He felt rudderless without his spaniels at his heels. He had left them at home because of Sarah’s pug who would go into spasms of barking at sight of them, persist in barking throughout the visit. He was a spoilt little devil.
The rain beat down on him, the wind beat the wet branches of the trees that seemed all too ready to sacrifice their leaves on the icy altar of winter. The trees this season seemed to have no pride in rich foliage, changing to despondent yellow and brown instead of their brighter tones. Their wet limbs discovered the forsaken birds’ nests and a faint twitter of birdsong came from the naked branches of a wild cherry tree.
The boards of the little bridge were plastered with wet leaves and edged with vivid green moss. The stream, welling full, hurried between the rank borders of long grass, harsh iris leaves, and a few pale forget-me-nots. It gave back no reflection but detached, sullen, occupied solely by its own swift progression, slid under the bridge, its voice lost in the wind and rain.
Renny laid his hands on the slippery smoothness of the railing and looked down into the stream. His eyes followed its turnings almost unseeing so familiar was the scene, yet an essence rich and comforting entered into him from it. It held so many memories for him — memories from his very infancy — that he knew its changes as the changes on the faces of his own family. But, unlike them, it was yearly rejuvenated.
An inner chamber of his mind opened and out of it came the remembrance of that scene between him and Alayne, after she had discovered him with Clara. Again he saw Alayne, shadowy behind the electric torch as she turned it full on him. He saw her bending over the stream, clinging to the rail, in an agony of jealousy, in this very spot. Where he now stood. Her body had hung over the rail here … her dear body….
He was startled by that sudden feeling of her dearness. That, combined with the great distance between them…. She had gone out of his life … gone away…. She was not going to live with him ever again…. Not until this minute had he taken it completely in, the fact that she was lost to him. And it seemed a strange moment for this realization to come, when he had his mind so filled with the affairs of someone else.
Now the stream, as though it reversed its mood, gave him back the reflection of Alayne — not tortured by hate but happy, relaxed, her blue eyes beaming up at him, her white arms round his neck. He saw her body — her dear body — strong and sweet in love for him. Yet he had not been able to shield her from what had come between them. And it was false, a traitorous disruption of their love, because no woman could ever put her out of her place in his heart and no man rivalled him in hers…. He had loved Clara. He still loved Clara. It had been a wrench to give her up — as a friend who understood him without explaining, who accepted him as he was, without yearning to make him over. Their interval of passion had, to him, been only as a red poppy blossoming in the rich grain of their friendship. It had been garnered with the grain. It had, now that all was over, taken on the sober hue of comradeship.
It seemed almost unbelievable to him when Sarah herself opened the door. It was unnatural to see her in that house. For an instant he saw in her stead Pauline, as a long-legged child, holding her pet fox in her arms, her dark hair framing her face. His heart contracted as he remembered how that face was now framed. And the little fox was dead….
Sarah looked at him startled, then said:
“You look like a brigand!”
“Do I?” He grinned, trying to look amicable.
“Yes — with that battered-looking hat pulled over your eyes and your collar turned up.”
“I need to — it’s raining like the devil.” He took off his hat and the rain ran from its brim.
She looked at his head disclosed in the electric light. It was to her the head of an enemy, stark and invulnerable. His bright eyes roused a fierce antagonism in her.
After an embarrassed pat to the pug he followed Sarah into the living room. She sat down, arranging her skirts about her and touching the twists of her sleek hair, as though for his inspection. He waited for her to speak, which she did in a sweet, rather pleading tone.
“I hope you have brought me good news of Finch.”
He looked at her speculatively. “No I’m afraid not. He won’t go on with the treatments.”
“Not go on! But he has just nicely begun.”
He could not resist answering sarcastically:
“It may seem nice to you. He doesn’t find it so. It drives him crazy.”
“It is often like that at the first. It will help him later. It is helping him. The doctor says it is.”
“Well, he ought to know. But Finch doesn’t agree. He refuses to go to the hospital again or see the doctor again.”
“You’re glad!” she said hotly.
“I can’t pretend I’m sorry. I’ve seen him going downhill for weeks.”
“What is going to draw him up again? Tell me that?”
“Rest.”
“Rest!” She spat out the word scornfully. “He’s had nothing but rest for months! I must see him. I must see him at once. Nothing shall stop me!”
“Sarah, you cannot see him!”
“You shan’t stop me!”
“I don’t want to stop you.”
“You do! You do!” she interrupted, not raising her voice but charging it with hate. “You are trying to take him from me. You want to see me cast out — alone!”
“What rot you talk! Why should I want to separate you?”
“Because you’re jealous of his love for me. You know it has changed him.”
He looked at her in wonder. “The things women get into their head!”
Sarah put her elbows on her knees and her chin in her palms, bending toward him. He had never seen her sit in this attitude before. She looked familiar yet unfamiliar and, like a highly strung horse, he mentally shied from her.
She said — “You really hate women. That is why you are so fascinating to the weak ones. But I see you just as you are.” And she bent nearer as though for that fuller view.
“Your idea of me is as false as hell,” he answered morosely. “I don’t hate you or any other woman but I have to think of my brother. He’s a sick boy —”
“Boy!” she interrupted. “There you go! Keeping him tied to you — calling him boy! I say he is a man — and my husband!”
“He acts like it, doesn’t he?” He shewed his teeth at her and she had a desire to strike him. He added — “And like a husband!”
“He would be both — if he were away from you!”
“Sarah, in God’s name, what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to let me go to see Finch.”
He answered emphatically — “Finch will not see you. There is no use in persisting. Give him time. Go away somewhere. The change would do you good.”
“Join Alayne, eh? Yes — tell me to join Alayne!”
“Now you’re being just silly.”
She twisted her fingers together. “Oh, I could be so happy here, in this little house — if only he would be his old self! I’d ask nothing better of life.”
“Not Finch’s music?”
“Our life would be a song.”
She embarrassed him. He said:
“You talk like a crooner, Sarah. You only need to add — ‘And nothing could go wrong!’”
Her pale face became paler. She rose and went to a window and looked into the dusk.
“You think none of my emotions are deep,” she said, with her back to him, “but they are. I am in earnest when I say that I love this place. I love it because it is a part of Jalna. It was that way from the day I first saw it.”
He went to her, smiling his gratification.
“Do you really, Sarah? It is nice, isn’t it? You know, I don’t want to hurt your feelings but I do think you’re being pretty difficult about Finch. I don’t understand your attitude toward him but I do understand your feeling for Jalna.”
She returned his smile with her small mischievous one, that had something wicked
in it, like the lifting of a feline animal’s lip.
“I like it so well,” she returned, “that I wish I owned it.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Do you really?”
“Yes…. I wish I owned it.”
“Not much chance of that, Sarah!”
“I suppose not…. Will you stay and have dinner?”
The thought of a meal with Sarah in that house was repellent to him.
And he did not like dinner at night. He was used to his evening meal of cold meat, some hot made dish, biscuits, and cheese.
The pug was so pleased at his going that it was genial, rubbing the wrinkled velvet of its nose against Renny’s hand, seeming to screw its tail tighter. He gathered a handful of its fawn-coloured hide and gently rolled it. Sarah looked at them, enigmatic and smiling.
Under cover of the pug’s good humour Renny said — “About the interest, Sarah…. It’s overdue, I know…. It’s been mounting up…. But I’ll have it for you after I’ve been to the New York Horse Show. I expect to do something there with this new mare of mine.”
Her laugh was almost inaudible. “You had better,” she said, “or I may own Jalna yet.”
He straightened himself to rigidity and said, incredulously:
“Surely such an idea has never entered your head!”
“Many a time,” she answered coolly. “You would be surprised if you knew how often.”
His incredulity was tinged with pride. He said, with a certain grimness:
“There isn’t money enough in the world to buy Jalna. Why, I can’t believe you have entertained such a thought! But I’m glad you appreciate it, Sarah. It’s a fine old place. Gran put a good deal of herself into the building of it.”
Sarah folded her arms, not aggressively but rather with resignation. “If I cannot have Finch,” she said, “I shall try to get Jalna.”
All the way home those words sounded in his ears. He ran, crushing the wet grass and ferns, repeating aloud — “Try to get Jalna! Yes — try it — do try it! By God — the cheek of the woman! Get Jalna — from me — she’s out of her wits — if she ever had any!”
He crossed the bridge in two strides and mounted the steep path without slackening his speed. He threw open the little gate, stood on the lawn, his breath coming sharp and strong, and stared at the house as though to make sure of its invincibility. To think that Sarah, that queer cousin, that snaky wife of young Finch’s, had cast acquisitive glances at the old house! It was enough to raise its roof — to shatter its windows in outrage.
But the house stood there, serene and even stolid under his inspection. It looked massive surrounded by the blackness of its evergreens. Light showed in the hall, the drawing room, and the nursery. The one in the drawing room came from a leaping fire. The uncles were there. Upstairs the babes were being put to bed. What of Finch?
Renny went to the side of the house and looked up at his window. There was no light. Lying there — the poor young devil — in the darkness — alone with his thoughts and his pain!
XVIII
A DAY OF ADELINE
ADELINE WOKE ON this clear frosty morning even earlier than usual. There was a fanciful mystery in the first pink rays of sunlight that penetrated between the reddening leaves of the Virginia creeper which during the summer had begun to festoon across the window. The rays fell on to the quilt embroidered in blue forget-me-nots that her mother had made her and she lay still a moment remembering how she had used to sleep in her mother’s room. She could remember her mother bending over her and the way her hair looked bright. Alayne! That was her name. Some day she would come back and bring presents. But Adeline liked sleeping upstairs in the nursery. She did what she liked. There was no one to say — “You shall not have another drink,” or to stand quelling her with steady blue eyes till she stopped laughing and shouting. Adeline could do what she liked up in the nursery with Alma and little Roma. She was past four and no one in the house could make her mind except her father and she knew how to manage him.
She closed her eyes and lay looking at the pretty colour behind her lids. She knew that in another moment she was going to do something that would dispel the immobility of her body as a swift breeze would dispel the stillness of a little pool. Even now she felt the first ripples of motion running upward from her toes, flowing through her tender yet elastic muscles.
She broke into a ripple of laughter and scrambled to her feet. She stood in the middle of her crib and looked across the room at Roma, lying curled like a shell, fast asleep. Adeline laughed again, this time loudly and consciously, trying to wake Roma but she curled herself closer and slept on.
Adeline jumped up and down, enjoying the bouncing of the mattress beneath her, her red hair flying, her brown eyes shining, a being so thoroughly refreshed by sleep that it seemed she could never be tired again.
She jumped so high that she all but lost her balance. This sobered her a little. She put her hands on the railing of the crib and looked over. She noticed a worn spot on the carpet that she had not seen before. She thought she would spit on it.
She gathered a supply of saliva in her mouth and let it dribble over her pouting red lip on to the carpet. It did not hit the worn spot. She tried to gather saliva for a fresh venture but apparently she had used all there was.
Masterfully she threw a leg over the side of the crib, then turned on her stomach and slid toward the floor. Her nightdress was caught and her deliciously dimpled body glowed pink in the frosty air. So she hung for a space, then found her feet and trotted to the window.
She saw on the ledge a small, blue butterfly, late beyond reason, opening and closing his wings like two gently waving diminutive fans. A roguish smile dented her cheek. She put out a hand, with fingers curled, just over the butterfly. It folded its wings, watching her. Her hand swooped, closed. She had it safely. She squeezed it in glee. Then she cautiously opened her hand and again shut it, after one glance. An expression of ferocity darkened her brow. She put her shut hand between her knees and pressed knees and fist together, jumping up and down to gain force. Then suddenly her face became a blank, she straightened, spread her palm and gazed long at it.
She wiped her hand against her nightdress. She felt lonely and pouted out her lips.
Then she saw Roma and galloped to her. She pressed her face between the bars of the cot and put it close to Roma’s. How funny the face looked with the eyelashes pressed close together and the two round holes in the nose, the mouth open a little! She looked closely into Roma’s mouth. She laughed into it, their breaths mingling.
“Ah, non, non, non!” said Roma, pushing at her. But Adeline would not go. She began to roar like a lion and in a moment they were romping together.
Alma came to dress them, looking apprehensively at Adeline. She carried a jug of warm water which she emptied into the basin.
“I won’t be washed!” said Adeline.
“Just your face,” pleaded Alma.
Adeline snatched up a washcloth and wet it in the cold water in the ewer and scrubbed her creamy cheeks to flame. She dried them on a corner of a bath towel. Alma stripped Roma of her nightdress and she stood, a white sliver of humanity, shivering by the washing stand.
Adeline went to the cupboard where her riding breeches and coat were hung and threw open the door. Alma rushed at her. They scuffled.
“I will wear them!” stormed Adeline.
“You mustn’t! ’Tisn’t allowed, first thing in the morning!” hissed Alma.
Roma began to rub herself with a jelly-like cake of soap.
Adeline lay down on the floor preparing to roll and scream, then she changed her mind, got up and went to a chair where the clothes she had worn yesterday lay. These were a pair of outgrown breeches and jersey that had belonged to young Maurice. Alma watched her with relief and disapproval. She said:
“I should think you’d want to put on one of your pretty dresses and look like a lady.”
“I must ride,” returned Adeline briefly. “Hel
p me with these. I’ll keep my best ones clean.”
Alma helped her into the breeches whose seat reached Adeline’s knees, and turned back the sleeves of the jersey from her round white wrists.
“Look at Roma,” said Adeline. “She’s had a scare.”
Roma, covered by a sticky lather, shook like a leaf. Alma ran and began to rub her with a towel. “Froid — froid!” chattered Roma. “Cold!”
“She comes from a warm country,” explained Adeline. Hands in pockets she swaggered to the door.
“Hair!” begged Alma. “Your hair! It’s like a brush heap!”
Adeline slammed the door after her and swaggered along the passage. At Finch’s door she stopped and put her eye to the keyhole. She could see the bed and a hump in it.
“Hullo, Unca Finch!” she called.
“Hullo, darling!”
“Can I come in?”
“Not today, Adeline.”
“Are you better? Will you soon be well?”
“Quite soon.”
She tried the handle. She would have liked to romp with him on the bed, but the door was bolted.
“Listen! I’m giving you a kiss.”
She placed her mouth on the keyhole and kissed through it repeatedly. Finch made kissing sounds in the bed.
“Does that make your pain better?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to ride my pony.”
“Good.”
“Bye-bye.”
“Bye-bye.”
She went down the stairs and looked into her father’s room. Its emptiness made her thrust out her under lip in disappointment. She went to Ernest’s door and heard him steadily snoring. She stood there for several minutes imitating him. Then she went to the door of Nicholas’s room and thumped on it.
“Come in! Come in!” rumbled the deep voice.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 345