“My word,” said Mrs. Wragge, “them dogfights do give me a turn! As many as I’Ve seen I can’t seem to get used to ’em.” She pressed a fat hand to her bosom.
Renny glanced at Alayne’s face and away again.
“You’d better,” he said to the cook, “have Bessie come and mop this up at once.”
“Yes, sir, though where to find her I don’t know, for she’s always hiding in corners. What I was going to say is that the kitchen range is smoking like all possessed an’ will do until the chimbley’s cleaned. Me eyes is smoked almost out of me ’ead along of it an’ the blood’s still running out of the joint an’ it a quarter to one by the kitchen clock though goodness knows it may be wrong for it’s been gaining on me this twelvemonth an’ I’ve asked times an’ times to ’ave it seen to. I Ope you don’t mind my speakin’ so, out of my own basement, sir.”
He grinned at her genially. “I’ll have the chimney cleaned tomorrow. Did the fishmonger bring the salmon? And did the cases of stout come?”
When Mrs. Wragge had gone, Alayne said, in a tone too low for Finch, who had re-entered the drawing-room, to hear:
“Do you know that there is always twice as much fish ordered as is needed? And must you have a case of stout? The bills for provisions in this house are appalling.”
He gave her an admiring look, as though he thought— “You are a shrewd little thing!”
He said—“I am used to seeing plenty of food on the table. I dislike cheese-paring. As for the stout—that is for Uncle Ernest. He needs it—poor old chap!”
“I’ve ordered coal,” she said, in a self-conscious voice. “It is to come collect. I’ll pay for it.”
He arched his brows. “My rich little wife!” he exclaimed. He put his arms about her and laid his head on her shoulder.
She clasped his hard body and thought—“He has no conscience. He is without conscience and he is as aloof as a tree, though he lays his head on my shoulder.” Now that she held him in her arms she was not thinking—“My darling—my own darling!”
He was aware that she was not approving of him. He straightened himself and, to change the subject, asked, with a jerk of his head toward the drawing-room:
“How is that boy getting on? His nerves, I mean.”
She drew a loosened strand of her hair into place and answered, half-petulantly:
“Oh—Finch! I don’t know. He never plays the piano. He is in there now… reading Eden’s poems.”
“Is he really! He was very fond of Eden. We all were, weren’t we? We, all of us, miss him…” He looked at her challengingly
She thought—“He is angry with me because I am not mourning for Eden. Was there ever such a position!”
He went to the door of the drawing-room and looked in. Finch was sunk in a deep chair, his hands clasped on his chest, his legs stretched at full length.
“Hullo, Finch,” said Renny, “is your cold better?”
“Yes, thanks,” he answered, without looking up.
Renny frowned at him speculatively, then said:
“There’s just time before dinner for you to play a piece. Play me something nice, will you? I’m a bit tired and I’d like some good music.”
“I can’t play,” growled Finch.
“Come now—just a short piece—a fugue or a gavotte— or something of the sort.”
Finch looked at him, suddenly suspicious. Was he being baited? “You know I’m off colour,” he growled. “Why I—I’m hardly able to play a scale. I daren’t try.”
Renny came into the room and turned over some music on the piano. “This looks easy,” he said. “Try this.”
Finch began to laugh. He laughed suddenly, naturally.
Renny grinned. “Come now. Try this over. To please me.”
Alayne, in the doorway, was making signs to him to desist.
Rags intervened by a prolonged sounding of the gong. The noise swelled to a deafening clamour, diminished, swelled again and, at last, as the family were collected, died away, and Rags, with a grand air, appeared at Renny’s elbow. Renny looked up at him and asked an inaudible question to which Rags replied by a humorous pantomime affirmative.
Ernest had seated himself with a sigh. Nicholas had not appeared.
“Where is Uncle Nick?” asked Renny.
“He can’t get out of his bed,” answered Ernest. “His gout is very bad. He’s having a tray. No wonder he feels the weather. It is terrible. Terrible.” The rain drove against the pane. “I’m afraid I shouldn’t take roast pork, Renny,” he said, “but it looks very nice. And apple sauce, too. I’m very fond of that.”
“It will do you good,” encouraged Renny, and cut him a juicy slice.
But when it was set in front of him, Ernest did not begin to eat. He stared, seeing nothing, and then he yawned without restraint. “Oh, ho, ho, ho,” he yawned.
Mooey, with poised fork, was entertained.
“Oh, ho, ho, ho,” he imitated, in his pretty treble.
“Don’t imitate me, boy,” said Ernest sternly.
Pheasant commanded her son to attend to his dinner.
“But,” she observed, “there’s an old saying that yawning is contagious and I really believe it is, for I feel like yawning myself this very minute.”
Piers pinched her thigh and she laughed instead.
Laughter was pleasant in Renny’s ears these days. He gave a bark of laughter himself, though he did not know what the joke was about.
Pheasant, seeing his good-humour, said:
“Have you heard about the plaster? A huge piece of it has fallen off the nursery ceiling right into poor little Nooky’s cot.”
The master of Jalna was noisily crunching a bit of crisp rind.
“Was Nooky in the cot?” he asked.
“Good heavens, no!”
“Why worry then?”
“But he might have been killed!”
Piers asked sharply of Renny—“Aren’t you going to send for the plasterer? The entire ceiling should be done.”
Renny dropped a piece of meat to one of his spaniels and watched the dog devour it without replying.
“Very well,” said Piers, “I’ll telephone for the mason this afternoon.”
“If you do you’ll pay him for the job yourself.”
Piers’s eyes grew prominent. The air became electric.
Boney, on his perch in the library, seemed aware of this. He flapped his wings and uttered incoherent screams that resolved themselves into “Shaitan-ka-batka!”
“The ceiling in my room,” said Finch, “has been leaking as long as I can remember, and it has not fallen yet.”
Augusta said—“I entirely approve of your decision, Piers. It cuts me to the heart to see my father’s house going to wrack and ruin. The shutters in my room are ready to fall from their hinges.”
“I’ll have them mended too,” said Piers.
“You’ll pay for them too, then,” said Renny. He continued to eat his dinner imperturbably.
Alayne felt a queer rocking motion inside her that was half sympathy for him and half anger against him.
The parrot, once roused, continued to scream.
Rags appeared with a glass of stout on a small tray and set it before Ernest.
“Well, well, that looks nice! Just what I needed, for I have no appetite at all!” He drank a little of it, beamed at Renny, and began to take an interest in his dinner.
Renny threw Alayne an intimate, laughing look that was almost a wink. It said—“I know how to cheer up the old boy.”
Pheasant said, wistfully—“I don’t see where in the world Piers is going to get the money to pay for all those repairs.”
Renny returned—“He should have married a rich wife, like I did!”
There was appreciative laughter, shot through by Finch’s hysterical giggle. Alayne turned scarlet.
Ernest, seeing this, observed—“Dear Alayne, she has been a blessing to us all.”
“Please spare me, Uncle Ernest,
” she said sedately. How could Renny, in front of the family, refer to her pitiful possessions! Especially after the affair of the coal, that very morning. She remembered his proud refusal to benefit by Finch’s legacy. What had come over him since then?
Throughout the meal Wakefield had paid little heed to what was being said. There was a secret, smiling look in his eyes. When they were leaving the dining room, side by side, Finch said to him:
“Well, and what are you looking so smug about?”
“I suppose I feel smug.”
“You may—but it looks damned silly, I can tell you!” “No sillier than your sulks.”
Alayne overheard them. Was there ever such a disagreeable family, she thought? She spent a part of the afternoon reading aloud to Nicholas.
Renny was out that evening, ostensibly to see a prospective buyer in town, but she suspected that he was playing poker with his horsy friends, Crowdy and Chase. She had discovered that they sometimes went to his office in the stables to play where they felt themselves more welcome than in the house, and she had, with a sense of shame, heard Augusta censure him for having Wright join in the game.
She was asleep when he returned but the sound of his light step woke her. She called softly:
“Renny, can you tell who it is that is coughing? It’s keeping me awake.”
He came to her door and stood listening. The loud insistent cough came from Piers’s and Pheasant’s room.
“It’s Pheasant,” he said. “I suppose she’s getting this beastly cold, now. God, how I hate the sound of a cough!”
“She takes no care of herself,” said Alayne. “She kept me awake for quite an hour and when I did fall asleep from sheer exhaustion you have waked me again!”
“Too bad! I wonder if she has taken anything for it.”
“No. She thinks it isn’t safe when she is nursing the baby.”
“Was Adeline good tonight?”
“Angelic… What about your business? Was it good?” She succeeded in purifying her tone from suspicion.
“Very. The man—he’s from Buffalo—is coming out tomorrow. I think Boniface is as good as sold.”
Adeline stirred and snuffled.
“Sh,” warned Alayne and he bent over her and kissed
her.
Adeline laughed.
Renny went round to her cot and put his hand on her soothingly. She caught it in her strong little fingers.
“If she misbehaves tonight I can’t bear it,” whined Alayne. She heard the whine in her own voice and was ashamed.
He whispered into the child’s ear—“Be quiet and Daddy will give you a ride on his big gee-gee tomorrow.”
“Now!” she exclaimed.
“No. Tomorrow. If you go to sleep.”
She was quiet. He tiptoed to his own room. “My two darling girls,” he thought, and he felt pensive, almost weak, in his tenderness for them.
Wakefield flung his arm across his eyes against the light. His lips pouted in a smile, as though he had been in a happy dream.
A violent spell of coughing came from Pheasant’s room. After that it was repeated every little while. As Renny lay uneasily listening, he thought at first only of Alayne’s distress. She would have another bad night, poor old girl. But, when a sustained cough came from Finch’s room above, a sudden feeling of panic gripped his heart. What if the girl and the youth were both affected as Eden had been? Finch had helped to nurse Eden. The doctor had warned them to be careful of infection. But—had they been careful? He knew that he himself had not. Finch was delicate—born of a consumptive mother—probably—good God, inevitably susceptible! He should never have been allowed to go near Eden. And there was Pheasant, just at the time of child-bearing— well, if she had it, she would last three months! What had he been thinking of? He was a fool—a brute! And there was Eden—poor boy—he’d told Eden to help Maurice with the work—the worst thing he could have done—he’d helped to kill Eden… He clenched his hands, set his teeth to hold back a groan.
The coughing from the two rooms continued as a terrible duet in the blackness. Renny saw himself burying, first Pheasant, then Finch. Gran would have three young people about her. Wakefield murmured in his sleep… Little Wake— perhaps he’d be the next!
Renny found himself in the middle of the room quivering like a terrified horse. He stood so a moment, then felt his way to the door and groped along the passage, a pale pencil of light under the door at the end guiding him.
He tapped, but Pheasant was coughing and did not hear him. He pushed open the door and went in.
Pheasant was sitting up in bed and a night light threw her enlarged shadow grotesquely on the opposite wall. She looked up at him with the wistfulness of a child.
“I can’t stop it,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
He came close and looked down at her. He saw that Piers was fast asleep.
He said—“You don’t think there is anything wrong with you, do you, Pheasant?”
She repeated, startled—“Wrong with me? What do you mean?”
“Like Eden had… Your lungs.”
“My goodness, no! It’s just a common cold. I’ve had dozens like it.”
“And what about Finch? Do you think he—” he looked at her tragically—“I’m afraid he’s going the way Eden went.”
“Finch smokes too many cigarettes. It irritates his throat. But he’s perfectly all right. He was worried about himself— a little, and he went to a doctor in town. He’s perfectly sound. So now you know.” She began to cough. “Oh, if only I had a hot drink!”
Relief surged through Renny, followed by anger at Piers.
He went round to his side of the bed and, pulling down the bedclothes just far enough, gave him a rousing slap.
“There,” he said, “take that! You good-for-nothing lout—sleeping here like a swine while your wife coughs her head off!”
Piers sat up, furious. “Why doesn’t she take her rum and honey?” he demanded.
“I have taken it!” declared Pheasant. “And it’s making me ill!”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” continued Renny, “to show no more feeling than you do for Pheasant or anyone else in the house! Do you know that Alayne hasn’t slept tonight because of her coughing. I haven’t slept. Nobody has slept—but you!” His fright, his relief, combined to make him thoroughly lose his temper. “You’ve never shown any consideration for other people! If Pheasant died at your side—you’d go right on snoring! You had no pity for Eden—no, by God—you’d no pity for Eden! You’re colos-sally selfish. You act as though you owned the earth. You act as though you owned Jalna—sending for masons and carpenters without my permission! Now you’ll go down to the basement and get this poor girl a drink of something hot.”
During this tirade Piers’s face had gone from flushed and sulky sleepiness to white anger. In one movement he was out of bed and on his feet facing Renny. He said:
“If you think I’ll stand this sort of abuse, you’re mistaken! I won’t stay in the house. I’ll get a place for myself!”
“Yes—I can see you!”
“Well—you shall see me—and before the month’s out, too!”
“Come, come, don’t get in a rage!”
“You like to do all the raging yourself, don’t you?’
“I’m annoyed—and no wonder!”
Pheasant broke in—“Oh, please don’t quarrel.” Then, to drown out their voices, she threw herself into a fit of coughing. She kept it up until she saw Piers put on his dressing gown and Renny leave the room. Then she took a spoonful of rum and honey and lay down.
Renny stopped at the door to say to Piers:
“You’d better bring a hot drink for Finch, too. I’ll take it up to him.”
Piers kept a stony silence.
Renny saw a light under Alayne’s door and went into her room, closing the door behind him. Adeline was asleep, but Alayne was pacing the room with a blanket about her shoulders.
He looked at her
mischievously.
“They’re going,” he said, with a nod toward the other room.
“Who?” she asked blankly.
“Of course, I don’t really believe he’ll do it, but he says he will. He was lying there, beside that poor girl, fast asleep, simply paying no attention to her—well, I couldn’t stand it and I gave him a wallop that made him sit up, I can tell you.” He gave the arch grin of old Adeline.
XXIII
AUGUSTA’S FLITTING
PIERS stood by his word, and chance had it that the opportunity of renting a furnished house was offered him inside the week. The Miss Laceys wanted very much to spend a year with a cousin in California, and were eager to have friends as tenants for a low rental. Theirs was not a house that could be let easily, and they had a dread of strangers.
At first Piers’s pleasure was damped by the fact that he had, in his hastiness, ordered mason and carpenter to repair ceiling, roof, and shutters of Jalna. Now that he was leaving, surely he could not be held responsible for the cost of these. Yet he dreaded to suggest this, for fear of exciting the anger of his inflammable brother. He did indeed approach the subject once or twice, but Renny shied from the mention of bills as a horse from fluttering paper.
Then Piers told his trouble to Augusta, and she, with a grand gesture of generosity, expressed herself willing to pay all from her own purse. Piers kissed her, gave her a hug, almost painful in its vigour, and went off to find Pheasant. In her relief and delight Pheasant rushed off to tell Alayne. Alayne, whose feeling at the moment was one of pessimistic tolerance toward them all, passed the news on to Renny.
He was honestly delighted.
“What a good thing!” he exclaimed. “It would have been a pull for the boy. And it’s quite time the old lady toed the scratch. She hasn’t laid an offering on the altar of Jalna for a dog’s age.”
He forgot that he had been angry at Piers, and that day called on the Miss Laceys and tried to beat them down a little more in the rent. He did not succeed in this, but they had a jolly afternoon together, and he returned home feeling happier than he had in many months. Perhaps, after all, it was a good thing that Piers and his family were going. The house was overcrowded. The noise of the children was trying to the uncles, and Pheasant seemed to be heading toward a large family. Piers would still spend his days at Jalna and would be living so near that there would be constant coming and going. Alayne, he felt sure, would be more contented for the change. It was hard on her not seeing more of him—having more of a private life of their own—and she would see more of him with Piers and Pheasant and their kids out of the house.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 68
