Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Oh, yes. A poem. I suppose that’s a good sign.” He forced his features into a grin of approbation.

  “Splendid.” As they drew near to the young poet she said: “I’m so glad, Eden. Is it good?”

  “I’ll read it. No, I’ll wait till Renny’s gone. I say, what a shambles you’ve made of the place!”

  Renny looked disappointed. “When it’s been raked over it will look better. Shall I trim this Virginia creeper now?”

  “No. I like a little privacy.”

  “But you’ve said a hundred times—” cried Alayne.

  “My good girl, never remind a person of temperament what he’s said a hundred times.”

  “But it’s dreadful to have that vine clinging round you!” “No, it isn’t. It makes me feel like a sturdy oak.”

  Renny examined the vine critically. “I think he’s right. It would be a pity to touch it. It’s always looked just like that.”

  “But,” Alayne protested, “everything in the cottage is damp!”

  The brothers agreed that the vine had nothing to do with the dampness.

  A figure was approaching along the path. It was Minny Ware, in a vivid blue dress. She carried a bowl of jelly mounded with whipped cream.

  “I’ve had such a time to find my way,” she said. “It’s the first time I’ve been in this direction by myself. I hadn’t realized how large the estate is. Mrs. Vaughan sent this.”

  “Not so large as it once was,” observed Renny, gloomily. Alayne took the jelly and wondered what she would do with Miss Ware. Eden seemed rather pleased with her.

  “Come in,” he said, “and let’s look at you. We’ll pretend you’re a bit of blue sky”

  They went into the cottage. Minny Ware seated herself in a wicker chair by the open door. Eden’s remark had made her radiant. Renny sat on a bench, holding the collars of his dogs. Alayne disappeared into the kitchen, carrying the bowl of jelly. She did not want to be in the room with the girl.

  Minny Ware, elated at being left alone with the two men, exclaimed:“Isn’t this atmosphere the most depressing!”

  “You don’t look depressed,” said Eden, his eyes absorbing the freshness of her cheeks and lips, the gaiety of her gown.

  “It’s weather to make a man virtuous,” said Renny.

  This remark evoked a gush of laughter from Minny, effortless as an oriole’s song.

  Eden continued to be pleased with her. He said: “I wonder if you are too depressed to sing to me. You promised to, you know.”

  Minny Ware thought she couldn’t, was sure she would disgrace herself by trying to sing on such a morning as this, but after some persuading she threw back her head, clasped her hands before her, in the attitude of a good child, and sang three little English songs. Alayne remained in the kitchen. Covertly she watched the three through a crack in the door. She saw Kenny’s intent gaze on the throbbing white throat, the full bosom. She saw Eden’s appraising eyes also fixed on the girl, who appeared to have forgotten their presence. The first song was of a country lover and his lass, with a touch of Devon dialect in the refrain. The second song told of little birds in springtime innocently building their nest. The third—yes, the third was a lullaby. This she softly crooned, her ripe lips parted in a smile. She remembered the presence of the brothers and, as she finished, her eyes sought theirs. She seemed timidly to ask for approbation.

  The last long-drawn sweet note had been too much for one of the spaniels. He raised his muzzle and gave vent to a deep howl.

  “Did he hate it so?” asked Minny Ware, looking askance at the dog.

  “Down, Merlin,” said Renny. “He’s like his master. He’s not musical.”

  Her face fell. “I thought the other night you enjoyed it.” “I enjoyed this, too. But you sang more passionate things the other night. I suppose something else in me was appealed to then.”

  “Oh, I love passionate music!” She spoke with abandon. “I only sang these simple little things to please your brother, as he’s not well.

  “Thank you,” said Eden with gravity. “That was nice of you.”

  “Oh, now you’re laughing at me!” she cried, and filled the room with her laughter.

  Alayne came in and sat down on a stiff-backed grandfather’s chair. She felt icy before this exuberance. Only with the two spaniels, held by their collars, did she feel any sense of companionship in the room.

  When Eden and she were alone, she said: “If your sister thinks she will bring that to pass, she is mistaken. He hates her. I could see it in his eyes.”

  “How clever you are!” he cried. “You can read him like a book, can’t you?” His glance was full of merriment.

  XVII

  NIGHT MEETINGS

  WHILE Eden and Alayne were struggling for his renewed health at Fiddler’s Hut, the family group were living in a morbid complicity of emotions, the two strongest of these being fear and jealousy. Since old Adeline had, as Renny put it, staged her own deathbed scene, they apprehended, one and all, that this sudden interest of hers in her final act was but the foreshadow of the spectre itself. The thought of it hung over them like a pall. The idea that she should pass from their midst was unbelievable… Captain Philip Whiteoak had died; young Philip and his two wives had died; several infant Whiteoaks had passed away in that house; but that the involved pattern Adeline had woven in and out of those rooms, round about their lives, could be shattered was incredible. Shivers of foreboding ran through this pattern, such as might run through the intricate web of a spider when the old spinner himself, curled in the very centre, is shaken by some dire convulsion.

  If she was aware of any change in the atmosphere, she made no sign. She seemed in even better health than usual, and ate with increasing gusto, in preparation, it seemed to them, for the chill fast approaching. Neither did they talk to each other of what was in their minds, but of other things they talked even more than usual. Augusta, Nicholas, and Ernest sought out each other more frequently in their rooms. They discussed their pets, Nip, Sasha, and her kitten, their amazing sagacity. They grouped themselves, with chirrups and tweets, about the cage of Augusta’s canary. Forced cheerfulness sapped their energy. They were like people watching each other for symptoms of some disease which it was necessary, for their peace of mind, to ignore. Each one discovered, with grim satisfaction, the symptoms he sought in the others, and believed he had successfully hidden his own.

  Augusta had little hope of gain for herself. She was passionately desirous that Ernest should be the heir. Nicholas thought that they plotted against him, and he feared Renny more than the two of them together. And Augusta and Ernest feared Renny and thought he plotted against them. And Renny believed that all his three elders were plotting against him. Even Mooey, Piers’s infant son, became an object of suspicion. Had not his great-grandmother demanded that Mooey be brought to her? Was she not always pushing bits of biscuit and peppermints into his hand? And she was always exclaiming: “Bring my great-grandson to me! I want to kiss him—quick!”

  Piers did not hope greatly for himself, though he felt a thrill of exultation when his grandmother would cry: “Boy, you’re the image of my Philip! Back and thighs just like his. And those bright blue eyes of his, too!” But both Piers and Pheasant thought it truly remarkable that on her deathbed— even if it were a pretence—Grandmother should have called for Mooey. Frightfully old people were often drawn to frightfully young ones. They had things in common—thinking mostly of food and sleep—being near the beginning and the end, and all that sort of thing.

  Mooey laughed every time he saw his great-grandmother. To certain of the family his laughter sounded sinister.

  Wakefield, with the shrewdness of a child living among grown-up folk, was conscious of the air of dread and suspicion that had crept into every corner of the house, even to the basement, where the Wragges discussed the situation from every angle. They quarrelled bitterly over it, for Wragge was of the opinion that the peppery and taciturn master of Jalna should inherit, w
hile Mrs. Wragge, whose bias in favour of primogeniture was strong, thought that Nicholas should he his mother’s heir. Nicholas too was in the habit of giving her little presents of money, when she “did” his room.

  Wakefield soon discovered that his elders were troubled when he hung about his grandmother’s neck and whispered in her ear. This gave him an agreeable sense of power. He began to lavish delicate attentions on her. He carried little nosegays to her, and handfuls of wild strawberries, which brought out a rash on her grand Court nose. He would steal up behind her and press his hands over her eyes, demanding, in a deep voice: “Who is it, my grandmother?”—invariably being vociferously kissed for it.

  One day he announced that he was making a special prayer for her each night.

  “Ha!” she cried. “Praying for me, eh? What is it that you say?”

  “It depends,” he replied, his palms together between his bare knees, “on what sort of day you’ve had. If your appetite’s been not so good, I pray that it may be better. If it’s been good, I pray for lemon tart next day. If you’ve been worked up into a rage, I pray that you may have more consideration shown you tomorrow.”

  “The darling!” exclaimed his grandmother. “Oh, the precious darling! Praying for his old Gran!” And she made a habit from that day of asking him each morning what his prayer for her had been the night before.

  She took to giving him quite valuable things. One stormy afternoon when he was bored, she opened the door of the Indian cabinet, containing the ivory, ebony, jade, and lapis-lazuli curios which he always longed to play with, but must not touch, and filled his two hands with things which she said he was to keep. Her sons and daughter were genuinely alarmed.

  “Mama!” chided Augusta. “You must be crazy!”

  “Mind your business, Lady Bunkley!” retorted old Adeline. “I’ll give away my bed if I choose, or my head. I tell you, this child is the apple of my eye.”

  Nicholas and Ernest emerged from cover and conferred with each other in the open.

  “It’s really very worrying, Nick,” said Ernest.

  “The child is literally worming —his way into Mama’s inmost affections. Dear knows how it will end!”

  “Renny must be spoken to,” said Nicholas. He spoke to Renny.

  “It’s very bad for my mother, to know that she is being constantly prayed for. I must ask you to put a stop to it.”

  “The hell I will!” rejoined Renny. “It can’t hurt her to know that Wake is praying for her. It tickles her to death.”

  “That’s exactly the danger,” put in Ernest, lugubriously. “At her age it might tickle her to death. She’s too old to be prayed for.”

  “Ha, ha, ha!” shouted Renny.

  Nicholas and Ernest came to the conclusion that Meg and Renny were putting the child up to it. Wakefield’s face continued to be a mask of piety, but there was a secret little smile on his lips.

  Finch, scarcely noticed by the family once their rejoicing over his return had subsided, was only an observer of this drama. Tension was relaxed for him, not increased. The strain of his examinations was over. He had passed. Not gloriously—he had come near the tail end of the candidates— but passed, nevertheless. It was as though an aching tooth were drawn. He could look at his dog-eared textbooks without a sinking at the heart.

  It was beautiful to him to spend these hot summer days in the country. He imagined with horror what they must be in New York. Yet there were moments when he remembered with a strange regret the lights in the harbour at night, the interesting foreign faces one met in the streets, the kindness that had been shown him at Cory and Parsons’. He would wonder vaguely if he had missed something by coming home with Uncle Ernest, something he could never have again—a chance to get on in the world, to be respected instead of sneered at or just tolerated. But this was home, and here was music. Twice a week he went to the city and had music lessons. Two hours daily he was allowed to practise on the old square piano in the drawing-room. It was not enough, and he would have made up the deficiency by some extra practice on the piano at Vaughanlands but for an insur-mountable shyness of Minny Ware. Her presence in that house took all the virtue out of his playing. Her laughter frightened him. He felt that she regarded him as a curiosity. And there was something in her oddly coloured eyes, slanting above her high cheekbones, that disturbed him to the depths of his being. Her eyes seemed to invite him while her mouth laughed at him… No, he could not practise in the house where Minny was.

  On the occasions when she came to Jalna he felt certain that she was making up to Renny, and he felt certain that Meg approved. Unbearable if those two were to marry. He couldn’t stand that laughing, slant-eyed girl in the house. If only Renny and Alayne might be married! He was deeply conscious of their love for each other. He would have liked to talk with Alayne these days, of life and art, and the meaning of both. In Alayne he felt a stability, a clarity, which he craved for himself, but he could not go to see her because of Eden.

  One day, when he was sent to the rectory on a message, Mr. Fennel questioned him about his music. When Finch told him that he was dissatisfied with the amount of practising he got, the rector offered to let him practise on the church organ, and gave him a key so that he might let himself into the church at any time. This was the beginning of a new happiness. Miss Pink, the organist, finding him rather baffled by the organ, offered to help him for a while each week after choir practice. Soon he wrung from the old organ music so passionate that Miss Pink quite tingled when she heard it, and wondered if it were quite right to draw such sounds from the pipes of a church organ.

  Finch went more and more frequently to the church to play. At first he went only in the daytime, then was captivated by the mystery of playing in the twilight, and at last, wandering along the road one night in the moonlight he was seized by the desire to play in the church by night. He climbed the long flight of steps to the churchyard, passed through the glimmering gravestones and in at the portal. Outside it was sultry. Warm dust had lain thick on the road, but in here there was a coolness as of death and the austere presence of God. Finch had never been alone in the church at night before, and he felt the Presence there in the moonlight as he never felt it when people sat in the pews and Mr. Fennel moved about in the chancel.

  Finch’s belief in God seemed to be something that would not die. In spite of the boyish blasphemies of his school-mates, or the half-amused tolerance of young men like Arthur Leigh, or the cynical references to Christ as a curiosity which he had heard among the staff in the publishing house, his belief in Him remained secure, terrible, and strangely sweet, somewhere deep within him. Music had freed him from the terror of God that had troubled his boy-hood, but there in the church he felt in his very fibre the power of the Almighty Presence.

  On that first night he played little. He sat with his long hands on the keys, searching his heart, trying to find out, if he could, what was in it of good and evil. Now its depths seemed less turgid than usual. He looked into it and saw a white light glimmering. God living in him. Not to be beaten down. The white light, pointed like a flame, quivered, drew upward. Sank, writhed as though in agony. He brooded over his heart, trying to discover its secret.

  Had this white flame anything to do with the pale shape that sometimes, in moments of exaltation, emerged from his breast and floated for a space, face down, close beside him, before it was dissolved into the darkness? That pale shape he knew was himself, his innermost essence, drawn from his body by some magnetic force. Did the shape—himself— emerge from the body in search of something without which it would never rest? If the white flame he saw in his heart was God in him, was this white shape perhaps himself in God?

  In this dark tangle of thought one thing was clear to him. He was being searched for, as he was searching. Not by God, whose eye already held him; not by Christ, who had one awful night shown him His pierced hands; but by that Third Person. It was He who strove to speak in the white flame. It was He who, at last, after Finch ha
d sat long before the organ in the moonlight, touched the boy’s fingers on the keys; and the night was full of music. The moonlight sang through the dim aisles. Through the stained glass a lyric light swept singing across the chancel. The organ, though Finch’s fingers did not move, filled its every gilded pipe with divine melody.

  The white flame in his heart struggled, writhed in agony no more. It filled his heart to overflowing…

  Afterward he wandered for a long while up and down the empty aisles. He touched the walls with his hands. His hands were full of magic. He raised his eyes to the memorial windows, in memory of his grandfather, his father, and the mother of Meg and Renny. There was none in memory of his own mother. Sometime, he thought, he would place one there. The central figure would be that of a youth, with a distraught face and a breast open to expose his heart, in which a pale light would shine. No one but himself would understand the significance of the window, and he would come, a mature man, and sit beneath it, remembering this night.

  He went out into the churchyard and stood in the moonlight. Below, on the road, he saw two men whose figures he knew. One was Chalk, the blacksmith, reeling slightly, the other was old Noah Binns, a labourer at Jalna. He descended the steps and followed them at a little distance. Chalk talked without ceasing in an argumentative tone, until he turned in waveringly at his own door next the smithy. Finch caught up to Binns and walked abreast of him, where the blacksmith had been. Binns plodded on, not seeming to notice the change of companion. Finch wondered greatly what were the thoughts of an old man like Binns. Had he ever experienced anything such as he had just experienced in the church? He could play the fiddle a little. Had he ever felt music as Finch had felt it tonight? Finch kept staring into his face, and at last the old man turned and looked into his. He showed no astonishment, only a flicker of pleasure that one had come to whom he could impart information. He clumped along several paces in silence, choosing carefully the words in which the portentous news should be phrased. Then he said: “Bugs is here.”