“Of course, I shan’t mind!” She wished he could have known what a heroine she was being, she so longed, in a measure, to repay him. “Do you think it would like a saucer of milk?”
To him it was the most natural thing in the world that she should take the puppy to her heart. He liked to see her sitting with it in her lap. But to Alayne, when she was first able to come downstairs, it was a sight so amazing as to be comic. Miss Archer resented Alayne’s air of levity. She took her relationship to the dachshund and its master seriously, almost aggressively.
Now that Alayne was strong enough they discussed the details of their plans for the future. It had already been arranged that friends of Miss Archer’s, a college professor and his wife, were to take her house furnished. It was at rather a low rent but it would pay the rates, keep up the repairs and leave something over for her personal needs.
Though there was so much to be done in preparation she found time to amuse Adeline. She made a scrapbook for her. She made paper dolls for her. She made ginger cookies for her and cut them into the shapes of little animals. Renny thought she was the busiest woman he had ever seen. She never sat down with her hands idle. Before a week had passed she had knitted a beautiful green jumper for Adeline and was at work on a cap and scarf. He thought she was a wonder and told her so.
Alayne’s health steadily improved. She recuperated more quickly than the doctor had hoped. At the end of a fortnight she, Renny, Adeline, Miss Archer, and the dachshund pup, with all Miss Archer’s personal belongings, set out for Jalna.
XXVI
HOW THEY TOOK THE NEWS
NICHOLAS WHITEOAK READ and read again Renny’s brief letter. Then he pushed his spectacles from the arch of his big nose to the crest of his grey hair and said to his brother:
“Here’s a pretty to-do!”
Ernest never liked to hear his brother use their old mother’s pet phrases, so to punish him he ignored the remark, though he was burning to know what had caused it. He went on with his embroidery.
Two could play at the game of being stubborn, thought Nicholas. He gripped the letter in his hand, rose rather totteringly because of his bulk and his gout, and began heavily to pace the room. He muttered at intervals:
“Well — well, this beats all!”
Ernest endured this as long as he could, then he spat out:
“Don’t act like a fool, Nick! What beats all?”
Nicholas halted beside him and threw down the letter on his embroidery frame.
“Read this! Read it aloud. I can’t properly take it in.”
Ernest read:
DEAR UNCLE NICK —
I expect you think I have been rather a long time in writing home but you will not wonder when you hear what I have been up against. Alayne has been very ill. When I arrived I found her in a dead faint on the floor. She is going to have a child next month. She is better now and we are coming home Wednesday, on the train arriving at 9.30 a.m. Aunt Harriet is coming with us. I have invited her to make her home at Jalna as she has lost practically everything. She is a very delightful woman and I am sure she will be a nice companion for you and Uncle Ernest. I am very fond of her already. Adeline is in grand fettle. I have acquired a very good dachshund pup in payment for a long-standing debt. Please have Aunt Augusta’s room got ready for Aunt Harriet. Tell Finch to get out in the air if he can.
LOVE TO ALL, RENNY.
The brothers stared at each other in mutual astonishment. Yet they were not displeased. They had been finding the winter very long. They were candidly bored by each other. The thought of Alayne’s return with Renny, even though in a delicate state, was pleasant. The thought of an addition to the family brought its own pride. The acquisition for their circle of a cultivated woman, such as they knew Alayne’s aunt to be, was nothing short of exhilarating. The one thing of which they disapproved was the dachshund.
They wasted no time informing Piers and Meg of the news. That very afternoon there was a gathering of the family to discuss it. Finch alone was not present. He resented the shattering of his privacy by what he thought of as an avalanche of people. Day by day, in the indolent company of his uncles, in the quiet depths of the snowy weather, he had felt himself growing stronger. He could see a change in the looks of his hands and the reflection of his face in the mirror. He began to enjoy reading and, if it had not been for his fear of meeting Sarah, he would have ventured a walk in the brilliant weather. Now everything would be changed. He would have to face the eyes of a stranger.
If Finch was resentful, Meg was furious.
“To think,” she exclaimed, “that Alayne would foist her impecunious old relation on us for the rest of her days! And after the way she had behaved to Renny — going off and sulking, as everyone knows she has! She could always wind him round her finger. I think we should rebel. Simply refuse to get Aunt Augusta’s room ready for Miss Archer. I think you should write and tell Renny so, Uncle Nick.”
Nicholas looked dubious. “Well, Meggie, I don’t think I could quite do that. I dare say we’ll find her very nice. And — as Renny says — she’s lost all her money —”
“That’s the awful part!” interrupted Meg. “If she had any money we might tolerate her! I dare say, if the truth were known, we should find that Alayne has little enough of her own left — the money she was so penurious with.’’
Maurice put in — “Renny always had a foolhardy generosity.”
“Well,” said Piers, “it’s Renny’s own house, and if he chooses to make it an asylum for relatives who pay nothing for their keep, it’s his own affair, isn’t it?”
Nicholas glared at him. “Is there any personal insinuation in your remark?”
“Yes,” agreed Ernest nervously, “I should like very much to know.”
“Of course there isn’t!” exclaimed Pheasant.
Piers looked at his boots and blew out his cheeks. He said slowly:
“Yes, I think there is. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of this for some time.”
Meg looked at him, blinking a little. She did not know what he was going to say, or which side she was going to be on.
He said — “You two uncles have made a long visit here. You’re both far from impecunious. It looks to me as though you were staying on indefinitely. Now — what about it?”
“What about it? What about it?” repeated Ernest huffily. “What about your coming in here, young man, and poking your nose into affairs that are none of your business?”
“But they are my business,” said Piers. “Maurice speaks of Renny’s foolhardy generosity. I quite agree with him. I call it foolhardy to support two well off old gentlemen who own a house in Devonshire, without getting a penny in return for it. I’m damned if I’d do it!”
Nicholas returned, with less temper than might be expected — “Renny would be insulted if we offered him money.”
Piers gave a snort. “Try him! Just try him!”
“Everyone is not such a money-grubber as you are, Piers,” said Ernest severely. “Renny is a real Whiteoak, a true Court. He has a mind above such pettiness. If you had a better memory you would recall the stories my mother told of her father’s house in Ireland and of the relatives who lived there with him — free to come and go as they pleased — free as the air!”
“I have an excellent memory,” said Piers. “I remember Gran telling how one of those relatives lived with him because Great-grandfather had won all his money at cards and the poor devil had nowhere to go. I’ve also heard her tell how, at the day of his death, her father had never paid for her wedding trousseau. Renny Court didn’t trouble to pay his debts. Our Renny is a man of honour.”
“It is small wonder if my mother’s trousseau was not paid for,” said Ernest. “It filled seventeen trunks when it was taken to India.”
Nicholas said — “Could you expect a woman of her appearance to be satisfied with less?”
“I should expect her father to pay for it,” retorted Piers.
“Whe
n I think,” said Meg, “of the modest trousseau I had when I was married!”
“It was your second,” said Piers. “Remember the one you had twenty years earlier. There was nothing modest about that.”
Meg gave him a scornful look. “What can you know about it?” she said. “You were a babe in arms.”
“I’ve heard.”
Pheasant was scarlet. Maurice stared at the ceiling. With his gaze still on it he said:
“I agree with Piers that Renny would not in the least object to your uncles giving him something regularly. It’s surprising what a help paying guests are. If it weren’t for them Meg and I should be on the rocks.”
Nicholas heaved himself in his chair. “It’s intolerable” he said, “that you and Meg should depend on that!”
“What I think is intolerable,” said Meg, “is that Alayne should force her wretched aunt on us.”
“I suppose she considers that one more in such a houseful doesn’t matter,” said Piers.
Nicholas turned his deep gaze on him. “You seem to forget,” he said, “how you and your wife and child lived here for years without responsibility.”
“I was working the farm. Paying rent for it.”
“And being paid in turn for the feed you raised.”
“When Renny would fork over.”
“He told me only lately that he had paid you a large bill.”
“Yes — poor devil — I hated to take the money.”
Meg put in — “I wish I had a close-up of you hating to take money.”
Ernest said with dignity — “There is no disgrace in liking money. As a family we like it for what it will bring — not for its own sake.”
“What about Gran?” cried Meg. “She hoarded hers for its own sake!”
“She hoarded it for the power it brought her,” said Piers. “She knew she had us all on a string.”
His sister groaned. “Oh, if only she had divided it among us! Or left it all to Renny — or, perhaps me! Anything but what she did do!”
A brooding silence fell on them all. The wind swept shrewdly against the house, carrying bright particles of snow and depositing them wherever there was any roughness of surface. Through the window the turquoise blue of the day showed a new phase in winter’s progress. The sunlight brought out the heavy lines in Nicholas’s face, the pinkness of Ernest’s scalp showing through his hair, the increasing greyness of Meg’s and Maurice’s heads, Piers’s fresh colouring and the length of Pheasant’s lashes.
Ernest continued, as though there had been no interruption — “I repeat that we do not care for money for its own sake. I say this specially of my brother and myself. If Renny wants us here — and I know he does want us for he has said so — on a business basis, we shall be only too glad to pay him whatever he demands; isn’t that so, Nick?”
“Absolutely. I’ll ask him as soon as he comes home.”
“He’ll never tell you,” said Piers. “Or, if he does, he’ll name a ridiculously low figure.”
“What should you suggest?” asked Ernest, lifting his lip at Piers.
Piers considered. “Well — hm, supposing you give him eighty dollars a month. I think that would be fair.”
“You mean between us?” asked Ernest.
“No. I mean apiece.”
“My God!” said Nicholas.
“It seems a lot,” said Ernest.
“It will make a tremendous difference to Renny,” said Piers.
“My P.G.’s paid that,” said Meg, “and they hadn’t half the comforts you have.”
“There’s the truth from you for once, Meggie!” said Piers.
“They had all the comfort in the world,” said Maurice huffily.
“What I mean is,” pursued Meg, “that they hadn’t such beautiful furniture in their rooms, or such a variety of food or the run of a wine cellar.”
Nicholas filled the room with his sardonic laughter. “The run of a wine cellar! A glass of port after dinner — perhaps thrice a week! A bottle of beer occasionally! Let me tell you, young woman, my father would have never dignified the meagre supply in this basement by the name of wine cellar. Added to that, on every special occasion I buy something out of my own purse. The very whiskey and soda Maurice is taking now was bought by me, if you must know.”
Maurice looked into his glass. “It’s very good,” he said.
“As for the furniture in our rooms,” said Ernest, “it is our own to do with as we choose. No — eighty dollars is too much. We can’t think of it.”
“We shall talk it over between ourselves,” said Nicholas.
“Well, it’s awfully sweet of you,” said Meg, “and I’m sure Renny will be delighted.” Having patted her uncles on the back she went on — “But you really should object to his bringing that old Miss Archer here. If you both object I’m sure he won’t do it. What you say carries so much weight with him.”
But though Nicholas and Ernest pretended that they would show opposition to Miss Archer’s coming to Jalna, they did nothing of the sort. They were secretly very favourable to it. Like their mother, they enjoyed fresh arrivals and delighted in preparation for them. They had Augusta’s room turned out and thoroughly cleaned. They had some of the heavier pieces of furniture carried to the attic, substituting for them less cumbersome ones which would be more likely to please such a woman as they pictured her to be.
They pictured her as the New England spinster of tradition. As Augusta’s hair had maintained to the end a purplish-brown colour they endowed Miss Archer’s in imagination with the same tinge and thought of it as worn in a Queen Alexandra fringe. They believed she would be rather didactic, rather reserved. It would take some time to get acquainted with her.
They were therefore not at all prepared for the vision of elderly loveliness escorted by Renny into their midst a week later. Harriet Archer had made up her mind to one thing, and that was to look her best before these Whiteoaks. She instinctively felt that the more attractive she looked the warmer would be their welcome. She had the New York woman’s instinct for clothes and how to wear them. She was not even aware that the family knew that she was without means. She had yet to understand their intimacy. And she wanted Alayne to be proud of her.
She appeared before Ernest and Nicholas in a pale grey, fur-trimmed ensemble. She wore a small, grey velvet hat from beneath which her silvery hair showed in exquisitely finished waves. Renny, obviously proud of her, had just divested her of a handsome mink coat. Her skin was of a fragile fairness and her pastel blue eyes large and appealing. She put a small, soft, ringless hand into each of the brother’s in turn.
“I have heard so much about you from Alayne,” she said.
Renny returned to the car to help Alayne up the icy steps. The presence of Miss Archer made the meeting between her and the family less embarrassing. She felt as though she were in a dream entering that house again. All was so familiar yet seen as though from an overpowering distance. The tears she had shed here…. What a confused sense of life she had! If only she could straighten things out … see them clearly … as she used to before she loved Renny. Now she could feel his arm strong and taut, half-carrying her up the stairs. She was so glad that Aunt Harriet had said that bed was the best place for her…. On the landing they met Finch. He came toward her shyly, holding out his hand. Her eyes filled with tears as she saw how ill he had been. There was something of extreme youth in the gaunt delicacy of his frame…. His lips touched her cheek, then he went down the stairs. Adeline was shouting her excitement in Ernest’s arms.
“Do you want a peep at my room?” Renny asked Alayne.
“I’d love to see it.”
They went in and her eyes took in the shabby room with its furniture brought incongruously together. She saw the cabinet and china he had bought at Clara’s sale.
“If you like,” he said, “I’ll have those taken out.”
“No, no — leave them where they are!”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do! I’l
l give them to Meggie! I’d rather not have them.”
“Do that then. Yes — it would be better.”
“Should you like to see your aunt’s room?”
“No … I’m so tired.”
She lay on her own bed. She lay there marvelling at all that had happened since she had left that room. There, on the desk, lay the blotting pad on which she had written her letter to her aunt, saying that she was going to her. The intimacy of her possessions wrapped her about. Here was the echo of her voice and Renny’s, raised loud in their distress. Here were spun the fine filaments of their relationship. Now he moved about the room, doing things to the curtains, laying out the articles from her dressing case. She marvelled at his easy movements, the dexterity of his hands. She felt so heavy…. He bent over her and kissed her. She drew him close.
XXVII
THE NEWCOMERS
“SHE’S A VERY attractive woman,” Nicholas said to Renny when he and Ernest had him to themselves. “I expected to see someone much — plainer, less affluent-looking.”
“You said in your letter,” said Ernest, “that she had lost practically everything.”
Renny realized that he had made a mistake in branding Miss Archer as impecunious. He enquired:
“How did Meg take it?”
Nicholas answered — “She was furious. She wanted us to refuse to have a room got ready for her. As though we should interfere!”
“On the contrary,” said Ernest, “we went to no end of trouble to make things nice.”
“That was decent of you.”
“Just what is Miss Archer’s position?” asked Ernest.
“She looks like a million dollars.”
“Well — she owns a very nice house which she has let. But she has had very heavy losses. I didn’t inquire into them. You know what Americans are. They cry poverty if they have to do without all their accustomed luxuries.”
The minds of his uncles were profoundly relieved. They lost no time in letting the rest of the family know that Miss Archer’s losses had still left her affluent. There was nothing to fear from her; possibly something to gain. The family came to see her and their verdict was, in every case, favourable. Meg said that if only Alayne had had the good sense and sympathetic tact of her aunt she would never have brought dissension into Jalna.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 355