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

by Mazo de La Roche

  Renny had taken Alayne to the train. He had gone into the railway carriage with her, arranged her smaller pieces of luggage in a neat pile on the seat opposite. He had sat down on the arm of the seat and made jerky attempts at conversation. He had gone out and returned with magazines and newspapers for her. The worst moment had been when it was necessary to say goodbye. He had stood up rigid, his nose looking prominent and bleak. She had stood up, her legs trembling. A grating jar had passed through the train.

  “Hurry!” she had gasped. “It is starting.”

  His body had swayed, as though he were tearing himself physically from her.

  “Goodbye,” she had gasped, and their hands, hers in fresh white gloves, had touched.

  He had had a jerk from the train as he sprang to the platform. She had seen him recovering his balance, people staring at him. Then the relief — the blessed relief — it was all over between them. The train was whirling her into another life.

  Still she had that feeling of being pursued. She lay hunched in her berth, her hands clenched under her chin, and she seemed to hear the beat of feet running in pursuit. In the blackness she saw the Whiteoaks pursuing her, tireless and unyielding. She saw Ernest first, with long, limber legs, stitching at his needle point embroidery as he ran. She saw Nicholas leaping strongly, unhampered by his gouty leg. She saw their mother, with closed eyes and folded arms, as she had seen her in her coffin, but running too. She saw Eden clinging to old Adeline’s skirt, his yellow hair streaming a yard long. She saw Piers and his family — little Nook weeping. She saw Meg and hers…. Wake in his monk’s robe flitted in the shadow…. Finch took off one pair of glasses and put on another so that he might see her clearly…. Last she saw Renny, carrying her child.… Then her clenched hands moved upward and pressed her lips against her teeth.

  It was while she was filling in the form for the immigration officer that her nerves had begun to get the better of her and the nausea that had been troubling her returned. She had scarcely been able to make out the questions or to control her pen between the narrow lines. The officer had been considerate. He had sat down on the seat opposite and given her help. But he looked a little suspicious when she had trouble in remembering the name and address of the aunt whom she was going to visit. When he had left her she had gone to the ladies’ toilet room and been sick. After that she went to her berth.

  The heat in Canada seemed as nothing compared with the heat in New York. The great marble station seemed a sepulchre for a demon of heat. But her little aunt, who met her, looked as fastidiously cool as ever and had aged little since Alayne had last seen her. She took Alayne and her luggage in hand, and they were transferred to an electric train that carried them to the pretty house on the Hudson where Miss Archer lived. It was five years since Alayne had been there. She had been estranged from Renny then, but that estrangement had been only as a cloud in the sky of their love compared to the chasm that now separated them.

  Miss Archer had been troubled by the abrupt addition to Alayne’s letter — even the handwriting had looked unnatural. She was still more troubled by Alayne’s appearance and, when she had her settled comfortably in the cool living room with a cup of coffee and some cookies before her, she said:

  “Now, my dear, you must tell me all about it.”

  Alayne tried to look unconcerned.

  “About what?”

  “Well” — Miss Archer gave a nervous little laugh — “this is all very sudden, isn’t it?”

  Alayne fortified herself with a drink of coffee. She must get it over at once. She had had enough of leading a double life. She could endure no more. She raised her heavy eyes to Miss Archer’s face and answered

  “It just means, Aunt Harriet, that I have left Renny. I’m not going back to him — ever.”

  Miss Archer’s delicate face was suffused by colour and her mild eyes by tears. She half rose as though to take Alayne in her arms but Alayne held up her hand. “Don’t, Aunt Harriet! I’m not in any mood for sympathy. I just want to speak of this matter coldly. I want to say what must be said and then try to put all that behind me. I want to make a new life with you — if I can — if you’ll have me.”

  Miss Archer half rose once more, and again, at Alayne’s look, sank back.

  “Very well, dear. Tell me just what you want to and then we’ll speak of it no more. As for welcoming you to my house — you know there’s nothing on earth I want so much as to have you with me.” She kept her voice steady but her handkerchief was twisted in her smooth ringless hands.

  “I have left him,” repeated Alayne. “I can’t stand it any longer. He’s — been unfaithful to me — with a woman named Clara Lebraux. She lives next door to us — that is, she did.”

  “Another woman,” said Miss Archer. “A neighbour! The brute!”

  “I tried to stay in the house with him after I found out. I did stay for a while. But — things happened and I just couldn’t.”

  “I should think not! Oh, my poor dear, what you have been through! The second one of that family. What a pity you ever met them! If only you had married that nice man — that friend of your father’s. How different your life might have been!”

  “Yes.” Alayne tried to picture what her life might have been but she could not. “I can’t picture it,” she said. “I’m too worn out by what my life has been. It has been hell, I tell you, Aunt Harriet. I wasn’t made for such a life — such a wife.”

  The harshness of Alayne’s words, the vital life thrust suddenly before Miss Archer repelled her. She felt shaken. She said — “Let us be thankful that your dear parents have not lived to see this day.” She said after a moment:

  “It seems so strange that I have never seen him.” There was a note of reproach in her tone, for Alayne had never urged her to visit Jalna. Alayne had felt that there were too many things at Jalna, too much seething life there. She had felt that it would have frightened her aunt. She said:

  “You would not have admired him. Still — you might. I don’t know. I can’t tell. He isn’t at all like Eden. But you’ve seen snaps of him.”

  “He has a good figure,” said Miss Archer.

  Alayne began to count the stripes in a casement cloth window curtain. Her lips moved silently. One — two — three — four — five — “What are you saying, dear?”

  “I was saying he has.”

  “His face is unusual. Not at all like Eden’s. Eden was so attractive.”

  Six — seven — eight — nine — Her lips moved.

  “I didn’t hear you, Alayne dear.”

  “I was saying he was.”

  “It seemed such a perfect marriage. But I mustn’t talk of that. Alayne — what of your child?”

  “I am to have her a part of the time.”

  “Poor little mite! She will be missing you terribly. Are you assured that she will be properly cared for? The bringing up of children is so scientific now.”

  “She will flourish. She won’t miss me.”

  “Not miss you! Alayne!”

  “She adores her father.”

  How hard Alayne was! Marriage with this man had certainly changed her. Miss Archer had a moment’s doubt as to her congeniality as a companion in her house, but it was swept away by sympathy.

  That sympathy was never failing. Alayne relaxed, lapped in it, relaxed as she had not for months. She burrowed into the downy quiet of the new life. She drew long breaths of the air that was never tainted by smell of dog or horse. Her ears gratefully drank in the tones of Miss Archer’s soft thin voice. She looked out on the tidy street where each little lawn had its ornamental shrubs kept moist by water from a hose and where boys and girls flitted by on roller skates.

  But, though she rested and a new peace came to her, her health did not improve. One day unknown to her aunt she went to see a doctor. He confirmed what she suspected. She was going to have a child.

  She made up her mind to keep this a secret as long as possible.

  XV

  THE
ADORING WIFE

  THE UNCLES, FINCH and Sarah, Renny and the two tiny girls, now constituted the household at Jalna. Nicholas and Ernest had never been more content to be in their old home. England was no longer for them as a permanent home. They had got on each other’s nerves in the damp days of the Devon winter. They had felt isolated. The fact that London was near and they were too old to take part in the life they had once loved, even if it had existed, saddened them. Nicholas’s gout and Ernest’s indigestion had got steadily worse. Now, back in Jalna, they felt like new men.

  The long hot summer agreed with them. They had the food they were used to, cooked just as they liked it. They took care to give periodical presents to Mrs. Wragge which kept up her interest in their favourite dishes. Their Devon house was let to satisfactory tenants.

  They set about the congenial task of embellishing their own rooms. Nicholas had his repapered in a rich design with a good deal of gilt. He had his couch and chairs upholstered in mulberry and the woodwork of the room painted ivory. Ernest selected a mauve monotone as his scheme of colour and he had brought a rug with him from Augusta’s house. It was one which he had not wanted to leave to the mercy of even a well-recommended tenant. He had brought it to Jalna with the intention of presenting it to Alayne but he found himself less drawn to her than ever before. For one thing, she had gone off terribly in her looks and, as he said to his brother, she was appallingly self-centred. He was disappointed in her and he simply could not make up his mind to give her the rug. He kept it in the attic rolled in canvas as it had crossed the ocean, till she went away. Then, when he had his room redecorated, he had it brought down and laid on his floor. When he saw the effect he could not be thankful enough that he had had the good sense to keep it for himself. Now he was working on gros point covers for the seats of his chairs.

  The effect of these two rooms side by side was rich. Renny was elated by the sight of the house so beautified. The fact that his own room, which had always been ugly, was now made hideous by the crowding into it of the bookcase and black china cabinet from the fox farm, did not impress him. Inside and out the house was in order. Though there was a mortgage on it, the mortgage was held by Finch’s wife. It was Finch himself who held the mortgage on Vaughanlands. So behind the depressing word mortgage was the solid security of kinship. Though Maurice could not dig up his interest, Finch would certainly never make a move against him. Though Renny was equally vulnerable, Sarah would never foreclose. Yet consciousness of the power held by the young couple secured them certain immunity from criticism. When Maurice would have scoffed at Finch’s nerves, Meg would have laughed at the idea of his not being able to fill his autumn engagements, they remembered the mortgage on Vaughanlands. When Renny would have ridiculed what, to him, were Sarah’s affectations, he remembered the mortgage on Jalna.

  He came to dislike Sarah. He resented her enigmatic smile, her look of sly pleasure in her own thoughts, her small-mouthed, curved-nosed, pointed-chinned profile always turned toward him at table. She disliked him more every day. She was jealous of Finch’s love and loyalty for him. She resented his air of masculine hardihood even while she wished that Finch had some of it. In Sarah he met a woman for whom he had no physical attraction. Nor did he wish to have any. He forced his grandmother’s own grin to his lips when he encountered Sarah, and longed for her visit to be over.

  Nicholas and Ernest admired her. They enjoyed her talk of European capitals, when she brought herself to talk, for she was a silent creature except with Finch. They liked the dresses she had brought from Paris and the scent of her Russian cigarettes and exotic perfumes. She was lavish with herself in expensive trifles to make up for the years of penury, and the fact that her income was greatly decreased by the falling of stocks did not impress her at all. In spite of her strangeness she was more readily absorbed by the family than Alayne, for she was a Court, and the life of the house was congenial to her. She longed for no life outside it except for the life of concert hall and travel connected with Finch’s work. She practised on the violin for an hour every morning but never opened a book. Her only reading was love stories in magazines which she devoured but never discussed. She did not throw them away when she had finished but kept them in a corner of her room where the pile grew from week to week. She went to church every Sunday, delighting in showing off her Paris clothes before the little congregation. Once she played the violin at a church tea party. The Rector liked her better than he had ever liked Alayne. On her part she was glad of Alayne’s absence. Little by little she gathered in what authority she could in the house. Rags and his wife both approved of her and flew to do what she asked.

  Little Adeline held herself aloof. She was conscious, with a child’s instinct, of the dislike between Renny and Sarah. In a subtle way she felt that Sarah was trying to usurp her mother’s place in the house. She frowned when she saw Sarah pouring tea from the silver pot. On her birthday came a beautifully made frock from Alayne. Adeline was enraptured and strutted about, saying:

  “This is from my Mummie. She’s coming back soon. I want to see her.”

  Roma, the other new member of the household, expressed no opinion either by behaviour or words of the strange environment in which she found herself. She was so shy, so speechless, that she might have been dumb. She was an inactive child who preferred to sit rather than run about with Adeline. She did not care much for toys, liking better to play with coloured pebbles from the lakeshore or a handful of acorns or some petals of flowers. Yet she accepted what Adeline offered, only to discard it when Adeline’s back was turned. She cared even less for food than toys, sometimes refusing to touch her meals. At these times Renny alone could persuade her to eat. He would sit with her on his knee, the spoon in his hand, cajoling, petting her into emptying the dish. He scowled at her thinness. She was a feather compared to Adeline’s white-fleshed weight. “Eat this!” he would exclaim. “Your legs are a sight.” And he would add, in horrible French — “Menge cela! Tes jambes sont trop maigres.” And she, opening wide her mouth, would murmur — “Merci, beaucoup.”

  He was really delighted to have her, partly because she was a companion for Adeline and brought out the best in her, even more because she was Eden’s child. His love for Eden’s memory increased as he resented more deeply Alayne’s attitude toward him. He often talked of him, now jocularly of his difficulties with him as a boy, now gloomily of his last illness. There were several copies of Eden’s two books of poems in the house. He arranged one of each on a table in the drawing room. The others he stood in the bookcase in his bedroom. Sometimes, at night, he would take one up and sombrely read a poem through, his pipe drooping from a corner of his mouth. Finch, passing his door one night, discovered him and stood unseen watching. Why was Renny doing that? What did he find in Eden’s poems? Pity for Renny who never pitied himself, pity for Eden, filled Finch with sadness. He remembered how Eden had given the money he had made from a series of talks on poetry to Wakefield to buy an engagement ring for Pauline. Where was that ring now? Discarded — hidden away, as the symbol of a futile love. And for that Eden had driven himself to the last ditch!

  Finch saw his own reflection in the mirror behind Renny’s chair, his hollow cheeks, his questioning, troubled eyes. His reflection seemed to brood over Renny, to cast a spell over him. Finch stared, not able to move away, till he was not sure whether the figure in the chair were Renny’s own or a reflection of him, whether the reflection in the mirror were not his own true self and the figure in the doorway a mere shadow.

  The lithographs of horses on the walls rolled their eyes at him, their bodies seemed to palpitate in fear. Renny moved uneasily in his chair. His head slanted, as though he listened. The puppy on the foot of the bed sat up and yawned. The yawn strengthened into a whine.

  Finch moved away. He thought — “I can’t sleep with Sarah. It would be too unreal being in the bed with her. Those creeping pains in the back of my neck will drive me insane unless I can be alone. But I’m afraid to tel
l her for fear she will object….”

  He thought he would write her a note, and went up to his old room where he knew there were paper and pencil. He tore a leaf from an old exercise-book and wrote: “Darling — I am feeling so —”

  But the pencil would not move. He put all the force of his body into his arm, his hand, but he could not move the pencil. It reared itself, clamped to the paper, inexorable.

  For a time he could not even loosen his fingers from their iron grip on it. Then it fell to the floor and he tore up the paper. The noise of the tearing shot through his head in a dreadful pain.

  He went unsteadily down the stairs to Sarah. She was propped up in bed reading a magazine. A glossy braid lay over each shoulder, black as night. The lacy jacket of her pyjamas glimmered over the firm whiteness of her body.

  He stood leaning against the door, his heart beating heavily. But he spoke in a low steady voice:

  “Look here, Sarah, the beastly pain is after me again. There’s only one thing for it and that is to be alone. I’m going up to my old room. You don’t mind, do you, darling?”

  Her eyes looked into his over the edge of the book.

  “You know,” she said, slowly, “what it means to me to be away from you.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. It’s wonderful your feeling like that — about me … but I’ve got to get over this rotten thing … and the only way … I can’t bear anyone near me….”

  He pulled off his glasses. His long, large-pupilled eyes became very bright.

  “It can’t be your eyes. They look so lovely.”

  “No, no. I don’t know what it is…. Just nerves….” He came to her and gently touched her. “You understand, darling — just till I get over this…. You won’t mind.”