Like a sweet rain after a drought, word came that Meggie had not only survived the operation, but was progressing famously Maurice went to see her and returned jubilant. She was weak, but she was out of all danger; her appetite was good, and she was cheerful as could be. Later, Piers and Pheasant went to see her and took her jelly and a cake. Wakefield was taken to see her, and visited several other patients besides. But Renny did not go. When Maurice suggested it, he ordered flowers to be sent her, but he could not go inside that place.
Now that she was safe, his spirits went up with a bound. Above stairs as well as below there was freedom and cheeriness in the house. Without the restraining presence of either Augusta or Alayne, dogs were allowed to make themselves at home in every room. Wragge dusted or not as he saw fit. Pheasant was ailing, and often did not come down to her meals. More and more frequently certain horsy friends of Renny’s came to the house. One of these was a Mr. Crowdy, who had never until now got farther than the hall. Nicholas and Ernest were annoyed by the very sight of him, but now that they were not present to object he formed the habit of dropping in at mealtime. Renny liked him about. He was so burly that he filled the space ordinarily allotted to two people at table. His face was so rubicund and his eyes so twinkling that his mere presence lent an air of jollity to any scene. He bred racehorses, and he could watch one of his horses lose a race, even fall and throw its rider, with the same impenetrable beaming gaze with which he watched a success. He probably understood horses as well as is possible for any human being. Renny valued his opinions as jewels. He would stand gazing at a horse as though in a kind of trance, then, extending the palm of his left hand, he would, with the forefinger of his right, inscribe on it some hieroglyphic full of mystery to all but himself. After looking at this intently for a space he would utter his pronouncement in a thick wheezy voice that always had a squeak of merriment in it. You might take his advice or leave it. It was all the same to him. There was no hard feeling in him for any man. He admired fine things of many sorts. He would stand in the doorway of the drawing-room at Jalna and gaze meditatively at the Chippendale furniture, then, flattening his thick palm, he would inscribe some symbol on it with a massy forefinger, and remark: “Good stuff. Good stuff. Very nice and showy Not things you’d ever want to part with, Mr. Whiteoak.”
The other was a civil engineer named Chase. He was a man who had seen hard service in the War, and had experienced hard luck prospecting in the North. He made barely enough in his profession to keep him. He had no ambition now except to spend as much of his time as possible among horses and dogs. He looked on all time spent out of their company as lost time. He loved only two human beings— Crowdy and Renny Whiteoak. He disliked all women, from eighteen to eighty. He had a fund of droll, and sometimes bawdy, stories which he told without moving a muscle of his long swarthy face.
After supper these two, with Maurice and Renny, would play poker in the sitting-room until the early hours of the morning. Maurice and Chase both took a little too much to drink.
Once Crowdy said to Renny, while the cards were being dealt—“Mrs. Whiteoak is paying quite a long visit in the States, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” returned Renny, somewhat brusquely.
The horse-breeder laid his left hand on the table, palm upward, and made a minute memorandum on it with the forefinger of his right. Then he looked beamingly into the faces of the other three.
“A delightful lady,” he said. “A very delightful lady. Not the kind you meet every day. No indeed.”
Chase said—“Well, I’ve never married, and I thank God for that. I count it as the chief among my few blessings.”
XXIII
THE YOUNG POET
MEG could have given nothing to Wakefield that he would have liked so much as the little lacquer writing-case. It was so small, so pretty, with dim blue flowers on its satiny black surface. Inside it looked as though it had been the recipient of a thousand thoughts—some beautiful, some fierce, some sad. It had belonged to Grandmother when she was a girl in Ireland. It had travelled with her across the seas to India. All the way back to England it had accompanied her. Then came in the sailing vessel out to Quebec. Then up the St. Lawrence to Jalna. When Meggie was eighteen Gran had given it to her. Now, darling old Meggie had presented it to him.
Words had always fascinated him, but it was only of late that he had cared to write them down. In his early days he had delighted in repeating the stately words used by the elder members of the family. He had listened to himself saying them, his head on one side. He had rejoiced in the feeling of eloquence and dignity their utterance had created in the room. He had rejoiced in the expressions of wonder their coming from his childish lips had created on the faces of those who heard. He had marshalled the words like generals of noble lineage in the newly recruited army of his speech.
But now he had a fresh delight. This was to extract the sweetness from everyday words, to draw them together into rhymes. He beckoned to them, and they came to him like other children, now tractable and gay, now wayward and weeping.
This year he had hated his birthday. He was now in his teens, no longer a little boy. He dreaded the thought of growing up. The day would come when Renny would no longer hold him on his knee, no longer give him those quick, tobacco-smelling kisses that somehow put strength into him. He wished Gran might have lived longer. It did not seem fair that the others should have had her strong arms to clasp them until they were great men, while he, who needed her most, must lean on weaker members of her sex.
He scarcely looked on Pheasant as a grown woman. If Mooey chose to regard her as such, there was no object in disillusioning him; but, as someone to lean on, she was not to be considered.
Of one thing he had come to be certain that summer. It was that Alayne did not love him. Once, a long time ago, he had thought she did, but that summer, he believed, she wished he were out of the way. She might even wish him dead, as Grandmother was dead. Out of the way for ever and ever. He pictured himself lying dead in the drawing-room as Gran had lain, with the silver candelabra lighted at his head and feet, and Uncle Ernest standing beside the coffin, telling of the noble and unselfish life he had led, of the pain heroically endured. He pictured his funeral winding up the slope to the graveyard, his grave, midway in size between those of the infants and the grown-ups, mounded with flowers. But there were no flowers from Alayne. He pictured how conscience-stricken she would come weeks later with a large nosegay and find Renny there, kneeling on the turf in his new green tweed suit, crying as though his heart would break. He usually ended these imaginings by shedding a few tears himself.
It seemed to him that Alayne was always watching him. Often when he raised his eyes to hers he would find her looking at him with what he felt was a forbidding look. He began to watch her closely. Scarcely a word spoken or a gesture made by her in his presence was lost on him. He knew she was immensely clever. Renny had told him that there were indeed few women that had an intellect equal to hers. Wakefield was greatly impressed by the parcels of books that came to her from New York. He would have very much liked to handle them, to dip into their pages. But once when she allowed him to look at one, of which she thought he might understand something, he had got a smudge on the clear green cover, and, though she uttered nothing more than an exclamation of annoyance, she did not allow him to handle her books again.
When she went to her room and shut herself in there to write, he formed the habit of going also to his room—his and Renny’s—and sitting down at the table with a writing-pad before him. He thought that by emulating her habits he might, in some intangible way, absorb something of her intellect. He would mount the stairs with a calm detached expression, such as she wore, and close his door behind him with exactly the same note of precision. The trouble was that he had no new books to write about. However, there were plenty of old ones in the bookcase in the sitting-room, and he would carry, perhaps, one of Charles Lever’s and one of the Waverley novels and lay them on the
table beside him. He would earnestly read a page or so and then write—“This book is elegantly written. I would recommend it without hesitation to all my readers.” Sentences of this sort stood out beautifully on the clean white paper.
Sometimes he would go into the passage and stand listening, with quickening pulses, for a sound from Alayne’s room that might inspire him. Even though he heard nothing, he experienced the subtle thrill of intellectual contact and returned to his task with renewed spirit. Before long he abandoned the idea of writing the sort of thing Alayne did, and gave himself up to the pleasure of writing in his own way. Sometimes in prose, more often in rhyme, he wrote of the things he saw and felt that pleased or saddened him. One day Alayne went to town and left a new anthology of poetry in the drawing-room. He scarcely laid it down during her absence. He carried it to his room and copied out the verses he liked best. Soon he had them by heart. Afterwards, when he saw Alayne with the book in her hand, he thought—“I know as much of that book as you do. It’s my book as much as yours.” And, looking straight at her, he would silently repeat lines from one of the poems. And Alayne would think—“He is becoming more tiresome, more inquisitive every day.”
He was so proud of the verses he himself wrote that he longed to read them to someone. A certain instinct told him not to read them to Renny. No—Renny would think he was being a sissy. And, if he read them to Rags, or Pheasant, or Meggy, they would be sure to tell Renny or Piers, and he would be laughed at. At last he thought of Alma Patch. There was something about her pale freckled face, her sandy head, that seemed ripe for listening. He carried his verses to her and sat down beside her on the lawn, where she minded Mooey. He commanded Mooey to be silent. If he moved or spoke, a tiger with eyes of fire would come up from the ravine and carry him off to feed her young. So the tiny boy, bare-legged and bare-armed, sat, scarcely breathing, staring fearfully into the shadows of the ravine, while Wakefield read his verses to Alma Patch. Alma was all receptivity. She listened, holding a blade of grass to her lips. When it was done she whispered—“My, how lovely!”
After that he read all his poetry to her, having first made her take a fearful oath of secrecy. At the end of each one she tickled her lips with a grass blade and whispered—“My, how lovely!” But, though her words and her look were always the same, her receptivity was so great that he was satisfied. He grew happier.
When Alayne was gone he was happier still. He hoped that her aunt would not get better too quickly. When he was cold that she had died he thought it would be rather nice if :he other aunt were to have a little illness—be just ill enough to want her dear niece at her side... He went boldly into Alayne’s room and took the anthology of poetry from the bookshelves and laid it in the bottom of the chest of drawers where he kept his special things.
He did exactly as he liked in these days, and he noticed how well this agreed with his health. He had never felt better. Mr. Fennel was away on a holiday, so there were no lessons. The servants were jolly and devil-may-care. He could go to the kitchen whenever he liked and possess himself of tarts, cheese cakes, or currant scones. He washed or not, just as he felt inclined. He seldom combed his hair. Pheasant was too lackadaisical at present to notice his dishevelled look. Piers and Renny were in a relaxed mood, lenient toward everybody. They talked a good deal about their annual duck-shooting expedition, in which Crowdy and Chase were, for the first time, to be members of the party.
On this morning Wakefield had a most beautiful idea for a poem in his head. It was to be more ambitious than anything he had yet written—longer, more thoughtfully worked out, filled with smooth and singing words. He sat down to write it in his bedroom but somehow, for that poem, it would not do. For the first time he noticed the wallpaper, how ugly it was, with its green and yellow pattern of scrolls and bilious-looking birds. The shiny photographs of horses distracted his eyes. The calendar, tacked to the wall above the table, with its gaudy picture of a grinning girl, offended him; the smell of Renny’s pipes... He looked about him disconsolately. What was he to do? Here he was, with a most glorious poem in his head—all atiptoe to be written—and suddenly he had turned against his own loved retreat... His eyes sought the window, rested on the treetops, gold and red against the hyacinthine sky. He gazed and gazed, forgetting himself and his poem, lost in contemplation of the brimming beauty of the day.
He knew what he would do. He would go out into the morning freshness and write his poem there. He would have lovely things about him while he wrote... He gathered up his paper, pencil, and the little lacquer writing-case, and glided down the stairs and through the hall.
He chose a yellow field from which the grain had been cut, and in which three old pear trees stood. He sat down on the warm sandy soil beneath one of these, his folio on his knees... He noticed his hands, how they were getting long, and the knuckles beginning to show, noticed that his wrists protruded from his sleeves. He bent his face to the shining lacquer of the folio, and caressed it with his cheek, his lips.
His face touched the flesh of his hand and he sniffed its warm sunburned sweetness. He loved himself passionately that day as he loved the pear tree and the warm sandy soil. He pressed his body against the ground, feeling its warmth. He looked up into the innermost depths of the tree. The leaves were turning yellow, whispering together in the merest waft of air. Among them the fruit, beautifully shaped, golden green, hung ready to drop the very instant that its dried stem wavered in the support of its luscious weight.
He wrote and wrote. Frowning, he sought for words, found them, and, as a hound that has caught the scent, his spirit ran forward, panting after its quarry. To write a perfect poem! As lovely as one of Eden’s. To write something that, in years and years to come, people would say over to themselves and feel happy... Who was the author? Why, the author was Wakefield Whiteoak, the brother of Eden Whiteoak... Poet brothers... the younger was thought by many to be the greater of the two.
Just as he finished, a pear fell, impaling itself on a spear of stubble. He reached out and curved his hand about it, held it to his nostrils, sniffing it. He was divinely happy.
He re-read the verses, polished them tenderly, copied them out again in his most careful handwriting. How quickly they had flowed out of his head! Only a short while ago the paper had been blank, and now a picture was drawn on it in lovely words that would last forever. Though the writing of it had not taken long, the thought of it had been haunting him lor weeks; in fact, ever since he had watched the family of ducks with the new understanding that had come to him.
He had rushed to find Bessie when the thought of the poem had first come to him. “Look here, Bessie,” he had said, “would you mind being called a farmer’s wife in something I am going to write?” Bessie had agreed with alacrity. Indeed she had simply thrown herself at the farmer’s head.
To whom could he read the poem? He had read it to the pear tree, but her leaves had gone on whispering together as heedless of him as of the nuthatch that twittered among them.
He lay watching a flock of birds flying high on the journey southward. He saw how some of the birds would press forward in their haste, passing their fellows, and how the conformation of the flock was still unbroken. Passing and repassing each other, they were still contained in their formation like winging words in a poem.
The thought of Pauline Lebraux came to him. He remembered the way her lip curled when she smiled, giving her smile an odd shadow of pain. He felt that he would like to read the poem to her—for this one, Alma Patch’s “My, how lovely!” would not suffice.
He would go to the fox farm and read the poem to Pauline...
He was panting when he reached the gate, for he had run all the way. He hesitated there to take breath. Standing behind the gatepost, he thought: “What if Mrs. Lebraux should come to the door? I cannot read my poetry to her. I must find Pauline and take her to some place where we can be all alone.” He walked cautiously beside the fence, peering between the palings, hoping for a glimpse of her. But
, before he saw her, he heard her laughing. She was squatting in the shade of a group of cedars playing with her pet fox.
It had been a puny cub, the smallest of the first litter of an immature vixen. It had promised to develop into a “Samson,” of inferior woolly underfur and uneven rusty pelt. But Pauline had taken it under her protection. She had fed it with milk and stolen eggs for it. She had brushed it till it shone; had taught it to know its name. It was a secret name—formed of an English word spoken in a French way— and known only to the fox and herself. Now it was growing into a rugged animal of good girth, the glossy black of its pelt shading to blue-black, the silver bands on the guard hairs bright as polished metal.
Wakefield stood watching girl and fox romp gracefully together. A new shyness came over him. The thought of reading his poem to Pauline made him feel strangely timid. The very thought of speaking to her, of her speaking to him, made him shrink. Yet he liked to stand, hidden, watching her. He forgot all else in the pleasure of that till a voice calling from within the house caused her to spring up and, followed by the fox, disappear.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 32
