Without a word Althea put down the basket of watercress and sat herself on the trunk of the tree beside him.
“Why, your feet are wet!” he exclaimed.
“Yes. I was so eager to get the cress I walked right into the stream without thinking.”
“I believe you are very impulsive,” he said.
“Yes. I have to guard against it.”
He thought this over, wondering what she meant. Then he said — “I think it might be better for you to let yourself go.”
“Oh, no. I must never do that!” She twisted her long slender fingers together. “It would never do. It’s Gemmel, you see, who tortures us — first me and now even Garda…. She can’t do things herself and she’s always talking — talking about them…. She tries to drive us to do things we oughtn’t to. She’s always wondering and guessing and, now that Molly’s away and Garda is growing up, it’s worse. I can’t tell you what it’s like.”
Finch listened to this outburst with a strange throbbing in his pulses. He had always been struck by a sense of mystery in the three sisters, particularly in Gemmel. But what did it mean? He had a sense of shame that this disclosure of Althea’s should stir him in this particular way. Perhaps he was too vulnerable to emotion, now that Sarah’s spell had been removed. Suddenly, and scarcely conscious of what he did, he dropped to his knees beside Althea and laid his head in her lap.
He did not know what he expected her to do. She was like a frozen stream whose character he could only guess. He felt dizzy from the throbbing of his pulses. He would not be surprised if she cast his head from her lap with the same swiftness with which she might cast aside undesired fruit which had fallen there.
He felt a secret joy when, instead of a rebuff, she laid her hands on his head. They fluttered over it as though in fear, then rested there, caressing his hair, stroking his cheek.
“Oh, Althea,” he whispered. “You’re not afraid of me any longer!”
“No. I’m not afraid.”
He raised his face to hers and she bent over him, but she did not kiss him. Nor did he desire her to. What had happened was enough. They did not belong to each other nor could they ever. But it was joy enough for the time that the icy barrier of her shyness had melted and they could be friends.
They heard Garda’s voice.
“Althea!” she called. “Are you there?”
Althea stood up. Finch slid on to the fallen tree.
“Althea, I’ve something to tell you!”
“I’m coming.”
Garda ran toward them, her face glowing with excitement and happiness. The change had done wonders for her. She was becoming a lovely young girl. As she came up her eyes were bright with curiosity. There was a glint of malice in them too, as though she were treasuring something she had seen, to repeat it to Gemmel.
“What do you suppose?” she said. “Mrs. Whiteoak has been to see us and brought us a basket of purple grapes and a huge bunch of chrysanthemums! Do come and see! She was so sweet and kind! You can see her through the trees, if you look, going down the path.” She pointed to where Alayne’s lonely figure was visible, descending by another path into the ravine.
Alayne had drawn on an old cardigan of Renny’s for warmth. It clung warmly about her, emanating the scent of his tobacco and a certain essence of his vitality. She thrust her hands into the pockets and walked back toward Jalna. She had enjoyed her walk. It was an exercise she had never much cared for but now she made up her mind to do more of it. Tomorrow she would go to the stables — and every day after — so that she might send Renny firsthand news of his horses. She would find out things for herself and send them on to him. Perhaps, if she wore this cardigan of his, the horses would feel friendly to her — even feel some connection between her and him. She would begin riding again — go out riding with Adeline. That would be great news for him. In a strange, subtle way she felt that, in doing these things to please him, she was protecting him.
She found Nicholas and Ernest in the sitting room, trying to get the news on the radio. Their two grey heads were close together in front of it while strange, unwanted cries, grunts and squawkings, came from its interior.
Nicholas heaved himself closer. “Let me try! You seem always to think I can’t get anything.”
“Well, Nick, you can’t do anything that I’m not doing.”
“Get out of the way and I’ll show you.”
“What are you trying to get?” asked Alayne.
“The news from England,” answered Ernest. He looked at his watch.
“It’s quite time for it.”
“One would think,” rumbled Nicholas, as a persuasive male voice came from the radio, “that the entire population lived with its hands in the laundry tub. Soap flakes — super-suds — by Jove, there’s little else!”
He persisted, however, while snatches of serials full of heart throbs filled the room with their woe. At last he gave an exclamation of triumph. “Ha, here we are! Your watch must have been fast, Ernie.”
Pheasant slipped into the room. The four listened to the calm recital of air raids and air battles. Their minds were on young Wakefield, who, such a short while ago, had been a mischievous small boy, a sensitive adolescent, in this room. Now, somewhere over there he was sailing in the skies, in daily hazard of his life. Suddenly, startlingly, his name came to them out of the radio. They were frozen to attention. What was the voice saying?
“It is announced that Flying Officer Wakefield Whiteoak —”
“Don’t! Don’t!” cried their hearts. “Don’t tell us that he has been killed!”
Nicholas’s large eyes were fixed in apprehension on the radio. Ernest gripped the arms of his chair. Pheasant closed her eyes and her lips moved. The colour fled from Alayne’s face. All this in a breath! Then the cool buoyant voice continued —
“— Wakefield Whiteoak, a young Canadian flier, has been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for gallantly flying a badly damaged plane back to England after taking part in a raid over Germany. The King personally presented the Cross.”
The news went on but no one heard it. This was enough. This terror — this relief! An electric thrill of pride and relief went through the room. They looked at each other, making incoherent sounds to express their emotions. Ernest’s eyes were full of tears.
“Wonderful! Wonderful! I was never —” he got out, but could say no more.
“To think of little Wake!” cried Pheasant. “Oh, won’t Renny —”
“I’m glad. I’m glad,” said Alayne. “It will be a great help to Wake.”
Nicholas was struggling to get to his feet. “Heave me up out of here,” he demanded. “Got to be on my feet.” His untidy grey hair on end, his heavy shoulders seeming too weighty for the power in his legs, he stumped about the room.
Adeline must have heard something of the excitement. She came to the doorway and demanded: —
“What has happened?”
Nicholas turned himself about and faced her. He said in a sonorous voice: —
“Adeline, this is a proud day for us. Your Uncle Wakefield has won the Distinguished Flying Cross. It’s been presented to him by the King. Tell her the very words of the announcer, Ernest. I can’t remember ’em.”
Ernest repeated the words. The grownups listened as though they too heard them for the first time.
Adeline’s eyes were like stars.
“Oh, good!” she said. “Oh, good!”
“I tell you,” said Nicholas, still in his deepest voice, “we shall beat Hitler. With men like ours — we shall beat Hitler. With a leader like ours nothing can defeat us. What did he say? ‘Long, dark months of trial and tribulation lie before us … death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey, hardship our garment, constancy and valor our only shield.’ Grand words, eh?”
“How well you remember them, Uncle Nick,” said Pheasant.
“And yet he says his memory is failing!” said Ernest, very proud of his brother.
Nicholas threw up hi
s leonine old head and went on: —
“‘We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air …’”
“Aye,” said Ernest grimly, “in the air, by God!”
Nicholas fixed his eyes on Adeline and went on: “‘We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.’”
“Magnificent!” exclaimed Ernest, as though the noble words were Nicholas’s own.
“You’ve put me off!” declared Nicholas. “You’ve put me completely off. I can’t remember another word of it.”
“Oh, yes, you can, Uncle Nick,” said Pheasant. “Please do! It’s grand.”
He ran his hands through his hair. “‘This Island,’” he muttered, “‘subjugated or starving … Then our Empire across the seas … armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until, in God’s good time in … God’s good time …’” He could not finish. His voice was shaking. “Adeline,” he said, “the future lies with you children. You must remember this day and … pledge yourself, yes … pledge yourself …”
“I will, Uncle Nick.”
Alayne brought in the decanter of sherry and they drank to Wakefield. Nicholas was tired. He dropped heavily into his chair.
Adeline went again into the hall. She found Archer there, staring up at the grandfather clock. He had opened its door and was holding the pendulum motionless.
“If you stop the clock,” he said, “you stop time, don’t you? I need never go to bed.”
She removed his hand sternly from the pendulum. “Let it go. You can’t stop time. No matter what you do. We need it.”
“What good is it to us?”
“We’ve got to have it. Archie, come upstairs with me.”
“Where?”
“To Daddy’s room.”
She took him by the hand and led him up to Renny’s room. She closed the door behind them. Then she faced him.
“Archie,” she said, “we may have to fight. Uncle Nick says so. We may have to fight — just like Daddy.”
“Have they killed Daddy?”
“No, no, but we children may have to fight too, and I think we’d better begin training. Look here.”
She climbed on to a chair and took down two double-barreled rifles from the wall. She placed one of these in Archer’s hands, he took it as though this were what he had been waiting for since long years.
She opened the window wide. The rich-coloured autumn landscape lay before them in peace and majesty. The window faced the east.
“This is the direction they’d come from,” she said. “Because England’s over there. Now rest your gun across the sill, Archie, and I’ll be on the lookout. When I see them coming I’ll tell you and we’ll fire. We’ll shoot them as they come out of the woods and we’ll never surrender.”
He drew his high white forehead into a frown and fixed his piercing gaze on the blue horizon. His small grimy hands gripped the rifle. Adeline’s expression was one of watchful courage. The dark red hair framing her face was bright in the sunshine. She felt inside her a gathering strength.
THE END
Return
to
Jalna
MAZO DE LA ROCHE
DUNDURN PRESS
TORONTO
To Betty and Daniel Macmillan in friendship
I
YOUNG MAURICE’S RETURN
IT WAS MORE than four years since Maurice Whiteoak had left his native land and now he was once more within its borders. Then he had sailed by passenger ship from Halifax to Côbh. He had returned in plane and warship by way of Portugal and New York. He smiled as he considered the change wrought in him by those four years in Ireland. He was a different being, he thought, from the child of thirteen who had gone to live with Cousin Dermot. How timid he had been then! The very marrow of him had shuddered as he had stood waiting with the maid in the hall while old Dermot Court had interviewed Wright, in whose charge Maurice had been. When Wright had come out of the room he had winked at Maurice as they passed and whispered, “I hope you’ll like the old boy better than I do.”
Maurice had slowly but steadily entered the room where Dermot was waiting. Dermot had looked very old, sitting there in the high-backed chair, but his voice had been strong and his handclasp warm. Maurice clearly remembered the first words they had exchanged.
“How do you do?” Dermot had said.
“Quite well, thank you, sir,” he had answered. And the conversation had continued, “I hear you were seasick coming across.”
“A little. After that it was fine.”
Then Dermot had given him a penetrating look and asked, “Do you think you can bear to visit me for a while?”
“Yes. I’m sure I can.” His own voice had sounded very small and wavering even to himself.
“Remember,” — Dermot had continued — “if you don’t like me you may go home whenever you choose.”
“Mummy told me that.”
“But I’ll say this for myself — I’m not hard to get on with. Some of the Courts were, you know.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Dermot Court had laughed. “Your great-grandmother was among ’em,” he had said. “But of course you don’t remember her.”
Maurice had been terribly homesick on that first night in Ireland, but the next day had been warm and sunny; Dermot had shown him the lawns, smooth as bowling greens, the yews clipped into fanciful shapes, the lodge embowered in ivy, the pasture where the mares and their colts grazed. Later, by himself, Maurice had crossed the bluish green fields and climbed the hill, from where he had a glimpse of the sea. It was all so different from his own home.
Jalna had seemed very old to him. The house had been built almost ninety years ago, but ninety years was as nothing in this place. Surely those gnarled oak trees were as old as the Druids! At home he had been the eldest of three small brothers. His father had been sharp with him. At Cousin Dermot’s he became the young, tender, cherished heart of the house, the apple, as everyone said, of the old man’s eye.
At the end of his first summer in Ireland the war had come. It had now been going on for four years. In spite of all the letters from home Maurice had felt remote from the war, as Cousin Dermot felt remote from it. Even when his father and his uncles had gone overseas to fight, even when he had heard that his father was a prisoner in Germany, he had felt remote from the war, leading his peaceful life with his tutor and the old man.
Now Dermot Court was dead and young Maurice Whiteoak was on his way home.
Again he thought of the change in himself. He had gone over in charge of Wright, doing just what Wright had told him to do; he had come back by himself, doing just as he pleased. He had left home wearing the clothes of a small boy. He was returning in the garb of a man. He tried to feel the unconcern of the seasoned traveller, a man who had been abroad and knew all about life. But, as the train neared the city, a tremor ran through him and his mouth became suddenly dry. Who would be there at the station to meet him? Not his father, for his father was still a prisoner in Germany. Perhaps his mother would come! At the thought of her his heart gave a quick thud. It moved in his breast as though it were a thing apart from him, imprisoned there. Her figure rose before him, as he had seen her at the moment of their parting, more than four years ago. Her arms had been held close against her body, as though she forcibly restrained them from clinging to him, but her eyes had clung to him in anguish. She had feared she might never see him again. Now he had a sharp stab of jealousy as he thought how his brothers had been close beside her all these years, and he far away. He was almost a stranger.
He looked out at the fields baked brown in the late summer drought, at the wire fences and the ugly little houses of the suburbs. The train was nearing the city. People were beginning to gather their things together. Two
officers in the seat in front of him rose to their feet, looking very rigid and erect. Maurice thought of his uncles and supposed they would look like that. And his father in the prison camp! He pictured him in an old uniform, almost ragged and his hair unkempt but his face still fresh-coloured and authoritative. He had a guilty feeling of relief that his father would not be at home when he arrived there. He remembered his father’s eyes and how they could give you a look that made you tremble. It would be easier to return home with only his mother and his brothers there.
While he was thinking he had got to his feet, scarcely knowing he did so and was moving slowly toward the door of the railway carriage with the other passengers. Agitating memories crowded in on him. He almost shrank from alighting from the train. But now he was on the platform surrounded by people struggling to find porters. There were very few of them and they were almost overwhelmed by luggage. At last he managed to capture one. He was among the last to pass through the station. He kept on the watch for his mother and had a sudden fear that he might not recognize her.
There was no need. He was in her arms before ever he saw her. She had darted from among those who waited and flown straight to him.
“Mooey,” she was saying, “why, Mooey darling, how you’ve grown!” She was holding back the tears from her eyes but they were in her voice.
He put his arm tightly about her and they walked together so linked. “Mooey!” He had not heard himself called by that old pet name for four years. Instead of bringing her closer it had set her apart in a half-forgotten life. He dared not look into her face.
“I have the car here,” she was saying rather breathlessly. “Is that your luggage? why, Mooey, you’re almost a man! Travelling alone — with all those things! Oh, to think you are back again! I can scarcely believe in it.”
She was smaller than he had expected her to be. He remembered having looked up into her face. Now she was looking up into his. The pain of their parting distorted the joy of their reunion. Even as they held close to each other they felt that they were about to be torn apart. They made slow progress through the station crowded with men in uniform.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 396