07 Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

“Have a pull, Muriel,” he offered.

  “Don’t like it,” she said. “You have a bite of chocolate.” She held the bar to his lips, and so they contentedly ate it, bite about.

  How happy he was! “Brideangroom... Brideangroom.” The pleasant words went singing through his head. A spiral of wood smoke curled upward from a mound of burning leaves in a yard across the street. A hen and her half-grown brood scratched blithely in the middle of the road. Muriel was gazing into his face with slavish admiration.

  A car was coming. Their own car. He recognized its peculiar hiccoughing squeaks. Hastily he drained the last drops and pushed the bottle into Muriel’s hands.

  “You may return the bottle, Muriel,” he said. “I must go to meet the brideangroom.”

  The car was in sight. He espied a clump of Michaelmas daisies growing by the side of the road, and he swiftly ran and plucked a long feathery spray. It was rather dusty, but still very pretty, and he stood clasping it, with an expectant smile on his face, as the car approached. Piers, who was driving, would have gone by and left him standing there, but Eden sharply told him to stop, and Alayne leaned forward full of eager curiosity.

  Wakefield mounted the running board and held the Michaelmas daisies out to her.

  “Welcome to Jalna,” he said.

  XIII

  INSIDE THE GATES OF JALNA

  EDEN had not been sorry to see his little brother waiting at the roadside with daisies for Alayne. The meeting with Piers, the breakfast in his company at the Queen’s, and the subsequent drive home had not been altogether satisfactory. Alayne had been tired and unusually quiet, Piers actually taciturn. Eden resented this taciturnity because he remembered having been very decent to Piers and Pheasant on the occasion of their humiliating return to Jalna. He had been the first, and the only one except Renny, to stand up for them. He regarded his brother’s solid back and strong sunburned neck with growing irritation as the car sped along the lakeshore road.

  Alayne gazed out over the misty blue expanse of the lake with a feeling approaching sadness. This sea that was not a sea, this land that was not her land, this new brother with the unfriendly blue eyes and the sulky mouth, she must get used to them all. They were to be hers. Ruth—“amid the alien corn.”

  But she should not feel that they were alien. It was a lovely land. The language was her own. Even this new brother was probably only rather shy. She wished that Eden had told her more about his family. There were so many of them. She went over their names in her mind to prepare herself for the meeting. A tiny shudder of apprehension ran through her nerves. She put her hand on Eden’s and gripped his fingers.

  “Cheer up, old dear,” he said. “We’ll soon be there.”

  They had left the lakeshore and were running smoothly over a curving road. A quaint old church, perched on a wooded knoll, rose before them. Then a diminutive shop, two children staring, Eden’s voice saying, “There’s young Wake, Piers!” And a little boy on the running board, pushing flowers into her hand.

  “Welcome to Jalna,” he said, in a sweet treble, “and I thought maybe you’d like these Michaelmas daisies. I’ve been waiting ever so long.”

  “Hop in,” commanded Eden, opening the door.

  He hopped in, and squeezed his slender body between theirs on the seat. Piers had not looked round. Now he started the car with a jerk.

  Wakefield raised his eyes to Alayne’s face and scrutinized her closely. “What eyelashes!” she thought. “What a darling!” His little body pressed against her seemed the most delightful and pathetic thing. Oh, she could love this little brother. And he was delicate, too. Not strong enough to go to school. She would play with him, help to teach him. They smiled at each other. She looked across his head at Eden and formed the words “A darling” with smiling lips.

  “How is everyone at home?” asked Eden.

  “Nicely, thank you,” said Wakefield, cheerfully. “Granny has had a little cough, and Boney imitates her. Uncle Ernest’s nose is rather pink from hay fever. Uncle Nick’s gout is better. Meggie eats very little, but she is getting fatter. Piers took the first prize with his bull at the Durham show. It wore the blue ribbon all the way home. Finch came out fifty-second in his Greek exam. I can’t think of any news about Pheasant and Rags and Mrs. Wragge except that they’re there. I hope you like your flowers, Alayne. I should have got more, but I saw your car coming just as I was beginning to gather them.”

  “They are beautiful,” said Alayne, holding them to her face, and Wakefield close to her side. “I am so very glad you came to meet me.”

  In truth she was very glad. It seemed easier to meet the family with the little boy by her side. Her cheeks flushed a pretty pink, and she craned her neck eagerly to catch a first glimpse of the house as they passed between the stalwart spruces along the drive.

  Jalna looked very mellow in the golden sunlight, draped in its mantle of reddening Virginia creeper and surrounded by freshly clipped lawns. One of Wake’s rabbits was hopping about, and Renny’s two clumber spaniels were stretched on the steps. A pear tree near the house had dropped its fruit on the grass, where it lay richly yellow, giving to the eyes of a town dweller an air of negligent well-being to the scene. Alayne thought that Jalna had something of the appearance of an old manorial farmhouse, set among its lawns and orchards. The spaniels lazily beat their plumed tails on the step, too indolent to rise.

  “Renny’s dogs,” commented Eden, pushing one of them out of the way with his foot that Alayne might pass. “You’ll have to get used to animals. You’ll find them all over the place.”

  “That will not be hard. I have always wanted pets.” She bent to stroke one of the silken heads.

  Eden looked down at her curiously. How would she and his family get on, he wondered. Now that he had brought her home he realized suddenly that she was alien to his family. He had a disconcerting sensation of surprise at finding himself married. After all, he was not so elated as he had expected to be when Rags opened the door and smiled a self-conscious welcome.

  Rags was always self-conscious when he wore his livery. It consisted of a shiny black suit with trousers very tight for him and a coat a size too large, a stiff white collar, and a greenish-black bow tie. His ash-blond hair was clipped with convict-like closeness, his pallid face showed a cut he had given himself when shaving. His air had something of the secretive smirk of an undertaker.

  “Welcome ‘ome, Mr. Eden,” he said, sadly. “Welcome ‘ome, sir.”

  “Thanks, Rags. Alayne, this is Wragge, our—” Eden hesitated, trying to decide how Mr. Wragge should be described, and continued, “our factotum.”

  “Welcome ‘ome, Mrs. Whiteoak,” said Rags, with his curiously deprecating yet impudent glance. It said to Eden silently but unmistakably: “Ow, you may fool the family, young man, but you can’t fool me. You ‘aven’t married a heiress. And ‘ow we’re to put up with another young woman ‘ere Gawd only knows.”

  Alayne thanked him, and at the same moment the door of the living room was opened and Meg Whiteoak appeared on the threshold. She threw her arms about Eden’s neck and kissed him with passionate tenderness. Then she turned to Alayne, her lips, with their prettily curved corners, parted in a gentle smile.

  “So this is Alayne. I hope you will like us all, my dear. We’re so happy to have you.”

  Alayne found herself enfolded in a warm plump embrace. She thought it was no wonder the brothers adored their sister—Eden had told her they did—and she felt prepared to make a sister, a confidante, of her. How delightful! A real sister. She held tightly to Meg’s hand as they went into the living room where more of the family had assembled.

  It was so warm that even the low flameless fire seemed too much; none of the windows were open. Slanting bars of sunlight penetrating between the slats of the inside shutters converged at one point, the chair where old Mrs. Whiteoak sat. Like fiery fingers they seemed to point her out as the most significant presence in the room. Yet she was indulging in one of her unpr
emeditated naps. Her head, topped by a large purple cap with pink rosettes, had sunk forward so that the only part of her face visible was her heavy jaw and row of too perfect underteeth. She wore a voluminous tea gown of purple velvet, and her shapely hands clasping the gold top of her ebony stick were heavy with rings worn for the occasion. A steady bubbling snore escaped her. The two elderly men came forward, Nicholas frowning because of the painful effort of rising, but enfolding Alayne’s hand in a warm grasp. They greeted her in mellow whispers, Ernest excusing their mamma’s momentary oblivion.

  “She must have these little naps. They refresh her. Keep her going.”

  Wakefield, who stood gazing into his grandmother’s face, remarked: “Yes. She winds herself up, rather like a clock, you know. You can hear her doing it, can’t you? B-z-z-z-z—”

  Meg smiled at Alayne. “He thinks of everything,” she said. “His mind is never still.”

  “He ought to be more respectful in speaking of his grandmamma,” rebuked Ernest. “Don’t you think so, Alayne?”

  Nicholas put his arm about the child. “She’d probably be highly amused by the comparison, and talk of nothing else for an hour.” He turned with his sardonic smile to Alayne. “She’s very bright, you know. She can drown us all out when she—”

  “Begins to strike,” put in Wake, carrying on the clock simile. Nicholas rumpled the boy’s hair.

  “We had better sit, down,” said Meg, “till she wakens and has a little talk with Alayne. Then I’ll take you up to your room, my dear. You must be tired after the journey. And hungry, too. Well, we’re going to have an early dinner.”

  “Chicken and plum tart! Chicken and plum tart!” exploded Wakefield, and old Mrs. Whiteoak stirred in her sleep.

  Uncle Nicholas covered the child’s face with his hand, and the family’s gaze was fixed expectantly on the old lady. After a moment’s contortion, however, her face resumed the calm of peaceful slumber; everyone sat down, and conversation was carried on in hushed tones.

  Alayne felt as though she were in a dream. The room, the furniture, the people were so different from those to which she was accustomed that their strangeness made even Eden seem suddenly remote. She wondered wistfully whether it would take her long to get used to them. Yet in looking at the faces about her she found that each had a distinctive attraction for her. Or perhaps it was fascination. Certainly there was nothing attractive about the grandmother unless it were the bizarre strength of her personality.

  “I lived in London a good many years,” mumbled Uncle Nicholas, “but I don’t know much about New York. I visited it once in the nineties, but I suppose it has changed a lot since then.”

  “Yes, I think you would find it very changed. It is changing constantly.”

  Uncle Ernest whispered: “I sailed from there once for England. I just missed seeing a murder.”

  “Oh, Uncle Ernest, I wish you’d seen it!” exclaimed Wakefield, bouncing up and down on the padded arm of his sister’s chair.

  “Hush, Wake,” said Meg, giving his thigh a little slap. “I’m very glad he didn’t see it. It would have upset him terribly. Isn’t it a pity you have so many murders there? And lynchings, and all?”

  “They don’t have lynchings in New York, Meggie,” corrected Uncle Ernest.

  “Oh, I forgot. It’s Chicago, isn’t it?”

  Eden spoke for almost the first time. “Never met so many orderly people in my life as I met in New York.”

  “How nice,” said Meg. “I do like order, but I find it so hard to keep, with servants’ wages high, and so many boys about, and Granny requiring a good deal of waiting on.”

  The sound of her own name must have penetrated Mrs. Whiteoak’s consciousness. She wobbled a moment as though she were about to fall, then righted herself and raised her still handsome, chiselled nose from its horizontal position and looked about. Her eyes, blurred by sleep, did not at once perceive Alayne.

  “Dinner,” she observed. “I want my dinner.”

  “Here are Eden and Alayne,” said Ernest, bending over her.

  “Better come over to her,” suggested Nicholas.

  “She will be so glad,” said Meg.

  Eden took Alayne’s hand and led her to his grandmother. The old lady peered at them unseeingly for a moment; then her gaze brightened. She clutched Eden to her and gave him a loud, hearty kiss.

  “Eden,” she said. “Well, well, so you’re back. Where’s your bride?”

  Eden put Alayne forward, and she was enfolded in an embrace of surprising strength. Sharp bristles scratched her cheek, and a kiss was planted on her mouth.

  “Pretty thing,” said Grandmother, holding her off to look at her. “You’re a very pretty thing. I’m glad you’ve come. Where’s Boney, now?” She released Alayne and looked around sharply for the parrot. At the sound of his name he flapped heavily from his ring perch to her shoulder. She stroked his bright plumage with her jewelled hand.

  “Say ‘Alayne,’” she adjured him. “Say ‘Pretty Alayne.’ Come, now, there’s a darling boy!”

  Boney, casting a malevolent look on Alayne with one topaz eye, for the other was tight shut, burst into a string of curses.

  “Kutni! Kutni! Kutni!” he screamed. “Shaitan ke khatla! Kambakht!”

  Grandmother thumped her stick loudly on the floor. “Silence!” she thundered. “I won’t have it. Stop him, Nick. Stop him!”

  “He’ll bite me,” objected Nicholas.

  “I don’t care if he does. Stop him!”

  “Stop him yourself, Mamma.”

  “Boney, Boney, don’t be so naughty. Say ‘Pretty Alayne.’ Come, now.”

  Boney rocked himself on her shoulder in a paroxysm of rage. “Paji! Paji! Kuzabusth! Iflatoon! Iflatoon!” He glared into his mistress’s face, their two hooked beaks almost touching, his scarlet and green plumage, her purple and pink finery, blazing in the slanting sun-rays.

  “Please don’t trouble,” said Alayne, soothingly. “I think he is very beautiful, and he probably does not dislike me as much as he pretends.”

  “What’s she say?” demanded the old lady, looking up at her sons. It was always difficult for her to understand a stranger, though her hearing was excellent, and Alayne’s slow and somewhat precise enunciation was less clear to her than Nicholas’s rumbling tones or Ernest’s soft mumble.

  “She says Boney is beautiful,” said Nicholas, too indolent to repeat the entire sentence.

  Grandmother grinned, very well pleased. “Aye, he’s beautiful. A handsome bird, but a bit of a devil. I brought him all the way from India seventy-three years ago. A game old bird, eh? Sailing vessels then, my dear. I nearly died. And the ayah did die. They put her overboard. But I was too sick to care. My baby Augusta nearly died, poor brat, and my dear husband, Captain Philip Whiteoak, had his hands full. You’ll see his portrait in the dining room. The handsomest officer in India. I could hold my own for looks, too. Would you think I’d ever been a beauty, eh?”

  “I think you are very handsome now,” replied Alayne, speaking with great distinctness. “Your nose is really—”

  “What’s she say?” cried Grandmother.

  Ernest murmured: “She says your nose—”

  “Ha, ha, my nose is still a beauty, eh? Yes, my dear, it’s a good nose. A Court nose. None of your retroussé, surprisedlooking noses. Nothing on God’s earth could surprise my nose. None of your pinched, sniffing, cold-in-the-head noses, either. A good reliable nose. A Court nose.” She rubbed it triumphantly.

  “You’ve a nice-looking nose, yourself,” she continued. “You and Eden make a pretty pair. But he’s no Court. Nor a Whiteoak. He looks like his poor pretty flibbertigibbet mother.”

  Alayne, shocked, looked indignantly toward Eden, but he wore only an expression of tolerant boredom, and was putting a cigarette between his faintly smiling lips.

  Meg saw Alayne’s look and expostulated: “Grandmamma!”

  “Renny’s the only Court among ‘em,” pursued Mrs. Whiteoak. “W
ait till you see Renny. Where is he? I want Renny.” She thumped the floor impatiently with her stick.

  “He’ll be here very soon, Granny,” said Meg. “He rode over to Mr. Probyn’s to get a litter of pigs.”

  “Well, I call that very boorish of him. Boorish. Boorish. Did I say boorish? I mean Boarish. There’s a pun, Ernest. You enjoy a pun. Boarish. Ha, ha!”

  Ernest stroked his chin and smiled deprecatingly. Nicholas laughed jovially.

  The old lady proceeded with a rakish air of enjoyment. “Renny prefers the grunting of a sow to sweet converse with a young bride—”

  “Mamma,” said Ernest, “shouldn’t you like a peppermint?”

  Her attention was instantly distracted. “Yes. I want a peppermint. Fetch me my bag.”

  Ernest brought a little old bead-embroidered bag. His mother began to fumble in it, and Boney, leaning from her shoulder, pecked at it and uttered cries of greed.

  “A sweet!” he babbled. “A sweet—Boney wants a sweet—Pretty Alayne—Pretty Alayne—Boney wants a sweet!”

  Grandmother cried in triumph: “He’s said it! He’s said it! I told you he could. Good Boney.” She fumbled distractedly in the bag.

  “May I help you?” Alayne asked, not without timidity

  The old lady pushed the bag into her hand. “Yes, quickly. I want a peppermint. A Scotch mint. Not a humbug.”

  “Boney wants a humbug!” screamed the parrot, rocking from side to side. “A humbug—Pretty Alayne—Kutni! Kutni! Shaitan ke khatla.”

  Grandmother and the parrot leaned forward simultaneously for the sweet when it was found, she with protruding wrinkled lips, he with gaping beak. Alayne hesitated, fearing to offend either by favouring the other. While she hesitated Boney snatched it, and with a whir of wings flew to a far corner of the room. Grandmother, rigid as a statue, remained with protruding mouth till Alayne unearthed another sweet and popped it between her lips, then she sank back with a sigh of satisfaction, closed her eyes, and began to suck noisily.

  Alayne longed to wipe her fingers, but she refrained. She looked at the faces about her. They were regarding the scene with the utmost imperturbability, except Eden, who still wore his look of faintly smiling boredom. A cloud of smoke about his head seemed to emphasize his aloofness.