The sun rose high, pouring warmth into the ravine, which appeared to stretch itself, languorous and supine, under that delayed caress.
They sat down on the bridge, which was now dry, while Eden, in his deep mellow voice, read poem after poem. Some had been read before, to Alayne, but not all. They were the essence he had drawn from the past summer, what he had formed into strength and brightness from those shadowed months. As he listened to his own words, and saw the rapt faces of the two boys, he wondered whether the solution of his life might not lie in such moments. Might not the suffering he knew he had caused in the lives nearest him be justified, even be necessary to the creation of his poetry? The evil in him was inseparable from the good, like the gods, whose energies were directed first into one channel, then another. So he seemed to himself, and so less coherently he seemed to Finch, who never dared to hope that anything he might create would justify his own clumsiness in life.
There was a third listener to the reading, of whom the others were unaware. This was Minny, who, wandering into the ravine from the direction of Vaughanlands and hearing voices, had stolen from trunk to trunk of the trees till she was within sight as well as hearing. It chanced that this morning she wore a dark dress instead of the usual gay colours, so she was able to conceal herself behind a great clump of honeysuckle within a few yards of the bridge. She crouched there, her feet pressing into the moist earth, the succulent growth all about her exhaling a sweet, sticky odour, and, almost touching her face, a large and meticulously woven spider’s-web in which two jewel-like flies were caught. She felt no discomfort in her situation, but rather an increased sense of adventure. As a doe might have crept close to watch the browsing of three stags, she observed with ardent interest every detail of their faces, their attitudes and gestures. She absorbed the beauty of Eden’s voice, but the words he uttered made no more impression on her than the words of the songs she sang. Though her body ached from its crouching position, she did not grow tired or impatient, remaining after the reading was over to listen to the discussion of the poems which followed. She heard their titles without hearing them—“The Dove; Thoughts of You and Me; Resurgam; Thoughts on Death; The New Day”—yet so sympathetic was she that when Leigh’s bright face broke into merriment she smiled, too, and when the voice of Eden took on a tragic note her lips reflected this in a mournful curve. When the smoke of their cigarettes drifted about her she pitied herself that she could not share this pleasure. When Eden, dropping his voice, related something that produced a gust of hilarity, she would have given all she possessed to have known what he said.
She hoped, and tried to will it so, that the two boys would depart first, leaving Eden on the bridge. Contrary to the usual vanity of such hopes, this was what happened. All three got to their feet, but Eden did not accompany the boys when they ascended the path. Instead, he stood motionless, looking in her direction, and, after a few moments in which she was wondering whether or not to reveal herself, he called: “Come along, come along, Minny! Don’t you think You’ve been hiding long enough?”
She stood up, straightening her dress. She was not at all ashamed, but advanced toward him, laughing.
“How long have you known I was here?”
“All the time. I saw you playing at Indian, creeping from one tree to another. You’re a little hussy.”
She liked that. Her laughter became teasing.
“I heard every word you said!”
“No, you didn’t!”
“Yes, I did!”
“What was it I told them that made them laugh?” “Shan’t repeat it!”
“Because you did not hear.”
“I don’t care! I heard all your poetry.”
“It isn’t becoming in a young girl to spy on men.”
“Men! Listen to the child!”
“Well, the others are boys, but I suppose you’ll admit that I’m a man.”
“You! You’re the greatest baby of all!” “Me! I’m a disillusioned profligate.”
“Then you’re a profligate baby! Your wife has made a baby of you. Coming all this way to nurse you when she doesn’t really care a damn for you.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t have done that?”
“Of course I should.”
His laughter joined hers. They sat down on the bridge together.
As he held a match to a cigarette for her, he looked deep into her narrowed, mirthful eyes. “I wish I understood you!”
“It’s a good thing for your peace of mind that you don’t.” An obscure pity moved him to change the subject. “How did you like my poems?”
“Ever so. Two of them sounded awfully like two songs I sing.”
“It’s a wise poem,” he replied gravely, “that knows its own creator.”
“I suppose they’ll make you famous one day.”
“I hope so.”
“What a pity you didn’t get any of the money I”
“Ah, my naive young brother saw to that!”
“I should think you’d hate him for it.”
“I don’t hate anyone. I only wish people were as tolerant of me as I of them.”
“I hate someone.”
“Not me, I hope.”
“You’d never guess.”
“Tell me, then.”
“Your wife.”
“Do you really? My sister has done that.”
“Not at all. I hate her on my own.”
His gaze slid toward her swiftly, but he made no comment on this. They puffed in silence, each acutely aware of the other. He heard her suck in her breath once as though putting some sudden restraint on herself. Now the sun beat down on them hotly, inducing a mood of dreamy acquiescence.
After an interval, she said: “I’ve been to the shore on the last three mornings. It seemed lonely there without you.”
He was astonished.
“Have you really? What a shame! And you didn’t let me know!”
“I thought you’d expect me. I wouldn’t disappoint you!” “My dear child!” He took her hand in his.
At his touch her eyes filled with tears, but she laughed through them. She said: “What a silly I am to care so much!”
XXVII
THE FLITTING
THERE followed a succession of perfect September days, so alike in their unclouded sunshine—a sunshine which was without the energy, for all its warmth, to produce additional growth—that it seemed possible they might continue forever without visibly changing the landscape. Michaelmas daisies, loosestrife, with here and there a clump of fringed gentian, continued to cast a bluish veil beside the paths and stream. In the garden nasturtiums, dahlias, campanula, phlox, and snapdragons continued to put forth flowers. The heavy bumblebee agitating these blossoms might well think: “I shall suck honey here forever.” The cow in the pasture, which this year had never turned brown, might well think: ’There will be no end to this moist grass.” The old people at Jalna might well think:“We shall not grow older and die, but shall live on forever.” Even Alayne, collecting her belongings in Fiddler’s Hut, did so as in a dream. It seemed impossible that she should be going away, that life held the potentialities of change for her.
The action of the life to which she was returning seemed desirable to her. She could picture the things which she would do on her return with perfect precision, yet when she pictured herself as doing them it was not herself she saw, but a mere shadow. She thought: “There is no real place for me on earth. I was not made for happiness. I am as unreal to myself as a person in a play—less real, for I could laugh at them or weep for them, but I can only stare stupidly at myself and think how unreal I am.”
She wondered whether the things with which the Hut had been so overfurnished would be left there. She had grown used to them, and they no longer seemed grotesque in the low-ceilinged rooms. She went about collecting the few things she wished to take away with her, and wondered what were Eden’s thoughts as he lay on the sofa reading, now and then giving her a swift look across the
page.
An odd embarrassment had arisen between them. He no longer had need of her care; their relationship was meaningless. They were like two travellers, forced by the exigencies of the journey into a juxtaposition from which each would be glad to escape. If he came in tired, he no longer demanded her sympathy, but sought to conceal his weariness. She no longer tried to prevent his doing things which she thought would be bad for his health. His restlessness was a source of irritation to her, while her reserve, and what he thought her stolidity, made her presence weigh upon him.
Yet on this, the second day before her departure, a mood of pensiveness had come upon Eden. He felt a somewhat sentimental desire to leave a memory, not too troubled, of himself with her. He would have liked to justify by some simple, yet how impossible, act their presence together in these last weeks. They avoided each other’s eyes.
Eden, to override his embarrassment, began to read aloud scraps from his book:
“‘My idiot guide was on his way back to Aldea Gallega… And I mounted a sorry mule, without bridle or stirrups, which I guided by a species of halter. I spurred down the hill of Elvas to the plain… but I soon found that I had no need to quicken the beast which bore me, for, though covered with sores, walleyed, and with a kind of halt in its gait, it cantered along like the wind.”
Alayne was about to empty a vase holding some faded late roses. She stopped before him, drew out one of them, and slid it down the page on to his hand.
He took it up and held it to his face.
“Still sweet,” he murmured. “A queer kind of stifling sweetness. But it’s beautiful. Why are dying roses the most beautiful? For they are—I’m sure they are.”
She did not answer, but carried the flowers to the doorstep and threw them out on the grass. When she returned he was reading sonorously:
“’We soon took a turn to the left, toward a bridge of many arches across the Guadiana… Its banks were white with linen which the washerwomen had spread out to dry in the sun, which was shining brightly; I heard their singing at a great distance, and the theme seemed to be the praises of the river where they were toiling, for as I approached I could distinguish “Guadiana, Guadiana.” which reverberated far and wide, pronounced by the clear and strong voices in chorus of many a dark-cheeked maid and matron.”
She went into his room and reappeared carrying his laundry bag. She took it to the kitchen, and he heard her talking to the Scotch maid. She returned and put a slip of paper into his hand.
“Your laundry list,” she said. “You had better look it over when it comes back. They’re very careless.”
He crushed the neatly written list in his hand.
“Why, oh, why,” he said, “can’t my washing be done on the bank of a river by a singing dark-cheeked maid or matron? Why was I pitchforked into this prosaic life?”
“I dare say it can,” she returned absently, “if you go far enough… I don’t know why, I am sure.”
She began to take things from the desk. From her writing folio she turned out some Canadian stamps.
“Here are stamps I shan’t need. On the blotter.”
“Oh, all right. Thanks.”
He looked at her half quizzically, half reproachfully, then impulsively got up and went to the desk. He smoothed out the laundry list, then, licking the stamps one by one, he stuck them in a fantastic border round the edge. He discovered a drawing-pin and pinned the paper to the wall.
“A memorial,” he said, tragically.
She did not hear him. She was gone into her room.
He followed her to the door and stood looking in. She had changed into a thinner dress; her cheeks were flushed.
“Do you know,” he said, “you are the most matter-of-fact being I have ever known?”
She turned toward him with raised brows. “Am I? I suppose so, compared to you.”
“No other woman living,” he returned, “could keep such orderly habits with such a disturbed mind.” And his eyes added: “For your mind is horribly disturbed, you can’t deny it!”
“I guess it was my training. If you could have known my parents and our way of living! Everything in such perfect order. Even our ideas pigeonholed.”
“It’s deeper than that. It’s in your New England blood. It’s a protective spirit guarding you, eh?”
“Possibly. Otherwise I might have gone mad among you.”
“Never! Nothing would send you off your head. In spite of your scholastic forebears, I seem to see in you the spirit of some grim-lipped sea captain. His hands on the wheel, consulting the barometer, making entries in the log, while the blooming tempest raged and the bally mast broke and the blinking timbers shivered and the perishing rudder got out of commission. I can hear him saying to the mate: ’Have you made out the laundry list?’—while the heavens split! And taking time to stick a stamp on the brow of the cabin boy so that his body might be identified when it was washed ashore.”
Alayne began to laugh.
“How ridiculous you are!” she said.
“Tell me the truth, don’t you feel that old fellow’s chill blood in your veins?”
“I feel it boiling sometimes. My great-great-grandfather was a Dutch sea captain.”
“Splendid! I knew you had something like that somewhere. Now if only he had been a Spanish sea captain, how we might have got on together!”
She made no response, but began to take things from a bureau drawer and lay them carefully in the tray of her trunk.
“I wish I could help you,” he said, almost plaintively. “Do something for you.”
“There’s nothing you can do.” She checked an impulse to say: “Except to leave me alone.”
“I wonder if you will be angry with me if I ask you something.”
She gave an unhappy little laugh. “I don’t think so. I feel too tired for temper.”
“Oh, I say!” His tone was contrite. “I’ve bothered you all the time you’ve been packing.”
“It’s not that. It always upsets me to go on journeys. What did you want to ask?”
“Turn round and face me.”
Alayne turned round. “Well?”
“Would you have come here to nurse me if Renny had not been here?”
The flush on her cheeks spread to her forehead. But she was not angry. The shock of what he had asked was too deep for that.
“Certainly, I should.”
A look, antagonistic but shrewdly understanding, passed between them.
He said: “I believe you, though I’d rather not. I’d like to think that it was your love for him that dragged you here, against your reason. I hate to think that you did such a tremendous thing for me alone. Yet, in spite of what you say, you can’t quite make me believe that you would have come back here if you had never loved Renny. The place itself must have had a fascination for you. I believe places keep some essence of the emotions that have been experienced in them, don’t you? Do you think the Hut will ever be the same again after this summer? Alayne, I honestly believe that Jalna drew you back, whether you realize it or not.”
She muttered: “How can you be sure that Renny and I care for each other? You talk as though we had had an affair!”
“When we came to Jalna after we were married, I saw that Renny had made a disturbing impression on you. Before many months had passed, I saw that you were trying desperately to beat down your love for him, and that he was trying just as hard to control his feeling for you.”
Under his scrutiny she lost her air of reticence. She pressed her hand to her throat. She had woefully failed, then, in her first effort to conceal her love for Renny. Eden had watched this smouldering passion with an appraising eye from the beginning!
She asked brokenly: “Did that make a difference to you? Knowing so long ago that I loved Renny? I thought you had only guessed it, later—believed that I had turned to him when I found you didn’t care any more—”
He answered mercilessly: “Yes, it did make a difference. I felt an outsider.”
“Then,” she gasped, “I am to blame for everything! For Pheasant—”
“No, no. It would have come, sooner or later. It’s not in me to be faithful to any woman.”
She persisted doggedly: “I am to blame for everything.”
He came into the room and touched her with an almost childlike gesture.
“Alayne, don’t look like that. You’re so—it’s stupid of you. You can’t help what you are. Any more than I can help what I am. My dear, I suspect that we are much more alike than you would let yourself believe. The great difference between us is that you analyze yourself while I analyze others. It’s better fun… Alayne, look up—”
She looked at him sombrely.
“The whole trouble has been,” he said, “that you were a thousand times too good for me!”
She turned away from him and returned blindly to the arranging of her trunk.
He said: “I told old Renny one day that you’d go through hell for a sight of his red head.”
“Oh! and what did he say?” Her voice was without expression. Eden should not bait her again.
“I forget. But of course he liked it.”
She turned and faced him. “Eden, will you please leave me to pack in peace? You know that I have promised to spend the evening with your aunt and uncles. I have no time to waste. Are you coming?”
“No, you will be happier without me. Give them my love. Will Renny be there?”
“I don’t know.” How cruel he was! Why could he not let her be? How she would rejoice to be far away from all this in another twenty-four hours!
When he had returned to the living room, he hung about miserably. He hated himself for having upset her. If he had! Perhaps it was the thought of going away that made her look like that. And he had meant to say something beautiful to her at the last! The whole situation was ludicrous. The sooner this impossible atmosphere was dispelled the better… Did he hear a sob from the other room? Lord, he hoped not! That would be horrible. He stood and listened. No, it was all right. She was only clearing her throat. He fidgeted about till she came out, ready to go. She looked pale, calm, her hair beautifully cared for, as always. She had a pathetic air of serenity, as though the final word had been said, as though she were now beyond the reach of emotion. He saw that she had indeed been crying.
08 Whiteoaks of Jalna Page 38