The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (288 page)

Ah, well, he was only twenty-six. He had seen and experienced a good deal, and would experience a deal more. Write poetry that would be remembered—for a day, at any rate. He was almost well. The desire to write surged up in him. He became wrapped in contemplation of his own personality. He forgot to rise when a hymn was sung until Renny touched him on the arm, then he rose hesitatingly to his feet. So long since he had been to church.

“Day of Wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfilled the prophets’ warning!
Heaven and earth in ashes burning!”

He wondered whether anyone in heaven or on earth disliked hymns as much as he did. They made him want to throw back his head and howl like a dog. But he made no sound whatever, meekly taking a corner of the hymn book Renny offered him. Renny did not sing either, or poor snuffling young Finch, but Piers raised his lusty baritone.

“What shall I, frail man, be pleading,
Who for me be interceding,
When the just are mercy needing!”

From a pew behind a woman’s voice rose, clear and beautiful.

“With Thy favoured sheep O place me
Nor among the goats abase me,
But to Thy right hand upraise me.”

He recognized the voice as Minny Ware’s. He followed it, absorbed by its beauty. He glanced at Renny, wondering if he too was following it, but Renny seemed to be engrossed in the hymn, his lips silently shaping the words.

All through Mr. Fennel’s eulogy of the Christian qualities of old Adeline, Eden’s mind played with the thought of Minny Ware. He recalled her as he had seen her on various occasions, always in bright colours full of vitality, ready to give laugh for smile. He thought of her snowy neck rising columnlike from her turned-back collar. He rested his mind on the music of her voice. He decided that he would ask Alayne to have her come more often to sing to them. No, he would go over to Vaughanlands himself, and hear her sing with the piano. He was getting restless. He couldn’t loaf about much longer. He must get work of some kind, though what it would be, God only knew!

His brothers were rising. Now it was time to carry the coffin to the graveyard. Surely Maurice would take his place again. Renny left the pew, but Eden did not move, though Finch was pressing behind him. He sent a glance, almost of entreaty, toward Maurice, who seemed undecided what to do. But Eden was not to be let off. Renny had made up his mind that it was seemly for the brothers to bear the coffin, and bear it they must, though one of them faint. He threw a look, half harsh, half affectionate, toward Eden, and, with a curt motion of the chin, indicated that he was to follow. The four took up their burden.

They had lowered her into the ground. Earth had been thrown into the grave. The last words were being spoken: “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust”… Meggie’s soft weeping was mingled with Mr. Fennel’s voice. “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body…”

Ernest’s face was white and bleak. His jaw had dropped a little. He was inwardly sobbing to himself: “Mama, Mama!” Now she was to be “no more seen.”

Augusta, in deepest black, had drawn back her head, facing the concourse with the dignity of sorrow. If she had been isolated from her surroundings, one might easily have been persuaded that her expression was one of profound offence. Was she, perhaps, offended by death? On her next birthday she would be seventy-seven.

The face of Nicholas was like a rock, scarred by the lashings of long-past storms. He stood, massive, looking stoically into the dark aperture before him. But he did not see it. He saw himself, a little lad of five, sitting in the pew he had just left, leaning against his mother, with three-year-old Ernest on her other side, both getting very drowsy. Mama was voluminous in a snuff-coloured, billowing dress, lovely for tiny boys to curl up against, and the broad satin ribbons of her bonnet delightful to fondle. What a fine rich red her hair was then! Strange how it had slipped a generation and struck fire in Renny! Beyond was Papa’s stalwart figure, his fresh-tinted stubborn profile that had descended, first to Philip, then to Piers, but not so aristocratic in the last generation. Well, you couldn’t do anything about it. You were hurled into this world, floundered about a while, and were hurled out of it… Ernest had taken his arm. “Come along, Nick,” he said. “It’s over. We’re going.”

Ernest led him through the maze of gravestones. His gouty knee gave him some nasty twinges; once or twice he stumbled. Queer how things looked unnatural to him. Even the people who came up to speak to him. The elder Miss Lacey had taken one of his hands in both of hers.

“Dear Nicholas,” she said. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? I know just how you feel! Losing our father as we did, last year. He was ninety-two!”

He looked at her vaguely. He did not see her as she now was, but as she had looked forty-five years ago when she was
making up to him, wanting to marry him. He’d have done a sight better if he’d taken her instead of that flyaway creature he had chosen. He’d have had a family, and his father might have left Jalna to him instead of to his younger brother. He rumbled a few words appreciative of her sympathy and limped on.

A strong wind, smelling of the hot dry land, had sprung up. The long grasses of the graveyard rippled before it joyously. “It is not yet evening,” they seemed to sing. The wind swept low, as though to gather fresh sweetness from the roses, lilies, and carnations mounded in the Whiteoak plot. A number of white clouds were borne along the sky in orderly procession, like choristers in snowy surplices. The drone of the organ still came from within the church.

Renny moved urgently toward his car, Wakefield dragging at his arm.

“Renny, Renny, may I drive home with you? I see Eden getting in with Meg and Maurice.”

“All right, youngster.”

He was glad to have the little boy with him, glad to get away from that place. At the grave-side he had stood with raised head, his eyes on the distance, and again something in his attitude suggested the fear of a sensitive horse toward death. Now he snuffed the wind, pressed Wake’s hand against his side, and made an effort to restrain his eagerness to leave that place.

Wakefield said: “I don’t think my grandmother could have had a nicer day for her funeral, do you ? And, I think she would be glad, if she could know, what a monstrous crowd there is.”

The churchyard was deserted.

The body of Adeline lay at last in the family plot, which was enclosed by a low iron fence around which were festooned rusted chains and little spiked iron balls. Under a burden of earth and sod and drooping flowers, she lay stretched out by the side of all that was left of her Philip, whose bones were now probably bare. At their feet lay young Philip, and at his side his first wife Margaret. In a corner reposed Mary, his second wife, surrounded by a little group of infant Whiteoaks.

All that was lacking was Adeline’s name, soon to be graven on the granite plinth that towered above the graves… All was over for her, her tempers, her appetites, her sudden dozes, her love of colour, of noise, of family scenes. No more would she sit, velvet-gowned, ringed, capped, with Boney at her shoulder, before the blazing fire. No longer would she entreat, with a sudden tremulousness of that bold heart: “Somebody kiss me—quick!”

She would be “no more seen.”

One of meditative mind might, knowing her character, speculate on what sort of tree should possibly be nourished, in far future days, from that grave. A flamboyant, Southern tree would perhaps be favoured were this not a Northern land. In consideration of this, a Scottish fir might well draw sustenance from the hardy frame and obdurate spirit.

T
HE
Y
OUNG
P
RETENDER

W
AKEFIELD
scented excitement in the air from the moment when he first opened his eyes. There was something in the way the window curtains fluttered in the breeze that made him think of the bellying of sails. There was something unusual in the smell of the air, as though it had come from a long way off, a different country, full of strange adventure. A tiny cockerel, just learning to crow, had somehow escaped from the poultry house and found his way to the lawn. Every few minutes he raised himself on tiptoe, flapped his wings, and essayed a plaintive, yet boastful, crow.

Wakefield, lying across the sill in his pyjamas, watched him with eyes still soft with sleep, but already lighting into mischief. The shoulder of his pyjamas was ripped, and a tear in the seat fluttered as the breeze ran along his back. Since Meg had married, his clothes were not kept in very good order, but that gave him no concern; to improve his mind, to broaden his experience, were of more importance to him than mere sartorial perfection. The sun warming a bare shoulder, the fluttering of a torn pyjama suit, were more stimulating than tame tidiness. He noticed that one feather
of the half-grown tail of the cockerel was awry, and he had a fellow-feeling for him. He watched him strutting about, between crows picking up nice morsels from the lawn. Before each peck there was a short, gay period of scratching. Wakefield felt that he would like to eat his breakfast in such a way. He had a vision of himself energetically pawing the ground, turning up buttery morsels of toast, or, better still, chocolate creams wrapped in silver paper.

He thought he would see what time it was. He did not wish to spend too much of his day in meditation. He went to the dressing table where, among Renny’s rather meagre toilet articles, lived the alarm clock. It was a temperamental clock, though it bore across its forehead the words “Big Ben.” It lost twenty minutes every day, and might have been counted a sluggard but for the fact that its alarm had to be set half an hour later than the time when one wished to be called, so urgent was it in its desire to go off. How many a time the little boy had wakened at night to see Renny half undressed, his face close to the face of Big Ben, with a look as of determination to keep the upper hand in the constant duel between them. It was twenty minutes to ten. There would be little left of breakfast to tempt one of wayward appetite. He opened Kenny’s top drawer, and there, among the neat rows of ties and mounds of handkerchiefs, he discovered a small tin box marked Chest and Lung Tablets. These were richly flavoured with liquorice and, while not large in bulk, might be counted on to stay one until something more intriguing than half-cold porridge and tepid tea turned up.

He laid one on his tongue and, when he had got into his clothes, dropped a few more into a pocket of his knickers. His ablutions were a miracle of producing the most pleasing effect with the least effort. However, he spent a good deal of time on
his hair, for he had found that its sleekness invariably produced a favourable impression on his elders, with the exception of Piers, who took delight in rubbing it the wrong way.

He was about to go downstairs when he heard the peculiar bubbly cooing by which young Maurice was wont to express his pleasure in the morn. He glided to the door of Pheasant’s room and looked in. No one was there save the infant, sitting on a quilt on the floor, sucking something out of his bottle. When he saw Wakefield he kicked convulsively and took the bottle from his lips, a waggish smile widening his mouth, showing all his pearl-like teeth.

“Nug-nug! Ee-ee! Nug-nug!”

“Hello, Mooey!” returned Wakefield, kindly. “Glad to see your old uncle, aren’t you?”

“Nug-nug! Brrrr!” bubbled Mooey, and replaced the nipple in his mouth. He sucked energetically, the muscles in his lip quivering, his eyes turned slightly toward his nose.

Wakefield took him under the arms and raised him to his feet. Mooey stamped his bare soles energetically on the quilt, but the bottle fell from his grasp and a shadow troubled his pink brow. His motto was “One thing at a time and that done thoroughly.” This promenading in the middle of a drink confused him.

“Ba!” he declared, trying to see his uncle’s face. “Bubbub-bub!”

Wakefield walked him the length of the room between his knees. “Nice walk,” he said, dictatorially. “Bad old bottle.”

But Mooey was of a different opinion. There, on the quilt, lay his bottle, still half full of delicious sweetened water, and here was he, leagues away, held by two vice-like hands, while tweed-knickered legs and leather brogues imprisoned him on either side.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!” he cried, hut his “ha” was of lamentation, not mirth.

“Hush,” said Wakefield, sternly, “or you’ll have your mother fussing about! What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you step out and learn to walk when I’m taking all this trouble with you? Do you know what’s likely to get you, if you’re naughty? Well, a big wolf is, and gobble you right up.”

Happily Mooey was unable to take in the import of this dire possibility, but when he threw back his head, and looked up into Wakefield’s face, he saw something in that smooth, alive visage that brought tears welling into his eyes, and made him raise his voice in a despairing wail. Wakefield propelled him to the door and balanced himself on one leg while he shut it with his foot. He then returned him to his quilt, on which he dropped him so precipitately that the infant’s faculties were occupied, for the moment, in recovering his balance.

Wakefield picked up the bottle and shook it. He removed the nipple and tasted the insipid fluid. At this sight, an expression so outraged came into Mooey’s wet eyes that Wakefield was moved to reassure him.

“Can’t you trust your uncle?” he asked. “You’re very much mistaken if you think I want any of this beastly stuff. And if you weren’t such a little fathead you’d never let them put you off with it! Now I’m going to give you something really nice. And it’s good for you, too, ‘specially as you sound sort of wheezy.”

Mooey made noises indicative of a broken spirit, and watched Wakefield fascinated as he took two of the Chest and Lung Tablets from his pocket and dropped them into the bottle. He placed his palm on the opening and shook the bottle vigorously. It took the tablets some time to dissolve,
but at last the water took on a dark, rather poisonous colour, and Wakefield assumed that sufficient of the medicinal quality of the tablets had been absorbed. He replaced the nipple and put the bottle into the outstretched hands of his nephew.