Alayne, he thought rather ruefully, would have been a happier woman if she had lived quite by herself all the day, with a tired husband coming home at night to a perfectly ordered house, to a tidy and well-behaved child who would sit on Daddy’s knee and stroke his tired head before she went to her cot. And, after a perfect little dinner, there would be a concert or intellectual conversation. Intellectual conversation—that was what hit him in the weak spot. He had it not nor ever would have. Still, they had their happiness. There was that other side of Alayne’s nature, the passionate selfforgetting side which, it seemed to him, she was learning to keep under control.
But he felt cheerful. For one thing Maurice had not sold any more of his lots, and the two families who were already building bungalows there seemed to be quite decent folk. Perhaps they could be endured. Then the spring was forward. There was a quick rush of budding and unfolding, and the sun, in the height of the day, gave a generous heat.
Renny became jovial on the subject of the removal of the young family. He would say at table “Well, I wonder where you’ll be this time next year! Sneaking back to Jalna, I’m willing to bet!”
“I don’t see why!” Pheasant would retort, hotly.
“What about the rent? What if you can’t pay your rent? I suppose you think Auntie will pay it for you, but you won’t, will you, Auntie?”
Augusta would look down her nose.
Or perhaps he would urge Mooey to a third helping of pudding. “Eat all you can, old man, while you have the chance! God knows how you’ll fare when your dad has the providing to do.” And Mooey, forcing down his third helping, would look downright alarmed.
But no matter what Renny said, Pheasant could not feel angry with him. She remembered the night when he had come in to her when she was coughing and been so tender with her and so rough with Piers, who, she could not help thinking, had deserved all he had got. In conversation with Piers she was always referring to that night “when Renny was so perfectly sweet to me.”
Piers’s eyes would grow prominent and he would perhaps repeat:
“Sweet to you! What the hell do you mean, sweet to you?”
“Well,” she would return, “you mightn’t have had me with you today if Renny hadn’t got thoroughly alarmed by my condition and sent you down for a hot drink for me. Whatever he has done or may do, I shall never forget that night, and there is no use in your trying to make me forget it.”
“I only wish I could get a reputation for benevolence as easily.”
Nicholas and Ernest had never been so unobservant of what took place about them. Even the budding spring did not arouse them from their dejection. They felt old, they felt ill, and the departure of their sister hung over them like a cloud. The day approached only too quickly
Renny was to accompany her to Quebec from where she sailed. She would have preferred the company of either Piers or Finch, for she was feeling annoyed at her eldest nephew. But Finch’s nerves were so unstrung that she hesitated to ask him to undertake a tiring journey, and Piers, with so much on hand, could not get away. The master of Jalna could always get away.
On the last morning Augusta went from room to room through the house, from attic to wine cellar that had been so well stored in her father’s time. With a feeling of melancholy reverence she said goodbye to each room with the conviction in her heart that never again would she see it. She gave a goodbye present to each of the children and carried a lump of sugar to Boney on his perch in her mother’s room. He clutched it in his scaly grey claw but did not attempt to eat it until she had gone. He looked at her out of his shrewd grey eyes and made chuckling noises that ruffled the feathers on his throat.
The car, laden with her luggage, was at the door. All the family, including Maurice, Meg, and little Patience, had gathered to see her go. The sunlight intensified the lines in the faces of the three old people. They stood close together as they had stood on the same spot when they were tiny children.
“Well, well, Gussie,” said Nicholas thickly, “so you’ve got to go! We must say goodbye, eh?” He took her in his big arms and held her tightly to him for a moment. The familiar strong smell of tobacco came to her nostrils.
“Goodbye, my dear, dear sister,” said Ernest, in a trembling voice “I am sure that next year you will come back to us for a visit. Say you will, Augusta, for just one more visit!”
“I will try, dear Ernest,” she answered, and kissed him tenderly.
She looked back just once at the group left behind, then pressed her handkerchief to her eyes and sat so for quite a long while. After that she was her composed self again and looked at the hurly-burly of the station platform with her accustomed air of dignified offence.
It was indeed a long journey to Quebec. The great powerful train raged and swung its way from province to province, from budding spring to lingering winter. “Never again, never again,” thought Augusta, “can I undertake this!”
At Quebec the Citadel towered above them purple against an azure sky. The dark ramparts told their story of another day. She said to Renny, as they stood together on the pier:
“How strange to think that I was carried ashore here from a sailing vessel an infant, in my father’s arms! My ayah, you will remember, died on the voyage and was buried at sea.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “things have improved greatly since then.”
“I do not think they have improved,” she said.
He was silent for a moment and then said:
“Speaking of burial at sea, Auntie, makes me think what a pity it is that you won’t be buried with the rest of the family at Jalna.”
She looked at him out of her opaque dark eyes where, on the iris of one, there was a whitish spot. She said:
“Well, my dear, my place is beside my husband and he is buried at Nymet Crews.”
“I know. But—in spite of that—it’s a pity. And I see no reason why—if you’d prefer to be buried in the family plot—you shouldn’t have your wish.”
They were jostled by the crowd as everyone moved toward the gangplank.
She answered—“I do not see how it could be managed.”
There was such a noise that he had almost to shout his answer.
“I’d gladly go for you myself and fetch you back.”
She had no opportunity of answering him, such was the confusion, until they were on deck. Then she said:
“It is very kind of you, Renny, very kind indeed, to offer to take so much trouble for me. But I think, when my time comes, I shall prefer to lie beside my Edwin…”
He stood on the pier watching the liner move slowly down the St. Lawrence. The river gave back the sublime reflection of the morning clouds. It ran swiftly toward icebergs, whales, and open sea, dandling the river craft on its way. Renny pictured his grandfather, fresh from military life in India, standing where he now stood, with his belongings about him, his handsome, hawk-nosed, brown-eyed wife whose bonnet concealed her luxuriant dark-red hair, whose strong arm negligently held the infant he had just surrendered to her. The delicate dark infant was now Aunt Augusta, steaming away on the wide water, probably never to return.
Renny pictured himself and Alayne and little Adeline in a like position and he thought it would have suited him very well. He would have liked the country as it was then, noble, wild, with forests full of game. He stood, tall and lean, a noticeable figure, with his air of impetuous pride and the disciplined strength of his. body. The War had left its mark on him. His association with horses, his familiarity with the saddle, his long years of responsibility, had marked him. And on his features was the stamp of old Adeline, tempered with his manhood.
His reverie was broken by the passing of a long tail of black-coated schoolboys in charge of two priests. They were pale-faced boys who chattered in French as they passed him. He gave a last look at the liner, now growing small, as though drawing into herself, and turned back along the steep street.
XXIV
PIERS’S FLITTING
PIERS had chosen the days of Renny’s absence as an agreeable time for his own removal from Jalna to the Miss Laceys’ house. Pugnacious though he was, he rather dreaded the jocularities of his elder and he was afraid that he might be driven by them into a serious quarrel. He felt himself in the mood for a serious quarrel. For one thing Renny after much pressing, had paid him his entire bill for the winter’s fodder, and inside of a fortnight had, apparently being driven to desperation, borrowed it back. Since then it had not been possible to extract a penny from him.
The morning was the gayest possible, for the cherry trees were in full blow, the apple trees in pink bud, and the blue of the sky was an arch of forget-me-not. The breeze stayed in no direction for long but darted out like a playful child from first one hiding-place and then another. Sometimes it scattered a handful of petals, sometimes flung a feather from a bird, but always it lingered a moment to whisper through the shutters or ruffle the Virginia creeper on the old house.
Pheasant was in a state of bliss, but to Piers the day was unreal. He was exhilarated but, at the same time, unbelieving that he, Piers Whiteoak, was going to sleep from henceforth under a different roof. It would have been less impressive to him if he had been going far away. To go to a house of which every corner was familiar to him was a mental upheaval.
The young pair owned nothing save their personal belongings, the silver cups which Piers had won in school athletics and horse and cattle shows, and an armchair which he had once bought at an auction sale. The children’s cots they took as a matter of course, and the children themselves came out to the waiting car clutching armfuls of toys.
Baby Adeline strode up to Nooky and snatched a stuffed blue rabbit.
“Mine,” she said.
Mooey tore it from her grasp and returned it to his brother. “It’s Nooky’s!”
“Mine,” she reiterated and charged again.
Mooey pushed her to the ground.
Wakefield lifted all three children into the car beside Pheasant, who was holding her youngest. She cried:
“But you shouldn’t have put Adeline in! Heaven knows I have enough without her!”
There was a scene as Adeline was lifted out and carried into the house by Finch.
“All ready?” asked Piers, one hand on the wheel, the other steadying the toppling tower of bandboxes beside him.
Wakefield stood on the running board. He was going to help them settle in.
“All ready!” cried Pheasant joyously
“Goodbye, Uncle Ernest! Goodbye, Uncle Nick!”
“Goodbye, children! Come often to see us.”
“Bye-bye! Bye-bye!” shouted the children.
Alayne came running down the steps to kiss them.
Finch appeared carrying Adeline.
“Wait a moment,” he said. “She wants to kiss and be friends.” He projected her, in a horizontal position, into the car and she pressed her rosebud mouth on each face in turn.
As Finch was withdrawing her she snatched the blue rabbit from Nooky and the car sped away, wails issuing from its interior.
Adeline smiled divinely and embraced the rabbit.
“Deah Bunny,” she cooed…
The Miss Laceys’ house had been built just ten years later than Jalna, but their father (a retired naval officer who had named it The Moorings) had been a poor man and it was small and unpretentious. Now its grey plaster walls were weather-stained and it seemed to have sunk lower against the little hillside from which it had sprung. It had an old-fashioned garden, a wicket gate, and a verandah across its front. The charming interior came as a surprise, and there was an air of delicate femininity, for only women of a retiring type had lived there for many years.
They had left everything spic and span, even to freshly washed dusters in the duster bags of each room, and lavender was scattered in the dresser drawers.
“We must try to keep it this way,” said Piers, looking about with great gravity after Wakefield had gone.
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Pheasant. “Oh, darling, isn’t it wonderful living in a place of our own after eight years of married life in the house of a domineering man like Renny Whiteoak, to say nothing of Gran and the Uncles and all the rest? Even Alayne sometimes got on my nerves with her highbrow ways and her fussing over her child.”
They had brought Bessie with them as a general, and Alayne had gladly surrendered Alma Patch as nurse. The little boys were in the garden feeding Mooey’s pigeons. The infant was upstairs asleep. When they returned to the dining room they found that Bessie had already laid an inviting tea on the small oval table. They looked across it into each other’s eyes. Their toes touched beneath the table.
“Isn’t it cosy?” she cried.
He nodded and grinned, showing the white bread behind his white teeth.
“And me pouring tea! Do you know, I’ve never poured tea since I was in my father’s house, and there was no great prestige in that.”
He nodded sympathetically and then asked:
“What about grub? Have you ordered things?”
“Not yet. Mrs. Wragge gave me a good supply to start with. She’s really a generous old soul. She said she’d more on hand than she knew what to do with. She says she’ll never forget us when she’s baking.”
“Good for her! I sent vegetables and eggs along with the load. Then naturally we shall get our fruit and milk from the farm. We killed a nice young pig yesterday and I sent a leg and some chops over here. We can manage pretty well for food. The rent will be the only difficulty.”
“Never fear, darling! You will feel so much more self-reliant in this house that making money will come easily. Won’t it be great fun having the family over to a party and showing off our house?”
“Yes, and having Renny jeer at everything!”
“Let him jeer! I’ll not mind. And—after all—he’s rather a darling. I’ll never, so long as I live, forget how sweet he was to me that night when I lay awake coughing and you—”
Piers interrupted—“We shan’t have any time in the garden, if you don’t hurry with your tea. I must get the pigeons and try to find Biddy. I suppose she’s digging up the flowers.”
At this same moment Finch and Wakefield were standing in the middle of the room just vacated and looking about it with very different feelings. Finch was regretful of the break in the family. His mind went back to the time of Piers’s marriage and his own delight in at last having a room of his own… That attic room which he and Piers had shared together and where Piers had so often ragged him and made him unhappy. Now Piers and Pheasant had left their mark on this room. Would not the room hold forever some essence of their joys and sufferings there? In here Piers had once locked her for three weeks after the affair with Eden. In here she had borne three children. His mind went back further and he remembered being led into this room to see his mother when she lay with the infant Wakefield at her side. She had been white as marble. In this room she had died.
Wakefield considered the furniture and the wallpaper. The carpet was quite good, if a small rug were laid on the worn spot in front of the dressing table. He liked the walnut furniture, but the wallpaper was an abomination. He examined a small medicine cabinet. It was worth examining, for it had been fixed into the Sheraton frame of a mirror, the arched top of which served as a decoration for the cabinet. The mirror having been broken, someone had thus made ornament of the frame.
“Who did that, I wonder?” said Wakefield.
“God knows! But it’s a monstrosity.”
“I rather like it. I think it’s neat.”
“The room should be changed in some way.”
“I agree! It’s the wallpaper that’s wrong. And, as I want the room for myself, I shall tear off the old paper and buy fresh and put it on. I’m sure I could. Perhaps you would give me a little help.”
“You want the room! What for?”
“To sleep in, of course. Don’t you think it’s time I had a room of my own?”
Finch said roughly�
��“Oh, I know what you have in your mind! You make me sick—a kid of your age!”
“The trouble with you is that you’re envious.”
“Not a bit! Marriage is the furthest thing from my thoughts. But you’re so damned ignorant, so unsophisticated—”
“I’ll be all the better husband for that,” interrupted Wake proudly. “And you needn’t help me if you don’t want to.”
“Oh, I’ll help you paper the room—if Renny says you may have it.”
Renny, returning the next day, agreed. He was willing, as always, to give the boy what he wanted, but he felt that he would miss him from his side. But Wakefield was growing up and changes were in the air.
He was anxious to see Piers and Pheasant in their new surroundings, and just before one o’clock he appeared at their door, with Biddy at his heels.
“Here’s your dog,” he said. “She doesn’t seem to approve of the move.”
“Little fool,” said Piers, patting her. “Won’t you come in?”
Renny entered the house and, it seemed purposely to Piers, knocked his head on the door of the parlour. He pressed his hand to the spot and said:
“I’d forgotten how ridiculously small this place is. It’s a good thing you’re not so tall as I am.”
“We like it very much,” said Piers rather stiffly.
They were about to sit down to dinner. The roast of pork was on the table. Pheasant nervously asked him to share the meal with them.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 69
