“Oh, you make it all seem ridiculous. You make me feel very childish—very stupid.”
He had seated himself on the fallen tree. Now he raised his eyes contritely to hers.
“Look here. That’s the last thing on earth I want to do. I’m only trying to get you not to take it too seriously, and I want all the blame.”
Her earnest eyes now looked full into his, taking a great deal of courage, for his were sparkling, so full of interest in her, and at the same time so mocking.
“I see that I must tell you. It is this: I have had odd feelings lately of unrest, and a kind of anticipation, as though just around the corner some moving, thrilling experience were waiting for me. This sensation makes me reckless. I felt it just before I moved toward you, and, I think— I think—”
“You think I was playing up to you?”
“Not quite that. But I think you felt something unusual about me.”
“I did, and I do. You’re not like any woman I’ve ever known. Tell me, have you thought of me as—caring for you, thinking a good deal about you?”
“I thought you rather disliked me. But please let us forget about all this. I never want to think of it again.”
“Of course not,” he assented gravely.
With a stab of almost physical pain, she remembered that she had half unconsciously kissed him back again. Her face and neck were dyed crimson. With a little gasp she said: “Of the two I am the more to blame.”
“Is this the New England conscience that I’ve heard so much about?” he asked, filled with amazement.
“I suppose so.”
He regarded her with the same half-mocking, half-quizzical look in his eyes, but his voice deepened.
“Oh, my dear, you are a sweet thing! And to think that you are Eden’s wife, and that I must never kiss you again!”
She could not meet his eyes now. She was afraid of him, and still more afraid of herself. She felt that the strange expectancy of mood that had swayed her during these weeks at Jalna was nothing but the premonition of this moment. She said, trying to take herself in hand:
“I am going back to the house. I think I heard the stable clock strike. It must be dinner-time.” She turned away and began to walk quickly over the rough orchard grass.
It was significant of the eldest Whiteoak that he made no attempt to follow her, but sat with his eyes on her retreating form, confident that she would look back at him. As he expected, she turned after a dozen paces and regarded him with dignity but with a certain childlike pleading in her voice.
“Will you promise never to think of me as I have been this morning?” she asked.
“Then I must promise never to think of you at all,” he returned with composure.
“Then never think of me. I should prefer that.”
“Come, Alayne, you know that’s impossible.”
“Well, promise to forget this morning.”
“It is forgotten already.”
But, hurrying away through the orchard, she felt that if he could forget as easily as that it would be more terrible to her than if he had brooded on it in his most secret thoughts.
XVII
PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
ALAYNE had been accustomed to church, but the systematic upheaval of Sunday mornings at Jalna was a revelation to her. She had been used to the intellectual, somewhat detached worship of the Unitarian church, where, seated between her father and mother, she had followed reverently the minister’s meticulous analysation of the teachings of the man Jesus. She had listened, in a church that rather resembled a splendid auditorium, to the unaccompanied singing of a superb quartet. She had seen collection plates all aflutter with crisp American banknotes, and been scarcely conscious of the large congregation of well-groomed, thoughtful men and women.
When she had lived alone after the death of her parents, she had gone less regularly to church, attending the evening service rather than the morning, and when Rosamund Trent had come to live with her she had gone with still less regularity, for Rosamund was one of those who believe that churchgoing is for those who have nothing better to do.
At Jalna there was an iron rule that every member of the family should attend morning service unless suffering from extreme physical disability. Being only half sick would not do at all. One must be prostrated. Alayne had seen Meg almost stumble into the motor, dazed from headache, a bottle of smelling salts held to her nose, and sit through the entire services with closed eyes. She had seen young Finch dragged off, regardless of a toothache.
She was inclined to rebel at first, but when she found Eden slavishly acquiescent, she too succumbed. After all, she thought, there was something rather fine in such devotion, even though religion seemed to play so small a part in it. For the Whiteoaks were not, according to Alayne’s standards, a religious family. In fact, she never heard the subject mentioned among them. She remembered the intelligent discussions on religious subjects in her father’s house: Would Science destroy Religion? The quoting of Dean Inge, Professor Bury, Pasteur, and Huxley.
The only mention of the Deity’s name at Jalna was when Grandmother mumbled an indistinguishable grace, or when one of the young men called on the Almighty to witness that he would do such and such a thing, or that something else was damned. Yet with what heroism they herded themselves into those hard adjacent pews each Sunday!
Wakefield summed it all up for Alayne in these words:
“You see, Grandfather built the church, and he never missed a Sunday till he died. Gran never misses a Sunday, and she’s almost a hundred. She gets awfully sick if any of the rest of us stop home. And the rector and the farmers and other folk about count us every Sunday, and if one is missing, why, it doesn’t seem like Sunday to them at all.” The little boy’s eyes were shining. He was very much in earnest.
Grandmother had never ridden in a motor car, and never expected to ride in one consciously. But she had given orders for the motor hearse from Stead to bear her body to her grave. “For,” she said, “I like to think I’ll have one swift ride before I’m laid away.”
The old phaeton was brought to the front steps every Sunday morning at half-past ten. The two old bay horses, Ned and Minnie, were freshly groomed, and the stout stableman, Hodge, wore a black broadcloth coat with a velvet collar. With his long whip he flicked the flies off the horses, and every moment cast an anxious look at the door and set his hat at a more Sundayish angle.
At a quarter to eleven old Mrs. Whiteoak emerged, supported by Renny and Piers, for it needed plenty of muscle to negotiate the passage from her room to the phaeton. For church she always wore a black moiré silk dress, a black velvet fur-trimmed cloak, and voluminous widow’s weeds of the heaviest crêpe. Alayne thought that the old lady never looked so dignified, so courageous, as she did on these occasions, when, like some unseaworthy but gallant old ship, her widow’s veil billowing like a sail, she once again set forth from her harbour. When she was installed in a corner of the seat, with a cushion at her back, the old horses invariably made a forward plunge, for they were instantly aware of her arrival, and Rags as invariably, with a loud adjuration to Hodge to “‘old ’ard,” leaped to the horses’ heads with a great show of preventing a runaway.
Her two sons next appeared: Nicholas, with a trace of his elegance of the old days; Ernest, mildly exhilarated, now that he had passed through the stage of preparation. The old phaeton creaked as their weight was simultaneously added to its burden. Then came Meg, usually flustered over some misdeed of Wake’s or Finch’s. The little boy made the last of the phaeton party, climbing to the seat beside Hodge, and looking, in comparison with that burly figure, very small and dignified in his snowy Eton collar and kid gloves.
The rest of the family followed in the motor car, excepting Finch, who walked through fields and lanes. He preferred to do this because there was not room for him in either vehicle without squeezing, and it was hard enough for him to know what to do with his long legs and arms on ordinary occasions. He liked th
is Sunday walk by himself, alone with his own thoughts.
Renny drove the car, and it was his chief concern to overtake and pass the phaeton as soon as possible, for if he did not accomplish this before the narrow sloping Evandale road was reached, it was probable that the rest of the drive would take place behind the slow-trotting horses, for Grandmother would not allow Hodge to move aside so that a motor might pass her on the road. She did not want to end her days in a ditch, she said. And she would sit with the utmost composure while Renny’s car, with perhaps half a dozen others behind it, moved at a funeral pace, urging her onward with despairing honkings of their horns.
This morning was one such occasion. The drowsy Indian summer heat still continued, but the air had become heavier. The various odours from the earth and fields did not mingle or move about, but hung like palpable essences above the spot from which they rose. All objects were veiled in a thick yellowish haze, and the road dust stirred by the horses’ hoofs descended in an opaque cloud on the motor behind.
It was the morning after the scene in the orchard. Alayne had slept little. All night, as she lay tossing, changing sharply from one position to another as the recollection of Renny’s kisses made her cheeks burn and her nerves quiver, she had tried to see her position clearly, to ascertain whether she had been truly culpable or merely the passive object of Renny’s calculated passion. But here in Jalna she found that she could not think with the same freedom of initiative as formerly. Fantastic visions floated between her and the situation she was trying to puzzle out. At last, in the pale abnormal earth light before the dawn, a friendly languor enfolded her and she sank into a quiet sleep.
Now, sitting behind Renny, she saw only the side of his face when he turned it momentarily toward Piers. She saw his thin cheekbone, the patch of reddish hair at his temple, and the compressed line of his lip and chin. Had he slept soundly, giving scarcely a second thought to what had so disturbed her? He had not appeared at dinner, tea, or supper, sending a message to the house that he and Maurice Vaughan had gone together to a sale of horses. This morning the determination to pass his grandmother’s chariot before it reached the Evandale road seemed to absorb him. Pheasant had kept them waiting, and on her he threw a black look as she scrambled into the car.
The engine balked, then started jarringly. Eden, sitting between the girls, took a hand of each and exclaimed: “Oh, my dears, let us cling together! We will come through this safely if we only cling together. Pheasant, give me your little paw.”
But, speed though the eldest Whiteoak did, he could not overtake his grandmother before she reached the Evandale road. There was the phaeton creaking along in leisurely fashion in a cloud of yellow dust, resembling an old bark in a heavy fog, Grandmother’s veil streaming like a black pirate flag.
Renny, with half-closed eyes, squinted down the road where it dropped steeply into a dusty ditch, grey with thistles.
“I believe I could get by,” he muttered to Piers. “I’ve a mind to try.”
The occupants of the phaeton recognized the peculiar squeakings of the family motor. They turned their heads, peering out of the dust fog like mariners sighting a hostile craft. Renny emphatically sounded his horn.
They could hear Grandmother shout to Hodge. At once the two old horses were restrained to a walk.
“By Judas!” exclaimed Renny. “I’d like to give the old lady a bump!”
Again he cast his eyes along the narrow strip of road between the phaeton wheels and the ditch. “I believe I’ll risk it,” he said. “Just go by like the devil and give them a scare.”
Piers protested: “You’ll put us headfirst into those thistles if you do. And you might frighten the nags.”
“True,” said Renny, gloomily, and sounded his horn with passionate repetition. Grandmother’s face glared out of the fog.
“No back chat!” she shouted; but it was evident that she was enjoying herself immensely.
Farmer Tompkins and Farmer Gregg drew up their respective cars behind, and sounded their horns simultaneously. The eldest Whiteoak frowned. It was all very well for him to torment his ancient relative, but these yokels should not. He slumped in his seat, resigning himself to the progress of a snail. He took off his hat.
The sight of his narrow head suddenly bared, the pointed ears lying close against the closely cropped red hair, had a remarkable and devastating effect on Alayne. She wanted to reach forward, put a hand on either side of it and hold it tightly. She desired to stroke it, to caress it. She gave a frightened look toward Eden, as though to implore him to cast out these devils that were destroying her. He smiled back encouragingly. “We shall arrive,” he said, “in God’s good time. Behind us is Tompkins, who is a churchwarden, and he’s suffering torture at the thought of being late. I’ve known him since I was three and he has only been twice late in all that time, and on each occasion it was Gran’s fault. Tompkins is much worse off than we are.”
Alayne scarcely heard what he said, but she slipped her hand in his and clung to it. She was lost in speculation about what thoughts might be in that head toward which her hands were yearning. Were they of her, or had the scene in the orchard been only one of many careless encounters with women? She believed that last was not so, for he had avoided the house for the rest of the day, and this morning had palpably avoided her. There was a sombre melancholy in his face as she caught a glimpse of his reflection in the little mirror before him. But perhaps that was only because he was baffled by old Mrs. Whiteoak.
What had he done to her that had filled her with such unrest? She had got up in the night and crept to the window and, in the mystery of the moonlight, seen the orchard, and even been able to discern the curving bulk of the tree he had felled. She had felt again the hot passion of his kisses.
One thing of which she was keenly sensible this morning was her new intimacy with Pheasant. Every time their eyes met, the young girl gave her a little smile, ingenuous as a child’s. Alayne even fancied that Piers was less surly with her than formerly. She had told Eden of the talk with Pheasant, and he had seemed rather amused at Alayne’s desire to make friends with her. “She’s a dear quaint kid,” he had remarked. “But she’ll soon bore you. However, perhaps you’re so bored already that even the company of Pheasant—”
“Nonsense,” she had interrupted, more shortly than she had ever before spoken to him. “I am not bored at all, but Pheasant attracts me. I think I could become very fond of her. She has unusual possibilities.”
Now Eden sat between them, holding a hand of each and smiling tolerantly. He did not care if they never got to church.
The bell was ringing as the car chugged up the steep little hill and passed through the gate behind the church. Heads of people mounting the precipitous steps at the front could be seen bobbing upward, as though ascending from a well. Golden sunshine lay like a caress on the irregular green mounds and mossgrown headstones of the churchyard. There was one new grave, on the fresh sandy top of which a wreath of drooping flowers lay
Wakefield came and put his hand into Alayne’s.
“That’s Mrs. Miller’s grave,” he said. “She had a baby, and they’re both in there. Isn’t it terrible? It was a nice little girl and they’d named it Ruby Pearl. However, Miller has five girls left, so it might be worse.”
“Hush, dear,” said Alayne, squeezing his hand. “Are you going to sit with me?”
Wakefield had taken pride in sitting by Alayne and finding, with a great fluttering of leaves, the places in the prayer book for her. Now he looked doubtful.
“I’d like to,” he said, “but I think Meggie feels lonely at my leaving her. You see, I’ve sat beside her ever since I was very little and used to go to sleep with my head on her lap. Look, they’re getting Granny out of the phaeton. I think I’d better rush over and see that the sexton’s holding the door wide open.”
He flew across the grass.
Old Mrs. Whiteoak shuffled, with scarcely perceptible progress, along the slat walk that led to
the church door. Renny and Piers supported her, and Nicholas, Ernest, and Meg followed close behind, carrying her various bags, books, and cushions. Under her beetling rust-coloured brows her piercing gaze swept the faces of those she passed. From side to side her massive old head moved with royal condescension. Sometimes her face was lighted by a smile, as she recognized an old friend, but this was seldom, for most of her friends were long dead. The smile flashed—the mordant and mischievous grin for which the Courts had been famous—at the Misses Lacey, daughters of a retired British admiral. “How’s your father, girls?” she panted.
The “girls,” who were sixty-four and sixty-five, exclaimed simultaneously: “Still bedridden, dear Mrs. Whiteoak, but so bright!”
“No right to be bedridden. He’s only ninety. How’s your mother?”
“Ah, dear Mrs. Whiteoak, Mamma has been dead nine years!” cried the sisters in unison.
“God bless me, I forgot! I’m sorry.” She shuffled on.
Now the grin was bestowed on a bent labourer nearly as old as herself, who stood, hat in hand, to greet her, the fringe of silvery hair that encircled his pink head mingling with his patriarchal beard. He had driven Nicholas and Ernest about in their pony cart when they were little boys.
“Good morning, Hickson. Ha! These slats are hard to get over. Grip my arm tighter, Renny! Stop staring about like a fool, Piers, and hang on to me.”
The old man pressed forward, showing his smooth gums in a smile of infantile complacence.
“Mrs. Whiteoak, ma’am, I just am wantin’ to tell ye that I’ve got my first great-great-grandchild.”
“Good for you, Hickson! You’re smarter than I am—I haven’t got even one great yet. Don’t drag at me, Piers. One would think I was a load of hay—ha! and you a cart-horse. Tell Todd to stop clanging that bell. It’s deafening me. Ha! Now for the steps.”
Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna Page 76