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

by Mazo de La Roche

  She advanced in her peculiar short gliding step, at which Finch had once scoffed, saying that she moved as though she were on wheels. Now he slackened his step resignedly and put his hand under her elbow.

  He did not wonder at her petulance. He himself felt ready to drop. The sleepless night in the stifling heat of the train had been an experience never to be forgotten. The throbbing of the wheels, the crashing and jolting of the trucks as the train stopped and started, still beat in his temples.

  She exclaimed suddenly — “There he is! It’s Piers.”

  Finch felt a moment’s disappointment but it vanished at sight of Piers’s welcoming grin, his sunburnt face in which his eyes looked surprisingly blue.

  They grasped hands and Piers said:

  “Hullo! Is that mountain of stuff yours? Sarah, you look as cool as a cucumber!”

  He took the arm on her other side and together they guided her to the car. It was the one Finch had given him. Piers said facetiously:

  “It’s still in pretty good shape but I’m ready to exchange it for the latest model whenever you are.” Then he noticed that Finch was wearing glasses, and added — “By George, you look highbrow! Is it affectation or do you really need them?”

  Finch answered nervously — “I’ve been having the devil of a time with my eyes.”

  His nervousness came, not from the trouble with his eyes, but from his agitation over the bundle which Sarah’s maid was carrying. Piers recognized the woman and smiled at her amiably. Then he saw that what she carried was a sleeping child of between two and three years.

  His expression changed to one of bewildered astonishment. He stared stupidly at Finch and Sarah. He opened and shut his mouth without uttering a sound. Sarah had a malicious pleasure in his bewilderment. Finch searched in vain for words to explain the child to Piers. Why had he come? Of all the family been the one to whom the first explanation was necessary! He cursed himself for having given in to Sarah’s desire for melodrama. Melodrama in a railway station, at nine in the morning and at a temperature of ninety degrees, was unthinkable and yet it had to be faced. Well, let Sarah break the news to Piers in her own way! With a lift of his eyebrows he shifted the responsibility to her.

  Piers exclaimed — “I say, you’ve been rather beforehand, haven’t you?”

  Sarah answered, in her low, sweet voice — “This is your brother Eden’s child. His and Minny Ware’s. She brought it to us in Paris. She was ill and couldn’t keep it any longer. So we have brought it here.”

  Piers did not start or change colour. He stood stock-still, his eyes fixed on Sarah’s face, absorbing in its full significance what she had said. If she had hoped for an outburst of anger from him, she was disappointed. He turned to Finch and said simply:

  “As affairs are at home you could scarcely have done a worse thing. Renny and Alayne are at the outs. Alayne and I aren’t speaking and, though Eden’s dead, he was dragged into our quarrel and the sight of his child won’t help matters. You must be mad to think of bringing it here.”

  Finch answered loudly, in a shaking voice — “What else could I do? There was nothing else to do, I tell you Minny came to us — a sick woman. She’s in Switzerland now!”

  Piers interrupted with a note almost of despair in his voice:

  “Is there no end to the harm that fellow has done?”

  “Well, this is his child,” said Finch, “and there was nothing else for me to do but to protect it.”

  “Are you sure it’s his child?”

  “Look at it and you’ll not ask that.”

  Piers strode to the side of the maid who did not understand English but who now spoke cooingly to the child which sat up with a startled expression and looked about it. It was a girl with delicate features and rather sallow. She looked composedly into Piers’s face while leaning against the maid’s shoulder in an attitude of languor. Piers saw in her a curious blending of Eden and Minny. She had Minny’s slanting, strange-coloured eyes and high cheekbones but Eden’s bright golden hair and the lower part of her face was shaped like his.

  Piers turned abruptly from his survey of her and got into the car. He placed his hands on the wheel and looked straight ahead of him. The porters had installed the smaller luggage and Finch had to busy himself in arranging for a lorry to carry the trunks. When he returned to the car, Sarah, with the maid and child, were already in the back seat. He got in beside Piers. He dreaded the long drive to Jalna. He wondered what he could find to say to Piers that would calm his resentment. Again he cursed himself for not having prepared the family for such an advent. He blamed himself for being too much under Sarah’s influence. He was too much under the influence of all those closely connected with him yet he did not seem able to help himself. He took off his glasses and began to polish the lenses while he slid an enquiring, propitiatory look at Piers.

  “I repeat,” said Piers, “that it is the most insane thing I ever heard of two people doing. Have you taken the child yourselves? Or are you bringing her home to Renny? I wish you’d tell me that!”

  “I want to pay for her education but we can’t adopt her. Sarah doesn’t like children. Renny is so fond of them that I thought he’d be willing to give her a home. Or perhaps Meggie will.”

  “Well, you may leave me out of it. I certainly will not have her in my house.”

  “No one would expect that. You have three of your own already. But Patience is an only child. I thought perhaps Meggie —”

  “Meg has her hands full with her P.G.s.”

  “Then there’s little Adeline. The child would be a companion for her.”

  Piers gave a bark of sardonic laughter. “God help the child! What’s her name?”

  “Roma. Poor Minny told Sarah that she called her that because she was conceived in Rome where they had the happiest time they ever knew.”

  “Tch! What a name! And what a way to come by it! Poor young devil! Is Minny going to recover?”

  “I’m afraid not. She was hopeful but she looked terribly ill. A friend, a rich Jew I think, has been awfully kind to her. She’s to have the best care. I’m afraid the disease was deep-seated before she knew of it.”

  “A pity she had the child! I don’t believe Eden ever told Renny of it.”

  “He never knew. For some reason Minny didn’t want him to know. Do you think Renny will be very angry with me for bringing her home?”

  The tone in which he asked this was so like the tone in which, as a boy, he had asked — “Do you think Renny will give me a licking, Piers?” — that Piers turned a curious glance on him. What sort of fellow had this queer younger brother grown up to be? Piers realized that he knew very little about him. He had been married, and that to a strange creature like Sarah, for more than half a year. He had lived in Paris, he had played to foreign audiences and been written about in the press, yet none of these experiences seemed to have left much mark on him. He had the same half-starved look, the same too-sensitive mouth, the same nervous way of putting his hands between his knees as though to restrain their excited movements. Piers felt rather sorry for him.

  “How does it feel to be married?” he asked.

  “Oh … fine!” But, to Piers, his tone was strangely detached. He remembered now that Finch had asked him a question, and he felt a sudden desire to reassure him. So he answered:

  “I dare say old redhead will be delighted. If there is one thing above another that pleases him it is an addition to the clan.”

  “And Alayne — how do you think she’ll take it?”

  “I don’t think for a moment that she’ll tolerate it.”

  Finch raised his voice excitedly — “Well, she needn’t! She needn’t! I’ll look after Roma! I’ll find a home for her. Perhaps Mrs. Lebraux would look after her.”

  “She’s leaving to keep house for that brother of hers. Pauline has gone into a convent.”

  Piers felt a distinct relish in delivering this counter-shock to Finch’s introduction of the child. He relished still
more the announcing of Wakefield’s entering a monastery.

  But he had not counted on the effect of the first piece of news on Finch. He caught Piers by the arm and exclaimed:

  “That’s not so, Piers! You’re joking! You aren’t in earnest!”

  Piers narrowly avoided a collision with a motor lorry. The French maid screamed and Finch sank into a corner, crimson with shame, his heart pounding violently.

  “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m a blasted fool!”

  He grunted under the prod Piers gave him with his elbow. Piers growled — “You’d better get into the back seat with the women and let the baby sit with me. It would have more sense than you.” He looked reassuringly over his shoulder at Sarah. “It’s all right, Sarah! I’ve not been drinking. But your young husband is rather too emotional.”

  Piers lighted a cigarette. Sarah asked, inquisitively introducing her pale face with its pointed chin, between them:

  “What did you tell him that upset him so?”

  Piers thought — “I’ll bet she’s a devil of jealousy. I must protect this young fool.” He said, out of the side of his mouth:

  “I was just telling him that young Wake has gone into a monastery. I had no idea it would be such a shock to him.”

  Finch sat up in his seat as though galvanized, then sank back speechless.

  “There he goes again,” said Piers jocularly. “We’d better get him home.” He started the car and did not look in Finch’s direction again till he saw, from a swift glance, that he had recovered himself. Then he imparted to him, in desultory snatches, such news of the farm, the horses, and the new ponies as he thought would interest him. While he talked, his own mind was heavy with the thought that Eden’s child was in the seat behind. He had hoped that they were done with Eden, except in the dark recesses of memory, but now his child had come as an ever-growing reminder of him. But Finch must take her away again! Alayne would be on his side in this and he would stand by her. That child must not live in their midst!

  Any doubt as to the truth of Piers’s first piece of news was dispelled for Finch by his manner of imparting the second. It was a cruel truth and it cast him down into a depth of melancholy that was unaccountable to him. He was not sure that he loved, or ever had loved, Pauline but he had felt her presence in his life as something beautiful. There were always in his thoughts of her a regret and a sense of promise. She had inherited something from her mother that made her presence restful and magnanimous toward men. Neither of them was capable of any antagonism of sex. He had envied Wakefield his long acquaintance with Pauline. He wished he might have been Wakefield’s age and grown up beside her in his stead. He had resented Wake’s engagement to Pauline. Now he felt an impassioned curiosity to know what the two had experienced that had driven them to such a recoil from marriage. He pictured them in nun’s and monk’s habit and strangely the pictures he conjured up looked natural and even inevitable.

  Sarah disliked being in the seat with the maid and child. It would have been much nicer if she could have had Finch beside her on the first drive to Jalna since their marriage. She was irritated by the maid’s slavish adoration of the child. When Sarah, who cared little for the services of the maid beyond the mere packing and care of her clothes, had suggested that she might look after the child on the journey, the rather hard-faced French woman had indifferently agreed. No sooner was the little one in her care than it became the object of lavish caresses and a continuous babbling of infantile endearments. The maid was a changed woman, shown in her true colours which were most unattractive to Sarah. She turned her shoulder on the pair. She fixed her eyes on Finch’s profile. Its fascination for her never lessened. Nor the intense study of his face when his eyes looked deep into hers. The contrast between him and Arthur Leigh, her first husband, in every aspect of their life with her provided her with material for profound brooding. The contrast was always in Finch’s favour. Arthur had given her wealth, social position, and travel. He had been charming to look at and charming to live with but he had never really pleased her. He had been too vulnerable, too easily elated or cast down by her moods. What was perhaps only a slight perversity he had taken too seriously. He had translated a little gaiety into an ecstasy of happiness. She had owned so few belongings that she had been bewildered by the presents he had lavished on her; and it was not till after his death that she had developed an acquisitive sense and had guarded her possessions.

  Finch’s timidity combined with his harsher vein increased her infatuation for him day by day. She marvelled at what he said. She sought to penetrate his mind, to know the thoughts he kept secret. He was so often wrapped in his thoughts. He sometimes ignored her and he seldom gave her presents because, with Whiteoak hard-headedness, he saw that she already had too much.

  They left the town and passed foamy stretches of orchards in bloom. The lake slid to the side of the road and although it was scarcely ruffled they felt its coolness. Finch took off his hat and closed his eyes. He wished that Piers would stop talking. It was hard to keep his mind on what he said. Harder still to find words for a reply. Over and over he was saying to himself — “Pauline in a convent…. Pauline a nun…. I shall never see her again! Everything is changing for me…. I am alone….”

  Nicholas, Ernest, and Alayne were at the door to meet them. Piers stood, with an air of resolute detachment, waiting to see what welcome would be given the newcomer. Sarah went to Finch’s side as soon as they had alighted from the car, and they advanced with strained smiles. The child sat rigidly on the maid’s arm, her bright hair, which had never been cut, hanging in uneven locks about her face.

  When greetings had been exchanged Ernest asked of Finch — “Who are the woman and child? Is Piers giving them a lift?”

  Finch, in his present state of mind, longed to declare — “Yes, yes, they are going on. I don’t know who they are.” He saw Piers staring fixedly at his uncles. He saw Sarah’s smile fade and her lips move without making a sound. He gathered himself together and said, in a shaking voice:

  “Uncle Ernest, this child is Eden’s. Minny brought her to me in Paris. Minny is terribly ill. She couldn’t keep the child. Eden never knew about it — the baby, I mean. I’m going to look after her.”

  Ernest, Nicholas, and Alayne stood rooted. Nicholas could not take it in. He turned to his brother and demanded testily:

  “What’s he say? Who is the child?”

  “Eden’s,” returned Ernest, with surprising composure. “Eden’s and Minny’s.”

  Nicholas stared, stupefied. “But — but — Eden is dead! What’s all this talk? I can’t understand!”

  “It’s Eden’s child,” repeated Ernest and his clear blue eyes searched Alayne’s face to see how she would take the news.

  She looked almost as mystified as Nicholas. She went slowly to the child and scanned its face. Then she turned almost pleadingly to Piers, to whom she had not spoken for weeks.

  “Do you think this is true?” she asked.

  Nothing she could have done could have drawn Piers’s sympathy to her as this appeal to his judgment. He gave her a look of almost tender solicitude.

  “It’s rough on you,” he said, “having it brought to Jalna.”

  Nicholas repeated — “I don’t understand.”

  Sarah smiled almost maliciously. “It’s easy to understand. Minny was that sort of girl, you know. And Finch is the sort of man who would come to her rescue.”

  “It’s rough on Alayne,” repeated Piers.

  Finch exclaimed loudly — “It has nothing to do with Alayne! I should think Alayne would feel sorry for the poor little thing.”

  At this moment Adeline, freshly dressed for the occasion, rushed out of the house. Instantly her eyes discovered the other child and she had no interest in anyone else. She reached up to her, trying to drag her from the arms of the maid.

  “Set her down,” commanded Ernest. “Let us see her.”

  The child stood motionless, dazed but not afraid, its dr
ess, of a foreign cut, crumpled against its thin body. The maid encouraged her in staccato French.

  Adeline was enraptured by the sudden appearance of the girl child smaller than herself. She inspected her with beaming assurance then grasped her wrist and led her toward the house. The child hung back timidly.

  Nicholas’s voice came, as though shaken out of him. “Finch, do you tell me that this is Eden’s and Minny’s child?”

  “Yes, Uncle Nick.”

  “Well, well, I don’t know what Renny’ll say to this. I can’t think what he’ll say to it.” Suddenly he picked up the little creature and held her in front of him. “Minny’s eyes and cheekbones!” he growled. “No doubt about that…. I must tell Renny of this! I am the one to tell him! Where is he now? Why isn’t he here?” He stood irresolute holding the child in his hands, the thin legs with soiled knees, dangling.

  Alayne said — “Where would he be but in the stables? A new arrival there is more important than one at the house.”

  Finch exclaimed eagerly — “I do wish you would tell him, Uncle Nick! It’s just as you say. You are the one to do it.” He thought — “I’m scarcely home…. I’m not inside the door before I feel the pressure of all their spirits on mine and I get bewildered…. I can’t remember whether or not I’ve spoken to Alayne…. How ill she looks!” He said — “What a crowd of us to descend on you, Alayne! It’s a beastly nuisance for you, I know.”

  “It is nothing,” she said, and she returned his kiss affectionately.

  Sarah came and stood close beside them. She looked at Alayne as though she would snatch Finch’s kiss from her. Alayne said to her:

  “I suppose you have had a wonderful time in Europe.”

  “For itself I hate Europe,” answered Sarah. “I was dragged about it too much by my aunt. But wherever Finch is, is wonderful to me!”

  “That’s the way to feel!” exclaimed Ernest. Then he added — “I do wish Nick wouldn’t be so impulsive! Why can’t he wait till Renny comes instead of rushing off like that!”

  Nicholas was indeed clambering into the car, very stiffly because of his gouty knee, and still carrying the child. Piers had returned to his place at the wheel.