“Why, you’re not going!” exclaimed Meg.
“You must stay for dinner,” added Maurice, halfheartedly. He shrank from the thought of a meal dominated by Renny’s arrogant opposition to his project.
“I must go. I’ve a man coming out to see a horse at two o’clock.” The same formula was always the ready excuse on his lips. And as he uttered it he moved, with something of the restiveness of a nervous horse, away from the others. He gave Meg a look in passing and she followed him to the porch.
“Eden is in a pretty bad way,” he said in a low tone. “He needs a rest and lots of good food. I had to bring him here to you—well, I couldn’t have taken him to Jalna, you know.”
She clasped his arm in her hands. “I will nurse him back to health. No matter what happens he shall lack nothing. Thank goodness, we have quantities of Jersey milk.”
“Good. I’ll send some stout and sherry. And I can give you some money next week. You’ll need it.”
“No, no. You must not. Tell me—where is Minny?”
“They’ve separated. I think that’s a good thing. He’s very thin, isn’t he?”
“Yes, the poor boy! But don’t worry! I’ll look after him. Don’t let us worry about anything!”
He smiled rather grimly but kissed her with affection, and, after half a dozen attempts, induced his car to start homewards.
IV
FINCH RETURNS
TWO MONTHS LATER Finch Whiteoak came out of the house after having eaten his breakfast in company with Wakefield on the first morning after his return from abroad. He slowly crossed the lawn, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, drinking in the familiar scent of the air with closed eyes, so that it might permeate his entire being, in the fiery darkness beneath his lids. “I am here,” he thought, “home again, where the very air has a smell all its own. A dry, sweet stinging smell that tickles my nostrils. Every foot of this lawn has been stepped on a thousand times by every one of us. No matter where I’ve been or what I’ve seen, this place has gone with me. I could not uproot myself from it if I tried. I’ve seen places so much more beautiful, so much more spectacular, that this is tame compared with them, and yet it is so dramatic to me that the rustle of the trees makes me shiver with excitement, the neighing of that stallion in the stable is like a peal of bells to me, the sight of Rags’ shiny coat with the fringed cuff makes me want to cry. I’ll bet anything that I can walk straight across the lawn with my eyes shut and pick a golden-brown zinnia from the middle of the border.” He walked on without wavering, made a scallop to avoid the great balsam tree, and stopped just at the edge of the grass. He bent and stretched out his hand and closed it on a crisp flower-head. His fingers slid down the stalk. He broke it off and opened his eyes. He held a golden-brown zinnia with a crimson heart.
He was laughing when he heard steps on the grass behind him. He turned and saw Wakefield.
“What are you doing?” Wake asked.
“Passing a test. I came down the lawn with my eyes shut and picked a golden-brown zinnia.”
“Brilliant youth,” returned Wake, sitting down on the grass. “Here’s your reward!” He held up a harvest apple, smooth as yellow silk, with one green leaf still clinging to its stem.
Finch took it and dropped to the grass beside his young brother. He sniffed the spicy sweetness of the apple, bit into its white flesh, and said:
“Lord, I had forgotten what an apple could be!”
Wakefield looked at the hand and wrist that held the fruit. “You’re very thin,” he observed. “Thinner than I remember you. And Eden came back in an even worse condition. It’s strange. I always envy you fellows who go abroad, and yet you come home—after all your adventures and your triumphs—looking half-starved.”
“It is queer,” agreed Finch. “But I have worked frightfully hard and it’s natural to me to be thin. It’s not natural to Eden. I feel worried about him.”
“Oh, you mustn’t worry now. He has picked up wonderfully. I had a talk with him yesterday and he was looking awfully handsome, with a most beautiful colour—as fit as can be. He was wondering if those rich friends of yours, the Leighs, could help him get a job.”
“Have you seen anything of them lately?” asked Finch, trying to make his tone casual.
“No. They’ve been somewhere down the St. Lawrence all the summer, but before that we saw them occasionally.”
“What did you make of Sarah, Wake?” He was curious to know how that strange girl, whom he had loved and hated, would affect this sensitive, rather supercilious young brother.
“Young Mrs. Leigh? Well, Meg says she’s as deep as the sea, and I’m inclined to agree with her. I’m sure of one thing, and that is that her in-laws hate her.”
“What makes you sure of that?”
“She told Pheasant so. And Pheasant told me. I never guess at things. And she as much as told Pheasant that you and she had had an affair.” Wake peered sideways at him.
Finch’s heart had begun to tap sharply against his side. He said, plucking a handful of grass and slowly scattering it:
“That amounted to nothing. We rather liked each other, but she and Leigh fell in love almost at first sight. I don’t suppose you have heard how they get on?”
“No—but Pheasant told me that, in her opinion, they’re an ill-assorted pair. However, as far as I can make out, most married couples are. Except, of course, Aunt Augusta and Uncle Edwin. There was a marriage of souls!”
He looked so earnest as he said this that it was hard to know whether or not he were laughing in his sleeve. What a self-possessed, conceited young devil he was! The old admiration for him, the old desire to treat him roughly, came over Finch. But he finished his apple in outward acquiescence and tossed the core into the border. Then he asked irrelevantly:
“Do you often see Pauline Lebraux?”
“Almost every day since the holidays began. You’ll be surprised at the way she’s improved. I used not to think much of her looks, but she’s grown almost beautiful. Beauty just comes on her in a flash. She may be standing near you looking rather round-shouldered and sallow, and she turns and smiles at you—or perhaps she doesn’t even smile—and suddenly she’s beautiful and you feel like shouting to her— ‘Don’t move—don’t change—stay like that always!’ It’s a most extraordinary thing.”
Finch, watching his animated face, felt a sudden glow. Wake was growing up. They could be friends. He had never had a real friend among his brothers—a friend in the sense of close companionship.
“Tell me more about Pauline,” he said.
“Well, for one thing, I took her to a dance not long ago. I knew she could dance. I knew that Renny had danced with her a good deal to the gramophone at the fox farm. But I had no idea she was so wonderful. She simply floats. You feel that you could go on forever.”
“I’d like to see her.”
“We’ll go over this afternoon!
“I can’t. I’ll have to go to the Vaughans.”
“We’ll go there first.”
“All right … I say, what’s this I hear about Maurice subdividing some of his land?”
“My God! Don’t ask me! I’m fed to the teeth with that. I’ve heard about nothing else all the holidays. Deputations of every shape and form have waited on him from Jalna. Then, for a week, the whole thing is hashed over and a new deputation is formed. According to the oldsters, Gran must be ceaselessly turning over in her grave. And Renny is almost as unreasonable as they are. Only one fact remains— Maurice and Meggie have got to have money or apply to the Consolidated Charities for help.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so glib,” said Finch. “You make everything sound awful.”
“Do I? That’s interesting.”
“You’re a callous little brute.”
“Better callous than callow.”
“Lord, when I think what I was at your age!”
“Yes,” agreed Wakefield pityingly. “I remember. And Piers was always ragging you. And Renny w
as rather hard on you. But he’s proud of you now. We all are. You’re going to be famous, aren’t you? I wonder if I shall. Perhaps I’ll be a famous criminal. I believe I have a flair for crime.”
“I shouldn’t wonder.” Then he added seriously—“What do you think you’ll be, Wake?”
“I don’t know. Renny wants me to be a clergyman. Thinks it would be a nice easy life for me and keep me near Jalna. But the truth is that I’d rather be a flier than anything, but I know he’d never let me go in for that.”
Wakefield had lowered his voice, for he saw Renny coming toward them across the sun-warmed grass.
“I am going over to the fox farm,” he said. “Would you two like to come?” He looked down at them kindly, asking them if they would like to go with him as though he proposed a treat to two children.
Wakefield got to his feet at once. “Just the thing! I’ve been telling Finch that I must take him to see Pauline. He’ll immediately fall in love with her, won’t he, Renny?”
Finch still lolled on the grass. “I don’t think I’ll go,” he said, twirling the zinnia in his fingers.
Wakefield looked down at him mockingly. “Very well, let’s leave him,” he said, and then sang, in a silky tenor:
“If he’s content with a vegetable love which would certainly not suit me,
Why, what a most particularly pure young man this pure young man must be!”
Renny gave his short jeering laugh that always had the power to make Finch flush with annoyance at himself, and began to walk away. Wake followed him, and Finch, after a short hesitation, rose and joined them.
“It was just,” he explained, “that I suppose they have forgotten me. I hate butting in.”
“Don’t you worry,” said Wakefield. “They haven’t forgotten you. Renny and I never let anyone forget you. We’re always bragging about you. When you were rich we bragged about your riches, and, now that they’ve gone, we brag about your fame, don’t we, Renny?”
Finch could gladly have throttled him. He was scarcely home, he thought bitterly, before he was being ragged. And he had no power of retaliation.
Renny laughed again and then turned abruptly to Finch. “How much have you got left?” he asked.
The question came as a shock to Finch. His money and what he should do with it had so long been a sore point, Renny had so arrogantly refused to discuss it with him, that this sudden demand to know what remained of it startled and confused him. One reason that it confused him was because he had purposely given Eden the impression that there was almost nothing left of the one hundred thousand dollars Gran had bequeathed to him. He had felt contemptible in deceiving Eden who was ill and penniless, but he had done it instinctively to protect his own art. If he were to have a career he must have something to live on in the meantime. But if Eden knew he had money… well, he never could refuse Eden. Now, here was young Wake listening, ready to carry the news to him—yet he could not lie to Renny. And, after all, what was fifteen thousand dollars? Almost nothing! No one knew better than himself how quickly it would melt.
He stammered—“Oh, I think—I’m not perfectly sure— but I guess—about fifteen thousand.”
“Hmph! Well, you’ve parted with it fast enough. Just what I expected.”
“I have enough to see me through.”
“You’re lucky. I wish I had.”
Finch burst out—“Renny, if I can do anything…”
Wakefield looked encouragingly at Renny, but he muttered:
“No, no. I don’t want any of your money!”
“It must be good fun,” said Wakefield, “to have spent all that and still have so much left.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Finch.
Renny interrupted—“On our way to Mrs. Lebraux’s I must show you what our dear Maurice has been doing. You’ve heard that he’s planning a shack town along the ravine?”
“Yes… Look here, Renny, I don’t believe I want to see. It’s so beastly depressing.”
Renny gave his objection no more heed than if he had been a small boy, but led the way through the wicket gate in the hedge, along the winding path across a paddock, then down into the ravine where the stream hid itself among the watercress and honeysuckle. They stopped for a moment on the rustic bridge, for no Whiteoak could pass over it without this tribute. A group of cattails grew beside the stream, and one of them had already unloosed its velvet pile and the bright particles glistened on the air. A sumach tree of the deepest red sheltered the gay plumage of an oriole while he sang of late summer joys and eyed the purple elderberries spread out beneath him. The stream, talking secretly, showed itself for a space before sliding under the bridge, and into the sunlit pool thus formed Finch dropped his zinnia. A moment it stood upright, spreading out its leaves as though in a vase, then reclined gently and gave itself to the soothing movement of the stream.
Renny held out his cigarette case to his juniors.
“It seems only yesterday,” he said, “since I carried Wake down here in my arms to see the water and you ran alongside.”
“I remember,” said Wakefield, lighting his cigarette. “And Finch would sail paper boats, and you’d hold me over the railing head downward and the pool would look like a deep well.”
Finch did not speak. The remembrance of his childhood filled his heart. He saw it complete, tangible. He felt that he could hold it in his hand, drop it down into the stream as he had dropped the zinnia.
The smoke from their cigarettes lay on the air in bluish grey planes. Renny looked at his brothers with an amused, reminiscent expression, seeing them as he had seen them then.
At last, with one accord, they moved from the bridge and climbed the steep on the far side of the ravine. They passed through a wood of young oaks and Renny observed:
“This is where Piers and Pheasant used to meet on the sly.”
They came to open fields which showed here and there the stakes of the surveyors.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Finch. “Is this where Maurice is planting his bungalows? Why, it’s right beside us!”
“We shall need to put up a barbed wire fence,” said Wakefield.
Renny grunted derisively. “No fence will keep the sight and sounds of them out. No—it’s the thin end of the wedge. If we let this happen, God knows where it will end.” He turned, with the ingratiating smile so like his grandmother’s, to Finch.
“Here’s your chance to become a landowner, youngster. You could buy the land of Maurice and save the situation.”
“How much does he want for it?” asked Finch heavily.
“Ten thousand dollars, or even less, would buy it. But of course you can’t be expected to do that. We’ll just have to grin and bear it, I suppose.” He looked bitterly over the fields and then turned away as though he could not bear the sight of them.
They walked over the rough ground to the road in the direction of the fox farm.
“I wonder if they’ll mind our coming in the morning,” asked Finch, as they turned in at the gate. “They’re not expecting us, are they?
“We’ll go round and have a look at the foxes,” returned Renny. “That will give them time to tidy up, if they want to. Mrs. Lebraux is not at all fussy.”
“Neither is Pauline,” said Wakefield. “I’ve never known such an unaffected girl. She’s just as natural and beautiful as one of her own foxes.”
Renny gave a sly look across him at Finch.
Finch thought—“So—the kid is falling in love with Pauline.”
Somehow the thought of that did not please him. Wake was too young for real love, and the idea of Pauline as the object of his first amorous flutter was irritating.
There was a scurry among the foxes as they approached. Tawny streaks slid into kennels or burrows. All except a dog fox who sat on top of one of the kennels looking contemptuously about him. He had the expression of a fox that has been hunted a score of times and has learned to sneer at his pursuers, but he had spent all his life behind wire netting, had
his food without danger, his courtships without rivals, and had never heard the cry of a hound. He had been a sickly cub nursed to health by Pauline. He was her pet and would let her handle him with no more objection than the lifting of his lip. Now he knew that she was in her seat in the apple tree from where she could become acquainted with the habits of the different foxes unobserved.
She watched the three brothers approaching with a feeling of nervous excitement. If she could, she would have fled to the house, unseen by them. She drew back among the foliage of the apple tree and listened, hoping, with a kind of mischievous fear, to hear what they might say.
They stood looking at the dog fox. She could see them distinctly, hear Renny whistling between his teeth. She was conscious of his peculiar inaccessibility. Although she had not seen Finch for nearly two years, it was Renny at whom she gazed with yearning surprise, as though she recognised in him an antagonist whom she loved and feared.
Finch said—“They’ve made some improvements here. It looks better cared for than when I saw it last.” Something new in his voice held her. It was deeper. It had lost the hollow sweetness of youth. It was a man’s voice, easy, careless, pleasant to hear. There was a new look in his face too, as though he had learned to wear a mask.
Wakefield answered eagerly—“Mrs. Lebraux is splendid. She works like a man. And as for Pauline—she’s a marvel with the young foxes—she’s as tender with them as though they were babies— and she’s beautiful, too. You’ll agree with me in that, Finch.”
Pauline’s cheeks blazed. She was terrified lest they should go on talking about her. She could not bear to hear more, but that Wakefield had called her beautiful filled her with a wild, voluptuous joy. She stared down at him through the leaves, joyous and terrified.
Renny’s voice cut in. “I should never call her beautiful. She’s got that startled look, like a foal, that is rather nice to see in a young girl, but beautiful, why—I wish you boys could have seen a girl named Vera Lacy I was gone on when I was your age. There was a beauty, if you like.”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 295
