Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“But she can’t know of it,” returned Renny; “so why harrow ourselves over what she would think? As for the fox farm—you will scarcely know that it is there.”
“It will be there for every passer-by to see,” put in Ernest, striking his hand on the table. “As Maurice says, it will depreciate the property on both sides. We shall hear it, smell it, be disgusted by it, with every breath we draw!”
Meg interjected—“It’s the menagerie effect that’s so appalling to me. Wild animals raging about. Peering through the netting. And Mrs. Lebraux, in a man’s overall, working among them like a man!”
“I shouldn’t worry, Meggie, if I were you,” said Piers. “The house will fall to pieces when they move it.”
“No, it won’t!” said Renny. “It’s a well-built house. I have engaged a good man for the job.”
“I have never known you, Renny,” said Nicholas, “to do anything so callous as this!”
Ernest said—“To think that we were feeling so happy over the acquiring of this new land and the abolishing of the bungalows—and then to have to face—but we won’t face it!” He rose and began to walk about excitedly. “It must not be. Alayne, surely you have some influence with him! Surely you can use it to make Renny see how wrong this is!”
Alayne said icily—“I’d rather not interfere. If you wish to influence Renny—it would be better for you to go to Mrs. Lebraux.”
“I shall! I shall!” cried Ernest. “Surely she can’t be so brazen as to come where she’s not wanted!”
“It will be a joke for the countryside,” said Maurice, “if the scheme is carried through.”
Renny turned on him savagely. “What the hell do you mean? There is no joke about it. I have bought the land and I will put on it what I damned well choose.”
“You bought it under false pretences! You said that you couldn’t stand the thought of a dozen small houses there, and now you’re planting a fox farm.”
“I am allowing two women—friends of ours—to keep foxes there. Very different from the thirty or forty people who would have swarmed over your lots.” He turned appealingly
to his uncles. “Surely you can see the difference. And what was I to do? That child and her mother are losing everything!”
Piers broke in. “I’m all at sea. When did you buy the land? And how?”
Meg answered for Renny. “He has just bought it. Sarah lent him the money.”
Nicholas said—“Very well. If you must help those women, do! Let them have land, but, for God’s sake, let it be at the back of the estate, not the front!”
“Yes, yes,” cried Ernest, “there are fields back there—bits of wood behind which they would scarcely be noticed. Let us, by all means, give them a few acres there. I’ll be the first to agree to that.”
“There are two things against that,” replied Renny. “One is that it would be almost impossible to move the house so far, and too expensive. The other that they would be much too isolated. They must be on a main road. For their business and for their own sakes. They have no car. They’re obliged to walk to village and bus. Things are hard enough for them as it is. What surprises me is that you should all take the high and mighty stand you do.” He turned his eyes accusingly on Alayne. “I should have expected you to be more broad-minded.”
“I have said nothing to oppose you.”
“You have said nothing to help me. Disapproval has stuck out all over you.”
Piers said—“I guess that Alayne is like I am—speechless at Sarah’s generosity. We’re both wondering what security you’ve given Sarah. Have you given her Finch? Or a mortgage on Jalna?”
At the first question a quiver, as of sardonic mirth, passed through the circle. At the second an electric tremor shook
them into horrid confusion. The air was stifling. It was full of thunder. Every eye turned, startled and menacing, on Renny.
They needed no answer from him. The muscular contracting of his face, the quick intake of his breath, was enough. The question shot by Piers had caught him unprepared. He made a grimace, expressing both chagrin and defiance. He said:
“I was driven to it.”
If only he had denied it! If he had made them believe, against the evidence of his guilty grimace, that he had committed no such outrage against them and against Jalna! Then perhaps Nicholas would not have turned so ghastly grey in the face; Ernest would not have clutched his throat and tried in vain to utter a sound; Meg not have burst into tears; Maurice not have looked at him with such horror; Alayne with something like hate; and Piers might have restrained the blasphemous oath.
Wakefield, still harbouring his childish fear of thunder, had left his work at the signs of approaching storm and now came running toward them, half laughing, wet with sweat. At sight of them the laughter died on his lips. He cried:
“What’s the matter? Has the house been struck?”
Nicholas answered, in a terrible voice—“Yes, the house has been struck! Look at it, all of you. It’s been blasted!”
Meg threw herself into Piers’s arms and clung to him. They all turned their eyes to the house which faced them, clothed in its creepers, their greenness and the dark red of its bricks intensified by the sulphurous light from the low, threatening sky. The house looked at them unblinkingly from its windows, not in reproach, it seemed, but in threatening aloofness. It appeared to recede from them, to draw
away. “I am no longer yours,” it seemed to say; “you are no longer mine. A barrier is between us.”
Wakefield cried—“But I don’t see it! I don’t see the fire! Where is it? Oh, Meggie, don’t cry! Renny, what’s the matter?”
Nicholas caught him by the arm.
“The house has not been struck by lightning—but in another way,” he said. He pointed to Renny, who had sprung to his feet. “He’ll tell you. You’ve admired him. Let him tell you what he’s done to jalna.”
Renny exclaimed—“By God, I won’t have you turn the boy against me!”
“But what is it? What is it? I don’t understand!” Wakefield drew away from Nicholas and faced Renny.
Renny said—“They’re all after me because I’ve borrowed money on Jalna. I had to stop that building on Maurice’s place and I had to help Paula.”
“That’s shrewd of you,” said Piers. “Why didn’t you say Clara?”
“Oh, the deceit of him!” wept Meg. “If Gran knew of this!”
“It will be the end of me,” Ernest got out in a strangled voice and supported himself against the table.
Renny said harshly—“You talk like an old fool! I have not lost the place.”
“I’ll thank you,” said Nicholas, “not to insult my brother.”
“Oh, he doesn’t care what he does,” said Meg, wiping her eyes. “None of us means anything to him.”
A few heavy drops of rain fell. A roll of thunder came jarring from the black west as though it overthrew obstacles to approach them.
“I’ll stick by you, Renny” said Wake. “I’m on your side, always.”
Piers sneered—“You’d stick to the devil if you could get anything out of him.”
“You’ll see!” cried Ernest. “Sarah will be the mistress of Jalna! It will kill me.”
“And Finch will be the master,” said Piers. “Mark my words, he’ll marry her. He’ll line his nest if he plucks the down from our breasts to do it.”
Alayne looked wildly about her. “I’m going in,” she said, and turned toward the house.
Meg had never felt in such accord with her. She went and put her arm about her. “Poor dear,” she said, “you look as white as a sheet. You’re breaking your wife’s heart, Renny. Anyone can see that. I’ve watched her failing for months.”
The words, Meg’s tender touch, were too much for Alayne. She too burst into tears.
A tawny radiance illumined their figures. The mare’s side shone like metal. She lifted her lip in a wry distortion.
Piers fixed his prominent eyes on Alayne.
“No wonder she cries,” he said. “This news is enough to make a man cry.”
“It’s killing me,” reiterated Ernest, pressing his hand to his side.
Nicholas swept out his arm. “All this is on your head, Renny!” His gesture included the house, with its air of receding from them, his distraught brother, the weeping women, and the mouthing mare.
As Nicholas spoke the thunder pealed like a bell in simultaneous consent with a dazzling flash that struck the oak tree near them, ripping off a strip of its bark from top to root. The sun disappeared and the rain began to fall in torrents.
Ernest cried—“There’s a sign! There’s a sign! The oak tree blasted. I see the end of this!”
“Take him into the house,” Renny said to Piers. “Give him a spot of brandy.” He spoke coolly but his lips were pale. He cast a bitter look after his wife and his sister, who had now reached the shelter of the porch.
Nicholas was trying to heave himself out of the garden seat. The rain beat on his grey head. Renny took him by the arm, but he planted his spread hand on his chest and thrust him away, growling:
“Don’t touch me! I don’t want your help.”
Wakefield went to him and helped him up.
Renny caught the reins of the mare and sprang into the saddle. She stood a moment rigid, fierce, beautiful in her naked symmetry, divided between love and hate of him, then, tossing her head as the hailstones struck her, fumed galloping toward the stables.
Nicholas hobbled houseward, weighing heavily on Wakefield. He muttered to himself—“It’s come to this, eh? Well, well, well. A pretty pass. I wish I’d never lived to see this day…”
S
ULTRY
W
EATHER
T
HE STORM
did not cool the air or disperse the thunderclouds. They lingered, shouldering each other on the horizon, their edges burnished by the blazing sun, now and then a troubled mutter echoing through their sultry depths. Every grass blade held its jewel, and the timid movement of the birds among the leaves scattered bright drops. The scene was highly coloured and still, but without tranquillity.
Was it cooler indoors or out? Alayne wondered. Should she go up to her room where she would be undisturbed, or seek peace out of doors where these walls would not press in on her? If only some other people had once lived in the house it would not be so permeated by the essence of the Whiteoaks. They had built it, lived in it, quarrelled and loved in it, died in it. Even Eden, who had not died in it, had left his restless spirit there. Strangely the thought of him gave her pain at this moment. She had never sorrowed for him. In her secret heart she had resented Renny’s grief for him as a shadow on their love. But now she found her heart yearning over Eden. As though to protect herself against today’s unhappiness, she reached back toward something in her past
that might justly claim her tears. She saw herself and Eden, a happy girl and boy new-married, just come to Jalna.
How gay he had been! How full of hope! She could see him springing up the stairs, light and strong, or sitting at his desk, his face upraised to hers, while she scarcely heard what he said for watching the play of his lips, the light in his eyes. She was glad she could remember him like that, glad that she had never seen him after he was ill.
She stood in the doorway and started as Piers came up behind her. She moved aside to let him pass, avoiding his eyes, but he stopped. He gave her a curious look.
“Well, I’m off,” he said.
“I hope the hail has not injured your grain,” she remarked, for the sake of saying something.
“I don’t think so. It didn’t last long. But the storm is not over yet.”
“You think those clouds will come back? Which way is the wind?”
He stepped on to the drive. He wet his forefinger in his mouth and held it up. “Southeast,” he said. “They’ll come back.”
His usually fresh-coloured face looked pale and heavy. She was sorry for him.
“I regret this for your sake,” she said, “more than for the others.”
His mouth went down at the corners.
“It’s rough on us all. For my part, I feel as though the earth weren’t solid under me any more. It’s given me a nasty jolt. I didn’t believe it was in Renny to mortgage”—his tongue stumbled on the word—“to do such a thing.”
“I know how you must feel,” she said quickly. “But Renny—he is not always easy to understand, is he?”
“Do you seriously try?”
The question surprised her. She stammered.
“Yes—I think I try very hard.” And she added bitterly — “I know that you think I have no influence over him.”
“Well, I cannot help thinking that you might have more. He strikes me as a man who would naturally be greatly influenced by a woman he loved—and who understood him. Pheasant influences me a lot, though you wouldn’t suspect it. I should think that Renny would have been afraid to—do what he’s done without giving you a hint of it. It’s your show, and your kid’s show, as well as his. He should have been made to feel that.”
“I know,” she answered miserably.
He continued—“I don’t know Mrs. Lebraux very well, but I do know that she understands him. If I were in your place—”
Alayne, looking at him, tried to picture him in her place.
“If I were in your place I’d tell him that if he brings her on to our land, I’d leave him and take my child too. He’ll think all the more of you if you’re firm. I’ve heard Meg say how much good a sound hiding did him when he was a boy. He loved the one who walloped him. If he thinks you’ll stand
anything
—well, there’s no knowing what he’ll do.”
Advice on her marriage relations from Piers! She was both embarrassed and touched. Yet his advice was not ingenuous.
Wakefield came out of the house. He cast a look of apprehension at the sky. Piers said sternly:
“You’ve been wasting a lot of time. Get a move on now You must drive the milk truck to the station tonight.”
Wake puckered his forehead but moved resignedly toward the stables.
Alayne called after him—“Is Uncle Ernest feeling better?”
He answered over his shoulder—“Yes, thank you, Alayne. He is lying down. Uncle Nick and Meggie are with him.”
Piers followed his brother without another glance at Alayne. She slowly descended the shallow steps to the gravel drive and, crossing the wet lawn, passed through a wicket-gate and went into the ravine. She stopped on the little rustic bridge that spanned the stream, reduced now to a trickle. She was startled to find Renny leaning against the railing, his unlighted pipe in his hand and a look of complete self-absorption shadowing his face. She turned away, thinking he might not see her, but he had heard her step and threw her a negative glance as though her coming had scarcely roused him.