The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (238 page)

Her two sons next appeared: Nicholas, with a trace of his elegance of the old days; Ernest, mildly exhilarated, now that he had passed through the stage of preparation. The old phaeton creaked as their weight was simultaneously added to its burden. Then came Meg, usually flustered over some misdeed of Wake’s or Finch’s. The little boy made the last of the phaeton party, climbing to the seat beside Hodge, and
looking, in comparison with that burly figure, very small and dignified in his snowy Eton collar and kid gloves.

The rest of the family followed in the motor car, excepting Finch, who walked through fields and lanes. He preferred to do this because there was not room for him in either vehicle without squeezing, and it was hard enough for him to know what to do with his long legs and arms on ordinary occasions. He liked this Sunday walk by himself, alone with his own thoughts.

Renny drove the car, and it was his chief concern to overtake and pass the phaeton as soon as possible, for if he did not accomplish this before the narrow sloping Evandale road was reached, it was probable that the rest of the drive would take place behind the slow-trotting horses, for Grandmother would not allow Hodge to move aside so that a motor might pass her on the road. She did not want to end her days in a ditch, she said. And she would sit with the utmost composure while Renny’s car, with perhaps half a dozen others behind it, moved at a funeral pace, urging her onward with despairing honkings of their horns.

This morning was one such occasion. The drowsy Indian summer heat still continued, but the air had become heavier. The various odours from the earth and fields did not mingle or move about, but hung like palpable essences above the spot from which they rose. All objects were veiled in a thick yellowish haze, and the road dust stirred by the horses’ hoofs descended in an opaque cloud on the motor behind.

It was the morning after the scene in the orchard. Alayne had slept little. All night, as she lay tossing, changing sharply from one position to another as the recollection of Renny’s kisses made her cheeks burn and her nerves quiver, she had tried to see her position clearly, to ascertain whether she had
been truly culpable or merely the passive object of Renny’s calculated passion. But here in Jalna she found that she could not think with the same freedom of initiative as formerly. Fantastic visions floated between her and the situation she was trying to puzzle out. At last, in the pale abnormal earth light before the dawn, a friendly languor enfolded her and she sank into a quiet sleep.

Now, sitting behind Renny, she saw only the side of his face when he turned it momentarily toward Piers. She saw his thin cheekbone, the patch of reddish hair at his temple, and the compressed line of his lip and chin. Had he slept soundly, giving scarcely a second thought to what had so disturbed her? He had not appeared at dinner, tea, or supper, sending a message to the house that he and Maurice Vaughan had gone together to a sale of horses. This morning the determination to pass his grandmother’s chariot before it reached the Evandale road seemed to absorb him. Pheasant had kept them waiting, and on her he threw a black look as she scrambled into the car.

The engine balked, then started jarringly. Eden, sitting between the girls, took a hand of each and exclaimed: “Oh, my dears, let us cling together! We will come through this safely if we only cling together. Pheasant, give me your little paw.”

But, speed though the eldest Whiteoak did, he could not overtake his grandmother before she reached the Evandale road. There was the phaeton creaking along in leisurely fashion in a cloud of yellow dust, resembling an old bark in a heavy fog, Grandmother’s veil streaming like a black pirate flag.

Renny, with half-closed eyes, squinted down the road where it dropped steeply into a dusty ditch, grey with thistles.

“I believe I could get by,” he muttered to Piers. “I’ve a mind to try.”

The occupants of the phaeton recognized the peculiar squeakings of the family motor. They turned their heads, peering out of the dust fog like mariners sighting a hostile craft. Renny emphatically sounded his horn.

They could hear Grandmother shout to Hodge. At once the two old horses were restrained to a walk.

“By Judas!” exclaimed Renny. “I’d like to give the old lady a bump!”

Again he cast his eyes along the narrow strip of road between the phaeton wheels and the ditch. “I believe I’ll risk it,” he said. “Just go by like the devil and give them a scare.”

Piers protested: “You’ll put us headfirst into those thistles if you do. And you might frighten the nags.”

“True,” said Renny, gloomily, and sounded his horn with passionate repetition. Grandmother’s face glared out of the fog.

“No back chat!” she shouted; but it was evident that she was enjoying herself immensely.

Farmer Tompkins and Farmer Gregg drew up their respective cars behind, and sounded their horns simultaneously. The eldest Whiteoak frowned. It was all very well for him to torment his ancient relative, but these yokels should not. He slumped in his seat, resigning himself to the progress of a snail. He took off his hat.

The sight of his narrow head suddenly bared, the pointed ears lying close against the closely cropped red hair, had a remarkable and devastating effect on Alayne. She wanted to reach forward, put a hand on either side of it and hold it tightly. She desired to stroke it, to caress it. She gave a frightened look toward Eden, as though to implore him to cast out
these devils that were destroying her. He smiled back encouragingly. “We shall arrive,” he said, “in God’s good time. Behind us is Tompkins, who is a churchwarden, and he’s suffering torture at the thought of being late. I’ve known him since I was three and he has only been twice late in all that time, and on each occasion it was Gran’s fault. Tompkins is much worse off than we are.”

Alayne scarcely heard what he said, but she slipped her hand in his and clung to it. She was lost in speculation about what thoughts might be in that head toward which her hands were yearning. Were they of her, or had the scene in the orchard been only one of many careless encounters with women? She believed that last was not so, for he had avoided the house for the rest of the day, and this morning had palpably avoided her. There was a sombre melancholy in his face as she caught a glimpse of his reflection in the little mirror before him. But perhaps that was only because he was baffled by old Mrs. Whiteoak.

What had he done to her that had filled her with such unrest? She had got up in the night and crept to the window and, in the mystery of the moonlight, seen the orchard, and even been able to discern the curving bulk of the tree he had felled. She had felt again the hot passion of his kisses.

One thing of which she was keenly sensible this morning was her new intimacy with Pheasant. Every time their eyes met, the young girl gave her a little smile, ingenuous as a child’s. Alayne even fancied that Piers was less surly with her than formerly. She had told Eden of the talk with Pheasant, and he had seemed rather amused at Alayne’s desire to make friends with her. “She’s a dear quaint kid,” he had remarked. “But she’ll soon bore you. However, perhaps you’re so bored already that even the company of Pheasant—”

“Nonsense,” she had interrupted, more shortly than she had ever before spoken to him. “I am not bored at all, but Pheasant attracts me. I think I could become very fond of her. She has unusual possibilities.”

Now Eden sat between them, holding a hand of each and smiling tolerantly. He did not care if they never got to church.

The bell was ringing as the car chugged up the steep little hill and passed through the gate behind the church. Heads of people mounting the precipitous steps at the front could be seen bobbing upward, as though ascending from a well. Golden sunshine lay like a caress on the irregular green mounds and mossgrown headstones of the churchyard. There was one new grave, on the fresh sandy top of which a wreath of drooping flowers lay

Wakefield came and put his hand into Alayne’s.

“That’s Mrs. Miller’s grave,” he said. “She had a baby, and they’re both in there. Isn’t it terrible? It was a nice little girl and they’d named it Ruby Pearl. However, Miller has five girls left, so it might be worse.”

“Hush, dear,” said Alayne, squeezing his hand. “Are you going to sit with me?”

Wakefield had taken pride in sitting by Alayne and finding, with a great fluttering of leaves, the places in the prayer book for her. Now he looked doubtful.

“I’d like to,” he said, “but I think Meggie feels lonely at my leaving her. You see, I’ve sat beside her ever since I was very little and used to go to sleep with my head on her lap. Look, they’re getting Granny out of the phaeton. I think I’d better rush over and see that the sexton’s holding the door wide open.”

He flew across the grass.

Old Mrs. Whiteoak shuffled, with scarcely perceptible progress, along the slat walk that led to the church door. Renny and Piers supported her, and Nicholas, Ernest, and Meg followed close behind, carrying her various bags, books, and cushions. Under her beetling rust-coloured brows her piercing gaze swept the faces of those she passed. From side to side her massive old head moved with royal condescension. Sometimes her face was lighted by a smile, as she recognized an old friend, but this was seldom, for most of her friends were long dead. The smile flashed—the mordant and mischievous grin for which the Courts had been famous—at the Misses Lacey, daughters of a retired British admiral. “How’s your father, girls?” she panted.

The “girls,” who were sixty-four and sixty-five, exclaimed simultaneously: “Still bedridden, dear Mrs. Whiteoak, but so bright!”

“No right to be bedridden. He’s only ninety. How’s your mother?”

“Ah, dear Mrs. Whiteoak, Mamma has been dead nine years!” cried the sisters in unison.

“God bless me, I forgot! I’m sorry.” She shuffled on.

Now the grin was bestowed on a bent labourer nearly as old as herself, who stood, hat in hand, to greet her, the fringe of silvery hair that encircled his pink head mingling with his patriarchal beard. He had driven Nicholas and Ernest about in their pony cart when they were little boys.

“Good morning, Hickson. Ha! These slats are hard to get over. Grip my arm tighter, Renny! Stop staring about like a fool, Piers, and hang on to me.”

The old man pressed forward, showing his smooth gums in a smile of infantile complacence.

“Mrs. Whiteoak, ma’am, I just am wantin’ to tell ye that I’ve got my first great-great-grandchild.”

“Good for you, Hickson! You’re smarter than I am—I haven’t got even one great yet. Don’t drag at me, Piers. One would think I was a load of hay—ha! and you a cart-horse. Tell Todd to stop clanging that bell. It’s deafening me. Ha! Now for the steps.”

Eden and Alayne had fallen in behind Pheasant and Meg, who had Wakefield by the hand. Alayne wondered what the Corys and Rosamund Trent would have thought if they could have seen her at that moment, moving in that slow procession, rather like courtiers behind an ancient queen. Already Alayne felt a family pride in the old lady. There was a certain fierce grandeur about her. Her nose was magnificent. She looked as though she should have a long record of intrigues, lovers, and duels behind her, yet she had been buried most of her life in this backwater. Ah, perhaps that was the secret of her strong individualism. The individualism of all the Whiteoaks. They thought, felt, and acted with Victorian intensity. They threw themselves into living, with unstudied sincerity. They did not philosophize about life, but no emotion was too timeworn, too stuffy, to be dragged forth by them and displayed with vigour and abandon.

Now they were in the cool, dim church.

The bell had ceased. They were ranged in two pews, one behind the other. Their heads, blond, brown, and grey, were bent. Grandmother’s great veil fell across Wake’s thin shoulders. She wheezed pathetically.

Little Miss Pink at the organ broke into the processional hymn. Wakefield could see, between the forms of those grown-ups before him, the white-clad figure of Mr. Fennel. How different he looked on Sunday, with his beard all tidy
and his hair parted with moist precision! And there was Renny, surpliced too. How had he got into the vestry and changed so quickly? A Whiteoak always read the Lessons. Grandfather had done it for years. Then Father had had his turn. And Uncle Ernest still read them sometimes when Renny was away—all the time Renny had been at the War. Would Wakefield ever read them himself, he wondered? He pictured himself rolling out the words grandly, not in Renny’s curt, inexpressive way.

A burst of melody rose from the Whiteoak pews. Strong voices, full of vitality, that bore down upon little Miss Pink and her organ like boisterous waves and swept them along, gasping and wheezing, while the choir tried vainly to hold back. And even Renny in the chancel was against the choir and with the family. The choir, with the organ so weak and Miss Pink so vacillating, had no chance at all against the Whiteoaks.

“Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.”

Mr. Fennel’s voice was slow and sonorous. Heavy autumn sunshine lay in translucent planes across the kneeling people. Alayne had come to love this little church, its atmosphere of simplicity, of placid acceptance of all she questioned. She kept her eyes on the prayer book, which Eden and she shared. Grandmother, in a husky whisper, directly behind them, was asking Meggie for a peppermint. When it was given to her she dropped it, and it rolled under the seat and was lost. She was given another, and sucked it triumphantly. The odours of the peppermint and of the stuff of her crêpe veil were exuded from her. Wakefield dropped his collection money, and Uncle Nick tweaked his ear. Piers and Pheasant whispered, and Grandmother poked at Piers with
her stick. Renny mounted the step behind the brass eagle of the lectern and began to read the First Lesson.

“If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.