Whiteoaks of Jalna/Chapter 14
The train seemed to be flying with passionate purpose through the night. The engine shot forth smoke and sparks, its bright eye glared, its whistle rent the air. Its long hinderpart, trailing after it, the intricate, metallic parts of which revolved with terrific energy, seemed no less than the body of some fabulous serpent which, having swallowed certain humans, hastened to disgorge them in a favoured spot. In the steel cavern of its vast interior their tender bodies lay secure and unharmed. It seemed to Finch, imaging it thus, that its journey was made for the sole purpose of returning five souls to the walls of Jalna, from which they had wandered.
Eden had borne the journey well. Renny had taken a compartment for his comfort, and had shared it with him that he might be on hand to wait on him. Ernest, Finch, and Alayne had had berths at the other end of the coach. The four—for Eden had not been visible to the other occupants of the coach—were the subjects of much conjecture. The men—tall, thin, absorbed in themselves and their female companion—made their numerous passages from end to end of the coach in complete obliviousness of the other travellers. Thus the Whiteoaks revealed their power of carrying their own atmosphere with them. With calculated reserve they raised a wall about themselves, excluding the rest of the world. In the smoking compartment not one of them exchanged more than a glance, which itself lacked any appearance of friendliness, with any other passenger.
They were met on their arrival by two motor-cars. One was of English make, a very old car but still good, owned by Maurice Vaughan, Renny's brother-in-law, and driven by him. Eden was installed in it, and with him went Ernest and Renny. Watching their departure, Alayne wondered why Renny had not chosen to ride with her. She was relieved that the propinquity of a long drive had not to be endured, but she felt a quick disappointment, even resentment, that he had shunned her. His mixture of coldness and fire, of calculation and restrained impulse, had always disturbed her. To be near him was to experience alternate moods of exhilaration and depression. She was glad that she was not to be in the house with him. Fiddler's Hut was near enough.
As she settled herself in the familiar shabby car of the Whiteoaks beside Finch, beheld the remembered form of Wright, the stableman, driving, and dressed to the height of his power for the occasion, she wondered what had been the force which had impelled her to this strange return. Had it indeed been the shadow of her dead love for Eden—springing desire to cherish his life for the sake of his poetry? Or was it that, knowing Renny willed it so, she had no self-denying power to resist? Or was it simply and terribly that the old house—Jalna itself—had caught her in the coil of its spell, had stretched forth its arm to draw her back into its bosom?
Finch and she said little. An understanding that made words no obligation had been born between them. He too had his moving thoughts. He was passing through the town where his school was. What a great city it had seemed to him until he had seen New York! Now it looked as though it had had a blow on the head that had flattened it. Its streets looked incredibly narrow. The crowd, which had seemed to him once to surge, now merely loitered. They had different faces, too, less set, more good-humoured. And how jolly the policemen looked in their helmets!
When they had left the town and were flying along the country road, past fields of springing corn and gardens bright with tulips and heavy with the scent of lilacs, Finch's face was so happy that Alayne said, with a half-rueful smile: "Glad to be home after all, aren't you?"
He assented with a nod. He longed to tell her that part of his gladness was due to her presence, the miracle of her riding beside him in the spring, but could not. He tried to make her understand by a look, and turned toward her with his wide, not unattractive smile.
She smiled in return and touched his hand, and he thought she understood, but she was only thinking: "What will become of him now? Is this a good or a bad step for him?"
They came to the low white cottages of Evandale, the blacksmith's, Mrs. Brawn's tiny shop, the English church on its high, wooded knoll, the vine-covered rectory. The wind blew, high and fresh, scattering the last of the orchard blossoms. They entered the driveway of Jalna just as the occupants of the other car were alighting. Renny had Eden by the arm.
They were crowded together in the porch. The lawn seemed less spacious than Alayne had remembered it. The great evergreen trees, with their heavy, draped boughs, seemed to have drawn nearer, to be whispering together in groups, observing the return.
Rags flung wide the front door, disclosing, as in a tableau, the grandmother, supported by Nicholas and Augusta. Her face was set in a grin of joyous anticipation. She wore her purple velvet tea-gown, her largest cap, with the purple ribbons. Her shapely old hand, resting on the ebony stick, bore many rich-tinted rings. Behind her, down the hall, the sunlight, coming through the stained-glass window, cast strangely shaped bright-coloured patches. Still grasping her stick, she took a step forward and extended her arms.
The arrival had been well timed for her. After a sound night's sleep, she had just arisen refreshed, her initial vitality not yet lowered by the agitations of the day.
"Ha!" she exclaimed. "Ha! Children. . . . All my children. . . . Kiss me quick!"
They pressed about her, almost hiding her—Ernest, Renny, Finch, Eden. Loud smacks were exchanged.
"Dear me, Nicholas," said Ernest, with some anxiety, as his mother embraced Eden, "do you think she should do that? The contagion, I mean."
"She'll scarcely catch anything at her age," rejoined Nicholas, composedly. "God, how changed the boy is!"
"Yes. . . . What a time I've had, Nick! If only you knew what I've been through! The responsibility and all! How has Mama been?"
"Marvellous. Renny's letter has given her a new lease of life. I wonder what prompted him to write to her instead of to Augusta."
Ernest stared, incredulously. "You don't mean that he wrote to Mama about Alayne's coming and getting the cottage ready for them?"
"He did. Right over Augusta's head. The old girl is nettled, I can tell you. And serve her right. She's too hoity-toity about here by far."
"H'm! He should not have done that. It wasn't fair to Augusta. And Mama is so helpless. What could she do?"
Nicholas gave one of his subterranean chuckles. "Do? Do? She has driven us nearly crazy. If she had had her way most of the furniture would have been carried from the house to furnish Fiddler's Hut. Things haven't been dull here! Look at her now."
Old Mrs. Whiteoak was again seated in her own chair. To protect her from draught a black and gold Indian screen had been placed at her back. On top of the screen Boney, in brilliant spring plumage, was perched, his beady eyes fixed on her cap, the gay ribbons of which intrigued him. On ottomans on either side of her she had commanded Eden and Alayne to sit. She took a hand of each. It was almost a sacramental act.
Her mind had never grasped the fact that Eden and Alayne were estranged, separated. She saw them now only as an inseparable pair who had disappeared for a long time and were now returned miraculously to her. Her activities of the past days had brightened her eyes and reset her strongly marked features in the mould of authority.
"Ha!" she ejaculated. "And so you're here! At last, eh? My young couple. Bonny as ever. Lord, what a time I've had getting ready for you! What a to-do! Eh, Augusta? A to-do, eh? Alayne, my dear, you remember my daughter, Lady Bunkley? She's failing. I notice it. This climate don't agree with her. It takes an old war-horse like me to stand it. I've lived through India and I've lived through Canada. Roasting and freezing. All one to me."
Augusta looked down her nose. She was greatly chagrined by the old lady's remarks. She said: "It is no great wonder if I am unwell. It has been a trying time." She directed her offended gaze toward Renny.
He did not see it. His eyes were fixed on his grandmother. He was absorbing her aspect, delighting in her. Some perversity of his nature had impelled him to write to her, asking her to oversee the furnishing of the Hut for Eden and Alayne—she was the one above all who would see to it that the Hut was made comfortable. This he wrote, knowing that she was capable only of making things difficult for his aunt. His feeling toward Augusta was not altogether dutiful, though, on occasion, he would be demonstratively affectionate. She too often interfered with the boys. She too often sounded the note of England's superiority, of the crudity of the Colonies. He admired her, but he resented her. He admired his grandmother and resented not her most flagrant absurdities. Now her air of hilarity, of the exaltation of a superior being, moved him to tenderness toward her. He forgot for the moment his anxiety over Eden. He forgot his smouldering passion for Alayne. He was satisfied to see her sitting at his grandmother's right hand, for a while, at least, a member of his tribe. He felt the tug of those unseen cords between himself and every being in the room.
Eden's exhaustion after the journey was, for the moment, forgotten in the excitement of the home-coming. He felt the cynical bliss of the prodigal. He was at his own hearth again, he was loved, but he knew he was unchanged. He smiled mockingly at Alayne across the purple velvet expanse of Grandmother's lap, across the glitter of her rings as they pressed into the flesh of the two captured hands. He felt an exquisite relief in the knowledge that Alayne would be with him at Jalna, to care for him as she had done once before when he was ill. He could not have borne anyone else about him. If he were to die, it would not be quite so horrible with her beside him. . . . But he could not help that mocking smile.
"I am trapped," Alayne thought. "Why am I here? What does it all mean? Is there some plan, some reason in it all? Or are we just mad puppets set jigging by the sinister hand of a magician? Is the hand this old woman's? Not hard to think of her as Fate. . . ."
"Shaitan! Shaitan ka batka!" screamed Boney, suddenly perceiving her as a stranger.
"Tell the bird to hold his tongue!" cried Grandmother. "I want to talk."
"Hold your tongue, Bonaparte!" growled Nicholas.
Alayne thought: "Is Eden going to die? And if he does—what? Why am I here? If I can nurse him back to health, can I ever care for him again? Ah, no, no—I could not! What are Renny's thoughts? Why was I such a fool as to think that his presence no longer swept over me like a wave of the sea. Oh, why did I come?" Her brow contracted in pain. Old Mrs. Whiteoak's rings were hurting her hand.
"Shaitan! Shaitan ka batka!" raged Boney.
"Nick!"
"Yes, Mama."
"Ernest!"
"Yes, Mama."
"Tell the bird to hush. I'm asking Alayne a question."
They composed the parrot with a bit of biscuit.
"Are you glad to be home again, child?"
"Y-yes. Oh, yes."
"And where have you been all this time?"
"In New York."
"It's a poor place from what I hear. Did you weary of it? Had Eden a good position?"
All the eyes in the room were on her. She hedged. "I went away once for a change. To visit cousins in Milwaukee."
The strong rust-coloured eyebrows shot upward. "Milwaukee! China, eh? That's a long way."
Nicholas came to the rescue. "Milwaukee's not in China, Mama. It's somewhere in the States."
"Nonsense! It's in China. Walkee-walkee—talkee-talkee! Don't you think I know pigeon English?" She grinned triumphantly, squeezing Alayne's hand.
"Walkee-walkee—talkee-talkee!" chanted Wakefield.
"Nicholas!"
"Yes, Mama."
"Hush the boy. I must not be interrupted."
Nicholas put out a long arm and drew Wake to his side. "Listen," he said, with a finger up; "an improving conversation."
Grandmother said, with her dark bright eyes on the two beside her: "What's the matter? Why haven't you got a child?"
"This is too much," said Augusta.
Her mother retorted: "It's not enough. . . . Pheasant's had one. Meggie's had one. May manage another. . . . I don't like this business of not having children. My mother had eleven. I should have done as well. I started off smartly. But, look you, when we came here the doctor was so hard to get at, Philip was afraid for me. Ah, there was a man, my Philip! The back on him! You don't see such straight backs nowadays. No children. . . . H'm. In my day, a wife would give her husband a round dozen"
"Shaitan!" cried Boney, his biscuit gone and his eye on the stranger.
"—and, if there was one of them he wasn't quite sure about, he took it like a man—ha!"
"Shaitan ka batka!"
"He knew even the most reliable mare . . . skittish now and then."
"Ka batka!"
"Hey, Renny?"
"Yes, old dear. Great days those!"
Eden withdrew his hand from his grandmother's. There was a look of exhaustion on his face. He got to his feet; his lips were parted, his forehead drawn in a frown. "Awfully tired," he muttered. "I think I'll lie down for a bit." He looked vaguely about.
"Poor lad," said the old lady. "Put him on the sofa in the library."
Eden walked slowly from the room. Ernest followed him, solicitous, a little important. He covered him with a rug on the sofa.
Grandmother's eyes followed the pair with satisfaction. She then turned to Alayne. "Don't worry, my dear, we'll soon have him well again. Then let's hope you'll"
"Mama," interrupted Nicholas, "tell Alayne about the Hut. What a time you've had, and all that."
This was enough to distract her attention from the necessity of multiplying. She now bent her faculties to a description of the downy nest she had prepared.
Nicholas said in an undertone to Renny: "It was appalling. The Hut could not possibly have held the furniture she insisted on sending to it. There was only one thing to do, and that was to carry the things out at one door and bring them back through another. Augusta, poor old girl, was at her wits' end."
The master of Jalna showed his teeth in appreciation. Then, his face clouding, he asked: "What do you think of Eden? Pretty sick boy, eh?"
"How bad is he? I couldn't gather much from your letter."
"I don't quite know. I must have Dr. Drummond see him. The New York doctor says his condition is serious. Not hopeless."
"American doctors!" observed Nicholas with a shrug. "Fresh air. Milk. We'll soon fill him out. . . . Gad, what a trump that girl is! Gone off in looks, though."
"Nonsense," denied Ernest, who had come up from behind. "She's lovelier than ever."
Renny offered no opinion. His eyes were on her face. He read there spiritual acceptance of her changed condition. A calm embrace of even Boney. A trump? No. A proud spirit subdued by passion. He moved circuitously to her side among the pieces of heavy inlaid mahogany. He sat down on the ottoman that had been occupied by Eden.
"I want to tell you," he said, "how happy it makes me to have you here."
Old Mrs. Whiteoak had fallen into a doze. Fate seemed to be napping. Alayne and Renny might have been the only two in the room, each so felt the isolating power of the other's proximity.
"I had to come. He wanted me—needed me so terribly."
"Of course. He needs you. . . . And when—he gets better?"
"Then I shall go back."
But the words sounded unreal to her. Though she had left her possessions in the apartment, had made preparations for only a summer's stay, the words sounded unreal. The apartment, with its artistic rugs, its pretty lamps, its bits of brass and copper, seemed of less importance than the ebony stick of this sleeping old woman. Rosamond Trent seemed of no importance. This room spoke to her. Its cumbersome furniture had a message for her. Its thick walls, enclosing that subjugating atmosphere, had a significance which no other walls could have. She might not grasp the unqualified meaning of it. She had not courage for the attempt. The room might be only a trap, and she—a rabbit, perhaps—a limp, vulnerable rabbit—caught!
His tone, when he spoke again, was almost crisp. "Well, you've come, and that's the great thing. I can't tell you what a load it takes off my mind. I believe it will mean recovery for Eden."
She must work, she must strain for Eden's recovery. And that was right. One must obey the laws of one's order. But what a fantastic interlude in her life this summer was to be!
Augusta had gone out. Now she reappeared in the doorway and motioned them to come. They rose and went to her, moving cautiously so as not to awaken the grandmother.
"He has fallen asleep," said Augusta. "Done out, poor boy. And you must be so tired, too, my dear. Shouldn't you like to come up to my room and tidy yourself before dinner? I'll have a jug of hot water taken up to you."
Alayne thanked her. She would be glad to change her dress and wash.
"Then," continued Augusta, "I shall take you to the cottage—I think we had better drop that horrid name of Fiddler's Hut, now that you are going to live there—and show you our preparations. I suppose I should say my mother's preparations." And she directed a reproachful look at Renny.
He returned her look truculently. "I like the old name," he said. "I don't see any sense in changing it."
"I shall certainly never call it that again."
"Call it what you please! It's Fiddler's Hut." He gave an angry gesture.
"Why should one cling to low names?"
"You'll be sneering at Jalna next!"
Alayne thought: "Have I ever been away? Here they are, wrangling in exactly the same fashion. I don't see how I am to bear it. What has come over me now I am in this house? A mere movement of his arm disturbs me! In New York it was possible—here, I cannot! I cannot! Thank God, I shall be under another roof!"
A red patch of light, projected through the coloured glass of the window, rested on Renny's head. His hair seemed to be on fire. He said, contemptuously: "The cottage, eh? Better call it Rose Cottage, or Honeysuckle Cottage. Make it sweet while you're about it!" It was a passion with him that nothing about the place should be changed.
The front door was thrown open, and Wakefield ran in. With him came a rush of spring wind and three dogs. The two spaniels began to bark and jump about their master. The old sheep-dog sniffed Alayne and wagged the clump of fur that was his tail. He remembered her.
Wakefield held out a small bunch of windflowers. "I've brought these for you," he said. "You're to keep them in your room."
Alayne clasped him to her. How adorable his little body felt! So light, so fragile, and yet how full of life! "Thank you! Thank you!" she breathed, and he laughed as he felt the warmth of her mouth against his ear. He wrapped himself about her.
"Child," admonished his aunt, "don't be so rough with Alayne! She is coming to my room now. She is tired. You're dragging her down."
Renny removed the little limpet, and Lady Buckley took Alayne by the arm.
As they mounted the stairs, she said: "You have done nobly and rightly. I cannot express how I admire you for it. I wish I could say that I am sure you will be rewarded for your self-sacrifice, but I have not found it so in life." And she sighed. "I have discovered a nice young Scotch girl who will come from the village every day to work for you at—you know where. I refuse to call the cottage by that odious name, even though Renny be disagreeable to me."
They sought Augusta's room, and she poured water from the heavy ewer into the basin, that Alayne might wash her face and hands.
Finch, too, had gone to his room. The creak of the attic stairs, as he ascended, was to him the voice of the house. It welcomed him, and chided him. The attic complained that it had been so long deserted by him. No one there, all those weeks, to listen to the voice of the house at night. All that he might have heard it say on those nights was now lost to him for ever. The walls of his room did not seem to be standing still. They seemed to move, to quiver in consciousness of him. The faded flowers of the wallpaper stirred as in a gust. He stood there, snuffing the familiar smells: the plaster, damp in one spot where the roof leaked—there was his water basin just where he had left it, placed to catch the drops; the faded carpet, not swept too thoroughly by Mrs. Wragge—it had a peculiar, fuzzy smell; the mustiness of the old books in the cupboard; and, permeating all, the essence of the house itself, which held a secret never to be told, though he thought he came near to guessing it.
He threw open the window and let in the air. The trees, sombre and friendly, exhaled their teasing, resinous scents. Little rosy cones, like tiny candles for a fête day, stood upright on a mossy spruce. All the trees showed a green film of moss on that side of the trunk nearest the house, as if a visible sign of their communion with it. The leaves of the deciduous trees, in their newly opened freshness, were of a gloss unimpeachable and pure. Beyond the trees, the meadows, moist and verdant; the paddock, where a group of leggy foals stood in awe of their own newness; the apple orchard, where the pinkish-white blossoms were falling with every breeze to the dark red earth, like flowers before the feet of June, young Summer's bride. The stream, its surface broken in a thousand sunny splinters, hastened down into the ravine, where only the trunks of the silver birches stood bright against the shade. A mourning dove uttered its pensive, wooing call.
Finch threw out his arms and drew the beauty of it into his soul. He sent his spirit out of the window to meet the morning. His spirit returned to him, laden with the morning, heavy with the sweetness of it, as a bee with honey.
He thought of his last day in this room, its humiliation. He had dreaded the home-coming as ignominious. But Piers had not been present to jeer at him. He had crept back, scarcely noticed, under the screen of Eden's illness. Only Uncle Nicholas had growled, under his moustache: "Well, young man, I hope you're ashamed of yourself. What you need is a good hiding."
And Renny, overhearing, had remarked, curtly: "If it hadn't been for the kid we'd never have found Eden."
Cantankerous, magnificent Renny!
Behind him he heard a light step. He turned and saw Wakefield in the doorway. The dignity of his bearing, the gravity of his small countenance, showed him to be in a mood which Finch detested. A darned patronizing mood that expressed itself in the most high-flown words at his command, words garnered from his conversations with Aunt Augusta and Mr. Fennel.
"I see," he said, enunciating clearly, "that you have repented you of your folly."
Finch hung on to himself. It was hard to keep his hands off the insufferable little fellow, but he must. A bad way that would be for reinstating himself. He wondered why Wakefield had no respect for him. Other small boys had for their seniors. In the house of one of his school friends he had seen an inquisitive young brother dismissed with a mere nod of the head.
No harm in trying that on Wake, anyhow. He suspended the brush he had begun to use on his hair, and gave his head a peremptory jerk toward the door. The expression of his face, reflected in the looking-glass, was one of cold authority.
Wakefield did not move. He said: "I knew full well that you would repent you of your folly."
Finch threw down the hairbrush and bore down upon him. But you could not really hurt anything as fragile as this youngster. Why, his bones were only gristle! Finch flung him over his shoulder and ran down the stairs with him hanging limp and unresisting. But the instant Wake was set on his feet in the hall, his cock-a-hoop air returned, and he deftly placed himself at the head of the procession now entering the dining-room.
"Aha!" cried Grandmother, showing every tooth, "that's what I like to hear! Young lads racketing about!"
They were around the table, with the portraits of Captain Philip Whiteoak in his uniform and old Adeline in her heyday smiling down on them. Behind their chairs glided the form of Rags, his expression that queer mixture of servility and impudence, his shiny black coat, dragged on in haste at the last minute, very much up at the nape.
There they were, consuming large slices of underdone roast beef; potatoes roasted in the pan; turnips smothered in brown gravy; asparagus weltering in drawn butter; a boiled pudding with hard sauce; and repeated cups of hot tea. Alayne was touched because they had remembered that she did not eat pudding. There were jam tarts for her. "Baked in the little shell pattypans you like!" Grandmother pointed out. And there was sherry to drink, too. A New York clubman would have paid a pretty price for such sherry as this. How old Adeline liked it! She threw back her head, her cap-ribbons trembling, to drain the last drop. Renny whispered: "I'll send some of this sherry to Fiddler's Hut for Eden. Some good porter would buck him up, too. Do him more good than milk." Alayne's thoughts flew on swift wings of compassion to Eden, stretched on the sofa in the next room. She had had a glimpse of him as she passed, covered with a magenta crocheted afghan. Confusing for him, she thought, all this robust conversation. Nicholas, Ernest, their mother, were all talking at once. About food. What Ernest had had to eat in New York; what Nicholas had eaten in London, twenty-five years ago. What Grandmother had eaten in India, seventy-five years ago. Augusta, in contralto tones, extolled the flavour of English strawberries, lettuce, and cauliflower. There was an altercation among Augusta, Renny, and Wakefield as to whether or not the child should eat the fat of his beef. Only Finch was silent, eating as though he would never get enough.
Sunshine, coming through the yellow blinds, bathed them all as in the thunderous glow of a Turner sunset. The salient features of each were mordantly emphasized. Grandmother's cap, her eyebrows, her nose; Augusta's fringe, the carriage of her head; Nicholas's shoulders, the sardonic droop of his moustache; Ernest's long white hands; Wake's glowing dark eyes; Renny's red head, his Court nose. And in the essence of them there was no conformation to a standard. Life had not hammered them, planed them, fitted them to any pattern. After the weary wit of the talk to which she had listened, rather than taken part in, at dinners of the past year, all this gusto, this spendthrift tossing away of energy! But perhaps they were right. Perhaps they had some secret which others had lost or were losing. They did not save themselves. They were built on a wasteful plan. Like shouldering trees, they thrust down their roots, thrust out their limbs, strove with each other, battled with the elemental. They saw nothing strange or unlikely in themselves. They were the Whiteoaks of Jalna. There was nothing more to be said.