The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (473 page)

“I’m a ba-a-by,” he said, and took the lobe of her ear into his mouth.

The little girls ran, shrieking with laughter, up the stairs to the third floor where Alma waited to put them to bed. A choir was singing Christmas carols over the radio.

In his own room Wake felt himself enfolded under the roof as a child on the breast. The smells, the sounds, the feel of the carpet beneath his feet, drew him back into the old life. It would always be the same. But now Molly would become a part of it. No matter where they went they would belong here. She was his and he was hers and they both belonged to Jalna.

CHRISTMAS OF JOY

I
T WAS LIKE
a Christmas card, thought Molly, looking out of her window.One of those cards that glittered with a frosty powder and had a bow of red ribbon at the top. You might stand them on your mantelshelf or send them to your friends but you never believed in them. They were symbolic of a child’s idea of Christmas.

Yet here she was, the centre of just such a Christmas-card scene. The land hushed beneath a blanket of downy snow, the sky of a hard polished blue, the boughs of the spruces and hemlocks bending beneath the weight of what looked so ethereal. There was a rabbit flying across the snow into the blue shadows of the trees, its white scut flashing! There came the dog yelping on its trail, in an anguish of desire! There was a man carrying a bucket toward the stables, a red scarf wound round his neck! There were icicles a foot long hanging from the eave! There came the children’s voices from above, chattering and laughing over their stockings! Yes — “Merry Christmas” should be written beneath it in flowing gilt letters.

Molly found that she was shivering like a leaf. She leaped back into bed and drew the covers up to her chin. She lay looking about the room. It had once been Meg’s. There were a flowered carpet, flowered wallpaper, and a pink chenille curtain at the door. There was a washing stand with a pretty little ewer and basin. On the walls hung watercolours done by Ernest Whiteoak and a photograph of Renny, at the age of eighteen, in the uniform of a cadet of the Royal Military College.

She lay gazing at the photograph. She recognized at once who it was. How little he had changed except for the few sharp lines that were now cut into his experienced face. His hair was as thick, his eyelids as clearly cut, he was just as thin, though his thinness now had an enduring, weathered look. Certainly there was a resemblance between this picture and Wake, but Wake had a gentler and more intellectual look. She did not know whether or not she liked Renny. At one moment she felt happy and at ease with him. At the next, something came between them like a shadow, a threat, as though he held something in his mind against her.

She looked at her watch. It was half-past eight. Breakfast was at nine, so she had better dress. She would put on the hunter’s-green dress that was piped with red. It looked Christmasy, she thought. She wondered what was the present Wake had for her.

Twelve people sat down to breakfast. Besides Wake and herself, there were the two uncles, Renny and his wife, Paris Court, the three children of the house, and Piers’s boys, who had arrived soon after sunrise, carrying the contents of their stockings. Porridge, sausage and bacon, toast and marmalade, were the breakfast, and from the uncles down the family ate with gusto, with the exception of Alayne and Archer. She was occupied in keeping him in order and he was preoccupied with some little lead animals he had brought to the table. He made them jump back and forth over his porridge. Such behaviour would never have been tolerated from Wake when he was Archer’s age. He looked disapprovingly at his nephew.

“Archer,” said Alayne, “you must eat your breakfast or leave the table.”

“I want to leave,” he answered, coolly.

Rags bent over him. “Give them to me and I’ll tike them to the kitchen and feed them.”

“I want to come too.” He began to climb from his chair.

“Darling,” whispered Alayne, “eat your breakfast and we’ll have a lovely time afterward.”

“No. See this elephant jump!”

Nicholas stretched out a long arm and took possession of the elephant. Archer slid on to his backbone and down under the table.

“Leave him there,” said Renny.

“I prefer to take him upstairs.”

“Nonsense. I’ll take him, if he must go. Archie, come here!”

Archer crept the length of the table and scrambled up between his father’s knees. His tow head appeared above the edge of the table. He clasped his father round the neck. Renny offered him a piece of sausage on his fork. He ate it with relish.

“He’ll eat for me,” said Renny.

“It is better,” said Ernest, “to persuade small children, rather than force them.”

“Do you remember,” said Nicholas, “how Mamma used to feed Wakefield biscuits soaked in sherry?”

“Don’t believe it, Molly,” said Wake.

“I am finished,” said Alayne. “I will take Archer upstairs.”

As she came toward him he burrowed into his father’s breast. He had so much that was beautiful and good in him, she thought, it was humiliating to see him behave like this. Adeline was chuckling.

Archer scrambled from his father’s knee and wobbled down the room. “I’m a jellyfish,” he said.

Everybody laughed but Alayne. She followed him, humiliated.

“A jellyfish,” he repeated, shaking from head to foot. “A wimbly wambly jellyfish.”

Rags carried him from the room. He lay limp across Rags’s arms, staring impassively at the ceiling. Alayne followed with folded arms and bent head.

“Chief mourner,” whispered Wake to Molly.

All that happened excited and amused her. She wondered if ever she could be unhappy again.

In all her life she had been to church just three times. She had attended the wedding of a maid in a Nonconformist village church in Wales. She had been to an Easter-morning service in Westminster Abbey. She had gone to Mass on Sunday in New York with Wakefield. When he spoke of his religious experiences to her she was embarrassed. They were beyond the bounds of her knowledge of him. Religion for her was an uncharted land. She knew little more of religion than a young heathen but she knew how to love, to forgive, and to put others before self. She knew she had to become a Catholic, outwardly at least, in order to marry Wake, but the little books he had given her to study were in the bottom of her trunk. She simply could not understand them, nor did she know how to go about the searching of her soul. She only knew that she loved Wake with every bit of her and she saw no reason why a God who was a complete stranger to her should enter into their scene. Yet, if Wake wanted her to be baptized in his faith, she was willing.

“I really shouldn’t go to a Protestant church,” he said to her that morning, “but I know old Renny would love to have me and I very much want you to see the church my grandfather built and — to see my family in action in it!”

“Hadn’t you rather go for a walk?”

“No. I want you to come to church.”

She lightly stroked his cheek.

“Very well, but you must show me what to do.”

“I’m glad, Molly, that you’ve never had any religious instruction. It will all come as a revelation.”

“You’re revelation enough for me! Do you know, you’re the first actor I’ve met with an atom of religion in him.”

“I’m much besides an actor,” he answered, a little stiffly.

Renny was delighted when he found that Wakefield was coming to church. “I’ll tell you what,” he said to Molly, “we’ll get him away from the papists between us. We can do it, if we work together.”

“On the contrary,” said Wake, “I’ll convert you two. I’ve got Molly and, sooner or later, I’ll get you.”

He had no hope of such an achievement but he liked to tease his elder.

The church was full of the scent of spruce and hemlock. The pillars were twined with them, the pews embowered. Flame-coloured chrysanthemums burned on the altar. Smilax and holly twined about the pulpit and lectern. Surplices were white as snow and smelled of the frosty air. Some few must have worked very hard. Never did Noah Binns ring the bell more vigourously, never did his boots squeak louder. In spite of much scraping of soles outside the door, clots of snow were tracked up the aisle but soon melted in the warm air. There was a good deal of coughing, sneezing, and blowing, as people settled into the pews.

Wakefield crossed himself.

Molly, beside him, made a faint gesture with her hand just above her waistline, then looked apprehensively about her not knowing what to do next. The effect of Wakefield’s act on those about him was electric. Noah Binns had been squeaking up the aisle to do something to a window and was at Wakefield’s side at the moment of devotion. Noah stopped dumbfounded, his jaw dropped, staring at Wakefield’s face. Across the aisle the three Vaughans bent their startled gaze on him. Piers nudged Pheasant and said something. There was a quirk beneath Nicholas’s moustache. Ernest lost his place in his hymnbook. Mr. Fennel thrust his fingers in his beard and looked sternly at Wakefield. But it was Renny who put things into movement again. He raised his voice in the Christmas hymn with more than wonted vigour. The family joined in. Noah squeaked on his way. Wakefield looked at his hymnbook as though unconscious of the stir he had created. Molly looked at him.

She sat absorbing the strange new atmosphere. Mr. Fennel’s voice went on and on. It was a good voice and she liked the way he read. She wondered what sort of actor he would have made. She began to choose parts for him and for all the family. What would they say, she thought, if they knew what was going on in her mind? What was going on in their minds? Were they as completely absorbed by this strange ritual as they appeared to be? Wake had said — “There is so much in me besides the actor.” She must try to understand that other part of him. There must be nothing alien between them. Their understanding must be many-sided and complete. She remembered how he had opened his heart to her family. Now she must do the same by his. As she sat there unobserved, she was aware of a singleness of heart, a staunchness, that seemed a part of the very fabric of this little building. She felt it encircling the family, and her in the midst of them. The Rector had come there as a very young man. Now his beard was grey. How many times had he gone through the intricacies of the service? Why, surely he must be able to do it in his sleep! Yet there were freshness and good faith in his movements as he stepped up into the pulpit. He folded his hands and said a short prayer.

Mr. Fennel could scarcely keep his eyes from Molly’s face as he repeated the story of the Birth. Her face was so rapt, she might he hearing it for the first time. He could only conclude that never before had she heard it so well told. His heart glowed. His fingers sought his beard and his beaming hazel eyes dwelt on the Whiteoak pew.

Outside she caught Wakefield’s arm.

“What an old pet the Rector is! He’d have made a fine actor, wouldn’t he?”

“He wanted to go on the stage when he was a young chap but something — I think it was his father — stopped him. He’s the happiest man I know. I’ve told you that he taught me when I was a small fellow. He’ll be coming to supper tonight.”

The Miss Laceys, very old and bent, came to make much of Wake. They cherished a playbill from the London Theatre, they said, with his and Molly’s names on it. They congratulated the young pair. Other old friends crowded about. Merry Christmas was on every lip. The children ran in and out among the snowy gravestones. Wakefield led Molly to the family plot. Here the graves were obliterated. It was a smooth white coverlet under which the dead Whiteoaks rested. The stream that threw an arm about the graveyard was frozen. Here was complete immobility.

Molly stared at the names on the granite plinth.

“What a lot of you are buried here!”

“Yes. It looks forbidding now. But you should see it in summer, or when the maples are red in the fall. Now the crosses marking each grave are covered. But look.”

He stepped over the low iron fence and with his hands brushed the snow away from one of them. It bore the name of Eden. “I’ve told you about him.”

“Yes. Poor Eden!”

Roma peered round the corner of the church at them. She was filled with curiosity because she knew they were engaged. She wore a little red hat, her cheeks and nose were pink from cold. Molly did not connect her with the cross marked “Eden.” Roma was followed by Nook and Adeline, pelting each other with snow. Nook was a happy boy in these days for, as he was not old enough to take the journey to school without Mooey’s protection, he now again had lessons with the children at Jalna.

The children were followed by Piers and Pheasant. He said: —

“We’re going to Vaughanlands to see the new baby. Pheasant thought you two might like to come.”

“I’d love to,” Wakefield agreed at once.

“Oh, yes,” said Molly, “it’s a perfect thing to do on Christmas Day.”

They sent the two boys on to Jalna and made their way over the snowy road to Vaughanlands.

Meg was already there to welcome them. The living room was homelike in bright chintz and a dancing fire. Patience, now a boarding-school girl home for the holidays, was possessive toward the baby.

“I’ll bring him down,” she said. “No one can make him so comfortable as me.”

They waited expectantly. She returned with the infant, carrying him deftly. An odor of warm flannel came with him, and a kind of sanctity, because he was newborn and it was Christmas today.

“Oh, the darling!” cried Pheasant, clasping her hands.

“My goodness,” said Wake, “he looks a hundred!”

Piers blew out his cheeks. He said: —

“I’ve never seen an uglier one. He’s got the worst points of both parents.”

“He’s sweet,” said Molly. “What are they going to call him?”

“Dennis — after Sarah’s father.”

“May I hold him?” asked Pheasant. She took him tenderly into her arms.

“Be careful,” warned Patience. “He must be held just so.”

“How is Sarah?” Piers asked Meg.

“I’ve never seen such an ecstatic mother. You’d think no one had ever had a baby before. She’d love to see you for a moment, Pheasant.”