The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (237 page)

It seemed that the dignity of the gnarled old tree would never be shaken. At each blow a shiver ran through its far-spreading branches and, one by one, the remaining apples fell, but for a long time the great trunk and massive primal limbs received the onslaughts of the axe with a sort of rugged disdain. At last, with a straining of its farthest roots, it crashed to the ground, creating a gust of air that was like the last fierce outgoing of breath from a dying man.

Renny stood, lean, red-faced, triumphant, his head moist with sweat. He glanced shrewdly at Alayne and then turned to Vaughan.

“A good job well done, eh, Maurice?” he asked. “Can you give me a cigarette?”

Vaughan produced a box, and Pheasant, without waiting to be asked, snatched one for herself and, with it between her lips, held up her face to Vaughan’s for a light.

“There’s a bold little baggage for you,” remarked Renny to Alayne, with an odd look of embarrassment.

Pheasant blinked at Alayne through smoke. “Alayne knows I’ve been badly brought up.”

“I think the result is delightful,” said Alayne, but she disapproved of Pheasant at that moment.

Pheasant chuckled. “Do you hear that, Maurice? Aren’t you proud?”

“Perhaps Alayne doesn’t realize that he is your happy parent,” said Renny, taking the bull by the horns.

Vaughan gave Alayne a smile, half sheepish, half defiant, and wholly, she thought, unprepossessing. “I expect Mrs. Whiteoak has heard of all my evil doings,” he said.

“I did not connect you two in my mind at all. I only heard today—a few minutes ago—that Pheasant had a father living. I had stupidly got the idea that she was an orphan.”

“I expect Maurice wishes I were, sometimes,” said Pheasant. “I don’t mean that he wishes himself dead—” “Why not?” asked Vaughan.

“Oh, because it’s such fun being a man, even an ill-tempered one. I mean that he wishes he had no encumbrance in the shape of me.”

“You encumber him no longer,” said Renny. “You encumber me; isn’t that so?”

“Will somebody please get my hat and book and mushrooms?” pleaded the young girl. “They’re under the tree.”

Renny began to draw aside the heavy branches, the upper ones of which were raised like arms in prayer. An acrid scent of crushed overripe apples rose from among them. His hands, when he had rescued the treasures, were covered by particles of bark and tiny terrified insects.

Vaughan turned toward home, and Pheasant ran after him, showing, now that they were separated, a demonstrative affection toward him that baffled Renny, who was not much given to speculation concerning the feelings of his fellows.

As for Alayne, her mind was puzzled more and more by these new connections who were everything that her parents and her small circle of intimates were not. Even while their conduct placed her past life on a plane of dignity and reticence, their warmth and vigour made that life seem tame and even colourless. The response of her nature to the shock of this change in her environment was a variety of moods to which she had never before been accustomed. She had sudden sensations of depression, tinged with foreboding, followed by unaccountable flights of gaiety, when she felt that something passionately beautiful was about to happen to her.

Renny, lighting a cigarette, looked at her gravely. “Do you know,” he said, “I had no idea that you were so keen about that tree, or I should have left it as it was. Why didn’t you make me understand?”

“I did not want to make too much fuss. I thought you would think I was silly. Anyone who knew me at all well would have known how I felt about it. But then—you do not know me very well. I cannot blame you for that.”

His gaze on her face became more intense. “I wish I did understand you. I’m better at understanding horses and dogs
than women. I never understand them. Now, in this case, it wasn’t till the tree was down and I saw your face that I knew what it meant to you. Upon my word, I wouldn’t have taken anything—why, you looked positively tragic. You’ve no idea what a brute I feel.” He gave a rueful cut at the fallen tree to emphasize his words.

“Oh, don’t!” she exclaimed. “Don’t hurt it again!”

He stood motionless among the broken branches, and she moved to his side. He attracted her. She wondered why she had never noticed before how striking he was. But then, she had never before seen him active among outdoor things. She had seen him rather indifferently riding his roan horse. In the house she had thought of him as rather morose and vigilant, though courteous when he was not irritated or excited by his family; and she had thought he held rather an inflated opinion of his own importance as head of the house. Now, axe in hand, with his narrow red head, his red foxlike face and piercing red-brown eyes, he seemed the very spirit of the woods and streams. Even his ears, she noticed, were pointed, and his hair grew in a point on his forehead.

He, having thrown down the axe at her words of entreaty, stood among the broken branches, motionless as a statue, with apparently a statue’s serene detachment under inspection. He scarcely seemed to breathe.

One of those unaccountable soarings of the spirit to which she had of late been subject possessed her at this moment. Her whole being was moved by a strange exhilaration. The orchard, the surrounding fields, the autumn day, seemed but a painted background for the gesture of her own personality. She had moved to Renny’s side. Now, from a desire scarcely understood by herself, to prove by the sense of touch that she was really she and he was no one more
faunlike than Renny Whiteoak, she laid her hand on his arm. He did not move, but his eyes slid toward her face with an odd, speculative look in them. He was faintly hostile, she believed, because of her supersensitiveness about the tree. She smiled up at him, trying to show that she was not feeling childishly aggrieved, and trying at the same time to hide that haunting and wilful expectancy fluttering her nerves.

The next moment she found herself in his arms with his lips against hers, and all her sensations crushed for the moment into helpless surrender. She felt the steady thud of his heart, and against it the wild tapping of her own. At last he released her and said, with a rather whimsical grimace: “Did you mind so much? I’m awfully sorry. I suppose you think me more of a brute than ever now.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed quiveringly, “how could you do that? How could you think I would be willing—”

“I didn’t think at all,” he said. “I did it on the spur of the moment. You looked so—so—oh, I can’t think of a word to describe how you looked.”

“Please tell me. I wish to know,” she said icily.

“Well—inviting, then.”

“Do you mean consciously inviting?” There was a dangerous note in her voice.

“Don’t be absurd! Unconsciously, of course. You simply made me forget myself. I’m sorry.”

She was trembling all over.

“Perhaps,” she said, courageously, “you were not much more to blame than I.”

“My dear child—as though you could help the way you looked.”

“Yes, but I went over to you, deliberately, when—oh, I cannot say it!” Yet, perversely she wanted to say it.

“When you knew you were looking especially lovely—is that what you mean?”

“Not at all. It’s no use—I cannot say it.”

“Why make the effort? I’m willing to take all the blame. After all, a kiss isn’t such a terrible thing, and I’m a relation. Men occasionally kiss their sisters-in-law. It will probably never happen again unless, as you say, you brazenly approach me when—what
were
you trying to say, Alayne? Now I come to think of it, I believe I have the right to know. It might save me some stabs of conscience.”

“Oh, you make it all seem ridiculous. You make me feel very childish—very stupid.”

He had seated himself on the fallen tree. Now he raised his eyes contritely to hers.

“Look here. That’s the last thing on earth I want to do. I’m only trying to get you not to take it too seriously, and I want all the blame.”

Her earnest eyes now looked full into his, taking a great deal of courage, for his were sparkling, so full of interest in her, and at the same time so mocking.

“I see that I must tell you. It is this: I have had odd feelings lately of unrest, and a kind of anticipation, as though just around the corner some moving, thrilling experience were waiting for me. This sensation makes me reckless. I felt it just before I moved toward you, and, I think— I think—”

“You think I was playing up to you?”

“Not quite that. But I think you felt something unusual about me.”

“I did, and I do. You’re not like any woman I’ve ever known. Tell me, have you thought of me as—caring for you, thinking a good deal about you?”

“I thought you rather disliked me. But please let us forget about all this. I never want to think of it again.”

“Of course not,” he assented gravely.

With a stab of almost physical pain, she remembered that she had half unconsciously kissed him back again. Her face and neck were dyed crimson. With a little gasp she said: “Of the two I am the more to blame.”

“Is this the New England conscience that I’ve heard so much about?” he asked, filled with amazement.

“I suppose so.”

He regarded her with the same half-mocking, half-quizzical look in his eyes, but his voice deepened.

“Oh, my dear, you are a sweet thing! And to think that you are Eden’s wife, and that I must never kiss you again!”

She could not meet his eyes now. She was afraid of him, and still more afraid of herself. She felt that the strange expectancy of mood that had swayed her during these weeks at Jalna was nothing but the premonition of this moment. She said, trying to take herself in hand:

“I am going back to the house. I think I heard the stable clock strike. It must be dinner-time.” She turned away and began to walk quickly over the rough orchard grass.

It was significant of the eldest Whiteoak that he made no attempt to follow her, but sat with his eyes on her retreating form, confident that she would look back at him. As he expected, she turned after a dozen paces and regarded him with dignity but with a certain childlike pleading in her voice.

“Will you promise never to think of me as I have been this morning?” she asked.

“Then I must promise never to think of you at all,” he returned with composure.

“Then never think of me. I should prefer that.”

“Come, Alayne, you know that’s impossible.”

“Well, promise to forget this morning.”

“It is forgotten already.”

But, hurrying away through the orchard, she felt that if he could forget as easily as that it would be more terrible to her than if he had brooded on it in his most secret thoughts.

P
ILGRIM’S
P
ROGRESS

A
LAYNE
had been accustomed to church, but the systematic upheaval of Sunday mornings at Jalna was a revelation to her. She had been used to the intellectual, somewhat detached worship of the Unitarian church, where, seated between her father and mother, she had followed reverently the minister’s meticulous analysation of the teachings of the man Jesus. She had listened, in a church that rather resembled a splendid auditorium, to the unaccompanied singing of a superb quartet. She had seen collection plates all aflutter with crisp American banknotes, and been scarcely conscious of the large congregation of well-groomed, thoughtful men and women.

When she had lived alone after the death of her parents, she had gone less regularly to church, attending the evening service rather than the morning, and when Rosamund Trent had come to live with her she had gone with still less regularity, for Rosamund was one of those who believe that churchgoing is for those who have nothing better to do.

At Jalna there was an iron rule that every member of the family should attend morning service unless suffering from
extreme physical disability. Being only half sick would not do at all. One must be prostrated. Alayne had seen Meg almost stumble into the motor, dazed from headache, a bottle of smelling salts held to her nose, and sit through the entire services with closed eyes. She had seen young Finch dragged off, regardless of a toothache.

She was inclined to rebel at first, but when she found Eden slavishly acquiescent, she too succumbed. After all, she thought, there was something rather fine in such devotion, even though religion seemed to play so small a part in it. For the Whiteoaks were not, according to Alayne’s standards, a religious family. In fact, she never heard the subject mentioned among them. She remembered the intelligent discussions on religious subjects in her father’s house: Would Science destroy Religion? The quoting of Dean Inge, Professor Bury, Pasteur, and Huxley.

The only mention of the Deity’s name at Jalna was when Grandmother mumbled an indistinguishable grace, or when one of the young men called on the Almighty to witness that he would do such and such a thing, or that something else was damned. Yet with what heroism they herded themselves into those hard adjacent pews each Sunday!

Wakefield summed it all up for Alayne in these words:

“You see, Grandfather built the church, and he never missed a Sunday till he died. Gran never misses a Sunday, and she’s almost a hundred. She gets awfully sick if any of the rest of us stop home. And the rector and the farmers and other folk about count us every Sunday, and if one is missing, why, it doesn’t seem like Sunday to them at all.” The little boy’s eyes were shining. He was very much in earnest.

Grandmother had never ridden in a motor car, and never expected to ride in one consciously. But she had given orders
for the motor hearse from Stead to bear her body to her grave. “For,” she said, “I like to think I’ll have one swift ride before I’m laid away.”

The old phaeton was brought to the front steps every Sunday morning at half-past ten. The two old bay horses, Ned and Minnie, were freshly groomed, and the stout stableman, Hodge, wore a black broadcloth coat with a velvet collar. With his long whip he flicked the flies off the horses, and every moment cast an anxious look at the door and set his hat at a more Sundayish angle.

At a quarter to eleven old Mrs. Whiteoak emerged, supported by Renny and Piers, for it needed plenty of muscle to negotiate the passage from her room to the phaeton. For church she always wore a black moiré silk dress, a black velvet fur-trimmed cloak, and voluminous widow’s weeds of the heaviest crêpe. Alayne thought that the old lady never looked so dignified, so courageous, as she did on these occasions, when, like some unseaworthy but gallant old ship, her widow’s veil billowing like a sail, she once again set forth from her harbour. When she was installed in a corner of the seat, with a cushion at her back, the old horses invariably made a forward plunge, for they were instantly aware of her arrival, and Rags as invariably, with a loud adjuration to Hodge to “‘old ’ard,” leaped to the horses’ heads with a great show of preventing a runaway.