“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.
It was long before she put such fancies from her, rose, and tidied her hair and washed her face. She called Bessie to come and sweep the rug, and she tied up the silk bedspread in a parcel for the cleaners.
Renny slammed the side door behind him, Ben still at his heels. He was glad to get out of the house, but no more glad than he had been a score of times after a family row, when perhaps old Adeline had followed him to the very door, raining recriminations on him. Certainly this tantrum of Alayne’s had been rather a shock. He had thought she had one of the sweetest dispositions possible. And to have beat up old Benny like this, and then to have called him a fool! He gave a kind of hysterical grin as he thought of it. Whatever had got into the girl? Perhaps it was a child? Women got into strange states at those times, he knew. Had tantrums or wanted to eat raw carrots or common starch—anything to be unnatural. Well, he hoped to the Lord it was a child. Meggie and Pheasant had both had them in the year, and now he’d been married a year and never a whisper of one. He’d like a boy resembling himself, except for the red hair. He could do very well without that. If it were a girl he should like it to look like Alayne, only, on the whole, it would be better if it inherited Meggie’s disposition. She’d been cranky from the first that morning, he remembered. The way she’d pounced on poor old Rags about that marmalade, and the look she’d given him when he went to put down the window for her. Everything had annoyed her, even such a trifle as Wake’s waving of the bell-pull. And how peevish she had been about Mooey coming to the table! She had tried to hide that, but he could see through her. Of course, if she were going to have a baby, the sight of another kid at the table might upset her stomach; there was no knowing.
He was only a few strides from the door when he was intercepted by Wragge. In the bright sunlight his coat looked very rusty and his scalp showed through his greying hair. He looked up at Renny with a mournful expression, twitching his nose and upper lip before he spoke as was his way when his feelings were hurt.
“Well, what is it?” Renny demanded impatiently.
“I’ve come to give notice, sir. I think that me and me missus had oughter go since we’re not giving satisfaction to Mrs. W’iteoak, sir.”
Renny stared at him, thunderstruck. “Mrs. Whiteoak hasn’t said anything to me about your not giving satisfaction. What is the trouble?”
“Well, sir, you saw ’ow it was about the marmalade at breakfast. I was that unnerved that I nearly jumped out O’ me shoes when the bell rang, and I let drop the jar and smashed it. Not but w’at it was cracked already and our second best one. Then, after breakfast, she came to the kitchen and poured out the vitals of her wrath on Mrs. Wragge. There wasn’t a pot, nor a crock, nor a drawer she didn’t look into, and nothink was right. She even examined of the oven cloths and said they was tea cloths and had no business there. She was after Bessie for the way she plucked the fowls. Bessie’s young and she can tike criticism calm, but Mrs. Wragge ain’t herself this morning along o’ her innards. She ’ad a fry o’ some pork leavin’s last night before she went to bed, and at three this morning we both thought ’er hour ’ad come. So she don’t feel able to swallow Mrs. W’iteoak’s unreasonableness, sir, and my nerves won’t stand it neither, so I think we’d better be goin’.”
“The hell, you will!” said Renny. “Get along back to your work. I never heard of such nonsense. You have a very good place here and, if your wife can’t stand a little scolding, she ought to be ashamed of herself. Give her a dose of salts and don’t encourage her in her tempers.” He strode on, but Rags followed. “We appreciate the plice we ’ave ’ere. I ’ave it in me to be an old family retainer, but wat’s the use, if we can never do nothink to please the mistress?”
Renny stopped. “Rags,” he said, giving him a look of almost tender familiarity, “you and I were through a good deal together. I don’t want to part with you and I don’t believe you want to leave me. You know quite well how to pacify your wife. Probably what happened this morning may never happen again. I’ve overlooked things in you and you must show your good sense by putting up with a little criticism. Remind your wife of the dozens of times I’ve praised her sauces and her tarts.”
Rags’s grey little face was quite broken up by emotion. “Do you mind the time, sir, when we’d moved our position at the Front and we arrived in a God-forsaken plice just at dark and, inside of a hour, I’d cooked you up a four-course dinner out o’ some bits o’ things I’d brung along in tins?”
“Do I! I’ll never forget that dinner!”
They stood together talking of old times. Rags returned to the kitchen and told his wife that the master was all on their side and advised them not to take the missus too serious.
“I could have borne with ’er fault-finding,” declared Mrs. Wragge, “if she ’adn’t started in about the glazing on the platters. W’y, that was all cracked afore she ever set ’er foot inside this ’ouse.”
“My! she has a funny way of talking,” observed Bessie. ‘When she began about the fowl’s plumage I nearly burst out laughing.”
“Silly!”—said Mrs. Wragge. “That’s the American for fevvers.”
Renny and the sheepdog went on toward the stable, but now he was genuinely angry at Alayne. It was all very well to be disagreeable to him—Good God, she had told him that he talked like a fool—She had beaten poor old Ben for almost nothing, and now he found that she had all but lost him the Wragges. He remembered how she had drawn away from him when he had wanted to kiss her after breakfast. He sighed in puzzlement.
Usually he visited each of his horses in turn on his arrival at the stables in the morning, but this morning he felt out of sorts. He went straight to his little office and sat down before his yellow oak desk. Things were not going well with him this year. He had lost money at the races. A horse he had backed rather heavily, feeling certain of its quality, for it had been bred in his own stables and later sold to a friend (he had watched its training from month to month), had fallen, thrown the jockey, and galloped riderless to the finish. A horse of his own, trained by himself as a steeplechaser, ridden by one of his own men, had given a far from brilliant performance. He had hoped to sell it for a large sum. That hope was gone, unless the horse retrieved its reputation in another race. He had sold two of his best horses to a prosperous broker, but for some reason the payment for them was not forthcoming. Renny did not want to sue him for the money but he needed it badly. Added to these misfortunes, a gale in the autumn before had taken the roof from one of the stables and blown down a portion of the wall. Luckily the horses had not been injured, but the carpenter and the mason were becoming anxious for their money. They must be paid somehow.
In the early spring he had had a letter from Eden asking for a loan. He was in France, where he had been working all winter, and he wanted to go to England. His health was none too good. He badly needed a change—they had had a dreadful winter of cold and rain on the Riviera. Minny was with him, of course. He couldn’t imagine what he should have done without her. Might he have a thousand dollars? And Minny had joined him in sending love.
When Renny had come to
that part of the letter he had cocked an eyebrow. There was something about the whole tone of the letter that he had not quite liked. It was an almost impudent tone, as though Eden had said—“Well, I cleared out with Minny and made things easy for you and Alayne. A thousand dollars isn’t much to ask!” He had called it a loan, but Renny knew that he would never pay it back, and Eden knew that he knew. The money had been sent. One could scarcely refuse it to a brother who had almost died of lung trouble. Renny had never mentioned the affair to the family.
He picked up a paper that lay on his desk. It was an account from Piers of the hay, straw, oats, and chop with which he had supplied Renny during the winter. He had been expecting this account for some time, and he had known that Piers put off the rendering of it because of the shortage of money. The farm lands of Jalna were rented to Piers at a moderate rental. Renny bought from him the supplies he needed for the stables at the regular market price. Piers also supplied the house with fruit and vegetables at a low price, as they did not need to be packed or shipped. This arrangement had worked out excellently, each brother giving the other a little time when necessary. Their love of Jalna, their love of horses, and their pride in their family was a strong bond between them. In the last two years Piers had been ready with his rent each quarter, on the day of its falling due. Renny, on the contrary, had been obliged to ask Piers for more time on several occasions. He felt chagrin at this. He wondered if he might put off the mason, the carpenter, or some other creditor, and pay Piers at once. He ran his eye over the items of the account. Certainly the nags had got away with a lot of feed. But they were worth it! He opened a drawer and took out the accounts that had come in at the beginning of the month. He had not paid the vet anything since the New Year. His was mounting to a large figure. He must be paid something. Urgent notes were attached to the accounts of the mason and the carpenter, begging for an immediate settlement. Then there was the notice from the bank telling of a note that had fallen due. He had not been able to resist that lovely mare in Montreal, though he really had not needed her... He lighted a cigarette and stared rather blankly at the papers on the desk. A jubilant neigh came from the stallion’s loose box.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 274
