X
GEMMEL AND MR. CLAPPERTON
GEMMEL GRIFFITH LAY on the side of a grassy knoll, drinking in the warmth of the sun with all her being, letting her mind wander free. She was so cruelly hampered in her physical movements that the pleasure of her life lay in her reckless and untrammelled thoughts. They were what Garda’s bodily activities were to her, Althea’s painting to her. Garda expressed her emotions of longing or fear or whatever they might be, by household work, by tearing along the country road on her bicycle, by gardening. Althea expressed the strange hidden self of her, in those fiercely individual drawings. What Gemmel liked was life itself. Lying on the edge of it, cloistered, free of responsibility, she watched it flow by her with hungry interest in all that came within her range. Passionately she longed for Althea or Garda to have love affairs. Oh, to watch their joys or miseries! To counsel or comfort them! She felt capable of anything. Oh, how she could love or hate, be frantically jealous, tear her heart out or break someone else’s! Her supple hands felt their way through moss and among the tiny blue violets, as she lay with closed eyes on the knoll.
Her sisters had taken her there in a wheelbarrow made of wicker that had been given them by Finch. It had stood in the old carriage house ever since he could remember. Before his grandmother had got past gardening, she had used it among her flower borders.
One day he had trundled it over to the fox farm, offering it in its lightness to the girls for their work. But it turned into a chariot for Gemmel. Lined with cushions, it enthroned her while her sisters laboured behind. They had possessed it for more than two years now. Little paths wound everywhere to show where Gemmel had been. This knoll, just inside the grounds of Jalna, was one of her favourite spots.
Now she lay there, the sun dappling her pale face, thinking over all she knew. She knew so much, she thought, that her knowledge was a world in itself. Yet, measured by the scholarship of schools, she knew almost nothing. She could not for the life of her have named the boundaries of foreign countries, or their mountains, or what king succeeded Edward III. She could not have explained latitude or longitude. But she could have repeated tales of strange happenings among the hills of Wales. She knew fanciful and frightening stories of the doings of the monks in the ruined abbey whose ancient walls dominated the stony farm, hidden among those hills, where she had spent the greater part of her life. The abbey and the tales of life there, represented all she knew of religion. She had never been inside a church, for her father had hated religion in all its forms. More than once she heard him say that he had retired to the house in Wales to get away from a world ruined by mechanism and religion.
The Fennels had several times called on the Griffiths. They had been invited to the Rectory but only Garda had gone. Only Garda had been induced to go to church. Althea could not have borne the gaze of so many strangers. Yet she was as interested as Gemmel in hearing of all that Garda had seen and heard there. Now Garda often went to the services but only in a spirit of curiosity. The three were in truth pagans and felt no need for religion in their lives. They believed in the supernatural and clung to certain peasant superstitions they had got from servants in Wales.
Gemmel lay on the knoll thinking of how much more profound was her understanding of life than was her sisters’. She so loved it. She felt impatient of Althea’s supersensitiveness, of Garda’s contented acceptance of things as they were. Her hearing was acute and now she heard a step on the grass. She called out, in an impatient tone: “Come here!”
As the steps drew near she opened her eyes expecting to see one of her sisters. But it was Finch Whiteoak. He said smiling:
“I don’t know whether or not to come. Your invitation isn’t exactly warm.”
“I thought you were one of the girls. But — as you aren’t — I’m delighted.” She raised herself on her elbows and smiled back at him.
He dropped to the grass beside her. “Are the girls out of favour then?”
“I get tired of the same company. And they bore me by the way they behave. You’d think they had a hundred years ahead of them, the way they never make a move to change things. That attitude may have been all right in the old days but now, at the speed things move with, it’s all wrong.”
Was she just trying to appear knowing, Finch wondered. He asked:
“what do you want them to do?” Did she realize, he wondered, that they always had her on their hands, always had to consider her first.
She made an expressive gesture with her hands that looked almost too supple, too capable, as though they had too completely taken on the work of her disabled members. She said:
“I want Althea to show her sketches, not hide them. They’re clever, I tell you. I wish you could see the sketch she made of you the other day. It was a wonderful likeness — the sort of portrait that could only be made when — oh, well —” she plucked at the grass and then added, “when someone thinks a great deal about another.”
“I’d like to see it,” he said, a little embarrassed. “Do you think she’d show it to me?”
“Never! But I might contrive to let you see it. You’ll be surprised. It’s full of feeling, yet I suppose you think Althea is cold.”
“No, I have never thought that. I’m sure she feels too much. If you’ll forgive my saying so, I think you three sisters are sometimes bad for each other.”
“I’m sure we are,” she agreed. “But it makes our lives so much more complicated and interesting. Oh, if you could know what Althea is! But you never will. No one ever will but me. As for Garda — what do you think of Sidney Swift?”
“what has he to do with Garda?”
“Well, he’s always coming to see her and talking to her about himself by the hour. Do you like him?”
“I think he is what my uncles would call a philanderer.”
“You mean when he doesn’t come to see Garda he goes to see Patience Vaughan.”
“He’s wasting his time there.”
“He speaks of Patience as the ‘little heiress.’”
“Good heavens, she won’t inherit a fortune.”
“I’d call it a tidy sum if it were to be mine. Sidney is always talking of riches and what they will do.”
“They can make you miserable,” said Finch.
“He talks,” went on Gemmel, “of Mr. Clapperton’s wealth as though he were Mr. Clapperton’s heir. Perhaps he is. I don’t know. All I know is that I won’t have him breaking poor little Garda’s heart.”
As she said this, Gemmel sat up straight, with a defiant air. Her attitude, the fierce tone in her voice, made her sisters appear suddenly as two fragile children whom she had all their life protected and would continue to protect. Her love for them seemed greater than the love between any man and woman could be. Her egotism was such that she appeared ready to face any living menace on their behalf.
“Don’t you ever think of yourself, Gem?” he asked, for the first time calling her by her sisters’ abbreviation of her name.
“Never!” she declared. “I don’t count.”
But, when he had left her and she was alone again on the knoll, one would have thought she counted herself very greatly, for she fell into a paroxysm of weeping, she sobbed in despair and tore up the violets by their roots. “I do love him,” she whispered hoarsely, with her mouth pressed to the warm earth. “I love him. I love him! Oh, if only he were in trouble and I might comfort him! I’d hold him in my arms and stroke his head and I’d kiss him.”
She cried till exhaustion calmed her. She lay quietly gazing at the sky between the gently moving leaves. It was all over for her, she thought. It had never begun and now it was over. As though from the window of a prison she looked down into sunny meadows at her sisters, walking with their lovers beside a swift flowing river. She wanted to cry out to them to come and rescue her, to spare her some part of their joy.
She saw Althea coming and lay smiling up at her.
“You’ll never guess,” she said, “who has been talking to m
e.”
“You’ve been crying,” said Althea sternly. “what made you cry?”
“Just the sheer joy of being alive. Don’t you ever feel that way?”
“Yes. To cry a little but not that way. Your eyes are all red and swollen. And your lips — oh, Gem, you shouldn’t go on like that!”
“It was partly what I found out from him that made me cry.”
“From whom?”
“Finch Whiteoak.”
“Was he here?”
“Yes … oh, Althea —” she raised her wet eyes to her sister’s — “he loves you! I’m sure he does! when he says your name his whole face changes. When I told him you had made a sketch of his head, you should have seen how his eyes lighted. You know those long dreamy eyes of his.”
“You told him I made a sketch of him! Very well, Gem, it’s the last drawing of mine you’ll ever see!”
“Nonsense. Why not let him see that you care for him? You know you do.”
“I wish I could make you understand that I care for no one — in that way — and never shall.”
“But why? You’re so beautiful.”
“The whole idea is repulsive to me … I am my own and I can belong to no one.”
“But you belong to Molly and Garda and me. I don’t know anyone who belongs more to those they love.”
“Gem, you’re being just stupid. You know what I mean. Finch Whiteoak is no more to me than Mr. Clapperton. Do you know he has just brought us some strawberries, and practically asked himself to tea this afternoon? You and Garda can entertain him. I’ll not be there.”
“Of all the impossible people I have ever known, you are the most. Now here’s a rich man and not old, coming with an offering of strawberries and to drink tea, and you say you won’t see him!”
“I dislike him.”
“But why? He’s so kind.”
“He wants to change everything. He can’t let things alone. He calls himself an idealist but he’s just stupid.”
When Eugene Clapperton came to the fox farm that afternoon, Althea did remain hidden in her room. Free from her restraining presence, the two younger girls reached an undreamed of state of intimacy with the new neighbour. He made wide gestures with his hands as he told them of his plans for a perfect village — a village surrounded by trees, with no ugliness anywhere. It would be impossible to get more than four or five small houses built before the end of the war. Two were already well on the way to completion. Eugene Clapperton invited the sisters to come to inspect it and they accepted the invitation.
His attitude toward Gemmel had a gentle fatherliness in it that made her free and bold with him, like a spoilt child. It was well for her that Althea was not present to see her.
Althea refused to go to see the proposed village of Clappertown, as he already called it, but he came in his own car and carried off Gemmel and Garda.
“Oh, Gem,” Garda had exclaimed, “are you going to stop tittivating? One would think you were going to a party.”
With one of her swift movements, Gemmel turned from her survey of herself in the looking glass.
“Do I look pretty?” she asked.
“Oh, pretty enough. But what does it matter! Going off to visit a middle-aged man!”
“It’s a party to me and I will make the most of it. I wonder if Sidney will be there.”
Garda’s rosy cheeks became rosier.
“I don’t expect so. He is awfully bored when Mr. Clapperton gets on the subject of his village. He says there is nothing idealistic about it — that it’s just a money-making scheme.”
“Then he ought to be pleased with it, for he’s always talking about money.”
“He hates cant.”
Mr. Clapperton took the girls to that part of the estate where the two cottages were nearing completion. They were indeed pretty, though rather too close together and rather too much alike. Sidney Swift appeared out of one of them and led Garda inside to inspect it. The older man who had got out of the car, now returned to it and sat down in the seat beside Gemmel.
“May I call you Gem?” he asked. “I must say I like this new fashion of familiarity. Of course, I’m very much older than you.”
Gemmel thought wildly, “He is in love with me! Oh, help, help — what shall I do?”
But she said composedly, “I should like to be called Gem, by you.”
“Splendid,” he said, and he laid his hand on her knee. He looked deeply thoughtful.
She looked at his hand, longing to shake it off. It was a forceful hand, with short sandy hairs across the back of it. His fingers pressed her knee. “You know,” he said. “I’m worried about these poor little limbs of yours.”
An electric shock went through her. How dare he! Oh, how dare he! She flung off his hand and turned a blazing face on him.
“I don’t want anybody’s pity,” she said.
His eyes filled with tears. “Don’t be annoyed with me. But I think it’s such a crying shame you can’t run about like other girls and I’m wondering if something can be done about it.”
“Done about it!” she repeated, in a tense voice. “what do you mean done about it?”
“Well, there are very fine surgeons in this country,” he said. “They do miraculous things. I’d like to know how long it is since you consulted a first-rate doctor.”
Her heart was pounding. “I can’t remember,” she stammered. “After I had the fall, when I was a baby, they took me to one of the best doctors. My spine was injured, he said, and I’d always be a cripple. My mother died when I was very young and my stepmother just accepted what my father told her. He was a dear man but he drank a good deal and he didn’t bother much about us children. He wasn’t fussy, you know.”
“Fussy!” repeated Mr. Clapperton, on a note of contempt. “Fussy! If you’d been my daughter I’d have been scouring the earth to find a cure for you.” He struck one clenched hand into the palm of the other. “And I’ll see to it that you have the opinion of the best specialist in this country — if you’ll agree. Think of the years that have passed since your accident and of the advance in science in that time! why — there may be hope for you, my dear little girl. Will you let me help you? I mean, find out who the best man is and take you to him?”
A throbbing was set free on the air, like the strong beat of a perfect heart. The movement of the trees was the weaving of banners of hope.
“Oh, I don’t know what to say,” she stammered, her nerves quivering in fear.
“Just say you’ll let me help you. That’s all I ask.”
“But it frightens me. The thought of an operation.”
“No, no, you mustn’t say that. There is nothing to be afraid of. Just think what it would be like to run about and have fun like other girls.”
“It would be heavenly.”
“Think what it would mean to your sisters. You would have a grand time together.”
“We couldn’t afford it. It would cost too much.”
“Don’t worry about expense. Leave all that to me.”
He spoke with benign indifference to cost. Again he patted her knee. She became calm. She would do what he wished. She would trust him.
“Don’t you worry about the expense,” he repeated. “I’m not the man to do things by halves. You know I’m an idealist, a dreamer. I dream of a perfect village, out here in the woods, and I’m going to build it. I dream of a perfect girl and I’m going to do what I can about that. My only fear is that I may have raised hopes that can’t be fulfilled. That would be dreadful.”
She gave a little excited laugh. “Now that you’ve roused hope in me I don’t believe I shall ever give up hoping. Oh, Mr. Clapperton, how soon can we go to see a specialist? what have I done to deserve so much from you? whatever will my sisters say!”
XI
ADELINE AND THE ORGAN
ADELINE SAW HER trunk being lifted safely off the baggage car and out on the platform. She hastened along the platform toward it, her suitcase bumping again
st her legs, her tennis racket and a large paper parcel gripped tightly under one arm. Wright came running after her, and the station master followed in leisurely fashion. She was the only passenger to alight from the train.
Wright caught up with her and touched his cap deferentially, but his tone was jocular as he said, “It’s about time you came home.”
“Oh, Wright,” she gasped. “Am I actually here? Oh, my goodness, what heaven!” She laughed up at him, her eyes shining.
For an instant he was taken aback by her beauty. She’d been pretty, right enough, when she’d been home for the Easter holidays, but now — what had come over her? It was as though a shining veil, a radiance, had descended on her. There was a finish to her, a polish, a quivering first bloom that made Wright scratch his head and stare, that made the station master stare too when he came up.
“I was just telling this young lady,” said Wright, “that it’s high time she came home. It’s pretty tough on me running the place without her.”
“I guess you don’t like goin’ away to school,” said the station master, taking the check for her trunk and gazing down into her face.
“It’s a nice enough school,” she returned, “but when you know that you’re needed at home it makes you restless.”
Wright winked at the station master. “Her and me,” he said, “have run the stables together, since the boss went away.”
“So I’ve heard,” said the station master, and he gave Wright a look appreciative of Adeline’s beauty.
“I hope you won’t mind riding home in the wagon,” said Wright. “I had to come to the mill for feed and there’s no sense in wasting gasoline.”
“I’m glad it’s the wagon,” she returned. She went to the great dappled-grey team and patted an iron flank. Two pairs of liquid dark eyes looked at her in benign recognition.
Wright placed her belongings beside the bulging meal-dusty bags, helped her to the seat and mounted beside her. He turned the team and they jogged on to the tree-shaded country road, where the sunlight fell through the dark flutter of the leaves.
Books 13-16: Return to Jalna / Renny's Daughter / Variable Winds at Jalna / Centenary at Jalna Page 14