But how comforting his presence was at times! No one could tuck a hot-water bottle at an old gentleman’s feet and cover him with an eiderdown with an air of greater solicitude. He would bring a glass of hot water and whiskey or a cup of hot water and bicarbonate of soda with equal expressions of the good he was certain it would do you.
Of course he had a nasty way of whispering to Renny at table when he sensed any family disturbance and wanted to show that he was on the side of the master of the house. On the other hand, he showed endless patience in searching for mislaid spectacles and never forgot the hours at which Ernest’s medicine should be taken. It had been a shock to see him in his uniform.
Now Renny came into the room and once more they realized how soon they must part with his heartening presence. This war was quite different from the last. They had been twenty years younger then and their mother was living. While she lived there had been that feeling of stability and changelessness at Jalna but now all was changed. Nicholas gave a deep sigh and raised his heavy eyes to Renny’s face. He noticed Renny’s look of anxiety, the corrugations on his forehead, but he sniffed, with an odd sense of comfort, the smell of the stable that came with him.
Renny sat down near the fire and held a hand toward the blaze.
“Cold?” asked Nicholas.
“No. I just like the warmth.”
“You’re like Mamma. She always liked the warmth of the open fire. Where are the young people this morning? I haven’t seen them.”
Renny looked at him thoughtfully. He wondered what the uncles would say if he told them all. For a moment he had a mind to. There would be a certain comfort in telling them. But no — they had enough to worry about without hearing of poor young Wake’s heartache.
“Molly’s gone to town,” he said. “She and Wake had to go to arrange for her sisters’ passage from Wales to Canada…. Poor girl, she has a great responsibility. I’ve been thinking that it would be a very decent thing for us to offer your house, Uncle Ernest, to those girls — if you agree. They would be safe here and under our protection. It would be a load off Molly’s mind.”
“Are they able to pay rent?” asked Nicholas. “I gather they are pretty hard-up. Molly said something about their income ceasing if their father died.”
“We can’t very well ask rent from refugees.”
“Of course not! I’d forgotten.”
“By all means, let them come,” said Ernest. “It would be a relief to me to see the house occupied by nice young women. Harriet would have wished it.”
“After all,” put in Nicholas, somewhat grumpily, “the house belongs to Renny.”
“I haven’t said it doesn’t, have I? However, the furniture is mine and Harriet’s.”
“Upon my word, Ernest, you take a lofty tone about family belongings. The furniture in that house — I mean the portion of it that came from Jalna — is as much mine as yours. Not that it matters. I’m perfectly willing to lend it.”
“Then what are you grousing about?” said Ernest.
“I’m not grousing. But that card table in the living room was one Mamma gave me years ago. She also gave me that bedroom furniture and the rugs.”
“But you never took them to England!”
“How could I? It would have been ridiculous.”
“Then why claim the things now?”
“I’m not. It’s you who are claiming them.”
Ernest’s colour rose. He tried to speak but he could only stammer incoherently. Renny’s voice broke in.
“I’m awfully glad you both agree to lending the house. I’ll cable Christopher Griffith today.”
He rose and moved toward the door.
“What’s the matter?” asked Nicholas, eyeing him shrewdly. “Is something worrying you?”
“Well, I have a good deal on my mind.”
“You look as though you hadn’t slept.”
“I’m all right.”
A shadow fell across the window. Wakefield passed. As he passed he glanced into the room. That glimpse of him was sufficient to discover his haggard eyes, his drawn mouth. He looked ill.
“Why,” exclaimed Ernest, “did you see Wakefield? The boy’s ghastly!”
“What’s wrong?” Nicholas heaved himself about in his chair that he might face Renny squarely. “Tell us what’s wrong, Renny.”
Renny stood looking down on the experienced grey heads of his uncles. Again he had a mind to tell them the truth. A perverse curiosity made him wonder how they would take it.
“Surely,” said Ernest, “the death of Molly’s father wouldn’t make him look like that.”
Old Adeline’s love of the dramatic flared in her grandson. The sardonic light that had on occasion gleamed in her eyes appeared in his.
“Molly’s father is very near to Wake,” he said.
“Why,” said Nicholas, “that’s impossible. Wake scarcely knew the man.”
“Wake knows the man,” returned Renny, driven by an impulse he could not resist. “He knows the man — to his sorrow.”
“I do wish you would not be so enigmatic,” exclaimed Ernest peevishly.
“I will tell you the truth then. I think it will be better.” Renny walked the length of the room and back again. He put his hands in his pockets and touched a penknife that had belonged to his father. He himself had carried it for the past twenty years. Its worn ivory handle lay slim and cool in his fingers. In a strange way this small cool object brought back to him the warmth and vigour of his father’s presence. He thought — “I wonder what he would be like if he were living now. I wonder what he would say to this.”
The eyes of his uncles, one pair blue and questioning, the other pair dark and puzzled, were fixed on him. He said: —
“I suppose you remember the Dayborns who worked with me after the last war.”
“Yes,” said Ernest. “I never liked the fellow. There was something shady about him.”
“Of course I remember them,” added Nicholas.
“Mamma paid their passage back to England. I forget why.”
“I don’t,” said Renny. “She did it to separate Chris Dayborn and me because she had found out that we were in love with each other.”
“Well, really,” exclaimed Ernest, “that’s strange! Only yesterday I was thinking of that girl! She came into my head, I can’t tell why, and I kept thinking and thinking of her.”
“She came into your head,” said Renny, “because Molly reminded you of her. And she well might, for she is Chris Dayborn’s daughter.”
Nicholas struggled in his chair. “Help me up out of here!” he demanded.
Renny went behind him and heaved him to his feet. Very lame from gout, he stumped about the room, a grey lock falling over his forehead.
“Well, well,” he said. “Hmph, well. I see it all. What a fix! What a fix to be in!”
Ernest was chagrined. Usually it was he who had to explain things to Nick.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What has all this to do with Mr. Griffith’s death?”
“That’s just the point,” said Renny. “It has nothing at all to do with it.”
“You silly old fool,” said Nicholas to his brother, “don’t you realize that this child, Molly, is Renny’s daughter? And that consequently she and Wake can’t marry?”
Ernest sat bewildered, biting his thumb. Then his brow cleared. Then it darkened, and he exclaimed: —
“Those poor children! Those poor children!”
“Yes,” said Renny. “That’s why Wake and I look — as we do. It’s been a blow.”
“How did you find it out?”
“Just one thing after another. I was suspicious. Then I made certain.”
“You must never let Alayne know this,” said Ernest.
“She does know it.”
“Good God!” said Nicholas. “How did she find out?”
“I had to tell her.”
“You were a fool to do that.”
“No. It was necessa
ry. She was splendid.” The colour deepened in his weather-beaten face. “I’ve done nothing to deserve such a wife.”
Nicholas blew out his cheeks. “It’s unfortunate. But after all, your affair with Mrs. Dayborn took place five years before you met Alayne. There’s no reason why Alayne should feel herself deeply injured.”
“God, if ever a man’s pigeons came home to roost, mine have!”
“It’s a blow for Wakefield,” said Ernest.
Nicholas returned — “He’ll get over it. He’ll go to the war and forget her. And, after all, he ought to make a far better match, with his looks and talents.”
“He’s deeply in love. I’ve been impressed by that from the first. Dear me, it was strange how that Dayborn girl came into my mind yesterday! I couldn’t forget her.”
“And she’s just died, has she?” asked Nicholas, suddenly confused.
“Good heavens, Nick! She died years ago. It is Molly’s stepfather who has just died.”
“Of course, of course, I know that…. Shall you tell Piers and Meg of this, Renny?”
“Never! But I thought you ought to know. I thought you might have a talk with Wake, Uncle Ernie. You might say something to cheer him up. And Uncle Nick might have a little talk with Alayne.”
“I will. I will.”
Renny looked at his wrist watch. “I’m meeting a man in the stables. I’m late.”
Rags, in the hall, swiftly removed his ear from the keyhole and straightened himself. He felt a sharp pain in the small of the back.
“Cripes,” he thought, in consternation, “am I getting some bloomin’ kidney disorder? Maybe I shall never get to the Front with the boss!”
But his face was composed as Renny passed him and went out by the side door. What he had overheard was no great surprise to him. He had been in that house for twenty years and he was an adept in the art of human relationships. He had known that Renny and Chris Dayborn were lovers.
He thought he would go to the kitchen and make himself a pot of tea. That would buck him up. Probably there wasn’t much wrong with him. He’d had a crick in the back from bending forward so long. Overburdened as his mind was, he paused on his way to the basement stairs to set a Benares brass casket that old Adeline had brought from India cornerwise on the chest where it stood.
On the way to the stables Renny felt a small mittened hand pushed into his. He looked down into Adeline’s face. She said rather breathlessly: —
“You know that nonsense Archer had got into his head, Daddy! Well, I think I’ve made him forget it. Every time he begins I put him on his back and tickle him. Now it’s a game. Archer begins — ‘Do you know what I saw through the window?’ Then he stares at me and waits for a romp.”
She laughed a little but her eyes were grave as she looked up into his face. She seemed to be trying to say — “Whatever you’ve done, I’m always on your side.”
“Good,” he said. “Archie’s at a funny stage but you understand him, don’t you?”
She held his hand for an instant against her cheek. High overhead, in the crystal air, an aeroplane was passing like a silver dragonfly.
“I used to like to look at the planes,” Adeline said, “but now they make me think of war and you going away. I wish you weren’t, or that I could go with you.”
XXIX
NEW TENANTS FOR THE FOX FARM
WAKEFIELD AND MOLLY stood at the barrier watching the arrivals from the New York train. They were waiting for her three stepsisters, whose passage had been arranged for by a succession of cablegrams. Finch was accompanying them. He was to give a series of recitals in America and it had seemed expedient that they should travel under his protection.
Wakefield and Molly stood shoulder to shoulder, so accustomed to each other, so intimate in the quick interchange of feeling, yet separated by a barrier that made them as strangers. They were like two ships sailing side by side yet glimpsing each other through the distortions of an iceberg that had risen from the deep to separate them. Every now and again a tremor ran over her.
“Are you cold?” he asked, not looking at her.
“No. Just excited.”
“The train is late.”
“Yes, it seems to be.”
This was their third meeting since their relationship had been disclosed to them. The first had been in the living room of Ernest’s house. At the second he had taken her to the small apartment in town where she had found temporary war work. In that meeting they had been bewildered, not daring to look in each other’s eyes for fear of breaking down. Alone for a moment they had broken down and wept in each other’s arms. Then he had hurried from the apartment and left her alone.
In the weeks that followed they had gained an uncertain self-control, the balance to be kept only by calculated coldness. But each had receded from the other. The charm and spontaneity of speech was gone from them. The warmth and candor of glance was no more. Love was turned to bitter and hopeless longing. They stood shoulder to shoulder waiting for the train with nothing to say but commonplaces.
She should not have let him come with her, she thought. Why had he offered to come? His presence was a torture. She looked sidewise at his stern, dark profile, the bitter bend of his lips, and wondered if this were indeed her young lover.
Sarah’s voice came to them from behind. She was gliding toward them, dressed in grey fur and followed by Meg.
“It’s a good thing the train is late,” she said, “or we should have kept them waiting. Meg was so annoyed. But then I’m always late.”
She looked sharply into their faces. “How wan you two are! But stations always make people look dreadful. I believe I’ll go out and wait in the car. I don’t want Finch to think I’ve lost all my looks.”
“You look all right,” said Wakefield, shortly. He made room for her between him and Molly.
Meg came to his other side and squeezed his arm. “Isn’t it lovely to think Finch is coming?” she exclaimed, and added in a whisper, “But I suppose we shall scarcely have a word with him. Sarah is so possessive. Still, we can look at him!”
“There they come!” said Wakefield.
They were among the last of the passengers to appear and they made an arresting group. Even to Molly, who was accustomed to the oddities of her stepsisters, they looked strange in this new setting. To Meg they were strange and touching. To Sarah they were bizarre and a little ridiculous. She gave them an amused smile, then flew to Finch’s arms. He clasped her to him, in her scented fur, and felt a dizzy joy mingled with foreboding.
“Darling!” she breathed. “What I’ve gone through, with you on the sea! Every night I’ve woken, picturing your ship sunk by a submarine! How well you look! Not a bit as though you’d been worried. Yet think what I’ve been through since we parted! It’s a wonder I’m here to meet you.”
She clung to his arm, deliberately placing herself between him and his brother and sister.
Meg had almost forgotten Finch in her interest in the three sisters. Finch had led the way with Garda at his side. She was wearing a black bonnet-like cap tied under her chin and beneath it her thick dark hair hung down to her shoulders. She wore a heavy black coat and was weighted with bags and parcels. Out of this sombre attire her round child’s face stared, rosy as an apple. She looked surprised at everything and held her mouth as though about to whistle. When she saw Molly, tears began to run out of her eyes.
Gemmel was being carried by a Negro train porter and a red-capped station porter. She too was in black but a feather hung from the brim of her velvet hat. She clung to the men’s necks and her pointed features were still more sharpened by anxiety. She too began to cry when Molly appeared.
Althea came last, wearing an old-fashioned fur-trimmed cloak that had been her mother’s. Her fairness was so accentuated as to be ethereal and the expression of her face was as remote as when Wakefield had first seen her on the mountainside in Wales. She too carried a number of parcels and a traveling rug for Gemmel.
To
Molly their coming signified the breaking up of her old life. So long as she had been able to picture her family in Wales she had felt a certain solidity in her background. The fact that they had been uprooted had added to the distress of the past weeks. But even while they were tossing on the dangerous waves of the ocean she had not quite brought herself to believe in the upheaval. The picture in her mind, that picture of the dark Welsh hills, was still firm. She saw Christopher walking near the ruined Abbey with his sheep, Althea painting her strange harsh pictures and hiding from the outside world, Gemmel and Garda always about the house.
But now she saw them in this new land and she felt in truth that her world was shattered.
She sat with Althea and Garda in the rear seat of the car. Gemmel sat beside Wakefield, who drove. Molly could find no words. Her throat might have been paralyzed. She sat rigid, holding the hand of a stepsister on either side, her eyes fixed on Wakefield. How he had changed! He did not look like the same boy, she thought. Just that glimpse of the cheek, the compressed lips, the eyes fixed straight ahead, was enough to prove how he too was suffering. It was wrong of him to come! He should have sent someone else to drive the car, not subjected the two of them to this torture of hopeless nearness. The car skidded a little and she thought — “I wish we might have an accident and I be thrown into his arms and die there. It would be over and done with and I should be glad.”
She thought of Renny with sudden fierce anger. It was his fault. He had done this to them. If he had kept his secret to himself what would it have mattered! Time and again she had remarked his paternal attitude toward his brothers. That fatherliness was one of his strongest characteristics, she thought. Yet she had seen not a sign of it toward herself and he had roused no feeling of a daughter from her. They were man and woman, connected by a tragic bond. That was all.
Blindly she saw the town left behind, saw the grey foam-flecked lake, the winter woods, the frozen fields. She heard Gemmel raining questions on Wakefield. She was thankful that the two beside her did not want to talk. Blindly she helped to carry the parcels into the house. She and Wakefield gripped hands and carried Gemmel up the slippery steps and put her down in the warm living room.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 390
