08 Whiteoaks of Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  The eldest of the young Whiteoaks, his lean body curved in an armchair, his bony weather-beaten face drooping above the dark wood of the table which reflected the lights of the prismed chandelier, would have made a satisfying model for an artist who desired to paint a picture entitled “The Huntsman at Night.” He would have found, in the disposal of his limbs, in the lines of his head, a perfect example of the relaxation of a man whose joy was in vehement primitive pursuits.

  Rags was clearing the table. As he lifted the spirits bottle, of which a small part remained, the master of Jalna, nodding toward it, observed curtly: “Yours, Rags.”

  III

  THE HOUSE AT NIGHT

  WHEN the order and calm of night had descended upon the turbulence of Jalna, the old house seemed to settle under its roof with an air of snuggling, as an old man under his nightcap. It seemed to hunch itself against the darkness and draw inward. It appeared to tie the strings of its nightcap under its chin, the jutting porch, and mutter: “Now for dreams.” Like nightclothes it wrapped the outside darkness around it, and pressed its bulk against the earth. And, as one more dream added to its weighty store, the thoughts and movements of those inside its walls flitted shadowlike in room after room.

  Finch’s room was under the sloping roof of the attic. Its one window was closed against the dripping leaves of the Virginia creeper which clung to that side of the house. Up here there was always a faint smell of damp plaster, and the dreamy mustiness of old books. The roof needed mending, and the old books—which were mostly discarded farm journals, dog-eared manuals on horse breeding and showing, and thick catalogues of equine events—needed throwing away, but there was no haste at Jalna, no too urgent attempt to arrest natural decay. When the roof should leak sufficiently to form a puddle on the floor, when the cupboards should no longer be capable of containing more trash, then, and then only, repair and clearing out would begin.

  Finch, seated under an oil lamp, shaded by a green paper shade on which were pictured the heavily smiling faces of two German girls, was writing in his diary. He wrote:

  “All but missed train. Rotten day at school. Must swat for math exam. Had interesting talk with Leigh in spare hour. Horse show. Renny simply great. Best in the show. Pheasant not bad on The Soldier. Red ribbon. Motored home. Row about lottery, ticket for canary Gran absolutely awful. Had two glasses of port!! Saw Joan.”

  He sucked the abrasions on his knuckles and let his eyes run over the entries of the preceding days. There was more or less variety in these. School was more or less rotten. There were noted several good times with Leigh, and a “h— of an evening” with George and Tom. One peculiarity was common to all the entries. They all ended with the name “Joan.” It was either “Saw Joan” or “Did not see Joan.”

  In looking over the entries, Finch saw nothing either pathetic or ridiculous in them. Nevertheless he took care to conceal the diary behind some textbooks on the shelf before he began his evening’s work. He did not intend to run any risk of its being discovered by the prying eyes of Pheasant or young Wake.

  He took out his Euclid and laid it on the table before him. The upper right-hand corner had to be placed on an old ink stain in the wood. The book had a habit of opening of itself at page 107. He hoped it would not do that tonight because, if it did, he might be unable to study. His jaw dropped and his hand shook as he raised the cover—107 stared up at him… The pencil he held between his fingers fell with a small clatter to the floor. He was afraid he would not be able to pick it up. He stared blankly at the number on the corner of the page—107. Why did he fear it? I—that was the same as I… I, Finch Whiteoak. o—that was nothing… he, Finch, was nothing! Ah, he was getting at it! That was why he dreaded the number, and no wonder! Then, 7—that, of course, was magic. Magic 7. I, Finch, am nothing. He closed the Euclid sharply and opened it in a fresh place. Page 70 this time. Again the magic 7, and after that naught. Magic followed by nothingness, void… That was life, magic, with naught to follow! He tried again. Page 123. Again the i. Then two… I and another. Two of us… Then three. I and the other have made a third. Three of us… He saw himself, himself and Joan together in a bedroom. They were bending over the crib where lay the Third which they had made, as he had seen Piers and Pheasant bending over Mooey’s crib. Joan, to whom he had never spoken a word! She was a girl to whom he had been introduced at a football match by his friend, Arthur Leigh. He had only bowed, but she had said, “How do you do?” in a clear piping voice, and had snuggled her round white chin into the fur collar of her coat and had drawn in one corner of her mouth, producing by the action a tremulous yet persistent dimple in her cheek.

  The thought of her had troubled him a great deal during the month that had since passed, but he had made no effort to become acquainted with her and had never spoken of her again to Leigh, though he should have liked to know her surname, which he had not caught at the moment of introduction.

  She went to a girls’ school not far from his own school, and few days passed without an encounter on the street. One swift glance was all he ever gave her as he took off his cap, but his meeting or not meeting with her always provided the last words for the day’s entry in his diary. It was always either “Saw Joan.” or “Did not see Joan.”

  On the nights when he was obliged to write the negative he felt invariably depressed and heavy, settling down doggedly to his work. But when he had seen her, as today, he was even more troubled, unable to settle down at all.

  Of course, he reflected, these unhappy moods were nothing new. He had always had strange thoughts. He supposed that if he had never met Joan he would have found some other instrument with which to torture himself. If only he had passed his exams, and Renny had not in consequence stopped his music lessons! He felt that tonight, if he had been allowed to spend an hour at the piano, it would have quieted him, lifted him into happiness, freed him from the sense of longing, of fear. He did not question the justness of Renny in stopping the piano playing. He knew that he had spent a lot of time—wasted it, he humbly admitted—hanging over the keyboard, when he was not practising but feverishly attempting to compose. How happy he had been at those times! He could not in his heart of hearts believe that they had been bad for him—even bad for his school work.

  Resolutely he opened his Euclid at the problems and deductions he was to study for the next day. He placed the corner of the book exactly on the blot on the table. Then he dropped his pencil again. A bad beginning to drop one’s pencil… He looked down at it where it had fallen on a discarded sheet of paper on which was written a French exercise. He wondered at what word the tip of the pencil pointed. But he would not be so silly as to look. He would pick up the pencil and set to work… Still, it would be interesting to know the word… perhaps he really ought to know the word… perhaps there was a meaning in this—something to help him.

  He dropped to his knees and bent over the pencil, narrowing his eyes to decipher the blurred letters. The point of lead rested on the word dne. He felt shocked. “Ass!” That’s what he was—a silly ass! Thank God, no one could see him! But stay—he had been mistaken in the word âne. It was not âne, but âme—“soul!” Ah, that was different. His soul—that was groping in the darkness. Strange that he should be kneeling there with the tip of the pencil pointing out the word “soul.” It made him think of the times he had knelt by that chair, afraid of God, praying. He wanted suddenly to pray now, but words would not come. He remembered one night, more than two years ago, when Piers had made him get out of bed to say his prayers, just to rag him, and he had been able to remember only two words—Oh, God! oh, God! What boundless, what terrible words! Words that unchained one’s soul, whirled it upward, dissolved it…

  If once he gave way and began to pray, to let the words of prayer free his soul, there would be no study for him that night.

  He would pick up his pencil and begin to work…

  But he found that he could not pick it up. Three times his fingers wavered above it, but they
could not close on it. He groaned, hating and fearing himself… He began to count the dim medallions of the carpet. He found that he was kneeling on the sixth medallion from the north end of the room, and the fifth from the west. Six and five were eleven—it was the eleventh day of November. Six times five—thirty. Thirty was the number of his locker at school. Thirty was the number of marks he had taken in the Euclid examination when he had failed… Christ was thirty years old when He had been crucified…

  He thought that if he had a cigarette to smoke he might be able to pick up the pencil and begin his work. He got to his feet and stole cautiously down the attic stairs. The door of the bedroom occupied by Piers and Pheasant stood ajar. A lowered lamp cast a peaceful light over the white bed and Mooey’s cradle beside it. It was the same solid hooded cradle that had rocked all the infant Whiteoaks. Both the uncles had wept, and slumbered, and crowed in it. Meg and Renny, Eden, Piers (the most beautiful baby of all), himself (he could imagine the poor squalling wretch he had been), little Wake, whom he could remember gazing from under the hood with great dark eyes… And two or three babies had died in it. Finch wondered how Mooey could sleep so quietly there.

  He opened the top drawer of the chest of drawers where he knew Piers sometimes kept an extra packet or two of cigarettes. Ah, there they were—Piers was good to himself! A large-size tin box of Players, more than half full. A packet containing at least a dozen Turkish cigarettes. Finch helped himself, but with caution, and closed the drawer.

  As he turned to go he bent over the cradle and looked in curiously at young Maurice. He was curled, sweet and warm, in baby sleep. One round fist, curved against his mouth, pressed the moist flower-petal lips to one side. There was a damp spot on the pillow where he had been slobbering a little. Finch went suddenly weak with tenderness as he looked at him. He put his head under the hood of the cradle and sniffed him, as a dog might sniff at a sleeping puppy. He kissed his cheek and felt his own blood turn to some mild sweet nectar, and his bones to nothing but a tender desire for love.

  He took the baby into his arms and bent over him, his lank blond forelock falling over the little head. He kissed the head, the cheeks, the mouth extravagantly. He could not be satisfied. He poured out his soul in love. His eyes filled with tears, which dropped on to the little hands. My God, was it possible that Piers felt that way?

  Voices were in the hall below. Pheasant and Aunt Augusta were coming up… He thrust the child back into the cradle and drew the covers over him. Not for anything would he have been caught caressing his young nephew.

  Upstairs he found he was no longer the victim of his nerves. He picked up the pencil, the Euclid, lighted one of Piers’s cigarettes, and set to work.

  Lady Buckley had laid aside her bracelets, her brooch, and her gold chain. She had taken off her black satin dress, her long black silk petticoat, and now, in her camisole and short white underpetticoat, was brushing her still abundant hair. Even in such jaunty apparel as this, her appearance of being on her dignity was not lessened. She regarded her reflection in the glass with her accustomed air of mingled complacence and offence. Her complexion had never been good—now it was mottled and liverish; her eyes had a peculiar glassy dullness, unlike her mother’s, which still retained a clear fire. But her features were excellent. Her nose—the Court nose, though in a modified form. Not the fierce, carven feature that her mother and Renny thrust into the world. An improvement, she thought. More becoming to a lady, the widow of an English baronet. She began to think of her husband…

  How insignificant her parents and her brothers had thought him, with his pale side-whiskers, and his mild eyes, and his neat little feet! He had had a little lisp, too… She could almost hear him, even now, calling her: “Auguthta!” But what character! He had never lost his self-control, no matter what happened. Nothing ever surprised him. Even when the word had come from England that two sudden deaths had brought the baronetcy to him, together with an old house and a respectable income, he had shown no surprise. He had merely turned from the cablegram in his hand and remarked: “You had better begin packing our bags at once, Lady Buckley. We’re going home.” Heavens, what a start it had given her! To be addressed as “Lady Buckley ” in that cool tone, without a syllable of preparation. She had not known whether to laugh or cry. She had never ceased to be grateful that she had done neither, but had replied with undismayed dignity: “You will need new flannels for the sea voyage, Sir Edwin.”… Lady Buckley! How the title had always stuck in her mother’s throat! How disagreeable it was of her mother, always pretending that she could not remember her name! Speaking of her to friends as “my, daughter, Lady Bunkley”—or perhaps “Bilgeley” If her mother had not been a Court she would have called it ill-bred. But, of course, the Courts were like that. Nicholas was very much like that. So overbearing. He always seemed to think that he and that dreadful wife of his—Millicent—had been of more importance in England than she and Edwin had been. She was sure of that because of the jocular tone he used about the little circle the Buckleys had moved in. Well, at any rate it had been a much better behaved circle than the horsy one wherein he and Millicent had splurged and lost everything!

  She thought of England. How she longed to be back there! She thought of the hedgerows, the beds of geraniums about her own house (she did hope the tenants were keeping things in order), the song of the linnets on the moist sweet air, her friends. She had been away from all these things for a year, and it seemed like two. But it was her duty to remain in Canada till her mother’s death. Surely Mama—well, she was a hundred and one. It almost frightened Augusta… what if Mama were to live forever! But then, no one lived forever!

  She put on her flannelette nightdress, buttoned up to the chin, with silk featherstitching at the wrists. Little knobs of hair in wire wavers stuck out on her head. She drew the curtains closely across the two windows. How the rain beat! Voices came from the dining room below. Renny’s voice, exclaiming: “Never! Never!” How odd that he should exclaim “Never!” that way, as though in answer to her thoughts… She caught sight of her reflection in the pier-glass, as she stood against the long dark curtain. She drew back her head and stared. A stately figure she made, truly. An upright, noble-looking creature, she could not help thinking. She raised one hand and placed it palm downward across her brow in the attitude of one searching the horizon for a sail, in the attitude of one standing on the edge of a cliff, buffeted by the wind, with the stormy sea below.

  She posed thus for a moment like a statue, then turned out the light and sought her bed.

  Ernest had felt a little odd coming up the stairs, almost lightheaded, but when he got to his own room he was quite himself, except that he had a feeling of agreeable exhilaration. He very much liked the rose-coloured shade for his lamp that Alayne had sent him from New York on his birthday. It made his room so pretty and cheerful, even on such a night as this. Really, since this wet dark spell of weather had set in, he could hardly wait to light the lamp. Even in the daytime it made a charming spot of colour in the room. Alayne had always been so sweet to him. Her going had left a real blank in his life. And Eden, too, he missed him greatly. It was such a pity that their marriage had turned out as it did. They had been such a lovely young couple, intellectual, good to look upon.

  He stood meditatively, enjoying the soft pink glow that was diffused over the room. It imparted a fragile liveliness to the Dresden china figures on the mantelpiece, a tremulousness as of sunrise on the watercolours on the grey walls. He was lucky to have such a room. Well, not altogether lucky, for his own good taste had made it what it was, though, of course, the view over the meadows and winding stream was much to be preferred to Nick’s view, which was blocked by a huge cedar, and beyond it only the ravine.

  The little china clock between the shepherd and shepherdess chimed twelve. What an hour for him to be getting to bed! But what a jolly evening! He hoped and prayed that the rum and water would do him no harm. Yes, and he had had a glass or two of wine before th
e rum… He hoped and prayed that Mama would be all right after that second supper of hers. How roguish she had been! He smiled when he thought of her. Really, one could scarcely believe that he was seventy-one with Mama so active… He hoped and prayed that he would be like that at a hundred and one. If he could manage to live that long. There was no reason why he should not live to a ripe old age. He took such good care of himself, though, of course, there was his chest—a handicap, certainly.

  He remembered his new overcoat. Not a bad idea to try it on now when he was looking his best, flushed a little, his eyes bright. He got it from its hanger in the tall wardrobe and turned it round, looking it over very critically, his lips stern, his eyes knowing. “A damned fine coat!” He uttered the words aloud in the tone one might use in similar praise of mare or woman. Gad, it was a handsome coat!

  He put it on, and it slipped over him with a firm yet satiny embrace. He stared at his reflection in the glass. No wonder the tailor had complimented him on his figure! Slender, upright (when he used a little willpower), with an air of elegance such as one did not associate with the colonies.

  Suddenly he felt the colonial’s strange nostalgia for England. He remembered a top hat he had bought once in Bond Street. He remembered exactly what the shopman had looked like, and his pleasantly deferential manner. He remembered buying a flower for his buttonhole from such a sweet-faced flower-seller that same morning. He recalled the agreeable elation he had felt as he had walked lightly down the street. It had never taken a great deal to elate him. He had a happier disposition than either his sister or his brother. Eden was like him in that. They both had a way of seeing the beauty of life—poetic temperament, though, of course, one couldn’t say so before the family. Certainly he missed Eden’s little visits to his room—to say nothing of Alayne’s. Such a pity about that marriage… Twenty years ago he had bought that hat in England, and he had not been back since! Perhaps when Mama died, and Augusta returned to her home, he would go back with her on a visit.