The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche

by de la Roche, Mazo

  She had been a week at Jalna. She had, as it were, got her bearings in the household, before she approached Finch on one of the chief objects of her visit. He was alone, sunk in a deep chair in the library with a book, when she came in. She wore that marvellously well-groomed air which so attracted Ernest, so made him wish he was thirty years younger, and so irritated Nicholas. Finch gathered himself out of the chair and gave her a vague smile. He did not want to be interrupted.

  “Reading!” she exclaimed. “Then I won’t come in.” But she was in.

  He offered her a chair and a cigarette.

  “I’m glad to find you alone,” she said. “I want to talk with you.” She sat down and inhaled the smoke from her first puff.

  “Oh!” He looked enquiringly at her. He hoped she was not wanting to borrow more money from him.

  “Your uncles are safe in the drawing-room,” she said, and added with enthusiasm, “what old darlings they are!”

  “Yes.”

  “Especially your Uncle Ernest. He’s a real museum piece.”

  “I’m so used to him, you know, he doesn’t seem out-of-the-way to me.”

  “I guess that’s true.” She studied the rug for a moment of indecision and then came to the point, with dramatic emphasis. “My principal reason for making this visit is to pay my debt.”

  “Your debt,” he repeated, bewildered.

  She laughed gaily. “Certainly. My debt to you. Surely you haven’t forgotten?”

  “No, I hadn’t forgotten. You say you want to pay it?”

  “It’s about time, isn’t it?”

  He could not answer. No one who had borrowed money from him had ever paid it back. It was incredible that Rosamond Trent should. He stammered, “Well — I don’t know.”

  But obviously she was in earnest. She was taking a cheque out of the white handbag she carried, and saying, “I’ve made it out for fifteen thousand dollars. I know that the compound interest on ten thousand dollars for fifteen years would be terrific. I can’t calculate it, can you?”

  “Not possibly,” he answered, looking at the cheque she had put into his hand as though it were a viper. “You mustn’t think of such a thing.”

  “But I must pay interest.”

  “I’d forgotten all about it.”

  “I hadn’t! I’ve brooded on it. All through the depression, all through my financial recovery, I’ve brooded on it. When I knew you were married to a rich wife, I didn’t worry so much but, when I heard you were divorced, I’d wake in the middle of the night and think, ‘That poor boy is wanting his money!’ Of course, I know you are making enormous sums by your recitals but — a debt is a debt and, if you’re anything like I am, you like people to pay you what they owe you.”

  “I wasn’t worrying.”

  “But I was! And now — after all these years — I can breathe freely again.” She drew a deep breath to prove it, her beautifully controlled body gallantly responding.

  “I don’t want interest.”

  “Nonsense! Interest is due and must be paid. Remember you have a child to bring up. He’s lovely. I wish he was mine.”

  Finch pocketed the cheque, very pleased to have it, yet somehow very uncomfortable in accepting it.

  Ernest appeared in the doorway. He said, “Do come and talk to Nicholas and me. We’re dreadfully bored by each other. If you don’t come soon we shall be driven to quarrel.”

  Finch was glad to escape from the somewhat embarrassing situation. He was glad to have the unexpected cheque but found it difficult to accept. The debt was too old, its payment like a too extravagant present. Rosamond Trent, on the contrary, sprang up with buoyancy, taking Ernest’s arm and walking him back to the drawing-room at a quick pace. Rags had just brought in a pot of chocolate and a plate of biscuits. Nicholas, of late, ate lightly at table and grew hungry between meals. The mid-morning chocolate and biscuits were very pleasant to him, though he found the quality of the biscuits very inferior to those of years past.

  “what’s the matter with food?” he demanded. “Can you tell me, Miss Trent?”

  He offered her chocolate and biscuits which she accepted, saying, “I shouldn’t. I’m putting on weight. But I can’t resist. I’ve been hungry ever since I came to Jalna.”

  “Now,” said Nicholas, peremptorily, “tell me what you think of that biscuit.”

  “It’s very nice.”

  “Nice! It’s no better than a mixture of flannel and starch soaked in water. We used to make good biscuits in this country but the makers have learned that the public will pay just as much for a poor quality of food as a good — and like it!” He thrust a biscuit under his shaggy moustache and washed it down with a large mouthful of chocolate. For a moment he could not speak, then he continued, “We used to make biscuits almost as good as English biscuits. Now look what we have, and the makers have the cheek to advertise them as “English Style Biscuits” — whatever that may mean.”

  “It’s just too bad,” said Miss Trent, critically biting into another biscuit.

  “And bread,” went on Nicholas. “The baker’s bread is uneatable, yet the advertisements are full of drivel about its excellence. Thank God, Mrs. Wragge can make good bread.”

  “It’s delicious,” agreed Miss Trent. She loved to hear Nicholas go on like this.

  “Baker’s bread,” he continued, working himself up, “has no crust. The bread is made to suit the people of today. They’re too lazy to chew. When they are as old as I am they won’t have any teeth. I have twelve. Seven upper — five lower.” He dipped a biscuit in his chocolate.

  “when we were children,” put in Ernest, “and were hungry between meals, we were given hard crusts of delicious fresh homemade bread, with butter and brown sugar on them.”

  “And the sugar was brown,” added his brother. “Dark brown, with what a flavour! Not the tasteless yellowish stuff that is called brown today.”

  “Then there is the fruit,” said Ernest. “what a difference in the fruit!”

  Nicholas blew out his breath in contempt. He said, “The new generation have never tasted a good banana and never will. Fifty years ago we ate only the large red banana, rich, mellow, really good. Then came the yellow banana, not so good but still eatable. Now we have the green banana that rots before it ripens.”

  “And the peaches,” almost chanted Ernest, “with their crimson cheeks, their golden flesh! Now the wretched under-ripe fruit is covered by red netting to make it appear ripe.”

  “The variety is no good to begin with,” growled Nicholas. “The growers discovered coarse-grained varieties that ship well, and the good old kinds are pushed off the market.”

  Ernest chimed in, “Piers tells me he can’t sell our little snow apples. I don’t suppose you ever tasted a snow apple till you came to Jalna, Miss Trent.”

  “No — and I adore them.”

  Nicholas fixed accusing eyes on her. “You adore them! Yet it is you Americans who have taught us all these tricks.”

  Ernest gave him a warning look.

  Nicholas chuckled and added, “I confess there never were apter pupils.”

  “I’m afraid we started it,” agreed Miss Trent, smiling.

  “Of course, you did,” said Nicholas. “You can’t deny that.” He heaved himself about in his chair and glared at her. “You have taught us to call our soldiers boys. We used to call ’em men. You’ve taught our boys to call their sweethearts babies, to call their pals buddies, to call their dogs pups! Younger and younger! More and more inane.”

  “I agree with all you say,” she patted his arm comfortingly.

  “That’s handsome of you. Still, I’m ninety and have a right to say what I think.”

  “At this minute,” she said, “you don’t appear a day past seventy.”

  “Ha, and what of that old fellow?” He pointed with the stem of his pipe at his brother.

  “Sixty-five!” she declared.

  Ernest was pleased. In truth, with his pink complexion and blue eyes
, he looked many years younger than his age.

  “Boys — buddies — babies — pups,” growled Nicholas. “Bah, it’s sickening!” Still with his pipe he pointed at the radio. “Take that thing,” he said, “can one get any pleasure out of it nowadays? No. Two-thirds of it is advertising, the other third flaccid sentimentality. And the songs!” He could not continue for the disgust that made his utterance unintelligible.

  Ernest continued for him. “They have revived the word ballad,” he said, “which once conjured up the thought of a charming old song. But I always say that the ballads sung over the radio are composed by the illiterate, sung by the illiterate, for the pleasure of the illiterate.”

  Nicholas had got control of his voice. “Crooners!” he growled. “Just enough vitality to crawl to the microphone and be sick into it.”

  “Nick!” reproved Ernest. “Remember that Miss Trent is here.”

  “I don’t mind,” she laughed gaily. “I feel just the same.”

  “But you Americans invented it.”

  “We invented a good many things that have got out of control.”

  “Then you ought to be ashamed,” Nicholas returned brusquely.

  “Let us talk of the opera,” said Ernest, soothingly. “I think the Metropolitan opera is splendid.”

  “I like light opera.” Nicholas lighted his pipe and drew on it with some placidity. “I like Gilbert and Sullivan. Do you have Gilbert and Sullivan down there?”

  “Do we! I guess there isn’t a country in the world where their operas are presented so often. I just wish you could have seen the jazzed-up version of the Mikado at the World’s Fair. It was the funniest show you can imagine. Now we have two versions of Pinafore running on Broadway. One is a Negro version. The other is called Hollywood Pinafore. It’s terribly clever.”

  As these words fell from Miss Trent’s lips, Nicholas’ pipe fell from his, into his shaking hand. His jaw dropped.

  “Is there no law against it?” he demanded.

  She stared. “Against what?”

  “Such — sacrilege? The Mikado jazzed up! Pinafore done by Negroes! A Hollywood Pinafore!”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so. Don’t you like the idea? That’s too bad. I’m sorry I told you.”

  He returned sonorously, “Like it? Like it? There ought to be a law against it. There ought to be a law prohibiting any but the English from doing Gilbert and Sullivan. They are the only people with the voices, the personalities, to present them properly.”

  Nicholas took a large silk handkerchief from his pocket and, spreading it over his face, laid his leonine head against the back of his chair.

  “I’m sorry to appear unsociable,” he said, “but I’m an old man and I need a little nap. Please excuse me.” A moment later a bubbling snore fluttered the handkerchief against his moustache.

  “I must apologize for him,” said Ernest, colouring, “but I’m afraid I agree with him.”

  Outside, in the hall, Finch said to Rosamond Trent:

  “You mustn’t mind what my uncles say. They find some of these changes hard to bear. They think they’re changes for the worse.”

  Her handsome face lighted with a good-natured smile. “One thing is certain,” she said. “I wouldn’t have those old dears changed. They’re perfect as they are.”

  “As for that loan,” he continued, “you should not have paid all that interest on it. In fact, I’d forgotten all about it.”

  She threw both arms about him and gave him a hearty hug. “My only fear is,” she said, “that I have not given you enough.”

  When they separated a few minutes later Finch went straight out of doors. He felt extraordinarily young and carefree. There was a high, pale-blue sky, a piercingly fresh wind with the dampness of melting snow in it. The thin layer of snow that accented the irregularities of the ground, soon would disappear. The red berries on the barberry bushes shone out. The sound of horses’ hooves came sharply from the road. Finch swung his arm like a flail and ran down the drive, the wind blowing through his hair. His eldest brother, on horseback, was trotting in at the gate.

  “Hullo,” he exclaimed, as he saw Finch. “You look nice and sportive.”

  “You’d feel sportive too,” laughed Finch, “if you’d just had happen to you what I have.”

  Renny drew rein. “Tell me,” he said. “what was it?”

  Finch caressed the smooth shining leather of Renny’s leggings. “Rosamond Trent has just paid me the ten thousand dollars she borrowed from me — with five thousand dollars interest.”

  “The hell she has!” Renny’s hard features broke into an expression of complete astonishment. “How splendid! You are in luck.”

  “I never was so surprised. I’d long ago given up any hope of the debt being paid. But just now she took a cheque for fifteen thousand dollars out of her handbag and simply forced it on me.”

  “Forced it on you! You aren’t telling me that you had to be forced to accept it, are you?”

  “Well, not exactly forced, still — it was embarrassing.”

  “I should think the embarrassment would have been on her side. What are you going to do with it?” He looked down into Finch’s face with a genial smile.

  Finch gave a little laugh. “Oh, I shall find lots to do with it.”

  “You’ll not need to save it for your boy. He will have as much as is good for him.”

  Now Finch was stroking the mare’s muscular chestnut neck. He said, hesitatingly, “You know, Renny, I’m not altogether happy in the life of a pianist.”

  Rennys smile took on a sardonic gleam. “I don’t know what you could do,” he said, “that would make you happy. You’re just not the happy sort.”

  “I suppose I’m not. But — I want to see — to experience a different sort of life. I’m not ambitious.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that.”

  “I think I’ve worked damned hard,” exclaimed Finch hotly.

  “Of course, you have. What you mean is, you’re not particularly ambitious to be rich or famous.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Renny. “You want to enjoy life. Not be a slave to your profession.”

  “Yes. I’ll just invest this money till I need it.”

  “Good. What shall you invest it in?”

  “I haven’t thought about that. I haven’t had time.”

  His elder brother looked down at him speculatively. “You must be cautious.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  “No lending it to an irresponsible person.”

  “No, no. I’ll put it into some sound stocks.”

  “It’s hard to tell,” said Renny, combing the mare’s mane with his fingers, “just what stocks are sound.”

  “I suppose so — in times like these.”

  Renny regarded him almost tenderly, then he said:

  “If I were you, I’d invest it in Jalna.”

  “In Jalna?”

  “why not? You couldn’t make a better investment.”

  “But Renny — just what do you mean?”

  “I mean that the stables have got run down during the war. They need building up. I mean that there is going to be a lot of money in horses when the war is over — as it will be in a few months. If I had fifteen thousand dollars now, I could double it — there is no knowing what I could do with it.”

  “Well — but what,” stammered Finch “— just what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to invest this little windfall to the best advantage, to yourself and to Jalna. Come along to my office and I’ll tell you exactly what I have in mind. You’ll catch a cold standing here.”

  The mare had grown impatient. The gravel showed a groove where her hoof had pawed it. Now Renny let her go at a gallop toward the stables. Finch stood looking after them. He remembered all that Renny had been through. And now he was apparently as well as ever, able to gallop off on a new quest, as though he never had had a care in the world. Well, there was no reason,
thought Finch, why he too couldn’t be carefree. He had nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing in the world to worry him, except that his feet were cold as ice. Again swinging his arm like a flail, he set off after horse and rider, at a jog trot.

  XXXIII

  INTO THE YEAR NINETEEN FORTY-FIVE

  ALAYNE SHOULD HAVE felt happy with Renny restored to her, not only in the flesh but in soundness of spirit. What had happened to her that she was not happy? she asked herself. Was the power of happiness atrophied in her by long disuse during five years of war, to say nothing of the harassment of the theft? Was her spirit no longer flexible enough to resume the shape of happiness? She could feel sudden joy — could experience an hour’s content. But happiness was a different thing. It came as easily as breathing to the children, when all went well with them, but was hurled aside on the slightest provocation of anger or discipline — to be as easily resumed. The two old men were better at it than she, Alayne thought. Morning after morning they came downstairs cheerful after a night’s sleep. The dark days of early winter did not depress them. They listened with rapt interest to every detail of Renny’s plans for improving the stables in the following spring. They accepted the loan to Renny of the fifteen thousand dollars, as an excellent thing. It filled Alayne with a kind of shamed anger, for even though Finch were paid a high interest on the money, she did not believe the principal would ever be repaid. She was ashamed for Renny who, with this money in his pocket, showed a hardy forgetfulness of everything but the pleasure of spending it. It was hard for Alayne to forgive him for not telling her of the presence of Finch’s child in the house, before the child was put in her arms to embrace. There had been something callous in that, she felt, and she realized afresh how impossible it was for them to look at any event from the same point of view. She could not even guess what his point of view would be, except to be certain it would be different from hers.