Whiteoaks of Jalna/Chapter 22
As he walked swiftly along the country road that led to the lake, the feel of the thick fine dust through the thin soles of his canvas shoes gave him an aching sense of pleasure. The balls of his stockingless feet, his toes, seemed to have acquired a new sensitiveness that morning. They pressed the earth hungrily as though to imprint on it a palpable and lasting caress.
His eyes, dark-ringed after a sleepless night, moved constantly, as though to drink in all possible beauty from the dew-drenched burnished land. They swept over a field of ripe corn, from which came a dry, sweet whisper as though all the tiny imprisoned kernels sang together. They swept hungrily over a swarthy stubble field, from which a great flock of crows rose into the blueness of the sky. They espied, bluer than the sky, the clump of chicory by the roadside. Nothing could escape them. Not the spider's web, red as copper in the red sunrise. Not the sudden sparkle of dew on a tilting leaf. Not the slender imprint of a bird's foot on the dust before him.
He loved it so, and he was going to leave it. So often had he traversed this road, afoot and on his bicycle, and now this was to be the last time!
He could endure his life no longer. He had thought it all out through the long night, reviewed its nineteen years of blundering, cowardice, and terrors, and he had reached the certainty that he could endure it no longer. If he had had one friend—one person who could have understood, and pitied his forlornness! There was Alayne, but she was inaccessible because of the presence of Eden. And, even if he could have gone to her and poured out his miserable heart, it would not have sufficed, for there was the family, a solid hostile wall, impervious to his tears as to his batterings. It was not to be borne! In that wall of his own flesh and blood there was no relenting crevice through which he might creep and timidly touch hands with those he loved again. . . . He had wronged them, and there was only one way to make it right. . . . The old uncles—wondering all these years about their mother's money—and it had come to him! And Renny! But he could not think of Renny, and that look of shame for him on Renny's face!
All night it had been necessary to compel his mind from the remembrance of that look. There had been moments when he had felt that he must run down the attic stairs, throw himself on his knees at Renny's bedside, and beg him to forgive him, to comfort him, as he had comforted him after childish nightmares. Renny, whom he had wronged most of all! Well, now he was going to do what lay in his power to set things right. They would have to take the money now and divide it among them!
This morning it required no effort to keep his mind clear. It was as clear as crystal, exquisitely empty, as though washed clean by a hurricane. It was like an empty crystal bowl held up by the hands of his soul to receive the wine of beauty. From every side that wine ran into it, from the pine-sweet darkness of the ravine, from the reddening fields, along the slanting rays from the sun through which God spoke to him.
He passed the cross-roads. Here once they would have buried him, when his drenched body had been taken from the lake, with a stake driven through his heart. A warning to those who contemplated suicide. He did not think he would have minded that. He would have been no lonelier buried at the cross-roads than in the churchyard with his kin around him. What he was about to do seemed so natural that it seemed to him that all his acts for years had been leading up to this. To obliterate himself—to dash from his lips the bitter cup of living. He had brought with him into the world not much but the power of loving beauty. He would take out with him all that he could absorb of beauty, and perhaps God would leave that with him, while he slept, as compensation for the pain.
Oh, the caressing softness of the dust! For this last little way he would have nothing between his soles and it. He threw off his shoes and ran barefoot. He threw back his head, drinking in the cleanness of the breeze from the lake. Now he ran over dry, coarse grass, now over shingle that cut his feet, now over fine sand, hard as a marble floor.
The sun was hanging, a great lantern, just above the horizon. A red pathway crossed the lake from it to his very feet. The morning was as pure, as crystalline, as though it was the first morning that had broken over the earth. As he ran splashing into the water, fiery drops were flung up all about him. Translucent ripples disturbed the glassy surface of the lake. He ran out, his bare head empty and untroubled. He was not afraid. He sank into the water and swam outward on his side, following the red pathway. He would swim till he was tired, and then . . . He embraced the gently heaving water. He flung his arm again and again across the early morning ruddiness. He closed his eyes and saw bright panels set in amethyst walls against the lids. . . . There was no thought in him; he was empty as a crystal bowl moving through the water; feeling neither pride nor shame, exquisitely unconcerned; fragile, yet capable of receiving and holding fast the beauty that was flowing with him. . . . He heard music. . . .
Slowly he relaxed, and surrendered himself. . . .
The music became by degrees blurred, resolving itself into an overpowering humming, as though the arch of the sky were the dome of a vast beehive. His ears ached with the burden of it. He longed, with a sad longing, to be free of the fantastic, terrible droning, to hear the music, pure and clear once more. . . . It was no longer morning, red sunrise, but night, black night, and all the stars were bees, filling the universe with their humming. They swarmed in the cold black heavens, hungry for honey, ceaselessly humming. . . .
He must conceal the fact that he is a flower, full to the brim, overflowing with honey, for, if they discover this, they will swarm down upon him and suck the sweet essence out of him, leaving him empty, bruised and forlorn. . . . He shudders and draws his petals close about him to conceal the treasure. He is rocked on his stem, and is terrified that he will be broken from it and fall into the abyss below. . . . His petals are now white, now red, changing their colour constantly, veined with violet and gold, drawing and withdrawing above the honey that is the centre of him. . . .
He is convulsed with agony, for the bees have found him out. Their humming is becoming deafening, their wings clash like armour; they fly down, carrying lances to pierce him. . . . There is one golden bee that has seized him. They struggle. He curls up his petals desperately. He tries to scream, but knows that flowers have no voice. The abyss yawns below.
The great golden bee clutches him and will not be thrown off. Another comes to its aid. They are dragging him away now, helpless, fainting. No use to struggle. His petals, red and white, are falling into the abyss. He is torn to pieces.
Eden's face was close to his. Eden's face, white and dripping, with a wet lock plastered over the forehead. Someone else was there too, someone who had been doing strange things to him, knocking him about. He felt weak and sick, but he managed to gasp out: "All right . . . all right . . . pretty well, thanks."
He didn't know why he said that, unless they had been asking him how he felt, and he knew he must conceal the terrible truth. He had completely forgotten what the truth was, but he was poignantly conscious of its terror.
Eden was saying, in a staccato way, as though his teeth were rattling: "God, what a mercy that you were here! I should never have saved him alone!"
It was Minny Ware's rich voice that answered.
"I'm afraid you'd both have been drowned."
"And this first-aid business—you're simply wonderful! I've never felt such a duffer in my life!"
"You were splendid the way you plunged in! He'll be all right now, I think. It's you I feel worried about. You've been so ill. I must get help at once!"
Eden's hand was on Finch's heart. "It's beating more regularly. You're better, old chap? You know who I am?"
"Yes, Eden."
With a great effort he raised his eyelids again and saw Minny Ware standing straight and flushed, a dripping undergarment clinging to her rounded body, her breast still heaving from her exertions, her hair, like Eden's, plastered against her head. When she saw him looking at her, she smiled and said: "You naughty boy! I hope you're sorry for what you've done. Giving us such a fright!"
A shiver shook Eden from head to foot. She snatched up her dress and struggled, dripping as she was, into it. "I shall run to the house and get Mr. Vaughan as quickly as possible."
"No—no. Get Renny. He'd not like it if we didn't send for him first. Besides, he'll get here in half the time Maurice would."
She hesitated, disappointed. She had thought to come back with Maurice. The idea of missing any of the excitement, of losing any of the savour of being with these two males, half-drowned as they were, was intolerable to her exuberant femininity. She said: "I think it would be better to fetch Mr. Vaughan."
"Why?" Eden asked sharply.
"Because—he would take you straight to his house. You'd like that better, wouldn't you?"
"Telephone Renny—I'll have him take us to the Vaughans'. Please be quick, Miss Ware. This poor youngster is half-frozen—and I" He shivered and smiled.
"What a beast I am!" she cried. "I'll run every bit of the way!"
She did, and felt as though she could never tire, elated by the strange happenings of the morning. Her life at the Vaughans' was so quiet! Her mind was fervently preoccupied with the young men at Jalna. Married or single, their doings filled her thoughts. She discussed their dispositions, their talents, and their prospects endlessly with Meg. Meg pushed her always in the direction of Renny. Rich-voiced, yearning-bosomed, she was willing to be pushed in any direction.
She had risen that morning shortly after dawn, and sat at her open window, from which she could see the road. Along it she had seen the figure of Eden sauntering. She was almost sure it was Eden, but not quite sure. At any rate, it was one of the Whiteoaks. The red sky in the east, the figure of the young man sauntering, the sudden cry of a blackbird in the elm-tree near her window, had filled her heart with loneliness, with longing. She had changed into a prettier dress, stolen from the house, and followed him to the shore. She had found him nursing his knees and a pipe. She had made her presence known by singing softly as she approached along the sand. He had confessed to her that he had been too restless to sleep—a lyric that struggled toward birth, and yet was perversely reluctant of delivery. She had sat down beside him, at his invitation, hugging her knees and the smell of his tobacco smoke. Together they had rescued Finch.
They had watched him run into the water and swim outward without suspicion dawning, until Minny had exclaimed over the fact that he wore trousers and shirt instead of a bathing suit. And there had been something strange, wild, and exalted about the running young figure. . . .
He lay stretched on the sand now under Eden's coat, his face, of a deathly pallor, half-hidden in the crook of his arm. Eden crouched beside him, gripping between shaking jaws a pipe that had long been out. He patted Finch's shoulder. "Someone will be here, old chap! Do you feel sick?"
An inarticulate sound came from the prostrate figure. Eden patted him again. "You'll soon be all right. Those feelings come to us, but they pass. I've felt like doing it many a time."
"Ugh!" He shuddered from head to foot.
Disgusted at being brought back, poor young devil, thought Eden. Preferred oblivion out there to that tidy little fortune of Gran's. Ah, he'd been having a rough time of it—no doubt about that! But he'd get over it—live to play the fool with the money. . . . Money. What must it be like to have money! Why the hell didn't Renny come? If only Gran had left the money to him! He'd have snapped his fingers in the family's face. There he went—shuddering again! Poor little devil!
The Whiteoak car! Rattling down the stony road as though it would fly to pieces. Bang! Some rut that! Rattle, jiggle, bump. Ungodly racket, but how the old car could go! There was Renny at the wheel, his face set, too weather-bitten to show pallor even though he'd had a fright. Serve him right! Serve them all right if the kid had been drowned. Eden guessed at the scene which had brought about this reckless act.
"Hullo!" he shouted. "Here we are!"
The car bumped on to the beach, stopped with a jerk, and the master of Jalna leaped out.
He came with a long, crunching stride. "What's this?" he asked sharply.
Eden got to his feet. "This boy's been trying to do away with himself."
"Do away with himself! Minny Ware told me that he'd got cramp swimming!"
"She was trying to spare your feelings! I'm not." Eden's face was set also. His characteristic half-smile was frozen into a queer grin. "He hasn't been able to tell anything, but I'll venture to say he was hounded into it!"
Renny bent over Finch. He looked into his eyes, felt his heart. "I must get him into bed. I've brought brandy with me." He held the cup from a flask to Finch's mouth, and, when he had gulped the brandy gaspingly, Renny refilled the cup and handed it to Eden. "This has been enough to kill you," he said grimly, "after all you've been through!"
Eden shrugged, then looked steadily into Renny's eyes. "I have an idea," he said, "that I've done the best thing in saving this youngster that I've done in all my life."
"Minny Ware told me that you'd never have got him if it hadn't been for her."
Damn Renny! How he took the wind out of one's sails!
"She was there," he admitted, "and I guess she never did a better thing! He must have had a hell of a time to make him do this!"
"Time to talk of that later." Renny picked up the boy, too light for his length, and carried him to the car. He supported him against his shoulder while Eden drove. Meg met them on the steps. The old people at Jalna must not get a fright. Meg's full, soft lips were ineffably tender, and behind her stood Minny Ware. Maurice helped to carry Finch up the stairs.
He was rolled in blankets before a fire, drowsy, perspiring, sensing already the sweet, sticky smell of petunias that came in on the hot sunshine through the open window. But he had something to say to Renny, who stood drawing down his shirt sleeves. He had been rubbing Finch with alcohol.
"Renny," he said hesitatingly, "you won't tell them what I did . . . you won't let the others know?"
"All right," returned Renny, looking down on him with brusque compassion. His mind flew back to other times when Finch had entreated, in the very same tone: "You won't tell them that you licked me, will you, Renny? You won't let the others know?" And he had answered then as now: "All right, I won't."
Meg came in with a step which she tried to make noiseless, but she was getting heavy, and the things on the bedside table jiggled. She bent over the sausage-like form on the bed and stroked the damp hair.
"Comfy, now?"
"Uh-huh."
She asked Renny: "How is he, really?"
"Half-lit and as hot as blazes."
"Poor fellow!" She sat down on the side of the bed and tried to see his face. "Finch, dear, how could you do such a dreadful thing? Frightening me almost to death! As though I minded you having the money! What upset me was Gran's giving her ruby ring, that I always understood I was to get, to Pheasant. You must understand that. Do you?"
He pushed his head against her palm as a dog urgent for caresses. He felt broken. He tried to drag his mind from the well of muddle-headedness, exhaustion, and submission, into which it had sunk, and reply to her, but he could not. He could only feel for her fingers with his hot lips and kiss them.
"He feels so hot!"
"That's the way he ought to feel. Come along and let him sleep."
She led Renny into the sitting-room, bright with glazed chintz. Eden was seated before a tray on which were a dish of poached eggs on toast, a pot of tea, and a jar of quince jelly. The shadow was lifted from her face. The agitation caused by Finch was eased. He was safe in bed, and here was a delicious breakfast tray.
She exclaimed: "This is Minny's doing! She has had breakfast brought up for the three of us. She knew we must be faint for food. What a girl!"
"She carried it in herself," said Eden, "but she wouldn't stay. By George, she can swim! And to look at her just now you'd never think she'd been through anything. I admire her awfully." He helped himself to an egg.
"She's a darling," said his sister. "I shall feel very blue when she goes."
"Is she going?" Eden looked almost dismayed.
"Of course. A girl like that couldn't stay here for ever. She's getting unsettled. But I don't know what she'll find to do"
Renny put an egg on Meg's plate and two on his own. He said, easily: "She'll find something to do! That sort always fall on their feet."
"What sort?" cried Meg, offended.
"Adventurous. Grabbing at life with both hands."
"I'm awfully keen about her," said Eden.
"You'd make up to anything in petticoats," said Renny.
"Petticoats! Listen to the man!"
"She could do with one. She's too"
"Too what, dear?" asked Meg.
"H'm. Provocative. A little hampering might be good for her."
Meg pondered on this remark, not knowing whether or not to be displeased. She changed the subject. "How lovely to be breakfasting together!"
"I thought you liked eating alone," observed Renny, taking a third egg. "Have another, Eden?"
Eden shook his head. "I wonder," he said, "what the upshot of this is going to be! Brother Finch and the money. I wish the old lady might have left me a thousand."
"Poor darling!" sighed Meg. "I wonder what you're going to do now that you're better."
"Fall on my feet, I suppose, like Minny. I suspect I'm that sort, too—grabbing life with both hands."
Meg said, spreading quince jelly on toast: "Finch has been getting out of control for a long time. I've seen it, though I haven't said anything."
"I commend your reticence," said Renny, looking down his nose.
Meg looked pensive. "Finch is really a nice boy—underneath. He's ever so generous. Don't you think he might do something for Eden?"
"He doesn't come into the money until he's of age. Almost two years. By that time Eden will probably be famous."
"Oh—his poems! But they pay so badly for them, don't they? Can't Alayne do something for you, Eden?"
"Good God," exclaimed Renny, irritably, "she's done almost enough for him, I think! Giving up her work and coming here to nurse him!"
"But why not? He's her husband. I think she'd a perfect right to nurse him."
"And yet," retorted Renny, "you were angry with her for coming!" And he added bitterly: "But she could never do anything right in your eyes!"
Eden's eyes, full of mocking laughter, looked from one face to the other.
"Quarrel over me, do!" he said. "It makes me feel so important. And I haven't felt very important of late. I'm quite well again, I've no job, and my wife doesn't care a damn for me. In fact"—his eyes narrowed with malice—"it's my opinion that she only came back to Jalna to nurse me so that she could be near Renny!"
Renny sprang up, with lean red face redder with anger. The table was jarred, a miniature squall slopped the tea from the cups.
"I don't expect anything better of you, Meggie," he said. "But I thought that you, Eden, might have a little gratitude—a little decency!" He strode to the door. "I must go. If you want me to drive you home, come along."
This day seemed set apart for one emotion on top of another. He could not endure the indoors. Meg followed him to the porch. Before the bed of purple petunias, whose sweetness had risen to Finch's window, knelt Minny Ware, her face close to the flowers, absorbing their perfume drawn out by the sun. She liked the untidy, luxuriant, sticky things. They hadn't troubled themselves about delicacy, precision of form, like some flowers, but had given themselves up to sucking in all the sweetness possible and wastefully exuding it. Though she was conscious of the two in the porch, she made no sign, keeping her head bent over the flowers.
Meg clasped Renny's arm in both her hands. "There's someone," she said, indicating Minny with a glance, "who is deeply disappointed for your sake."
"I like her nerve! I don't want her sympathy. . . . Meggie!" He turned his dark eyes reproachfully on her. "Why will you try to shove that girl down my throat when you know that I love Alayne—and Alayne only—and always shall?"
Meg said, with a melancholy vibration in her voice: "No good will come out of this! Why should she have come back? She is full of deceit. It's just as Eden says—she made his illness an excuse to be near you! I'm glad he's not grateful to her! I'm not grateful to her. I despise her, and hate her."
His carved profile showed no sign of emotion. He let his arm remain in his sister's clasp and his eyes rested composedly on the bright head of Minny Ware, but Meg was aware of an inexplicable magnetic current from him which, if she had been more sensitive, she might have interpreted as a volcanic disturbance in the restrained tenacity of his passion.
Eden appeared in the hall, slid past them, and went to where Minny crouched above the purple mass of petunias. She was not aware which of the brothers had approached, and scarcely knew whether to be pleased or disappointed when it was Eden's voice that said: "I'm afraid you feel very tired. Heroic exertion, that—saving the lives of two able-bodied men."
She tilted her head so that he looked down into her eyes, and saw the sunlight on the satin prominence of her cheek-bones. She denied heroism emphatically. "I only helped you a bit with Finch. He would struggle. But—I am tired—I don't sleep well—I'm restless."
He said: "If you should be taking another early stroll to-morrow, we might meet again by the lake. We could talk."
"I'd like that. . . . Mrs. Vaughan's a darling, but—I'm getting bored. Oh, I'm a beast! I'm always like that."
He laughed. "So am I. We'll meet and compare our beastliness. It's going to be fine to-morrow."
In the car the brothers rode in silence, broken at last by Eden's saying rather fretfully: "Sorry, old chap."
The Whiteoak car was an inauspicious place for an apology to a driver whose ears were not only assailed by its rattle, but who was trying to fathom the meaning of a new jerking movement in its anatomy.
"What'd you say?" he demanded, turning his head with a gesture so like old Adeline's that Eden's apology was marred by mirth. He repeated: "I say I'm sorry for what I said—about Alayne, and all that."
Renny had caught nothing but the name of Alayne. He stopped the car with a jerk and gave Eden a look of mingled encouragement and suspicion.
"Yes?"
"If I have to repeat it again," said Eden, sulkily, "I'll take it back. I was trying to apologize for what I said about Alayne." He continued with a frown: "The fact is, I'm absolutely fed up with being grateful. I've spent the summer oozing gratitude to Alayne. It's got on my nerves. I suppose that's why I said what I did. I'd no right to say it, but—it's true, and you shouldn't mind that. She'd go through hell—and being under the same roof with me is a fair imitation of hell for her—for the sake of setting eyes on your red head once in a while. She can't help it . . . I can't help it . . . we're caught in a net. . . . She's not suited to any Whiteoak that ever lived. But neither of you can ever be happy as things are. I want you to believe I'm sorry—horribly sorry."
Renny said: "I hope this affair hasn't given you any cold. If you feel a chill we must have the doctor to you. You mustn't be running risks."
He started the car and concentrated once more on that dubious, jerky movement in its interior. What could it be? He was afraid the time was at hand when he would have to buy a new car.
Eden slouched in his corner. What a baffling devil! If only one could take him apart as one could the car, and find out what was inside! A queer, fiery, cantankerous interior, he'd be bound!