“It will not surprise me if I do.”
He stared at her, positively frightened. “Meggie, how can you say such things? By God, I have enough to bear without your turning against me!”
She said, with calculated cruelty: “You have Alayne. Why should you need me?”
“I have not got Alayne,” he retorted furiously. “She is going away the day after Gran’s birthday.”
“I do not think she will go away.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, suspiciously.
“Oh, I think you have a pretty little game of progressive marriage going on at Jalna. No, Alayne will not go away.”
His highly coloured face took on a deeper hue. Its lines became harsh.
“You’ll drive me to do something desperate,” he said, and flung to the door.
She pushed the tray from her and rose to her feet.
“Will you please go? You are mistaken if you think you can abuse me into putting up with loose women in my house. As to being the talk of the countryside, there must be strange stories about the married couples of our family already.”
“Rot! It’s all within the family.”
“All within the family? Just think those words over. They’ve got a sinister sound, like the goings on in families in the Middle Ages. We should have been born two hundred years ago at the very least. No woman who respects herself could stay at Jalna.”
He broke into a tirade against her, and all hard, narrow-minded women. She followed him to the door, laying her hand on the latch.
“You can never argue, Renny, without using such dreadful language. I can’t stand any more of it.”
He had stepped outside, and his spaniels, having traced him to the hut, ran to meet him with joyous barks, jumping up to paw him and lick his hands. For an instant Meg almost relented, seeing him there with his dogs, looking so entirely her beloved Renny. But the instant passed; she closed the door firmly and returned to her chair, where she sat plunged in thought, not bitterly reviewing the past as Maurice did, nor creating an imaginary and happy present, but with all her mind concentrated on those two hated alien women in her house.
Renny, returning to his stables, found Maurice there, waiting to talk over some proposed exchange. He was in the stall with Wakefield’s pony, feeding her sugar from his pocket. He turned as Renny entered.
“Well,” he said, “how are things going now?”
“Like the devil,” he returned, slapping the pony sharply, for she had bitten at him, not liking the interruption of her feast. “Piers still keeps Pheasant locked in her room, and, goes about with an expression like the wrath of God. Uncle Nicholas and Aunt Augusta quarrel all day long. He’s trying to worry her out of the house and back to England, and she won’t go. He and Uncle Ernest aren’t speaking at all. Alayne is looking ill, and Grandmother talks ceaselessly about her birthday. She’s so afraid that something will happen to her before she achieves it that she refuses to leave the room.”
“When is it?”
“A week from today. Alayne is staying here till it’s over; then she goes back to New York, to her old position with a publisher’s firm.”
“Look here; why doesn’t she divorce Eden? Then you and she could marry.”
“The proceedings would be too beastly unsavoury. No, there’s no hope there.”
Something vicious in him prompted him to tease the pony. He cuffed her till she drew back her lips, showed all her teeth, bit at him, neighed, and finally reared and struck at him with her sharp hoofs. Maurice moved out of the way.
“Stop it, Renny,” he said, half angry and half laughing at the display of temper by the pair. “You’ll make her an ugly little brute for Wake to handle.”
“That’s true.” He desisted at once, red-faced from temper, rather ashamed of himself.
“It’s a pity Alayne could not have seen that.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” He began to stroke the pony. “Here, give me a lump of sugar, Maurice.”
“No, I’ll give it to her myself. She and I are friends. We have no quarrel to patch up. Have we, pet?”
He offered her sugar, but, too upset to take it, she wrinkled her lips and cast baleful glances at them both. As they left the loose box, Maurice asked: “How is Meg, Renny?”
“I’ve just been to see her. She’s still stuck in that awful hut, sulking. Nothing will budge her. It looks as though she would spend the rest of her days there. I don’t know what I’m to do. If you could only see her! It would be pathetic if it weren’t ridiculous. She has a few sticks of furniture she took from the attic. The floor is bare. They say that all she eats is the little that Rags carries over to her. I met him with a tray. The fellow is nothing but a spy and a tale-bearer. He keeps her thoroughly posted as to all that goes on in the house. Aunt Augusta was for starving her out, forbidding Rags to take food to her; but I couldn’t do that. She shut the door in my face just now.”
“It’s appalling.”
They walked in silence for a space, along the passage between stalls, among the sounds and smells they both loved—deep, quiet drinking, peaceful crunching, soft whinnying, clean straw, harness oil, liniment.
Vaughan said: “I’ve been wondering—in fact, I lay awake half the night wondering—if there is a chance that Meg might take me now. Pheasant being gone, and Jalna in such an upset, and things having reached a sort of deadlock, it would be a way of solving the problem for her. Do you think I’d have a show?”
Renny looked at his friend with amazement.
“Maurice, do you really mean it? Are you still in love with her?”
“You know perfectly well I’ve never cared for any other woman,” he answered, with some irritation. “It’s not easy for you Whiteoaks to understand that.”
“I quite understand, only—twenty years is a long time between proposals.”
“If things had not turned out as they have, I should never have asked her again.”
“I hope to God shell have you!” And then, fearing that his tone had been too fervent, he added: “I hate to see you living such a lonely life, old man.”
Meg had come out of the cottage, and was bending over a spray of sweetbriar that had thrust its thorny way up through a mass of dogwood. She loved its wild sweetness, and yet it made her sadder than before. Maurice noticed, as she raised a startled face to his, that her white cheeks were dappled by tears. One of them fell, and hung, like a bright dewdrop, on the briar.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
His voice, unheard for so many years, came to her with the sombre cadence of a bell sounding through the dark. She had forgotten what a deep voice he had. As a youth, it had seemed too deep for his slenderness, but now, from this heavy frame, she found it strangely, thrillingly moving.
“I had no right to intrude on you,” he went on, and stopped, his eyes resting on the spray of briar; for he would not embarrass her by looking into her tear-stained face. Why did she not wipe her cheeks? He reflected, with a shade of annoyance, that it was just like Meggie to leave those glittering evidences of her anguish in full view. It gave her a strange advantage, set her on a plane of suffering above those around her.
Unable to speak, he rolled a cigarette deftly—in one hand, for the other had been crippled in the War. He could not have found a more poignant way of pleading his case.
She had passed him often on the road and seen that he was going grey. She had heard that one of his hands was useless, but it was not until she saw the wrist in its leather bandage, above the helpless hand, that she realized how alone he was, how pathetic, how he needed to be taken care of. Renny was hard, careless, unhurt; he was arrogant, immovable. Eden was gone. Piers clung to his wretched young wife. Finch was unsatisfactory, moody. Wake was a self-sufficient little rogue. But here was Maurice, her unhappy lover, seeking her out with a strange, hungry expression in his eyes.
The droop of his mouth stirred something in her that she had forgotten, something buried for years and years. It did not s
tir weakly, feebly, like a half-dead thing, but boundingly, richly, like the sap that thrilled the growing things in this June day. She swayed beneath the sudden rush of its coming and put out a hand to steady herself. Colour flooded her face and neck.
He dropped the cigarette and caught her hand.
“Meggie, Meggie,” he burst out. “Have me—marry me! Meggie, oh, my darling girl!”
She did not answer in words, but put her arms about his neck and raised her lips to his. All the stubbornness was gone from their pretty curves, and only the sweetness was left.
XXVI
GRANDMOTHER’S BIRTHDAY
THE DARKNESS had just fallen on Grandmother’s birthday. It had descended slowly, seeming reluctant to draw the curtain on that day of days. But now the sky was a royal purple, and quite a hundred stars twinkled with all the mystic glamour of birthday candles.
Grandmother had not slept a wink since dawn. Not for worlds would she have missed the savour of one moment of this day, toward which she had been straining for many years. She could sleep all she wanted to after the celebration was over. There would be little else to do. Nothing to look forward to.
With her breakfast had come all the household to congratulate her, wish her joy, and other birthdays to follow. She had put her strong old arms about each body that, in succession, had leaned over her bed, and after a hearty kiss had mumbled: “Thank you. Thank you, my dear.” Wakefield, on behalf of the tribe, had presented her with a huge bouquet of red, yellow, and white roses, an even hundred of them, tied with red streamers.
The day had been a succession of heart-touching surprises. Her old eyes had become red-rimmed from tears of joy. The farmers and villagers of the neighbourhood, to whom she had been a generous friend in her day, besieged her with calls and gifts of fruit and flowers. Mr. Fennel had had the church bell ring one hundred merry peals for her, the clamour of which, sounding through the valley, had transported her to her childhood Ireland; she did not know just why, but there was she was in Country Meath again!
Mrs. Wragge had baked a three-tiered birthday cake, which had been decorated in the city. On the top, surrounded by waves of icing, was a white-and-silver model of a sailing vessel such as she had crossed the ocean in, from India. On the side, in silver comfits, the date of her birth, 1825. This stood on a rosewood table in the middle of the drawing-room, beside a silver-framed photograph of Captain Philip Whiteoak. How Grandmother wished he could have seen the cake! She imagined herself, strong and springy of step, leading him up to the table to view it. She pictured his start of surprise, his blue eyes bulging with amazement, and his, “Ha, Adeline, there’s a cake worth living a hundred years for!”
Oh, the feel of his firm, muscular arm in her hand! A dozen times that day she had kissed the photograph. At last Ernest had been moved to say: “Mamma, must you kiss it so often? You are moistening off all the gloss.”
Now night had fallen and the guests were arriving for the evening party. The Fennels, the admiral’s daughters, Miss Pink, and even old friends from a long distance. Her chair had been moved to the terrace, where she could see the bonfire all ready to be lighted. It had taken her an unconscionably long time to make the journey there, for she was weak from excitement and lack of sleep. In the summer-house, two violins and a flute discoursed the insouciant, trilling airs of sixty years ago, filling the air with memories and the darkness with plaintive ghosts. Grandmother’s sons and eldest grandson had spared no trouble or expense to make the party a memorable one.
On her right hand sat Ernest and Nicholas, and on her left Augusta and Alayne. Augusta remarked to Alayne: “What a blessing that Meg is off on her honeymoon, and not sulking in Fiddler’s Hut! It would have spoiled the party completely if she had been there, and even more so if she had come.”
“She wasted no time when she finally made up her mind, did she?”
“No, indeed. I think she was simply shamed into it. She might have gone on living there forever. Renny would never have given in.” Lady Buckley regarded with complacency her nephew’s tall figure, silhouetted against the flare of the musician’s torches.
“I am afraid,” said Alayne, “that Meg hated me very much after our quarrel about Pheasant. I know that she thought my attitude toward her positively indecent.”
“My dear, Meg is a narrow-minded Victorian. So are my brothers, though Ernest’s gentleness gives him the appearance of broad-mindedness. You and I are moderns—you by birth, and I by the progression of an open mind. I shall be very sorry to see you go tomorrow. I have grown very fond of you.”
“Thank you; and I have of you—of most of you. There are so many things I shall miss.”
“I know, I know, my dear. You must come back to visit us. I shall not leave Jalna while Mamma lives, though Nicholas would certainly like to see me depart. Yes, you must visit us.”
“I’m afraid not. You must come to see me in New York. My aunts would be delighted to meet you.”
Augusta whispered: “What do they know about Eden and you?”
“Only that we have separated, and that I am going back to my old work.”
“Sensible—very. The less one’s relatives know of one’s life the better. I had no peace in my married life till the ocean rolled between me and my people. Dear me, Renny’s lighting the bonfire. I hope it’s quite safe. I wonder if you would mind, Alayne, going down and asking him to be very careful. A spark from it smouldering on the roof, and we might be burned in our beds tonight.”
As Alayne moved slowly down the lawn, the first sparkle curled about the base of the pyramid of hardwood sticks that had as their foundation a great chunk of resinous pine. A column of smoke arose, steady and dense, and then was dispersed by the sudden and furious blossoming of flowers of flame. In an instant the entire scene was changed. The ravine lay, a cavernous gulf of blackness, while the branches of the nearby trees were flung out in fierce, metallic grandeur. The torches in the summerhouse became mere flickering sparks: the stars were blown out like birthday candles. The figures of the young men moving about the bonfire became heroic; their monstrous shadows strove together upon the rich tapestry of the evergreens. The air was full of music, of voices, of the crackling of flames.
Out of the shadow thrown by a chestnut tree in bloom, Pheasant ran across the grass to Alayne’s side. She seemed to have grown during those weeks of her imprisonment. Her dress looked too short for her. Her movements had the wistful energy of those of a growing child. Her hair, uncut for some time, curved in a quaint little tail at her nape.
“This freedom is wonderful,” she breathed. “And all that pretty firelight, and the fiddles! Try as I will, Alayne, I can’t help feeling happy tonight.”
“Why should you try not to be happy? You must be as happy as a bird, Pheasant. I’m so glad we had that hour together this morning.”
“You’ve been beautiful to me, Alayne. No one in the world has ever been so good to me. Those little notes you slipped under my door!”
Alayne took her hand. “Come, I am to go and tell Renny to be careful. Aunt Augusta is afraid we shall be burned in our beds.”
The three youngest of the Whiteoaks were in a group together. As the girls approached, Finch turned his back on them and skulked into the shadow, but Wakefield ran to meet them and put an arm about the waist of each.
“Come, my girls,” he said, airily, “join the merry circle. Let’s take hands and dance around the bonfire. If only we could get Granny to dance, too! Please, let’s dance!” He tugged at their hands. “Piers, take Pheasant’s other hand. Renny, take Alayne’s hand. We’re going to dance.”
Alayne felt her hand being taken into Renny’s. Wakefield’s exuberance was not transmittable, but he ran hither and thither, exhorting the guests to dance, till at last he did get a circle together on the lawn for Sir Roger de Coverley. But it was the elders who were moved to disport themselves, after a glass or two of punch from the silver bowl on the porch. The younger ones hung back in the shelter of the blazing
pile, entangled in the web of emotions which they had woven about themselves.
Eden was not among them, but the vision of his fair face, with its smiling lips, mocked each in turn. To Renny it said:
“I have shown you a girl at last whom you can continue to love without possessing, with no hope of possessing, who will haunt you all your days.” To Alayne: “I have made you experience, in a few months, love, passion, despair, shame, enough for a lifetime. Now go back to your sterile work and see if you can forget.” To Piers: “You sneered at me for a poet. Do you acknowledge that I am a better lover than you?” To Pheasant: “I have poisoned your life.” To Finch, hiding in the darkness: “I have flung you, headfirst, into the horrors of awakening.”
Renny and Alayne, their fingers still locked, stood looking upward at the flame-coloured smoke that rose toward the sky in billows endlessly pursuing each other, while, after the crashing of a log, a shower of sparks sprang upward like a swarm of fireflies. In the glare their faces were transfigured to a strange beauty, yet this beauty was lost, not registered on any consciousness, for they dared not look at each other.
“I have been watching two of those sparks,” she said, “sparks that flew up, and then together, and then apart again, till out of sight—like us.”
“I won’t have it so. Not till out of sight, extinguished—if you mean that. No, I am not hopeless. There’s something for us besides separation. You couldn’t believe that we’ll never meet again, could you?”
“Oh, we may meet again—that is, if you ever come to New York. By that time your feelings may have changed.”
“Changed! Alayne, why should you want to spoil our last moments together by suggesting that?”
“I suppose, being a woman, I just wanted to hear you deny it. You’ve no idea what it is to be a woman. I used to think in my old life that we were equal: men and women. Sinc I’ve lived at Jalna, it seems to me that women are only slaves.”
Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna Page 88