The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (125 page)

“You didn’t understand her,” said Renny gruffly.

“Upon my word, I’m surprised that you did. I shouldn’t fancy her your style at all. But perhaps it just means that you have more discrimination than I have.”

“She’s wonderful.”

A silence fell between them as they padded, in their light canvas shoes, over the warm earth. They turned into a narrow winding path and, in a moment, the lake lay before them and the deserted white sickle of the shore. The lake was rippled like blue silk and level cloud shapes barred the horizon. They were a nameless colour, neither blue nor rose, nor gold, but a mingling of all three.

The two boys slid the canoe across the sand and sprang into it, Maurice pushing off with his paddle. In three strokes they had entered into a new world, a liquid translucent world freed from the troubling bonds of the land. They had taken off their jerseys, and their smooth torsos, as they bent above their paddles, were bronzed by the afterglow. The rhythmic movement of their arms, the crystal drip of water from their paddles, gave them peace. They saw the events of the past weeks in a calmer light. As they moved farther and farther from shore they became detached from themselves, and each looked into his own mind as into a still well.

“You say,” said Maurice, at last, “that she is wonderful. Does that mean that she has let you love her?”

“Yes.”

“Were you long at the farm?”

“I stayed there one night.”

Maurice looked at his friend’s back, watched its muscles moving against the shapely bones, watched the proud way he held his head and how his ears lay against it.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever understood you, Renny,” he said.

“There’s nothing in me to understand — except as you might understand the colt.”

“Well — I guess he’s not easy to understand.” It was a relief to speak of the colt. “But I’m glad you’re to have him. Shall you school him for the Show?”

“Yes. I don’t know what I can make of him, any more than my father knows what he can make of me.”

“I’m terribly sorry that I led you into this,” said Maurice. “It was all my fault.”

“I didn’t need any leading. I should have found my way.”

Maurice had a moment’s chagrin. He had felt superior to Renny as an experienced man to a boy. Now Renny seemed to have advanced beyond him. His affair with Elvira seemed immature and trifling. He said: —

“Will you tell me something about Lulu? What is she like to talk to? She always seemed to be laughing at me.”

“Oh, I can’t remember anything she said!” He began to paddle strongly. The canoe moved swiftly forward. The clouds at the horizon had merged into a great conflagration of colour that engulfed sky and lake.

A
N
E
XCHANGE OF
P
RESENTS

I
T WAS LATE
when Renny went to his room. He found on his dressing table a pair of ivory hair brushes and beside them a card bearing the words — “A token of affection from Cousin Malahide.” He looked at the brushes and the card, not believing his eyes. He turned back to the door, then again came to the dressing table and reread the message.

“The dirty dog!” he ejaculated. “As though I’d have his brushes!”

He took one in either hand and examined them. Handsome ones, certainly. He had admired them in Malahide’s room when first he came. But to have them given to him as a token of his affection, at a time like this! He began vigorously to brush his hair with them. Back from his forehead and temples, up from his ears, down to his nape. Good brushes — excellent brushes — he should like to take them to Cousin Malahide’s room and give him a whacking with them.

Instead he took them to his sister’s door.

“Meg,” he whispered, tapping, “may I come in?”

Her light was still burning. Her voice came heavy with drowsiness. “Come in. I was just going to put out my light.”

He closed the door behind him and came and sat on the side of her bed.

“Look,” he said, holding out a brush in each hand, “what Malahide has given me! He left them on my dressing table — ‘as a token
of affection’! What do you think of that? What the devil shall I do
to him?”

Meg examined the brushes. “I’d certainly keep them,” she said.

She looked charming sitting up in her frilled nightdress with its long sleeves and high neck, above which her girl’s face blossomed and her tendrils of bright brown hair shone in the lamplight.

“Keep them!” he repeated, fiercely. “Keep them! What I want to think up is the most insulting way of returning them.”

“Well, after all,” she said, “he ought to give you a present. He knows he has been horrid to you and he is trying to make up for it. Besides, Granny has been giving him presents, so it is only fair he should return the compliment.”

“What a mind you have!” he exclaimed peevishly.

“I have a logical mind,” she returned, “which you have not and never will have.”

He gave her a long, searching look, trying to read her, trying to understand this being, so close to him, of the very flesh of which he was made, yet uncomprehendable as a book in a foreign tongue.

He gave up the effort and said — “What I am afraid of is that he will not leave when Auntie and Uncle Edwin do. If he doesn’t, God knows when we shall be rid of him. He may stay till Christmas — all the winter!”

“Oh no,” cried Meg, “that would be too horrible! We must make it so unpleasant for him here that he will be glad to go!”

“When are they leaving?”

“In a fortnight. They’re seeing about tickets tomorrow.”

“Meggie, can you think of anything we might do to get even with him for what he’s done to me? Something so insulting that he’ll be bound to go, after it?”

“Let me think,” she said, and covered her face with her hands.

There was silence while she sat with bowed head and he gazed hopefully at her. The grandfather clock in the hall struck its twelve sonorous tones.

“You’re not going to sleep, are you?” he asked.

She uncovered her face and turned it reproachfully on him.

“Do you imagine,” she said, “that a plan to get rid of such a bundle of black iniquity can be thought of in a second?”

“I suppose not. But have you got an idea?”

“Yes…. But it will all depend on how well we can do it. Supposing we write an insulting verse to him and teach it to Eden and have Eden recite it in front of everyone.”

He was disappointed at the suggestion. It lacked the violence he desired, but he said, encouragingly: —

“That’s a good idea. But you’ll have to write it. I’m no good at that sort of thing.”

“We’ll write it together!” Her face brightened with a mischievous light he had not seen there for a long while. He grinned in response.

“How shall we begin?” he asked.

“We’ll begin with the vocative. I’ll do the first line….'O Malahide —' Now you go on.”

“I can’t abide,” he added at once.

“Good!” she exclaimed.

He knit his brows. “I can’t think of anything else.”

“Of course you can! You must.”

He proceeded, with a scowl: — “The way you’ve spied —
The way you’ve lied —”

Meg carried on triumphantly: — “You are a snide!”

Renny uttered a snort of delight. “Go on, go on,” he implored, “while you’re in the vein!”

With an exalted expression she concluded: — “I wish you’d died
In Ballyside —
O Malahide!”

Renny’s lips were stretched in a grin of approval.

“Now let me say it over from the beginning.” But she could not repeat it for laughing. She buried her face in her bolster and he laid her pillow on her head to smother the sound of her mirth. “What a one you are for laughing!” he said, but he was pleased with her.

A bat flew in at the window and began its naked, black dance, soft and punctual, up and down the room.

Meg sat up and stared at it from the ambush of her sheet.

“Oh, put it out! Oh, kill it!” she said in an anguished whisper. “If it gets into my hair it must be cut off!”

Renny caught up a towel, folded it into a weapon, and tiptoed, lean and silent, after the bat. It flitted always where he was not, like the spirit of opportunity, the answer to desire.

“Ha, I’ve got you!” he said, again and again, but when he raised his weapon the bat was pirouetting with its shadow against the ceiling.

“Oh, mind the lamp!” she cried, as the flapping towel snatched the air from the glass and the flame sank and the smoke poured up through the lamp chimney. But the lamp did not go out. The flame rose again to show her Renny triumphant, holding the bat in a little nest in the towel.

“Want to see it?” he asked.

“No, no,” she answered, shrinking, but in spite of herself had to peer fearfully at it nipped between his finger and thumb. From out of the towel its evil face peered back at her. Its body swelled with spite.

“It’s a return gift,” said Renny, “for Cousin Malahide.”

With the hair brushes in one hand and the bat concealed in the towel, he stole from the room and rapped softly on Malahide’s door.

It opened, and Malahide appeared clad in a black silk dressing gown, open to the waist. His neck, without the high collar, was smooth as ivory. On his breast was a patch of glossy black hair.

“Cousin Renny!” he exclaimed. “I’m so glad to see you! Come in! Did you like my present?”

“So well,” said Renny, with a bitter grin, “that I’ve brought you one in return!”

He stepped into the room, laid the brushes on the dressing table, and, with a bold gesture, released the bat. It danced from its captivity, ugly as fate, and circled above their heads.

Renny slid swiftly out of the room and closed the door behind him.

R
ECITATION

E
DEN WAS CAPTURED
the next day by Renny and led to Meg’s room. He had been told that he was to share a secret with them, and his back was stiff with pride. He stood looking expectantly from one face to the other, at Meg settled in her chintz-covered chair, and at Renny lighting a cigarette as he lounged on the wide window sill.

“Now,” said Renny, “you know that Cousin Malahide is going away. Meggie and I have decided that it will be nice for you to recite something for him — a sort of goodbye verse in front of all the family. So we’ve brought you up here to teach it to you.”

Eden looked blank. “Is that all? I thought there was a secret.”

Meg took his hand in hers. “It is a secret. No one is to know anything about it but us three. Renny and I have made up the verse, but we’re too old to recite it, and you recite so beautifully.”

Eden was unimpressed. He said, “I don’t want to.”

Renny and Meg exchanged glances. This lack of enthusiasm on the part of their speaker would never do. Renny said: —

“Now, look here, if you recite this piece properly I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I will take you for a glorious ride on my colt. He’s perfectly safe now, but you mustn’t say anything about it. The whole thing is a profound secret.”

“All right,” said Eden at once. “How soon will you take me on Gallant?” The colt had been so named by a combination of his dam’s name, Saucy Gal, and his sire’s, Duke of Brabant.

“As soon as you have said the piece,” returned Renny, “and we’ve escaped with our lives.”

“Sh,” warned Meg.

Eden had a good memory. In a quarter of an hour he could recite the doggerel accurately.

Two days passed before the propitious moment came. Remembering the promised ride, Eden kept the secret. The Laceys and Mr. Fennel had come to tea, and a game of backgammon and two tables of whist had been arranged.

Admiral Lacey and Adeline were seated at the backgammon board in the middle of the room. The Admiral, a man of just over seventy and of a build so solid and a countenance so red that he looked a formidable opponent, faced her with friendly truculence. His wife, short, stout, and pink-faced, sat at a table of whist with Sir Edwin as her partner, and Augusta and Philip as opponents. At another table the two Miss Laceys, who were in their late forties and had fluffy hair turning grey and complexions like young girls, were engaged at play with Nicholas and Ernest. There had been a time when they had hoped very much to be engaged with them in the business of life, but the brothers had spent much of their time in London and had there met women more congenial to them, as they had thought, and certainly less restricted in their outlook. Now Nicholas, looking into Violet Lacey’s blue eyes, wondered if he would not have done well to marry her. On her part she still cared for him, but about his head glimmered a sinister halo of divorce. She doubted if she could face that. Still, the sight of his large handsome hands shuffling the cards moved her strangely. Her sister Ethel and Ernest kept up a flow of badinage of the sort fashionable in the nineties. At a third table Mary, Malahide, and Vera Lacey watched Mr. Fennel do a card trick prior to a game of bridge.

After a period of great heat there had been an electrical storm and the air was now unseasonably cool, so that the snapping of the wood fire was agreeable to the human occupants of the room, though not to Keno, the spaniel, who wished to lie on the rug in front of it, or to Boney, who eyed the blaze askance from his perch, at the same time keeping the eye next the company closed, as though in distaste for their frivolity.

Renny had not appeared for tea. Now he came in and went straight to Mary with an air of unusual deference.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Mother. I had to go to town and I got caught in the rain and was wet through. I’ve been changing.”

Mary, always ready to be friendly with her stepchildren, smiled at him. Meg appeared in the doorway with Eden by the hand. She had not yet quite resumed her place in the family. Now her coming was greeted by sympathetic smiles. She said sedately, after speaking to the guests: —

“Eden has come to say goodnight. Hurry up, dear, and get it over with.”

“But,” said the little boy excitedly, “I want to say my piece first.”

“What piece?” asked his father.

“My goodbye poem for Cousin Malahide.”

“A goodbye poem,” repeated Malahide. “That’s rather premature, isn’t it?”