“Why didn’t she go with him? Why did she come to me?”
“How can I tell? He probably didn’t ask her. Oh, the whole rotten business harks back to me! It’s my fault. I’d no right to let Eden loaf about all winter, writing poetry. It’s made a scoundrel of him!”
A wry smile flitted across Vaughan’s face at the unconscious humour of the remark.
“I shouldn’t blame myself too much if I were you. If writing poetry has made Eden into a scoundrel, he was probably well on the way beforehand. Possibly that’s why he turned to it.”
There was a deep understanding between these two. They had confided in each other as they had in no one else.
Renny, stirred by the disclosures of the night, burst out: “Maurice, in thought I am no better than Eden! I love his wife. She’s never out of my mind.”
Vaughan looked into the tormented eyes of his friend with commiseration.
“Do you, Renny? I had never thought of such a thing. She doesn’t seem to me your sort of girl at all.”
“That is the trouble. She isn’t. If she were, it would be easier to put the thought of her aside. She’s intellectual, she’s—”
“I should say she is cold.”
“You’re wrong. It is I, all my life, who have had a sort of cold sensuality—no tenderness went with my love for a woman. I don’t think I had any compassion. No, I’m sure I hadn’t.” He knit his brows as though recalling past affairs. “But I’m full of compassion for Alayne.”
“Does she love you?”
“Yes.”
“What about Eden?”
“She had a romantic devotion to him, but it’s over.”
“Does she know about this?” Maurice lifted his head in the direction of the room above.
“Yes. I only had a glimpse of her in the hall—the house was in an uproar. She had a strange, exalted look as though nothing mattered now.”
“I see. What is Piers going to do?”
“Piers is a splendid fellow—tough as an oak. He said to me, ‘She’s mine; nothing can change that. I’m going to fetch her home.’ But I should pity Eden if he got his hands on him.”
“They are coming down. Heavens, they were quiet enough! Must I speak to them?”
“No, let the poor young beggars alone.”
The two came slowly down the stairs. Like people leaving the scene of a catastrophe, they carried in their eyes the terror of what they had beheld. Their faces were rigid. Piers’s mouth was drawn to one side in an expression of disgust. It was like a mask of tragedy. They stood in the wide doorway of the dining room as in a picture framed. Maurice and Renny smiled at them awkwardly, trying to put a decent face on the affair.
“Going, eh?” Maurice said. “Have something first, Piers.” He made a movement toward the sideboard.
“Thanks,” returned Piers in a lifeless voice. He entered the dining room.
“Where’s that key, Renny?”
Renny produced the key; a tantalus was brought forth, and a drink poured for Piers. Maurice, with Renny’s eye on him, did not take one himself.
Piers gulped down the spirits, the glass rattling grotesquely against his teeth. Under the ashen tan of his face, colour crept back. No one spoke, but the three men stared with gloomy intensity at Pheasant, still framed in the doorway. The magnetic currents between the members of the group seemed palpably to vibrate across the atmosphere of the room. Then Pheasant, putting up her hands, as though to push their peering faces back from her, exclaimed: “Don’t stand staring at me like that! One would think you’d never seen me before.”
“You look awfully done,” said Maurice. “I think you ought to have a mouthful of something to brace you. A little Scotch and water, eh?”
“I might if I were asked,” she returned, with a pathetic attempt at bravado. She took the glass in a steady little hand, and drank.
“I shall come along later,” said Renny to Piers. ‘I’m going to stop a while with Maurice.” But he continued to stare at Pheasant.
“I know I’m a scarlet woman, but I think you’re very cruel. Your eyes are like a brand, Renny Whiteoak.”
“Pheasant, I was not even thinking of you. My—my mind was quite somewhere else.”
Piers turned on Maurice in a sudden rage. “It’s all your fault!” he broke out, vehemently. “You never gave the poor child a chance. She was as ignorant as any little immigrant when I married her.”
“She doesn’t seem to have learned any good from you,” retorted Vaughan.
“She has learned all of decency that she knows. Was she ever sent to school?”
“She had two governesses.”
“Yes. They both left inside of six months, because they couldn’t live in the house with you.”
“Oh, I suppose it is my fault that she inherits her mother’s instinct,” returned Maurice, bitterly. “And Renny has just been telling me that it is his fault that Eden is a scoundrel. We’ve taken on a lot of responsibility.”
“You are talking like fools,” said Renny.
“Please do not quarrel about me,” put in Pheasant. “I think I’m going to faint or something.”
“Better take her out in the air,” said Renny. “The liquor was too strong for her.”
“Come along,” said Piers, and took her arm.
The touch of his hand had an instant effect on Pheasant. A deep blush suffused her face and neck; she swayed toward him, raising her eyes to his with a look of tragic humility.
Outside, the coolness of the dawn refreshed her. He released her arm, and preceded her through the grove and down into the ravine. They walked in silence, she seeming no more than his shadow, following him through every divergence of the path, hesitating when he hesitated. Centuries before, two such figures might have been seen traversing this same ravine, a young Indian and his squaw, moving as his silent shadow in the first light of morning, primitive figures so much akin to the forest life about them that the awakening birds did not cease twittering as they passed. On the bridge above the stream he stopped. Below lay the pool where they had first seen their love reflected as an opening flower. They looked down into it now, no longer able to share the feelings its mirrored loveliness excited in them. A primrose light suffused the sky and in a deeper tone lay cupped in the pool, around the brink of which things tender and green strove with gentle urgency to catch the sun’s first rays.
An English pheasant, one of some imported by Renny, moved sedately among the young rushes, its plumage shining like a coat of mail. Careless, irresponsible bird, Piers thought, and for one wild instant he wished that she were one with the bird—that no man might recognize a woman in her but himself; that he might keep her hidden and love her secretly, untortured by the fear and loathing he now felt.
Pheasant saw, drowned in that pool, all the careless irresponsibility of the past, the weakness, the indolence, that had made her a victim of Eden’s dalliance. If Piers loathed her, how much more she loathed the image of Eden’s face, which faintly smiled at her from the changeful mirror of the pool! Just to live, to make up to Piers by her devotion for what he had suffered—to win from his eyes love again instead of that look of fear which he had turned on her when he entered the bedroom! She had expected rage—fury. And he had looked at her in an agony of fear. But he had taken her back! They were going home to Jalna. She longed for the thick walls of the house as a broken-winged bird for its nest.
“Come,” he said, as though awakening from a dream, and moved on up the path that led from the ravine to the lawn.
The turkeys were crossing the lawn, led by the cock, whose blazing wattles swung arrogantly in the first sunrays. His wives, with burnished breasts and beaming eyes, followed close behind, craning their necks, alternately lifting and dragging their slender feet, echoing his bold gobble with plaintive pipings. The hens paused to look with curiosity at the boy and girl who emerged from the ravine, but the cock, absorbed by his own ego, circled before them, swelling himself rigidly, dropping his wings, ur
ging into his wattles a still more burning red.
Down the wet roof Finch’s pigeons were strutting, sliding, rooketty-cooing, peering over the eaves at the two who slowly mounted the steps.
Inside, the house lay in silence except for the heavy snoring of Grandmother in her bedroom off the lower hall. It was as if some strange beast had a lair beneath the stairs, and was growling a challenge to the sun.
They passed the closed doors of the hall above and went into their own room. Pheasant dropped into a chair by the window, but Piers, with a businesslike air, began collecting various articles—his brushes, his shaving things, the clothes which he wore about the farm. She watched his movements with the unquestioning submissiveness of a child. One thought sustained her: “How glad I am that I am here with Piers, and not flying with Eden as he wanted me to!”
When he had got together what he wanted, he took the key from the door and inserted it on the outside. He said, without looking at her:
“Here you stay, till I can stand the sight of your face again.”
He went out, locking the door behind him. He climbed the long stairs to the attic, and, throwing his things on the bed in Finch’s room, began to change his clothes for the day’s work. In the passage he had met Alayne, looking like a ghost. They had passed without speaking.
XXV
FIDDLER’S HUT
THREE WEEKS LATER Mr. Wragge was an object of great interest one morning to a group of Jersey calves as he crossed their pasture. They ceased gambolling, butting, and licking each other, to regard him with steadfast scrutiny out of liquid dark eyes. He was in his shirt sleeves, his coat being thrown over one arm, for the day was hot; his hat was tilted over his eyes, and he carried, balanced on one hand, a tray covered with a white cloth. He was smoking, as usual, and his expression was one of deep concern.
When he reached a stile at the far end of the paddock, he set the tray on the top, climbed over, then, balancing the tray at a still more dangerous angle, proceeded on his way. It now lay through an old uncared-for apple orchard, the great trees of which were green with moss, half smothered in wild grapevines and Virginia creeper, and their boughs, like heavy wings, swept to the long coarse grass. Following a winding path, he passed a spring, where long ago a primitive well had been made by the simple process of sinking a wooden box. The lid of this was now gone, the wood decayed, and it was used by birds as a drinking fountain and bath. The liquid gurgle of the spring as it entered the well made a pleasant undertone to the song of birds with which the air was merry.
Embowered in vines, almost hidden by flowering dogwood, stood the hut where Fiddler Jock, by the consent of Captain Philip Whiteoak, had lived in solitude, the story of whose death young Finch had told Alayne on their first walk together.
Here Meg Whiteoak had been living for three weeks.
Before approaching the threshold, Mr. Wragge again set down the tray, put on his coat, straightened his hat, threw away his cigarette, and intensified his expression of concern.
“Miss W’iteoak, it’s me, ma’am,” he said loudly, as though to reassure her, immediately after knocking.
The door opened and Meg Whiteoak appeared, with an expression as sweetly calm, but a face paler than formerly. “Thank you, Rags,” she said, taking the tray. “Thank you very much.”
“I’d be gratified, ma’am,” he said anxiously, “if you was to lift the napkin and tike a look at wot I’ve brought you. I’d be better pleased if I knew you found it temptin’.”
Miss Whiteoak accordingly peered under the napkin and discovered a plate of fresh scones, a bowl of ripe strawberries, arid a jug of thick clotted cream such as she liked with them. A sweet smile curved her lips. She took the tray and set it on the table in the middle of the low, scantily furnished room.
“It looks very tempting, Rags. These are the first strawberries I’ve seen.”
“They are the very first,” he announced, eagerly. “I picked them myself, ma’am. There’s going to be a wonderful crop, they s’y, but it don’t seem to matter, the w’y things are goin’ on with us these days.”
“That’s very true,’ she said, sighing. “How is my grandmother today, Rags?”
“Flourishing amazing, ma’am. My wife says she talked of nothink but ‘er birthd’y the ’ole time she was doin’ up ’er room. She ’ad a queer little spell on Thursday, but Mr. Ernest, ’e thought it was just that she’d eat too much of the goose grivy. She looked remarkable well yesterd’y, and went to church the sime as usual.”
“That is good.” She bit her full underlip, and then asked, with an attempt at nonchalance: “Have you heard anything about Mrs. Eden’s leaving?”
“I believe she’s to go as soon as the birthd’y celebrations are over. The old lidy wouldn’t ’ear of it before. Ow, Miss W’iteoak, she’s only a shadder of ’er former self, Mrs. Eden is; and Mr. Piers is not much better. Of all the people in the ’ouse those two show the wear and tear of wot we’re goin’ through the most. Of course, I’ve never seen Mrs. Piers. She ain’t never shown up in the family circle yet, but my wife saw ’er lookin’ out of the winder, and she says she looks just the sime. Dear me, some people can stand any think! As for me, I’m not the man I was at all. My nerves ’ave all gone back on me. It’s almost like another attack of shell shock, you might s’y.”
“I’m very sorry, Rags. You do look pale.”
He took out a clean folded handkerchief and wiped his brow. “It isn’t as though my own family relations was wot they were, ma’am. Mrs. Wragge and me, we ’ad our little altercations, as you know, but, tike it as a ’ole, our life together was amiable; but now,” he dolefully shook his head, “it’s nothing more nor less than terrific. Me being on your side and she all for Mr. Renny, there’s never a moment’s peace. W’y, yesterd’y—Sunday and all as it was—she up and shied the stove lifter at my ’ead. I escaped to the coal cellar, where she pursued me, and as for ’er language! Well, Mr. Renny ’e ’eard the goings on and ’e came rattling down the basement stairs in a fine rage, and said if ’e ’eard any more of it we should go. The worst was, ’e seemed to blime me for the ’ole affair. I never thought I’d live to see the d’y ’e’d glare at me the w’y ’e did.”
“That’s because you are on my side, Rags,” she said sadly.
“I know, and that makes it all the worse. It’s a ’ouse divided against itself. I’ve seen deadlocks in my time, but I’ve never seen a deadlock like this. Well, I’ll be takin’ aw’y wot little appitite you ’ave with my talk. I must be off. I’ve a thousand things to do, and of course Mrs. Wragge puts all the ’ard work on to me as usual. And if you’ll believe me, ma’am, she’s so evilly disposed that I ’ad to steal those little scones I brought you.”
He turned away, and when he had gone a few yards he put on his hat, removed his coat, and lighted a cigarette. Just as he reached the stile he met Renny Whiteoak crossing it.
Renny said sarcastically: “I see you have a path worn to the hut, Rags. Been carrying trays to Miss Whiteoak, I suppose.”
Rags straightened himself with an air of self-righteous humility.
“And if I didn’t carry trays to ‘er, wot do you suppose would ‘appen, sir? W’y, she’d starve; that’s wot she’d do. It would look rather bad, sir, for a lidy to die of starvation on ‘er brother’s estite, and’im livin’ in the lap of luxury.”
This remark was thrown after the retreating figure of his master, who had strode angrily away. Rags stared after him till he disappeared among the trees, muttering bitterly: “This is all the gratitood I get for the w’y I’ve slaved for you in war and in peace! Curses yesterd’y, and a sneer and a dirty look tod’y. You ill-tempered, domineerin’ red-’eaded slave driver! But you’ve met your match in Miss W’iteoak, let me tell you—and serves you right.”
With this he climbed over the stile, and returned meditatively to the basement kitchen.
When Renny reached the hut, he found the door open, and inside he could see his sister sitting by the
table, pouring herself a cup of tea. She looked up as she heard his step, and then, with an expression of remote calm, dropped her eyes to the stream of amber liquid issuing from the spout of the teapot. She sat with one rounded elbow on the table, her head supported on her hand. She looked so familiar and yet so strange, sitting in these poverty-stricken surroundings, that he scarcely knew what to say to her. However, he went in, and stood looking down at the tray.
“What particular meal is this?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” she answered, buttering a scone. “I keep no count of meals now.”
He looked about him, at the low, rain-stained ceiling, the rusty stove, the uneven, worm-eaten floor, the inner room with its narrow cot bed.
“This is an awful hole you’ve chosen to sulk in,” he commented.
She did not answer, but ate her scone with composure, and after it two strawberries smothered in cream.
“You’ll make a charming old lady after you’ve spent ten years or so here,” he gibed.
He saw a sparkle of temper in her eyes then.
“You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you drove me to it.”
“That is utter nonsense. I did everything I could to prevent you.”
“You did not send that girl away. You allowed Piers to bring her into the house with me, after her behaviour.”
“Meggie, can’t you see anyone’s side of this question but your own? Can’t you see that poor young Piers was doing a rather heroic thing in bringing her home?”
“I will not live under the same roof with that girl. I told you that three weeks ago, and you still try to force me.”
“But I can’t allow you to go on like this!” he cried. “We shall be the talk of the countryside.”
She regarded him steadfastly. “Have you ever cared what the countryside thought of you?”
“No; but I can’t have people saying that my sister is living in a tumbledown hut.”
“You can turn me out, of course.”
He ignored this, and continued: “People will simply say that you have become demented.”
Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna Page 87
