The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (243 page)

“Each imagining, poor fool,” said Nicholas, “that he was the father of the egg.”

“I didn’t hear them at all,” said Meggie.

Ernest raised a long white hand. “If I had the whole gallinaceous tribe,” he said, “between the forefinger and thumb of this hand, tomorrow’s sun should rise upon a cockless and henless world.”

A heavy thumping sounded on the floor of grandmother’s room.

“Piers, go and see what she wants,” said Meg. “I tucked her up quite an hour ago, and she dropped off instantly.”

Piers went, and returned, announcing: “She wants to know who brought the rooster into the house. Says she won’t have it. She wants Renny and Alayne to go and kiss her.”

“Oh, I think she just wants Renny. I don’t think she would trouble Alayne.”

“She said she wanted them both to come and kiss her.”

“Come along, Alayne,” said Renny, throwing down his table napkin. They left the room together.

Just as they reached the bedroom door, a long sigh was drawn within. They hesitated, looking at each other. That quivering intake of breath went to their hearts. She was lying alone in there, the old, old woman with her own thoughts. Her fears perhaps. Of what was she thinking, stretched under her quilt, the old lungs dilating, contracting. They went in and bent over her, one on each side of the bed. She drew them down to her in turn and kissed them with sleepy, bewildered, yet passionate affection, her mouth all soft and sunken with the two sets of teeth removed.

As they tucked the bedclothes about her neck, she lay peering up at them, her eyes queerly bright under the night light, infinitely, pathetic.

“Anything more, Gran?” asked Renny.

“No, darling.”

“Quite comfy, Gran?” asked Alayne.

She did not answer, for she was again asleep.

Outside, they exchanged tender, whimsical smiles. They wished they did not have to return to the dining room. They loved each other all the more because of their pity for the old woman.

As Nicholas and Ernest separated for the night, Nicholas said in his growling undertone: “Did you notice anything about those two?”

Ernest had been blinking, but now he was alert at once.

“No, I didn’t. And yet, now I come to think of it—What d’ye mean, Nick?”

“They’re gone on each other. No doubt about that. I’ll just go in with you a minute and tell you what I noticed.”

The two stepped softly into Ernest’s room, closing the door after them.

Renny, in his room, was sitting in a shabby leather armchair, with a freshly filled pipe in his hand. This particular pipe and this chair were sacred to his last smoke before going to bed. He did not light up now, however, but sat with the comfort of the smooth bowl in the curve of his hand, brooding with the bitterness of hopeless love on the soft desirability of the loved one. This girl. This wife of Eden’s. The infernal cruelty of it! It was not as though he loved her only carnally, as he had other women. He loved her protectingly, tenderly. He wanted to keep her from hurt. His passion, which in other affairs had burst forth like a flamboyant red flower without foliage, now reared its head almost timidly through tender leaves of protectiveness and pure affection.

There she lay in the next room, alone. And not only alone, but loving him. He wondered if she had already surrendered herself to him in imagination. No subtle vein of femininity ran through the stout fabric of his nature that might have made it possible for him to imagine her feelings. To him she was a closed book in a foreign language. He believed that there were men who understood women because of a certain curious prying in their contacts with them. To him it was scarcely decent. He took what women gave him, and asked no questions.

There she lay in the next room, alone. He had heard her moving about in her preparation for bed. She had seemed to be moving things about, and he had remembered Eden’s saying something about emptying out the bookcase. The blasted fool! Leaving her to handle a lot of heavy books. He had
thought of going in to do it for her, but he had decided against that. God knows what might have come of it—alone together in there—the rain on the roof, the old mossgrown roof of Jalna pressing above them, all the passions that had blazed and died beneath it dripping down on them, pressing them together.

There she lay in the next room, alone. He pictured her in a fine embroidered shift, curled softly beneath the silk eiderdown like a kitten, her hair in two long honey-colored braids on the pillow. He got up and moved restlessly to the door, opened it, and looked out into the hall. A gulf of darkness there. And a silence broken only by the low rumble of Uncle Nick’s snore and the rasping tick of the old clock. God! Why had Eden chosen to stay away tonight?

Wakefield stirred on the bed, and Renny closed the door and came over to him. He opened his eyes and smiled sleepily up at him.

“Renny—a drink.”

He filled a glass from a carafe on the washstand, and held it to the child’s mouth. Wake raised himself on his elbow and drank contentedly, his upper lip magnified to thickness in the water. He emptied the glass and threw himself back on the pillow, wet-mouthed and soft-eyed.

“Coming to bed, Renny?”

“Yes.”

“Had your smoke?”

“Yes.”

“M-m. I don’t smell it.”

“I believe I’ve forgotten it.”

“Funny. I say, Renny, when you get into bed, will you play we’re somebody else? I’m nervous.”

“Rot. You go to sleep.”

“Honestly. I’m as nervous as anything. Feel my heart.”

Renny felt it. “It feels perfectly good to me.” He pulled the clothes about the boy’s shoulders and patted his back. “One would think you were a hundred. You’re more trouble than Gran.”

“May I go to the Horse Show with you?”

“I guess so.”

“Hurrah. Did you buy the filly?”

“Yes.”

“When will she be here?”

“Tomorrow.”

“If I aren’t well, may I stay home from lessons?”

“Yes.” Renny had no backbone tonight, Wake saw that. He could do what he liked with him. “May I tell Meggie you said so?”

“I suppose.”

“Who shall we be when you come to bed?”

“Well—no pirates or harpooners or birds of that sort. You be thinking up a nice quiet sociable pair while I have my smoke.”

A muffled tread sounded in the hall, and a low knock on the door. Renny opened it on Rags, sleep—rumpled but important.

“Sorry to disturb you, sir, but Wright is downstairs. ‘E’s just come in from the stible and ‘e says Cora’s colt ‘as took a turn for the worse, sir, and would you please ‘ave a look at it.”

Rags spoke with the bright eagerness of hired help who have bad news to tell.

This was bad indeed, for Cora was a new and expensive purchase.

“Oh, curse the luck,” growled Renny, as he and Wright, with coat collars turned up, hurried through the rain, now only a chill drizzle, toward the stable.

“ Yes indeed, sir,” said Wright. “It’s pretty hard luck. I was just going to put the light out and go to bed”—he and two other men slept above the garage—“when I saw she was took bad. She’d just been nursed too, and we’d give her a raw egg, but she sort of collapsed and waved her head about, and I thought I’d better fetch you. She’d seemed a bit stronger today, too.”

Down in the stable it was warm and dry. The electric light burned clearly—lamps in the house, electricity in the stables at Jalna—and there was a pleasant smell of new hay. The foal lay on a bed of clean straw in a loose box. Its dam, in the adjoining stall, threw yearning and troubled glances at it over the partition. Why was not its tender nose pressing and snuffling against her? Why, when it suckled, did it pull so feebly, with none of those delicious buntings and furious pullings which, instinct told her, were normal and seemly?

Renny pulled off his coat, threw it across the partition, and knelt beside the foal. It seemed to know him, for its great liquid eyes sought his face with a pleading question in them. Why was it thus? Why had it been dropped from warm indolent darkness into this soul-piercing light? What was it? And along what dark echoing alley would it soon have to make its timid way alone?

Its head, large and carved, was raised above its soft furry body; its stiff foal’s legs looked all pitiful angles.

“Poor little baby,” murmured Renny, passing his hands over it, “poor little sick baby.”

Wright and Dobson stood by, reiterating the things they had done for it. Cora plaintively whinnied and gnawed the edge of her manger.

“Give me the liniment the vet left,” said Renny. “Its legs are cold.”

He filled his palm with the liquid and began to rub the foal’s legs. If only warmth and strength could pass from him into it! “By Judas,” he thought, “perhaps there’s some fiery virtue in my red head!”

He sent the two men to their beds, for he wanted to look after the foal himself, and they must have their sleep.

He rubbed it till his arms refused to move, murmuring encouragements to it, foolish baby talk: “Little colty—poor little young ‘un—does she feel ‘ittie bit better then?” and “Cora’s baby girl!”

Comforting noises came from other stalls, soft blowings through wide velvety nostrils, deep contented sighs, now and again a happy munching as a wisp of left-over supper was consumed, the deep sucking-in of a drink. He took a turn through the passages between the stalls, sleepy whinnies of recognition welcoming him. In the hay-scented dusk he caught the shine of great liquid eyes, a white blaze on a forehead, a white star on a breast, or the flash of a suddenly tossed mane. God, how he loved them, these swift and ardent creatures! “Shall I ever see the foal standing tall and proud in her box like one of these?”

He went back to her.

Cora had lain down, a dark hump in the shadow of her stall. In her anxiety she had kicked her bedding into the passage, and lay on the bare floor.

The foal’s eyes were half closed, but when Renny put his hand on its tawny flank, they flew wide open, and a shiver slid beneath his palm. He felt its legs. Warmer. He was going to save it. He was going to save it! It wanted to rise. He put his arms about it. “There—up she comes now!” It was on its feet, its eyes blazing with courage, its neck ridiculously arched, its legs stiffly braced. Clattering her hoofs, Cora rose,
whinnying, and looked over the partition at her offspring. It answered her with a little grunt, took two wavering steps, then, as if borne down by the weight of its heavy head, collapsed again on the straw. “Hungry. Hungry. Poor old baby’s hungry. She’s coming, Cora. Hold on, pet.” He carried the colt to its dam and supported it beneath her.

Oh, her ecstasy! She quivered from head to foot. She nuzzled it, slobbering, almost knocking it over. She nuzzled Renny, wetting his hair. She bit him gently on the shoulder. “Steady on. Steady on, old thing. Ah, the baby’s got it. Now for a meal!”

Eagerly, it began to suck, but had scarcely well begun when its heart failed it. The foal turned its head petulantly away. Cora looked at Renny in piteous questioning. It hung heavy in his arms. He carried it back, and began the rubbing again. It dozed. He dozed, his face glistening with sweat under the electric light.

But another light was penetrating the stable. Daylight, pale and stealthy as a cat, creeping through the straw, gliding along the cobweb-hung beams, penetrating delicately into the blackest corners. Impatient whinnies were flung from stall to stall. Low, luscious moos answered from the byre. The orchestra of cocks delivered its brazen salute to the dawn. The stallion’s blue-black eyes burned in fiery morning rage, but the little foal’s eyes were dim.

Renny bent over it, felt its legs, looked into its eyes. “Oh, that long, long, lonely gallop ahead of me,” its eyes said. “To what strange pasture am I going?”

Wright came clattering down the stairs, his broad face anxious.

“How’s the wee foal, sir?”

“It’s dying, Wright.”

“Ah, I was afraid we couldn’t save her. Lord, Mr. Whiteoak, you shouldn’t have stopped up all night! When I saw the light burning I was sure you had, and I came straight over.”

Cora uttered a loud terrified whinny.

The two men bent over the foal.

“It’s gone, Wright.”

“Yes, sir. Cora knows.”

“Go in and quiet her. Have it taken away. God! It came suddenly at the last.”

The rain was over. A mild breeze had blown a clear space in the sky. It was of palest blue, and the blown-back clouds, pearl and amethyst, were piled up, one on another, like tumbled towers. Behind the wet boles of the pines a red spark of sunrise burned like a torch.

Renny pictured the soul of the foal, strong-legged, set free, galloping with glad squeals toward some celestial meadow, its eyes like stars, its tail a flaming meteor, its flying hoofs striking bright sparks from rocky planets. “What a blithering ass I am—worse than Eden. Writing poetry next... All her foals—and theirs—generations of them— lost.”

He went in at the kitchen door, and found young Pheasant, a sweater over her nightdress. She was sitting on the table eating a thick slice of bread and butter.

“Oh, Renny, how is the little colt? I wakened before daylight, and I couldn’t go to sleep again for thinking of it, and I got so hungry, and I came down as soon as it was light enough, to get something to eat, and I saw the light under your door and I was sure it was worse. Wake called to me and he said Wright had come for you.”

“Yes, Wright came.”

He went to the range and held his hands over it. He was chilled through. She studied him out of the sides of her eyes. He looked aloof, unapproachable, but after a moment he said, gently:

“Make me a cup of tea, like a good kid. I’m starved with the cold in that damned stable. The kettle’s singing.”

She slid from the table and got the kitchen teapot, fat, brown, shiny, with a nicked spout. She dared not ask him about the colt. She cut some fresh bread and spread it, thinking how strange it was to be in the kitchen at this hour with Renny, just like Rags and Mrs. Wragge. The immense, low-ceiled room, with its beamed ceiling and now unused stone fireplace, was heavy with memories of the past, long-gone Christmas dinners, christening feasts, endless roasts and boilings. The weariness, the bickerings, the laughter, the love-making of generations of servant maids and men. All the gossip that had been carried down with the trays, concerning the carryings on of those who occupied the regions above, had settled in this basement, soaked into every recess. Here lay the very soul of Jalna.