Whiteoaks of Jalna/Chapter 19
There she lies, the old woman, in her coffin; wreaths, sprays, crosses of sweet flowers, all about her. She has been bathed, embalmed, dressed in her best black velvet dress. Her hands are crossed on her breast, but they have left her only her wedding ring, worn to a mere thread of gold. If one could see inside the ring, one might decipher the words "Adeline, Philip, 1848." She wears her best lace cap that has long been put by in a lavender-scented box awaiting this occasion. On a silver plate on the coffin is engraved the date of her birth, her death, her name, including her Christian names—Adeline Honora Bridget. All has been done for her that it is possible to do. All is arranged, perfected for her burial. She has been on this earth a long time, but now she is to be put into it for an infinitely longer period.
There is an ineffable air of dignity, of pomp, about her. She looks like an ancient empress, with that faintly contemptuous smile on her lips, that carven nose. She might have lived as the centre of court intrigues, instead of having passed three-quarters of her life in this backwater, with only her family to lord it over. Ireland and India, two countries the names of which begin with "I," have left their mark on her. Her life has been lived, dominated by "I."
At her head and her feet stand tall silver candelabra bearing lighted candles. Finch placed them there, when he stole downstairs to his last meeting with her, after the rest were all in bed. His gaunt young face was that of a mystic as he glided about her, touching each waxen column into flame.
Augusta, in the morning, ordered them to be taken away, exclaiming against such popish practices, but Nicholas said: "Let them be. Pomp suits her."
By ones, twos, and threes her descendants came to mourn over their progenitress. Nicholas remained by her side all day, refusing food, his leonine head dishevelled, one end of his grey moustache caught in his teeth. Ernest wandered in and out, tall and elegant in his black frock coat. He escorted visitors to the casket, drawing their attention to the chiselled features, the beautiful expression of his Mama. He whispered the word a great many times to himself those days, for soon she would be gone, and he would have no Mama. All the sarcastic things she had ever said to him were obliterated from his mind, and only the times when she had been kind remained. He remembered how she had been dependent on him for certain things, and tears ran down his cheeks.
It was not so with Augusta. The contemptuous smile on her mother's lips seemed to be especially directed toward her. Every now and again some humorous jibe from those lips would crop up in her mind. She kept remembering the last of them: how, when she had been dressing her for the last tea, she had remarked: "You look nice and bright this afternoon, Mama," and her mother had returned: "I wish I could say the same for you!"
Augusta recalled happenings of her childhood. They were clearer to her than the events of the past year. She remembered the time of her marriage, when on the eve of her wedding day her mother had said to her: "I don't think I need give you any advice, my dear. Buckley's not much past your shoulder. You needn't be afraid of him!" Mama could remember his name quite easily then; but once he had come into the title, it had always been Bunkley or Bilgeley or Bunkum!
Augusta reproached herself for recalling such little frictions at a time like this. Her sorrow was real, but her memory was very uncomfortable. . . . She led Wakefield to the coffin. It was his first sight of death. She said, in impressive tones: "Look at her long, Wakefield. Try to impress her face on your mind. She was a very wonderful woman."
The little boy was awestruck. He felt dizzy from the heavy scent of flowers. He gazed long at the calm face, at the shapely old hands folded in resignation.
"But, Aunt," he exclaimed, his clear treble sounding incongruous in that room, "she looks so nice! Isn't it a pity to bury her?"
Her old friends—there were not many left—agreed that they had never seen a corpse look so natural. Down in the basement Rags declared to his wife and the kitchenmaid, and a little gathering of workers from the stables, the farm, and Vaughanlands: "Bless me, if the old lady don't look more natural than 'erself!"
What of Renny? Like one of the horses among which he spent so much of his time, his feeling toward death was one of almost animal alarm. He drew away, shivering, from the sinister presence that shadowed the house.
After one look at the face of the dead woman, he left the room and did not return to it until the hour of the funeral. Death, as he had seen it during the War, had not affected him greatly. He had been overseas when his father and his stepmother had died. This experience was to him terrifying. He left the arrangements for the funeral to Augusta, Ernest, and Piers. In one matter only he took an interest, the choosing of the pallbearers. These, he decided, must be the four eldest grandsons. Eden expostulated, he was not strong enough yet to undertake such a thing. Alayne thought, and said with some vehemence, that it would be wrong, impossible for him to tax his strength so. But Renny was adamant. Eden looked to him almost as well as ever; he should and must take his place among his brothers to bear the body of their grandmother to her grave. He went to Fiddler's Hut, and the three sat about the table talking excitedly, his red hair in an unkempt crest, his lean narrow face flushed, the sharp lines of his face set against opposition. Eden gave in.
The day of the funeral broke infinitely lovely. There had been a heavy dew, which lay like a sparkling veil across the lawn. It was a still day, except for the chatter of small birds in the evergreens along the drive. There was a tender aloofness about the day, as though summer hesitated, drawing a deep breath before departing. Old Adeline had loved such a day as this. If she had been living, she would have assuredly taken one of her little walks as far as the gate, supported by her sons. But instead she was to take her last ride. During her lifetime she had consistently refused to get into a motor-car, but she had asked to have a motor hearse at her funeral. "I like to think," she had said, "that I'll have a ride behind a motor instead of a horse before I'm laid away. No one can say that I was old-fashioned."
Wakefield was awed to see all the family, even to Finch, in deep black. He would have liked a black suit himself, but he had to be content with the black band that Meggie stitched on the sleeve of his grey Norfolk jacket. He felt very conscious of this badge of mourning, very dignified and aloof. He greatly wished that he were big enough to be one of the pallbearers.
The funeral cortège was almost ready to leave the door. The four who were to carry the coffin stood shoulder to shoulder, Eden and Piers near enough to hear each other breathing! Renny had had trouble with Piers before he could persuade him to be, even for so short a time, near Eden. But he had overridden them both. There they were beside him, and he was head of the clan. Short prayers were said by Mr. Fennel. The pallbearers raised the coffin to their shoulders.
The hearse moved slowly from the door, followed by a car in which rode the four brothers. This in turn was followed by one in which were Augusta, Nicholas, Ernest, and Mr. Fennel. Next the Vaughans and Wakefield. Pheasant had made an excuse of some baby ailment of Mooey's to remain at home. She peeped through a curtain above and saw Eden's fair head shining among his brothers', and she made little moaning sounds, remembering her short and sultry passion for him. It had nearly wrecked her life and Piers's, but tragedy had been averted—she was safe, safe with Piers and her baby!
Alayne also had stayed behind. She had gone for one long look at that aloof old face, which indeed had always looked kindly on her. Shrewd as old Adeline had been, Alayne felt sure that she had never guessed that she had ceased to love Eden, any more than she could be convinced that she was not an American heiress.
Alayne had left the house in a mood of deep depression. She had felt, not the aversion of a sensitive animal from the presence of death, as Renny had, but a profound shrinking from the mourning of the inanimate Jalna. It had seemed to her that the solid walls had drawn nearer to enclose that body, that the ceiling had lowered to shelter it, that the very doors had narrowed to delay its passage from thence. . . . Leaving, she had looked back at it from the edge of the lawn, and it seemed to her that the whole house had shrunken into itself with grief!
After the chief mourners there followed the friends of the family, and many people from the surrounding villages and countryside in motors and old-fashioned buggies, a long procession. Here was the funeral of one whom the oldest of them could remember, from their earliest days, as a married woman. A landmark was gone. Not a tree, not the steeple of a church, but a living, dominating being! Many of the mourners had not seen her for years, but her tall form, her rust-red hair, her piercing brown eyes, were impressed on their memories for ever. Every now and again some story of her temper or her idiosyncrasies would float about. To-day it was remembered how until the last year she had never—or almost never—missed a morning service in the grey stone church built by Captain Whiteoak, driving there in her shabby phaeton behind the two stout bays. And, though she might have been close-fisted enough in some ways, she had each Christmas given a present to every child in her own village of Evandale, built on what was once part of the estate of Jalna. In her last years she had depended on Ernest to buy these presents for her. Next Christmas the children would miss that.
So, though she had been almost as immovable as a tree, her reputation grew, year by year, as girth is added to a tree. Those who had come to pay respect to her remains felt that they were taking part in a momentous and climacteric occasion.
To stout Hodge, who had driven her phaeton for the past thirty years, her death had been a tragedy. The meaning of his life was gone. No longer would he groom the bays—each nearing thirty—to satin sleekness, on a Sunday morning, polishing their jangling harness to a bright finish. No longer wash down the creaking wheels of the phaeton or put on his tight coachman's coat with the velvet collar. His dignity was gone. He was nothing but an ageing stableman.
He had come to Nicholas with tears on his cheeks, and said: "I suppose, sir, I'll never need to bring out the old phaeton again. . . . It does seem hard."
And Nicholas had growled: "My brother and I will use the phaeton for a long time yet, I hope." Nicholas would have preferred to go to church in a motor-car, now that the widow's veil of his mother would no longer dominate the phaeton, but one could not hurt Hodge. He was the one old servant left. The others came and went, and had no old-fashioned pride in their work.
Renny, in the car with his brothers, was thinking of the phaeton. He was remembering how his grandmother delighted in having her horses possess the middle of the road, thereby preventing him or any other motorist from passing. But him in particular. Yes, she had liked to get the best of him. God, but she was game!
He wished she might have seen the number who had turned out to do her honour. It seemed too bad that she could never know. And the flowers! A car filled with them. He liked that wreath of roses and carnations from the Hunt Club. . . . He looked his brothers over. It was good to see Eden fit again. A summer at Jalna was bound to do it. Good, too, to see him and Piers riding in the same car. It had taken some will-power to bring that about. He wondered if it were possible to bridge that chasm. He was afraid not. Wives brought into the family had a way of messing things up. A good thing probably that he had never married. His mind dwelt, for one aching moment, on the thought of Alayne. The funeral procession became a phantom procession. She was in his arms. He closed his eyes, giving himself up to the desire that tore at his heart.
When he opened them again, they rested on Finch, who was sitting between Piers and him, his long legs very much in the way. Finch had been in a detached, almost hallucinated state of mind since his grandmother's death, but now, of all times, with his face exposed to the gaze of Renny and Piers, he had broken down. He was giving way to spasmodic sobs; even the frequent wiping of his eyes on a large folded handkerchief could not keep them dry. Poor young devil, Renny thought, and he put his hand on the boy's bony knee, at which he cried the more. He felt that Piers was regarding him with contempt, but Piers did not see him. His eyes were fixed on Eden's back, before him on the front seat with Wright.
The funeral procession, phantom momentarily to Renny, was nothing but phantom to Piers. The one reality was Eden, sitting before him. Eden well again. Eden ready for more mischief. Eden, whom he longed to beat with his fists into insensibility. Except for that one glimpse of him by the paddock, he had not seen him since that summer day two years ago on the night of which young Finch had come white-faced to tell him that Eden and Pheasant were in the birch wood together. If only Eden had not got away that night! If only he could have had it out with him! Now, he supposed, they would never have it out.
Eden was conscious of Piers's eyes on the back of his head. He would have given a good deal to know what was in Piers's mind. Melodramatic, blood-and-thunder thoughts, no doubt. He smiled a little, as he imagined them, but he shifted uneasily in his seat. He pitied himself, rather. Here he was, on his first outing of the entire summer, and it a funeral! Had been forced, dragged into it, and into a proximity with Piers that, in spite of his cynicism, made his nerves feel shaky. He could not feel as the others did about his grandmother. They had seemed to expect her to go on living for ever. She had had a longer innings than he would ever have. He ached all over, had an uncomfortable, trembling sensation, after the effort of carrying his share of her coffin. Alayne had been against it. She had known he wasn't fit for it. And ahead of him lay the journey from the hearse into the church, and from the church to the grave-side. He wished that he had sat behind and looked at Piers's back instead of having Piers glaring, in that early Victorian way, at his.
The car stopped. The first of the cortège was on the driveway of the churchyard. He removed his hat and inhaled the sweet air. He was surprised to see what a crowd had gathered. He looked with apprehension at the steep that led to the church door. They had her out of the hearse. God, that scented, embalmed breath from its interior! He shouldered his share of the burden.
Mr. Fennel had met them. All was orderly confusion. The brothers strove together under that dead weight up the gravelled drive. Piers saw that Eden was overtaxed, half-fainting, and wished the way were twice as long. As they reached the church door Maurice came and took Eden's place, and Eden, his forehead dripping with sweat, dropped behind.
He had heard the rector's words, from a long way off.
"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. . . . We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord. . . ."
He was in a pew between Renny and Finch. He could not think clearly. His blood was singing in his ears. The chancel was veiled in a mist. If Alayne could see him, exhausted like this, how anxious she would be! She was always connected now in his mind with anxiety for him.
He became conscious that Finch was breathing in a queer snuffling way. He turned his eyes toward him, and saw his drooping boy's figure, and, beyond, Piers's brown hand lying on his knee. A fist! Surreptitiously his eyes slid to Piers's face, sunburnt, full-chinned, with strong, short nose. Of what was he thinking? Of his proximity? Of Pheasant? Of Gran lying there at the chancel steps?
"My heart was hot within me, and while I was thus musing the fire kindled. . . ."
He became conscious of the voice from the chancel, resonant, mournful:
"Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long: and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee. . . ."
Poor old Gran! How she would resent that! He could fancy her exclaiming: "Not a bit of it! I won't have it!"
The voice swept on:
"O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I go hence, and be no more seen."
Good poetry David wrote! And he had known life—not bridled himself! Lovely fragments came, clear as crystal:
". . . seeing that is past as a watch in the night . . . and fade away suddenly like the grass. In the morning it is green, and groweth up: but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered."
Ah, well, he was only twenty-six. He had seen and experienced a good deal, and would experience a deal more. Write poetry that would be remembered—for a day, at any rate. He was almost well. The desire to write surged up in him. He became wrapped in contemplation of his own personality. He forgot to rise when a hymn was sung until Renny touched him on the arm, then he rose hesitatingly to his feet. So long since he had been to church. . . .
He wondered whether anyone in heaven or on earth disliked hymns as much as he did. They made him want to throw back his head and howl like a dog. But he made no sound whatever, meekly taking a corner of the hymn-book Renny offered him. Renny did not sing either, or poor snuffling young Finch, but Piers raised his lusty baritone.
From a pew behind a woman's voice rose, clear and beautiful.
He recognized the voice as Minny Ware's. He followed it, absorbed by its beauty. He glanced at Renny, wondering if he too was following it, but Renny seemed to be engrossed in the hymn, his lips silently shaping the words.
All through Mr. Fennel's eulogy of the Christian qualities of old Adeline, Eden's mind played with the thought of Minny Ware. He recalled her as he had seen her on various occasions, always in bright colours, full of vitality, ready to give laugh for smile. He thought of her snowy neck rising columnlike from her turned-back collar. He rested his mind on the music of her voice. He decided that he would ask Alayne to have her come more often to sing to them. No, he would go over to Vaughanlands himself, and hear her sing with the piano. He was getting restless. He couldn't loaf about much longer. He must get work of some kind, though what it would be, God only knew!
His brothers were rising. Now it was time to carry the coffin to the graveyard. Surely Maurice would take his place again. Renny left the pew, but Eden did not move, though Finch was pressing behind him. He sent a glance, almost of entreaty, toward Maurice, who seemed undecided what to do. But Eden was not to be let off. Renny had made up his mind that it was seemly for the brothers to bear the coffin, and bear it they must, though one of them faint. He threw a look, half-harsh, half-affectionate, toward Eden, and, with a curt motion of the chin, indicated that he was to follow. The four took up their burden.
They had lowered her into the ground. Earth had been thrown into the grave. The last words were being spoken: "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." . . . Meggie's soft weeping was mingled with Mr. Fennel's voice. "Who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body. . . ."
Ernest's face was white and bleak. His jaw had dropped a little. He was inwardly sobbing to himself: "Mama, Mama!" Now she was to be "no more seen." . . .
Augusta, in deepest black, had drawn back her head, facing the concourse with the dignity of sorrow. If she had been isolated from her surroundings, one might easily have been persuaded that her expression was one of profound offence. Was she, perhaps, offended by death? On her next birthday she would be seventy-seven.
The face of Nicholas was like a rock, scarred by the lashings of long-past storms. He stood, massive, looking stoically into the dark aperture before him. But he did not see it. He saw himself, a little lad of five, sitting in the pew he had just left, leaning against his mother, with three-year-old Ernest on her other side, both getting very drowsy. Mama was voluminous in a snuff-coloured, billowing dress, lovely for tiny boys to curl up against, and the broad satin ribbons of her bonnet delightful to fondle. What a fine rich red her hair was then! Strange how it had slipped a generation and struck fire in Renny! Beyond was Papa's stalwart figure, his fresh-tinted stubborn profile that had descended, first to Philip, then to Piers, but not so aristocratic in the last generation. Well, you couldn't do anything about it. You were hurled into this world, floundered about a while, and were hurled out of it. . . . Ernest had taken his arm. "Come along, Nick," he said. "It's over. We're going."
Ernest led him through the maze of gravestones. His gouty knee gave him some nasty twinges; once or twice he stumbled. Queer how things looked unnatural to him. Even the people who came up to speak to him. The elder Miss Lacey had taken one of his hands in both of hers.
"Dear Nicholas," she said. "It's terrible, isn't it? I know just how you feel! Losing our father as we did, last year. He was ninety-two!"
He looked at her vaguely. He did not see her as she now was, but as she had looked forty-five years ago when she was making up to him, wanting to marry him. He'd have done a sight better if he'd taken her instead of that flyaway creature he had chosen. He'd have had a family, and his father might have left Jalna to him instead of to his younger brother. He rumbled a few words appreciative of her sympathy, and limped on.
A strong wind, smelling of the hot dry land, had sprung up. The long grasses of the graveyard rippled before it joyously. "It is not yet evening," they seemed to sing. The wind swept low, as though to gather fresh sweetness from the roses, lilies, and carnations mounded in the Whiteoak plot. A number of white clouds were borne along the sky in orderly procession, like choristers in snowy surplices. The drone of the organ still came from within the church.
Renny moved urgently toward his car, Wakefield dragging at his arm.
"Renny, Renny, may I drive home with you? I see Eden getting in with Meg and Maurice."
"All right, youngster."
He was glad to have the little boy with him, glad to get away from that place. At the grave-side he had stood with raised head, his eyes on the distance, and again something in his attitude suggested the fear of a sensitive horse toward death. Now he snuffed the wind, pressed Wake's hand against his side, and made an effort to restrain his eagerness to leave that place.
Wakefield said: "I don't think my grandmother could have had a nicer day for her funeral, do you? And I think she would be glad, if she could know, what a monstrous crowd there is."
The churchyard was deserted.
The body of Adeline lay at last in the family plot, which was enclosed by a low iron fence around which were festooned rusted chains and little spiked iron balls. Under a burden of earth and sod and drooping flowers, she lay stretched out by the side of all that was left of her Philip, whose bones were now probably bare. At their feet lay young Philip, and at his side his first wife Margaret. In a corner reposed Mary, his second wife, surrounded by a little group of infant Whiteoaks.
All that was lacking was Adeline's name, soon to be graven on the granite plinth that towered above the graves. . . . All was over for her, her tempers, her appetites, her sudden dozes, her love of colour, of noise, of family scenes. No more would she sit, velvet-gowned, ringed, capped, with Boney at her shoulder, before the blazing fire. No longer would she entreat, with a sudden tremulousness of that bold heart: "Somebody kiss me—quick!"
She would be "no more seen."
One of meditative mind might, knowing her character, speculate on what sort of tree should possibly be nourished, in far future days, from that grave. A flamboyant, Southern tree would perhaps be favoured were this not a Northern land. In consideration of this, a Scottish fir might well draw sustenance from the hardy frame and obdurate spirit.