Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course

by Mazo de La Roche

  She blinked her streaming eyes, her mouth changed miraculously from a square exit for howls to a very throne of laughter. Her dress was up to her armpits. The puppy took hold of her drawer leg and began to pull at it. She kicked delightedly and gurgled with laughter.

  “I simply can’t do anything with her,” said Alayne. “Her behaviour is enough to ruin my nerves. I can’t enjoy flowers or have any peace for her. Look at her dress — fresh an hour ago. My head aches. Here is the fish dealer’s bill. Do take her up, if I touch her she screams.”

  Renny took Adeline into his arms. His face was stern but he could not keep the tenderness out of his eyes when he looked at her, and nothing escaped her. She put both arms about his neck and planted her mouth on his. She gave him a long, fragrant kiss. Alayne shot a look of positive resentment at her plump back and picked up the saddle. With sweet placidity Adeline watched her carry it into the house, then gave a sidelong glance at her father. He said:

  “Poor little Mother. You do upset her. Why are you so naughty?”

  Adeline stroked his arched nose with her forefinger. “Am I good with you?” she asked.

  “That has nothing to do with it. The question is, why are you naughty with her?”

  “You are naughty with her too.”

  He gave one of his sudden bursts of laughter and was still laughing when Alayne returned.

  “I can’t help it,” he said apologetically. “She says such extraordinary things.”

  “What sort of things?” asked Alayne coolly.

  “Well, she says I am naughty with you too.”

  “She has an instinct for hurting me.”

  “What absolute nonsense!”

  “It’s true.’’

  “Why, she’s only a baby — not four yet!”

  “I can’t help that. She knows how to hurt. And she knows how to draw you always to her side.”

  “I’m not on her side!”

  “You are — or you would not show such evident glee at her precocity.”

  “Glee — what a beastly word!”

  “It seems to express the tone of your laughter.”

  He stared at her baffled, then took a quick turn across the gravel drive, the child in his arms. He did not know what to say.

  She thought — “I am being detestable. But I can’t help it. He doesn’t know how Adeline worries me. He wouldn’t understand. If only she would love me as she loves him. But she is antagonistic towards me.”

  Alma Patch, the anemic village girl who came daily to look after Adeline, now appeared.

  “Baby’s dinner is ready,” she announced in her accustomed timid whisper. Renny’s presence always frightened her. Now she stood blinking her pale eyelashes and staring at his shoes.

  He set down the child, who ran and thrust her white fist into Alma’s freckled hand. Then she broke from her and threw both arms about her mother’s knees and hugged them.

  When Alayne was alone with Renny she leant against his shoulder and her hand slid inside his coat. She felt the muscular roundness of his chest and his strong heartbeats. Her lips trembled.

  “I’m such an unsatisfactory mother. I haven’t the animal magnetism or whatever it is that makes one’s offspring love one.”

  “Adeline adores you. Look at the way she ran to you.”

  “Yes … I know.” But the image of her child faded from her mind. It was obliterated by Renny’s nearness, the smell of his tweeds, of his flesh, the feel of his heartbeats.

  He laid his face against the smooth pale gold bands of her hair. But he drew suddenly away.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Your hair!” he exclaimed. “I see a white one — right on the top.”

  “I know. I saw it days ago.”

  He looked aghast. “But you’re not going white, are you? At thirty-eight?”

  She laughed. “What a catastrophe! But I don’t think so. My mother found grey hairs at twenty.”

  He looked relieved. “Let me pull it out.”

  It was characteristic of a strain of stubborn New England Puritanism in Alayne that she would not pull out this grey hair. She backed from his predatory hand. “No, no, let it be! Why should you want to pull it out?”

  “Because I don’t like it.”

  “Well, I do.” She really hated the white hair but she resented his flurry over it.

  “You like it because your mother had one at twenty. I can imagine your father saying — ‘Really, my dear, this is a most interesting hirsute phenomenon. I must immediately write an obscure thesis on it!’”

  She returned tartly — “You ought to understand ancestor worship. You are eternally quoting your grandmother and your aunt.”

  Showing his teeth he pounced on her, held her tightly while he tweaked the hair from her head. She gave a little cry and he held up his trophy triumphant.

  “I think you are horrid,” she exclaimed but in her heart she was glad the hair was out. It was as though with it some of her irritation had been uprooted. She winced but she smiled.

  “Do throw it away,” she said.

  He looked at her, scandalized. “For birds to weave in their nest! You know that’s bad luck, don’t you?”

  “Don’t tell me that you believe in such a ridiculous superstition!”

  “Gran always said —”

  “There you go — ‘Gran’!”

  “She said it meant death.”

  Alayne laughed. “Well, I can think of people whose hairs I should like to cast to the birds.”

  “I shan’t risk it.” He struck a match and touched the blanched hair with its flame. She looked on amused yet with a ridiculous feeling of sadness as this minute part of her shrivelled and turned to a puff of ash. She said suddenly:

  “You do love me, don’t you?”

  “What a question!”

  “But you do? “ Her eyes filled with tears. “I want you to say you do.”

  “Otherwise I might have given your hair to the birds.” He put his arm about her, then gave an exclamation of pain. “I believe I shall have to see the doctor,” he said. “I’ve hurt myself.”

  Instantly her brows puckered in anxiety. “But when? Where? Why haven’t you told me?”

  “It’s my shoulder. I was lifting something.”

  She gave an exhalation of relief. A wrenched shoulder was not likely to be serious. She said, with more irritation than sympathy — “I have never known anyone who so often gets hurt. You are too impetuous really. You throw yourself into things so. What were you lifting?”

  He returned, frowning — “I don’t throw myself into things. It’s nothing serious. I’ll get Piers to drive me over to the doctor’s.”

  “But not before dinner.” They had dinner at one.

  He agreed to wait till after dinner because Alayne disliked the hours of meals upset, but he had little appetite. He returned from the doctor’s with his arm in a sling. He had broken his collarbone.

  III

  THUNDERCLAP

  THAT EVENING CLARA Lebraux divested of her daffodil-strewn apron, sat on a rather uncomfortable rustic seat before the door of her own house and inhaled with deep enjoyment the smoke from a Russian cigarette. Her enjoyment of the cigarette had an edge all the more keen because of her deep unhappiness. She stared into the twilight of the trees beyond her small garden and reviewed her life. It was divided into three parts — her girlhood in Newfoundland, her married life in Quebec, and the years since coming to the vicinity of Jalna. Her father had made money in the fisheries. He and his family had lived extravagantly. Clara had married young and enjoyed a kind of bickering happiness for twelve years, clinging more and more to her child as she cared less for her husband. She had lived the open air life that suited her, tobogganing, snowshoeing, in the winter; sailing her yacht on the St. Lawrence in the summer. Then, when Pauline had been a long-legged child of fourteen, Clara’s father had lost his money and, in the same year, Antoine Lebraux had developed the disease which had proved fatal. From
that time Clara had never known what it was to be free from anxiety and care. Her brother had moved to Ontario. She and Lebraux with their child had followed him and bought a small farm with the object of rearing silver foxes. In the long illness and death of her husband Clara had found a friend in Renny Whiteoak. He had been friend and protector to Pauline and her. Clara remembered how in her husband’s terrible illness she had depended more and more on Renny, how, after Antoine’s death, love had come to her. But not in place of friendship. They were good friends always, he never suspecting her love — not till that night last September when, in the twilit wood that now opened before her, they had found each other as lovers. They had come together in friendship and in passion. The harvest moon had burned in the dusky sky above them. She wanted him, had been wanting him for years and hiding her desire. She had exulted in giving herself to him. They had seemed small under the great harvest moon, but not insignificant. Their love had had an exultant meaning under the night sky. All through the autumn they had met, but not since then. She understood that she was no longer necessary to him in that way and she acquiesced. She was more primitive than passionate. Nothing could take from her what she had had. Now that the warm weather had come she sat smoking every evening staring into the wood, wondering if he might come to her.

  Pauline, dressed in white, came out of the house and leaned against the back of the bench. She looked pale.

  “I find these first warm days depressing,” she said, in her low voice that had a hint of her father’s French intonation.

  Clara’s hand reached back to hers. “Do you, darling? But they are nice, after such a terrible winter, aren’t they?”

  “I like the winter. I never mind the cold.”

  “I know. But the cold is awful to me, even though I was brought up in Newfoundland…. Look here, Pauline.”

  “Yes, Mummie.” She answered as a child, but her eyes dwelt, with a woman’s appraisal, on her mother’s blunt, healthy face, her hair cut without elegance, her chest on which there was a red triangle of sunburn. Pauline suspected the relations between Renny and her mother, and the suspicion poisoned her life. She loved Renny with her passionate girl’s soul, with a piercing, hopeless love. And soon she was to marry Wakefield. Sometimes she felt that she was wrong in marrying Wakefield, but she had a deep affection for him, and she could not waste her life in love for a man who cared nothing for her as a woman, only loved her as a little friend. She had told of her indecision in the confessional and the priest had advised her to turn her heart confidently to Wakefield. He was sure they would be happy together. She must put Renny out of her mind. Her love for him was a sin.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Clara.

  “Yes?” Pauline was scarcely interested. Her mother would certainly be thinking about the tea shop, and they had talked and thought so much of it.

  “I’ve been thinking,” went on Clara, “that I ought to go away.”

  “Go away? But where? And why?” Pauline’s words were almost a cry. She could scarcely believe her ears. Her mother go away!

  Clara went on quietly — “Well, since your uncle’s wife has died, he needs a housekeeper.”

  “He doesn’t need you!” said Pauline passionately. “He’s never been kind to you. I don’t like Uncle Fred. Why, Mummie” — her voice broke — “you couldn’t go away? You couldn’t!”

  “You and Wake would be better alone. Any young married pair are better alone.”

  “We don’t want you to go. We don’t want to be alone.” But even as her lips framed the words, her voice faltered. She was not convincing. Clara experienced a cruel pang. Yet how natural that the boy and girl should want to be in the house alone!

  But Pauline was not thinking of Wakefield. A glimmering brightness had risen in her mind. If her mother went away there would no longer be the torture of seeing her and Renny together, of seeing them go off together talking intimately about some trivial matter.

  “I have quite made up my mind.” Clara was saying. “Of course, I shall often come to see you. And I’ll write two or three times a week.” She spoke in a stolid matter-of-fact tone.

  Pauline looked down at her curiously. What was behind that blonde impassive face? Why had she come to this decision? Pauline suddenly wanted to throw herself on Clara’s breast and cry. The twilight of the spring evening, the strangeness of her approaching marriage, the thought of parting from her mother, gave her a lost, frightened feeling. But she spoke calmly.

  “Of course, if you want to go, Mummie. But you know how I feel about it. Why, I’ve never been away from you a night in my life. It will be horrible.”

  Clara laughed teasingly. “Horrible! With Wake! It’s a good thing he can’t hear that.”

  “He would understand.”

  “Is he coming tonight?”

  “No. He has gone to town to a mission for men. It is the Paulist Father’s mission. Wakefield is becoming more Catholic than I am. He really knows much more about the ritual. He’s wonderful, and he appreciates the beauty of it so.”

  “Yes,” agreed Clara thoughtfully. “But I wish he had come to see you. It’s a night for young lovers. Do you smell something sweet on the air?”

  “I’ve noticed it. I don’t know what it is. I’m perfectly happy with you. Shall we go for a stroll?”

  Clara’s feet ached from being on them all day, but she was never too tired to walk with Pauline. She so habitually thought of Pauline before herself that a wish expressed by the girl became her own also. She rose and put her arm about Pauline’s waist.

  “Which way shall we go?” she asked.

  “Through the wood and down into the ravine.”

  “Don’t you think it will be damp there?”

  “I don’t mind.” Pauline’s childishly egotistical answer overrode any further objection Clara might have had. Clasped together they crossed their plot of shaven grass and from it found the narrow path that led across an open field into a copse of oaks. Here the path wound steeply into the ravine, from where the hurried murmur of the stream could be heard.

  As they entered the wood a blackbird, hidden among the dense branches, let fall his last low whistle before, startled by their steps, he sought a still more remote shelter for the night. After that came the whirring cry of the nightjar who seemed not to fear them. He spun his velvet flight about them as they moved, now singly, toward the little bridge that crossed the stream.

  All this belonged to Jalna, and from the other side of the water another path led upward to the house. Along this path they now heard a third person moving. The young bracken, crushed by his footsteps, added its scent to the already sweet-scented air. A bright spark, making a downward curving arc, showed that he smoked.

  In the minds of both mother and daughter was the certainty that the descending figure was Renny Whiteoak’s and both felt an almost equal pang of regret that she was not to meet him alone. No regret dulled the eagerness with which he greeted them. They had not yet spent a summer in the place where they now lived, and it came as a pleasant surprise to him to find them standing together on the bridge on this first warm evening.

  Clara noticed before Pauline that his arm was in a sling. She gave an exclamation of dismay, then asked curtly:

  “What did you do to it?”

  “Nothing!” he laughed. “Honestly, nothing.”

  “Well … if you are going to answer me as though I were a fool …” she said sulkily.

  “What is it really?” asked Pauline. She drew close to him, trying to see his features, but she could only make out the brightness of his eyes, and the line of his lips against the cigarette.

  He answered — “I was wrestling with the Daffodil tea shop and put it in its place too.”

  “It’s a damned shame!” exclaimed Clara. “I’m absolutely sick about it. Is anything broken?”

  “The collarbone.”

  “And you’re due to ride in the Show in a few weeks. How awful!”

  “It’s only a crack really
. I shall be all right.”

  Clara put out her hand and laid it gently on his shoulder. “I had rather the old tea shop had fallen down,” she said.

  She kept her hand on his shoulder because she could not take it away. It was as though the maimed shoulder were a magnet that held her hand irresistibly. If he had backed from her across the bridge, she would have followed him as unconsciously as the iron the magnet. In the semi-darkness Pauline was aware of this irresistible drawing of her mother and she felt a wild rage against her. “When she goes,” Pauline thought, “I shall never be tortured like this any more. I shall be far happier.” She said — “I think I shall go back to the house. Wakefield may come.”

  Without turning her head, Clara answered:

  “I thought you said he had gone to the mission.”

  “He may not stay. He said he might come rather late.”

  “Oh, very well.”

  Clara spoke, almost without knowing that words left her lips. But, after a few moments, she made a great effort and said to Renny:

  “I am going to keep house for my brother. It is better for Pauline and Wakefield to be alone together.”

  “Going away!” he repeated incredulously. “You can’t. It’s perfect nonsense. They don’t need to be alone together. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Why should they want to be alone together?”

  “It’s better for married people. They get on better.”

  He returned hotly — “None of us have been alone when we were first married. Not Eden and Alayne. Not Piers and Pheasant. Not Alayne and me.”

  She gave a little laugh. “Well, have the lot of you always got on?”

  “My Uncle Nicholas and his wife were alone together and they got to hate each other.”

  “I have another reason.”

  Something in her voice made him try to see her face. “What is it, Clara?” he asked.

  “I feel that it is not safe for me to be near you.”

  “You need not be afraid of me.”

  “You have shown me that. But I can’t trust myself. I must take my hateful self away.”

  His voice broke out harshly. “Clara, I need you! I can’t let you go away! I want you near me!” He put his uninjured arm about her and drew her to him so that their breasts were together. She did not answer but, with supreme effort, tried to draw every particle of bliss possible from his embrace for her solace later. Yet she did not falter in her resolve.