XIX
ALAYNE AND THE NEW LIFE
LIFE IN THE charming little house up the Hudson was not so easy as Alayne had expected. Not that she had looked forward to happiness, but she had expected the serenity, the simplicity of living which she had known there in the old days. She found that living alone had made a difference in Aunt Harriet. After spending her days in thought for her sister’s comfort, she had turned to spending them in thought for her own. It took little to upset her — a window opened that she had left shut — a disarranged couch — a newspaper thrown down carelessly. There was no doubt Alayne was less tidy than of old. Yet at Jalna she had been held up, sometimes as a paragon, sometimes as a tyrant of orderliness. Now she found herself intensely irritated by her aunt’s fussiness, her exacting care over things that were not, after all, of great value. It irritated her that Miss Archer should refuse to let the maid dust china that, at Jalna, would have been handled by the Wragges without restraint. Sometimes the very smallness of the table at which they ate their meals irked her. She was too conscious of her aunts fastidious preparation of each mouthful.
Yet, at times — nearly always, she was warmly grateful for the refuge of this house. To no other place could she turn for love and kinship.
She and Aunt Harriet talked for hours of days gone by. They recalled every incident of the visit which she, as a child, had made to the Miss Archers’. All Alayne’s childish sayings were recounted, not once but again and again, in the long autumn evenings. Hearing them she could not help thinking how much cleverer and more spiritual she had been than her own child. At other times she felt that she had been a little prig.
When the tale of Alayne’s childhood was exhausted Miss Archer turned to her own early life with her sister and brother, Alayne’s father. She brought out old photographs and daguerreotypes and recalled the very price and pattern of the dresses in them. She retold the lives of her own parents and grandparents. She even shed tears over the pathetic death of a young son of her great-grandmother’s. Living intimately in the memory of these forebears of hers Alayne could not wonder that she had found the Whiteoaks alien. She recalled the faces in the old photograph albums at Jalna and the anecdotes she had heard of their owners; how Nicholas would growl — “That old blackguard! Well — he was the scandal of County Meath, and that’s saying a good deal.” Or Ernest would exclaim — “That was Fanny Whiteoak — a beauty, but what a temper! Her husband used to beat her, and small wonder!”
Alayne wondered when her aunt would become conscious of her condition. It seemed extraordinary that her state of health aroused no suspicion. But then, Miss Archer had never had anything to do with maternity. Still she often seemed to be worrying privately over something. It was possible, Alayne thought, that Aunt Harriet was getting tired of having her with her, and one day she bluntly put the question.
Miss Archer burst into tears. “No, no, dearest Alayne,” she sobbed, “it could never be anything but joy to have you with me. It is my investments that worry me. They are getting worse and worse.”
Alayne was aghast. “Have you seen your lawyer?”
“Oh yes. He has done all he can. But how could he know that my stocks would go down so? He is terribly disturbed.” Her pretty, old face quivered and was wet with tears.
“Now let us keep calm and go into this,” said Alayne.
They went into it and it was even worse than she had feared. The room began to go round with her, as it always did now, if things were upsetting. But she kept on patting Aunt Harriet’s plump back. “You must not worry so. It will be all right. I have enough for both of us and your stocks will recover. I am sure they will.” In her heart she did not believe they would. She found herself prone to look on the dark side of everything. She saw the money which she had so relentlessly guarded from Renny’s predatory hand, being spent to keep up this house — leaving nothing to bequeath to her child — her children! With terror she put from her the thought that her own income might shrink so that there would not be enough of it for them to live on. Still, she could always get a job with her old friend, Mr. Cory the publisher. She was sure of that. But who would care for her baby while she was away? Certainly not Aunt Harriet. She knew nothing of infants and was too old in any case. No, she would have to engage a nurse — and she pictured her aunt and herself in an apartment in New York being kept awake by the crying of a child.
Oh, if only this had not happened to her! She writhed spiritually as she considered all that it implied … if only she had found Renny out before this had happened to her! For a second it flashed into her mind that perhaps it would be better if she had never found him out — considering that then all was over between him and Clara…. Fiercely she put this weakness from her. She was glad she had found him out, glad she had escaped from the degradation of such a situation — glad that she had taken from him the power to say, “I have deceived her and got away with it. A man has to have a fling once in his married life. Mine was successful.” And how could she know that he would not have repeated the infidelity?
She was morbidly determined to hide the fact of her pregnancy from the family at Jalna. In a curious manner the knowledge that Minny had concealed the birth of her child from Eden worked on her mind. She conceived a strange connection between herself and Minny. The thought even came to her that her own child would be a girl and of the same pale colouring as Minny’s child. She pictured herself as dying at its birth and Aunt Harriet taking the child to Jalna — a companion to Roma.
In the dark fall days she took an unhappy solace in such thoughts as these. Her health was better and she forced herself to take long walks for the sake of the unborn child. She took them in the afternoon and it was at this hour that the postman made his rounds. As she turned homewards she could scarcely restrain her impatience to see if he had brought a letter to her from Canada. She said to herself that it was Pheasant’s letter she strained toward, with its news of Adeline. But in truth she was always expecting a letter from Renny — a letter demanding or imploring her return. The sight of the Canadian stamp set her heart pounding.
But the letter was always from Pheasant. She was a good correspondent. Alayne was the only person to whom she wrote and she had a deep sense of secret importance when she sat down to detail the doings at Jalna for her benefit. Alayne always carried the letter to her own room and first read it there, later on reading such parts as she wished to her aunt.
If Miss Archer thought that she kept anything back she gave no hint of her suspicion. Indeed suspicion could not describe any feeling of hers toward Alayne. Alayne had a right to her own privacy and the thought of infringing on that was obnoxious to Miss Archer. They were a family who always respected each other. Some of the extracts from Pheasant’s letters made it easy to realize what Alayne must have gone through in such an environment. And it had had its effect on her! One could tell by the way she read aloud, without turning a hair, things which she would once have found distasteful.
Miss Archer could not understand Alayne’s attitude toward little Adeline. To her it seemed lacking in tenderness and natural solicitude. Once she said to her:
“Aren’t you afraid, Alayne dear, that she will grow quite away from you? Don’t you think we should manage for her to visit us soon?”
Alayne had disconcertingly exclaimed:
“Adeline here! You little know what you are suggesting. She would drive you mad in this little house. As for her growing away from me — she’s never been near me, since her first year. I can do nothing with her.” As her lips formed the last words the figure of Miss Archer faded from her sight and in its place she saw Renny’s tall, spare form, his lips bent in an expression of embarrassment. She had so often flung these words at him.
The room seemed suddenly suffocating. She rose and went to the window a crack of which was open and beneath which a steam radiator sizzled forth its heat. She added:
“You must think me an unnatural mother. But — I’m simply not able to have her with me no
w. Later on it will be different.” She drew herself up, facing the cool inlet of fresh air. Her body looked strange and misshapen. Miss Archer gasped as the revelation struck her like a blow.
“Alayne! You — why, you — oh, my dear!” Her face became crimson. Life was suddenly horrible, indecent to her.
“Yes,” answered Alayne coldly, “I’m going to have a baby. It can’t be helped. There’s no use in making a fuss over it.” She had never spoken so to her aunt before. Miss Archer was hurt and showed it.
Alayne went and put her arms about her.
“Don’t mind me, Aunt Harriet. I’m not myself these days. I’ve been so worried that I haven’t known what to do.”
Miss Archer clasped her close. “My poor child! It’s all too terrible. To think that — when you knew he was unfaithful!” She could not keep a note of accusation out of her voice.
“But I didn’t know! Not when this happened! You don’t imagine I ever lived with him after I found them out, do you?”
“Did you know that you were — like this — when you left Jalna?”
“No. I went to a doctor here.”
“But you should have confided in me! Not borne all this alone! Oh, my poor little girl — what you have been through!” Miss Archer began to cry but kept on talking. “When I think of all that your parents hoped and planned for you! They both thought you would do something very much worthwhile…. If only you had never met Eden! Then you would never have met this man. I just can’t say his unspeakable name! I hope I am a Christian but it seems to me that nothing is too bad to punish him. He deserves to suffer.”
“He’s no worse than lots of others, I suppose,” said Alayne sullenly. She was heavy and tired and felt that she could bear no more talk.
Miss Archer, on the contrary, could not stop talking. Her mind was fastened on Renny, rather than on Alayne’s state which she could not yet bring herself to face, and on his head she poured out her bitterness of spirit. Alayne was glad when she heard the postman. She hoped there would be a long letter from some old friend of Aunt Harriet’s to take her mind off their difficulties. For once she did not look for the Canadian stamp. Yet there it was, on an envelope addressed by Pheasant.
Contrary to her use she did not take the letter to her room but opened it at once and began to read it aloud:
DEAR ALAYNE —
I’ve been intending to write to you for weeks but there always seems so much to do at this time of year, getting ready for winter and having colds and helping with the Harvest Festival. And then there is always the Horse Show. We did pretty well at the Show. That new mare of Renny’s is certainly a bad actor. She walked on her hind legs through all the events and won nothing. But he has great faith in her. Piers tries to talk reason into him but you know what he is like when he gets infatuated. We got a first in the Corinthian Class — two firsts and a third in Middleweight Hunters. The polo ponies did very well and we made several good sales after the Show. I was especially bucked by Mooey’s performance, as Piers has rather a low opinion of his powers. Of course Patience is a born rider and was a favourite with the crowd. But you just wait till your little Adeline gallops on the scene! She’ll carry all before her. Even now she will get on any sort of pony and stick there too. She’s a picture of health and loveliness. I only wish that Nook had her digestion. But he’s a darling, really, and often asks when Auntie Alayne is coming back. Philip is growing to be a grand lad and a chip from the old Whiteoak block.
To go back to the Horse Show. Do you remember the carriage that the grandparents had built in England in the old days? It stood in the carriage house, rusty and covered with cobwebs. Piers cleaned and polished and enamelled it till it simply glittered and I, wearing a bustle and a sailor hat over one eye, perched on the driver’s seat, while the bays glittering and rattling their harness high-stepped round the ring. Renny agreed that I handled them well and I certainly got masses of applause. That young bay mare is a great disappointment. She has been …
Alayne stopped reading, coughed, searched for a handkerchief.
“You are not catching a cold, I hope, dear,” said Miss Archer.
“No. Just a tickling. Let’s see, oh yes —”
“The mare. What a lot Mrs. Piers knows about horses.”
“I’d finished with that. Here we are:
The Harvest Festival was a great success. I did the font in masses of purple grapes and their leaves. It looked lovely but Meg thought that grapes were not suitable, being suggestive of Bacchanalian revels rather than innocent babes. She and Miss Pink did the chancel in dahlias and gladioli. Piers did marvellous things with pumpkins and ears of corn and Renny came in with some gorgeous branches of scarlet maple leaves. They were the last touch in beauty.
“I should think,” interrupted Miss Archer, “that he would have the decency to keep out of the church.”
“Why?” asked Alayne brusquely.
“Well — I shouldn’t think you’d ask that.”
“I suppose he never misses a Sunday — reading the Lessons.”
“Doesn’t it seem horribly hypocritical to you?”
“No. I think that the Whiteoaks look on that little church as their own — whether they are being good or bad.”
“You speak of them as though they were children.”
“They are, in a way. That is — they are natural.”
“But no family has a right to look on any particular church as its own.
Religion is universal.”
“I haven’t any.”
“Well, of course, I mean in theory.”
“The Whiteoaks don’t theorize. That church is as much a part of their life as Jalna.” She returned to the letter, feeling herself surrounded for the moment by the old life, scarcely conscious of her aunt’s presence. She read in silence.
“Aren’t you going to finish the letter to me? I am always so interested in that family.”
“Oh, there’s not much more. She speaks of how they miss Wakefield and of Finch’s illness. The poor boy doesn’t seem to be improving very fast.” She spoke in an unnatural voice. A strange brightness had come into her eyes.
Miss Archer looked at her steadily.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Alayne, her voice trembling. “He is coming to New York! Renny!”
“I’ve been expecting it: Alayne, you must stand firm.”
“Oh, not to see me! To the Horse Show — in Madison Square Garden. You know! He’s coming to ride that awful horse Pheasant speaks of!”
“Yes, dear,” said Miss Archer soothingly. “I wish that good luck may attend him, I’m sure.”
“Aunt Harriet, I must see him! Not to talk to him! I don’t want him to know I am there. But I must see him ride. There is something in me that simply demands this final glimpse. I can’t tell what it is but it’s there. I’ve got to see him! You’d like to come too, wouldn’t you, Aunt Harriet? It is the sort of thing you have never been to. It would be an experience for you — even if you didn’t particularly enjoy it.”
Miss Archer was quite eager to go. She delighted in new experiences and anything was better than sitting at home mourning the loss of her income. She trembled to think what would have become of her if Alayne had not been at hand with her support. And Alayne must be humoured. If she wanted to see this dreadful husband of hers do high jumps on an impossible horse, why — she must see him! If only Alayne were not going to have his child! That was the complication that rose dark and almost overpowering. When Harriet Archer thought of that she was frightened by the hate that flamed in her. Once, in the privacy of her own bathroom she heard herself exclaim — “Serve him right if he fell and cracked his ugly red head!”
She heard herself say this in a harsh voice quite unlike her own. She looked in the looking glass and saw her face puffy with hate, her mouth in a new shape. She stared at her reflection fascinated. For the first time she was conscious of a second self, whose existence she had never even suspected, a vindictive self who could wi
sh suffering to another.
But she was not ashamed. She wished him ill, only because he had caused suffering, and would be the cause of how much more, to the one she loved best in all the world. She let herself go and repeated:
“It would serve him right if he cracked his skull at this very Show!”
She was struck with horror by the thought of what such a sight might mean to Alayne, in her present state. It might be the end of her and of her unborn child! Indeed it was not safe for her to risk witnessing an accident of any sort. She must give up the thought of attending the Show.
But Alayne was stubborn. Her heart was set on going.
“But in your delicate condition it is dangerous. Just think if there was an accident — not to Mr. Whiteoak, of course, but to some rider — what a shock for you!”
“Aunt Harriet, if I can survive what I have been through, nothing can hurt me. The change will do me good.”
In truth the thought of it seemed to do her good. Either that or because in the natural course of her pregnancy she developed balance and endurance. Her appetite was good, her skin clear, she felt a desire for movement. This was well because the strictest economy was now necessary. They parted with the one maid and did the work of the house themselves. Alayne found that she enjoyed this. The house was small, in perfect order, there were all the conveniences of electric appliances, perfect plumbing and hearing. She and Miss Archer did things in their own way, to their great satisfaction, without waste and without irritation. Again and again Alayne recounted the maddening perversities of the Wragges: how on a mild autumn morning an enormous fire would blaze on the hearth, and how on a cold wet one only a handful of coals would struggle against the chill: how when the uncles had tea by themselves an enormous potful of the best tea — enough for six — was carried up to them: how there was never anything made of leftovers, which were fed to the dogs: how Rags spent hours in cleaning silver but never swept underneath the furniture: how they both were enough to drive anyone, descended from New England housewives, stark, staring mad. Miss Archer never tired of hearing of their evil deeds. They exhilarated her almost to the point of forgetting her own adversities.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 99
