“Darn it all!” bawled Finch. “Why can’t I practise in peace?”
“Finch, go upstairs this instant and change into dry things.”
The door of Gran’s room opened and Uncle Nick put his head out.
“What’s this row about?” he asked. “Mamma is sleeping.”
“It’s Finch. He is being very unruly.” Meg turned her round sweet face toward Nicholas.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself. And all the money which is being spent on your music! Get upstairs with you. You deserve to have your ears cuffed.”
Finch, with his ears as red as though they had already had the cuffing, slunk up the stairs. Piers and Pheasant, still on the window seat, had drawn the curtains tightly across, so that they were effectually concealed, except for the outline of their knees, and their feet which projected under the edge. Finch, after a glance at the feet, was reasonably sure of their owners. What a lot of fun everyone had, but himself! Snug and dry before warm fires, or petting in corners.
He found Wakefield in his room, sprawled on the bed, reading Huckleberry Finn.
“Hullo,” said the little boy politely. “I hope you don’t mind me being here. I wanted to lie down a bit as I aren’t very well, and yours is the only bed I can tumble up without Meggie minding.”
“Why don’t you tell her you’re not well?” asked Finch, pulling off his soaked jacket.
“Oh, she’d fuss over me, keep me on the sofa where she could watch me. I like a little privacy as well as anyone.”
He was eating marshmallows and he offered Finch one.
“Thanks,” said Finch, who was ravenous. “You seem always to have marshmallows lately.” He looked at him with sudden severity. “Does Meggie know you’ve always got them?”
Wake calmly bit into another. “Oh, I don’t suppose so. Any more than she knows you’ve always got cigarettes about you.” His eyes were on his book; one cheek was distended. He looked innocent, and yet, the little devil, it had sounded like a threat.
“You mind your own affairs,” broke out Finch, “or I’ll chuck you into the hall.”
Wakefield’s bright eyes were on him. “Don’t be cross, Finch. I was only thinking how yellow your second finger looked when you took that marshmallow. You’d better scrub it with pumice stone before tea or someone may notice. You see, your hands are so large and bony that people notice them, and anyone knows that it takes more than one cigarette to give that orangey color.”
“You see too damned much,” growled Finch. “When you get to school you’ll have some of the smugness knocked out of you.”
“I dare say,” agreed Wake, sadly. “I hope you won’t let the other boys bully me, Finch.”
“Why, look here, there are five hundred fellows in the school. Do you suppose I can keep an eye on you? I’ll never even see you. You’ll have to just shift for yourself.”
“Oh, I’ll manage somehow,” said Wake.
Finch thought that Wake would probably be happier at school than he was. He hoped so, for he was very fond of this dark-skinned debonair little brother, so different from himself. In silence he took off his sodden socks, gave his feet a perfunctory rub with a frayed bath towel and threw it into a corner. His brain was going round like a squirrel in a cage. Finding Renny and Alayne alone in the dark, rain-drenched porch had brought something to his mind, reminding him curiously of something. He could not think at first what it was, then he remembered. It was the time he had come upon Renny and the unknown woman in the pine wood.
It was not only finding Renny alone with a woman in a dim and sheltered spot, it was something in his attitude—an air of detached attentiveness, as though he were listening, waiting for something that the woman was to do. Some sort of signal.
Finch could not understand why it had affected him so deeply to discover Renny and Alayne in the porch together, unless it was that it had reminded him of that other time. He had been determined that Meg should not know that they were there. But why? There was nothing wrong in their being there together. It was simply that he himself had the kind of mind that—oh Lord, he seemed to find possibilities of mystery, of evil, where no one else would see anything of import. He had a disturbed and beastly mind, there was no doubt about it. He deserved all the knocks that came his way. He had a horrible mind, he thought.
He did wish Meggie would let him practise his music lesson. Meggie was antagonistic toward the music lessons. No doubt about that. But if he had been taking from Miss Pink it would have been all right. God, women were strange beings!
He went to the drawer where his underclothes were kept, and fumbled hopelessly for a pair of socks that matched.
XIX
A VARIETY OF SCENES
THE BOOKS from New York were held 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 labourers, 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 faraway 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 Wragge, 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—cosy 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 forever. 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 anyone. A glimpse of him on his bony grey 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 wastepaper 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, raincoated, 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 grey 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 fruitcake; 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 tomorrow. 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 selfcentred as a cat. Like a lithe, golden, tortoiseshell 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 Nich
olas 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.
Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna Page 79
