It was she who told Roma all she knew of Eden.
“why, surely you know,” Alma had said, “that your pa was married to Mrs. Whiteoak that is!”
Roma had stared in bewilderment. “Then, is she my mother? Are Adeline and I sisters?”
“You are a silly girl! Of course you and Adeline ain’t sisters. You’re cousins, because her pa and your pa were brothers.”
“But if my father was married to Auntie Alayne —”
“They didn’t have no children. Then your pa ran off with a Miss Ware that was staying with Mrs. Vaughan, and your Auntie Alayne divorced him. I suppose you know what divorce is.”
“It’s getting unmarried.”
“Then your Auntie Alayne stayed in New York for a while and then she up and married Colonel Whiteoak, and they had Adeline and Archer.”
“But where do I come in?”
“Well, you was born away off in Italy or France or somewheres, and your pa and ma died and you came here when you was about the size of Ossie.” She snatched up her infant and hugged him. “Ossie — Ossie — the chain yan down the chack!”
Many a time Roma had pondered on this conversation. Indeed, she seldom was alone when she did not speculate on the strangeness of the grown-ups’ behaviour and her own peculiar situation. But she did not speak of this to anyone. Whether or not her mother or father had done something wrong she could not understand but she felt something melancholy in her beginning. She clung to the thought of Eden’s being a poet and she liked the book she now carried so well that she hesitated beneath the trees in the moonlight to examine it, as though she had not done so a hundred times already. She admired the delicate green of the cover, the way his name, Eden Whiteoak, stood out in fine gold letters, the little wreath of gold flowers. She would keep this book always and perhaps later she would take his two other books from the library and keep them too.
She heard a step, looked round, and saw Finch coming through the wood.
“Hullo,” he said. “You here, Roma?”
She smiled, hiding the book.
How fair she looked in the moonlight! But she was a queer little thing. One never knew what she was thinking. He took her hand in his. “Coming with me to the fox farm?” he asked.
“They won’t want a child there,” she answered.
“I’m not going to stay. I’m just going to ask after Gemmel.”
“Is she ill?”
“No. But she’s in a hospital. She’s been having an examination — X-rays, you know — and that sort of thing, by a specialist. They think there’s a possibility that she may be cured.”
“That would be nice … Did you see the owl?”
“Yes. I don’t like them. They’re always after some poor little beggar of a mouse or small bird. They’re uncanny. They frighten me.”
“I like them … There’s Althea Griffith. She’ll try not to meet us. She always hurries away. Do you see her turning back?”
Finch began to run after Althea. He called out, “I want to ask after your sister. That’s all.”
As he caught up to her he looked at her half-admiringly, half-fascinated by her invincible shyness.
She spoke quietly. “The specialist says she should have been operated on years ago. They’ve known — skilful surgeons, I mean — how to do this particular operation for years. But away in the mountains in Wales, we’d never had any hope of such a thing. We’d just accepted what the doctors said when she was a baby.”
“Will they operate now?”
“Oh, yes. They’ve every hope she’ll be walking in a few months.”
“Aren’t you terribly excited? Aren’t you and Garda happy?”
She clasped her hands under her chin and stood rigid as she answered, “I don’t know. We’re dazed.”
“I’m sure you are. But when you can think calmly —”
“That’s what I’m doing,” she interrupted. “I’m out here trying to think calmly. You’ve no idea how hard it is to do. If Gem learns to walk, we shall have to begin an entirely new life. The whole pattern of our existence has been fitted round the fact that she’s always stationary. She’s the pivot.”
“But if you three can go about together in the future, you’ll be awfully happy, won’t you? I have a picture in my mind of Gemmel running.”
“So have I, and it frightens me.” Althea relaxed suddenly and stood leaning against the rough trunk of an old oak, as though tired.
“How is Gemmel bearing the strain?”
“Quite coolly. Almost impersonally — as though someone else’s fate, not hers, were to be decided. But I know her. Underneath she’s on fire.”
Althea had said so much freely and without the strange cloak of shyness that disguised her real self. Now she looked at Finch startled and began to retreat from him. She remembered with terror what Gemmel had said of his feeling for her, that Gemmel had told him of the sketch she had made of him.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“I must. I have things to do. Goodnight.” She almost fled along the path away from him. He felt angry at her. What was the matter with her? He could have loved her, he thought, at that moment, if she had not had that atmosphere of impenetrability enveloping her. Suffering as she was, he longed to hurt her. He stood looking after her resentfully till, in her white dress, she looked no wider than a moonbeam.
“She’s shy,” said Roma.
“How clever of you to discover it! Come on, let’s go home.”
“She always acts like that.”
“Does she really?”
“I don’t believe the doctors will cure Gemmel, do you?”
“Yes. I’m sure they will.” They were descending the path holding hands. He asked, “what is that book?”
She held it up so the moonlight fell on it. Finch’s jaw dropped. He stammered, “why, Roma, why — where did you get it?”
“In the library.”
“Did someone give it to you?”
“No. I took it. I thought I had a right to.”
“Well. I suppose you have.” He leant against the railing of the bridge, looking down into the stream. He could see the sickroom and Eden on the bed, terribly emaciated. The book had just come from the publishers. He had put it into Eden’s hands, hoping for some gleam of pleasure. But Eden had only said, “How very nice,” and handed it back to him. Then he had said, quite loudly, “Don’t leave me alone! I don’t want to be alone.” But a week had passed before Eden died.
“Have you read the poems, Roma?” he asked.
“Some of them. I wanted to bring the book on a walk. You won’t tell, will you?”
“Never. Look here, Roma, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Some day we’ll bring one of Eden’s books out to the woods and we’ll read the poems aloud. We’ll take turns. Should you like that?”
“Oh, yes,” she answered placidly.
When they reached the lawn before the house, Finch left her and turned aside through the shrubbery. She went slowly into the porch, reluctant to go to bed. Archer was there, also on his way to bed, his dry, almost white hair erect above his high forehead. He had collected certain belongings to carry upstairs among them a box in which he had had a butterfly imprisoned. The box was broken and the butterfly gone.
“It’s your fault,” he said with concentrated passion. “I left my butterfly for you to look after and you threw it on the grass and the dogs got it!”
“You did not,” she returned. “You just showed it to me. Then you went off and left it. How do you know the dogs got it?”
He showed her the box. “There — do you see the teeth marks? And there’s a bit of the butterfly’s wings sticking to the lid. It’s the last time I’ll ever trust you to look after anything of mine.”
“You didn’t tell me to look after it.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t.”
They ascended the stairs quarrelling. Archer said, “You’re always against me. Whatever I try to do, you’re always against me.
If someone was to throw a rock at me you’d find two bigger rocks and throw them at me”
“Get out of my way,” she said, as they climbed the second flight of stairs. “Don’t keep joggling me.”
“I will.” He moved closer to her.
She took the book she carried and gave him a smart rap on the head with it. He burst into angry tears. In the first place, he was disturbed about his butterfly. In the second, he did not want to go to bed.
She turned into her room, not giving him so much as a glance. He went into his own room, gasping and gulping, making the most of every sob. He began to undress. Every now and again he would call out:
“If anybody threw a rock at me you’d throw two bigger ones!”
She was perfectly silent.
She sat down by the table where Eden, as a youth, had written his first poetry. His name was carved on it, just his Christian name — Eden. She traced the letters with her forefinger. Some day, she thought, she would cut her own name beneath it. It would look nice, as both names had four letters.
The moonlight shone in brightly, making Roma beautiful in her fairness. She had laid the book on the table and sat looking at it. “I will never give it up,” she thought, “to anyone.”
There was silence in Archer’s room, then suddenly he came running into hers, stark naked. He was laughing. He leaped on her bed and began springing up and down.
“Roma, Roma, sitting all alone-a!” he chanted.
She looked at him disparagingly. “If I were as skinny as you,” she said, “I’d never take my clothes off. I’d sleep in them.”
He gave a few more jumps but she had taken the spring out of him. He got off the bed and came and bent his white body over the table.
“what book is this?” he asked peremptorily, like a professor.
“It’s mine.”
“It is not. It’s Eden Whiteoak’s. Don’t you see his name on it?” He looked at her slyly. “I’ll bet you don’t know who he was.”
“Yes, I do.”
“who then?”
“My father.”
“I bet you don’t know who he was married to once.” Archer’s face looked pinched with shrewdness.
“I do so.”
“He was married to my mother!”
“I know who told you.”
“who?”
“Alma. I’ve known it a long while.”
“My mother,” Archer said, dictatorially, “didn’t want him. She put him right out of the house. Then she married my father and had me. She had me, do you understand?”
“Having you was the silliest thing she ever did.”
Again he was deflated. He could think of nothing to say.
“She didn’t put him out of the house,” went on Roma. “He ran away, of his own accord, with someone much nicer and much prettier and they had me.”
Alayne’s step could be heard on the stairs. The children looked at each other guiltily.
“Archer,” she said, coming into the room, “how often have I told you not to run about like that! when you undress you are to put your pyjamas on at once.” She came to the table and picked up the book. A stab of shock and pain went through her. How she had once loved Eden’s poetry! How long ago! Ah, a different life — a different world — she had been a girl then! Well, almost a girl, only twenty-eight and he twenty-three! She had stood by this same table, from which his carved name stared up at her, and stroked his bright hair, smiled down into his eager face and bent and kissed him. How long ago! Another life. Another world. A world sunk under the waves of time, only now and again recreated in memory by some small floating object, such as this book.
“who gave you leave to take this from the library?” she asked, her eyes on Roma’s pale face.
“No one.”
“You should not have taken it without permission. You must be very careful of it.” She could not say to put it back. As she turned away she asked, “why did you want the book?”
“I don’t know.”
“Now that’s just being stupid, Roma. Of course, you know why you want it.”
“No — I don’t.”
“Have you read any of the poems?”
“Yes — a few.”
“which ones?”
“I can’t remember.”
How, Alayne wondered, had Eden begot this uninteresting child! He, with his swift intelligence, his responsiveness! But there was Minny Ware — she had been shallow enough. Alayne took Archer’s hand. “Come,” she said, “it’s getting chilly.” She saw the tumbled bed and exclaimed:
“I should think you would be ashamed to make your bed so badly. One would think you had been jumping on it.”
The children stared at her in silence.
Alayne sighed and led Archer to his own room. Roma could hear him steadily talking, trying with all his powers to drag out the goodnights, to hang on to his mother a little longer. But at last she went, calling out “Goodnight, Roma!” as she reached the head of the stairs. She was scarcely at the bottom when Archer turned his light on again.
“Goodnight, Roma!” he sang out. “Come and kiss me goodnight.”
“No. Go to sleep.”
He began to groan and moan, making dreadful noises.
Alayne called from below, “Archer, do you want me to punish you?”
“No — o,” he whined, though he had no fear of her. Now he called softly, “Goodnight, Roma,” repeating the words till she replied with a goodnight to him.
She sat by the table in the moonlight, motionless except that now and again she turned a page of the book. She did so with an air of serene possessiveness, as though its contents were well known to her and beloved. So she remained till the moon sank.
XIII
RENNY’S RETURN
A MONTH LATER, at five o’clock in the morning, Renny Whiteoak alighted from a car at his own gate and turned into the deep shade of the driveway. He had come on an early train, had got a lift from the railway station and, unknown to his family, was almost at the door. They were not expecting him for another fortnight. It pleased him that he would surprise them, find them doing everyday things, instead of waiting in an excited group to welcome him. He would take even the old house off its guard. It would be dozing away in the rich comfort of its Virginia Creeper, never expecting him. Well, he had been away an unconscionable time. Yet it had passed quickly, in confusion, in noise, in mass movements of men. Here there was peace.
What a plunge it was into the shade of the evergreens! How fresh, how still the early morning air was! A red squirrel ran the length of a bough and sat swaying on its tip, gazing down at him. Another squirrel darted across his path and up the mossy trunk of a hemlock, in a flying leap joined the first squirrel and the two peered down, talking about him. And it was only five in the morning!
He stepped through a gap in the trees and onto the lawn that wore a silver carpet of dew. Near his feet there was a throng of tiny mushrooms that had sprung up overnight. He stood looking down at them, deliberately savouring the moment when he would raise his eyes to the house, anticipating the recognition it would give him. Out of the earth rose the essence of the land he knew. Out of the hushed white branches of the old silver birch came a long-drawn sigh of recognition.
A robin, running across the dewy grass, caught an earthworm, drew it out to full length, to far more than full length; it snapped like the string of an instrument. Renny waited till both halves were devoured, then slowly raised his eyes to the house. His eyes moved over it, from eave to basement, from shuttered windows to vine-embowered porch. It had not changed. It rose solid and intact. By God, he never wanted to leave it again!
He would stay at home and think easy and comfortable thoughts. He would forget the victimized world he had been living in for more than four years. He would forget the planes that swept like a flock of vultures; the palpitating entanglement of mechanism that ground that earth. He felt that he hated everything mechanical. He would like to walk on his two legs or r
ide a horse for the rest of his days. He felt that he would like to see the land ploughed, harrowed, sown with seed, by man’s labour alone, as in the old days at Jalna. His ears were weary of the throbbing of engines.
An early morning breeze swept through the leaves of the Virginia Creeper. They vibrated, and the vibration seemed to spread throughout the fabric of the house. It seemed to say: “So you are home again, wanderer. And high time it is! My roof has waited all these nights and days to receive you; now bend your head under it and leave me no more.”
He smiled and moved beneath the window of his wife’s room. He picked up a handful of gravel from the drive and threw it lightly against the pane. He waited, his face upturned. She must have sprung up at the first rattle of the tiny stones for there she was at the window, throwing wide the sash, leaning across the sill to look down. She saw him standing below, his face raised to the window, wearing his uniform as he had worn his riding clothes, with that air as though they had been invented for him and he alone could so well grace them.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 412