08 Whiteoaks of Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  She knew something of this sexual clairvoyance, but had not fathomed its dark depths. If she had realized the full knowledge he had of her at that moment, it would have been impossible for her to remain under the same roof with him.

  She had changed to a thinner dress of a pale green that seemed to have caught its colour from the atmosphere, for, though it was noonday, the room lay in a green twilight because of the rich foliage that was reared between its windows and the sun.

  “How nice and cool you look!” he said, his eyes resting on her.

  She did not answer, but went to the window and looked out between the leaves of the trumpet vine. She thought of Renny, and his promise to cut away some of these creeping things. Why did he not come? Was it callous absorption in his own doings that made him neglect his brother, or did he wish to avoid her? She told herself that she was angry at him. Vehemently she asked herself why it was that her love for him should so often be driven to put on the hair shirt of irritation.

  It was July when at last he came. A dim day after a week of intense heat. When they looked out in the morning, their little woodland world had been shrouded in an unearthly fog. Thin films of vapour covered the abnormally large leaves, gathering at the tips and forming clear drops. The seething summer life of the wood was silent, apparently in a deep languor after the restless activity of the past week. There was no bird song; only from the little spring, hidden under its bower of honeysuckle, came a faint murmuring, like the very breath of the sleeping grass. As the morning drew on, the fog lifted slightly and the sun was distinguishable, but almost as wan, as somnolent, as the old moon. Each day the path that led from the door became narrower, more closed in by the urgent growth of flowers and weeds. Few used it. The visits from those at the house had become rarer, either because of the heat and lassitude of the month of July or because they were absorbed by some new interweaving of the threads of the pattern that was being woven at Jalna. Eden and Alayne were left very much to themselves, spending drowsy days, cut off by his illness and her shrinking from meetings with the family.

  She felt apathetic now. They might go on like this forever, passing their days in that green shade, their nights in fantastic dreams. She was startled, almost afraid, when, on this morning, she saw Renny’s figure detach itself from the mist which lay thick under the orchard trees, and which had made his body appear to be but another trunk, and emerge into the path. She saw that he wore a loose white shirt and riding breeches, but he carried in one hand some implement and in the other a long trailing piece of vetch, covered with little purple flowers.

  He moved with such energy along the path, seemed so unoppressed by the humid air and the fog, that she fancied it moved aside for him, was lightened and dispersed at his approach.

  Eden had actually been trying to write. He raised his eyes from the pad that lay on his knee and, like Alayne, looked almost startled toward the door, as Renny stood there.

  An expression of embarrassment made the elder brother’s features appear less carved than usual. He knew that he had been remiss, even heartless, but he had, since their return, a feeling of shy avoidance toward them. Although Alayne had come only to nurse Eden, to win him back to health, and then again part from him, she seemed now to belong to him. She must not be sought out, brooded on, hungered for, with a pain as for something one could never possess. Renny had retired, with an almost animal fatalism, to wait for events to turn out as they would. He was watchful. His instincts were invincible. He was conscious of the presence of those two in the very air he breathed, in the earth beneath his feet. Yet the summer might have passed without his going to them, had not Augusta that morning drawn his attention to the unusual growth of the vine that covered the porch, to the great size of the geranium leaves in the beds, to the difficulty of keeping down weeds in the garden, and to the need for cutting the lawn. All these evidences of rank growth drove him to inspect the still ranker growth at Fiddler’s Hut. Those two might almost be enclosed now by such a hedge as enclosed the Sleeping Palace.

  As he passed through the orchard he had noticed a clump of purple vetch, wound and curled about itself into a great mound, beautiful, showing through the mist. He had detached a long strand of this and brought it to Alayne. It hung dangling from his hand, almost touching the doorsill. His spaniels appeared on either side of him.

  Eden was pathetically glad to see him. His face broke into a boyish smile, and he exclaimed: “You, at last, Renny! I thought you’d forgotten me! How long do you think it is since you were here?”

  “Weeks, I know. I’m ashamed. But I’ve been—”

  “For God’s sake, don’t say you’ve been busy! What must it be like to be busy! I’ve forgotten!”

  “Did you ever know?” Renny came in and stood beside him. The dogs entered also, with great dignity, their plumed legs and bellies dripping from the wet grass, “Shall I turn them out?” he asked Alayne. “I’m afraid they’re making tracks on the floor.”

  “No, no!” objected Eden. “I like them. How fine they look! And you, too. Doesn’t he, Alayne?” The dogs went to him and sniffed his thin hands.

  “He looks as he always does,” she answered, coldly. Now that he stood before her, whom her whole being had ached to see, she felt antagonism for his vigour, his detachment. How little he cared for Eden, for her, for anyone but himself!

  His brown eyes were on her face. He moved toward her, half shyly, and offered the vetch.

  “I picked this,” he said, “in the orchard. Funny stuff. A weed—-but pretty. I thought you might like it.”

  “We have so few growing things about us,” said Eden. Alayne took the vetch. Their hands touched. Deliberately she had manoeuvred so that they must touch. She must feel the torment of that contact… The vine clung to her hands as she put it into a vase. When she drew them away it still clung, was dragged from the vase, its tendrils seeming to feel for her fingers.

  She sat down by the window. Renny took a chair beside Eden. He looked him over critically. “You’re getting stronger,” he observed. “Drummond”—the family doctor— “says you’re improving steadily. He thinks you’ll be almost recovered by fall.”

  “Silly old blighter!” exclaimed Eden. “He hasn’t seen me for weeks!”

  “There is nothing to do but continue the treatment. You’re getting the best of care.”

  “Everyone avoids me,” continued Eden. “One would think I had the plague! The only one who comes is Wakefield, and I must send him away. If it weren’t for Rags, I should not know what is going on in the house.”

  “What has he been telling you?” asked Renny quickly. “Nothing in particular, excepting that Piers and his wife are home again. I suppose Meggie couldn’t put up with them any longer.”

  Both Renny and Alayne wondered how he could bring himself to repeat that bit of news. There was surely no shame in him. She looked out of the window, and Renny down at his boots. After a silence he said: “Meggie comes to see you.”

  “Not often. There’s some excuse for her. It’s a long walk, and she’s getting fat. Once she brought that Ware girl. I suppose you know her?” He regarded Renny with a mocking and slightly contemptuous smile.

  “Yes. I gave her a lesson or two in riding.”

  “Ah… How does she sit a horse?”

  “Like a sack of meal.”

  Eden broke into laughter. “I wish Meggie could hear you!”

  “Why?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  Alayne could not bear it. He must be stopped. “Eden,” she interrupted, in a harsh, dry voice, “it is time for your eggnog. I must make it.” She rose and, in passing him, gave him a look of impassioned appeal. Her lips moved, forming the word, “Don’t.”

  When the brothers were left alone, Renny demanded: “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing! Only that she seems to be a pet of Meggie’s. But honestly, it’s a deadly thing to be cooped up with one person all the time. That one face. That one voice. Those eyes. Even th
ough you care a great deal for the per son—feel all kinds of gratitude, as 1 do. Picture yourself here, between these four walls, day and night, with only Alayne!” With bright malice his eyes sought Kenny’s. They seemed to say: “You may be well—sound as one of your own horses— but look how I can torment you! What would you give to have what I have—and which is nothing to me?”

  Renny said, imperturbably: “Well, you’re improving, at any rate. That’s the main thing.”

  If he were touched on the quick, he hid the pain well— red-headed devil!

  Alayne brought the eggnog. Eden stirred it, gazing contemplatively into the yellow liquid. The two watched him, weak, unscrupulous, holding them, as it were, in the net of his mockery There was a vibration in the air about them as if all three were antagonists, each of the other.

  Renny began to talk, in a desultory fashion. News of his stables, news of the family. The uncles and Aunt Augusta stuck to the house pretty much because of the heat. Gran was well. Word had just come that Finch had passed his examinations. He was a happy boy. They’d make something of him yet!

  At last he rose. “Now what about this greenery? I’ve shears and a saw here, and if you’ll show me what you want cut down—”

  “You go with him, Alayne,” said Eden. “It’s so beastly foggy out. I’ll stop here and see if I can do anything with this.”

  Renny glanced at the pad on Eden’s knee. What was written looked like poetry. Good Lord, was he at it again! Renny had hoped that his illness might have cured him of this other disability. But no, while Eden lived he would make verse, and trouble.

  Outside, the fog still enveloped the woodland, delicate and somnolent. The pale moonlike sun scarcely illumined it. The drip of moisture from leaves mingled with the muted murmur of the spring.

  “It’s rather a strange morning,” said Alayne, “to have chosen for cutting things. It will be hard to know what the effect will be.’ She thought: “We are alone, shut in by the fog. We might be the only two on earth.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, in an equally matter-of-fact tone. “It’s a queer morning. The branches seem to spring out from nowhere. However, that won’t prevent their being lopped off.” He thought: “Her face is like a white flower. I wonder what she would say if I were to kiss her. The little hollow of her throat would be the place.”

  She looked about her vaguely. What was it she wanted him to do? The path, yes. “This path,” she said, “should be widened. We get so wet.”

  He followed it with his eyes. Safer than looking at her. “I’d need a scythe for that. I’ll send one of the men around this afternoon and he’ll cut down all that growth. Now I’ll thin out these long branches.”

  Before long, boughs, heavy with their summer growth, lay all about. And all about green mounds of low growing things: dogwood, with its waxen berries; elderberry, its fruit just going red; sumach, the still green plumes of which were miniature trees in themselves; aconite, still in flower; and long graceful trailers of the wild grape. And wherever he had stridden, in his heavy boots, tender growths lay crushed. His dogs ran here and there, chasing into cover the squirrels and rabbits she had tried to tame. Symbolic of him, she thought, in one of those waves of antagonism which would ride close upon the waves of her love.

  “No more,” she exclaimed, at last. “I’m afraid to think how it will all look when the sun comes out.”

  “Much better,” he assured her. He stopped and lighted a cigarette. His expression became one of gravity. “I must tell you the real reason why the uncles and aunt have not been to see you. You’re sure Rags has said nothing to Eden?”

  “Nothing.” She was startled. She feared some strange development of the situation.

  He went on. “We’ve been worried”—he knitted his brow and inhaled the smoke deeply—“about my grandmother.”

  His grandmother! Always that imposing, sinister, deplorable old figurehead of the Jalna battleship!

  “Yes? Is she not so well?”

  He returned, irritably: “She’s quite well. Perfectly well. But—she’s given us all a bad fright, and now she’s behaving in—well, a very worrying fashion. I thought Eden had better not be told.”

  Alayne stared, mystified beyond words.

  “Pretended she was dying. Staged a regular deathbed scene. Goodbyes and all. It was awful. You couldn’t believe how well she did it.”

  Alayne could believe anything of old Adeline.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Don’t repeat any of this to Eden.”

  “Certainly I will not,”

  “It gave us a terrible fright. I had come in rather late. About one o’clock, I think. I had just put on the light in my bedroom. Wakefield was awake. He said he couldn’t sleep because moonlight was coming into the room and the cup-board door stood ajar. It worried him. He wanted me to look into the cupboard, to make sure there was nothing there. I did, to please him. Just as I stuck my head into it a loud rapping came from below. Gran beating on the floor with her stick. The kid squeaked, he was so nervous. I left him and ran down to her room. Aunt Augusta called out: Are you going to Mama, Renny? I don’t see how she can be hungry at this hour!’ Well, in her room there was the night light, of course. I could see her sitting up in bed, clutching her throat. She said: ‘Renny, I’m dying. Fetch the others.’ You can imagine my feelings.”

  “Yes. It was terrifying.”

  “Rather. I asked her where she felt the worst, and she only gave a sort of gurgle. Then she got out: ‘My children—I want to tell them goodbye. Every one. Bring them.’ I got some brandy from the dining room and managed to give her a swallow of that. I propped her up on the pillows. The parrot kept biting at me, as if he didn’t want anyone near her. Then I went to the telephone, and Drummond promised to be over immediately. Then I ran upstairs. Got them all up. Finch from the attic. Little Wake. God, they were a white-looking lot!”

  “And she was only pretending?”

  “She had us all going. We crowded about the bed. She put her arms around each one in turn. I thought: ‘That’s a pretty strong hug.’ And she’d something to say to each. A kind of message. Tears were running down Uncle Ernest’s face. Wake was sobbing. She had us all going.” The red of his face deepened, as he recalled the scene.

  “And then?”

  “Then the doctor came. Pulled down her eyelid. Felt her pulse. He said: ‘You’re not dying.’ And she said: T feel better now. I’d like something to eat.’ The next morning she told us that she’d been lying awake and she’d got an idea she’d like to know just how badly we’d feel if we thought she was dying.”

  Alayne said, through tight lips: “I hope she was satisfied.”

  “She must have been. We were a sorry sight… And if you’d seen us trailing back to bed! Hair on end. Nightclothes. We were figures of fun, I can tell you!”

  “It was abominably cruel of her.”

  “Perhaps. But a good one on us. And, I guess, a great satisfaction to her.”

  “You were sufficiently harrowed!”

  “If only you could have seen us!”

  She smiled in rather bitter amusement. “I think I begin to understand you.”

  “Me?”

  “You—as a family.”

  “We’re easy to understand—when you know us.”

  “But we are friends—aren’t we?”

  “Are we? I don’t believe I can manage that.”

  “Don’t you think of me, then, in a friendly way?”

  “Me? Friendly? Good God, Alayne! And you call Gran tormenting!”

  “Well—about her. You spoke of some odd behaviour.” She was a fool to get on dangerous ground with him. Better talk about old Adeline.

  He went on, frowning: “The trouble is this. Ever since that night she’s always wanting to see her lawyer. Has him out every few days. It must be a plague for him. And it makes things tense at Jalna. I don’t worry about her will. But I know the uncles are worrying. And one can’t help wondering. I suppose you know
that she’s going to leave everything she has in a lump sum to one of us. I suppose everyone is really wondering just how sorrowful he looked that night. Rather wishes he had the chance to do it over again. You remember I told you that Uncle Ernest cried. I believe Uncle Nick thinks that Uncle Ernest feels rather cocky about that. Wishes he could have dug up a tear or two.” He gave one of his sudden staccato laughs.

  “If it comes to that.” she said, ironically “Wakefield cried too.”

  “And Mooey! Did I tell you he was down, too? The old dear missed him. She looked around and said: ‘Somebody’s not here! It’s the baby. My great-grandson. Fetch the baby down!’ Pheasant flew upstairs and brought Mooey. If you’ll believe me, the little devil simply howled. And now Piers and Pheasant are hopeful about him!” This time his laughter reached Eden’s ears.

  He appeared in the doorway of the cottage. The fog was really dispersing. He stood, after all this lopping of branches, in a bath of vague sunlight.

  “What’s the joke? You might tell it to me.”

  Alayne called back: “It isn’t really a joke. Just something Renny finds amusing. How did you get on?”

  “I’ve done it!”

  “Done what?” asked Renny.

  Alayne answered: “Finished what he was writing. Didn’t you notice that he was writing?”

  “Oh, yes. A poem. I suppose that’s a good sign.” He forced his features into a grin of approbation.

  “Splendid.” As they drew near to the young poet she said: “I’m so glad, Eden. Is it good?”

  “I’ll read it. No, I’ll wait till Renny’s gone. I say, what a shambles you’ve made of the place!”

  Renny looked disappointed. “When it’s been raked over it will look better. Shall I trim this Virginia creeper now?”

  “No. I like a little privacy.”

  “But you’ve said a hundred times—” cried Alayne.

  “My good girl, never remind a person of temperament what he’s said a hundred times.”

  “But it’s dreadful to have that vine clinging round you!” “No, it isn’t. It makes me feel like a sturdy oak.”