The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (275 page)

“Hullo!” returned Finch, but he could not hold out his hand. His heart sank when he looked at Eden. He had helped to bring him to this.

“Eden, Eden!” cried their uncle. “I am distressed to find you looking so ill. I could not have believed—”

“Oh, I’m not in such bad shape as I look.” He stared at these newly arrived members of his family in satiric mirth. “Lord, what a quaint pair you are! When did you come here, and why?”

Ernest and Finch glanced at each other uncomfortably.

“I—he—,” mumbled the boy.

“He—I—,” stammered Ernest.

Eden broke into laughter. “I see it all! You ran away, Finch, and Uncle Ernest came to fetch you. Or was it the other way about? Never mind, it’s enough that you’re here! I wouldn’t have believed you’d have the guts.”

“You must come back to my hotel,” said Ernest.

“I wish I could invite you to my lodgings, but they’re too tough for you, by a long shot.”

Ernest was greatly upset. He turned to Finch. “Get a taxi. Eden isn’t fit to walk.”

On the way to the hotel, Eden asked: “Have you seen Alayne?”

“Yes, I’ve had dinner with her—and luncheon. M-yes. She’s looking lovely, Eden.”

“She would! Some women thrive on marital troubles. They find them more stimulating than babies.”

In the hotel bedroom Ernest said: “What you need is a good hot toddy, but how am I to get you one? Do you know if there is one of those—er— ‘speak-easy’ places about?” His heart failed him as he spoke. The thought of searching for such a place was abhorrent to him.

“No, thanks,” said Eden. “I couldn’t possibly take anything.” He drank a glass of water and fidgeted about the room, talking in a way that seemed to Ernest rather strange and wild. Finch sat by the window smoking, and took no part in the conversation. Eden did not speak to him.

After a time Eden announced his intention of going, but just as he took up his hat he was attacked by another fit of coughing. His last strength seemed to go into this. After it was over, he flung himself on the bed and shivered from head to foot. He was plainly so ill that Ernest was distraught. He sent Finch running downstairs to inquire about a doctor. The next morning he sent a telegram to Renny which read:

Have found Eden very ill please come at once cannot cope with this.—E. W
HITEOAK
.

T
HE
C
IRCLE

O
N THE MORNING
that followed, another member of the Whiteoak family might have been seen ascending in the hotel lift, attended by a porter carrying a rather shabby suitcase. When they alighted, he limped vigorously after the man and knocked with impatience on the designated door. It was opened by Finch.

When the porter had been tipped and the door closed behind him, Renny swept his eyes over the boy and gave a grunt, half of satisfaction at beholding him, half of derision.

Finch, red in the face, drew a step nearer. The elder took him by the arm, then kissed him. Finch seemed to him little more grown up than Wakefield. Joy and pure love surged through Finch. Animal joy and love that made him want to leap on Renny and caress him roughly like a joyous dog. He stood still, grinning sheepishly.

“Where’s Eden?” demanded Renny.

“In there,” He nodded toward the next room. “Uncle Ernest’s with him.”

Ernest himself then entered. He looked white and drawn.

“Heavens above!” he exclaimed. “I’m thankful you’ve come,” and he gripped Renny’s hand.

“This is a pretty mess,” said Renny. “Have you a doctor? How ill is he? What’s the matter with him?”

“It is indeed,” returned Ernest. “I don’t know when I’ve been so upset. I called a doctor as soon as he was taken badly. I think he’s a good one. He’s got a German name, but I dare say he’s all the cleverer for that.” He braced himself and looked Renny in the eyes. “Renny, it’s the boy’s lungs. They’re in a bad way. He’s in great danger, the doctor says.”

Renny’s brow contracted. He set the point of his stick in the centre of the geometrical pattern of the rug and stared at it. He said in a low voice: “His mother died of consumption.”

“Yes. But none of the children have shown any tendency that way. I suppose he’s been exposing himself.”

Renny began to limp nervously up and down the room. Ernest asked, solicitously: “How is your knee? It is a shame to have brought you here, when you’re not fit, but I—you understand—”

“It’s nothing. I wish I had our own doctor to see him. This man may be an alarmist.”

“I don’t know. I hope so. He says that he must have the very best care.”

“We must take him home… What does Alayne think of this?”

“She’s terribly upset, naturally. She’s shocked. There’s no hatred in her toward Eden. She thinks that he simply can’t help being what he is. Unfaithful. I agree, too. What do you think?”

“I think he’s a damned nuisance. All these brothers of mine are.” He turned his incisive gaze suddenly on Finch. “I hope you’re going to behave yourself, now,” he said.

Finch pulled at his underlip.

“Are you?”

“H’m-h’m.”

Ernest put in: “It’s God’s mercy that the boy ran away. We should never have heard of Eden till too late.”

Both men stared at Finch. He writhed inwardly, not knowing whether he was being commended or jeered at.

Ernest continued: “Alayne had got him quite a decent position in a publishing house, as costing clerk. I saw this Mr. Cory and got him to let him off at once. I had to have his help with Eden. I couldn’t be alone here, not knowing what might happen. I little thought, when I left home, the time I’d have.”

“Well, it’s a good thing he’s been of some use,” replied Renny. “Now, you’d better take me in to Eden.”

Eden was propped up in bed, not seeming so ill as Renny had expected until he had taken the hot dry hand and felt the thinness of it, noticed the sharp outline of the limbs under the coverings.

Renny seated himself on the side of the bed and surveyed his brother. “You have got yourself into a pretty state, haven’t you?”

Eden had been told that Renny was coming, but it seemed too unreal to see his family thus gathering about him. It frightened him. Was he so dreadfully ill? He withdrew his hand quickly from Renny’s and raised himself in the bed. He said, excitedly: “I don’t like this at all! What in hell’s the matter? Does that doctor say I’m going to die?”

“I haven’t been told anything of the sort,” returned Renny, with composure. “Uncle Ernest wired me that he had come across you, and that you were on the rocks. Well, you are, aren’t you? What are you getting up in the air about?”

Sweat stood on Eden’s forehead. “He wired you! Show me the telegram!”

“I can’t. It’s at home. For heaven’s sake, keep your hair on! You don’t feel like dying, I suppose?” He grinned as he asked the question, but he was filled by a great anxiety. All that was sturdy in him rushed out toward Eden to protect him.

“Tell me what he said! Had he seen the doctor yet?” He dropped back on the pillow. “Never mind. You wouldn’t tell me the truth.”

“I’m going to take you home.”

Eden’s agitation had subsided. He stared at his brother hungrily. “God, it looks good to see you sitting there! But I wish you’d take a chair! You make the bed sag. You’re no featherweight, Renny… Look at my arm.” He thrust it out from the sleeve, thin, dead-white, blue-veined. Renny scowled at it.

He got up, dragged a chair to one side of the bed and reseated himself.

“I can’t think how you got yourself into such a state. You don’t look as though you’d had enough to eat. Why haven’t you sent to me for money?”

“Should you have sent it?”

“You know I should.”

“And now you want to take me home?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Good old patriarch! The two lost lambs. Young Finch and I… But what about Piers? He’d not stand for that. God, I should like to see his face if it were suggested!”

“I did see it. I told him I might fetch you if you were fit to travel.”

Eden laughed, suddenly and maliciously. “Poor Piers! What did he say? That he’d poison all his pigs and then take a dose himself?”

“No,” Renny returned, sternly. “He remarked that you were a waster and always would be. He said that if you were coming home to—to—”

“To die… Go on.”

“That he’d take Pheasant away till it was over.”

Again Eden was moved to mirth, but this time there was an hysterical note in it.

“It’s a good thing you’re amused,” Renny observed calmly. “I should say that the joke is on you.” He thought: “I wish I knew what is in the bottom of his mind. I wish I knew what he’s been up to the past year.”

But Eden’s laughter brought on a fit of coughing. Renny watched him, his hard, thin frame tense with misery. “Can I do anything?” he entreated.

Eden raised his head, which he had buried in the pillow. His hair was plastered in damp locks on his forehead, his face flushed crimson.

“Look here, Renny.”

“Yes.”

“My mother died of lung trouble, didn’t she?”

“The doctor called it that, but I think she simply pined away after Wake’s birth. Father’s death was hard on her.”

“That’s the way I’ll go!”

“You’ve not been having a posthumous baby.”

“Might that bring it on, do you think?”

“If a woman were inclined that way”

“Well, I’m free from that cause.”

“But perhaps you’ve been begetting one!”

“If I have, it will be posthumous, poor little devil.”

“If you are determined to look on the black side of this trouble, you’ll die and no mistake,” declared Renny,
emphatically. “Buck up! Be a man! I’m going to take you home. You’ll get good care—the best care—”

“Who will take care of me?”

“A nurse, I suppose.”

Eden answered, hoarsely vehement: “Like hell she will! I tell you, I hate women! I won’t have a nurse about me. I loathe them—starchy flat-footed, hard-eyed—I’ll not go home if you make me have a nurse! I’ll die first!”

Ernest, his face puckered by anxiety, came into the sickroom. Finch, drawn by morbid curiosity, slunk after him.

Ernest said, reproachfully: “This will never do. The doctor says he must be kept quiet. I don’t think you realize how ill he is, Renny.” He poured something into a glass and brought it to Eden.

Renny regarded the proceeding with intense irritation and concern. He remarked: “I realize that he’s making this affair as difficult as possible.”

Ernest, looking down his nose, smoothed Eden’s pillow.

“Perhaps you expect Uncle Ernie to nurse you,” observed Renny, sarcastically.

Finch guffawed.

Renny wheeled on him. “What—” he began. “What—”

“Let the lad be,” said Ernest. “Finch, my boy, take the hot-water bottle and fill it.”

Eden did not want the hot-water bottle, but he pretended that he did, since the need of it made him appear rather more ill-used. Finch, with Renny’s eye on him, slunk out with the bottle.

“I’ll die before I’ll have a nurse,” Eden persisted, in a weak voice, after a silence broken only by the running of a tap.

The hot-water bottle was put in with him. Ernest patted his back, and said: “If it were not for Meggie’s baby, she
would be the very one! She would be perfect. She is almost perfect in every way.”

“Yes,” agreed Renny. “She is.”

“Couldn’t she get someone to look after the kid?” asked Eden.

“She has a sort of companion, but she’d never trust it to her entirely. She’s a perfect mother.” After a little he continued, hesitatingly: “Do you know, I have an idea. It may not be feasible, but”—he looked from one to the other—“but the whole affair is so unusual…”

“What is your idea?” asked Renny.

“Oh, I’m afraid it would be impossible. We’d better not discuss it. We had better think of someone possible… Eden, if the thought of a trained nurse is so intolerable to you, how would it do if we engaged some elderly woman who has had experience—”

“I saw one on the street!” interrupted Eden. “Wonderful old body! Tatters, and a face like one of the Fates.”

Renny asked of Ernest: “Do you think he’s a little light in his head?”

Finch gave a muffled snort of laughter.

“Not at all,” said Ernest. “You don’t understand him, that is all… Now the person I have in mind is Mrs. Patch. She is reliable. She has had experience in nursing—”

Finch, unable to stop himself, interjected: “She ought to do. She’s buried three of her own with T.B.”

“Finch,” said his uncle, sternly, “that remark was in very bad taste. I’m surprised at you!”

“Don’t mind me,” said Eden, faintly smiling. “Only please tell me about this idea of yours. Whom had you in mind?”

Ernest answered, looking, not at him, but at Renny: “I was wondering whether Alayne might be persuaded to nurse him.”

This sudden mention of her name seemed to conjure Alayne’s bodily presence before the occupants of the room. A subtle embarrassment dimmed their vision of each other. Ernest, after uttering the words, was moved to wish that he could recall them. They had seemed to him to besmirch her present aloofness, to drag her again into the shame and darkness of her last days at Jalna. He looked rather pathetically into the faces of his nephews, seeing each in his relation to those days.

Renny, experiencing a feeling of shock by the proposal, stared at Eden lying on the bed, dishevelled, ill, beautiful. He saw him as again the possessor of Alayne. He felt in himself the pain for something he could never possess. No, she must not do such a thing. It would be cruel to ask her, and yet… if she could bring herself to do it… he thought of her as standing reluctant in the room, midway between himself and Eden…

“She’s not quite a saint,” he said.

Finch, crouching in a big chair, twisted his fingers together. Figures in a dream, that was what they were—gesticulating, hiding their troubled eyes, disappearing, reappearing, beckoning one who had eluded them to return, seeking to draw her again into the circle. Again, in spite of himself, he spoke. “Do women,” he asked, “ever take a man back after a thing like that?”

His brothers regarded him in silence, too astounded to speak. It was Ernest’s mellow voice that answered.