He looked at her sullenly, without replying.
“Now, Sarah,” said Maurice, cheerful at being left behind, “you and I will play Piers and Alayne. Pheasant looks tired. Bed is the place for her.”
Alayne suffered herself to be drawn into the game of bridge though she did not care for cards, and Piers as a partner was exacting. Throughout the game he was too attentive to Sarah to please Pheasant, who, from the corner of the sofa, kept jealous eyes on them.
Ernest leaned toward his brother.
“We could arrange another table,” he said.
Nicholas shook his head. He took out his pipe. “Not tonight. I’m tired. That was a hard walk to church.”
Ernest pulled at his lip. He considered what possibilities were left. Finch, Wakefield, Pheasant (she was looking rather mopy), and himself.
“Fetch the other card table, Wakefield,” he said, authoritatively. “There is no reason why we shouldn’t have a game.”
Pheasant was glad of the distraction. Finch sat where he could watch Sarah unobserved. Wakefield’s thoughts were on Pauline, who, with her mother, had gone to spend the day with Clara Lebraux’s brother.
Finch suddenly remembered something. He said, in an undertone to Wakefield, while the others were discussing a hand:
“Eden gave me something for you. A present, I think. It went completely out of my mind.” He slid an envelope under the table on to Wakefield’s knee.
Wakefield fingered the bulky packet wondering what it might contain, excited by the possibilities of the belated present. Still keeping it concealed, he tore open one end and looked into it. Saying nothing, he continued the game. But it did not last long. Pheasant became faint, all but keeled over, and had to be half-carried upstairs. Wakefield retreated into the dining room. A few minutes later he called out to Finch.
“Hullo!” said Finch. “What was it?”
Wakefield stammered with excitement.
“Why—why—I could hardly believe my eyes! It’s a secret, but I’ll tell you, Finch! He has sent me practically all he made from his readings. He didn’t spend it and now, he says, he doesn’t need it. It’s to buy the engagement ring for Pauline! He says he’d rather do that with it than anything, so I’m not to feel too grateful. God, how excited I am!”
A dramatic gesture, Finch thought, and how Eden loved to make them! He looked enviously into Wakefield’s happy face. To be able to love like that… To be able to give oneself without reserve… He himself might have felt so about Pauline… If only Wake had given him the chance… A kid like that—why, he couldn’t marry for years! The affair was ridiculous and Eden should not have encouraged it. He said:
“Well, it was generous of Eden and I suppose it’s true— what he says about not needing it himself. But when I think how he worked—for that paltry sum—” His eyes darkened and he saw, not Wakefield’s happy face, but Eden’s sunken cheeks, his too brilliant eyes.
“Don’t think I’m not appreciating it! I’ll never forget it as long as I live. You see, I was so young when Eden left home that I’ve never known him very well. And I’ve always heard Piers saying things against him. The thought that he’s not going to get better hasn’t meant so much to me as it has to you and Renny. But now—if he wasn’t so ill I’d go straight to him this minute and thank him.”
Finch could not bear to hear this child babbling about Eden. He said gruffly:
“I suppose Pauline will be pleased.”
“Pleased! She’ll be overjoyed! I’ll not tell her a thing about it until I put the ring on her finger. Have you ever noticed her hands?”
“Yes—I’ve noticed them. Look here, Wake, don’t tell Pauline how you got the ring.”
“But why? I think she ought to know.”
“I think it would be better for her to think you had saved up for it.” He could not bear to think of those two babbling together over Eden’s generosity.
“I believe you’re right. She’ll have all the more confidence in me if she thinks I saved up for it. She looks on me as rather extravagant, you know. But, on the whole, we’re perfect in each other’s eyes!”
“Oh, Lord—” Finch turned away.
“You won’t tell anyone,” said Wakefield to his back, “because Eden says he’d rather they didn’t know.”
“Of course I won’t.”
Going moodily through the hall he met Renny returning from Vaughanlands. He said:
“I suppose he’s just the same?”
Renny nodded, frowning.
Sarah appeared in the doorway of the drawing-room.
“They want us to make some music, Finch,” she said.
He looked at her sombrely.
“I wish you would,” said Renny. “I’d like it.”
The two had never before played together with such sympathy. They were released from all the conflicting emotions about them. They found themselves so happy in their music that they forgot the presence of the others and played each to each.
Wakefield sat, shading his eyes with his hand, his heart going out through the night to Pauline. Renny’s hand slid along the sofa to Alayne’s.
They two were the last to go upstairs. She stood on the bottom step and so could look levelly into his eyes. She touched her finger to his forehead between the brows.
“Those lines are getting deep, poor darling,” she said.
“Kiss them away.” He bent his head toward her.
She kissed his forehead tenderly, then his cheeks, then his lips, and clung to him.
“See what I have,” he said. He showed her the corner of one of the silk handkerchiefs she had given him, projecting from his pocket.
“Do you like them?”
“Do I? Do I like you?” He took the handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out, and, with a short laugh, laid it over their two heads.
“Now,” he said, “you have me alone.”
Under this silken tent his eyes looked black and mysterious, but the harsh contours of his face were obscured. He did these childish things, she thought, and calculatingly increased his power over her. Each fragment of experience with him was laid upon the preceding one, and so was being built up the edifice of their inner life. By his most trivial act he was unconsciously making more concrete her imagining of him. While she craved his gentleness she feared it, as though by it he would transmute her into the passive creature of his need.
He, on his part, thought only of a moment’s sweet escape from the thoughts that harassed him.
XVIII
DEATH OF A POET
IN THE WEEKS following Christmas Eden’s decline was rapid. In the New Year he had a second haemorrhage and, after that, it was apparent to all about him that his time was short. Yet, toward the end of January, his strength rallied. He was up every day for a while, sitting, in his light-blue dressing gown, at the table where his manuscripts were littered. His interest and pleasure in this last book of poems gave him strength. He felt a certain enchantment in his isolation, his lack of responsibility. He had only one thing to do and that was to get the proofs ready for the publishers. He hoped to live to see his book between covers, and he had a yearning to read one or two good reviews.
Finch spent several hours each day with him. He was constantly amazed by Eden’s matter-of-factness, his cool acceptance of his fate. It was rather shocking to see him so detached, to hear his callous, and often ribald and blasphemous remarks. Eden was pleased when he could startle Finch into laughter. The unexpected laughter would make Finch lose control of his nerves. He would laugh until he croaked and the tears would run down his cheeks and his breath come with a sob.
Augusta would say, looking into the room:
“You boys seem to be having a good time. I think you
feel a little better today Eden.”
And he would look up at her with his mocking smile, and
say:
“This fellow is an awful ass, Auntie. It takes nothing to set him off.”
The one thing that Eden was bitter about
was the weather. It was a cold snowy winter and he grew sick of the sight of all the whiteness. More than anything he loved the colours of the earth and now it was drained of all but black and white. Out of the cold sky came the weary drift of snowflakes, muffling all sound, blurring all contours, making mounds that softened and sank, only to be wearily replenished. He longed for spring, even while he scarcely hoped to live till spring.
He showed decided preferences for certain members of the family. He liked to have Wakefield come to see him but this was not encouraged, because of the boy’s delicacy. Gentle Ernest, for some unknown reason, tired him, while Nicholas, big-bodied and sonorous-voiced, made him more tranquil. He could not bear to have Meg about him for long but yearned toward Augusta, whose rather stuffy style of dress and long gold earrings hardly seemed suited to a sickroom. Renny, in his lean strength, his look of outdoors, his troubled, compassionate eyes, his forced cheerfulness, cast down Eden’s spirits more than any of the others. It was to Finch he clung, Finch whom he could move to wild laughter or—by a tone of the voice or a gesture—to scarcely concealed tears. He liked to watch Finch’s face as Finch read aloud to him—his large flexible mouth; his long, actor’s upper lip; the sensitive structure of his face. When he chose he could send Finch down to the piano to play for him.
The new book was a bond between them. They discussed phrases and rhythm together, Eden placing dependence on Finch’s ear for music. Finch thought that these poems were the best Eden had written. He wrote to the New York publishers urging them to hasten the publication.
As the snowy weeks moved on, with dragging days but terrifying swiftness, the burden of apprehension pressed more and more cruelly on the family. Even Piers had less vitality and would often sit silent, buried in thought.
For the first time in his life Finch’s appetite failed him. He grew to hate the sight of food. The dish of California grapes in Eden’s room became abhorrent to him. Their opaque, sickly greenness, through which he could discern the seeds, was repugnant. The watching of Eden’s swift decline in substance wrung his breast. He had a continual nervous pressure there. And when Eden coughed, with a low rattling sound, as though there were nothing left to cough with, the pressure became a pain.
It would not have been so bad, he thought, if Eden had not got up. But to help him half dress his emaciated body, that had once been so beautiful, to see him move about the room in the light-blue, slack-hanging dressing gown, to see him looking out of the frosted window at the snow, was almost beyond bearing.
Yet when, in late February, Eden had a third haemorrhage and did not get up from his bed again, what would Finch have not given to have seen him once more at the window!
Now Eden was a different being. His face was ravished to a sunken semblance of what it had been. He lay with his great eyes full of pleading, his sallow cheeks sunken, his mouth and teeth prominent.
He no longer wanted music or reading, and his preferences in the family were reversed. The presence of Augusta now worried him, while Meg’s warm arms comforted. Augusta now assisted in the work of the house, and this was a relief to her, for she was worn out with nursing and she was eighty-one.
He no longer liked to have Nicholas sit with him. His heavy body loomed too large. He was always heaving himself about in his chair. When he gave Eden a drink he spilled half of it. But Ernest was deft, gentle, and soothing.
But most of all he turned now to Renny. Here was the one he wanted. Here was the hand and the voice and the support he craved always to be at his side. It was Renny who sat up with him night after winter night.
So the clan helped him with the best that was in them. They went with him to the very gates through which he must pass alone.
The second week in March an advance copy of Last Poems was sent from the publisher. Finch carried the book to Eden. It had come on the morning post. Renny had just gone to lie down. Ernest was in the room.
Finch put the book, delicate, spring-like in colouring, into Eden’s hand. He took it meekly as he would take what was offered him. But he scarcely seemed to see it. A smell of sickness rose from the bed. Finch saw a basin underneath it stained with blood.
“It’s your book, Eden,” he said. “Do you like the way they’ve done it?”
Eden opened the book but he could not read.
Ernest came forward.
“How very nice,” he said, in a quavering voice. “How very nice.”
Eden closed the book and turned it over. He handed it back to Finch.
Then he looked with widening eyes at the two faces above him.
“Don’t leave me alone!” he said loudly, almost chanting the words. “I don’t want to be alone.”
But it was a week before he died.
Then one morning Renny came down to the dining room where Augusta and Meg and Finch were seated about the table. It was half-past seven and they were expecting him, for he had been with Eden since midnight.
He looked ghastly in the early morning light, and a stubble of red beard gave him a ruffianly appearance.
He stood inside the door and looked at them.
Finch started up. Meg put her hand to her mouth as though to stifle a cry. Augusta sat bolt upright.
“He’s gone,” said Renny hoarsely.
Meg threw herself on Finch’s breast, sobbing.
“Was there no warning?” asked Augusta. “Couldn’t you have called us?”
“No. I knew he was worse. But he went suddenly—just like that!” He made a decisive, sweeping gesture with his hand.
“Thank God!” said Augusta. “Poor boy! Poor boy!”
Meg loosed Finch’s arms from her. “I must go to him,” she sobbed.
But Finch caught at her skirt. “No, no,” he cried. “You mustn’t, Meggie!”
“Let her come,” said Renny. “I’ll take her.”
He put his arm about her and led her up the stairs.
XIX
WINTER IN SPRINGTIME
THE COLD did not abate in the following days. Rather, the wintry rigour increased. The hard round granules of snow were whipped by the north wind, as though in spite, against the cheeks of those who faced it. Miniature ponds of ice were uncovered by the wind, and others were concealed by it under the light snow.
Piers had faced the wind for some time, his fresh skin whipped to bright pink. The flesh of his cheeks was as firm and cold as a winter apple. His full red lips were compressed into an expression of stubborn reserve. He had walked into the village and was now walking back, in the direction of Vaughanlands, in response to a message from Renny.
What did Renny want with him, he wondered, as he approached the house. Something, he felt sure, that would be unpleasant, probably impossible, for him to do. He stood on the drive, determined not to go into the house, but to wait there until he was seen. The sight of the house, with its drawn blinds, the crepe fluttering on the door, made him withdraw still more into himself. He turned up the collar of his coat and stood motionless in the snow.
He had not long to wait. He saw a movement of one of the blinds, and, in a moment, Renny came from the back of the house. Against the purity of the snow his unkempt appearance was startling. The short dense growth of red beard gave his face a look both ruffianly and wan.
Piers looked at him enquiringly. It was not the first time he had seen him since Eden’s death yesterday morning, for it was Renny who had carried the news to Jalna. But surely he might have found an opportunity to make himself decent—not go about looking like the end of the world.
They looked steadily into each other’s eyes, like antagonists marking each other’s armour, then Renny said:
“I want you to come in to see him.”
Piers drew back.
“See him!” he repeated. “See him! You must have lost your reason!”
“No, I haven’t. I want you to come in to see him.”
“But, good God! Why should I see him now—when I did not come while he was living?”
“It’s d
ifferent now.”
“If you think my feelings are different, you’re mistaken!”
Renny took him by the sleeve and said, in a tone almost cajoling:
“Come along. Come along—to please me!” Piers shook himself free.
“I don’t know why you are urging me to do this,” he said. “But I tell you, it’s useless. I won’t do it!”
A car turned in at the gate. Two people alighted and went to the door. The brothers drew out of sight behind the hedge.
“They won’t be long,” said Renny. “We’ll go in then.”
Piers kept his temper with an effort. He said, in a hard voice:
“I refuse to go into that house while he is there. Why do you ask me?”
“Because,” answered Renny, “I want you to be one of the pallbearers.”
This was what Piers had dreaded. He said at once:
“I can’t do it!”
Renny returned—“If you saw him you couldn’t refuse.”
Piers burst out—“I think it’s damned hard luck to be asked to do this! I’d never ask it of you—if you were in my place.”
Renny broke a clear, bright icicle from a snow-laden bough of spruce and bit a piece from it, holding it in his parched mouth until it dissolved. He did not speak.
Piers continued—“I see now what you’re thinking. You’re thinking what people will say—if I don’t help to carry him.”
“Well, it’s partly that but there’s another reason. As to what people will say—you don’t want to give them a chance to gossip, do you? They’d say you were bitter against Eden. They’d be certain why. They’d be certain it was jealousy. Very well—don’t give them the opening. Then the other reason: I’ve always tried to keep the family together. I’ve liked to feel that those gone on ahead knew I was doing it. It’s been my religion—all I’ve had—I guess. You boys—one of you is gone now—have been a part of my love for Jalna. I can’t bear to think that one of you could hate another so that he wouldn’t touch his dead body… That’s why I want you to see Eden. You’ll feel quite different when you do.”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 312