Now he did not give her a thought. He thought of nothing but the new lightness and strength that was pouring into him. His breast ached with the colossal uprising of his spirit. As he strode among the pines he struck his breast with his hand feeling the new power in him. He tried to think what this power was. It rose to him out of the land, as though from the soles of his feet. There was a communion between him and the land such as he had not felt in years. But this was something new because in it was the blending of his childhood, his boyhood, his manhood. All his past, present, and future, all the splendour and misery of his thoughts were one with the land…. He threw himself on the pine needles at the foot of the tall dark trees that shut out the sunlight and buried his face in his arms.
He lay there pressing his body against the life-giving earth. Why am I suddenly so strong, so well, he thought. What has broken the chains that held me to fear and pain? I don’t need to ask myself this. It is because I have given away the last of Gran’s money. I’ve given it to Renny who should have had it all…. I’ve been so selfish, so morbidly wrapped up in my own suffering, that I have forgotten the suffering of others. I was like a swimmer who has been submerged under a great wave, suffocating, cut off from the light and air. But now I can breathe. I can see the light … I’ve given away everything. I’ve forgotten myself. Now I’m conscious of all that’s about me — in a new way. There’s no fear in me. It goes through me like music…. like music….
He turned on his side and looked at his sensitive bony hand spread out on the pine needles. His hand had a new meaning. Something apart from himself. His fingers were like five separate beings with individual power of their own. But his wrist bound them to him.
He heard the most minute sounds…. Surely he heard the very rustling of the pine needles as they made room for those that, this moment, fell…. Surely he heard the murmurs of the moss that edged the hump of that strong root…. Was it not possible that he heard the pine roots communing with each other in the warm earth? Heard the faint cry of the bud as it first felt the air?
Something sharp pressed against his hip. He rolled over and thrust his hand in his pocket. He found the key of the piano and took it out. It was warmed by his body. He lay smiling, with it in his hand. The strange, yet rather fascinating discord the children had made on the piano that morning, began to go through his head.
XXX
PAID IN FULL
A CARD WAS stuck above the electric bell stating that it was out of order. But there was a knocker on the door, a man in armour made of brass. Renny knocked on this and the small sharp blows vibrated through the house. Sarah answered the door herself, standing on the threshold with the expectant air she always had now when summoned.
A shadow crossed her face when she saw who it was. Then she smiled a little and gave him a slanting inquisitive look, feeling sure that Miss Archer’s message had brought him there. If there was to be a scene between them, she thought, she would summon all the cruelty in her to hurt him as he had hurt her. But she spoke to him gently and they went into a small living room. This was the room where Antoine Lebraux had died, but Sarah had so changed it that it was not recognizable to Renny. It was furnished in green. The lamp was green-shaded and in its light their faces showed pallid, almost sinister. Magazines, boxes of sweets, and cushions were littered about. The air was heavy with the scent of Russian cigarettes. Yet Sarah looked cool and fresh. She glanced inquisitively at the dispatch case he carried in his hand.
He set it on the table and said:
“You may well look at it. There is a good deal of money in it. It’s the last of any transaction — business or otherwise — between you and me.”
She was mystified. She said:
“You look exactly like an agent of some sort — or a piano tuner. Have you come to tune my piano?”
“No. I’ve come to pay the piper.” He opened the case and showed her that it was filled with bank notes. “There — there is the amount of the mortgage in full!”
“The amount of the mortgage in full?” she repeated faintly.
“Yes. Miss Archer told me that you had made up your mind to foreclose, so I have brought the money. I suppose it’s idiotic of me but I couldn’t bear to pay it by cheque. I wanted to hand the actual money to you — to see the lump sum pass from my hands to yours. I wish I could have brought it in gold or even silver. But it would have been very inconvenient for you, even if I could have done it. Now, if you will sit down opposite me, I will count out the money on the table. I want you to be sure that it’s right.”
“Why, yes, if you like —” She sat down beside the table obediently like a child.
But she could not keep her mind on the counting. Her eyes moved from the capable shifting of the notes between his fingers to his face, greenish bronze in the strange light. So all her revenge on him had come to this? He was sitting opposite her unwelding, link by link, the chain by which she had thought to bind Jalna to her….
Curiously, as she watched him, her antagonism faded. It was possible that no heat of anger could survive in the watery-green light of the room. Her glance was almost obsequious as she watched the mound of notes grow beneath his hands, the thousands upon thousands of dollars. She said:
“It was wonderful that you could lay your hands on all that at a moment’s notice.”
“Ssh!” he returned sharply, and went on counting.
She drooped silent, submissive. When he had laid the last note on the pile he said:
“I couldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for Finch.”
Her breath was expelled in a sharp exhalation.
“Finch!” she repeated. “Did he lend you all that?”
“He didn’t lend it. He gave it.”
“But why should he do that?”
A smile flickered across Renny’s face.
“Oh,” he said, “I think you can guess.”
“You mean … so that I should have to go away from here?”
“Yes. I haven’t seen him look so happy in years as when he gave me that money.”
Her tone was almost confidential. “Then you think it’s absolutely hopeless — his ever coming back to me?”
“I told you that long ago. But you would persist. Now you can see that it’s quite useless. You’ll have to go away, Sarah.”
“But where can I go? What can I do?”
“Good God!” he answered testily. “You have the whole world before you! You’re young. You should find another man.”
“Finch is the one man I could love. He is the only being in the world who matters to me.”
“You should meet other people. It’s wrong to shut yourself up here like a hermit. It has made you neurotic.”
She was looking at him steadily. He was struck silent by the look of hate in her eyes.
“Why should you look at me like that?” he asked. “I’ve only done what is natural.”
She did not answer. She seemed to draw on all her reserve of power to concentrate her look on him.
He gave a short laugh and said — “Well, I’ve paid the money … so that’s the end of that.”
She shouted, with a vehemence that startled him — “I won’t take your money! I won’t have it!” She snatched up the mound of banknotes from the table and darted toward the glowing fire.
He sprang after her and caught her by the wrists. She gave a scream so piercing that he turned pale. She tore one hand free and with it struck him again and again. “You devil!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you!”
He held her off while he gathered up the notes. He thrust them into a deep drawer of the writing table, locked it, then tossed the key into the glowing coals.
She sank on to the couch and buried her face in her hands.
He asked — “Have you the papers in the house?”
“No,” she answered hoarsely. He scarcely knew the voice for Sarah’s.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. I can get them later. But you must sign this receipt for the money�
�. If I’d known you’d carry on like this I should certainly have sent a cheque to your lawyer. Now, I want you to behave yourself and sit up.” He carried the receipt on a blotting pad to her side.
She sat up rigid and took the pen from his hands.
“Sign here,” he said, pointing the place with his finger. She signed. Then she raised her white face, Medusa-like under her black hair, to his: “If it had been you,” she said, “if it had been you I’d loved, you would have never cast me off. Oh, I wish it had been you!”
XXXI
UNRAVELLING
THE NEWS THAT Finch had paid the mortgage, that Jalna stood liberated, foursquare to the winds, swept through the house from attic to basement. The house seemed conscious of the good news. It had a prideful air as though it spread its roof with a new assurance above the cherished beings beneath. It drank in the early summer sunshine. It hunched its gables against the beating summer storms. At night its walls re-echoed the cries of the whippoorwills, its windows reflected the lightning. In the mornings its chimneys sent up genial spirals of smoke.
The future master of Jalna thrived. His sister grew handsomer every day. Even Roma’s cheeks put on the colour of a wild rose and her spindling legs grew round and firm. Her hair became thick and lay on her head in a golden sheen.
The farmlands showed the promise of rich crops. The blossoms of the orchard trees were set in the seal of fruit. Piers boasted that not a foal, calf, or young pig had died. The hens seemed to delight in hatching large broods. Piers caught Meg in the very act of gliding about his poultry-house with a basket into which she was popping eggs for a setting of his pure-bred stock. She said that she was in a kind of haze from all that had transpired and scarcely knew what she was doing. He let her keep the eggs.
Word came from Wakefield that they might expect him in a few days. Renny had written to him of the paying off of the mortgage and it was understood that Wakefield could not rest till he had had a day with the family. He must join in the jubilation.
It was Nicholas who suggested that they should celebrate by a dinner party, to which all the family must come. This should coincide with Wakefield’s visit and should be given in honour of Finch — if Finch felt able to bear that honour.
Finch agreed, but he must not be asked to make a speech, even to this intimate few. He remembered his speech on his twenty-first birthday.
To Renny especially the thought of the dinner came most acceptably. He would be glad of the chance of a little display. The thought that Harriet Archer had known of the distress of his situation, his bitter need of money, had rankled within him. He wanted her to feel that he made no sacrifice in offering her a home. He wanted to impose on her mind the generous well-being of the old days at Jalna. He and Alayne talked over plans for the dinner. She thought he was being extravagant for a family party but delighted in seeing him extravagant. She wrote out as intricate a menu as she thought Mrs. Wragge could cope with. At Renny’s wish the best silver and Captain Whiteoak’s massive dinner service were brought out. At Finch’s wish even old friends were not invited. His confidence was too lately won. He could not face outsiders.
In these days the wonder of each awakening lay in his freedom. Sarah was gone. The fox farm was empty. Now he could wander as far afield as he chose without ever the fear of meeting her. She had said goodbye to none of them. She had gone away without a word the day after her interview with Renny. Removers had come and taken what she owned from the house. It still held the furniture the family had lent her. Already the grass of the lawn was growing long and the house beginning to look desolate. Finch went there one day, his mind full of confused thoughts, and peered in at the windows. He was surprised to see Ernest and Harriet Archer sitting on the couch in the living room in close conversation. Finch, startled, remembered his voyage to England in company with his uncles and how attentive Ernest had been to an American lady on board. Now here he was in obvious admiration of Alayne’s aunt. There was something in American women that appealed to him.
Finch went away without having been seen. He could not rest. Nothing he could do satisfied the urge of the new energy that was in him. But he had not found himself. In spite of the happiness, the peace he had given Renny, the sense of tranquility he had been able to give to Jalna, he had not found himself. He longed for the coming of Wakefield.
Two days later Wakefield came. They all had to acknowledge that the life of the monastery agreed with him. He looked healthier than they had ever seen him, and happier too. His eyes glowed with happiness. He could not look at you without smiling.
Alayne had got herself a new dress for the dinner. It was long since she had bought herself anything new — excepting the things for the Horse Show — and she had a woman’s instinct to deck her body in her new happiness. She had asked Renny what he thought about it and he had agreed that a new dress would become her. She could have wept when he drew out the last payment he had had from his uncles and pushed it into her hand. She remembered how close she had been with him when she was the one who had money and he had none. But she smiled — took a quarter of what he had offered and gave the rest back. Again she could almost have wept at his look of relief. Was she always to live between smiles and tears?
He was ready first and he came to see her in her new dress, a gay flowered taffeta with a little train. She was standing in front of her pier glass, so that, on opening the door, he discovered two of her. He elongated his face and held up his hands in an excess of admiration.
“A peach!” he breathed. “A perfect peach!”
She faced him. “Do you like it so well?”
“I love it. By George, I have never seen you look so lovely!”
“Never?” she spoke incredulously.
“Never!” he answered with fervour.
She almost agreed as she turned again to her reflection. The new styles suited her and, in the last months, her face had gained something it had lacked.
From behind he clasped her about the middle and they swayed together. He began to laugh.
Her face slanted upward toward his. “What are you laughing at?”
“I was remembering the night I took the money to Sarah.”
“Tck — I can’t see what there was funny in that!”
“I was remembering how she screamed — really screeched — and hit me on the head.”
Alayne was horrified. “Hit you!”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“You never mentioned it! She dared hit you! I always thought she had a violent temper underneath that air of remoteness.”
“Yes that’s true. And she said something…. What was it, now?… Oh yes — she said that, if it had been me she loved, I should never have cast her off.”
“I hope she flattered herself.”
“She did indeed. I couldn’t have loved that girl — not if she and I were the last two on earth. But I admit I like the thought of her better since she said that.”
“Well, thank goodness, she’s gone!”
They went downstairs hand in hand.
When Ernest found the opportunity he drew Renny aside and said — “I think it would be better if you did not mention the names of my mother or Eden at dinner tonight. I know you do it out of your great affection but it is saddening and I particularly want everything to pass off happily, without the least shadow.”
Renny stared rather aggressively at his uncle. “Do you mean to say it will spoil the party if I mention Gran’s name?”
“No, no, no, but — sometimes you have rather a sombre way with you. Do speak of my mother if you like but I really think you had better not refer to Eden … not tonight, dear boy.”
“I’ll not mention either of them,” returned Renny huffily.
He still looked taciturn when Finch ran into him in the doorway of the dining room. He had slipped in there to look at the table. He had the most extraordinary feeling of extreme youngness and irresponsibility. The thought of seeing the table finely spread was an excitement. He
found himself stirred by things which, a few weeks ago, would have left him untouched or shrinking. Now this family party — this close drawing together — this air of festivity — this feeling of being a boy again — younger than any of them — younger than Wake…. He looked eagerly into Renny’s face. Would he guess? Renny said:
“Ha, you’ve been pinching something off the table! Young whelp!”
Rags hardly knew himself in a new coat. No bishop in ceremonial robes could have shown greater dignity than Rags as he waited at table. He was filled with vanity at his own appearance, with pride in his wife’s achievement. No one could deny that the dinner was perfect, from the clear soup to the first strawberries of the season served with rich ice cream. Everyone ate well but none so well as Wakefield.
Meg was rather pensive. It was hard to think of Renny and Alayne so miraculously freed from their mortgage while she and Maurice still laboured under theirs — the unpaid interest mounting up and up. But no one enjoyed delicious food more than she did and she put her envy from her and beamed around the table.
Harriet Archer was sitting on Renny’s right. She was conscious of the admiring glances he gave at her chiffon dress of pinkish-mauve, at her beautifully waved silver hair. She felt that she and Alayne possessed a style very different from that of Meg and Pheasant. Yet she acknowledged that never had she sat down to a table surrounded by such striking-looking people as these. Her eyes dwelt longest on Ernest’s aristocratic aquiline face.
Ernest was rising to his feet. Surely they were not to have speeches! thought Alayne.
Piers exclaimed — “Hear! Hear!”
Nicholas gave his brother an encouraging smile.
“I’m not going to make a speech,” said Ernest, rather nervously. “I’m just going to tell you something which I hope will please you. I have all my life had a desire to get married, though you may not have guessed it. But I could never find the one person to whom I felt I was perfectly suited. Now I have found her and, though it’s rather late in the day, I think we are going to be very happy. Miss Archer has promised to be my wife.”
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 110
