Steps came from the house and Pheasant appeared, followed by her three sons. She stood smiling down at Piers.
“Your birthday,” she said, “is a week off. But we are going to give you your present now because — it simply will not be quiet for another minute. Bring her out, boys!”
The two younger darted into the house and reappeared carrying a hamper in which something small and white was bestirring itself.
“Open and see, Daddy!” cried Philip.
Piers lifted the lid of the hamper which was now on his knees. A four-months’-old wire-haired puppy was inside, clean and white as a new toy, black-nosed, pink-tongued, ready, in its infant vitality, to bound out of the hamper.
“what do you think of her?” cried Nooky. “Mother and Maurice clubbed together and bought her. And Philip and I clubbed together and bought her collar.”
“We knew you’d miss Biddy so,” said Pheasant.
“She spent the night at Auntie Meg’s,” put in Maurice. “I’ve just been over to fetch her. I’m afraid she was pretty naughty. She made three puddles on the floor and kept them awake half the night whimpering.”
Piers said nothing. The puppy was in his arms, wildly licking his face, nibbling his nose, trying its best to turn itself inside out in its joy.
“Do you like her?” asked Philip.
“Like her!” exclaimed Piers. “Like her! why, if you had scoured the country over, you couldn’t possibly have found anything else I’d like half so well.”
“what shall we name her? It’s a she, you know.”
“She’s well bred,” said Maurice. “You must see her pedigree.”
“We’ll find a name for her,” answered Piers. He snuggled the puppy in his arms. He would not be parted from her for a moment. Her pliant, ecstatic little body was the final drop in his brimming cup of content. When, an hour later, they went in a body to Jalna, the puppy went too.
Finch and Alayne met them on the drive. They were waiting there to stop them from all going in together to see the uncles. It might be too exciting for them. Piers climbed out of the car, took Alayne by the hand, then kissed her cheek. She looked thinner, older, he thought. But he was glad to see her. God, how glad he was to see every single one of the family! As they stood talking on the drive, his eyes kept wandering from the faces of those clustered about him to stare at the old house, standing there serene, just as though nothing especial had been happening in the past four years. Then suddenly he saw Ernest’s face at a window of the drawing-room. Ernest threw open the window and called in a hoarse voice quite unlike his own:
“Piers! Piers — here we are! Come in at once!”
“Oh, go to them, darling!” said Pheasant.
Finch warned, “Don’t tell them any horrors or get them too excited.”
Piers stared. “Are they so delicate as all that?”
He limped hurriedly to the house. Yes, he thought as he stood before them, they did look fragile, very changed indeed. It took him a moment or so to feel at home with them. Poor old fellows — they’d obviously suffered a lot.
“Well, well, well,” said Nicholas, “so here you are! It’s a great day, Piers. It’s a great day for us.”
“Sometimes we wondered if ever we’d see you again,” said Ernest, his blue eyes wet with tears.
Nicholas added, with a deep sigh, “If only Renny were back again! And Wakefield! We still have them to worry about.”
“Don’t you worry about Renny,” said Piers. “Colonels generally come back.”
“Many are killed or wounded,” said Ernest.
“Yes, but they have a better chance. He’ll come back. Don’t worry.”
Ernest smiled. “You are right. We must just rejoice in the fact that you are safe.”
Nicholas looked Piers over. “You look fine. If three years in a German prison camp would make me look like that, egad, I’d try it!”
“And lose a leg?” laughed Piers.
Nicholas scowled at his gouty knee. “I’d give this one up and be glad of it.”
Ernest still held Piers’ firm hand in his. “Dear boy, you walk better than I had hoped for.”
“I’ll walk better when I get a better leg. Still, this one has served me pretty well.”
“Sit down between us,” said Nicholas, “and tell us about your life over there.”
Piers’ eyes drank in the familiarity of the room. The feel of the chair he drew up was as familiar as the feel of the hand that drew it. The suit worn by Nicholas was familiar. Surely that suit was ten years old!
“They’ve given me a puppy to take Biddy’s place,” exclaimed Piers. “Did you know? She’s a little beauty. I’ll bring her in and show you.”
“Yes, but not now,” said Nicholas. “Tell us about your life over there. The real truth, you know, not just what they’d let you tell in letters.”
Ernest looked nervous. “Yes, yes. I hope it wasn’t too bad.”
Piers smiled from one face to the other. “We had a good deal of fun,” he said. “Not always, of course. But funny things happened.”
He did not tell of the heart-breaking boredom, the lack of the most simple comforts of life, the crowding, the dirt. He told of the concerts they had put on, the jokes they had played on each other, the ribald stories. For all that they had been men of the world, Nicholas and Ernest never had heard stories quite so ribald as the ones Piers told them. They laughed till their sides ached. Finch heard the laughter and joined them. His loud laugh that always, when he had laughed with too much abandon took on an hysterical note, was added to theirs.
When he and Piers went outdoors again, Piers’ mouth was down at the corners. “Poor old uncles,” he said, “they’ll not last much longer. No one told me they were like this.”
“It’s been gradual,” Finch returned sadly. “I’d never noticed it quite as much as this morning when they were laughing so hard.”
Piers had to go down to the basement to see the Wragges, the wife even fatter and the husband even thinner than when he had last seen them. While he was there a shout came from Philip, “Auntie Meg and Patience are here, Daddy! Come — quick!”
Meg folded the brother with whom she had had many a quarrel but still loved deeply, to her ample bosom. Patience kissed him shyly.
“How well you look!” said Meg. “Rested and well! But of course you’ve led a quiet, regular life. Patience and I have been through a terrible time. We’ve been thrown from post to pillar. I hardly know what a good night’s sleep is. You will find us sadly changed — living in a tiny house and doing our own work, except for a woman who comes in twice a week.”
“You look like a million dollars.”
She tried to smile wanly.
“I’m glad to hear it. But really, Piers, when I found I must sell Vaughanlands, I made up my mind to go through it with an iron resolve. I made up my mind to trouble no one with my worries.”
“Pheasant tells me you got a mighty good price for it.”
“How can she know its value!” Meg was indignant. “I sold it at a sacrifice. But don’t let’s talk of sordid things. Let us sit down and talk about you.”
They sat down in the old lawn chairs, worn by the wind and weather to a greyish brown. Pheasant and Alayne had gone into the house. Now Patience, given a look by Meg, went with Piers’ sons toward the stables. Meg sat between her brothers.
“I don’t call selling a property for a good price, sordid,” observed Piers.
“All money dealings seem sordid to me,” said Meg. “They have a way of bringing out the meaner side of human nature. Not that I ever have allowed material things to influence me.”
Finch looked at her admiringly as she uttered these words but Piers’ eyes were fixed on a rotund little cloud just above the tree tops. He had a sore feeling inside him and he could not have explained just why it was. Then he recalled the faces of the two old uncles, their looks so aged since he had seen them last.
“The uncles don’t look very well,” he
said.
“Ah, it was the winter,” said Meg. “And the anxiety. But now that you are home and the summer coming, you’ll see how they will pick up.”
“I hope so.” After a moment’s silence, in which he absorbed the almost forgotten sweet humming of bees in a flowering-currant bush, he exclaimed, “Gosh, it will seem strange to see someone else at Vaughanlands! what is this fellow, Clapperton, like?”
“Very nice indeed,” said Meg. “You must go with me to call on him. He has all sorts of interesting schemes. A sunroom, a swimming pool, a rose garden with a sun dial.”
“Hmph.”
“You won’t say that when you meet him ... Oh, Piers, it will be such a relief to have someone at Jalna who has experience of farming and knows how the farm horses should be cared for! Of course, you have been told about the Clydesdale mare.”
“No. What was that?”
Meg poured out the story of Wright’s dismissal, of the man whom Alayne and Finch had engaged and how he had caused the death of the Clydesdale. Piers gave a grunt of heartfelt anger at the tale of incompetence and disaster.
“It was the same with everyone,” said Finch. “Everyone was having trouble.”
“It is a mercy,” declared Meg, “that Wright had the loyalty to stay on even though Alayne discharged him. I can’t tell you how overbearing she has become, yet she has little control of her children.”
“I miss Adeline,” said Piers. “when are her holidays?”
“Early in June. She’s growing to be a lovely girl. How she hates going to boarding school! But Alayne would have it. Poor little Archer and Roma were dying to stay home today because of your coming but Alayne wouldn’t hear of it. Really, she’s becoming a tyrant. The servants don’t like her. Wright hates her, for she thwarts him at every turn. The poor dogs are so cowed they scarcely dare enter the house. She has torn off the lovely embossed wallpaper that has been in the hall ever since the house was built and had the walls done in cream-colour. It’s really shocking.”
Piers’ eyes became prominent. “I didn’t notice! I was in such a hurry to see the uncles, I didn’t notice. The woman must be mad. She’ll have old redhead in a rage when he comes home.”
“She can find money for everything she wants to do,” said Meg, “but she’s positively penurious when other things are suggested. No one but Rags and Cook and Wright would have stayed with her.”
“You exaggerate,” said Finch. “I think Alayne is very kind. Think of how much she must have endured in having Uncle Nick and Uncle Ernest here!”
“Endured!” cried Meg. “Think of what it has meant to her to have them as companions! Alayne knew nothing of the world when she came to Jalna.”
“She came from New York.”
“Oh, that!” said Meg.
“Here they come!” Piers waved his hand in welcome to his uncles who now appeared in the porch, followed by Rags carrying an armful of cushions and travelling rugs.
“We’re coming,” said Ernest, “to enjoy the sunshine. It is the first day we have found it really warm enough for sitting on the lawn. How green the grass is!”
“And there’s the puppy!” Nicholas clapped his hands at it. “A good one too. I’d like a puppy of my own but I daren’t suggest it to Alayne.”
Meg gave Piers a look.
“And I,” added Ernest, “have wished many a time in the past winter for a Persian kitten. They’re very amusing little things. But — of course — they make trouble.” He sighed and sank into the chair Rags had arranged for him.
“This ’ouse, Mr. Piers,” said Rags in a low tone, “ain’t what it was in regard to pets. I don’t object to them. My wife don’t object. It’s the mistress who objects.”
Piers scarcely heard. He was playing with the puppy. Oh, the delicious gnawing of its tiny teeth on his fingers! Oh, the velvet softness of its hide! Oh, its ignorance of misery or of pain!
Meg was saying, “Tomorrow I will take you to see Mr. Clapperton. I’m sure you’ll like him.”
Piers turned to Nicholas. “what do you think of him, Uncle Nick?”
“Think he’s a horrid old fellow.”
“Oh, Uncle Nick,” cried Meg, “how can you say such a thing! I think he is very nice and so is his secretary, young Mr. Swift who is cramming Mooey.”
“Cramming Mooey!” repeated Piers. “I haven’t been told of that.”
“He’s no better,” said Nicholas. “A horrid young fellow.”
The next afternoon Meg did take Piers to call on Mr. Clapperton. She had arranged for this by telephone as she wanted to make sure that the new owner of Vaughanlands would be at home. It was very strange to Piers to stop before that door, to ring the bell, to be met by a stranger.
The neCentenaryomer seemed a decent sort, in spite of what Uncle Nicholas had said. There was something innocent-looking about him. He had a wide-awake enquiring look in his eyes. Yet there was a hard little quirk at the corner of his mouth, like a wrought-iron handle on a door.
“Ah, Mrs. Vaughan,” he said, “come in, come in. I have just been thinking of you, for I need your advice about several things.”
They warmly shook hands and Meg introduced Piers.
“It must feel wonderful to you to be at home again.” Mr. Clapperton was leading them into the room that once had been particularly Meg’s own. Now bereft of its chintz and soft cushions, it looked uncompromising. Yet it looked luxurious. Everything looked luxurious to Piers. He felt like a chessman who had been swept from the chessboard, thrown into a desolate dustbin, a rubbish heap where he had lain for years and now been somehow rescued, wiped clean, tidied up and once again placed on the board to play his part. At Jalna he could talk but here he was almost dumb. He disappointed Meg by his terse responses to Mr. Clapperton’s questions.
But Mr. Clapperton was not rebuffed. He talked on and on about greenhouses, swimming pools, sunrooms. It was very hard to get anything in the way of building done but he was satisfied to go slowly. To play with ideas delighted him — now that he had leisure for playing.
After Piers’ half-washed companions in the prison camp, Mr. Clapperton looked miraculously clean. He looked as though from birth onward he had been miraculously clean. He began to talk of the new bathroom he was installing, “For I cannot bear to share my bathroom with anyone, Mrs. Vaughan. Not even my secretary, who is quite a fastidious young man.”
In the next room a typewriter was clicking energetically.
“Oh, I can quite understand,” agreed Meg who, all her life, had been accustomed to sharing the one bathroom with the family.
“Is that your secretary typing?” asked Piers.
“Yes. That’s Sidney.”
“He’s tutoring my boy. I was at the stables this morning when he came. I haven’t met him.”
“Ah, he’s very brilliant. When the War is over and he finds his proper niche, I think he’ll make a name for himself.”
Piers gave a grunt.
“Now, Mrs. Vaughan, I want you to come outdoors and inspect some of the things I’ve planned to do on the estate.” He spoke with relish.
It was late in the May afternoon. There was an inexpressible balminess, a golden gilding in the air. Bees suddenly had become active, humming above the buttercups, lolling in the blossoms of an elm locust. Piers, staring across the fields, forgot what Meg and Mr. Clapperton were saying. His eyes rested on the hazy blue distance. Then he saw a man ploughing and two men planting trees.
“You are fortunate,” Meg was saying, “to be able to get men.”
“Veterans of the War. I pay high wages. Can you see what they are doing, Mrs. Vaughan?”
“That one is ploughing, isn’t he? But — what a long furrow!”
“It isn’t a furrow!” Mr. Clapperton chuckled. “It’s a street! I’m laying out a village. That’s the surprise I’ve hinted at. Now you see for yourself.”
“A village!” Meg was thunderstruck.
“Yes. A village!” He gave a delighted laugh. “You kn
ow how one has ideas in one’s mind — things you’d love to do, if you just had the money. Well, my idea has always been a model village. A pretty little village. A real picture village. When I retired from business — with plenty of money — I looked about me for a site. I wanted a place in the real country but not too far from the city. I must have people for my village. Well, there is a great scarcity of small houses, isn’t there? I expect to get only half a dozen built this year. But after the War it will grow like wildfire.”
“why didn’t you tell me this at the first?” Meg asked in a trembling voice.
“Because, being a business man, my dear lady, I was afraid you might raise the price. Besides which I wanted to surprise you and everyone else. Childish of me, but I’m like that.”
“Mr. Clapperton,” said Meg, “if I had known you would start a village here, I should not have raised the price of the estate, I should have refused to sell. As a matter of fact you mustn’t do it.”
“But why not?” He looked astonished and hurt.
“Because my family will never forgive you, if you do. Once my husband sold some land to a builder who intended to put up a few bungalows but my eldest brother never rested till he had put a stop to it.”
“Well, I’m afraid he’ll have to put up with my village. It’s been a dream of mine for years. Just you wait till you see it, Mrs. Vaughan. You’ll be delighted with it and so will your family. It isn’t going to be one of these ugly villages that looks like a bit of a city broken off and set down in the country. Mine will be as pretty as a picture. No two houses exactly alike. Trees along the streets. You see I’m having them planted already. And when the time comes for a gasoline station! Well, just wait till you see what Sidney and I have planned!”
“where are you going to find buyers for these houses?” asked Piers.
“I’m not going to sell. Just rent. You should see the waiting list I have, of people who want to get out into the country but still be accessible to their work. I even have a name chosen for my village. You’ll never guess.”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 408