He served the tart, raising his eyes to the pulse throbbing in Alayne’s throat and asked — “You, Alayne?”
“No, thank you.”
There was silence for a space whilst Mrs. Wragge’s flaky pastry was consumed and the warm sunlight coming between the heavy yellow curtains brought out not only the richness of the mahogany and silver but the shabbiness of the rug, the wallpaper and Rags’s coat. The mind of each one at the table drew back on itself, ignoring for the moment the pressure of the egos surrounding it. Alayne felt a kind of exhausted triumph after her silent encounter with Renny. She had reduced him as she had not seen him reduced before, and she had a mordant comfort in the thought that he could know shame. The only one who seemed near to her at this moment was little Nook who sat on her left. She took his hand in hers and helped him with the eating of his tart.
Pheasant had seen the look exchanged between Alayne and Renny and her mind was in a whirl of curiosity. Her sympathy lay with Alayne but, for some reason, she had hated to see that expression on the hard weather-bitten features of the master of Jalna.
Piers was experiencing a feeling of irritation at himself in that he was unable to enjoy the good food according to his wont. He could not remember a time when a family disturbance had dulled his taste, that is when he was not the centre of it himself. But it was certain that neither duckling nor peas nor rhubarb had their accustomed flavour. Then observing the damp spot by his plate he realized that it was being given only water to drink that had taken the zest from his palate. He pushed out his lips and toyed with the pastry on his plate. Renny shot him a sideways look.
“What’s the matter with it?” he demanded.
“Oh, I expect it’s all right.”
“Why don’t you eat it then?”
“I don’t seem to want it.”
“I shall be sorry,” said Wakefield, “if the spiritual crisis I am passing through takes away anyone’s appetite, most of all yours, Piers. Home wouldn’t seem like home if you —” He smiled ironically.
Piers’s blue eyes turned on him truculently. “My loss of appetite has nothing whatever to do with you or your plans,” he said hotly.
“The truth is,” said Pheasant, “that Piers is simply sulky because he has had no spirituous liquors to quaff at this repast.”
“We are economizing,” returned Renny curtly. “But, if you find it impossible to eat without drink, if you find that you must overturn your glass of water and sit sulking throughout the meal, I can have Rags fetch something. What would you like?”
Piers returned stolidly — “Nothing will help me now but a whiskey and soda.”
“Whiskey and soda, Rags.”
Rags opened a door of the sideboard and peered into it defensively. He produced a decanter half-full of Scotch and a syphon of soda water.
Renny asked — “Wine, Pheasant? Alayne?” He kept his eyes on his plate.
Both declined. Alayne said — “Wragge is taking coffee to the drawing room. Shall we go on, Pheasant?”
They rose and collected the children. As they passed out, Renny, at the door, gave Alayne a fleeting look. Her face revealed nothing but a weary endurance of the situation. He returned to the table and poured himself a drink.
Wakefield sat between his brothers lighting a cigarette. He got to his feet then and said:
“I think I’ll follow the girls. There’s no object in my staying here. My mind is irrevocably made up.”
“Remember,” said Renny, “that you have promised me to say nothing of this to Pauline till I have talked to your priest.”
“I’m not likely to forget it. And I’m anxious for you to see Father Connelly and discover for yourself how little encouragement I have had from him.”
“Sit down,” urged Renny almost tenderly, “and let us talk it over quietly together, now that the women are gone. Have a drink with Piers and me.”
“No, thank you, Renny. I’m not taking anything of that sort. I forgot myself when I lighted this cigarette.” He stubbed it out on the plate before him and left the room.
He met Alayne at the foot of the stairs. She was bringing down a large cretonne bag in which Adeline kept a jumble of small toys. All three children had followed her to the attic for this. Now their faces were as expectant as if they had never seen its contents before. Wakefield went with them to the porch and saw the bag turned out on the floor. Nook timidly picked up a dishevelled mechanical bird.
“Mine!” exclaimed Adeline and snatched it from him. “His name is Boney. He used to talk but he can’t talk now. He used to say — ‘Haramzada — haramzada — chore — chore!’” She was triumphant over her delivery of the Hindoo words.
“Now,” said Alayne, in a flat tone, “you must amuse yourselves with these while we have coffee. Adeline, you must share your things with Nook. Mooey, will you please play with them?”
Adeline, her hair a bright red in the sunlight, went down on her knees among her treasures pushing toys arrogantly into Nook’s hands while he still gazed longingly at the bird. Mooey dropped to his knees beside them and began languidly fitting a puzzle together.
As Alayne poured the coffee Pheasant asked Wakefield — “Have you heard from Finch and Sarah lately? Is there any talk of their coming home this summer?”
“Yes. But I don’t know just when. Finch is giving recitals here in the autumn. He’s been doing awfully well in Paris.”
“I know, I saw the press cuttings he sent. They seemed to be good though Piers and I couldn’t make out all the technical terms. Our French is as rusty as our everyday conversation is bright.” She was nervous before Wakefield. She did not know what to say to him. He had a queer sort of halo round his head, she thought, as though he were already half-sainted. She believed in him as Piers could not.
“I wonder,” he said, putting four lumps of sugar in his coffee, then taking three of them out again and laying them on his saucer, “whether he and Sarah are happy. Tranquilly happy, I mean.”
“I don’t see how they can be. They seemed to me oddly matched. Finch is so open, so anxious to please, and Sarah is so closed in and doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks of her.”
“That seems to me a good combination.” He spoke rather cynically, his bright eyes resting on Alayne’s face. She said:
“Sarah and Finch have their love of music in common. And not only that — they love all beauty. I think they are perfectly suited to each other.”
“You may think so,” returned Pheasant sententiously, “but, if I were a man, I’d sooner do what Wake is doing than be linked up with Sarah.”
“I do expect understanding from Finch in the new life I’m undertaking,” observed Wakefield. “He was very interested and nice about my conversion. There is something religious in him too that the others haven’t got.”
Pheasant looked at him enviously. “I wish I had! But I’ve no more real religion in me than a gypsy. I’m full of pagan superstitions!”
Wakefield answered gravely — “They show that you are not dead spiritually, Pheasant. All may come right with you yet.”
Again a wave of nausea was passing over Alayne. The two in front of her were no more real than figures in a dream. She could not clearly follow what they were saying though she made the effort. She sipped her coffee clear and held all the nerves in her body tense.
Mooey drifted into the room. “They’re playing very happily,” he said. “Adeline has given Nook the bird now as well as most of her other toys. I wish I had something to amuse me.”
Wakefield went to the cabinet of Indian curios. He took out a small ivory elephant. “My grandmother gave me this when I was a kid like you. I’ve liked it better than anything I’ve ever owned, almost. It’s so nice to hold and the carving is so delicate. I’m going to give it to you, Mooey, to remember me by.” He put it into Mooey’s hands.
Mooey had always been rather afraid of Wakefield who had liked to tease him and bewilder him with long words. He was almost overcome by pleasure in the
gift. His face flushed. Wakefield bent and kissed him on the forehead. “Bless you, young Maurice,” he said.
Pheasant burst into tears. “Oh, Wake,” she sobbed, “you make it all seem so sad!”
Alayne clenched her hands between her knees and closed her eyes.
Renny and Piers, left together, sat in silence for a space, then Renny said:
“Our mistake was in tackling him simultaneously. But I’ll take him myself to the stables this afternoon and have it out in my office. I may be able to do something with him.”
“Silly young blighter!”
“Well, I shouldn’t say that. Wake has always been thoughtful for his age. His delicacy when he was a kid made him different from the rest of us. He’s in dead earnest about this so we mustn’t be too hard on him.”
Piers pushed out his lips. “No, we mustn’t be hard on him even if he breaks Pauline’s heart! She’s mad about him.”
Renny rested his head on his hand, shielding his eyes. With an almost physical effort he put from his mind the thought that Pauline loved and always had loved him more than Wakefield. He said indistinctly:
“She’ll get over it.”
Piers mixed himself another drink. He eyed his brother speculatively. The bent head that had something stark and aloof about it, the lean shapely hand shading the eyes, the mouth with its downward curve of miserable gloom. There was a misery, there was a gloom about him like a palpable essence. Piers felt almost startled by it. Good Lord, no need to take Wake’s defection so hard as that. He put his hand on Renny’s arm.
“It will probably turn out all right. And it’s not final yet — he hasn’t gone into the monastery and when they’ve had a month or two of him they’ll probably reject him.”
Renny muttered — “I’m in deeper trouble than that, Piers. I’m in the hell of a mess and — the doors have shut on me — it’s irrevocable —”
Piers’s fingers pressed his arm. Piers’s mind flew to the mortgage on Jalna. Surely nothing less than the thought of losing Jalna would make Renny look like this. He asked, rather unsteadily:
“What is it, old man?”
Renny raised his head and looked at him sombrely. “You know about Clara Lebraux and me?”
“I’ve guessed.”
“Alayne has found out.”
A weight rolled from Piers’s chest. So it was not Jalna! But it was bad enough to make old Renny look like a mask of tragedy. He asked:
“She’s not going to leave you, is she?”
“Leave me? God, no! It’s not as bad as that. But it’s bad enough. And the hard part is that it is all over between Clara and me — has been for months — and Clara is going away. She was telling me that she was going away, down in the ravine, and Alayne overheard.”
Piers gave him a shrewd look. “Was there something then — in the way you took the news —?”
Renny broke out harshly — “I still care for Clara, as a friend! It was hard to think of losing her. I have talked to her … as I couldn’t to anyone else … well, she’s been a complete pal — if you know what I mean.”
“It’s a beastly mess,” said Piers. After a little he added — “I am glad Mrs. Lebraux is going away. Things may come right between you and Alayne when she is gone.”
“Never! You have no idea what Alayne is like. It’s been horrible to her. She sets before me the standards of her father — not of my father or my uncles.”
“What of that old Dutch sea captain ancestor of hers? Was he a paragon?”
“She only knew her father. And she knows what her mother would have done in her place. Or so she says.”
Piers asked abruptly — “Was all this going on last night? Between you and her, I mean?”
“Yes. Piers, you must not let fall a word of this to Pheasant. It’s in absolute confidence.”
“Not a word, old man!”
There was no need for Renny to have warned him. The subject of infidelity between a man and woman was one which Piers and Pheasant avoided with a determination almost fearful. Piers muttered:
“But it’s not half so bad for her as it would be for you if she …”
Renny gave a harsh laugh. “My dear fellow — I could forgive her! I could forgive her twice over!”
Piers saw that his lip trembled, that his eyes were full of tears. Poor devil, he was taking it hard! As for Alayne — Piers’s mind moved slowly back over the past. He recalled the atmosphere of Jalna when Alayne lived here as Eden’s wife and had not been able to hide her love for Renny. He took another drink and muttered:
“Uncle Nick could see it — I could see it — I’ll bet Eden knew it…. If you had … I wonder if she would …”
“I hope you’re not getting drunk,” observed Renny.
“Not a bit of it. But it’s a difficult thing to put into words. What I mean is I believe Alayne had it in her to be unfaithful to Eden with you.”
Renny’s mind also turned to the past but it turned with a passionate swiftness. He saw himself standing by an old apple tree he had felled, Alayne in his arms, their first unforgettable, unpremeditated kisses, for she had kissed him back … she had kissed him back … he would never forget the feel of her lips on his. He saw himself with her again, in the porch at night, a rainy wind scurrying about them, dead leaves blown to their feet. She standing rigid, rain drops on her cheeks like tears. He saw the longing in her eyes. Through all his nerves he felt her wild reckless desire for him, the desire to be held close to his breast, to be kissed again by him. But he had restrained himself with a grim effort, remembering that she was another man’s wife. He had kept from her his understanding of her, though, if young Finch had not just then come on the scene his resolve might have melted before the burning desire in her eyes. He saw a third picture. Night again and again rain. This time they were in a motorcar in a secluded spot. He had been driving her home from town where they had left Eden. Yes, they had left Eden, they had left him behind them as they had moved into the dark depths of a world of deeper desire. All during the drive they had not had a thought but for the nearness of each other, the wish to make that nearness complete. Yet Eden had come between them when he would have stretched out his hands to take her for his own. He remembered how the reluctant words had been dragged from him — “If you were not Eden’s wife I should ask you to be my mistress. A man might cut in on another man that way, but not one’s brother….” Again he had reminded her that Eden was his brother, that time in. the bright sunshine on the lakeshore and she had reminded him, in a strange harsh voice, that Eden was only his half-brother. That had somehow chilled him. He had answered — “I never think of that.” The smell of wood smoke from a fire his brothers had lighted on the beach came back to him now with the remembrance of the leap his heart had given when she had whispered — “I will do whatever you tell me to.” And when they had said goodbye — it was the night of Gran’s hundredth birthday, he remembered — she had clung to him and, half fainting under his kisses, had whispered — “Again — again!”
He sat so motionless, the lines of his face so set, that Piers dared not speak to him for a space, but sat sipping his whiskey and soda, studying with unabashed eyes the profile turned to him. But suddenly he could restrain himself no longer. He leaned forward and struck the table in front of Renny sharply with his fingertips. He exclaimed:
“Let her deny it! She’d have given in to you if you had pressed her! I saw you kiss that night of Gran’s birthday.”
“Well — I don’t know — it may be one way or the other. But I do know that I never could throw that up to Alayne. Ours was a great love. She was perhaps willing to put aside everything for it. I couldn’t put aside Eden. This affair — Clara and me — is quite different. I went to her for comfort when everything was wrong at home, when Alayne seemed to have turned away from me. And indeed she has now. I’m afraid I’ve messed things up horribly and I’m damned if I know how I’ve done it. When I was eighteen a woman old enough to be my mother told me that I cou
ld have women’s love for the asking. I guess what she meant was that I would attract them physically. If she had known me longer she might have added that I could not satisfy their spiritual or intellectual side.”
“You’re muddled up in your mind, that’s certain,” said Piers. “You’re no more to blame than she was. You’ve done nothing that she wouldn’t have done. But you’re ready to take all the blame while she is self-righteous. She has always put herself on a pedestal, by God!”
Renny gave a wry smile. “Let that be your last drink,” he said. “I’m going to find Wake.”
He hesitated outside the drawing-room door unseen by Alayne but seen by Pheasant. He and she exchanged a curious, intimate glance. It was an intimate look of understanding. He passed on into the porch, watching for a moment the children at their play. The sudden sight of him always filled Adeline with rapture. She dropped her toys and scrambled to her feet. As he bent over her she clasped his wrist in her hands and depended her weight from it. He uttered a shout of pain in response to the fiery stab in his shoulder. He pushed her from him and stood leaning against a pillar of the porch nursing his arm. Pheasant and Alayne appeared in the doorway.
“Whatever has happened?” demanded Pheasant, her small face showing the anxious lines that were only too ready to shadow its youthful smoothness.
Alayne looked frowningly from husband to child, a fresh wave of nausea dimming their figures. She did not speak.
Renny gave an apologetic grin, his eyes fixed beyond them in the empty hall. He muttered:
“This young woman had a sudden fancy for swinging from my arm.”
“Oh, how awful!” cried Pheasant. “No wonder you howled! It gave me a fright, didn’t it you, Alayne?”
Alayne gave a wintry smile and turned back to the drawing room. Renny strolled across the gravel sweep. Adeline ran after the women demanding — “Why did Daddy cry? Why did he push me? I don’t like to be pushed. I’ll push him back next time!”
Mooey was troubled by what had happened. There was something strange, something unnatural about all the grown-ups today. Even in the sweet warm breeze that blew in at the door there was a sense of sadness. A little round bunch of hepaticas, the first spring flowers, stood on a table in the hall. He and Nook had gathered them in the wood that morning and brought them to Alayne. He stood by them now admiring them and he held the small ivory elephant warm in his hand, yet his heart felt heavy. He thought he would go into the dining room and peep into a recess of the sideboard where sometimes candied fruit was kept.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 85
