“God bless my soul,” said Nicholas. “where had you hidden them?”
“I had not hidden them. It was this little girl.” He put his arm about Roma and drew her into the centre of the group. “She did it to help me.”
“She stole the money from Clapperton!” shouted Nicholas, divided between horror and amusement.
“Yes. She followed me into his house, on that day when the notes were taken. She pinched them — for my sake, mind you! — she did not keep a single one; she ran with them out of the house and hid them in this kettle in the woods. After that she put them where I should find them — just one happy surprise after another for me. Poor little thing! — she didn’t understand.”
“Not understand,” growled Nicholas. “Not understand what thieving meant — a girl of twelve!”
“I can’t believe,” said Ernest, “that she knew nothing of all the searching, the dreadful nervous strain —”
“She knew nothing.”
“when I think of the nights,” interrupted Piers, “when I have woken, wondering what cloud was hanging over me — when I think of all Alayne has been through, and when I look at this smug youngster —”
Meg interrupted. “what about me? One would think that you and Alayne were the only sufferers. I can tell you there were nights when I never closed my eyes. Often I couldn’t eat, could I, Patience?”
“Oh, I know you are worn to skin and bone from worry,” returned Piers.
“Aren’t we all?” cried Ernest. He bent down to look into Roma’s face. “Roma, you must have seen something of all the searching — the anxiety.”
“I was at school.”
“But before you went to school.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did you never confide in Adeline?”
“No, Uncle Ernest.”
“My God,” cried Renny, “don’t you realize what finding the money means to me? I’m a free man. My sky is clear. Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters!”
Meg took him in her arms and kissed him. She enfolded him in her motherly embrace. He laid his head for a moment on her shoulder. He closed his eyes, trying to be fully conscious of what had happened but, when he closed his eyes, the old darkness of fear swept back to envelop him. He had suffered too long. He could not be entirely cured in an hour. What he wanted was to relax the tension of his nerves, to be surrounded by a calm rejoicing. It did not matter whether or no Roma had acted wrongly. He was astonished that the attention of the family should be centred on her, rather than on the fact that he was mentally whole. He straightened himself and opened his eyes. He saw Alayne standing tense and white, not white but grey, with a bluish cast. He went straight to her. “Just think of what this means to us,” he said, in a low voice. “I’m a normal man, Alayne.”
A moment passed before she could answer, then her voice came, harsh and unlike her own.
“I am thinking of what it has meant to us. I am thinking of the days of futile searching, when your mind was fastened on that one thing. I am thinking of the times when you found the separate notes, hidden here, there and everywhere — with devilish ingenuity. I am thinking of our sleepless nights and your fear that you were losing your reason. And my fear. What kind of a life have we lived for months? Have we had an hour’s peace? Look at your face. It has lines it never had before. Look at mine.” She turned it up to him. “And that girl did it all to us by her devilish trick. She did it purposely to torture us. And now you ask me to think only of the relief!”
She broke into loud hysterical crying.
The others stared at her in shocked silence for a space. The colour was drained from Renny’s face. Roma looked at Alayne, fascinated.
“I think you ought to take her up to her room and make her lie down,” said Piers.
“Give her a drop of brandy,” said Nicholas.
Wakefield appeared in the doorway. “what’s happened?” he cried, his eyes twitching.
Finch went to him. He muttered. “Shut up! It’s all right. The money is found.”
Renny was half-leading, half-carrying Alayne up the stairs. She stumbled beside him without speaking till they reached her room and the door was shut behind them. Then she threw herself on the bed and lay there, staring up at the ceiling. His instinct to comfort her made him throw a silk-lined quilt over her but she flung it off, as though in anger.
“I don’t want anything over me,” she said.
He went to his own room and returned with a little brandy in a glass. He raised her and patted her back while she drank it. “Come now, come now,” he kept saying.
She raised her eyes, wide and blue, to his face.
“Can you expect me,” she said, “to forget all you’ve suffered and to give myself up to simple rejoicing?”
She had left a mouthful of the brandy in the glass and he drank it.
“Alayne,” he said, “such a burden has fallen from me, such a cloud has been lifted from my mind, that I can think of nothing else. You know, darling, I’ve been a very unhappy man.”
She raised herself on her elbow. “If a wife,” she said, “met her husband outside the door of a prison where he had been tortured, would you expect her to be filled with joy at seeing him free again? To look at the scars of his suffering and never give a thought to the torturer?”
“Yes.”
“You would expect that?”
“Yes. I’d expect her to be so glad to see him free that nothing else would matter. Also this is an entirely different case. Roma is no torturer. She’s a little girl who was playing a kind of game. She thought —”
Alayne interrupted fiercely, “Don’t speak of that girl as innocent. Nothing will convince me that she hasn’t gloated all these months over the trouble she was making. From the hour she entered this house she hated me. I’ve seen it in her eyes a thousand times.”
“Now you’re talking rubbish. She was a baby of less than three when she came to Jalna. How could she hate you?”
“She did. I could feel it.”
He answered angrily, “You could feel it, for the simple reason that you disliked her because she was Eden’s child. You’ve never been just to her.”
Colour flooded Alayne’s white face. “what did I do that was unjust? Tell me one thing.”
“I can’t put my finger on any one thing,” he answered impatiently. “But your dislike was there.”
“Just as her hate for me was there.”
“Roma does not hate you. She hates no one.”
“Well — I hate her!”
“Because she’s Eden’s child.”
“why must you go on repeating that!” Her voice broke hysterically.
He got up and moved restlessly about the room. Then he said more calmly, “Let’s be reasonable. Eden is dead. Roma cannot help being his child. She is ours now — to care for —”
“She’s not mine to care for! I won’t have her in the house. Not a day longer.”
“Alayne!” His brown eyes widened in astonishment.
“I mean it. I won’t see her growing up with our children. She is full of deceit. It’s her second nature. You can’t make me believe she hasn’t revelled in her power over us. I will not have her instilling her perversion into Adeline and Archer.”
“Just what do you mean?” he demanded.
“Let her go to your sister. I repeat, I will not have her here. I couldn’t breathe the air she breathes. If you had lost your reason — it would be her fault. If I had lost mine —”
He came and looked down on her. “You’re too ready to brood on the past, Alayne. Think of the future. It is bright, if only you will let it be so. There’s nothing I want so much as to forget what has happened — if you’d let me. When I was coming home, with Finch and Roma, I thought I’d never been happier in my life. I had found the lost money. I knew there was no crick in my brain. I was ready to wipe everything else off the slate. Let me tell you something. I was talking to Mr. Fennel this afternoon and he persuaded me to g
o into the church with him and we knelt on the chancel steps and he prayed that everything would be made clear and, inside half an hour, it was. What do you think of that?” He smiled half-apologetically, half with the air of one trying to take a child’s mind off its troubles.
Alayne said, “And I suppose you and Mr. Fennel believe that divine guidance led you to the very spot where Roma was.”
“why not?”
“And I suppose you think she should be rewarded for what she has done. Oh, Renny, we’re too different! We can’t feel the same about anything.”
“We can feel the same about our relief, can’t we? Upon my soul — I think you might try.”
She stretched out her hand, caught his and kissed it. “I shall be as happy as you, if you will send Roma away. But I will never leave my room while she is under this roof. My nerves won’t stand it.” She buried her face in the pillow. Hoarse sobs tore her throat.
“Very well,” he said resignedly. “I will ask Meg to take her for a while.” He went to the door.
“Forever, I tell you! I won’t have her here.”
He went down the stairs and met Wragge in the hall. “I thought, sir,” Wragge said, “I’d better lay the tea in the library, as there seems to be a conference going on in the drawing-room. Everything is ready, sir.”
“Right. We’ll be there directly.” He went into the drawing-room and closed the door behind him. Wragge at once applied his ear to the keyhole.
Finch had told Wakefield what had happened. The two were standing in a corner together. Maurice and Patience were together by a window, their young faces embarrassed yet inquisitive. The two uncles, Meg and Piers, were in a group about Roma who stood pale and composed, looking from one face to another as they questioned her.
“It seems clear,” Ernest said, “that the child thought she was doing a benevolent thing.”
“You know,” Meg added, “it is just the sort of thing Eden might have done, half mischievous and half kindhearted. I think Roma is very like dear Eden.”
Piers said, with a grin, “If Eden ever had got his hands on those notes, he’d never have parted with them.”
Wakefield flushed and called out from where he stood:
“That’s a lie. Eden was the most generous chap I’ve ever known.”
“Good for you,” Finch said, under his breath.
“I never saw any signs of generosity in him,” said Piers.
Wakefield retorted with heat, “That is because you shut your eyes to all the good in him. I can never forget how he gave me the last money he ever earned.”
“He knew he had no further use for it,” said Piers.
“I am glad,” Ernest said, “that Wakefield shows a spirit of gratitude. It is all too rare. On my part, I never forget a benefit given.”
All eyes now turned to Renny, standing just inside the door.
“How is she?” asked Nicholas. “Feeling better?”
“She’s pretty well upset.”
“No wonder. Poor girl, she’s been feeling wretched.”
Meg exclaimed, “But why, in the name of Heaven, can’t she stop feeling wretched! People who go on hugging their emotions to them are beyond me. Why can’t she rejoice with the rest of us that the mystery is solved? I feel ten years younger. Why should Alayne make a scene?”
“She’s at the end of her tether,” said Piers. “No one knows better than I do what she has been through.”
“Well, I must say that sounds queer to me,” returned his sister. “As though you could know better than Renny, when he was the cause of it all.”
“That is just why I know better. I saw it from the outside.”
“whether you see things from the inside or the outside, you always know better than anyone else,” she smiled ironically.
“whatever happens,” said Piers, “you see things strictly from your own point of view. Other people’s don’t exist for you.”
They stared at each other truculently, their fine clear eyes prominent. By the window their two children stood looking on, Patience hotly partisan for her mother, burning to say something on her side; Maurice embarrassed, yet faintly amused.
Renny spoke, with his hand on the doorknob. “Rags has laid tea in the library. We’d better go.”
Ernest drew back. “In the library! I am afraid that won’t suit me. Already I have a slight cold. I don’t like to leave the fire. I don’t think there is a fire in the library. I’m sure there isn’t. Will you please see, Renny?”
Renny strode across the hall. Returning to the doorway he said, “No, there’s none.”
“Then I can’t go. Never mind. Never mind. It doesn’t signify.”
“what has happened to you, Uncle Ernest?” asked Piers. “No one is generally more keen for their tea than you.”
“I found Alayne’s weeping very upsetting.”
“All the more reason for taking your tea.”
Meg exclaimed, “Poor old dear! I’ll carry your tea to you here. I’ll bring my own as well. We shall have ours by the fire together — away from all dissension.”
“I want my tea by the fire,” said Nicholas.
“You have no cold.” Ernest regarded him with mild asperity. “Just now you were complaining of the heat.”
“I want my tea by the fire.”
“We’ll carry it all in here,” said Renny. “Come along, Mooey and Patience. Get busy.”
They sprang to help. Roma gave a little laugh of pleasure and ran after them. Meg settled down to be waited on. Piers looked thoughtfully after Roma. He said:
“That’s the strangest kid I’ve ever known. She doesn’t realize in the least the enormity of what she has done. I think she’s about six in her mind.”
“You’re wrong,” said Finch. “Her mentality is nearer sixteen.”
“I agree with Finch,” Meg said. “Roma is a very intelligent child. She grows more like Eden in her looks. I shan’t be surprised if she becomes a poet.”
Piers blew out his cheeks. “whatever she may become, she is a little troublemaker now. She has nearly wrecked Renny’s life — to say nothing of Alayne’s.”
“That is all over, thank God,” said Ernest. “when the tea comes in, Renny must tell us all that happened from the very beginning. One’s mind gets a little confused with all the talk.”
Maurice and Patience appeared, carrying two trays. The one on which sat the stout silver teapot with a silver robin perched on its lid, was placed in front of Meg. She said with a happy smile, “How natural it is for me to be pouring tea at Jalna again. Tea always is a pleasant ceremony to me and I have a theory that it never should be poured except by one who really relishes it. Alayne doesn’t even like tea. She drinks one cup but I’ve heard her say many a time that she could very well do without it.”
Renny asked, “Roma, where is Adeline?”
“With Wright in the stable. There’s a little foal.”
Renny put a cup of tea and a plate with bread and butter and a small cake on it into her hands. He said, “Take them and run away somewhere. We want to talk.” He opened the door for her and she passed under his arm with a docile glance up at him. He closed the door after her, came back and stood by the fire.
Nicholas had swallowed the first cup of tea and now, wiping his moustache with an appreciative “Ha!” he said:
“Good idea to put the child out. Now we can talk. Renny, I can’t tell you how glad I am. Many a time I thought you would lose your wits. Now we know you’re sound. Come and give me your hand.”
Renny came and shook the shapely old hand. His lip trembled. For a moment he felt unmanned. “I’ve worried a lot,” he said.
Ernest, not to be outdone by his brother, said, “Some of the Courts were not quite right in the head. My mother had a young brother, Timothy —”
Piers interrupted, “This affair has been enough to send anyone bughouse. That kid is not to be let off scot-free. Something must be done about her.”
“That is what I want to t
alk about,” said Renny. “Alayne refuses to let her live on at Jalna.”
“what?” exclaimed Nicholas, his hand cupping his ear. “what’s that you say?”
“I say that Alayne cannot bear the thought of being in the same house with Roma. Alayne’s nerves are at breaking point, poor girl.”
“whose house is it, I should like to know?” asked Meg. “Yours or hers? Roma has never been any trouble to Alayne. Roma would never be a trouble to anyone.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Piers. “what about this affair?”
“She meant only good. You could see that in her little face.”
“Alayne won’t have her here,” said Renny. “She says she will not leave her room while Roma is under the roof.”
“This is a pretty to-do,” said Nicholas.
“She’ll get over that feeling,” Ernest added. “A night’s sleep does wonders in calming one down.”
“She won’t calm down,” Renny said, “till Roma goes. Meggie, I am wondering if you will take Roma — for a time at least.”
Meg’s face fell. “Take a child into my house, when I have all my own work to do! Oh, I’m afraid it would be too much for me.”
Piers quoted, laughing, “Roma would never be a trouble to anyone.”
“If you feel like that,” retorted his sister, “take her yourself.”
“We have no room for her. You have two extra bedrooms.”
“As to the work,” said Renny. “Roma makes her own bed. And doesn’t Patience help you?”
Patience, who did most of the work, now said, “I think we could manage very well, Mummy.”
“wherever she goes,” said Renny, “I shall expect to pay for her keep.”
“I’m not thinking of cost,” said Meg. “Such a thought never entered my head. But to please you — to help make things smooth for you — I’ll take her. I know how Alayne is when she’s roused. Roma shall come with me this very evening.”
“Thank you, Meggie.” He gave her a warm look.
“It’s nothing,” she declared. “It’s nothing to what I would do for you. You know, Renny, I feel that every one of us should do everything possible to make up to you for all you’ve been through.”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 429