Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“Still,” protested Ernest, balancing himself on the balls of his feet, “they are a charming family, the Leighs. And really intellectual.”
“I don’t agree,” said Alayne. “To me, they seem very superficial.”
“To me, too!” cried Pheasant.
Finch interrupted, hurt for his friend’s sake. “Not Arthur. Arthur’s absolutely sound.”
“I’d like to give him a sound hiding,” observed Renny, lighting his pipe, “and knock some of the effeminacy out of him.”
“Listen to the he-man!” exclaimed Pheasant.
Renny took her by the nape and rumpled her hair into a brown crest.
“Mrs. Leigh,” said Ernest, “was greatly interested in my annotation of Shakespeare.”
His two nieces by marriage looked at him pityingly.
The two young women went, as with one impulse, to the mirror above the mantel that had reflected so many of the scenes at Jalna, and examined themselves in the glass. The five men regarded their backs and the reflection of their faces with incurious interest. They were interested, as always, in this manifestation of sex, but they knew them too well to feel the sting of curiosity.
Alayne said, turning round to them:
“It was rather a nuisance Mrs. Lebraux not dancing. It kept one of the best dancers always at her side entertaining her.”
Neither Nicholas nor Ernest had sat by Mrs. Lebraux, consequently they felt a little irritated by this remark. Ernest said:
“I talked to her for a moment, but she scarcely took the trouble to answer. I can’t say I admire her.”
“I shouldn’t have minded sitting by her for a bit,” said Nicholas, “but she seemed not to lack attention.” He looked at Renny.
Renny looked back. “Someone had to be decent to the poor woman. The girls were awfully cool to hen”
“I scarcely know her,” said Alayne.
“That is no reason why you should be cool to her,” returned Renny.
“She’s one of those women,” asserted Pheasant, sagaciously—“who don’t care a bit about other women. She’s simply
mad
about men!”
“How unjust you are,” said Renny. “She’s been in great trouble. She only liked to talk to me because she is used to me—I’ve been a friend of Lebraux.”
Piers said—“I shouldn’t mind the looks of her so much, if only she’d darken her eyelashes and touch her hair up so it would be all one colour.”
Renny turned on him angrily. “She’d never do anything to her hair. She’s not that sort. She never thinks of her personal appearance.”
His wife and his sister-in-law looked at him scornfully.
“Well, she spent about ten minutes on her face in the dressing-room!” cried Pheasant.
“Dear me,” said Ernest, “what was she doing to it?”
“Wiping her tears away,” suggested Piers.
“Tears!” scoffed Pheasant. “Mrs. Patch, who helped nurse Mr. Lebraux, told Mrs. Wragge that they quarrelled half the time and the other half they didn’t speak.”
“You’ve little to do,” said Renny, “to be gossiping with the servants about Mrs. Lebraux.”
“I wasn’t gossiping. She just told me. And besides, you often repeat things that Rags told you.”
The master of Jalna gripped his pipe and drew back his lips from his teeth. He could think of nothing to say, so he glared at her.
“She looks healthy,” said Nicholas.
“Such crude health lacks charm for me,” said Ernest.
“Renny only danced once this evening,” observed Pheasant, “and that was with her child.”
“I had hoped,” said Alayne slowly, “that no one had noticed that.”
“Heigho!” said Piers, in an endeavour to imitate his grandmother. “I want something more to eat. I want it right away.”
His Uncle Ernest looked at him reprovingly. “Is it possible, Piers, that you are mimicking my mother?”
“Oh, no,” answered Piers, innocently. “Not consciously, at any rate. But I was thinking, just a moment ago, how much she would have enjoyed tonight, and I suppose the thought of her stayed in my head.”
Ernest smiled at him. No one could help it, with his face so pink and that enigmatic smile on his lips. He led the way to the dining room and got a decanter of whiskey and a siphon of soda water from the sideboard. He sat down by the table, which had been cleared and reduced to its normal size. Nicholas, Ernest, and Finch followed him. Pheasant stood a moment in the doorway before going to bed. She said:
“I do think it was rather a shame, Piers, the way you whirled poor little Miss Pink around. She looked positively dazed.”
“You’re just jealous of her,” said Piers.
She ran over to him and bent her head to his ear.
“Don’t be silly, darling! And please, please, don’t drink much more! It’s bad enough for me to see my father going home in the state he did without seeing my husband come to bed in another...”
“Another what?” he mumbled against her cheek.
“Another state. Of intoxication, of course.”
“All right, little ‘un. Run along now.”
Renny had discovered Wakefield sound asleep on the settee in the drawing-room and had carried him up to bed.
Alayne had followed, angry with herself for being irritated by the sight of the child’s legs dangling, his arm tightly around Renny’s neck.
She went straight to her own room. She felt definitely unhappy, tired in spirit yet restless in body. She fidgeted about the room, exposing, with a touch of self-pity, her bare arms and shoulders to its chill air. How often during the day she had looked forward to dancing with Renny that evening! And he had danced only once, and then with a child. Then, when the guests were gone, he had taken on that protective tone about Mrs. Lebraux. Just because she had chosen to lean on him! And there was Wakefield to be carried to bed, who should have been sent there hours ago... She heard Mooey whining in the next room as Pheasant took him up... She heard Wakefield’s voice raised complainingly in Renny’s room... Children were too much in evidence in this household...
She was getting cold, yet she could not go to bed. She thought she would go to Pheasant’s room and talk to her for a little... Really, Mrs. Lebraux was a strange-looking woman... something animal about her... lucky for the child that she had taken after the father... She went into the passage, but, instead of going to Pheasant’s door, she went to Renny’s. She laid her two hands against the panels, and stood motionless there.
Very soon Renny came out, drawing the support of the door from her. But she still retained her posture, and stood before him, hands raised as though in wonder. His brows flew up.
“Well—you here, Alayne!”
He took her hands and drew them together at the back of his neck, looking with solicitude down into her face.
“Tired, old girl?”
She nodded her head several times, frowning and pushing out her lips. Never during her married life with Eden had she shown him this mood of childish petulance. In truth, she had not in all her life shown it to anyone but Renny: had not known it was in her to frown and pout, and be at once both angry and clinging, and, if she could have seen the expression of her own face at this moment, she would have felt mortified, angry with herself.
He kissed her. “Were you long at the door? Why didn’t you come in?”
“Not very long... I didn’t want to. What was the good?”
“What do you want?”
“You.”
“Well, you’ve got me, haven’t you?”
“You’re going downstairs to the others.”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“Yes, do go, please! I don’t want you to stay with me.” She tried to push him from her.
“Yes, you do!” He tightened his arms about her.
“Well, I don’t see why
I
should. I’m not at all necessary to you.”
“What rot you talk!”
“How am I necessary, then?”
“You know without my telling you.”
“You will make me hate you!”
“Why should women always think of only one thing!”
“I suppose they know the truth.”
“My dear child, you make me tired!”
“I know I do.” Her voice broke.
He picked her up, as he had picked up Wakefield, and carried her into her room. It was lit only by moonlight. The new
mauve silk bedspread caught and held the light like a dreaming pool in a wood. The moon was sinking.
Its last rays were shining into the dining room too. Its light was enough for the business they had in hand there. Nicholas, unmindful of gout, had given himself up to it. Ernest, unmindful of indigestion, had given himself up to it. Piers, forgetful of wifely admonition, had given himself up to it. Finch, mindful of his new estate, entered heart and soul into it. The decanter and the siphon, with amber and cold white lights in their respective parts, moved slowly around the table. The moonlight blotted age out of two faces and stamped age into two, so that the quartette appeared to be all of one age, and that was ageless.
Finch said: “I wish one of you would tell me what it was I said that was so funny. They were making such a row when I sat down that it knocked it clean out of my head.”
“I can’t remember,” answered Nicholas, “but I know it was damned witty. In fact, I’ve never heard a better afterdinner speech.”
“Nor I,” agreed Ernest. “Just the right amount of sentiment mixed with real wit. It’s a special talent in itself, this after-dinner speaking.”
“I thought the Rector spoke very well,” said Finch judicially.
“Yes, he spoke very well. But you were better. I only wish I could remember just what it was you said at the last.”
“Something about the joy of living,” suggested Piers.
“Well, that’s not very new,” said Finch, rather disappointed.
“Seems to be new to you!”
“Life,” said Nicholas, “is experience.”
“I don’t agree,” said Ernest. “I think life is work.”
Finch said gravely—“I suppose you have all heard of my decision”—he rolled the words “my decision” on his tongue—“my decision not to go on with my University course.”
“It would have been better,” said Ernest “if you had made up your mind to go to England and take a university course there.”
“No, no,” interrupted his brother, “the boy’s quite right. He knows what he’s fitted for. And I say that he is a musical genius.” His eyes, glittering strangely in the moonlight, were fixed on Finch.
“I’m so glad you think so, Uncle Nick! And you thought my speech was all right, didn’t you?”
“Absolutely. From the moment you rose to your feet, you were, as the Italians say,
pere bene!’
“Meaning,” said Piers, “full of beans.”
“Exactly.”
Finch half filled his glass with Black and White and aimed a squirt of soda at it. “I think, just among ourselves, that I may say that my aim is to live an unselfish life.”
“You couldn’t have a better,” commended Ernest.
“From my own experience I know that bringing happiness to others brings happiness to oneself.”
“What form,” asked Nicholas, “is your unselfishness going to take?”
“I should suggest,” said Piers, “making a pool of it.”
Finch turned toward him somewhat truculently. “What do you mean?—a pool of it?”
Piers pondered a moment, and then said: “Your unselfishness, of course. Sunshine idea. A brighter Jalna.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Finch. “I’m in dead earnest. I want to do something for each one of you, and that’s a fact.”
“Say it in writing,” put in Piers.
“My word is as good as—”
“Of course it is,” said Nicholas. “We all know it is.”
Finch proceeded—“I’m very glad that Renny hasn’t joined us, because he never seems to see eye to eye with me in anything.”
“Where is he?” asked Ernest. “I hadn’t missed him before. Indeed I quite thought he was here.” He peered about the room.
“Been sent to bed,” said Piers; “he was a naughty boy, poor fellow!”
Finch said—“Uncle Nick and Uncle Ernie, if I were to invite you to come on a trip with me to England at my expense, would you accept?”
“Delighted to accept,” answered Nicholas instantly.
Ernest reached across the table and took Finch’s hand and shook it. “Dear boy—dear boy—” was all he could say.
“Me, too!” said Piers. “What are you going to do for me?”
“What should you choose?”
“Give me time. Let me sleep on it.”
“It’s settled then, is it? You two are coming with me to visit Aunt Augusta?”
Ernest squeezed the hand he held, the hour, his condition, the invitation, filling him with an almost overwhelming emotion. Nicholas accepted airily, as though he were bestowing a favour.
“I will take you to some of my old haunts in London,” he promised, straightening his shoulders and drawing his chin against his collar.
Both uncles then began to talk about the years they had spent in England, repeating, at first, incidents that the
nephews had heard before, but, as the night drew on, and as the decanter emptied, drawing from remote places in their memories events unrecalled in years, like forgotten birds’nests dragged forth from an old belfry, or rusty anchors drawn up from the deep.
Some of these memories were disgraceful, and, in the telling of them, the two elders became more and more youthful, breaking into sudden uncontrolled laughter, their speech falling into the catchwords of their day. The young men, on the contrary, grew graver and more judicial with each glass, looking as though they did not quite approve of the levity of the others, Finch even going to the length once of giving some sound advice. In order that he might hurt no one’s feelings he addressed the advice to the siphon in a kind of chant, and when no one gave any heed to him he shed a few unnoticed tears.
But, when the moment came when sing they must, he was ready. Ernest, who loved very old songs, ballads, madrigals, and the like, began “Summer is acumen in,” in his still excellent voice. A tenor, a lusty baritone, and a bass joined in with:
Loudly sing, cuckoo!
Grows the seed, and blows the mead,
And grows the wood anew,
Sing cuckoo!
The ewe is bleating for her lamb;
Lows for her calf the cow.
The bleating and the lowing, so loud and mellow, brought a fifth member of the family on the scene. This was Renny, clad in dressing gown and slippers. He stared at the revellers with ironical amusement.