The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (593 page)

“It was fun listening,” he returned.

She gave her abrupt laugh. “Well, you’ll very soon find yourself in the thick of these discussions.”

“I couldn’t,” he said positively. “Material things don’t matter to me.”

“They will. You’ll get just like the others. Why, they’d quarrel about which way a doorknob turns.”

Fitzturgis looked over his shoulder. “I see Norman,” he said, “back there with the other boys.”

“Do you want to go to him?” she asked.

He chuckled. “what a question!”

“Neither do I,” she said.

He looked down at her with detached curiosity. “You’re an odd sort of girl, Roma.”

“It would be strange if I weren’t.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

She plucked the flower from a day lily, smelled it, then threw it on the grass. The brightening moonlight just touched it where it lay.

His curiosity was no longer detached. As though to try her, he said, “You’ll be happier when you’re married.”

“Don’t!” she exclaimed almost violently.

They had reached the brink of the ravine. On the rustic bridge, in the moonlight, they could just make out the figures of Finch and Sylvia. They could hear the faint rippling of the stream.

“Shall we go down?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I’d rather be here with you — for a moment. I’ve got to pull myself out of this mood. But you needn’t stay…. Go and rescue Adeline from that playboy Maurice.”

Fitzturgis said seriously, “when I first met Maurice he liked me.”

“when I first met Norman,” she said, “I liked him.”

“And what has poor Norman done now?” asked Fitzturgis.

“Just been himself. His ambition is to become an executive. Bah!”

The contempt she put into the last syllable was remarkable.

“what quality do you admire in a man?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you. You ought to know.”

Adeline and Maurice now emerged from the drive, through a break in the trees, and began crossing the lawn toward them.

Patience had at this time gone off by herself. She had felt herself unwanted by any of the others. Like a child unwanted she had gone round the house to the side entrance and sat down on the doorstep. She folded her hands on her knees and laid her forehead on her hands. Under her breath she whistled a little inaudible tune to comfort herself.

“I’m always surprised,” Finch was saying to Sylvia, “by the smallness of this little bridge and stream when I return home after a long absence. I have so many recollections of it. I used to look on it as quite a torrent when I was small. I can remember Renny holding me over the rail when I was about four, pretending he’d drop me in. It was springtime and the water was rushing. I’ve never forgotten that. I clutched him for dear life and screamed. Then he laughed and swung me up to his shoulder…. I used to think the stream was playing a tune. I thought it had a special message for me. And I’d try to understand it and repeat the tune on the piano…. Once, when I was a boy, I came upon my brother Eden — the one that died — crying here. I never knew what about…. I remember his reading some of his poems aloud, sitting on this bridge. There’d been a fog and the boards were still damp. Do you find it damp down here now?”

“After Ireland,” she said, “nowhere seems damp.”

“I like Ireland. You’ll find it a great change to live in New York.”

“At the present time I am hating it,” she said in an expressionless tone.

“Oh,” he said, and waited for her to explain why.

She did not, but continued after a moment, “It fascinates me to visit strange places. I invariably think I’d like to live there. Just now I am thinking how delightful it must be to live at Jalna.”

“It is,” he said with boyish earnestness. “when I am away on a tour I am always longing for the day when I return. You will laugh at me, but even a scene like that about the occasional table will have a kind of heartwarming pull, though at the time I may be damned uncomfortable.”

“Do you mind my asking which you think has the better right to the table?”

“Well,” he said judicially, as though it were a matter of great moment, “the table really belongs to Renny, and Alayne is Renny’s wife, but Meg has possessed it for years. She hasn’t much that was my grandmother’s. She’s cared for it and polished it and taken pride in it. Alayne had forgotten all about it till she saw it in my house.”

“I quite agree. Your sister should have it.”

“Both Alayne and Meg,” said Finch, “are what one would call high-minded women. I’m just a blundering man, but I couldn’t struggle over an occasional table.”

“I like them both so much.”

“I’m glad of that,” he said warmly, and added after a silence, “You know, I can’t recall any painful scenes between myself and either of them. That’s a great thing to look back on, isn’t it?”

The moon was now casting its light on the bridge. Turning to Finch, Sylvia could see his face clearly. She had thought of him as an artist, absorbed in his own life, successful as a concert pianist. But now she saw his vulnerability, the marks left by the suffering of a nature too sensitive for the harsh encounters of life.

He was conscious of the gentle compassion of her face that was still in shadow. He smiled, as if to disclaim his need for compassion. He said, “See that moonlight. Isn’t it clear and bright? Do you know what I should like to do? I’d like to go to my house and see it in this light. The moon is full and it will be shining right in at the large window. Would you come with me? It’s not far. I think you’d like the walk.”

“I’d love to go,” she said, and felt a quick glow of pride at his asking her.

They returned to the house to tell that they were leaving. “Do you mind?” Sylvia asked, bending over Alayne as she sat at the card table.

“Do go,” said Alayne. “It’s a divine night for a walk. How sensible you are.”

“It’s the first time I have been told that.”

“Don’t let Finch take you through the ravine,” said Pheasant, “or that pretty dress will be torn by brambles.”

In the porch Sylvia and Finch found Meg waiting with the occasional table. “Uncle Nicholas has gone to bed,” she said. “I saw you come in — heard you say you are going to Vaughanlands — and quietly carried the table out here, without being noticed by anyone. Now what I want you to do, Finch, is to take it back with you and so put an end to any dissension on the subject.”

“But, Meggie,” he said, “wouldn’t tomorrow do?”

“You brought it to Jalna, unknown to me.” The tone of her voice now became high-flown. “It is only fair that you should take it back unknown to Alayne.”

“All right,” he grumbled, and shouldered the table.

“You don’t mind my brother’s taking the table along, do you, Mrs. Fleming?” Meg said.

“Oh no. I think it’s a good idea — probably.”

Now the two were trudging — for their romantic moonlit walk had come to that — along the country road.

“Is it heavy?” asked Sylvia. “Could I help?”

“It’s nothing…. As a matter of fact I am quite pleased to have the table again.”

They walked on in silence, their shadows distinct on the white road, Finch’s grotesque because of the occasional table. The air was vibrant with the shrilling of the locusts.

“what a strange feeling they give one,” said Sylvia, “as though there were no time to spare.”

“There isn’t,” said Finch.

She said, with regret rather than bitterness, “And I have wasted so much of my time.”

As Finch turned this over in his mind, considering what to say to her, she added, “I wasted some of my time in a nervous breakdown. Had you heard?”

“Yes.”

“It was horrible. I try to forget it.”

“I know what nerves are. I’ve gone through hell with mine.”

She stopped stock still to look at him. “It’s hard to believe,” she said. “You seem so steady.”

“So do you!”

“You appear rather cool and detached.”

“So do you.”

“We seem to be good dissemblers,” she said. “Perhaps we are just hiding from ourselves.”

“The moral is,” said Finch, “that we must get better acquainted.” He spoke with sudden gaiety, and, finding the table cumbersome in his arms, he raised it and placed its underpart on the top of his head. His shadow thus became a grotesque monster moving beside the perfect silhouette of hers, as though in menace.

“Anyone meeting us,” said Sylvia, “would take us to be a couple evicted from their home, you carrying our one piece of furniture on your head.”

“Our shadows,” he said, “the straight white road, that orchestra of locusts, seem symbolic. Surely it means something. Have you any idea what?”

“I have only one idea and it is that I’m in love with this place.”

Finch, in his strange headdress, began to caper; his shadow, wildly formed, prancing beside hers. But soon there were no shadows. They were in a wooded grove and before long stood on the terrace of his house. Moonlight lay on the stones. The front door stood open. Finch set down the table and led Sylvia into the music room. He stood entranced. Surely it was unique.

“Do you like it?” he demanded. “Please say you like it.” The moonlight on his face was what held her.

“I do,” she answered earnestly. “I think it’s the most adorable house I have ever seen.”

“Oh, I say,” he exclaimed in gratification. “That’s too much. I didn’t expect that.”

He was unexpectedly boyish, she thought. There was something almost theatrical in his exclamation, as though the acquisition of this little house were something spectacular. But then perhaps he was one of those to whom all life is spectacular. She envied him that.

He led her to the mantelshelf, where stood a porcelain figure of a Chinese goddess.

“That’s the goddess Kuan Yin,” he said. “She’s my greatest treasure. My grandmother gave her to me when I was nineteen. Gran was a hundred.”

“No wonder you cherish it.”

“I used to steal out of the house at night,” he said, “when I was supposed to be studying and go to the church to play on the organ. One night Gran heard me when I came in and called me into her room. You know where it is — right behind the staircase.”

“Adeline’s room. When she showed it me, what do you suppose she said? She said that if ever she were going to have a baby she would not go to a hospital but would have it right there in that bed.”

“That’s like Adeline. I hope she does.”

“Tell me more.”

“Well, after that,” he went on, “I used to go to her room every night — after I’d played in the church. I’d bring sherry from the dining room and we’d talk and talk. In those nights I discovered what she must have been when she was younger. I guess it was bad for her to lose her sleep and all that, but — it was wonderful for me.” He took the porcelain figure from the shelf and held it tenderly in his hand as though in that contact he re-created those scenes of the past. “She would sit propped up on her pillows, her eyes shining below her nightcap, and talk of her past — and my future.”

“That would be a great thing for you.”

He set the figure again on the mantelshelf and turned, as though deliberately, away from it.

“Not so much then, as later,” he said. “You see, she died, and … she left me all her money. Nothing seemed to matter for a while … but now, twenty-five years later, I remember so clearly things she said to me then.” He went and stood by the piano, the tips of his fingers just touching the keys.

“Shall I play?” he asked.

“Please do.”

He turned on the light of a lamp. She sat where she could see his face as he played.

“A little Bach first,” he said. “Then some Beethoven, eh?” Sylvia smiled and nodded. To speak, she felt, would be to shatter the entrancement of the moment. She sat, still as the statue of Kuan Yin, while he played. Sometimes the intricacies of the Bach stole her senses. She could not see the player. At other times she scarcely heard the music but was conscious only of the flying hands. Their isolation appeared so complete to her that the house they had left seemed far away. All her present life seemed far away. Her illness an evil dream. Strangely her thoughts moved back to the time of her marriage. She thought of it calmly. For the first time she recalled the time of her husband’s death — recalled it with calmness. It, too, was a dream — a tragic dream.

She became conscious after a time that Finch was no longer playing Bach but Beethoven. He appeared oblivious to her presence, and she was glad of that…. Her imagination now turned back to the time of her girlhood in Ireland, to the time when she had felt safe, protected, when her father and mother and brother had stood between her and all that was troubling in life. She saw herself as a long-legged tow-headed girl surrounded by primroses, bluebells, misty hills, and happy peasants. How wonderful Maitland had been, how wonderful it all had been! She smiled at the ridiculousness of it….

An hour had passed and Finch still was playing. But now he remembered her presence. His hands rested on the keys and he asked, “Tired?”

“Tired — no, rested! Please go on.”

“Something of Brahms?”

“Yes. And after that — Mozart.”

“I warn you, when I play Mozart I never know when to stop.”

“I shall be here — enjoying it — if you play all night…. If my plumage ever has been ruffled, at the present moment it is as smooth as silk.”

He gave her a glance of appreciation, both for what she said and for how she looked sitting there.

He went on playing.

The moon was gone. When, between pieces, there was a pause, the silence seemed palpable, like a silver shape, standing in the open doorway. Then, after a little, the trill of the locusts became faintly audible, grew in its tiny but persistent volume, never missing a syllable, till it was again drowned in the music.

All the pent-up desire for the piano was now loosed in Finch. The felicity he had pictured had been to play in solitude, in that house. But now he found himself playing to Sylvia, sometimes unconscious of her presence, at others acutely aware of it, as though in her he had discovered the listener perfect above all others.

Again he asked her above the music if she were tired.

She shook her head.

They lost all consciousness of time.