“Well—you here, Alayne!”
He took her hands and drew them together at the back of his neck, looking with solicitude down into her face.
“Tired, old girl?”
She nodded her head several times, frowning and pushing out her lips. Never during her married life with Eden had she shown him this mood of childish petulance. In truth, she had not in all her life shown it to anyone but Renny: had not known it was in her to frown and pout, and be at once both angry and clinging, and, if she could have seen the expression of her own face at this moment, she would have felt mortified, angry with herself.
He kissed her. “Were you long at the door? Why didn’t you come in?”
“Not very long... I didn’t want to. What was the good?”
“What do you want?”
“You.”
“Well, you’ve got me, haven’t you?”
“You’re going downstairs to the others.”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“Yes, do go, please! I don’t want you to stay with me.” She tried to push him from her.
“Yes, you do!” He tightened his arms about her.
“Well, I don’t see why I should. I’m not at all necessary to you.”
“What rot you talk!”
“How am I necessary, then?”
“You know without my telling you.”
“You will make me hate you!”
“Why should women always think of only one thing!”
“I suppose they know the truth.”
“My dear child, you make me tired!”
“I know I do.” Her voice broke.
He picked her up, as he had picked up Wakefield, and carried her into her room. It was lit only by moonlight. The new mauve silk bedspread caught and held the light like a dreaming pool in a wood. The moon was sinking.
Its last rays were shining into the dining room too. Its light was enough for the business they had in hand there. Nicholas, unmindful of gout, had given himself up to it. Ernest, unmindful of indigestion, had given himself up to it. Piers, forgetful of wifely admonition, had given himself up to it. Finch, mindful of his new estate, entered heart and soul into it. The decanter and the siphon, with amber and cold white lights in their respective parts, moved slowly around the table. The moonlight blotted age out of two faces and stamped age into two, so that the quartette appeared to be all of one age, and that was ageless.
Finch said: “I wish one of you would tell me what it was I said that was so funny. They were making such a row when I sat down that it knocked it clean out of my head.”
“I can’t remember,” answered Nicholas, “but I know it was damned witty. In fact, I’ve never heard a better afterdinner speech.”
“Nor I,” agreed Ernest. “Just the right amount of sentiment mixed with real wit. It’s a special talent in itself, this after-dinner speaking.”
“I thought the Rector spoke very well,” said Finch judicially.
“Yes, he spoke very well. But you were better. I only wish I could remember just what it was you said at the last.”
“Something about the joy of living,” suggested Piers.
“Well, that’s not very new,” said Finch, rather disappointed.
“Seems to be new to you!”
“Life,” said Nicholas, “is experience.”
“I don’t agree,” said Ernest. “I think life is work.”
Finch said gravely—“I suppose you have all heard of my decision”—he rolled the words “my decision” on his tongue—“my decision not to go on with my University course.”
“It would have been better,” said Ernest “if you had made up your mind to go to England and take a university course there.”
“No, no,” interrupted his brother, “the boy’s quite right. He knows what he’s fitted for. And I say that he is a musical genius.” His eyes, glittering strangely in the moonlight, were fixed on Finch.
“I’m so glad you think so, Uncle Nick! And you thought my speech was all right, didn’t you?”
“Absolutely. From the moment you rose to your feet, you were, as the Italians say, pere bene!’
“Meaning,” said Piers, “full of beans.”
“Exactly.”
Finch half filled his glass with Black and White and aimed a squirt of soda at it. “I think, just among ourselves, that I may say that my aim is to live an unselfish life.”
“You couldn’t have a better,” commended Ernest.
“From my own experience I know that bringing happiness to others brings happiness to oneself.”
“What form,” asked Nicholas, “is your unselfishness going to take?”
“I should suggest,” said Piers, “making a pool of it.”
Finch turned toward him somewhat truculently. “What do you mean?—a pool of it?”
Piers pondered a moment, and then said: “Your unselfishness, of course. Sunshine idea. A brighter Jalna.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Finch. “I’m in dead earnest. I want to do something for each one of you, and that’s a fact.”
“Say it in writing,” put in Piers.
“My word is as good as—”
“Of course it is,” said Nicholas. “We all know it is.”
Finch proceeded—“I’m very glad that Renny hasn’t joined us, because he never seems to see eye to eye with me in anything.”
“Where is he?” asked Ernest. “I hadn’t missed him before. Indeed I quite thought he was here.” He peered about the room.
“Been sent to bed,” said Piers; “he was a naughty boy, poor fellow!”
Finch said—“Uncle Nick and Uncle Ernie, if I were to invite you to come on a trip with me to England at my expense, would you accept?”
“Delighted to accept,” answered Nicholas instantly.
Ernest reached across the table and took Finch’s hand and shook it. “Dear boy—dear boy—” was all he could say.
“Me, too!” said Piers. “What are you going to do for me?”
“What should you choose?”
“Give me time. Let me sleep on it.”
“It’s settled then, is it? You two are coming with me to visit Aunt Augusta?”
Ernest squeezed the hand he held, the hour, his condition, the invitation, filling him with an almost overwhelming emotion. Nicholas accepted airily, as though he were bestowing a favour.
“I will take you to some of my old haunts in London,” he promised, straightening his shoulders and drawing his chin against his collar.
Both uncles then began to talk about the years they had spent in England, repeating, at first, incidents that the nephews had heard before, but, as the night drew on, and as the decanter emptied, drawing from remote places in their memories events unrecalled in years, like forgotten birds’nests dragged forth from an old belfry, or rusty anchors drawn up from the deep.
Some of these memories were disgraceful, and, in the telling of them, the two elders became more and more youthful, breaking into sudden uncontrolled laughter, their speech falling into the catchwords of their day. The young men, on the contrary, grew graver and more judicial with each glass, looking as though they did not quite approve of the levity of the others, Finch even going to the length once of giving some sound advice. In order that he might hurt no one’s feelings he addressed the advice to the siphon in a kind of chant, and when no one gave any heed to him he shed a few unnoticed tears.
But, when the moment came when sing they must, he was ready. Ernest, who loved very old songs, ballads, madrigals, and the like, began “Summer is acumen in,” in his still excellent voice. A tenor, a lusty baritone, and a bass joined in with:
Loudly sing, cuckoo!
Grows the seed, and blows the mead,
And grows the wood anew,
Sing cuckoo!
The ewe is bleating for her lamb;
Lows for her calf the cow.
The bleating and the lowing, so loud and mellow, brought a fifth member of the family on
the scene. This was Renny, clad in dressing gown and slippers. He stared at the revellers with ironical amusement.
“Well,” he said, “you’re a lovely looking lot!”
The moon was gone, and the dawn creeping in showed them wan and dishevelled in their evening clothes.
“You’ll wake the women and the kids,” he said. “They’ve been asleep for hours. Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
“I’ve made serious decision,” said Finch.
“What?”
“To go to bed.”
V
THE DEPARTURE
TO ERNEST it seemed positively portentous that Sasha should die just before his departure for England. It was as though she had comprehended what the state of his mind must be at the thought of parting from her. She was fourteen years old, and though she seemed to be in perfect health she required certain luxuries, certain attentions, to keep her so. On whom could Ernest have depended to care for her? Alayne had promised, but her attitude towards all animals was detached. Pheasant might have done very well, but there was Mooey, always at hand to lift her up by the wrong part or to roll on her as she slept before the fire. That left a choice among Wakefield, the Wragges, and Bessie the kitchenmaid. Ernest shivered before the choice and almost felt that he should not go.
As he fondled her with concern he noticed the look of understanding in her translucent amber eyes. She was standing on him, rhythmically kneading his stomach with her forepaws, as she so often did. He fancied, half-whimsically, that she was aware of his weak digestion and that she held the belief that gentle massage, such as she gave him, would benefit him. The benign expression she wore, when she kneaded him thus, encouraged the belief. Now to the expression of benignity was added the look of understanding.
The very next morning he had found her dead on his eiderdown. Curled up, as though sleeping, with a look of blissful peace—but dead. It was as though she had not been able to bear the anxiety in his eyes and had willed her spirit to depart in the night, setting him free from the claims of love.
He had lain back again, pulled the covers over his head, and felt much shaken. He remembered the morning she had had her last kitten on this very bed. Just given one yell, as of triumph (for she was then old), and had it, about six o’clock in the morning. He remembered when she had been given to him by one of the Lacey girls fourteen years before, a tiny golden ball of sportiveness. He had been rather bored then at the thought of owning a kitten, had not much wanted her... a dog had killed her last kitten, and now she was gone...
Everyone was sympathetic. They had dug a grave for her in the prettiest corner of the garden, just where the old stone urn marked the spot. Wakefield had filled the grave with marsh marigolds and had curled her beautiful tail about her like a plume.
Ernest thought that Nicholas was very callous in the leaving of Nip. Nip, to be sure, was not so fine fibred as Sasha, but still he merited something more than the brief injunction thrown off by Nicholas at the supper table, on the night before departure—“For heaven’s sake, look after Nip!” That had been all. But it was Nick’s way.
The two months just passed had flown for them all. The spring had been backward, then forward. Their spirits had been up, then down. It was such an upheaval. At first the mere stupendousness of it had been exhilarating. But later, the thought of how they would be scattered was like a hovering cloud. Augusta was in England; Eden was in France or England—no one knew which; and soon Nicholas, Ernest, and Finch would be on the ocean. They felt afresh the blank left by the death of Adeline.
When old steamer trunks were carried down from the attic, rubbed up and new labels written for them, all felt definitely that the moment was at hand. New luggage was bought by Finch.
He had paid much more for it than he thought was necessary, but Arthur Leigh had been with him when he bought it and had insisted on the best. Finch was afraid of what Renny might say about such expenditure, but he had said nothing. Since the day Finch had announced his intention of going no more to the University, Renny, after his first outburst, had been cold towards him. Piers, on the other hand, had been warmer than ever before. But neither one would give him any advice about his money. If he approached Renny with—“I say, George Fennel thinks I ought to invest something in New York stocks and not be satisfied with such a low rate of interest,” Renny would shrug and say—“It’s none of my business. Do as you like with it.” And he would turn away.
If he sounded Piers on the same subject, Piers would laugh and say—“You’re going to have the time of your young life, aren’t you?” And, if Finch persisted, he might add—“Well, George ought to know something about it; he’s in the business. I should think it would be rather fun to speculate a bit.”
Finch felt like a half-fledged bird suddenly pushed from the nest. After being constantly supervised in his spending, ordered here and there, sometimes tyrannised over, this sudden thrusting on him of responsibility bewildered him, skimmed the cream of his pleasure in his inheritance.
It was as though they had formed a conspiracy against him. His uncles never referred to the money in his presence.
It was as though they said—“By hook or crook he got what we should have had. Now let us see what he will do with it.”
He had been almost frightened when the bank book had been put into his hand, when he had interviewed the bank manager and been shown the list of Gran’s solid and conservative investments. But George had scoffed at them. George had said that, aided by one versed in the fluctuations of the market, Finch might with “speculation” double his fortune.
His head was in a whirl. It felt hot most of the time. He found that he could not quiet his nerves by playing the piano. The virtue seemed to have gone out of it. His spirit, like a captive bird that had been wont to sing in captivity, now found itself baffled in its freedom, beating itself against the walls of change.
Alayne realised something of his bewilderment, his loneliness. They had several long talks. She felt anxiety at the thought of his giving up old Adeline’s safe investments for more spectacular ones, on the advice of George Fennel. Yet, like Finch, her imagination was captured by the thought that he might greatly increase his capital by careful speculation. George had offered some tempting suggestions, and she had heard from American friends who had made large sums of late. She wrote to the head of the New York publishing house for which she had been a reader, and asked his advice. His reply was an effort to stress cautiousness, but he could not conceal jubilation over the result of his own recent investments. In the same week came a letter from Miss Trent, with whom she had shared an apartment in New York, telling joyously of her own good luck. Renny and Piers, the two uncles, Maurice Vaughan, were children, she thought, in matters of business. To be sure, the first two exhibited a certain shrewdness in their own province, but she had seen and heard so much of mismanagement at Jalna. There was no use in consulting them. And added to their incompetence was their disinclination even to speak of Finch’s inheritance. If in some unexpected way the subject of the grandmother’s money came up, a feeling of tension was at once apparent. They shied at the mention of it, as skittish horses will shy at their own gatepost.
Alayne took her own small capital, left her by her father, out of the Government stocks where it had been invested, and bought Universal Autos with it.
When the stock began to rise steadily she could not resist telling Finch what she had done, and, after that, it was impossible for her to restrain him. But she made him tell Renny of the project. “Invest it as you like,” Renny said curtly. “I don’t know anything about stocks. I’ve never had anything to invest.” Finch knew that it was not jealousy that made him curt, but anger that he should have, at the instant of attaining his majority, refused to return to the University. This prompt refusal had symbolised to Renny the rejection by Finch of all further authority, of supervision by him as the head of the clan.
How bitter Meg Vaughan would be, Alayne thought, if Finch were to lose eve
n a small amount of money by following her example. Meg had always regarded her as an interloper, and to have some tangible injury to lay at her door would give her real satisfaction. Finch must go, therefore, and talk the matter over with the Vaughans. He was not loth to do this, even though he was afraid they would discourage the investment. He was in a condition of sensitiveness which made him desirous of discussing his affairs with anyone who was willing to do so. Himself and the hundred thousand dollars that were his seemed to him of vast importance, looming above all other subjects. Within an hour after it was decided that he should go to Vaughanlands he was on his way.
There was no doubt about the arrival of spring, but as yet no manifestation of it was visible in the landscape beyond an indefinite swelling of tiny leaf-buds which gave the trees the appearance of being seen behind a veil. Or, like love unrecognised, it had come, causing the heart to turn, but as yet making little difference in the outward life.
It was midday, and the cup-like formation in which the house stood had caught and held the sun. The windows were open to it, and certain pillows, curtains, and draperies piled on the sills gave evidence that spring-cleaning was in progress.
He found his sister covering a cushion with new cretonne in a design of tulips and delphiniums. Her white hands moved softly above it like two plump pigeons in a gay bit of garden. She wore a pink-and-white chintz cap in Quakerish shape, which, she fancied, gave her the appearance of being hard at work. Vaughan, who made no pretence of working, lay stretched on a sofa reading a book on fox-breeding. Since Lebraux had died, and there was a good chance that Mrs. Lebraux would give it up, he had entertained thoughts of buying her stock himself.
“Well, Finch dear,” exclaimed Meg, “so you thought you would come to see me! It’s about time. When I think how little I see of my brothers it makes me quite sad.” She held up her smooth face expectantly.
As Finch bent to kiss her his unruly forelock fell across her eyes. He kissed her repeatedly, smelling the warm sweetness of her flesh and the peculiar stinging odour of the new cretonne.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 258
