The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (468 page)

Yet he was pleasurably excited as he went down the stairs. Christopher was waiting for him. They went straight to the dining room. Its ceiling was so low that Wakefield could have put up his hand and touched it. He liked this room as much as he disliked the parlor. It belonged to a much earlier period, with its oak refectory table and Welsh dresser and dark blue and red Mason stoneware. The flagged floor was bare, so were the oak walls; there were no curtains to the small-paned casements that stood open to the pure air from the mountains.

He could see Molly in this and her smile drew him closer as he sat down by her side.

Gemmel was already sitting at the table in a high-backed leather chair. Her peculiar characteristics were for the moment obliterated. “She looks,” thought Wakefield, “like any other girl, till she moves her head and her eyes slant up at you.” At her side the youngest sister seated herself. Molly had briefly introduced her as Garda. She was sixteen, shy and too plump. She looked sturdy and wholesome. Christopher sat in an armchair at one end of the table.

“This is Father’s place,” he said, “but I’m sitting here tonight. He’s feeling seedy.”

At the same moment there was a heavy thud in the room above. The brother and sisters gave each other a startled look, then Molly began to talk eagerly of what she meant to do on her holiday. Every time she looked at Christopher their eyes smiled. The place at the other end of the table was still vacant. A middle-aged servant brought in the soup. Molly gave Wakefield a thick square of bread.

“It’s homemade,” she said. “I used to dream about it in London.”

“Delidgious!” he agreed. The word was a joke between them. An Italian waiter in a restaurant they went to in Soho always said it that way.

“Delidgious!” repeated Gemmel. “How lovely!”

Garda began to laugh and could scarcely stop herself. Her colour became rosy in her cheeks.

Wakefield was startled to see that the seat at the end of the table facing Christopher was now occupied by Althea. She was fair and slender but not in the way Molly was fair and slender. Althea’s fairness was pale, almost wan; her slenderness that of extremely small bones. Yet she was rather tall. She sat with eyes downcast, like a nun, her long narrow hands moving nervously.

Molly looked at her anxiously. “Althea, this is Wakefield Whiteoak,” she said.

“How do you do.” Althea’s voice was scarcely audible. She did not raise her eyes.

“It’s so kind of you to have me,” said Wake, his brilliant gaze trying to force a return glance.

She neither looked up nor answered. She did not speak again during the meal. But her silence was not a chill or damping one. Indeed a smile played once about her mouth when some nonsense passed between Wakefield and Molly.

Wakefield found Molly’s family, with the exception of Althea, easy to get on with. Christopher was always ready to laugh at other people’s jokes. The accounts of theatrical life filled him with an amused wonder. Wake thought he had never met a young fellow of twenty-one so unsophisticated, so naïve. He felt like a grandfather beside him and, being the youngest of a large family, enjoyed the feeling.

After dinner the two young men sat on the bench in the porch smoking. Before them the dark humps of the mountains rose and fell till they melted into the hyacinth horizon. There were other small farms tucked away in the valleys but none in sight. In this light the mountains no longer seemed granite-hard but malleable and changeful, as though they took on new postures, moving like ponderous bedfellows to curl closer for the night. The sheep huddled by the Abbey, becoming one with its paleness. Sometimes out of this pale fleecy bulk came the plaintive bleat of a young lamb.

“How peaceful it is here,” said Wake. “You know, in some ways, I envy you living in such a prehistoric sort of place. You may read of upheavals and war but you can’t believe in them.”

“I like it here,” said Christopher, puffing at his pipe. “It just suits me. I don’t think I shall ever want to live anywhere else.”

“What would you feel if war came?”

“Oh, I’d join up at once, but I should hate it,” he answered simply, and added — “Do you think there’s going to be war?”

Always the same question, wherever you went! Always that look in the eyes, as though the questioner had a vain hope of reassurance.

“Yes,” Wakefield said. “I think it’s coming but perhaps not very soon. I hope not soon.” He laughed and added, “I don’t want you to leave your lambs, or Molly and me our play.”

“I don’t think it will come,” said Christopher tranquilly.

Wakefield had a glimpse of Garda, laboring up the stairs, carrying a large tray. “Dinner for Papa,” he thought. He discovered that Gemmel’s room was off the parlor.

Christopher said: “I expect she’d like to be with us.” He went into the house and returned carrying Gemmel on his back. She smiled mischievously over his shoulder at Wakefield. Christopher deposited her on the seat beside him. Soon they were joined by Molly and Garda. A slip of a moon had risen above the Abbey. Its grey stones looked ethereal now. It might float away at any moment like a cloud. The breeze was light and playful as though it mocked the austerity of the mountains. The boys and girls sat talking together like old friends. But Gemmel could not leave Christopher in peace. She teased him. She got his pipe from him and hid it behind her and seemed to expect admiration from Wake for these tricks. Molly spoke to her as though she were a child.

After a while Christopher said — “Let’s sing, shall we?”

“All right,” said Molly, “if Wake doesn’t mind.”

“I’d love to hear you,” he said.

“You must sing too.”

Wake saw that Althea had come into the porch. She sat in the corner beside Christopher, half hidden by his broad shoulder.

How they could sing! Their young voices filled the night air with silvery strength and sweetness. It was like the moonlight turned into song, Wake thought. He added his own good tenor to their voices. Molly exclaimed: —

“It’s just what we needed! Isn’t it, Christopher?”

“It’s splendid,” he said with satisfaction. “There’s nothing I like in the evening so well as singing.”

They sang for an hour. Wakefield strained his ears to catch the separate sound of Althea’s voice. He did, and thought it was the best of all. He turned to smile at her. She put up her hand as though to shield her face and, after a moment, went into the house.

A casement upstairs was thrown open and a man’s voice called out: —

“If you’re going to keep up that row any longer, I wish you’d go into the mountains.”

Dead silence fell in the porch. The casement closed.

“Father is not very well today,” said Christopher. “Perhaps we’d better go to bed.”

Wakefield realized that he was very tired. The little group dissolved but he had a moment alone with Molly.

“I love your family,” he said.

“I’m so glad. I never hoped you’d fit in so well. But then, you’re so adaptable — you’d fit in anywhere. You mustn’t mind Father’s speaking like that. He’ll be all right tomorrow. Probably very glad to see you.”

“Shall we walk together on the mountain tomorrow?”

“Yes. Good night, Wake.” She swayed almost imperceptibly toward him. He put his arm about her and laid his cheek against hers. He would not kiss her. No — that precious moment was to be kept for the mountaintop.

Mr. Griffith’s voice came from above. “If they’ve stopped that row down there you may open my window.”

“Don’t mind,” said Molly. “He isn’t really like that. He loves singing himself. He has a fine bass voice.”

“Has he?” said Wakefield lamely.

Christopher reappeared in the doorway.

“I’ve been listening to the news,” he said. “I don’t at all like the sound of it.”

Molly and Wake gave each other an anxious, yet shamefaced, look. They were thinking about their play. They couldn’t help it.

IN THE RUINED ABBY

A
LL THE BEAUTY
of the night sky foretold nothing. The next day the rain came down relentlessly. It drummed on the roof like an advancing army. It ran down the mountainsides in rivulets and drew a curtain between the house and the ruin of the Abbey. Christopher and the shepherd, attending a sick sheep, came in dripping. Molly was bitter in her disappointment.

“It will do this for a week, you’ll see!” she said, in despair. “We might as well have stayed in London.”

“It will clear,” said her brother. “This can’t last more than a day or two.”

“You’re always so horribly optimistic, you don’t cheer me at all. You make me feel worse.”

He looked at her ruefully. “Anyhow,” he said, “you will have seen us.”

“I know, and that is worth everything to me, but here is Wake longing to explore the mountain.”

“Here am I,” said Wake, “completely happy.”

But he wondered when he would have Molly to himself. Garda brought out her collection of butterflies to show him. Christopher rarely had another young man to talk to and he wanted Wakefield’s views on a number of subjects. When Wake slipped into the chill parlor, hoping Molly would follow, he found Gemmel peering up at him from beside the hearth. She was knitting.

“I’m beginning a pullover for your birthday,” she said. “Molly tells me it is this month. Come here, please, and let me see how the colour suits you.”

He went and sat down beside her. She held the golden-brown wool next his cheek.

“Lovely!” she exclaimed.

“It’s frightfully kind of you.”

“Do you like me?”

“How can I help — when you’re so kind?”

“I mean do you like me for myself?”

“Of course.”

“How much?”

“As much as that.” He held up his hands.

She pushed her head between them. Her hair was thick and lively and there was a look in her eyes.

“Well — are you going to?” she asked.

He kissed her lightly, quickly.

“I’ve won!” she exclaimed, laughing.

“What?”

“Garda and I had a bet as to which of us could get you to kiss her first. She’d no luck with the butterflies. She told me so.”

Wake laughed. “She didn’t give me time.”

“Neither did I.”

She heard her father’s heavy step on the stair. She began to talk fast about her knitting.

Mr. Griffith came into the room slowly. He held out his hand with a genial smile.

“I’m so sorry I was laid up yesterday,” he said. “I hope the children are making you comfortable.”

“I’m teaching him to knit,” said Gemmel.

Her father smiled down at her indulgently. He was very different from what Wake had expected. He had pictured him as somewhat battered and disgruntled but here was a man well-groomed, well pleased, apparently, with himself and his situation. He was blond, stoutish, and tall. He had a smile that took one into his confidence, a voice that made his most trivial remark telling. No wonder his family stood a good deal from him. He added pleasantly: —

“I heard your singing last night and wished I could take part in it. I’m very fond of a good song.”

It was as though a middle-aged London man-about-town had remarked how much he enjoyed a good game of croquet.

He asked a number of questions about Canada and said he had often considered taking his family out there. The morning passed in talk. In the afternoon it was the same. Mr. Griffith dominated the scene. They were like children beside him. He arranged amusements like a bachelor uncle entertaining a rather awkward lot of nieces and nephews. He made Christopher sing. He made Garda, who twice broke down doing it, play a piece on the piano. He made Gemmel recite Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” which she did so well that Wake felt a new pang at her helplessness. That girl, he thought, might have somehow made a name for herself. Then Mr. Griffith himself recited and you could see where Gemmel had her talent. Obviously he was proud of his children and seldom had a chance for showing them off. He tried to persuade Althea to display her sketches but she fled from the room. She never spoke.

The rain came pouring down till evening. The rivulets swelled to rushing streams down the mountainside. The sheep, with the lambs trotting beside them, went into the Abbey and took possession there. The sky rested, in solid greyness, on the mountaintops. But at evening it broke into swinging purple clouds as a strong wind whistled inland from the West. The rain lessened, blew slantwise, then ceased. A clear greenish blue fringed the rims of the clouds. Molly and Wake put on windbreakers and went out. For the first time they were really alone together.

The air lay like a cool hand on their hot cheeks. They wanted to run up the steep stony path. They were aimlessly wild like birds suddenly set free. They ran here and there, picking up odd stones, finding mountain flowers that, for all their fragility, had captured the wonder of the mountains in their tiny staring faces.

The Abbey rose pale and rain-washed before them. The sunlight, piercing the purple of the clouds, flickered over the delicately wrought pillars. The stone groinings supported little more than the stormy sky. Here one of the bosses had fallen from a column and lay like a broken lily, there a pilaster was topped by a bird’s nest built of mountain grass. The sheep had discovered that the rain had ceased and they came shouldering each other through the Abbot’s own door, all but one who lay with her lamb beside her on the fallen altar. She lay chewing her cud and blinking coldly at Wake and Molly through her white eyelashes.

“It’s too overwhelmingly picturesque,” thought Wake. “I can’t say what I want to here. I wish I’d said it in London.”

Molly looked the sheep over with an appraising eye. “They’re a nice lot,” she said. “Christopher is pleased with them.”

“Yes. They’re a lovely flock. It’s all lovely and strange and quite unbelievable. Shall we really be back with Ninian Fox next week? I can’t imagine it. I almost wish we could stay here forever.”

“You’d tire of it.”

“You forget that I lived in a monastery for a year.”

“So you did! But I had sooner be working in London.”

“Well — I want to be wherever you are.”

Something in his voice made her suddenly aware of herself physically. She moved, as though for more space, to one of the windows and leaned out. He followed her.