“One would think she had ridden all her life.”
“She’s got a good mount,” observed Renny, drawing in his horse, and throwing a look of pride over the chestnut and his rider.
Alayne’s eyes were bright with exhilaration. In riding she had found something which all her life she had lacked, the perfect outdoor exercise. She had never been good at games, had never indeed cared for them, but she had taken to riding as a waterfowl to the pond. She had gained strength physically and mentally. She had learned to love a gallop over frozen roads, against a bitter wind, as well as a canter in the temperate sun.
Renny was a severe master. Nothing but a good seat and a seemly use of the good hands nature had given her satisfied him. But when at last she rode well, dashing along before him, bright wisps of hair blown from under her hat, her body light as a bird’s against the wind, he was filled with a voluptuous hilarity of merely living. He could have galloped on and on behind her, swift and arrogant, to the end of the world.
They rarely talked when they rode together. It was enough to be flying in unison along the lonely roads, with the lake gulls screaming and sweeping overhead. When they did speak it was usually about the horses. He kept a sharp eye on her mount, and when he tightened a girth for her, or adjusted a stirrup, a look into her eyes said more than any words.
Sometimes Eden and Pheasant and Piers rode with them, and once they were joined by Maurice Vaughan, to Pheasant’s childlike delight. It was on this occasion that Eden’s horse slipped on the edge of a cliff above the lake, and would have taken him to the bottom had not Renny caught the bridle and dragged horse and rider to safety. He had pushed Piers and Maurice aside to do this, as though with a fierce determination to save Eden himself. Did he covet the satisfaction, Alayne wondered afterward, of risking his life to save Eden’s, to make up to him for winning the love of his wife, or was it only the arrogant, protective gesture of the head of the family?
Now at any time the bitterness of winter would descend on them. The rides would be few.
“Watch me,” cried Grandmother. “I’m going back to the house now. This is my last walk till spring. Ha—my old legs feel wobbly. Hold me up, Nick. You’re no more support than a feather bolster.”
The three figures shuffled along the walk, scarcely seeming to move. The horses dropped their heads and began to crop the dank grass of December.
“You’ve no idea,” said Renny, “how much the old lady and the two old boys mean to me.”
His grandmother had reached the steps. He waved his riding crop and shouted: “Well done! Bravo, Gran! Now you’re safe till spring, eh?”
“Tell them,” wheezed Gran to Nicholas, “that when they’ve put their nags away they’re to come and kiss me.”
“What does she say?” shouted Renny.
Nicholas rumbled: “She wants to be kissed.”
When they had installed their mother in her favorite chair, he said in a heavy undertone to Ernest:
“Those two are getting in deeper every day. Where’s it going to end? Where are Eden’s eyes?”
“Oh, my dear Nick, you imagine it. You always were on the lookout for that sort of thing. I’ve seen nothing. Still, it’s true that there is a feeling. Something in the air. But what can we do? I’d hate to interfere with an affair of Renny’s. Besides, Alayne is not that sort of girl—”
“They’re all that sort. Show me the woman who wouldn’t enjoy a love affair with a man like Renny, especially if she were snatched up from a big city and hidden away in a sequestered hole like Jalna. I’d be tempted to have one myself if I could find a damsel decrepit enough to fancy me.”
Ernest regarded his brother with a tolerant smile.
“Well, Nick, you have had affairs enough in your day. You and Millicent might be—”
“For God’s sake, don’t say that,” interrupted Nicholas. “I’d rather be dead than have that woman about me.”
“Ah, well—” Ernest subsided, but he murmured something about “a dashed sight too many affairs.”
“Well, they’re all over, aren’t they?” Nicholas asked testily. “Ashes without a spark. I can’t even remember their names. Did I ever kiss anyone in passion? I can’t recall the sensation. What I am interested in is this case of Renny and Alayne; it’s serious.”
“He scarcely seems to notice her in the house.”
“Notice her! Oh, my dear man—” Nicholas bit off the top of a cigar, and scornfully spat it out.
“Well, for an instance, when the young Fennels were in the other night, and the gramophone was playing, Alayne danced oftener with them and Eden, and even young Finch, than with Renny. I only saw her dance with him once.”
Nicholas said, pityingly: “My poor blind old brother! They only danced together once because once was all they could stand of it. I saw them dancing in the hall. It was dim there. Her face had gone white, and her eyes—well, I don’t believe they saw anything. He moved like a man in a dream. He’d a stiff smile on his face, as though he’d put it on for convenience: a mask. It’s serious with him this time, and I don’t like it.”
“There will be a pretty row if Eden gets on to it.”
“Eden won’t notice. He’s too damned well wrapped up in himself. But I wonder Meggie hasn’t.”
Ernest took up a newspaper and glanced at the date. “The seventeenth. Just fancy. Augusta will arrive in Montreal tomorrow. I expect the poor thing has had a terrible passage. She always chooses such bad months for crossing.” He wanted to change the subject. It upset his digestion to talk about the affairs of Renny and Alayne. Besides, he thought that Nicholas exaggerated the seriousness of it. They might be rather too interested in each other, but they were both too sensible to let the interest go to dangerous lengths. He looked forward to seeing Augusta; he and she had always been congenial.
She arrived two days later. She had made the passage without undue discomfort, never indeed missing a meal, though most of the passengers had been very ill. She had become such a hardened traveller in her infancy that it lay almost beyond the power of the elements now to disarrange her.
Lady Buckley was like a table set for an elaborate banquet at which the guests would never arrive. Her costume was intricate, elegant, with the elegance of a bygone day, unapproachable. No one would ever dare to rumple her with a healthy hug. Even old Mrs. Whiteoak held her in some awe, though behind her back she made ribald and derisive remarks about her. She resented Augusta’s title, pretended that she could not recall it, and had always spoken to her acquaintances of “my daughter, Lady Buntley—or Bunting—or Bantling.”
Augusta wore her hair in the dignified curled fringe of Queen Alexandra. It was scarcely grey, though whether through the kindness of nature or art was not known. She wore high collars fastened by handsome brooches. She had a long tapering waist and shapely hands and feet, the latter just showing beneath the hem of her rather full skirt. That air of having never recovered from some deep offence, of which Nicholas had spoken, was perhaps suggested by the poise of her head, which always seemed to be drawn back as though in recoil. She had strongly arched eyebrows, dark eyes, become somewhat glassy from age, the Court nose in a modified form, and a mouth that nothing could startle from its lines of complacent composure. She was an extremely well-preserved woman, who, though she was older than Nicholas or Ernest, looked many years younger. Since it was her fate to have been born in a colony, she was glad it had been India and not Canada. She thought of herself as absolutely English, refuting as an unhappy accident her mother’s Irish birth.
She was most favourably impressed by Alayne. She was pleased by a certain delicate sobriety of speech and bearing that Alayne had acquired from much association with her parents.
“She is neither hoydenish nor pert, as so many modern girls are,” she observed to her mother, in her deep, well-modulated voice.
“Got a good leg on her, too,” returned the old lady, grinning.
Lady Buckley and Alayne had long conversations togethe
r. The girl found beneath the remote exterior a kind and sympathetic nature. Lady Buckley was fond of all her nephews, but especially of the young boys. She would tell old-fashioned stories, some of them unexpectedly bloodcurdling, to Wakefield by the hour. She would sit very upright beside Finch while he practised his music lesson, composedly praising and criticizing, and the boy seemed to like her presence in the room. She endeared herself to Alayne by being kind to Pheasant. “Let us ignore her mother’s birth,” she said, blandly. “Her father is of a fine old English military family, and, if her parents were not married—well, many of the nobility sprang from illegitimate stock. I quite like the child.”
It was soon evident that Meg resented her aunt’s attitude toward Piers’s marriage, her admiration for Alayne, and her influence over Finch and Wakefield. She first showed her resentment by eating even less than formerly at the table. It would have been a marvel how she kept so sleek and plump had one not known of those tempting secret trays carried to her by Rags, who, if he were loyal and devoted to anyone on earth, was loyal and devoted to Miss Whiteoak.
She then took to sitting a great deal with her grandmother with the door shut against the rest of the family, and a blazing fire on the hearth. The old lady thrived on the scorching air and gossip. There was nothing she enjoyed more than “hauling Augusta over the coals” behind her back. To her face she gave her a grudging respect. Since Augusta approved of Finch’s music lessons, it was inevitable that his practising should prove a torture to the old lady.
“Gran simply cannot stand those terrible scales and chromatics,” Meg said to Renny. “Just at the hour in the day when she usually feels her brightest, her nerves are set on edge. At her age it’s positively dangerous.”
“If the boy were taking lessons from Miss Pink,” retorted Renny, bitterly, “the practising wouldn’t disturb Gran in the least.”
“Why, Renny, Gran never objected to his taking from Mr. Rogers! It doesn’t matter to her whom he takes from, though certainly Miss Pink would never have taught him to hammer as he insists on doing.”
“No, she would have taught him to tinkle out little tunes with no more pep than a toy music box. If the youngster is musical, he’s going to be properly taught. Alayne says he’s very talented.”
The words were scarcely out before he knew he had made a fatal mistake in quoting Alayne’s opinion. He saw Meg’s face harden; he saw her lips curl in a cruel little smile. He floundered.
“Oh, well, anyone can see that he’s got talent. I saw it long ago; that is why I chose Mr. Rogers.”
She made no reply for a moment, but still smiled, her soft blue eyes searching his. Then she said:
“I don’t think you realize, Renny, how strange your attitude toward Alayne is becoming. You have almost a possessive air. Sometimes I think it would be better if Eden had never brought her here. I’ve tried to like her, but—”
“Oh, my God!” said Renny, wheeling, and beginning to stride away. “You women make me sick. There’s no peace with you. Imagine the entire family by the ears because of a kid’s music lessons!” He gave a savage laugh.
Meg, watching him flounder, was aware of depths she had only half suspected. She said:
“It’s not that. It’s not that. It’s the feeling that there’s something wrong—some sinister influence at work. From the day Eden brought the girl here I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of something in her. Something fatal and dangerous. First she wormed her way—”
“Wormed her way’! Oh, Meggie, for heaven’s sake!”
“Yes, she did! She literally wormed her way into the confidence of the uncles. Then she captivated poor Finch. Just because she told him he was musical, he is willing to practise till he’s worn out and Grannie is ill. Then she turned Wake against me. He won’t mind a thing I say. And now you, Renny! But this is dangerous. Different. Oh, I’ve seen it coming.”
He had recovered himself.
“Meggie,” he said, stifling her in a rough tweed hug, “if you would ever eat a decent meal—you know you literally starve yourself—and ever go out anywhere for a change, you wouldn’t get such ideas into your head. They’re not like you. You are so sane, so well balanced. None of us has as sound a head as you. I depend on you in every way. You know that.”
She collapsed, weeping on his shoulder, overwhelmed by this primitive masculine appeal. But she was not convinced. Her sluggish nature was roused to activity against the machinations of Alayne and Lady Buckley.
That evening when Finch went to the drawing-room to practise he found the piano locked. He sought Renny in the harness room of the stable.
“Look here,” Finch burst out, almost crying, “what do you suppose? They’ve gone and locked me out. I can’t practise my lesson. They’ve been after me for a week about it, and now I’m locked out.”
Renny, pipe in mouth, continued to gaze in whole-souled admiration at a new russet saddle.
“Renny,” bawled Finch, “don’t you hear? They’ve locked me out of the drawing-room, and I met Rags in the hall and he gave one of his beastly grins and said, ‘Ow, Miss W’iteoak ‘as locked up that pianer. She’s not goin’ to ‘ave any pianer playin’ in the ‘ouse till the old lidy’s recovered. She’s in a pretty bad w’y, she is, with all your rattlety-bangin’.’ I’d like to know what I’m to do. I may as well throw the whole thing up if I’m not allowed to practise.”
Renny made sympathetic noises against the stem of his pipe and continued to gaze at the saddle.
Finch drove his hands into his pockets and slumped against the door jamb. He felt calmer now. Renny would do something, he was sure, but he dreaded a row with himself the centre of it.
At last the elder Whiteoak spoke. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Finch. I’ll ask Vaughan if you may practise on his piano. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. The housekeeper’s deaf, so her nerves won’t be upset. I’ll have the piano tuned. It used to be a good one. Then you’ll be quite independent.”
Soon young Finch might be seen plunging through the ravine on the dark December afternoons to the shabby, unused drawing-room at Vaughanlands. He brought new life to the old piano, and it, like land that had lain fallow for many years, responded joyfully to his labour, and sent up a stormy harvest of sound that shook the prismed chandelier. Often he was late for the evening meal, and would take what he could get in the kitchen from Mrs. Wragge. Several times Maurice Vaughan asked him to have his supper with him, and Finch felt very much a man, sitting opposite Maurice with a glass of beer beside him, and no question about his smoking.
Maurice always managed to bring the conversation around to Meggie. It was difficult for Finch to find anything pleasant to tell about her in these days, but he discovered that Maurice was even more interested to hear of her can-tankerousness than her sweetness. It seemed to give him a certain glum satisfaction to know that things were at sixes and sevens with her.
Finch had not been so happy since he was a very little fellow. He had perhaps never been so happy. He discovered in himself a yearning for perfection in the interpretation of his simple musical exercises, which he had never had in his Latin translations or his math. He discovered that he had a voice. All the way home through the black ravine he would sing, sometimes at the top of his lungs, sometimes in a tender, melancholy undertone.
But how his school work suffered! His report at the end of the term was appalling. As Eden said, he out-Finched himself. In the storm that followed, his one consolation was that a large share of the blame was hurled at Renny. However, that did him little good in the end, for Renny turned on him, cursing him for a young shirker and threatening to stop the lessons altogether. Aunt Augusta and Alayne stood by him, but with caution. Augusta did not want her visit to become too unpleasant, and Alayne had come to regard her position in the house as a voyageur making his difficult progress among treacherous rocks and raging rapids. She could endure it till the New Year—when Eden was to take a position in town whic
h Mr. Evans had got for him—and no longer.
At this moment, when Finch, a naked wretch at the cart’s tail, with fingers of scorn pointing at him from all directions, alternately contemplated running away and suicide, he suddenly ceased to be an object of more than passing scorn, and little Wakefield took the centre of the stage. Piers had for some time been missing cartridges. Wake had for an equal length of time seemed to have an unlimited supply of marshmallows. And a sneaking stable-boy had “split,” and it was discovered that Wake was emptying the cartridges, making neat little packets of the gunpowder, and selling it to the village boys for their own peculiar violences.
When cornered, Wake had denied all knowledge of gunpowder, whether in cartridges or bulk. But Meg and Piers, searching his little desk, had come upon the neat little packets, all ready to sell, with a box full of coppers, and even a carefully written account of sales and payments. It was serious. Meg said he must be whipped. The young Whiteoaks had set no high standard of morality for a little brother to live up to, but still this was too bad.
“Flog him well,” said Gran. “The Courts stole, but they never lied about it.”
“The Whiteoaks,” said Nicholas, “often lied, but they never stole.”
Ernest murmured: “Wakefield seems to combine the vices of both sides.”
“He’s a little rotter,” said Piers, “and it’s got to be taken out of him.”
Alayne was aghast at the thought of the airy and gentle Wake being subjected to the indignity of physical punishment. “Oh, couldn’t he please get off this time?” she begged. “I’m sure he’ll never do such a thing again.”
Piers gave a short scornful laugh. “The trouble with that kid is he’s been utterly ruined. If you’ll let me attend to him, I’ll wager he doesn’t pinch anything more.”
“I strongly disapprove of a delicate child like Wakefield being made to suffer,” said Lady Buckley
The culprit, listening in the hall, put his head between the curtains at this and showed his little white, tear-stained face.
07 Jalna Page 24
