Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
Renny was deeply glad that Wakefield was home again. Now the last source of anxiety for his brothers was gone. He would concentrate all his powers on the solution of the mystery that enmeshed him. His restlessness at night disturbed Alayne’s sleep. She lay always with an arm about him, so that if he rose to walk in his sleep she would know. But he never did. He noticed her paleness and returned to his own room. But in his room he made a trap for himself with cords drawn across the door which would cause him to stumble, or even fall, if he tried to go out. Nothing happened. The truth was that he slept little at night. He lay listening to the striking of the grandfather clock in the hall below, longing for the day. Morbid imaginings assailed him. Sometimes when he did fall asleep, he dreamed he was confined in a straitjacket and woke struggling to free himself, wet with the sweat of terror. His best sleep was in the daytime when he would stretch himself on the sofa in the library, stationing Wakefield nearby to watch him and to follow him, if he went out. The sound of the piano did not wake him. Sometimes Finch would come into the room and the two younger brothers would stand looking down into the high-coloured bony face that seemed formed to withstand the stress of life’s fiercest attack.
Sometimes he would wake and smile up at them. Then it was impossible to believe that anything was wrong with him. He would get up, light a cigarette and tell Finch to continue with his practising.
“Come, Wake,” he would say, “we’ll see how he’s getting on.”
The two would sit at a little distance from the piano; Wakefield, with his head resting on his hand, Renny leaning back in his chair, his eyes fixed on Finch’s hands. He was proud of their swift sure movements across the keyboard. When Finch had played Brahm’s variations on a theme by Handel, Renny would smile at Wakefield and remark, “Pretty good, eh?”
“what’s that piece called?” he asked, when Finch had played Debussy’s “La Cathédrale Engloutie.”
Finch told him, and he remarked, “I wish you’d play that to me every day.”
At first Finch found the presence of his brothers a strain, but later he liked having them sitting quietly there. He began to think of the music as healing their scars of war. They had been hard and manly, he vulnerable. Now he felt he could heal them with his music.
Sometimes Nicholas and Ernest joined them and the five men seemed to overcome even that large room by their presence. There seemed no place for any women in the room. The present suffering, the vulnerability, the scars, the recollections of the past, all were masculine.
Piers seldom came to Jalna in these days. He always found something that needed doing about the farmlands. He was active despite the loss of his leg. He was proud to show what he could do. His muscular frame was hardening once more, after the years of inaction in the prison camp. But his chief reason for remaining away from Jalna was that he shrank from being for more than a short while with Renny, in his present state. He could meet him in the stables, on the land, talk to him of crops and the breeding of cattle, but to sit at Renny’s table, to spend an evening with him, conscious all the while of his abstraction — that look in his eyes — was too much.
When one morning he met Alayne in the orchard, carrying a small basket of red apples she had gathered for the table, he was startled by the change in her. She looked wan. Her fair hair drooped lifelessly about her thin temples. Her lips were pale. He stood staring, making no attempt to conceal his scrutiny.
She smiled. “Well, I am not improving in my appearance, am I?”
“You’ll be ill, if you go on like this.”
“To tell the truth, Piers, I don’t feel very well now.”
“It’s a damned shame,” he broke out. “That fellow has got to see a doctor. If he won’t do it willingly, he must be forced.”
“He’s not an easy person to force, as you know.”
“Can’t he see what he’s doing to you?”
“He doesn’t see anything clearly.”
“Then he must be made to see.”
Piers’ steady blue eyes, his stalwart body, gave out masculine strength and support to Alayne. She had a blind desire to throw herself on his breast and cling there. For an instant she loved him, he who so often had been antagonistic to her. In imagination she clung to him, kissing him. She was so overwrought she scarcely knew what was real or what was unreal. Piers suddenly put his arms about her and kissed her.
“There, there,” he said comfortingly. “It will come out all right.”
“I know,” she sobbed, and withdrew herself.
“I’ll see what I can do with old Red Head. When did he find the last bill?”
“Two days ago. Stuffed into the bowl of his meerschaum pipe which he hadn’t smoked for months.”
“Tck. Whoever hides them is ingenious.”
“Piers, do you believe it
is
Renny?”
“I can’t see who else it could be.”
“Adeline comes home for her midterm weekend tomorrow. I did so hope the atmosphere would be cleared by now. She was very conscious of the change in Renny. I often saw her looking at him in a puzzled way — and the scene after
Othello!
He would not have been so upset if he had been normal.”
“I think he would ... Anyhow I’ll see him this morning and talk him into consulting a doctor. See if I don’t!”
Piers set off at once to find Renny. Standing over him as he sat on the swivel chair in his office in the stable he said, “The time has come when you’ve got to do something about the lost money. All your searching won’t bring it back. You are ruining your health. You are ruining Alayne’s life. I am your brother and I know what I am talking about. I am going with you to consult a psychopathist. He’ll make you wish you had gone to him at the first. He’ll take the quirk out of your memory. Do it for Alayne’s sake. She is at breaking point. Come, now — say you will.”
Renny raised his eyes to Piers’ face. “If I haven’t found the money at the end of a fortnight,” he said, “I will do whatever you say.”
“Make it a week.”
“Very well. A week.”
Piers was elated. He had expected a struggle, possibly failure. He said, “I can’t tell you how glad I am — for all our sakes. It’s taken a load off my mind.”
“I wish my mind were as easily relieved.”
“Renny, I have worried about you more than you know. Now I feel that something is going to be done.”
“what if the fellow says I’m deranged? That I’ll get worse?”
“I would not believe him. You’re as sound as one of your own horses. Haven’t you seen a horse suddenly begin to shy at some object he has previously ignored? He’s got to be treated carefully — led up to it — walked round — encouraged to look at it from every side. That’s what the psychopathist will do for you.”
“My God, I’ve looked at this thing from every side!”
“You can’t cure yourself without help.”
Renny made a sardonic grimace.
But in spite of himself he felt a little cheered. In a week he would cast off responsibility and let the family do with him what they willed. On the other hand, he clung desperately to the coming week, dreading what might befall him at its end.
He was glad to have the two young girls at home again. He aroused himself from the cloud that oppressed him, to chaff them, to make them laugh. Adeline’s laugh was high, gay. It seemed to come from all parts of her being, the natural expression of their mirth. Roma’s laugh was scarcely more than an audible smile. When she smiled her lips bent down at the outer corners, though the sensitive upper lip was raised. There was an oddness in her smile that later would be fascinating.
A period of wet weather had set in after a long drought. The last of the apples fell into the long wet orchard grass. The red and gold maple leaves showed their last brightness against the pewter-grey sky. The turkeys trailed among the blackberry canes, searching for the last berries. “Everything is at its last,” thought Renny, walking through the orchard path with the three dogs following him, more in stolid resolve not to lose sight of him than in pleasure. The long grass brushed their faces, they found no scent of wild creature.
At the end of the orchard, Michaelmas daisies glowed in little mauve stars. A few oats had fallen there in the seeding time and now bore grain, hanging delicately from the stock, not garnered. There was a miniature graveyard, the resting place of all the dogs who had died at Jalna since its building. Twenty-eight little graves were there, each marked with a low stone on which was carved a name. Once they had been cared for but now many were so overgrown by wild grasses, Michaelmas daisies, and goldenrod, as to be lost. The oldest grave and the one with the tallest stone was that of Nero, the great Newfoundland, who had come from Quebec with Renny’s grandparents. Many a time he had heard old Adeline tell of Nero’s exploits. “Ha,” she would exclaim, “a great-hearted dog if ever there was one! He loved me and I loved him. The day he died I thought my heart would break from the grief in me.”
Renny thought of all the dogs buried there, how they had padded over the farmlands, through the orchard, chased their quarry, sometimes caught it but more often lost it. Had their fun. Been cherished. Never ill-treated — no, not one. Yes — wait! There was the Irish terrier, Barney, who had been stabbed to death by a Scotch labourer because the poor dog had run about wildly, frothing at the mouth. But he had only been overcome by exertion with heat, he had not been mad. Renny’s brows drew together at the remembrance. Strange how painful memories hurt him more than ever in these days. He turned his eyes to the newest graves, those of his two Clumber spaniels, Floss and Merlin. Never could he love another dog as he had loved those two. And they had taken with them some of his best years.
The living dogs waited expectantly for him to go on. Now, when he moved, they became the leaders and he followed them to the road and along it to the church. It looked closed-in on itself, the stained-glass windows one uniform brownish colour, the heavy door shut against the world. What had it to do with the world? Inside its walls one might hear the story of Noah and the Flood, but what had that to do with the clouds and rain of today? That was all very well when there were half-a-dozen people on the earth. If he had been Noah he would have taken Merlin and Floss into the Ark, and for horses his mare, Cora, and a beautiful high-jumper he had owned after the last war. Launceton, that was his name.
He was still smiling a little at the thought when he saw the Rector pruning a hedge in his garden. His grey beard and hair were curly in the damp air — the scent of the clipped cedar filled the air, the flat, sharply articulated leaves of it lay all about. The dogs slipped through the hedge and Mr. Fennel disappeared for a moment as he bent down to pat them. Then he put his hand over the hedge to greet Renny.
“Lovely rains we’ve been having,” he said.
“Yes. I suppose they’re needed.”
“It’s a great benefit to the fall wheat.”
“I guess it is.”
“You’re no farmer, Renny.”
“No. I leave that to Piers.”
“You must miss the Horse Shows — both financially and for their pleasure.”
“I miss nothing but my peace of mind,” Renny returned sombrely.
Mr. Fennel made a sound of sympathy, then he asked:
“Have you found any more of the notes lately?”
“Yes. They turn up steadily. But there are still more than half of them missing. I found one this morning in a drawer I constantly use. But the odd thing is that this note smells distinctly musty. It points out pretty clearly that they’re hidden somewhere outdoors and that these rains are dampening them.”
“That is interesting. I believe you’re right.”
“I’ve wasted a lot of time searching in the house and stable. But imagine starting on five hundred acres! No. I shall never discover them.”
“But, if they turn up, one by one, will you be satisfied?”
“How can I be? I shall not know what I may do next.”
“Then why do you go on searching?”
“I must.”
Mr. Fennel gently opened and closed the garden shears he held.
“Renny,” he said, “I think we
must
do something.”
“I’ve promised Piers to consult a psychopathist next week. Nothing else will satisfy the family.”
“I don’t believe a psychopathist will help you.”
“Neither do I, but I have promised.”
Mr. Fennel ran his thumb along the cutting edge of the shears, as though to prepare for a fresh pruning. He said, almost laconically:
“what do you say to doing away with useless effort? You have been dropping buckets into an empty well. Now let us go to a well which is ever brimming to the top with help for us. But perhaps you have already done this. Forgive me for taking for granted that you haven’t.”
Renny turned away his face in embarrassment. “If you mean praying, I haven’t. It would be impossible to me — in the personal way you mean.”
Mr. Fennel studied the profile presented to him. From the front, Renny’s face had seemed to him stationary, set in the mould in which inheritance, experience, and passion had formed it, unchangeable in its essence. But the side view appeared moving, full of possibilities, capable of expressing the soul.
“I suggest,” said the Rector, “that we should go into the church and kneel together and ask divine help in solving this mysterious trouble.”
With his profile still turned, Renny answered, “No, no, I couldn’t do that.”
“why?”
“I should feel a fool!”
“Do you feel wise, as you stand here?”
“No, but I feel natural. The other would be unnatural to me.”
“Unnatural to you who have assisted in the services in that church your grandfather built — where you were christened, confirmed?”
“Yes.”
“Renny,” the Rector put his hand across the hedge and tapped him on the breast, “I have asked your help many times. I have asked you for money for the church when I knew you had little to spare, and you never refused me. I ask you to do something that I desire more earnestly than anything I have asked before. Don’t refuse. Come with me into the church for a few minutes.”
Now Renny turned his eyes on him with a half-humorous look. “You make it impossible for me to refuse. But I certainly think I shall be a comic spectacle for the Almighty, if he happens to notice me.”