The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (323 page)
Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
He had not hoped for any intimate companionship such as this, had not dreamed that she would reveal anything of
her inner self to him. Now he found that he could not keep pace with her careless and cold revelations. He would have liked to escape from her at that moment to brood on her mystery without the necessity of making talk. Yet she seemed not to expect comment from him, and, when he uttered a lame sentence or two, she made no reply but withdrew into her former immobility.
The young moon had passed behind a tall elm, and, as the branches were tossed in the wind, moonlight fell fitfully into the garden, illuminating now one flower bed, now another, now casting its silver veil on Sarah’s face and hands.
Looking at her hands, like the hands of a silver statue, and remembering how they drew the music from her violin, he longed to touch them. Timidly he laid one of his own upon them. They were very cold.
“I’m afraid you are cold,” he said nervously. “I think we had better walk about. Would you like that?”
She rose at once without answering him. They went through the garden gate, along a stone-paved passage, and crossed the tennis court.
“Do you play tennis?” he asked, and he wondered if her reason for rising so abruptly had been her desire to put aside the touch of his hand.
“A little. I wish I played better.”
“I will see if I can get Aunt Augusta to have the court put in order.”
She gave one of her small malicious smiles. “Perhaps we could get the two at the lodge to join us. I’d like that.”
He looked round at her, startled. “Would you really? I didn’t think you knew of their existence.”
“I only wish I could meet them! I’ve passed the lodge time and again, wanting to speak to them. But all I saw was
the curtain moving, as though they were peering out at me, thinking how horrid I was.”
“Well,” he said, frowning in anxiety at what he was going to suggest, “we might go and call on them now, if you’re not afraid of offending your aunt.”
“I don’t mind offending her in the least,” she replied coolly, and turned in the direction of the drive.
She walked quickly, as though she were doing something eagerly anticipated. They passed in and out of shadow and moonlight, her bright shawl flaming and darkening like the plumage of an exotic bird.
Halfway down the drive he offered her a cigarette, which she at first declined, then suddenly accepted, saying—“Yes, give me one! I’ll do everything tonight that Aunt would hate.”
He had only to see her put it in her lips and light it from the match he held to know that she was well accustomed to smoking.
He looked at her almost sternly, for he felt something devious about her. “When do you do it?” he asked.
“When I am being Mole.” And she held up a thin forefinger with a swarthy stain on it.
They found Eden sitting in the porch of the lodge on a tilted chair, like a workman after his day was done. He regarded their approach with an incredulous smile, then got to his feet.
“I’ve brought our cousin, Miss Court, to see you,” said Finch, feeling suddenly daredevil and at his ease. Was it the support of Eden’s presence that produced this feeling?
They shook hands gravely, and Eden led the way indoors. Finch had heard Minny scampering upstairs to tidy herself. Yet, when she came down, he wondered what the process of
tidying had been, she looked so far from neat. He came to the conclusion that she had gone to powder her face, which had the pink bloom of a peach in the candlelight. Her milk-white neck looked thicker than when he had seen her last, her crossed legs, under her too-short skirt, stouter. But her slanting eyes held the same challenge and gaiety, and her lips looked ready as ever to part in laughter or song. She had on an orange-coloured jumper, a blue skirt, and “nude” stockings. Finch wondered how Eden could tolerate this combination of colours. But then, Eden seldom seemed to notice things.
Minny made Sarah sit in the one comfortable chair, close to the fire, because she looked so pale. Minny’s own cheeks glowed beneath the thick layer of powder. Her generous mouth smiled welcome, and this astonished Finch after what Eden had told him of her feelings toward Sarah. Sarah spread out the long fringe of her shawl and inhaled the smoke of her cigarette as though she were inhaling the very sweetness of life. She preened herself like a bird, and Minny was apparently delighted to entertain her. Eden too was delighted. He was beginning to feel the need of some society other than Minny’s. He heaped dry faggots on the fire, which crackled into swift ruddy flames. He sat down on the narrow ingle-seat facing Sarah. He thought Finch’s description of her very superficial. He read her with a far more subtle understanding.
Minny talked a great deal, directing almost all her conversation to Sarah, who sat motionless, seeming to drink in all that Minny said. She told of amusing things that had happened to them abroad, now and then appealing to Eden’s memory to supply some foreign name which she invariably mispronounced. Before long she began to speak of Eden’s
poetry, of which she was very proud. It was the only poetry, she said, that she had ever been able to read, even though so much of it was hard to understand. Finch reminded Eden that he had promised to read him some of the poems he had written since leaving home.
Eden took a candle and went up the stairs that ascended from a corner of the room. Minny said—“He keeps everything he has in such perfect order.” Soon he returned, carrying a folio of papers. Hot wax had dripped on his hand, and he went to Minny like a child to show it.
He sat again in the ingle-nook and read by the light of the flames. His voice, always musical, took on new, full tones when he read his poems.
“These are some bits from the long poem ‘New France.’I can’t read all of it. It’s not in order,” he said.
He read fragments which he called—“Indian Braves as Galley Slaves,” “The Loves of Bigot,” “A Countess of Quebec,” and “Song of the Ursuline Nuns.”
The two young women made little murmuring noises of approval after each poem. Finch liked them immensely and said so. He was almost overcome when Eden said suddenly to Sarah—“Do you know, this boy has been paying my way for a year and a half. If it had not been for him I don’t know what I should have done.”
“That was good of him,” she said simply. “But how he must have liked doing it!”
“Did you like doing it?” Eden asked of him.
Finch assented, uttering the sudden guffaw of his hobbledehoy days, which still came from him in moments of embarrassment.
“These,” said Eden, taking up some sheets of paper clipped together, “are some things I wrote in Italy.”
“In Italy!” gasped Finch. “Why, I didn’t know you were in Italy!”
“Yes, I had to go. It was beastly cold in France and I’d got a cough.”
“We went on a cheap excursion,” put in Minny, easily.
“How splendid!” sighed Finch. “How I wish I might go!”
“Don’t be a silly young blighter,” said Eden. “You can go where you like.”
“Perhaps I’ll go with Arthur Leigh. He’s over here.”
Sarah looked expectantly into Eden’s face, waiting for the poems. He read three. The last one was “To a Young Nightingale Practising his Song in Sicily.” His listeners agreed that this was best of all
“It’s beautiful! It’s beautiful!” said Sarah, clasping her fingers tightly together. The shawl fell from her, as she leaned toward Eden, and her bare shoulders and arms were exposed to the firelight.
Eden was made happy by this approval. Soon he and Minny went to the larder together. Their whispers and the clink of china could be heard by the other two.
“Do you like them?” whispered Finch. “Are you glad you came?” He was worried lest her aunt might have missed her.
She nodded composedly.
Eden and Minny returned, he carrying a bottle in each hand, and she a large dish on which were arranged several sorts of cake, the icing of which, chocolate and pink and white, had crumbled and were intermingling.
Eden was hilarious at having company. Nothing was too ridiculous for him to say or do. Finch and Minny filled the room with their laughter. Sarah Court sat upright, sipping wine, nibbling cake, seeming to absorb with passionate intensity the gaiety of the moment.
As they hurried home along the drive they faced a strong warm wind from the moor. She had to grasp her shawl tightly to hold it about her. Their elders were still playing whist and they entered undiscovered. She glided up the stairs, while he lounged into the drawing-room and leant against Augusta’s chair, asking her what luck she had had.
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strung themselves out like pearls warmed on the sunburnt throat of summer, till Finch and his uncles had been a month in Devon. The time had passed quickly for the two old brothers, with no incident more unpleasant than a wrangle at the bridge table to shadow their enjoyment. There was so much to do in the way of garden parties, paying calls on old acquaintances, drinking tea in the rose garden, and having the
Times
to read when it was a few hours instead of two weeks old, that the day was all too short. The change had done them a world of good. Nicholas had not in years been so free from gout. Ernest was almost frightened by the power of his digestion. There seemed something sinister about a stomach that, from rebelling at a piece of seed cake at tea, turned to the consumption of strawberries and Devonshire cream without a qualm. Ever since his meeting with Rosamond Trent his digestion had improved, and it had crossed his mind that if such meetings could be arranged once in, say, six months, the benefit to him would be immense. He attributed his improvement to nothing else than the exhilaration of contact with this vigorous and highly efficient personality.
He and Nicholas were both fond of music, and they delighted in the violin and piano playing of Sarah and Mrs. Court. Nicholas thought the girl’s playing was without soul, and it was he who insisted that Finch should accompany her one evening. But the performance was a depressing failure. Finch was unaccountably nervous, and Sarah more soulless than ever. Mrs. Court had sat delightedly tapping her heels on the floor while they had spiritlessly executed a Polonaise by Chopin.
At the end she had exclaimed:
“Sarah can’t play with anyone but me! And Finch is far too nervous to play accompaniments. You’ve got to have nerves of iron to play accompaniments. I’ve never heard you do so badly as you did tonight, Mouse.”
The little woman had trotted eagerly to the piano, scarcely waiting till Finch had risen from the seat before she settled herself on it and instructed Sarah to repeat the Polonaise with her. Sarah had repeated it to the brilliant exactitude of her aunt’s accompaniment, and after that no one again suggested that the boy and girl play together.
But they did play together. Every afternoon that their elders went out to tea, and they went about four out of the seven, Sarah and Finch glided like two conspirators into the drawing-room. They went as though to indulge in the taste of some forbidden wine. He trembled as he sat with bent back above the keyboard while she tuned her violin. As they lost themselves in the indolent beauty of a Tchaikovsky waltz the world about them dissolved. Their life came into flower. But no word or sign of love passed between them beyond the expression of their love for music. On the days when they were not alone together she seemed to go out of his life, leaving him scarcely a thought of her beyond the fascination
her face and her attitudes always had for him. Even sometimes when they had played together he left her presence with a feeling of relief, drawing a deep breath, as though he had come from an atmosphere too close for him. But at times he was so susceptible to her nearness, to something captivating and strange in her, that he would find it hard to restrain himself from some open expression of his emotion. Once a mist came before his eyes when he was accompanying her, and he could not see the notes. He stopped playing, and, after a wild cascade of grace notes, she stopped too.
“I lost my place,” he muttered.
She bent over him, her violin still tucked under her chin, and looked into his eyes with a gently curious expression. Yet he thought he detected the same hint of malice in her that he had encountered before. He stared steadily back without speaking, but his heart was beating wildly, and he was on the point of taking the violin from her hands and possessing himself of them when she straightened herself and, pointing to the place with her bow, said coldly:
“Please don’t waste our time! It goes so quickly.”
He wondered whether she were really repelling him or regarded these meetings only as an outlet for the sensuous enjoyment of music.
Once Nicholas did not go with the others as they imagined he had. Coming down from his room he turned, with a feeling of anticipation, towards the drawing-room at the sound of music. He opened the door softly, not wishing to interrupt them, but, after listening for a few moments and studying the expressions of the two, he withdrew as quietly as he had entered, standing outside the closed door until the piece was finished, with bent head and a look of sardonic gentleness on his lined face.
Though he had been conscious of the uneasy joy within the room, he never made any reference to their playing together. He never intruded on them again, and he often suggested afternoon excursions that would set them free.
Mrs. Court would have liked to insist on Sarah’s accompanying them, but to have taken her would have meant discomfort in the car. She gave her endless letters to write, and stuffy, old-fashioned dresses to alter to keep her busy in the evenings. These Sarah did, sitting up late in her room, having previously put out her light and pretended to go to bed.
Augusta, at this time, began to be a little tired of her guests. The constant strain of ordering meals, to say nothing of the expense of providing them, was beginning to tell on her nerves. She had thought that Mrs. Court would see eye to eye with her in her hope for the union of Sarah and Finch. She had broached the subject before his arrival, and it had been received with Mrs. Court’s customary jaunty good humour. But now Augusta was driven to believe that Mrs. Court did not approve of the match at all, that she selfishly wished to keep the girl unmarried in order that she might have not only a companion whose salary consisted of her clothes and keep, but one of striking appearance and artistic attainments. The young pair themselves were not very satisfactory. They seemed to have nothing to say to each other, and the music which she had hoped would draw them together was apparently a barrier between them. His attempt at accompanying Sarah had been a failure, and when Sarah and Mrs. Court made music Finch sat drooping in a corner, the picture of gloom.
