“Then, when I needed a little occasional table, Renny said, ‘There’s that old one in the attic that needs repairing. I’ll give —’”
“Lend,”he interrupted.
“That’s better,” said Nicholas. “I don’t like my mother’s belongings scattered over the countryside.”
Now Meg was truly hurt. “Uncle Nicholas,” she cried, “surely you would not call my little drawing-room, where every article is cared for, polished, and loved for its past associations, the countryside!”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” growled Nicholas.
“She is saying,” said Piers, “that she intends to have the table, by fair means or foul.”
“How perfectly ridiculous,” she cried. “I have put forward no claim that is not just. Renny gave me the table. I took it to Finch’s house —”
“why?” asked Nicholas.
“Because, Uncle Nick, dear, I am going to live there.”
“why?” repeated Nicholas.
Meg looked about her in despair. “Will you please tell him, Finch,” she said in a desperate tone.
Finch mumbled, “I guess I need a woman to look after me, Uncle Nicholas.”
Nicholas looked doggish. “Get a wife,” he said. “where’s that pretty young widow who was visiting here?”
Sylvia was sitting just behind him. Renny, Piers, and Pheasant, their sons, all broke into laughter. But Piers almost instantly became serious again. “One thing is certain,” he said. “I never have had any of Gran’s things either given or lent me.”
Meg’s eyes opened wide in wonder to think he could be so forgetful of favours. “what about that beautiful old dressing table and washstand with marble tops? I presume you haven’t sold them.”
“Lord, no,” laughed Piers. “One could scarcely give them away today.”
“They were bought right here, in Ontario,” added Pheasant.
“Jacques and Hayes, that was the name of the maker,” Nicholas said brightly.
“Fancy his remembering that,” exclaimed Meg in appreciation.
“I’m not in my dotage yet,” he returned crossly.
Meg went and sat on the arm of his chair and stroked his thick grey hair. “Not one of us has a better brain than you, Uncle Nicholas. And I think it is for you to decide who is to have the occasional table.” She drew his head to the beguiling softness of her bosom.
He said, as everybody knew he would, “I think you should have the table, Meggie. It will be my present to the new house.” He smiled round him benignly. Archer, under his breath, said, “Mercy!”
Later Nicholas expressed a wish for a game of backgammon. It was long since he had played, but when the board was set in front of him he was competent as ever. Meg was his opponent and in such good spirits that she was delighted to be beaten. Renny, Piers, Pheasant, and Alayne settled down to bridge. The others drifted outdoors…. Enveloped in the rich darkness, the full moon glimmering low among the trees but as yet casting no shadow, the air enticing with the scent of nicotiana, the grass moist from the first evening dew, the wan orchestra of locusts losing not one beat in their melancholy recitative which, while vibrant with life, spoke only of death, those who drifted outdoors wondered that any could bear to remain in.
Maurice took Adeline’s hand, openly as though she belonged to him, and led her into the dim tunnel of the driveway. “Surely,” he said, “you can’t deny me a word alone with you — now that everything is so finally settled between you and Fitzturgis. In a little while I shall have no right to ask for even that.”
“I want us always to be able to talk together as good friends,” she said gently. She still left her hand in his. The voices of the others came to them muffled by the heavy foliage of the hemlocks and spruces of the drive.
“what is it you want to say to me?” she asked.
“As soon as I’m alone with you I forget what I intended to say. It doesn’t matter.”
“Think hard and it will come back to you.”
“I can’t think…. It’s only when I am alone that I can properly think. I don’t suppose you will believe me, Adeline, but when I am alone I have quite beautiful thoughts. Solitude brings out the best in me. What I mean is, I understand things better then.”
“I wish,” she said, “that you wouldn’t try to understand. Just take things calmly as they come.”
“what I want you to tell me” — his voice shook a little — “is why you cannot care for me. What is wrong with me? There must be something wrong.”
“I care for you a great deal, as a cousin —”
He flung her hand from him.
“You are my favourite cousin,” she said, “except perhaps Christian.”
“Christian! Good Lord — you surprise me.”
“I admire Christian.”
“You love Fitzturgis. You admire Christian. And you neither love nor admire me.”
“Sometimes I do both. Not always.”
“I suppose I should be thankful for the crumbs you throw me.” He tried to see her face in the shaft of moonlight that now entered the drive as they neared the gate. He knew that face so well. The curve of the nostril, the line of chin and lip were so clear, yet never could he feel secure in the knowledge of her features. Changefully they eluded him, took on one expression after another, like a face seen through a moving veil.
They reached the gate and stood talking in desultory snatches before they retraced their steps. He had a faint feeling of satisfaction in the thought that Fitzturgis must be wondering why they had gone off together. Fitzturgis did wonder but with a certain grim amusement at Maurice’s expense. Obviously Maurice was snatching at anything he could get. Well, let him make himself as objectionable as he liked. It did not matter. Yet mingled with his amusement Fitzturgis felt a moment’s hot anger.
The anger passed as he found himself at Roma’s side, strolling across the open lawn toward the ravine. She looked so cool, so innocently self-possessed, in that low-cut dinner dress, with those smooth fair locks.
“Did you ever hear such a lot of nonsense,” she said, “about an old table?”
“It was fun listening,” he returned.
She gave her abrupt laugh. “Well, you’ll very soon find yourself in the thick of these discussions.”
“I couldn’t,” he said positively. “Material things don’t matter to me.”
“They will. You’ll get just like the others. Why, they’d quarrel about which way a doorknob turns.”
Fitzturgis looked over his shoulder. “I see Norman,” he said, “back there with the other boys.”
“Do you want to go to him?” she asked.
He chuckled. “what a question!”
“Neither do I,” she said.
He looked down at her with detached curiosity. “You’re an odd sort of girl, Roma.”
“It would be strange if I weren’t.”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
She plucked the flower from a day lily, smelled it, then threw it on the grass. The brightening moonlight just touched it where it lay.
His curiosity was no longer detached. As though to try her, he said, “You’ll be happier when you’re married.”
“Don’t!” she exclaimed almost violently.
They had reached the brink of the ravine. On the rustic bridge, in the moonlight, they could just make out the figures of Finch and Sylvia. They could hear the faint rippling of the stream.
“Shall we go down?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I’d rather be here with you — for a moment. I’ve got to pull myself out of this mood. But you needn’t stay…. Go and rescue Adeline from that playboy Maurice.”
Fitzturgis said seriously, “when I first met Maurice he liked me.”
“when I first met Norman,” she said, “I liked him.”
“And what has poor Norman done now?” asked Fitzturgis.
“Just been himself. His ambition is to become an executive. Bah!”
The contempt she put into the last syllable was remarkable.
“what quality do you admire in a man?” he asked.
“I can’t tell you. You ought to know.”
Adeline and Maurice now emerged from the drive, through a break in the trees, and began crossing the lawn toward them.
Patience had at this time gone off by herself. She had felt herself unwanted by any of the others. Like a child unwanted she had gone round the house to the side entrance and sat down on the doorstep. She folded her hands on her knees and laid her forehead on her hands. Under her breath she whistled a little inaudible tune to comfort herself.
“I’m always surprised,” Finch was saying to Sylvia, “by the smallness of this little bridge and stream when I return home after a long absence. I have so many recollections of it. I used to look on it as quite a torrent when I was small. I can remember Renny holding me over the rail when I was about four, pretending he’d drop me in. It was springtime and the water was rushing. I’ve never forgotten that. I clutched him for dear life and screamed. Then he laughed and swung me up to his shoulder…. I used to think the stream was playing a tune. I thought it had a special message for me. And I’d try to understand it and repeat the tune on the piano…. Once, when I was a boy, I came upon my brother Eden — the one that died — crying here. I never knew what about…. I remember his reading some of his poems aloud, sitting on this bridge. There’d been a fog and the boards were still damp. Do you find it damp down here now?”
“After Ireland,” she said, “nowhere seems damp.”
“I like Ireland. You’ll find it a great change to live in New York.”
“At the present time I am hating it,” she said in an expressionless tone.
“Oh,” he said, and waited for her to explain why.
She did not, but continued after a moment, “It fascinates me to visit strange places. I invariably think I’d like to live there. Just now I am thinking how delightful it must be to live at Jalna.”
“It is,” he said with boyish earnestness. “when I am away on a tour I am always longing for the day when I return. You will laugh at me, but even a scene like that about the occasional table will have a kind of heartwarming pull, though at the time I may be damned uncomfortable.”
“Do you mind my asking which you think has the better right to the table?”
“Well,” he said judicially, as though it were a matter of great moment, “the table really belongs to Renny, and Alayne is Renny’s wife, but Meg has possessed it for years. She hasn’t much that was my grandmother’s. She’s cared for it and polished it and taken pride in it. Alayne had forgotten all about it till she saw it in my house.”
“I quite agree. Your sister should have it.”
“Both Alayne and Meg,” said Finch, “are what one would call high-minded women. I’m just a blundering man, but I couldn’t struggle over an occasional table.”
“I like them both so much.”
“I’m glad of that,” he said warmly, and added after a silence, “You know, I can’t recall any painful scenes between myself and either of them. That’s a great thing to look back on, isn’t it?”
The moon was now casting its light on the bridge. Turning to Finch, Sylvia could see his face clearly. She had thought of him as an artist, absorbed in his own life, successful as a concert pianist. But now she saw his vulnerability, the marks left by the suffering of a nature too sensitive for the harsh encounters of life.
He was conscious of the gentle compassion of her face that was still in shadow. He smiled, as if to disclaim his need for compassion. He said, “See that moonlight. Isn’t it clear and bright? Do you know what I should like to do? I’d like to go to my house and see it in this light. The moon is full and it will be shining right in at the large window. Would you come with me? It’s not far. I think you’d like the walk.”
“I’d love to go,” she said, and felt a quick glow of pride at his asking her.
They returned to the house to tell that they were leaving. “Do you mind?” Sylvia asked, bending over Alayne as she sat at the card table.
“Do go,” said Alayne. “It’s a divine night for a walk. How sensible you are.”
“It’s the first time I have been told that.”
“Don’t let Finch take you through the ravine,” said Pheasant, “or that pretty dress will be torn by brambles.”
In the porch Sylvia and Finch found Meg waiting with the occasional table. “Uncle Nicholas has gone to bed,” she said. “I saw you come in — heard you say you are going to Vaughanlands — and quietly carried the table out here, without being noticed by anyone. Now what I want you to do, Finch, is to take it back with you and so put an end to any dissension on the subject.”
“But, Meggie,” he said, “wouldn’t tomorrow do?”
“You brought it to Jalna, unknown to me.” The tone of her voice now became high-flown. “It is only fair that you should take it back unknown to Alayne.”
“All right,” he grumbled, and shouldered the table.
“You don’t mind my brother’s taking the table along, do you, Mrs. Fleming?” Meg said.
“Oh no. I think it’s a good idea — probably.”
Now the two were trudging — for their romantic moonlit walk had come to that — along the country road.
“Is it heavy?” asked Sylvia. “Could I help?”
“It’s nothing…. As a matter of fact I am quite pleased to have the table again.”
They walked on in silence, their shadows distinct on the white road, Finch’s grotesque because of the occasional table. The air was vibrant with the shrilling of the locusts.
“what a strange feeling they give one,” said Sylvia, “as though there were no time to spare.”
“There isn’t,” said Finch.
She said, with regret rather than bitterness, “And I have wasted so much of my time.”
As Finch turned this over in his mind, considering what to say to her, she added, “I wasted some of my time in a nervous breakdown. Had you heard?”
“Yes.”
“It was horrible. I try to forget it.”
“I know what nerves are. I’ve gone through hell with mine.”
She stopped stock still to look at him. “It’s hard to believe,” she said. “You seem so steady.”
“So do you!”
“You appear rather cool and detached.”
“So do you.”
“We seem to be good dissemblers,” she said. “Perhaps we are just hiding from ourselves.”
“The moral is,” said Finch, “that we must get better acquainted.” He spoke with sudden gaiety, and, finding the table cumbersome in his arms, he raised it and placed its underpart on the top of his head. His shadow thus became a grotesque monster moving beside the perfect silhouette of hers, as though in menace.
“Anyone meeting us,” said Sylvia, “would take us to be a couple evicted from their home, you carrying our one piece of furniture on your head.”
“Our shadows,” he said, “the straight white road, that orchestra of locusts, seem symbolic. Surely it means something. Have you any idea what?”
“I have only one idea and it is that I’m in love with this place.”
Finch, in his strange headdress, began to caper; his shadow, wildly formed, prancing beside hers. But soon there were no shadows. They were in a wooded grove and before long stood on the terrace of his house. Moonlight lay on the stones. The front door stood open. Finch set down the table and led Sylvia into the music room. He stood entranced. Surely it was unique.
“Do you like it?” he demanded. “Please say you like it.” The moonlight on his face was what held her.
“I do,” she answered earnestly. “I think it’s the most adorable house I have ever seen.”
“Oh, I say,” he exclaimed in gratification. “That’s too much. I didn’t expect that.”
He was unexpectedly boyish, she thought. There was something almost theatrical in his exclamation
, as though the acquisition of this little house were something spectacular. But then perhaps he was one of those to whom all life is spectacular. She envied him that.
He led her to the mantelshelf, where stood a porcelain figure of a Chinese goddess.
“That’s the goddess Kuan Yin,” he said. “She’s my greatest treasure. My grandmother gave her to me when I was nineteen. Gran was a hundred.”
“No wonder you cherish it.”
“I used to steal out of the house at night,” he said, “when I was supposed to be studying and go to the church to play on the organ. One night Gran heard me when I came in and called me into her room. You know where it is — right behind the staircase.”
“Adeline’s room. When she showed it me, what do you suppose she said? She said that if ever she were going to have a baby she would not go to a hospital but would have it right there in that bed.”
“That’s like Adeline. I hope she does.”
“Tell me more.”
“Well, after that,” he went on, “I used to go to her room every night — after I’d played in the church. I’d bring sherry from the dining room and we’d talk and talk. In those nights I discovered what she must have been when she was younger. I guess it was bad for her to lose her sleep and all that, but — it was wonderful for me.” He took the porcelain figure from the shelf and held it tenderly in his hand as though in that contact he re-created those scenes of the past. “She would sit propped up on her pillows, her eyes shining below her nightcap, and talk of her past — and my future.”
“That would be a great thing for you.”
He set the figure again on the mantelshelf and turned, as though deliberately, away from it.
“Not so much then, as later,” he said. “You see, she died, and … she left me all her money. Nothing seemed to matter for a while … but now, twenty-five years later, I remember so clearly things she said to me then.” He went and stood by the piano, the tips of his fingers just touching the keys.
“Shall I play?” he asked.
“Please do.”
He turned on the light of a lamp. She sat where she could see his face as he played.
“A little Bach first,” he said. “Then some Beethoven, eh?” Sylvia smiled and nodded. To speak, she felt, would be to shatter the entrancement of the moment. She sat, still as the statue of Kuan Yin, while he played. Sometimes the intricacies of the Bach stole her senses. She could not see the player. At other times she scarcely heard the music but was conscious only of the flying hands. Their isolation appeared so complete to her that the house they had left seemed far away. All her present life seemed far away. Her illness an evil dream. Strangely her thoughts moved back to the time of her marriage. She thought of it calmly. For the first time she recalled the time of her husband’s death — recalled it with calmness. It, too, was a dream — a tragic dream.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 490
