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

by Mazo de La Roche

  He was eager to tell Pauline of his decision, yet he shrank from hurting her in her pride and possessive love of him. But she herself was devout and, even though her suffering might be almost intolerable at first, she would come to see that in giving him up she would reach heights of spiritual joy she might never have attained in the possession of him as a husband. She would marry; she was designed for marriage and happy motherhood; she would think of her engagement to him as a period exquisite and untouched by the crudity of sex. Perhaps she would name her youngest son for him…. He pictured himself going to see her and her husband (a robust, fine-looking man not unlike Piers) and taking the infant Wakefield on his knee while her other children stood about in awe of his thin ascetic person and monk’s robes. He was not sure that such a visit could be permitted but hoped that because of some special circumstance it might.

  Pauline was waiting for him, looking pale, he thought. She was heavy-eyed, as though she had not slept, withdrawn into herself as though in contemplation. Was it possible that she guessed his intention? His voice shook a little when, after kissing her gently, he said:

  “You look tired, darling. Have you been doing too much?”

  She shook her head, her fingers gripped his closely. They dropped into their accustomed seat on the verandah. He put his arm about her, then withdrew it and thrust his hand in his pocket. It was going to be harder than he had thought. He longed to have it all over and to be free. The world about him, the dim sea of purple twilight, seemed meaningless to him apart from his great desire.

  “I have something to tell you,” he said. “I’m almost sure that you have guessed it and that it is hurting you even more than I was afraid it would.”

  She turned to him, her face pale and startled. “What is it? Has anything happened at Jalna?”

  “Pauline — don’t you guess?”

  “What do you mean? I don’t guess anything. Is it about Renny … Alayne?”

  “No, no — about me…. Haven’t you noticed anything different about me lately?” He looked steadily into her eyes. The moment was upon them now. He steadied himself to tell her. There was a wounded look in her eyes, as though she already felt the blow. She answered, gravely:

  “I have noticed that you seem very happy, and very — religious.”

  “Then you do guess!”

  She looked at him blankly. “No, I can’t possibly guess.”

  “Then I must tell you.” He had a sudden aversion from putting his resolution into words, sounding, everyday words. He muttered, almost inaudibly:

  “I must go away. Can’t you guess where?”

  “No, I can’t guess.” She sat waiting, her dark impenetrable gaze fixed on his, her long brown hands folded on her lap.

  He took his hand from his pocket. It felt almost powerless, as though it did not belong to him. He laid it on her folded hands, his fingers pressing their engagement ring.

  “Pauline — I am going to ask you to take off this ring that I gave you…. No — not really to take it off — I want you to keep it always in remembrance of the lovely time we’ve had together. But — I can’t marry you! I find that I’m simply not meant for marriage. I am meant for something very different. I want to go into a monastery, Pauline!”

  She looked at him unbelievingly. “Oh no, Wake — you can’t mean that!”

  “Darling — you can’t feel the cruelty of it any more than I do! But it’s better for me to discover my vocation now than after marriage, isn’t it?”

  She seemed incapable of taking in his words. She said incredulously — “You! Vocation! Why — you can’t really mean it! What are you saying, Wake?”

  I’m telling you, darling, that I want to enter a monastery. I broke the news to Renny yesterday. I promised him that I wouldn’t speak to you about it till he had had a talk with Father Connelly. He went to see him today. You can’t imagine how splendid the Father was — how clearly he made him see that I had the right to direct my spiritual life. Renny came home quite different. More controlled and apparently quite willing to let me have a try at it, but, of course, he’s terribly anxious about you and so am I. I realize what a blow it is.”

  She said in a low voice — “He is anxious about me!”

  “Yes, terribly anxious. But he doesn’t know you as well as I do. He doesn’t realize how full of character you are.”

  She gave a little laugh. “No — I suppose not.”

  Her laugh jarred on him. He took his hand from hers. His eyes were luminous in the dark. He said, almost assertively:

  “Of course, it is awful for you. I know it, and I’ve suffered accordingly. But what must be must be, and it is as inevitable for me to enter a monastery as for that stream down there to enter the lake. No matter what obstacles are put in its way it goes on to its ordained destination.”

  “Oh yes, I understand. And I sympathize — more than you know … now that I have taken it in. At first I was absolutely astounded. You seem the last one on earth for such a life.”

  He returned, almost huffily — “I don’t see why you say that. I’ve always had a desire for solitude. When I was a small boy they used to talk about my thoughtfulness. Of course, I was generally up to mischief then. Still — I think I’ve always had a contemplative nature.”

  She said hesitatingly — “I have often thought that I should like to enter a convent.”

  “Not take the veil!” he ejaculated.

  “Yes, take the veil.”

  “I have never heard of anything so ridiculous! Why, you’re absolutely cut out for marriage and motherhood. Don’t let such thoughts enter your head, Pauline. They’re positively wrong — for you. Some other chap will come along, someone far worthier of you than I am. And you’ll love him and you’ll have children and perhaps” — he smiled tenderly — “you’ll name a little boy for me. That would please me if — the news reached me in my cell.”

  “It sounds very pretty,” she answered. “But I’ll never marry. If you are going to enter a monastery I’ll go into a convent. As I said, I’ve often thought I should like to, and now it seems the natural thing.”

  Wakefield did not like the idea at all. He had anticipated comforting a heartbroken Pauline, but to find her calm, taking his announcement with no more than astonishment, ready herself to throw aside the world at a moment’s notice, seemed somehow to belittle his act of renunciation, to steal his thunder, as it were. He experienced an almost childish resentment and was searching for words to translate this into dignified disapproval when the door opened and Clara Lebraux came on to the verandah. She carried a tray with glasses of lemonade and a plate of cake.

  “I thought you children would like this,” she said, setting the tray on a low table before them. She turned away then to fasten a verandah blind that hung loose and Pauline took the opportunity to whisper — “Don’t speak of this to Mother. I had rather tell her when we are alone.”

  Wakefield nodded glumly. He would have preferred a dramatic disclosure to this too easy acceptance of their changed relations. Pauline turned the little pearl ring on her finger and said, with a flitting smile:

  “I wonder what I shall do with this! Nuns can’t have possessions, you know — any more than monks!”

  Wakefield thought that he had never known Pauline to be guilty of bad taste before. He sipped his lemonade which was too sour, in silence. Clara suspected a quarrel between them and talked cheerfully of plans for their future. She had already told Wakefield of her intention to live with her brother and relinquish the tea shop after her short essay in running it. Wakefield had a sudden pity for her as she talked of visiting him and Pauline after they were married. For the first time in his life he was wretchedly uncomfortable because of feeling for someone else. What would Clara’s life be, with himself in a monastery and Pauline in a convent? Instead of gaining an affectionate and brilliant son, she was to lose her daughter. He could not endure the situation for long and, after muttering an excuse and kissing the two on their foreheads, he lef
t. Everything had turned out different to what he had expected. Pauline had accepted his withdrawal with no faintest outcry of pain. She had seemed even more willing to retreat from him than he from her. Now Clara’s staunch tenderness for them both oppressed him to the point of tears. In truth his eyes were wet when he kissed Clara, and he experienced a filial uprooting in his breast that was more painful than his farewell to Pauline.

  The two women watched his slender figure, so quickly absorbed into the twilight. A shadowy moon appeared above the trees and a smell of wet earth rose from the fields.

  Clara, sitting on the step, lighted a cigarette, its flare discovering her blunt blonde features set in an expression of affectionate concern. Pauline swayed softly in a hammock in the shelter of the verandah. She curled herself up and put an arm across her eyes. She waited for Clara to speak.

  Clara did so in her usual matter-of-fact tone. “What’s up, darling? Anything you can tell me?”

  Pauline’s answer startled her. “Yes, Mummie. So much that I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Nothing worrying, I hope?”

  “I’m afraid you will not be very happy about it.”

  So many vicissitudes had come to Clara Lebraux that her spirit was alert with its answer of defence. Now, in a veiled tone, she said:

  “Don’t keep me in suspense, Pauline. I’m ready to face most things, you know.”

  Pauline lay curled up, as though she would make herself physically remote from Clara’s anxious maternity. She answered, almost coldly:

  “Wakefield and I — he came to tell me that he doesn’t want to be engaged any more. He is going to enter a monastery.”

  “Oh, my darling!” The exclamation was sharp with anger against Wakefield and fierce with pity for Pauline. “How could he? How dare he? That church … all my married life…. He can’t do such a cruel thing to you! Why didn’t you tell me while he was here?”

  “I wanted to be alone with you.”

  Clara threw away her cigarette and her hand groped toward Pauline in the dusk. Pauline took it in both of hers.

  Clara said — “You know that I wouldn’t have made a scene. But I should have talked sound sense to him. He’s a romantic boy and he is simply carried away by the vision of a mediaeval life. But to have him treat you like this! I won’t bear it!”

  Pauline interrupted — “It doesn’t matter nearly so much as you think.”

  “Not matter! Why, darling — what are you saying?”

  Pauline’s body swayed with the deep breath she drew.

  “Mummie, I have never really loved Wakefield. I’ve tried to and often thought I had succeeded — and I do love him but — not in the way you want to love the man you’re going to marry. There is only one way for that, isn’t there?”

  Clara came to the side of the hammock and took Pauline in her arms.

  “No, no, there are different ways. Many different ways. That’s the wonderful and strange thing about it. There are different ways.”

  Pauline said stubbornly — “There is only one way for me, and I’ve never loved Wakefield like that. Perhaps it was wrong for me to be willing to marry him but I was willing.”

  She gave a strange little laugh. “I took a lot of pleasure in preparing for it but it was a kind of game of pretence. It was as though I was pretending it was someone else I was marrying.”

  Clara shrank from something in her voice. She was afraid that Pauline was going to say something that would be even more painful than what had gone before.

  Pauline was helpless against a desire for further self-disclosure. What she had so assiduously guarded she longed to bring into the light, even though she knew what it would cost them both. She said almost defiantly:

  “I don’t suppose you’ve even guessed the real truth. You’ve had no idea, have you, that I’ve really loved another man?”

  Even in that dim light she saw the whiteness of Clara’s face, how all its wholesome sunburnt colour fled from it, leaving it white and drawn. They had been isolated too much together, the understanding between them was too deep to make the speaking of his name necessary. Clara turned and went to the edge of the verandah. She said, in a heavy, choking voice:

  “You have felt this way about him for a long time, I suppose.”

  “For years.”

  The words were dragged from Clara against her will. “Does he know?”

  The jealousy which Pauline had felt for Clara now rose from its smouldering to a cruel flame.

  “Yes,” she breathed, and kept her face turned from her mother.

  Clara asked — “What does he feel?” A cold sweat broke out on her lips. She was so afraid of what Pauline’s answer would he. She felt herself unable to bear it. She sat down again on the steps and buried her head in her arms.

  She is afraid, thought Pauline, she is terribly afraid that he has made love to me too. It would be unbearable to her to think he had kissed me. But if only I had something worth confessing, I should be glad! I don’t think I could stop myself from telling her.

  She said, almost humbly — “He loves me as a child, nothing more.”

  It seemed to Clara that her heart was eager for suffering that night. Every remark that Pauline made, even one like the last which should have been a relief, cut her cruelly. She said:

  “You have been unlucky in your love, Pauline. It’s very hard for you, my darling. I don’t know what to say to help you. I simply don’t know what to say. It’s so unbearable to me to see you suffer.”

  Pauline’s disclosure had given her relief. She felt a new compassion for her mother and a sense, already cloistered, of watching the world from a different plane. She scarcely realized what significance her next words would have for Clara. She spoke them almost indifferently.

  “There is no need to worry any more about me, Mummie. I’m going into a convent. I’ve made up my mind to do that. So there’s no use in saying things against it.”

  Clara put up her hand, as though against a blow. Her jaw dropped and she stared fixedly at Pauline out of her round boyish eyes.

  “You’re not in earnest, really,” she gasped. “You don’t know what you’re saying — all this has upset you so. But you mustn’t say it, darling — it frightens me too much.”

  “But I am in earnest. I’m not upset…. I tell you I shall be a thousand times happier in a convent than married to Wake —”

  Clara interrupted fiercely — “If you don’t want to marry — I shall be the last one to urge you. But why the convent? You have no vocation, I’m sure of that. There’s so much in the world for us to do together. Think of me, Pauline! Don’t leave me! Why — if I lose you —”

  She began to cry frantically, with hoarse, tearing sobs. She clutched Pauline to her, hurting her in the vehement embrace by which she seemed to feel that she could restrain her.

  But it was of no use. The child who had been so malleable in her hands was as resolute as though her decision was the outcome of long months of thought, instead of the outcome of a swift recoil. They crept to bed in the grey drawn, like two boats seeking harbour after a night of buffeting.

  Pauline slept dreamlessly as an exhausted child, but Clara lay awake thinking of how Pauline’s love for Renny had flourished, side by side with her own, and been undiscovered by her. She brooded passionately on the brief fructifying of her own desire. All was gone from her forever, she thought, her child, her lover, her very life.

  VII

  RENNY AND CLARA AND PAULINE

  SEVERAL DAYS PASSED before Renny was seen by either Clara or Pauline. Wakefield wrote to them both long letters full of poignant feeling and touched by a tender regret for the happiness they had known together. After reading hers Pauline burned it, but Clara laid hers away in a little box to keep. Her feeling of bitterness against Wakefield was gone. With her usual resignation to the inevitable she now accepted the new design of her life with outward composure. She spent most of her time in the tea shop, and at night she felt tired out and went to
bed early.

  One morning, when the newly budded boughs were being tossed by a fresh wind on which floated downy particles from birds’ nests in process of building, Clara did not go to the tea shop but remained at home for necessary household tasks. She and Pauline were talking with an attempt at unconcerned cheerfulness when they saw Renny dismounting from a roan mare at the gate. They both became motionless as though they had been moved by some secret spring that now ceased to act. They looked out of the window at horse and man as though to imprint the image on their minds. Clara noted with sensuous pleasure the harmonizing colour of the mare’s sleek hide, Renny’s mellowed riding boots, the heather-toned tweed of his clothes, the russet of his hair and his weather-beaten face. Pauline was conscious only of the approach of the exciting and powerful personality that had dominated her adolescence.

  He fastened his horse to the fence and knocked formally at the door as he always did. They looked at each other but neither moved. Pauline glanced mechanically toward a mirror above the sideboard and raised her hand to smooth her hair. It was unruly, vigorous hair that had always framed her face in a dark halo. She had a startling vision of her head close-cropped and shrouded in a black veil.

  She stood, a strange smile lighting her face, as Clara admitted Renny. She knew at once, by his expression of profound melancholy, that Wakefield had told him what she was about to do. She said, almost lightly:

  “You know about me, don’t you?”

  He took her hand and held it tightly, looking down at its slender length, its pale deep-set nails. Already it looked to him like a nun’s hand.

  “I’m baffled,” he said huskily. “I’m simply baffled by it all. I’ve read of suicide pacts but this beats any suicide pact.”

  Pauline answered, still wearing the smile — “It may be suicide socially but that is all. I think we shall be much happier — at any rate I shall — where we are going. Please don’t say anything against it, Renny! Mother and I have had it all out and I can’t bear any more.”