“Later I forgot to give Alayne a cheque I’d promised her, didn’t I, Alayne?”
“That’s nothing new,” she said.
“I forgot to pay the Wragges their wages. I forgot to send the vet a cheque for his account.”
“That doesn’t impress me,” said Piers. “You always have forgotten to pay the vet. And not only that, how often have I had to prod you into remembering to pay me?”
Renny repeated angrily, “Prod me, eh?”
“Well — remind you — if you prefer that. However, you never did like paying accounts, you know.”
Renny turned his head to look at him squarely. “I expect you’ll go on to say that I’d have stolen from you if I’d had the chance.”
“I’ve never had anything to steal.”
Meg cried, “Piers, how dare you insinuate that our eldest brother would have taken money from you! He who has been generosity itself! He who has overpaid you — if anything! He who has given your wife and family shelter!”
“Look what you’ve done to him — by bringing this swine Clapperton into our midst.”
Finch gave an hysterical laugh.
“I’ve always said,” growled Nicholas, “that it was a mistake selling Vaughanlands to that fellow.”
Now Ernest spoke. “I think,” he said, “that the thing to do is for you to see a doctor.”
“And end my days in an institution, eh?”
“No, no, dear boy. If you had to be —” he hesitated, searching his mind for a word.
“Locked up?” suggested Renny.
“No, no! — we’ll say restrained — we’d do it at Jalna.”
Renny grinned. “Padded room, straitjacket — all that sort of thing, eh?”
“I don’t believe,” said Piers, “that there is anything wrong with you.”
“Then how did the money get in my pocket?”
“Perhaps it was a kind of magnetism,” said Meg. “Perhaps he unconsciously drew the money to him.”
“Then where is all the rest of it?” asked Piers.
“God only knows,” said Renny.
Piers was sitting beside a writing table where stood a papier-mâché letter holder, in which Renny kept receipts for household accounts. Piers always had liked the Chinese scene depicted on the letter holder and now he picked it up to examine it, as he had done a hundred times. He lifted it and the receipts fell out, lay scattered on the table. With an exclamation of annoyance he began to pick them up.
“I always say,” reproved Ernest, “that it’s better not to play with things.”
Piers had stopped gathering up the receipts. He sat rigid, as though frozen into immobility.
“what’s the matter?” demanded Renny sharply.
Piers hastily swept the receipts together.
Renny sprang to his side. Piers covered the papers with his hand.
“Let’s see what’s under your hand!”
“what are you getting up in the air about?”
“I know what is under your hand ! There’s no use in your trying to hide it.” He caught Piers’ wrist and lifted his hand, loosening the papers.
“Now what’s the matter?” growled Nicholas.
“Look!” Renny dramatically pointed to where, among the receipts, lay a crisp twenty-dollar bill.
Every eye was directed toward it, as though a viper had uncurled itself on the table.
Renny sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands. There was a frozen silence. Then he raised sombre eyes.
“I wish,” he said slowly, “that I’d had a bullet through my head, rather than have come to this.”
Meg came and stroked his head. “Don’t say that, dear. It doesn’t matter what you do — we’re thankful to have you back.”
“It matters to me. I’m ruined. My reputation —”
“Now, listen,” said Piers, “you’ll get over this. It is a beastly thing to face, I grant you, but we’ll face it together. I’ll take this money to Clapperton myself and have a talk with him.”
“He doesn’t believe in a memory lapse,” said Renny. “It was Swift who suggested that.”
Meg was still stroking his head. “Lie down on the sofa a little,” she said, “and I’ll cover you with the afghan.”
“Let him alone,” said Piers. “Let him think. Renny, try with all your might to go back over the morning and see if you can reconstruct everything that you did, from the moment you got up.”
“I remember,” put in Ernest, “a case of loss of memory in London, in the nineties. It was in all the papers. A man forgot he was married and —”
“Please don’t interrupt, Uncle Ernest,” said Piers. “I’m trying to help Renny to reconstruct his movements. It’s just possible that he may be able to recall some act that will bring everything back.”
“Quite so,” replied Ernest. “It was with that idea in mind that I was about to tell —”
Nicholas interrupted, “Let me see that bank note.”
Piers put it in his hand. Nicholas exclaimed:
“And that horrid old fellow had fifty of these lying on his desk!”
“Yes,” answered Renny.
“And you are pretty sure you took them?”
“I must have.”
“Then where are the others?”
“I don’t know.”
Meg said, “It seems foolish to return this one little bill to him.”
“Here, Renny,” said Nicholas, “take it, hold it in your hand. It may help you to remember.”
Obediently, like a sick man, Renny took the bill, closed his eyes and sat motionless while his family looked compellingly, sympathetically, into those weather-beaten features which, in all their knowledge of him, had never before worn the expression of mute bewilderment which they now wore. Alayne could not endure it. The scene was too painful. She slipped quietly from the room, her going almost unnoticed.
He drew a deep sigh and opened his eyes. “I can’t remember anything more than I have told you,” he said. He laid the bill on the table.
“Perhaps later on you will be able to,” Piers said cheerfully. “In the meantime I think we ought to have a search for the rest of the money. Will you turn out your pockets, Renny?”
Obediently he emptied his pockets, not now like a sick man but like a criminal resigning himself to a search. He brought out his intimate belongings — his cigarette case, his lighter, his pencil, a shabby notebook held together by an elastic band, his wallet which, when opened, disclosed a few bills of small denomination, some silver and copper coins, the penknife that had been his father’s. This his hand closed on, as though he would not be parted from it.
Ernest kept nervously pulling at the lobe of his ear. Nicholas blew out his breath under his shaggy moustache. Pheasant wore the look of a child, present at a scene that it had no right to witness. Finch, unutterably miserable, kept his eyes fixed on the carpet.
“Nothing there,” said Piers. “I think we ought to search your bedroom, Renny. You may have hidden the money in one of your drawers or in your cupboard.”
“All right,” said Renny, returning the articles one by one to his pockets.
“If we find the money,” continued Piers, “I shall take it to Clapperton. If we find no more than this bill I shall take it to him and ask him what he’s going to do. Is that all right, Renny?”
“Yes.”
“what if he demands the payment of it all?” asked Ernest.
“He can’t prove that Renny took it all!” cried Meg. “The first bill might have got into Renny’s pocket by accident. We need not tell about the second. I don’t mean we’d keep it. We’d give it to the Red Cross.”
“I took the money,” said Renny.
“Do you remember taking it?” asked Piers sharply.
“I remember nothing.”
“You had better stay here while Finch and I go to your room.” Piers spoke to him as to one who was unable to take part in the search — a sick man, a criminal — it did not matter wh
ich.
“Very well.”
“Come along, Finch.”
Finch followed him miserably. Up in Renny’s room he said, in a shaking voice, “This is awful, Piers. I can’t believe in it. To think of Renny —”
“Have you noticed anything strange in his behaviour?”
“Don’t ask me. If I begin to think about it I’ll be sure I have.”
“My God, what a family!”
Finch muttered, “I know he’s been worried about money.”
Piers sighed. “That’s nothing new.”
Doggedly he began to turn out the drawers. “Get busy,” he ordered, “and search the cupboard.”
But the most thorough search revealed nothing. They even looked under the mattress and shook the rug. When they returned to the library they heard Meg and Pheasant discussing in desultory fashion the bottling of peaches. Renny and the two old men sat silent. Ernest kept pulling at the lobe of his ear.
“Nothing up there,” said Piers.
“You had better go and see Clapperton if you are going,” observed Renny in an expressionless voice.
“I suppose it would be a pretty hard pull to pay back the thousand dollars?”
“Oh, he can’t — he can’t!” cried Meg.
Piers turned to her. “Will you do it for him, then?”
Her face fell. “Oh, I didn’t mean that!”
“You can well afford to.”
“How do you know what I can afford?” she returned hotly.
Piers turned to Finch with a peculiarly sweet smile.
“Finch,” he said, “if Meg were to repay you the fifteen thousand dollars you lent her for the mortgage on Vaughanlands, would you pay this thousand for Renny?”
“Would I? There’s nothing I’d like better.”
“Then it’s all settled. Meg will pay you and you’ll pay Clapperton.”
“Will you, Meggie?” Finch asked eagerly.
“Oh, Finch,” she exclaimed, her eyes full of tears, “never did I think that you would bring up that debt against me — now that Maurice is gone and I am a widow, left to fight her battles alone.”
“Listen to her,” said Piers.
“If there is anyone I despise,” said Meg, “it is the person who brings up old, unhappy far-off things.”
Renny said, “I will pay Clapperton myself. I’ll sell some of the horses, if necessary.”
“But I don’t see why he should be paid,” declared Meg. “You didn’t know you were taking the money. You are not responsible. I think you should see a doctor — a psychoanalyst — and have a certificate from him that you are not responsible.”
Renny gave a harsh laugh. “Thanks. I had rather pay the money to Clapperton.”
Piers rose. “The first thing to do is to see him. I’ll go straight over. Coming, Finch?”
“I’d rather not.”
Ernest said, “Be polite to him. It will pay in the end.”
“This is what comes,” added Nicholas, “of selling Vaughanlands to a man we knew nothing about.”
Mr. Clapperton was not in his house but Piers found him superintending building operations in his village. He greeted Piers coldly.
“Well,” said Piers, “I’ve come to ask you what you are going to do.”
“I am waiting to see what your brother will do. I suppose he has told you that he took a thousand dollars off my desk.”
“If he took it, he was not conscious of what he was doing. You know he had a bad injury to his head in France.”
“That doesn’t bring the money back.”
“No. But it might be well for you to remember that while you were piling up the dollars at home my brother and I have been doing our duty overseas and suffering for it.”
“There was nothing I could have done over there. I have bought my share of war bonds. I’ve given generously to the Red Cross.”
“But not at the risk of your life.”
“what do you expect me to do?” demanded Mr. Clapperton angrily. “Tell your brother to keep the money, with my blessing?”
“It would be the decent thing to do. You came here, a stranger, in his absence. You have depreciated the value of his property by your building. I believe it is worry over this village of yours that has brought on the amnesia.”
Mr. Clapperton gave a groan of complete exasperation. He said, “I am not putting this case in the hands of the police. Your brother can pay me back or not — as he pleases. But if he doesn’t, it’s just plain dishonesty. I wonder what the countryside will think of that — if it leaks out.”
“In short, you mean that you will see that it does leak out.”
“Take that as you will.”
Piers’ eyes were prominent and very blue, as he returned:
“You’ll get your money, sir. And I’m willing to bet you an equal amount that your village will never be built.”
“I don’t want any bets with you.” Eugene Clapperton stalked away. At that moment he hated all the Whiteoaks and almost wished he had never acquired the property adjoining Jalna.
Two days later he received by post a cheque from Renny Whiteoak for nine hundred and eighty dollars. On the intervening day Renny had discovered another twenty-dollar bank note, lying among his neckties in the small left-hand drawer of his chest of drawers. This drawer had already been carefully searched by Piers and Finch.
XIX
A CHANGED LIFE
IN THE THREE weeks that followed, a change came over the household at Jalna. A change came in the very air they breathed. At various times it had been deeply disturbed but this was a new quality. It was a quality of uncertainty. The head of the house was unsure of himself. He distrusted himself. He dreaded with primitive fear what he might do next. Each morning it came to him with a startled shock that his memory, his mind, was damaged. And this shock so clouded his mind that not all the long day was it clear again. Sometimes there arose in him a ferocious wish to tear himself free from this desolation. He would force himself to animated talk and laughter but this lively mood was so contradicted by the misery in his eyes, the drawn look about his mouth, that it was more depressing to the family than his dark mood.
During those three weeks, eight more of the twenty-dollar notes were recovered by him. He found them in the strangest places. It was uncanny the diversity of places in which he found them, and every time he found one there followed a day of gloom at Jalna. If only, Alayne and Finch often said to each other, the uncles need not have known! But they knew all and were affected by all. Every time he discovered one of the notes he hastened to inform them and to speculate wildly as to what madness would overtake him next. Constantly he begged the others to watch him, to keep him in sight, to give him no opportunity for these lapses. Yet, after a day of being constantly observed, he would probably find one of the notes next morning in some horribly whimsical place.
Though he had repaid the full amount of the theft to Eugene Clapperton, he did not look on these recovered notes as rightfully his. He would hand them over to Alayne’s keeping with an air of longing to be rid of them that cut her to the heart. He spent much of his time searching for the place where the money was hidden. Over and over again he would search through cupboards and drawers where already he had searched many times. He never gave up hope, or perhaps was driven on by the weary mechanical urge of his tormented mind. He kept the house in disorder by his searching, for what he took out of drawers he returned but carelessly. One day he would take all the books from the bookshelves where Alayne, who had bought many books since her marriage, had them arranged to her taste. He would be convinced that he had hidden the notes among, or in, the books. He would open them, ruffle their leaves and at last replace them in disorder. Perhaps only three days later he would again go through them, again leave them in confusion. On one occasion he turned his grandmother’s room literally inside out, it suddenly being his conviction that he had hidden the money there. Doggedly but with heavy heart, Alayne put it to rights again. Yet she would not
let herself despair. She had so longed for his return from the war that she could not believe that now her peace of mind, her happiness in him, was to be shattered. Lying awake at night she would go over and over in her mind the happenings of the past weeks. She did not yet allow herself to think of the disappearance of the money as a calamity, but each week it more nearly approached that dimension.
He got the idea that he rose in his sleep, went to the hiding place of the bank notes, abstracted one and then secreted it where he would find it on the morrow. Ernest had at one time been a sleepwalker, now Renny felt that he himself was leading a double life of night and day. On a sultry evening in late August he came to Alayne’s room and, after a speculative look at the bed, said:
“I want you to let me sleep here for a time.”
She had been brushing her long hair. Now she turned and faced him, brush in hand. “But why?” she asked anxiously, fearing always some new symptom of strangeness.
“I am sure that it is at night I do these things. I want you to watch me.”
She went to him and took him by the arms. “Darling,” she said, “I do wish you’d get it out of your head that you are a sleepwalker. That is an entirely different thing from memory lapses.”
“Everything is wrong with my brain,” he said tersely, his sombre eyes fixed on hers.
“I won’t hear you say it!” she cried.
“But I know it — and so do you.”
“Oh, if only you would see a doctor!”
“Time enough for that.” He turned away his head.
He tightened his arms about her. “May I sleep here?” he asked.
“I’ll love to have you. We shall sleep better together.”
“The bed is not very wide.”
“It is wide enough.”
That night, with her arms about him, he had the most peaceful night he had known in weeks. But Alayne slept little. In spite of herself, the thought that he would rise in the darkness and go to the hidden hoard, played cruelly on her nerves. Every time he moved a quiver ran through them, her heart quickened its beat. In the morning she looked pale and wan. But she could bear it! She could bear anything to help him.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 420
