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

by Mazo de La Roche

  Sylvia caught his arm. But now again she was overcome and could not speak. “There, there,” he kept on saying, and patted her on the back, as one would comfort a child. Not till she was calm did he detach himself from her clinging hands and go to Dennis. He was hot with anger at the child. Either he had deliberately been the cause of Sylvia’s distress or he had not. But he was entangled with it, whatever his intentions.

  Finch strode to Dennis’s room. He went in and closed the door after him. The child had remained unmoved by Sylvia’s outburst but he flinched when he saw Finch’s frown. He stood up straight in front of the window.

  Finch said, keeping his voice low with an effort, “why did you tell those lies to Sylvia?”

  “I thought there was only one lie,” said Dennis.

  Dennis had a surprising power of angering Finch. He found himself with a hot desire to take hold of his son roughly. That would not do and he said, in a controlled voice, “You said you had a stamp collection andyou said I’d sent you stamps for it. What does it matter how many lies? You lied.”

  Dennis hung his head. “I thought you had.”

  “You knew I hadn’t. Why did you lie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A silence fell that seemed almost fearful to Finch, for his nerves were shaken by Sylvia’s distress.

  Through the window Dennis was watching a red squirrel. Finch asked suddenly, “Was Sylvia upset before you spoke to her? I mean did you say anything to upset her?”

  “I couldn’t know how, could I?”

  “Well, I just wondered. You were with her.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes — each trying to fathom what lay hidden.

  Finch drew a sigh. “Sylvia is very delicate,” he said.

  “Is it a misfortune to have a delicate wife?”

  “She must be taken care of.”

  “By you and me?” Dennis asked eagerly, moving a little toward Finch.

  “You must not make yourself troublesome.”

  Dennis said at once: “I won’t be troublesome.”

  “As for your lying,” said Finch, “for that you’ll stay in your room for the rest of the day.”

  He left Dennis and returned to Sylvia. He was very anxious about her, and puzzled because she had seemed particularly well and gay all that day.

  “There’s one thing I have made up my mind about,” she said, “and it is that I’m never going to be the cause of trouble between you and Dennis. He is your only child and nothing must spoil your relationship.” She spoke with vehemence, as though she had thought anxiously on the subject.

  “You must not look for trouble,” he said, sitting down beside her. “As for the bond between Dennis and me, I’m afraid I’m not much of a father — but he does irritate me with his clinging ways and now — this lying.”

  “If only he will cling to me!” she exclaimed. “That’s what I should love. It will be tragic for me, if he holds something against me. He always speaks of you with such a possessive air.”

  “Possessive — yes,” said Finch. “That’s his mother all over again.”

  “Finch,” she said, “Dennis remembers that tragedy. He remembers it clearly. It made a terrible impression on him.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what upset you, then?”

  “I was very much moved. How could I help being moved? It brought back …”

  “It’s a lie,” Finch said loudly.

  “Hush. He’ll hear you.”

  Finch spoke more quietly. “It’s a lie. Dennis remembers nothing of that accident. He doesn’t remember his mother. I’m sure of that. I’ve a mind to go back and face him with it. He ought to be punished.”

  “No, no, no.” Sylvia laid a restraining hand on his. “You would turn him effectually against me. If I’m to be a good mother to him — Oh, I do want to be a good mother, and you can help me, darling.”

  “I had no mother,” said Finch, “and I can tell you I was roughly treated sometimes.”

  “Then you must be all the more understanding with Dennis.” She spoke with confidence, almost with authority. “Remember the little boy you were.”

  After a little she arranged a tray for Dennis and carried it to Finch for his inspection. On it were sandwiches, strawberries and cream and sweet biscuits.

  “May I take it to him?” she asked.

  “Good Lord,” Finch said, “it looks like a treat rather than a punishment.”

  “It’s not a punishment. Dennis is just having a tray in his room.” And she repeated, “May I take it?”

  “If you wish,” Finch said indifferently.

  Dennis was lying flat on his back on the neat white bed. There was a strange austerity in the outline of his narrow shape beneath the sheet. His eyes were closed and he did not open them when Sylvia entered. She set the tray on a low table beside the bed.

  “It’s turning much warmer,” she said, as though casually. “I think it’s going to be a hot night.”

  How pale he was! Surely he never could look really warm. He did not open his eyes. He scarcely seemed to breathe. It was as though he were listening with his whole body — with every bit of him.

  She laid her hand with a caressing movement on his forehead. She had, ever since they were together, longed to touch his hair. Now she found it fine and silky, rather long for a boy’s hair but becoming. Her heart went out to him.

  “Dennis dear,” she said, “aren’t you hungry?”

  Still without opening his eyes he said: “Go away. And take the tray away.”

  V

  Seen Through a Picture Window

  The night did indeed turn hot. It felt breathlessly hot in Dennis’s small room. There was no slightest breeze to stir the curtains. The sheet that covered him no longer felt pleasant to the touch. He threw it off and raised his legs straight into the air. He was naked.

  He could hear the daily woman and Sylvia talking in the kitchen. Now the table was being laid in the dining room. The woman was a good cook and an appetizing smell pervaded this part of the house. But Dennis was not hungry. He listened, tense, as he heard Finch go into the bedroom he shared with Sylvia. With all his might he wished that those two did not share a room. He wished that Finch would come in to see him, but he trembled with fear at the thought of Finch’s frown.

  He had no visitor all that long evening but a mosquito. It had got in, despite the wire screening, and hovered about him incessantly buzzing. It seemed not able to make up its mind to bite him but never stopped singing of its intention. He hated it and longed to kill it.

  He held up his bare knee in the twilight and said:

  “Come on — come on — bite me if you dare!”

  But the mosquito refused to be tempted.

  Sometimes it sang close to his ear. Sometimes it became tangled in his hair. Then its buzzing was maddening. He struck at it in a fury of resentment.

  “You devil — you devil — you she-devil,” he said between his clenched teeth. For he had learned at school that it was the female mosquito which stung. “You she-devil,” he growled. “why doesn’t your husband kill you?” He had a picture in his mind, then, of the female mosquito being killed by the male and he forgot everything else in the pleasure of witnessing that death — the wings torn off, the sting ripped out.

  But it was only for a moment. Soon the mosquito was buzzing about his lips and nostrils. He became intolerably hot, even though he was naked. With the increasing heat, darkness descended. But he knew it was light where Finch and Sylvia were eating their dinner. He could bear the clink of dishes and the rather heavy footfall of the daily woman. Then at last she left for her home. He heard her footsteps on the path.

  Now the mosquito was buzzing about his body. Twice it alighted on his leg but though he struck at it he failed to kill it. He lay still scarcely breathing, till he felt the tickle of it on his knee. Then out shot his hand and he struck it and crushed it.

  There
came the peace of silence. No more buzzing. He sprang out of bed and turned on the light so that he might discover the corpse of his tormentor.… Very small it looked, crushed there on his knee. A trickle of blood, his own fresh blood, stained the paleness of his skin. He turned out the light and flung himself again on the bed, savouring his victory.

  He was waked by the itching of the bite on his knee. He could hear the piano being softly played in the music room and pictured Finch with his hands on the keys and Sylvia sitting close by. He began to scratch the mosquito bite — rhythmically, as though in time to the music. The more he scratched the bite, the more it burned and itched. He could feel the blood trickling down his leg.

  So curious was he to see the bite and the blood, he again turned on the light that he might examine it. “whew,” he exclaimed in surprise, and again, “whew.” Certainly he must have scratched hard to draw so much blood.

  It was on his hand too.… He could not stop himself from putting his hand to his forehead to leave a bloody imprint there. He stood in front of the looking-glass, gloating over his reflection with the bloodstained forehead. He ran his fingers through his hair, so that it stood upright. He was almost afraid of his reflection, it looked so strange. He wished the pair in the music room could see him, could see what they’d done to him.

  As he had been unable to stop himself from smearing his forehead, so now he could not stop himself from putting first one palm and then the other on his bleeding leg. After that he carefully made a mark on his side, just beneath his heart. Now he knew what one who had been crucified looked like. He examined himself in the mirror and found himself growing a little sick.

  It was so hot in the room he made up his mind to go outdoors through the window. The sill was low and it was nothing to him to climb over it onto the smooth grass. The grass was deliciously cool to his feet, the night air to his feverishly hot body. The light from a young moon was just touching the petals of a white peony. Sylvia was proud of this, its first bloom. It was a single variety, looking and smelling like a large water lily. Dennis ruthlessly pulled off the flower, scattering its petals as he went toward the picture window. The fresh air made his body light and daring, but his mind was sunk in resentment. Incoherent thoughts of vengeance, for he did not know what, possessed it.

  The picture window framed the one who played the piano and the one who sat listening. Sylvia’s eyes were on Finch’s hands that moved quietly, as though conscious of their power. Finch’s back was toward the window but Sylvia sat facing it. Dennis threw the last of the peony petals toward her face against the pane. He threw them as though he wished they were stones.

  They fell only softly against the pane but the movement of his arm caught Sylvia’s eyes. She moved them startled to the window. Now she and Dennis were face to face. She saw him raise his arms and extend them, as though on a cross. She saw his bloodstained forehead and the hair in sharp golden points, like thorns. She saw the red prints on the palms of his hands, and the blood on his side. When he was conscious of her look of horror he allowed his chin to drop and rolled his eyes upward to the night sky.

  “Dennis!” With a strangled cry she repeated his name, then covered her eyes with her hands.

  Finch sprang up from the piano, and he too looked out and saw the ghostly figure of the child. He ran out to him and Sylvia followed.

  When Dennis saw them he said loudly:

  “I’m crucified! Don’t you see? I’m crucified!”

  Finch picked him up and carried him into the house and laid him on his bed. Dennis relaxed there, gazing up into Finch’s face with a possessive look.

  “what do you mean,” demanded Finch, “by saying such a thing? where are you hurt?”

  “Shall I telephone for the doctor?” Sylvia asked from the doorway.

  “Wait till I find out where he is hurt.” He stared at the bloodstained figure of his son in perplexity and dismay. He went to the bathroom and returned with a sponge and basin of warm water. Sylvia, her face drained of colour, leaned against the side of the door for support.

  Finch wiped the blood from Dennis and discovered the mosquito bite. “This is all play-acting,” he said. “He’s not hurt — but, by God, he deserves to be.”

  Dennis lay looking up at them with an expression almost blissful. To be the focus of Finch’s attention, even though in anger, was enough to bring that look to his face.

  “You got yourself into that disgusting mess,” said Finch, “to frighten us. You scratched that mosquito bite again and again, didn’t you? You smeared the blood over yourself purposely, didn’t you? You were out to give us a great fright, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Dennis still wore that blissful half-smile.

  “I’ll take that smirk off your face,” said Finch and roughly turned him over. He administered a dozen stinging slaps to the boy’s small round buttocks. At the impact of the first, Sylvia fled.

  She stood, with wildly beating heart, looking out into the darkness of the trees. This house, she thought, which should have been so happy, so peacefully welcoming to Finch, was disturbed, unhappy, because of her presence. She turned a wan face to him when he came to her.

  “Is Dennis — ” she began, but could not go on.

  “He’s all right,” Finch said tersely. “He’ll not bother us again tonight. What a young viper he is! It’s a damned shame that you should have been so upset.” He put his arm about her. She could feel that he was trembling.

  “It was terrifying to both of us,” she said, for she wanted to feel that they both were in the same boat. “And — crucified!However did he come to think of that?”

  “I tell you he’s vicious,” said Finch.

  “I won’t hear you say that about your child. But — I do think he is rather morbid — poor little boy.”

  “Let’s go out into the air and forget about him,” said Finch. “It’s a lovely night. See where the moon has climbed. Above the treetops.”

  They went out into the garden. Finch saw the bloodstained petals of the white peony. He picked them up, trying to conceal them from Sylvia, but she had seen them. “I don’t mind,” she said. They did not look in the direction of the window of Dennis’s room.

  It was early daylight when the sound of crying woke them. It was a loud, wailing, unrestrained crying such as Finch had never before heard from Dennis. He sprang out of bed and — “You are not to come,” he said sternly to Sylvia. He laid his hand on her chest and pressed her back onto the bed. “You’ve borne enough from him. Stay where you are.” Miserably, and with the feeling that this was but the prolonging of her troubled dreams, she obeyed. She put her head under the bedclothes to dull the sound of the crying, but it went through her like a knife in spite of that.

  Shortly afterward the telephone extension in Renny Whiteoak’s bedroom rang persistently. He might well have refused to wake, because he was at that moment in the midst of an enthralling dream in which he was judge at a show where all the entrants were unicorns. He was hesitating between a beautiful blond unicorn, with a horn of pure gold, and one which was striped like a tiger, with a lovely body and challenging eyes. He did not want to be waked but the little old cairn terrier lying against his back climbed over him at the sound of the bell and firmly pawed his face.

  With a groan he reached for the receiver. “Hello,” he said.

  “Sorry to disturb you so early,” came Finch’s voice, “but I’m wondering if you can tell me what to do for a mosquito bite young Dennis has. I guess it’s infected. It looks pretty bad. The leg’s swollen.”

  “I have the very best remedy for that,” said Renny. “I’ll bring it right over.”

  It was a marvel, thought Finch, how Renny could have got into his clothes and so soon appeared at the door. He went straight to the little boy’s room. Dennis at once sat up in bed. “Look,” he said, “how fat my knee is! It was paining like anything but my father heard me and he came to see, and now it doesn’t hurt so much.”

  Finch sat down on the s
ide of the bed. He said, “Feel how hard and hot the leg is.”

  “Yes, feel, Uncle Renny.”

  Renny examined the leg. “It’s infected,” he said. “We must have the doctor to it. I’ll bet you’ve been scratching it, young man.”

  “Scratching,” Finch echoed bitterly. “He got himself into a horrible mess last night. Bleeding.”

  Dennis, his possessive eyes raised to Finch’s face, put out his hand to press it into Finch’s, who quickly drew his away. As though to make up for this retreat, he said, “I’ll bring you a cold drink.”

  The result of the doctor’s visit was that Dennis was kept in bed and treated for a serious infection. It was a painful time, but he was uncomplaining, gentle. Yet when Sylvia carried a tray to him or offered to read aloud he would turn his face to the wall and ask to be left alone. It was different when Finch appeared. Dennis would gaze at him with what seemed to Finch a calculated devotion, as though he strove, with all his small strength, to build a wall about the two of them. If Finch were present when Sylvia came to the sickroom, Dennis would meekly accept what she offered, meekly reply when she spoke to him, but always he kept those jewel-like green eyes of his, in which the whites were not noticeable, averted.

  To be with him was enough to make Sylvia tremble. Small and suffering as he was, she felt in him a force dominant over her. She realized that he was aware of this, that he saw and savoured her trembling. In the days of his illness she gave up hope of winning him over. The long weeks of his holidays loomed as a threat. She might have borne his presence with ease, if she had not seen its effect on Finch. They could not speak of the boy without constraint. Try as they would they could not be natural about him, could not treat him as the child he was. Yet, when he lay sleeping, Sylvia would sometimes long to take him into her arms. At other times she was startled by her anger against him. Almost, she felt, she hated him. Once, she found to her horror that she was imagining him dead and the relief it would be.