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

by de la Roche, Mazo

  He chose a yellow field from which the grain had been cut, and in which three old pear trees stood. He sat down on the warm sandy soil beneath one of these, his folio on his knees... He noticed his hands, how they were getting long, and the knuckles beginning to show, noticed that his wrists protruded from his sleeves. He bent his face to the shining lacquer of the folio, and caressed it with his cheek, his lips.

  His face touched the flesh of his hand and he sniffed its warm sunburned sweetness. He loved himself passionately that day as he loved the pear tree and the warm sandy soil. He pressed his body against the ground, feeling its warmth. He looked up into the innermost depths of the tree. The leaves were turning yellow, whispering together in the merest waft of air. Among them the fruit, beautifully shaped, golden green, hung ready to drop the very instant that its dried stem wavered in the support of its luscious weight.

  He wrote and wrote. Frowning, he sought for words, found them, and, as a hound that has caught the scent, his spirit ran forward, panting after its quarry. To write a perfect poem! As lovely as one of Eden’s. To write something that, in years and years to come, people would say over to themselves and feel happy... Who was the author? Why, the author was Wakefield Whiteoak, the brother of Eden Whiteoak... Poet brothers... the younger was thought by many to be the greater of the two.

  Just as he finished, a pear fell, impaling itself on a spear of stubble. He reached out and curved his hand about it, held it to his nostrils, sniffing it. He was divinely happy.

  He re-read the verses, polished them tenderly, copied them out again in his most careful handwriting. How quickly they had flowed out of his head! Only a short while ago the paper had been blank, and now a picture was drawn on it in lovely words that would last forever. Though the writing of it had not taken long, the thought of it had been haunting him lor weeks; in fact, ever since he had watched the family of ducks with the new understanding that had come to him.

  He had rushed to find Bessie when the thought of the poem had first come to him. “Look here, Bessie,” he had said, “would you mind being called a farmer’s wife in something I am going to write?” Bessie had agreed with alacrity. Indeed she had simply thrown herself at the farmer’s head.

  To whom could he read the poem? He had read it to the pear tree, but her leaves had gone on whispering together as heedless of him as of the nuthatch that twittered among them.

  He lay watching a flock of birds flying high on the journey southward. He saw how some of the birds would press forward in their haste, passing their fellows, and how the conformation of the flock was still unbroken. Passing and repassing each other, they were still contained in their formation like winging words in a poem.

  The thought of Pauline Lebraux came to him. He remembered the way her lip curled when she smiled, giving her smile an odd shadow of pain. He felt that he would like to read the poem to her—for this one, Alma Patch’s “My, how lovely!” would not suffice.

  He would go to the fox farm and read the poem to Pauline...

  He was panting when he reached the gate, for he had run all the way. He hesitated there to take breath. Standing behind the gatepost, he thought: “What if Mrs. Lebraux should come to the door? I cannot read my poetry to her. I must find Pauline and take her to some place where we can be all alone.” He walked cautiously beside the fence, peering between the palings, hoping for a glimpse of her. But, before he saw her, he heard her laughing. She was squatting in the shade of a group of cedars playing with her pet fox.

  It had been a puny cub, the smallest of the first litter of an immature vixen. It had promised to develop into a “Samson,” of inferior woolly underfur and uneven rusty pelt. But Pauline had taken it under her protection. She had fed it with milk and stolen eggs for it. She had brushed it till it shone; had taught it to know its name. It was a secret name—formed of an English word spoken in a French way— and known only to the fox and herself. Now it was growing into a rugged animal of good girth, the glossy black of its pelt shading to blue-black, the silver bands on the guard hairs bright as polished metal.

  Wakefield stood watching girl and fox romp gracefully together. A new shyness came over him. The thought of reading his poem to Pauline made him feel strangely timid. The very thought of speaking to her, of her speaking to him, made him shrink. Yet he liked to stand, hidden, watching her. He forgot all else in the pleasure of that till a voice calling from within the house caused her to spring up and, followed by the fox, disappear.

  He turned back the way he had come and met Renny on the path through the birchwood.

  “Hullo!” said Renny, “where have you been?”

  “To the fox farm.”

  “Were you? Em glad of that. I think you should go sometimes to see Pauline. She’s a lonely girl.”

  “I just looked in... I wasn’t speaking to anyone.”

  Renny stared. “But why did you go?”

  Wake shook his head petulantly. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, when you’d got there, why didn’t you speak?”

  “I don’t think I like Pauline. She’s so silly about her old fox.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you knew what she’s made of him. He was such a poor specimen I was for stripping his pelt off him, but now he’s to be saved for breeding.”

  “Well, well,” said Wakefield judicially.

  “It would be a good thing for you to have a companion of your own age. You’d better come back with me. I’m going there now.” He noticed then the unkempt appearance of his young brother. “Look here. When have you had a bath?”

  “I went to the lake with Piers yesterday. I took soap with me.”

  “But your clothes—” He touched the ragged jersey.” “How long have you been going on like this?”

  “Please, Renny don’t touch me! I hate to be pulled at... I like my rags.”

  “And your hair—Good Lord, I must take you to the barber. You look like the Minstrel Boy.”

  Wake’s eyes blazed up into his. “I am! I’ve just been writing a beautiful poem!”

  It seemed too bad to be true; but Renny controlled his lips, held back the expression of dismay that rose to them, forced them into a genial grin. “You have? Right now—out in the open? I see you have your writing-case that Meggie gave you. What do you say to reading the poem to me?”

  “Oh, I’ll like that! If you won’t be contemptuous.”

  “Of course I shan’t! We’ll sit down here. Now, fire away!”

  They sat down in the shadow of the silver birches—the little cold faces of the Michaelmas daisies were turned towards the young poet. Renny stared at him—his little boy, his darling—at that cursed rhyming already! Oh, that fanciful, second wife of his father’s!

  Wakefield opened the lacquer case and took out the verses. He read them in a small, carefully modulated voice, with an ecstatic singsong to it.

  THE DRAKE

  He has two wives, both plump and blonde,

  Complacent, roguish, kind.

  I’ve never seen a family

  So sweetly of one mind.

  In May beneath the hemlock’s shade,

  Each duck arranged her nest,

  And each upon a dozen eggs

  Composed her downy breast.

  Each thrust her head beneath her wing

  And breathed the heady scent

  Of feathers, warm straw, warmer eggs,

  While drake his ardour spent

  In rocking round and round the coop

  To ward off stalking foe,

  Or taking each in turn to swim

  In the cold stream below.

  In dim green pools they floated, dived,

  Then up the slope he led,

  Each in her turn, while wetly gleamed

  His jewel-bright, dark blue head.

  Full twenty cowslip balls one morn

  Into the nests were spilled,

  Drake, hearing those faint, infant pipes

  With pride of life was filled.

&nbs
p; Down a green vista of rich shade

  The farmer’s wife, their god,

  Bore one warm duck, and the two broods

  To a run set on fine sod.

  Nor anger, pain, nor jealousy

  Inflame the two outside,

  Only between the bars they peer

  In love and simple pride.

  Round and around the run they rock

  In ceaseless, sweet converse.

  Each loves the other, each the brood

  For better and for worse.

  But there’s no worse, time sweetly flies.

  ’Tis August now, the flock

  Troop down the lawn to the cool stream

  And on its wavelets rock.

  Wakefield’s face was flushed, his lips trembled, as he waited for what Renny would say.

  Renny said: “I think it’s very good. I like it very much.”

  “Oh, Renny, do you really? I think it’s by far the best thing I’ve done.”

  The best thing he’d done! So this wasn’t the first time! He’d been at it for God knew how long. “You’ve written others, then?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve been working hard all summer. I’ve written any number of poems. I’ve read a whole book of poetry Alayne had. I’ve read Eden’s two books, and I know some of his poems by heart. But this is the first thing I’ve done that I think is really beautiful.” His eyes glowed happily into his brother’s. “I’m so glad you think so too, Renny.”

  The master of Jalna achieved a wry smile. “Yes, it appears to me to be a perfectly good poem. The only question I should like to ask you is—why write it?”

  “Why, that’s the whole thing—writing it! You see something you like. Then you want to make others see it. Only you want to make them see it more clearly than they could ever have seen it for themselves.”

  “But why? Why not see it yourself and be satisfied?”

  “Because”—he knitted his slender black brows—“you want to give them a picture to keep. You want them to see it the way you did.”

  “But you only give yourself a lot of trouble. People will read your poem and forget all about it in five minutes. I don’t understand.”

  “But, Renny, when Cora had her last colt, and she was so proud about it, you came to the house and told us just how she’d whinnied to you, and how pleased she was with herself. You mimicked her till it was just as though we saw her.”

  “That wasn’t writing a poem about her.”

  “It was your kind of poem, Renny.”

  “Now, look here! When Eden was a boy he was always writing rhymes. Now he’s a man, he’s still at it. It’s never done him any good. It’s mostly got him into trouble.”

  “Do you mean marrying Alayne?”

  Renny’s loud laugh shattered the quiet. “No, I don’t mean that. The trouble there was all hers.” He changed the subject. “Now, take young Finch. Music is his trouble. He’s been strumming on the piano ever since he could toddle. He used to stand on tiptoe to reach the keyboard and got his hands smacked for it. I’ve spent a lot of money on him because I was made to believe that he was a genius. I never really believed it. He acknowledged himself that he had never played worse than at his recital last spring and yet he practised six hours a day for it. Music has brought him nothing but trouble. Poetry has brought Eden nothing but trouble. Neither of them is strong. Now, Wake, do you want to be like those two or like Piers and me? I know we’re not artistic or anything of that sort. Intellectual ladies don’t get hysterical over us. But we’re normal chaps. We’ve good digestions, good nerves, and healthy appetites.”

  “But I’m sickly to begin with. What’s the use in my trying to be like you and Piers?”

  “You’re not sickly!” retorted Renny angrily, “you have a weakness but you’ll outgrow that. I want you to outgrow this other thing too. Why, I’ve never seen you look fitter than you do now. And, by George, how you’re growing! Come and saddle your pony and we’ll go for a ride... Poetry of motion, eh, what?”

  XXIV

  RETURN OF NICHOLAS AND ERNEST

  IT WAS good to be at home again.

  When Nicholas let himself down into the armchair in his own bedroom, with Nip quivering with delight on his knee, he felt that this was the return from his last trip abroad. Every few minutes Nip turned to give his face or his hand a quick lick of the tongue. The luggage had been carried upstairs and the box which contained the presents had been opened.

  It was the rule that a returning Whiteoak should not fail to bring presents to the rest of the family. Especially was this the rule when the journey had been to the Old Country Ernest had now unpacked and distributed the presents. He was beaming happily on his nieces with their scarves and strings of beads (Meg’s a little the handsomer), on his nephews with their gloves and neckties. A flaxen-haired doll had been brought to Patience and a nigger doll in striped suit and red waistcoat to Mooey. Their eyes were sparkling with gratification. Ernest had enjoyed himself thoroughly, but he was now beginning to feel rather tired. He had arranged that the opening of the box should take place in Nick’s room.

  Now, at any moment, he might fade away to his own and relax. He had forgotten what splendid voices his nephews had. How their noise and laughter excited and fatigued one. Meg kept her arm about his shoulders. It was a lovely plump arm, but it weighed on him. In the midst of all the present-giving she was trying to tell him about her operation. Maurice was trying to explain something about having slept IN his room which he simply could not take in because of the din. Patience and Mooey were running round and round him in circles, holding their dolls on high.

  “Hold them nicely children,” he admonished. “Isn’t yours a droll fellow, Mooey?”

  Mooey halted in his gambols to examine the leering, black face. One of the eyes was tight shut while the other stared horribly.

  “Isn’t he nice?” urged Pheasant.

  “He’s only got one bad eye,” returned Mooey.

  Meg, too, urged her offspring to expressions of gratitude.

  “Patience, tell Uncles how you love your beautiful dolly.”

  “Her’s dot a daity face,” answered Patience. She moistened a corner of her diminutive handkerchief on her tongue and began to rub the doll’s cheeks. “I s’all wash her face,” she said, “but not her breeches.”

  “Here!” cried Mooey, “you’re not allowed to say breeches!”

  “l am so!”

  “You are not!”

  “I am so!”

  “Oh, hell, you’re not!”

  “Pig, Pig, Pig!”

  “Nig, nig, nig!”

  Ernest glided away to his own room...

  Later, when all was quiet, he returned. He found his brother with a glass of whiskey and soda before him and Nip still on his knee.

  “I had to have a peg,” explained Nicholas to Ernest’s disapproving look toward the glass, “to buck me up after all that row. What an exciting lot they are! Children getting badly spoiled too.”

  Ernest picked up one of the doll’s shoes from the floor and put it on his finger. “Yes—but they’re very sweet. I haven’t seen two prettier children anywhere. It’s very good to be home again.”

  “Yes. I’ve taken my last trip. Here I stick till they take me off to lie beside Mama. Sit down, Ernie, and rest yourself. You must be tired after all the to-do.”

  Ernest sat down near enough to stroke the little dog’s head. He remembered Sasha and sighed. He asked:

  “Did you notice anything about Pheasant?”

  Nicholas grunted. “Strange we weren’t told of it.”

  “We didn’t get many letters. Meggie’s operation was the subject of most of them. What do you think about it, Nick?”

  “I think there are kids enough about the house, but I suppose she is going to have a regular Whiteoak family.”

  “Poor child! She looks pale. Much more ailing than Meggie.” He tapped his teeth with the tips of his fingers and added, in a reflective tone—“Do you know, Nick
, that the Vaughans are still staying here? I’d only been in my room a few moments when Maurice came to my door. He said he’d forgotten some of his things. There were his brushes on the dressing table and a coat on the back of the door. I naturally looked a little surprised and he explained, rather apologetically, that Meggie isn’t fit yet for the responsibility of housekeeping. I remarked how well she is looking. Then he told me that their house has been let furnished and that the tenants were very keen to have it for another month.”

  “H’m. It is rather strange. But not half so strange as Alayne’s not being home yet. Why it must be two months since her aunt died. What did she say in her letter to you?”

  “She said she was going to visit Miss Archer for a time, but I certainly expected to find her at Jalna when we returned. Meggie has her room.”

  “Well,” growled Nicholas, “it was hers before it was Alayne’s.”

  “Of course, of course, but if Alayne were suddenly to return it would be awkward.”

  “Where is Maurice going to hang out now?”

  “In the attic, he said. In Finch’s room.” A yawn made his eyes water. He had slept little on the train. When, in a short while, the dinner gong sounded he was almost too tired to respond. Yet he still felt the exhilaration of the return and he was curious to press further enquiries about Alayne.

  In the passage they passed Wragge carrying a tray, on which were arranged creamed sweetbreads on toast and a glass of sherry, to Meg. The two tall old gentlemen stood aside while the little Cockney, with an air mysterious and important, slid past them with the tray.

  Nicholas chuckled as he heavily descended the stairs. “At her old tricks again, I see. I fancy this convalescence will extend through the rest of her life. She’s always preferred her little lunches to proper meals and, at last, she has an authentic excuse.”

  Ernest, following, poked him warningly between the shoulders. Maurice was in the hall below. He was talking to Renny and two men who appeared at first to be strangers, but when they faced round turned out to be Renny’s objectionable friends Crowdy and Chase.