The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (479 page)

The news that Rags was to depart made the two elderly men feel drawn still closer to the war. The pattern of their world was changing so fast as to be bewildering. They had known from the first that Renny would go. Paris Court and Wakefield had been eager to follow suit. Harriet had died. Sarah’s son had been born. Now Rags was to go. For nearly twenty-one years he had irritated and served them. Sometimes the irritation was uppermost. Sometimes the service. But they were always there. Sometimes the irritation acted as a counterirritant, as when, for instance, Nicholas and Ernest had had words with each other. Then one of Rags’s misdeeds would bring them together again in hearty censure of his ways. He would leave traces of polishing powder in the crevices of heavily chased trays or jugs but he would rub thin old Georgian teaspoons so hard that they would bend double. When an important English army man on a lecture tour was entertained at dinner Rags brought coffee in everyday cups, but when the Rector and Mrs. Fennel came, as they did once a week, he would bring out the rare old Worcestershire china. It was impossible to teach him discrimination. It was his idea of taste to have every piece of furniture, every ornament, set cornerwise and a constant struggle was waged, with him on one side, Ernest and Alayne on the other. Rags always won. No matter how he might neglect to sweep up the crumbs from tinder the breakfast table, no matter how he continued to ignore windows that needed cleaning, or children’s finger marks on doors, he had only to pass through a room and every chair and ornament stood cornerwise in his wake.

But how comforting his presence was at times! No one could tuck a hot-water bottle at an old gentleman’s feet and cover him with an eiderdown with an air of greater solicitude. He would bring a glass of hot water and whiskey or a cup of hot water and bicarbonate of soda with equal expressions of the good he was certain it would do you.

Of course he had a nasty way of whispering to Renny at table when he sensed any family disturbance and wanted to show that he was on the side of the master of the house. On the other hand, he showed endless patience in searching for mislaid spectacles and never forgot the hours at which Ernest’s medicine should be taken. It had been a shock to see him in his uniform.

Now Renny came into the room and once more they realized how soon they must part with his heartening presence. This war was quite different from the last. They had been twenty years younger then and their mother was living. While she lived there had been that feeling of stability and changelessness at Jalna but now all was changed. Nicholas gave a deep sigh and raised his heavy eyes to Renny’s face. He noticed Renny’s look of anxiety, the corrugations on his forehead, but he sniffed, with an odd sense of comfort, the smell of the stable that came with him.

Renny sat down near the fire and held a hand toward the blaze.

“Cold?” asked Nicholas.

“No. I just like the warmth.”

“You’re like Mamma. She always liked the warmth of the open fire. Where are the young people this morning? I haven’t seen them.”

Renny looked at him thoughtfully. He wondered what the uncles would say if he told them all. For a moment he had a mind to. There would be a certain comfort in telling them. But no — they had enough to worry about without hearing of poor young Wake’s heartache.

“Molly’s gone to town,” he said. “She and Wake had to go to arrange for her sisters’ passage from Wales to Canada…. Poor girl, she has a great responsibility. I’ve been thinking that it would be a very decent thing for us to offer your house, Uncle Ernest, to those girls — if you agree. They would be safe here and under our protection. It would be a load off Molly’s mind.”

“Are they able to pay rent?” asked Nicholas. “I gather they are pretty hard-up. Molly said something about their income ceasing if their father died.”

“We can’t very well ask rent from refugees.”

“Of course not! I’d forgotten.”

“By all means, let them come,” said Ernest. “It would be a relief to me to see the house occupied by nice young women. Harriet would have wished it.”

“After all,” put in Nicholas, somewhat grumpily, “the house belongs to Renny.”

“I haven’t said it doesn’t, have I? However, the furniture is mine and Harriet’s.”

“Upon my word, Ernest, you take a lofty tone about family belongings. The furniture in that house — I mean the portion of it that came from Jalna — is as much mine as yours. Not that it matters. I’m perfectly willing to lend it.”

“Then what are you grousing about?” said Ernest.

“I’m not grousing. But that card table in the living room was one Mamma gave me years ago. She also gave me that bedroom furniture and the rugs.”

“But you never took them to England!”

“How could I? It would have been ridiculous.”

“Then why claim the things now?”

“I’m not. It’s you who are claiming them.”

Ernest’s colour rose. He tried to speak but he could only stammer incoherently. Renny’s voice broke in.

“I’m awfully glad you both agree to lending the house. I’ll cable Christopher Griffith today.”

He rose and moved toward the door.

“What’s the matter?” asked Nicholas, eyeing him shrewdly. “Is something worrying you?”

“Well, I have a good deal on my mind.”

“You look as though you hadn’t slept.”

“I’m all right.”

A shadow fell across the window. Wakefield passed. As he passed he glanced into the room. That glimpse of him was sufficient to discover his haggard eyes, his drawn mouth. He looked ill.

“Why,” exclaimed Ernest, “did you see Wakefield? The boy’s ghastly!”

“What’s wrong?” Nicholas heaved himself about in his chair that he might face Renny squarely. “Tell us what’s wrong, Renny.”

Renny stood looking down on the experienced grey heads of his uncles. Again he had a mind to tell them the truth. A perverse curiosity made him wonder how they would take it.

“Surely,” said Ernest, “the death of Molly’s father wouldn’t make him look like that.”

Old Adeline’s love of the dramatic flared in her grandson. The sardonic light that had on occasion gleamed in her eyes appeared in his.

“Molly’s father is very near to Wake,” he said.

“Why,” said Nicholas, “that’s impossible. Wake scarcely knew the man.”

“Wake
knows
the man,” returned Renny, driven by an impulse he could not resist. “He knows the man — to his sorrow.”

“I do wish you would not be so enigmatic,” exclaimed Ernest peevishly.

“I will tell you the truth then. I think it will be better.” Renny walked the length of the room and back again. He put his hands in his pockets and touched a penknife that had belonged to his father. He himself had carried it for the past twenty years. Its worn ivory handle lay slim and cool in his fingers. In a strange way this small cool object brought back to him the warmth and vigour of his father’s presence. He thought — “I wonder what he would be like if he were living now. I wonder what he would say to this.”

The eyes of his uncles, one pair blue and questioning, the other pair dark and puzzled, were fixed on him. He said: —

“I suppose you remember the Dayborns who worked with me after the last war.”

“Yes,” said Ernest. “I never liked the fellow. There was something shady about him.”

“Of course I remember them,” added Nicholas.

“Mamma paid their passage back to England. I forget why.”

“I don’t,” said Renny. “She did it to separate Chris Dayborn and me because she had found out that we were in love with each other.”

“Well, really,” exclaimed Ernest, “that’s strange! Only yesterday I was thinking of that girl! She came into my head, I can’t tell why, and I kept thinking and thinking of her.”

“She came into your head,” said Renny, “because Molly reminded you of her. And she well might, for she is Chris Dayborn’s daughter.”

Nicholas struggled in his chair. “Help me up out of here!” he demanded.

Renny went behind him and heaved him to his feet. Very lame from gout, he stumped about the room, a grey lock falling over his forehead.

“Well, well,” he said. “Hmph, well. I see it all. What a fix! What a fix to be in!”

Ernest was chagrined. Usually it was he who had to explain things to Nick.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “What has all this to do with Mr. Griffith’s death?”

“That’s just the point,” said Renny. “It has nothing at all to do with it.”

“You silly old fool,” said Nicholas to his brother, “don’t you realize that this child, Molly, is Renny’s daughter? And that consequently she and Wake can’t marry?”

Ernest sat bewildered, biting his thumb. Then his brow cleared. Then it darkened, and he exclaimed: —

“Those poor children! Those poor children!”

“Yes,” said Renny. “That’s why Wake and I look — as we do. It’s been a blow.”

“How did you find it out?”

“Just one thing after another. I was suspicious. Then I made certain.”

“You must never let Alayne know this,” said Ernest.

“She does know it.”

“Good God!” said Nicholas. “How did she find out?”

“I had to tell her.”

“You were a fool to do that.”

“No. It was necessary. She was splendid.” The colour deepened in his weather-beaten face. “I’ve done nothing to deserve such a wife.”

Nicholas blew out his cheeks. “It’s unfortunate. But after all, your affair with Mrs. Dayborn took place five years before you met Alayne. There’s no reason why Alayne should feel herself deeply injured.”

“God, if ever a man’s pigeons came home to roost, mine have!”

“It’s a blow for Wakefield,” said Ernest.

Nicholas returned — “He’ll get over it. He’ll go to the war and forget her. And, after all, he ought to make a far better match, with his looks and talents.”

“He’s deeply in love. I’ve been impressed by that from the first. Dear me, it was strange how that Dayborn girl came into my mind yesterday! I couldn’t forget her.”

“And she’s just died, has she?” asked Nicholas, suddenly confused.

“Good heavens, Nick! She died years ago. It is Molly’s stepfather who has just died.”

“Of course, of course, I know that…. Shall you tell Piers and Meg of this, Renny?”

“Never! But I thought you ought to know. I thought you might have a talk with Wake, Uncle Ernie. You might say something to cheer him up. And Uncle Nick might have a little talk with Alayne.”

“I will. I will.”

Renny looked at his wrist watch. “I’m meeting a man in the stables. I’m late.”

Rags, in the hall, swiftly removed his ear from the keyhole and straightened himself. He felt a sharp pain in the small of the back.

“Cripes,” he thought, in consternation, “am I getting some bloomin’ kidney disorder? Maybe I shall never get to the Front with the boss!”

But his face was composed as Renny passed him and went out by the side door. What he had overheard was no great surprise to him. He had been in that house for twenty years and he was an adept in the art of human relationships. He had known that Renny and Chris Dayborn were lovers.

He thought he would go to the kitchen and make himself a pot of tea. That would buck him up. Probably there wasn’t much wrong with him. He’d had a crick in the back from bending forward so long. Overburdened as his mind was, he paused on his way to the basement stairs to set a Benares brass casket that old Adeline had brought from India cornerwise on the chest where it stood.

On the way to the stables Renny felt a small mittened hand pushed into his. He looked down into Adeline’s face. She said rather breathlessly: —

“You know that nonsense Archer had got into his head, Daddy! Well, I think I’ve made him forget it. Every time he begins I put him on his back and tickle him. Now it’s a game. Archer begins — ‘Do you know what I saw through the window?’ Then he stares at me and waits for a romp.”

She laughed a little but her eyes were grave as she looked up into his face. She seemed to be trying to say — “Whatever you’ve done, I’m always on your side.”

“Good,” he said. “Archie’s at a funny stage but you understand him, don’t you?”

She held his hand for an instant against her cheek. High overhead, in the crystal air, an aeroplane was passing like a silver dragonfly.

“I used to like to look at the planes,” Adeline said, “but now they make me think of war and you going away. I wish you weren’t, or that I could go with you.”

NEW TENANTS FOR THE FOX FARM

W
AKEFIELD AND
M
OLLY
stood at the barrier watching the arrivals from the New York train. They were waiting for her three stepsisters, whose passage had been arranged for by a succession of cablegrams. Finch was accompanying them. He was to give a series of recitals in America and it had seemed expedient that they should travel under his protection.

Wakefield and Molly stood shoulder to shoulder, so accustomed to each other, so intimate in the quick interchange of feeling, yet separated by a barrier that made them as strangers. They were like two ships sailing side by side yet glimpsing each other through the distortions of an iceberg that had risen from the deep to separate them. Every now and again a tremor ran over her.

“Are you cold?” he asked, not looking at her.

“No. Just excited.”

“The train is late.”

“Yes, it seems to be.”

This was their third meeting since their relationship had been disclosed to them. The first had been in the living room of Ernest’s house. At the second he had taken her to the small apartment in town where she had found temporary war work. In that meeting they had been bewildered, not daring to look in each other’s eyes for fear of breaking down. Alone for a moment they had broken down and wept in each other’s arms. Then he had hurried from the apartment and left her alone.

In the weeks that followed they had gained an uncertain self-control, the balance to be kept only by calculated coldness. But each had receded from the other. The charm and spontaneity of speech was gone from them. The warmth and candor of glance was no more. Love was turned to bitter and hopeless longing. They stood shoulder to shoulder waiting for the train with nothing to say but commonplaces.