Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course

by Mazo de La Roche

  “I should think not,” agreed Piers.

  “Adeline,” said Renny, “come to Daddy.”

  Adeline jumped from her imaginary mount, her round, bare thighs flashing. She now stood astride a small mound marked by a headstone bearing the words — ‘Gwynneth, Died April 13th, 1898, aged five months.’ Piers exclaimed angrily:

  “Now she is on my little sister’s grave! I won’t have it!” He grasped Adeline by the arm and lifted her roughly over the railing. She smiled up at him daringly.

  “You talk,” said Renny, with equal heat, “as though Gwynneth were your sister only. What do you mean by it?”

  “Well, she was only your half-sister.”

  Renny was cut. “Do I cast it into your teeth that you are only my half-brother? I care as much for Gwynneth’s memory as you do. As a matter of fact, you never even saw her.”

  “Yes,” agreed Meg, with one of her inexplicable veerings in fraternal discussion. “Gwynneth might never have a flower laid on her grave if she had to depend on you, Piers. It is I, her half-sister, who bring them.” And she looked down complacently at three narcissi and a spray of pussy willow.

  Piers did not know what to say. He stared sulkily at his boots.

  Maurice examined his wristwatch.

  “Our P.G.s will be starving, Meg.”

  She gave an exclamation of consternation.

  The very mention of the paying guests was distasteful to Renny. He said sarcastically:

  “I suppose you dish up for them and Maurice ambles round with the trays.”

  “You seem to think it is all right,” declared Meg, “for Mrs. Lebraux to run a tea shop.”

  “Yes,” said Piers, “he goes to the length of breaking his bones to help her in the work.”

  “Oh, to think of it! And you allow Wakefield to keep a filling station!”

  Renny retorted in exasperation — “Don’t worry! Mrs. Lebraux is going to live with her brother and Wake is entering a monastery.”

  Before Meg could answer this she was led away by Maurice who took the welfare of his guests deeply to heart. Patience ran after them. Renny and his child crowded into the car with Piers, Pheasant, and their boys.

  A tremor might well be supposed to have quivered through the dense earth that lay on old Adeline’s coffin as the group departed, and her spirit have exclaimed — “What’s the to-do? I will not be kept out of things!”

  Alayne was waiting for them in the sitting room. She had often felt it rather an ordeal that these relatives should always take Sunday dinner at Jalna. Today she welcomed them.

  She had a flat, strange, unreal feeling. The thought of making conversation took from her what strength she had. She would let the others do the talking. The Whiteoaks had one never-failing subject of absorbing interest — horses and the breeding and training of horses. For all his keenness in farming, Piers could not make it pay. He and Renny were breeding more horses, polo ponies and children’s saddle ponies. Curiously little Maurice had not inherited his parents’ love of horses. He loved the sounds and scents of the fields and woods, but he desired no stirrups between him and the earth. An erratic swift-moving creature beneath him filled him with nervous apprehension. Even Pheasant did not realize the depth of this emotion though she shielded him from rough experiences as much as was in her power. Mooey lived a double life, feigning a keenness unnatural to him in the activities of the stables, disappearing when he had the chance into the great depths of the woods or hiding in his attic room to pore over the old books which the Miss Laceys had left stored there.

  Alayne liked Mooey and she felt a compassionate understanding of him, but it was little Nook who was her favourite. He was the sort of child she would have liked for her own. He was sensitive, shy, aloof, slow to give his affection but staunch in the giving of it. Between him and Alayne there was a curious understanding. He ran to her now and clasped one of her hands in both of his. She sat down and took him on her lap. She and Pheasant were in the sitting room while their two husbands, Adeline between them, had gone to the stables before dinner. Mooey hesitated in the hall, uncertain whether or not he should follow his father.

  Pheasant glanced shrewdly at Alayne. She saw the heaviness of her eyes, the lines about her mouth. Something was wrong, she thought, something beyond an ordinary quarrel. Alayne looked ill. Her skin had a sallow tinge. “Men can make you suffer,” she said out loud before she could stop herself, and then added, breathlessly — “Oh, Alayne, I should not have said that!”

  Alayne sifted Nook’s fine hair between her fingers. “It doesn’t matter. I expect I do look awful. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

  Pheasant burst out — “As long as you love each other, I don’t believe in lying awake suffering in your mind! I say it’s better to make friends at any cost — dignity or high ideals or — anything! And I know you have lots of both.”

  Alayne’s lips twisted in a little smile. She answered composedly, not being able to enter into intimate depths of marital discussion.

  “We are naturally worried about Wakefield.”

  Pheasant was unconvinced. She could not believe that Wake’s decision to enter a monastery could make Alayne look like that. She said:

  “Nothing that young man could do would surprise me. I pity him when Renny and Piers get after him. But I didn’t expect you to mind so much.”

  Alayne answered irritably — “I don’t mind. It is the sort of thing one must settle in oneself. But it is upsetting to Renny and very hard on Pauline.”

  “Not half so hard, I think, as marriage with him would be! But Mrs. Lebraux will be terribly disappointed. It must be hard, when you think you have your daughter settled in life, to find that it’s all off. Not having a daughter, I shall never have to go through that.”

  The mention of Clara Lebraux’s name quivered through Alayne’s nerves like the striking of a gong. She got up abruptly and carried Nook to the open window. “Let us see,” she said, “if we can find any buds on the lilac.”

  Alayne retreating as usual! thought Pheasant. And she began resignedly to talk about the children: baby Philip’s new tooth and how good Adeline had been in church. Alayne remained at the window till she saw Renny and Piers coming toward the house.

  She remembered how the first time she had seen Renny it had been from a window, drooping in his saddle with that accustomed air, unconscious of being watched. At that first moment the shape of him had been imprinted in the most sensitive recess of her mind and never again could be effaced. Now he was walking toward her after ten years and how little changed outwardly! Yet she felt as though she saw him for the first time, unaccountable, mysterious, threatening. Yet there was nothing to fear. She had experienced the worst — he could not hurt her now. A feeling of repulsion toward him, amounting to nausea, rose in her. She turned from the window.

  He did not enter the room with Piers but said from the doorway:

  “Could you come here a moment, Alayne? There is something you must attend to.”

  She set Nook on his feet and went into the hall. Renny stood in the doorway of his grandmother’s room. He said in a low voice — “Come in here — I have something I want to say to you.”

  “No,” she said, out of the constriction in her chest.

  He took her by the arm and drew her into the room. She did not resist because of Piers and Pheasant across the hall. He closed the door behind him.

  Although the window was open the air of the room was close, impregnated by the odours of the Eastern rugs and fabrics, the formidable dresses, dolmans, and mantles that still hung in the wardrobe. It seemed to Alayne that she must stifle if she remained there for more than a moment. She faced him, her antagonism quivering like a flame in her eyes. She put her hands behind her on the handle of the door.

  He said, with a perceptible tremor in his voice — “Alayne, I brought you into this room purposely, into this room that belonged to a woman who understood more about life than anyone I’ve ever known. She knew men and she
knew women, and she knew human weakness —”

  “What is all that to me?” she exclaimed passionately. What help is that to me today?”

  “But only listen —”

  “I will not listen —” She turned the handle of the door vehemently in her hands.

  His face softened to tenderness, his eyes were suffused by tears. “You know I love no one but you — that I never have and never shall love any woman but you!”

  She pointed to the bed with its rich-coloured covering. “You might have told that to her — she might have believed you. Perhaps she condoned such things in her husband. But you can’t make a Whiteoak out of me — you can’t make a Court out of me — not after ten years! I’m the child of my parents. Do you suppose that if my mother had found that my father had been meeting another woman in the wood — been intimate with her there — oh, I have no right even to mention their names in such a connection! It’s horrible! I wish I had not even mentioned my father’s name with such thoughts in my mind. But I have mentioned it and I tell you, Renny Whiteoak, she would never have forgiven him! She would never have allowed him to touch her again! And I am her daughter.”

  “Does that mean” — an odd embarrassed expression flitted across his face — “does that mean that you will never sleep with me again?”

  “It does.” She opened the door and stood in it. She saw him place his hands on the footboard of the bed and stand staring at it as though he actually saw his grandmother lying there. His lips moved but she did not hear what he said. She turned with a quick strong step into the hall just as Rags sounded the gong for the Sunday dinner.

  Rags stood by the gong with bent head. He looked up at her slyly from under his light brows. She had an uncanny feeling that he knew all that went on in the house, understood all, with no more than a word caught here and there to inform him. He was like some strange god, she thought, standing there by the gong, beating their entrances and exits in the futile drama of their lives. In the sitting room they stood waiting for Renny, Piers talking with an added heartiness because he was conscious of some crisis other than that brought about by Wakefield.

  Adeline was in a gale of spirits. She tossed back her head and laughed up in their faces, showing her teeth which were extraordinarily white even for a child. She would not let Nook be and he made no effort to hide his fear of her. Piers’s chagrin at his son’s timidity deepened the colour in his fresh-skinned face. Mooey felt embarrassed for Nook’s sake, but he also felt a certain satisfaction in the thought that he was not the only one who did not come up to Piers’s standard of what a boy should be.

  As Renny entered, Piers said to him — “I guess this one will have to go into a monastery too. I think it’s the only place he’ll be fitted for. Adeline can frighten him with a look.”

  Renny stared at the children, not seeming to see them. He said — “Did I hear the gong?”

  “Yes,” answered Pheasant. “And I don’t think it’s fair to say such things about poor little Nook, because Adeline certainly has an intimidating way with her, don’t you think so, Alayne?”

  “She intimidates me,” answered Alayne. She took Nook by the hand and moved toward the dining room.

  “She grows more like Gran every day,” said Piers approvingly. Adeline hung on his coat, dancing beside him.

  Following them, Pheasant asked of Renny — “When do you expect the uncles? They’re coming to visit, aren’t they?”

  “I’m expecting to hear any day that they are on their way. This will be a pretty mess for them to return to.” He looked so sombre, indeed so black, that Pheasant felt a sudden pity for Wakefield. She said:

  “Perhaps everything will be happily straightened out before they come.”

  He drew a profound sigh. “Indeed I hope so.” His eyes rested on Alayne standing facing him across the table.

  Wakefield was late, not so much because he shrank from the concerted attack of the family as with a sense of the dramatic significance of his entrance. He was disappointed to find that Meg and Maurice were not present. With a little smile at Pheasant and a non-committal nod to Piers he dropped into his chair.

  Contrary to his usual air of protest against Wakefield’s tardiness, Rags placed his plate as though making him a formal presentation of it, but it was near Renny that he hovered with an air of solicitude.

  It was customary on Sunday to have red wine or ale on the table, but to Piers’s disappointment there was neither today. He showed his discontent by pushing the glass of water away from him and throwing a glance of sulky enquiry at Rags. Rags received it with almost smirking pleasure because he felt in his master’s perverse refusal to have anything stronger than water on the table a gesture expressing depression of a peculiarly searching nature.

  There was roast duckling and Renny presented a drumstick to each of the children. It was almost unendurable to Alayne to sit during the exhibition of eager gnawing that followed. Adeline was conscious of this and threw her mother daring looks out of eyes humid with greed.

  When this course was removed and large glistening table napkins were being used to wipe small sticky hands and mouths, and Renny had loudly cautioned Rags not to let the dogs have the duck bones, the gathering heaviness of the atmosphere was broken by Piers saying to Wakefield:

  “Are you in earnest about this affair or are you just showing off?”

  A quiver passed over Wakefield’s face. He gathered some crumbs of bread by his plate into a little mound. Then he turned to Renny and said:

  “Do you think it is fair that I should be asked such a question?”

  “I don’t doubt your sincerity.”

  “Thank you. Then if you don’t doubt my sincerity, and if I tell all of you that I have fought this out in the very sweat of my spirit and that I’ve come to a fixed decision, I don’t see what more there is to be said about it.”

  “But, Wakefield,” cried Pheasant, “you don’t realize what you are doing! You’re just throwing away all the lovely things in life for a dreary existence in some dreadful cell!”

  Wakefield smiled at her almost compassionately. “That speech shows how little you know of life in monasteries. I expect to work as hard as I ever have only in a different way. And don’t imagine, Pheasant, that I haven’t considered the lovely things of life that I must give up. I have considered every single one of them and I don’t mind telling you that it was a bitter thing giving them up, but it would have been still more bitter to have given up the lovely things of the spirit.”

  “But can’t you have both?”

  He answered gravely — “Not in the way necessary to me.”

  Piers said — “What about Pauline? You don’t mind depriving her of all she has looked forward to? Not that I consider a life yoked up to you a very desirable one!”

  “I don’t think that this will come as a very great surprise to Pauline. I think she must have seen it coming. No one who loves me could have failed to see that I was passing through a great crisis in my life.”

  Piers returned — “No one who knows you could fail to see that you’re a confirmed play-actor and have been all your life. I make my guess that this monastery stuff will last just about a month — just long enough for you to break your engagement to a girl who is a damned sight too good for you!”

  Wakefield gave a crucified smile. “I must learn,” he said, in a steady voice, “to bear such remarks as that — even to welcome them. I must be ready to pass through fire to attain —”

  “Shut up!” shouted Piers. “I won’t listen to such tripe! What I’d like to do to you is —”

  Renny interrupted — “That’s not the way to take him, Piers. We must try to show him calmly that he’s not fitted for a monastic life, that no Whiteoak is. Just think, Wake,” he turned his penetrating gaze on his youngest brother, “you will be cut off forever from all the things our family have delighted in! From a free outdoor life, from liberty of speech —”

  “Ho!” exclaimed Wakefield, “I like that!�
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  “I repeat liberty of speech. As a family we say what we think even though we get hell for saying it.”

  “I call the oath of silence liberty as compared to that!”

  “My God!” ejaculated Piers, and overturned his glass of water.

  “Naughty, naughty,” cried Adeline.

  Pheasant began to mop up the water with her table napkin. Renny proceeded — “You’re young. You’re very young even for your years —”

  “He’s a whining puppy,” interjected Piers.

  Renny turned on him fiercely. “Will you let me go on! Now, Wake, what do you think your uncles will feel about this? Your father, your grandmother, if they were living? They would feel that you are contemplating an impossible thing. Because they all would know that a Whiteoak cannot live without women.” The disastrous import of his last words as relating to the crisis in his own life struck him into silence the moment they had passed his lips. Wakefield, Piers, Pheasant, and the children faded from his sight. He was left alone with Alayne, the bitter accusation in her eyes, the sneer on her lips piercing him. He stared at her fascinated, the muscles in his cheeks and about his mouth alternatively flexing and relaxing, his forehead corrugated in consternation.

  She held him with her gaze, caring for once nothing for what the others thought. The tension was only cut by the entry of Rags who placed a deep rhubarb tart in front of Renny and a bowl of whipped cream.

  “Rhubarb tastes so nice this time of year,” observed Pheasant, while she pressed Piers’s foot under the table.

  “Yes,” he added, “and the cream whips so well.”

  “Me!” cried Adeline. “I want tart! I want tarts with cream! Lots of cream!”

  Her father turned on her sharply and gave her a rap on the hand with the spoon with which he was about to serve the tart. “Mind your manners,” he said sternly, “and behave yourself!”

  She drew back her hand and hid it under the edge of the table. She thrust out her lower jaw and glared at him half abashed, half defiant.