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

by Mazo de La Roche

  All sleep was gone from Wakefield and he found himself, almost without knowing what he was doing, out of bed and searching for his clothes. They were always mixed up with Renny’s. The untidiness of their room was a constant annoyance to Alayne.

  He drew on a white jersey and grey flannel trousers but he neither washed nor combed his hair. Nothing could teach him to be tidy about his person, yet he always looked better groomed than Finch.

  He hesitated at the foot of the attic stairs. Should he go up and ask Finch to join him? He turned away—no, he would go alone, he would have this early August morning to himself! He descended the worn carpet of the stairs into the silent hall and let himself out by the side door on to the lawn.

  The sun had not yet appeared above the treetops but the eastern sky was fantastically streaked with red and gold and purple, and above these hung many bright clouds, some of them no more than rosy flakes, and beyond them a pale-green sky. Every leaf and blade and petal stood out singly, clear-cut, significant, proud. As he reached the open fields the whole world unrolled like a rich-coloured scroll, now signed with a flourish of sunlight. A flock of gulls flew high above his head uttering their plaintive pleasure in the morning.

  He stood irresolute, not knowing what to do with himself. The time was past when by running and shouting and waving his arms he could express the feeling that was in him. And yet to move forward on his two legs was not enough—just to look up and down and say what a fine morning this was, would not satisfy him. Even poetic thoughts, which used to come to him so easily, now held aloof.

  He looked down at the bright stubble beneath his feet, then up at the gulls circling in their fiery whiteness, and a new and tender longing made his heart ache. He was alone and he longed for the companionship of one who would understand him and rejoice with him. The thought of Pauline Lebraux came to him and he crossed the field and found the path through the birch wood that led toward her home. He wondered why Finch had tried to draw him on to talk of Pauline. Did Finch suspect that he cared for her? And was he, with his artist’s instinct, tempting him to expose his soul? But he had not talked of her though he had thought of her a great deal. She had told him one day that she often gathered blackberries on the edge of the wood before the sun grew hot.

  His feet broke the short golden spears of the stubble, as he moved slowly across the field. The gulls swam, heavy and graceful, nearer and nearer to the ground, waiting only for him to be gone before again taking possession. A field mouse, burnished to bronze by the sun, hesitated for a moment, staring at him astonished, then disappeared in a flurried zigzag. A furry brown caterpillar reared itself on a spear of stubble, thrusting forward its black head, spying out the land for some hazardous expedition. A tiny brown bird scratched in the sandy soil with the energy and composure of a barnyard fowl.

  The pines and birches, dark and fair, accepted the persuasive penetration of the path. They held it to them for a space before dismissing it into the sunlight. Then, in the open, it ran alongside a fence which had long been concealed by a dense growth of brambles and wild blackberry bushes. Here the sun slanted his golden gaze, burning to ripen, pressing to mature.

  An old apple tree, its trunk hidden in undergrowth, its branches showing every conceivable distortion, brandished, as it were, three harsh red apples in mockery to the desirous sun.

  In among the bushes and the long dry grass the flood of locust song now burst forth, triumphant and yet sounding a tenuous note of despair. A delicious warmth sought even the shady corners, so quick, so filled with energy, was the morning. A milkweed pod having burst, its hoard was released and the silvery particles, detaching themselves one by one from the central mass where the seeds had overlapped like the scales of a fish, swam delicately on the light breeze.

  He found her, wearing a yellow cotton dress, pressed in among the thickest growth of brambles where she had worked her way bit by bit. She carried a tin pail and already it was almost full of berries shining as though lacquered.

  “Pauline!” he called softly.

  She looked over her shoulder and smiled when she saw him.

  “May I come and help you?” he asked. But he did not want to go in among the thorns to help her. He wanted her to come out and talk to him.

  “I am tired,” she answered. “I’ll sit down and rest a bit.”

  But the brambles clung to her so that she could not move. He came and detached her dress thorn by thorn, noticing the pricks and scratches on her arms. He bent down to release a prickly branchlet that embraced her ankle, and looking up saw her eyes slanting above him, and caught her in one of her moments of beauty.

  They sat down on the grass together under a birch tree. She looked little more than a child, and a fragrance, as of the morning, came from her. He was delighted because she was still beautiful, and he decided that it was because she was still smiling. He had never seen anything so gravely sweet as her smile, nothing so young and pure as her forehead beneath the thick dark hair. Yet there was a mocking light in her eyes when she looked at him as though she laughed at him for pretending to be grown up. But there was nothing sharp or cruel about her. She was too gentle, he thought, for her own good and needed someone to care for her. In imagination he touched her cheek with his lips but he could not have brought himself to touch her hand with his.

  They ate berries from her pail and she said:

  “It’s a lovely morning, isn’t it? Were you the first one up at Jalna?”

  “Yes. There wasn’t a soul stirring. Something woke me and I had to come out. I thought I might find you!”

  “Finch should have come too. He would have enjoyed it.”

  “Finch? Why?”

  “Well—he’s rather poetic, isn’t he? He gives one that impression. It’s easy to think of him out in the dewy morn.”

  “And not easy to think of me, Pauline?”

  Her eyes looked into his. “Yes, it’s very easy. But you seem a part of all this.” She made a little foreign gesture, embracing what lay about them. “Finch seems more like someone who looks on. You’re a part of it,” she repeated.

  He loved her for saying that. He had never felt such exquisite companionship with anyone before. The very air seemed tremulously waiting for her next words. Yet if she uttered no word it would be enough that she was near him. He lay down on the grass beside her, his head on his arm, looking up into her face.

  “Could we meet sometimes like this?” he asked. “I should like to talk to you when there aren’t others by. We’ve scarcely ever been alone together.”

  “Yes, we could,” she answered simply. “I’d like it too.”

  “You know, Pauline, I’ve never really had a friend—”

  “Neither have I.”

  He added shyly—“But I don’t exactly want you for a— friend…”

  “No?” She looked at him without self-consciousness.

  “I don’t know how to explain—but—I want to feel that we can meet sometimes like this—perhaps scarcely say a word—keep our meetings secret—and feel nearer to each other, you know, than to any other being.”

  She listened with gravity. “I think I know what you mean. Something not quite so solid as friendship. Yes—I’d like it.”

  “I’m so glad, Pauline!” He felt a swift surge of tenderness toward her. He wondered how she could look in his eyes and be unaware of it. Yet she must be unaware or she could not return his gaze with such untroubled sweetness. His long-fringed eyes rested on the magnanimous curve of her lips. A shiver of delight and fear ran over him.

  They fell silent, listening to the late summer singing of an oriole. He could remember only half his song of the mating season, and this he pensively repeated, again and again. A chipmunk came near to the pail of berries, flirting his tail and eyeing them covetously. He screwed up the courage to take one, snatched it, sat upright with it beneath his chin, stared hard at the boy and girl, started, dropped the berry, and scampered up the trunk of a young maple, chattering of his exploit
and his disappointment.

  The two laughed in unison and Wakefield moved a little nearer to her… Would she be frightened if he touched her? Would she draw away? But he could not bring himself to touch her. This meeting was like a bowl of delicate crystal, not to be handled.

  But he began to talk to her. He went over his life, drawing out the most colourful of its incidents to dazzle her, as a pedlar the brightest fabrics from his pack. And, with innocent vanity, he embellished his own part in whatever incident he repeated, making a gallant figure of himself.

  Pauline listened, enthralled. She had never had companions of her own age. She was so used to this particular loneliness that she seldom gave it a thought, scarcely realised it. Now, to sit under the trees in the bright morning while Wakefield poured out his experiences, opened up unexpected possibilities in life. Even while she drank in all his words, she sought in her own mind for things she might tell him. But she found nothing that she thought would interest him, and gave herself up to listening.

  The time passed quickly. The sun beat on the blackberries, making them soft, so that they sank lower in the pail. The heat soon became intense, and the children withdrew farther into the shade. The unseen chorus of locusts became more insistent, more despairing, as though, of the short time left to them, they would let no beat escape unmarked.

  Almost before they were aware of the thud of hooves, Renny appeared on the path, riding a highly strung colt. It sidled into view like a self-conscious dancer, turning, curveting, arching its neck to look with scorn at the path. Nothing that the summer morning could produce equalled it for sheer beauty. And its bare-headed rider was as a part of it.

  They both saw Wakefield and Pauline. Renny’s teeth gleamed, and he made as though to draw rein, but the colt, describing a violent arc that took her among the milkweed and goldenrod, shot fearfully away and, with her rider, disappeared into the darkness of the pine wood. The scent of warm pine needles flung up by her hooves came back to the two-peering after.

  “Wasn’t that splendid?” cried Wakefield.

  “Yes.” Her voice came in a little gasp and she laid her slender hand against her throat.

  “Renny is letting her have her own way. He enjoys that. But he’ll pull her up when he wants.”

  “Yes.”

  She was looking at him strangely, he thought. With the gallop past of the horse something had come between them.

  Wakefield’s eyes brooded on her. He muttered—“I must go…” And they parted in a mood of tender melancholy.

  But all day he thought of her. From every facet of his mind the reflection of her face looked out, changing the aspect of his world. “I am in love,” he thought proudly. He was as a bird whose plumage is burnished in the spring.

  Over and over he recaptured her graceful gestures, the changeful colour of her eyes, the sensitive smile that lighted her face to beauty.

  “I am in love,” he repeated again and again, and wondered that the family could look at him and not see love’s sign painted on his forehead.

  He followed Finch into the yard behind the house, where he had gone to see the pigeons. Now he would like to talk of Pauline to Finch and yet allow Finch to suspect nothing. He longed to hear his own voice say her name, to feel the form of it on his lips.

  But Finch appeared to be engrossed by the pigeons. He stood with one on each shoulder and one swaying on his head. He wore an expression of complete happiness.

  The pigeons were Mooey’s, and the little boy appeared carrying a basin of corn for them. But they were in no hurry to leave Finch, for there was something about him that they liked.

  “They are mine,” said Mooey resentfully. “They’re not yours.”

  “I know.”

  “They’re mine,” repeated Mooey, scattering more corn. He turned to Wakefield. “Those pigeons are mine.”

  Wakefield took the empty basin from his hand and turned it upside-down on his head. The little boy, in a rage, dashed it to the ground, kicked it, and shouted:

  “They’re mine! They’re mine!”

  “If you say that again,” said Finch pleasantly, “I’ll wring their necks. And yours too.”

  Mooey threw himself on the gravel and rolled over, howling. The pigeons, with a strong flutter of wings, rose to the roof of their cote, and from there peered down with pretty interest on the scene.

  “Pauline gave them to me! She did! She did!” came from Mooey’s distorted mouth.

  “What!” exclaimed Wakefield. “Pauline! I didn’t know that!” He turned his face up to them. “Aren’t they beauties? I’d not noticed before what beauties.”

  “I was making friends with them,” said Finch sullenly.

  One by one the birds dropped to the ground and began to peck at the corn. Mooey sat up and regarded them with possessive, tear-stained eyes.

  His young uncles turned away together.

  “Pauline gave them to him,” said Wakefield.

  “Hm-hm.”

  “I wonder if he feeds them properly.”

  “They look all right.”

  “I hadn’t known she gave them to him.”

  “Hadn’t you?”

  “I must keep an eye on them and see that he doesn’t neglect them.”

  “Good idea.”

  “I saw her this morning.”

  “Did you? Are you going into the house?”

  “No—I think I shall go—well, where are you going?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  They wandered aimlessly across the lawn.

  “What had she to say?” Finch asked politely.

  “Well, we talked about a good many things.” He cast an oblique look at Finch. “What would you guess we talked about?”

  “Not music?”

  “No. She doesn’t care about music.”

  “Not care about music? And dance like she does?”

  “That’s different. Pauline loves the rhythm of motion.”

  “Music is the soul of motion,” said Finch gruffly. “I suppose the truth is that she listened while you talked about yourself.”

  “Yes,” Wakefield answered gaily, “that is exactly what we did.” He pushed his arm through Finch’s and hung on it. Should he break down the barriers—tell Finch all? Pour out the story of his love?

  A feeling of anger ran through Finch’s nerves. He did not want this boy to fall in love with Pauline. He drew away from Wakefield as they reached the sagging tennis net and they passed it on opposite sides. He said bitterly: “I suppose you have kissed her.”

  His words jarred on Wakefield. He answered in a muffled voice:

  “No… we haven’t got that far.”

  A relief that did not lift his heaviness of soul came to Finch at this admission. They were going toward the rustic bridge, and could already hear the secret August whisper of the stream. Each wished now to be rid of the other, but it was as though Pauline had, with one of her swift gestures, bound them together.

  They strained to opposite sides of the bridge. Already the sun touched the topmost boughs, and an earth-scented coolness rose from under every tree and plant. This earthy coolness spread inexorably, silencing the birdsong, except that which came from the exuberant throats of the birds in the highest treetops. They still poured out their song to the sunlit arch of the sky, unconscious of the change taking place below.

  “It is hard to believe,” said Finch, “that I have been home for only two weeks. I feel sometimes as though I had never been away.” He must definitely change the subject, he thought, or give himself away.

  “Yes. But you’ve really changed a good deal.”

  “Have I? Well—of course, I’m older.”

  “Yes, but… Pauline was saying this morning that you seem an outsider. An onlooker, I think she said.”

  “Did she say that?”

  Wake crossed to Finch’s side of the bridge.

  “Yes. Do you mind?”

  Finch answered, in the confusion of sudden hurt:

  “Y
es. I do mind. I think it was beastly cruel.”

  “She didn’t mean to be cruel… How do you feel about it yourself?”

  “I suppose it’s true. That’s why I mind. But look here”— his voice broke—“there is not one of you who feels himself more terribly bound up in Jalna than I do!”

  “I’m not going to argue,” said Wakefield. “But I think you’re wrong.”

  “You always think I’m wrong! All of you do!”

  “Eden thinks you’re the best of the bunch.”

  “He says that only because we have certain things in common.”

  “But, Finch, I—” He laid his hand on Finch’s arm. Finch’s lank body swayed like the stem of a strange plant.

  “Don’t,” he said, and pushed his brother’s hand away.

  “Finch, I’d like to tell you something. You said once that we might be friends.”

  “Yes, yes, I know I did… but… don’t tell me just now, Wake. I’m in the hell of a mood. Just let me get over it first.”

  “I should say you are! Very well—but perhaps I shan’t tell you after all.” He turned away and ran lightly, with an air of escape, up the path.

  He was halfway to the top when Finch called:

  “I know what you were going to tell me.”

  “Do you? What then?”

  “I can’t shout it.”

  Wakefield stood irresolute a moment, then, turning, leaped the rest of the way up the path and disappeared.

  “You’re in love with Pauline,” muttered Finch, and, leaning against the rail of the bridge, buried his face in his hands.

  VIII

  DIGGING UP THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

  MONEY had never been so tight at Jalna. It was not only tight. It simply was not there. It was like a river that had sometimes trickled slowly, sometimes rushed in spat, but had now—and without apparent reason—become little more than a moisture in the mud. Even though there were national crises, there must be people who would want horses—if only they could be found! Fruit and grain and stock must still be necessary, but why were the buyers so diffident? Conditions like this might be inevitable in Europe. If the United States were in a mess—well, they had only themselves to blame. But Canada had done nothing to deserve this. She had been good; she had been loyal; she had spilt her blood when there was fighting to be done; and had minded her own business afterwards. Especially the family at Jalna did not deserve it. They had upheld the old traditions in the Province. They had stuck by Jalna and stuck by each other. So they reasoned, and looked at one another baffled.