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

by Mazo de La Roche

“But you can’t be positive of this! After all, you’re just guessing, aren’t you? My mother never wrote to you to tell you I was coming, did she?”

  “No, she didn’t tell me, though we exchanged letters for a time. Then she stopped writing. Evidently she didn’t want me to know. There was a kind of deep reserve in her that makes me understand her doing this. I think you have it in you, too.”

  “Then you’re only guessing really!”

  “I have no written proof but I am positive. You do believe in instinct, don’t you? And there’s more than that. Look.”

  He took her hand and held it in front of her. He put his own right hand beside it.

  “I have a very individual hand,” he said. “I want you to look at it and then at your own.”

  Obediently she examined his lean, muscular, man’s hand, then her own thin, girl’s hand.

  “They don’t look alike to me,” she said.

  “Not look alike! Do you see the bend of the little finger — the length of the thumb and the way it’s joined to the hand — the shape of the nails! Why, the two hands are identical.”

  “That might be chance.”

  “But it isn’t chance. And look here,” — he led her to the mirror above the mantel, — “I want you to examine our foreheads and the way the hair grows. Do you see? Look at my ears — then at your own! You are marked, Molly, as my daughter. There’s no getting away from it. At first I kept thinking — ‘How like her mother she is!’ But now I can see only your resemblance to me. Don’t you see it?”

  “Yes,” she answered, half reluctantly. “I do. And there was that letter. The one I found among my mother’s things. He —” she stumbled over the word, not knowing what to call Dayborn — “he said in it — ‘You’ve never been able to get that red-haired fellow out of your mind. I’ll swear there aren’t many husbands as forgiving as I am.’”

  “Brute!”

  “He went on to ask her how much money she had and to send him as much as she could. That letter turned me against him.”

  “No wonder. But, if you had known him, you’d have forgiven him a good deal…. The question is — can you forgive me?”

  Old Adeline, propitiatory, challenging, wary, looked out of his eyes. He forgot, for the moment, his harassment of the past twenty-four hours.

  She turned to him swiftly and laid her cheek against his shoulder. She said: —

  “I’m glad … in a strange sort of way. I can’t explain.”

  He put his arm about her.

  “Do you realize what it’s going to mean to you and Wake?” he asked.

  She looked trustfully into his face. “What had I better do? Tell him or keep it secret?”

  He answered, almost irritably, “I’ve had it out with Wake. He realizes that you can’t marry now.”

  His arm tightened about her. He waited for the impact of the blow. He felt her go rigid. Then she began to cry wildly and loudly. She beat on his shoulder with her hands.

  “We can’t marry!” she cried. “We can’t marry!”

  She would have fallen to the floor but he took her in his arms trying to quiet her.

  At last she said — “I must go away.”

  “Yes. That will be best…. Molly, I’d have given anything I possess to have prevented this. It’s been one of the worst days in my life.”

  “It has broken my heart,” she sobbed.

  “Poor little girl!” He stroked her hair.

  “I’ll go back to England.”

  “You and Wake must settle what is best to do.”

  “When can I see him?”

  “Whenever you like. Shall I send him here?”

  “Yes. Tell him not to be long, will you?”

  “I’ll send him as soon as I can find him. Molly — you’ll have to be strong. It’s going to be awful for Wake to give you up.”

  “What did he say — when you told him?”

  “He was terribly upset.”

  She began once more to cry, wildly.

  He found some brandy in the sideboard and gave her a little. He chafed her hands, which were icy cold. As he looked down at their hands, his warm and strong, bringing the life back to hers, the resemblance between them seemed suddenly to typify the whole heartbreaking business to her. She closed her fingers round his and held them to her breast.

  XXVI

  RENNY AND ALAYNE

  ARCHER WHITEOAK WENT down through the ravine and over the bridge, drawing his new sleigh behind him. The bell on it jingled merrily but he did not feel merry. Somewhere he had lost his cap. He could not remember when but he now realized that the cold wind was whistling in his ears and over his crown. The sleigh felt heavy, much heavier than on the way over. The two girls and Nook had disappeared long ago. He had been left to find his way home alone. He would tell his mother.

  Though it was still early afternoon the sun was slanting through the trees, etching a pattern of great beauty on the snow. Diminutive snow clouds were sometimes blown across its crust. Archer saw no beauty in the scene about him. It existed for him as an immense icy basin across which he had a long way to traverse. In the illimitable distance was the circular shape of a cookie or a sweet biscuit or a snow apple. This was all that kept him alive crossing the ravine.

  He passed through the little wicket gate on the lawn. The gate was propped wide open by a snowdrift. He discovered that he had a sore spot somewhere. He had coughed and it had hurt.

  He pondered on this hurt with gathering gloom as he trudged toward the porch. The sheep dog was sitting in the porch, a bundle of snowy grey hair, and ran joyfully to greet him. He gave it a shout of warning but that was of no avail. It knocked him down as he knew it would. The sore spot hurt again!

  He made no attempt to pick up the rope of his sleigh but went howling straight into the house.

  Alayne came down the stairs, her mind balanced between annoyance and sympathy.

  “Whatever is the matter?” she asked.

  He threw himself on the bottom step and lay there, filling the house with his woe. She picked him up and began to divest him of his outer garments.

  “Darling, are you hurt? Where is your cap?”

  “My feet are cold! They went and left me!”

  “What a shame! Where were you?”

  “At Uncle Ernest’s … Oh — my feet! Oh — my sore spot!”

  Rags came and she gave him the small snow suit to shake and hang up.

  “Come upstairs with Mummie,” she said.

  “I can’t wa-alk!”

  His face looked fragile but he had a sturdy body. She found him heavy and was glad to set him down in her room. She undressed his feet and held them in her warm lap. She looked anxiously into his face.

  “Where is the sore spot?”

  “It’s where somebody hit me.”

  “Hit you! Who was it?”

  “I forget.” Deliberately he gave his rare smile that always stirred her heart. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Can I have a cookie?”

  “Archer, I cannot let you eat between meals.”

  There was silence for a moment while he watched her ministrations to him. Then he said: — “I don’t feel well.”

  “Then why do you want to eat?”

  “To make me feel better.” He put his hand to his side. “There’s the spot! I hurt it when I fell off my sleigh. Daddy was kissing the girl and I fell off my sleigh. It was his fault.”

  Alayne looked at him, unable to speak for a moment in her astonishment. Then she demanded: —

  “What do you mean, Archer? You must tell Mummie just what you mean.”

  He laid his hand on her head as though he were blessing her. “If had something to eat I could talk.”

  She rose and went to a cabinet. She took barley sugar from it and gave him a piece.

  “Where was Daddy?” she asked, trying to speak without concern.

  “In Uncle Ernest’s house.” His cheek was distended by the sweet. “I stood on my sleigh and looked through the wind
ow. The girl was on the sofa —”

  “What girl?”

  “Molly. You know Molly, don’t you? Tickle my feet and see if I can keep from laughing.”

  “In a moment. Did Daddy and Molly see you?”

  “No. They were on the sofa. She was being naughty and he kissed her. Now tickle me!”

  Gently Alayne caressed his pink sole with the tips of her fingers. She looked compellingly into his eyes.

  “Tell me, why did you leave the window?”

  “Molly frightened me. I fell off my sleigh and came home.”

  “Didn’t they see you?”

  “No. Tickle me harder!”

  “Tell me right from the beginning what happened and you shall have another sweet.”

  “Well, they looked in the glass and she put her head on his shoulder and cried and he carried her to the sofa and held her like you do me and gave her something to drink in a glass and kissed her. And she kissed him. The spot is right here.” He laid his hand on it. “It doesn’t hurt so badly when you tickle me and I have a sweet.”

  Alayne heard Renny’s step on the stair. He came into the room. A cold rage toward him possessed her. She could have screamed in her rage at him. She felt rage, like a living thing, turn in her breast, but she pressed it down and spoke in a controlled voice.

  “Tell Daddy how you hurt yourself, Archer.”

  He began eagerly — “It was your fault, Daddy, wasn’t it? Because if you hadn’t been on the sofa with Molly I’d not have looked through the window and —”

  Renny interrupted — “What are you saying? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Why, yes, Daddy. You closed the window and I looked in and you —”

  “Shut up!” exclaimed Renny sharply. “You’re talking nonsense and you know it.”

  Alayne smiled. “You should choose a more secluded spot for your rendezvous,” she said.

  “I don’t know what either of you mean.”

  Archer turned his bare feet together till the soles met. He clasped his hands and his brow became accusing. “I fell off my sleigh,” he said, “because I tried to see what Daddy and Molly were doing.”

  “You may be willing to encourage the boy to be a spy and a liar,” broke in Renny. “I can’t agree.”

  Alayne began to draw on the little boy’s socks.

  “I don’t want to go!” he whined.

  “I hear Adeline in the passage. She’ll take you up with her. It’s almost your teatime.”

  He stiffened himself to a poker. “I won’t go!”

  If he was a poker Renny’s grasp was iron. He carried him into the passage and closed the door behind. Adeline was standing with her back against the opposite wall, very straight, as though her height were to be measured.

  “Adeline,” he said, “I want you to take Archie up to the nursery! He’s got some nonsense in his head. Make him forget it. It’s damned silly.”

  Her eyes searched his face.

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  She took her brother by the hand and he walked stiffly toward the stairs. He began, in a dictatorial tone: —

  “Daddy shouldn’t have made Molly cry and then —”

  Adeline interrupted him with a gay laugh. “I know and I’d have cried too but I laughed and laughed and what do you suppose I laughed at? An owl and a squirrel fighting in the ravine! The feathers and the fur flew. Come and I’ll tell you.”

  Renny gave a wry smile and went back to Alayne.

  She was standing, waiting.

  “Our children are getting an early training in deception,” she said.

  He tried to touch her but she drew sharply away.

  “Alayne,” he said, “I ask you, in all truth and sincerity, to believe me. I —”

  She interrupted — “Believe you! When there’s another woman in question!” She put her hands on the foot-board of the bed and gripped it to steady herself. “Never! I know you too well.”

  “How dare you say that to me!” he exclaimed roughly. “You talk as though our life was a succession of affairs on my part and endurance on yours. It’s unjust.”

  “You’ll be telling me next that you’ve always been faithful to me and that Archer saw nothing.”

  “I was unfaithful — if you want that word — once! Once, I tell you, in all our married life! I thought that was over — forgiven — forgotten — it was the only time. There was something to be said on my side. I’ll swear there was! As to what Archie saw — I was comforting Molly because she is in trouble.”

  “Yes — yes — I know that sort of trouble! She wants you! That’s her only trouble.”

  “My God! She adores Wake.”

  “I’ve seen looks pass between you. I couldn’t understand. Now I do. There’s no use in talking to me.”

  “Archer saw something in that room that shocked him.”

  “He saw Molly crying.”

  “Why were you kissing her?”

  “I wasn’t!”

  “You were!”

  “You take that mere baby’s word against mine?”

  “Your own face gives you the lie! The moment you stepped inside the door and heard Archer talking you looked excited and defensive. What was she crying about?”

  “Her father. She worries about him. He’s drinking hard”

  “My God, why need you and she go to an empty house to talk about her family affairs? Where was Wakefield? Why didn’t she tell her troubles to him?”

  “She thought I could help her.” He stared steadily into Alayne’s eyes.

  “And I don’t doubt that you did,” she sneered. “You helped her by kissing her! Well, you are not the first middle-aged man to want affairs with young girls.”

  He still looked steadily into her eyes. “Alayne,” he said, “anyone who heard you say that might wonder if you have an atom of love left for me.”

  There was a moment of quivering silence, then she began to cry bitterly. “You can’t imagine what it is,” she sobbed, “to be a woman who sees her looks going and her husband …” She could not speak. She covered her face with her hands.

  “Now listen to me,” he said. “You know that I have never been interested in girls. The one woman who came into my life after our marriage was a woman of my own age. If I kissed Molly Griffith — and I don’t think I did —”

  “You acknowledge it then!”

  “I stick only to one thing and that is that you are the only woman I love and that —”

  “Please don’t try to explain!”

  “Let me speak!”

  “It’s too painful, I can’t bear it.”

  “But you can bear to say things to me that cut me to the heart!”

  “Can you wonder at anything I say?”

  “What has happened? Just tell me!”

  She answered, in a shaking voice, “You have made love to a girl visiting in the house.”

  “Whose word have you for it?”

  “Your own! You can’t deny it.”

  “Alayne, you might have heard every word that passed between us —”

  “Why were the two of you on the sofa?”

  He laughed. “Have I so little finesse that I would forget to draw down the blind if it were expedient?”

  “The house was empty. You thought you were far from everyone.”

  “I knew the children were outside.”

  She put her hands to her forehead and pushed back her thick hair. She said: —

  “I can’t talk about it any more. It exhausts me. I have lost my looks. I have lost your love. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

  “You have lost neither.”

  “Are you going to tell Wake of your meeting with — that girl?”

  “He already knows.”

  She broke out wildly, “Oh, you’re too much for me! You’re too clever. Too experienced. But you’ve done something today that I’ll never forget. You’ve broken down something I’ve been for years building up. You’ll go away to the war leaving me with this feeling!
”

  He looked at her contemplatively, as a surgeon might look at a patient, wondering if she were strong enough to bear the operation he had in his mind.

  After a space of silence, he said — “I think I had better tell you the whole truth about this.”

  “Are you going to tell me you want a divorce?” she asked, in a voice not her own.

  “Alayne, don’t make it harder for us! Just listen to me quietly. Something terrible has happened. That is, terrible for Wake and Molly. You must remember that they are deeply in love. They expected to marry in a few weeks. Now they find that they can never marry. They can never marry because —” How could he go on? What would be the effect of such a disclosure? Well — she’d asked for it. Let her have it!

  “Can’t marry!” she repeated, her eyes still hard with suspicion.

  “They can’t marry because — Molly is my daughter.” He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone in his effort to calm her. “You can imagine what it means to me to tell you this but I feel it’s better than that you should think what you do.”

  “But —” she spoke in a hoarse whisper — “how can that be?”

  “Have you ever heard the family speak of a girl named Chris who came to Jalna, after the last war, to help train horses?”

  “Yes. She and her husband were both here. They were English people.”

  “They were a very unhappy pair. There was no love between them. She and I … that summer … Do you understand?”

  “Only too well,” she breathed, wringing her fingers together.

  “Well, from things Molly said, I began to suspect. Then I became certain. This morning I told Wake. This afternoon I had to tell Molly.” He smiled grimly. “A nice sort of day, eh?”

  He stood waiting for her to speak. She sat shielding her eyes with her hand but he could see her mouth. He looked at it a moment, then, as though its expression hurt him unbearably, he dropped his eyes to the floor and stood waiting.

  Alayne tried to think clearly but there was a buzzing in her ears that distracted her. He stood there waiting. She must say something. That girl, his daughter — he had just come home from the War! Now he was about to go to fight in another war. What a stirring life! The courage, the masculinity, the unscrupulousness of it! A slow deep joy welled up in her, spreading from her breast to her very hair and finger tips as sap through a tree. It felt like life itself welling up in her. She had not lost him! Her mind revolved in burning eagerness round her relief, her love. She could not think of the boy and girl torn apart. Not yet. Not while she was still quivering under the reverberation of her relief.