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

by Mazo de La Roche

  It was necessary that Nicholas have a cabin to himself. He was so heavy, he said, and could not bear the thought of others in the room with him. Ernest and Finch therefore shared one. The boat sailed at midnight. Finch felt beside himself with excitement.

  To sail out of the harbour under the quivering brightness of the stars; to look back at the starry brilliance of the city that stretched out arms, as though to hold the ship; to gaze ahead into the unrolling obscurity of the sea, stirred the very pith of him. Up and up till he was on the highest deck, which he had almost to himself, there to lean against the rail, feeling the trembling of her through all his nerves, brought him a new joy unlike anything he had yet experienced.

  He might have spent the night there had he not remembered that Uncle Ernest would be wanting to turn in. Down below he found that the confusion was lessening, but there were still groups of women in evening cloaks, carrying flowers, surrounded by too prosperous-looking men. Here and there were stewards, fetching vases to hold flowers, running errands. He had trouble in finding his stateroom in the intricacies of the passages. The door of the one next his stood open, and, on the floor just inside, he saw two flower-baskets and several open boxes filled with roses. Two women stood in the passage reading a telegram together, clutching other telegrams in their hands. “Telegrams,” he thought; “trouble at home, poor things! Hard luck that, just as they’re setting out.”

  He found his uncle tucked up neatly in the lower berth, his clothes unpacked and hung in the wardrobe, a little irritated at the lateness of Finch’s coming.

  “This is what comes,” he remarked, “of travelling with someone your age!”

  “But,” returned Finch, peeling off his things, “I don’t think you could have slept if I had been here, there’s so much noise in the corridors.”

  “I could have had this glaring light turned out, at any rate.”

  Finch wasted no time. Soon he was clambering up the little ladder, snuggling on his swaying perch, rather like a wild-eyed young cockerel, half timid, half challenging toward the world.

  He lay there feeling in himself the capacity for absorbing the essence of what surrounded him, not only the beauty or the tragedy, but the mere motion and sound, the thrusting of the ship’s bow against what would restrain her, the foamy onslaught and the troubled retreat of the waves against her side.

  The next morning the sky had clouded and the sea grown rough. Nicholas and Finch were sick men. But Ernest, in spite of his weak digestion, had not enjoyed his meals so well in years. For two days the others lay in their berths while he savoured the pleasure of new contacts. While they aged the years fell from him as he paced the deck or played bridge and sipped cocktails in the lounge. The invincible vein of youth-fulness in him was rubbed bright. He strode out with the best of them on the promenade deck. He seemed more like a man of sixty than one of seventy-four.

  The third day out, when the sky had become a merry blue and the sea was scarcely ruffled, the invalids reappeared, looking rather sallow, and feeling a little resentful of Ernest’s state of well-being. Nicholas had the habit of looking down on him as something of a weakling, while Finch had been obliged to watch his cheery changes of costume from his own perch of suffering, for two days. Had been waked from his first restful sleep by Ernest returning flushed out of his bath, opening and shutting drawers, talking breezily to the steward.

  Ernest’s wish was to keep away from their melancholy presence and to make desirable acquaintance among the passengers. It was on the second day that he had discovered Rosamond Trent.

  It was a moment before he recognised her as the friend with whom Alayne had shared an apartment before her marriage to Eden. Ernest had met her several times on his visit to New York and had admired her. Now he felt delighted at the re-encounter at such an auspicious moment. She showed an almost equal pleasure at meeting him. Her mind still brooded with passionate affection on Alayne. She felt pity for her and a kind of envy Pity, because Alayne had buried herself in a place so remote from New York; envy, because she would have liked to reach out and grasp the varied experiences of those who existed outside that city. She had a certain greed for life, and, in New York, she thought she had her ear against the beating of its heart, but was, at times, doubtfully conscious that she was not aware of what its extremities were doing.

  They settled themselves in the prettiest corner of the lounge and Ernest nodded toward the wine steward. He remembered Miss Trent’s fondness for cocktails. She was, he noted, perfectly turned out, from her closely fitting hat to her manicured hands and her shoes that, one felt, were specially designed for shipboard wear in the month of May.

  “Now, do tell me,” she said eagerly, “about Alayne! I was just thrilled by her second marriage. But I’m so perfectly devoted to her that I can’t help worrying the least teeny bit when she doesn’t write often. I haven’t had a letter from her for three weeks.”

  “Alayne is very well. To my mind she grows more charming. She and Renny are so deeply attached. They are really like one being.”

  Miss Trent smiled happily. “Ah, I’m perfectly delighted to hear that! I was so disappointed at not meeting him when he was in New York two years ago. Do you think that Alayne is ever going to invite me to visit her?” She hurried on, without waiting for an answer, asking questions about the family (knowing most of them only through Alayne) as though they were old friends. She was shocked to hear that Renny had ridden at the New York Horse Show the autumn before and had not come to see her. She and Ernest got on famously. She told him that he looked younger every time she saw him, and he told her that she looked handsomer every time he saw her. And, after a couple of cocktails, he and she did indeed look even younger and handsomer still.

  She had given up the profession of advertising, she told him, and had gone into the antique business with a friend. They had put all their capital into it. They were like two leaves swept along by a tide. They might arrive anywhere or be just swamped. The object of Miss Trent’s trip to England was the purchase of more antiques.

  “In my waking moments,” she declared, “I think of nothing but antiques.”

  “How well I understand you,” said Ernest, leaning toward her across the cocktails. “I am exactly like that about my annotation of Shakespeare. Waking or sleeping, it is seldom out of my head.”

  Miss Trent’s eyes found the depths of his. “Do you think,” she asked, “that you are going to realise your dream?”

  Ernest said that he thought he was.

  On the morning when Nicholas and Finch came on deck they found the two stretched side by side in their deck chairs. No other legs on the deck had been swathed so meticulously by the steward, as theirs. They exhibited a like fastidiousness. There was not a wrinkle in their rugs. On his lay his binoculars. On hers the latest available copy of The Connoisseur. Her head was thrown back, her lips parted, showing her fine teeth. She looked young for her fifty-five years.

  Nicholas, who was leaning on Finch’s arm, halted and stared. Finch stared too, recognising Rosamond Trent. He told his uncle that she was the New York friend who had, in a way, mothered Alayne.

  Nicholas gave Ernest a poke with his stick and smiled ironically down on him. Ernest, a little self-conscious under his brother’s eye, introduced him to Miss Trent.

  Ernest arranged that they should sit at table together. So Rosamond had the felicity of being surrounded by three distinguished-looking men, distinguished, at least, by their dissimilarity from the other men aboard. Their contrast to their companion also was marked. The group was the subject of some conjecture. How had they come together? Rosamond, usually sociable, now became distant, determined to keep her little circle intact.

  Nicholas took a quite unreasonable dislike to the good-natured woman. He was annoyed at having the isolation that he craved when travelling disturbed by imposed intercourse with her. He was annoyed by the sight of Ernest promenading the deck with her, discussing the menu with her. He hated the sight of the food she chos
e. He resented her knowledge of the affairs of his family, her knowingness concerning antiques. She even knew that at Jalna there were some fine Chippendale “pieces” brought over by Captain Whiteoak.

  He decided that she was a fool, and told Ernest so.

  Ernest decided that poor old Nick was only envious of the brisk time he was having. He did not say this to Nicholas, but he did say that Miss Trent was one of the best-turned-out women on board.

  “That may be,” returned his brother, “but she’s not at all Alayne’s sort. I can’t see how she ever came to take up with her. There’s something cheap about her.”

  Ernest smiled pityingly. “You don’t understand New York life, or even modern life. Besides, Miss Trent comes of a good Virginian family. Her people used to keep slaves.”

  “It appears to me that she keeps one now,” said Nicholas testily.

  As Miss Trent and Ernest became more preoccupied with each other, Nicholas and Finch held more aloof from them. Finch was too shy to make friends with other young people on board. He would stand in the doorway of the saloon watching them dance, choosing an imaginary partner among them. One girl, with a rather heavy face but with movements of sustained rhythm, attracted him. Through an entire dance he would follow the graceful swaying of her body, mentally pressing it against his own, then turn away and find some isolated spot on the deck where he could watch the dark rhythm of the waves.

  Once he found the saloon deserted when some amusing contest claimed the attention of all, and he sat down at the piano. He played the Prelude in A softly, for fear of being heard, bending over the keyboard as though with his body to muffle the sound. Before he was finished he was conscious that there were others in the room with him. He kept on, but, when he had touched the last notes, he rose and, assuming the sullen hangdog expression he often wore at home, he hurried out. The girl with the heavy face and graceful movements was in the doorway as he brushed past. She had been playing the piano through him, as he had danced through her.

  His Uncle Nicholas complained a good deal to him of his Uncle Ernest.

  “He’s acting like a simpleton,” he said. “There’s nothing he won’t do. He and that woman went into some idiotic contest as partners and actually won first prize. I’ve just been in the lounge seeing them get it. I don’t know what your grandmother would say if she could see him. Upon my word, I shouldn’t be surprised if he’d end by marrying her, if she were fool enough to have him.”

  Finch was horrified. The thought of Uncle Ernest as a husband, the husband of Miss Trent, caused his world to rock. He gasped:

  “Is there nothing we can do to stop it? Couldn’t you give him a talking to? Couldn’t you remind him what Gran would think if she knew? He’s always quoting her opinion himself.”

  “He’d probably make out that she’d quite approve of Miss Trent. Spirits always say just what you want them to, you know.”

  “Well, look here, Uncle Nick—do you think I might try to cut him out?”

  Nicholas looked him over with amusement. “He’s twenty years older than she is, and you’re about thirty-five years younger. You might have a go at it though she seems to be out for antiques.”

  Nicholas was not so much worried over Ernest’s behaviour as irritated by it. But Finch was very much worried.

  On the last night out a fancy dress dance was given. Nicholas, after watching the changeful pattern of the dancers for a while, went early to his berth. Finch, lurking outside a window, saw two figures in dominoes which, he made sure, were those of Rosamond Trent and Ernest. The thin one in mauve was Ernest. Mauve! The very tentative blithesomeness of the colour sent a stab of apprehension through Finch. He felt weighed down by a sense of responsibility for his uncle. How to save him from Miss Trent!

  They were undressing in their cabin when Ernest remarked:

  “Rosamond Trent is a very brilliant woman, Finch. A very vigorous yet very sympathetic woman.”

  Finch’s head was concealed in his shirt and he left it there, feeling more comfortable thus sequestered, while Ernest went on.

  “She has rare business acumen combined with understanding of those of more reflective bent.”

  Finch thought—“It’s coming! God help us!” And he kept his head inside his shirt.

  Ernest proceeded—“She never succeeded in her advertising enterprise because it gave no scope for her really ardent temperament.”

  Ardent! Oh, this was too much! He struggled out of his shirt and stood in his bare pelt, crimson-faced, glaring at his uncle.

  Ernest sat down on the side of his berth and fixed his eyes on Finch’s. “But this collecting of antiques is another affair—”

  “Antiques,” mumbled Finch; “you don’t mean—”

  “Mean what?”

  “That you’re going—” He could not get it out.

  “What I was going to say is that it seems such a pity to see a woman like Miss Trent handicapped in her new enterprise for lack of funds.”

  “Oh,” said Finch, relieved, “is that all?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Uncle Ernie, I thought you were going to tell me that you were in love with her,”

  Ernest’s face turned almost as red as Finch’s, but he did not look ill-pleased.

  “I hope I’ve too much sense to be falling in love at my age,” he said. “And if I were going to do anything so foolish, it would be with quite a different sort of woman. A woman more like Alayne possibly.”

  Finch felt boundless relief as he hurriedly pulled on his pyjamas.

  “Miss Trent has put all her capital into her business. It is tied up. She has not sufficient ready money to invest in antiques to ensure a large profit. She is sadly hampered. If she had, say, ten thousand dollars to invest at once, she could, with her skill, double, even treble it.”

  Finch climbed up to his own berth. He hung over the edge of it, looking down on Ernest, feeling somehow that he had saved him from some danger. But it turned out that it was Miss Trent whom he was to save, and, in saving her, make a splendid investment for himself. To the muffled throbbing of the engine they discussed the intricacies of her affairs, with which Ernest was astonishingly familiar, far into the night.

  VII

  LONDON

  THERE they were, crowded into a taxi, making their way through the traffic of the London streets, Finch on one of the drop-seats, almost dislocating his neck in the effort to see out of both windows at once. It was too unreal, seeing the places he had heard of so familiarly all his life. Westminster Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square, the lions, Buckingham Palace! They thundered at him like a series of explosions. It was too much. It was overwhelming.

  His uncles simultaneously pointed out places on opposite sides of the street. They were amused and touched by the expression of his face. It was nearly twenty years since they had been in London. They perceived changes even in that hurried drive. Old landmarks gone, new buildings towering in their place. A certain depression tempered the pleasure of the return.

  They had engaged rooms at the same hotel where once they had been familiar guests. It was no longer a fashionable hotel and had lost something of its air of elegance. But they were delighted to find that the hall porter was the same, scarcely changed except for greying. He recognised Ernest, after a moment of hesitation, but Nicholas only because he was in the company of Ernest. This heavy old man with the drooping shoulders, the sombre face where, only in the eyes, the old light smouldered, was a very different gentleman from the former Mr. Nicholas Whiteoak.

  Finch leant across his window ledge and looked down into the street. Tawny yellow sunlight gave it mystery. The shadows of pedestrians were elongated. A flower-seller with his barrow of spring flowers had taken his stand below. Three disabled returned men were at the corner playing the Londonderry Air on two violins and a sort of legless piano held on the knees. A fourth man timidly held out a hat toward the passers-by. From the position of the piano-player’s head Finch guessed
that he was blind. He closed his own eyes and listened to the wild plaintive strain. Beneath the music he heard the turgid rumble of the city’s life. London... It was too unreal to be here. He could not believe it.

  He wanted to buy violets from the flower-seller, to give money to the musicians, to do something for the terrible-looking old woman in the feathered hat, shuffling along the opposite side of the street. He wanted to make a gallant gesture to the plump lady in the flower-boxed window across the way as she paused in her conversation with her parrot to look at him. He must go out again. He could not endure the indoors. They had been out all afternoon, had just come back in time for tea, but he must go out again, this time uncleless.

  They were to be only a week in town before going on to visit Augusta. The fine weather might not hold, so Nicholas and Ernest had decided to go to the Park on that first afternoon. They had sat in the little green chairs watching the riders cantering in the Row. Finch had sat between them, and they, hands clasped on their sticks, had leaned forward to talk across him. Their quiet tones had broken into excited exclamations once when they had recognised a burly purple-faced rider as an old acquaintance. They had been more or less certain of the identity of half a dozen others. A handsome girl riding a black horse was so like another handsome girl, sat her mount with so like a grace, that she must surely be a daughter. It was most exciting.

  They had walked through the gardens, shown Finch the Serpentine and the waterfowl, the flaming rhododendrons, the rosy foam of the hawthorns in bloom, pointing out this and that to him with their sticks as though he had been their little boy. But the new apartment houses in Park Lane were horrible to them. Strange, they said, that nothing could have been done to prevent that. They were disgusted with Finch for thinking that Park Lane was still a fine street.