Harriet discovered that she was far less winded by the ascent than she would have been four months ago. Nevertheless she breathed rather quickly as she emerged from the trees and looked across the open space to the fox farm. She wanted terribly to do what she had set out to do, efficiently and yet with caution, and she dreaded interfering in the affairs of other people — something she had never in her life done.
Sarah was bending over a bed of blue hyacinths and she was wearing a pale green dress with long drooping sleeves. The shining convolutions of her massed black braids made her head have the appearance of being carved out of ebony. She turned and faced Harriet Archer with a startled look. In a day of scarlet lips, hers were palely chiselled, folded together in a flower-bud secrecy.
“I hope I have not frightened you,” said Harriet. “I was walking this way and I saw you. I couldn’t resist coming in.”
Sarah smiled palely and held out her hand. “I wasn’t frightened,” she said, “just excited. When anyone comes on me suddenly I am always hoping it may be Finch.”
Harriet, embarrassed by this frankness yet encouraged by it also, answered simply:
“It is very hard for you, living apart from Finch. It is very hard, I am sure.”
“It is terrible. And the worst of it is that he would have come to me long ago if it were not for that villainous brother of his.”
Harriet blinked. She had barely arrived and here she was in the thick of it! She said:
“Oh, surely, you don’t think of Renny as villainous!”
Sarah fronted her. “How else can I think of him? He has deliberately come between two lovers. Isn’t that villainous? And it’s not only that. You are Alayne’s aunt. You know what sort of husband he was to her. He used to come through that ravine — into that wood — to meet the woman who lived in this house. Wasn’t that villainous? He drove Alayne from him. Then — when he wanted Alayne — when Clara Lebraux was gone — he went and brought her back. He would like to make us all slaves. But he’ll find that I am different. I am not submissive. I’ll strike back.” A pale radiance brightened her face. She showed her small white teeth.
“Might we sit down?” asked Harriet. “I think we could talk more calmly. That is, if you want to talk to me.”
“I want to talk to anyone who will listen!” exclaimed Sarah. “I want to scream his injustice, to the world.” She led the way to the verandah and they sat where Clara and Pauline had so often rested.
“How pretty this place is!” Harriet said.
“You should have seen it when I came here. It was hideous. But I have done a good deal to it. It has been something to occupy me, and I like the place. It’s secluded and yet not far from the town. I intend to live here always.”
“In this house?” asked Harriet, softly.
Sarah gave her a daring look as though to say — “Now go and repeat this to the Whiteoaks!” The words she spoke were:
“No. I intend to live at Jalna.”
Harriet felt afraid of her, afraid of her cold, derisive smile. Yet there was something empty, childlike, about her. She was like water on which nothing could be written. Harriet whispered:
“What do you mean — live at Jalna?”
There was never a sweeter voice than Sarah’s. She said:
“Don’t you know about the mortgage? It falls due in a few weeks. Iwill not renew it. I’m going to turn all those people out and live there myself. I’ll live there alone — unless Finch will live with me.”
“Are you firm in this?” asked Harriet.
“As firm as iron.”
Harriet Archer said — “Do you know what I think about you? I don’t think you love Finch at all.”
“Not love Finch! I love him too much. That is the trouble.”
“Not the man! You don’t love the man. What you love is the excitement of his presence. That’s all you care about. It’s all you can understand. I haven’t known either of you very long but I feel that — know it in my inmost soul. Oh, do try, if it is possible to you — to care for the real man! Then you will know that what you contemplate doing would be the very peak of cruelty to him.”
She knew her last words were wasted but she thought — “I must be true to myself. I must give her a chance.” She sat contemplating Sarah with her mild, pastel blue gaze. But her soul was seething in protective energy toward Jalna and the family.
Sarah answered, almost indifferently — “I would kill him rather than give him up to that man.”
Harriet Archer rose. “I think I had better go,” she said. “I can see that there is nothing to be done — that I can do” — then she added, almost inaudibly — “on this side of the ravine.”
She returned the way she had come and this time, as she mounted the imposing slope, she felt even less fatigue than before. She felt powerful for good. As she reached the top she looked down at the stream shining below, her eyes took in the fairness of the land. She raised her two hands high above her head and clenched them, as one who declared — “Curfew shall not ring tonight!”
Ernest had just crossed the lawn, a daisy between his finger and thumb. He opened the little white gate at the top of the path for her, and said:
“What a charming gesture! You look the very personification of spring!”
No wonder Harriet wanted to protect this house.
XXIX
HARRIET AND FINCH
FINCH HAD LOCKED the piano and he had the key in his pocket. Several times lately he had been startled by the torturing sound of small children strumming on the keys. He had found Adeline and Roma standing side by side — making the dreadful discords. Their look of exaltation had changed to one of defiance on Adeline’s part, fear on Roma’s, when he had angrily forbidden them to touch the keys again. They had persisted and this morning he had really frightened them both. They had run away and he had locked the piano and put the key in his pocket. He wondered at himself for not having done this before. It gave him a sense of security, of mastery, not over the children but over the piano itself. He had bound it in silence. Now its voice, appealing, torturing, could not again speak to him.
Curiously, one of the discords made by the children remained with him, not as an irritation but as something strange and suggestive. He hummed it over and over as he went toward the orchard. Lately he had been going there as the most secret place he could find. He would hide himself among the tree trunks in the very midst of the army of trees and lie staring up at the white torrent of bloom. He would listen to the steady murmur of the bees, watch the petals drift down when a bird sprang from a bough.
He could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw how today everything was changed. He was disappointed out of all proportion to what he had lost. He took it almost as a personal injury. Piers had had his men at work there. The ground beneath the trees had been ploughed up. The path Finch had followed was gone. There was nothing there but the rough brownness of moist earth. And as though this were not enough Piers himself stood in a wagon with the spraying machine, holding in his hands the hose from which the poisonous rainbow of the Bordeaux mixture arched itself against the sky.
Finch’s expression was almost comic in dismay. Piers saw him and called out a genial hello! He waggled the hose and the rainbow writhed in sinister salute.
Finch waved his hand in reply but it was a limp gesture. He did not know where to go, what to do with himself. His hand, in his pocket, fingered the key of the piano.
At this moment Harriet Archer appeared on the path, coming toward him. He felt that she was coming toward him with purpose and he was determined to avoid her if he could. But she gave him no chance of doing so. She fixed her eyes on his face and held him with them as she drew near.
He had to face her.
She said, rather breathlessly — “I must see you. I have been looking everywhere for you. Where can we talk alone?”
“Well,” he looked about vaguely, “I don’t know. I —” A faint colour flooded his face. “Are you sure it’s me
you want to see?”
“Oh, quite, quite sure! You are the only one who can help.”
He opened his long, large-pupilled eyes in surprise.
“Well — then, of course — I wonder where we had better go.” He looked about him bewildered.
“I should not trouble you. But — you are the only one who can help. The only one.” She looked searchingly into his face. She was afraid she could not reach him, make him willing to do something desperate to save Jalna.
“There’s a packing shed beyond the orchard,” he said. “We might go there.” He thought — If once she gets me alone I may not be able to escape…. But I’ll go with her and — if it’s anything I can’t listen to — I’ll tell her I’m not well…. Perhaps Piers — He said:
“There’s Piers. He is much better than I am at … at helping … doing the sort of thing…. I’m really no good at all….” He made as though to leave her.
But her small figure blocked the way! “You must listen! You must hear what I have to say!”
He led the way resignedly to an open shed where fruit boxes and crates, left over from the past season, littered the floor. Before them was a stretch of raspberry and blackberry canes in new leaf and the close matted rows of a strawberry bed. They sat down on a bench and Finch took off his glasses and polished them. Harriet had got some of the sandy soil in her shoe. She felt tired and hot. Her strength seemed to have left her. She suddenly felt alone — and alien.
But this weakening of will was the forwarding of her purpose. Finch, looking shyly at her, no longer felt the desire to escape. He said:
“This is a quiet place for talking…. I’m so sorry if you’re in trouble.”
Impulsively she laid her hand on his. He thought he had never felt a more soothing touch. She said:
“It’s not really my trouble — except that I love the place — and the people who live in it.”
He looked into her eyes with a deepening interest — with cool intelligence she had not yet seen in his. “Yes?” he said.
She went on desperately — “I suppose you know that — that there is a mortgage on Jalna.”
He coloured. “Of course.”
“And that it expires this summer?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
Her eyes accused him. “You hadn’t thought …”
His colour deepened. “Well — you see, I’ve been ill so long…. Nearly a year.”
She said, almost sharply — “You don’t look ill now. You did when I came here.”
“Oh, I’m better. I hadn’t remembered…. But, look here, when these things expire they renew them, don’t they?”
Harriet Archer rapped out — “Your wife won’t! She’s going to foreclose. You know what that will mean to Renny — to all of you!”
Finch stared incredulously. “But he’ll never let her. Don’t imagine that he’ll take that lying down!”
“I don’t think he knows. She has just told me. I have come straight from her.”
“You have come straight from her!” Finch spoke almost dreamily as though to someone who had just returned from an unimagined land.
“Yes. I’m almost out of breath.” She felt that perhaps he might resent, for some subtle reason, her agitation. She would therefore give it a physical cause.
He asked — “Why did she tell this to you? Do you think she was using you as a sort of — mediator?”
She saw his hostility to Sarah in the hardening of his lips. She answered:
“Sarah said I might come back and tell him — Renny, I mean.”
“And have you?”
“No — I couldn’t bear to! Not till I’d seen you.”
He asked gravely — “Miss Archer, what do you think I could do?”
“I thought perhaps — oh, how can I put it into words! I thought perhaps you would see her yourself. Plead with her. She’s terribly in love with you, you know.”
He broke out excitedly — “Tell me the truth! Why is Sarah doing this? I am sure you know.”
“She thinks — she blames Renny for your refusing to live with her.”
“Then — is she getting even with him? Or trying to force me back to her?”
“Either — or both. I’m not sure that I know.”
“Miss Archer, tell me the truth. Did you come to see whether you could persuade me to go back to Sarah?”
Harriet averted her eyes. It took some courage for her to reply.
“I thought perhaps if you knew…. People do come together again — after separation.”
“Not after a separation like ours,” he said savagely. “I tell you, I wouldn’t do that — not to save Jalna — not for Renny’s sake — well, it’s just unthinkable!”
She looked at him pathetically. “Do you think I ought to go to him — tell him what she has threatened?”
“No. I’ll go myself. He’s over there now, talking to Piers. I’ll go straight to him.”
“Do you think he will be able to raise the money?”
“I think he’d move heaven and earth to save Jalna.”
He smiled at her. It was the first time she had seen his wide boyish smile and her heart warmed to him. She said:
“He’s been so kind to me. No one in all my life has ever been so kind. I can’t bear to think …” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “Perhaps after you have talked with him, you will tell me what he said. I’ll just sit here and wait.”
Finch covered the ground between them and Renny in long strides. Renny turned an approving look on him.
“Well,” he said, “I haven’t seen you walk like that for a long while.”
“Look here, Renny.” He took Renny by the sleeve and drew him along the path. The wagon was lumbering away from them, leaving the evil smell of the Bordeaux mixture.
“Renny,” said Finch, “I’ve just been having a talk with Miss Archer.”
“I’m glad of that. Nice little woman, isn’t she? And fits in surprisingly well.”
Finch gave a short laugh. “Yes, surprisingly…. She has just been telling me that the mortgage on Jalna expires this summer. I’d forgotten.”
Renny’s eyebrows went up. “Why the devil should she tell you that?”
“Because Sarah has just told her that she intends to foreclose.”
Renny showed instant alarm but exclaimed:
“She won’t do it!”
“You don’t know Sarah if you say that. She’s absolutely relentless. Hasn’t she given you any warning?”
“She’s dropped hints. She’s said she’d like to own Jalna. She’s said she would like to spend the rest of her days here. Of course, the root of it all is, that she wants you.” He turned his penetrating gaze on Finch.
Finch bore it and its implications without flinching. He put his hands in his pockets and his fingers closed over the key of the piano. He said.
“And can’t have me.”
“That’s right! Stick to that! She’d ruin your life. I hate the sight of her myself.”
“Renny, what shall you do?” There was still in his tone something of the old implicit belief in Renny’s power.
The face he looked into was formidable enough at this moment to justify the belief. Its weather-beaten hardness was concentrated into a defensive widening of the nostrils and strengthening of the muscles about the mouth.
“I must raise the money! The witch is mistaken if she thinks she’ll ever make her nest in Jalna. If I can’t get any of my friends to help me out — and I’m afraid there’s not much chance of that — in these days — then I must sell off the horses — some of the land — I’ll sell my soul if necessary —” His eyes blazed into Finch’s.
Finch caught him by the arm. “Renny — the solution lies with me! It’s all as easy as rolling off a log! I have enough money left to pay off the mortgage. You must take it!”
Renny’s lips softened to tenderness. “You would do that, Finch? But you mustn’t! It isn’t fair!”
“But it
is fair! It’s just — and nothing more.”
“God — it will take a load off my mind to have it in your hands instead of hers!”
“No, no, I don’t mean that! I don’t mean that at all! Renny, I don’t want to hold a mortgage on Jalna. I’d loathe it. It’s bad enough holding a mortgage on Vaughanlands. You know in your heart that it’s only fair you should have a share of Gran’s money. This is your share. You are to pay the money to Sarah and tear up the papers. I want nothing out of it — but my freedom! And I’ll feel a thousand times freer when she has her clutches off you — her death grip — her mortgage!” He was becoming too excited. His lips trembled. He began to shake all over. Looking at him, realizing what he was doing, Renny too was deeply moved. He could not speak. He just stood staring, his proud face softening more and more till his lips trembled also.
“Shut up!” he said gently. “You’re making a fool of yourself — and me too —” He took out a clean handkerchief, neatly folded, shook it and loudly blew his nose.
“It’s all right, isn’t it? You’ll do it straight away?” said Finch.
“Will I? It’s the happiest day of my life — I can tell you that. I’ve been worried over this more than anyone knows. I’ve been to the bank — I’ve tried to get a loan from them — but they’re being damned careful about loans in these days. As for selling my horses — it would ruin me! But that’s all over, thanks to you, Finch. You’re the best brother in the world, old man.”
“Don’t!” said Finch. “Don’t thank me, Renny. I can’t bear it!”
Abruptly he turned away and began to walk swiftly along the sandy path marked by the wheels of the farm wagon. From it he turned into the narrow bridle path that led through the wood. It was the first time this year that he had gone there. It was a place too pregnant with the memories of his boyhood — all those strange fears and exalted hopes. He had had the dread also of meeting Sarah there, for Piers had told him of seeing her in the very heart of it.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 109
