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

by Mazo de La Roche

  Finch saw that she had the Court nose, but that was not what held his gaze with a sense of something remembered. As she was being greeted by his uncles, who apparently had seen her as a small child in Ireland, his mind flew here and there among his recollections of the past, striving to fix on something that would explain this strange sense of having seen her before. It had fastened on nothing, when he heard his aunt’s voice introducing them.

  He still stood staring at her, unable to detach his mind. She came, however, to him holding out her hand. Something in the gesture gave him what he was looking for. Even as they shook hands he did not see her. His consciousness was occupied in the attic at Jalna. He saw himself in the lumber-room on a rainy day, crouching by the window, absorbed in old copies of Punch taken from a toppling dust-covered pile that year by year increased, for none were ever thrown away. He was looking at the picture of a Victorian drawing-room in which a whiskered gentleman was bowing over the hand of a lady. Other ladies were standing by. They were all alike, and each and all bore a striking resemblance to Sarah Court.

  That was it! She was like a drawing by du Maurier.

  He was so relieved by the discovery that he smiled delightedly at her. She smiled back, and he saw how the thin, delicate lips parted, showing unexpectedly small, even teeth. He thought he had never seen an upper lip so short, a chin so jutting.

  Mrs. Court was saying:

  “Well, Mole! So you’ve come out, now that the sun is gone!”

  Sarah Court’s lips closed tightly. She fixed her eyes on a ring with a large green stone, which she began nervously to twist on her forefinger.

  Her aunt leant forward, as though she would pry under the lowered lids.

  “Well, Mouse! Quiet as ever?” She turned to Ernest. “I call her Mouse, she’s so silent. It’s very irritating to me when I’ve no other companion.”

  Nicholas said—“Many years ago there was a girl we called Mouse. She was a ballet dancer.”

  “Was she quiet?” asked Mrs. Court eagerly.

  “No, she was rather noisy. But she’d a peaky little face, and small bright eyes.”

  “I enjoy a good ballet/” said Mrs. Court, “but I’ve no pleasure in the Russian ballet. I hate Russian music. It’s nothing but a fantastic noise compared with Bach, or Handel, or Mozart. When Sarah begins to do the rough-and-tumble of it on her fiddle I get out of the room. It gives me the fidgets.” And she played a tattoo with her heels to show how really fidgety she could become.

  Her niece had seated herself and continued to turn the green ring on her finger until Finch carried a cup of tea to her. She helped herself to bread and jam with something of the concentration of a child. Finch was so conscious of her withdrawal, he hesitated to speak to her. However, there was no need for conversation. Mrs. Court only stopped talking long enough to snatch a mouthful of scone or tea, and her harsh, yet somehow not disagreeable, voice required no encouraging response.

  “Do you keep up your music?” she asked Nicholas.

  “I play a little occasionally, but I notice that my hands are getting stiff.”

  “Is that rheumatism?”

  “I daresay.”

  “And you’ve gout, too?”

  He grunted.

  “Now, I wonder if your blood pressure is high?”

  “Shouldn’t be surprised. Nothing my body does surprises me now.”

  She turned to Finch. “We must get you playing. We’ll make a musical time of it.”

  She talked of music she had heard in the principal capitals of Europe. “But I can’t afford to travel now,” she said. “I just stick at home in Ireland. Mouse and I make our own music. Don’t we, Mouse?”

  How ludicrous, Finch thought, to call that remote-looking girl Mouse! He got up his courage and said:

  “You play the violin awfully well, I expect.”

  Her aunt had received no answer to her question and had apparently expected none, for she continued to talk without hesitating; but Sarah turned to Finch with a peculiar smile, with a certain elfish mischief in it, and answered:

  “You’ll know that when you hear me.”

  It was the first time he had heard her say more than a monosyllable. Her voice, he thought, was the very distillation of sweetness, all the more noticeable following, as it did, the gruff tones of her aunt. And it had a muted sound, as though a secret being within her spoke for her. He tried to draw her into conversation, but he was awkward and she was either shy or aloof.

  He was glad to escape into the garden when the others went to their rooms. He stood on the drive drinking in the air that was so fresh after London, his eyes opened wide, as though they would take in, at one extravagant glance, the scene that lay unrolled before him.

  The shower had passed and a light wind was blowing the rain clouds from the upper sky. In the west the sun had emerged from behind piled-up masses of snowy vapour, the fantastic shapes of which were outlined by his brilliance. But some of this triumphant radiance was reserved for the earth where fields and trees, wet with rain, showed their own colours intensified to celestial brightness.

  The house stood on a hill overlooking the village of Nymet Crews and, beyond that, the fields, woods, and pastures that stretched to the edge of Dartmoor. From the village, with its square-towered Norman church and white cottages, there was another rise of land toward the moor, and on this stretch every irregularity of field and meadow was outlined by the flowering hedgerows. The pattern of it was unrolled before him like a rich tapestry The deep red earth of one field lay beside the pale red of another. The tender green of pasture against the silver green oats. The darkness of a spinney next a field of corn that held the sun. He could see lanes, between tall hedges, threading their way to the open moor, there to be lost. He could see, looming above all, the hyacinth-blue contours of the Tors. The air held an almost palpable sweetness, unknown to him, of garden flowers, of new-mown grass, of the thousand wild flowers of the countryside and hedge, of Dartmoor itself.

  Lyming Hall was an unpretentious house of no particular period, but its gardens, lawns, and small park were kept in excellent order. Augusta was proud of the commanding view over the countryside. The fact that there were no large landowners about and few people of wealth gave her a pleasant feeling of superiority.

  Finch wandered among the flower beds, discovered the tennis court, the rosery, and walked down the drive, which sloped steeply, to the gate. There was a small gabled lodge half hidden in roses, so much like a picture of a little English house that Finch had to grin with delight as he looked at it. He turned away when he saw a woman in the door and cut across a corner of the park to where he could see the stable.

  In the stable he found only a pony which had just been given its evening meal by a boy a couple of years younger than himself. He put his knuckle to his forehead when he saw Finch. He had sombre black eyes and a rich tan on his cheeks.

  “Good evening,” said Finch. “I came in to see the horses.”

  “There’s only this one, zir,” answered the boy. “Her ladyship just keeps him for the lawn-mower and garden work. Her hasn’t kept more than this ‘un since I’ve worked ‘ere. His name’s Bobby.”

  Finch patted Bobby’s fat flank. “I suppose he’s all she needs. But aren’t there any dogs about?”

  “No, zir; we had one, but he was took bad one day and died.”

  “Have you worked here long?”

  “Two years, zir. I help Ash, the gardener.”

  What a nice-looking boy he was, Finch thought. He said—“I should think you’d like a dog about.”

  “Yes, zir.”

  Finch wished he wouldn’t call him “sir” quite so often. It made him feel silly. The men about the stables at home did not treat him with great respect. He scarcely seemed grown up to them.

  “An old English sheepdog is a nice dog,” he remarked. “We have one at home.”

  “Yes, zir. An old English is a very nice kind of dog.”

  “And Irish terriers are
first-rate companions. We have one of them too.”

  “Yes, zir. An Irish terrier is a nice kind of dog to have.”

  Finch remembered Nip. “My uncle has a Yorkshire terrier. Clever little fellow, too.”

  “Yes, zir. A Yorkshire terrier is a very nice kind of dog.” His dark eyes looked earnestly into Finch’s. He seemed satisfied that he was carrying on an animated conversation.

  “There are spaniels too,” went on Finch.

  “Yes, zir. A spannel is a nice kind of dog.”

  Finch looked at him excitedly, trying to bridge the gulf that separated them. “My brother has two Clumber spaniels,” he said.

  “Yes, zir. Two Clummer spannels must be very nice to have.”

  They smiled at each other. Finch turned to go. Then he stopped. “I say, what kind of dog was the dog you had here?”

  “He was a spannel, zir.”

  “Oh... was he a good dog?”

  “Yes, he was a spannel, zir.”

  “Well, I think I’ll be off. What’s your name?”

  “Ralph Hart, zir.”

  Finch repeated the name to himself as he prowled among the shrubbery, thinking how well it suited the dark interesting-looking boy. But what a conversation! He should like to go back and do it all over again and see if it would turn out the same way. He’d wager it would.

  He found the kitchen garden. He found strawberries under netting, and gooseberries like eggs. He came upon a door in a wall, almost hidden in ivy, and pushed it open. He found himself in a walled flower garden.

  He went up and down the box-bordered paths, a lanky figure filled with the joy of being alive in that warm sweetscented enclosure. He squatted to look into Canterbury bells. He held moss-roses in his hand. He put his long nose to the very earth to smell the mignonette. The pear trees, trained against the wall, were beautiful to him. At that moment the orchard of pear trees at Jalna, that carelessly covered the ground with golden fruit every fall, seemed a poor thing. He could not decide which roses were the most beautiful—the newly opened ones, their inner petals still resisting the fingers of the sun, or those at that mysterious moment of perfection, just before they fade and fall, when they seem to be offering their essence in a final surrender so complete as to have something of delicate vehemence in it. He thought he should like to carry his breakfast to this garden one morning, and eat it with no one about but the birds and Ralph Hart.

  When Ellen showed him his room, he was glad to find that its windows overlooked the walled garden. There was a can of hot water and his clothes were laid out ready for him on the bed. He felt very happy. He had had no idea it would be so nice at Aunt Augusta’s. He wished that Mrs. Court and her niece were not there so they might have been just a family party... Still, after all, Sarah Court was his cousin. But how strange and unapproachable she was! And she had a baffling charm for him. As he stood looking out of the window his thoughts, like curious birds, hovered about her.

  He was still looking down into the garden, where a violaceous shadow had tempered all the brightness, when a light tap sounded on the door. Augusta’s voice asked:

  “Are you dressed, dear? May I come in?”

  He threw open the door and stood guiltily before her.

  “I say, Aunt, I’m awfully sorry! I haven’t begun to dress; I’ve just been staring into the garden. You shouldn’t have given me a room with a window overlooking it.”

  She sailed with kindly majesty into the room.

  “I am glad you enjoy your view. It is not as pretty a room as I should have liked for you. But you see how it was. There were four others to be considered before you.”

  “Look here,” cried Finch, with a violent wave of the arm, “I’d rather have this garden under my window than a Turkish rug and a Louis Seize bed and a Turner landscape in the room!”

  “I am so glad you like it,” said Augusta; but she spoke abstractedly. She went back to the door, closed it, then sat down on the settee at the foot of the bed. She had on a black dinner dress and wore her old-fashioned jewellery that was beginning to be fashionable again. She raised her large eyes to Finch’s face and said, in a tone almost tragic:

  “Finch, I am in great trouble.” Her voice sounded a baritone depth.

  The thought of anyone’s being in trouble terrified him. He was used to trouble, Heaven knew, but his hair seemed to rise at the mere mention of it. “Oh—what’s up, Aunt?”

  “Eden,” she boomed, “is sitting on the doorstep.”

  He had an instant mental picture of Eden, rather down-at-heel but debonair, with that insolent, veiled smile of his, lounging on the door-sill. He could only make incoherent sounds expressing a state of being staggered.

  “That girl,” proceeded Augusta, “is with him.”

  So Eden and Minny were both sitting on the doorstep! He could only get out—“Well, well.”

  But his look of consternation was sufficient to satisfy his Aunt of his sympathy.

  “They are,” she said, “living in the lodge.”

  The lodge! And he had walked down to it not an hour before! Perhaps the woman he had seen in the doorway was Minny.

  “But how did they get there?” he asked.

  “By effrontery. As they get everywhere. You know I am attached to Eden. I cannot help being attached to Eden. But to have him come and sit on my doorstep, when I have Mrs. Court and Sarah in the house, is too much.”

  “But how did they come there? And when?” Life seemed one long surprise for him. Now he asked himself, as he had asked himself about so many things, can this be true?

  Augusta said—“They have been there a week. Eden turned up a month ago alone. She was somewhere in the offing, awaiting her chance to creep onto my doorstep. He told me that he was completely out of funds, and he asked me if he might not come and live at the lodge. 1 told him that the widow of the late lodge-keeper lived there alone. She paid me no rent, but he had been very faithful, and after his death I let her live on there. She often came and helped about the house. Now what do you suppose Eden’s remark was after I had told him all this? His remark was—’Can’t you turn the widow out?’Did you ever hear of anything more coldblooded?”

  “It was terrible,” agreed Finch.

  “It was barbarous; not only the words, but the way he uttered them. Just a casual—’Can’t you turn the widow out?’As though it were the turning of a hen out of a coop. I spoke impressively to him. I said—’Eden, I never thought that I should live to see the day that a Whiteoak and a Court should suggest that a widow be turned out of doors. Whatever our faults may have been, we have been benevolent.’ ” She pressed her middle finger where her eyebrows all but met.

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He said nothing. He just gave that rather tired smile of his and began to talk about his poetry. He does write really beautiful poetry, you know.”

  “And what then?”

  “After he’d had tea he went away. What was my astonishment, in less than a fortnight, when the widow’s daughter, who lives in Plymouth, wrote to her mother asking her to come there to live. She is going to have another child, and takes in lodgers, so it was altogether too much for her.”

  “And did the widow go?”

  “She went. And she had only been gone two days when Eden sauntered into the garden, where I was cutting roses, and said ‘Well, we’ve settled in.’ ‘Settled in!’I almost shouted it. ‘Who has settled in? ‘ ‘Me and Minny,’he said. Just like that, without grammar or consideration. Then he said—’We heard the widow had got out, so we’ve moved in.’I shouted— ’You’ve moved into the lodge! You?’ And he said—’Yes, Minny and me.’And there they’ve remained.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know, I’m sure. I thought perhaps you could help me. I’m afraid that, if I tell your uncles, they may be too severe with him. He is such a sweet boy. Clever, like you— only so much more—” She hesitated.

  “Yes, I know,” said Finch.


  “I shouldn’t mind their occupying the lodge for a time, in :he least, if only they were married, though Minny does look very odd since she’s taken to painting her ears.”

  “Painting her earsl”

  “Yes. She puts a dab of paint on the lobe of each ear. I suppose it’s living in France.”

  “Well, well,” said Finch again. He felt as though life were really crowding too furiously on him. He asked—“Do the people about here know that they are not married?”

  “No one knows but Mrs. Court. We have, so far, kept the fact of their existence from Sarah. Her aunt is very particular about Sarah’s acquaintances.”

  “She is rather a strange girl, Aunt Augusta.”

  “You will not think her so strange when you are used to her...”

  But her strangeness was even more pronounced at dinner. When she spoke to him, asking him a question or two about his home, he could only feel a sensuous pleasure in the beauty of her voice. Her words, he was sure, revealed nothing of her. She seemed scarcely conscious that she uttered them. Not once did she turn to look him in the face. He could study, as often as he chose, that pale profile with the drooping, sensitive mouth encamped between the conspicuous nose and chin. He noticed how the candlelight lay on her breast and touched her arms as though it loved her.

  He heard Mrs. Court’s voice across the table as she talked with gusto to Uncle Nicholas. “Fred thought he would be better off if he took the other church as well. But it just meant that he had to get a curate; and what with the curate, and the glebe lands being worth so much less, I think he’s worse off. He rents his fields for half what he used to, and his hearing grows worse every year.”

  He longed to hear his cousin play the violin, but he could not make up his mind to ask her. However, the evening was not far advanced when Augusta said to Mrs. Court: