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

  “No, no, Sarah. He is afraid of you. That’s all.”

  She asked ingenuously as a child—“How can I stop that?”

  He sat down beside her. “By pretending that you are afraid of him.”

  “It would be no pretence! I’m terrified of him.” She gave a little nervous laugh, then pushed a box of cigarettes toward him. “Here are some of your favourite Russians,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I’ve given up smoking,” he said. “It makes me cough.”

  “Hard luck! I shan’t take one either.”

  “Please do. I’ll like to watch you smoke. We’ll talk about young Finch.”

  They talked, and Eden wondered if perhaps, after all, a marriage with Sarah might bring Finch happiness. But he could not bring himself to believe that. She would entrap him, and Finch should be free. Still, he was sorry for her, even while he distrusted her. She fascinated him.

  In the days that followed Eden amused himself, kept his mind off his own troubles by thinking of Sarah and Finch. He had an odd feeling that it was for him to bring them together or keep them apart. He felt that he had a certain power over Finch, who was at this time away on the tour that had been arranged for him.

  But, by the end of the week, his thoughts were occupied only with his own condition. His cough had become so much worse that Meg was concerned and dosed him with rum and honey, flaxseed tea, and patent cough medicines. He was drenched with sweat after his early morning work in the stable, but his pride kept him from complaining to Maurice. He would drag himself back to his bed and throw himself on it where still was the shape of his body in moisture from his sweat of the night. Much of the day he spent bent over his desk. His feverish brain found its solace in a new dramatic poem. “Thank God!” he said aloud, as he drove Maurice’s car through the bitter cold streets, whirling dust half choking him, “this will soon be over!” It was his tenth Thursday.

  Renny was in his office the next morning, as was his custom after breakfast. He was reading his mail, which consisted mostly of bills and circulars. The morning paper lay open on the desk, its back page uppermost, showing a large advertisement of Christmas goods by a department store. He laid down his last letter and his eyes fell on the advertisement. Was it possible that Christmas was so near? He smiled as he thought that little Adeline would be old enough to enjoy it this year.

  He rubbed his eyes, which were smarting from the smoke of the small stove, which always refused to draw when the wind was off the lake. Yet he must have the fire for there was a raw, penetrating chill in the air. Outside lay several inches of wet snow. He had been walking in that and, as it had melted from his boots, it had formed a small puddle on the floor beneath them.

  A quick rap sounded on the door and, when he said “Come in,” it opened halfway and Eden was revealed standing back from it.

  “Are you alone?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Renny answered, startled at seeing him there.

  Eden entered and closed the door behind him. He looked dishevelled, desperate, and wild.

  Renny sprang up and went to him.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  Eden tried to answer but he could make no sound at first. Then his voice came loud and harsh.

  “I’m ill… I’ve been to see a doctor… My God, Renny, I’m going to die!”

  Renny looked at him horrified, yet unbelieving.

  “What are you saying?” he said roughly. “I don’t think you know. You’ve been drinking!”

  Eden gave a despairing laugh. “No such luck! It’s true, I tell you… I saw a specialist yesterday. He was a cold-blooded fellow. Well—I asked him for the truth! I’ve been suspecting it but, by God, I didn’t want to hear it!”

  “What did he say?”

  “I’ve about three months. He couldn’t do anything for me. No one can!” His face cleared for a moment and he added: “No wonder you look staggered. I was staggered myself.”

  Renny took him by the arm. “Sit down and tell me about it.” He put Eden into his chair.

  Eden wrung his hands together under the desk. He raised his stricken eyes to Renny’s face. He spoke in jerky sentences in a broken voice.

  “I’ve been feeling rotten for a month… But this week has been the limit… I made up my mind to see a specialist… Sarah told me she didn’t think old Harding much good… Anyhow he hadn’t seen me lately. I’ve been getting worse, I tell you—for some time.”

  “Yes.” Renny spoke quietly. “Go on.”

  “Well—I went into town early… It was bad going through the wet snow… I was exhausted when I got to the doctor’s… He examined me. Told me—that… I was dazed when I left his office…” His wide-open eyes looked intensely blue. Renny thought, as though it were a discovery—“How blue his eyes are…” He asked gently:

  “Where did you go then?”

  “Then? Why I drove the car into a side street and I stopped there. I must have sat a long time… I don’t remember… I don’t remember… I don’t remember…” He kept repeating the words while he stared straight ahead, as though at something horrible.

  Renny opened a cupboard and took out a flask of brandy. He poured some into a glass and gave it to Eden. He seemed clearer in his head after that. He said, in a voice that was almost natural:

  “Well, it was a great shock, you know. It took me a bit to get over it. And it was a vile day—blackness and slush—like the end of the world.”

  “Did you go to Sarah’s?”

  “No. I couldn’t face that! But I gave my reading! All the nice ladies were there, armed with my poems. I read—and I read horribly, but somehow I got through… They said they’d loved the readings and they kept inviting me to their houses and I accepted every invitation. It was amusing—knowing that I was going home to die…”

  “If you’re willing to accept that man’s word for it, I’m not. I’ll take you to the best doctors in the country.”

  Eden shook his head. “No use, old fellow. He’s right. I’m done for. I’ve no lungs left to cure.”

  The lines in Renny’s face were as though they had been cut there with a knife. “Have you told Meg or Maurice about this?” he asked.

  “No. I’ve left that for you to do. I said I was tired when I got back and went to bed. I was actually too tired to put the car in. I left that for Maurice. He was rather crusty about it… I don’t believe I slept two hours. But I did the work this morning. We’ve let the boy go. He wasn’t any good, and there’s not much to do now.”

  “Why the hell,” exclaimed Renny, “did Maurice leave it to you? Couldn’t he see that you weren’t able?”

  “Oh, he’d never notice!”

  Renny saw that Eden had lost flesh since he had last seen him. He saw that there was dust and chaff on his clothes, that his hands were dirty.

  “I suppose,” he said, “that this work hasn’t been good for you.”

  “The worst thing possible. Early morning exertion. The dust… But the climate’s been bad too. The doctor said I should have been up North.”

  “You could have gone—if we’d known!”

  “Yes—I suppose I could.”

  A silence fell between them. Through it came the pleasant sounds of the stable… The sound of a pump, a man’s deep voice singing, the contented neigh of a horse.

  Another sound was added to these—steady footsteps coming toward the office. Eden started up. He knew the step.

  Renny moved to the door to lock it, then stopped. An idea had come into his mind. Perhaps a reconciliation might be possible between these two—in such a case. He fixed his eyes on the door, and on Piers’s face, when he opened it and came in.

  That face was a study. For a moment its habitual bold, firm expression was broken into a look of positive dismay. Then it hardened into grey iciness and he turned to go away. But Renny stopped him.

  “Look here, Piers,” he said. “Shut that door. I want you two—”

  Piers saw his purpose. “Let me out!” h
e said fiercely. “Do you think I’ll do that? Do you take me for a fool.”

  Renny reached out and shut the door. Eden had risen and was standing with his hands on the desk.

  Piers looked at him again and was struck by his strange appearance. His eyes turned questioningly to Renny.

  “He’s a sick man,” said Renny. “A specialist told him yesterday that—he’s not going to get better.”

  Piers frowned. His mouth was drawn to one side in an expression of disgust.

  “You fellows,” Renny went on, “had the same mother…”

  “I’m sorry for that,” muttered Piers.

  “If you can’t be decent to him—after what I’ve told you—get out and leave us alone!”

  “I’m going!” He swung round and put his hand on the doorknob. He hesitated, then looked over his shoulder, as though unwillingly, at Eden.

  Eden said—“I don’t give a damn for your forgiveness.”

  “I’ve said to myself,” said Piers, “that if ever I met you face to face I’d bash yours in. But you take care never to come about unless you’re down and out. It seems to me that I’ve been hearing for years that you are dangerously ill.”

  “It has taken rather a long while,” returned Eden bitterly.

  “If you had lived a decent life you wouldn’t have come to this!”

  Renny exclaimed—“Get out of here!”

  Piers turned on him—“Oh, I know what you’d like! You’d like me to say, ‘Dear brother, I want to be friends! If I can do anything for you, just let me know.’ But I’m not that sort. Neither would you be if you were in my place. By God, I’d like to know what you’d have done if you had been in my place! Put a bullet through him, I’ll bet!”

  Eden said—“You fellows embarrass me. I feel as though I were overhearing a private conversation.” He gave a rasping laugh. “Don’t you think you’d better postpone this postmortem for a little?” The brandy had given him heart. He threw them one of his old mocking looks… Well—he had lain with both their women…

  Again Piers made as though to go, but he hesitated once more and said to Eden, without looking at him:

  “I’ll send one of my men over to help Maurice. Don’t worry about the work.” It cost him an effort to say this.

  “Oh, I’m not worrying about the work—now,” answered Eden. He watched Piers go out. He held himself together until the door had shut on the stalwart figure, then he dropped with an air of unutterable fatigue into Renny’s chair and buried his face in his arms.

  “I feel,” he said, “as though I never want to move again.” The old people definitely felt that winter had come that day—a mean, shuffling, down-at-heel approach, with nothing grand about it, but nevertheless as certain as death. After dinner the three gathered about the fire in the drawing-room, which huddled sputtering under the smoke that the east wind was driving down the chimney. Now and then it thrust out an angry tongue of flame, but more often sent a puff of smoke into the room.

  Ernest sat, with hands outstretched, getting more than his share of what heat the fire gave out, his expression verging toward peevishness. He wore a woollen dressing gown over his suit, and he had lighted a cigar, an unusual indiscretion for him.

  Nicholas had been having a spell of gout, and from his afflicted leg, that was propped on one of the beaded ottomans, there rose a strong smell of liniment. His pipe hung slackly from the corner of his mouth, and he kept noisily rubbing his large shapely hands together. His Yorkshire terrier, Nip, lay curled up tightly on the ottoman beside his leg and, either from nerves or cold, kept up a continuous shivering.

  Augusta sat upright in front of the cabinet of Indian curios, a small purple shawl around her shoulders, her knitting, a grey sock for her gardener in England, twitching under her quick needles. Being accustomed to English houses she did not find the room nearly so uncomfortable as her brothers did. She looked over her spectacles at the terrier with a disapproving expression.

  “Nip takes up too much of the ottoman,” she observed. “He has your leg pushed almost off. It is a good thing you never had a child, Nicholas. You would have ruined it.”

  “He likes the smell of the liniment,” returned Nicholas.

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Ernest declared. “Animals invariably hate such smells. And I must say I sympathise with them. That liniment of yours is particularly objectionable. It’s making me feel quite squeamish.”

  “Blame your cigar, not my liniment. Gad, it smells like what Mrs. Wragge calls, a ‘heap of refuge’ burning.”

  Ernest stared at him indignantly through the smoke.

  “It’s an excellent cigar,” he said.

  “I agree,” put in Augusta. “It has a very pleasant aroma… As for the dog’s snuggling up to Nicholas, he probably feels the cold. It’s a wretched day.”

  “And there is a wretched fire in the furnace,” said Nicholas. “I felt the radiator when I came into the room and it’s scarcely warm.”

  “We seldom have a really good fire now,” agreed Ernest, his mind taken off his cigar. “I spoke to Wragge about it yesterday and he said—’We must mike the coals last as long as we can, sir.’ I thought it was distinctly cheeky on his part.”

  “Sometimes I think that Renny is getting a little more than close-fisted,” said Nicholas.

  Augusta took off her spectacles and looked solemnly at her brothers. “There is no doubt about it,” she said. “He is. More than a little.”

  “Well, of course—of course—” said Ernest nervously, “he has a good many—quite a good many demands on him.”

  “I sympathise,” Augusta went on, “with frugality in times like these, but it should be used consistently. Renny will still cut slices off the hot joint for his spaniels but he will not mend the roof, which leaks in half a dozen places. It hurts me to see the place going to rack.”

  “And ruin,” added Nicholas.

  “Speaking of joints,” said Ernest. “That last was as tough as leather.”

  “Nothing better than a boiling piece,” boomed Augusta.

  Nicholas scowled, sucking at his pipe. Then he said:

  “Every mattress in the house needs doing over.”

  “Very true,” agreed Ernest. “And every carpet needs cleaning. Just look at this one!”

  All three peered at the carpet.

  “The pattern is scarcely visible,” said Augusta.

  “What we need,” said Ernest, “is one of those electric suction cleaners. Alayne tells me that her aunt has one. It’s quite wonderful, she says.”

  “A good broom and some elbow grease is all it needs,” rumbled Nicholas.

  The door opened and Renny came in.

  “Well,” he said, “and what are you looking for?”

  “We were just remarking,” said Augusta, “how well the carpet wears.”

  “We were wondering,” added Ernest, “if perhaps it should be sent to the cleaners.”

  “Your fire seems to be smoking,” observed Renny. He advanced into the room, picked up the poker, and beat a large piece of coal into fragments. Dusky flames shot through the crevices. He said:

  “It’s a devil of a day. I’ve just been over at the Vaughans’.”

  “We heard you were there,” said Augusta. “We waited dinner some little time for you.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that.” He added, apologetically—“I didn’t know that I was going to be there for dinner but they would have me stay.”

  “How are they all?” asked Ernest.

  ‘Oh—Patience had a stomach-ache last night but it’s better today.”

  Augusta said—“Children are given too much variety nowadays. They’re spoiled and they’re none the happier for it. Pheasant was saying to me this morning that her children are bored by this weather and that it bores her too. Fancy being bored by the weather! I remember being bored only once in my life and that was when I was five years old. My mamma had taken the three of us for a picnic on the lakeshore and she’d
forgotten to take my sewing along. I watched my brothers gambol about but I was bored because I had no sewing with me.” She put on her glasses and resumed her knitting with an offended expression.

  Renny sat down beside her on the sofa.

  He touched her knitting. “Socks, as usual,” he said. For some moments he watched the needles as though they fascinated him. The fire had begun to crackle and burn brightly. Nicholas said:

  “It’s burning quite well now. Perhaps the east wind has fallen.”

  “I find east wind very trying,” observed Ernest. “I wonder how it affects Eden. How is he, Renny?”

  Renny still stared at the knitting needles. “Eden? Oh— well, he’s not very well, to tell the truth.”

  “No wonder,” said Nicholas. “It’s a miserable day.”

  “It would have been well for both Eden and me,” said Ernest, “if we could have gone south this winter.”

  Renny drew a deep breath. He pressed his fingers between his brows and closed his eyes. The elderly people felt something odd about him and were silent. The flames made small flapping noises.

  “I don’t know,” said Renny, “how I’m going to tell you something I heard this morning. But I feel that I must.”

  His uncles looked at him with shrinking in their eyes. They felt that they had endured enough worry and unpleasantness that year. But Augusta once more removed her spectacles and turned her full gaze upon him.

  “Yes,” she said, her deep voice sympathetic, “you had better tell us. It’s easier to face things together.”

  Renny tried to smile at her but his smile contracted into a miserable look of pain. “It’s Eden,” he said, in a husky voice. “I’m afraid he’s not going to get better.”

  Nicholas had not taken in the words.

  “What’s that?” he demanded sharply. And, as Renny did not answer him, he turned to Ernest. “What’s he say? I don’t see why he should mumble like that.”

  Ernest looked at him pathetically. “It’s Eden. Renny says he’s not going to get better. Why, I don’t see how that can be! I understood all along that he was getting better. Dr. Harding told me so himself.”

  “Harding’s an old fool!” exclaimed Renny.