All the way home he exulted in thoughts of it. The face of the earth seemed to him like the owl’s breast; the stars had the cold glitter of the owl’s eyes; the bitter wind was its hoot... It had left its perch and swept through the open door of the Rectory with him, and had become one with the night, the beating of its wings the rhythm of the universe.
He left the road and took his customary shortcut through the fields, though the path had long been obliterated. The snow lay in great drifts, light as mounds of fallen feathers. He dashed through them, bounding, with each leap, as high as he could. All his instinct revolted against being grown up. He wished only to be a wild, half-mad boy, that the passage of time might not touch him... He pulled off his cap and ran bare-headed, dancing with his shadow, trying to wrest his spirit from his body, and toss it, a glistening essence, into the frosty air. He fancied how the great owl would pounce on it, a tender morsel for its starry-eyed young, and sweep Poleward with it, uttering a whoo-hoo that would shake the universe.
He left the fields and ran through the pinewood. He left the pinewood and ran through the birchwood, where the silvery trees bathed themselves in the moonlight as in a sea, laying their round boles in it, keeping nothing of themselves from it, shivering in their naked whiteness as they drowned themselves in it.
He ran through the apple orchard, where the gnarled black shapes of the trees were like old men dancing. There was an icy pathway there from which the wind had blown the snow, and he slid along it, cap in hand, in long graceful glides.
He ran through the young cherry orchard, where the trees stood in straight rows like timid, half-grown girls, and, as he emerged into the garden, he saw the lights of the house welcoming him.
As soon as he saw them the shadow of the owl grew smaller, but still, he thought, it followed him, swooping, lower and lower, towards his legs. A sensation of terror took hold of him. He ran panting, his consciousness trickling from his brain to his nether parts. Would it catch him before he reached the door?
It was level with him, its eyes afire. He plunged across the lawn, and flung himself against the door. It flew open, and, at the same instant, he felt a cruel nip on the left leg!
“My dear boy,” said Uncle Ernest, “what a draught you’re letting in. Shut the door quickly! And you may as well bolt it for the night.”
IV
THE BIRTHDAY
IT CAME on the first day of March. He had narrowly escaped being born on the twenty-ninth of February, which, in addition to having been born with a caul, would have singled him out with a directness almost ominous. As it was, he was quite satisfied to have first seen the light with the arrival of spring; and, on this particular birthday, the season did not, as was its wont, appear crouching under the cloak of winter. On the contrary, it was a day of remarkable mildness for the time of year. Rain had fallen steadily all the preceding day and night, and by the time the sun had emerged from the rain clouds there were already patches of bare ground on the lawn. By noon that part of it which was not in shadow lay revealed to the warmth of the sun. Last year’s grass had retained something of its colour, and even seemed to have grown, as the hair of a dead person is said to flourish morbidly for long after burial.
The withered forms of last year’s asters and calendula lay sodden on the soaking soil of the flower border; under the hedge last year’s leaves lay in a discoloured ridge. Yet all was enlivened by a boundless hope. The abnormally large drops of rain and melted snow that were strung on every twig and blade and ledge were glancing with radiant brightness. The sky was swept clean of all that came between its sun and the earth. No return of cold and snow could efface the promise of this day.
The door into the hall stood wide open letting in the sun. It was on such a day as this that old Adeline would take her first walk of the year. Wrapped in innumerable cloaks, scarves, and petticoats, so that she looked a very battleship of a woman, she would come into view, supported by her sons, and present herself foursquare to the reviving world. “I’m out again!” she would exclaim. “Ha! 1 like the smell of the fresh air!”
Finch thought a good deal about her today, recalling their strange delayed intimacy that had drawn them so mysteriously together, wondering if it were possible to him to live in a way that would have won her approbation. Still, she had known him for what he was, had loved him, had accepted him as one of “the whelps” her son Philip had got by his second wife.
He stood in the porch sunning himself, and watched Rags furbishing up the hall. How shabby both hall and servant looked in the noonday brightness! The slender walnut banister and carved newel-post were elegant enough, but the wallpaper along the stairway showed dingy where small hands had been pressed against it. Certainly it had never been repapered in his time. The carpet on the stairs was threadbare. The Turkish rug on the floor had lost all its fringe. The fringe had reappeared miraculously on the cuff of. Rags’s coat. This cuff was being violently agitated as he polished the mirror in the hat-rack above which the carved head of a fox sneered down at him.
“Well,” he said, seeing Finch, “many happy returns of the d’y to you, sir!”
“Thanks, Rags.”
“We couldn’t ‘ave a finer d’y for the occasion, not if it ‘ad been hordered! It’s a fine thing to be twenty-one, sir, and to ‘ave all the money in the family.” He looked over his shoulder at Finch with an air of innocent envy.
Finch felt like taking the fellow by the scruff of his grizzled neck and shaking him. He said—“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Rags.”
The little Cockney proceeded imperturbably:
“It’s a ‘appy d’y for us all, I’m sure, sir. Mrs. Wragge was saying to me just a bit ago that she’d prayed for a fine d’y. I don’t go in for prayer much myself, but, as the saying is, strawrs tell which way the wind blows. Not that she is much like a strawr, sir. More like a strawrstack, I’d say. I ‘ardly dare to go into the kitchen this morning, she and Bessie are that worked up with excitement. And the thought of those caterers coming out from town with all their paraffinaliar!” He came to the door and shook out his cloth. He then produced a small, foreign-looking leather pocketbook from somewhere about his clothes. He proffered this to Finch with a bow.
“Will you accept this from me, Mr. Finch, as a little offering? I brought it ‘ome with me from the War. It belonged to a German officer. And I’ve always thought that if the d’y come when I ‘ad a pot of money, I’d use it myself. But the d’y ‘asn’t come, and it looks as though it never would come—not in this country, and at this job—so, if you’ll accept it, I’ll give it to you with my best wishes, and may it always be full!”
Finch took it, embarrassed. It was a handsome pocket-book, and there was something touching in Rags’s expréssion as he offered it; but Finch always had the uncomfortable feeling that Rags was laughing in his sleeve at him.
“Thanks, very much,” he mumbled. “It’s an awfully good one.” He opened it, looked in it, shut it, Rags regarding him with an expression of mingled sadness and pride. He gave his duster another shake and re-entered the hall.
Mooey was descending the stairs on his little seat, a step at a time. Finch watched him, feeling suddenly very happy. Everyone was amazingly nice to him. Renny had given him a wristwatch. Piers and Pheasant, gold cufflinks. Uncle Nicholas a paperweight, and Uncle Ernest a watercolour from the wall of his own room. Alayne had given him a crocodile-skin travelling-bag, and Wakefield a large clothes brush which, he explained, would “come in handy to whack his kids with when he had any.” Meggie’s present was yet to arrive.
“Bump!” sang out Mooey. “I’m toming! Bump! Bump! Bump! I’m not f’ightened!”
Finch went to the foot of the stairs and snatched him up. He put him on his shoulder, and, out of the shadows of the past came a picture of himself, caught up thus by Renny. A queer thing life... One tall strong body, one little weak body after another... Some day Mooey would stand at the foot of the stairs and shoulder some tiny boy just a
s today he was doing... And Mooey would be twenty-one, and whose would be the tiny boy? Some little Whiteoak, out of a Whiteoak body...
Mooey clasped Finch’s head, and pressed his round flower-like face to Finch’s thin one. “I want to go out on the nish geen gash,” he said.
“The grass may be green, but it’s not nice. It’s nasty and soggy.”
“I l-like nawsty soggy fings.”
“Very well, I’ll carry you out and stand you on your head on it.” He ran out the door and down the steps.
“There’s a nish soggy spot,” said Mooey, pointing out a puddle.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” cried Finch. “I’ll take you to the stables to see Uncle Renny.” He had got an idea. He would find Renny and approach the subject of quitting the University this very hour. Renny was always more or less absent minded and good humoured when he was among his horses. The presence of Mooey would be a help too, for Renny had a way of staring at him speculatively and only half-listening to what was being said.
They found the master of Jalna in the paddock, mounted on a bright bay mare which he was training as a highjumper. Two grooms stood by a hurdle, the top bar of which they raised and lowered in accordance with the shouted directions of the rider.
Finch, carrying Mooey wrapped in a man’s jersey, stood by the enclosure unnoticed save by a casual glance. The mounting strength of the sun was poured down on this sheltered spot, giving the impression of a day in late April rather than one in early March. The intrinsic quality of all on which the sunrays fell was made evident in smell or colour. The earth, newly thawed, trampled by the feet of horses and men, gave forth a pungent and profoundly vital odour. There had been pressed and soaked and baked and frozen into it—ever since Captain Philip Whiteoak, almost eighty years before, had chosen this particular place for this purpose—rotted straw and manure, and the impalpable essence absorbed by the earth from the sanguine activities of men and beasts. Every hair in the young mare’s mane and tail seemed charged with energy. Her hide glistened as though varnished, her eyes flashed back the light. Renny’s strong-muscled, mud-spattered legs, his weather-beaten, sweating face, his bare head against which the hair was plastered, the red healthy faces of Wright and Dawlish, their capable hands that took up and replaced the fallen bar, the skin of their hands dry from the grooming of horses and stained with harness oil, all these were discovered in the spring sunlight.
Between the two men, the mare, and her rider there existed a sympathy not needing the expression of words. When she felt panic and sheered off from the jump or valiantly essayed it and failed, a like shadow seemed to fall across all four. She blew out her breath in what seemed a great sigh. The grooms dubiously replaced the bar; and Renny, wheeling her about, drew his brows together in a rueful frown. But, when she swung clear of the hurdle, and hung like a bird for a space against the sky, before she alighted triumphant and cantered down the course, a brightness of aspect descended as the sun’s rays on men and mare. A group of cows that had collected as spectators by the fence of an adjoining enclosure looked on the scene with complete lack of sympathy. At the critical moment one might stop chewing the cud, as though the better to concentrate on what was going on, but, be the leap never so birdlike or the failure never so forlorn, the cud-chewing was resumed with an aloof serenity.
Finch thought—“She has done well; I believe it’s a good time to speak.”
Renny had dismounted and given the bridle to Wright and was strolling toward him, scrubbing the palms of his hands with a crumpled handkerchief.
“Wasn’t she splendid?” asked Finch, scrutinising his elder’s face. “I think she’s going to be a wonderful jumper.”
“I hope so. She’s a sweet thing. I intend to ride her in New York this fall, if possible.” He turned to Mooey. “Hello, what’s the matter with your nose?” He gave the small feature a decisive wipe with the handkerchief.
“I suppose,” said Finch, “he should have something on his head.”
Mooey, his nose quite pink, observed:
“I’m going to jump a nish orsey and not be f’ightened neider.”
“He talks too much about not being frightened,” said Renny. “It sounds as though he were trying to reassure himself. I hope he’s not going to be a duffer at riding, like you.”
“I hope not,” returned Finch dolefully. It took so little to cast him down.
There was silence for a moment while Renny struck at the flakes of mud on his legs with his riding-crop, then Finch set the little boy on his feet, and, turning to his brother, broke out with the energy of despair.
“Look here, Renny, it’s impossible for me to go back to ‘Varsity! I simply can’t do it!”
Renny continued to strike at his leg with his riding-crop, but he did not speak. His face hardened.
Finch continued—“You can’t know how it is with me. You’re always doing the most congenial work. ‘Varsity isn’t congenial to me. It isn’t anything to me but a grind and a flatness and an unreality. I don’t see any sense in sticking it out.”
The fiery brown eyes, before which he quailed, were raised to his. “What the hell is congenial to you? I wish you’d tell me. I thought music was, and I’ve let you take lessons and spend hours practising when you ought to have been studying. Then, when you play at a recital, you play your worst, and you tell me that audiences aren’t congenial—”
“I didn’t!” cried Finch. “I didn’t say that! I said that I was afraid of audiences—”
“Afraid! By God—afraid—that’s the trouble! You’re always afraid! No wonder the kid there whines about not being frightened! You’ve put it in his head!”
Finch had turned white. He had begun to shake.
“Renny! Look here! Listen! I—I—you don’t understand—”
“Of course I don’t! Nobody understands. You’re not like anyone else, are you? You’re a student, and you can’t study! You’re an actor, and you can’t act! You’re a pianist, and you can’t play! You’re twenty-one, and you act like a girl in her teens!”
Finch flung out his hand. The sun touched the face of the wristwatch Renny had given him that morning. He cursed himself for a fool. Why, oh why, had he chosen this day of all days for his declaration! He dropped his arm. He was cut to the heart.
Renny went on—“I suppose you think that because you’re of age today and are coming into some money—”
“No! No, I don’t! I only thought I’d like to tell you—at least, ought to tell you—”
“Why didn’t you tell me long ago? Why did you let me go on planning for your education—”
In spite of the unhappy turmoil of his emotions, Finch could not help wondering what effort of the brain Renny had spent on him beyond the tardy digging up of his tuition fees, and the determination that he should not evade one lecture or examination.
He got out, hoarsely—“You shall have it all back!”
“Not a cent! I won’t have a cent of it back!”
“But why? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t!” cried Finch distractedly.
“There’s every reason. I won’t take a cent of it.”
“But why?”
“Because if I took it back I should not have reared you and educated you, as it was my duty to do.”
“But there’s no reason in that! I know how hard it is for you to get money. All along I’ve said to myself—‘I’ll make it up to Renny!’The thought of that bucked me up to tell you this today. Renny, you must take it back!”
“Not a penny. Well, I can’t force you to go on, but I can feel that I’ve done my best, and, if you’re a mess, it’s not my fault!” He had worked himself into a temper. He showed his teeth, Finch thought, as though he would like to bite him. Things were blurred before Finch’s eyes. The sunlit scene before him began to revolve. He put his hands on the palings and held himself together with an effort.
Mooey looked from one uncle to the other, his lip quivering. “I’m not f’ightened!” he said.
Renny made as if to strike him with his riding-crop. “Say that again and I’ll thrash you!” Nothing on earth would have induced him to touch Mooey with the riding-crop, but he felt and looked as though he could. Mooey raised his voice in a howl of anguish.
At this moment Piers drove up to them in the car. He had been to the village and had brought the post. He got out with the letters in his hand. His son moved toward him screaming, in a kind of dance.
Renny said—“That’s a nice young milksop you’ve got! He’s frightened of his own shadow! He takes after his Uncle Finch!”
Piers’s fatherliness was roused. He picked up his child and comforted him. “What’s it all about? What’s he been doing? It seems to me that you look fierce enough to frighten anyone.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Renny. “Only Finch has just been telling me that he’s not going to ‘Varsity any more. It’s uncongenial to him.”
Piers’s prominent blue eyes took in the situation. He did not speak for a moment while he turned the matter over in his mind. Then he said in his deep voice:
“Well, it’s no surprise to me. I always knew he didn’t like college. I didn’t like it myself. I don’t see any sense in his taking a course in Arts—going in for a profession—unless he wants. If I were in his place I’d do just as he is doing.”
Without another word Renny turned and strode toward the stable. Piers looked after the tall retreating figure with composure. “You’ve got his back up,” he said. “He’ll not get over this today.”
“I don’t know what I’m to do,” said Finch bitterly. “I couldn’t go on with it. And I thought I could make it up to him... but he won’t let me. He simply got in a rage...”
“Gran will never be dead while he lives! You may have her gold, but he has her temper.”
Finch broke out—“I wish he had them both.” His jaw shook so that he had to clench his teeth to control it.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 254
