Eden ate greedily. “Church service and Sunday dinner,” he said, “leave one famished. I don’t know why it is, but I want to eat all day on Sundays.”
“Were there many at church?” asked Mrs. Stroud. “I just couldn’t face going out in the heat along the country road. Was the sermon good?”
“It was mercifully short. Every time the rector paused Gran struggled to get on her feet, hoping it was all over. I think that unnerved him, for he was very brief.”
“It is a sight to see Mrs. Whiteoak arrive at the church in her carriage, behind those prancing horses. It is worth going just to see her.”
“The congregation was small,” continued Eden, “and the singing would have been feeble if it hadn’t been for us. We sang with all our mights, the sweat running down out faces and our backs sticking to the pews every time we rose. I could hear myself singing, but I was really fast asleep.”
“This lad is a perfect chatterbox,” said Ernest, smiling at Mrs. Stroud, “and prone to exaggeration.”
“Yes, I know.” Her eyes met Eden’s but dared not rest long. His were too teasing, too mocking. There was something in his voice that set Ernest aside. It was hard for Ernest to overcome the constraint he felt. The afternoon was spoilt for him.
“Who read the lessons — with your brother away?” Mrs. Stroud asked of Ernest. “You, I suppose.”
“Yes. But later on Renny will read them. It has always been the custom for the owner of Jalna to read the lessons.”
Mrs. Stroud exclaimed — “And he will wear a surplice! I shall certainly go to church to see that sight.”
Ernest resented the flippancy of her tone. For a moment Mrs. Stroud was to him no more than a rather ill-bred sightseer who had somehow pushed herself into their circle. His constraint deepened.
Eden turned to him. “Mrs. Stroud doesn’t like our Renny, you know.”
She interrupted hastily — “I do! I admire him very much. But I can’t picture him in a surplice.”
“You mean, he’s so horsy?” said Eden.
“Perhaps that. I’m not quite sure. I know there are fox hunting parsons in England.”
“He is filling his niche,” observed Eden in a sententious voice.
As he perceived the constraint of the others his own spirits rose in proportion. Sometimes he talked to Mrs. Stroud, making allusions that left Ernest feeling out in the cold. Sometimes he directed his remarks to Ernest, irritating him by expressing too modernistic views on manners and morals. He was restless and moved about the room, sometimes languidly, sometimes leaping over a sofa as he might do at home.
He carried the tea things to the kitchen and insisted on washing them, though he had never had his hands in a dishpan before. He opened the refrigerator and peered into it, exclaiming at the dainty food in store there, wondering who it might be for. Mrs. Stroud was at her wits’ end. When she had him alone for a moment she gave him a smart slap on the cheek.
“There! Take that and behave yourself!”
“Uncle,” he began, in a complaining tone.
“For goodness’ sake don’t!” she exclaimed, aghast.
“Kiss me, then.”
She took his face between her hands. Their lips met. She grew dizzy in this web of deception.
Ernest and Eden stayed on and on.
They became pensive in the oppressive heat. There was dead silence next door.
At sunset a breeze lifted the curtains. Ernest went to the piano and lowered the old-fashioned stool to suit his height. The instrument had belonged to the first Mrs. Stroud. The husband was always telling his second wife how she had played hymns for him by the hour. Amy Stroud would have sold it with the rest of the furniture but had had no acceptable offer for it. Now it had been tuned and, in place of the yellow velvet drapes it had once worn, its expanse of shining wood was bare except for a slender silver vase containing a single red rose.
Ernest began softly to play “Träumerei.”
Mrs. Stroud moved to a low chair near the piano and fixed her eyes on his face. It was his turn to be enmeshed more securely in her net.
“How beautifully you play that!” she said, in deep thrilling tones.
He finished the piece and then said: “I am a very poor performer, but my brother plays really well. Or would do if he were to practise a little more. He says his fingers are getting stiff.”
“Will you bring him to play for me?”
“I’ll try to persuade him.”
“My little brother, Finch, is going to be musical,” said Eden.
Ernest turned on the stool to face him. “Indeed he is! He will sit, quiet as a mouse, when Nicholas is playing. I myself have taught him to play ‘The Blue Danube’; though he doesn’t know one note from another, he plays it charmingly.”
“How sweet!” Her eyes glowed. “Do play something more. It’s like hearing running water after the heat of the day.”
“My repertory is painfully limited.” He knit his brows, then began something of Schubert’s.
“Music at night,” said Eden, “always sends me to the depths. Good music or bad, the effect is the same.”
He went and stretched his length on the sofa, his face to the wall.
The thin curtains were wafted into the room. The music was spun out under Ernest’s delicate touch. His feeling for Amy Stroud was reaching a point it had not hitherto touched. He had a surge of triumph at the thought that Eden was outside the magic circle. He had done what he had set out to do. That his own feelings were involved took nothing from his triumph but rather enhanced it.
“My two lovers, my two lovers.” The words throbbed through her brain. She saw the one, prone on the sofa, the other playing on and on, with that rapt smile on his face. What she could not be aware of was the supreme egotism of both, which made them truly invulnerable to the spell they courted.
As Eden lay with his face turned to the wall he wondered, with growing irritation, what Ernest was up to. In all decency he should have gone an hour ago. Was it possible that he was trying to outstay him? Was it even possible that there was some understanding between him and Amy Stroud? A quiver of laughter ran through him at the thought. This was followed by a shudder of jealous anger. He turned abruptly to his other side and stared at the two by the piano. He could not see Ernest’s face, but there was something almost indecent in the droop of his shoulders — by heaven, there was! And why was Amy gazing into his face with that soulful expression? Her eyes were luminous with some emotion.
He rose from the sofa and went to a small table. From it he took a paper knife in the shape of a dagger. Fixing his eyes on Mrs. Stroud he moved stealthily up behind Ernest and made a barbarous gesture as though to stab him in the back. She closed her eyes and kept them so till the piece was finished. She opened them and discovered Eden standing by the window, the paper knife returned to the table. Ernest got up from the piano.
A feeling of lassitude came over all three. There was silence for a space, then Mrs. Stroud said:
“Won’t you stay and have some supper?” Her glance included them both.
“I was under the impression,” said Eden, “that I was invited days ago.”
Ernest answered calmly — “Thank you. I’d very much like to.”
With the same feeling of lassitude the supper was prepared by Mrs. Stroud and arranged on the table by the uncle and the nephew. They laid their places on either side of her. In silence they sat down to the meal.
“There’s nothing I enjoy more,” said Ernest, “than a meal away from home.”
“Me too,” said Eden. “There’s nothing I like so much as a meal away from home.”
“How do you manage,” asked Ernest, “to have such deliciously crisp salads?”
“By keeping them on ice,” answered Eden. “Like she does her emotions.”
“How rude of you!” said Mrs. Stroud.
“Am I? I’m so glad. I’m naturally of such a polite nature that it’s difficult for me to be rude, even when I want
to.”
“Do you want to?” asked Ernest.
“Terribly, Uncle.”
There was something insolent in his use of the word uncle. Ernest looked at him sharply.
“Why, may I ask?”
“The situation is so terribly unpleasant. Don’t you find it so?”
“No. But I do find you a trifle so.”
“I have an elastic nature,” said Eden. “Just now it is drawn to snapping point.”
Under the table Mrs. Stroud put her foot warningly against his. He took it between both his own and held it. Under his breath he mumbled:
“Probably he’s doing the same on the other side.”
Pretending to drop his napkin he peered under the table to find out. Ernest’s feet were decorously side by side.
Eden noisily ate a stick of celery, even to the leaves. “I used to call them the feathers when I was a little boy,” he said. “I love celery.”
“What a pity!” observed Ernest.
“Why?”
“You eat it so resoundingly.”
Eden turned to Mrs. Stroud. “Hasn’t Uncle a wonderful vocabulary?”
“I refuse to be drawn into this,” she answered. She tried to withdraw her foot but he held it firmly. She could scarcely control her laughter.
It was impossible that Ernest, with his sensitive nature, should be unaware of these passages between them. His spirits began to flag. He was tired. But he was not a whit less determined to hold his position. The evening degenerated into a test of which could outstay the other. A distant roll of thunder was heard. The darkness outside was illuminated by a vivid flash. Mrs. Stroud had lighted candles and set them about the room. Curiously, as their three faces became marked by fatigue, they were definitely set into three generations. Ernest’s face was dimmed to all his years. Mrs. Stroud, though nothing was added to her years, which the candlelight diminished, looked wearily middle-aged. Eden appeared a pale exhausted boy. Thus it was as though they were father, daughter, and daughter’s son, three generations in some morbidly tense situation.
Finally Mrs. Stroud could bear it no longer. Her eyes were full of tears. She said:
“I’m afraid I must ask you both to go. This heat and the thunder in the air has got on my nerves. My head aches.”
Even then they were reluctant to go. Ernest asked solicitously:
“May I get you something? An aspirin, perhaps?”
“No, no. I shall be all right. It’s silly of me but I must lie down.”
Eden plumped up the cushions on the divan. “You can’t go to bed yet. Do lie down here.”
She shook her head, not able to speak. There was another roll of thunder. Ernest remarked apprehensively:
“We shall be caught in the storm.”
She accompanied them as far as the gate. The breeze had fallen and the air was heavy with the approaching storm. She took a hand of each and looked up into their eyes. Her own were glistening with tears:
“How sweet you both are to me!” she exclaimed.
She stood looking after them, her arms resting on the gate. Relief at their going was mingled with triumph at their staying so long. She felt that she never could close her eyes that night. But she did not mind. She had thoughts for the long night through.
She turned back to the house, which at that hour and in her present mood appeared as a glamorous retreat. She raised her arms and stretched them wide, drinking in the night air. Her lassitude had vanished. She was free to brood over the contrasting personalities of her two “lovers,” and to calculate her future relations with them.
As she reached the door, a lurid flash discovered Jim Dayborn standing on his own doorstep, the door shut behind him. How long he had been there she could not guess but her anger flared at the sight of his almost painfully thin, sarcastically smiling face. She exclaimed heatedly:
“How you do like to spy on other people!”
Dayborn replied imperturbably — “Well, what else have I to do on a Sunday night?”
“You acknowledge, then, that you do spy?”
“If you can call it spying to stand on one’s own doorstep. What you need, Mrs. Stroud, is a house in a wood, with not a neighbour in sight.”
She came to the low fence that divided them and placed her hands on two of the pointed palings.
“I am tired,” she said, “of your prying presence. You are two months behind with your rent. You can go. I will not ask you to pay the rent but you must be out of here inside of three days. Three days, do you hear?”
She was positively intimidating in her restrained fury. Dayborn was shocked into silence for a moment. Then he repeated:
“Three days! You can’t mean it! Why — what have we done?”
“You’ve made yourselves a nuisance. You’ve been prying. You’ve been always in evidence — quarrelling — coming in and out of my house at all hours — borrowing and not returning — behind with your rent — now you can go!”
“But we can get no house about here!”
“Then go somewhere else.”
“But our work is here!”
“Your work! Breaking in colts! Let them go unbroken — let them go mad — I don’t care! Just to be rid of your presence is all that I ask.”
He now used a placating tone. “But you’ve encouraged us to run in and out of your house. You’ve said you liked to lend us things. You’ve liked the kid.”
She cut him short. “Well, — I don’t like any of you now! I’ve borne more from you than I’ve ever borne from a tenant in my life.”
He was roused. He said sarcastically, “The truth about you is that being taken up by these Whiteoaks has gone to your head. But if you think that either of those men care a curse for you, you’re damned well mistaken.”
It was with difficulty that Mrs. Stroud controlled herself. She gripped the sharp palings of the fence in her hands and bit her shaking underlip. Then she spoke with comparative calm.
“This is the end. I don’t want you to speak to me again — ever. Tell Chris not to come in to see me. Not she or anyone else can change me. Hand me your keys inside of three days.”
She turned from him and went into her house, shutting the door behind her. After a time a rap sounded on her door but she did not answer it. Looking out of a window she saw Chris Cummings climb over the fence and return to her own house.
Ernest and Eden said little on the way home. Now that they were alone together they were embarrassed by what had taken place, though Eden the less of the two. His mind was revolving about the events of the past weeks. He would have liked to know what was in Ernest’s mind. How much did Ernest care for Mrs. Stroud? How much had the family to do with it? Were they at the bottom of it? Either Ernest was a good play-actor or he was really himself entangled. Eden leaned toward this opinion. What did Amy feel? She and Ernest appeared to hit it off too well for just a casual friendship.
Eden was angry at Ernest’s interference. His evening had been spoilt. Was he never again to have the freedom in her house that had meant so much to him? Did Amy love him? Could she love Ernest? His immature mind groped among vague possibilities.
As they reached Jalna there were heavy rolls of thunder. Lightning outlined smallest twigs against the greenish sky. Large drops of rain fell.
“We’re lucky,” remarked Ernest, “to get under shelter. The rain is coming.”
He bolted the door. The gas was turned low in the hall. He examined the dim gold face of the grandfather clock. It was a quarter-past twelve. He gave an exclamation of dismay.
“We did keep that poor lady up late!” he said.
“I never knew her to be tired before,” said Eden.
“I suppose it was the weather.”
“I never knew her to mind weather before.”
“But we haven’t previously had any such heat.”
“I don’t want to go to bed, do you?”
Ernest hesitated. Late hours did not agree with him. But he was excited and it was not pleasant
to be in bed during a storm. It was probable that his mother might want him. He went and stood outside her door, which was at the end of the hall. A tranquil snore came from within. It was not so much a snore as the buzzing of a bumblebee in a particularly well-honeyed flower. Ernest smiled. “What shall we do?” he asked.
“Could we have a drink?”
“My dear boy, you’re too young for drinking at this hour.”
“I feel that tonight is the time to begin.”
“I don’t know what your aunt would say.”
“Come, now, Uncle Ernie, there are just us two! Who’s to know?”
“Very well. We’ll have a whiskey and soda. It will do us good. There — listen to that!”
A deep roll had ended with a crash that reverberated through the house. Ernest again listened at his mother’s door. There was dead silence. Then the bumblebee resumed its rumbling in a more tremulous tone.
“Bless her!” exclaimed Ernest. He led the way to the dining room.
Eden closed an open window and set two chairs together at the end of the long table. Ernest fetched a bottle of Scotch and a siphon of soda from the sideboard. They sat down and Ernest poured whiskey into each glass. Eden filled the glasses with soda water.
“I don’t think,” observed Ernest, “that the storm will be heavy. The rain is already coming.”
The rain, as though a barrier had been removed, began to fall in a torrent, beating against the panes, streaming over the gravel sweep. Beyond its onslaught the distant roll of thunder could be heard.
Eden raised his glass halfway, hesitated, and then said — “To Aimee.”
“To Aimee,” repeated Ernest, and put his glass to his lips.
Eden lighted a cigarette. “It must be lonely for her,” he said, “in that house, in a storm.”
“It must be very lonely.”
“It’s a pity we came away so soon.”
“It is a pity.” Ernest took a deeper drink.
“Still, if we hadn’t come when we did, we mightn’t have got away at all.”
“You mean stayed all night?”
“Yes.” Eden again drank.
Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna Page 17
