She took her hand from her eyes and looked up at him.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked.
“That is all in the past,” she answered.
She was sitting and he came and knelt beside her. He put his forehead in her lap. A wave of possessive tenderness, all the more passionate because he must so soon go away, swept over her. She put her arms about him and held him dose.
XXVII
THE SEVERING
Molly was sitting with her hands clasped between her knees when Wakefield came into the room. She raised her eyes, heavy from weeping, to his. She was shocked by his pallor, his drawn look. She said: —
“Oh, Wake, what has Renny done to us?”
He answered hoarsely, “He’s ruined our lives.” Then he added — “But Renny didn’t know. It’s a blow to him too.”
They felt as though a gulf had opened between them. He stood just inside the door, looking at her. She might have been a stranger whose features he was trying to impress on his mind. After a little he said: —
“Do you believe it, Molly?”
She nodded, wringing her fingers together.
“Have you just what he thinks to go on or do you know of anything else?”
“Now that he’s told me, other things come to my mind. A picture. A letter. Then our hands. It’s as though they were cast out of the same mould.”
“Yes. I see it now…. I’ve been to my priest. I thought something might be done. But it can’t. There’s nothing to do, Molly.”
She sprang up and went to him. She remembered how Renny had said she must be strong. She laid her hands on his shoulders but he drew away.
“Don’t touch me! I can’t bear it.”
“Am I a different person, then? Since you’ve found out this about me?”
He controlled himself with a painful effort.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t know. I can’t think. It’s just as though a blight had fallen on us. Our love is poisoned. It’s no longer in flower. It’s —”
“You mustn’t say such things! Nothing can ever change my love for you. I’ll love you to my dying day. Yes — to the last breath I draw.”
A feverish light came into his eyes. Suddenly he put both arms about her and drew her close. “Molly, darling, my precious one! There is no need for us to be separated. We can love to — the last breath we draw — just as you said!”
For a moment of ecstasy she gave herself to his embrace. The room receded. They were alone, clinging together, in dizzy space. A flame shot through their bodies. Their lips met in a burning kiss. Whatever fate had taken from them it had given them this moment.
As clearness of mind came back to her she thought — “Our love would have been like this.”
He would not let her go. He clung tightly to her.
“No, no. Wake,” she breathed.
“But, Molly, don’t you understand? We needn’t part! Till our last breath.
Even then — even after that — we’d cling together. Don’t you understand?”
Frightened she whispered — “No.”
“There’s death — as well as love, Molly…. Now do you know what I mean? We could die, darling. It would be so easy. Lovers have often done it. Why not we? I’ve thought of a way. Will you, Molly?”
She understood him. Blissful and terrible visions floated before her eyes. No parting. A continuance of their love till the end. A last, exquisite, dreamlike embrace…. No more wondering what to do next…. No dark uncertain future to face…. Just the end creeping gently on them till they slept. Perhaps not creeping gently but coming as an extinguishing flame…. Then she tore herself from him — with fierceness, as though she would have torn her heart out.
“How dare you suggest such a thing, Wake! You don’t mean it! You know you don’t. You love life too well. You love Renny too well. It would kill him — break his heart! And you a Catholic! Does your religion mean so little to you, then?”
He stood with folded arms and downcast eyes. He said: —
“Nothing seems to matter to me now.”
“But it will — your religion, I mean. Everything will come back to you.”
“Everything but you.”
“I haven’t left you, Wake. Only it’s got to be different. Oh, can’t you help me bear it? If you don’t help me I just can’t bear it. Renny said I was to be strong and I’m trying to.”
“It doesn’t mean so much to you as it does to me.”
“It means just as much. I think it means even more. You loved another girl once. But I’ve never loved anyone but you. The way I am trying to look at it is this. I was trying hard — all the while I waited for you. Our country is at war. We’ll all have to work desperately to win. A lot of people are going to be killed. Perhaps you and I among them. But that would be an honorable death. Think how proud your family are of you, Wake! Almost every one of them has said to me how proud they are of you. You wouldn’t want to let them down in such an appalling way, would you?”
He raised his sombre eyes to her face. He tried to speak but could not. But she read submission on his lips.
He turned from her and laid his arm against the side of the door, then hid his face on his arm. She dared not go to him but she spoke in a firm voice.
“We’re going to be all right, aren’t we, darling?”
“Don’t call me darling!” he cried hoarsely.
“Wake, then. Wake — my friend.” She could not go on. She held her hand against her trembling lips.
A clear sweet whistling came to them through the window. The whistle was drawn and sweet as a blackbird’s. Piers was coming along the path. He was bareheaded and wore a leather windbreaker. He called out: —
“Hullo, are you in there, Wake?”
He came to the window and looked in. He thought — “A quarrel, eh? A pretty bad one too, by the looks of them.”
He held up a yellow envelope.
“A cable for you. Molly. I’ll bet it’s an offer from some London manager.” But he looked a little anxious for her, as though he feared bad news.
She tore open the envelope and read. She looked dazed. She handed it to Wakefield. He too read it.
“It’s from her brother,” he said. “Their father has died. Christopher wants to join the RAF. He asks Molly if she can arrange for their sisters to come out here.”
Piers came in at the window. He put his arm about Molly and patted her on the back.
“Bad luck.” he said, “but we’ll look after you. Everything will be all right.”
His presence came into the room bringing life itself. Life, full of vigour and hope, radiated from him. Strange visions could not live in the room with him. He came like life, willing to lay itself down if necessary, but not in defeat.
XXVIII
THE SHUTTLE
THE TIE THAT bound the Whiteoak family to the Old Land had been strong but since the war that tie had, as in the case of countless other Canadian families, so strengthened, toughened, and tautened that they now felt as one. The Atlantic crossing, which had once been safe, was now perilous, but a bridge of courage and loyalty had been flung from shore to shore.
Nicholas and Ernest would sit on either side of the radio, waiting for the news. Nicholas would hold his watch in his hand. When the news came they would impressively impart it to the rest of the household. Rags wasted much of his time in recalling incidents of the last war. He was in a state of ferment lest he should not be able to rejoin the Buffs in Renny’s service. He got out their uniforms, aired and pressed them. He put more elbow grease on the buttons than ever he gave to the table silver. He all but shed tears of joy when he found that Renny’s still fitted him to perfection. As for himself, he had considerably shrunken but he was as proud of his figure as though he were an Adonis.
“Broad in the shoulder, narrow in the ’ip, that’s wot I am,” he would declare, never having noticed that his neck was too long, his legs too short, and that he stuck out behind. He paraded
the kitchen, fairly bristling to have another fling at the Germans. His wife regarded him pessimistically.
“You’d think,” she said, “that it was just a picnic to go to war and leave your wife behind.”
“In times like these ’ere, wives recede to the background.”
“Aye, and sweethearts comes to the fore,” she returned grimly.
He gave her a tantalizing look. “Let that be as it may, I ’ave a man’s work to do and, if a little fun is thrown in, you needn’t worry.”
“Well, you’re not away yet. Like as not you’ll never get away.”
He looked a trifle crestfallen at this and she added: —
“Dear knows who they’ll get in to do your work. With my allowance from the government I’ll have enough to live on. I think I’ll quit and take it easy for a spell.”
“Now just put that idea out of your ’ead,” he said angrily. “Wot you’ve got to do is to ’old down this ’ere plice till I return. I’d look well, shouldn’t I, going round with me ’at in me ’and looking for a job when I come back! There goes the bell! Blast those old fellers — wot do they want now? I’ve been up them ruddy stairs forty times today!”
“You can’t go up with that there uniform on.”
“Well, I’d like to ’ear ’em object to the King’s uniform in my presence! I’d ’ave somethink to say.”
In a few minutes he came rattling down the stairs again. “Wot was it?” asked his wife, who was singeing a goose over the flame of the kitchen range.
“Mr. Ernest wanting a glass of ’ot water and bicarbonate of soder. Is there any ’ot water? Upon my word I sometimes think it would ’ave been better for ’im if ’e’d never married, wot with all the ’ot water and soder and the fruit juice and the bran flakes ’e’s took to. W’y the ’ell don’t you ’ave ’ot water always on the stove?” He banged the stove lids about.
Mrs. Wragge held the blazing goose precariously near him while her little eyes shot him a malevolent look. He sprang aside.
“Look out wot you’re doing! Do you know that you could be fined for willfully damaging the King’s uniform?”
“Get out o’ my way then!”
“Oh, I’ll get out of your way! Don’t you worry. I’ll get out and probably be blown to bits by a bomb.”
“A bad penny always turns up.”
“Oh, does it then! I like that! Maybe it will turn up with the Victoria Cross on it!”
“More likely with a ’ole bored through it.”
“Ow. I like that! Making fun of a dying soldier’s wounds! Well, let me tell you, my lidy, this ’ere is going to be a civilian’s war. You may yet see the day when you’ll be bombed or gassed.”
“I’ve often thought of stickin’ me ’ead in the oven after a jaw from you!”
“Oh, you ’aye, ’ave you? Get out of my way with that goose or I’ll do you an injury.”
“You done me the worst injury possible when you married me.”
As she uttered these words the master of the house came down the stairs. It was he who, twenty years before, had led Mrs. Wragge down the aisle of the church and given her to her bridegroom. Now he stood looking at the pair with an ironic grin.
“I had a hand in that, Mrs. Wragge,” he said. “I hope you’re not blaming me.”
She coloured, which is saying a good deal, for she was already crimson from full-bloodedness and the heat of the fire. “No, sir, but he does irritate me at times. ’Ere, take your ’ot water and get along with you.”
Rags turned himself round in front of Renny.
“Wot do you think of the fit, sir?”
“Fine! I only hope you get a chance to wear it.”
“I’ll be ’eartbroken, if I don’t.”
“Rags, I’ve just come down to tell you that I can take you along!”
“Thank Gawd for that, sir! I couldn’t ’ave borne to stay at Jalna and you at the Front! Now let ’Itler look out! Now let Goring and Gubbles ’ave a mind to themselves! We’re after ’em! You and me! Same as we were after the old Kaiser. We’ll do ’em in!”
He did a few hornpipe steps, with the cup of hot water in his hand, then hastened up the stairs to tell the good news to Ernest and Nicholas.
The news that Rags was to depart made the two elderly men feel drawn still closer to the war. The pattern of their world was changing so fast as to be bewildering. They had known from the first that Renny would go. Paris Court and Wakefield had been eager to follow suit. Harriet had died. Sarah’s son had been born. Now Rags was to go. For nearly twenty-one years he had irritated and served them. Sometimes the irritation was uppermost. Sometimes the service. But they were always there. Sometimes the irritation acted as a counterirritant, as when, for instance, Nicholas and Ernest had had words with each other. Then one of Rags’s misdeeds would bring them together again in hearty censure of his ways. He would leave traces of polishing powder in the crevices of heavily chased trays or jugs but he would rub thin old Georgian teaspoons so hard that they would bend double. When an important English army man on a lecture tour was entertained at dinner Rags brought coffee in everyday cups, but when the Rector and Mrs. Fennel came, as they did once a week, he would bring out the rare old Worcestershire china. It was impossible to teach him discrimination. It was his idea of taste to have every piece of furniture, every ornament, set cornerwise and a constant struggle was waged, with him on one side, Ernest and Alayne on the other. Rags always won. No matter how he might neglect to sweep up the crumbs from tinder the breakfast table, no matter how he continued to ignore windows that needed cleaning, or children’s finger marks on doors, he had only to pass through a room and every chair and ornament stood cornerwise in his wake.
But how comforting his presence was at times! No one could tuck a hot-water bottle at an old gentleman’s feet and cover him with an eiderdown with an air of greater solicitude. He would bring a glass of hot water and whiskey or a cup of hot water and bicarbonate of soda with equal expressions of the good he was certain it would do you.
Of course he had a nasty way of whispering to Renny at table when he sensed any family disturbance and wanted to show that he was on the side of the master of the house. On the other hand, he showed endless patience in searching for mislaid spectacles and never forgot the hours at which Ernest’s medicine should be taken. It had been a shock to see him in his uniform.
Now Renny came into the room and once more they realized how soon they must part with his heartening presence. This war was quite different from the last. They had been twenty years younger then and their mother was living. While she lived there had been that feeling of stability and changelessness at Jalna but now all was changed. Nicholas gave a deep sigh and raised his heavy eyes to Renny’s face. He noticed Renny’s look of anxiety, the corrugations on his forehead, but he sniffed, with an odd sense of comfort, the smell of the stable that came with him.
Renny sat down near the fire and held a hand toward the blaze.
“Cold?” asked Nicholas.
“No. I just like the warmth.”
“You’re like Mamma. She always liked the warmth of the open fire. Where are the young people this morning? I haven’t seen them.”
Renny looked at him thoughtfully. He wondered what the uncles would say if he told them all. For a moment he had a mind to. There would be a certain comfort in telling them. But no — they had enough to worry about without hearing of poor young Wake’s heartache.
“Molly’s gone to town,” he said. “She and Wake had to go to arrange for her sisters’ passage from Wales to Canada…. Poor girl, she has a great responsibility. I’ve been thinking that it would be a very decent thing for us to offer your house, Uncle Ernest, to those girls — if you agree. They would be safe here and under our protection. It would be a load off Molly’s mind.”
“Are they able to pay rent?” asked Nicholas. “I gather they are pretty hard-up. Molly said something about their income ceasing if their father died.”
“We can�
��t very well ask rent from refugees.”
“Of course not! I’d forgotten.”
“By all means, let them come,” said Ernest. “It would be a relief to me to see the house occupied by nice young women. Harriet would have wished it.”
“After all,” put in Nicholas, somewhat grumpily, “the house belongs to Renny.”
“I haven’t said it doesn’t, have I? However, the furniture is mine and Harriet’s.”
“Upon my word, Ernest, you take a lofty tone about family belongings. The furniture in that house — I mean the portion of it that came from Jalna — is as much mine as yours. Not that it matters. I’m perfectly willing to lend it.”
“Then what are you grousing about?” said Ernest.
“I’m not grousing. But that card table in the living room was one Mamma gave me years ago. She also gave me that bedroom furniture and the rugs.”
“But you never took them to England!”
“How could I? It would have been ridiculous.”
“Then why claim the things now?”
“I’m not. It’s you who are claiming them.”
Ernest’s colour rose. He tried to speak but he could only stammer incoherently. Renny’s voice broke in.
“I’m awfully glad you both agree to lending the house. I’ll cable Christopher Griffith today.”
He rose and moved toward the door.
“What’s the matter?” asked Nicholas, eyeing him shrewdly. “Is something worrying you?”
“Well, I have a good deal on my mind.”
“You look as though you hadn’t slept.”
“I’m all right.”
A shadow fell across the window. Wakefield passed. As he passed he glanced into the room. That glimpse of him was sufficient to discover his haggard eyes, his drawn mouth. He looked ill.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 141
