08 Whiteoaks of Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  But as the crowd surged out, and he felt the cool night air on his face, he revived. It was like a return to his prime to find himself steering an evening-cloaked female through a crowd. Really, he must make a trip to New York every now and again after this. It was not well to let one’s self become frowsty. And with his figure, his carriage, it was a downright waste. He pressed Miss Trent’s firm arm a little as he guided her. An exquisite perfume rose from the soft fur of her collar.,.

  They had a little supper in the apartment. Delicate food, Pall Mall cigarettes, bought specially for him; gay conversation, for Ernest found it easy to shine before this audience, so uncritical, so, if he could have known, tolerantly amused by him; and, added to their tolerance and amusement, a sentimental desire to look through his mind back into the strange glamour of another day. He sighed as he said good night. He was not a bit tired now, and he hated to think how soon this charming interlude would be over.

  It was not till he and Finch were back in his hotel bedroom that there returned to him with force the consciousness of his mission. He had arranged that the boy should spend the night with him, and had got a room for him next to his own. He shrank from the thought of a clash of wills at that late hour. He wished he could simply pack Finch into his portmanteau the next day with his clothes, and carry him back to Jalna. It was such a nuisance having to be politic with him, tactful and understanding. It was really a pest the way boys grew up.

  There was a distinct air of embarrassment between them when they found themselves alone in the hotel bedroom together. It was abominably stuffy, and Ernest went to the window and threw it up.

  He looked out for a moment on the confusion of roofs and blinding lights, at the orange- and ruby-coloured signs that flashed on and off, at the sinister-looking black spaces beyond which lay one knew not what, at the white-lettered signs which were painted, tier upon tier, on the side of a building in the next street, at the strange, blurred sky which might as well be a stretch of canvas for all its apparent reality. Up here the sound of the traffic was deadened to a dull rumble that seemed resentful of the spring night.

  Ernest found that he had smudged his finger-ends in opening the window. He went into the bathroom to wash his hands. Finch had dropped into a chair by the table, looking very young and wan under the hard electric light. He had picked up the shiny black Bible belonging to the hotel and was looking at it with a queer smile. An uncomfortable boy, Ernest thought. He lathered his hands, and examined his face in the mirror above the basin. He was looking very well.

  On returning to the bedroom he said: “I hate very much to go back to Jalna without you, Finch. Everyone at home will be disappointed.”

  “I can’t see them disappointed because I don’t go back.”

  “But they will be. You don’t understand. You’re one of us, aren’t you?”

  “The odd one.”

  “Nonsense. We’re all more or less oddities, I fancy. And we’re proud of you, though you may not think so.”

  Finch grunted sarcastically. “You should have heard Renny and Piers telling me how proud they were of me!”

  “Come, come, don’t take things so hard. Piers has a rough tongue—”

  “He’s as hard as nails! With me, anyhow.”

  “He doesn’t always mean it, and, if he does, he’s not the important one. It’s Renny who matters.”

  “Renny thinks I’m an ass.”

  Ernest sat down beside him. He put all the persuasiveness, all the eloquence of which he was capable, into his voice. “Renny loves you. He wants you to come home like a good boy, without any further trouble. He is willing, after you’ve tried your examinations, to let you take music lessons again—to play as much as you want to. All you have to do is to try your exams.”

  “What if I fail?”

  “You won’t fail. You’ll pass. You did not fail badly last time. You’re sure to pass.”

  “And if I do—what then?”

  “You have all your life before you. You’ll make something fine of it.”

  “I don’t see myself.” said Finch wearily.

  “Finch, you had a very clever and very lovely mother. She would have wanted you to develop your talent—to be a credit to us.”

  “Good Lord!” exclaimed the boy. “This sort of talk is new to me! My talents—my mother—”

  “But, my dear child,” cried Ernest in exasperation, for his head was beginning to ache, “families will make remarks. You don’t expect—”

  “Gran often makes sneering remarks about her—my mother. I hear her, though I’ve pretended not.”

  “Your grandmother is a hundred and one. Your mother has been dead eleven years. What have their relations to do with the question in hand… Really, you are wearing me out! The point is this.” Ernest made a supreme effort. “What is there for you in New York? Crowds, crowds, crowds. Struggle, struggle. You, a Whiteoak, struggling in a foreign mob! Uncongenial work. Homesickness. You know you’re horribly homesick, Finch. I’ve been watching you. You’re homesick.”

  “Don’t!” cried the boy in anguish, putting his head on the table. “I can’t bear it! Oh, Uncle Ernest, do you really think I’d better go back?”

  XII

  EDEN DISCOVERED

  TWO EVENINGS LATER Eden Whiteoak was sauntering along lower Fifth Avenue, one hand thrust in a pocket of a rather shabby tweed jacket, the other carrying a light stick. The change in him since he had disappeared from Jalna was remarkable. He had become thin almost to emaciation. His movements were still graceful, but the bright vigour of his carriage was gone. He seemed to progress only by an effort of the will, either because of bodily weakness or because of extreme despondency. If he had removed his hat, one would have seen that his hair, which had lain like a shining metal casque upon his head, was now rough and unkempt. Above the hollows in his cheeks two feverish spots burned where had been only a fresh glow. The beauty of his large blue eyes seemed accentuated. They still retained their peculiar unseeing expression, which sometimes disturbed one in company with him, and his lips still curved in their odd half smile.

  He was feeling himself near the end of his tether, and he was filled with a cynical dislike toward the moving mass of people who shared the pavement with him. This dislike, through some whim or perhaps some old resentment, was directed chiefly toward those of the opposite sex. And his aversion was at the moment centred upon their legs, which, like the sleek antennae of insects, moved mechanically past him. It seemed to him that if ever he should look back upon this night of humid, unseasonable heat, he would recall it as being borne along its course by innumerable silk-clad legs.

  Four girls approached abreast, wearing French heels and flesh-coloured stockings, their eight legs flashing in quick rhythm. “Beasts,” he thought. “Beasts. Why cumber ye the earth? Why, in God’s name? I wish I could help you off it. Four. Why should there be four of you, all alike?” He glanced up at their faces, heavy-eyed, smooth-checked, crimson-mouthed faces. He scowled at them. Beasts. A little later he singled out one walking with a thin, undersized youth. Her skirt was very short. Her calves large, caught inward abruptly at knee and ankle. Her feet ridiculously short. Oh, the grotesque shape of her! Why should she exist? Why, oh why? How could the spotted-faced youth endure her?

  The darkness of his brow deepened. He kept his eyes on the pavement, trying not to see the women. But presently he was jostled by one. He almost staggered, her progress had been so relentless, so direct. He turned his head and his angry eyes swept her. He saw her heavy middle-aged legs, her huge, pallid, aggressive face, her heavy breasts, smothered beneath a brassiere, her close hat pulled over one eye, the other eye glowering through horn-rimmed spectacles. Why, oh, why should she exist? Why cumber ye the earth, fat beast? They exchanged looks. She thought: “Oh, if we could only really enforce the law to protect lovely young men like that! I’m sure he’s been drinking. He stumbled right against me.”

  There was no air. The air seemed to have been sucked out of
the street, leaving it a vacuum through which a dreamlike procession marched, a procession so dreamlike that it required no air. The faces, the legs, passed in a blur before Eden’s eyes, until at last the form of an old woman stood out clearly. She was in rusty black, wearing an old-fashioned bonnet, the strings of which were tied in a greasy bow beneath her withered, jutting chin. Her slate-coloured eyes, which had once been as blue as Eden’s, were fixed in the unseeing stare of one who had looked too long on life and could bear to look no more. Her sunken upper lip gnawed always the pendulous lower one. The turned-out toes of her large shoes could barely be seen beneath the heavy width of her draggled skirt. Instantly she appeared as something precious to Eden. His heart leaped. He surveyed her appraisingly, feeling anew joy in the poetry of life. Here was a woman who had meaning. One could understand why she existed, not cumbering the earth, gracing it—beautiful. Ah, the gracious, exquisite reality of her waddling legless form! There she was—a woman. He was jostled, almost pushed from the curb as he stared. He drew a banknote, his last, from his pocket, and hurried after her. He pressed it into her hand. The hand, a claw, closed over it. She shambled on without a glance at him.

  He felt elated, and suddenly rather hungry. A row of people sitting on high stools before a counter in a drug store attracted him. He went in. There was only one empty stool, between two young girls. He would not take it, but stood waiting until there was a space at the end, beside an elderly man. He ordered tomato soup and wafers. As he drooped over the mug containing the thick liquid, which tasted as though it were of the tinned variety, a fit of coughing came on him. He had difficulty in suppressing it, and, by the time he had, his appetite was gone. He drank the rest of the soup, but left the wafers. Out in the street he found that there was now a faint movement of air. He entered the little garden in Madison Square, sat down on one of the benches, and lighted a cigarette. A feeling of extreme lassitude crept over him, from the legs upward, at last reaching his head and making him drowsy. The figures passing through the park became shadowy. He saw as in a dream the twilight arch of the sky, the far-off hazy moon, the rows of lights, like strings of bright beads in the surrounding buildings.

  He was weary with a deep sickness of dejection. He remembered his young strength, his gifts—and they had come to this! And he was twenty-five! Surely he was held in derision of the gods. He remembered Jalna, his brothers, Alayne. He had harmed them all in one way or another, he supposed. But he did not think of them clearly. Himself only he saw with great clarity. His own white face, like the face of a drowning man, risen for a moment on the crest of a wave.

  What was there for him to do? He could not now earn his living. He could not go home. He had parted from the woman with whom he had been living because he could no longer contribute to their joint expenses. She would have been glad to have paid all—but, Christ, he had not come to that! How they had quarrelled, and she had rained tears whom he had thought too hard ever to shed one! How he had grown to hate her heavy arms! To be free of them—that was the one bright spot.

  The smell of damp earth rose from the roots of the new grass about him. The sound of traffic was lulled to a deep hum. He felt isolated, as though he were on an island in the midst of a lonely sea. He was alone. Utterly alone. A wave of loneliness swept over him, so engulfing that beside it the homesickness of Finch was little more than a ripple. He sank back on the bench, his chin sunk on his chest.

  Two people had come and seated themselves beside him. They were talking steadily, but in low tones—a mellow old voice and a boyish one. He scarcely heard them. Another fit of coughing came upon him, and he clung to the back of the bench for support. When it was past he took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. The elder of the two men leaned forward and looked toward him with compassion. Eden, embarrassed, took out a cigarette, struck a match. His face was illuminated.

  “My God!” cried Ernest, springing up. “Eden, is it you?”

  Eden looked up at him, too astounded for speech.

  “Speak, Eden! Tell me what is the matter.”

  Eden’s mouth quivered. “Everything, I guess.”

  “But that cough! It’s simply terrible. How long have you had it?”

  “Several months. Don’t bother. It will be all right when the warm weather comes.”

  “But the weather is hot now!”

  “It’s unseasonable. Probably be cold again tomorrow… Please don’t trouble about me. Tell me why you are here. Is that young Finch?”

  Finch got to his feet, trembling. He was bewildered, frightened by this sudden meeting with Eden. He remembered his last encounter with him. That summer night when he had discovered Eden and Pheasant in the birch wood together. His mind fastened on an incident strikingly similar in both meetings, and yet how dissimilar! On each occasion Eden had, at a moment of climax, struck a match, illuminated a face. But in the first instance, it had been the white, terrified face of Finch; now it was his own, hollow-cheeked, feverish. Then he had exclaimed bitterly: “What a worm you are, brother Finch!” Now he said, in a low tone of reckless self-possession: “Hullo, Finch! You here, too? God, what a meeting!”

  “Hullo!” returned Finch, but he could not hold out his hand. His heart sank when he looked at Eden. He had helped to bring him to this.

  “Eden, Eden!” cried their uncle. “I am distressed to find you looking so ill. I could not have believed—”

  “Oh, I’m not in such bad shape as I look.” He stared at these newly arrived members of his family in satiric mirth. “Lord, what a quaint pair you are! When did you come here, and why?”

  Ernest and Finch glanced at each other uncomfortably.

  “I—he—,” mumbled the boy.

  “He—I—,” stammered Ernest.

  Eden broke into laughter. “I see it all! You ran away, Finch, and Uncle Ernest came to fetch you. Or was it the other way about? Never mind, it’s enough that you’re here! I wouldn’t have believed you’d have the guts.”

  “You must come back to my hotel,” said Ernest.

  “I wish I could invite you to my lodgings, but they’re too tough for you, by a long shot.”

  Ernest was greatly upset. He turned to Finch. “Get a taxi. Eden isn’t fit to walk.”

  On the way to the hotel, Eden asked: “Have you seen Alayne?”

  “Yes, I’ve had dinner with her—and luncheon. M-yes. She’s looking lovely, Eden.”

  “She would! Some women thrive on marital troubles. They find them more stimulating than babies.”

  In the hotel bedroom Ernest said: “What you need is a good hot toddy, but how am I to get you one? Do you know if there is one of those—er— ‘speak-easy’ places about?” His heart failed him as he spoke. The thought of searching for such a place was abhorrent to him.

  “No, thanks,” said Eden. “I couldn’t possibly take anything.” He drank a glass of water and fidgeted about the room, talking in a way that seemed to Ernest rather strange and wild. Finch sat by the window smoking, and took no part in the conversation. Eden did not speak to him.

  After a time Eden announced his intention of going, but just as he took up his hat he was attacked by another fit of coughing. His last strength seemed to go into this. After it was over, he flung himself on the bed and shivered from head to foot. He was plainly so ill that Ernest was distraught. He sent Finch running downstairs to inquire about a doctor. The next morning he sent a telegram to Renny which read:

  Have found Eden very ill please come at once cannot cope with this.—E. WHITEOAK.

  XIII

  THE CIRCLE

  ON THE MORNING that followed, another member of the Whiteoak family might have been seen ascending in the hotel lift, attended by a porter carrying a rather shabby suitcase. When they alighted, he limped vigorously after the man and knocked with impatience on the designated door. It was opened by Finch.

  When the porter had been tipped and the door closed behind him, Renny swept his eyes over the boy and gave a grunt, hal
f of satisfaction at beholding him, half of derision.

  Finch, red in the face, drew a step nearer. The elder took him by the arm, then kissed him. Finch seemed to him little more grown up than Wakefield. Joy and pure love surged through Finch. Animal joy and love that made him want to leap on Renny and caress him roughly like a joyous dog. He stood still, grinning sheepishly.

  “Where’s Eden?” demanded Renny.

  “In there,” He nodded toward the next room. “Uncle Ernest’s with him.”

  Ernest himself then entered. He looked white and drawn.

  “Heavens above!” he exclaimed. “I’m thankful you’ve come,” and he gripped Renny’s hand.

  “This is a pretty mess,” said Renny. “Have you a doctor? How ill is he? What’s the matter with him?”

  “It is indeed,” returned Ernest. “I don’t know when I’ve been so upset. I called a doctor as soon as he was taken badly. I think he’s a good one. He’s got a German name, but I dare say he’s all the cleverer for that.” He braced himself and looked Renny in the eyes. “Renny, it’s the boy’s lungs. They’re in a bad way. He’s in great danger, the doctor says.”

  Renny’s brow contracted. He set the point of his stick in the centre of the geometrical pattern of the rug and stared at it. He said in a low voice: “His mother died of consumption.”

  “Yes. But none of the children have shown any tendency that way. I suppose he’s been exposing himself.”

  Renny began to limp nervously up and down the room. Ernest asked, solicitously: “How is your knee? It is a shame to have brought you here, when you’re not fit, but I—you understand—”