Once he followed Ralph Hart and his girl along a winding lane, across a field, over a stile, and across another field. All the way they had held hands. It was the bell-ringers’ evening for practice, and during the walk the ecstatic chime and clamour of the bells had not ceased. From every hedgerow the sweetness of flowers had come, and from the dark clump of woods the hoot of owls. Above all other scents, and intermingled strangely with hoot of owl and chime of bells, rose the smell of new-mown hay.
Finch had a feeling that this life would go on forever. Himself and Uncle Nick alone in the house, himself and Ralph Hart talking in the garden, himself walking alone at night under the moon. The sensation of the shadowy form that left his breast, leaving him void of personality but strangely strong, came to him more often. It was drawn like a bolt from his body, the door of his being flew open, and he was one with the moor and the wind on the moor. For the first time he attempted to compose for the piano.
Nicholas suggested that they ask “the lodge-keeper and his lady,” as he called Eden and Minny, to spend the Sunday evening with them. The maids, excepting Ellen, would be out, and Ellen knew how to hold her tongue. “Even if Augusta finds out that they’ve been here, I don’t believe she’ll mind much. Though she does wear a Queen Alexandra fringe, she dates from before Victorian days.” And, looking hard at Finch from under his shaggy brows, he added—“I want to see Eden. I want to see Minny. I like the young folk about me.” Finch thought—“Good Lord, he’s at it again! It’s a good thing Uncle Ernie isn’t here. It upsets him so to hear Uncle Nick being like Gran.” He agreed that it would be jolly to have a little party.
The two from the lodge arrived looking tidier than Finch had yet seen them. Minny, poor girl, had got a new frock of summer silk, purchased through the advertisement of a London shop’s July sale. Eden had himself trimmed her thick hair. And, surely enough, there were the dabs of rouge on her ears!
“I’ve turned barber,” Eden exclaimed. “How do you like Minny’s hair?”
“I like her ears,” said Nicholas, and pinched one.
Minny caught his hand. “May I call you Uncle Nick?”
“My dear! What else should you call me?”
There was hilarity at supper. Eden swore that it was the first good meal he had had in months. Minny cooked so badly, he said, that he had to do most of it himself. But it was impossible to offend Minny. Like the yielding fulfilment of hot July itself, she opened her mouth, and laughter and breath as sweet as clover issued from it. Nicholas was generous with Augusta’s best wine.
After supper Nicholas and Eden talked, and Finch and Minny listened. Then there was music, and the talkers listened.
On the way back to the lodge Minny said, holding tightly to Eden’s arm—“Oh, darling, wouldn’t it be thrilling if we owned a place like that!”
“We never shall, my child,” he answered. “You and your poet must sing on other people’s doorsteps.”
When the others came back from town all was haste and preparation for an early wedding. Leigh was nervously intolerant of delay. The pangs of his love could not brook the loss of summer weeks with Sarah as his bride. His mother and sister were in British Columbia. His mother had had an illness, and it would be some time before she could make a long journey. He would have liked to be married in a registry office, but neither Augusta nor Mrs. Court would hear of any such thing. The wedding might be simple, the guests few, but it must be properly done. Augusta thought it augured well for their happiness that Renny and Alayne had been married from her house the year before. Only people from the neighbouring houses and a few friends of Leigh’s from London would be present.
Since Sarah’s coldness had melted into love under Arthur’s passion, Finch wondered at his friend’s feverish unrest. He looked tired after the week in London. Suddenly one day he confided to Finch:
“I often feel as though she were slipping away from me. I’ve never been quite so near her again as that first day by the stile. I feel half-frightened... And irritated... Then I’m angry at myself. She’s so absolutely sweet and adorable. Yet she puzzles me. I think when I’ve had her in the flesh it will be different. We’ve disagreed about the honeymoon. I wanted to go to Norway; but no, she wants to go to the sea. Some place quite near here. She hates society. She scarcely spoke to my friends in London when I brought them to see her.”
“Has she ever told you about her childhood?” asked Finch.
“Nothing except that she was orphaned at thirteen, and that Mrs. Court adopted her then. Educated her, took her travelling. My feeling is that Sarah has no spark of gratitude toward her for what she’s done. I think she’s an old dear.”
Finch hesitated as to whether or not he should tell Arthur of the manner of Dennis Court’s death. A longing to keep something of Sarah secret to himself prevented him. If she had wanted Arthur to know of her strange childhood she would have told him. In any case, his conversations with her in the garden were his own to forget or to meditate on as he chose. He was glad that she had told Arthur nothing. He said:
“I agree with Sarah. I can’t think of anything better than a honeymoon on the seacoast here. Renny and Alayne had a cottage in Cornwall for a month, and they were awfully keen about it. He’s often spoken since of the hours he spent with fishermen.”
“Well, that’s a funny thing to remember out of one’s honeymoon!”
“Oh, I suppose there were other things. But he’s that sort of chap; and then she was always going about to the old churches making rubbings of the brasses. She’s got quite a lot of them at Jalna now. But that sort of thing would bore Renny horribly.”
“I wonder if we could get their cottage.”
“It’s rather late for that. They had it in June, before the rush.”
“I like the idea of a cottage. I must speak to Sarah about it.”
Finch thought that Arthur, in marrying Sarah, was bound to an enterprise that would leave him less time for self-analysis than formerly.
They hired a motor—for the keeping of one was an extravagance Augusta did not allow herself—and went into Cornwall. They sought out agents and had one disappointment after another. All desirable places had been let months ago. It was within a few days of the wedding, and Leigh was in despair, when an agent in Polmouth told him of a house belonging to a well-off retired Cornish farmer. It was a fine house, he said, vastly superior to the places that were usually to let. The two youths rattled off in their hired car to inspect it.
It stood on the outskirts of the town in its own garden— a square, ugly house, with white sun blinds and curtains gleaming frostily behind each polished pane. Not a fallen leaf lay in the spruce garden, not an atom of dust within. They were shown into the dining room, where, seated on the mahogany chairs upholstered in crimson plush, they were critically interviewed by the lean husband. With a hard, quizzical gleam in his small eyes, he sat entrenched behind the dining-table, tapping on it with his spectacles while the rent was discussed. The plump wife, a yearning beam in her large eyes, sat silent, with submissively folded hands. Finch soon discovered that her chance of visiting her married daughter in Scotland depended on the letting of the house. Something in the Cornishman roused a feeling of antagonism in Leigh. Finch was astonished to hear him haggle over the rent. There were periods of terrible silence while they sat at grips, the old man tapping with his spectacles, Leigh looking stony. By the time all was settled and the rent had been reduced by twenty-two and six a week, Finch and the wife were in a state of abject depression.
Leigh and the Cornishman were suddenly beaming, pleased with each other. Finch thought—“I-begin to see why Arthur’s people all made money.” Yet, Arthur was so extravagant. Finch and the wife smiled at each other and drew sighs of relief. A final survey of house and garden was made. Leigh was told that the apples on the wall were not included with possession unless blown down by a gale. But the runner beans were. The Cornishman was almost jubilant in the throwing in of the beans. He ran into the house and fetc
hed a kitchen knife that he might demonstrate the most effective way of preparing them for the pot. Leigh, who had probably never seen an uncooked bean before, looked on attentively while one was meticulously sliced. The wife showed them just how reverently the electric suction cleaner must be manipulated, and promised to engage a capable cook and housemaid for them.
In the car Leigh threw himself back with a gesture of dismay.
“To think,” he ejaculated, “that I should be taking my lovely Sarah to such a mausoleum! It seems too bad to be true! Did you see the dreadful whiteness of the bedrooms? Why did you let me do it?”
“I don’t think it will be so bad,” comforted Finch. “After all, the house is only a shelter. Look at that, and you’ll see how little the house matters.” He pointed to the sea stretching to the blue horizon in an incalculable multitude of advancing foam-fringed waves. “You should worry,” he grinned, “about lace curtains and texts on the walls!”
Arthur looked out, his face brightened. “Isn’t it glorious! Oh, if only you were going to be with us to enjoy it, too.” His eager eyes turned to Finch with a compelling look. “There is no reason on earth why you shouldn’t.” He smote Finch on the leg. “You must! You must! Think of those fine white bedrooms! Don’t refuse me this, Finch! You’ve no idea how much I want you.”
“Well,” said Finch, “it’s the rummiest suggestion I ever heard. To want to take your best man on your honeymoon. Why, Sarah’d never stand for it. It would be awfully upsetting for her. A honeymoon is about enough for a girl to take on, let alone a groomsman thrown in!”
“Rot! Sarah would love to have you. She likes you tremendously, she’s told me so. And it’s not only that we’d like to have you... there’s something more... I can’t quite explain... Finch, darling, I want your support... You may think that my love for Sarah has come between you and me. You’re wrong. I think more of you than ever. And I want to have you near me in these weeks. I want the woman 1 love and the man I love beside me. I want the two different loves merged into one beautiful whole. I want our love to be as clear as the brightness of a three-pointed star. Do you understand?” He held one of Finch’s hands tightly in his.
“But—hadn’t we better begin it a little later?” asked Finch. His very flesh and bones seemed to melt into some ethereal substance at Arthur’s words, Arthur’s touch, but he was assailed by doubt at the thought of sharing the honeymoon.
“No, we can’t!” Arthur returned fiercely. “It’s begun already. Now is the time to hold it to us. Cherish it. Make it Part of us, don’t you see?”
Finch felt rather bewildered, but he agreed. “You won’t want me right at the first, will you?”
“Of course we shall!” Arthur pulled his hat petulantly over his eyes. He relapsed into a brooding silence.
The day of the wedding was a day of soft rain. Everything felt warm and damp to the touch. The pensive air held the sound of the wedding chimes as though reluctant to let it go. The chimes beat, quivered, pulsed through the patter of the rain, and died at last in the mist of the moor. Arthur was delighted at the thought of giving money to bell-ringers at his wedding.
Mrs. Court annoyed Augusta excessively by beating a tattoo with her heels throughout the service. Augusta shed a dignified tear or two, since there was no one else to do it. She had also done this for Renny and Alayne.
That part of the church not occupied by guests was filled by curious villagers and country people. They agreed that the groom was a pretty young man and that the bride was proud and cold. They thought that the best man was a kind-looking young man, but sad. An aged Court, almost stone deaf and with an appetite even greater than Finch’s, came over from Ireland to give Sarah away. He evidently mistook her for some other great-niece, for he continually addressed her as Bridget.
At the first Augusta and Mrs. Court had thought the idea of taking a third person on the honeymoon a far too unconventional one. Arthur persuaded them, however, that, on the contrary, it was one of really arch-propriety. Sarah was acquiescent. The thought of a house near the coast pleased her, for her aunt’s house was inland and she longed for the sea.
By the time they and their belongings were stowed in the hired car and had gained the macadam highroad to Polmouth, the rain that had been lightly falling from a sky of pale, shifting cloud-forms, began to beat fiercely on the pavement, rebounding from it in large silvery drops. The drenched hedgerows seemed to draw nearer the road, abundantly green and starred by a multitude of flowers.
Finch sat with the driver nursing Sarah’s violin. The case was clammy in his hands, and he thought of the violin inside as a sensate thing, troubled by the tide of life that flowed about it. He clutched it, staring at the streaming glass of the windows.
Mrs. Court had explained—“Sarah cannot play without me! No use in taking her fiddle that I can see.”
Arthur had answered silkily—“Sarah must learn to play with Finch, for my sake.”
Sarah had agreed to take it, hut she doubted if she would play it when she had the sea to play with.
When they reached Polmouth, the rain was a deluge. When they stopped before the gate of Penholme, they saw the house behind a leaning wall of rain. The dash from motor to porch was a scurry under a wave. The maids ran here and there with the luggage. Leigh was glad that he had told no one in the place that he was newly married.
As they sat about the square expanse of the mahogany table, eating their tea, his eyes roved distractedly about the room.
“I can’t bear it,” he kept repeating. “I simply can’t bear it.”
“Don’t glare about so,” advised Finch. “Keep your eyes on Sarah.”
“But what a blasphemous setting for her! I can’t and won’t bear it.”
“What shall you do?”
“Turn half the things out of this room. You’ll see. Just wait until I’ve finished this preposterous saffron cake!”
Sarah, appealed to, thought the room was very nice.
When tea was over and they had got the servants out of way, Arthur linked arms with the other two and made the rounds of parlour, dining room, and little morning room. Each, he declared, was more contrary to art and nature than the other. The walls of all the rooms, including the hall, were hung with gilt-framed oil paintings by an artist named Stephen Gandy. They were all of Cornish scenes. Cornish cows stood footless in tangled meadows. Cornish waves poppled against turgid Cornish cliffs. Enormous, stiff-tailed setters gazed upwards at a falling bird. Sheep were lost in snowdrifts. Ships were wrecked. All, all Cornish.
“Oh, Stephen Gandy!” cried Arthur. “If only I had you by the throat! Tomorrow’s sun would rise on one Cornishman the less!”
Sarah said she liked the pictures.
“My adored one,” he explained, taking her hand, “if you like them it is because you see them in a golden mist of love for me! Don’t you think that is so?” He looked at her in a way Finch thought was strange. His eyes had an excited glitter in them, his mouth looked strained, as though his smile were forced. He looked afraid.
Finch thought—“This is terrible. Why am I here?”
Arthur said—“I will bear with the pictures, but I will not endure the mats and the tidies!”
Scattered over the floors and in the doorways they counted thirteen mats, and, on the chair backs, nine tidies. Finch and Arthur carried them by armfuls to an upstairs room. To it also they carried innumerable glass and china ornaments of tortured shape. The furniture must be all changed about. Arthur discovered an old table and some chairs that pleased him, and brought them out of their retirement into the light. He swathed the glaring electric globes in coloured scarves of Sarah’s trousseau. He was in despair over three grim aspidistras in ornamental pots until Finch offered to keep them in his bedroom.
“You’re sure you don’t mind having them? They won’t keep you awake?”
“Oh, hell,” said Finch. “What do you take me for?”
“If I slept in the room with them, do you know what wo
uld happen? In the morning they would be more overgrown, more disgustingly green, more macabre. But I should be dead!”
“I know,” returned Finch solemnly. “But you’re so frightfully sensitive, Arthur, and I’m not.”
“Listen to that rain! Do you think it’s a bad omen?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you think Sarah cares very deeply for me?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Finch, will you play to us tonight?”
“As long as you like...”
The three sat smoking about the red and green tiles of the grate. There was a blazing fire. The little German inlaid clock chimed the hour.
“I shall now make my Cornishman’s prayer,” declared Arthur. “‘From ghosties, and ghoulies, and long-tailed gandies, Good Lord deliver us!’”
XII
BY THE SEA
THEY WERE TAKING their first picnic to the shore. After three days of wind and rain the sun shone warmly and a period of tranquil summer weather was foretold. The wings of the gulls shone between sea and sky of equal blueness. All the life of Polmouth that had retreated, damp and discouraged, to the shelter of its slated roofs now leaped out rejoicing. On the links the figures of golfers were dotted with upraised bare forearms. On the downs the black-faced sheep exposed the dampness of their wool to the sun. On the porches of the boarding houses appeared rows of drying bathing suits. Soon after sunrise the hardiest strode to the sands, towels hung about their shoulders. All day long the bathing continued. In the heat of the day the throng of bright-coloured figures glowed like tropic flowers in the surf. Strong-limbed boys and girls hurled themselves on painted surfboards and were carried, half-smothered in foam, to the gleaming sands. They were careless of the changeful currents and gave little heed to the coast-guardsman who shouted warnings to them through a megaphone. As he wiped his mouth after each brazen warning he would growl to himself, in his natural voice—“Let ’un drown then! And serve ’un right! What do they think I am? A nursery-maid? Next time I’ll let ’un drown and no mistake.” Little bronze, half-naked children scuttled here and there carrying tin pails and spades. Elderly ladies clutching reticules walked gingerly in the advancing foam, their upheld skirts showing plump white legs, while they kept a wary eye on their black stockings and shoes perched on some shell-encrusted rock. In gravelly recesses between the jutting cliffs little groups lay basking in the sun or reading novels with its light full on the page.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 20
