The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (401 page)

F
ATHER
, M
OTHER, AND
C
HILD

R
ENNY’S WIFE
, A
LAYNE
, was arranging some sprays of wild cherry blossom in a black glass vase in the drawing room. To her they seemed the very soul of spring, flowering in exquisite whiteness after the long bitter winter. She touched them tenderly for fear one petal might be bruised, and when a flower did fall, she carefully laid it on the water where it floated, with upturned face, like a tiny water lily. She had charming hands. She handled the sprays of bloom capably and, when she had arranged them to her liking, she stepped back a pace to see the effect. She was not satisfied. This room, with its heavy damask hangings and richly toned carpet, was not one that showed flowers to their advantage, least of all the fragile blossoms of the wild cherry. She rejoiced in the delicate lines of the Chippendale furniture and sometimes amused herself by imagining the background she would create for it, if she were given a free hand. But Renny thought it perfect as it was. The point where their taste differed most was the wallpaper with its massive gilt scrolls that had decked those walls for eighty years, and looked good for another eighty.

Alayne shivered a little, for she had put on a thinner dress today and the room was cool. The dress was a flowered grey-and-blue foulard made with little ruchings. As she caught her reflection in a mirror she thought that both colour and style were kind to her.

She had put little Adeline also into a thinner frock and she wondered if she had perhaps been too precipitate. There might be a cool breeze on the porch where the child played. There was no need to wonder where she played, for every now and again she made a noisy outcry in one of her games. Alayne went to the door and looked down on her.

She had got a saddle that had belonged to her great-grandmother, a side saddle of old-fashioned design, and she was poised on it in an attitude both vigorous and graceful. She grasped a crop in her small hand and with it belaboured an imaginary mount which apparently shied at the jump at which she was putting him.

Alayne stood, unseen by her, delighting in her strength and vivacity. Yet this very strength and this very animation stood between her and her child. Adeline was so different from what she had been as a little girl. She could remember her early childhood better than most, for she had been much alone with her parents and all her little sayings had been treasured and repeated to her, as her baby clothes had been carefully laid away as she outgrew them. Almost once a year she had been taken to the photographer and a most satisfactory portrait made. There was little Alayne at two, wearing a heavy-looking hat tied with a huge bow under her chin and standing solemnly on the seat of a padded chair. There was little Alayne at four, standing in a doorway with a butterfly bow on her fair hair. There she was at seven, holding flowers and showing a profile that was beginning to be something more than childish. In all the series of photographs the keynote was a sweet gravity, an earnest eagerness to understand things. It was a pleasure, her parents had often told her, to take her to the photographer’s and it had been difficult to select the best proofs, they were all so good.

How different when she and Renny had taken Adeline to be photographed, at the age of two! It had been literally impossible to keep her quiet long enough to pose her. She had struggled to investigate everything in the studio. When they had tried to restrain her she had screamed. When the distraught photographer had brought out his most amusing toy to please her, she had been all too pleased, laughing immoderately, so that her very palate showed. She had laughed till she had wetted herself and Alayne, humiliated, had to carry her to the dressing room. There she had had an idea. Renny should hold the child on his knee to be photographed. He eagerly agreed to this, but Adeline was in a fever of excitement. She climbed all over him, hugging him, kissing him, shouting in glee. Of that lot of proofs not one had been worth finishing, though one pose had been so truly splendid of Renny that Alayne had felt a hot resentment at the grotesque little figure on his knee which, blurred and caricatured, had spoilt the picture. The one result from this terrible morning now stood in a silver frame on a table in the drawing room — an infant with a scowl, a too large nose, and an almost frightening resemblance to her great-grandmother.

Now looking at her Alayne felt that only a painter could do justice to her beauty, her creamy flower-petal skin, her hair of so rich and dark a red that its colour could only be compared to a rarely fine chestnut newly stripped of its sheath. This hair clustered in thick locks about her temples and nape, and seemed capable of expressing her very moods, seeming to rise and quiver when she was in a rage. Alayne remembered hearing Grandmother Whiteoak exclaim — “Eh, but my hair was my crowning glory when I was young!” She supposed it had been hair like this. She remembered the old lady showing a few rusty locks, whether of wig or dyed hair Alayne had never decided, beneath her impressive lace caps.

Adeline brandished the crop and shouted:

“Up, now — up, now, my pet! Over you go! Now — now — up!” She set her small mouth and stiffened her legs and back. Then, as once again the visionary steed balked, her face was contorted and she said, in a tense voice — “Damn you — you son of —”

Alayne did not let her complete the horrifying imprecation. She ran and snatched Adeline from the saddle and gave her a little shake.

“Baby, baby, you
must
not —” then she remembered that what she ought to do was to ignore the words, and faltered.

“Must not what?” asked Adeline inquisitively. There was an amused smile on her fine lips.

Alayne thought — “She sees through me. But I won’t let her get the best of me.” She answered — “You must not bounce and shout so. You will make yourself so hot. You will tire yourself out.”

Adeline turned from her with a swagger and threw her leg over the saddle. She had the power of rousing antagonism in Alayne. With just such a gesture as this she could make Alayne’s heart beat quicker, make her even desire a scene, but she spoke in a controlled voice.

“You must come now and have your hands washed. It is your dinnertime.”

“No,” returned Adeline curtly. She rose and sank now on her plump behind as though in a comfortable jog-trot. “Can’t stop,” she added.

Wragge, the houseman, now appeared and presented an evil-looking piece of paper on a silver plate. It was the fish dealer’s bill. It seemed to Alayne exorbitant, as it always did. She asked — “Is he waiting?”

“Noaw, madam. I told him there weren’t noaw use.” For the thousandth time the mingled deference and impudence of his manner infuriated Alayne. With her cheeks burning she turned her back on him and lifted Adeline from the saddle.

Either something in her mother’s face or the thought of her dinner prompted the child to acquiesce, but she objected to leaving the saddle behind.

“I must take it upstairs to my room.”

“Wragge,” said Alayne, “take that saddle away. I don’t know where it came from.”

“From the cupboard under the stairs ’m. That’s where the old mistress kep’ it. Liked it near ’er, she did. Many a time she ’ad me carry it into ’er room and she’d stroke it and sniff the smell of the leather. She was a grand rider in ’er day and no mistike.” Wragge spoke as though he had known old Mrs. Whiteoak in her years of strength though he had never seen her till she was past ninety, when Renny had brought him home after the War. Rags had been his batman. But this, thought Alayne, was his way of showing his intimacy with the affairs of the Whiteoaks, of making her feel an outsider whenever possible, she who had been married to two Whiteoaks, who had experienced heaven and hell in that fusty old house. She said tersely:

“Well put it away.”

With a sliding provocative glance at Adeline, he picked up the saddle. She raised her crop threateningly and glared up into his face. He backed away in exaggerated fear of a blow. Alayne could barely restrain an access of anger at them both.

She tore the riding crop from Adeline’s hands and put it into Wragge’s. She would have liked to strike him with it. “Put it and the saddle away,” she said sternly.

But the child now threw herself face down on the saddle, clutching it with arms and legs and indeed the whole of her strong little body and filling the air with her yells of rage. They sounded as though she were being strangled. For a moment Alayne and Wragge looked down on her with equal consternation.

Then a quick step crunched the gravel and Renny hurried toward them. He looked frightened.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded.

“Just ’er ’igh temper, sir,” answered Wragge, speaking before Alayne could. She made a peremptory sign and he reluctantly withdrew though she was sure he lingered just inside the hall.

The blind spaniel threw up his muzzle and howled but the Cairn puppy, darting to Adeline’s side, began to snuffle ecstatically against her face and in her thick tumbled hair. Her crying was stopped as if by magic and she rolled off the saddle and looked up into her father’s face.

She blinked her streaming eyes, her mouth changed miraculously from a square exit for howls to a very throne of laughter. Her dress was up to her armpits. The puppy took hold of her drawer leg and began to pull at it. She kicked delightedly and gurgled with laughter.

“I simply can’t do anything with her,” said Alayne. “Her behaviour is enough to ruin my nerves. I can’t enjoy flowers or have any peace for her. Look at her dress — fresh an hour ago. My head aches. Here is the fish dealer’s bill. Do take her up, if I touch her she screams.”

Renny took Adeline into his arms. His face was stern but he could not keep the tenderness out of his eyes when he looked at her, and nothing escaped her. She put both arms about his neck and planted her mouth on his. She gave him a long, fragrant kiss. Alayne shot a look of positive resentment at her plump back and picked up the saddle. With sweet placidity Adeline watched her carry it into the house, then gave a sidelong glance at her father. He said:

“Poor little Mother. You do upset her. Why are you so naughty?”

Adeline stroked his arched nose with her forefinger. “Am I good with you?” she asked.

“That has nothing to do with it. The question is, why are you naughty with her?”

“You are naughty with her too.”

He gave one of his sudden bursts of laughter and was still laughing when Alayne returned.

“I can’t help it,” he said apologetically. “She says such extraordinary things.”

“What sort of things?” asked Alayne coolly.

“Well, she says I am naughty with you too.”

“She has an instinct for hurting me.”

“What absolute nonsense!”

“It’s true.’’

“Why, she’s only a baby — not four yet!”

“I can’t help that. She knows how to hurt. And she knows how to draw you always to her side.”

“I’m not on her side!”

“You are — or you would not show such evident glee at her precocity.”

“Glee — what a beastly word!”

“It seems to express the tone of your laughter.”

He stared at her baffled, then took a quick turn across the gravel drive, the child in his arms. He did not know what to say.

She thought — “I am being detestable. But I can’t help it. He doesn’t know how Adeline worries me. He wouldn’t understand. If only she would love me as she loves him. But she is antagonistic towards me.”

Alma Patch, the anemic village girl who came daily to look after Adeline, now appeared.

“Baby’s dinner is ready,” she announced in her accustomed timid whisper. Renny’s presence always frightened her. Now she stood blinking her pale eyelashes and staring at his shoes.

He set down the child, who ran and thrust her white fist into Alma’s freckled hand. Then she broke from her and threw both arms about her mother’s knees and hugged them.

When Alayne was alone with Renny she leant against his shoulder and her hand slid inside his coat. She felt the muscular roundness of his chest and his strong heartbeats. Her lips trembled.

“I’m such an unsatisfactory mother. I haven’t the animal magnetism or whatever it is that makes one’s offspring love one.”

“Adeline adores you. Look at the way she ran to you.”

“Yes … I know.” But the image of her child faded from her mind. It was obliterated by Renny’s nearness, the smell of his tweeds, of his flesh, the feel of his heartbeats.

He laid his face against the smooth pale gold bands of her hair. But he drew suddenly away.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Your hair!” he exclaimed. “I see a white one — right on the top.”

“I know. I saw it days ago.”

He looked aghast. “But you’re not going white, are you? At thirty-eight?”

She laughed. “What a catastrophe! But I don’t think so. My mother found grey hairs at twenty.”

He looked relieved. “Let me pull it out.”

It was characteristic of a strain of stubborn New England Puritanism in Alayne that she would not pull out this grey hair. She backed from his predatory hand. “No, no, let it be! Why should you want to pull it out?”

“Because I don’t like it.”

“Well, I do.” She really hated the white hair but she resented his flurry over it.

“You like it because your mother had one at twenty. I can imagine your father saying — ‘Really, my dear, this is a most interesting hirsute phenomenon. I must immediately write an obscure thesis on it!’”

She returned tartly — “You ought to understand ancestor worship. You are eternally quoting your grandmother and your aunt.”

Showing his teeth he pounced on her, held her tightly while he tweaked the hair from her head. She gave a little cry and he held up his trophy triumphant.

“I think you are horrid,” she exclaimed but in her heart she was glad the hair was out. It was as though with it some of her irritation had been uprooted. She winced but she smiled.

“Do throw it away,” she said.

He looked at her, scandalized. “For birds to weave in their nest! You know that’s bad luck, don’t you?”