“We were shipping some horses. I’ve been in town overnight. I must get rid of that taxi for you. What luck that I should be here with the car! Crowdy and Chase must come with us, though. But they live just outside the city. I’ll drop them there.”
The two friends came forward looking rather crestfallen. Chase vouchsafed no more than a stiff bow, but Crowdy soon recovered himself and beamed at her. Somehow her luggage was stowed in the car. She was in the seat beside Renny. She was glad it was the old car—muddy, with ill-fitting curtains, rattling as though this must surely be its last trip. It had been just as it was now when she had first ridden in it, five years ago. In it Renny had first spoken of his passion for her. She recalled his words. They had been few and his tone almost matter-of-fact. It had been at night and it had rained. Neither had had any hope that they could come together. Now it was morning. Rain was beginning to fall. They were together, together, yes, together...
She could not understand herself, yet now she could understand him. She could not understand why it was that she did not mind the presence of Crowdy and Chase in the car. Yet she could sympathise with his feeling for them. They were real. That was it. They were as real as this raw wind that made the curtains flap. They were as real as Rosamond Trent and Professor and Mrs. Card had become unreal to her. She had changed. She was becoming a new person. It had been the birth pangs of this new self that had torn her.
Renny asked her questions about her life with Miss Archer. He seemed to think that it was the natural and proper thing that she should have made a long stay with her. He did not reproach her with the brusqueness of her letters, with her writing so seldom to him. Her heart turned with joy as she slid her eyes toward him... He reached for the cloth he kept for the purpose and wiped the windshield.
The lake was trembling in the wind. The waves were a light, translucent green. They buffeted each other like rowdies, knocking the caps of foam from each other’s heads.
Gulls swooped and sank to the waves and rose again, whimpering. When the car was stopped for Crowdy and Chase to alight she heard the gulls’whimpering.
Chase bowed and backed away from the kerb, but Crowdy drew close to her. He extended his left hand and, on its palm, with the forefinger of the right, made cabalistic signs. His shrewd little eyes indicated Renny. He said:
“You have a fine husband, Mrs. Whiteoak. None better. Thoroughbred.”
Alayne put out her hand to shake his. They gazed steadfastly into each other’s eyes, she and the horse dealer. She could picture the hideous houses on hideous suburban streets into which he and Chase would disappear.
As they drove on again Renny’s face wore a pleased smile at her magnanimity toward his friends. She found that her headache had quite gone, but it, combined with a sleepless night, had left her unutterably tired. She let her weight rest against Renny’s shoulder and relaxed as she had not relaxed for months. Renny talked on and on about the horses they had been shipping that morning.
The heavy branches of the evergreens along the drive seemed to have extended since she had last seen them. They swept the windows of the car, drenching them. After the house on the Hudson this old red brick one looked long and rambling. There was a covering of wet snow on the steps of the porch and on the snow footprints of dogs. He carried her things on to the porch. She asked suddenly:
“Were you surprised?”
“A little. Not much. I was expecting you any day.” But there was a shyness in his eyes. After a quick glance at her he opened the door and they went into the hall.
It was empty save for old Ben curled up before the stove. He rose, stretched, and came toward her wagging his bobbed ail. If they had had differences he had forgotten them. Now was her time to show that she too could be generous. As he raised himself, with his paws against her side, she put her arms about him as she had never done to a dog before.
Nicholas had been reading in the sitting-room. He came out, pulling off his spectacles as he came. He kissed her and exclaimed:
“My dear Alayne, how glad I am to see you! But you could not have got my letter. It was only posted yesterday I had been intending to write you for a fortnight, but you know how bad I am at writing letters.” He scrutinised her from under his shaggy brows, trying to pierce the wherefore of her coming. He had never untangled the wherefore of her going.
Ernest came, kissed her, and led her into the sitting-room. “But, dear Alayne, how pale and cold and tired you look! We must have some wine and a biscuit for you. I will get it myself.” He hastened to the dining room.
“Thank God,” rumbled Nicholas in an undertone, “that you’re come! Otherwise, I don’t know when we should have been rid of the Vaughans. Their tenants are gone but here they stick, just because it’s so comfortable. And we have missed you dreadfully for yourself, my dear!”
As she was sipping her wine Meg came in leaning on Renny’s arm. In the hall he had pressed her arm authoritatively: “Meggie, be nice to Alayne or I won’t love you!”
She had delayed their entry long enough to say— “Nice to Alayne! As though I had ever been anything else! Surely Alayne will be nice to me when she sees my weak state.”
Alayne rose and looked into Meg’s flushed face. “Oh, Meggie,” she said. “How nice that you are able to be about again! But I see that you are very weak.”
Meg advanced and kissed her. “Yes, indeed I am! If only I had your strength! To be able to eat anything, at any time, as you do! I have no appetite. You have no idea what I’ve been through.” Renny lowered her into a chair beside Alayne and stood looking down at them with old Adeline’s very grin of delight in their reunion.
Meg laid her soft white hand on Alayne’s knee. “When we are alone I must tell you all about it. But I am afraid you will be upset when you hear that I have your room.”
“Not at all,” Alayne assured her, though she would have given almost anything to have had her own bed to lie down in. “I will take Finch’s room while you are here. You must not hurry away because of my coming.”
Nicholas glared at her. “The ceiling in Finch’s room leaks badly,” he said. “It has been leaking for a long time. I’m afraid you won’t be comfortable there.” He added testily turning toward Renny—“I don’t like to see the place going to rack and ruin.”
Renny went and began to poke the fire as he always did when repairs were mentioned.
Wragge appeared at Alayne’s side, with the decanter on a tray “May I give you some more of the sherry ma’am?” he asked.
“Yes, a little.” She watched him as he poured the wine with his air of mingled humility and impudence.
He said—“It’s a great pleasure to see you ’ome again, ma’am. I hope you don’t mind me saying so.”
Wakefield was in the doorway. He did not come forward, but stood looking gravely at her. She held out her hand. She noticed that he had grown since she had last seen him.
“Wake, aren’t you coming to kiss me?”
He advanced then and touched her cheek with his lips.
Renny said—“I haven’t seen him as fit in a long while as he is just now”
Maurice, Pheasant, and Piers came in, followed by the two little ones, who clambered at once to Alayne’s lap and the arm of her chair. There they were, all together in one room, as they liked to be, in the heat of intimacy, all barriers down. Once more in their midst, Alayne saw them as a crowded group in a picture, high-coloured, vigorous, resistant to change... On the centre table stood a vase filled with dahlias. There were as many as the vase could hold. Bronze, rust-coloured, orange, and scarlet; they were like the Whiteoaks, she thought, in their bold yet crowded commingling.
Meg saw her looking at the flowers. “Aren’t they lovely?” she asked. “Do you know, I have never been without flowers since my illness.” She drew Patience from Alayne’s knee. “You must not stroke Auntie Alayne’s fur, Baby. Stand up nicely and let her hear you say your pretty new piece. Stand beside her, Mooey.”
She placed the
infants side by side, facing Alayne.
Without hesitation Patience grasped Mooey’s hand and recited:
“Step out, baby cousin,
Show your feet so small;
Never fear
While Patty’s near,
Lest you have a fall.”
Mooey pulled away his hand. “Oh hell,” he said, “I’m not f’ightened!”
At last she was up in Finch’s room. She was back under the roof of Jalna. The roof leaked into the basin by the foot of the bed. There was a smell of wet plaster, Finch’s things were about...
Renny came running up the stairs. He came in. He looked about. “You will be quite cosy here,” he said.
She came to him. “Renny,” she said with an effort, “I am so sorry about your dog. It was cruel that it should have been killed unnecessarily.”
For a second there was a look of shrinking in his eyes. Then he exclaimed:
“You should see how Cora’s colt is developing! It is growing into the most charming filly you ever saw.”
“And Cora... Is she well?”
“Fit as can be! She has a heart of gold, that mare!”
XXVI
FINCH
FINCH was striding along a wet, winding road in the direction of his aunt’s house. He had been walking all morning and he was tired, but he moved with the excited energy that possessed him when he walked, in opposition to the enervation he felt when indoors. He carried the stick to which he had become accustomed at the time of his strained ankle, swinging it and sometimes poking at things in the hedge with it. It had been a period of extraordinary gales and floods. Every now and again he came upon a fallen tree or a group of men removing one from the road across which it had been blown. A brimming stream hurried along the ditch, twisting and turning among the grasses and gurgling happily. Where the sky was not covered by smoke-coloured clouds, it showed a brilliant and tranquil blue as of springtime, though it was December. The hedges were a rich brown, against which the glossy clumps of holly stood out, with here and there a holly tree rising in berried brightness. Gusts of wind flapped against his face, wet and scentless, except when he passed a rick from which a man was cutting trusses of hay. Then the sweet smell of the hay came to him like an exhalation of summer. Above a ploughed field lapwings were flying in wide circles, uttering their cries that ranged from tender plaintiveness to a wild moaning.
He found one dead by the side of the road. It must have flown against the telegraph wires. He picked it up. It was still warm. The sheen on the dark green of its back was not dulled, but its long crest was moist and limp. He turned it over, letting it lie on his palms, showing its breast plump as a pigeon’s, its white throat, and cinnamon under-tail feathers. Not again would it fly across the fields uttering that cry which moves the heart of the lonely walker. Its fellows cared nothing as they ran along the wind, now dark above the reddish loam, now, as they turned broadside, exposing their white underparts. If he had not come along, there would have been no one to notice its death.
He stood in the ditch, his stick hooked over his wrist, holding the bird. He would absorb the last of its warmth into his own body. Its vitality, its song, should pass into him, and he would hold it so while he lived. Its spark should not be lost.
“You shall not die, lapwing,” he said. “You shall live in me. In the spring you shall cry to your mate through me in my music.”
The eyes of the lapwing, which had been shut when he picked it up, now opened, and the glazed eyeballs stared up at him. Out of its long, sharp beak he fancied he heard these words
“Clodhopper! Do you think I can live in you? I who am a hen lapwing! Can you make the nest on the earth for me? Can you carry my eggs in your body until the shell is just the right shade of greenish brown, with just so many specks for concealment? Can you place them point to point? Can you warm them to life? Feed them?”
“They shall live in my music,” answered Finch.
“The flight, the swooping, the crying of my younglets live in your music?”
“Yes.”
“What of the tens of thousands of worms they and I should have devoured?”
“The worms shall die in my music.”
“Birds fly and worms die in your music! Never can you compose three bars as beautiful as my tremulous and variable notes. Outcast of your own flock, do not imagine that you can steal virtue from me! My song turns to dust in my throat. My tongue cleaves to my beak. My eggs are silent notes that never can be touched to life.”
He pressed her in his hands and she felt cold. A motor car passed, spattering him with mud.
He hastened along a lane between high banks towards a cottage where a thatcher lived. By the cottage there was a duck-pond, on the dark, ice-cold water of which several ducks and a drake were swimming. In the middle of the pond stood the thatcher’s wife, red-cheeked, with a shock of coarse black hair. She wore high leather boots, from which she was scrubbing the mud with a corn broom.
Finch went to the edge of the pond and said:
“Good morning, Mrs. Rush. Will you please lend me your trowel? I want to bury this bird. I found it dead in a ditch by Ram’s Close.”
“Good morning, sir. What, a peewit? He’em dead sure enough! They pore creatures don’t watch proper where they be flyin’. They’m half-mazed with their own hurry-scurry. Where be ’ee goin’ to bury un, sir?”
Finch hesitated. “I scarcely know... Just here, by your pond, if you don’t mind... But you mustn’t hurry to fetch the trowel.”
He stood watching her as she scrubbed her boots with the broom, noticing how the dark water crept in between the laces. When she had finished he followed her to the cottage, against one end of which bundles of faggots were piled to the thatch, and against the other was a shippen, from where came the lowing of a cow.
As he strode down the road, carrying the trowel and the lapwing, an idea came to him. He would bury the lapwing by the side of Ralph Hart... Why should not the dead bird bear the dead boy company? He gloated over the thought of their being buried side by side, as over a strain of music... Then a doubt of his own sanity assailed him for a moment, but he put it from him... He was sane enough, he was sure of that. But his mind was the playground of queer sensations. What in life would bring him peace?
As he descended the steep hill into the village he had a feeling of shame at what he was doing. He hid the lapwing under his coat and endeavoured to conceal the trowel.
The children were just let out of school. They passed him, running in laughing groups, their cheeks glowing, their stout legs purple from cold. He turned down the narrow street that led to the churchyard. He avoided the sexton, who was digging a grave, and slipped behind the gravestones to the distant corner where Ralph lay. From here was a noble view of the moors. The sun sent his spears of light through broken clouds, striking the humped shoulders of the tors. A sodden wreath of everlastings lay on Ralph’s grave, but it was marked by no stone. Finch dug a hole close beside it and laid the lapwing there, smoothing its feathers before he replaced the turf. He straightened himself then, stared up into the sky and across the moor with a dazed look. He felt that life was as mysterious to him, as non-understandable, as when he had emerged from the shelter of his mother’s womb.
Since the departure of his uncles, he and Augusta had seen less and less of the pair at the lodge. Eden had shown a desire to bring Minny to the Hall now that there was more room, but Augusta had had enough of company. Her manner became discouraging, even chilly. She felt herself tired out and she relaxed, finding the presence of Finch so congenial to her that she wished he might stay indefinitely. Finch, in truth, was eading a double life. In the presence of Augusta he was apparently cheerful, interested in all the small doings of neighbours and villagers that were the chief subject of her conversation at Nymet Crews. When a letter came from home he was almost painfully eager to hear news of the family. But no one wrote to him and he wrote to no one... When he was alone he relapsed into a state of deep melancho
ly, out of which he was only roused by some such incident as the finding of the lapwing. Then he was roused to a state bordering on exaltation.
The suicide of Ralph Hart, coming at a time when his nerves were swept by the storm of his hopeless love for Sarah, was a shock from which they were in no haste to readjust themselves.
He could not play the piano in the evening to Augusta without becoming unstrung. He would be forced to stop in order to wipe away the sweat that trickled down his forehead and sprang out on his palms. He would offer a stammered apology, avoiding Augusta’s calm gaze. She would say then—“I think we have had enough music for tonight, dear. I am rather tired, and I can see that you are.”
She saw more than he imagined she did. She thought that, in his present state, he was better off with her than in his own home. He was a fanciful boy and, she guessed, had had some sort of spiritual upset in connection with his cousin. She could not fail to notice Finch’s repulsion from her, his tendency to sneer at her. Arthur had sent photographs of himself and Sarah taken in Paris. Augusta was for having them framed at once, but Finch exclaimed—“For heaven’s sake, Aunt, don’t force me to see that smug-looking pair every time I raise my eyes! Please wait till I am gone!”
Ellen told her mistress that she had found rosemary strewn over the floor of Finch’s room and that sometimes he stole out of the house at daybreak. Augusta stared at her. “We will not worry about that, Ellen,” she said. “Rosemary is quite clean and easily swept up. And, so long as Mr. Finch is stealing out at that hour and not stealing in, I have no cause for anxiety.” But she was anxious. She suggested that he go to London or Leipzig to continue the study of music.
“Like this?” he exclaimed. And, as though at his bidding, his nerves had begun to quiver, and she had been made still more anxious by the sight of him standing trembling before her, with nothing whatever to tremble at.
His appetite reassured her. He was always hungry, as he had ever been. Mutton, winter greens, suet pudding were swept clean from his plate and, if a dish of nuts and raisins were carried to the drawing-room he was sure to finish them. Yet he grew thinner.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 36
