Her arms reached up to him. They seemed to him like naked feelers reaching up to drag him into an abyss. He started back.
“Good night. Tell me good night.”
“No,” he said loudly. “I can’t even do that! Can’t you see …” The harshness of his own voice surprised him.
He left the room quickly and returned to the attic.
Oh, the peace and darkness of it! In the darkness he pulled off his clothes and got into bed. He burrowed his head into the pillow and lay waiting for the pain to ease.
It crept up from between his shoulders, circling his neck, its shrewd fingers pressed even to his throat. The roots of his tongue felt it. His head seemed to swell, as though his brain would burst from an iron band. There was an orchestra playing in the room with him, accompanying the exquisite solo of the pain…. He drew himself into a knot and lay listening.
The next morning he woke in peace. He went downstairs, ate his breakfast in the sweet peace. He was almost afraid to speak for fear he would break its sweet fragility.
But, at ten o’clock, the pain began again and stayed with him till he slept at late night. And so on, day after day, week after week. He grew gaunt and dishevelled and had to force himself to speak gently to Sarah.
He had a sudden longing to see Wakefield. He went to Renny and said — “Do you think Wake could come home for a few days? I’ve scarcely seen him, you know. After he takes the final vows it won’t be so easy for him to leave.”
Renny looked pleased at the mere thought of a visit from Wakefield. He said — “I’m sure they will let him come, knowing you’ve been away and aren’t feeling yourself. Just write a nice letter — you know how to put it — I’m sure there won’t be any difficulty.”
“You write, Renny. I — I’m afraid I can’t do it.” As he made this admission the pain in his head increased.
“Can’t do it!” Renny stared at him, then looked embarrassed. He answered, with forced heartiness — “Yes, of course, I’ll do it. I’ll write today…. Have you tried aspirin? Alayne found that it helped her headaches.”
It doesn’t help this. Nor the stuff the French doctor gave me. Nothing seems to help it. I — don’t know when I shall be able to play again.”
Renny put a reassuring arm about his shoulders. “It will pass away — just keep your mind off it and stay outdoors all you can.” He looked anxiously into Finch’s haggard young face. “I’m glad you thought of having Wake come to see you, only mind you don’t let him convert you. He’ll be after you if he thinks there’s a chance.”
In a few days Wakefield came to spend a week at Jalna. In his black robe his figure looked fuller, his face browner. He looked serene and secure in his happiness. The family regarded him with wonder. It seemed such a short while ago that he was a bare-kneed little boy, imitating his elders, busy in the expression of the intricate life he had made for himself in the family circle. Now he was aloof from them all but so affectionate and understanding. He hung with Ernest over his embroidery frame. He had long talks with Nicholas and read the London Times aloud to him. He visited every corner of the stables with Renny. Took sugar to his old pony and groomed it down. He even hitched up his robe and mounted Renny’s new horse to try its gait, savouring with serene pleasure the wonder and admiration of the stablemen and farm labourers who had gathered to see him.
He went to tea every day at Vaughanlands or with Pheasant and her boys. Meg showed him off to her paying guests. Pheasant poured out to him her problems in the rearing of her small sons as though he were already an experienced minister of souls. Even Piers began to take him seriously. He visited Mr. Fennel who had taught him almost all he knew, and stirred him up to controversy in the matter of religion. It was delightful to him to go to the Rectory as a monastic emissary. In truth Wakefield was in the seventh heaven.
Eden’s little girl forgot her shyness with him. When they were alone together she would even talk to him in her odd mixture of baby English and French. She followed him wherever she could, clutching a fold of his robe in her thin little hand. His name fascinated her. She kept repeating it as they went. “Wake … Wake … Wake …” in a strange little singsong. Her straight hair was so fine that whatever touched it left it standing in a pale wisp … it always stuck out so, on the side nearest Wakefield.
The idea came to him of re-colouring the walls of the nursery. With one of Mrs. Wragge’s aprons tied over his robe he applied a wash of sunny yellow to walls and ceiling. He went to town and bought pictures of the legends of saints for a border. Between the windows was St. Francis surrounded by birds and animals. Alma Patch, the nursemaid, was breathless in her delight. Ernest had brought her from England a nurse’s outfit which raised her to a new pinnacle of prominence in the village. She found Roma easy to care for except in the matter of persuading her to eat her meals. The difficulty with Adeline was to persuade her to stop.
But the greater part of Wakefield’s day was spent with Finch. They had long walks together or lay talking on the glossy brown needles in the pine wood. Endlessly, with calculated soothing monotony, Wakefield talked of his life in the monastery, of his joy in his religion. He read aloud to Finch who lay, only half listening to what his mind refused to accept, but drinking in the reassuring peace of Wakefield’s presence.
At night they slept together in Finch’s old room, their long limbs in peaceful relaxation, Wakefield’s arm thrown protectively across Finch. He felt the elder of the two now. He felt immensely strong and proud in his protection of Finch. Finch was the young brother, the weak, the fearful, the clinging. Wakefield realized, as did no one else in the family, that Finch shrank from Sarah’s demonstrative love, that her feverish interest, which was never apart from sex, in everything he said and did, was irritating and exhausting to Finch. To Sarah, Wakefield’s attitude was conciliatory and confidential. He listened gravely to her accounts of Finch’s playing in Europe. He promised that Finch would be able to undertake the series of recitals in America which his agent had arranged for him. Just now, he said, relaxation and solitude were what Finch needed most. She must go to see Meggie and Pheasant, keep out of Finch’s way, so that his love for her might not distract his nerves. Artists were temperamental beings and had to be humoured. Wakefield clasped his hands on his stomach and felt fifty.
It was an amazing thing to Finch that the boy who had always irritated him by his cocksure ways and assumption of superiority over him should now be his comfort and his strength. But he surrendered himself to Wakefield. As he lay in bed watching Wake at his prayers in the candlelight, listening to the steady murmur of prayer from his lips that sometimes showed a curious resemblance to his grandmother’s in their flexible line, Finch felt that there was something present stronger than either of them, a mystery and a symbol in the room. Day by day the pain in his head lessened.
Still he was not regretful when Wakefield’s week was up and he returned to the monastery. He wanted to be alone with his growing peace. He felt that only by himself could he find the way back to normal life, the work that lay before him … the years that stretched before him, the years with Sarah.
She followed Wakefield’s advice and left Finch to himself, but he was never out of her thoughts. With Wakefield gone Finch became conscious of Sarah’s thoughts always reaching out to him. He shrank from them because their feminine vitality was more than he could bear. They were hot sparks from a furnace. They were electric waves. She conceived the idea that by playing her violin she could draw him back to his music. She began by playing it softly in the drawing room when she knew that he was nearby. Then she played more loudly, choosing the pieces he liked best, in their own room when she knew he was in his old room above. She even came to the foot of the attic stairs. She came slowly up the stairs, the violin held fast under her white, pointed chin, playing as she came.
When he had heard her violin in the drawing room he had slipped out by the side door. When he had heard it in her bedroom he had crept down the stairs and escaped. Bu
t when she mounted the stairway, playing as she came, there was no escape and he flung up his window and leant far out, calculating the distance to the ground.
She was as insistent and ruthless as a child. She had a child’s egotism. The door of Finch’s room was thrown open and he stood on the landing looking down at her.
“Don’t!” he said hoarsely.
She raised her pale glittering eyes to his and went on playing.
“Stop!” he repeated fiercely. “You mustn’t play to me, Sarah! I can’t bear it!”
The hand that held the bow dropped to her side. She smiled up at him.
“Why?” she asked. “I think some music will do you good.”
“No, no, it hurts my head! Can’t you understand, Sarah! The notes hurt those nerves in my head that keep paining all the time. They beat like little hammers. They tear like little claws. You must put your violin away, darling. Just for a while, till I’m better.”
Sarah drew her bow caressingly across his hand that lay on the banister. She came nearer to him, smiling. “I’ll not play anymore,” she said.
The violin bow burnt his hand. He drew it back and for something to do with it took off his glasses and rubbed them on his sleeve.
“Darling eyes,” she said, and came close and kissed them.
He stood motionless, scarcely breathing, surveying himself as an outsider, a body — a skull surrounding a horrible pain.
She put both arms about his neck and held him tightly. A cold wind blew on them through the open window.
“I am so cold,” she breathed, and she put her lips on his and wound one of her supple legs about his calf.
He tore himself away from her, backing into the doorway of his room. She stood her violin on the floor, leaning it against the wall, and came toward him showing her small white teeth.
“No, don’t come!” he said loudly. “Can’t you see that I don’t want you?”
“Darling, you don’t mean that! Not want your Sarah?”
He controlled himself and spoke more quietly. “It’s just that I’m tired, Sarah. You know how it is with me, darling. You don’t want me to go quite to pieces, do you? You’ve got to let me alone — till I’m better. Wake told you that, didn’t he? He told you that what I needed was to be let alone.”
“Wakefield spoiled you,” she said.
She slipped past him into the room and laid herself down on the dishevelled bed. She held out both arms to him and put all her seductiveness into her smile.
“Come,” she said. “Love will make you well.”
He stood swaying in the doorway. Should he run down the stairs and escape? But no, if he did that she would have his room, his blessed retreat, the place where he had been happy with Wakefield.
He came to the bed and, taking her by the arms, dragged her wildly from it and thrust her out into the passage. She struggled with him. They struggled on the stairway. She screamed and, as though the scream had loosed something in her, followed it with others loud and piercing.
Renny had just come into the hall below followed by his spaniels. At the sound of the screams Floss dropped her tail between her legs and backed to the door but Merlin lifted his blind face and barked as though in anger. Renny came to the foot of the stairs, his jaw dropped in consternation. “My God, what’s the matter?”
Finch loosed Sarah and hung against the banister.
“She won’t let me alone!” he shouted. “I tell you she won’t give me any peace! She’s driving me mad!”
Renny turned to Sarah who was leaning against the wall. He asked — “What’s the matter with him?”
“Wakefield has been turning him against me,” she moaned. “He won’t let me touch him.”
“It’s maddening!” shouted Finch. “I tell you, she gives me no peace. She’s been fiddling on the stairway — right to my door — and she knows how it hurts my head! I tell you — I can’t bear any more!” He broke into hysterical crying, clinging desperately to the banister.
At the sound of his crying Sarah began to cry too, with a wailing sound like keening at a wake. Ernest who had been busy at his needlework in the drawing room, came into the hall carrying it. Anxious, in the midst of his excitement, not to lose a stitch, he tried to set his needle in the canvas but instead thrust it into his thumb. He doubled over with pain. Merlin continued his angry barking. Nicholas, confined to his bed with gout — the first attack since his return to Jalna — beat on the floor with his stick and shouted:
“What’s going on out there? I say, what’s going on?”
Renny bounded up the stairs and put his arms about Finch. He led him into his own room and set him on the bed. Then he returned to the passage and shut the door behind him. Merlin was grinning at his side, snuffling at the door, but Floss stayed below with Ernest. Renny called down:
“Uncle Ernest, take Sarah down with you. Give her a glass of something. Make her shut up!”
“I’m all right,” said Sarah. She went slowly down the stairs to Ernest who led her into the drawing room.
All was quiet now but for the thumping from Nicholas’s room. Renny opened his door and looked in. Nicholas was sitting on the side of his bed, his face contorted as he tried to put his bandaged foot to the floor.
“Get back to bed, Uncle Nick,” said Renny. “It’s all over.”
“But what was it?” asked Nicholas almost piteously. Gladly he heaved up his leg and got under the covers again. Merlin went to him, nosed for his face, found and licked it.
“Down, you old fool,” said Nicholas, cuffing him.
“It was a row,” said Renny, “between Sarah and Finch. They’ve got on each other’s nerves, I guess, and no wonder, with the way he carries on with his head and all. It’s enough to drive the girl crazy. Still — she’s no right to go fiddling at him when she knows how it hurts.”
“Fiddling at him!” groaned Nicholas. “Fiddling at him!”
“Yes. Who does she think she is? Nero? I tell you, she’ll find her Rome burning one of these days if she doesn’t look out. Finch is in no condition to cope with a high-strung wife.”
“I call her a harlot,” said Nicholas.
“Well,” Renny’s forehead was knit. “I’m going back to the poor young devil to see what I can do with him. If he keeps on like this he’ll be in a sanatorium. This house is enough to drive a man to drink. Come, Merlin —” He went out, followed by the spaniel.
XVI
HIS OWN ROOM
NICHOLAS WAS PROPPED up in bed reading when Renny returned. He laid down his paper and looked expectantly into his nephew’s face. Renny said:
“He’s quiet now. But he’s in a bad way. I wonder if I ought to send for the doctor.”
“What is it all about?” asked Nicholas irritably.
Renny sat down on a chair by the side of the bed, folded his arms and drew down his mouth at the corners.
“Are you going to tell me, or aren’t you?” demanded Nicholas.
“He’s turned against Sarah, Uncle Nick. He can’t bear to have her near him. Do you think he may be going out of his mind? They say it’s a sign, when you turn against those you love.”
Nicholas returned his look with one still more sombre. Then he said, emphatically:
“No, no, I don’t believe any such thing. She’s just got on his nerves. He’s been under a strain … all those recitals … he’s tired out. Then — she’s a queer girl — I never could make her out.”
“She’s damned passionate — behind that cold face of hers.”
Nicholas growled — “Hmph, well, my wife was damned cold, under an alluring exterior.”
“You turned against her, didn’t you?”
“Absolutely. But in a normal way — no hysterics on either side.”
“He says he can’t stay in the house with her. He looks awful. I believe he’ll go nutty if she starts her fiddling again.”
“Send him away for a change.”
“When I suggested that, he said he wouldn’t leav
e his old room. He said he never wanted to leave it again.”
Nicholas ran his hand distractedly through his tumbled grey hair. He said:
“Bring me a whiskey and soda. I want to think.”
“Remember your gout.”
Nicholas groaned back to his pillow.
“Lord, yes! Give me a little plain soda, then. I’m thirsty. Just put a spot in the soda, enough to flavour it. I’ll cut out meat today.”
While he was sipping Ernest came into the room his thumb bound in a handkerchief.
“It was a strange coincidence,” he complained, “that I should have had my needle in my hand when Sarah screamed. The result is that I gave myself a disagreeable wound. I’m wondering if there might be a possibility of lockjaw.”
“Not a chance,” growled his brother.
“Well, I am relieved to hear you say that, but really it is very painful,” He turned to Renny. “How is that young man behaving now?”
In brief sentences Renny told him.
“They must be separated for a time,” said Ernest. “My idea is this — let Sarah go to the fox farm. She can make it quite nice with the things Finch and you bought and some of the furniture from our attic. She won’t have much to buy. I’ve suggested it to her and she falls in with the idea. She does not want to be far from Finch yet she realizes that he must be humoured.”
Nicholas looked admiringly at his brother, then deprecatingly at Renny.
“Trust old Ernie,” he said, “to find the solution. I think it’s the best plan possible. That house is standing empty. Let Sarah live in it. Let her pay a good rent for it.”
“No, no,” said Renny. “I couldn’t ask her to pay rent.”
“It would be in very bad taste,” agreed Ernest. “Especially as she holds the mortgage on Jalna.”
“All the more reason,” said Nicholas. “Get out of her all you can.”
Renny shook his head. “Impossible. But Uncle Ernest’s idea is a good one! We’ll shoot Sarah over there as soon as possible. I shan’t be sorry to have her out of Jalna. I don’t wonder that she gets on young Finch’s nerves.”
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 94
