Whiteoaks of Jalna/Chapter 23
Renny Whiteoak wandered about that afternoon with a grievous sense of being cut off from the activities of the life he loved by the flaring up of a passion he had thought to have under control, the futility of which was so definite that to brood on it was to hunger for painted fruit in a picture. He had thought to keep his desire for Alayne under control, as he controlled a vicious horse by a curb bit, and he was humiliated to find that Eden's reckless words at the breakfast table had broken the bit and set his passion galloping. That, and the sting of Meg's determination to marry him to Minny Ware, her fond hope of transforming him into a placid husband and father. Now he was conscious of only one thing—that, close at hand, beyond the orchards heavy with fruit and thick autumnal sunshine, was Eden's wife whom he loved, who, as Eden had said, would live in hell for the sake of sometimes setting eyes on his red head. Had the summer been hell to her, he wondered. But he was only faintly curious. Her mind was to him, as woman's mind, a book in a foreign tongue, the pages of which might flutter with subtle charm before him, but which he knew himself to be incapable of reading. Hesitatingly he might recognize a word, a phrase, which resembled the language spoken by himself; indolently he might form its syllables with his lips, trying to become familiar with its tones, but the language must ever remain for him a tenuous whisper between girl and girl.
Vehemently he was occupied by the clamour in his own being. At times he surrendered himself to it, plunging all his senses into its depths, so that he was unconscious of where he was, what he saw or heard, moving like a storm-cloud through his stables, fields, and woods. Piers avoided him, while sympathizing with the evil mood, brought on, as he thought, by disappointment over the will. The stablemen pronounced him vicious. As he was passing a field of potatoes he came upon the bent figure of Binns brooding. The old man straightened himself with difficulty, and cast a disgruntled look across the brown loam at the master of Jalna.
"Hi!" he called.
Renny wheeled and stared at him blankly.
"No gettin' away from blight," called Binns. "Taters got it. Tomaters got it. Corn's got it. It's a terr'ble year for blight." He began to dig lustily, fearing he would again be told to cease work, for he was a day labourer. But when the tall figure had moved on without answer he leaned on his spade and followed him with vindictive little eyes. "Blight's got him, darn him," he muttered. "It's got the whole fam'ly. They be crazy, I tell you," he said to the potatoes, "rampagin' over the country, playin' the organ in pitch dark. They've women on the brain—that's what. . . . I tell John Chalk to keep his girl in at night. He just laughs. Serve him right if she's ketched. High or low, it's all one to that kind. Rips!" His eyes looked sagaciously into the eyes of the potatoes.
Renny loitered by the paddock, where a two-year-old was being put at a gate by Wright. He felt more peaceful as he followed the lift of the splendid, lustrous body, the straight hocks, the strong neck. When the practice was over, bridle and bit were removed; the two-year-old came to the paling and nuzzled him. He plucked a handful of short clover and fed it to her, watching the beam in her liquid eyes become ecstatic, watching the firm muscles above the eyes swell and contract into hollows as she munched. He took her head between his hands and kissed her nose. "Sweet girl," he murmured. "Pet Jenny!"
But he could not rest. He left her, though she whinnied to him. Restlessly he turned his steps in the direction of the bridle path, following it into the green well of the pine wood. The damp summer had produced a rich crop of mushrooms here. They followed the path, ivory-white, brown, and rust-red, fantastically shaped, pushing through the grass or half-hidden beneath prickly brambles laden with berries. By a curve where the sun had access a tall clump of pennyroyal scented the air with its acrid sweetness. A tiny green snake hesitated for a moment, with quivering tongue, before it slid under the grass. On the path were hoofprints of Wake's pony. He had passed that way, and was returning, Renny judged by the small thunder of an approaching canter. He pressed his way through the brambles under the pines and watched boy and pony go by, Wakefield sitting erect, with folded arms, a look of exaltation on his face. Renny made a grimace of disgust with himself for hiding from the little boy, yet speech with even Wake was abhorrent to him. He stood motionless as one of the mastlike trunks, his eyes fixed on the sombre wasted red of pine needles thick on the ground. He recalled certain amorous adventures of his past. How lightly forgotten! But now there was neither fulfilment nor forgetting.
Eden was well now, but unfit for responsibility. He must be sent to some warm climate for the winter. And Alayne would return to New York. Unless—but what was the alternative? His mind moved in the old relentless circle. There was no way out. If only she was gone to-day! If only he could force himself to go away until this fever subsided and he could endure her nearness with the same stoicism as before. He made up his mind to go away—to breathe a different air.
He re-entered the bridle path, and in a sunny space, where the berries were large and ripe, he found Minny Ware filling a small basket. He felt a quick annoyance with her for being in his path and, after a nod, passed on. Then he remembered that he had not thanked her for what she had done that morning. He reversed his steps hastily and came to her side.
"I want to thank you—I can't thank you enough for your courage this morning. God knows what might have happened if you had not been on the shore!"
The sound of his own words raised suspicion in his mind. "How did you come to be there," he asked abruptly, "at that hour?"
"Oh, it was just a coincidence. I like the early morning."
But he saw warm colour creep up her cheeks. Why had she been there? Odd that neither he nor Meg had seen anything strange in the presence of Eden and her on the shore at sunrise.
She knew that he was suspecting her, but she went on picking berries. She selected the largest ones and dropped them almost caressingly into her basket. He noticed that her finger-tips were stained and also her lip, giving her a look of childlike innocence. The trivial act of her laying the plucked berries so gently in the basket, the stain on her fingers and her lip, seemed suddenly of enormous importance to him, as though she were performing some rite. The harassment of his thoughts ceased, his mind became concentrated on the ritualistic act.
She said, dreamily: "Do you care for these? Shall I pick you some?" Her eyes slid toward him speculatively.
"No," he answered, "but I'd like to stay and watch you pick them, if you don't mind."
"Why should you want to watch me do such a simple thing?" Her eyes searched his face. She had a great longing for love.
"I don't know," he answered, perplexed. And, seeing that she looked rebuffed, he took her hand in his and kissed her bare arm on the white crook of her elbow.
He was not conscious of the approach of a third person, but he felt her arm quiver and he heard the quick intake of her breath. She was startled, but not by the caress. She said, "Oh!" in a defensive tone, and, turning his head, he saw across the bushes the pale set face of Alayne.
She had come upon what looked to her like a radiant understanding between the two. She saw Minny's exuberance responding to a calculated caress for which Renny had led her to this secluded spot.
She drew back and stammered something incoherent. Minny, not much put out, regained her composure and smiled, not ill-pleased to be discovered by Alayne in such a situation. Renny retained his grasp on her wrist.
In the silence that followed Minny's exclamation, a delicate trilling sound became audible, as though some bizarre but diminutive instrument were being played beneath a leaf of bracken. The performer seemed to be so unconscious of the existence of the giant beings towering above him that his very egotism reduced them to something less than his own size; his shrill piping rose higher and higher, triumphant over mere bulk, was taken up by other players just as insistent, just as impressive in their purpose, till the sound of their trilling became universal. The locusts were singing of the death of Summer.
An inertia had crept over the three, who had, without their own volition, become listeners rather than performers in the woodland drama. Minny held a warm, too soft berry in her hand; Renny looked entreatingly yet dreamily at Alayne, who stood, as though she had lost the power of motion, regarding the linked hands of the other two.
The spell was broken by the reappearance of the little green snake, who, unlike the orchestra of locusts, was conscious of the intruders from tip to tip, quivering with fear and hatred of them, rearing his head against their presence, determined to separate them into the three lonely wanderers they had been when they entered the wood.
Without speaking, Alayne turned and walked swiftly along the path, a curve of which soon hid her from their sight. Their hands fell apart. Renny stood irresolute for a short space, feeling a kind of anger against both girls, as beings of a different texture from himself who had a secret in common that was in its essence antagonistic to him. Then, without looking at Minny, he crashed through the underbrush and strode after Alayne.
Minny's eyes, as she resumed her berry-picking, had in them more of amusement than chagrin. After all, it was an amusing world. Mrs. Vaughan's schemes come to nothing. . . . Renny Whiteoak in love with that cold-blooded Mrs. Eden. . . . Eden, himself—a wayward dimple indented her round cheek. She began to sing, softly at first, but gaining in volume, till the locust orchestra was silenced, believing Summer to have returned in all her strength and beauty.
Alayne was conscious that he was following her and, dreading a meeting with him, she turned from the path at the first opportunity and took a short cut through the woods toward a gate that opened on to the road. He followed the windings of the bridle path, believing her still to be ahead of him, but when he did not overtake her he suspected that she was wilfully eluding him, and retraced his way to the short cut. He overtook her just as she reached the road. She heard the opening of the gate and turned to him. Here in the public road she felt more courageous than in the quiet of the wood, less likely to show the feeling which she fought so desperately to control. He had been the permanent object of her thoughts all the summer, yet this was the first time they had been quite close together. She had desired to return to New York without such a meeting. Now that it had been forced upon her, she felt her strength drained by the effort of resisting her own love for him no less than by the bitterness of having discovered him in the act of kissing Minny Ware.
"Alayne," he said, in a muffled voice, "you are trying to avoid me! I don't think I deserve it. Upon my word I don't!"
"I would rather be alone. It's nothing more than that." She began to walk slowly along the road.
"I know" he exclaimed. "You're angry. But I give you my word"
She interrupted furiously: "Why should you explain things to me? As though it mattered to me! Why did you leave her? Why did you follow me?" Though her lips questioned him her eyes looked fixedly ahead.
He walked beside her in the dust of the road. A jolting waggon loaded with turnips overtook and passed them.
He said: "You can't refuse to have this much explained, surely. I had not been two minutes beside Minny when you came up. My kiss on her arm was no more than her eating a blackberry. A few minutes before that, I had stopped by the paddock and kissed a two-year-old mare. One kiss was as important as the other. To me—to the mare—to Minny!"
He looked down into her pale, firmly modelled face, with its look of courage, of endurance, its what she called "Dutch" look of stability. Yet about her mouth was a look of fatigue, as though she were played out by the isolation and the ingrown emotions of the last months.
He continued: "I wish I could make you believe in my love as I believe in it myself. There's nothing on earth I could want so much as to have you for my own. Do you believe that?"
She did not answer.
A motor-car whizzed by them, raising the dust in a cloud. "Come," he said, "let us get off this road. It's so hot and dusty, it will give you a headache."
But she trudged doggedly on.
"Alayne," he persisted, "why don't you say something—if it's only to say that you don't believe me—that you're sick of the sight of me?"
She tried to answer, but her mouth was parched and her lips refused to move. She felt that she must go on for ever, walking along this road, with him following her, longing to cry out, yet unable to speak, as in a nightmare. She would go on till she stumbled and fell.
He did not speak again, but walked beside her, trying once rather pathetically to suit his stride to hers. At the foot of the steps that led to the church he stopped.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"To your grandmother's grave. I haven't seen it yet. Do I hear Finch playing in the church?"
"No, no. Finch is in bed. He tried to drown himself this morning." Let her have that. Perhaps it would shock her out of this terrible quiet.
"Yes," she said calmly. "Eden told me. No wonder!"
"God, how you hate us!"
"No—I fear you."
He said, almost irritably: "All this is so unreal! Can't you, or won't you, talk about our love? You know it exists. Why blink it? We can't come together, but surely—just before we part we can speak of it. I am going-away to-night. You needn't be afraid that you'll see me again."
She began to go up the steps toward the churchyard. He caught her dress and held it. "No. You shall not go up there! I can't follow you there."
She raised her face to his with a sudden piteousness in her eyes. "Where shall I go, then?"
"Back into the woods."
They turned back, and had to step into the ditch, rank with dusty goldenrod and Michaelmas daisies, out of the way of a lorry loaded with calves. She stumbled; he put his hands on her and supported her. She felt that she must fall.
Again they were in the golden-green well of the woods. The red sun was low. Overhead the half-moon drifted, a pale feather, along the sky.
They stood for a moment listening to the beating of their own hearts. Then she raised her heavy eyes to his and whispered: "Kiss me"
He bent. She drew his head down, closed her eyes, and felt for his mouth with her lips.
With their kisses they mingled the endearments pent up so long in their hearts.
"Alayne, my precious one."
"Renny—oh, my darling love."
He drew away a little and cast an oblique glance at her. "Is it true?"
"Is what true?"
But he could not go on. He could not ask her if what Eden said to him were true—that she would be willing to live in hell for the sake of seeing him now and again—that she had come back to Jalna to be near him, and not for Eden's sake.
"Is what true?" she whispered again.
"That we must part."
She broke into restrained but bitter crying.
A great flock of crows passed above the treetops, calling to each other, crying wildly.
"They are mocking us!" she said.
"No, we don't exist for them. We only exist for each other. . . . Alayne, I can't go away to-night as I said.'
"No, no! We must meet sometimes and talk—while I am still here. Oh, Renny, hold me close—I want to get strength from you."
"And I want to make you as weak as I am," he murmured, against her hair. He drew her closer. Some magnetic current from his hands frightened her. He began to kiss her again. What mad thoughts were born of his kisses against her eyes, her throat, her breast!
She disengaged herself and began to return along the bridle path. He followed her, his eyes dark and brilliant the lines about his mouth patient and stubborn.
It seemed that he could follow her thus across the world, lean, primitive, untiring.
Where their paths separated, they said a muttered good-bye, not looking at each other.