07 Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  Nip, the Yorkshire terrier, had a bone on the hearthrug when Renny entered. Hearing the step, he darted forward, nipped Renny on the ankle, and darted back to his bone, snarling as he gnawed. Nicholas, his bad leg stretched on the ottoman, looked up from his book with a lazy smile.

  “Hullo, Renny! Come for a chat? Can you find a chair? Throw those slippers on to the floor. Place always in a mess—yet if I let Rags in here to tidy up he hides everything I use, and what with my knee—well, it puts me in the devil of a temper for a week.”

  “I know,” agreed Renny. He dropped the slippers to the floor and himself into the comfort of the chair. “Have you got a good book, Uncle Nick? I never seem to have any time for reading.”

  “I wish I hadn’t so much, but when a man’s tied to his chair, as I am a great deal of the time, he must do something. This is one Meggie got the last time she was in town. An English authoress. The new books puzzle me, Renny. My God! if everything in this one is true, it’s amazing what nice women will do and think these days. The thoughts of this heroine—my goodness, they’re appalling. Have a cigar?”

  Renny helped himself from a box on the piano. Nip, thinking Renny had designs on his bone, darted forth once more, bit the intruder’s ankle, and darted back growling, fancying himself a terrifying beast.

  “Little brute!” said Renny. “I really felt his teeth that time. Does he think I’m after his bone?”

  Nicholas said: “Catch a spider! Catch a spider, Nip!” Nip flew to his master, tossing his long-haired body round and round him, and yapping loudly.

  A loud thumping sounded through the thick walls. Nicholas smiled maliciously. “It always upsets Ernie to hear Nip raise his voice. Yet I’m expected to endure the yowls of that cat of his at any hour of the night.” He clapped his palms together at the little dog. “Catch a spider, Nip! Catch a spider!” Hysterically yelping, Nip sped around the room, looking in corners and under chairs for an insect. The thumping on the wall became frantic.

  Renny picked up the terrier and smothered his barks under his arm. “Poor Uncle Ernest! You’ll have him unnerved for the rest of the day. Shut up, Nip, you little scoundrel.”

  Nicholas’s long face, the deep downward lines of which gave an air of sagacity to his most trivial remarks, was lit by a sardonic smile “Does him good to be stirred up,” he remarked. “He spends too much time at his desk. Came to me the other day jubilant. He had got what he believed to be two hundred and fifty mistakes in the text of Shakespeare’s plays. Fancy trying to improve Shakespeare’s text at this time. I tell him he has not an adequate knowledge of the handwriting of the day, but he thinks he has. Poor Ernie, he always was a little nutty.”

  Renny puffed soberly at his cigar. “I hope to God Eden is not going to take after him. Wasting his time over poetry. I feel a bit upset about this book of his. It’s gone to his head. I believe the young fool thinks he can make a living from poetry. You don’t think so, do you, Uncle Nick?” He regarded Nicholas almost pathetically.

  “I don’t believe it’s ever been done. I like his poetry, though. It’s very nice poetry.”

  “Well, he must understand he’s got to work. I’m not going to waste any more money on him. He’s quite made up his mind he won’t go on with his profession. After all I’ve spent on him! I only wish I had it back.”

  Nicholas tugged at his drooping moustache., “Oh, he had to have a university education.”

  “No, he didn’t. Piers hasn’t. He didn’t want it. Wouldn’t have it. Eden could have stopped at home. We could find plenty of work for him on one of the farms.”

  “Eden farming? My dear Renny! Don’t worry. Let him go on with his poetry and wait and see what happens.”

  “It’s such a damned silly life for a man. All very well for the classic poets—”

  “They were young fellows once. Disapproved of by their families, too.”

  “Is his poetry good enough?”

  “Well, it’s good enough to take the fancy of this publisher. For my part, I think it’s very adroit. A sort of delicate perfection—a very wistful beauty that’s quite remarkable.”

  Renny stared at his uncle, suspiciously. Was he making fun of Eden? Or was he just pulling the wool over his own eyes to protect Eden? “Adroit, delicate, wistful”—the adjectives made him sick. “One thing’s damned certain,” he growled; “he’ll not get any more money out of me.”

  Nicholas heaved himself about in his chair, achieving a more comfortable position. “How are things going? Pretty close to the wind?”

  “Couldn’t be closer,” Renny assented.

  Nicholas chuckled. “And yet you would like to keep all the boys at Jalna instead of sending them out into the world to shift for themselves. Renny, you have the instincts of the patriarch. To be the head of a swarming tribe. To mete out justice and rewards, and grow a long red beard.”

  Renny, somewhat nettled, felt like saying that both Nicholas and his brother Ernest had taken advantage of this instinct in him, but he satisfied himself by pulling the little dog’s ears. Nip growled.

  “Catch a spider, Nip,” commanded his master, clapping his hands at him.

  Once again Nip hurled himself into a frenzy of pursuit after an imagined insect. The thumping on the wall broke out anew. Renny got up to go. He felt that his troubles were not being taken seriously. Nicholas, looking up from under his shaggy brows, saw the shadow on Renny’s face. He said, with sudden warmth: “You’re an uncommonly good brother, Renny, and nephew. Have a drink?”

  Renny said he would, and Nicholas insisted on getting up to mix it for him. “Shouldn’t take one myself with this damn knee—” but he did, hobbling about his liquor cabinet in sudden activity.

  “Well, Eden can do as he likes this summer,” said Renny, cheered by his glass, “but by fall he’s got to settle down, either in business or here at Jalna.”

  “But what would the boy do at Jalna, Renny?”

  “Help Piers. Why not? If he would turn in and help, we could take over the land that is rented to old Hare and make twice as much out of it. It’s a good life. He could write poetry in his spare time if he wanted to. I’d not say a word against it, so long as I wasn’t asked to read it.”

  “The ploughman poet. It sounds artless enough. But I’m afraid he has very different ideas for his future. Poor young whelp. Heavens! How like his mother he is!”

  “Well,” mumbled Renny. “He’ll not get around me. I’ve wasted enough on him. To think of him refusing to try his finals! I’ve never heard of such a thing. Now he talks of going down to New York to see his publisher.”

  “I expect this particular germ has been working in him secretly for a long time. Perhaps the boy’s a genius, Renny.”

  “Lord! I hope not.”

  Nicholas made the subterranean noises that were his laughter. “You’re a perfect Court, Renny. No wonder Mamma is partial to you.”

  “Is she? I’d never noticed it. I thought Eden was her pet. He has a way with women of all ages. Well, I’m off. Hobbs, up Mistwell way, is having a sale of Holsteins. I may buy a cow or two.”

  “I should go with you if it were horses, in spite of my knee, but I can’t get worked up over cows. Never liked milk.”

  Renny had got to the door when Nicholas asked suddenly: “How about Piers? Have you spoken to him of the girl yet?”

  “Yes. I’ve told him he must cut out these meetings with her. He never dreamed they’d been seen. He was staggered.”

  “He seemed all right at dinner time.”

  “Oh, we had our little talk two days ago. He’s not a bad youngster. He took it very well. There aren’t many girls about here—attractive ones—and there’s no denying Pheasant is pretty.”

  Nicholas’s brow darkened. “But think what she is. We don’t want that breed in the family. Meg would never stand it.”

  “The girl is all right,” said Renny, in his contradictory way. “She didn’t choose the manner of her coming into the world. The boys have always playe
d about with her.”

  “Piers will play about with her once too often.”

  “That’s all right,” returned Renny, testily. “He knows I’ll stand no nonsense.” He went out, shutting the door noisily, as he always did.

  Nip was still busy with his bone. Regarding him, Nicholas feared that he would be in for an attack of indigestion if he got any more of the gristle off it. He dragged the treasure from him, and with difficulty straightened himself. Once bent over, it was no joke to rise. What a responsibility a little pet dog was! “No, no, no more gristle. You’ll get a tummy-ache.”

  Nip protested, dancing on his hind legs. Nicholas laid the bone on the piano and wiped his fingers on the tail of his coat. Then the bottle of Scotch and the siphon caught his eye. He took up his glass. “Good Lord, I shouldn’t be doing this,” he groaned, but he mixed himself another drink. “Positively the last today,” he murmured, as he hobbled toward his chair, glass in hand.

  A deep note was struck on the piano. Nip had leaped to the stool and from there to the keys. Now he had stretched his head to recapture the bone. Nicholas sank with a grunt of mingled pain and amusement into his chair. “I suppose we may as well kill ourselves,” he commented, ruefully,

  “You in your small corner,

  And I in mine.”

  Nip growled, gnawing his bone on the top of the piano. Nicholas sipped his whisky and soda dreamily. The house was beautifully quiet now. He would doze a little, just in his chair, when he had finished his glass and Nip his bone. The rhythmic crunching of Nip’s teeth as he excavated for marrow was soothing. A smile flitted over Nicholas’s face as he remembered how the little fellow’s barking had upset Ernest. Ernest did get upset easily, poor old boy! Well, he was probably resting quietly now beside his beloved Sasha. Cats. Selfish things. Only loved you for what they could get out of you. Now Nip—there was devotion.

  He stretched out his hand and looked at it critically. Yes, that heavy ring with the square green stone in its antique setting became it. He was glad he had inherited his mother’s hands—Court hands. Renny had them, too, but badly cared for. No doubt about it, character, as well as breeding, showed in hands. A vision of the hands of his wife, Millicent, came before him—clawlike hands with incredibly thin, very white fingers, and large curving nails... She was still living; he knew that. Good God, she would be seventy! He tried to picture her at seventy, then shook his head impatiently—no, he did not want to picture her at either seventy or seventeen. He wanted to forget her. When Mamma should die, as she must soon, poor old dear, and he should inherit the money, he would go to England for a visit. He’d like to see old England once again before he—well, even he would die some day, though he expected to live to be at least ninety-nine like Mamma. He was a Court, and they were famous for their longevity and—what was the other? Oh, yes, their tempers. Well, thank goodness, he hadn’t inherited the Court temper. It would die with Mamma, though Renny when he was roused was a fierce fellow.

  Nip was whining to be lifted from the piano top. He was tired of his bone, and wanted his afternoon nap. Little devil, to make him get out of his chair again just when he was so comfortable!

  With a great grunt he heaved himself on to his feet and limped to the piano. He took up the little dog, now entirely gentle and confiding, and carried him back under his arm. His knee gave him a sharp twinge as he lowered his weight into the chair once more, but his grimace of pain changed to a smile at the shaggy little face that was turned up to his. He had a sudden impulse to say, “Catch a spider, Nip!” and start a fresh skirmish. He even framed the words with his lips, and a sudden tenseness in Nip’s body, a gleam in his eye, showed that he was ready; but he must not upset old Ernie again, and he was very drowsy—that second drink had been soothing. “No, no, Nip,” he murmured, “go to sleep. No more racketing, old boy.” He stroked the little dog’s back with a large, indolent hand.

  Nip lay along his body, as he half reclined, gazing into his eyes. Nicholas blew into Nip’s face. Nip thumped his tail on Nicholas’s stomach.

  They slept.

  V

  PIERS AND HIS LOVE

  IT WAS almost dark when Piers crossed the lawn, passed through a low wicket gate in the hedge, and pressed eagerly along a winding path that led across a paddock where three horses were still cropping the new grass. The path wandered then down into the ravine; became, for three strides, a little rustic bridge; became a path again, still narrower, that wound up the opposite steep, curved through a noble wood; and at last, by a stile, was wedded to another path that had been shaped for no other purpose but to meet it on the boundary between Jalna and the land belonging to the Vaughans.

  Down in the ravine it was almost night, so darkly the stream glimmered amid the thick undergrowth and so close above him hung the sky, not yet pricked by a star. Climbing up the steep beyond, it was darker still, except for the luminous shine of the silver birches that seemed to be lighted by some secret beam within. A whippoorwill darted among the trees, catching insects, uttering, each time it struck, a little throaty cluck, and showing a gleam of white on its wings. Then suddenly, right over his head, another whippoorwill burst into its loud lilting song.

  When he reached the open wood above, Piers could see that there was still a deep red glow in the west, and the young leaves of the oaks had taken a burnished look. The trees were lively with the twittering of birds seeking their nests, their lovemaking over for the day—his just to begin.

  His head was hot and he took off his cap to let the cool air fan it. He wished that his love for Pheasant were a calmer love. He would have liked to stroll out with her in the evenings, just pleasantly elated, taking it as a natural thing, as natural as the life of these birds, to love a girl and be loved by her. But it had come upon him suddenly, after knowing her all his life, like a storm that shook and possessed him. As he hurried on through the soft night air, each step drawing him nearer to the stile where Pheasant was to meet him, he tormented himself by picturing his disappointment if she were not there. He saw, in his fancy, the stile, bare as a waiting gallows, mocking the sweet urge that pressed him. He saw himself waiting till dark night and then stumbling back to Jalna filled with despair because he had not held her in his arms. What was it that had overtaken them both that day, when, meeting down in the ravine, she had been startled by a water snake and had caught his sleeve and had pointed down into the stream where it had disappeared? Bending over the water, they had suddenly seen their two faces reflected in a still pool, looking up at them not at all like the faces of Piers and Pheasant who had known each other all their days. The faces reflected had had strange, timid eyes and parted lips. They had turned to look at each other. Their own lips had met.

  Remembering that kiss, he began to run across the open field toward the stile.

  She was sitting on it, waiting for him, her drooping figure silhouetted against the blur of red in the west. He slackened his pace as soon as he saw her, and greeted her laconically as he came up.

  “Hullo, Pheasant!”

  “Hullo, Piers! I’ve been waiting quite a while.”

  “I couldn’t get away. I had to stop and admire a beastly cow Renny bought at Hobbs’s sale today.”

  He climbed to the stile and sat down beside her. “It’s the first warm evening, isn’t it?” he observed, not looking at her. “I got as hot as blazes coming over. I wasn’t letting the grass grow under my feet, I can tell you.” He took her hand and drew it against his side. “Feel that.”

  “Your heart is beating rather hard,” she said, in a low voice. “Is it because you hurried or because—” She leaned against his shoulder and looked into his face.

  It was what Piers had been waiting for, this moment when she should lean toward him. Not without a sign from her would he let the fountain of his love leap forth. Now he put his arms about her and pressed her to him. He found her lips and held them with his own. The warm fragrance of her body made him dizzy. He was no longer strong and practical. He wishe
d in that moment that they two might die thus happily clasped in each other’s arms in the tranquil spring night.

  “I can’t go on like this,” he murmured. “We simply must get married.”

  “Remember what Renny has said. Are you going to defy him? He’d be in a rage if he knew we were together here now.”

  “Renny be damned! He’s got to be taught a lesson. It’s time he was taught that he can’t lord it over everyone. He’s spoiled, that’s the trouble with him. I call him the Rajah of Jalna.”

  “After all, you have the right to say who you will marry, even if the girl is beneath you, haven’t you?”

  He felt a sob beneath her breast; her sudden tears wet his cheek.

  “Oh, Pheasant, you little fool,” he exclaimed. “You beneath me? What rot!”

  “Well, Renny thinks so. All your family think so. Your family despise me.”

  “My family may go to the devil. Why, after all, you’re a Vaughan. Everybody knows that. You’re called by the name.”

  “Even Maurice looks down on me. He’s never let me call him Father.”

  “He deserves to be shot. If I had ever done what he did, I’d stand by the child. I’d brave the whole thing out, by God!”

  “Well, he has—in a way. He’s kept me. Given me his name.”

  “His parents did that. He’s never liked you or been really kind to you.”

  “He thinks I’ve spoiled his life.”

  “With Meggie, you mean. Picture Meg and Maurice married!” He laughed and kissed her temple, and, feeling her silky brow touch his cheek, he kissed that, too.

  She said: “I can picture that more easily than I can our own marriage. I feel as though we should go on and on, meeting and parting like this forever. In a way I think I’d like it better, too.”