Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
The effect on the family at Jalna of Eden’s death was revealed as more depressing than the death of old Adeline had been. She had died in late summer when all the windows of the house were open, when all the activities of stable and farm were manifest. Waggons loaded with oats or wheat lumbered from Piers’s fields to the barn. The harvest apples were being picked when she, ripe in years, was garnered in. But Eden died at the end of a long winter, when the elderly people were enervated by confinement. In other winters they had absorbed vitality from their nephews, but, in this winter, Renny and Finch had none to spare for them and Piers was often silent and even morose. Alayne too was preoccupied with her own thoughts, and it was with a visible effort that she roused herself to cheer Nicholas and
Ernest. Wakefield spent more and more time at the fox farm.
After Adeline’s sudden death (in which no hearts were wrung by the sight of suffering) excitement was maintained by the reading of her will and the fierce discussion following it. But Eden had nothing to bequeath but the memory of his cruel decline, which, at this time, blotted out remembrance of his happy youth.
It was appalling to Nicholas to think of this young life being cut off, while his own, almost fifty years in excess of it, lingered on. He became possessed by this thought, brooding on it by day, and pressing it against his aching heart when he lay awake at night. He lay awake so often that his haggard eyes told their own tale though he made no complaint. He and Ernest took to reviewing their own lives, recalling the mistakes, the false moves they had made, and speculating on what they might have made of them if they had done differently; deriving sometimes a forlorn exhilaration in the triumphs thus imagined. They would raise their peevish voices, each eager to give his own version of the bygone tale, talking each other down until they were tired out and the fire was low. Then Nicholas would stump off to his own room, Nip trotting at his heels, and stand in the middle of it with a dazed expression. Once, thus alone, he broke down and, raising his arms in a gesture of appeal, sobbed out—’Oh, God, give me another chance! Make me a boy again!”
But Augusta, though she looked thin and old, was admirable in her calm. She felt a deep relief at Eden’s going, for she had seen all his suffering. Her own affairs in Devon demanded her attention and she began her preparations for departure. The bitter thought in her mind was the unlikelihood that she would ever see her brothers again. She felt that
she could never return to Canada. Even if she were able to let her house, the effort to get it ready for a tenant was too great, the journey too long for a woman of her years. Ernest and Nicholas could not afford to go to see her, and they too were getting old for travel. So it was with a strange sense of finality that she turned her thoughts toward England.
Pheasant, her young face growing thinner as her body increased in bulk, progressed through her pregnancy without attracting much sympathy or even notice. She felt Eden’s shadow between herself and Piers in the months before his death, but afterward her spirits lightened a little and, in the early part of April, she gave birth to a third son.
For Finch the ordeal had been greater than for anyone. His strength had been too lately acquired to stand the strain. He grew hollow-cheeked and his nerves, always ready to betray him, once more became a torture. He took a severe cold which lingered in a bronchial cough, and after each bout of this he found himself overcome by a charged melancholy—he was going the way Eden had gone, he told himself. But he coughed mostly at night and, in his attic room, he disturbed no one.
He had offers of several concert engagements which he had to refuse. He had a feeling of terror lest he should never be able to play in public again.
He had not seen George Fennel since the day of Eden’s funeral, and one rainy Sunday morning he felt the sudden need of a talk with his friend. George would be at home, for he was unpresentable, Wragge had informed Finch, because of a face swollen from toothache.
He met Finch at the door of the Rectory looking even more cheerful than usual, his square face a little chubby on one side.
“Why,” exclaimed Finch, “what’s this I hear about toothache? Just bluff?”
“Had it out yesterday. A relief, I can tell you. My soul feels as peaceful as a pond.”
Finch regarded him enviously. “I believe you,” he said. “I’d have all my teeth out if it would make me feel like that.”
George asked—“Where shall we go? We have the house to ourselves.”
“Your room, if you don’t mind. I believe I’m happier in that room than anywhere.”
George led the way up the stairs to the shabby room where he and Finch had spent so many confidential hours. This room never changed. It seemed that its furniture, which had been almost worn out when placed there, would last forever. Finch fitted himself into the accustomed hollow in the couch. He took out a cigarette case, offered it to George, then took a cigarette himself and, breaking it in two, lighted a half with a shaking hand.
George stared at him. “Well—have you come to that?”
“Yes. I never smoke more than a half now. I think it’s better for me.”
“How are you? You look rather seedy.”
“I am. It’s the spring, I suppose.”
George’s hazel eyes beamed at him compassionately. “You’ve been through a good deal, Finch.”
“Oh, well, no more than the others.”
“But you’re not quite as strong as the others. And you were with Eden through it all, weren’t you?”
“Renny sat up with him at nights. But he seems as well as ever.”
George said, in a tone that invited confidence: “He’s rather a queer chap, isn’t he?”
Finch took the second half of his cigarette and lighted it from the stub of the first. He said: “What do you mean, queer?”
“Well, there’s a kind of fire in his eyes like there was in your grandmother’s. I remember her so well. I thought she was magnificent. And he’s magnificent, too, in his own way. But he strikes me as an uncomfortable chap to live with. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”
“He is uncomfortable—in a way. But he’s easy to get on with, too, if only—” He hesitated.
“If only you do just what he says, eh?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that. I think he rather likes opposition, of a certain kind. But I think he feels himself spiritually alone at times—I don’t know just why. Just now he’s terribly cut up over Maurice’s subdivision. Maurice has sold two more lots. Small ones, and at a much lower price than he asked at first. I can’t blame Maurice, but it’s going to make things very different at Jalna, there’s no doubt about that. Yet Eden’s death has left the rest of us rather numb— excepting Renny—and we can’t work ourselves up over it as he does, and I think he feels alone—that we’re not with him.”
“What about Piers? He must feel it too.”
“He does. But he’s a fatalistic fellow. If things must be, they must be. He doesn’t waste his energy fighting the inevitable. I think it’s taking all his energy to keep his farm afloat. And he’s got a family coming on, you know.”
“How is the newcomer?”
A tender smile crossed Finch’s face. “Oh, he’s a splendid little fellow! He hardly ever cries. I think he’s going to be the image of Piers. Same blue eyes. They’re calling him Philip, after my father.”
“The third Philip! I say, what’s the good of limiting yourself to half cigarettes when you light them one off the other that way?”
Finch laid the one he had just broken on the table beside him. “No use, I know. I’ve no self-restraint.” He looked despondently at the two halves.
“Well,” said George consolingly, “you’ll soon be quite fit again when you’ve had a little time. Are you playing much now?”
“That’s the worst of all. I can’t practise. I’ve had to refuse several offers of concert work.” He wrung his fingers together and avoided George’s eyes.
“What you need is a change,” said George briskly, his affectionate eyes studying his friend’s downcast face. “I wish we could get away together for a week at Easter.”
“I wish we could,” said Finch heavily. “But Aunt Augusta is sailing then, and I may have to go with her to Quebec.”
“Your uncles will miss her.”
“We’ll all miss her. She’s so wonderful for her age—a wonderful woman for any age. Weeks ago she wrote home to England to her housekeeper to send out some jig-saw puzzles she had. It seemed rather a silly thing to do—at such a time—but you wouldn’t believe the interest the uncles are taking in them. The puzzles arrived last week—at least a dozen of them—and Uncle Nick and Uncle Ernie and Wakefield and Pheasant, and even Piers, were working with them all yesterday afternoon. It was pouring rain, so it was something to do. For my part I think they’re getting a little too intense about it. I can’t stand the concentration. It unnerves me.”
“What about Renny? Is he interested in puzzles?” There was amusement in George’s tone.
Finch was not conscious of the amusement. “No. I think his life is puzzle enough for him.” He reached out, took one of the half cigarettes and lighted it.
“I must tell you,” said George, “that he was in a terrible temper the day of the funeral. When he came here, I mean, to look for Dad.”
“You could scarcely call it temper, George. He was upset. And no wonder.”
“Well, it may not seem like temper to you, but I was afraid of him. He’d fallen down and cut his head, and he was in such a rage he didn’t know he was hurt. The blood was running down his face and his eyes were blazing. Do you know what he said? He said he’d a mind to read the burial service himself and lay Eden in his grave with no help from anyone.”
“Did he say that to the Rector?”
“No. He just glared at him. Dad remarked afterward that Renny looks more like his grandmother every day.”
“He does. And young Adeline is the image of him. The temper too. She’s a thoroughly bad youngster.”
The church bell began to ring. Finch rose and went to the window. From there he could just see the door of the church. It was the last bell, and it clanged its summons militantly against the heavy spring air.
“Who is the bell-ringer now?” asked Finch.
“The same. Noah Binns.”
“If he put half the fury into his hoeing that he puts into his bell-ringing we should have no weeds.”
Wakefield, Piers, Mooey, Augusta, Nicholas, and Ernest were presented for an instant to Finch’s gaze before they disappeared into the church.
“They’re almost late,” he said. “I scarcely think that Renny will come. Cora dropped a foal this morning and he
was up all night with her.” He watched the procession of his family with an almost morbid interest.
The bell continued to clang, and, while Finch still stood at the window, the master of Jalna appeared for an instant on the steps as a significant figure and then disappeared into the church.
Noah Binns, through a crack, was able to observe those who entered. Now he had got his man, he muttered to himself:
“I’ll deafen’m. Dang’m!” And, with a last violent pull of the rope, he flung it writhing from him, and, composing his features, took his place among the worshippers.
Finch turned back into the room.
“I don’t know what to do with my life,” he said. “Something went out of it with Eden. I’m left floundering about. I’ve no grip on anything. I want to compose. That’s one thing I feel I could do. But my nerves won’t stand it.”
“I wish,” returned George, “that you’d fall in love.”
Finch gave an embarrassed laugh. “I don’t believe that would help me.”
“Well, of course, it would depend on the girl. If it were the right sort of girl, it would have a most revivifying effect. Look at young Wakefield. He’s become a man since he’s in love with Pauline Lebraux.”
“He’s become more selfish than ever—if you call that being a man.”
“I don’t agree. I think he’s improved in every way Sometimes I can hardly believe it is little Wake talking. He’s got such—well, such mature ideas.”
“He always was precocious. He loves an audience.
“You’re not fair to him, Finch. You don’t see him as an outsider does. I remember when he used to come to Dad for
his lessons. A sickly little chap, and precocious, as you say Since then he’s improved, of course, but he’s always seemed self-centred till lately. Now it’s all Pauline and his plans for her. He often drops in to talk about her.”
“Does he!” said Finch jealously. “He’s never mentioned it to me.”
“He is probably shy of you. One often is shy of one’s own family. You know how that feels… But I think he and Pauline are perfectly matched and I do hope it comes off.”
Finch regarded his friend’s honest face with dislike.
George went on—“And he’s so tremendously grateful to Eden. He’s told me over and over again of Eden’s generosity. He says he’ll never forget it as long as he lives.”
Finch interrupted fiercely:
“Well,
I
want to forget it. I tell you, it cuts me to the heart to remember it. I wish to God I could forget it—and Eden too!”
Now George brought out his mandoline and sat solidly playing, while Finch fretted up and down the room striving to gain composure. He did regain it but he did not forgive George. George had failed him, he thought, as he went homeward through the flat, damp, lifeless April day. He had gone to George for comfort and had got only irritation. Wakefield… To have Wakefield’s praises sung to him!
He tramped through the mud, turning his steps away from Jalna and toward the fox farm. The leaf-buds, after swelling to make a mist across the trees, now seemed to shrink. The coarse grass in the ditch lay sodden and tangled in every futile shade of drab and brown. Oh, for hills and valleys, moor and sea! He pictured the lake lying beyond the stifling woods, flat as wax. Oh, for love! he thought—a wild and passionate love, to lift me out of this mental and physi
cal slough. Revivifying, George had said. Sickening word! But to lift out of the slough—to give spiritual hills and valleys, moor and sea… A passion to kindle in one a divine insanity. He was capable of such a passion, he knew, and he desired it.
He stood in the field facing the fox farm, his arms folded on a gate. The dingy house needed painting. It looked flat and drab as the landscape. He thought: “Why do I wait here? For I shall see nothing to lighten my heart. Even if I should see Pauline—what is the use of that? She can be nothing to me. Still, I long for a glimpse of her. Perhaps because there is something in her that is like the wind on the moors, the sun on the high hills… Oh, if only Eden were back, I should not ask for anything! But he has taken my youth with him and I can find nothing to replace it.” He shivered in the damp, still air.