“One would think,” observed Meg, “that you’d never seen an aeroplane before!”
“I’ve never seen a prettier bit of gliding.”
Ernest peered skyward. “It hurts my eyes,” he said.
“Come, come, come,” urged Nicholas. “Enlighten us about this amazing deal. You can’t get out of that, you know. Maurice and Meg have been telling how you’ve saved the situation—and acquired new acres for Jalna into the bargain.”
The aeroplane had disappeared. Renny turned his gaze enquiringly to Maurice. “What have you told them?” he asked.
Maurice’s tone was impatient. “All I know. That you bought the land and paid cash for it, and are going to tear down what has been built on it.”
Renny grinned genially at his uncles but avoided the eyes of his sister and his wife. He said:
“Well, then, there’s nothing more to tell. It’ll be good fun pulling those shacks down, won’t it?”
Ernest stretched out his hand and clasped Renny’s.
“My dear boy, this is a happy moment for me!”
The slender white hand and the muscular brown one gripped.
“I’m glad of that, Uncle Ernie.”
Alayne, unable to contain herself any longer, exclaimed: “It strikes me that you are all very optimistic. I am wondering what is to be made out of that land in return for the investment.”
“It’s good land,” said Maurice, “but I don’t think Renny bought it for crops.”
“He bought it,” said Meg, “for an ideal.”
“Then how,” asked Alayne, her voice trembling with anger, “is he to repay his debt?”
“He has probably arranged that,” returned Meg stiffly “I suppose it depends on whom he borrowed from.”
Nicholas sent a sudden penetrating glance at Renny.
“Meg was wondering,” he said, “if it might be Sarah.”
Renny sprang up and caught the mare, which was now cropping the grass near them, by the bridle. She had one of her feet planted on the flower border. He spoke roughly to her and cuffed her head. She bit at him and reared. They showed their teeth at each other, but there was a subtle understanding between them. She reared, danced, dipped, like a plunging ship while he held her bridle, cuffed her, encouraged her. It was upsetting for those about the table, but it made them certain that it was Sarah who had given him the loan. He had not been able to face them.
But his expression, when he rejoined the circle, was brazen. “Yes, it was Sarah,” he admitted.
“I’d never have believed it of her,” cried Nicholas. “She’s a trump!”
“To think of Sarah coming to the rescue!” said Ernest.
Meg looked complacent. “I was the one who guessed.”
Alayne stared at Renny, dismayed.
Before there was further comment Piers appeared suddenly from the direction of the stables. His face was crimson and his thin shirt clung in damp patches to his body. He cast a quick look about and said:
“So you’ve heard the news!”
“Yes,” answered Ernest; “and it has made us very happy.”
“A great day for us,” added Nicholas.
Piers was bewildered. “Happy! A great day! You must be talking about something else. I was speaking of Mrs. Lebraux losing her place.” He turned to Renny. “I suppose you know all about it.”
Renny nodded.
Meg exclaimed—“Oh, the poor thing! Whatever will she do? Who told you, Piers?”
“Stone, who holds the mortgage. He’s foreclosed. He came to see me just now about buying some corn. He mentioned it quite casually, as though he expected I’d know all about it, and then told me that Renny had bought the house from him. He’d been going to tear it down. What are you going to do with it, Renny?”
There was too much mystery in all this. There was something sinister in it. They looked at each other, they looked at Renny, and waited with misgiving in their hearts.
“Well—” He tried to speak confidentially, as though he expected their approval, but how could he tell them what he had in mind to do?
“Do sit down,” said Meg, “and tell us all about it!”
He dropped to the grass beside her chair. Piers remained standing.
“Well—” he repeated, and began to laugh to drown out his own voice. He looked toward his mare as though hopeful that she might again offer distraction, but she stood immobile, her eyes fixed on him, enquiring like the others.
Meg said—“I’ve always hated this way of laughing when there’s nothing to laugh at.”
Nicholas, chin in hand, stared compellingly at him.
He ceased laughing. His face hardened and he said abruptly:
“I’m going to move the house from the fox farm and put it on the land I’ve just bought from Maurice.”
For a moment they could scarcely take in his meaning.
Ernest stammered—“But—I don’t see—but why in the world should you do that? Why it would look appalling there! It’s a particularly ugly house.”
Nicholas said—“It would look as bad as—even worse than—the bungalows. You can’t do it! It’s impossible!”
“What is the idea?” asked Piers. “Are Mrs. Lebraux and Pauline to live there?”
Renny looked up at his brother challengingly.
“Have you anything to say against them as neighbours?”
“But the foxes!” interrupted Meg. “They wouldn’t bring their foxes, would they?”
“Of course they’ll bring their foxes.”
“But it would be horrible! A pack of yapping, evil-smelling wild animals. And the hideous house! And the more hideous wire enclosures—” She turned to Maurice. “We’re against that, aren’t we?”
Maurice replied—“I’d never have sold him the land if I’d known of it. It will depreciate both our properties.”
Nicholas heaved himself forward on the garden seat and leaned toward Renny.
“It’s doubtless very compassionate of you,” he said sonorously, “to have thought of helping Mrs. Lebraux and her daughter in this way but—I forbid it—yes, I must forbid it in the name of my mother, who would turn over in her grave if she knew of it.”
“But she can’t know of it,” returned Renny; “so why harrow ourselves over what she would think? As for the fox farm—you will scarcely know that it is there.”
“It will be there for every passer-by to see,” put in Ernest, striking his hand on the table. “As Maurice says, it will depreciate the property on both sides. We shall hear it, smell it, be disgusted by it, with every breath we draw!”
Meg interjected—“It’s the menagerie effect that’s so appalling to me. Wild animals raging about. Peering through the netting. And Mrs. Lebraux, in a man’s overall, working among them like a man!”
“I shouldn’t worry, Meggie, if I were you,” said Piers. “The house will fall to pieces when they move it.”
“No, it won’t!” said Renny. “It’s a well-built house. I have engaged a good man for the job.”
“I have never known you, Renny,” said Nicholas, “to do anything so callous as this!”
Ernest said—“To think that we were feeling so happy over the acquiring of this new land and the abolishing of the bungalows—and then to have to face—but we won’t face it!” He rose and began to walk about excitedly. “It must not be. Alayne, surely you have some influence with him! Surely you can use it to make Renny see how wrong this is!”
Alayne said icily—“I’d rather not interfere. If you wish to influence Renny—it would be better for you to go to Mrs. Lebraux.”
“I shall! I shall!” cried Ernest. “Surely she can’t be so brazen as to come where she’s not wanted!”
“It will be a joke for the countryside,” said Maurice, “if the scheme is carried through.”
Renny turned on him savagely. “What the hell do you mean? There is no joke about it. I have bought the land and I will put on it what I damned well choose.”
“You bou
ght it under false pretences! You said that you couldn’t stand the thought of a dozen small houses there, and now you’re planting a fox farm.”
“I am allowing two women—friends of ours—to keep foxes there. Very different from the thirty or forty people who would have swarmed over your lots.” He turned appealinglyto his uncles. “Surely you can see the difference. And what was I to do? That child and her mother are losing everything!”
Piers broke in. “I’m all at sea. When did you buy the land? And how?”
Meg answered for Renny. “He has just bought it. Sarah lent him the money.”
Nicholas said—“Very well. If you must help those women, do! Let them have land, but, for God’s sake, let it be at the back of the estate, not the front!”
“Yes, yes,” cried Ernest, “there are fields back there—bits of wood behind which they would scarcely be noticed. Let us, by all means, give them a few acres there. I’ll be the first to agree to that.”
“There are two things against that,” replied Renny. “One is that it would be almost impossible to move the house so far, and too expensive. The other that they would be much too isolated. They must be on a main road. For their business and for their own sakes. They have no car. They’re obliged to walk to village and bus. Things are hard enough for them as it is. What surprises me is that you should all take the high and mighty stand you do.” He turned his eyes accusingly on Alayne. “I should have expected you to be more broad-minded.”
“I have said nothing to oppose you.”
“You have said nothing to help me. Disapproval has stuck out all over you.”
Piers said—“I guess that Alayne is like I am—speechless at Sarah’s generosity. We’re both wondering what security you’ve given Sarah. Have you given her Finch? Or a mortgage on Jalna?”
At the first question a quiver, as of sardonic mirth, passed through the circle. At the second an electric tremor shook them into horrid confusion. The air was stifling. It was full of thunder. Every eye turned, startled and menacing, on Renny.
They needed no answer from him. The muscular contracting of his face, the quick intake of his breath, was enough. The question shot by Piers had caught him unprepared. He made a grimace, expressing both chagrin and defiance. He said:
“I was driven to it.”
If only he had denied it! If he had made them believe, against the evidence of his guilty grimace, that he had committed no such outrage against them and against Jalna! Then perhaps Nicholas would not have turned so ghastly grey in the face; Ernest would not have clutched his throat and tried in vain to utter a sound; Meg not have burst into tears; Maurice not have looked at him with such horror; Alayne with something like hate; and Piers might have restrained the blasphemous oath.
Wakefield, still harbouring his childish fear of thunder, had left his work at the signs of approaching storm and now came running toward them, half laughing, wet with sweat. At sight of them the laughter died on his lips. He cried:
“What’s the matter? Has the house been struck?”
Nicholas answered, in a terrible voice—“Yes, the house has been struck! Look at it, all of you. It’s been blasted!”
Meg threw herself into Piers’s arms and clung to him. They all turned their eyes to the house which faced them, clothed in its creepers, their greenness and the dark red of its bricks intensified by the sulphurous light from the low, threatening sky. The house looked at them unblinkingly from its windows, not in reproach, it seemed, but in threatening aloofness. It appeared to recede from them, to draw away. “I am no longer yours,” it seemed to say; “you are no longer mine. A barrier is between us.”
Wakefield cried—“But I don’t see it! I don’t see the fire! Where is it? Oh, Meggie, don’t cry! Renny, what’s the matter?”
Nicholas caught him by the arm.
“The house has not been struck by lightning—but in another way,” he said. He pointed to Renny, who had sprung to his feet. “He’ll tell you. You’ve admired him. Let him tell you what he’s done to jalna.”
Renny exclaimed—“By God, I won’t have you turn the boy against me!”
“But what is it? What is it? I don’t understand!” Wakefield drew away from Nicholas and faced Renny.
Renny said—“They’re all after me because I’ve borrowed money on Jalna. I had to stop that building on Maurice’s place and I had to help Paula.”
“That’s shrewd of you,” said Piers. “Why didn’t you say Clara?”
“Oh, the deceit of him!” wept Meg. “If Gran knew of this!”
“It will be the end of me,” Ernest got out in a strangled voice and supported himself against the table.
Renny said harshly—“You talk like an old fool! I have not lost the place.”
“I’ll thank you,” said Nicholas, “not to insult my brother.”
“Oh, he doesn’t care what he does,” said Meg, wiping her eyes. “None of us means anything to him.”
A few heavy drops of rain fell. A roll of thunder came jarring from the black west as though it overthrew obstacles to approach them.
“I’ll stick by you, Renny” said Wake. “I’m on your side, always.”
Piers sneered—“You’d stick to the devil if you could get anything out of him.”
“You’ll see!” cried Ernest. “Sarah will be the mistress of Jalna! It will kill me.”
“And Finch will be the master,” said Piers. “Mark my words, he’ll marry her. He’ll line his nest if he plucks the down from our breasts to do it.”
Alayne looked wildly about her. “I’m going in,” she said, and turned toward the house.
Meg had never felt in such accord with her. She went and put her arm about her. “Poor dear,” she said, “you look as white as a sheet. You’re breaking your wife’s heart, Renny. Anyone can see that. I’ve watched her failing for months.”
The words, Meg’s tender touch, were too much for Alayne. She too burst into tears.
A tawny radiance illumined their figures. The mare’s side shone like metal. She lifted her lip in a wry distortion.
Piers fixed his prominent eyes on Alayne.
“No wonder she cries,” he said. “This news is enough to make a man cry.”
“It’s killing me,” reiterated Ernest, pressing his hand to his side.
Nicholas swept out his arm. “All this is on your head, Renny!” His gesture included the house, with its air of receding from them, his distraught brother, the weeping women, and the mouthing mare.
As Nicholas spoke the thunder pealed like a bell in simultaneous consent with a dazzling flash that struck the oak tree near them, ripping off a strip of its bark from top to root. The sun disappeared and the rain began to fall in torrents.
Ernest cried—“There’s a sign! There’s a sign! The oak tree blasted. I see the end of this!”
“Take him into the house,” Renny said to Piers. “Give him a spot of brandy.” He spoke coolly but his lips were pale. He cast a bitter look after his wife and his sister, who had now reached the shelter of the porch.
Nicholas was trying to heave himself out of the garden seat. The rain beat on his grey head. Renny took him by the arm, but he planted his spread hand on his chest and thrust him away, growling:
“Don’t touch me! I don’t want your help.”
Wakefield went to him and helped him up.
Renny caught the reins of the mare and sprang into the saddle. She stood a moment rigid, fierce, beautiful in her naked symmetry, divided between love and hate of him, then, tossing her head as the hailstones struck her, fumed galloping toward the stables.
Nicholas hobbled houseward, weighing heavily on Wakefield. He muttered to himself—“It’s come to this, eh? Well, well, well. A pretty pass. I wish I’d never lived to see this day…”
XXVIII
SULTRY WEATHER
THE STORM did not cool the air or disperse the thunderclouds. They lingered, shouldering each other on the horizon, their edges burnished by the blazing sun,
now and then a troubled mutter echoing through their sultry depths. Every grass blade held its jewel, and the timid movement of the birds among the leaves scattered bright drops. The scene was highly coloured and still, but without tranquillity.
Was it cooler indoors or out? Alayne wondered. Should she go up to her room where she would be undisturbed, or seek peace out of doors where these walls would not press in on her? If only some other people had once lived in the house it would not be so permeated by the essence of the Whiteoaks. They had built it, lived in it, quarrelled and loved in it, died in it. Even Eden, who had not died in it, had left his restless spirit there. Strangely the thought of him gave her pain at this moment. She had never sorrowed for him. In her secret heart she had resented Renny’s grief for him as a shadow on their love. But now she found her heart yearning over Eden. As though to protect herself against today’s unhappiness, she reached back toward something in her past that might justly claim her tears. She saw herself and Eden, a happy girl and boy new-married, just come to Jalna.
How gay he had been! How full of hope! She could see him springing up the stairs, light and strong, or sitting at his desk, his face upraised to hers, while she scarcely heard what he said for watching the play of his lips, the light in his eyes. She was glad she could remember him like that, glad that she had never seen him after he was ill.
She stood in the doorway and started as Piers came up behind her. She moved aside to let him pass, avoiding his eyes, but he stopped. He gave her a curious look.
“Well, I’m off,” he said.
“I hope the hail has not injured your grain,” she remarked, for the sake of saying something.
“I don’t think so. It didn’t last long. But the storm is not over yet.”
“You think those clouds will come back? Which way is the wind?”
He stepped on to the drive. He wet his forefinger in his mouth and held it up. “Southeast,” he said. “They’ll come back.”
His usually fresh-coloured face looked pale and heavy. She was sorry for him.
“I regret this for your sake,” she said, “more than for the others.”
His mouth went down at the corners.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 72
