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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “I am hoping that you and Sarah will play for us. My brothers are too tired for whist, but they would delight in some music. Wouldn’t you, Ernest and Nicholas?”

  They would, and said they would, both addressing Mrs. Court, as though she were to be the sole performer. She got up at once in a businesslike manner, and hurried, with her effect of being wound up, to the piano.

  “Come, Sarah,” she commanded, “and get out your fiddle.”

  Her niece rose impassively and followed her. On a window seat near the piano lay her violin case. She took out the instrument and began to tune it. Mrs. Court had seated herself and removed several bangle bracelets.

  Finch did not know what he expected, but his curiosity had in it the quality of pain. There was a subtle sense of distress in the thought of these two women, so antagonistic in spirit as he was sure they were, attempting to produce the exaltation or gaiety of music. He could not tell which he despaired of most—the self-assured little marionette at the piano or the resolute, ice-cold girl with the violin... That chin of hers... God, she seemed fairly to dig it into the violin! He glanced nervously at his aunt and uncles to see if misgiving might be evident in their faces, but there was none. Augusta sat upright, wearing an expression of almost overwhelming benevolence. Nicholas was frankly sprawling in the deep chair he had chosen, his handsome hands dangling over its padded arms. Yet, in spite of his attitude of indolence, he was very much alive. A vivid interest was bright in his deep-set eyes. Ernest looked suddenly wan and tired.

  They played one of Handel’s sonatas. The slow, gracious music rose from the violin and piano in harmonious accord. Aunt and niece were not only skilled performers, but they were in complete understanding.

  Yet Finch’s sense of pain did not diminish, but rather increased. On Mrs. Court’s side he felt too much cold energy; on his cousin’s a too docile perfection. Mrs. Court was, he felt, not playing Sarah’s accompaniment; she was dragging her by the hair of the head through the starry realms of sound.

  As they went from one piece to another (Mrs. Court never seemed to tire) Finch became convinced that Sarah could play the violin very differently if she had a different accompanist. Now the door of her senses was shut fast. She was only going through certain tricks she had been taught. If only the door were opened and her spirit set free to rejoice and to suffer in the music of her violin! He had a scarcely controllable longing to lift Mrs. Court bodily from the piano-seat and himself take her place. He pictured himself as cutting Sarah’s bonds, and the two of them free, soaring together.

  But it grew late and he was not even asked to play.

  IX

  A DEVON DAY

  1 MORNING

  FINCH was woken the next morning by the sound of a man’s voice shouting orders to a dog, by the dog’s barking, in his turn, orders to a flock of sheep, by the troubled baaing of the sheep themselves, and by a gust of wind blowing in at the window and flinging on his face the gathered sweetness of the garden and the fields.

  His eyes flew open and he saw the bright chintz of the bed curtains, the wallpaper with its prim birds pecking prim cherries, the white mantelpiece with the china figure of a little lady riding a pink horse, and two framed photographs so dim that he could not tell what they represented.

  He was in Devon, he realised, in the very depths of its deep, rich, luxuriant roundness that lay on the earth like a nest on a bough. He was in Devon. He was in England. He must make himself believe it, though it seemed impossible to believe. Here he was, Finch Whiteoak, in the middle of one of Aunt Augusta’s beds, in the middle of one of her bedrooms, in the middle of Lyming Hall, in the heart of Devon. He had travelled by train the six hundred miles from Jalna to the New York pier. He had crossed the ocean on a liner. He had stopped a fortnight in London. He had travelled the nearly two hundred miles into Devon. And he had not only done that but he had brought his two old uncles with him, paid all their expenses out of his own money that Gran had left him, and had set them down, safe and sound, beside Aunt Augusta. He lay still, feeling flabbergasted at his own achievement. He wondered if other fellows felt so surprised at the happenings of their lives. There was Piers—he had got married, got a kid, gone through a good deal, yet he never seemed surprised. He might look in a rage at things but not surprised. George Fennel never seemed surprised, nor Arthur Leigh. Still, he supposed, they kept it to themselves if they were. Just finding himself alive was often a rather fightening surprise to him. He wondered when he would outgrow it and rather hoped he would not, for there was something he liked in it.

  Suddenly he jumped out of bed and went to the window. It was framed in a yellow climbing rose, the buds clinging there as thick as bees on a honeycomb. Down in the garden, where sunlight and shadow had the sharp distinctness of early morning, he saw Ralph Hart trimming a box border. He wore corduroys and leggings, and his black head was glossy in the sun. The stone wall had a peculiar golden bloom on it except where there were patches of greyish lichen. Ivy lay thick along its top and clumps of yellow stonecrop.

  The fields beyond the wall were let to a farmer. Finch saw him now, astride of a stout brown cob, wearing a clean linen Norfolk jacket and breeches, a pink wild rose in his buttonhole. He was so short and stout that his legs stuck out on either side of the horse. Beneath his hat, set at a jaunty angle, showed his round earnest face, red as a peony. In gruff hearty tones he gave directions to two men who were trying to keep several bullocks separated from the sheep which the dog was endeavouring to herd through the open gate into the next field. The men ran here and there waving their arms, the bullocks blundered, with unexpected agility, among the buttercups, the dog barked, half beside himself with importance, and the sheep, uttering the same cry in a variety of tones, bundled themselves here and there, but always managed to evade the gate. It was a vivacious scene, of which all the participants, from farmer to buttercups, looked shining, well nourished, and in good humour.

  “Devonshire cream,” murmured Finch, lolling on the sill. “Devonshire cream, that just expresses it. Gosh, if only the others were here to see this!”

  One of the others was, he remembered, just down the drive at the lodge. If he walked down that way now he might get a sight of him, before Minny was about, for Eden loved the early morning. He had not seen him for more than a year and a half. Eden would be quite a cosmopolitan after all that time in Europe. Would he be changed, he wondered. Rather embarrassing to meet Minny under the conditions. Hot stuff, Minny; no doubt about that.

  He slid into his clothes and went downstairs. No one was about but Ellen, industriously dusting. The door stood open and warm sunlight had already taken the chill from the hall.

  The gardener was mowing the terraced lawn. Finch stood for a moment to watch the little white heads of the daisies leap from their stems and fall like spray before the knives of the mowing-machine. He went to the gardener and spoke to him, just for the pleasure of hearing the singsong of his Devon speech. He was a thin, youngish man with very blue eyes, a fair skin, and not a tooth in his head. He stopped the pony and let his eyes wander over the sweep of fields, woods, and mist-wreathed tors that Finch had admired.

  “Ay, it’s a lovely voo,” he said. “It’s a lovely voo in all seasons. But ‘tidden quite so pretty now as ‘twere an hour agone when that highest tor had just put un’s head out o’mist.”

  “What is the name of that tor?” asked Finch, to draw him out.

  “Ah,” his eyes moved slowly to Finch’s face, “I couldn’t tell ‘ee that. He’s got a name. They’m all named; but I’ve never seen un close by, and I’ve never heerd tell.”

  Finch stared. “Have you never been on the moor, then?”

  “No, zur. My work has alius been about here. Us sticks pretty close to own parts hereabouts.”

  A heavy cart, drawn by three horses harnessed head to tail, and carrying a forest tree, rumbled along the road below. The gardener watched it till it was out of sight, then he said:

  “Him’s one of Sq
uire Varley’s trees. They’m cuttin’down a fine lot there. Six souls are hard at it, day in, day out. Cuttin’ trees.”

  Finch felt that if he stayed longer talking to the gardener he would not have the strength to walk to the lodge. That rich singsong voice, those meditative eyes, produced in him an exquisite weakness. Soon he would have to lie down among the daisy heads...

  The whirr of the mower began again as he went down the drive. The rumble of the cart faded in the distance. The grey trunks of the beeches on either side of him were dappled with sunshine, and, here and there along the hedge, a tall foxglove shook out its bells. The ground fell away so abruptly that he looked down on the lodge. Someone was astir within, for a blue spiral of smoke rose from the chimney. He followed the curve of the drive to the gates and stood looking timidly at the house. He felt very shy of meeting Minny. At last he got the courage to go up the flagged walk, between borders of petunias and pinks, and peer in at the window.

  He saw a table inside set for a simple breakfast, the sunlight falling on a half loaf of bread and a glass pot of raspberry jam. He saw a small room with beamed ceiling and a large fireplace. A figure he recognised as Eden was bent over something in a frying pan. He was almost inside the fireplace.

  Finch entered without knocking, his canvas shoes making no sound on the stone floor. He went and stood almost behind Eden. The room was filled with the smell of frying bacon. A pot in which tea was brewing stood on the warm hearth. Eden wore loose grey flannel trousers, a shirt open at the throat, and rolled-up sleeves. Finch could see the gleam of short golden hairs on his rounded forearms. His face looked full and healthy but retained a certain delicate sensitiveness of expression that prevented its acquiring an aspect of well-being. His brows were drawn upward, as he blinked against the smoke, and the inherent melancholy of his mouth was perhaps accentuated by the cigarette that drooped from its corner. His hair was, as always, well brushed, with the gleam of a metal casque.

  Finch had time to take in these details, over-emphasised by the glow of the fire, before he was discovered.

  Eden, with difficulty, kept himself from overturning the bacon. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he exclaimed, “if it isn’t Brother Finch! So you’ve come to breakfast with me!” He stood smiling at Finch. The frying pan tilted in his left hand, he extended the right.

  ’Oh, no,” protested Finch, shaking hands limply. “I really mustn’t! Aunt Augusta will be expecting me. I shouldn’t have come in on you like this, so early—I think I’d better not stay.” He felt flustered under Eden’s eyes.

  “Sit down,” said Eden, pushing him onto a chair. “You’re just in the nick of time. I’m getting my own breakfast, as you see. We’ll start on what bacon I’ve cooked, and I’ll put on some more to fry while we eat.”

  He carefully divided the bacon and made his other preparations in a businesslike manner. Finch cut thick slices of the sweet crusty bread, and felt ferocious hunger rage within him. He saw that Eden had dumped all the bacon from the paper packet into the pan, and he thought—“Lord, he hasn’t forgotten what a pig I am!”

  So they sat facing each other across the breakfast table— another marvellous happening to Finch. He watched a bee drift in through the open diamond-paned casement and settle on the rim of the jam-pot. He said:

  “I say, Eden, isn’t it funny that you and I should be eating breakfast here together? To think that we’d both cross the ocean, and you’d go to France and then come to England, and then I’d come to England and we’d sit down at a break-fast table here in this lodge, just like we’ve had breakfast together many a time at home!” He took a large mouthful of bread, and his young face was so thin that it made his cheek jut out ridiculously. His eyes were bright with excitement.

  “I don’t see anything funny in it, except you,” said Eden. ‘Certainly you are Finch, wherever you go.”

  “Don’t you think I’ve changed?” Shyly he hoped that Eden would say that he had improved in appearance. Eden had never seen him in such good clothes as he wore this morning.

  Eden looked him over critically. “No, you’ve not changed, except for a better haircut and a few glad rags. You’re the same callow youth. But”—he added quickly as he saw Finch’s face fall—“believe me, you’re the flower of the flock, Finch.”

  “I don’t see why you must pull my leg the moment we meet.”

  “I’m not pulling your leg. And I don’t know exactly why I say it. It’s not because of your music. Perhaps it’s because it seems to me that you have the faults and virtues of the rest of us sublimated in you. You’re more of the coward, more of the hero, more of the genius, more of the poet—”

  “The poet!”

  “Oh, I don’t suppose you’ll ever get it down on paper. And, unless I miss my guess, more of the lover—when your time comes.”

  Finch drowned his embarrassment in a cup of blazing hot tea. Yet he liked to hear himself described, especially in such extraordinary terms as these.

  “You’re the peculiar flower of our peculiar flock,” continued Eden. “It looks to me as though our forebears had rampaged down the centuries for the sole purpose of producing you, as their final flourish. Their justification, perhaps.”

  There was no doubt about it now, Eden was talking to hear himself talk. Finch glared at him. “What about you?” he demanded.

  Eden smiled faintly. “Well, perhaps me too. Let’s hope so.”

  “We’re not half the men Renny and Piers are!” burst out Finch.

  “No? Very well, I don’t suppose we’ll produce so many young. Breed so many foals. Jump so many hurdles.”

  “I’d a thousand times sooner be like them!”

  “Of course you would. And they’d a thousand times sooner be like themselves. The world might have reached a state of civilisation ages ago if that weren’t always the case. People without imagination are always cocksure, and they’ve been given the power of intimidating and exhausting those who have. The man with imagination is frightened at what he sees in himself. The thought of trying to govern others is abhorrent to him.”

  Eden emptied the remainder of the milk from the jug into his teacup and drank it. “Ever since I had that beastly lung trouble,” he said, “I drink whatever milk comes my way.”

  Finch had finished the bacon. He remembered Minny. “Why, look here,” he cried, “what’s Minny going to have?”

  “She eats scarcely any breakfast. She’s getting fat, poor soul!”

  “I hope she’s well,” said Finch timidly.

  “Absolutely fit. Sleeps like a log—sings like an angel— and talks like a fool,” answered Eden, turning the loaf crumb-side down to keep it fresh for her. “Let’s go for a walk, and not waste the best time of the morning indoors. I’ll show you my favourite nook. Only mind you keep out of it unless I’m with you.”

  They went through the gate into the road, two tall bareiaeaded figures. Finch angular, rather slouching; Eden moving with the grace that made people turn to look at him.

  The road curved frequently, so that they seldom saw more than a short distance ahead of them, and the height of the hedges combined to produce in them the feeling that they were traversing one of the very veins of summer through which flowed the energy that produced her efflorescence. They met no soul on the road, after they had passed a man sitting sideways on a white horse, with a basket on the crook of his arm. The tangle of holly and ivy in the hedges glittered as though lacquered, and against this background a thousand spring and early summer flowers were fluttering their bright petals: pink and waxen white hedge roses, the cuckoo flower, bird’s eye, the bee-shaken bells of the foxglove, and, clustering beneath them, the tender spears of ferns. The road was a changeful dusky red, paling on the rise of a hill, darkening on its fall. Above it, the sky changed without rest, white cloud and translucent blue moving, arching, giving at one moment the impression of tranquil nearness, at the next the aching pallor of unbounded space. A flock of starlings cast a shadow on the road, and the beat of
their wings as they passed was like the break of a summer wave.

  They had to stand close to the hedge to let a herd of red Devon cows go by. The sweet warm smell of newly milked udders came from them, and their humid eyes turned in indolent curiosity toward the brothers.

  Eden opened a gate into a meadow across which a footpath wavered among buttercups and clover. In a boggy corner rose the yellow spears of the iris, and a great oak tree made a shade already sought by sheep pink from the dipping.

  They followed the path through a spinney where some young rabbits at play paused, staring and startled for a space, before scampering to cover. They crossed a stream by stepping-stones, and then the path joined a lane so narrow that the trees, almost meeting overhead, turned it into a green moist tunnel where the colours of flowers and fern were intensified into an unreal and dreamy brilliance.

  They talked little as they went, Eden pointing out this and that in broken sentences. But, when they reached a certain gap in the hedge, he said—“Here we are! This is my own particular spot. You see, I must rather like you or I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

  They passed into a grassy dell that lay at the foot of a series of fields of barley, oats, and wheat that rose, fold upon golden fold, to the rounded hills on which the bosoms of the clouds seemed to rest. They stretched themselves upon the grass, and it was as though they lay at the foot of the rich tapestry of June, unrolled on the hillsides above them. Here were the last of the bluebells, their tender stems bending beneath the weight of their blossoms that seemed the very distillation of nature’s thought of blueness.

  Finch lay with his eyes on a level with them, as still, as empty of remembrance as he could make himself, letting, in this instant, their beauty pour into him. As with a catch in the breath of his being he was suspended, knowing nothing, feeling all, as he fancied.