Jalna: A Novel

XIII

A MILD steady wind was blowing which had appropriated to itself every pungent autumn scent in its journeying across wood and orchard. It blew in at the window and gently stirred the hair on Finch’s forehead, and brought to his checks a childish pink. He did not hurry to get up, but stretched at ease awhile, for it was a Saturday morning. His mind was occupied in making a momentous decision. Should he put on some old clothes and steal out of the house, with only something snatched from the kitchen for breakfast, thus avoiding a meeting with Eden’s wife, for he was shy of her, or should he dress with extra care and make a really good impression on her by appearing both well turned out and at ease?

Those who were early risers would have had their breakfast by now and be about the business of the day, but Eden never showed up till nine, and Finch supposed that a New York girl would naturally keep late hours. He wanted very much to make a good impression on Alayne.

He got up at last, and, after carefully washing his face and hands and scrubbing his neck at the washstand, he took from its hanger his new dark blue flannel suit. When it was on, and his best blue-and-white striped shirt, he was faced by the problem of a tie. He had a really handsome one of blue and gray which Meggie had given him on his last birthday, but he was nervous about wearing it. Meg would be sure to get on her hind feet if she caught him sporting it on a mere Saturday. Even wearing the suit was risky. He longingly fingered the tie. The thought of going to Piers’s room and borrowing one of his entered his

mind, but he put it aside. Now that Piers was married young Pheasant was always about.

Hang it all! The tie was his, and he would wear it if he wanted to.

He tied it carefully. He cleaned his nails and polished them on a worn-out buffer Meggie had thrown away. Meticulously he parted and brushed his rather lank fair hair, plastering it down with a little pomade which he dug out of an old jar Eden had cast aside.

A final survey of himself in the glass brought a grin, half pleased, half sheepish, to his face. He sneaked past the closed door of his sister’s room and slowly descended the stairs.

It was as he had hoped. Eden and Alayne were the only occupants of the dining room. They sat close together at one side of the table. His place was on Alayne’s left. With a muttered ‘Good morning,’ he dragged forth his chair and subsided into it, crimson with shyness.

After one annoyed glance at the intruder, Eden vouchsafed him no attention whatever, speaking to Alayne in so low a tone that Finch, with ears strained to catch these gentle morning murmurings of young husband to young wife, could make out no word. He devoted himself to his porridge, humbly taking what pleasure he could draw from the proximity to Alayne. A fresh sweetness seemed to emanate from her. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the movements of her hands. He tried very hard not to make a noise over his porridge and milk, but every mouthful descended his throat with a gurgling sound. His very ears burned with embarrassment.

Alayne thought she had never before seen anyone eat such an immense plate of cereal. She hated cereals. She had said to Eden almost pettishly: —

‘I do not want any cereal, thank you, Eden.’ And he had almost forced her to take it.

‘Porridge is good for you,’ he had said, heavily sugaring his own.

He did not seem to notice that this breakfast was not at all the sort to which she was used. There was no fruit. Her soul cried out for coffee, and there was the same great pot of tea, this time set before her to pour. Frizzled fat bacon, so much buttered toast, and bitter orange marmalade did not tempt her. Eden partook of everything with hilarity, crunching the toast crusts in his strong white teeth, trying brazenly to put his arm about her waist before the inquisitive eyes of the boy. Something fastidious in her was not pleased with him this morning. Suddenly she found herself wondering whether, if she had met him first in his own home, she would so quickly have fallen in love. But one look into his mocking yet tender eyes, one glance at his sensitive full-lipped mouth, reassured her. She would — oh yes, she would!

She addressed a sentence now and again to Finch, but it seemed hopeless to draw him into the conversation. He so plainly suffered when she attempted it that she gave up trying.

As they got up from the table Eden, who was already cherishing a cigarette between his lips, turned, as if struck with an idea, to his brother.

‘Look here, Finch. I wish you’d show Alayne the pine grove. It’s wonderful on a morning like this. — It’s deep and dark as a well in there, Alayne, and all around it grow brambles with the biggest, juiciest berries. Finch will get you some, and he’ll likely be able to show you a partridge and her young. I’ve got something in my head that I want to get out, and I must have solitude. — You’ll take care of her, won’t you, Finch?’

In spite of the lightness of his tone, Alayne discovered the fire of creative desire in it. Her eyes eagerly explored his face. Their eyes met in happy understanding.

‘Do go off by yourself and write,’ she agreed. ‘I shall be quite content to wander about by myself if Finch has other plans.’

She almost hoped he had. The thought of a tête-à-tête with this embarrassed hobbledehoy was not alluring. He drooped over his chair, his bony hands resting on the back, and stared at the disarranged table.

‘Well,’ said Eden, sharply, ‘what are your plans, brother Finch?’

Finch grinned sheepishly. ‘I’d like to take her. Yes, thank you,’ he replied, gripping the back of the chair till his knuckles turned white.

‘Good boy,’ said Eden. He ran upstairs to get a sweater coat for Alayne, and she and Finch waited his return in absolute silence. Her mind was absorbed by the thought that Eden was going to write. He had said one day that he had an idea for a novel. Little tremors of excitement ran through her as she pictured him beginning it that very morning.

Rags was starting to clear the table. His cynical light eyes took in every detail of Finch’s attire. They said to the boy, as plainly as words: —

‘Ho, ho, my young feller! You’ve decked yerself all up for the occasion, ’aven’t yer? You think you’ve made an impression on the lidy, don’t yer? But if you could only see yerself! And just you wait till the family catches you in your Sunday clothes. There won’t be nothink doing, ow naow!’

Eden followed them to the porch. They met Meg in the hall and the two women kissed, but it was dim there, and Finch, clearing his throat, laid one hand on the birthday necktie and concealed it.

It was a day of days. As golden, as mature, as voluptuous as a Roman matron fresh from the bath, the October morning swept with indolent dignity across the land.

Alayne said something like this to the boy as they followed a path over the meadows, and, though he made no reply, he smiled in a way that lighted up his plain face with such sudden sweetness that Alayne’s heart warmed to him. She talked without waiting for him to reply, till by degrees his shyness melted and she found herself listening to him. He was telling her that this path that led through the birch wood was an old Indian trail and that it led to the river six miles away when the traders and Indians had long ago been wont to meet to barter skins of fox and mink for ammunition and blankets. He was telling her of the old fiddler, Fiddling Jock, who had had his hut in this wood before the Whiteoaks had bought Jalna.

‘ My granddad let him stay on. He used to play his fiddle at weddings and parties of all sorts. But one night some people gave him such a lot to drink before lie started for his hut that he got dazed, and it was a bitterly cold night, and he could not find his way home through the snow. When he got as far as Granddad’s barnyard he gave up and he crawled into a straws Lack and was frozen to death. Gran found him two days after when she was out for a walk. He was absolutely rigid, his frozen eyes staring out of his frozen face. Gran was a young woman then, but she’s never forgotten it. I’ve often heard her tell of finding him. She had Uncle Nick with her. He was only a little chap, but he’s never forgotten the way the old fellow had his fiddle gripped, just as though he’d been playing when he died.’

Alayne looked curiously at the boy. His eyes had an hallucinated expression. He was evidently seeing in all its strangeness the scene he had just described.

They had now entered the pine grove. A shadow had fallen over the brightness of the morning like the wing of a great bird. In here there was a cathedral hush broken only by the distant calling of crows. They sat down on a fallen tree, on the trunk of which grew patches of moss of a peculiarly vivid green, a miniature forest in itself.

‘I don’t believe I’d mind,’ said Finch, ‘going about with a fiddle and playing tunes at the weddings of country people. It seems to me I’d like it.’ Then he added with a shade of bitterness in his tone, ’I guess I’ve just the right amount of brains for that.’

’I do not see why you should speak of yourself in that way,’ exclaimed Alayne. ‘You have a very interesting face.’ She made the statement with conviction, though she had just discovered the fact.

Finch made a sardonic grimace that was oddly reminiscent of Uncle Nicholas. ‘I dare say it’s interesting, and I should n’t be surprised if old Fiddler Jock’s was interesting, especially when it was frozen stiff.’

She felt almost repelled by the boy’s expression, but her interest in him was steadily growing.

‘Perhaps you are musical. Have you ever had lessons?’ she asked.

‘No! They’d think it a waste of money. And I have n’t the time for practising. It takes all my time to keep from the foot of the form.’

He seemed determined to present himself in an unprepossessing light to her. And this after all the anxious care over his toilet! Perhaps the truth was that, having seen a gleam of sympathy in her eyes, he was hungry for more of it. But it was difficult to account for the reactions of Finch Whiteoak.

Alayne saw in him a boy treated with clumsy stupidity by his family. She saw herself fiercely taking up cudgels for him. She was determined that he should have music lessons if her influence could bring them about. She drew him on to talk, and he lay on the ground, sifting the pine needles through his fingers and giving his confidence more freely than he had ever given it before. But even while he talked with boyish eagerness his mind more than once escaped its leash and ran panting after strange visions. Himself, alone with her in this dark mysterious place, embracing her with ecstasy. After one of these excursions of the mind he would draw himself up sharply and try to look into her eyes with the same expression of friendly candor which she gave him.

As they were returning to the house, and Alayne’s thoughts were flying back to Eden, they came upon a group in the orchard consisting of Piers and several farm laborers who, under his supervision, were preparing a number of barrels of apples for shipment. Piers, with a piece of chalk in his sunburnt hand, was going about marking the barrels with the number of their grade. He pretended not to notice the approach of his brother and Alayne, but when he could no longer ignore them he muttered a sulky ‘Good morning’ and turned to one of the laborers with some directions about carting the apples to the station.

Finch led Alayne from barrel to barrel, with a self-consciously possessive air, knowing that the farm hands were regarding them with furtive curiosity. He explained the system of grading to her, bringing for comparison apples from the different barrels. He asked her to test the flavor of the most perfect specimen he could find, glossy, red, and flawless as a drop of dew.

‘Mind that you replace that apple, Finch,’ said Piers curtly in passing. ‘You should know better than to disturb apples after they are packed. They ’ll be absolutely rattling about by the time they reach Montreal.’ He took a hammer from one of the men and began with deafening blows to ‘head in’ a barrel.

Finch noticed Alayne’s discomposure, and his own color rose angrily as he did as he was bid. When they had left the orchard Alayne asked: ‘Do you think Piers dislikes me?’

‘No. It’s just his way. He’s got a beastly way with him. I don’t suppose he dislikes me, but sometimes—’ He could not finish what he had been going to say. One could n’t toll Alayne the things Piers did.

Alayne continued reflectively: ‘And his wife — I just noticed her a moment ago disappearing into the shrubbery when she saw us approach. I am afraid she does not approve of me either.’

‘Look here,’ cried Finch. ‘Pheasant’s shy. She does n’t know what to say to you.’ But in his heart he believed that both Piers and Pheasant were jealous of Alayne.

He parted with her at the front door and went himself to the side entrance, for he was afraid of meeting his sister.

XIV

Alayne found Eden in the summerhouse, a vine-smothered, spiderish retreat, with a very literary-looking pipe in his mouth, his arms folded across his chest, and a thoughtful frown indenting his brow.

‘May I come?’ she breathed, fearing to disturb him, yet unable to endure the separation any longer.

He smiled an assent, gripping the pipe between his teeth.

‘ Have you begun the — you know what?’

‘I do not know what.’

‘The n-o-v-e-l,’ she spelled.

He shook his head. ‘No, but I’ve written a corking thing. Come in and hear. ’

‘A poem! I am so glad you are really starting to write again. It is the first, you know, since we have been married and I was beginning to be afraid that instead of being an inspiration —’

‘Well, listen to this and tell me whether I’m the better or worse for being married.’

He read the poem and it gained not a little from his mellow voice and expressive, mobile face. Alayne was somewhat disconcerted to find that she had no longer the power to regard his writing judicially. She now saw it colored by the atmosphere of Jalna, tempered by the contacts of their life together. She asked him to read it again, and this time she closed her eyes that she might not see him, but every line of his face and form was before her still, as though her gaze were fixed on him.

‘It is splendid,’ she said, and she took it from him and read it to herself. She was convinced that it was splendid, but her conviction did not have the same austere clarity that it had carried when she was in New York and he an unknown young poet in Canada.

From the summerhouse after that issued a stream of graceful, carelessly buoyant lyrics like young birds. Indeed Piers with brutal jocularity remarked to Renny that Eden was like a cock sparrow hatching out an egg a day in his lousy nest under the vines.

It became the custom for Eden, Alayne, Ernest, and Nicholas to gather in the latter’s room every afternoon to hear what Eden had composed that morning. The four became delightfully intimate in this way, and they frequently (Nicholas making his leg an excuse for this) had Rugs bring their tea there.

It was pleasant to pour the tea in Nicholas’s room for the three men, from an old blue Coalport teapot that wore a heathenish woolly cozy; and after tea Nicholas would limp to the piano and play from Mendelssohn, Mozart, or Liszt. Alayne never forgot those afternoons, the late sunshine touching with a mellow glow the massive head and bent shoulders of Nicholas at the piano, Ernest shadowy in a dim corner with Sasha, Eden beside her, strong in his shapely youth. She grew to know these two elderly men as she knew no other member of Eden’s family except poor young Finch.

They seemed close to her; she grew to love them.

Meggie did not want to join the quartette in Uncle Nick’s room. It was not the sort of thing she cared about. But she did rather resent the air of intimacy which was apparent between the uncles and Alayne, an intimacy which she had not achieved with the girl. Not that she had made any great effort to do so. Persistent effort, either mental or physical, was distasteful to Meg, yet she could, when occasion demanded, get her own way by merely exerting her power of passive stubbornness. But passive stubbornness will not win a friend, and as a matter of fact Meg did not greatly desire the love of Alayne. She rather liked her, though she found her hard to talk to — ‘terribly different’; and she told her grandmother that Alayne was a ‘typical American girl.’ ’I won’t have it,’ Grandmother had growled, getting very red, and Meg had hastened to add, ‘But she’s very agreeable, Gran, and what a blessing it is that she has money!'

To be sure there was no sign of an excess of wealth. Alayne dressed charmingly but with extreme simplicity. She had shown no disposition to shower gifts upon the family, yet the family, with the exception of Renny and Piers, were convinced that she was a young woman of fortune. Piers did not believe it simply because he did not want to believe it, and Renny had cornered Eden soon after his return and had wrested the unromantic fact from him that he had married a girl of the slenderest means, and had come home for a visit while he ‘looked about’ him. And so strong was the patriarchal instinct in the eldest Whiteoak that Eden and Alayne might have lived on at Jalna for the rest of their lives, without his doing more than to order Eden to help Piers on the estate.

On one occasion Eden did spend a morning in the orchard grading apples, but Piers, examining the last of the consignment and finding the grading erratic, to say the least of it, had leaped in a fury into his Ford and rushed to the station, where he had spent the rest of the day in a railway car, wrenching the tops from barrels and regrading them. There had been a family row after this, with Renny and Pheasant on the side of Piers and the rest of the family banded to protect Eden. They had had the grace to wait till Alayne went to bed before beginning it. She had gone to her room early that night, feeling something electric in the air, and no sooner had her door closed than the storm had burst forth below.

She had been brought up in the atmosphere of a home peaceful as a nest of doves, and this sudden transplanting into the noisy raillery and hawklike dissensions of the Whiteoaks almost bewildered her. Up in her room she had quaked at the thought of her oddness among these people. When Eden had come up, an hour later, he had seemed exhilarated rather than depressed by the squall. He had sat on the side of the bed, smoking endless cigarettes, and had told her what this one had said and how he had squelched that one, and how Gran had thrown her velvet bag in Renny’s face; and Alayne had listened, languid in the reassurance of his love, and he had sat down at his desk before he ever came to bed and had written a wild and joyous poem about a gypsy girl, and had come back to the bed and read it loudly and splendidly, and Nip, in Uncle Nick’s room across the hall, had started up a terrible yapping, and one of Eden’s cigarette stubs had burned a hole in the quilt.

Alayne wondered with a feeling of apprehension when Eden was going to bestir himself to get a position. After the affair of the apples, he spent more and more time in the summerhouse, for he had begun another long narrative poem. Proof sheets of his new book had arrived from New York, and they demanded their share of his time.

Alayne, who was supposed to be the inspiration of this fresh wellspring of poetry, found that during the fierce hours of composition the most helpful thing she could do for the young poet was to keep as far away from him as possible. She explored every field and grove of Jalna, followed the stream in all its turnings, and pressed her way through thicket and bramble to the deepest part of the ravine. She came to love the great unwieldy place, of which the only part kept in order was the farm run by Piers.

Sometimes Finch or Wakefield accompanied her, but more often she was alone.

On one of the last days of autumn she came upon Pheasant, sitting with a book in the orchard. The young girl had thrown down her book and, with head tilted back and eyes closed, was more than half asleep. Alayne stood beside her, staring down at her, but she did not stir, exposing her face to the gaze of the almost stranger with the wistful unconcern of those who slumber. It seemed to Alayne that she had never before really seen this child, for she was little more than a child. With her cropped brown head, softly parted lips, and childish hands with their limply upturned palms, she was a different being from the secretive pale girl, always on her guard, whom Alayne met at table and in the drawingroom at cards. Then she seemed quite able to take care of herself, even faintly hostile in her attitude. Now, in this relaxed and passive pose, she seemed to ask for compassion and tenderness.

As Alayne was about to turn away Pheasant opened her eyes, and, finding Alayne’s eyes looking down into them with an expression of friendliness, she smiled as though she could not help herself.

‘Hullo,’ she said, with boyish brevity. ‘You caught me asleep.’

‘I hope I did not waken you.’

‘Oh, I was only cat-napping. This air makes you drowsy.’

‘May I sit down beside you?’ Alayne asked, with a sudden desire to get better acquainted with the young girl.

‘ Of course.’ Her tone was indifferent, but not unfriendly. She picked up her hat, which was half full of mushrooms, and displayed them. ‘I was gathering these,’ she said, ‘for Piers’s breakfast. He can eat this many all himself.’

‘But are n’t you afraid you will pick poison ones? I should be.’

Pheasant smiled scornfully. ‘I’ve been gathering mushrooms all my life. These are all alike — the orchard kind. Except this dear little pink one. I shall give it to Wake. It’s got a funny smoky taste and he likes it.’

Alayne asked, ‘Have you known Piers for a long time? I suppose you have, for you were neighbors, were n’t you?’

Pheasant stiffened. She did not answer for a moment, but bent forward plucking at the coarse orchard grass. Then she said in a low voice, ‘I suppose Eden has told you about me.’

‘Nothing except that you were a neighbor’s daughter.’

‘Come, now. Don’t hedge. The others did, then. Meg — Gran — Uncle Nick?’

‘No one,’ answered Alayne, firmly, ‘has told me anything about you.’

‘Humph. They’re a funny lot. I made sure they’d tell you first thing.’ She mused a moment, biting a blade of grass.

‘Then what is it?’ persisted Alayne, her tone still light, but her face becoming very serious.

Pheasant picked up one of the misshapen apples of the old tree and balanced it on her palm.

‘Oh, you’re different — that’s the principal thing. You don’t seem to know anything about real life.’

Alayne could have laughed aloud at the answer, that this ignorant little country girl should doubt her experience of life. Yet — it was true enough that she did not know life as they in this backwater knew it, where no outside contacts modified the pungent vitality of their relations with each other.

She sat a moment in thought, and then she said gently, ‘You are mistaken if you think that I should be easily upset by anything you would care to tell me. Not that I want to urge your confidence.’

‘Oh, it’s not a matter of confidence,’ exclaimed Pheasant. ‘Everybody in the world knows it but you, and of course you’ll hear it sooner or later, so I may as well tell you.’

She laid the apple on the grass and, clasping her ankles in her brown hands, sat upright, with the air of a precocious child, and announced: ‘I’m illegitimate — what Gran in her old-fashioned way calls a bastard. There you are.’

A bright color dyed her cheeks, but she flung out the words with pathetic bravado.

’I am sorry,’ murmured Alayne, ‘ but you do not suppose that that will affect my feelings for you, do you?’

‘It does most people’s.’ The answer came in a low, husky voice, and she went on hurriedly: ‘My father was the only child of an English colonel. His parents doted on him. He was the delight of their old age. My mother was a common country girl and she left me on their doorstep with a note, exactly the way they do in books. They took me in and kept me, but it broke the old people’s hearts. They died not long after. My father — ’

‘Did you live with him?’ Alayne tried to make it easier for her by a tone of unconcern, but her eyes were filled with tears of pity for the child who, in such quaint phraseology, — ‘the delight of their old age,’ indeed, — told of the tragedy of her birth.

‘Yes, till I was married. He just endured me. But I expect the sight of me was a constant reminder — of what he’d lost, I mean.’

‘Lost?’

‘Yes — Meg Whiteoak. He’d been engaged to her, and she broke it off when I appeared on the scene. That’s why she has that glassy stare for me. All the Whiteoaks were against our marriage, of course. It was adding insult to injury, you see.’

‘Oh, my dear.’

The significance of looks and chance phrases that had puzzled her became apparent. She was pierced by a vivid pain at the thought of all the unmerited suffering of Pheasant. She said, ‘You have had rather a hard time, but surely that is all over. Meg cannot go on blaming you for what is not your fault, and I think the others are fond of you.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘I should be if you would let me.’ Her hand moved across the grass to Pheasant’s. Their fingers intertwined.

‘All right. But I warn you, I’m not a bit proper.’

‘Perhaps I am not so proper as you think.’ Their fingers were still warmly clutched. ‘By the way, why doesn’t Piers like me? I feel that it will not be altogether simple to be your friend when he is so — well, distant.’

‘He is jealous of you, for my sake, I think. I just think that, mind you — he’s never said so. But I think he finds it pretty beastly that you should be thought so much of, and me so little, and that you should be made so welcome and me so unwelcome, when, after all, we’re just two girls, except that you’re rich and I’m poor and you’re legitimate and I’m up against the bar sinister, and Piers has always taken such an interest in the place and worked on it, and Eden only cares for poetry and having his own way.’

Alayne was scarlet. Out of the tangle of words one phrase menaced her. She said, with a little gasp, ‘Whatever made you think I was rich? My dear child, I am poor — poor. My father was a college professor. You know they are poor enough, in all conscience!’

‘You may be what you call poor, but you’re rich to us,’ answered Pheasant, sulkily.

‘Now, listen,’ continued Alayne, sternly. ‘My father left me five thousand dollars insurance, and a bungalow which I sold for fourteen thousand, which makes nineteen thousand dollars. That is absolutely all. So you see how rich I am!'

‘It sounds a lot,’ said Pheasant, stolidly, and their hands parted and they both industriously plucked at the grass.

The significance of other allusions was now made plain to Alayne. She frowned as she asked, ‘What put such an idea into your head, Pheasant? Surely the rest of the family are not suffering from that hallucination?’

‘We all thought you were frightfully well off. I don’t know exactly how it came about. Someone said — Gran said — no, Meg said — it was — ’ She stopped short, suddenly pulled up by a tardy caution. ‘What does it matter, anyhow?’

Alayne had to subdue a feeling of helpless anger before she answered, quietly, ‘It does not matter. But I want you not to have the notion that I am rich. It is ridiculous. It puts me in a false position. You knew that I worked for my living before I married Eden.’

Pheasant stared at her uncomprehendingly, and Alayne, moved by a sudden impulse, put her arm about her and kissed her. She said, ‘How silly of me to mind! May we be friends, then?’

Pheasant’s body relaxed against her with the abandon of a child’s. ‘It’s lovely of you,’she breathed, ‘not to mind about my — ’

Alayne stopped her words with a kiss. ‘As though that were possible! And I hope Piers will feel less unfriendly to me when he knows everything.’

Pheasant was watching over Alayne’s shoulder two figures that were approaching along the orchard path.

‘It’s Renny,’she said, ‘and Maurice. I wonder what they’re up to. Renny’s got an axe.'

The two came up, Maurice removing his tweed cap. Renny, already bareheaded, nodded, the reminiscent grin fading from his face.

‘Alayne,’he said, ‘this is Maurice Vaughan, our nearest neighbor.'

They shook hands, and Alayne, remembering having heard a reference to the fact that Vaughan drank a good deal, thought he showed it in his heavy eyes and relaxed mouth. He gave Pheasant a grudging smile and then turned to Renny.

‘Is this the tree?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’returned Renny, surveying it critically.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Alayne.

‘Cut it down. It’s very old, and it’s rotting. It must make room for a new one.’

Alayne was filled with dismay. To her the old apple tree was beautiful, standing strong and yet twisted with age in the golden October sunshine. She asked, trying not to look too upset, for she was never certain when the Whiteoaks would be amused at what they thought soft-heartedness or affection, ‘Must it come down? I was just thinking what a grand old tree it is. And it seems to have borne a good many apples.'

‘It’s diseased,’returned Renny. ‘Look at the shape of the apples. This orchard needs going over rather badly.'

‘But this is only one tree, and it is such a beautiful shape.'

‘You must go over to the old orchard. You will find scores like this there.’ He pulled off his coat and began to roll up his sleeves from his lean muscular arms. Alayne fancied that an added energy was given to his movements by her opposition.

She said nothing more, but with a growing feeling of antagonism watched him pick up the axe and place the first blow against the stalwart trunk. She imagined the consternation among the insect life on the tree at that first shuddering shock, comparable to an earthquake on our own sphere. The tree itself stood with a detached air, only the slightest quiver stirring its glossy leaves. Another and another blow fell, and a wedge-shaped chip fresh with sap sprang out on to the grass.

‘Oh, oh, let me get my things,’ cried Pheasant, and would have darted forward to rescue her hat and mushrooms had not Vaughan caught her by the wrist and jerked her out of the way.

It seemed that the dignity of the gnarled old tree would never be shaken. At each blow a shiver ran through its far-spreading branches, and one by one the remaining apples fell. But for a long time the great trunk and massive primal limbs received the onslaughts of the axe with a sort of rugged disdain. At last, with a straining of its farthest roots, it crashed to the ground, creating a gust of air that was like the last fierce outgoing of breath from a dying man.

Renny stood, lean, red-faced, triumphant, his head moist with sweat. He glanced shrewdly at Alayne and then turned to Vaughan.

‘A good job well done, eh, Maurice?’ he asked. ‘Can you give me a cigarette?’

Vaughan produced a box, and Pheasant, without waiting to be asked, snatched one for herself and, with it between her lips, held up her face to Vaughan’s for a light.

‘There’s a bold little baggage for you,’remarked Renny to Alayne, with an odd look of embarrassment.

Pheasant blinked at Alayne through smoke. ‘Alayne knows I’ve been badly brought up.’

‘I think the result is delightful,’said Alayne, but she disapproved of Pheasant at that moment.

Pheasant chuckled. ‘Do you hear that, Maurice? Are n’t you proud?’

‘Perhaps Alayne doesn’t realize that he is your happy parent,’said Renny, taking the bull by the horns.

Vaughan gave Alayne a smile, half sheepish, half defiant, and wholly, she thought, unprepossessing.

‘I expect Mrs. Whiteoak has heard of all my evil doings,’he said.

‘Will somebody please get my hat and book and mushrooms?’ pleaded Pheasant. ‘They’re under the tree.’

Renny began to draw aside the heavy branches, the upper ones of which were raised like arms in prayer. An acrid scent of crushed overripe apples rose from among them. His hands, when he had rescued the treasures, were covered by particles of bark and tiny terrified insects.

Vaughan turned toward home, and Pheasant ran after him, showing a demonstrative affection toward him that baffled Renny, who was not much given to speculation concerning the feelings of his fellows.

As for Alayne, her mind was puzzled more and more by these new connections who were everything that her parents and her small circle of intimates were not. Even while their conduct placed her past life on a plane of dignity and reticence, their warmth and vigor made that life seem tame and even colorless. The response of her nature to the shock of this change in her environment was a variety of moods to which she had never before been accustomed. She had sudden sensations of depression, tinged with foreboding, followed by unaccountable flights of gayety, when she felt that something passionately beautiful was about to happen to her.

Renny, lighting a cigarette, looked at her gravely. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ’I had no idea that you were so keen about that tree, or I should have left it as it was. Why did n’t you make me understand ? ’

‘I did not wish to make too much fuss. I thought you would think I was silly. Anyone who knew me at all well would have known how I felt about it. But then, you do not know me very well. I cannot blame you for that.'

His gaze on her face became more intense. ‘I wish I did understand you. I’m better at understanding horses and dogs than women. I never understand them. Now in this case it was n’t till the tree was down and I saw your face that I knew what it meant to you. Upon my word, I would n’t have taken anything — why, you looked positively tragic. You’ve no idea what a brute I feel.’ He gave a rueful cut at the fallen tree to emphasize his words.

‘Oh, don’t!’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t hurt it again!’

He stood motionless among the broken branches, and she moved to his side. He attracted her. She wondered why she had never noticed before how striking he was. But then, she had never seen him active among outdoor things before. She had seen him indifferently riding his roan horse. In the house, she had thought of him as rather morose and vigilant, though courteous, when he was not irritated or excited by his family; and she had thought he held rather an inflated opinion of his own importance as head of the house. Now, with his narrow red head, his red foxlike face and piercing red-brown eyes, he seemed the very spirit of the woods and streams. Even his ears, she noticed, were pointed, and his hair grew in a point on his forehead.

One of those unaccountable soarings of the spirit to which she had of late been subject possessed her at this moment. Her whole being was moved by a strange exhilaration. She had moved to Renny’s side. Now, from a desire scarcely understood by herself, to prove by the sense of touch that she was really she, and he was no one more faunlike than Renny Whiteoak, she laid her hand on his arm. He did not move, but his eyes slid toward her face with an odd speculative look in them. He was faintly hostile, she believed, because of her supersensitiveness about the tree. She smiled up at him, trying to show that she was not feeling childishly aggrieved, and trying at the same time to hide that haunting and willful expectancy fluttering her nerves.

The next moment she found herself in his arms with his lips against hers, and all her sensations crushed for the moment into helpless surrender. She felt the steady thud of bis heart, and against it the wild tapping of her own.

At last he released her and said, with a rather whimsical grimace, ‘ Did you mind so much? I’m awfully sorry! I suppose you think me more of a brute than ever now.'

‘Oh,’ she exclaimed quiveringly, ‘how could you do that? How could you think I should be willing —

’I did n’t think at all,’ he said. ‘I did it on the spur of the moment. You looked so — so — oh, I can’t think of a word to describe how you looked.’

’Please tell me. I wish to know,’ she said, icily.

‘Well — inviting, then.’

‘Do you mean consciously inviting?’ There was a dangerous note in her voice.

‘Don’t be absurd! Unconsciously, of course. You simply made me forget myself. I’m sorry.’

She was trembling all over.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, courageously, ‘you were not much more to blame than I.’

‘My dear child, as though you could help the way you looked! ’

‘ Yes, but I went over to you — deliberately, when —oh, I cannot say it!’ Yet, perversely she wanted to say it.

‘ When you knew you were looking especially lovely — is that what you mean?’

‘Not at all. It’s no use, I cannot say it!’

‘Why make the effort? I’m willing to take all the blame. After all, a kiss is n’t such a terrible thing, and I’m a relation. Men occasionally kiss their sisters-in-law. It will probably never happen again, unless, as you say, you brazenly approach me when — what were you trying to say, Alayne? Now I come to think of it, I believe I have the right to know. It might save me some stabs of conscience.’

‘Oh, you make it all seem ridiculous! You make me feel very childish — very stupid.’

He had seated himself on the fallen tree. Now he raised his eyes contritely to hers and said, ‘ Look here. That’s the last thing on earth I want to do. I’m only trying to get you not to take it too seriously, and I want all the blame.’

Her earnest eyes now looked full into his. This took a great deal of courage, for his were sparkling, so full of interest in her, and at the same time so mocking. She said, ‘I see that I must tell you. It is this. I have had odd feelings lately of unrest, and a kind of anticipation, as though just around the corner some moving, thrilling experience were waiting for me. This sensation makes me reckless. I felt it just before I moved toward you, and I think — I think —

‘You think I was playing up to you?’

‘Not quite that. But I think you felt something unusual about me.’

‘I did, and I do. You’re not like any woman I’ve ever known. Tell me, have you thought of me as — caring for you — thinking a good deal about you?’

‘I thought you rather disliked me. But please let us forget about all this. I never want to think of it again. ’

‘Of course not,’ he assented gravely.

With a stab of almost physical pain, Alayne remembered that site had half-unconsciously kissed him back again. Her face and neck were dyed crimson. With a little gasp she said, ‘Of the two, I am the more to blame.’

‘ Is this the New England conscience that I’ve heard so much about?’ he asked, filled with amazement.

‘I suppose so.’

He regarded her with the same halfmocking, half-quizzical look in his eyes, but his voice deepened as he said, ‘ Oh, my dear, you are a sweet thing! And to think that you are Eden’s wife, and that I must never kiss you again!’

She could not meet his eyes now. She was afraid of him, and still more afraid of herself. She felt that the strange expectancy of mood that had swayed her during these weeks at Jalna was nothing but the premonition of this moment. She said, trying to take herself in hand, ‘I am going back to the house. I think I heard the stable clock strike. It must be dinner time.’ She turned away and began to walk quickly over the rough orchard grass.

It was significant of the eldest Whiteoak that he made no attempt to follow her, but sat with his eyes on her retreating form, confident that she would look back at him.

As he expected, she turned after a dozen paces and regarded him with dignity, but there was a certain childlike pleading in her voice.

‘Will you promise never to think of me as I have been this morning?’ she asked.

‘Then I must promise never to think of you at all,’ he returned with composure.

‘Then never think of me. I should prefer that.’

‘Come, Alayne, you know that’s impossible.’

‘Well, promise to forget this morning.’

‘It is forgotten already.’

But, hurrying away through the orchard, she felt that if he could forget as easily as that it would be more terrible to her than if he had brooded on it in his most secret thoughts.

XV

There was an iron rule that every member of the family should attend morning service unless suffering from extreme physical disability. Being only half sick would not do at all. One must be prostrate. Alayne had seen Meg almost stumble into the motor, dazed from headache, a bottle of smelling salts held to her nose, and sit through the entire service with closed eyes. She had seen young Finch dragged off, regardless of a toothache.

She was inclined to rebel at first, but when she found Eden slavishly acquiescent she too succumbed. After all, she thought, there was something rather fine in such devotion, even though religion seemed to play so small a part in it. For the Whiteoaks were not, according to Alayne’s standards, a religious family.

The only mention of the Deity’s name at Jalna was when Grandmother mumbled an indistinguishable grace, or when one of the young men called on the Almighty to witness that he would do such and such a thing, or that something else was damned.

Yet with what heroism they herded themselves into those hard adjacent pews each Sunday!

Wakefield summed it all up for Alayne in these words: ‘You see, Grandfather built the church, and he never missed a Sunday till he died. Gran never misses a Sunday and she’s almost a hundred. She gets awfully sick if any of the rest of us stop home. And the rector and the farmers and other folk about count us every Sunday, and if one is missing — why, it doesn’t seem like Sunday to them at all.’ The little boy’s eyes were shining. He was very much in earnest.

Grandmother had never ridden in a motor car, and never expected to ride in one consciously. But she had given orders for the motor hearse from Steed to bear her body to her grave. ‘ For, ’ she said, ‘I like to think I’ll have one swift ride before I’m laid away.’

The old phaeton was brought to the front steps every Sunday morning at half past ten. The two old bay horses, Ned and Minnie, were freshly groomed, and the stout stableman, Hodge, wore a black broadcloth coat with a velvet collar. With his long whip he flicked the flies off the horses, and every moment cast an anxious look at the door and set his hat at a more Sundayish angle.

At a quarter to eleven old Mrs. W hiteoak emerged, supported by Benny and Piers, for it needed plenty of muscle to negotiate the passage from her room to the phaeton. For church she always wore a black moiré silk dress, a black velvet fur-trimmed cloak, and voluminous widow’s weeds of the heaviest, crape. Alayne thought that the old lady never looked so dignified, so courageous, as she did on these occasions, when, like some unseaworthy but gallant old ship, her widow’s veil billowing like a sail, she once more set forth from her harbor.

When she was installed in a corner of the seat, with a cushion to her back, the old horses invariably made a forward plunge, for they were instantly aware of her arrival, and Rags as invariably, with a loud adjuration to Hodge to '’old ard,’ leaped to the horses’ heads with a great show of preventing a runaway. 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. 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.

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 funeral pace, urging her onward with despairing honkings of their horns.

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. Now, sitting behind Renny, she saw only the side of his face when he turned it momentarily toward Piers. She saw his thin cheek bone, 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 to a sale of horses together. 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 barque in a heavy fog, Grandmother’s veil streaming behind like a black pirate flag.

Renny, with half-closed eyes, squinted down the road where it dropped steeply into a dusty ditch, gray 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 eye 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 said: ‘You’ll put us headfirst into those thistles if you do. And you might frighten the nags.’

‘True,’ said Renny, gloomily. Then he 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.

The eldest Whiteoak frowned. 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 those 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 late twice 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 into his and clung to it. She was lost in speculations 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.

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 moss-grown 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. Is n’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.’

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-colored 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-five, exclaimed simultaneously: ‘Still bedridden, dear Mrs. Whiteoak, but so bright!’

‘No right to be bedridden. He’s only ninety.’

Now the grin was bestowed on a bent laborer, 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.

‘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 have n’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. 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 time-worn, too stuffy, to be dragged forth by them and displayed with vigor and abandon. . . .

Ah, 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 gray — were bent. Grandmother’s great veil fell across Wake’s thin little 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 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 was asking Meggie for a peppermint in a husky whisper, directly behind them. 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 smell of the peppermint and of the stuff of her crape veil was exuded from her. Wakefield dropped his collection, 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.

‘He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.

‘As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who

maketh all.’

The family stared at their chief as he read.

Old Mrs. Whiteoak thought: —

‘A perfect Court! Look at that head, will you? My nose — my eyes. I wish Philip could see him. Ha, where’s my peppermint? Must have swallowed it. How far away the lad looks. He’s in his nightshirt — going to bed — time for bed.’

She slept.

Nicholas thought: —

‘Renny’s wasted here — ought to be having a gay time in London. Let’s see, he’s thirty-eight. When I was that age — God, I was just beginning to hate Millicent. What a life!’

He heaved himself in his seat and cased his gouty knee.

Ernest thought: —

‘Dear boy, how badly he reads! Still, his voice is arresting. I always enjoy old Ecclesiastes. I do hope there will not be plum tart for dinner. I shall be sure to eat it — and sure to suffer. Mama is dropping her peppermint.’

He whispered to her: ‘Mama, you are losing your peppermint.’

Meg thought: —

‘I wish Renny would not get such a close haircut. How splendid he looks. Really, what strange things the Bible says — but very true, of course. How sweet Wake looks! So interested. He has the loveliest eyelashes. He’s getting ready to kick Finch on the ankle.’

She bent over Wakefield and laid a restraining hand on his leg.

Renny’s voice read on: —

‘Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.’

Eden thought: —

‘He was a poet, the old chap who wrote that — “Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold —” Strange I never noticed before how lovely Pheasant is! Her profile . . .’

He shifted his position a little, so that he might the better see it.

Piers thought: —

‘I wonder if that piece of land needs potash. I believe I’ll try it. Don’t see what the dickens can be wrong with the sick ewe — walking in a circle, like a fool animal in a roundabout. Perhaps she’s got gid or sturdy. Must have the vet to her. Let’s see, fourteen and twenty-one is thirty-five, and seven is forty-two — owe Baxter fortytwo. Pheasant dare n’t look at me little rogue — darling little kid . . .'

He pressed his knee against hers, and looked at her under his lashes.

Pheasant thought:—

‘How big and brown Piers’s hands always look on Sunday! Regular fists. I like them that way, too. I wish Eden would n’t stare.

I know perfectly well he’s thinking how dowdy I am beside Alayne. Oh dear, how hard this seat gets! I shall never get used to churchgoing. I was n’t caught young enough. My whole character was completely formed when I married. Neither Maurice nor I have any religion. How nice it was to see him yesterday in the orchard. Quite friendly he was, too. Now, religion— Take Renny: there he stands in his surplice reading out of the Bible, and yesterday I heard him swearing like a trooper, just because a pig ran under his horse. To be sure it nearly threw him; but then, what good is religion if it does n’t teach forbearance? I don’t think he is a bit better than Piers. I wish Piers would n’t try to make me smile.’

She bit her lip and turned her head away.

Wakefield thought: —

‘I do hope there’ll be plum tart for dinner. If there is n’t plum tart I hope there’ll be lemon tart. But Mrs. Wragge was in a terrible temper this morning. How glad I am I was in the coal cellar when she and Rags had their row! Why he called her a — Hold on, now, I’d better not think of bad things in church! I might be struck dead — dead as a door nail — the very deadest thing. How pretty the lectern is. How beautifully Renny reads. Some day I shall read the Lessons just like that, only louder — that is, of course, if I live to grow up. By stretching my legs very far under the seat in front, I can kick Finch’s ankle. Now — Oh, bother Meggie, bother Meggie. Always interfering. Bother her, I say!’

He looked up innocently into his sister’s face.

Finch thought: —

‘To-morrow is the algebra exam, and I shall fail — I shall fail. If only my head did not get confused! If only I were more like Renny! Nothing in the world will ever tempt me to stand up behind the lectern and read the Lessons. What a beastly mess I’d make of it!’

He became conscious of the words his brother was reading.

‘Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.’

Finch twisted unhappily in his seat. Why these eternal threats? Life seemed compact of commands and threats. And the magic of the words in which these old, old threats were clothed — the dark, heavy foreboding. Magic — that was it. Their magic held and terrified him. If he could but escape from the cruel magic of words. If he could only have sat by Alayne that he might have touched her dress as they knelt!

He closed his eyes, and clenched his bony hands tightly on his thighs.

Alayne thought: —

’How strange his brogues look under his surplice! I noticed this morning how worn and how polished they are. Good-lookmg brogues. How can I think of brogues when my mind is in torment? Am I growing to love him? What shall I do in that case? Eden and I would have to leave Jalna. No,

I do not love him. I will not let myself. He fascinates me — that is all. I do not even like him. Rather, I dislike him. Standing there before that brass thing, with his brogues, his red hair, and Court nose, that foxlike look, he is repellent to me.’

She too closed her eyes, and pressed her fingers against them.

’Here endeth the First Lesson.'

Then, with Miss Pink and the organ tremulously leading the way, and the choir fatuously fancying themselves masters of the situation, the Te Deum burst forth from every Whiteoak chest save Grandmother’s, and she was gustily blowing in a doze. From the deep baritone of Nicholas to the silver pipe of Wake, they informed the heavens and the earth that they praised the Lord and called him Holy.

That night, after the nine-o’clock supper of cold beef and bread and tea, with oatmeal scones and milk for Grandmother and Ernest (who, alas, had partaken of plum tart at dinner as he feared), Meg said to Alayne: —

‘Is it true, Alayne, that Unitarians do not believe in the divinity of Christ?'

‘What’s that?’ Grandmother interrupted. ‘What’s that?’

‘The divinity of Christ, Gran. Mrs. Fennel was telling me yesterday that Unitarians do not believe in the divinity of Christ.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs. Whiteoak. ‘Rubbish. I won’t have it. More milk, Meggie.’

‘Why talk of religion?’ said Nicholas. ‘Tell us a story, Mama. One of your stories, you know.’

His mother cocked an eyebrow at him. Then, looking down her nose, she tried to remember a risqué story. She had had quite a store of these, but one by one they were slipping her memory.

‘The one about the curate on his holiday, Mama,’ suggested Nicholas, like a dutiful son.

‘Nick!’ remonstrated Ernest.

‘Yes, yes,’ said the old lady. ‘This curate had worked for years and years without a holiday. And — and — oh dear, what comes next?’

‘Another curate,’ prompted Nicholas, ‘who was also overworked.’

‘I think the boys should go to bed,’ said Meg, nervously.

‘She will never remember it,’ replied Renny, with calm.

‘Oh, Wakefield is playing with the Indian curios!’ cried Meg. ‘Do stop him, Renny! ’

Renny took the child forcibly from the cabinet, gave him a gentle cuff, and turned him toward the door. ‘Now, to bed,’ he ordered.

‘Let him say good-night first!’ shouted Grandmother. ‘Poor little darling, he wants to kiss his Gran good-night.’

Wakefield made the rounds, distributing kisses and hugs with a nice gauging of the character of the recipient. They ranged, in all varieties, from a bearlike hug and smack to Gran to a courteous caress to Alayne, and a perfunctory offering of his olive cheek to his brothers, except Finch, to whom he administered a punch in the stomach which was returned by a sly but wicked dig in the short rib.

The Whiteoaks had a vocation for kissing. They kissed upon the slightest provocation. Indeed, the grandmother would frequently, on awakening from a doze, cry out pathetically: ‘Kiss me, somebody, quick!’ Ah, perhaps Renny had regarded the kissing of Alayne in the orchard as a light thing!

A sudden impulse drew her to him where he stood before the cabinet of curios, a little ivory ape in his hand.

‘I want to speak to you about Finch,’ she said, steadily.

The light was dim in that corner. Renny scanned her face furtively.

‘Yes!’

’I like him very much. He is an unusual boy. And he is at a difficult age. There is something I should like you to do for him.’

He regarded her suspiciously. What was the girl up to?

‘Yes?’ His tone was mildly questioning.

‘I want you to give him music lessons. Music would be splendid for him. He is a very interesting boy, and he needs some outlet besides geometry and things like that. I am sure you will not be sorry if you do it. Finch is worth taking a great deal of trouble for.’

He looked genuinely surprised.

‘Really? I always thought him rather a dull young whelp. And no good at athletics, either. That would be some excuse for being at the bottom of his form most of the time. None of us think of him as interesting. ’

‘That is just the trouble. Every one of you thinks the same about Finch, and in consequence he feels himself inferior — the ugly duckling. You are like a flock of sheep, all jumping the one way.’

Her enthusiasm for Finch made her forget her usual dignified reticence, and with it her embarrassment. She looked at him squarely and accusingly.

‘And you look on me as the bellwether, eh? If you turn my woolly, wooden head in another direction, the others will follow.

I am to believe that Finch will turn out to be the swan, then?’

’I should not be surprised.’

‘I shall have the family in my wool, you know. They’ll hate the strumming.’

‘They will get used to it. Finch is important, though none of you may think so.’

‘ What makes you sure he has musical talent?’

‘I am not sure. But I know he appreciates music, and I think he is worth the experiment. Did you ever watch his face when your uncle Nicholas is playing?

‘No.’

‘Well, he is playing now. From here you can see Finch quite clearly. Is n’t his expression beautiful, revealing?’

Renny stared across the room at his young brother.

‘He looks rather idiotic to me,’ he said, ‘with his jaw dropped and his head stuck forward.’

‘Oh, you are hopeless!’ she said, angrily.

‘No, I’m not. He’s going to have his music and I am going to endure the curses of the family. But, for my life and soul, I can’t see anything of promise in him at this moment. Now Uncle Nick, with the lamplight falling on that gray lion’s head of his, looks rather splendid.’

‘But Finch —don’t you see the look in his eyes? If only you could understand him — be a friend to him —’ Her eyes were pleading.

’What a troubled little thing you are! I believe you do a lot of worrying. Perhaps you are even worrying about me!’

He turned his intense gaze into her eyes.

A passionate unrest seized upon her. The walls of the room seemed to be pressing in on her; the group of people yonder, stolid, inflexible, full-blooded, arrogant, seemed to be crushing her individuality. She wanted to snatch the ivory ape from Renny’s hands and hurl it into their midst, frightening them, making the parrot scream and squawk.

Yet she had just been granted a favor that lay near her heart — music for poor young Finch.

The contradictions of her temperament puzzled and amused the eldest Whiteoak. He discovered that he liked to startle her. Her unworldliness, as he knew the world, her reticence, her honesty, her academic ardors, her priggishness, the palpable passion that lay beneath all these, made her an object of calculated sexual interest to him. At the same time he felt an almost tender solicitude for her. He did not want to see her hurt, and he wondered how long it would be before Eden would most certainly hurt her.

He said, ‘I have forgotten yesterday, as I promised. Have you forgiven?’

‘Yes,’ she returned, and her heart began to beat heavily.

‘But giving Finch those music lessons will never make up for cutting down the tree, I’m afraid. You’ve made me very tenderhearted.’

‘Are you sorry for that?’

‘Yes. I have especial need of hardness just now. I must not get to care for you,’ he said, in a muffled voice. ’Nor you for me. It would make an impossible situation.’

‘Yes,’ murmured Alayne, ’it would be impossible.’

(To be continued)