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 bookcas
e, 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 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 earthysmelling 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 latecomers.
“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 grey 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, tomorrow’s sun should rise upon a cockless and henless world.”
07 Jalna Page 22
