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

by Mazo de La Roche

  Wandering in and out of the pattern of the Christmas service was the shining thread of the thought of Pauline. In a few hours they would be together again. Together! Lovely word! It had the sweetness of the evergreens and the brightness of the stained-glass windows in it… If only he might have given her the hoop of pearls and diamonds today! God only knew when he should be able to afford it… “I must be adamant. I must be steel. Deny myself everything in order to afford it.”

  Renny, casting a look sideways at him, thought—“He still has the look of a child. I’m glad of that.”

  The offertory plate was now moving from pew to pew, carried by old Chalk, the blacksmith, whose son now had a petrol station. Chalk watched with discreet interest to see what the Whiteoaks’ offerings would be, and his Christian spirit wavered for an instant in the direction of unpaid bills for hoseshoeing and motor repairs.

  Regretfully Wakefield laid Sarah’s banknote on the alms dish. His eyes slanted toward the faces beside him to observe its effect on them. He saw Pheasant start, heard her amazed intake of breath. He saw Uncle Ernest lean forward blinking unbelievingly at its crisp surface. Mooey stretched out his small chapped hand and pointed at it, his mouth forming an “oo” of wonder. Nicholas glared at it over his glasses, but it was Renny who nipped it up and held it suspended while he scanned, with desperate enquiry, the faces beside him.

  Wakefield nodded a resigned affirmation of the offering. Pheasant began to quiver with laughter. Ernest made futile faces of protest. Nicholas blew out his cheeks, while Mooey’s “oo” became articulate.

  Renny replaced the note on the plate, grinned affably at Chalk, who, very red in the face, clumped on down the aisle. From across the way Maurice and Augusta scented something strange. They too stopped singing and gazed at their kinsfolk. The Misses Lacey whispered together. The infection spread to Miss Pink and she fumbled for the keys. The congregation wavered. The hymn all but expired. Mr. Fennel mounted the pulpit and covered his face with his hands.

  The family progressed slowly along the icy slope from the church. Augusta, leaning on Maurice’s arm, was joined by Nicholas, who supported himself on Wakefield. They were followed by Renny, who assisted Ernest. Mooey slid alongside on the ice. Pheasant came last bearing her unborn child, whose weight, on a morning like this, was something of a burden to her.

  Nicholas said to his sister—“I can’t wish you a Merry Christmas, Gussie! Not at a time like this. But I can and do wish you many happier ones. How’s the boy?”

  “Not improving, Nicholas. But he had a quieter sleep last night and seems quite bright today”

  “Are you coming to Jalna for dinner?”

  “No. I shall stay with Eden and let Maurice and Meg go. I’ll go over later in the day.”

  The elder Miss Lacey, who had set her cap at Nicholas in her youth, now shuffled up to him across the icy path and they shook hands warmly. She was a pretty old lady, he thought, and he might have done worse than get spliced up with her.

  “Real Christmas weather, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yes,” he agreed sombrely. “A sad Christmas for us. But we make the best of it for the sake of the young people.”

  “How time does fly,” she sighed. “It seems just yesterday when they were children and we were—not so old. And not so very long ago since we ourselves were young. What sleigh rides we used to have on Christmas Day!”

  “Yes, yes,” he returned abruptly, and held Wakefield back and let her shuffle on alone. He cast a bleak look over the family plot, at the granite plinth pointing upward from the snow, the low iron fence, the ornamental chains and balls of which each bore its fragile mound of whiteness, the graves levelled and indistinguishable.

  Wakefield gave his arm a little tug. “Come along, Uncle Nick, I see Piers down there with the car. He’s managed to get it here through the snow.”

  Nicholas hastened to join the others. “Good boy, good boy, I’m very glad of that! The walk here was quite enough. Well, I’m very glad he’s brought the car. I hope you’ll have a Merry Christmas, Wake. If we elders are a bit quiet—well, you must try to keep your spirits up.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Nick.”

  Piers accepted their gratitude for bringing the car but, in truth, he had had his young wife and her burden in mind and not the fatigue of the old people. She and Mooey sat in front with him while Augusta and her brothers squeezed themselves into the back seat. Renny, Maurice, and Wakefield, relieved of responsibility, strode homeward together.

  Surely, thought Mooey, when the heavy two o’clock dinner was over and the grown-ups were established in the drawing-room about a blazing fire, surely Santa Claus will come now! He stood, shivering with excitement, outside the locked door of the sitting room. The other children were being dressed for the occasion, but he had been dressed ready and waiting all day for the coming of Santa Claus and the glory of the tree. The clock in the hall struck four. The wintry twilight was already drawing in.

  Jock, sitting by the stove, gave a wide yawn.

  “You’re tired of waiting too, aren’t you?” said Mooey.

  Jock looked at him quizzically.

  “But you won’t get anything off the tree, will you?”

  Jock closed his eyes.

  “Rags,” said Mooey as the ever-busy houseman flitted by “is Santa Claus back in his own house now?”

  Rags almost dropped the tray he was carrying. “In ’is own ’Ouse? Not a bit of it! ’E’s in this ’Ouse ’ere, that’s w’ere ’e is. Right in Jalner!”

  Mooey’s heart gave a leap of joy and terror. He caught Rags by the coattails and held him fast.

  “Don’t go! Tell me—how did he get in? Where is he?”

  Rags pointed a thin, greyish-white forefinger at the door of the library. He compressed his lips. His eyes were two gimlets boring into the door.

  Mooey dropped Rags’s coattail. His scalp pricked and his hair looked suddenly very lively.

  Jock rose, went to the door of the library, sniffed it and whined.

  “Rags! Rags!” cried Mooey, “don’t go! Stay with me!”

  His knees shook when he found himself alone with Jock still sniffing at the door. He had had a glimpse of the grown people sitting about the drawing-room but he could not go in to them, frightened though he was. He must stay here, waiting for Santa Claus.

  Without warning the front door opened and Augusta, followed by Finch and Sarah, stood on the threshold. Behind them Mooey saw the great dark-blue sky splashed with bronze and scarlet, the black shapes of the evergreens. He found himself enveloped in his great-aunt’s embrace.

  “I hope we have not kept the children waiting,” said Augusta over the little boy’s head to Alayne, who had just come into the hall.

  “Not very long, I think,” answered Alayne, and added in a whisper—“How is he?”

  “Much better than we could have hoped for. Just his old gay self—but weak.”

  Finch put icy fingers down Mooey’s collar. He laughed excitedly and wriggled.

  Finch said to Sarah—“He’s a nice little fellow, isn’t he? He’s funny and wistful—rather, like Pheasant.”

  Sarah stood with hands folded in her muff and looked coldly down at the child.

  “I don’t care for them,” she said, in her velvety voice. “They make me uncomfortable.”

  Finch laughed. “Just what I should expect of you, Sarah. I can’t picture you with a child.”

  Pheasant was descending the stairs with Nooky by the hand. They looked up and saw her. The change in her figure was noticeable.

  Sarah said—“I can picture myself with my own child. I should love it like a tigress.”

  “Those poor babes,” said Pheasant, “are at the end of all patience. Mooey’s been waiting outside this door for hours.”

  As she spoke, a deep voice called from within:

  “Mooey! Mooey! Bring young Mooey here!”

  Mooey rushed in terror to his mother.

  “It’s Santa Claus,” she
said. “He’s calling for you!”

  “Mooey! Mooey!” boomed the voice.

  The drawing-room emptied itself into the hall. It became crowded.

  Mooey thrust his head against Pheasant’s side and burrowed there as though he would harry the unborn from her womb and re-establish himself in that dark security.

  “Mooey! Mooey!” roared the voice.

  He could not help himself. He was swept into the library by strong avuncular hands. The tree blazed above him. The air was heavy with the scent of evergreens, candle-wax, and oranges. Santa Claus, enormous, red of coat and breeches, pink of face, white of beard, blue of eye, demanded in terrible accents if he had been a good boy all the year.

  Mooey’s chin rested on his heaving breast. Wakefield propelled him toward the saint. Every eye was on him when— “Me too,” cried Nooky, and ran forward without shame.

  “Splendid!” said Santa Claus, and placed a Noah’s ark in Nooky’s arms.

  “Speak up,” urged Wakefield, in Mooey’s ear. “Tell him you’ve been good!”

  Mooey’s eye was drawn by a toy train. He gathered all his force and said huskily:

  “I’ve been good!”

  “What!” roared Santa Claus. “Good all the year? Every single day?” His gaze was all the more terrible because it was so strangely familiar. Now it searched the faces of the collected family. “Has he really been good or is this just bluff?”

  “He’s been angelic,” growled Nicholas. “Give him that puff-puff or I’ll pull your beard off!”

  Mooey hugged the train to his breast and dived behind the towering forms of his uncles.

  “Now,” said Santa Claus, in a gentler tone, “who’s this I see?”

  It was Patience. She pointed, bright-eyed, to a doll’s perambulator. Santa Claus placed a blue rabbit in it and trundled it toward her. She grasped the handle and, breaking into a loud song of triumph, wheeled it between Ernest’s legs and almost upset him.

  Renny, who had been holding Adeline on his shoulder, now set her down and she started off like a small automaton toward Santa Claus. He glared at her.

  “Have you been good?”

  Adeline stood intrepid. Then, as Santa Claus did not offer her a present, she marched to the tree and pulled the lowest candle from its place.

  “You have exasperated the child,” said Augusta. “She must be pacified.”

  Santa Claus extinguished the candle and gave Adeline a flamboyant doll chosen by Renny.

  The jovial saint must be embraced for that, and Adeline liked the feel of his smooth lips and woolly beard so well that nothing less than a score of kisses would satisfy her.

  “She’s Mamma all over again,” said Nicholas.

  “What a pity Gran couldn’t have seen her,” said Renny.

  Present by present the tree was stripped and Santa Claus offered a pungent remark with each gift. The presents had never been so inexpensive but there had never been so many candles.

  When the library was again in darkness and the children had been put to bed, the spirits that had upheld the older folk failed. They talked, in low desultory tones, about the fire. Piers demanded to have a window open to cool his head after the heat of the wig and beard.

  “Open that window,” he tersely ordered Wakefield. “I’m as hot as blazes!”

  “What about me?” demanded Ernest. “D’you think I can stand the cold night air?”

  “Why, Uncle Ernest, the air can’t touch you where you’re sitting,” said Pheasant, “and Piers is frightfully overheated.”

  “Let him go out and stick his head in a snowbank,” said Nicholas.

  “Will someone play bridge, then?” asked Piers, without resentment.

  Augusta and Meg looked at each other. They said:

  “We must go. We’ve been away too long as it is.”

  Piers brought out the card table and seated himself before it. He began to shuffle the cards.

  Maurice said—“I’d like to play but I suppose I must go.”

  “I’ll drive them over,” said Renny. “I’d like to see him.”

  Pheasant’s gaze was fixed timidly on Piers’s downcast eyes.

  Alayne thought—“Oh, I wish it were over! I wish it were over!”

  Nicholas turned his grey head from side to side on the back of his chair. He stretched out his hand and took his sister’s.

  “Yes. You must go to him, Gussie. He should not be left too long.”

  Meg said—“The maid is there, Uncle Nick, and she is very kind.”

  “But it’s not the same. It’s not the same. Tell him I’ll be over tomorrow.”

  “Tell him that I’ll go too,” said Ernest, “just as soon as it thaws. Give him my love.”

  Piers tapped the pack of cards sharply on the table. “Who is going to play?” he asked.

  Meg bent over him to kiss him goodbye. She took the opportunity of whispering:

  “You might show a little sympathy when all the rest of us are feeling so badly.”

  He wrenched his shoulder free of her embrace.

  “The hell I will!” he said stubbornly.

  Renny said—“Hurry up, Meggie! Get your things on.”

  She and Augusta went upstairs. Alayne never knew whether or not to treat Meg as a guest. She always felt that Meg resented whichever attitude she took. She stood hesitant, wondering whether she were expected to accompany her upstairs.

  Pheasant went to Piers. “Shall I play?” she asked.

  He looked at her sullenly, without replying.

  “Now, Sarah,” said Maurice, cheerful at being left behind, “you and I will play Piers and Alayne. Pheasant looks tired. Bed is the place for her.”

  Alayne suffered herself to be drawn into the game of bridge though she did not care for cards, and Piers as a partner was exacting. Throughout the game he was too attentive to Sarah to please Pheasant, who, from the corner of the sofa, kept jealous eyes on them.

  Ernest leaned toward his brother.

  “We could arrange another table,” he said.

  Nicholas shook his head. He took out his pipe. “Not tonight. I’m tired. That was a hard walk to church.”

  Ernest pulled at his lip. He considered what possibilities were left. Finch, Wakefield, Pheasant (she was looking rather mopy), and himself.

  “Fetch the other card table, Wakefield,” he said, authoritatively. “There is no reason why we shouldn’t have a game.”

  Pheasant was glad of the distraction. Finch sat where he could watch Sarah unobserved. Wakefield’s thoughts were on Pauline, who, with her mother, had gone to spend the day with Clara Lebraux’s brother.

  Finch suddenly remembered something. He said, in an undertone to Wakefield, while the others were discussing a hand:

  “Eden gave me something for you. A present, I think. It went completely out of my mind.” He slid an envelope under the table on to Wakefield’s knee.

  Wakefield fingered the bulky packet wondering what it might contain, excited by the possibilities of the belated present. Still keeping it concealed, he tore open one end and looked into it. Saying nothing, he continued the game. But it did not last long. Pheasant became faint, all but keeled over, and had to be half-carried upstairs. Wakefield retreated into the dining room. A few minutes later he called out to Finch.

  “Hullo!” said Finch. “What was it?”

  Wakefield stammered with excitement.

  “Why—why—I could hardly believe my eyes! It’s a secret, but I’ll tell you, Finch! He has sent me practically all he made from his readings. He didn’t spend it and now, he says, he doesn’t need it. It’s to buy the engagement ring for Pauline! He says he’d rather do that with it than anything, so I’m not to feel too grateful. God, how excited I am!”

  A dramatic gesture, Finch thought, and how Eden loved to make them! He looked enviously into Wakefield’s happy face. To be able to love like that… To be able to give oneself without reserve… He himself might have felt so about Pauline… If only Wake had giv
en him the chance… A kid like that—why, he couldn’t marry for years! The affair was ridiculous and Eden should not have encouraged it. He said:

  “Well, it was generous of Eden and I suppose it’s true— what he says about not needing it himself. But when I think how he worked—for that paltry sum—” His eyes darkened and he saw, not Wakefield’s happy face, but Eden’s sunken cheeks, his too brilliant eyes.

  “Don’t think I’m not appreciating it! I’ll never forget it as long as I live. You see, I was so young when Eden left home that I’ve never known him very well. And I’ve always heard Piers saying things against him. The thought that he’s not going to get better hasn’t meant so much to me as it has to you and Renny. But now—if he wasn’t so ill I’d go straight to him this minute and thank him.”

  Finch could not bear to hear this child babbling about Eden. He said gruffly:

  “I suppose Pauline will be pleased.”

  “Pleased! She’ll be overjoyed! I’ll not tell her a thing about it until I put the ring on her finger. Have you ever noticed her hands?”

  “Yes—I’ve noticed them. Look here, Wake, don’t tell Pauline how you got the ring.”

  “But why? I think she ought to know.”

  “I think it would be better for her to think you had saved up for it.” He could not bear to think of those two babbling together over Eden’s generosity.

  “I believe you’re right. She’ll have all the more confidence in me if she thinks I saved up for it. She looks on me as rather extravagant, you know. But, on the whole, we’re perfect in each other’s eyes!”

  “Oh, Lord—” Finch turned away.

  “You won’t tell anyone,” said Wakefield to his back, “because Eden says he’d rather they didn’t know.”