He was not watching where he was going. He stepped into the opening of a burrow, hidden in grass, and fell headlong, almost dragging the others with him. When he gathered himself up he found that his ankle was strained. He could walk no farther. He sat down on a low crumbling wall and nursed his ankle. The rain was ceasing and the faces of Sarah and Arthur were pale discs in the glimmering moonlight.
“You must stay here while I go and fetch a car,” Arthur said in a flat voice. He felt no sympathy for Finch’s suffering, only irritation. The three had been isolated too long in each other’s company.
“Sarah will wait with you.” He was glad to leave Sarah behind, to put down the heavy basket on the wall beside her. He set off gloomily toward the blurred lights of the town below.
They listened to the soft suck of his retreating steps. Sarah took her shawl from the basket and wrapped it round her. Finch forgot the ache in his ankle. Her nearness, the consciousness that they were shut in by the walls of the night, was a pain that obliterated all others.
She said: “This is like it used to be—in the garden.”
“It’s not at all like it was there.”
“Why isn’t it?
“Because now I’m mad about you.”
“And you weren’t then?”
“I don’t know Perhaps I was. But I didn’t realise it. Now it’s too late.”
“I’ve loved you all along. From the first day you played my accompaniments.”
“Sarah!” His voice broke. He tried to see her face. “You loved me, and married Arthur!”
“You did not ask me.”
“You didn’t give me time.”
“You never made a sign. You say yourself that this is different—that you don’t know what your feelings were then.”
“But you! You knew yours!”
“What could I do?”
“Couldn’t you have made a sign? Don’t women let men know? Never once—never once did you give me any intimation that you cared for me!”
“I met you almost every night in the garden. You knew I was deceiving my aunt.”
“But a word—a look! You were as cold as ice! I don’t believe you love me! You just want to torture me.” He buried his face in his hands.
“I love you more than you love me.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “What do you know of love? Marrying one man—loving another!”
“What do you know? It’s new to you. It’s partly the night. The storm. Those lovers we saw. You’re excited.”
“You’re as cold as ice. As cruel. And what a shame for Arthur—if what you say is true!”
“He need not know”
“He will know. He’s too sensitive not to find you out. Even now—he’s not happy.”
“Did he tell you so?”
“No, but I feel it.”
“He will be happy again when we are away from you.”
“Yet it was Arthur who insisted on my coming! And you let me come... loving me!”
“You said just now that you do not believe I love you.”
“I was wrong! You do love me, Sarah! Oh, my darling, beautiful Sarah! Tell me you love me!”
She put her arms about him. In the darkness they kissed. A mighty primeval urge rose to them from the earth. The triumphant beating of their hearts almost stifled them. A great wave thundered on the beach and filled the night with its murmuring.
Finch tore himself from Sarah’s arms. “We must not,” he gasped. “Arthur... my best friend... never again... We must forget all this—never let him guess—that I—that you—”
Sarah folded her arms under her shawl. She gave her small, mysterious smile.
XIII
RALPH HART
MRS. COURT surveyed them critically. “Arthur is the only one,” she said, “who looks the better for the stay by the sea. But probably it was that dosing of codliver oil I gave him that put flesh on him. Finch’s cheeks look more hollow than ever. As for Mouse, she looks exactly the same. Let her bask in the sun or live in a hole, she’s always the same—Mouse and Mole!”
The young people stood looking down at her, the youths rather shamefaced before her scrutiny, her niece as aloof as ever.
“Did you play your fiddle much, Mouse?”
“I did not play it once.”
“Not once! I told you how it would be!” She turned triumphantly to her contemporaries. “She cannot play unless I accompany her. I inspire her. Isn’t that so, Mouse?”
Sarah nodded, curling her lip in her malicious child’s smile.
“And Finch depresses you—isn’t that so?”
“Yes, Aunt.”
Mrs. Court was delighted. She sat down in order that she might beat a tattoo with her heels.
“It was the house, not Finch, that depressed Sarah,” said Arthur. “If you had seen the house, you would not have wondered that she could not play in it. But it didn’t affect Finch. His music is its own roof and walls. He used to play to us in the evenings while we sat by the fire.” He told them then how they had changed the aspect of the house in the first hour of arrival and of how they had forgotten the original position of things when they set about restoring it at the last.
“You can picture Finch and me,” he laughed, “running distractedly about with antimacassars in our hands trying them first one place, then another, discovering that they looked natural no place. There was a door-mat with ‘Watch and Pray’ on it and we tried it in seventeen doorways before we found the right one.”
“And which was the right one?” demanded Augusta.
“Ah, Lady Buckley, don’t ask me. Let me tell you about the aspidistras! There was a large one in a glazed pot in each of the principal rooms. Finch agreed to take them all into his bedroom. I don’t know what he did to them but they grew so that, when we carried them out they would scarcely pass through the door. His room looked like a jungle.”
“In my house,” observed Mrs. Court, “I have three aspidistras, nine begonias, and fifteen cactuses.”
” Cacti!” boomed Augusta.
“I call ’em cactuses. Funguses, cactuses. I never did like la-di-da pronunciations.”
“What is the plural,” asked Ernest, “of candelabrum? I mean the sensible, unaffected plural.”
“Brums,” answered Mrs. Court, curtly, but she eyed him with suspicion.
Soon she carried off Sarah and Arthur to another room where she could question them without interruption.
“Well,” said Nicholas, when the door had closed behind them, “I can’t imagine what young Leigh saw in that girl.”
“She is certainly a very strange girl,” agreed Ernest. “She says almost nothing, yet one feels she thinks too much. She seems to be amiable, but one wonders what is behind it all. One feels baffled.”
“Perhaps that is what attracted Arthur Leigh,” said Augusta. “Many men admire deep women. My husband invariably admired a deep woman.”
Her two brothers stared at her incredulously.
“Well,” said Nicholas, “he wasn’t very deep himself.”
“Not deep?” cried Augusta. “Why, he was as deep as the sea!”
“How do you mean, deep as the sea? Do you mean deep intellectually or just devious?”
Augusta answered firmly—“I mean both.”
“I always thought,” put in Ernest, “that Buckley was one of the most transparent fellows I ever knew.”
“So he was,” agreed Augusta. “Transparent where he should be transparent. Deep where he should be deep.”
“And devious where he should be devious, I suppose,” continued Nicholas.
“He could see as far through a stone wall as anyone,” said Augusta, with a hint of chill in her voice. Her tone implied that he had seen through both Nicholas and Ernest.
Finch asked—“Have you heard from home while I have been away?”
“Yes,” answered Nicholas, “and not good news. Meggie has not been well. It will be necessary for her to have an operation, the doctor says.”
Finch was aghast. “An operation! But wh—what’s the matter? I hadn’t heard of anything wrong with Meggie.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s anything very serious. Something that has been troubling her since Patience was born. But it will be worrying for them.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Ernest. “Poor Meggie!”
Poor Meggie? Finch’s heart contracted with fear for her. And there his uncles and aunt had sat discussing this and that as calmly as though all were well at home! How callous, how self-absorbed they were! And they had no secret trouble such as he had. He had had no peace of mind since the scene on the downs. He had suffered shame, wild desire which there was no hope of assuaging, and an unreasoning, bitter anger against both Sarah and Arthur. He had not gone with them on any of their excursions that last week. His strained ankle was excuse enough. He had kept to himself, longing for the day of departure but not having the initiative to return to Lyming without them. He had sat by the hour brooding on what had passed between himself and Sarah, trying to recall their very words in the conversations in the garden. In tacit understanding they had avoided each other, but one look into that face, mysterious as a closed flower, was enough to set his nerves on fire. Feverishly he would recall the moment when the flower had opened to him. And not only opened but pressed backward its petals, as though to absorb the extreme measure of his passion.
And now there was this worry over Meggie! No love could make him unheedful of Meggie, so tender, so unselfish, so kind. Did Eden, he wondered, know of it? He did not ask the others whether they had told him, but set out at once toward the lodge, moving slowly with the aid of a stick.
As he limped down the drive he noticed how things were beginning to take on the appearance of late summer. The berries of the thorns were becoming a light red. Hips shone like coral in the wild rose bushes along the fence. The swarthy harvest fields drew the last glance of the sun. He noticed its light on the smooth grey trunks of the double row of beeches, and how each beech had its own delicate embroidery of ivy on the side exposed to the sun. The climbing roses that half hid the lodge had attained their full growth of the season.
He stood listening at the door. There was no sound inside, and, after a moment’s hesitation, he entered without knocking. He would like to see Eden alone. In some mysterious way he felt that he was nearer Eden than he had been when he last saw him. Yet nothing would have induced him to tell his brother of his experience.
He found him alone, stretched at full length on the floor, writing hastily on a pad by the light of the fire. He had been disturbed by the sound of Finch’s stick and threw him a furious look over his shoulder.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” stammered Finch, backing, “I’d no idea you’d be writing.”
“Why in hell shouldn’t I be writing?” snarled Eden, his gaze returning to the suspended point of his pencil.
“Why, of course, I’m glad you are! I’ll take myself off. I do hope I haven’t made a mess of your poem.”
“You blasted young swine, you’ve ruined it! Minny’s in the garden. Go and find her. I wish you’d do each other in and that would be an end of you both.”
Finch limped, as hastily as he could, through the back door into the garden. He found Minny swaying indolently in a hammock hung between two apple trees. The lichencovered trees were so old and bent that they tottered under the weight of Minny’s fresh, exuberant form. She looked up at Finch smiling, mirth in her oddly coloured slanting eyes. “Did he drive you out, too?” she whispered. “I think he must be doing something awfully good because he’s been like this all day—scarcely able to bear the sight of me. But he’s quite capable of tearing it up tomorrow”
“I’m sorry I came at such a bad time, but I just wanted to see how you were getting on.”
“Oh, we’re getting on well enough. But we missed you.” A mocking light came into her eyes. “Did you enjoy yourselves? Was it a nice honeymoon?”
Finch answered seriously.
“Yes, I enjoyed it very much. The sea bathing was glorious.”
“You didn’t find yourself de trop?”
Finch gave a little laugh and began gently to swing the hammock. “You’d better ask them that.”
“Even Eden,” said Minny, “thought you were an unconventional lot.”
“I suppose we are, but Arthur and I are such pals. He’s a curious fellow. Very sensitive and easily upset.”
Minny burst out laughing, then pressed her hand to her mouth, glancing fearfully at the lodge.
“Minny,” asked Finch, rocking her a little harder, “what do you think of my cousin? Do you like her?”
“Very much. I think she’s the most striking girl I’ve ever seen. But I don’t think they’re suited to each other. I don’t think she’ll make him happy.”
Finch turned away his face. He watched a flock of rooks wheeling above the park.
Minny continued—“You and she would have been much better suited in my opinion. I know I shouldn’t say that, but I’m hopelessly candid.” She looked curiously into his face, but for once it revealed nothing.
“I strained my ankle,” he said, tapping his boot with his stick, as though forcibly to attract her mind from the dangerous subject of Sarah.
“Oh, what a pity!”
“It’s nothing. What is worrying me is some bad news about my sister. She’s not well. She’s got to have an operation.”
“I have heard of that already. You mustn’t worry. I’m sure she will be quite all right. She complained when I was with her, but I don’t think it was anything serious.”
She was made for the comforting of men, Finch thought. Her very tone gave him reassurance. The relaxed curves of her body gave him a feeling of tranquillity.
“How kind you are, Minny!” His hand dropped to hers. She clung to it, swinging herself by it, smiling up at him.
Before he returned to the house he thought he would walk through the walled garden where he and Sarah had been used to sit in the evenings. He opened the door in the wall and looked about cautiously before entering. If she were here he would not go in, would not risk the danger of meeting her there. But the garden was empty except for the figure of Ralph Hart, the gardener’s boy, trundling a barrow along a walk. Finch was surprised to see him at work at this hour, for it was the time when he and his girl walked out together.
“Hello, Ralph,” he said, strolling over to him, “you’re working late tonight.”
Ralph touched his cap, “Gardening, zir. I thought I might as well finish this job up. It’ll be raining tomorrow by the look of the sun. He’s gone down in a proper stormy sky.”
Finch inhaled a deep breath of the garden scents. “But it’s a lovely evening. You should be having a stroll with your girl.”
“Her’s had to go to nurse her mother. Her folk live down Clapwithy way, near Beddelcoombe. ’Tis a long way, zir.”
“I expect you miss her.”
The boy gave a dreamy smile. “I feel fair mazed without her, zir. ’Tis the first time her’s gone off with hersen since we have been keepin’ company.”
The interest with which Ralph’s love for the stolid little maid had invested him in Finch’s mind was now greatly intensified by his new feeling for Sarah. He wanted to say to Ralph—“How much better off you are than I! You love a girl that you may one day marry, while I love one who is already possessed by another.” Instead, he asked:
“Have you ever been to Cornwall, Ralph? I remember that you told me your mother came from there.”
“No, zir. I’ve never been to Cornwall. Yet ’tis a nice place, my mother says, with the sea and all.”
“But you’ve seen the sea!”
“No, zir. I’ve never been to the sea. And the sea is very nice, so they tell.”
“But it’s only a short distance away!”
“Yes, zir. I’ve been told that tidden far.” He raised his eyes to the purple tors that bounded his world for him.
Finch became excited. “Look
here, Ralph, I’ll tell you what you must do! You must take your girl to the sea for your honeymoon, and I’ll pay for the trip.”
“Thank you, zir. Her ’ud like that.”
“But I suppose your marriage is a long way off. We can’t wait for that! You must take her the first fine Sunday. I’ll hire the car for you.” He wished he might go with them, watch Ralph’s face when his eyes first saw the might of the sea and the granite cliffs. Yet Ralph would probably say—“It’s very nice, zir,” and the girl stare stolidly without a word.
He no longer talked to Sarah of the pair. He avoided her, when it was possible, enwrapping himself in isolation. He had no desire to experience again the passionate emotions she had aroused in him.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 270
