Jalna (1927)/Chapter 19
The books from New York were held up at the custom-house in the city. The day when the official card arrived informing Alayne of this, the country was so submerged in cold November rain that a trip into town to get them seemed impossible. Alayne, with the despair of a disappointed child, wandered about the house, looking out of first one window and then another, gazing in helpless nostalgia at dripping hemlocks like funeral plumes, then at the meadows where the sheep huddled, next at the blurred wood that dipped to the wet ravine, and last, from a window in the back hall, on to the old brick oven and the clothes-drier and a flock of draggled, rowdy ducks. She thought of New York and her life there, of her little apartment, of the publishing house of Cory and Parsons, the reception room, the offices, the packing rooms. It all seemed like a dream. The streets with their cosmopolitan throngs, faces seen and instantly lost, faces seen more closely and remembered for a few hours, the splendid and terrible onward sweep of it. The image of every face here was bitten into her memory, even the faces of the farm laborers, of Rags, of the grocer's boy, and the fishmonger.
How quiet Jalna could be! It lay under a spell of silence, sometimes for hours. Now, in the hall, the only sound was the steady licking of a sore paw by the old sheep dog, and the far-away rattle of coals in the basement below. What did the Wragges do down there in the dim half light? Quarrel, recriminate, make it up? Alayne had seen Rags, a moment ago, glide through the hall and up the stairs with a tray to Meg's room. Oh, that endless procession of little lunches! Why could not the woman eat a decent meal at the table? Why this air of stale mystery? Why this turgid storing up behind all these closed doors? Grandmother: Boney—India—crinolines—scandal—Captain Whiteoak. Nicholas: Nip—London—whisky—Millicent—gout. Ernest: Sasha—Shakespeare—old days at Oxford—debts. Meggie: broken hearts—bastards—little lunches—cozy plumpness.
And all the rest of them, getting their rooms ready for their old age—stuffy nests where they would sit and sit under the leaky roof of Jalna till at last it would crash in on them and obliterate them.
She must get Eden away from here before the sinister spell of the house caught them and held them for ever. She would buy a house with her own money, and still have enough left to keep them for a year or two, until he could make a living from his pen. She would not have him tortured by uncongenial work. Above all, she must not be in the house with Renny Whiteoak. She no longer concealed from herself the fact that she loved him. She loved him as she had never loved Eden—as she had not known that she was capable of loving any one. A glimpse of him on his bony gray mare would make her forget whatever she was doing. His presence in the dining room or drawing-room was so disturbing to her that she began to think of her feelings as dangerously unmanageable.
The clock struck two. The day was only half gone, and already it seemed as long as any day should be. The rain was now descending tumultuously. How such a rain would bounce again from the pavement in New York! Here it drove in unbroken shining strands like the quivering strings of an instrument. A stableman with a rubber cape thrown over his head came running across the yard, frightening the ducks, and clattered down the steps into the basement. A moment later Mrs. Wragge laboriously climbed the stairs from her domain and appeared in the hall.
"Please, Mrs. Whiteoak," she said, "Mr. Renny 'as sent word from the stables as 'e's goin' into town by motor this afternoon and if you'll send the card from the customs back by Wright, he says, he'll get them books from the States. Or was it boots? Bless me, I've gone and forgot. And there's nothink throws 'im into a stew like a herror in a message."
"It was books," said Alayne. "I will run up to my room and find the notice. Just come to the foot of the stairs and I'll throw it down to you."
The thought of having the books that evening exhilarated her. She flew up the stairs.
Eden was not writing as she expected but emptying the books out of the secretary and piling them on the bed.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "See what a mess I'm in. I'm turning out all these old books. There are dozens and dozens I never look at. Taking up room. Old novels. Old Arabian Nights. Even old schoolbooks. And Boys' Own. Wake may have those."
What a state the bed was in!
"Eden, are you sure they are not dusty?"
"Dusty! I'll bet they haven't been dusted for five years. Look at my hands."
"Oh dear! Well, never mind. Renny's motoring into town and he will get the books from the customs. Oh, wherever is that card? I know I left it on the desk, and you have heaped books all over it. Really, Eden, you are the most untidy being I have ever known." They argued, searching for the card, which was at last unearthed in the waste-paper basket. In the meantime the car had arrived at the door, and Mrs. Wragge was panting up the stairs with another message.
"'E says 'e's late already, 'm, and will you please send the card. He says it's not half bad out, if you'd like a ride to town. But indeed, 'm, I shouldn't go if I was you, for Mr. Renny, he drives like all possessed, and the 'ighway will be like treacle."
"Great idea," cried Eden. "We'll both go. Eh, Alayne? It'll do us good. I've been working like the devil. I can stir up Evans about the job, and you can do a little shopping. We'll have tea at The George and be home in time for supper. Will you do it, Alayne?"
Alayne would. Anything to be free for a few hours from the cramped and stubborn air of Jalna. Mrs. Wragge panted downstairs with the message.
Alayne had never in her life before gone away leaving her room in such disorder. Impossible to keep even a semblance of order in the place where Eden worked. When they were in their own house, oh, the little cool mauve-and-yellow room she would have for her own!
If Renny were disappointed at the appearance of Eden he did not show it. Husband and wife clambered, rain-coated, into the back seats under the dripping curtains. The wet boughs of the hemlocks swept the windows as they slid along the drive.
It was true that the master of Jalna drove "like all possessed." The highway was almost deserted. Like a taut wet ribbon it stretched before them: to their left, alternate sodden woods, fields, and blurred outlines of villages; to their right, the gray expanse of the inland sea, and already, on a sandy point, a lighthouse sending its solitary beam into the mist.
Alayne was set down before a shop. "Are you sure you've plenty of money, dear?" and a half-suppressed grin from Renny. Eden was taken to the custom-house, and then the elder Whiteoak went about his own strange business among legginged, swearing hostlers, and moist smelling straw, and beautiful, satin-coated creatures who bit their mangers and stamped in excess of boredom.
Alayne bought a bright French scarf to send to Rosamund Trent, "just to show her that we have some pretty things up here," two new shirts for Eden,—a surprise,—a box of sweets for Gran, another, richer, larger one for the family, a brilliant smock that she could not resist for Pheasant, and some stout woollen stockings for herself.
She found Eden and Renny waiting for her in the lobby of an upstairs tea-room. They chose a table near the crackling fire. In a corner on the floor Eden heaped Alayne's purchases on top of the package of books. There were quite eight books in the packet, he informed her, and he had had the devil's own time getting them out of the customs. They had been mislaid and it had taken six clerks to find them. Alayne's eyes gloated over them as they lay there. While they waited for their order, she told what she had bought and for whom—except the shirts, which were to be a surprise.
"And nothing for me?" pleaded Eden, trying to take her foot between his thick-soled boots.
"Wait and see." She sent a warm bright look toward him, trying to avoid Renny's dark gaze.
"Nor me?" he asked.
"Ha," said Eden, "there's nothing for you." And he pressed Alayne's foot.
"My God," he continued, as the waitress appeared with the tray, "the man has ordered poached eggs! Why didn't I?"
He looked enviously for a moment on the two harvest moons that lay on buttered toast before his brother, and then attacked his Sally Lunn and raspberry jam.
"What is that you have?" asked Renny, looking down his nose at Alayne's cake and ice-cream.
"You seem to forget," she replied, "that I am an American, and that I haven't tasted our national sweet for months."
"I wish you would let me order an egg for you," he returned, seriously. "It would be much more staying."
Eden interrupted: "Do you know, brother Renny, you smell most horribly horsey?"
"No wonder. I've been embracing the sweetest filly you ever saw. She's going to be mine, too. What a neck! What flanks! And a hide like brown satin." He stopped dipping a strip of toast into the yolk of an egg to gaze ecstatically into space.
Alayne gave way. She stared at him, drank in the sight of the firelight on his carved, weather-beaten face, lost herself in the depths of his unseeing eyes.
"Always horses, never girls," Eden was saying rather thickly, through jam. "I believe you dream o' nights of a wild mane whipping your face, and a pair of dainty hoofs pawing your chest. What a bedfellow, eh, brother Renny?" His tone was affectionate and yet touched by the patronage of the intellectual toward the man who is interested only in active pursuits.
"I can think of worse," said Renny, grinning.
Safe from the wind and rain, the three talked, laughed, and poured amber cups of tea from fat green pots. Golden beads of butter oozed through the pores of toasted Sally Lunns and dimpled on little green plates. Plump currants tumbled from slices of fruit-cake; and Alayne gave her share of icing to Eden. A pleasant hum of careless chatter buzzed around them.
"By the way," said Eden, "Evans wants me to stop in town all night. There is a man named Brown he wants me to meet."
"Anything doing yet?" asked Renny.
Eden shook his head. "Everything here is dead in a business way. The offices positively smell mouldy. But Evans says there's bound to be a tremendous improvement in the spring."
"Why?" asked Alayne.
"I really don't know. Evans didn't say. But these fellows have ways of telling."
"Oh, yes," agreed Renny, solemnly. "They know."
"Little boys," thought Alayne, "that's what they are, nothing but little boys where business—city business—is concerned. Believing just what they're told. No initiative. I know five times as much about business as they."
"So," went on Eden, "if you don't mind trusting yourself to Renny, old lady, I'll stop the night here and see this man. You'll just have to chuck those books back into the bookcase, and I'll look after them to-morrow. Too bad I left them all over the place."
"Oh, I'll manage." But she thought: "He doesn't care. He knows I shall have to handle a hundred dusty books, that the bed is all upset, they are even on the chairs and dresser, and he'll never give it a second thought. He's selfish. He's as self-centred as a cat. Like a lithe, golden, tortoise-shell cat; and Renny's like a fox; and their grandmother is an old parrot; and Meggie is another cat, the soft purry kind that is especially wicked and playful with a bird; and Ernest and Nicholas are two old owls; and Finch a clumsy half-grown lamb—what a menagerie at Jalna!"
As Eden was putting her into the car he whispered: "Our first night apart. I wonder if we'll be able to sleep."
"It will seem strange," she returned.
He pushed his head and shoulders into the dimness inside and kissed her. The rain was slashing against the car. Her parcels were heaped on the seat beside her.
"Keep the rug about you. Are you warm? Now your little paw." He cuddled it against his cheek. "Perhaps you would sooner have sat in the front seat with Renny." She shook her head and he slammed the door, just as the car moved away.
They were off, through the blurred streaming streets, nosing their way through the heavily fumbling traffic; cars that were like wet black beetles lurching homeward. Every moment Renny's hand, holding a cloth, slid across the glass. No modern improvements on the Jalna car. Then out of the town. Along the shore, where a black cavern indicated the lake and one felt suddenly small and lonely. Why did he not speak to her? Say something ordinary and comforting?
They were running into a lane, so narrow that there was barely room for the motor to push through. Renny turned toward her.
"I have to see a man in here. I shan't be more than five minutes. Do you mind?"
"Of course not." But she thought: "He asks me if I mind, after we are here. If that isn't like the Whiteoaks! Of course I mind. I shall perfectly hate sitting here in the chill dark, alone in this lashing rain. But he does not care. He cares nothing about me. Possibly forgets—everything—just as he promised he would—and I cannot forget—and I suffer."
He had plunged into the darkness and was swallowed as completely as a stone dropped into a pool. There was no sound of retreating footsteps. The stamp of a horse could scarcely have been heard above the wind and rain. At one moment she saw him bent in the doorway of the car; at the next he was apparently extinguished. But after a little she heard a dog bark and then the slam of a door.
She snuggled her chin into the fur about her neck and drew the rug closer. Then she discovered that he had left the door of the motor open. He did not care whether she was wet and chilled to the bone. She could have whimpered—indeed, she did make a little whimpering sound, as she leaned over the seat and clutched at the door. She could not get it shut. She sank back and again pulled the rug closer. It was as though she were in a tiny house in the woods alone, shut in by the echoing walls of rain. Supposing that she lived in a tiny house in the woods alone—with Renny, waiting for him now to come home to her—Oh, God, why could she not keep him out of her thoughts? Her mind was becoming like a hound, always running, panting, on the scent of Renny—Renny, Reynard the Fox!
She and Eden must leave Jalna, have a place of their own, before she became a different being from the one he had married. Even now she scarcely recognized herself. A desperate, gypsy, rowdy something was growing in her—the sedate daughter of Professor Knowlton C. Archer.
She clutched the cord with which the books were tied as though to save herself by it. She would try to guess the titles of the books, knowing what she did of the latest Cory publications. It would be interesting to see how many she could guess correctly. What should she say to him when he came back? Just be cool and distant, or say something that would stir him to realization of her mood, her cruelly tormented mood? Rather be silent and let him speak first.
He was getting into the car. From the black earthy-smelling void into which he had dropped, he as suddenly reappeared, dropping heavily on to the seat and banging the door after him.
"Was I long?" he asked in a muffled tone. "I'm afraid I was more than five minutes."
"It seemed long." Her voice sounded faint and far away.
"I think I'll have a cigarette before we start." He fumbled for his case, then offered it to her.
She took one and he struck a light. As her face was illumined, he looked into it thoughtfully.
"I was thinking, as I came down the lane, that if you weren't the wife of Eden, I should ask you if you would like to be my mistress."
The match was out, and again they were in darkness.
"A man might cut in on another man that way," he went on, "but not one's brother—one's half brother."
"Don't you recognize sin?" she asked, out of the faint smoke cloud that veiled her head.
"No, I don't think I do. At least, I've never been sorry for anything I've done. But there are certain decencies of living. You don't really love him, do you?"
"No. I just thought I did."
"And you do love me?"
"Yes."
"It's rotten hard luck. I've been fighting against it, but I've gone under." He continued on a note of ingenuous wonder. "And to think that you are Eden's wife! What hopelessly rotten luck!"
She was thinking: "If he really lets himself go and asks me that, I shall say yes. That nothing matters but our love. Better throw decency to the winds than have this tumult inside one. I cannot bear it. I shall say yes."
Life in a dark full tide was flowing all about them. Up the lane it swept, as between the banks of a river. They were afloat on it, two leaves that had come together and were caught. They were submerged in it, as the quivering reflections of two stars. They talked in low, broken voices. When had he first begun to love her? When had she first realized that all those exultant, expectant moods of hers were flaring signals from the fresh fire that was now consuming her? But he did not again put into words his desire for her. He, who had all his life ridden desire as a galloping horse, now took for granted that in this deepest love he had known he must keep the whip hand of desire. She, who had lived a life of self-control, was now ready to be swept away in amorous quiescence, caring for nothing but his love.
At last, mechanically, he moved under the wheel and let in the clutch. The car moved slowly backward down the sodden lane, lumbered with elephantine obstinacy through the long grass of the ditch, and slid then, hummingly, along the highway.
They scarcely spoke until they reached Jalna, except when he said over his shoulder: "Should you care to ride? This new mare is just the thing for you. She's very young, but beautifully broken, and as kind as a June day. You'd soon learn."
"But didn't you buy her as a speculation?"
"Well—I'm going to breed from her."
"If you think I can learn—"
"I should say that you would ride very well. You have the look of it—a good body."
The family were at supper. Meg ordered a fresh pot of tea for the late comers.
"Could we have coffee instead?" asked Renny, "Alayne is tired of your everlasting tea, Meggie."
Nicholas asked: "What books did they send? I shouldn't mind reading a new novel. I'll have a cup of that coffee when it comes. Where did you get rid of Eden? Aren't you cold, child?" His deep eyes were on them with a veiled expression, as though behind them he were engaged in some complicated thinking.
"Evans wanted him to stay in town," answered Renny, covering his cold beef with mustard.
"Do you think he will get Eden something?" asked his sister.
"Oh, I don't know. There's no hurry."
Ernest said peevishly: "As I was remarking just before you two came in, something must be done about the young cockerels. They crow, and they crow. I did not get a wink of sleep after gray daylight for them. I was told a month ago that they would soon be killed, and here they are still crowing."
"Ah, say," interrupted Finch, "don't kill all the pretty little Leghorn cockerels. They're so—"
"It doesn't matter to you, Finch," said Ernest, getting angry. "You sleep like a log. But this morning they were dreadful. The big Wyandottes experimented with every variety of crow, from a defiant clarion shout to a hoarse and broken 'cock-a-doodle-do,' and then the little Leghorns with their plaintive reiterations in a minor key, 'Cock-a-doo-doo!' It's maddening."
"You do it very badly," said his brother. "It's more like this." And in stentorian tones he essayed the crow, flapping his arms as wings. Piers and Finch also crowed.
"Then a hen," pursued Ernest, "thought she would lay an egg. Fully twenty times she announced that she thought she had better lay an egg. Then she laid the egg, squawking repeatedly, that the world might know what an agonizing and important task it was. Then her screams of triumph when it was accomplished! Worst of all, every cock and cockerel in the barnyard immediately crowed in unison."
"Each imagining, poor fool," said Nicholas, "that he was the father of the egg."
"I didn't hear them at all," said Meggie.
Ernest raised a long white hand. "If I had the whole gallinaceous tribe," he said, "between the forefinger and thumb of this hand, to-morrow's sun should rise upon a cockless and henless world."
A heavy thumping sounded on the floor of Grandmother's room.
"Piers, go and see what she wants," said Meg. "I tucked her up quite an hour ago, and she dropped off instantly."
Piers went, and returned, announcing: "She wants to know who brought the rooster into the house. Says she won't have it. She wants Renny and Alayne to go and kiss her."
"Oh, I think she just wants Renny. I don't think she would trouble Alayne."
"She said she wanted them both to come and kiss her."
"Come along, Alayne," said Renny, throwing down his table napkin. They left the room together.
Just as they reached the bedroom door, a long sigh was drawn within. They hesitated, looking at each other. That quivering intake of breath went to their hearts. She was lying alone in there, the old, old woman with her own thoughts. Her fears perhaps. Of what was she thinking, stretched under her quilt, the old lungs dilating, contracting. They went in and bent over her, one on each side of the bed. She drew them down to her in turn and kissed them with sleepy, bewildered, yet passionate affection, her mouth all soft and sunken with the two sets of teeth removed.
As they tucked the bedclothes about her neck, she lay peering up at them, her eyes queerly bright under the night light, infinitely pathetic. "Anything more, Gran?" asked Renny.
"No, darling."
"Quite comfy, Gran?" asked Alayne.
She did not answer, for she was again asleep.
Outside, they exchanged tender, whimsical smiles. They wished they did not have to return to the dining room. They loved each other all the more because of their pity for the old woman.
As Nicholas and Ernest separated for the night, Nicholas said in his growling undertone: "Did you notice anything about those two?"
Ernest had been blinking, but now he was alert at once.
"No, I didn't. And yet, now I come to think of it—What d'ye mean, Nick?"
"They're gone on each other. No doubt about that. I'll just go in with you a minute and tell you what I noticed."
The two stepped softly into Ernest's room, closing the door after them.
Renny, in his room, was sitting in a shabby leather armchair, with a freshly filled pipe in his hand. This particular pipe and this chair were sacred to his last smoke before going to bed. He did not light up now, however, but sat with the comfort of the smooth bowl in the curve of his hand, brooding with the bitterness of hopeless love on the soft desirability of the loved one. This girl. This wife of Eden's. The infernal cruelty of it! It was not as though he loved her only carnally, as he had other women. He loved her protectingly, tenderly. He wanted to keep her from hurt. His passion, which in other affairs had burst forth like a flamboyant red flower without foliage, now reared its head almost timidly through tender leaves of protectiveness and pure affection.
There she lay in the next room, alone. And not only alone, but loving him. He wondered if she had already surrendered herself to him in imagination. No subtle vein of femininity ran through the stout fabric of his nature that might have made it possible for him to imagine her feelings. To him she was a closed book in a foreign language. He believed that there were men who understood women because of a certain curious prying in their contacts with them. To him it was scarcely decent. He took what women gave him, and asked no questions.
There she lay in the next room, alone. He had heard her moving about in her preparation for bed. She had seemed to be moving things about, and he had remembered Eden's saying something about emptying out the bookcase. The blasted fool! Leaving her to handle a lot of heavy books. He had thought of going in to do it for her, but he had decided against that. God knows what might have come of it—alone together in there—the rain on the roof, the old moss-grown roof of Jalna pressing above them, all the passions that had blazed and died beneath it dripping down on them, pressing them together.
There she lay in the next room, alone. He pictured her in a fine embroidered shift, curled softly beneath the silk eiderdown like a kitten, her hair in two long honey-colored braids on the pillow. He got up and moved restlessly to the door, opened it, and looked out into the hall. A gulf of darkness there. And a silence broken only by the low rumble of Uncle Nick's snore and the rasping tick of the old clock. God! Why had Eden chosen to stay away to-night?
Wakefield stirred on the bed, and Renny closed the door and came over to him. He opened his eyes and smiled sleepily up at him.
"Renny—a drink." He filled a glass from a carafe on the washstand, and held it to the child's mouth. Wake raised himself on his elbow and drank contentedly, his upper lip magnified to thickness in the water. He emptied the glass and threw himself back on the pillow, wet-mouthed and soft-eyed.
"Coming to bed, Renny?"
"Yes."
"Had your smoke?"
"Yes."
"M-m. I don't smell it."
"I believe I've forgotten it."
"Funny. I say, Renny, when you get into bed, will you play we're somebody else? I'm nervous."
"Rot. You go to sleep."
"Honestly. I'm as nervous as anything. Feel my heart."
Renny felt it. "It feels perfectly good to me." He pulled the clothes about the boy's shoulders and patted his back. "One would think you were a hundred. You're more trouble than Gran."
"May I go to the Horse Show with you?"
"I guess so."
"Hurrah. Did you buy the filly?"
"Yes."
"When will she be here?"
"To-morrow."
"If I aren't well, may I stay home from lessons?"
"Yes." Renny had no backbone to-night, Wake saw that. He could do what he liked with him.
"May I tell Meggie you said so?"
"I suppose."
"Who shall we be when you come to bed?"
"Well—no pirates or harpooners or birds of that sort. You be thinking up a nice quiet sociable pair while I have my smoke." A muffled tread sounded in the hall, and a low knock on the door. Renny opened it on Rags, sleep-rumpled but important.
"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but Wright is downstairs. 'E's just come in from the stible and 'e says Cora's colt 'as took a turn for the worse, sir, and would you please 'ave a look at it."
Rags spoke with the bright eagerness of hired help who have bad news to tell.
This was bad indeed, for Cora was a new and expensive purchase.
"Oh, curse the luck," growled Renny, as he and Wright, with coat collars turned up, hurried through the rain, now only a chill drizzle, toward the stable.
"Yes indeed, sir," said Wright. "It's pretty hard luck. I was just going to put the light out and go to bed,"—he and two other men slept above the garage,—"when I saw she was took bad. She'd just been nursed too, and we'd give her a raw egg, but she sort of collapsed and waved her head about, and I thought I'd better fetch you. She'd seemed a bit stronger to-day, too."
Down in the stable it was warm and dry. The electric light burned clearly—lamps in the house, electricity in the stables at Jalna—and there was a pleasant smell of new hay. The foal lay on a bed of clean straw in a loose box. Its dam, in the adjoining stall, threw yearning and troubled glances at it over the partition. Why was not its tender nose pressing and snuffling against her? Why, when it suckled, did it pull so feebly, with none of those delicious buntings and furious pullings which, instinct told her, were normal and seemly?
Renny pulled off his coat, threw it across the partition, and knelt beside the foal. It seemed to know him, for its great liquid eyes sought his face with a pleading question in them. Why was it thus? Why had it been dropped from warm indolent darkness into this soul-piercing light? What was it? And along what dark echoing alley would it soon have to make its timid way alone?
Its head, large and carved, was raised above its soft furry body; its stiff foal's legs looked all pitiful angles.
"Poor little baby," murmured Renny, passing his hands over it, "poor little sick baby."
Wright and Dobson stood by, reiterating the things they had done for it. Cora plaintively whinnied and gnawed the edge of her manger.
"Give me the liniment the vet left," said Renny. "Its legs are cold."
He filled his palm with the liquid and began to rub the foal's legs. If only warmth and strength could pass from him into it! "By Judas," he thought, "perhaps there's some fiery virtue in my red head!"
He sent the two men to their beds, for he wanted to look after the foal himself, and they must have their sleep.
He rubbed it till his arms refused to move, murmuring encouragements to it, foolish baby talk: "Little colty—poor little young 'un—does she feel 'ittle bit better then?" and "Cora's baby girl!"
Comforting noises came from other stalls, soft blowings through wide velvety nostrils, deep contented sighs, now and again a happy munching as a wisp of left-over supper was consumed, the deep sucking-in of a drink. He took a turn through the passages between the stalls, sleepy whinnies of recognition welcoming him. In the hay-scented dusk he caught the shine of great liquid eyes, a white blaze on a forehead, a white star on a breast, or the flash of a suddenly tossed mane. God, how he loved them, these swift and ardent creatures! "Shall I ever see the foal standing tall and proud in her box like one of these?"
He went back to her.
Cora had lain down, a dark hump in the shadow of her stall. In her anxiety she had kicked her bedding into the passage, and lay on the bare floor.
The foal's eyes were half closed, but when Renny put his hand on its tawny flank, they flew wide open, and a shiver slid beneath his palm. He felt its legs. Warmer. He was going to save it. He was going to save it! It wanted to rise. He put his arms about it. "There—up she comes now!" It was on its feet, its eyes blazing with courage, its neck ridiculously arched, its legs stiffly braced. Clattering her hoofs, Cora rose, whinnying, and looked over the partition at her offspring. It answered her with a little grunt, took two wavering steps, then, as if borne down by the weight of its heavy head, collapsed again on the straw. "Hungry. Hungry. Poor old baby's hungry. She's coming, Cora. Hold on, pet." He carried the colt to its dam and supported it beneath her.
Oh, her ecstasy! She quivered from head to foot. She nuzzled it, slobbering, almost knocking it over. She nuzzled Renny, wetting his hair. She bit him gently on the shoulder. "Steady on. Steady on, old thing. Ah, the baby's got it. Now for a meal!"
Eagerly it began to suck, but had scarcely well begun when its heart failed it. The foal turned its head petulantly away. Cora looked at Renny in piteous questioning. It hung heavy in his arms. He carried it back, and began the rubbing again. It dozed. He dozed, his face glistening with sweat under the electric light.
But another light was penetrating the stable. Daylight, pale and stealthy as a cat, creeping through the straw, gliding along the cobweb-hung beams, penetrating delicately into the blackest corners. Impatient whinnies were flung from stall to stall. Low, luscious moos answered from the byre. The orchestra of cocks delivered its brazen salute to the dawn. The stallion's blue-black eyes burned in fiery morning rage, but the little foal's eyes were dim.
Renny bent over it, felt its legs, looked into its eyes. "Oh, that long, long, lonely gallop ahead of me," its eyes said. "To what strange pasture am I going?"
Wright came clattering down the stairs, his broad face anxious.
"How's the wee foal, sir?"
"It's dying, Wright."
"Ah, I was afraid we couldn't save her. Lord, Mr. Whiteoak, you shouldn't have stopped up all night! When I saw the light burning I was sure you had, and I came straight over."
Cora uttered a loud terrified whinny.
The two men bent over the foal.
"It's gone, Wright."
"Yes, sir. Cora knows."
"Go in and quiet her. Have it taken away. God! It came suddenly at the last."
The rain was over. A mild breeze had blown a clear space in the sky. It was of palest blue, and the blown-back clouds, pearl and amethyst, were piled up, one on another, like tumbled towers. Behind the wet boles of the pines a red spark of sunrise burned like a torch.
Renny pictured the soul of the foal, strong-legged, set free, galloping with glad squeals toward some celestial meadow, its eyes like stars, its tail a flaming meteor, its flying hoofs striking bright sparks from rocky planets. "What a blithering ass I am—worse than Eden. Writing poetry next. . . . All her foals—and theirs—generations of them—lost." He went in at the kitchen door, and found young Pheasant, a sweater over her nightdress. She was sitting on the table eating a thick slice of bread and butter.
"Oh, Renny, how is the little colt? I wakened before daylight, and I couldn't go to sleep again for thinking of it, and I got so hungry, and I came down as soon as it was light enough, to get something to eat, and I saw the light under your door and I was sure it was worse. Wake called to me and he said Wright had come for you."
"Yes, Wright came."
He went to the range and held his hands over it. He was chilled through. She studied him out of the sides of her eyes. He looked aloof, unapproachable, but after a moment he said, gently:—
"Make me a cup of tea, like a good kid. I'm starved with the cold in that damned stable. The kettle's singing."
She slid from the table and got the kitchen teapot, fat, brown, shiny, with a nicked spout. She dared not ask him about the colt. She cut some fresh bread and spread it, thinking how strange it was to be in the kitchen at this hour with Renny, just like Rags and Mrs. Wragge. The immense, low-ceiled room, with its beamed ceiling and now unused stone fireplace, was heavy with memories of the past, long-gone Christmas dinners, christening feasts, endless roasts and boilings. The weariness, the bickerings, the laughter, the love-making of generations of servant maids and men. All the gossip that had been carried down with the trays, concerning the carryings on of those who occupied the regions above, had settled in this basement, soaked into every recess. Here lay the very soul of Jalna.
Renny sat down by the table. His thin, highly colored face looked worn. Straws clung to his coat. His hands, which he had washed at a basin in the scullery, looked red and chapped. To Pheasant, suddenly, he was not imposing, but pathetic. She bent over him, putting her arm around his shoulders.
"Is it dead?" she whispered.
He nodded, scowling. Then she saw that there were tears in his eyes. She clasped him to her, and they cried together.