Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“why, you poor little soul,” she exclaimed, “what are you doing here? Your uncle told me you was at Jalna.”
Dennis handed her the hat. “This is an old hat of my father’s,” he said. She took it with a doubtful look, then spied the scarf. “I’ve seen the poor lady wear that,” she said, and her reddened eyes filled with tears.
“Take it, too,” said Dennis. He was glad to be rid of it. The sight of it made him tremble with a terrible sense of guilt. He put the pipe also into her hand.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, wanting to do something for the child. “Will you come into the kitchen and let me fix you something to eat?”
“No, thanks,” said Dennis, drawing back. He wanted to ask what was going on inside that austerely curtained house that seemed no longer home, but only one question could his lips form. “where is the baby?” he asked.
“Poor little mite,” said the woman. “It’s safe and sound with Mrs. Bell. She took it to her house this morning. Poor little mite.”
The words resounded in the boy’s ears. He said them over and over to himself on his way to the Fox Farm. Strangely, he was too tired to run. His legs were weak. He could not run and yet he must keep moving. Combined with extreme weariness was an inward something that drove him on. He would have liked to retreat to the safety of home, but he felt that he had no home. He pictured himself as homeless, alone in his guilt, wandering in a snowy world.
The mysterious snow-weighted trees reared their cloaked boughs about the small house. One might think nobody lived there, so silent it was, and no path made in the deep snow. Dennis went to the door and lifted the iron latch. He stepped inside where it was warm and there was the smell of soap and hot water — yes, and milk.
He stood there in the narrow passage, his sense of smell and hearing intent. From upstairs there came the faint sound of a typewriter; from the kitchen the sudden loud cry of an infant. He heard Patience moving about in bedroom slippers, speaking in a reassuring voice to her child. Then the crying ceased and he pictured Victoria Bell guzzling at her mother’s breast. He went softly to the door of the kitchen and looked in.
Patience was gently rocking, in an old-fashioned rocking chair, the downy-haired blissful child in her arms. She was not startled by the sudden appearance of Dennis, but gave him a welcoming look and held out her hand, almost as though she had expected him.
He looked at her gravely and asked, “where is the other baby?”
“On the couch in the living room. Want to go and see it? It’s just been fed. This bottle business is new to me and I was nervous, but I think it’s all right.”
Dennis bent over the crimson-faced mouthing infant, newborn, scarcely recovered from its terror of suffocation.
“He’s all right,” said Patience, “even though he does look miserable. It’ll be nice for you to have a little brother.”
“We must keep him out of my father’s sight,” said Dennis. “Both of us must keep out of his sight. He doesn’t want to see his children about.”
Aftermath
When Adeline went to Finch’s house that same evening, she found Fitzturgis standing before the door trying to make up his mind to enter. Any embarrassment he had felt on their meeting at Christmas had now given place to a reaching out to the warmth, the almost painful compassion of her presence. She, too, remembered at this moment nothing of their past love, except that it was a common ground for their present sorrow. The hush of a heavy snowfall enfolded them. He said, in a low voice, without preliminary:
“You have been here before, I suppose.”
“No. I had not the courage to come. Not till now.”
“Neither had I.” He looked at her questioningly and added, “This has happened, I suppose? I’m not dreaming?”
“It’s happened,” she said sombrely, and held out her hand to him. So, holding to each other’s hands, they entered the cool, flower-scented house.
They could hear low voices from the back of the house but the music room was silent and lighted only by candles. That was where Sylvia lay, surrounded by pale flowers.
In silence they stood looking down at her, then Adeline said, “How beautiful she is! I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful.”
Fitzturgis did not speak but bent and kissed the marble-white forehead, on which the fair curls lay. He drew back from that cold touch and suddenly and utterly lost command of himself. He broke into wild sobs that shook him.
“No — no,” Adeline said, in fear as much as in pity. “Mait — you must not.”
“My sister — oh, my sister,” sobbed Fitzturgis and, giving himself up to his grief, sank on his knees beside the coffin.
On an impulse that she could not and did not even try to restrain, Adeline flung herself to the floor beside him, put both arms about him and mingled her weeping with his harsh sobs.
Meg and Finch came in from the adjoining room.
Finch’s tragic eyes accepted this abandon of grief as though nothing were too extreme to be fitting to the occasion — not even to the tearing of hair and the rending of garments. There was something almost noble in the kneeling figure of Fitzturgis — in his reiterated: “My sister … my sister.”
Finch did not speak, but Meg laid a hand on the head of each of the kneeling figures. “Come — come,” she said soothingly yet reprovingly, “we must try to resign ourselves to God’s will.”
Fitzturgis, with difficulty it seemed, got to his feet. He made as though to reply to Meg, but could only turn away his face and repeat, “My sister … my sister …” He came then to Sylvia and, laying his hands on the coffin, said, “She won’t speak to me. I can’t make her hear.”
Finch touched Adeline on the shoulder. He said, “You must take Mait out of here. There are people coming. I hear a car. Please take him away.”
Adeline rose and took Fitzturgis by the hand. He allowed himself to be led from the room out into the enfolding silence of the snowbent trees. More snow was falling. For a moment they were in the bright light of a standing car; they heard low voices, then were alone under the trees. In silence they plodded along the quiet road. Now Adeline had the strange, new sensation of being the older of the two, and with this she experienced a new tenderness for Fitzturgis. She said gently:
“I’m not going to talk of my grief, Mait, because I know that yours must be far greater, but I never have had a sister and I loved Sylvia like a dear sister.”
“She suffered so much in her life,” he said brokenly, “and then this.”
“You always were so good to her, Mait.”
“No — I wasn’t,” he denied passionately. “Looking back, I think I was sometimes harsh with her. In Ireland, I mean, when her nerves were in such a bad way. You were there once, I remember.” He wheeled, as he said the last words, and, pulling his hand from Adeline’s, he began to retrace his steps.
“where are you going?” she demanded, in sudden fear.
“Back to Sylvia,” he said. “I must see her again.”
But Adeline caught his arm and held him fast. “You can’t — not now. You shall see her again tomorrow. Come — let us walk along this road and talk of her.”
“Will you come with me tomorrow?”
“Yes, if you will be good and come with me tonight.”
She spoke to him as to a deranged child. Standing there in the falling snow, she looked stately as a young queen. She had tied a black veil over her head and beneath it Fitzturgis could dimly see her pale face. He gained control of himself and said docilely:
“Very well — if it will not tire you.”
“Nothing tires me,” she said, and they plodded on through the snow that lay heavy on the road.
As they walked they talked of Sylvia. Adeline recalled her first meeting with her and of how their attraction for each other had flowered into love. “It was love on my side, anyway,” she said, “and I do think Sylvia was fond of me. Did she speak of me as though she were?”
Fitzturgis tried to recall a time when he and Sylvia had talked of Adeline, but he could think only of his present grief for his sister.
“Sylvia had great affection for you,” he said briefly, then went on to talk of youthful days in Ireland. As he talked, his nerves grew steadier. Adeline drew him by questions to recall the past. They walked on and on, their hands linked. At last he fell silent for a space. She too was silent, brooding on the monumental consequences of life, trying in her simplicity to understand.
Now he looked about him bewildered; the white fields, the gaunt trees that edged the road looked alien. The snow had ceased to fall and a wan moon moved in and out among the clouds.
“where are we?” exclaimed Fitzturgis. “Do you know, Adeline?”
“These roads I know like the palm of my hand,” she said. “We have walked a long way.”
They turned back and again were silent, as though there were nothing left to say; but, as they reached the road that led to the church, he remarked, with somber resignation:
“I have lost my sister and I have lost you.”
“You still have a sister,” she said, “and you have a wife.”
“My older sister,” he said, “means little to me, as compared with Sylvia. Any affection I am capable of giving Roma is slight compared to the love I gave you. Oh, we get along very nicely, but — sometimes I wonder how we came to marry. I suspect that Roma wanted a husband and I more or less filled the bill.”
Adeline drew the width of the road, away from him. “You mustn’t say that — it’s wrong.”
She gave him a look, almost of appeal, as though she doubted her own strength to deny what he, in this moment, might say.
Fitzturgis, however, went on: “And you can’t make me believe that you are able to give that handsome boy, Philip, the love you once gave me. Oh, I know I’m nothing to you now, but I stick to it that we’ve lost something terribly valuable, and that we shall never find its like again. Do I flatter myself?” He tried to see her face but could not. He went on to say, “I’ll wager you never give me a thought.”
“I do think of you. I’m not one to forget. But — it’s all over between us — I can’t talk about it.” She spoke with a sudden weary finality, as if she had borne all of stress and strain that she was able to bear.
“You are right,” he said. “After all, we are no more than these snowflakes that are falling.”
“It’s stopped snowing,” Adeline said, in a practical voice. They did not speak again till their brief, almost abrupt goodbye, when they reached Jalna and he left her to walk back to the Rectory.
“It must be very late,” he said.
“I have no idea of the time.” But, as she opened the door, they heard the clock strike two.
“It’s two o’clock,” she said over her shoulder. “Are you sure you know the way to Auntie Meg’s?”
“Quite sure. Good night.” He turned away and was gone.
As Adeline was about to close the door she saw a small figure standing close against the wall in the porch. It was Dennis.
“Hello,” he said, coming into the light. “I guess I’ve frightened you.”
“You ought to be in bed,” she said, taking him by the arm and leading him indoors. “why aren’t you?”
“I don’t know where to go.”
“Not know where to go?” she repeated. “where did you spend last night?”
“I don’t remember,” he replied, in his clear boy’s treble. “I don’t remember last night.”
She heaved a sigh, as though his coming were indeed the last straw. “Very well,” she said, “we’ll go upstairs and find a bed for you. Come along. Keep your voice down.”
But he clasped the newelpost and hung there. He raised his eyes pleadingly to hers. “I’m afraid to be alone in there, Adeline. Please let me stay here with you.”
“There’s no bed for you.”
“I’ll sleep with you,” he pleaded. “Please let me sleep with you.” His lips quivered.
There was something in his face, in his voice, on the verge of tears, that made her agree to this added burden on this night of sadness. She gave a groan of sudden weariness as she went down the hall to her bedroom behind the stairs. She turned on the light and took warm pajamas from a drawer.
“These will be miles too big,” she said, “but, if you’re as tired as I am, you’ll not mind. You may go up to the bathroom first. You must keep quiet. Then I’ll take my turn.”
Dennis agreed with almost passionate docility. Sleeves down to his knuckles, he crept into bed and lay, slim and straight, next to the wall. He put his arm across his eyes either to shield them from the light or to shut himself off from conversation.
“Did you wash?” inquired Adeline, reaching out toward commonplace matters for ease from the tension of the past hours.
“Yes,” he said, almost in a whisper.
“You haven’t said your prayers. Better get up and say them.”
Dennis burst into tears. Beneath the bedclothes his legs kicked as though in agony.
“Don’t ask me to pray,” he sobbed. “I can’t — I can’t.”
“All right,” Adeline said hastily. “I’ll say them for both of us.”
She brushed the burnished chestnut of her hair and, going inside the clothes cupboard, took off her clothes and put on a nightdress. She turned out the light and knelt down beside the bed. She tried to say her prayers, but suddenly she was unutterably tired and could not remember a word. Kneeling there she fell asleep. She had opened the window and the frosty air blew in on her. Yet she slept, and was waked only when the boy’s timid hand touched her.
“Hadn’t you better get into bed, Adeline?” he said.
She grunted. Where was she? Had she been asleep? Was all that had passed a terrible dream?
“Hadn’t you better come to bed?” Dennis repeated.
She opened her dark eyes on the darkness and crept into bed. She put an arm about Dennis and patted his back. She did not speak, but the consolation of her nearness drew him to turn over and press his face against her breast. Again he began to cry.
Now she was all awake.
“Stop it,” she said sternly. “You can’t go on like this. I tell you I’ve borne enough.”
Now he was speaking, and she made out the words.
“I killed her.… I didn’t mean to, but I killed her.…”
“Killed whom?”
“Sylvia. I made her help me with the snowman. I had her alone and I hated her but I didn’t mean she should die. Oh, Adeline, I didn’t phone for the doctor, but the vet!”