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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Why perhaps?” he insisted. “It’s always perhaps with me.”

  “Because of... ?” He gave a little jerk of the head toward her aunt.

  She nodded.

  “But, if she’s playing bridge—”

  “There’s letter-writing. We have thirty-two regular correspondents. I write most of the letters.”

  He was too astonished for words. He came of a family who seldom wrote letters except on business. It had frequently been a matter for dispute who was to write the monthly letter to Augusta. He had sent a picture postcard to each member of the family from London. He had had no word from home. Ernest had had a letter from Alayne, and often said that he must answer it.

  “If there’s nothing to do I’ll come,” she said. Then she moved away and went to Nicholas, listening attentively to what he had to say.

  When Finch and Nicholas happened to be alone for a moment before dinner, Nicholas said

  “That girl has her father’s face; but Dennis Court was a devil, and I’m afraid the aunt has brought her up to be a prude.”

  3

  EVENING

  They entered the garden through a door in the wall that was half hidden in ivy. The door was not easy to open, and, when they were inside, Finch left it ajar. It was not dark, nor would it be that night. Across the clear primrose yellow of the west were two bars of purple cloud fringed with crimson. The pale new moon stood aloof, like a young singer standing in the wings timidly awaiting her summons to the stage. An ancient oak tree, its trunk embowered in ivy, its every branch and twig hoary with lichen, towered just beyond one of the garden walls. In it a number of rooks were gathered and seemed to be enjoying the wind from the south that tossed its lesser boughs. The birds leaped into the air and, after a few powerful strokes of the wing, allowed themselves to drift or tumble back into the green shelter. A linnet, perched among the branches of a peach tree trained against the wall, sang a thin plaintive strain that could be heard when the rooks silenced their cries for a space. The flower beds seemed to have drawn closer together, as though in a concerted effort to overpower by their perfume the senses of any who walked in the garden. And above the scent of the rose and the heliotrope there ascended the heavy somnolent sweetness of the nicotiana.

  Sarah Court wore a flame-coloured shawl, the deep fringe of which almost touched the ground behind. The shawl made her look proud and Spanish, he thought, and he remembered having heard his grandmother say that, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, one of the Courts had married a Spanish woman. He suddenly had a picture of Renny in his mind—Renny with a pointed beard and a high ruff that suited him well. He smiled to himself and saw that she was peering around at him with curiosity. He had wondered what he could talk to her about. Now he said:

  “I was thinking of my eldest brother. I wish you could know him. He’s such a splendid fellow. It is strange that just now there was something in you that reminded me of him.”

  “Something splendid?” she asked.

  “Yes. Something very proud and rather splendid.”

  “But I’m not proud!”

  “But you have a look of pride.”

  “I have nothing to be proud about.” After a moment she added—“And every reason to be humble.”

  She was walking slowly along a narrow box-bordered path, and Finch, following her, was conscious of pride in her every movement, in her manner of wearing the Spanish shawl, and in the restrained musical tones of her voice.

  When they reached the end of the path he looked into her face. “I’m glad you were able to come out,” he said. He was glad that she had come, but, in truth, he would have been still more glad to be in the garden alone at this hour, or with some companion of whose presence his nerves were not so aware.

  Her lip curled in the same smile of a malicious child as when in the drawing-room. “My aunt gave me enough letters to write to keep me busy till bedtime.”

  At that they were drawn nearer each other. She began to caress the flowers of a yellow rose bush and to press her face into them with an almost cruel eagerness.

  “What a lot of hair,” he thought, looking down at the mass of glossy braids covering the back of her head. “And she holds the roses to her exactly as she holds the violin.” He remembered what Eden had said about being kissed by her.

  He would have liked to summon the romantic valour to make love to her. He could not even picture the possibility of doing so in the future. Her air was too self-concealing. She was too exquisitely removed from him.

  Through the door in the wall he saw two figures passing, hand in hand. He recognised the gardener’s boy, Ralph Hart, but the girl’s face was just a disc of white.

  The boy dropped the girl’s hand and came to the door. It was supposed to be bolted at that hour, and he was surprised at finding it ajar. Finch went to him.

  “I shouldn’t have left that door open. But I’ll not forget to shut it when we leave. Perhaps you’d better shut it now and we will go out by the gate.”

  As he spoke he tried to see the girl’s face, curious to know what sort of sweetheart the boy had chosen. But she drew away, shyly averting it.

  “I’m sorry I came to the door, zir,” said Ralph; “but in the dimsey I didden see ‘ee in the garden. Us thought it were left open by mistake.” He touched his cap and went after the girl.

  Finch shut the door. The noise of its closing frightened the rooks, and, with hoarse caws, they rose from the oak and sailed in close formation toward the afterglow. The linnet in the peach tree hushed his song, listening till he believed all was well again, then once more his pipings and flutings filled the garden, not in the intervals of the clamour of rooks, as before, but in full and confident possession.

  There was a seat like a tall, narrow church-pew between two clipped yew trees, and they seated themselves on it. Finch began to tell her about his family. She listened with absorbed interest, and, as he described each one in turn, his heart warmed to them, their imperfections dwindled, and he could hardly find words to describe Renny’s spirit, his horsemanship; Piers’s courage, his knowledge of farming; Wake’s gentleness and precocity; Meg’s—oh, well, Meggie was perfect! He almost made himself homesick talking about them. Eden alone he did not mention.

  “You have so many,” she said, “and I have no one. I mean of my very own.”

  “Will you tell me something of your life?” he asked gently. “I’d like to be able to picture you in Ireland.”

  She made a disdainful movement of her shoulders under the bright shawl. “My life is nothing but practising, paying calls, and writing letters.”

  He was hurt by her inclusion of practising with calls and letter-writing. He said—“But you love music, don’t you?”

  “Never till today.”

  He felt what this implied through all his nerves. Yet—to have learned to play so beautifully, and not have learned to love it, to find sanctuary in it... The thought almost repelled him. He felt something insensate in her. What had today’s awakening signified then? That she had suddenly become conscious of the sensuous release in music? He asked:

  “Didn’t you care for it before you went to live with your aunt?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  She talked so little he was driven to catechise her. “Were you left an orphan young?”

  “My mother died when I was seven.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “How strange.”... Her tone was musing, rather than impressed by the coincidence.

  “And your father?” Well, she was his cousin; he had the right to question her!

  “When I was thirteen.” She turned towards him (the moon was now giving just enough light to etherealise her features) and began to speak rapidly. “He was drowned. He and I had lived alone after my mother died. Our house was on the sea coast. He was very fond of horses—like your brother Renny—but he drank a good deal. And he brought strange people to the house. I don’t mind telling you that I liked them. Much better than Aunt Elizab
eth’s friends. Father was always boasting about his horses. Especially a mare called Miriam which had saved his life in a flooded stream once. When he had been drinking, he’d boast of the great distance she could swim. One night he and his friends began making bets about it. To prove what she could do, he led her to the shore, and his friends went with him. He mounted her and rode her out into the sea. It was like glass, and there was moonlight. She swam on and on, with him on her back, and he shouted and sang. At last his friends were frightened and screamed to him to come back, but he only sang the louder. They heard the mare whinny. Before morning a storm came up, and the next day his body and the mare’s were driven ashore by the waves.”

  “How appalling! And were you alone in that house?”

  “Yes; but I watched the people on the shore from a window. The peasants said it was a terrible sight to see the great waves dash the mare against the cliff. My father’s feet were caught in the stirrups. They said the mare would rear and her hooves clatter against the rocks, as though she were alive.”

  Finch remembered having heard the family talk of this tragedy when he was a child, but he had thought of it as having happened many years before. The story had seemed too fantastic. The Dennis Court, of whom he remembered his grandmother exclaiming, “Ah, there was a real Court!” had seemed almost a myth... And now here was he, Finch, sitting on a garden seat beside Dennis’s daughter, while she repeated the story of his death in unemotional tones.

  Keeping his own voice as level as hers, he said:

  “And after that you went to live with Mrs. Court, I suppose. It was a great change.”

  She answered, with a touch of bitterness—“Yes. A change for the better everyone thought. No one seemed to remember how I had adored my father. It’s true enough that I can never repay her for all she’s done for me. All the lessons, the travelling. But she made me practise six hours a day, and, when we travelled, I never had a moment to call my own. Now we don’t travel. She can’t afford it. And, if I’m quiet or go off by myself, she calls me Mouse and Moler

  He had not hoped for any intimate companionship such as this, had not dreamed that she would reveal anything of her inner self to him. Now he found that he could not keep pace with her careless and cold revelations. He would have liked to escape from her at that moment to brood on her mystery without the necessity of making talk. Yet she seemed not to expect comment from him, and, when he uttered a lame sentence or two, she made no reply but withdrew into her former immobility.

  The young moon had passed behind a tall elm, and, as the branches were tossed in the wind, moonlight fell fitfully into the garden, illuminating now one flower bed, now another, now casting its silver veil on Sarah’s face and hands.

  Looking at her hands, like the hands of a silver statue, and remembering how they drew the music from her violin, he longed to touch them. Timidly he laid one of his own upon them. They were very cold.

  “I’m afraid you are cold,” he said nervously. “I think we had better walk about. Would you like that?”

  She rose at once without answering him. They went through the garden gate, along a stone-paved passage, and crossed the tennis court.

  “Do you play tennis?” he asked, and he wondered if her reason for rising so abruptly had been her desire to put aside the touch of his hand.

  “A little. I wish I played better.”

  “I will see if I can get Aunt Augusta to have the court put in order.”

  She gave one of her small malicious smiles. “Perhaps we could get the two at the lodge to join us. I’d like that.”

  He looked round at her, startled. “Would you really? I didn’t think you knew of their existence.”

  “I only wish I could meet them! I’ve passed the lodge time and again, wanting to speak to them. But all I saw was the curtain moving, as though they were peering out at me, thinking how horrid I was.”

  “Well,” he said, frowning in anxiety at what he was going to suggest, “we might go and call on them now, if you’re not afraid of offending your aunt.”

  “I don’t mind offending her in the least,” she replied coolly, and turned in the direction of the drive.

  She walked quickly, as though she were doing something eagerly anticipated. They passed in and out of shadow and moonlight, her bright shawl flaming and darkening like the plumage of an exotic bird.

  Halfway down the drive he offered her a cigarette, which she at first declined, then suddenly accepted, saying—“Yes, give me one! I’ll do everything tonight that Aunt would hate.”

  He had only to see her put it in her lips and light it from the match he held to know that she was well accustomed to smoking.

  He looked at her almost sternly, for he felt something devious about her. “When do you do it?” he asked.

  “When I am being Mole.” And she held up a thin forefinger with a swarthy stain on it.

  They found Eden sitting in the porch of the lodge on a tilted chair, like a workman after his day was done. He regarded their approach with an incredulous smile, then got to his feet.

  “I’ve brought our cousin, Miss Court, to see you,” said Finch, feeling suddenly daredevil and at his ease. Was it the support of Eden’s presence that produced this feeling?

  They shook hands gravely, and Eden led the way indoors. Finch had heard Minny scampering upstairs to tidy herself. Yet, when she came down, he wondered what the process of tidying had been, she looked so far from neat. He came to the conclusion that she had gone to powder her face, which had the pink bloom of a peach in the candlelight. Her milk-white neck looked thicker than when he had seen her last, her crossed legs, under her too-short skirt, stouter. But her slanting eyes held the same challenge and gaiety, and her lips looked ready as ever to part in laughter or song. She had on an orange-coloured jumper, a blue skirt, and “nude” stockings. Finch wondered how Eden could tolerate this combination of colours. But then, Eden seldom seemed to notice things.

  Minny made Sarah sit in the one comfortable chair, close to the fire, because she looked so pale. Minny’s own cheeks glowed beneath the thick layer of powder. Her generous mouth smiled welcome, and this astonished Finch after what Eden had told him of her feelings toward Sarah. Sarah spread out the long fringe of her shawl and inhaled the smoke of her cigarette as though she were inhaling the very sweetness of life. She preened herself like a bird, and Minny was apparently delighted to entertain her. Eden too was delighted. He was beginning to feel the need of some society other than Minny’s. He heaped dry faggots on the fire, which crackled into swift ruddy flames. He sat down on the narrow ingle-seat facing Sarah. He thought Finch’s description of her very superficial. He read her with a far more subtle understanding.

  Minny talked a great deal, directing almost all her conversation to Sarah, who sat motionless, seeming to drink in all that Minny said. She told of amusing things that had happened to them abroad, now and then appealing to Eden’s memory to supply some foreign name which she invariably mispronounced. Before long she began to speak of Eden’s poetry, of which she was very proud. It was the only poetry, she said, that she had ever been able to read, even though so much of it was hard to understand. Finch reminded Eden that he had promised to read him some of the poems he had written since leaving home.

  Eden took a candle and went up the stairs that ascended from a corner of the room. Minny said—“He keeps everything he has in such perfect order.” Soon he returned, carrying a folio of papers. Hot wax had dripped on his hand, and he went to Minny like a child to show it.

  He sat again in the ingle-nook and read by the light of the flames. His voice, always musical, took on new, full tones when he read his poems.

  “These are some bits from the long poem ‘New France.’I can’t read all of it. It’s not in order,” he said.

  He read fragments which he called—“Indian Braves as Galley Slaves,” “The Loves of Bigot,” “A Countess of Quebec,” and “Song of the Ursuline Nuns.”

  The two young women made litt
le murmuring noises of approval after each poem. Finch liked them immensely and said so. He was almost overcome when Eden said suddenly to Sarah—“Do you know, this boy has been paying my way for a year and a half. If it had not been for him I don’t know what I should have done.”

  “That was good of him,” she said simply. “But how he must have liked doing it!”

  “Did you like doing it?” Eden asked of him.

  Finch assented, uttering the sudden guffaw of his hobbledehoy days, which still came from him in moments of embarrassment.

  “These,” said Eden, taking up some sheets of paper clipped together, “are some things I wrote in Italy.”

  “In Italy!” gasped Finch. “Why, I didn’t know you were in Italy!”

  “Yes, I had to go. It was beastly cold in France and I’d got a cough.”

  “We went on a cheap excursion,” put in Minny, easily.

  “How splendid!” sighed Finch. “How I wish I might go!”

  “Don’t be a silly young blighter,” said Eden. “You can go where you like.”

  “Perhaps I’ll go with Arthur Leigh. He’s over here.”

  Sarah looked expectantly into Eden’s face, waiting for the poems. He read three. The last one was “To a Young Nightingale Practising his Song in Sicily.” His listeners agreed that this was best of all

  “It’s beautiful! It’s beautiful!” said Sarah, clasping her fingers tightly together. The shawl fell from her, as she leaned toward Eden, and her bare shoulders and arms were exposed to the firelight.

  Eden was made happy by this approval. Soon he and Minny went to the larder together. Their whispers and the clink of china could be heard by the other two.

  “Do you like them?” whispered Finch. “Are you glad you came?” He was worried lest her aunt might have missed her.

  She nodded composedly.

  Eden and Minny returned, he carrying a bottle in each hand, and she a large dish on which were arranged several sorts of cake, the icing of which, chocolate and pink and white, had crumbled and were intermingling.

  Eden was hilarious at having company. Nothing was too ridiculous for him to say or do. Finch and Minny filled the room with their laughter. Sarah Court sat upright, sipping wine, nibbling cake, seeming to absorb with passionate intensity the gaiety of the moment.