The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche

by de la Roche, Mazo

AUNT AND NEPHEW

  NICHOLAS AND ERNEST decided to return to Jalna while the fair weather held. They went to London, intending to spend ten days there before sailing, but the ten days became a month and they ended by making the voyage in heavy gales toward the end of October. By the time all their expenses had been paid Finch found that his present of a trip to them had been a costly one. But he did not regret it. He scarcely felt interested in the fact.

  A curious numbness had descended on him since the death of Ralph Hart. After the night that he and Eden had spent on the moor he had experienced an almost hallucinated happiness for several days. It had seemed enough for him that he was alive and young. He turned from one of the primitive pleasures of life to another, savouring each as though it were the last time he was to enjoy it. He wanted to be alone in order that all his senses might have unhampered play. He shunned Eden as though fearing that the fire of his presence might shatter the clear crystal of this mood.

  He had gone to church on Sunday, sitting in the high carved pew with his aunt. In the church he had felt a return of the sickness of spirit that had shaken him during the funeral service. He could scarcely make himself believe that Ralph’s coffin was not in the church. He knelt, pressing his knuckles into his eyes, trying to shut out the sight. The musty smell of the old church became the smell of a grave. He perceived the innumerable wormholes in the end of the pew and was filled with loathing. His mind turned to the thought of Ralph in his grave, and tore at it savagely like a persistent dog unearthing foulness. The hymns became howls of mourning to him. He saw, near the back of the church, all Ralph’s relations in deep black. They had come in a body as was the custom, on that first Sunday. Ralph’s mother knelt during the entire service, a bulky mourning figure, her face covered by her hands in black cotton gloves.

  Nicholas had remarked to Ernest that afternoon:

  “The boy seems very down in the mouth. I think he should come up to London with us. He’s really wasting his time in the country when he ought to be seeing life.”

  “He’s a strange, moody boy,” Ernest had replied. “One never quite knows how he will take things. I thought he was very callous about that young gardener’s death. He scarcely spoke of it. But this morning, after service, when we passed the boy’s relations all gathered about his grave, Finch’s face was working as though he were going to cry.”

  “He ought to come up to London with us. He needs a change after the shock he had. He’s a bundle of nerves like his poor flibbertigibbet mother.” The shadow on Ernest’s face, caused by his anxiety over Finch, deepened to gloom at what he could only consider Nick’s mimicry of their mother.

  But when they approached Finch on the subject of accompanying them, he said that he wanted to remain in Devon. While Augusta was flattered by his desire to remain, the thought of being entirely rid of visitors was not unpleasing to her. She was afraid, too, that if Finch stayed behind she would see more and more of Eden and Minny. It was becoming the problem of her life how to get them to remove from the lodge. But she could not definitely ask Eden to go, since he had no money to go on. Really she thought, what with two difficult elderly brothers in the house and a fidgety friend like Mrs. Court, and a moody boy, and a marriage, and a suicide, she needed a rest.

  Well, what was Finch going to do? Was he going to London later? Was he going to Paris or Rome? It was usual for young men to sow a few wild oats in these places, the elderly men suggested.

  Yes, he would see those places later. Just now what he wanted was to be let alone. Soon after this Nicholas and Ernest left for the return journey.

  He took long walks about the countryside. The ankle he had strained at the sea was still weak, and he learnt to ease it by the carrying of a stick. Soon the figure of the tall, thin boy with the stick was familiar to all in the neighbourhood. Many a time he thought of the spaniel bitch Ralph Hart had been going to get him. He began to picture it as trotting at his heels.

  Once at dusk when he was returning from a walk he was just about to enter the drive when he saw the figures of two girls in cap and apron. They had been speaking to a young man on a bicycle, and they now stood giggling together at some remark of his. Finch saw that one of them was the kitchenmaid, Ralph’s girl. He was suddenly aflame with anger at the sight of her on the roadside making free with a passing youth. Her round white face, which he had never seen in any but this dim light, was widened by a smile. He went up to her, raising his stick.

  “I should think you would be ashamed of yourself!” he said loudly. “Go into the house and never let me see you out on this road again!”

  The two girls fled in terror from him. He strode along the drive, swinging his stick, bristling with rage. He expected to hear next day that the girl had given notice, but that was the end of the incident. After that, when she saw him coming, she scurried out of sight.

  It was the first time he had ever spoken in a tone of authority to anyone but Wakefield, and Wake gave little heed to any authority of his. The fact that the girl was not his servant, that he had no right to speak to her so, did not trouble him. He only felt a fierce satisfaction in the thought that he had made her afraid of him. He strode up and down the floor of his bedroom, taking a fierce pleasure in the fright he had given her. He said aloud:

  “I stopped bang in front of her and raised my stick and said—‘I should think you would be ashamed of yourself! Go into the house and never let me see you on this road again!’” His face again reddened. He raised his stick, imitating his own gesture.

  The thought of Sarah had been put out of his mind by the shock of Ralph Hart’s suicide. Her face, which had come between him and all he saw, was replaced by the horribly contorted face of Ralph as he lay on the floor of the shed. That face had glared at him out of the garden loam, out of the flying clouds of autumn, out of the wallpaper in his room, out of the darkness of his own closed eyelids.

  After his encounter with Ralph’s girl another change took place in him. By degrees the image of Ralph’s dead face faded, and once again he was haunted by the face of Sarah. A remarkable peculiarity about this change was that, day by day, the dead boy’s expression grew less agonised, until he finally appeared in brown-throated serenity, his eyes darkly bright, and that Sarah’s image, in a like degree, frequently assumed the dreadful contortions of the suicide. This expression troubled Finch most deeply when he had gone to bed. He would dig his face into his pillow, trying to smother the terror of it.

  He came to hate the thought of Sarah. He came to imagine that she had served him as cruelly as the kitchenmaid had served Ralph. He coupled the thought of the two females together. Ralph’s girl had driven him to suicide, and Sarah was driving him to insanity. He pictured her as deliberately haunting him with that terrifying expression. Her power so to torment him at will was borne out in his mind by the strangeness he had always felt in her. He remembered his own attempt at suicide, and, in some mysterious manner, he began to blame her for that.

  When the subject of Sarah came up between him and Augusta he now disparaged her. “She’s a queer sort of girl,” he said once. “I’m afraid poor Arthur has made a big mistake. I think he’s going to find himself up against it. I should hate to be in his shoes.”

  “I shall be very sorry if the match turns out badly,” said Augusta. “He’s such a nice boy. And I’m fond of Sarah too. You know, dear, when you first came I thought you and Sarah might be drawn to each other, but I see how mistaken I was. You never would have got on with her.”

  “Get on with that girl! Never! I’m attracted by an entirely different sort of girl. I like a girl that can be a pal to a fellow.”

  This expression, as a matter of truth, was repugnant to him. The thought of a woman he loved being a pal to him was distasteful. He only used the word because it implied something so different from what Sarah was or ever could be.

  Another time he said—“You should have seen her walking on the downs, Aunt! There was no more freedom in her movements than in the movements
of a Chinese woman. I don’t know what’s the matter with her, but she seems to be too tightly put together.” And almost at the next moment, a pang of cruel lust for her went through him.

  Leigh wrote to him dilating on the beauties of the Lake country, then, a month later, of France, where they were going to spend the winter. Finch read the letters greedily, noting how much Arthur wrote of what he was seeing and how little of what he was feeling. He fancied that Arthur wrote cautiously. He did not answer either letter. Leigh and Sarah both wrote several times to Augusta. Finch listened judicially, smoking his pipe, while Augusta read Arthur’s letters aloud. But, when she began to read Sarah’s letter to him, he exclaimed:

  “Please don’t trouble to read her letters to me! I know just the sort of boring thing she’d write.”

  “It’s not at all boring,” said Augusta, as she reached the end. “It’s very bright.” She folded the letter and put it in her writing bureau.

  When she had gone upstairs after lunch to lie down Finch went to the bureau and took out the letter. He turned it over several times in his hands, then he opened it and read it. It was unexpectedly simple and girlish. He read and reread it, his eyes dwelling on the words “Please remember me affectionately to Finch.” He went to the piano and played almost noiselessly, so as not to disturb his aunt, some of the pieces he had played with Sarah.

  He saw her with the utmost clarity standing beside the piano with her violin under her chin. He could hear the piercingly sweet notes of it as in imagination he accompanied her. He could see her sweet secret mouth, the pinched elegance of her nostrils. He held his breath for fear her face should contort in the expression of agony which it sometimes assumed for him. But, as long as he played, it remained steadfastly serene and as though lighted by some inner radiance.

  In the late autumn he heard of the Stock Market crash in New York. He read the newspaper headings concerning it with very little emotion. Augusta was distressed when he told her that he had lost thirty thousand dollars. She blamed his brothers and hers for having allowed him to invest so much in a foreign country. Eden, too, was aghast. He told Finch that since it was his intention to throw away his money, he might as well throw some of it in his direction. Finch did not remind him that, when he had first told him of the investment, Eden had applauded his initiative.

  Soon he had a letter bearing an American stamp. It was from Miss Trent and was almost hysterical in its reiterations. She had lost everything, everything. But she would repay the ten thousand she had borrowed from him, if she had to starve herself to do it. She wrote a five-page explanation of the crash, full of technical terms that showed what she called her “terrific intimacy” with the doings of Wall Street. She ended by being optimistic and declaring that she would be in a position to repay the loan in a year at the most. She had given Finch a promissory note which was due the first of December. He put her letter in a drawer of his dressing table but he did not answer it. Augusta heaved a sigh when Finch told her of this additional loss. Her mother’s money, over which there had been so much discussion, so many hopes and disappointments, was fast disappearing.

  The mortgage on Vaughanlands which Finch had taken over was fifteen thousand dollars. The interest payable twice yearly was now due. A letter in Maurice’s handwriting arrived. He wrote—

  I thought perhaps you would not mind waiting a bit for the money. Things have gone rather badly with me this year. And now this operation of Meggie’s is giving me a lot of worry. I have had a large bill to pay to the doctor already, and the specialist who is going to operate will of course charge a big price. You can be certain that I care nothing about the cost if only he can bring her through it safely. They say the danger is not great, but one can never tell how those things will go. Meggie is as courageous as possible. She sends her best love. She would have written you long ago but she has been ailing all summer. Patty is growing prettier all the time. The other day Meggie asked her—Where is Uncle Finch? And Patty answered—In Heaven! Well, I suppose Devon is almost Heaven. You are lucky. I expect to be in hell for the next few days, at any rate. Meggie goes into the hospital tomorrow.

  Will you give my kind regards to your aunt. Meg and Patty both send love and kisses.

  Yours,

  Maurice.

  Finch folded the letter with shaking hands. His Meggie, his darling sister Meggie, in such danger! Perhaps he would never see her again.... He remembered the time when he had been ill at Vaughanlands and she had sat by him and fed him as though he were a baby. He remembered the feel of her tender feminine hands on his hair, the ineffable sweetness of her smile. Oh, she was so loving, so unselfish! If only all the brothers had been like her, how happy they might have been!

  He reflected, as his mind calmed a little, that if she had not come through the operation he should have had a cable by now. Perhaps, some day soon, he would get a letter to say she was doing nicely. In the meantime better not say anything to Aunt Augusta to worry her. Though she knew the operation was pending she didn’t know of its imminence.

  He went into her dressing-room, where he had seen a small bookcase, in search of something to read. More than any room in the house, this one was saturated with the personality of Augusta. Its sun blinds were always half drawn like drooping eyelids. Under them the room seemed to look out on the world with an air of offence. Finch now disliked being in there because the windows overlooked the tennis court, and beyond it the toolhouse where Ralph Hart had died.

  He ran his eyes along the titles of the books— The Scarlet Pimpernel Robert Elsmere, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Lady of the Lake. What books were these? Were they old favourites of his aunt’s that she liked to dip into at odd times? Or were they relegated here because of their shabby binding? Nothing on that shelf. He glanced at the one below. The Silence of Dean Maitland, Friendship, Chandos, Lady Audley’s Secret, Cometh up as a Flower... Hypatia, Ben Hur, A Pair of Blue Eyes. Five of Eden Phillpotts’. Well, Devon explained them. The Heavenly Twins, The Gods, Some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham. On the bottom shelf the books were so shabby that the titles were illegible. They were wedged in so tightly that it was not easy to dislodge the large one at the end, the size of which attracted him. He carried it to the window. It was a medical book for the layman. Perhaps he could find out in this book what might be wrong with Meggie. He read and read, listening at the same time fearfully for his aunt’s step on the stair. The more he read, the more bewildered and more horror-struck he became. Why, there were a thousand things that might be wrong with Meggie! And each one of them worse than the last. His head pounding, his nerves unstrung, he forgot to listen for Augusta. Women, he thought, why, it was better never to be born at all than be born a woman! How had Meggie lived so long as she had without disaster? How had Grandmother achieved her hundred years? It was a miracle. As he read his heart bled for the mothers of men.

  XVI

  JALNA

  RAIN was steadily falling on the old house. It was a cold rain for the end of May, and it fell, not in drops, but in a slanting sleet that beat against the panes and ran down them in rivulets to form puddles on the sills. The fact that the panes could not be seen through was a matter of no significance, for the eyelids of all in the house were closed in sleep. The changes worked on the flower beds, trees, and lawn by the rain, cold as it was, would not be observed until the morning sun revealed flowers from yesterday’s buds, buds from yesterday’s sheaths, leaves shaken out to full size, and grass in a thousand springing spears.

  The rain entered the house at two points, the attic and the basement. Through rotted shingles it dripped into Finch’s vacant room. Soon after Finch had gone abroad, Wragge had placed a basin on the floor during a heavy rain, to catch the drip. He had not been in the room since, so he had not observed that the basin was full. Now the drops falling from the ceiling struck the water with a clear musical note, sending tiny ripples to the brim that overflowed silently on to the worn carpet. The daylight would show this room with a bereft air. Its fur
niture, most of which needed repairing, had been the ramparts of Finch’s world. In the cupboard hung his worn clothes, still showing the impress of his body.

  The rain came into the basement through a crack beneath a window, outside which it collected from the soaking ground above. From the window ledge it dropped with a smart rapping sound to the brick floor beneath. This sound, entering Wragge’s consciousness, caused him to dream that he was back in the trenches and that the Germans were bombarding the British position. His sleep became more and more troubled. His snores turned to gaspings, and Mrs. Wragge, woken by his distress, put out her hand to quiet him. The result was the opposite of what she intended. The instant the large heavy hand was placed on his head he imagined that a fat German had captured him and he uttered a yell of fright.

  Old Benny, the bob-tailed sheepdog, who slept on a mat in the hall above, heard in his sleep the echo of the yell. He had been dreaming of a strange creature, half-tramp and half-sheep, that had been prowling about the shrubbery. He had been stalking it through illimitable spaces of time without its having perceived him. Suddenly it turned, peered at him with the face of a man, uttering at the same time the metallic bleat of a sheep. His hackle rose and, with a sonorous growl, he leaped and caught it by the throat.

  Upstairs Nip slept in Nicholas’s armchair. He refused to sleep anywhere but in his master’s bedroom. He always had one ear cocked for the sound of the deep voice he loved. Now he was in his first sleep of the night and the sound of Ben’s growl came up to him. It came as the voice of his master saying—“Nip, Nip, catch a spider, Nip!” He stood on the seat of the chair, quivering. He gave tremulous whines, part pleasure and part fear. His eyes were fixed on the door though the darkness hid it from him.

  Wakefield, snuggled against Renny’s side, was the only one of the family who heard Nip’s whining. He opened his eyes, saw that it was black night, heard the little quivering sound again, and shivered all over.