The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (646 page)

The stream that passed through Jalna meandered also through this farm. Yet, early that spring, it had been in flood, done damage to the barn, swept away a poultry house with the poultry in it, and almost uprooted three immense willow trees. Though almost taken by the flood, the tenacious roots of the willows still held fast to the bank, and their drooping branches were graced by a cloud of golden-green leaves. Birds, attracted possibly by the singing of the stream, sang also there, one pair even going to the length of building a nest.

The two young men, Maurice and Sir Patrick, returned to Jalna in this springtime, after lengthy travels. So full were they of all they had seen that, for three successive nights, they talked till long past midnight. California, Arizona, Mexico — they were enthusiastic about all. The family, from four other houses, came to see and hear them. The reactions of the different members might have been interesting to the travellers had they found it possible to be interested in anything outside their own recitals in those first days. Alayne recalled her visit to Italy with her parents. Renny remembered incidents of horse shows in New York. But no one was interested. On the fourth night the Rector began to talk of missions in the North. Meg began to talk of the Women’s Institute; Piers of breeding cattle; Patience of the television play Humphrey was writing; Pheasant of the baby, Ernest. At this point Finch, who had been present for the first time, excused himself and left.

“One would think,” cried Pheasant, “that he’d be glad to hear how his little boy is thriving — even though his birth did bring tragedy. He’s a perfectly lovely baby, and I know something about babies, having had four.” Pheasant looked truculently at those present, as though daring them to deny it.

“Finch will come round,” said the Rector comfortingly. “He’ll come round.”

“But little Ernest is so sweet, and Finch has never once kissed him or even given him one little pat.”

“Has he ever shown any affection for his other son?” said Piers and answered his own question. “No — and never will.”

“It’s high time for the baby to be christened,” said Meg. “We must choose godparents and arrange a date before the wedding. There is also Dennis’s Confirmation at his boarding school. How I love these ceremonials! As many as possible of us should go to see Dennis confirmed.”

However, it turned out that Dennis was not to be confirmed that spring. The school chaplain wrote to Finch:

I am rather anxious about your boy. After attending several of the preparatory classes, he came to me and told me he felt he ought not to be confirmed yet. When I questioned him, he refused to give a direct answer but gave me the impression that he is suffering from a sense of guilt. I am wondering if you may be able to throw some light on this difficult situation. I think that, if you could come to the school and have a talk with Dennis, it might be a great help to him, and also to me.

Finch read this letter and thought, “Is it possible Dennis is remembering that fright he gave Sylvia when he appeared outside the window, smeared with blood? By God, he deserves to have a sense of guilt and no pity given him.” Sylvia’s terrified face came between Finch and the letter. She had been brave, too, in her fear, and forgiven the wretched child, and now possibly he was justly suffering — if he had it in him to feel contrition. Through the wall of ice that divided Finch from his son, he saw his small white face distorted by emotion. He must go to the school, try to discover what lay behind all this. Finch was not driven to go by fatherly concern but by a chill curiosity. For the first time he had a desire to seek out Dennis.

The impulse moved him to lose no time. Within an hour he was on his way to the school. He sped through the blowy spring morning with a feeling of purposefulness he had not experienced since Sylvia’s death. His heavy heart was lightened by it.

Less than fifteen miles on the way he was delayed by a train at a village crossing. Standing there also was a truck loaded with calves on their way to the slaughterhouse. Their anxious eyes looked out on the green world where they had been so lately free and now were captive.

The howl of the train whistle made their eyes start. They shuddered in fear and one of them raised its voice. The train passed. The truck jolted across the tracks, but the calves were so closely packed in the truck that they could not fall. They could not move.

Neither could Finch continue on his way. His reason was powerless to prod him to start the car. He wanted nothing but to turn back — if only it were possible to turn back on the road where Sylvia was lost to him …

The virtue was gone out of him. He could not move forward. Slowly he turned his car about and returned the way he had come. The spring wind blew in his face. The roots struggled in the chill bed of the loam to send up their shoots. Finch said to himself that he would write to the chaplain telling him not to urge Dennis to be confirmed; to let him come naturally to the point where he desired it. But that letter was not written. The chaplain’s troubled letter remained unanswered.

When Finch reached the lately acquired farm which Piers had cleverly named New Farm, he stopped his car beside a gate that led into a stony field. He could hear hammering from where two farm hands were mending the roof of the barn. The hammering, softened by distance, was pleasant to the ear. There was an urgent rhythm to it. Finch left his car on the side of the road and went through the gate to where the three willows, dressed in wistful green, bent over a pool left by the flood of the stream. There was an oak nearby that had not yet put forth so much as a leaf, and there were the willows, exquisitely dressed.… A low-hung April cloud moved eastward and let the warmth of the sun full on the bank of the stream by the pool.

There must be small fish in the pool — suckers possibly, or sunfish — for a boy had left his fishing rod on the bank, gone off on some other boyish quest and forgotten it, or decided that there were no fish to be caught. The rod was no more than a willow wand, but it had a fishhook on a string and on the hook a writhing worm. It was long since Finch had fished. He thought he would like to catch even a very small fish. He dropped to the bank, in the sudden appealing warmth of the sun, and examined rod and bait.

His eyes became riveted on the writhings of the worm. Bloated and blindly twisting, it uttered a voiceless cry: Save me — save me!

Squatting on the bank Finch set about releasing it. He withdrew the hook, but the worm broke in half. Its writhing ceased. Ruefully he looked at it lying on his palm. The worm had waited long for this day and now had come to this — two half-worms, never to be joined together.

There was nothing for Finch to do but put it on the hook again, which he did, and, squatting there on the bank, dropped the bait into the pool. A feeling of something approaching tranquility stole up through his body, beginning in his feet planted on the sun-warmed earth, and seeping, like sap through trunk and limbs of a winter-bound tree, up to his very scalp.

All about him green shoots were seeking the sun. Green leaves were in the very act of untying themselves from the rolled-up package of a backward spring. On a mossy stone a slippery green frog sat staring with calculating coldness at the budding world in front of him.

Suddenly Finch felt a lively tug on the line. It was more than a nibble. It was a bite — and he landed, with a grin of triumph, a small fish. Carefully he took the hook from its lip. It was scarcely damaged and, after an inspection of it, he returned it to the pool, where it vanished, as though it had never suffered such an experience.

Finch removed the body of the worm from the hook and proffered it to the frog, which refused it with a glassy stare — then, with incredible agility, leaped down into the pool.

Finch’s housekeeper had made a package of lunch for him to eat on the motor trip. This he now opened and ate the sandwiches, sitting beside the stream. He dangled his legs over the edge of the bank in a freedom from tension unknown to him for months. The worm, the fish, the frog, glided through his empty mind as shapes in a crystal bowl. The meaningless murmur of the stream was music enough.

This New Farm was a place of the greatest interest to little Mary Whiteoak. Whenever she was given the chance she came to it. Especially was she fascinated by the farmhouse. It was being reshingled, painted inside and out. When it was in good order, Wright and his family were coming to live in it. But Mary, as much as was possible to the tenderness of her nature, grudged Wright the farmhouse. She would have liked to live there alone, with the baby Ernest. She knew so well how to care for him — he was so happy with her — she would wish for no interference from anyone.

Weeks passed. It was no longer spring but summer.

The time for Ernest’s christening was near at hand. Next came the centenary celebration of Jalna, and, following it, the wedding of Adeline and Philip. To Mary, the christening was by far the most important. She frequently talked about it to Ernest, telling him how properly he must behave himself, and that he was to wear the christening robe of his great-uncle Ernest for the occasion, and that the robe was a mass of the finest tucks and lace insertion, from neck to hem.

Already Pheasant had washed and exquisitely ironed the robe, and it now lay between sheets of tissue paper, in a particular drawer that was scented by a bag of lavender.

There was no doubt about it — Pheasant and Piers were infatuated by the baby. Piers quite simply doted on him. Now on this morning in early June Piers had, at Mary’s urgent request, brought her and little Ernest with him to New Farm. She had sat beside Piers in the car, holding the baby on her lap, as sensible as any little woman. As for Ernest, so intently did he watch Piers’s handling of the car that, as Piers remarked later to Pheasant, he might soon have it in his mind to apply for a driving licence.

Piers had gone into the farmhouse to inspect the painting and Mary was standing on the unkempt grass of the lawn, with Ernest in her arms. Just to stand there and hold him tightly was bliss. His first tooth was making itself felt. The gum about it was sore and an excess of saliva gathered in his mouth. He would thrust his round white fist into his mouth and, when he brought it out wet, he would wipe it on Mary’s pink cheek or on her straight fair hair. But whatever Ernest did was charming to Mary.

Now she was trying to draw his attention to a quite perfect spider web on the grass where three captives waited to be devoured. The fact that two of them were honey bees, bound round with glittering gyves, did not excite her pity. She was completely on the side of the spider and, when she saw him joyously descending on a gossamer thread from a briar rose to his web on the grass, she laughed in pleasure. “Look, Ernest, look — look!” But Ernest only stared wide-eyed at her.

She kissed him on the mouth and cried, “You’re better than a spider — prettier — prettier — prettier!”

Now she discovered that the briar had a pink rose on it. She tried to make Ernest see the rose but he saw only her. “Look — look — smell how nice!” But he just snuffled on her cheek.

She hugged him in delight. “You’re better than a rose,” she cried. Now, in a loud chant, quite unlike her usual voice, she repeated: “Prettier than a spider! Sweeter than a rose! Better than a spider
or
a rose!” She swayed with him in her arms, dipping him to see the spider’s web, raising him to smell the rose. But he would neither look nor sniff.

Now she became conscious of another presence. Dennis was coming round the corner of the house.

“what’s that you’re saying?” he demanded.

She hung her head, speechless.

“I heard you,” he said. “You were saying, ‘Better than a spider. Sweeter than a rose.’ what nonsense!… Give me the baby.” He tried to take Ernest from her, but she would not let him go.

They struggled.

Just then Piers came out of the farmhouse.

“what’s going on?” he asked.

“I’d like to hold my little brother for a bit,” said Dennis, “but she won’t give him up.”

“Mary,” said Piers, in an admonishing tone.

She let Ernest be taken from her.

“when did you come home, Dennis?” Piers asked.

“Last night. I’m ten days early because of chicken pox at school.”

Piers looked at him thoughtfully. “where did you spend last night?” he asked.

“At Jalna.” Dennis spoke eagerly. “Wright met me at the station and took me straight home” — Now his voice took on an argumentative tone — “but my father wasn’t ready for me. My room wasn’t ready. Well you couldn’t expect him to want a boy in the house when he was composing a concerto, would you? And my room was not ready. He said for me to go to Jalna temporarily. It’s different at Jalna. You can always go there because no one’s ever doing anything important there.” Dennis spoke fast, excitedly. He was proud of the word “temporarily,” and repeated it under his breath. He kept his eyes on Piers’s face.

“Your father,” said Piers, “doesn’t take much interest in his children.”

“Oh, he’s interested in us all right,” Dennis said eagerly, “but he’s an artist and you can’t expect them to be like other people, can you?”

“You’re coming on,” said Piers, “but you haven’t grown any taller this term.”

Dennis hung his head and Mary stood up as tall and straight as she could. Ernest looked sweetly pensive, as he did when about to wet himself.

Piers put all three children into the car. He said: “I’m going to drive you to your father’s, Dennis. When we get there I want you to go to him, with the baby in your arms. Let him see that you expect to be taken in — as you have a right to. Do you understand? I’ll wait at the gate.”

In front of the house Dennis stood, with Ernest in his arms, while Piers drew off with Mary. She was crying a little.

Dennis moved to where the snowman had stood, in front of the picture window. He could see Finch in the music room. He held Ernest up, in front of him, as high as he could, and waited. His arms were aching by the time Finch discovered them.

Against the green outdoors Finch saw the two sons he had begot. One by Sarah. One by Sylvia.