The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (319 page)

She began to be really annoyed at the lateness of the arrival of her relatives. She sat down by the table, however, and held herself together. The firelight (an unnecessary extravagance, for the afternoon was still warm) played over
the folds of her black satin dress and maliciously accentuated a dark mole on her left cheek.

A step sounded in the hall and a small spare woman appeared in the doorway. She was Mrs. Thomas Court, Augusta’s cousin by marriage. Her husband had been a son of old Adeline’s youngest brother. She had lived, since her marriage, in Ireland, but had remained in all aspects English, as Augusta was inherently English though brought up in Canada. She advanced into the room in a quick, jerky walk like a little wound-up figure. Her hair, dragged back from the forehead, vied with Augusta’s in purplish darkness. She had a complexion even more sallow, but she brightened it with two spots of rouge, and her dress, though ornate and oldfashioned, was sprightly. Her features were small, her light grey eyes intense, and the expression of her thin-lipped mouth one of unyielding conceit. Mingled with these qualities was a kind of jaunty good humour. She wore a black tailored suit, with a hairline stripe, the skirt of which reached her instep, just disclosing her rather heavy black boots that squeaked irritably as she walked. She walked straight to the window, with a side glance at the tea table.

Outdoors a shadow had fallen.

“Is it raining?” asked Augusta.

“Just beginning to spot,” replied Mrs. Court, her eyes on the paved terrace.

“I wish it would rain. The flowers need it.”

“I hope it doesn’t. Dry weather agrees with me much better. It suits my ear.”

“How is your ear?”

“Going chug-chug, the same as ever.”

Augusta deepened her contralto tones. “Dear me, how very aggravating!”

Mrs. Court wheeled and stared at her. “Aggravating doesn’t express it at all; it’s maddening.”

She advanced, with a businesslike air and squeaking boots, to the tea table. She pointed with a knuckly forefinger at the plate of scones. “Give me one of those and a cup of tea, and I’ll carry them to my room. Relations don’t want outsiders poking noses into their reunions.”

“I haven’t rung for the tea yet. And your leaving us is quite unnecessary.”

“Very well.” She sat down on an unyielding chair with buttoned-in upholstery. “But you’ll not be able to make so free with each other.”

“There is no need to make free,” said Augusta, rather stiffly.

Mrs. Court played a tattoo on the floor with her heels. “It makes me jumpy,” she explained, “to go so long without my tea.”

Augusta regarded her with disapproval. “Where is Sarah?” she asked, in order to take her cousin’s mind off her stomach.

Mrs. Court tattooed harder than ever. “Out in the rain. The girl’s mad. She quite likes to get wet. And when the sun is shining she’s as likely as not moping in the house. I call her Mole. My pet Mole.” She wagged her head, in recognition of her own wit.

“She is a very sweet girl,” said Augusta, “mole or no mole. And I only hope she and Finch will make friends.”

“No boy of twenty-one will ever give a second thought to her. She’s too quiet. Boys like romps. Sometimes I call her Mouse, my pet Mouse.”

Augusta was listening to a sound outside. “Here is the car!” she cried, and hurried to meet them.

Mrs. Court squeaked, with even more alacrity, to the bell-cord and gave it a tug.

“Bring in the tea,” she said to the maid, “and we’d better have an extra pot.” She stood stock-still then, in the corner, watching the embraces of the family.

Augusta turned to her at last. “Oh, you have rung for tea! Now you must come and speak to my brothers and nephew. Of course you remember Nicholas and Ernest.”

They shook hands, recalling how the last time they had met had been in London during the Coronation ceremonies of King George.

“Dear Edwin was alive then,” said Augusta,

“Thomas was alive too,” said Mrs. Court, not to be outdone.

They settled about the tea table, and Augusta noted how well her brothers looked, but she was a little disappointed in Finch’s appearance. He had the same half-starved look. It was rather hard to reflect that this lanky youth was the possessor of her mother’s fortune, when it would have graced so well Ernest’s courtly presence. Not a large fortune, but how important in a family of such restricted means! Yet, when Finch, sitting close beside her, on a chair too low for him, gave her one of his affectionate looks, her heart warmed towards him and she plied him with buttered scones. She could hardly believe she had him here. A young man. And it seemed only yesterday when he was in his cradle! Finch, with even greater wonder, stared about the room with its innumerable ornaments and framed photographs. On the walls hung watercolours of Scottish scenery painted by Sir Edwin. On the mantel was a photograph of him looking out of pale eyes, between thin whiskers. There was a photograph of Wake, in the starry-eyed beauty of five. There was one of
Eden and Piers in white sailor suits, with a dog between them. On the piano, a large one of Renny on Landor, the year he had won the King’s Plate. Then there was a pretty one of Meg with Patience. And a still prettier one of Pheasant with Mooey. Everywhere he looked he saw photographs of Whiteoaks. Nicholas, Ernest, and Augusta in their young and middle-aged days. Gran, as a handsome woman of fifty, in evening dress. And what was that on the small table just beside him?
Himself
at wild-eyed thirteen! It had been taken just after his first day’s shooting, and he held the gun, in the picture, with a terrified look. No wonder he had looked terrified, for the very next week he had tripped with it, when out with Piers, and nearly sent a bullet through Piers’s back. He had got a licking for his stupidity, and the gun had been taken away from him. It was nothing short of an insult to be faced with that picture in the moment of his arrival.

“I want you,” he whispered, “to burn that awful picture of me.”

“But I like it, dear. It’s the only one I have of you.”

“I’ll have one taken for you while I’m here.”

She gave him more tea, and again he whispered:

“I say, where’s the girl?”

Augusta looked mysterious. “She’s like you; she’s devoted to Nature. She forgets all about her meals!”

“That’s a lot like me!” And he helped himself to more honey.

“I hope,” he added, “that she doesn’t look like her mother.”

“Sh.”

“But they’re talking to her, one in each ear. She couldn’t possibly hear me.”

“That is her aunt by marriage. Sarah is an orphan and has been brought up by Mrs. Thomas. I must tell you about her father later.”

A shower was now beating against the panes. As though coming directly out of it Sarah Court appeared in the doorway and came slowly toward the group about the tea table.

What had Finch expected? An impetuous Irish girl, late for tea because she liked being out in the wet? A curly haired sprite, dancing in with rain-dappled cheeks? A sturdy matter-of-fact young person? Whatever he had vaguely expected, it was certainly not this.

She came with a long slow gait, that imparted almost no motion to the upper part of the body. That part, held with an erectness unknown to the present generation, moved like the torso of a statue carried on a float. Her dark dress was open at the throat, but buttoned tightly down the front with the effect of an old-fashioned basque, having also the effect of that garment in a short continuation below the waist. Her skirt was too long for fashion, and was arranged at the back in a manner suggestive of a bustle. Her arms were held rigidly at her sides, her hands had an extraordinary pallor. This pallor was equalled in the profile turned toward Finch. Her black hair was brushed back from her high forehead in glossy smoothness, and worn in a heavy braided coil at the nape.

Finch saw that she had the Court nose, but that was not what held his gaze with a sense of something remembered. As she was being greeted by his uncles, who apparently had seen her as a small child in Ireland, his mind flew here and there among his recollections of the past, striving to fix on something that would explain this strange sense of having seen her before. It had fastened on nothing, when he heard his aunt’s voice introducing them.

He still stood staring at her, unable to detach his mind. She came, however, to him holding out her hand. Something
in the gesture gave him what he was looking for. Even as they shook hands he did not see her. His consciousness was occupied in the attic at Jalna. He saw himself in the lumber-room on a rainy day, crouching by the window, absorbed in old copies of
Punch
taken from a toppling dust-covered pile that year by year increased, for none were ever thrown away. He was looking at the picture of a Victorian drawing-room in which a whiskered gentleman was bowing over the hand of a lady. Other ladies were standing by. They were all alike, and each and all bore a striking resemblance to Sarah Court.

That was it! She was like a drawing by du Maurier.

He was so relieved by the discovery that he smiled delightedly at her. She smiled back, and he saw how the thin, delicate lips parted, showing unexpectedly small, even teeth. He thought he had never seen an upper lip so short, a chin so jutting.

Mrs. Court was saying:

“Well, Mole! So you’ve come out, now that the sun is gone!”

Sarah Court’s lips closed tightly. She fixed her eyes on a ring with a large green stone, which she began nervously to twist on her forefinger.

Her aunt leant forward, as though she would pry under the lowered lids.

“Well, Mouse! Quiet as ever?” She turned to Ernest. “I call her Mouse, she’s so silent. It’s very irritating to me when I’ve no other companion.”

Nicholas said—“Many years ago there was a girl we called Mouse. She was a ballet dancer.”

“Was she quiet?” asked Mrs. Court eagerly.

“No, she was rather noisy. But she’d a peaky little face, and small bright eyes.”

“I enjoy a good ballet/” said Mrs. Court, “but I’ve no pleasure in the Russian ballet. I hate Russian music. It’s nothing but a fantastic noise compared with Bach, or Handel, or Mozart. When Sarah begins to do the rough-and-tumble of it on her fiddle I get out of the room. It gives me the fidgets.” And she played a tattoo with her heels to show how really fidgety she could become.

Her niece had seated herself and continued to turn the green ring on her finger until Finch carried a cup of tea to her. She helped herself to bread and jam with something of the concentration of a child. Finch was so conscious of her withdrawal, he hesitated to speak to her. However, there was no need for conversation. Mrs. Court only stopped talking long enough to snatch a mouthful of scone or tea, and her harsh, yet somehow not disagreeable, voice required no encouraging response.

“Do you keep up your music?” she asked Nicholas.

“I play a little occasionally, but I notice that my hands are getting stiff.”

“Is that rheumatism?”

“I daresay.”

“And you’ve gout, too?”

He grunted.

“Now, I wonder if your blood pressure is high?”

“Shouldn’t be surprised. Nothing my body does surprises me now.”

She turned to Finch. “We must get you playing. We’ll make a musical time of it.”

She talked of music she had heard in the principal capitals of Europe. “But I can’t afford to travel now,” she said. “I just stick at home in Ireland. Mouse and I make our own music. Don’t we, Mouse?”

How ludicrous, Finch thought, to call that remote-looking girl Mouse! He got up his courage and said:

“You play the violin awfully well, I expect.”

Her aunt had received no answer to her question and had apparently expected none, for she continued to talk without hesitating; but Sarah turned to Finch with a peculiar smile, with a certain elfish mischief in it, and answered:

“You’ll know that when you hear me.”

It was the first time he had heard her say more than a monosyllable. Her voice, he thought, was the very distillation of sweetness, all the more noticeable following, as it did, the gruff tones of her aunt. And it had a muted sound, as though a secret being within her spoke for her. He tried to draw her into conversation, but he was awkward and she was either shy or aloof.

He was glad to escape into the garden when the others went to their rooms. He stood on the drive drinking in the air that was so fresh after London, his eyes opened wide, as though they would take in, at one extravagant glance, the scene that lay unrolled before him.

The shower had passed and a light wind was blowing the rain clouds from the upper sky. In the west the sun had emerged from behind piled-up masses of snowy vapour, the fantastic shapes of which were outlined by his brilliance. But some of this triumphant radiance was reserved for the earth where fields and trees, wet with rain, showed their own colours intensified to celestial brightness.

The house stood on a hill overlooking the village of Nymet Crews and, beyond that, the fields, woods, and pastures that stretched to the edge of Dartmoor. From the village, with its square-towered Norman church and white cottages, there was another rise of land toward the moor, and
on this stretch every irregularity of field and meadow was outlined by the flowering hedgerows. The pattern of it was unrolled before him like a rich tapestry The deep red earth of one field lay beside the pale red of another. The tender green of pasture against the silver green oats. The darkness of a spinney next a field of corn that held the sun. He could see lanes, between tall hedges, threading their way to the open moor, there to be lost. He could see, looming above all, the hyacinth-blue contours of the Tors. The air held an almost palpable sweetness, unknown to him, of garden flowers, of new-mown grass, of the thousand wild flowers of the countryside and hedge, of Dartmoor itself.

Lyming Hall was an unpretentious house of no particular period, but its gardens, lawns, and small park were kept in excellent order. Augusta was proud of the commanding view over the countryside. The fact that there were no large landowners about and few people of wealth gave her a pleasant feeling of superiority.