Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“I want to go to Unca Renny,” said Mooey, holding out his arms.
Wragge sidled into the room with the child. Renny took him on his knee.
It was a small thing, thought Alayne, but it showed their attitude toward her. They had all known that she did not want the child brought to the table, but his presence was to be inflicted on her nevertheless. The presence of such a young child was an affliction, she persisted in her mind. There would be still less possibility of sensible conversation now. Not that the conversation at Jalna was ever intellectually stimulating to her. But now she foresaw that the cleverness or naughtiness of a baby would be its centre. Renny was already looking pleased, feeding the child from his plate, Wragge beaming down at them.
It seemed that they would never finish breakfast. Piers had forgotten his haste. Pheasant was leaning forward gazing at her child. Alayne noticed a long “runner” on the shoulder of her knitted jumper. Wakefield’s hair looked as though it had not been brushed that morning. He was saying in a whining voice:
“I aren’t very well this morning. I don’t think I should go to lessons.”
“You’re perfectly well,” returned his elder brother. “Get along with you! It’s nine o’clock.”
Alayne rose from the table. “I think you will have to excuse me,” she said. “I must see Cook at once about the dinner.”
Renny half rose, still holding the child. He caught her dress as she passed and drew her to him. She went rigidly like an offended little girl. The moment he touched her, dignity seemed to fall from her. Her intellectual clarity made her aware of this and, while she despised herself for her weakness, her resentment toward him increased. He held up his face to be kissed, his lips pouted, the darkness of his eyes deepened. She was in no mood to kiss him, still less in the presence of the family. She shook her head, compressing her lips.
His eyebrows went up. He formed with his lips—“What’s the matter with you?”
“Kiss him! Kiss him!” cried Mooey, tugging at her.
Alayne kissed him instead. He had left a sticky mark on her sleeve where he clutched her.
“Don’t mind us!” cried Pheasant gaily. “I’ve never seen you two kiss and I’d love to.”
“Our form improves as the day wears on,” returned Renny.
Alayne was offended and she did not trouble to hide it. Yet, as she descended the stairs to the basement, she had the feeling of having been priggish.
Mrs. Wragge usually came upstairs for her orders. She greatly preferred to do this, for, as she put it to her husband: “I don’t want none of the ladies nosin’ about in my kitchen. Miss Meggie, she stayed out of it. Mrs. Piers, she stays out of it. Now let Mrs. Renny stop out of it!”
Consequently Alayne received a very glum greeting from her when she appeared in the kitchen.
Looking Mrs. Wragge in the eyes, she asked—“Is anything wrong, Cook?”
Mrs. Wragge, rather taken aback by this quick pouncing on her unusual aspect, said:
“I ain’t just myself this morning along o’ my innards. I come over sick in the night. I should be in me bed, but I wouldn’t ast for the time off, not with Bessie spendin’ hours upstairs mindin’ the baby and me ‘usband smashin’marmalade jars on me clean floor.”
“It was ridiculous,” said Alayne, conscious that Wragge was within hearing, “for him to drop the jar just because the bell rang.”
“Oh, Alfred’s a bundle o’ nerves, ’e is, along o’ shell shock and worry over the way me innards took on last night.” She folded her stout arms on her heaving bosom and regarded Alayne with something approaching defiance. “An’ were you wantin’ anything special down ’ere this morning, ’m?”
“I thought I would just have a look about the pantries. And I want to see how much canned fruit and jam is left, so we shall know how much to put up this year.”
“There ain’t none left,” said Mrs. Wragge, following her into the larder, “nor ’asn’t been for months. I could ’ave done
down a lot more than I did, but there weren’t no bottles to put it in.”
“Then, why ever didn’t you say so?”
“I did, ’m. I ast Mr. W’iteoak for more before he set out for England to ’is weddin’, but ’e said that things were too easy broke in this ’ouse and that if there wasn’t jam pots enough we must do with less jam.”
Alayne felt that this remark was thrown at her with the intention of intimidating her. She felt that the three servants were aware that she was not used to dealing with servants and that therefore they intended to impose on her. She had, up to this moment, liked Mrs. Wragge, had thought her quite superior to her jaunty little husband, but now she began to dislike her. Holding her head high she preceded the cook into the larder and began to investigate conditions there with a rather quaking spirit.
First of all was the smell. She did not like the smell at all.
“I don’t see what it can be, ’m,” declared Mrs. Wragge sniffing. “There ain’t nothing ’ere to smell. Bessie scrubs it out on ’er ’ands and knees every day of ’er life.”
“What is in this crock?” asked Alayne, lifting its lid. It was half full of biscuits and small cakes tossed in together. She picked up a biscuit. It was as limp as a bit of flannel. “Don’t you know,” she said severely, “that biscuits should not be put in with cakes? After this, keep them quite separate.”
She saw butter on three different dishes, all uncovered. She saw a large bowl which had held preserves and now was empty but unwashed, with a lining of green mould, across which a spider scuttled. She saw a cheese half-finished while a fresh one was cut into. She saw milk and cream at every stage from that morning’s to wrinkled sourness. Lifting a
heavy silver dish-cover she discovered a roast of meat that was unquestionably the cause of the smell. For all these things she reproved Mrs. Wragge. When she discovered an old Staffordshire bowl filled with leftover beetroot, her reproof was inflamed to denunciation of such practices.
From the larder she went to the china-closet and pointed out that the china was not properly washed. Instead of a glittering and pure surface, it showed a dull one; it was not smooth to the touch.
“Well, ’m,” declared Mrs. Wragge desperately, “they’re washed every blessed time in strong suds.”
“I smell it on them,” said Alayne. “They are not half-rinsed.” Mentally she recalled the stark immaculateness of the china-closet in the house of her aunts, on the Hudson.
She went to the kitchen and drew Mrs. Wragge’s attention to the blackened condition of the saucepans. She drew her attention to the fact that the glazing on every one of the platters in the big platter-rack was cracked from overheating.
Bessie was in the scullery plucking fowls. Their feathers whitened the floor like snow. They were even in her thick black hair and sticking to her plump neck. She was a pretty girl with a turned-up nose and full red lips. She got to her feet when Alayne appeared, looking rather frightened. She held the fowl by one leg, its ghastly beak touching the floor. Its fellows, already plucked, lay on the table beside her.
“Don’t you think, Bessie,” said Alayne pleasantly, “that it would be better if you were to have a box to put the plumage in?”
Bessie did not know what plumage was and she looked still more frightened.
Alayne remained a little longer trying to talk cheerfully and arranging with Mrs. Wragge to have a tour of inspection
of the basement once every week. Next time, she thought, it would be much easier. Then she would penetrate into the mysterious bricked passage that led to the wine cellar. She longed to see the place in perfect order. It would help to fill in the time to keep it so, for time often hung heavy on her hands. On the way to the stairs she passed a dishevelled bedroom and had a glimpse of Wragge making the bed, a cigarette in his mouth.
She felt tired but not ill-pleased with herself as she went to her bedroom. She would show these servants that she was not a figurehead. She would show Piers and Pheasant that she was as much mistress of Jalna as Renny was master. She would show Renny...
She was astonished to find Mooey in her room. He was standing in front of her dressing table, and he had a tin of talcum powder in his hand. She saw that he was sprinkling all her toilet articles with the powder, that he had already whitened his hair, and that the rug and chairs showed what could be done with a single tin of talcum.
She was tired and irritated or she would not have been so sharp with him. “Oh, you naughty boy!” she said, giving him a shake, “don’t ever dare come into my room again!”
He looked up at her, tears springing to his eyes. He made his mouth square and uttered a howl of woe. She hustled him to the door and pushed him into the passage. As she turned back she saw that old Benny was lying in the middle of her new mauve silk bedspread. He was curled up tightly, with one hazel eye rolled toward her, with an air that intimated that it would take more than her disapproval to budge him from this new-found nest.
It was perhaps the first time in Alayne’s life that she had experienced the violence of primitive rage. She knew that he
had fleas, for she often saw him scratching himself. And after last night’s rain his paws were certain to be muddy. She snatched up a slipper and struck him sharply with the heel of it, first on the head, then on the stern. The effect of retribution on Mooey was as nothing compared to its effect on Ben. He screamed as though all the bad dreams he had ever had were come true. He jumped from the bed, leaving a dark moist imprint of himself, but instead of running out of the room he took refuge under the bed. From there, on hands and knees, she was obliged to dislodge him with the slipper. By now she was almost beside herself. She followed him to the door and threw the slipper after him. He bounded down the passage yelping hysterically. Mooey was still wailing. Pheasant appeared at the door of her room with him in her arms.
“Why, Alayne, Mooey says you hit him! Whatever had he done?” Pheasant looked very much the offended mother.
“He threw powder all over my room,” answered Alayne hotly. “Really, Pheasant, he must not be allowed to go in there by himself. He’s too mischievous.”
“Was that all?” said Pheasant coldly.
Renny came up the stairs with Benny mourning at his heels. “What have you been doing to poor old Ben? I’ve never heard him make such a row.” When he saw Alayne’s lace he burst into loud laughter. She had got the talcum on her hands, then on her nose and chin. Her hair, for once, was ruffled.
Quite unconscious of her appearance she regarded him with an air of hauteur. She said:
“You may think it is amusing but I don’t. That dog has ruined my silk bedspread, and that child has made my room look no better than Bessie’s scullery.”
Pheasant said, patting her son on the back, while he stared at Alayne wet-eyed, as though she were an ogress:
“I think that cats and a canary would suit you better than dogs and a baby, Alayne.” She returned to her room still comforting her child.
“I like dogs and children as well as anybody, but I like them to behave themselves and to know their place.”
“Let’s see what the damage is,” said Renny, leading the way into her room. He glanced at the floor, the dressing table, and the bed. “That will all brush off,” he said soothingly.
“It may off the rug,” she returned, “but the bedspread is
ruined!”
“Can’t you send it to the cleaners?”
“Of course I can! And have it come home all slimpsey like my dress did. The cleaners over here aren’t nearly so good as I’m used to.”
He could not take her seriously, looking as she did. His face broke into a smile as he said—“Only look at yourself in the glass and you’ll forget all your troubles.”
She looked, and was angrier than ever.
Old Benny thought—“With my master here I think I’m pretty safe in getting on the bed again.” Accordingly he hopped with airy lightness on to the silk spread, avoiding the spot he had soiled before. His legs were strung with little beads of dried mud. He began to lick the place on his stern where the heel of the slipper had hit him.
Alayne had barely turned from the survey of her face when she saw him. It was one of those things that seem too bad to be true. Snatching up the other slipper she flew at him, striking him again and again. Renny caught her wrist.
“I won’t have him beaten like that,” he said sharply.
“Keep him out of my room, then! He’s a perfect brute!”
“Come along, Ben! This is no place for us.”
“You talk like a fool!” said Alayne.
He stopped in the doorway to look back at her. “I think,” he said, “that you are the worst-tempered woman I’ve ever known.”
She watched him go and then sat down on a chair by the window, feeling suddenly weak. Her own voice echoed in her mind, repeating—“You talk like a fool!” She had actually said those words to Renny... And what was it he had said? That, too, was echoed in her mind... She was not filled with remorse for her words or cut to the heart by his. She just sat motionless, stunned by the sudden rift between them. It was as though a crack in the earth had suddenly separated them... Could that be bridged? Could she leap back, across the chasm of her words, and stand once more close beside him? “The worst-tempered woman he had ever known.” And he had seen his grandmother in her passions! Had seen her draw blood from the boys with her stick! He had felt the sting of her tongue himself. Ah, but she was his grandmother! To be his wife was different. His wife must be meek. Well—if not meek—she must still not raise her hand against his dog. She leant out into the sunny morning air. She heard the cooing of a wood-pigeon. She heard the rumble of a farm wagon. Saw the pointed leaves of the birches shaken out in gladness to the sun. She remembered her first coming to Jalna as Eden’s wife. Life here had seemed so mysteriously different from the life to which she was used. Now her maiden life seemed far away, mysterious, though it was only live years. It was like a street she had once known well. Her thoughts, her emotions, had been the buildings—airy, narrow white buildings of a proud simplicity. That street had
crumbled during the first months of her life with Eden. How the contact with his changeful, sensitive mind had absorbed her! A new street had been erected for her spirit—a wide, richly coloured street, where the stars hung above the roofs and fountains danced before the doors. Then she had thought she would be an inspiration to Eden, be the means of his writing glorious poems. And how quickly those bright edifices had dissolved! Eden’s faithlessness, her meeting with Renny—her living in the very house with Renny—What was it that had crumbled the foundations? Eden and she had never had such a scene as this. She had never felt such a blaze of anger against Eden. Why was it? Was it because her love for Eden had been so much less? That with her love was mingled a maternal feeling? Was it because her love for Renny had in it so much of passion—her hope of understanding him ever baffled? The new street rising out of her life with him was threaded by intricate dark passages, separated by closed doors which, when they were forced open, were swept by frosty air and the sound of galloping hooves.