08 Whiteoaks of Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  “It’s nothing. I wish I had our own doctor to see him. This man may be an alarmist.”

  “I don’t know. I hope so. He says that he must have the very best care.”

  “We must take him home… What does Alayne think of this?”

  “She’s terribly upset, naturally. She’s shocked. There’s no hatred in her toward Eden. She thinks that he simply can’t help being what he is. Unfaithful. I agree, too. What do you think?”

  “I think he’s a damned nuisance. All these brothers of mine are.” He turned his incisive gaze suddenly on Finch. “I hope you’re going to behave yourself, now,” he said.

  Finch pulled at his underlip.

  “Are you?”

  “H’m-h’m.”

  Ernest put in: “It’s God’s mercy that the boy ran away. We should never have heard of Eden till too late.”

  Both men stared at Finch. He writhed inwardly, not knowing whether he was being commended or jeered at.

  Ernest continued: “Alayne had got him quite a decent position in a publishing house, as costing clerk. I saw this Mr. Cory and got him to let him off at once. I had to have his help with Eden. I couldn’t be alone here, not knowing what might happen. I little thought, when I left home, the time I’d have.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing he’s been of some use,” replied Renny. “Now, you’d better take me in to Eden.”

  Eden was propped up in bed, not seeming so ill as Renny had expected until he had taken the hot dry hand and felt the thinness of it, noticed the sharp outline of the limbs under the coverings.

  Renny seated himself on the side of the bed and surveyed his brother. “You have got yourself into a pretty state, haven’t you?”

  Eden had been told that Renny was coming, but it seemed too unreal to see his family thus gathering about him. It frightened him. Was he so dreadfully ill? He withdrew his hand quickly from Renny’s and raised himself in the bed. He said, excitedly: “I don’t like this at all! What in hell’s the matter? Does that doctor say I’m going to die?”

  “I haven’t been told anything of the sort,” returned Renny, with composure. “Uncle Ernest wired me that he had come across you, and that you were on the rocks. Well, you are, aren’t you? What are you getting up in the air about?”

  Sweat stood on Eden’s forehead. “He wired you! Show me the telegram!”

  “I can’t. It’s at home. For heaven’s sake, keep your hair on! You don’t feel like dying, I suppose?” He grinned as he asked the question, but he was filled by a great anxiety. All that was sturdy in him rushed out toward Eden to protect him.

  “Tell me what he said! Had he seen the doctor yet?” He dropped back on the pillow. “Never mind. You wouldn’t tell me the truth.”

  “I’m going to take you home.”

  Eden’s agitation had subsided. He stared at his brother hungrily. “God, it looks good to see you sitting there! But I wish you’d take a chair! You make the bed sag. You’re no featherweight, Renny… Look at my arm.” He thrust it out from the sleeve, thin, dead-white, blue-veined. Renny scowled at it.

  He got up, dragged a chair to one side of the bed and reseated himself.

  “I can’t think how you got yourself into such a state. You don’t look as though you’d had enough to eat. Why haven’t you sent to me for money?”

  “Should you have sent it?”

  “You know I should.”

  “And now you want to take me home?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Good old patriarch! The two lost lambs. Young Finch and I… But what about Piers? He’d not stand for that. God, I should like to see his face if it were suggested!”

  “I did see it. I told him I might fetch you if you were fit to travel.”

  Eden laughed, suddenly and maliciously. “Poor Piers! What did he say? That he’d poison all his pigs and then take a dose himself?”

  “No,” Renny returned, sternly. “He remarked that you were a waster and always would be. He said that if you were coming home to—to—”

  “To die… Go on.”

  “That he’d take Pheasant away till it was over.”

  Again Eden was moved to mirth, but this time there was an hysterical note in it.

  “It’s a good thing you’re amused,” Renny observed calmly. “I should say that the joke is on you.” He thought: “I wish I knew what is in the bottom of his mind. I wish I knew what he’s been up to the past year.”

  But Eden’s laughter brought on a fit of coughing. Renny watched him, his hard, thin frame tense with misery. “Can I do anything?” he entreated.

  Eden raised his head, which he had buried in the pillow. His hair was plastered in damp locks on his forehead, his face flushed crimson.

  “Look here, Renny.”

  “Yes.”

  “My mother died of lung trouble, didn’t she?”

  “The doctor called it that, but I think she simply pined away after Wake’s birth. Father’s death was hard on her.”

  “That’s the way I’ll go!”

  “You’ve not been having a posthumous baby.”

  “Might that bring it on, do you think?”

  “If a woman were inclined that way”

  “Well, I’m free from that cause.”

  “But perhaps you’ve been begetting one!”

  “If I have, it will be posthumous, poor little devil.”

  “If you are determined to look on the black side of this trouble, you’ll die and no mistake,” declared Renny, emphatically. “Buck up! Be a man! I’m going to take you home. You’ll get good care—the best care—”

  “Who will take care of me?”

  “A nurse, I suppose.”

  Eden answered, hoarsely vehement: “Like hell she will! I tell you, I hate women! I won’t have a nurse about me. I loathe them—starchy flat-footed, hard-eyed—I’ll not go home if you make me have a nurse! I’ll die first!”

  Ernest, his face puckered by anxiety, came into the sickroom. Finch, drawn by morbid curiosity, slunk after him.

  Ernest said, reproachfully: “This will never do. The doctor says he must be kept quiet. I don’t think you realize how ill he is, Renny.” He poured something into a glass and brought it to Eden.

  Renny regarded the proceeding with intense irritation and concern. He remarked: “I realize that he’s making this affair as difficult as possible.”

  Ernest, looking down his nose, smoothed Eden’s pillow.

  “Perhaps you expect Uncle Ernie to nurse you,” observed Renny, sarcastically.

  Finch guffawed.

  Renny wheeled on him. “What—” he began. “What—”

  “Let the lad be,” said Ernest. “Finch, my boy, take the hot-water bottle and fill it.”

  Eden did not want the hot-water bottle, but he pretended that he did, since the need of it made him appear rather more ill-used. Finch, with Renny’s eye on him, slunk out with the bottle.

  “I’ll die before I’ll have a nurse,” Eden persisted, in a weak voice, after a silence broken only by the running of a tap.

  The hot-water bottle was put in with him. Ernest patted his back, and said: “If it were not for Meggie’s baby, she would be the very one! She would be perfect. She is almost perfect in every way.”

  “Yes,” agreed Renny. “She is.”

  “Couldn’t she get someone to look after the kid?” asked Eden.

  “She has a sort of companion, but she’d never trust it to her entirely. She’s a perfect mother.” After a little he continued, hesitatingly: “Do you know, I have an idea. It may not be feasible, but”—he looked from one to the other—“but the whole affair is so unusual…”

  “What is your idea?” asked Renny.

  “Oh, I’m afraid it would be impossible. We’d better not discuss it. We had better think of someone possible… Eden, if the thought of a trained nurse is so intolerable to you, how would it do if we engaged some elderly woman who has had experience—”

  “I saw one on
the street!” interrupted Eden. “Wonderful old body! Tatters, and a face like one of the Fates.”

  Renny asked of Ernest: “Do you think he’s a little light in his head?”

  Finch gave a muffled snort of laughter.

  “Not at all,” said Ernest. “You don’t understand him, that is all… Now the person I have in mind is Mrs. Patch. She is reliable. She has had experience in nursing—”

  Finch, unable to stop himself, interjected: “She ought to do. She’s buried three of her own with T.B.”

  “Finch,” said his uncle, sternly, “that remark was in very bad taste. I’m surprised at you!”

  “Don’t mind me,” said Eden, faintly smiling. “Only please tell me about this idea of yours. Whom had you in mind?”

  Ernest answered, looking, not at him, but at Renny: “I was wondering whether Alayne might be persuaded to nurse him.”

  This sudden mention of her name seemed to conjure Alayne’s bodily presence before the occupants of the room. A subtle embarrassment dimmed their vision of each other. Ernest, after uttering the words, was moved to wish that he could recall them. They had seemed to him to besmirch her present aloofness, to drag her again into the shame and darkness of her last days at Jalna. He looked rather pathetically into the faces of his nephews, seeing each in his relation to those days.

  Renny, experiencing a feeling of shock by the proposal, stared at Eden lying on the bed, dishevelled, ill, beautiful. He saw him as again the possessor of Alayne. He felt in himself the pain for something he could never possess. No, she must not do such a thing. It would be cruel to ask her, and yet… if she could bring herself to do it… he thought of her as standing reluctant in the room, midway between himself and Eden…

  “She’s not quite a saint,” he said.

  Finch, crouching in a big chair, twisted his fingers together. Figures in a dream, that was what they were—gesticulating, hiding their troubled eyes, disappearing, reappearing, beckoning one who had eluded them to return, seeking to draw her again into the circle. Again, in spite of himself, he spoke. “Do women,” he asked, “ever take a man back after a thing like that?”

  His brothers regarded him in silence, too astounded to speak. It was Ernest’s mellow voice that answered.

  “Many a woman has taken a man back to her bed after such an escapade… I was only suggesting that if Alayne could be persuaded to return to Jalna with us—to help look after Eden—how splendid it would be… I was thinking of her hands. They’re so cool, so capable.”

  “You must think she’s without character,” said Renny.

  “Not at all! I think she has great strength of character, or I should not suggest such a thing… She’s sick and tired of her life as it is. If she should return to Jalna she might never leave it again. Mama is really too much for Augusta.”

  Renny turned to Eden. “What do you think? Should you like Alayne to nurse you?”

  Eden rolled over, hiding his face in the pillow.

  Finch exclaimed: “He doesn’t want her! He doesn’t want her!” He could not bear the idea of Alayne’s being drawn again into Jalna, as into a whirlpool in which she would be sucked under.

  “Let him be,” said his uncle. “Let him have time to think.”

  The three sat with their eyes on the hunched-up figure on the bed. In and out, through the mazes of their thoughts, the shape of Alayne moved, in a kind of mystic dance. The roar of traffic from below rose as a wall around them.

  At last Eden rolled over and faced them. “I give you my word,” he said, “that unless Alayne comes to help me get well, I shall die.” His eyes were challenging, his mouth feverish.

  Finch said over and over again to himself: “It’s a shame— a shame to ask her.”

  “You are the one to ask her,” said Ernest to Renny “You must see her at once.”

  “How soon can he travel?”

  “In a few days.”

  “I think you are the one to ask her. You’ve been talking to her.”

  “No—no. It must be you, Renny.”

  “I will bring her here, and he shall ask her himself.”

  “I am afraid it will upset him.”

  “I’ll prepare her, but he must do the asking.”

  “Very well,” said Eden. “Bring her here to see me. She can’t refuse that.”

  Renny’s feelings, as he stood waiting for Alayne to answer her door, were a strange mixture. He had a disheartened, hangdog feeling at being forced, through his solicitude for Eden, to come on such an errand. He had scarcely slept for two nights. In a city he was miserable as a wild animal trapped. Yet stirring all through him was a ruthless exhilaration at the thought of once more becoming a moving force in Alayne’s life, in tearing her from her security and exposing her to the tyranny of passons and desires which she had thought to set aside.

  As she stood before him, his thought was that she was in no way striking, as he had pictured her in his fancy. She was less tall, her hair was a paler gold, her eyes more grey than blue, her lips closed in a colder line. Yet, his reaction to this meeting was greater than he had expected. He felt a magnetic fervour coursing in his blood as his hand held hers. He wondered if this were palpable to her. If it were, he marvelled at her selfcontrol.

  Alayne’s sensations were the very reverse of his. Standing before her in the flesh, his characteristics were even more intense than in her memory. He was taller, more incisive, his eyes more burning, his nose larger, more arrogantly curved at the nostrils. Inversely, his effect on her was less profound than she had feared. She was like a swimmer who, dreading the force of the current, finds himself unexpectedly able to breast it. She felt that since she had last seen him she had gained in self-confidence and maturity.

  With the conflict of these undiscovered emotions surging between them, they entered the living room.

  He said: “One after another we are appearing. Only wait and you shall have Gran at your door with Boney on her shoulder.”

  She gave a little laugh, and then said, gravely: “But it is too bad that it is trouble that brings you.”

  “Yes,” He looked at her shrewdly. “You know how serious Eden’s condition is?”

  “I have talked about it with your uncle.” Her face was quite calm.

  He said, his eyes devouring her: “God, it seems strange to see you!”

  “And you!”

  “Has the time seemed long or short to you?”

  “Very long.”

  “Short to me. Gone like the wind.”

  “Ah, well, you have your horses, your dogs, your family. I am rather a lonely person.”

  “But you’re busy” He glanced at the books on the writing-table.

  She gave a little shrug, and then said: “I am afraid I think too much and take too little exercise.”

  “You should have more exercise. I do my best thinking on horseback. Do you remember our rides together? You thought I was a stern riding-master, didn’t you?”

  “Our rides together,” she murmured, and in a flash saw herself and Renny galloping along the lakeshore, heard the mad thud of hoofs, the strain of leather, saw again the shining, flying manes. Her breath came quickly, as though she had indeed been riding. “How is Letty?” she asked. Letty was the mare she had ridden.

  “Beautiful as ever. Ready—waiting for you to ride her again.”

  “I’m afraid I shall never do that,” she said, in a low voice.

  “Aren’t you ever coming to visit us?”

  “Renny,” she said with sudden passion, “we said goodbye on that last night. You should not have come here to see me.”

  “Have I disturbed you?” he asked. “You look cool enough in all conscience.”

  “That is what I wish to be. I—I want to forget the past.”

  He spoke soothingly, as to a nervous horse. “Of course. Of course. That’s right, too. I should never have come if I weren’t so worried about Eden.”

  She opened her eyes wide. “I cannot do anything for Eden,” sh
e said, abruptly.

  “Not come to see him?”

  “Go to see Eden! I could not possibly. Why should I?”

  “When you have seen him you won’t ask that question. He’s a sick man. I don’t believe he’ll get over this. His mother went in consumption, you know.”

  Consumption! They would still call it that at Jalna. What a terrible word!

  “I am the last person Eden would want to see.”

  “You’re mistaken. He’s terribly keen to see you.”

  “But why?”

  “There’s no accounting for the desires of anyone as ill as Eden. Possibly he has something to say to you that he thinks is important.”

  “That is what has brought you here?”

  “Yes.”

  A flash of bitter disappointment pierced her. He had not sought her out because he must set eyes on her, but for Eden’s sake. She said: “I cannot see him.”

  “Oh, but I think you will. You couldn’t refuse.”

  He sat doggedly smoking, endeavouring to override her opposition, she felt, by his taciturn tyranny.

  She murmured: “It will be a difficult scene for me.”

  He replied: “There will not necessarily be a scene. Why should women always expect scenes?”

  “Perhaps I learned to expect them in your family,” she retorted.

  He showed his teeth in the Court grin, which, subsiding, left his face again dogged.

  “You will come, Alayne,” he said. “You can scarcely refuse to see him for five minutes.”

  “Do you know,” she said, “I believe I guess what he wants. He is frightened about himself and he wants me to look after him—nurse him back to health!”

  “That may be,” Renny replied, imperturbably. “At all events he absolutely refuses to have a trained nurse. I don’t know how Aunt Augusta and Mrs. Wragge will make out with him. Uncle Ernest suggested old Mrs. Patch, and Finch said at once that she ought to know something of nursing consumption, as she had buried three of her own with it!”

  He looked shrewdly into her eyes to read the effect of his words there, and saw dismay, even horror.

  “Mrs. Wragge—Mrs. Patch,” she repeated. “They would be the end of him!” Her mind flew to the scene of Jalna. She saw Eden, beautiful Eden, lying on a bed, neglected by Mrs. Wragge or Mrs. Patch. Another thought struck her. “He should not be in the house with the boys—Wakefield, Finch. It would be dangerous.”