Books 13-16: Return to Jalna / Renny's Daughter / Variable Winds at Jalna / Centenary at Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  “I can’t tell you. You ought to know.”

  Adeline and Maurice now emerged from the drive, through a break in the trees, and began crossing the lawn toward them.

  Patience had at this time gone off by herself. She had felt herself unwanted by any of the others. Like a child unwanted she had gone round the house to the side entrance and sat down on the doorstep. She folded her hands on her knees and laid her forehead on her hands. Under her breath she whistled a little inaudible tune to comfort herself.

  “I’m always surprised,” Finch was saying to Sylvia, “by the smallness of this little bridge and stream when I return home after a long absence. I have so many recollections of it. I used to look on it as quite a torrent when I was small. I can remember Renny holding me over the rail when I was about four, pretending he’d drop me in. It was springtime and the water was rushing. I’ve never forgotten that. I clutched him for dear life and screamed. Then he laughed and swung me up to his shoulder…. I used to think the stream was playing a tune. I thought it had a special message for me. And I’d try to understand it and repeat the tune on the piano…. Once, when I was a boy, I came upon my brother Eden — the one that died — crying here. I never knew what about…. I remember his reading some of his poems aloud, sitting on this bridge. There’d been a fog and the boards were still damp. Do you find it damp down here now?”

  “After Ireland,” she said, “nowhere seems damp.”

  “I like Ireland. You’ll find it a great change to live in New York.”

  “At the present time I am hating it,” she said in an expressionless tone.

  “Oh,” he said, and waited for her to explain why.

  She did not, but continued after a moment, “It fascinates me to visit strange places. I invariably think I’d like to live there. Just now I am thinking how delightful it must be to live at Jalna.”

  “It is,” he said with boyish earnestness. “when I am away on a tour I am always longing for the day when I return. You will laugh at me, but even a scene like that about the occasional table will have a kind of heartwarming pull, though at the time I may be damned uncomfortable.”

  “Do you mind my asking which you think has the better right to the table?”

  “Well,” he said judicially, as though it were a matter of great moment, “the table really belongs to Renny, and Alayne is Renny’s wife, but Meg has possessed it for years. She hasn’t much that was my grandmother’s. She’s cared for it and polished it and taken pride in it. Alayne had forgotten all about it till she saw it in my house.”

  “I quite agree. Your sister should have it.”

  “Both Alayne and Meg,” said Finch, “are what one would call high-minded women. I’m just a blundering man, but I couldn’t struggle over an occasional table.”

  “I like them both so much.”

  “I’m glad of that,” he said warmly, and added after a silence, “You know, I can’t recall any painful scenes between myself and either of them. That’s a great thing to look back on, isn’t it?”

  The moon was now casting its light on the bridge. Turning to Finch, Sylvia could see his face clearly. She had thought of him as an artist, absorbed in his own life, successful as a concert pianist. But now she saw his vulnerability, the marks left by the suffering of a nature too sensitive for the harsh encounters of life.

  He was conscious of the gentle compassion of her face that was still in shadow. He smiled, as if to disclaim his need for compassion. He said, “See that moonlight. Isn’t it clear and bright? Do you know what I should like to do? I’d like to go to my house and see it in this light. The moon is full and it will be shining right in at the large window. Would you come with me? It’s not far. I think you’d like the walk.”

  “I’d love to go,” she said, and felt a quick glow of pride at his asking her.

  They returned to the house to tell that they were leaving. “Do you mind?” Sylvia asked, bending over Alayne as she sat at the card table.

  “Do go,” said Alayne. “It’s a divine night for a walk. How sensible you are.”

  “It’s the first time I have been told that.”

  “Don’t let Finch take you through the ravine,” said Pheasant, “or that pretty dress will be torn by brambles.”

  In the porch Sylvia and Finch found Meg waiting with the occasional table. “Uncle Nicholas has gone to bed,” she said. “I saw you come in — heard you say you are going to Vaughanlands — and quietly carried the table out here, without being noticed by anyone. Now what I want you to do, Finch, is to take it back with you and so put an end to any dissension on the subject.”

  “But, Meggie,” he said, “wouldn’t tomorrow do?”

  “You brought it to Jalna, unknown to me.” The tone of her voice now became high-flown. “It is only fair that you should take it back unknown to Alayne.”

  “All right,” he grumbled, and shouldered the table.

  “You don’t mind my brother’s taking the table along, do you, Mrs. Fleming?” Meg said.

  “Oh no. I think it’s a good idea — probably.”

  Now the two were trudging — for their romantic moonlit walk had come to that — along the country road.

  “Is it heavy?” asked Sylvia. “Could I help?”

  “It’s nothing…. As a matter of fact I am quite pleased to have the table again.”

  They walked on in silence, their shadows distinct on the white road, Finch’s grotesque because of the occasional table. The air was vibrant with the shrilling of the locusts.

  “what a strange feeling they give one,” said Sylvia, “as though there were no time to spare.”

  “There isn’t,” said Finch.

  She said, with regret rather than bitterness, “And I have wasted so much of my time.”

  As Finch turned this over in his mind, considering what to say to her, she added, “I wasted some of my time in a nervous breakdown. Had you heard?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was horrible. I try to forget it.”

  “I know what nerves are. I’ve gone through hell with mine.”

  She stopped stock still to look at him. “It’s hard to believe,” she said. “You seem so steady.”

  “So do you!”

  “You appear rather cool and detached.”

  “So do you.”

  “We seem to be good dissemblers,” she said. “Perhaps we are just hiding from ourselves.”

  “The moral is,” said Finch, “that we must get better acquainted.” He spoke with sudden gaiety, and, finding the table cumbersome in his arms, he raised it and placed its underpart on the top of his head. His shadow thus became a grotesque monster moving beside the perfect silhouette of hers, as though in menace.

  “Anyone meeting us,” said Sylvia, “would take us to be a couple evicted from their home, you carrying our one piece of furniture on your head.”

  “Our shadows,” he said, “the straight white road, that orchestra of locusts, seem symbolic. Surely it means something. Have you any idea what?”

  “I have only one idea and it is that I’m in love with this place.”

  Finch, in his strange headdress, began to caper; his shadow, wildly formed, prancing beside hers. But soon there were no shadows. They were in a wooded grove and before long stood on the terrace of his house. Moonlight lay on the stones. The front door stood open. Finch set down the table and led Sylvia into the music room. He stood entranced. Surely it was unique.

  “Do you like it?” he demanded. “Please say you like it.” The moonlight on his face was what held her.

  “I do,” she answered earnestly. “I think it’s the most adorable house I have ever seen.”

  “Oh, I say,” he exclaimed in gratification. “That’s too much. I didn’t expect that.”

  He was unexpectedly boyish, she thought. There was something almost theatrical in his exclamation, as though the acquisition of this little house were something spectacular. But then perhaps he was one of those to whom all life is spec
tacular. She envied him that.

  He led her to the mantelshelf, where stood a porcelain figure of a Chinese goddess.

  “That’s the goddess Kuan Yin,” he said. “She’s my greatest treasure. My grandmother gave her to me when I was nineteen. Gran was a hundred.”

  “No wonder you cherish it.”

  “I used to steal out of the house at night,” he said, “when I was supposed to be studying and go to the church to play on the organ. One night Gran heard me when I came in and called me into her room. You know where it is — right behind the staircase.”

  “Adeline’s room. When she showed it me, what do you suppose she said? She said that if ever she were going to have a baby she would not go to a hospital but would have it right there in that bed.”

  “That’s like Adeline. I hope she does.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Well, after that,” he went on, “I used to go to her room every night — after I’d played in the church. I’d bring sherry from the dining room and we’d talk and talk. In those nights I discovered what she must have been when she was younger. I guess it was bad for her to lose her sleep and all that, but — it was wonderful for me.” He took the porcelain figure from the shelf and held it tenderly in his hand as though in that contact he re-created those scenes of the past. “She would sit propped up on her pillows, her eyes shining below her nightcap, and talk of her past — and my future.”

  “That would be a great thing for you.”

  He set the figure again on the mantelshelf and turned, as though deliberately, away from it.

  “Not so much then, as later,” he said. “You see, she died, and … she left me all her money. Nothing seemed to matter for a while … but now, twenty-five years later, I remember so clearly things she said to me then.” He went and stood by the piano, the tips of his fingers just touching the keys.

  “Shall I play?” he asked.

  “Please do.”

  He turned on the light of a lamp. She sat where she could see his face as he played.

  “A little Bach first,” he said. “Then some Beethoven, eh?” Sylvia smiled and nodded. To speak, she felt, would be to shatter the entrancement of the moment. She sat, still as the statue of Kuan Yin, while he played. Sometimes the intricacies of the Bach stole her senses. She could not see the player. At other times she scarcely heard the music but was conscious only of the flying hands. Their isolation appeared so complete to her that the house they had left seemed far away. All her present life seemed far away. Her illness an evil dream. Strangely her thoughts moved back to the time of her marriage. She thought of it calmly. For the first time she recalled the time of her husband’s death — recalled it with calmness. It, too, was a dream — a tragic dream.

  She became conscious after a time that Finch was no longer playing Bach but Beethoven. He appeared oblivious to her presence, and she was glad of that…. Her imagination now turned back to the time of her girlhood in Ireland, to the time when she had felt safe, protected, when her father and mother and brother had stood between her and all that was troubling in life. She saw herself as a long-legged tow-headed girl surrounded by primroses, bluebells, misty hills, and happy peasants. How wonderful Maitland had been, how wonderful it all had been! She smiled at the ridiculousness of it….

  An hour had passed and Finch still was playing. But now he remembered her presence. His hands rested on the keys and he asked, “Tired?”

  “Tired — no, rested! Please go on.”

  “Something of Brahms?”

  “Yes. And after that — Mozart.”

  “I warn you, when I play Mozart I never know when to stop.”

  “I shall be here — enjoying it — if you play all night…. If my plumage ever has been ruffled, at the present moment it is as smooth as silk.”

  He gave her a glance of appreciation, both for what she said and for how she looked sitting there.

  He went on playing.

  The moon was gone. When, between pieces, there was a pause, the silence seemed palpable, like a silver shape, standing in the open doorway. Then, after a little, the trill of the locusts became faintly audible, grew in its tiny but persistent volume, never missing a syllable, till it was again drowned in the music.

  All the pent-up desire for the piano was now loosed in Finch. The felicity he had pictured had been to play in solitude, in that house. But now he found himself playing to Sylvia, sometimes unconscious of her presence, at others acutely aware of it, as though in her he had discovered the listener perfect above all others.

  Again he asked her above the music if she were tired.

  She shook her head.

  They lost all consciousness of time.

  At last, pale but bright-eyed, he rose and came to her. He sat down beside her, looking anxiously into her face. “I’ve been an egotistical brute,” he said. “You must be terribly tired.”

  “I have not felt so truly rested in years.”

  “It has been … I can’t tell you what it has meant to me, having you here … just ourselves.” He added, with something of an effort, “That last thing I played — did you notice it?”

  “I thought it was enchanting.”

  “It’s something I’ve been jotting down at odd times. I hadn’t played it through till tonight. I played it very badly.”

  “And it was your own?”

  “Yes. A gavotte.”

  “I wish I had known it was yours. Will you play it again for me?”

  “Yes. But not tonight.”

  “what time is it?”

  “I’m afraid to tell you.”

  “I see that the moon is gone. It must be terribly late.”

  “I’ll take you back in my car, but not till I’ve made you some coffee.”

  She sprang up. “Let me help.” They went together to the kitchen.

  “The woman who does for me comes in by the day,” he said. “She leaves everything nice and tidy. Don’t you think so?”

  “It’s adorable.” As if they were children playing at housekeeping they got the cups and saucers, the cream, boiled the kettle. When the tray was laid Finch carried it to the music-room and Sylvia brought the occasional table.

  “The very thing,” he exclaimed, setting the tray on it with a triumphant air.

  “I’m so glad it was decided we should have it.” There was something in the plural pronoun that struck them both like the striking of a bell. They were silent a space, as though listening to its echo in their hearts. Then, quietly, as though not to disturb someone who slept, he placed chairs by the little table, and almost formally they seated themselves. They smiled into each other’s eyes across the cups.

  “Is it right?” she asked anxiously, for she had made the coffee.

  “It’s just as I like it,” he said, and looked deep into her eyes.

  They talked a little but could not afterward have told what they talked of. And then it happened that, standing by the window, with the dark night outside, she found herself in his arms, with her head on his breast.

  “I love you,” he was saying. “I realize now that I’ve loved you from the first.”

  “But you couldn’t.”

  “But I did.”

  “Oh, my dear.”

  “Sylvia.” His lips discovered the reluctant passion of hers. She tried not to show that she loved him, but she could not help herself.

  “We must marry,” he said after a little. “You will marry me, won’t you?”

  “I don’t think I ought.”

  He held her from him to look in her face. “But why not?”

  “Some other time I’ll tell you.”

  “Tell me now. I must know.”

  She hid her face against him. “I cannot tell you — not now.”

  But he persisted. “Is it because …” He fumbled for words. “Because of your … illness?”

  “No, no. I am well enough.”

  “Tell me just one thing. Do you love any other man?”

  “There
’s no one but you.”

  “My dearest — that’s enough for me tonight. But no — one thing more! There’s nothing that could make it impossible for us to marry, is there?”

  “Not for me. Possibly for you.” She withdrew from him and went to the window as though for air. “Don’t ask me now.” A shadow of unhappiness darkened her face.

  “I’ll not ask you,” he said. “Tell me when you feel that you can.” He tried to look as though resigned to waiting, but he was passionately impatient, for he desired all to be settled in that very hour.

  As in relief she exclaimed, “Someone is coming. I hear a car.”

  “Damn!” he muttered, and followed her to the window. He pressed his forehead to the cool pane.

  The light from the car blazed against the trees.

  It stopped and Renny got out. He strode to the house. The two went into the hall to meet him.

  “I’ve been sent by my wife to rescue you,” he said, looking hard at Sylvia. “She refuses to go to bed till you come. The others left some time ago. It’s almost morning.” He laid the blame, if blame there were, at Alayne’s door. In truth it was he who was determined to discover what kept Sylvia so late.

  “It’s all my fault,” said Finch. “I’ve been playing the piano.”

  “All this while?”

  “All this while.”

  “No wonder Mrs. Fleming looks —” He had been going to say tired, but, scrutinizing her, weariness was certainly not apparent.

  As he hesitated she could not resist asking, “Well — what do I look?”

  He gave her a mischievous grin. “As though you’d just been kissed,” he said.

  Sylvia uttered a gasp that was half a laugh and half a cry of dismay.

  “Don’t mind,” said Renny. “It’s very becoming.”

  They came into the music room.

  Almost apologetically Finch said, “We had coffee.”

  “For the second time tonight!” Renny’s eyebrows flew up. “No wonder you are wakeful.” He stood contemplating the occasional table.

  “Meggie thought we’d better bring it,” said Finch.

  “That table,” observed Renny, “is really mine.”

  “I know.”

  “And, as Uncle Nick says, I don’t think that Gran would like her possessions scattered over the countryside.”