“What I can’t understand,” he said, “is why we let them pull the wool over our eyes a year ago. Something should have been done.”
Meg answered — “Maurice says that if the Germans had made war on us a year ago they’d have got an easy victory. We weren’t ready.”
“We have Mr. Chamberlain to thank,” said Ernest, “for saving us from the greatest disaster in our history.”
“Hm, well, perhaps so. The last time we were over, a Colonel Rivers said to me …”
Meg interrupted, “Here comes Piers. I must tell him the news. I wonder what he’ll say.”
“Hullo,” said Piers, coming up. He was in riding breeches and a sweater and he was eating an apple he had picked from the old tree beside the paddock. His cheeks were ruddy from exercise. The sweater rose and fell quickly above his breast.
Meg kissed him. “What do you suppose has happened? Sarah is going to have a baby and Finch is sending her to us. A maid too. I suppose they’ll stay for the duration of the war. What do you think of Sarah as a mother?”
“I think it will be damned good for her.”
“It will be a great responsibility for me.”
“Send her to us then. We should like a little extra income.”
“In that little house!”
“It’s warmer in winter than yours.”
“I’m afraid Sarah would not be comfortable there. As for the financial side of it, I would never ask her a penny more than it costs me.”
“Oh, yeah!”
“I don’t know what you mean by your horrid slang.”
Childish voices were heard and Adeline and Archer came running from the house toward them.
“I’ve a letter!” cried Adeline. “A letter from Mooey!” She was waving it in her hand.
Meg sighed deeply. “Poor little Mooey.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Piers.
She opened her eyes wide. “Well, I shouldn’t like my child to be in Ireland with a war on.”
“He’s as safe there as here.”
“I can’t help feeling sorry for him.”
“Well, it’s very irritating to me. Especially when I’ve done what I consider best for him.”
“Three thousand miles away — in that lonely house.”
Adeline flew toward them along the path. The letter fluttered in her hand.
“Read it to us,” said Meg. “How nicely it’s written!” Adeline read glibly, because this was the third time: —
DEAR ADELINE,
How are you? How is everybody at home? Tell Nook to write to me. I am getting along fine. I have dinner with Cousin Dermot every night. I call him Granddad now. He has wonderful stories to tell and lots of books. I share lessons with a boy who lives near by. He has a tutor. We have great fun together. His name is Pat Crawshay and he told me to remember him to you. I often think of the old days at Jalna.
Love from MOOEY.
Archer, far behind Adeline, reached the group as she was reading the letter. They might have been trees for all the notice he took of them. He stalked through their midst looking straight ahead of him. In one hand he carried the body of a dead crow he had found, in the other a trowel.
“What a nice letter!” said Meg. “Poor little man! Fancy his saying he often thinks of the old days at Jalna!”
“It would be funny if he didn’t,” said Piers.
“But it sounds so touching.”
“I remember Pat Crawshay,” said Adeline. “He was a nice boy. I want to see him again.”
“Heaven only knows when you will, since this war is on.”
“Look at Archer,” chuckled Ernest. “I do wonder what that boy will be!”
“An undertaker,” said Piers, “by the look of him.”
The weather continued fair. Life at Jalna moved on, accompanied by the various reactions of the family to the war. Wakefield wrote from New York saying that, as soon as they were free, he and Molly would come to Canada and he would join the Air Force. This news brought mingled pleasure and foreboding. They were proud that their delicate stripling had grown to a strong young man ready to fight for his country, but the thought of his dying for it was terrible. Renny was already in touch with the headquarters of his old regiment in England and expected to join it before spring. Secretly he intended that this should take place before the running of the Grand National. He was in constant communication with those who were training Johnny the Bird. The possibility that Johnny would win the race, the thought that he himself would again live a soldier’s life, help to win the war, gave colour to every hour of his day. His stablemen had never known him so good-humoured. His family had never known him easier to get on with. Piers took advantage of this by getting whatever he wanted for the farm and an increase in the share of profits for himself. This was well-deserved, for Piers was heart and soul in his work. He also had had a physical examination for military service and had come out in Class A.
Toward the end of October, Sarah arrived, accompanied by her French maid whom she had dismissed some time before her reunion with Finch. Mathilde was glad to return to her and to go far from scenes of war.
With her maid, her mountain of luggage, and her arresting looks, Sarah came to Vaughanlands as a being exotic and troubling. Nothing so brought out the best in Meg as preparing her house for those who needed her care and lavishing that care on them when they had arrived. But Sarah was undoubtedly a trial. She made no pretense of staying in the rooms allotted to her as bedroom and sitting room but strewed her belongings all over the house. Magazines, shawls, empty chocolate boxes, even hats and shoes, marked her path. She dropped ash and cigarette ends wherever she smoked. Rings from glasses of sherry or milk marred the table tops. When she used the telephone she invariably left off the receiver. She outdid Meg in wanting food at odd hours. She and Mathilde were always talking volubly in French together. As for the maid, she was no help at all, only a hindrance. Yet, when Meg complained as she certainly had a right to do, Piers only laughed and said: —
“Send them along to us. We’ll be delighted to have them.”
But financially Sarah was a substantial help. She was careless in money matters, so long as the expenditure had to do with her own comfort or pleasure. She would send Mathilde into the town to shop for her and appear to care nothing about what was spent or whether or not the change was correct.
“But it’s terrible, Sarah!” cried Meg. “You must let me do your shopping for you. I should never trust that Frenchwoman.”
Sarah gave her an enigmatic smile. “How kind you are!”
Meg did the shopping to the great annoyance of Mathilde, who had found these excursions a compensation for the Canadian climate.
Meg knitted countless tiny garments for the coming child. She kept them in a drawer in her room, scented with lavender.
When she showed them to Renny, he frowned.
“What has she done?” he asked.
“She tried to knit a little jacket but got the stitches in such a mess I took it from her.”
“She ought to make these things herself. She imposes on you.”
Meg beamed. “I do it for Finch rather than for her. Remember, it’s his child.”
“Let’s hope it resembles him.”
The antagonism between Renny and Sarah had indeed not lessened. He disliked her secretive air, her small-mouthed, curved-nosed, pointed-chinned face. He hated her exotic perfumes, the heavy scent of her Russian cigarettes. She always seemed to be smiling slyly at him, gloating over having bested him, recaptured Finch. In truth she never met him without this inward triumph. She disliked him. He had no physical attraction for her. She feared him. His air of hardihood, his remoteness, the feeling that, at the first opportunity, he would again come between her and Finch, kept her resentment smouldering. When he came to Vaughanlands, as he often did, he wished she would keep out of his way. But there she always was, talking … talking of Finch, what they had done in London, what he would make of his talent. She wore bril
liantly coloured tea gowns, a contrast to the austere colours she had chosen for London, which well concealed her bulk. She showed no apprehension of the ordeal ahead of her.
In November something happened which thrust Sarah into the background. Aunt Harriet died after only a short illness. Ernest was convinced that the war had preyed on her mind, undermining her health. Certainly in her last days she had seemed capable of thinking of little else. She strove with all her fragile power to make over the world, as she had striven to make over herself into a Whiteoak. Doubtless this last had been a considerable strain for, from the day of her coming to Jalna, she had scarcely performed an act which was not self-conscious. Surrounded as she was by the Whiteoaks, their strong personalities had pressed in on the more rarefied atmosphere of the life that was natural to her.
Her loss came as a great shock to Ernest. He had thought of her as merely ailing, and for a time he was dazed. After the funeral, he wandered vaguely through the house which she had made into such a happy home, not knowing what to do with himself. He looked bereft and ill.
Then Nicholas took things in hand. Ernest must close the house, he said, and return at once to Jalna. He could not live alone and his own place was waiting for him. Nicholas had secretly resented Ernest’s marriage. It had broken in on the companionship of a lifetime. Such companionship was no longer possible with an active, gently domineering wife, always at Ernest’s side. It would be nice to have the old fellow back at Jalna, to bicker with, to confide in, to share his last days with. When he saw Ernest once more established in the room next his, Nicholas felt a profound satisfaction. The old oak which had been uprooted was miraculously restored to the side of its brother, their branches again intermingling.
And, after the first sharpness of sorrow, a new peace descended on Ernest. There was a dignity in his relations with Nicholas that had been lacking in the old days. Then Nicholas had sometimes made his brother feel his inexperience in one aspect of life. Nicholas had been married and divorced. Ernest was only a bachelor. Now Ernest could talk of matrimony. He had the dignity of a widower. His marriage had been happy.
There was another and secret side to his peace. With Harriet’s active and analytical New England mind no longer prodding him on, he could sink into comfortable old age. He had no longer to be on his guard lest he should disappoint her. He could read what was light and amusing. He could talk or be silent as he chose. If he slept all the afternoon, that was his own business and no one worried about him. The pleasant ways of bachelorhood opened again to receive him.
To Alayne, her aunt’s death brought back the loss of her loved father and mother. As long as Aunt Harriet had lived, there was someone to whom she could talk intimately of them, someone who would mourn for them with her. Now there was no one. She had not a near relative in the world. At the same time, Alayne’s affection for Harriet had altered since Harriet’s coming to Jalna. Alayne had watched her making herself into a new person, and the sight had given her both amusement and irritation. Harriet’s new personality had not been convincing to Alayne. She had been so admirable as she was. Why had she wished to change? Another source of irritation was that, if any disagreement rose between herself and Renny, Aunt Harriet was certain to take his side. She could see no fault in him.
Of all the family, it was Renny who grieved most sincerely for her. He had loved the little woman from the time of his stay in her house on the Hudson. In his view she had never changed in the least. It was simply that her life at Jalna had brought out certain latent qualities in her which only added to her excellence. And perhaps in this he was right. She had been motherly toward him as no other woman had, and he could not even remember his own mother.
XXII
WREATHS OF HOLLY
THE PLAY HAD a three months’ run. Wakefield and Molly had made a distinctive place for themselves in the hearts of New York theatregoers. They admired Molly’s look of fragility and breeding combined with vitality. When she wore riding clothes she looked capable of hard work with a horse. They liked her freshness and lack of self-consciousness. Now that she was away from Ninian Fox, her acting showed more freedom and initiative than before. No young actor in years had so captivated New York as Wakefield. The management wanted them to go on tour with the play. They had offers from Hollywood. But what they wanted and what they had done was to come to Canada. Wakefield was to enter the Air Force and Molly to find some sort of war work. They wanted to be married in the New Year.
They arrived at Jalna the night before Christmas Eve. There had been no snow in New York but here the ground was white and the stars trembled blue and low above the treetops. The spruces crowded the driveway in their black bulk but the old silver birch cast a fine tracery of its branches on the snowy lawn. The steps were shoveled clean, the snow mounded high at the sides in glistening peaks and pale blue shadows. All the windows were alight and, in those on the first floor, holly wreaths hung.
None of the family had come to meet them. There had been much to do in preparation for Christmas and that morning Sarah had given birth to a son. If anything were needed to give Wakefield’s homecoming a glittering sense of the Season it was the news that a new Whiteoak had chosen Christmas for the time of his arrival.
Wakefield felt almost unbearably excited as they got out of the car and he helped the man carry their bags to the door. When he had left them, Wakefield took Molly by the shoulders and placed her in front of the door facing him.
“I want to see you in your new setting!” he exclaimed. “I want to see how you become Jalna. For it is our home whether we live here or not.”
A smile illumined his face. His eyes were shining. He kissed her on each cold cheek, then on her warm lips. He opened the door.
“You become it very well,” he said.
He stood in the halt and looked about him, drinking in the familiar scene, the heavy scrolled wallpaper which had been there since the house was built, the slender grace of the banister, the hatstand with the carved head of a fox grinning down at them. Renny’s hat, weather-beaten to a soft mole colour, hung there with children’s caps and a dog’s lead.
The dogs rose in a ferocious chorus from where they lay about the glowing stove. They almost knocked Wakefield over before they discovered who he was. Then they almost knocked him over in their joy. Meg came out of the drawing room and closed the door behind her.
“I had to be the first to greet you,” she said. She clasped Wakefield to her bosom in a moment’s bliss before she turned to welcome Molly.
“We are so glad to have you, my dear,” she said.
Well might Wake look on her as a mother, Molly thought. It was easy to see how she adored him.
Meg took them straight into the drawing room where the uncles and Alayne were waiting. Alayne had faintly resented Meg’s welcoming of their guest but it was Meg’s way to be possessive. Alayne gave Molly her hand, smiling and critical. She thought — “An attractive girl but I don’t believe I’m going to like her.”
“What a charming child!” said Nicholas, aloud. “Do you mind if I kiss you, my dear?”
She held up her face like a child. Nicholas kissed her, so did Ernest.
“You see,” said Ernest, “we’ve been told of your engagement.”
The boy and girl looked so young standing there that the elders felt a compassion for them, wondering what sort of life they would have together, what sort of world awaited them.
Nicholas drew Wakefield aside. “What are they saying of the war in New York?” he asked.
“They’re calling it a phony war,” laughed Wakefield.
Nicholas blew through his grey moustache. “Phony? What’s that?”
“Well … it’s not very exciting to watch.”
Nicholas turned to his brother. “Do you hear that, Ernie? They’ve got a word for this war over there. They call it phony.”
“Well, well,” said Ernest.
Adeline and Roma had been allowed to stay up. They now came into the room. Roma, as
always, stood as though sheltering behind Adeline.
Wakefield kissed them and exclaimed at their growth as he had heard returning elders exclaim at his when he was a child.
“Have you done any hunting since I saw you?” he asked Adeline.
“Lots, but not real foxes. And I sent a postcard of Niagara Falls to Pat Crawshay and he sent me one of Blarney Castle.”
Meg put in — “Now I must take Wake and Miss Griffith to their rooms.” It was as though she were mistress of the house.
“Call me Molly.”
“May I? That will be nice.”
“Tomorrow night we hang up our stockings,” said Adeline. “The Christmas Tree is in the sitting room. You can’t go in there.”
“I can smell it!” cried Wake. “I’ve been wondering all along what the lovely scent was.” He went eagerly to the door of the sitting room and put his nose to the keyhole.
The pungent spicy sweetness of the spruce tree came through to him. The mystery, the entrancing tremors of childish Christmas Eves, stirred him. He put out a hand to Molly.
“Come,” he said, “come and smell.”
She bent and sniffed.
“How lovely! What sort of tree is it?”
“Spruce.”
“We don’t have them so sweet in Wales.”
He laughed. “They grow only at Jalna.”
The children had followed them into the hall and crowded to the keyhole to sniff the tree.
“Children!” called Alayne. “You must go to bed!”
They giggled together, hiding behind Wakefield.
“I’ve never had a Christmas Tree,” said Molly.
“How appalling!” said Wakefield in consternation. Then added — “But I’m glad you’ll have your first one with us. And, unless I’m very much mistaken, you’ll get a very nice present on it.”
“Never had a Christmas Tree!” cried the children in unison. “But why? Didn’t you like them?”
Wake answered — “She lived on a mountaintop where there were no trees.”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 384