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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Let me see it, please!” cried Wakefield. “Is it something interesting?”

  Alayne passed on the paper to him.

  “I don’t think,” said Piers, “that anyone was to blame for that. The men did just what was natural—seeing a dog in that condition. Alayne did just what was natural. She wanted him put out of the way with the least possible pain. And it wasn’t Quinn’s fault that he didn’t understand the gun... If it had been my dog, I’d just try to put it out of my head— forget the whole thing!” He began to draw horizontal lines on the tablecloth with his knife.

  “Yes, indeed!” cried Pheasant, revolting against her silence of the week. “If ever I saw a terrifying object it was that dog! If he wasn’t mad he’d no right to act as though he was and frighten darling little Mooey and Alayne and me almost to death!”

  “Don’t bring me into it, please,” said Alayne coldly.

  Renny sprang up from his chair. “Christ!” he exclaimed, “you make me sick, the lot of you!”

  He gave a wild look about the room and then flung out of it and out of the house.

  Those who were left exchanged one startled look. Then Piers slit open a letter to himself, Pheasant bent her head over the newspaper, casting a sidelong look at Alayne. She, summoning all her will, picked up a letter in the handwriting of the younger of her aunts and forced herself to read it.

  Wakefield kept repeating to himself, over and over, in a gabbling tone—“You make me sick, the lot of you... You make me sick, the lot of you.”

  Piers, suddenly becoming aware of this, scowled at him. “Shut up!” he said curtly, “or I’ll put you out.”

  To hide his chagrin Wakefield examined his reflection in the hollow of a spoon, making grotesque grimaces at it.

  Alayne thought—“What if Aunt Harriet is writing to say that they are coming at once? I never can endure that with things as they are!” But there was no word of a visit. Helen, the elder aunt, was ill. Her sister was greatly troubled.

  Alayne’s first sensation was one of pure relief. Then anxiety for her loved relation swept relief away. There was a note of foreboding in the letter very unlike the cheerful tone with which Aunt Harriet was used to face life’s worries. A rather shaky postscript said that, if there were any change for the worse, Alayne had better come. She could not bear the responsibility alone.

  All her life Alayne had been accustomed to make sudden decisions. There was nothing of wavering in her at such moments as this. She would wait for no telegram. She would go at once—today. For a moment she considered the idea of allowing the others to believe that Renny’s behaviour was unendurable to her—of punishing him in this way. But she put that aside. She was too proud for pretence.

  She took Pheasant aside after breakfast and told her of her aunt’s serious illness. Something sceptical as well as compassionate in the girl’s expression made Alayne give her the letter to read. Pheasant threw her arms about her and kissed her.

  “Darling Alayne! I do hope it will be only a little visit! I shall miss you so! Jalna isn’t really very comfortable for a prospective young mother these days. Oh, I do wish Uncle Nick were here! I’m sure he could have kept us out of this tangle!”

  At one o’clock Piers came in with the news that Renny had gone off somewhere on business with Maurice. He did not say what the business was and Alayne was of the opinion that Renny was simply spending the day at the Vaughans. Meg had not been well, and she knew he was worried about her. She packed clothes to last her for a month’s visit. She sat down at the writing-table in her room to write a note to Renny. She wrote one that sounded so frigid when she read it over that she tore it up. Better nothing than that! She began another on which, in spite of herself, tears fell, and she tore it up too. He should get no wifely weeping note from her. Better perhaps that he should hear the news from the family.

  Piers had the car freshly washed for driving her to the station. He sent Wright to drive it and kept out of the way at the moment of goodbye. Pheasant had hovered about her all the afternoon. She had brought her two little embroidered handkerchiefs as a gift. She had led Mooey to her, and he had said, having evidently rehearsed the words—“I’m shorry I was a naughty boy, Auntie Alayne.” And held up his face to be kissed.

  Wakefield begged to be allowed to see her off. He had so little in the way of change that he was delighted when she agreed. He and Wright carried her things into the Pullman for her. It was the first time he had ever seen one. He exclaimed:

  “How jolly this is! I wonder if the day will ever come when I’ll be going somewhere. I’ve lived thirteen years and I’ve never been anywhere. Isn’t it terrible, Alayne?” Yet there was a certain pride in his bearing, like the pride of the oldest inhabitant. People about were casting admiring glances at his dark eager face.

  All night Alayne tossed in the grip of a nervous headache. She was at the point of exhaustion when she reached the pretty stucco house up the Hudson. Miss Helen was just able to recognise her. In two days she died.

  When all was over and order was restored in the house she and Miss Harriet had long talks together. Alayne’s heart was wrung by her aunt’s loneliness. She made up her mind that she would remain with her for some time. She had written twice to Pheasant and had had two letters in reply. Things were going on about the same as usual at Jalna. She wrote-—“R. was very much surprised when you did not appear the next morning. He did not say much, but his look was one of the completest astonishment.”

  There was not much time for thought in those first weeks. Miss Archer had many friends eager to condole with her and to see Alayne after her long absence. The friends agreed that marriage had not improved Alayne’s looks. She had grown sallow and there were shadows under her eyes. Rosamond Trent came out from New York exuberant, lavish of her vitality. She had so much to tell that she took Alayne’s mind off her troubles. She spoke with admiration of Ernest Whiteoak, but it was Nicholas who was her ideal of a country gentleman of the old school.

  Miss Helen had left Alayne all her money not a large sum, but one sufficient to make many things possible for her which had not been possible before. Miss Harriet expressed a desire to own a motor car. Her sister had been content to hire one and had been timid of the roads. Now one was purchased, and Alayne took pleasure in driving her over the smooth roads above the river. The autumn weather was delightful.

  Alayne accompanied Miss Archer to a small club formed of ladies of the neighbourhood. At the meetings in drawing-rooms, where elegance and a certain austerity were combined, literature and questions of the day were discussed. Selected members brought intelligent articles in the best magazines, which they read aloud, enunciating so clearly that not a word was missed by their hearers. Alayne herself read an article of great interest, in which it was demonstrated, with quaint examples, that the rural people of the southwestern States retain in their dialect many words of Elizabethan English.

  She liked the club. She was strangely exhilarated by the mental atmosphere of the place. She began to have the feeling of clear-headed alertness which she had known in the days before her marriage. She was like a plant returned to its native soil. Her complexion cleared, but the shadows beneath her eyes remained. These remained because of lack of sleep. No matter how well she slept during the night she woke at four o’clock, and there was no more sleep for her except a mere snatch, achieved between the time when the maid first stirred about the house and the time when she herself must rise. That snatch of sleep refreshed her. It took the edge off the sharp remembrance of the thoughts that had kept her awake. They were thoughts of how her life was ruined, of how these cool and pleasant days were like a clean pinafore that a child puts on to hide its torn and shabby clothes. They were thoughts of how she had lain in the arms of Renny.

  XXII

  FREEDOM

  WITH THE DEPARTURE of Alayne a change came over the family at Jalna. The spurious order that had afflicted them during the summer was thrown aside like hampering harness, and they ran free
. In the basement, where her persistent weekly visits of inspection had been looked forward to with dread, it was as though the lid had been removed from a bubbling pot. The contents of the pot bubbled, boiled over, and the smell of its exuberance rose to the realms above.

  “White wings, they never grow weary,” sang Mrs. Wragge, in a rich contralto, as she threw the remains of a joint, of which she had no desire to make a mince, to the dogs. Her husband, with a cigarette in his lips and his sleeves uprolled, polished the best silver coffee pot, the inside of which had not been washed for many a day. Bessie was plucking a young goose, letting the feathers drift softly where they would.

  “What was that the missus called them that first day she come rampagin’down here?” she called to Wragge.

  “Plumage, that’s wot. It’s American for fevvers. She’s got a rum way o’talkin’. She got on my nerves if ever a lidy did.”

  “It’s not the way the boss talks” said Bessie. “He sort of shoots the talk at you. Makes you jump out of your skin sometimes.”

  “And serve you right,” returned Wragge, blowing on the coffee pot. “You’re the laziest young Canadjen I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a good many.”

  “Give me a Cockney for laziness!” jeered the girl. “What you do know is how to look busy! Why, you’ve been half an hour on that there coffee pot!”

  Wragge set down the silver pot and advanced toward her. There was a scuffle in which the air was filled with feathers, as though the combatants were two birds. Mrs. Wragge stopped singing to stare at them with disapproval.

  “Get on with yer work and stop yer foolin’, Bessie,” she ordered. “Alfred, don’t you be makin’so free.”

  A baby voice sounded from the stairway. “Fight some more, p’ease! We’re coming.”

  It was Mooey. He and his cousin Patience were descending the stairs, carrying their blue china plates in their hands.

  Maurice Vaughan and his little daughter had come to stay at Jalna while Meg was at the hospital. The two children being hungry in the middle of the morning, Alma had set them down at their little table with bread and butter and brown sugar before them. They had soon devoured that and, Alma being engaged in trying to hide her freckles under some of Pheasant’s face-powder, they had stolen from the room and laboriously descended two flights of stairs to the basement.

  There they stood, three steps from the bottom, Patience in pink, Mooey in fawn, holding their plates before them like two small mendicants, and smiling ingratiatingly. Mrs. Wragge came to them beaming. She had the pneumatic bosom and fat red face that inspire confidence in children.

  “Well, I’m blessed,” she declared, “if I ever seen two lovelier kiddies!” Wragge and Bessie also gathered to inspect them.

  “She’s the spit of ’er mother,” observed Rags. “Sime complexion. Sime smile.”

  “She ’as ’er daddy’s grey eyes,” said his wife.

  “This one,” continued her husband, placing the tips of his fingers on Mooey’s head, “is the most beautiful blend of two parents I’ve hever seen. ’E’s took the best points off both on ’em.”

  Mooey said—“I want gingerbed, p’ease.”

  “There is no gingerbread, dearie,” answered Mrs. Wragge.

  “Jam, then, and a piece of celery.”

  “Patty wants an egg!” said Patience.

  “Listen to them! At this hour in the morning,” cried Bessie.

  “They’re half-starved along o’that Alma,” declared the cook. “Run you to the larder, Bessie, and fetch those two hard-boiled eggs. I cooked too many for the jellied veal.”

  While the eggs were being shelled the children ran round and round in a circle, holding their plates before them. They liked the feel of the brick floor under their feet. Presently Patience slipped and fell. The plate flew from her hands and was broken. Mooey tripped over her and fell too. They sat, shouting with laughter, among the fragments of china.

  “That’s nish,” said Mooey, “now they’ll not need to be washed!”

  “Patty wants anozzer plate, p’ease,” she said, holding up her hands.

  “Give ’er that cracked one,” said Wragge, “just to see w’at she’ll do with it.”

  Finding it in her hand, Patty rose and, assuming the classic attitude of the disc thrower, she hurled it to the other end of the kitchen. At the crash she looked astonished for a moment, then said—

  “Patty wants anozzer plate!”

  Bessie brought a tin plate this time. Patience took it trustingly and, with a wide gesture, hurled it down the room. It fell with a thin clatter.

  “Oh, hell,” said Mooey, “that won’t b’eak!”

  “Chips of the old block,” said Rags sententiously.

  Bessie put the hard-boiled eggs into their hands. Patience tried to cram all hers in her mouth at once, but finding she could not do this she nibbled a little hole in the end.

  “Dis is de little door,” she said, “where de chookie comes out.”

  Mooey licked his all over. “Nish and slithery,” he said. “I like chooky-eggs.” But evidently the edge of his appetite was lost, for he seemed in no haste to eat it. Finally he held it toward the cook. “W’ap it up for me, p’ease, in a new shell. I’d like to keep it.”

  “Patty’s is gone!” she shouted. “Dust my hands, p’ease.” She held them out to the cook.

  Mrs. Wragge wiped the small hands on her none too clean apron and admonished Mooey to eat his egg if he wanted to grow a big man. He got rid of it in four bites, then came and picked up the hem of Mrs. Wragge’s long black skirt.

  “You’re a chooky-hen,” he said, “and we’re the little chookys. Come along and get under, Patty!”

  With a squeal of delight Patty joined him, and they sought to take shelter under Mrs. Wragge.

  “I’m a dog!” exclaimed Wragge. And he ran round and round the group, yelping.

  “I’m a cat!” cried Bessie. And she ran after him, mewing.

  It was good fun for all but Mrs. Wragge. She was too hefty for such artless gambolling. In trying to extricate herself from the game she stepped on a piece of china and fell in a sitting posture to the floor.

  The children watched her with interest to see whether or no she would break. Patty fetched the tin plate and placed it on Mrs. Wragge’s head. “You’re Queen of the May,” she said.

  Mooey held a bit of the broken china to her lips. “You’re my birdie,” he said. “This is nish cuttlefish. Peck, little birdie.”

  At this moment, luckily for the cook, Alma came down the stairs in search of her charges. Alma was greatly disturbed. She had just discovered that Patience was Mooey’s aunt as well as his cousin, and it made her head spin round and round. She explained how strange she felt, and Mrs. Wragge suggested that they had all better have a cup of tea. “For,” she said, “I’m afraid my innards may go back on me along o’a jolt like that.”

  Maurice Vaughan had had an opportunity to let his house furnished for two months, and Renny had suggested that he take advantage of the offer, and make Jalna his home for the period. Meggie would be in the hospital for several weeks and, when she was convalescent, she would almost certainly recuperate more quickly in the atmosphere of her old home. Renny thought that Vaughanlands was unhealthy, situated as it was in a hollow and standing flat on the ground, with no basement. The presence of Maurice and Patience in the house would help to distract his mind from the awful fact that Meggie was obliged to undergo an operation. The very word hospital filled the Whiteoaks with loathing and fear. Not one of them had ever entered one as a patient. When their time came they simply took to their beds and died. That was all there was to it. No surgeon’s knife had ever cut into their stubborn flesh.

  Only once had Renny set his foot inside such a place. Then it had been to visit one of his men who had been injured by a kick from a horse. The smell, the sights, the crisp, hurrying nurses had inspired him with nervous dread... And now his Meggie was forced to enter one for an operation! It was useless for Maur
ice to tell him that he had got a quite nice private room for her, that the chance of her not pulling through was very remote. Nothing lightened his depression. He spoke in a subdued tone to Maurice, as though he were already a widower. He took Patty on his knee and questioned her sombrely as to her recollections of her mother.

  Meggie had come to tell them goodbye, looking pale, but sweetly firm and reconciled. She had always had a sense of the dramatic, and it now helped her in this trying time. She embraced Mooey, exclaiming—“And you must always, always be a good boy!” She laid her two hands on Renny’s chest and said, deeply—“You will always guard little Wake, won’t you?” She visited her grandmother’s room and stroked the silent Boney, murmuring—“Never more”—having evidently confused him in her mind with Poe’s Raven.

  The most heartrending thing was that she brought a little gift to each of them. As though they needed anything to remember her by! She brought a gift to even the least of the servants, which was Alma Patch, and adjured her to be kind to her baby. To Piers she brought a silk handkerchief-holder with a pink bow. To Wakefield, a little black lacquer writing-case given to her by her grandmother when she was a girl. To Renny, a diary. It had been given to her, she explained, the Christmas before, but she had not had the strength to write in it.

  Renny kept several account-books, but he had never owned a diary. He carried it darkly to his room that night, lighted his lamp and sat down at the table with the little book before him. He opened it and read on the flyleaf in a spidery hand—“To dear Meggie with love from Nellie Pink.” This had been firmly crossed out, and underneath, in his sister’s bold hand, was written—“For Renny with my abiding love, Meggie.” Dubiously he fluttered the narrow pages under his thumb. Three-fourths of the year were almost gone, and it was difficult to know how to set about the enterprise. After giving his fountain pen the severe shake it always required before it would write, he pressed open the diary at January. The only event he could remember in that month (aside from events in the stable, of which a meticulous record was kept in his office) was the death of Lebraux. He wrote— “Tony Lebraux died. Age 45. Weather very rough.”... In the space for the first day of March he wrote—“Finch of Age. Dinner party. Finch spoke.” In May he wrote of the departure of Nicholas, Ernest, and Finch for England. In June he recorded Wakefield’s birthday and his height and weight that day. In July he recorded his own birthday, adding the words—“Getting on.” At the end of August he wrote— “Barney killed by four brutes with hay-forks.”... His next entry was—“Alayne left to visit her aunt owing to illness (later death) of other aunt.” He stared at this entry for quite a long while before he turned to the space for that day. Herein he wrote—“Meggie entered hospital today for serious operation. Gave me this book.”... He heaved a deep sigh, leant back and filled his pipe... He never opened the little book again.