Читать книгу Whiteoak Harvest - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 10

IV THE LONG NIGHT

NOT A SNATCH of sleep came to help her through the long hours. Mounting, mounting, up to midnight, declining, sinking, to the dawn, the hours carried their load of misery to her. In her fancy she saw them deposit their separate loads in the passage, between her door and Renny’s, till a great black mound was formed, barring them away from each other forever.

During the first hours she could think of nothing but the fact that Clara Lebraux had lain in his arms, as she herself had lain. Over and over again she pictured licentious details of their meetings. Had he lied when he said that they had not been together since the autumn? It did not matter — it did not matter — they had been together! She heard their very whispers in the woods, whispers that came to her like shouts. Clara’s face was riveted against the darkness, mouthing her passion.

Alayne hated herself for these thoughts. With all the strength in her she stripped them from her mind and left it naked, cold. She thought coldly of her position in this house. Ten years ago she had come to Jalna as Eden’s wife, a sedate, carefully guarded young woman, conventional, inexperienced, feeling herself unconventional, experienced beside these Whiteoaks, with their hidebound traditions of family, of churchgoing, of male superiority, even while they were dominated by the old grandmother. She had, coming from a great Metropolis, felt tolerant of them in their unworldliness and, in this backwater, under their Victorian guidance, what emotions, fears, hates, and anguishes — she had plumbed! Two marriages to Whiteoaks, and both of them unfaithful to her!

Then Renny’s words came like a whip. “If Eden was unfaithful to you, he knew damned well that you didn’t love him any more — that you had turned to me!” Had Eden known that? No, he could not have known! He could not! She had kept her secret. Eden’s love for her had been a shallow volatile stream, only too eager to turn aside to a fresh outlet. And those other cruel words that Renny had said — “Let me tell you that you were far more provocative toward me at that time than Clara Lebraux has ever been!” What had she done, said? She could not remember. But she remembered the fever of her love for him that gave her no peace. If Eden’s love for her had been a shallow stream, hers for him had been no more. To Renny she had thrown open the passionate recesses of her spiritual being. She had created for him a new Alayne, a woman reckless, desirous, abandoned to his love. “You are a more passionate woman sexually than Clara Lebraux.” She rolled her head on the pillows and tears poured down her cheeks.

Oh, the birth of this new hate for him! It was far more agonizing than childbirth. It tore at her every organ. It nauseated her very soul. A dreadful metallic taste came into her mouth. Her hair was dripping with sweat. She felt as though she would go mad.

She rose and went to the window. It was a black night and had turned extraordinarily cold for the time of year. There was no breeze, no sound, no feeling of life, no promise. The air touched her face like a cold hand. There were no stars, no moon, the sun might well forget to return to such a world.

Out of the darkness Adeline spoke — “Mummie!”

“Yes, dear.”

“I want a drink.”

“Very well. I’ll get you one.”

“No. I want Daddy to get it.”

“He is in his own room.”

“Call him.”

Alayne went to the side of the cot and spoke sternly.

“Baby, you are not to ask for Daddy. You will take the drink from me or do without. Will you take it from me?”

“Yes.” The little voice was self-possessed. Adeline sat up and drank deeply. She emptied the glass and asked for more, her eyes looking challengingly into Alayne’s.

“You cannot have any more water.”

“Why?”

“Because you have had enough.”

“Why?”

“If you drink too much you will wet the bed?”

“Why?”

Alayne put her hand on Adeline’s chest and pressed her down on to her back. With a touch she could rouse all the antagonism in Adeline’s fiery nature. Now she made her body rigid and, putting her hands above her head, clenched them into fists. She began violently to kick the bedclothes from her.

Like a sulphurous hot spring the hate that Alayne felt for Renny boiled up to engulf his child. She had to turn away and look out of the window. Adeline began to scream, giving herself up to the abandon of a tantrum as though it were noonday instead of midnight. Alayne let her scream.

Renny appeared in the doorway. He asked:

“Are you having trouble with her? Shall I take her?”

“I suppose you had better. I can do nothing with her.” She spoke without looking round.

He came into the room on tiptoe in his thick-soled shoes. Why is he walking like that?” thought Alayne. “One would think there was somebody dead.”

Adeline clutched him round the neck. She showed every tooth in her head in a joyful smile. When she was on his arm with her little pale blue silk quilt about her, she rolled her eyes triumphantly toward her mother.

“I’ll keep her the rest of the night.”

“Thanks.”

“Would you tell me what she was crying for? Was she hungry perhaps?”

“She was crying for more water. She has had enough.”

She could scarcely endure it till the two of them were out of the room. At once she locked the door and began to undress. She felt chilled through and drew the bedclothes over her head.

In the black seclusion beneath them she saw a series of pictures of Renny. She saw him with uprolled sleeves felling a tree on that day when she first discovered her love for him. She saw him, with her happy self by his side, galloping along the lakeshore in the autumn wind. She saw him, in the glare of electric lights, leaping barriers at the Horse Show amid a storm of applause. She saw him as he knelt by her bed on the day their child was born, his eyes wet with tears of tenderness for her.

Oh, how she had loved him! How she had loved him! Her love for him had made her into a different woman — yet not different enough to accept him as he was! Always she had wanted to change him — to force him into congeniality with herself, even while it was the bitter sweetness of their antagonism that enhanced their passion.

Hours passed while she went over and over the scale of their relations, always ending in the shock of the discovery. At last her brain refused to work coherently. Like a worn-out mechanism it moved erratically, feebly. Still she could not sleep.

Toward dawn an irritating tickling set up in her throat. At regular intervals she gave a dry hacking cough which she tried in vain to smother. When she found she could not smother it she gave in to it letting it tear at her throat without hindrance.

The handle of the door was turned, then Renny’s voice said — “Alayne, I have brought some of my licorice tablets. Open the door.”

“No,” she answered, in a muffled tone. “I don’t want anything!” And she allowed the cough to tear at her throat. She knew that, since Eden’s death, the sound of coughing was horrible to him.

“I’ll put them on the floor here,” he said. She heard the sound of the little box being placed on the floor. A faint light showed Adeline’s empty cot.

Her mind went back to her married life with Eden, that first flawless, happy love. She recalled her joy in the poems he had written then, a joy as over children they had created together. What a short while it had lasted! Yet this imperfect, troubled, tortured love for Renny — how it had persisted! Like a vivid, tough-fibred thread, it had dominated the pattern of her life for ten long years. It had so dominated her life that all that had gone before seemed to belong to a different person, to be almost meaningless to her. But she would unravel that thread! She would unravel the fabric of her life to the drab and pallid warp, so that nothing of that love might remain.

Her cough was less troublesome and might have ceased altogether but she began to cry again. She made choking, coughing sounds.

He was at the door again. “Alayne, I’m going down to get you a hot drink. You must take it. Do you hear?” He did not wait for an answer. He padded along the passage in his felt bedroom slippers. But he was fully dressed.

“She’s got to take it,” he kept muttering to himself as he went down the stairs. “She can’t help herself. She’s got to take it.”

He descended the basement stairs and was in the brick-floored kitchen where the big coal stove was throwing off a steady warmth. His spaniels were lying on a mat beside it. They rose, yawning their surprise at his early arrival. Merlin uttered the deep-toned bark which, since his blindness, expressed his easily stirred emotions. Renny quieted them and went to the stove. Luckily there was hot water in the kettle. He poked the fire and opened the draught. The reflection from the living coals made a rosy glow over his haggard face.

She must be hungry, he thought. He would take her some bread and butter and a pot of coffee. She loved coffee. Nothing else so refreshed her, she often said. He went to the cupboard where he knew it was kept and took out the red enamelled container with the picture of Windsor Castle on the lid. The heavy sound of Mrs. Wragge’s snoring came from the bedroom beyond the narrow dark passage.

He was a little puzzled about the making of the coffee. He supposed that the process must be very much the same as for tea but the steeping rather longer. While he waited for the kettle to boil he went to the larder. A gliding step approached and Rags, in cast-off pyjamas of his own, stood at his side.

His sharp little face showed his surprise at finding the master of Jalna, fully dressed, in search of anything so innocuous as bread and butter at that hour. He said:

“Can I ’elp you, sir? Shouldn’t you like something a little more substantial?”

“It’s not for myself.”

“Ow, it’s for the mistress! Just let me get it, sir. I know ’ow thin she likes it. Nothing more than a wifer.”

He did indeed cut the bread delicately, while Renny looked on and Mrs. Wragge’s snores echoed through the basement room. Watching Rags preparing food took Renny’s thoughts back to France. He saw him making an appetizing dish out of some odds and ends from dilapidated tins. Rags remembered it too. Cocking an eyebrow, he said:

“Well, they weren’t such bad toimes, sir. I think they were the best toimes of my life. I shouldn’t tike it amiss if there was another war. Not if I could be your batman again, sir.”

“There are worse things than war, eh, Rags?”

“I’ll s’y there are, sir! There’s comradeship in war. Folk are kind to each other. There’s only one enemy. We all knoaw ’oo ’e is. But in peace, my word, there’s enemies all about us and, ’arf the toime, they’re posin’ as friends! Noaw, I ’aven’t much use for peace, sir.” He arranged the bread and butter on a plate, with little finger crooked. “There, that looks temptin’, doan’t it?”

The boiling water was poured on the coffee. Renny carried the tray to Alayne’s door. He knocked and her voice said — “Come in.” She had unlocked the door while he was downstairs. She was sitting on the side of her bed with a blanket about her shoulders. As the door opened she turned her head and fixed her eyes on him with a look of almost impersonal wonder. She thought — “Let me look in his face again and see if there is no sign there of what he has done. Surely there is some change in his face.” But when she looked in it she saw nothing different. He wore the same look of concern, she thought, which he wore when he was worried about a sick mare. No added sensuality to mouth or cunning to eyes marked the months of deception he had passed through. He was made of iron, she thought.

He had a feeling of poignant compassion seeing her sitting there, dishevelled, in the grey dawn. He had a feeling of anger too, at some unseen force of fate that had made this so unnecessary discovery possible. All was over between him and Clara — excepting their friendship. Why could not their few amorous encounters have passed unrevealed!

He set the tray on the table by the bedside.

“If you would only,” he said, “try to look on this sensibly. If you would just keep in your mind that you are the only woman —”

“The only woman!” she interrupted hoarsely. “The only woman! Please don’t ask me to keep anything quite so grotesque in my mind. My mind is put to it now to keep its balance.”

He said loudly, “You are the only woman in the world I could want as my wife. Clara —”

“Yes — I know — a wife and a mistress!”

“Not a mistress! Not a mistress! You can’t call her that. Those special feelings came and went. They left no mark. On my word of honour, Alayne, I have been true to you all our married life except for this one lapse and you know that at that time we — you and I — were not on good terms.”

She stood up facing him. “Will you leave me alone! I can’t bear anything more.” She put her hand to her head. Again her legs felt heavy, as though they were dragged down by wet seaweed.

He made a grimace of despair. “Please taste your coffee then — before I go.” He filled a cup for her with the clouded liquid. She took a mouthful then set down the cup with an expression of disgust.

“I couldn’t possibly take it.”

“Is it made so badly?”

“It is horrible.” She lay down on the bed and turned her face away.

“Will you have some of the bread and butter?”

“I couldn’t eat. Please leave me.”

With a look of deep chagrin he carried the tray to his own room.

Its window faced the east. In the first tremulous sunrays Adeline lay curled on his bed fast asleep, her expression one of beatific calm. On the foot of the bed slept the Cairn puppy, its plump body giving little hysterical jerks in a dream.

Renny drank the coffee Alayne had left and poured himself another cup. He folded two pieces of the bread together and took it in a single bite. He was terribly hungry.