He was angry with Arthur for allowing himself to be so speedily enslaved. He was angry with Sarah for being the enslaver. He felt in himself a stirring of jealousy that clouded the clear waters of his friendship for Arthur. Sarah and himself, who had been drifting in a shadowy and devious intimacy that might have led to strange and lovely revelations, were separated by Arthur’s intrusion, for as such Finch began to regard his visit.
In the mornings, when Sarah was in attendance on Mrs. Court, Arthur Leigh sought out Eden, and they spent hours wandering in the flowery lanes, over the hillsides rich with ripening corn, and into the gorse-grown borders of the moor. Arthur could not say enough in praise of Eden. He confessed that with no one else had he ever experienced such a sensation of magnetic accord. As for Eden’s poetry, if Eden belonged to any other country he would have met an appreciation not yet given him. He was worried over Eden’s future, and was too appreciative to please Finch when Finch said that he would never let Eden suffer for lack of funds. Eden was his own brother, and he did not see why Arthur should take such a possessive note toward him. He began to pity himself. Eden did not want him, Arthur did not.want him, Sarah no longer sat with him in the garden. He took to sitting there alone, and had long conversations with young Ralph, who confided to him that one day he hoped to marry the kitchenmaid with whom he walked out. “But,” he had confided, “her’s the oldest of a long family and must help her mother for a bit, and I’m the youngest of a long family and must help my mother till one of my brothers can afford to have her live with he.”
Nicholas planned an excursion, in which he invited the three young people to join him. It was supposed to be merely the revisiting of a hamlet in the moor that had once pleased him. It was a rough drive that neither Augusta nor Mrs. Court cared to undertake. In reality he did not want them to know what he was about. This was to revisit the old home of the wife from whom he was divorced. He had heard of the death of her brother, who had lived there, and that the contents of the house were to be privately sold. He had spent some of the happiest days of his life in this house, when he was courting Millicent, and he had a sentimental desire to walk through its rooms once more. He confided his intention to his companions, with a half-cynical air, and yet with enough seriousness to make them feel both compassion and a romantic interest in the visit.
It was a day of alternate brilliant sunshine and flying cloud shadows. Their road lay, for the greater part of the way, along the ridges of rolling hills from where they could see a wide stretch of country where the green and gold pattern of the fields was blotted here and there by rounded clumps of woodland. High Willhayes and Yes Tor rose, alternately purple against the clouds or dim blue beneath the sunshine. The house where the Humes had lived was in a remote spot on the edge of the moor. Bracken and gorse grew to the very edge of its lawn, and behind it a small but noisy cascade rushed down a miniature gorge.
The house and all its outbuildings were of grey stone, very old, but quite bare of ivy and unsoftened by protecting trees, so that it gave the impression of bleakness. The many windows were small and the front door was sunk inhospitably between stone projections.
As they left the car and went toward the house the sun passed under a cloud. A wind from the moor began to whistle above the tumble of the cascade. Arthur and Finch showed their disappointment in their faces. They did not see how there could have been much jollity in that house. Even Nicholas, whose eyes had been alight with eagerness, looked rebuffed. He knocked on the heavy brass knocker. The door was opened by a tall stout man with a ruddy face, who had the place in charge. He was expecting them. He led them into the dismantled drawing-room. Surviving relatives had taken what they wanted from the house, and on tables were displayed in forlorn groups the ornaments and silver for sale. Light patches stood out on the wallpaper where pictures had been taken down. Furniture that had been long ago consigned to the attic had been carried downstairs by the agent in charge as being valuable, and the pieces thus reunited stood about the rooms, with the sad, hopelessly estranged air of old friends who have not met for half a lifetime.
The last Hume had been dead for only a month, yet there was an accumulation of dust in the house that might have been collecting during the seven generations of their occupancy. As they moved from room to room it seemed that some gloomy revelation of the past might be presented to them at any moment. Nicholas became more and more depressed. In a small room that had apparently been used as a study he found a framed photograph of a cricket team at Oxford wearing striped blazers, flat straw hats, and little side whiskers. He drew Finch to it and pointed out himself and his brother-in-law, the Hume who had lately died. Finch thought he should like to have this for himself, and bought it from the agent for three shillings. With it under his arm he followed Nicholas through the dining room into the kitchen. They left Leigh and Sarah examining an old brass-bound writing-case. A new intimacy seemed to enfold them.
The kitchen was the largest room in the house. The low ceiling was heavily beamed, the floor was of uneven stone, and the deep windows gave on a cobbled yard beyond which were the gabled stone stable, the shippen, and linhays. A long table, with benches on either side, filled one end of the room. At the other end was the fireplace and, at right angles to it, a high-backed settle. On the hearth lay a pair of heavy boots stained with mud, and on the settle a worn leather coat and a hat. These garments, belonging to the dead man, added the final touch of desolation to the scene. For the first time in his life Nicholas felt that he heard the portentous creak of the gates of death.
The agent and two people, a man and a woman, were talking in subdued tones before a cupboard filled with china. They were half hidden by the settle.
Suddenly the woman raised her voice on a note of energy and exclaimed: “1 really must have those adorable glass bottles, and, of course, the Toby jugs! What do you say; do you think I ought to buy the cupboard itself?”
Nicholas reared his head as might an old lion who hears the voice of the hunter. He listened and heard what he expected—the mellow tones of his brother Ernest! Ernest and Miss Trent were there in quest of antiques! It was too horrible. His gorge rose at the thought. Ernest must have got wind of the sale, sent word to Miss Trent, and the two come post haste after bargains. Finch heard too and could not help approving of their sagacity, considering what he himself had at stake in Miss Trent’s enterprise.
Nicholas grasped him by the arm and dragged him from the room. In the passage he glared at him, the deep downward lines of his face accentuated. He growled:
“I’m off upstairs to hide. Try to keep out of their way, but if they see you, don’t let them know I’m here! When that woman takes herself off, come upstairs and find me.”
Heavily he ascended the stairs. At the top he took off his hat and wiped his forehead, above which the iron-grey hair still grew strong and thick. “A damned close shave,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t have met that woman and that flibbertigibbet brother of mine for worlds.” He peered in at the principal bedrooms, finding no remembrance there but only distaste for the fly-blown mirrors and beds heaped with mounds of linen and pillows. Drawers of writing bureaux stood half-open, the yellowing papers within revealed.
He felt half-stifled and longed for the moment of escape. He turned from each with a sigh and wondered where he would be safest from Miss Trent. He thought he would go into the room to which one descended by two shallow steps, and, if he heard them coming, he would simply put his back against the door and keep them out. He thumped down the two steps, opened the door, entered and closed it softly behind him.
A sun blind, yellow with age, hung askew halfway down the window, dimming the light in the room to a sallow twilight. He was astonished to find that he was not alone there. A woman was sitting by the bureau looking over some papers she had taken from it.
He would have escaped, but she looked up and their eyes met. He stood quite still, returning her gaze, with that peculiar feeling of having done all this before, of enacti
ng a scene which he had previously rehearsed. Apart from that feeling his brain had ceased to function. He looked at the woman, saw that she was well dressed, elderly, distinguished-looking, but he was uncertain as to whether he and she were really existing in the world he knew.
The sound of her voice dispersed this trancelike condition. She said—“Why, Nicholas, how strange to meet you here!”
Her words came as the breaking of ice in a frozen stream, setting free a flood of memories. He saw clearly now that she was Millicent, the woman who had divorced him, and he realised that they were face to face, alone in a room of her dead brother’s house. He had the painful sense of returning reality that comes after the oblivion of an anaesthetic. Her voice sounded far away, yet it beat on his ears. Her face was the face of a stranger, yet the eyes pierced the intimacies of his heart.
She had got up and come to him. “I’m afraid I gave you a start,” she said. “Hadn’t you better sit down? You look pale.”
She too looked pale, and her voice, for all the coolness of her words, trembled with emotion.
“No, no,” he said. “I’m quite all right. But you did give me a start. I was feeling rather despondent, as it was, finding everything here so changed. The rooms, where we’d been so happy, torn up.” The muscles about his mouth twitched and he looked at her almost pathetically.
“I know, I know. I was feeling badly too. I had no idea you were in England.”
“Ernest and I are over here on a visit to Augusta. We’ve got a young nephew with us. He and another boy and one of the Court children are downstairs.”
She was rubbing her palms with a wisp of a perfumed handkerchief. Good God, it was the same scent she had always used! How it brought things back to him! She asked—“Is Ernest here?”
“Ernest!” he repeated wrathfully. “Don’t speak to me of Ernest! He’s down in the kitchen with a woman who is in the antique business. I believe they’re buying up the pots and pans for her shop.”
“I hope they are. I’ll be very glad of the money.”
“Did this place come to you?” he asked, his tone taking on the matter-of-fact note of intimates.
She nodded. “I should have put the whole house in order and had a proper sale. But I really hadn’t the energy. I’m just letting this agent sell things off as best he can.”
“I’ve a rich young chap downstairs. Perhaps I could get him interested in something.”
“That would be good of you!” And she added, with the flicker of a smile—“You were always so kind, Nick!”
His grey eyebrows went up. “It’s never too late to hear good news,” he said.
“Oh, I never accused you of unkindness... except in court!”
“Well, it’s about the only thing you didn’t accuse me of!”
She gave a little laugh. “When I look back on it all it seems to me that we were very silly.”
“Do you mean,” he asked, “that you think we might have got on?”
“Yes, I do.”
He eyed her suspiciously. She wasn’t trying to make it up, was she? At this time of life! He said gruffly: “No, no, no. We never could have got on!”
“No, I suppose not,” she sighed.
“May I open the window?” he asked. “It’s very close here.”
“Please do. I tried, but it was stuck. Isn’t this room terrible? The whole house depressing? Henry lived here alone for the last two years, with only a woman coming in by the day to look after him. He drank himself to death. He refused to see me.”
He had let in the air and he took deep breaths of it. The door of a cupboard standing open revealed a mound of decaying apples on the floor and shelves crowded with empty spirit bottles. He sat down and gazed mournfully at her. “A bad business,” he said. “Apples and whiskey, eh? Well, well.”
“I should have had the place tidied up,” she sighed again, “but I really was not fit for the effort.”
“Is your health pretty good, now?” He remembered that she had always been complaining.
“Better than it used to be,” she answered defiantly.
“You hold your age well. You’re a good-looking woman.”
“You’re a handsome man still.”
“No, no, I’m a wreck,”
“Nonsense!”
“No nonsense about it.”
“You’re a distinguished-looking man, and always will be.”
“Do you wish me well, Millicent?”
She put out her hand and just touched his. He noticed her white, rather clawlike fingers, with the large, curving nails. They were just the same. He had intensely disliked her hands.
He tugged at his moustache. His nerves felt shaken by this strumming on them of a half-forgotten tune.
“I wish you very well,” she said. “And I’m glad we met— this last time.” No doubt about it, there was a note of sentimentality in her voice.
“It’s odd,” she went on, “that you did not marry again.”
“No desire.”
“I suppose you know that my husband is dead.”
“Yes, too bad!” He had liked the young Irish officer for whom she had left him, and whom she had married after the divorce. Nicholas had allowed her suit to go undefended. She had had good grounds.
Finch came hurrying up the stairs and into the room. Nicholas introduced him. “My nephew, Millicent. Finch, Mrs. O’Flynn, an old friend of mine.”
They had trouble in finding Arthur Leigh and Sarah. At last Finch discovered them—she sitting on a stile that led into a field where there was a flock of sheep; Arthur standing, with one of her hands in both of his and an expression of joyous excitement on his sensitive face.
XI
ARTHUR, SARAH, AND FINCH
As SOON as there was an opportunity Leigh drew Finch into the privacy of the little outbuilding where the lawn roller and the tennis net were kept. The sun had gone and the dew was falling, but the heavens were still transfused by a tender rose-coloured light. A chestnut tree shaded the outhouse, and the fallen petals of its bloom lay thick about the door, trampled by those who entered.
Arthur sat down on the lawn roller and looked up at Finch with a half-pleading expression. He said:
“Now all the misery and uncertainty of it is over and only the beautiful part is left, you’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
“Forgive you what?” Finch asked in a hurried, nervous voice. He hoped that Arthur was not going to tell him of his feelings, disclose the spiritual distress that had been torturing him during all his visit.
“You know quite well. I’ve been a perfect beast ever since I came. Honestly, I don’t believe I can ever remember having been so morose and so brutally selfish in all my life before. Especially to’ you, Finch, who mean most of all to me!”
“More than Sarah?” asked Finch, trying to speak lightly.
Arthur answered seriously—“Yes, more than Sarah, in some ways. Because you’re my dear close friend and she’s the woman I worship, and dearness and closeness don’t seem to go with that someway.”
“I scarcely know anything,” said Finch. “Won’t you tell me? Of course, when I saw her sitting on the stile and you beside her, with that look, I knew there was something pretty serious. Arthur, is she going to marry you?”
“She is! I can hardly believe it. I’ve been like a man lost in a forest, giving up all hope of finding his way out. I’ve felt half mad sometimes; it was all so sudden, so unexpected.” In spite of his reassurance, his new-found joy, there was still a look of distress on his face. “How can I make you understand? You’ve never been up against this kind of thing.”
Finch looked at him compassionately and yet with a feeling of being himself hurt. Arthur had rushed into the midst of their scene, gathered into his own hands the strands of the tapestry Finch had slowly been weaving, and, in a kind of panic of passion, was changing it into a pattern all his own. Finch believed that it was the first time in Arthur’s life that he had ever been frightened by his own feelings,
felt the possibility of being thwarted in a desire. Arthur had always worn the bright, silky look of youth that had never been crossed!
“I can imagine something of what you are feeling. I’ve seen how unhappy you’ve been. But it couldn’t last. Things were bound to come right. How could any girl keep from loving you if you loved her?”
“Oh, but you don’t know Sarah. A man might prostrate himself at Sarah’s feet and howl of his love till the stars were shaken, and it wouldn’t move her. Not unless she loved him too!”
“But she does love you. It must be splendid to realise that.”
“I can’t realise it! You know, I didn’t intend to speak of love to her today. All I intended was to ask her if we might meet sometimes. To tell her that I simply couldn’t bear to think that everything would end with my going back to London... She was sitting on the stile, with a big holly bush behind her, looking divinely distant... You know that little secret look at the corner of her mouth. Well, it maddened me, because I felt that, if she were thinking of me at all, it was only as a far-away mortal whose hopes or despairs could never mean anything to her... I said what I had meant to say about our meeting. She said that she very seldom came over to England. It had been three years since the last visit. I said then that I’d go to Ireland to see her, if she’d let me. She turned and looked at me with the most adorable smile, but she didn’t answer... There was something in the smile that made me lose my head. I poured out all my feelings. A regular flood, it must have seemed to her... At the end I said that if she would not marry me I’d not answer for what I might do. She said, very gently, that she’d marry me... Oh, that voice of hers! Did you ever hear a voice like it, Finch?”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 267
