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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Was there something that troubled you—kept you from playing?”

  His mind closed against hers. “Oh, I had a kind of nervous breakdown, I think.”

  “Can’t you tell me about it?”

  That was the worst of her, he thought. She was too persistent, too keen to know the why and wherefore of things.

  Now he felt uneasy, and, seeing his sister’s eyes on him— “Meggie has something she wants to show me,” he said, and went across to her.

  He sat down by her on an ottoman embroidered in bead-work in a design of an angel carrying a sheaf of lilies. She said:

  “It’s time you came and sat by me. I was feeling jealous. I have been looking at old photographs. Isn’t this an adorable one of the uncles and our father in braided velvet dresses? Do you think Patty is like Papa?”

  “A bit. But she is like Maurice, too.” He lifted her hand from the album and raised it to his cheek. “Meggie,” he whispered, “I can’t bear to see you ill. You must go to Florida. I’ll foot the bill.”

  She beamed at him. “That would be lovely! And I could take Wake with me. The change would do him so much good. And, as he often says, the child has been nowhere.”

  “Right you are. I’d intended doing something for each one of you, and this will be your treat and Wake’s.”

  The three men entered from the hall. Renny went straight to Alayne and sat down by her side. He picked up the book she was reading, looked at the title and laid it down with a grimace. Maurice turned toward Ernest and Wakefield, putting his fingers inside the boy’s collar. Piers joined Meg and Finch. He regarded Finch with animated interest. He had convinced himself that Finch was a subtle devil well worth watching.

  Nicholas continued to play half-forgotten fragments. The dogs also had come in and stretched themselves, with intermingled bodies, on the hearth rug.

  Rags entered carrying the coffee which was taken in the drawing-room on festive occasions such as this.

  From above, the laughter and pattering feet of the children could be heard.

  Meg raised her voice. “What do you suppose Finch has done?”

  “Seduced Alma Patch?” offered Piers.

  “Piers! How can you! No... something much more thrilling. He has promised to send me South for my health. And I’m to take Wake with me.”

  “By George, that’s good of you, Finch!” said Maurice warmly He was glad he had not joined in ragging Finch in the hall.

  Wake uttered three staccato yells of triumph.

  Nicholas stopped playing to demand:

  “What’s the to-do?”

  “It’s Finch,” answered Meg. “He’s going to send Wake and me South for our health.”

  “Well, I call that handsome of him. If you two enjoy your trip as much as Ernest and I enjoyed ours it will certainly be a success.”

  Renny said, looking at his boots—“I can’t let you take the kid away on a long trip like that without me.”

  “Not let me take him! You must be crazy, Renny! Do you think I can’t look after him properly?”

  “You’d let him over-exert and eat too many sweets. The last time he visited you he came home and had a bilious bout.”

  “Rubbish! As though you watched him all the time!”

  “I do.”

  “Then a change from so much coddling would be good for him. I hope I can look after my own little brother!”

  Wakefield sat, his bright eyes flashing from one face to another, while his fate was being discussed. Even while he had shouted in triumph he had not really believed that the adventure would come to pass. It was too stupendous. Such things were not for him.

  Everyone was against Renny in the matter, with the exception of Alayne who had not spoken. Meg turned to her and said:

  “Surely you agree that Renny is being very perverse, Alayne!”

  Alayne thought he was, but she said—“I think Renny understands Wake as no one else does.”

  “Well, I suppose he must decide, but it seems rather hard that the child should be deprived of such a change.”

  Nicholas rose from the piano seat. He said—“Give me an arm, Piers. My gout is very bad today.”

  Piers went to him and assisted him to an easy chair. He sat down beside him.

  “I suppose,” he said, with his prominent eyes on Finch — “that you have all heard of Finch’s honeymoon.”

  “I have not heard of Finch’s honeymoon,” returned Meg with solemnity. “But I have heard other things about Finch that have upset me terribly.” She drew a deep breath, drew in her chin and looked accusingly at Renny. He had offended her.

  Finch gave her an agonised look. What was she going to say? To what new torture was he to be subjected? Involuntarily he drew away from her, but she laid her arm about his shoulders, her hand with fingers outspread, in a gesture at once pliant and commanding, such a gesture as that with which a cat draws her kitten to her.

  Renny did not like the look nor the gesture. He stared aggressively at her.

  “Finch has brought me,” she proceeded, “a letter from Aunt Augusta. I have managed to keep what she says to myself until dinner was over.” Finch writhed under her arm.

  “What the devil does she say?” asked Renny.

  Meg answered—“I need not read you all her letter. Just the bits of it that I think you should hear.” She had it ready in her free hand and held it close to her eyes, for she was short-sighted. She read:

  “’I have been observing Finch closely’.” Meg turned from the letter to observe him herself closely. All the family observed him closely. Then she went on:

  “’He has been in a state of melancholy brooding’.”

  “Brooding on his honeymoon, I suppose,” said Piers.

  “Shh,” exclaimed his sister, furiously. “This is not a matter for joking.”

  “Look here,” exclaimed Finch,” I don’t know what this is all about, but you’re not to read that letter!”

  “I must read it!” she continued—“’No wonder he broods, poor boy. It is terrible for him to think that he has been the victim of mercenary relatives. 1 feel that I must speak out to you, Meggie, so that you may use your influence to prevent my mother’s money from being scattered to the four winds. I should write this to his guardian Renny, but I find, from careful questioning of Finch, that Renny has utterly failed in his duties as a guardian. He has given him not one word of advice regarding investments. He has allowed this inexperienced boy to lend his money (to give it, one might better say) to any and every one who importuned him. I shrink from the disclosure I am about to make, but I feel it is my duty. I have discovered that a certain Rosamond Trent of New York—’”

  Ernest interrupted in a shaking voice:

  “I will not have Miss Trent brought into this!”

  Nicholas gave vent to subterranean chuckles.

  Ernest turned on him with an air of outrage. “Nick, this is your doing!”

  “I never mentioned Miss Trent’s name to Gussie,” answered his brother.

  “Finch, then, it was you!”

  Finch answered heavily—“I only told Auntie that I had lent money to Miss Trent and that she had lost everything in the Wall Street crash. I didn’t mind a bit lending it. You must know that, Uncle Ernest.”

  Nicholas exclaimed—“You lent her money! This is the first I’ve heard of that. Ha, the hussy! So she was just making a dupe of you, Ernie! She got at Finch’s money through you, eh?”

  Ernest was too affronted for speech. He sat making faces, his fingers twisted together.

  Meg could be almost heard to purr. She never released her protective hold on Finch. She said:

  “I think Miss Trent’s your friend, isn’t she, Alayne?”

  Alayne answered in a controlled voice—“Yes. She met Finch through me. No one can regret more than I do that Finch lent her money. I honestly believe that she will try to pay it back.”

  Renny, with hands deep in his pockets, continued to stare at his boots.


  “What’s this,” asked Piers, “about Uncle Ernest and Miss Trent?”

  Nicholas answered, his voice indistinct with mirth— “Why, Finch and I were almost frightened to death on shipboard! We thought he was going to propose to her. You should have seen them clutched at the fancy-dress ball—she in a pink domino, he in a mauve.”

  Ernest’s face went a violent pink. “I’ll not forgive you this in a hurry!” he snarled.

  Nicholas ignored him—“Why he toddled all over England after her, ransacking the country for antiques for her shop!”

  The colour in Ernest’s face subsided as quickly as it had risen. He said—“Miss Trent is a charming woman. It was a pleasure to me to have her company on shipboard. I enjoyed going about with her a little in England. I did not know that I was making myself ridiculous. The thought of marrying her never entered my head. If you want to amuse the family, Nick, just tell them how you made assignations with the wife who divorced you thirty years ago.”

  Nicholas thrust his hands through his grey hair, making it rise into two antlers. He looked like an old stag at bay. “By God, you are a sneak. How did you know I met Millicent? It was by the merest chance. And what were you doing at the time? You were in the kitchen with that Trent woman buying the very pots and pans!”

  “And you in a bedroom with the door shut, with a woman of whom you have declared you couldn’t endure the sight!”

  “I’d never have married Millicent if you hadn’t put me off Ruby Fortesque!”

  “Put you off Ruby Fortesque! How the devil did I do that?”

  “You whined to me about how you were gone on her yourself. And then—when I left her to you—you hadn’t the guts to marry her!”

  “I would have married her but that I had lost so much money through backing that disreputable friend of yours—I forget his name!”

  They glared at each other. There was an interval of silence while the younger members of the family absorbed what they could of these ancient revelations. One of the pine sticks on the fire gave forth an angry crack. The three dogs leaped from the hearth rug and stood in cowed attitudes gazing at the fire. Then slowly they returned to the rug and once more disposed themselves on it.

  Piers said—“Well, Miss Trent evidently has a gathering eye. How much did you lend her, Finch?”

  “Ten thousand.”

  “It’s perfidious,” said Nicholas, “that my mother’s money should be thrown about like this.”

  “Miss Trent will pay it back, never fear!” exclaimed Ernest.

  Meg said—“Now I will read a little more of the letter— ‘I do not know whether you are aware of it, but Finch borrowed money before he attained his majority in order to maintain Eden in France while he worked on his new book. Arthur Leigh, from whom he borrowed it, told me this as an evidence of Finch’s magnanimity. Finch himself told me that he gave (why should I trouble to say lend!) another thousand to Eden before his return to France in December. Eden must be looked after until his health is regained or he has become famous, but why should Renny shift the responsibility of this to Finch’s young shoulders?’”

  “I sent him a thousand in the summer!” put in Renny, hotly.

  To two of those present the bringing in of Eden’s name was almost unbearable. The others were conscious of this, so the loan to him was allowed to pass with no more than a faint sputter of exclamation.

  Meg was obliged to remove her arm from Finch’s shoulder in order to find the next part of the closely written letter.

  He straightened himself and a certain mordant pleasure in the scene took possession of him. Well, let her go through with it, let them see what he had done with the money they had made such a howl about his inheriting!

  “Here endeth the first lesson,” said Vaughan, jocularly. “Now for the second...”

  “The second,” said his wife with her eye on Piers, “is the piggery.”

  “I’d like to know what anyone has to say against the piggery!” exclaimed Piers.

  Meg replied by reading from the letter. “If Mamma had wished to build an expensive piggery, she would have built one long ago..’”

  “Yes, indeed,” agreed Ernest, glad of the introduction of a subject so far removed from himself. “She detested piggeries.”

  Meg read on—“‘If Mamma had wished her money to be spent on an expensive motor car she would have bought one long ago. The one motor ride she had was the one which conveyed her to her grave. She would turn over in that grave, I am sure, if she knew of all that has been going on.’” And Meg added briskly—“I quite agree.”

  Piers eyed her truculently. “I suppose you do. But what about the mortgage?”

  “What mortgage?” she asked, in a shocked tone.

  “Why, your own mortgage. The one you chivvied young Finch into taking over. I’ll wager that you’ve never paid the interest on that yet!”

  Meg’s glance was benign as she turned to Finch. “Tell him, Finch.”

  “She paid me this morning. As soon as she came over.”

  “Before she’d read that letter?”

  “Yes.”

  Piers shouted with laughter. “You’ve managed to save your face, Meggie!”

  “Nothing but extreme necessity because of my operation delayed the payment,” she returned.

  “I like the new motor car,” said Wakefield.

  “Of course you do,” Piers answered. “And you’re not the only one that likes it. Everyone here seems willing to make use of it. You jumped at the chance of being driven to the hospital in it, Meg.”

  Meg folded her short, plump arms and surveyed Piers with sisterly disapproval. “You are far too critical, Piers, for a young man who has had no more experience of life than you have. Where have you been? As far west as Niagara Falls. As far east as Montreal. Think of it! Yet no one in the family is so aggressive as you!”

  “Where have you been yourself?” he flared.

  “I leave shortly for Florida.”

  “That’s still in the future. In the past, all you’ve done is to move across the ravine just in the nick of time to have a baby!”

  “Maurice!” shouted Meg. “Are you going to let him insult me?”

  Maurice made himself heard above the general laughter.

  “You let my wife alone!” he scowled, as he knew Meggie expected him to scowl, at the brother-in-law who was also his son-in-law.

  Piers, unabashed, continued—“As for the piggery, it’s not mine at all. It simply adds to the value of Jalna. It belongs to Renny.”

  “The hell it does!” said Renny. “I won’t have it!”

  Piers turned to Finch. “Whom does the piggery belong to?”

  “Jalna,” answered Finch. Gradually, from being most unhappy, he had become rather pleased with himself. Here he was, the centre of a row, yet no one was blaming him. He took Meggie’s hand and replaced it on his shoulder. She gave him a tender smile. “What this poor boy has suffered!” she exclaimed.

  Nicholas said—“The great mistake was to allow him absolute control of the money at twenty-one. I should have been made his trustee.”

  Renny shot him a look. “You! I was his guardian.”

  “A lot you’ve guarded him,” retorted Nicholas. “You’ve allowed him to follow every whim.”

  “I wanted to keep out of the affair.”

  “But why? It was your business more than anyone’s, as you say.”

  “It would have been very different,” said Ernest, “if Mamma had given me control over the money.”

  “Hmph!” growled his brother. “Out of the frying pan into the fire, I should say”

  “What I have never been able to understand,” said Meg, “is this—Why did Granny leave me nothing but her watch and chain and that old Indian shawl. No one carries such a watch now. And she thought so little of the shawl that she used to let Boney make a nest in it. And then to give Pheasant that gorgeous ruby ring!”

  “For God’s sake, forget about that ring!” ejaculated Piers. “
When Gran’s things were divided you got two rings.”

  “Neither of them could compare with the ruby! And how can I forget it when Pheasant is so ostentatious with it. Why, she’s taken to wearing it on her forefinger!”

  “She’ll wear it on her nose if she chooses!”

  Maurice scowled without any urging from Meg. He refilled his pipe and lighted it with a coal from the fire.

  “All I got was her bed,” said Renny.

  Meg curled her short upper lip in a sneer. “A pity about you, truly! When you have the whole estate!”

  “Yes,” grunted Nicholas. “Jalna thrown in!”

  Ernest added: “He did not think Jalna worth considering!”

  The face of the master of Jalna became as red as his hair. “Gran had nothing to do with my getting Jalna! I got it through my father.”

  Another silence ensued in which each seemed to be searching his own mind for a weapon to turn against the others. Alayne refilled the coffee cups. The pot was emptied. She thought—“I cannot endure to stay here. I must leave them to have their row out in their own way.” But she did not go. Since her return the life at Jalna had become her life, as never before. If she left the room she would be tacitly acknowledging that she was of weaker fibre than they. She would stay, no matter how her head ached, no matter how she inwardly shrank from the things they said.

  Wakefield’s clear voice was heard. “Was there anything more in the letter, Meggie?”

  “Yes. There is more in the letter.” There was an increased tension as she read—“‘Are you aware that Finch invested thirty thousand dollars in New York stocks and lost it? He informed me of this without visible emotion. But he was never the same again. He seemed sunk in apathy. As for me, no words can express my pain at seeing the fortune, so many years hoarded by my mother, come to such a queer unnatural end. Writing without violence I may say that I consider Renny’s callous neglect to be at the bottom of the disaster.’”

  A smile flickered across Finch’s pale face. Now what would they make of this? He clasped his knee in his hands, and his eyes, in which the large pupils were unusually bright, took in the scene before him without moving.

  Nicholas’s voice came from a long way off. “You have lost thirty thousand dollars in stocks... what stocks?”