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

by Mazo de La Roche

  Alayne lost all patience with them. She tried to talk world politics with them, but they could not see what world politics had to do with Piers not being able to pay his rent.

  In July, Renny, by reason of the unexpected sale of a stallion, had been able to pay Piers the full amount of his feed bill. Piers had seemed glad of this, but not excessively glad. He had been tranquil, as was usual with him when things were going smoothly. Then, when September came, he had calmly told Renny that he could not pay his quarter’s rent. He had paid the farm labourers and, after that, there was nothing left.

  As was the custom with the Whiteoaks, Renny broke this bad news to the family at the dinner table. Alayne was shocked at his doing this. It seemed such a dreadfully embarrassing moment for Piers, but she need not have worried. Piers sat stolidly upright, wearing the rather smug expression of one who has developed one of the minor contagious diseases, and is in the act of transmitting it to all those near him. He looked from one to another of them as though to say—“Well, what are you going to do about it?” And what could they do about it? They could not go to their rooms and open a strongbox and take out sufficient money for current expenses and hand it over to Renny. There were no strongboxes, and what bank accounts there were were becoming more and more debilitated.

  Renny formed the habit of taking out his pass-book and examining his balance at least once every hour in the ingenuous hope that he might have been mistaken in the figures or that by some miracle they might have changed. He would look down at the floor thinking what it would be like to find a pocketbook stuffed with notes. Or he would look at the ceiling imagining a cheque for a thousand dollars plastered on it.

  Alayne’s heart ached for him when she saw lines of anxiety coming in his face. The lines already there were those of temper, endurance, and pride. She said to him:

  “Why don’t we dismiss the Wragges? We might easily get less expensive servants. And I know she is extravagant.”

  “I’d never part with Rags,” he said doggedly. “And even if Mrs. Wragge is a bit wasteful we’d never get another such cook.” And he added grimly—“Besides they haven’t had any wages for six months. How should I pay them off?”

  The thought of owing wages to anyone working for her was abhorrent to Alayne. She had always been contemptuous of the Wragges. Now she wondered how she would face them. Rags’s impudent little nose, hard jutting chin, and pale eyes that saw everything, rose before her. And so did his wife’s ruddy moon face and slow derisive smile.

  Well, they must not go unpaid. She could not endure that. She would pay them out of her own income. What her aunt had left her had brought her two thousand dollars a year, but with the cutting of dividends she had no more than a paltry thousand. Out of this she dressed herself and her child and had more than once paid the butcher’s bill.

  “I will pay their wages,” she said, in rather a dead voice, for she did not want him to be grateful yet she wanted him to realise what was forced on her.

  He gave her a look of gratitude. “Will you? You are a good girl! That will take a load off my mind.”

  “How much will it come to?” She knew, but she wanted him to realise the importance of the amount.

  “Three hundred dollars,” he answered quickly.

  It would leave her penniless until her next dividends came in. She said:

  “What a pity you bought all that Nickel! I suppose it’s bringing you almost nothing.”

  “My distillery stocks are not so bad,” he replied, trying to think of pleasant things.

  “I had rather you paid the Wragges,” she said. “I will write you a cheque.”

  She fetched her cheque book and wrote a cheque payable to Renny Whiteoak and signed it Alayne Whiteoak. He watched her write their two names there and observed:

  “I will give it back to you as soon as I can.”

  She gave a little weary shrug. Sometimes she felt almost hopeless.

  As he put the cheque in his notebook he said suddenly:

  “I can’t think what Eden’s going to do. He simply can’t get anything. The poor fellow is at his wits’ end.”

  The slow blood rose to her face and head, pricking her cheeks, making her eyes hot. How could he so callously bring up the subject of Eden between them? And call him poor fellow in that affectionate tone!

  They were in her room. She took the pins from her hair and let it fall about her face. She took up her brush and began brushing the long golden strands which rose with electric energy after each stroke, following the receding bristles.

  “I suppose he can go on staying at the Vaughans’,” she said coldly.

  He frowned. “They’re frightfully hard up. Eden says that Maurice seems to think he could get something if only he tried. I’m going in to town today to see a man about him. Eden says he will do anything.”

  She turned and faced him with her hair about her face.

  “Do you know what I’ve been thinking?” she said. “I’ve been thinking about Sarah Leigh. She attracts me and I know Finch is attracted by her. I am sure that she did not love Arthur Leigh and I am wondering if she and Finch were thrown together—just when she is so lonely—if something would not come of it.”

  He caught a flying strand of her hair and held it against the arch of his nostril. “How sweet your hair smells… I believe that’s a clever thought. We’ll invite the girl out to visit us. But perhaps it would be better if it were she and Eden—”

  Alayne interrupted impatiently—“We have no reason for thinking she is interested in Eden or he in her. I wish you would not always be dragging Eden into the conversation!”

  He threw the strand of hair he was holding back at her. “It’s surprising how heartless women are,” he said. “You cannot forgive Eden because he was unfaithful to you. And yet if he hadn’t been unfaithful, you and I could never have come together.”

  “I do forgive him,” she said, coiling up her hair, “but I do not wish to talk about him.”

  “No! And you won’t let me talk of him! I can tell you he’s not at all strong. Even though he’s looking so well.”

  “And yet you’d marry that poor girl to him!”

  “Lord, how unreasonable you are!”

  “Can’t we discuss anything without disagreeing!”

  He made a grimace of chagrin. Then, remembering the Wragges’ wages, covered the lower part of his face with his hand and appeared to twist it into an expression of amiability. He said:

  “You’ve certainly taken a load off my mind.”

  She thrust in the last hairpin and gave him a puzzled look in the glass. “A load off your mind… oh, that! Well, I’m glad I could do it.”

  He stood by rather stiffly while she powdered her face, then, as she moistened her finger on her lips and drew it across her eyebrows, he slid his fingers under her collar.

  “My rich little wife,” he murmured in an embarrassed tone.

  “Oh, how I wish I were!” she cried.

  He looked interested. “What would you do?”

  “So many things!” She looked up at him out of her clear blue eyes. “If you knew how I hate to see you so worried! All this household hanging on your neck…”

  He gazed down at her contemplatively.

  “What have you left now,” he asked, “out of your aunt’s legacy?”

  Her mind scuttled about like a frightened rabbit. She did not want to tell him. It would seem so much to him in his present hard-up condition. The day might come when they would badly need that money. She hedged:

  “Oh, I’m not sure.”

  “Not sure!” he exclaimed incredulously. “With your precise mind!”

  “My mind isn’t precise,” she said irritably. “It is a perfect jumble nowadays.”

  That did not interest him.

  He sat down and took her on his knee. He laughed rather self-consciously. She looked into his weather-beaten face with suspicion.

  “I am not Adeline,” she said. “I have no laughing complex.�
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  “Go on,” he said coaxingly. “Tell me what you’ve got left.”

  “I have nothing left,” she returned doggedly, “until my next dividends are paid.”

  “I’m not talking about dividends. I mean the principal.”

  She answered in a tight voice, out of the side of her mouth:

  “About thirty thousand dollars.”

  He gave a little whistle and his eyebrows went up. “That’s quite a lot. Now I’ll tell you what you could do, darling! You could take ten thousand of it and buy that piece of land from Maurice. I’m sure we could get it for that. There would be an end to this subdivision of his. The land would be added to Jalna, and you would own that much of Jalna. Wouldn’t that be nice?” He looked at her with his most ingratiating smile.

  “No,” she returned stonily. “I won’t do it, Renny. What good would the land be to us? What is Piers able to make from the land? I feel that it is my duty to keep my money intact to safeguard the future of our child.”

  “If our child could speak she’d tell you to do it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know she would! She would know that you couldn’t do a better thing with your money.”

  “There’s no use in talking! I refuse to do it.”

  He put her from his knee, got up, and with his characteristic glance at his wristwatch, and his—“Well, I’ve got to see a man about that mare,” he left her.

  There was a good deal of discussion over Alayne’s proposal to invite Sarah to visit Jalna. She confided to the three elderly members of the family what she had in her mind regarding Sarah and Finch. They fell in with the idea with enthusiasm, though neither Nicholas nor Ernest admired the girl. But Piers and Pheasant and, strangely enough, Finch objected to the invitation. It would be an extra expense, Piers and Pheasant declared, and they would be obliged to put on a style for her, accustomed as she was to the Leighs’ way of living, which would be a great nuisance. Finch agreed with them.

  However, Alayne had her way and, on a glowing September day, Sarah appeared, arriving in her own handsome car with what seemed to the family an extraordinary amount of luggage. From being repressed, having nothing literally to call her own, she had easily acquired the carelessly grand habits of the rich. But she was as simple as ever in her manner—if her low, secretive way of speaking and her rigid movements could be called simple. There was no doubt that with her coming a feeling of strain entered the household.

  “I hope to God,” said Renny to Nicholas, “that if she’s going to get struck on Finch she’ll lose no time about it!”

  “She is a queer stick,” said Nicholas.

  “Have you heard,” asked the Master of Jalna, “exactly what has been left her by Leigh?”

  “They say,” returned his uncle moodily, “that she has a quarter of a million.”

  “I told her tonight,” said Renny, “that Finch is kind-hearted and easy to manage.”

  “Don’t say too much. You may make her suspicious.”

  “Oh, I just said it casually. I didn’t lead up to it in a heavy manner. I simply said it and then changed the subject.”

  Nicholas regarded him with dubious amusement through the smoke from his pipe. The smoke lost itself in the bluish light that now at evening filled the window of his room. He liked to have Renny sit with him at dusk. Many a good talk they had had in this room.

  There was a silence while Nicholas made bubbling noises against the mouthpiece of his pipe. Then Renny remarked:

  “There’s Eden too. It seems scarcely fair that Finch should have all the luck. But Aunt Augusta says that, in her opinion, Sarah has always been in love with Finch.”

  Nicholas remembered the faces of Finch and Sarah when he had found them together making music in Augusta’s drawing-room. He nodded his massive grey head.

  “Yes. Perhaps she is right. It’s hard to tell these days. They’re an odd pair. I’m very fond of the lad but I confess that I cannot understand him.”

  “Nor I.”

  “If he gets Sarah he’ll have his hands full. She’s a subtle minx.”

  Renny raised his brows. “Is she? I should have thought she hadn’t two ideas… Now Alayne is what I call subtle.”

  Nicholas chuckled.

  “Poor Alayne,” he said.

  “Do you know,” said Renny, with apparent irrelevancy, “I have not paid the Wragges’ wages for six months.”

  The lines in his uncle’s forehead deepened. “By George, that’s bad! I was afraid from something Rags said that you were behind but I didn’t know it was as bad as that.”

  “Well, I had the money ready for them but I found that Uncle Ernie was worrying himself sick over his doctor’s bill. Gran had never let a doctor’s bill stand. It made him horribly afraid of being ill again. There were actually tears in his eyes. I couldn’t stand that, so I paid it.”

  “Hm… Why didn’t you just give him something on it and the rest to Rags?”

  “That would not have done. I wanted Uncle Ernest’s mind put at rest.”

  “What about your own mind? It hasn’t had much peace of late.”

  Renny laughed. “My mind is a bit easier too. I had enough after the doctor was paid to give the vet something. Now my annual subscription to the church is staring me in the face.”

  Nicholas shifted uneasily in his chair, which creaked under his growing weight.

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t worry!” exclaimed Renny. “I’m not worrying. Now, look here. Piers and I were talking over things today, and we’ve decided to have a sale of surplus stock. We think it will do quite a lot to help us.”

  “But what a time for a sale!”

  “It may turn out very well. And it’s bound to give us some cash, which we must have.”

  Nicholas listened rather sombrely to the plans for the sale. But, as he listened, his mind, with the resilience characteristic of the family, became more buoyant. It was filled with interest and hope.

  For some weeks little else was talked of in the house or out but the preparations and prospects of the sale. Bills announcing it were fixed to the walls of post offices, hotels, and railway stations within a considerable radius. The question of what animals should be sold and what retained was discussed with heat. The three elderly people were dragged to the stables to give their opinions, which indeed were greatly valued, and, once when Nicholas was kept to his room with gout, a young bull and two horses were fetched for his inspection and paraded round the lawn under his window.

  Sarah’s presence was almost forgotten. Pheasant was as good a man as any of them when it came to interest in the stables. If it had not been for Alayne, Sarah would have felt neglected. Finch fought shy of being alone with her. He wished profoundly that she had not come to Jalna at that time. He did not suspect the motive Alayne had had in asking Sarah to visit them, but he was conscious of something purposeful in the attitude of the family toward Sarah and he felt that she too was conscious of it, for sometimes an expression of childlike mischievousness flitted across her face and she, almost too ingenuously, asked the older members for advice about her future.

  “She is a little devil,” thought Finch, “and I hate her. I hate her for marrying Arthur without loving him, and I hate her for floating about here in her finery when he is dead.”

  Nothing in life, he thought, interested him so much at this moment as the development of his feeling for Pauline. Like a close-folded bud it as yet gave no sign of what peculiar form or fragrance it would later reveal.

  Augusta had told Meg of their hopes for Sarah and Finch. They did not wish, she said, to rush the girl callously into a new engagement with her tragic widowhood fresh on her, but it was their duty to guard her, to be kind to her, and, when the proper time came, to provide her with a new husband—and him a Whiteoak if possible. There was little doubt that Sarah had cared, and still cared, for Finch.

  Meg was heart and soul with the family. Her eyes had glowed, her full bosom swelled with eagerness while h
er aunt talked. Oh, it was such a good idea and, oh, she wished she could do something to help!

  She asked Maurice if he could think of anything they might do to help, but all he could suggest was a picnic, and that was far too commonplace for a girl like Sarah. Then Meg thought of a little dinner—a delightful little dinner of the sort that really smart people gave. It would show Sarah that her relatives could do things just as well as the Leighs and their friends, if they chose. Of course, there would be no guests outside the family.

  Maurice thought of their shabby dining room, their one servant, and looked doubtful. But Meg was sanguine. They had tender young chickens of their own which the maid could cook perfectly. She herself would make the soup and she would order a meringue from town. They would have plenty of sweets and cigarettes and surely Renny ought to supply the wine.

  “No, don’t ask him to do that. We have some sherry and I’ll buy port. I can make a good cocktail.” His face brightened as he arranged this part of the entertainment.

  “How many of them shall you invite?”

  “Only Sarah and Finch. Then I must have an extra girl for Eden. Pauline Lebraux is a sweet young thing. I’ll ask her.”

  “Can you leave her mother out?”

  “I’ll have her over another time. She’ll understand that six is quite as many as I can manage.”

  Meg was exhilarated by the arrangements for the dinner. It gave her a feeling of well-being. She felt almost prosperous when Maurice’s evening clothes were returned from the cleaners and laid out on the bed. She herself sponged and pressed her black lace dinner gown, but she was disconsolate at the amount of plump leg that showed.