“What is that on your forehead? It’s all stained.”
“My forehead? Oh—” she peered at her reflection in the small glass that hung above the sink… “That’s the life-blood of my poor hat. Just see what a wreck it is!” She began to scrub her face with a clean roller towel that hung on the back of the door. Pauline looked at the hat with distaste.
“Is it clean now?” Clara turned and faced them.
“Quite clean,” replied Renny. There was a warm, almost protective note in his voice, as though he had been aware of the coldness in Pauline’s.
He and Clara carried her purchases into the dining room and laid them on the table there. Out of doors there was a gleam of watery light from the sinking sun. The windows of the room had remained open during the storm and the curtains hung limp and wet. The roan stood grazing in the long grass; dark patches stained her sides. She raised her head and looked through the window out of melancholy eyes. She uttered a small complaining whinny.
Renny looked at his watch.
“I must be off!” he exclaimed.
Clara said—“Just look at this sweet frock! And I only paid three dollars and ninety-five cents for it!” She carried it, hanging from her hand, toward Pauline. “Let me see if it’s the right length, darling.”
Pauline backed away. She could not let her mother touch her. She felt disloyal. She hated herself. She would not raise her eyes to Renny’s.
“Don’t trouble her,” he said. “She’s unnerved. You shouldn’t go off and leave her alone in a storm.”
“Good heavens! I could not know it was coming!”
“You should have known. Mothers ought to know those things. Oughtn’t they, Paula?
Pauline, without answering, fled from the room and up the stairs.
Clara made a gesture of despair. “Whatever has come over the girl?”
He gave a short laugh. “Perhaps she’s in love.”
“But who with? Young Wakefield?”
“Well—he is—with her.”
“Has she said anything to make you think so?”
“No.”
“It would be a pity. There’d be no hope.”
“Not for a good many years.” Again he looked at his watch. “Now I must be off!” He put his leg over the sill and, in a moment, was on the roan’s back.
“That saddle must be drenched!” she exclaimed.
“True for you, woman!” he replied, grinning, and she watched him go splashing through the puddles.
XI
ART AND PROGRESS
EDEN was afraid of the Women’s Club before which he was to give talks about modern poetry. He told himself, and it was nearly true, that he disliked women. He had loved Alayne and he looked back on the days of his love for her as the happiest time of his life. Minny Ware had had a sensuous attraction for him but he had never liked her. He loved his sister and his aunt—and had loved his grandmother— because they were inextricably woven into the fabric of his life. Also, he told himself, there were no other women like them. His passing affairs with women in foreign cities had left no mark on him beyond the memory of a parting with dislike. He understood them too well, he thought. He felt a strain of femininity in himself, a careless treachery, a power of appeal, and he hated these qualities. Of one thing he was sure. He was not grasping. A very little money would suffice for him.
Renny had given him money for a new suit to wear at the readings, and Eden had chosen the material with care, had it made by a good tailor, for, if there was anything he hated, it was to appear as an unkempt poet. Renny also had provided him with money to buy copies of the poems of the various authors from whose works he was going to read. Meg had been shocked at the pile of books he had thrown down on the table in the sitting room.
“But, Eden,” she had exclaimed, “couldn’t you have got them from the lending library?”
“No,” he had answered irritably. “I shall be scribbling in these.”
“But I could take out the scribbling with a good eraser when you had done with them.”
He had opened one of the books without answering.
“You had quite a lot of poetry books at Jalna, before you went away,” she insisted.
“I can’t go back there to hunt them up.”
“Then there’s that huge Anthology of British Poets. The book Wakefield always sat on at table when he was a little boy.”
He did not reply. He was reading:
“The fatherless children, Colour, Tune, and Rhyme
(The sweet lad Rhyme), ran all uncomprehending,
Then, at the way’s sad ending,
Round the raw grave they stayed. Old Wisdom read,
In mumbling tone, the Service for the Dead.”
She continued:
“It seems so much to spend on books. Why, this one is marked two-fifty!”
“My God!” he exclaimed. “Am I never to be out of hearing of the howl of hard times!”
Meggie had been offended, and he had hunched himself, sulkily enough, over his purchases for the rest of the day.
He had spent a good deal of time in reading and preparation for these talks on modern poetry and, now that the day for the first one had come, he was thoroughly depressed. Had he chosen the right poems and the right things to say about them to these women? He longed for the support of another male.
The meeting was at four o’clock, and Sarah had invited him to lunch with her. It was a hot day of Indian summer. The ride into town on the bus had been stifling, the air heavy with dust. He had felt like a captive.
It was the first time he had seen the house which Arthur Leigh had bought and furnished for Sarah. As he noted its luxury he remembered her life with her aunt, and how Mrs. Court had counted every sixpence.
The lunch was perfect and deftly served. Eden was acutely conscious of the intimate and expensive setting as they smoked their cigarettes and drank coffee in the drawing-room. He looked at Sarah speculatively. What was she? Was she shallow? Was she cruel? That mouth of hers looked cruel, though it curved in sly mischief and the voice that came out of it was sweet as honey. Three months had passed since she had gone through that ordeal in the waters of the St. Lawrence, and its shadow had in a degree lifted from her. Something of the brooding look had gone out of her eyes. They laughed back at him, eyes pale and grey beneath their black lashes.
A new spring of happiness, in truth, rose in her today. There were bowls of flowers in her room. A pug dog was sleeping on a velvet cushion near her feet. Eden’s smooth fair head, on which there was a greenish sheen, was bent toward her. His large eyes, with their unseeing look, attracted her, while filling her with a strange suspicion. What did he think of her? What was in his mind? What adventures in life lay before her? Arthur Leigh had roused passions in her which he had never been able to satisfy, and now their renewed stirrings filled her with a sensuous elation which she took care to conceal.
A small clock delicately chimed the hour of three. Eden looked at it apprehensively. He said:
“In an hour I shall be there. I shall feel like a dying man in a desert with a flock of vultures sitting around him.”
“You’ll be all right when the time comes. They’ll be charmed with anything you say to them.”
“Honestly, Sarah, I’m frightened. If only you were coming! Why don’t you belong to this club?”
“It would be too strange,” she said. “I could not do it.”
“But come with me just for this once! They would not mind, and I could look at you while I talked.”
“No, no, Eden. I cannot come. Do you remember how my aunt called me Mouse, and Mole? Those names still suit me—in a sense. I am no good at mixing with other people. Especially other women. But I can’t see why you should dread doing this. They will every one feel so friendly toward you—so ready to be pleased with you.”
“If only there weren’t ten Thursdays ahead of me! An arid waste of Thursdays! There’s something sinister in the very word! I feel sure that the world
will come to an end on a Thursday.”
“Let us hope you will get your ten in first.”
When he had gone (she had sent him off in her car and made him promise to return to dinner) she picked up the pug and held him against her cheek. His coat was like fine velvet and his breath came in snuffling gasps. He endured her for a moment, then began to kick and, when she had put him down, returned to his cushion and curled up on it, his black, wrinkled nose pressed into its softness.
She watched him with a small, mischievous smile. She would have liked to torment him but she realised that it would not take much to make him hate her. Her hands lay in her lap, white, small, strong, ringless. She laid the left hand on the palm of the right and examined it with intense interest, as though it were the hand of a stranger whose character she was trying to read from it. Then, one by one, she pressed and pointed the fingertips which had become slightly blunted from violin-playing. “It looks better so,” she murmured… She turned it over, still as the hand of a stranger, and laid a kiss in the palm. Then she closed her fingers and held her own kiss tightly. She sat dreaming for a long while.
In his sleep the pug growled.
Sarah listened for a step in the hall.
The pug woke, rushed barking to the door, its tail curled like a handle above its bouncing behind. Sarah rose and stood rigid, her pale eyes shining, expectant. The maid entered and announced—“Mr. Finch Whiteoak.”
“Am I late?” asked Finch, taking her hand.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been watching the time.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Not unhappy thoughts, I hope.”
“No. I am not unhappy now. I’m in an odd state. Suspended between the past and the future. I feel no responsibility to anyone, for the first time since I was thirteen— when I went to live with my aunt.”
Finch bent to pat the pug, which pawed against his knees, wholeheartedly approving of him. He noticed Sarah’s clenched hand. She saw his look and said:
“You’ll never guess what I have here.” She held her hand, still closed, out to him.
He felt that she wanted him to take it in his but he would not. Yet he was conscious of its soft strength.
“What then?” he asked, and the pug stood on its hind legs sniffing suspiciously.
“A kiss!” she exclaimed, laughing, and opening her hand as though to let it escape.
He saw it as a pale moth fluttering upward. He saw the quick movement of her breast and the oblique glance at him.
He followed the imaginary flight with his eyes. “Who gave it to you?” he asked.
“Myself,” she answered. “An old love.”
The maid appeared with tea and Finch asked:
“Did Eden cheer up before he left?”
“A little. He is coming back to dinner and then we shall hear all about it. It is so wonderful to have you and Eden to come and go—as cousins. You can’t imagine what it means to me, at this time.”
Finch did not answer until they were again alone, then he said:
“Eden may think of you as a cousin. I don’t.”
She held the green glass jug, on which rings of lemon floated on the iced tea, poised above the tray. “How do you think of me, then?” she asked, giving him a direct and challenging look.
“Well, in the first place,” he answered, taking the glass she had filled, “I have never known cousins, so they have no fixed status in my mind, and, in the second, you seem to me much too remote for such a relationship.”
“I wonder if I should feel pleased at that speech,” she said, with a deliberately musing air.
“I don’t attempt to say things to please you, Sarah,” he answered boyishly, “for I have no idea of what would give you pleasure.”
“Have I changed so?
He returned sharply—“Did I ever know?” And, as he spoke, a springing emotion, akin to fear, clouded his eyes and he could not see her plainly. He wished he had never consented to spend these hours with her, which he was already beginning perilously to enjoy.
But she answered with gentle composure:
“It is very easy for you to please me. Just by coming to see me as you have been doing, and talking of your work.”
She went on then to talk of Eden, affectionately but lightly, and of her present life. But, though she spoke lightly, she kept, without her own volition, it seemed, an air of enchantment about them, as though they two were helpless actors in some magic play.
They heard the hum of the car outside. A melancholy droop depressed her mouth as she realised that their time together was over. Was she playing with him, or was she in earnest? Did he want her play or her earnestness? These questions stabbed Finch as he turned to the door where Eden entered.
He came in smiling, with an air almost radiant.
“It went like a house afire,” he said gaily. “They were perfect dears and were game for anything. They sat looking frightfully intelligent and well-groomed and asked me all manner of questions… God, I’m thankful it’s over! And more tired than you’d believe.” He dropped into a chair and smiled at them with the relief of one who has successfully passed through an ordeal. A girl, Finch thought, might have envied Eden the colour in his cheeks, the brightness of his eyes.
Sarah asked—“Shall I send for more tea?”
“No, thanks. I don’t want to spoil my appetite for dinner. And I had something there. A bit of pink fluff. An ice… oh, it was all so tasteful—tea, hostess, guests, and furnishings— and I hated it so, until I began to read. And the scraps of conversation I heard before the show began! ‘My dear, you can’t buy a well-fitting silk slip in either London or Paris. You can’t buy them at all… I had five teeth out and every one of them was abscessed… I have four little girls and it’s such fun seeing that each one gets her proper number of calories.’ But they were so nice to me that I couldn’t help liking them, even when I gasped in the atmosphere they created.”
“I suppose you hate this house of mine,” said Sarah.
“I think I should,” he replied, looking about, “if you weren’t in it.” He realised for the first time that Finch was in the room as an accustomed guest. He had accepted his presence without thinking of it. He looked at Finch curiously. What went on in that long head with the mousy fair lock dangling over the troubled brow? He found himself on the point of blurting out—“You’re not reviving that affair, I hope!” But he was able to say, instead:
“So, you’re here too.”
“Yes,” agreed Finch, wondering if Eden resented his presence.
“He’s going to play to us—something of his own,” said Sarah.
Eden said enviously—“They were all asking about your recital. They all seem to be going. I suppose you will make three times as much out of that concert as I shall out of my ten Thursdays.”
“Well,” answered Finch, “perhaps I shall. I don’t know. I wish it were over.” He became silent and fell into thought, his eyes fixed on Sarah.
All three were silent, and the pug, rising from its cushion, sniffed at each of them in turn with an air of polite contempt. It was almost dark now. The faint light that there was rested with a tentative caress on Sarah’s profile, on Finch’s drooping hands, on Eden’s shining hair. Sarah still held Finch in that circle of enchantment, that feeling of being moved by a power outside himself. But she could not, nor did she make the effort to, draw Eden into it. He did not give himself, for freedom was necessary to his spirit. In his isolation he had a solitary pleasure in the delicate game of love being played before him. Yet he honestly trembled for Finch, for whom he thought marriage would be a snare and an imprisonment.
They were quiet all through dinner, each repelling any advance toward intimacy from one of the others. Yet each felt a deeper peace than was usual and a desire to prolong this hour.
Three thin trails of cigarette smoke followed them back into the drawing-room. Like these fragrant trails of smoke, formless a
nd cloudy thoughts rose from the mind of each. Freedom, thought Sarah, to be passively free like this, without effort and without movement… This perfumed, flowery room we go into… The delicious bond between me and Finch… She went to a bowl of yellow roses and pressed her face, in which there was no softness, against their petals.
If only the time did not go so fast, thought Eden. If only I could be here and yet not be seen, not be expected to make any effort. Yet no woman could ask less of me than Sarah, because her mind is centred on herself and Finch… I shall make straight for the chair I had before… It is the most comfortable and stands back from the centre of the room.
Finch thought—If only I were not tormented by memory… If only I could forget that I loved her in England… And hated her in England… If I could forget Arthur… If I could love his memory. This is one of the nights when the piano is friendly to me… If I can play as well on the night of my recital as I shall play tonight…
Sarah said—“Where shall we sit? Oh, you’re taking that chair, are you, Eden? We’ll sit on the couch, then, Finch, and we’ll share this little table between us.”
The light touched the créme de menthe as they raised the small glasses to their lips; there was an air of worship in the attitude of both men toward Sarah. But in both cases it was a cloak to hide other feelings. In Eden’s, a lassitude of body and mind that was not unpleasant, and a preoccupation with his own thoughts. In Finch’s, a shrinking from the passion that was already assailing him.
They still talked little, throwing out scraps of conversation that were no more real than paper flowers but, like paper flowers, served their purpose of imparting a surface gaiety.
After a while Finch played, and Sarah and Eden relaxed in their separate shadows, he to the contemplative state he desired, and she to the desirous contemplation of Finch’s reflection in a long mirror that hung behind the piano.
They scarcely noticed what he played. They only knew that the room was filled with harmonies as true as their conversation had been false. They knew that now Finch talked to them out of the integrity of his soul and that truth moved from their souls in answer. He was aware of Eden’s loneliness, of Sarah’s desire, but they were necessary notes in his music.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 304