The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (421 page)

“No one is going to ask you to. Not till you want. But — will you just put yourself into my hands — do what I say for a few days? Perhaps a week?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Come for a drive with me every day. I’ll not trouble you by talking like this again. You’ll just get the air and a change of scene. Then, at night, I want you to take a good horn of Scotch — enough to make you forget your troubles. You have no idea how much good it will do you. It’s the best medicine you can have. Will you do it?”

Finch gave a little laugh. “It sounds easy,” he said. “I don’t mind taking the whiskey if you think it will do me good. I’m not sure about the motoring. I like my own room, you know.”

“You will never get well while you stick in it. I know what I’m talking about. What you need is movement in the open air. Why, you look better already!”

Finch gave in. That night Piers came to Jalna and administered the dose of Scotch with a steady hand and a benign eye. A rich glow enveloped Finch. His nerves tingled, then relaxed. He fell into a heavy sleep. But next day the pain in his head was worse and he refused to leave his room.

E
ARLY
A
UTUMN

R
ENNY WALKED BESIDE
the wagon that conveyed Clara Lebraux’s furniture, together with some pieces from the attic at Jalna, to the fox farm. The load did not include the things he himself had bought at the sale. He liked having the bookcase and cabinet in his bedroom and he had taken the coffee table to his office in the stables and had arranged his smoking things on it. He could not bring himself to return these pieces to the fox farm.

As he helped Sarah to arrange the rooms — Meg was also there, her presence adding comfort to the scene — he reflected on the vicissitudes of this house. He could scarcely believe that Clara and Pauline were gone from it forever and he would have given much to have seen Clara’s sturdy figure capably putting the place in order, Pauline, by turns serious and gay, in place of Sarah gliding helplessly about and her French maid making a mountain out of every molehill. They were unreal to him and he liked reality. That was what he had liked best about Clara, her warm vibrant reality. Still Sarah was taking this affair with admirable calm. She was in a difficult position but was uncomplaining. Indeed she seemed to feel more pleasure than unhappiness in making this separate home to which she expected to bring Finch as soon as he was fit.

Meg was affectionate toward Sarah. She praised her openly for unselfish devotion to Finch, comparing it with the cold selfishness of some wives, and if her lips did not frame Alayne’s name, her tone breathed it.

All the family began to find Alayne’s continued absence suspicious. As they watched the mails and no letters came from her to Renny they were certain that she had left him for good. Before long she acknowledged this in a letter to Pheasant, who kept her posted on the welfare of her child and who indeed never failed to send the most minute gossip connected with the family. Pheasant felt an isolated pride in being the only one to whom Alayne wrote but she wished that Alayne would write more frankly to her. There was something detached and impersonal about her letters. Pheasant felt sure that she had more to tell than of the trivial doings of herself and her aunt.

Ernest and Nicholas were hurt by Alayne’s not writing to them. A coldness had sprung up between them and they felt that the fault was on Alayne’s side. She was changed, she was cold and her old graceful charm seemed to have left her. At the same time they were not ill-pleased that Sarah had removed her presence, for it was an emphatic one and now they felt freer to live their own lives in their own way. They laughingly called Adeline the little mistress of Jalna. She liked this and put on an air of authority in the house. She was four years old and she was a woman of authority. So she felt, and Alma Patch could no longer control her. She got up, went to bed when she pleased, and ate what her keen taste demanded. Food that would cause pain to Pheasant’s boys affected her not at all. She ate hard russet apples, juicy peaches skin and all, slices of current cake between meals. She drank strong tea, lemonade, cider, or buttermilk. She threw off all authority and marched fresh-skinned and firm-fleshed to meet life.

Renny had bought her her first riding suit, had it made to order by his own tailors, who marvelled at her proportions, so fine for her age. In truth she looked noble with her auburn curls shortened a bit and her legs as straight as God could make them.

Soon she vied with Mooey in schooling the ponies. He was envious of her daring and strained every nerve to hold his superiority as a nine-year-old. Renny gave his time to preparing his horses for the shows. His hope lay in the newly acquired mare, tempered by the doubt that he would ever break her of her strange habit of walking on her hind legs. These legs were so thin and she held them so stiffly that the stableman nicknamed her “Mrs. Spindles,” and the name stuck. In her lay Renny’s hope of paying Sarah the interest on the mortgage, of which two installments were now due.

The Vaughans’ position was not so straightened as it had been. Meg’s paying guests had been profitable, but to produce the interest for Finch was out of the question. This caused Meg and Maurice little anxiety because Finch apparently did not notice that the time for payment had arrived. He spent his days in his room, only getting up to tidy his bed and not again repeating either of Piers’s prescriptions.

With Piers and Pheasant things had improved. Crops had been munificent, fruit and stock had both sold comparatively well. The Miss Laceys had decided to spend the rest of their lives in California and agreed that Piers should buy their house on easy terms. Piers made his first payment and came home to tea hilarious. He kissed Pheasant and the baby and gave each of the boys twenty-five cents to spend. He walked round the garden saying “My garden” — Pheasant knocked loudly on the door crying “My door.” The boys, taking it up, ran all over the place shouting “Mine — mine” to everything they touched.

Heavy autumn rains came and Sarah’s longing for Finch grew beyond all bounds. She came to Jalna at dusk on a day of gales and rain, wrapped in a white waterproof cape. She looked like one of the silver birch trees given motion and sight for its longing. The rain dripped from her as she stood waiting for Wragge to open the door. A black tendril of hair lay flat against her cheek. Once more the leaves of the Virginia creeper were beginning to fall into the porch, as every autumn they closed the chapter of the past summer. Merlin, dripping wet after a prowl, came snuffling at Sarah’s heels. He raised his blind face and gave her a deprecating grin as he recognized her, then pushed ahead to be first to enter the house.

Wragge was long in answering the door. She could hear his steps coming, then he waited to put on the light. Merlin could scarcely endure his anxiety. He pushed his stern against Sarah, scratched the door and whined. There were so many scratches on the door that these new ones made no impression — no more than another fallen leaf on the porch.

When the door opened Merlin shot into the hall and, placing the side of his head on the carpet, propelled himself in an effort to dry his long ears. Wragge looked surprised.

“Oah,” he said, and hesitated, as though he were a jailer.

“I came to see Mr. Whiteoak — Mr. Renny,” Sarah said, softly.

“Oah, you can see ’im,” said Wragge. “Will you come in, please?”

Sarah smiled and asked — “How is my husband?”

Wragge’s defences melted before that strange sweet smile which lighted only the lower part of the face, leaving the eyes cold and grey beneath their fine black brows. He glanced toward the door of the sitting room and spoke almost in a whisper.

“Pretty bad, I should s’y, ma’am. ’E takes very little nourishment — ’im as always was the ’eartiest heater in the family. And ’is nerves! Well — if nerves ever was unstrung, ’is are.”

“Wragge, I must go up to him,” said Sarah.

Wragge’s face puckered in worry. “I doan’t knaow if I ought to let you, ma’am — without permission. It might set ’im off. ’E won’t see no one.”

“But I must,” said Sarah. “I promise you I won’t set him off. It will do him good to see me.”

“Well, ’m, if you do, I ’ope you won’t mention music to ’im, for ’e’s turned clean against it. Only the other day Miss Adeline began to strum on the pianner and ’e came tearing down the stairs enough to frighten you and shouted to ’er to stop. ’E looked ’alf mad.”

“I’ll not talk of music, Wragge.” She slid past him into the hall and was halfway up the stairs when the door of the sitting room opened and Renny came out. In two strides he was at the banister. He thrust his hand between the spindles and caught hold of her cape.

“You dare!” she said. “You dare try to prevent me seeing Finch!”

“I can’t let you go up! It would upset him.”

“It is you and your brothers who are coming between us…. Let me go up!” She tore open her cape at the throat and let it fall in his hand. She ran like a hare up the two flights of steps to Finch’s door.

He was after her, two steps at a time.

Merlin raised his muzzle and gave his deep, bewildered bark. Wragge picked up Sarah’s cape and hung it carefully on the rack from the top of which the carved fox’s head grinned down at him.

Renny caught her just as she laid her hand on the doorknob. He held her tight, their two hearts pounding. He said, in a fierce whisper:

“No — no — you’re not going in!”

“I am! Let me go! Finch!”

Renny stifled her mouth against his shoulder. He pressed her body against his and carried her struggling down the stairs to the hall. He took her inside the sitting room and shut the door behind them.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said. “You’ll spoil all your chances with him — if you force yourself on him now.”

“You are determined to keep us apart.”

“Sarah, you are a stupid woman Can’t you
feel
that sometimes a husband may want to be left alone?”

Her eves shone with hate. “I feel why your wife has left
you
alone! You are absolutely ruthless!”

“Now you’re talking nonsense. But I have a sick boy on my hands. Can’t you be patient for a little? You were brought up to be patient. You weren’t allowed to put yourself first.”

“I am in love.”

She stood before him, sleek, black-haired, not disarranged after the struggle. Everything about him was repellent to her. She hated the look of authority in his eyes, as though his word were law in that house, hated his hard, shapely hands with their close-cut nails that looked as though they were scrubbed with a stiff brush. The hate was all the more poignant because she envied him, for Finch’s sake, his formidable strength.

“I am in love,” she repeated. “And the one I love is ill and you are keeping us apart. Your own sister thinks we should be together.”

He made a contemptuous grimace. “What does Meg know of his condition? I tell you, no one knows but Wakefield and me.”

“And both of you hate women,” she cried, “or you couldn’t treat them so! He drove Pauline to a convent and you drove Alayne back to her old life. You are trying to turn Finch —”

He interrupted — “I am trying to save Finch from an absolute breakdown.”

“I demand one thing,” she said. “He must be seen by a specialist. I will bring one here myself. Finch must see him.”

“Very well — do.”

“If the specialist says he can be moved I will take him to my house.”

“Very well — do.”

“Oh, you think you’re safe! You think you have his spirit broken! You think you’ve got him fast. You want to rule the house — as your old grandmother did! She stood up like granite while other people stumbled and fell. If you were put out of this house your strength would go. It’s the awful pride of this house that makes you so arrogant. Jalna reeks of pride and tyranny.”

He grinned at her, not ill-pleased.

“The house is all right,” he said. “Gran was all right. We are all all right. But you are letting your feelings run away with you. No one wants to see Finch on his feet — back at his work — more than I do. Bring the specialist along. Perhaps Finch will see him. Perhaps he won’t. We can only try.”

“I will see one tomorrow,” she said. She passed him, hating the smell of tobacco and horses that came from him, and went into the hall. With great deference Wragge took the white cape from the rack and put it about her shoulders. Only the moment before he had deftly stepped back from his position with his ear at the panel of the sitting-room door. There was a humorous melancholy in his eyes.

A gust of wind, with a splutter of rain on it, came in when the front door was opened. Floss came too, wet and draggled. Merlin met and kissed her. They both looked expectantly at Sarah, wanting her to go so that the door might be shut on the night. Renny asked:

“Shall I go with you through the ravine? It’s getting dark.”

“No — thank you. I’d rather go alone.”

The door was shut on her. Renny and Rags exchanged a look. Rags said:

“I think I’ll fetch you a little gin and water, sir. There’s nothing like it to steady the nerves.”

“Thanks, Rags. Where are my uncles?”

“Just in the drawing room, sir. It’s a blessing the wind’s ’owling like all possessed. They’ve ’eard nothink.”

Renny joined them, pausing by Ernest’s chair to admire the progress he had made with his needlework that day. Nicholas was reading aloud from
Henry Esmond
, in his sonorous voice. The wind strove against the French windows and cried out in the chimney. But Boney sat silent on his perch, muffled, somnolent, one half-open eye sufficing to show him all he wanted of the world.

“Sarah’s been here,” observed Rennv tersely.

Nicholas laid down his book. “Well, well, why didn’t she come in to see us?”

“She was rather upset. She wants to bring a specialist to see Finch. I think it may be a good idea. But I dare say Finch won’t see him. Sarah’s a bit of a fool.”

“Why?” asked Ernest putting his needle into the calyx of a flower.

“Well — she seems to think I’m trying to keep Finch and her apart.”