Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course

by Mazo de La Roche

  Finch crossed to her rather shamefacedly. He did not want to be thanked. But it was wonderful, this doing things tor people and benefiting himself at the same time.

  Again Meg embraced him, pressed her plump lips on his. “I don’t believe we’ll tell the others a thing about it,” she said. “I do like privacy about my own affairs, don’t you?”

  “Rather,” said Finch.

  They made all the arrangements, and, when they were complete, Finch sought advice on the subject of the New York stock. Meg and Maurice threw themselves into the discussion of it with enthusiasm. He would be a fool, they said, not to take advantage of such an opportunity. Why should Americans have all the money in the world? And if they had got it, why should they be allowed to keep it? Finch could not do better than to bring some of it here where it was so badly needed. He might become a rich man. And there was surely little danger when heads of publishing houses, who were right on the spot, considered it a good thing.

  “If Alayne,” said Meg, “is going into it, you’re safe. I never knew a more calculating person. To me she’s the very embodiment of shrewdness.”

  “She wasn’t very shrewd when she married Eden,” observed Maurice.

  “Maurice, how can you say such a thing! If ever she showed shrewdness it was then! Who was she? Nobody! He took her out of an office and brought her to Jalna—to a life of ease. He made a Whiteoak of her!”

  “He nearly broke her heart,” said Finch.

  “Hearts like hers aren’t so easily broken! They’re too calculating. For my part, I think she had her eye on Renny from the first. Poor lamb, he hadn’t a chance against her!”

  The two men sighed simultaneously in the effort of picturing the red fox, Renny, as a helpless lamb.

  Patience, now within a few months of three, came running into the room. She was vivacious as Mooey was grave. Her light brown hair lay sleek on her head, her frock was bright blue.

  “Baby, darling,” said Meg, as Finch picked up the child, “you must put your arms right round Uncle Finch’s neck and give him a perfectly ‘normous hug! He’s just done something so nice for Mummy.”

  Patience pressed Finch’s head against her stomach. “Oh, my Finchy!” she cooed.

  “Who’s got a pretty new dress?” asked Finch, to cover his embarrassment.

  Talking to Piers that afternoon, Finch could not forbear dropping a hint about the taking over of the mortgage on Vaughanlands. Piers was curious, and, after binding him to secrecy, Finch told all. Piers thought it a very good thing for both parties. “But mind you make them toe the mark with the payments,” he advised. “Maurice is more than a little slack in money matters. He owed me for two years for a Jersey bull he bought, and I only got the money lately by keeping right after him.”

  Finch felt a little depressed at the prospect of keeping right after Maurice. The responsibility of wealth was beginning to weigh on him. He said:

  “You’ve never told me what you would like in the way of a present. It would please me awfully to give you something. I hate not dividing things up a bit.”

  “Oh, I’ll think it over,” and Piers turned away.

  Finch strode after him. “You’re not going to get out of it like this. Just tell me something you’d really like.”

  “I’ve got everything I need.”

  “But there must be something.” He went on complainmgly—“I don’t know what’s the matter with you chaps! You’d think the money was tainted or something—you’re so shy of it!”

  Piers stopped, and turned to Finch. “Well, if you want to make me a present that won’t break you, buy me a new motor car. The old one is literally falling to pieces, and, as long as the engine has a kick in it, Renny won’t buy a new one.”

  “Good!” cried Finch. “I’m awfully glad you thought of that. And Pheasant will enjoy it too. Shall we go in tomorrow and choose one?”

  Piers made short work of choosing a car. He knew exactly what he wanted, down to the smallest detail. How amazing, Finch thought, to know all that when you had had no earthly prospect of getting a new car.

  They had taken the train to town and come home in the car. It would be hard to say which of them enjoyed the drive most—Finch, sitting with folded arms, feeling, he could not have told why, rather like a self-made man, rich enough at last to indulge in the pleasure of philanthropy; or Piers, with a small, set grin on his face, entranced by speed.

  They talked little on the way, but, by the time they reached Jalna, Finch had promised to reshingle the barn for Piers, and to build him an up-to-date piggery. It was understood that Piers was to repay the cost of this when he was able.

  Everyone came out of the house to admire the new car. Pheasant and Mooey danced round it. He must be lifted into it and must sit with his little hands on the wheel. Pheasant put her arm about Alayne. “You must share it too. The old car is a disgrace” Nicholas and Ernest were delighted at the thought of driving in such style to the train on their departure. There was nothing cheap about the car. It was a beauty, they agreed. But Wakefield was dubious.

  “I don’t believe,” he said, “that my grandmother would approve. She never liked the old car. She thought buying it was a great waste of money.”

  Piers answered—“She’s not here to worry over changes, and, as for you, you shan’t ride in it, just for being cheeky.”

  “Still, I don’t think Gran would like her money to be spent on motor cars.”

  “Would you like your seat warmed?”

  “No.” He edged away.

  “Well, shut up, then!”

  As they reached the garage they saw Renny standing in the door of the stable. When he saw the new car he turned sharply away and disappeared.

  At dinner, in the face of his forbidding expression, no one referred to the purchase. Only Wakefield, in every pause, made some pensive remark relating to the likes and dislikes of his grandmother.

  The day of leaving drew inexorably near. Then it dallied in a spell of heavy rainfall, seeming unreal and far off. Then it rushed upon them, giving them scarcely time for their last preparations.

  Nicholas and Ernest had taken tea with each of their old friends in turn. Ernest’s cheeks were flushed by excitement. Years seemed to fall from him with every day. The death of Sasha, which in moments of quiet saddened him deeply, made him feel in the moment of departure singularly free from responsibility. Nicholas, on the contrary, was intensely irritable. Gout danced about his knee, always threatening him, always making him feel that, at the last moment, he might have to postpone the trip. He found it hard to tear himself from the four walls of his room where he could do just as he liked and need pretend to be in no better humour than he was. And, though he would not acknowledge it, he was worried by the pleading look in Nip’s eyes. Toward the last Finch could do little but play the piano. From morning to night he played. And, when the family would no longer endure it, he went to the Vaughans’or the Rectory and played there.

  He was up before the sun on the last day. A gale from the west had blown all night, making him wakeful. He rose and leaned out of the window, letting the coolness of the wind refresh him. Daybreak, like a silver sail, was raised in the east, behind the darkness of the wood. To him it seemed the swelling sail of his adventure into a different world.

  But he wished his old world had been less lovely on this last morning. He wished that the birdsong that seemed to be shaken from the boughs by the wind had been less heart-rendingly sweet; that the silver sail of daybreak had not turned to gold, and then to rose, before his eyes. He would have liked to take away with him a homely, comforting remembrance of the place, not the etherealised aching beauty of this May morning. The green of the new leaves was too translucently green, the shadows in the ravine slept in too rich a bloom, the mating birds called from tree to tree with too tranced a longing.

  He dressed, in a kind of dream, and went out, taking old Benny, the sheepdog, with him. One by one he visited his old haunts. The rustic bridge across the str
eam, the apple tree in the old orchard, in whose crotch he had spent many hours reading. He went to the inmost part of the wood and lay down on the ground beneath the white-stemmed birches, pressing his face there, drinking in the smell of the soil. He crushed the young grass in his fingers and smelled it. He cut his initials and the date on a smooth white bole. He wondered what he would experience before he saw this place again. The old dog trotted seriously about, investigating, sniffing for a while, then settled down in a sunny space to doze.

  The three who were going away took dinner at the Vaughans. Meggie could not bear to part with them till tea time. When they returned to Jalna the new car was before the door, the hand-luggage already placed in it. Everything was in a rush now. They were annoyed with themselves and Meggie for detaining them so late. Pheasant had on her tweed suit and little brown hat. Mooey, though he was not going, was dressed in his best. Between slices of bread and honey Piers looked at his watch. Alayne was tying up a package of books she had bought for them to read on the voyage. Meg had packed a hamper with plum cake, currant jelly, the last of the russet apples, “because Finch loved them so,” and a jar of cough mixture made of rum and honey, which she thought infallible. From first to last the protection of this hamper fell to Finch and was a constant source of worry to him until, on shipboard, he scraped out and ate the last spoonful of the cough mixture, just to get rid of it. How could he throw away anything Meg had given him!

  Renny had not come in to tea. Finch asked, rather anxiously, where he was. Ernest explained—“He said goodbye to Nicholas and me before we went to Meggie’s. He said he might not be in to tea.”

  “But he did not tell me goodbye,” stammered Finch. “Surely he would not let me go away without seeing me?”

  “Surely not!” Ernest looked much concerned. “But there is no time for hunting him up. We must leave as soon as we have had our tea.”

  “I don’t want any tea!” He set down his cup and rushed out of the house. He had a sense of panic.

  Running towards the stables, he saw Wright in the act of backing the old car into the garage. He hesitated, and Wright called out:

  “If you’re looking for Mr. Whiteoak, sir, he’s over at Mrs. Lebraux’s.”

  Finch halted. “Wright, what’s the best time you can make to drive me there and back?”

  “I can get you there in five minutes, sir.”

  Finch clambered into the car. He must see Renny! The others would just have to wait for him if he were late. There was plenty of time for catching the train... Wright was showing what the old car could do. “You wouldn’t think she had it in her, would you, sir?” he grinned. A box that had been bumping about on the back seat fell to the floor. The door of the car jarred open and the box rolled into the road.

  “Let it go!” cried Finch.

  Wright drove on. “That was a mixture I’d just got from the vet,” he said ruefully.

  The place Antoine Lebraux had rented for his venture into fox-breeding comprised about twenty acres, a wooden house painted a dingy white, a small stable, a poultry-house, and the fragile outbuildings Lebraux had added. Finch had known it as the house of a retired tradesman who had built it ten years before, had spent his days in keeping the premises in unnatural order, and had been swift to complain of any intrusion on the part of the boys or dogs from Jalna. Several times Renny had had to pay him for fowls, the deaths of which were laid at their door.

  Finch had always hated the ugly neatness of the place, hated the rows of white painted stones that lay on either side of the walk. As he ran between them to the door his swift glance took in the air of neglect that had replaced the smug tidiness.

  He pressed the electric bell twice without answer. Then he saw, stuck above it askew, a card with the words “Out of order.” He knocked loudly. The minutes flew while he waited for some response, then a step sounded in the passage and a bolt was drawn. Good Lord, was Renny locked in there? The door opened and Pauline Lebraux stood on the threshold. She looked half frightened at seeing him. She wore a black serge dress of scanty cut, and this, with her long black legs and dense dark hair standing out about her face, made her look strangely fragile and pathetic. On her arm she carried, like an infant, a sickly fox cub wrapped in flannel. Its bright eyes peered out at Finch with an expression abnormally intelligent. Her appearance was so singular to Finch that he forgot for a moment what his errand was.

  “I’m going away,” he said.

  He thought a shadow darkened her face, but she only smiled a little and said—“Won’t you come in?”

  “Thanks, but I mustn’t. I’m in a rush to catch the train. I came to see if Renny is here.”

  “Yes. He’s with Mother. Helping her with the foxes. Are you going far?”

  “To England.”

  “For a long time?”

  “All the summer. Perhaps longer.”

  He thought it cruel of her mother to have put her into mourning. He heard himself saying—“I hardly knew you in that dress. You had on white the night you were at our place.”

  “This is one of my school-dresses. I went to a convent in Quebec.”

  He thought she looked exquisitely remote, half wild, with the fox cub in her arms. He had a sudden desire to touch her, somehow to bring her near him.

  He said, almost in a whisper—“Will you kiss me goodbye?” She was only a child, but he reddened in an odd excitement of the nerves.

  She shook her head. “No. But you may kiss my hand.”

  She was being affected, he thought, then remembered her French upbringing. He took the hand she offered, thin and white, with the immature wrist showing below the black sleeve, and raised it to his lips.

  They repeated “Goodbye,” shyly. He hastened to the back of the house and looked about, in the hope of seeing Renny.

  He saw the foxes in their enclosures, their fur darkly bright in the lowering sunrays. He heard voices in the little stable. How could he go there and call Renny’s name, as though he were a child? He had a feeling of hot anger against Renny. He had a mind to return to Jalna without seeing him. But he had been seen from within. Renny appeared in the doorway, then came slowly toward him.

  “Looking for me?” he asked.

  “Did you suppose I’d go away without saying goodbye?” blazed Finch.

  “How was I to know what you’d do? You do what you like.”

  Finch was aghast. Was this the way they were going to part? If it was, it would spoil his trip. If he missed his train, if he missed the boat, he would stay here till he’d wrung something better than this taciturn coldness from Renny.

  “What have I done? Why are you treating me like this?”

  “Watch out! Mrs. Lebraux is in there, she’ll hear you.”

  “I’m missing my train, do you know that? Yet you won’t say a friendly word to me! God, we might never meet again!”

  “I hate saying goodbye.”

  “But you said goodbye to Uncle Nick and Uncle Ernie. Why not me?”

  “That’s just it. I didn’t so much mind saying goodbye to them.”

  Finch’s eyes searched the lean red face before him. If that were the truth—and Renny was not a liar—and he was frightfully queer about some things.—Oh, perhaps it was not so bad after all—perhaps Renny didn’t hate him—why, Renny had always kissed him when they parted, like a father! He looked into Renny’s eyes, his face suddenly contorted in an effort to keep from crying. He put out his hand.

  Renny took it and drew Finch toward him. He bent and kissed him in the old way. Finch sniffed the familiar smell of stable on him. A load rolled from his heart.

  Mrs. Lebraux came out of the stable. She was bareheaded and wore a man’s linen dust-coat. She was rather attractive out of doors, Finch thought, with her short hair in its strange stripes of tow colour and brown, blown back from her face, her blue-eyed boyish stare and her reckless-looking mouth. She showed him her hands.

  “I can’t shake hands with you, you see. I’ve been working with the foxes
, and now I’m learning how to look after horses.”

  Finch murmured a few hurried words of greeting and farewell, threw a warm glance to Renny, and hastened back to the car. But he was still within earshot when she said in her deep, rather musical voice, with its Maritime Province accent:

  “It was amusing to see you kiss that tall youth. I hadn’t imagined—”

  That was all he heard. But what hadn’t she imagined, he wondered. And what had been Renny’s reply? He would give a good deal to know. And why had Renny gone to the fox farm that afternoon? Had he spoken the truth when he said that he had been loath to say goodbye? Or had he just been nursing his resentment against Finch? Still, this was not the first time he had taken himself off at a critical moment. Finch drew a deep sigh as they bumped along the road.

  At Jalna he found the others in varying degrees of perturbation at his delay. Ernest was almost in despair, not able to keep still for a moment. Nicholas, solidly settled in the car, was uttering wrathful ejaculations. Pheasant was distraught. Piers said that it was almost more than he could do to keep his hands off him. Wakefield had brought out a pair of binoculars the better to watch for him, though the road was quite hidden from the drive by trees. It was one of the moments when Alayne felt that the Whiteoaks were almost beyond bearing. With a controlled expression she stood holding Mooey in her arms. Mooey was dubiously sucking his thumb, only taking it from his mouth at intervals to say—“I’m not f’ightened.”

  They caught the train, and that was all. The porter had barely disposed of their luggage, Piers had barely shaken hands all round, Pheasant kissed all round and exclaimed, “Oh, how I wish I were going too!” when she and Piers had to get off. They stood on the platform together as the train drew out, their young faces upturned, she blowing a kiss to the three at the window; he bare-headed, a smile, in which there was a shadow of boyish envy of the adventurers, softening his face.

  VI

  THE VOYAGE

  NICHOLAS AND ERNEST had arranged that they should sail from New York, returning by way of Quebec. Once, years ago, they had done this and had enjoyed the variety it gave. They would like to repeat the experience, and it would be interesting for Finch.