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

by Mazo de La Roche

  He was surprised to find his father there and would have retreated but Piers, with a jerk of the head, indicated Renny’s chair and said:

  “Sit down and keep me company. I’m in a bad mood.”

  He had never spoken to Mooey in this intimate way before, as though he were another grown-up, and the little boy, sliding on to the chair, felt proud and rather anxious. He did not know what was expected of him.

  Piers studied his son’s face with a contemplative, not altogether approving gaze. He wanted Mooey to grow up to be a pal of his and doubted very much if he should. And certainly not little Nook. But there was young Philip — a chip of the old block. He looked up at the uniformed portrait of his grandfather relishing, as often before, his own resemblance to it and now, added to that, the resemblance of his third son. And he himself was a third son! And his own father, through whom he had got his looks, had been a third son! He had never thought of that till this minute. It was a most remarkable thing. Something special in third sons, no doubt about that! And, in the fairy tales of his childhood, it had always been the third son who had come out on top. Very remarkable. He pondered over this with a solemnity that Mooey found almost overpowering. He stared at him fascinated across the table.

  Piers asked suddenly — “What was the matter out there?”

  In one of the strange reticences of childhood, Mooey could not find words for a reply. He just looked at Piers with an odd veiled smile.

  “Why the devil don’t you answer me?” demanded Piers.

  Mooey still smiled but did not speak. Piers leant forward and stared into his face, a sudden surging fear shaking him to his depths. That smile — that detached veiled smile — why — why, there was no doubt about it — he caught Mooey’s chin in his hand, his staring eyes making the colour retreat from the little boy’s face. But still the smile remained! It was Eden’s smile — and Pheasant had — oh, God — it couldn’t be! It was too horrible!

  Then relief swept over him like a cooling wind. Eden was in Europe when Mooey was conceived! He was a fool — he was half drunk — or such an idea would never have entered his head. He threw himself back in his chair with a laugh of deep relief. He said:

  “You’re going to make a fine man, aren’t you? Horses and farming and outdoor life — all that sort of thing, eh?”

  “Yes,” breathed Mooey, out of strained lips. He twisted his fingers together under the table.

  Another thought assailed Piers. He remembered how mares and bitches sometimes reproduced characteristics of former sires in their offspring. Was it possible then that this smile of Eden’s which had almost a look of pain in it had come to Mooey because of Pheasant’s past intimacy with Eden? Piers felt a leaping antagonism toward both Pheasant and Mooey and the old bitter hate of Eden pained in his breast. Then again came relief. Eden had been like their mother. And she, of course, was Mooey’s grandmother. Easy for a boy to look like his grandmother. There was Renny — the spit of old Gran! Piers put out his hand and rumpled Mooey’s hair. He said:

  “I want you to do well with the ponies this summer. If you do I’ll give you something nice on your birthday, see?”

  Mooey put back his shoulders and forced courage into his eyes. He said:

  “Yes, Daddy, I will”

  Now Piers’s mind moved away from his son to Alayne. As always with him when he had drunk too much he could not remain seated. He rose and stood on his strong legs, his glass in his hand and a lowering shadow on his flushed forehead.

  “I want you to go to the drawing room,” he said, “and tell Auntie Alayne that I must see her alone. Not your mother, mind. Just Auntie Alayne.”

  By the time Alayne was inside the dining room the shadow had become an ugly blackness. His eyes were hot with resentment. She looked at him first enquiringly, then defensively, but she could not imagine what he had to say to her.

  “Yes?” she asked tentatively.

  “I’ve always hated the thought of Eden,” he said. “The very thought of him makes me feel as black as hell.”

  He had been drinking too much, she thought, and said “Why think of him, then?”

  He looked into his empty glass. “Because I’m forced to think of him. And the queer thing is that I begin to sympathize with him where you were concerned. What’s a man to do but turn to another woman when he sees his own wife throwing herself at another man’s head? The fact that that other woman happened to be my wife has obscured every feeling but rage in me.” He felt that he was becoming eloquent. He repeated — “Yes, it has obscured every feeling but rage. But he’s dead and I see now you have driven your second husband …”

  Alayne put up her hand to her throat. Her face was stony but her voice broke harshly as she exclaimed:

  “He has talked me over with you!”

  Piers raised his own resonant voice.

  “And why not? He knows he’ll get sympathy from me. And sympathy is something he’s lacked all his married days. You poured that out on him before you were married, when he didn’t need it. He needed no man’s sympathy till he was hitched up to you, and no woman’s either!”

  Alayne backed from him toward the door. She said — “You are utterly contemptible. Will you please go! As for the pair of you — you and he — I can only repeat — you will please never speak to me again!”

  “The thing for you to do is to think over what I’ve said and try to see yourself as the family see you.”

  “The family! It might have been different with him and me if there hadn’t been always the family!”

  She went out and shut the door behind her. She did not go back to Pheasant but upstairs to her own room and threw herself across the bed. She clutched handfuls of the soft pillows and pressed her face into the darkness between them. There was a bluish shining spot before one of her closed eyes. She rubbed the eye, opened it and shut it sharply, but when she closed it the bright spot was still there. Even tears did not wash it away.

  She had thought that the bitterness of her anger toward Renny could strike no deeper, but the discovery that he had confided in Piers gave an unexpected blow to her pride and Piers’s words had filled her with a rankling shame. She had always felt that neither Eden nor the family had been conscious of her infatuation for Renny. All their faces rose before her, strongly marked, individualistic, big-nosed and fierce-eyed. She saw them as vultures rejoicing over the pale corpse of her pride.

  In that moment she wished that she had never met one of them, that she had never planted her foot within the domineering gates of Jalna, that she had never spent a night under that roof, in the arms of one brother or the other — Eden who had come in his bright youth and swept her, in the music of his poems, from the drabness of her office life in New York — Renny who had roused to its height the passion only half woken by Eden. She remembered the professor, the friend of her father, who had asked her to marry him and whom she had refused. There would have been her proper place! With him she could have lived the life for which nature had calculated her. She could have had a child who would have been the fruit of her bosom as well as her womb. Not one who would have stared at her laughing out of alien eyes, tormenting her when she dared. Above all, she would have never had to face the desolation of this hour.

  She dreaded the return of Renny. She dreaded the uneasy darkness of his eyes, the inward purposefulness of him that was a mystery to her.

  She thought with complete detachment of the child left to work her will in the rooms below. Piers and his family had gone some time ago. There was silence for a time she heard Adeline’s laughter coming from the distant basement where the Wragges had taken her in charge. Unconsciously she was relieved by the laughter and, face downward as she lay, fell into a deep sleep.

  He did not return to the house till the hour of their evening meal. They were to eat it for the first time that spring by daylight. Rags had got a few sprays of wild cherry blossom and had placed them in a vase that did not suit them, on the supper table. Alayne noticed the clas
h before she drank in the beauty of the blossoms. She kept her eyes fixed on them, praising them to Rags who could not proceed with the serving of the meal till this was accorded.

  Renny asked — “Is Adeline asleep?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Wragge gave her her bath and put her to bed for me.”

  Rags oozed devotion as he offered Alayne the salad. Renny stood by the sideboard, fork in hand. “That was kind of her. Some cold beef, Alayne?”

  “No, thank you. Just salad.”

  He dropped a scrap to the spaniels who sat on either side of him, then returned to the table and spread mustard on his beef. He was afraid that Rags was going to leave them, yet perhaps it would be better if he did. Silence or even a scene might be easier than the effort to make conversation.

  “Those flowers are pretty,” he said, staring fixedly at them. “What are they?”

  Rags had left the room and Alayne answered:

  “You know the names of fruit blossoms better than I do.”

  He felt baffled. He tried talking to his dogs but they lay, muzzles on paws, with an air of resignation.

  He made a more determined effort. “Well, I had a long talk with Wakefield in my office. We came through it very well. Both kept our tempers. And I’m going to see his priest tomorrow.”

  “That is good,” she returned.

  “Wake is having supper with him tonight and, of course, preparing him for my visit. But I do believe that no pressure has been put on him. He’s always had a religious bent and turning Catholic has been rather too much for him. But I have hopes that I hadn’t this morning.”

  “That is comforting,” she observed, biting into a radish.

  He raised his eyes to her face. “Comforting —” he repeated, “comfort — that’s what we need, isn’t it, Alayne? Comfort to make us forget the things that go wrong…. Oh, my darling, if you knew how I hate to see you look like you do now. Why, you’re ill!” He got up and went to her side.

  She said vehemently — “It is no wonder if I am ill! If you have hopes that you hadn’t this morning I have despair that I hadn’t this morning.”

  “What is it now?” he asked.

  “You have talked me over with Piers.”

  A storm of reproach could scarcely have exceeded the bitterness of the few words. A tremor passed through her limbs and her heart beat heavily.

  He exclaimed — “I did not talk you over with Piers! I told him what I had done and that you took it very hard. That is the truth. I don’t even know what you mean.”

  She gave an exclamation of contempt. “Please don’t expect me to believe that! Like your grandmother you are clever when you are cornered. But you should choose someone less terribly candid than Piers for your confidences. He told me just how I had driven Eden to Pheasant’s arms and you to Clara Lebraux’s. He told me how I had thrown myself at your head. Oh, it must be splendid to have a brother like Piers to share your little troubles with!”

  They heard Wragge’s step on the basement stairs. Renny dropped quickly into his chair. Alayne took another bite of the radish and sat rigid, its tiny green stalk in her fingers.

  Renny exclaimed — “I have just heard of a most promising two-year-old I can buy for a surprisingly low figure, considering that her sire is a champion. She’s going to be a grand one. What would you say if I were to win a big event with her? There’s still money to be made in show horses, you know, if you only have the luck.”

  “Yes, I should imagine so.”

  She could see his hands across the table and she was fascinated by the amount of mustard he put on his beef.

  Wragge asked — “Shall I close the window, ma’am? This evening h’air strikes coald.”

  Alayne assented. From above came the sound of screams from Adeline.

  “One of her bad dreams,” observed Alayne, rising.

  But Renny was on his feet ahead of her.

  Wragge asked — “Shall I ask my wife to go to the young lidy, ma’am?”

  “No, no, I’ll go!” Renny was already halfway up the stairs.

  Alayne again sat down, her eyes fixed on his untouched meal. Although she had seen him leave the room she still saw him, with the utmost clarity, seated at the table. She saw the evening sunlight on his red hair and thought — “Not a grey hair there! He looks young, young!”

  Adeline was in a state of wild distress. She sat upright, her face contorted, her nightclothes wet with sweat. In an ecstasy of relief she strained toward her father.

  He bent over her. “Daddy’s pet — Daddy’s pet girl! There, there, now … what was it all about?”

  She looked at him with tranced eyes, scarcely seeing him but drawing comfort through every pore from his presence; the scent of him associated in her mind with comfort and protection. She began to laugh through her tears, not knowing what to say to him, for her dream had faded from her mind.

  She asked, fingering a button of his coat:

  “Why did you cry when I pulled your arm?”

  “You hurt me.”

  “Sorry.”

  She took his hand projecting from the sling and pressed her lips to it. She began to mumble it, like a puppy, and even nipped it with her sharp teeth. But when he put her down and covered her she snuggled docilely into her nest.

  He stood looking about the room, at Alayne’s intimate, delicate belongings, her thin silk dressing gown, her tortoise-shell toilet articles ranged on the glass with which she had lately had her dressing table covered. He saw her cloistered there, for the rest of their married life, separated from him by the hate he had seen in her eyes. He had been shocked by the cold hate he had seen in her eyes. He could not believe it possible that their marriage had come to that. If only she cared more for Adeline, that might hold them together! But she didn’t, there was no use in mincing matters, she was cold toward their child. If Adeline had been like herself, Alayne would have understood her. Yet he could not bring himself to wish that the child of his loins were different.

  She still clasped his fingers and he bent and kissed her hand before he withdrew. Then — “Good night,” he whispered, “and no more bad dreams!”

  Her lips curved, her lashes lay on her cheek.

  Alayne was alone when he returned to the dining room. She did not speak. After the dewy freshness of the child’s face, hers looked more haggard, more unhappy, than before. She saw that he had difficulty in cutting his beef. He scowled at it with lips compressed but she could not bring herself to go to his assistance. When, at last, the meat shot into the air and was caught by Floss, she clenched her hands and bit her lip painfully.

  Renny broke into loud laughter. “This is too funny,” he said. “It’s too ridiculous.” He gathered his table napkin into a ball with his good hand.

  Alayne rose from the table. “I could not sleep last night,” she said. “I believe I’ll have to go to bed now.”

  “Yes, yes, I think you’d better,” he said. “You need rest — but,” his eyes scanned her plate, “you’ve eaten only a radish!”

  “It is enough.” Her tragic tone, the thought of the radish, almost sent him off again. He sat, grinning up at her. He could no more have gone to the door with her than she could have helped him cut his beef.

  Floss stood drooling, stung by the mustard, yet wagging her tail for more. She looked idiotically good-natured. Wragge returned from the basement and Renny said curtly:

  “More beef, Rags. Cut it up.”

  “Ah yes, sir. That h’injured shoulder is a great ’andicap for you.” He glanced inquisitively at Renny’s plate.

  “Floss got that, Rags.”

  Almost tenderly Wragge prepared his food for him but neither salad nor cold beef had any flavour. Bit by bit he fed the meat to blind Merlin.

  He could not endure the house and though the darkness was abruptly closing in he went to the stables. It was turning cold too and the wind blew strongly from the lake. It pressed on his forehead like a steadying hand. Outside the stables he stood facing it a moment,
his eyes resting on the dark bulk of the house. Only two lights glimmered there.

  He remembered the days when its bright rows of windows repelled the darkness which now seemed powerful to engulf it. And soon Wake would be gone from it who had scarcely spent a night from under its roof! And gone forever! In his mood of depression he saw that calamity coming inevitably toward him. He could do nothing to prevent it. He was going to lose Wake whom he had thought to have always beside him! He had lost Alayne!

  He remembered his free days and how he had carried love lightly, as a rider wears his colours in a race. But Alayne would have him wear love as a chain, and his restive spirit winced at its galling.

  He went into the stable and, in the dim light, passed from stall to stall. They all knew him and bent their heads to touch him, to be caressed by his hands, cunning in knowledge of their responsive nerves. When he came to his favourite, Cora, he put his arms about her and kissed her. Her velvet nostrils snuffled against his cheek and her primitive quiescent peace was absorbed through all his being.

  VI

  THE CELIBATES

  THE NEXT EVENING Wakefield went through the ravine to break the news to Pauline. His mood was one of pensive joy. His spirit was exalted, yet a strain of tender sadness increased the beauty all about him, made him pause to observe the charm of the tiniest flowers, to notice the whitish green of the fern fronds. Before long he would be saying goodbye to the scene which had been the background of all his life! He had often longed to travel, to see the places which had seemed so magical when he read of them in books, but now he wanted to make only one journey and that was to the cloistered seclusion of the monastery where magic lay in the ceaseless service of Christ and His Mother. The monastery was opening its walls to him. As he walked he could feel in anticipation the soft flapping of the robe against his legs.