07 Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  “I think you’re very arrogant,” she said.

  “Perhaps I am,” he agreed, letting the speed out. “I can’t help it if I am,” he added, not without complaisance. “It’s in the blood, I expect.”

  She took off her hat and let the wind ruffle her hair. Road signs rushed past, black-and-white cattle in fields, cherry orchards in full bloom, and apple orchards just coming into bud.

  “Gran said at dinner that I need disciplining. You’ll have to do it, Pheasant.” He looked around at her, smiling, and seeing her with her hair ruffled, her eyes shining, he added: “You precious darling!”

  He snatched a kiss, and Pheasant put her hand on the wheel beside his. They both stared at the hand, thinking how soon the wedding ring must outshine the engagement ring in importance. They experienced a strange mixture of sensations, feeling at the same moment like runaway children (for they had both been kept down by their elders) and tremendous adventurers, not afraid of anything in this shining spring world.

  They were married by the rector of Stead, a new man who had barely heard the names of their families, with perhaps a picturesque anecdote attached. Piers was so sunburned and solid that he looked like nothing but an ordinary young countryman, and Pheasant’s badly cut dress and cheap shoes transformed her young grace into coltish awkwardness. He hoped they would come regularly to his church, he said, and he gave them some very good advice in the cool vestry When they had gone and he examined the fee which Piers had given him in an envelope, he was surprised at its size, for Piers was determined to carry everything through as a Whiteoak should.

  As they flew along the road which ran like a trimming of white braid on the brown shore that skirted the lake, Piers began to shout and sing in an ecstasy of achievement.

  “We’re man and wife!” he chanted. “Man and wife! Pheasant and Piers! Man and wife!”

  His exuberance and the speed at which they drove the car made people stare. The greenish-blue lake, still stirred by a gale which had blown all night but had now fallen to a gentle breeze, beat on the shore a rhythmic accompaniment, an extravagant wedding march. Cherry orchards flung out the confetti of their petals on the road before them, and the air was unimaginably heavy with the heady incense of spring. Piers stopped the wagon of a fruit vendor and bought oranges, of which Pheasant thrust sections into his mouth as he drove, and ate eagerly herself, for excitement made them thirsty. As they neared the suburbs of the city she threw the rinds into the ditch and scrubbed her lips and hands on her handkerchief. She put on her hat and sat upright then, her hands in her lap, feeling that everyone who met them must realize that they were newly married.

  Piers had spoken for rooms in the Queen’s Hotel which the Whiteoaks had frequented for three generations. He had not been there very much himself—a few times to dinner in company with Renny, twice for birthday treats as a small boy with Uncle Nicholas.

  Now on his wedding day he had taken one of the best bedrooms with bath adjoining. His blood was all in his head as the clerk gave a surreptitious smile and handed the key to a boy. The boy went lopsidedly before them to the bedroom, carrying the antiquated portmanteau. All the white closed doors along the corridor made Pheasant feel timid. She fancied there were ears against all the panels, eyes to the keyholes. What if Maurice should suddenly pounce out on them? Or Renny? Or terrible Grandmother Whiteoak?

  When they were alone in the spacious, heavily furnished hotel bedroom, utterly alone, with only the deep rumble of the traffic below to remind them of the existence of the world, a sudden feeling of frozen dignity, of aloofness from each other, took possession of them.

  “Not a bad room, eh? Think you’ll be comfortable here?” And he added, almost challengingly: “It’s one of the best rooms in the hotel, but if there’s anything you’d like different—”

  “Oh, no. It’s nice. It’ll do nicely, thank you.”

  Could they be the young runaway couple who had raced along the lakeshore road, singing and eating oranges?

  “There’s your bag,” he said, indicating the ponderous portmanteau.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I’ve got the bag all right.”

  “I wonder what we’d better do first,” he added, staring at her. She looked so strange to him in this new setting that he felt as though he were really seeing her for the first time.

  “What time is it?”

  “Half-past five.”

  She noticed then that the sun had disappeared behind a building across the street, and that the room lay in a yellowish shadow. Evening was coming.

  “Hadn’t you better send the telegrams?”

  “I expect I had. I’ll go down and do that, and see that we’ve a table reserved; and, look here, shouldn’t you like to go to the theatre tonight?”

  Pheasant was thrilled at that. “Oh, I’d love the theatre! Is there something good on?”

  “I’ll find out, and get tickets, and you can be changing. Now about those telegrams. How would it do if I just send one to Renny, something like this: ‘Pheasant and I married. Home tomorrow. Tell Maurice.’ Would that be all right?”

  “No,” she said, firmly. “Maurice must have a telegram all to himself, from me. Say: ‘Dear Maurice—’”

  “Good Lord! You can’t begin a telegram, ‘Dear Maurice.’ It isn’t done. Tell me what you want to say and I’ll put it in the proper form.”

  Pheasant spoke in an incensed tone. “See here; is this your telegram or mine? I’ve never written a letter or sent a telegram to Maurice in my life and I probably never shall again. So it’s going to begin: ‘Dear Maurice.’”

  “All right, my girl. Fire away.”

  “Say, ‘Dear Maurice: Piers and I are married. Tell Nannie. Yours sincerely, Pheasant.’ That will do.”

  Piers could not conceal his mirth at such a telegram, but he promised to send it, and after giving her body a convulsive squeeze and receiving a kiss on the sunburned bridge of his nose he left her.

  She was alone. She was married. All the old life was over and the new just beginning. She went to the dressing table and stood before the three-sectioned mirror. It was wonderful to see her own face there, from all sides at once. She felt that she had never really seen herself before—no wonder her reflection looked surprised. She turned this way and that, tilting her head like a pretty bird. She took off her brown dress and stood enthralled by the reflection of her charms in knickers and a little white camisole. She turned on the electric light, and made a tableau with her slender milky arms upraised and her eyes half closed. She wished she could spend a long time playing with these magical reflections, but Piers might come back and find her not dressed.

  A bell in some tower struck six.

  She saw that her hands needed washing and hoped there would be soap in the bathroom. She gasped when she had pressed the electric button and flooded the room with a hard white light. The fierce splendour of it dazzled her. At home there was a bathroom with a bare uncovered floor on which stood an ancient green tin bath, battered and disreputable. The towels were old and fuzzy, leaving bits of lint all over one’s body, and the cake of soap was always like jelly, because Maurice would leave it in the water. Here were glistening tile and marble, nickel polished like new silver, an enormous tub of virgin whiteness, and a row of towels fit only for a bride. “And, by my halidom,” she exclaimed—for she was devoted to Sir Walter Scott—“I am the bride!”

  She locked herself in and took a bath, almost reverently handling the luxurious accessories. Such quantities of steaming water! Such delicate soap! Such satiny towels! As she stepped dripping on to the thick bath mat she felt that never till that moment had she been truly clean.

  Her hair was sleekly brushed, and she was doing up her pink-and-white dress when Piers arrived. He had sent off the telegrams—and not neglected the “Dear” for Maurice. He had got orchestra chairs for a Russian vaudeville. He took her to the ladies’ drawing-room and set her in a white-and-gold chair where she waited while he scrubbed and beautified himsel
f.

  They were at their own table in a corner where they could see the entire dining room: rows and rows of white-clothed tables, glimmering with silver, beneath shaded lights; a red-faced waiter with little dabs of whisker before his ears, who took a fatherly interest in their dinner.

  Piers whispered: “What will you have, Mrs. Piers Whiteoak?”—and put everything out of her head but those magic words.

  Piers ordered the dinner. Delicious soup. A tiny piece of fish with a strange sauce. Roast chicken. Asparagus. Beautiful but rather frightening French pastries—one hardly knew how to eat them. Strawberries like dissolving jewels. (“But where do they come from, Piers, at this time of year?”) Such dark coffee. Little gold-tipped cigarettes, specially bought for her. The scented smoke circled about their heads, accentuating their isolation.

  Four men at the table next them did not seem able to keep their eyes off her. They talked earnestly to each other, but their eyes, every now and again, would slide toward her, and sometimes, she was sure, they were talking about her. The odd thing was that the consciousness of their attention did not confuse her. It exhilarated her, gave her a certainty of poise and freedom of gesture which otherwise she would not have had.

  She had carried the gold-embroidered India shawl that had been her grandmother’s down to dinner, and when she became aware that these four dark men were watching her, speculating about her, some instinct, newly awakened, told her to put the shawl about her shoulders, told her that there was something about the shawl that suited her better than the little pink-and-white dress. She held it closely about her, sitting erect, looking straight into Piers’s flushed face, but she was conscious of every glance, every whisper from the four at the next table.

  When she and Piers passed the men on their way out, one of them was brushed by the fringe of her shawl. His dark eyes were raised to her face, and he inclined his head toward the shawl as though he sought the light caress from it. He was a man of about forty. Pheasant felt that the shawl was a magic shawl, that she floated in it, that it bewitched all it touched. Her small brown head rose out of its gorgeousness like a sleek flower.

  The Russian company was a new and strange experience. It opened the gates of an undreamed-of and exotic world. She heard the “Volga Boat Song” sung in a purple twilight by only dimly discerned foreign seamen. She heard the ragings and pleadings in a barbarous tongue when a savage crew threw their captain’s mistress overboard because she had brought them ill luck. The most humorous acts had no smile from her. They were enthralling, but never for a moment funny. The moonfaced showman, with his jargon of languages, had a dreadful fascination for her, but she saw nothing amusing in his patter. To her he was the terrifying magician who had created all this riot of noise and colour. He was a sinister man, at whom one gazed breathlessly, gripping Piers’s hand beneath the shawl. She had never been in a theatre before. And Piers sat, brown-faced, solid, smiling steadily at the stage, and giving her fingers a steady pressure.

  Passing through the foyer, there was a dense crowd that surged without haste toward the outer doors. Pheasant pressed close to Piers, looking with shy curiosity at the faces about her. Then someone just behind took her wrist in his hand, and slid his other hand lightly along her bare arm to beneath the shoulder, where it rested a moment in casual caress, then was withdrawn.

  Pheasant trembled all over, but she did not turn her head. She knew without looking that the hand had been the hand of the man whose head she had brushed with her shawl. When she and Piers reached the street she saw the four men together, lighting cigarettes, just ahead.

  She felt old in experience.

  It was only a short distance to the hotel. They walked among other laughing, talking people, with a great full moon rising at the end of the street, and with the brightness of the electric light giving an air of garish gaiety to the scene. Pheasant felt that it must last forever. She could not believe that tomorrow it would be all over, and they would be going back to Jalna, facing the difficulties there.

  From their room there was quite an expanse of sky visible. Piers threw the window open and the moon seemed then to stare in at them.

  They stood together at the window looking up at it.

  “The same old moon that used to shine down on us in the woods,” Piers said.

  “It seems ages ago.”

  “Yes. How do you feel? Tired? Sleepy?”

  “Not sleepy. But a little tired.”

  “Poor little girl!”

  He put his arms about her and held her close to him. His whole being seemed melting into tenderness toward her. At the same time his blood was singing in his ears the song of possessive love.

  VIII

  WELCOME TO JALNA

  THE CAR moved slowly along the winding driveway toward the house. The driveway was so darkened by closely ranked balsams that it was like a long greenish tunnel, always cool and damp. Black squirrels flung themselves from bough to bough, their curving tails like glossy notes of interrogation. Every now and again a startled rabbit showed its downy brown hump in the long grass. So slowly the car moved, the birds scarcely ceased their jargon of song at its approach.

  Piers felt horribly like a schoolboy returning after playing truant. He remembered how he had sneaked along this drive, heavy-footed, knowing he would “catch it,” and how he had caught it, at Renny’s efficient hands. He slumped in his seat as he thought of it. Pheasant sat stiffly erect, her hands clasped tightly between her knees. As the car stopped before the broad wooden steps that led to the porch, a small figure appeared from the shrubbery. It was Wakefield, carrying in one hand a fishing rod, and in the other a string from which dangled a solitary perch.

  “Oh, hullo,” he said, coming over the lawn to them. “We got your telegram. Welcome to Jalna!”

  He got on to the running board and extended a small fishy hand to Pheasant.

  “Don’t touch him,” said Piers. “He smells beastly.”

  Wakefield accepted the rebuff cheerfully.

  “I like the smell of fish myself,” he said pointedly to Pheasant. “And I forgot that some people don’t. Now Piers likes the smell of manure better because working with manure is his job. He’s used to it. Granny says that one can get used—”

  “Shut up,” ordered Piers, “and tell me where the family is.”

  “I really don’t know,” answered Wakefield, flapping the dead fish against the door of the car, “because it’s Saturday, you see, and a free day for me. I got Mrs. Wragge to put me up a little lunch—just a cold chop and a hard-boiled egg, and a lemon tart and a bit of cheese, and—”

  “For heaven’s sake,” said Piers, “stop talking and stop flapping that fish against the car! Run in and see what they’re doing. I’d like to see Renny alone.”

  “Oh, you can’t do that, I’m afraid. Renny’s over with Maurice this afternoon. I expect they’re talking over what they will do to you two. It takes a lot of thought and talk, you see, to arrange suitable punishments. Now the other day Mr. Fennel wanted to punish me and he simply couldn’t think of anything to do to me that would make a suitable impression. Already he’d tried—”

  Piers interrupted, fixing Wakefield with his eye: “Go and look in the drawing-room windows. I see firelight there. Tell me who is in the room.”

  “All right. But you’d better hold my fish for me, because someone might look out of the window and see me, and, now I come to think of it, Meggie told me I wasn’t to go fishing today, and it slipped right out of my head, the way things do with me. I expect it’s my weak heart.”

  “If I don’t thrash you,” said his brother, “before you’re an hour older, my name isn’t Piers Whiteoak. Give me the fish.” He jerked the string from the little boy’s hand.

  “Hold it carefully, please,” admonished Wakefield over his shoulder, as he lightly mounted the steps. He put his face against the pane, and stood motionless a space.

  Pheasant saw that the shadows were lengthening. A cool damp breeze began to stir
the shaggy grass of the lawn, and the birds ceased to sing.

  Piers said: “I’m going to throw this thing away.”

  “Oh, no,” said Pheasant, “don’t throw the little fellow’s fish away.” A nervous tremor ran through her, more chill than the breeze. She almost sobbed: “Ugh, I’m so nervous!”

  “Poor little kid,” said Piers, laying his hand over hers. His own jaws were rigid, and his throat felt as though a hand were gripping it. The family had never seemed so formidable to him. He saw them in a fierce phalanx bearing down on him, headed by Grandmother ready to browbeat—abuse him. He threw back his shoulders and drew a deep breath. Well—let them! If they were unkind to Pheasant, he would take her away. But he did not want to go away. He loved every inch of Jalna. He and Renny loved the place as none of the others did. That was the great bond between them. Piers was very proud of this fellowship of love for Jalna between him and Renny.

  “Confound the kid!” he said. “What is he doing?”

  “He’s coming.”

  Wakefield descended the steps importantly.

  “They’re having tea in the parlour just as though it were Sunday,” he announced. “A fire lighted. It looks like a plate of Sally Lunn on the table. Perhaps it’s a kind of wedding feast. I think we’d better go in. I’d better put my fish away first though.”

  Piers relinquished the perch, and said: “I wish Renny were there.”

  “So do I,” agreed Wakefield. “A row’s ever so much better when he’s in it. Gran always says he’s a perfect Court for a row.”

  Piers and Pheasant went slowly up the steps and into the house. He drew aside the heavy curtains that hung before the double doors of the drawing-room and led her into the room that seemed very full of people.

  There were Grandmother, Uncle Nicholas, Uncle Ernest, Meg, Eden, and young Finch, who was slumped on a beaded ottoman devouring seedcake. He grinned sheepishly as the two entered, then turned to stare at his grandmother, as though expecting her to lead the attack. But it was Uncle Nicholas who spoke first He lifted his moustache from his teacup, and raised his massive head, looking rather like a sardonic walrus. He rumbled: