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

by Mazo de La Roche

  Looking at Finch stretched on the sofa, his head once more pillowed all his arm, the thought came to him, and not for the first time, that perhaps poor old Finch had been a little in love with Pauline himself. God knew she would have been a thousand times better as a wife for him than the one he had chosen — his distant cousin, Sarah Court. She had been a devil, thought Wakefield, and before he could stop himself had exclaimed: —

  “I wonder where Sarah is!”

  Finch shrank almost more from the sound of Sarah’s name than Pauline’s. Pauline’s name brought a tender sadness. A heartache at the thought of her in nun’s robes; but Sarah’s. a picture of what his life with her had been, how her cold, calculating, devouring passion for him had made that life unbearable.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” he muttered.

  Wakefield looked at him speculatively. “Being a Catholic,” he said, “I don’t believe in divorce but can’t help wishing you were free of her and might marry again. It would be good for you, I believe.”

  “I hate marriage,” broke in Finch. “There isn’t a girl living who would tempt me to it.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. I feel pretty shy of it myself, though I’ve had no experience. Still, we can have friends. I’d like to invite this girl — Molly Griffith is her name — to tea here. Do you think it would be all right?”

  “I don’t see anything against it excepting that Henriette might frighten her.”

  The brothers knew little of the so-called Bohemian life of London, its free-and-easy parties. They had been brought up in a conventional atmosphere. They had few friends in London and generally were content in each other’s company. Finch was to give a series of recitals and the preparation for those took all his energy. But he loved the theatre and often thought he would like to be an actor. Wakefield’s work was a new bond between them. Finch sat up and stretched out his hand.

  “Let’s see your part,” he said.

  Wakefield gave him the sheets of typescript. He said: —

  “It’s a good part. I’m lucky to get it. And I was just as glad for the girl as for myself. She looked hard-up, I can tell you. I think I’ll send a line home to tell them the news. There’s a ship sailing tomorrow.”

  He sat down at the writing bureau and began rapidly to cover a sheet of notepaper with his small firm handwriting. He was orderly in his habits and he hated the way Finch had stuffed letters, musical scores, accounts, and newspaper cuttings into the pigeonholes. He hated the disorder of the room. But he said nothing. He had always had self-control and during his stay in the monastery he had cultivated it.

  Finch searched for and found a pair of spectacles he had dropped on the floor, and began to read the typescript. In his college days he had loved play-acting next to music and he had shown such talent that the producer of the amateur company he had worked with had prophesied a fine future for him. But music had come first. Now, reading Wakefield’s part, the feel of the lines tingled through his nerves and he wanted to do the part himself. The thought came to him that acting might not have, surely would not have, taken such toll of his strength as did music. He was strong enough, he thought, yet surely there must be something wrong with him when he could not practise for five hours, as he had today, without feeling exhausted. He did not believe it was the actual practising, but the thought of what it led up to, the cold, waiting lights of the platform, the row upon row of ears — all waiting for him to falter once, waiting to catch the falter of that left hand of his, faintly behind the right. Yet why should this matter so when sometimes he could bring his audience to their feet in the passion of his playing! Still he continued to imagine all the ears as antagonistic to him, straining their drums to catch him in a fault, caring nothing for his passion.

  After a while he said — “It’s a pretty good part.”

  Wakefield turned to face him.

  “You can’t imagine how good till you have read the whole play. And I’m going to make it an important part. You’ll see.”

  He sealed and stamped his letter.

  “You might have read me your letter,” said Finch.

  The idea of home was such a living bond to him, though he barely remembered his parents, that the sight of an envelope addressed to Jalna made him want to guess what its effect would be on each member of that circle.

  “You would have found it too enthusiastic. You make me shy.”

  “Good God! You shy! Let’s have a look at you.”

  “I don’t always show my feelings.”

  “You dramatize them almost before they’re born.”

  “And yours arrive through a sort of Caesarean operation that devastates you and everyone around you.”

  They were angry and it was a relief that Henriette appeared carrying a tray loaded with their tea things. She said, in her doleful voice: —

  “It was the best I could do. By the time I ’ad my work done and got to the shop all the best cakes were gone. The market was very poor at Strutton Ground, so I couldn’t get very nice salad stuff for your dinner. I’m afraid you’ll not like it.” She looked at them lugubriously, her huge hands folded on her black cashmere stomach.

  “It’s all right,” said Finch, coming to the table.

  Wakefield snatched up a small cake filled with custard. “This is just the sort I like!” He put it whole into his mouth. “As for dinner, if we have your good soup, Henriette, it’s all that matters. Everything tastes marvelous today.”

  Henriette sighed heavily and trailed her skirt down the stairs to the kitchen. She had just reached the bottom when the doorbell rang. They could hear her groan as she began again to climb the stairs.

  “I’ll go!” shouted Wakefield. He ran to the door and opened it. A soft rain had begun to fall. His cousin, Paris Court, stood on the threshold. Wakefield swallowed the last of his cake and made him welcome.

  “We’re just sitting down to tea,” he said.

  “I hope there’s plenty of it,” said Paris. “I’m starving.”

  Paris always said he was starving and indeed behaved so, but looked well-nourished. He was so typically the young Irishman of tradition, lighthearted and irresponsible, black-haired, blue-eyed and fresh-skinned, with a dimple in his cheek, that it made you smile to look at him. He was a distant cousin whom the brothers had met only in the last months but already he seemed a near relation. He understood them very well, their weaknesses, their generosities, and how they had brought the atmosphere of their own home with them. He was about twenty-eight and was the only son of Malahide Court, both friend and enemy to old Adeline Whiteoak. At the end of his resources Malahide had made a last desperate visit to the Riviera and there become engaged to, and in Paris married an American girl. He had been convinced that, being an American, she was rich. She had imagined she was marrying an aristocratic Irishman of means. Each had told the other singularly little of the past. When he took her to his dilapidated mansion where the green moss was encroaching on some of the inner walls, and discovered that she had scarcely a dollar to bless herself with, the fat was indeed in the fire. It was a marvel that they both had survived that scene. But they had survived it and the marriage had turned out better than could have been hoped for. Paris was always talking about his parents. Finch and Wakefield remembered how, at Jalna, his father was generally referred to as “that snake, Malahide.”

  Paris had had one position after another in London but was seldom able to do more than keep body and soul together. Body was healthy and soul was cheerful, yet he asked more. He wanted luxury and freedom from care and did not much mind how he got them, so long as he did.

  Wakefield could not have asked for a better listener than his cousin. Paris was delighted that he had got a part in the new play at the Preyde Theatre. He was delighted with Wakefield’s imitations of Ninian Fox. He listened, with knit forehead and pouting lips, to Wakefield’s description of Molly Griffith. Finch said little but his nerves relaxed in the careless flow of their talk. He pulled at his pipe, whil
e his large-pupiled eyes rested on them in amusement and envy.

  “Let’s hear your part,” said Paris.

  Wakefield eagerly unfolded the manuscript and sketched the outline of the play. He read bits of his part aloud. Paris was enthusiastic.

  “It’s a grand part,” he said, “and I envy you doing it with the girl you describe. I’d like to meet her. So far I can’t think that English girls compare well with the Irish.”

  “Wait till you see Molly Griffith.” He began once more to rave over her.

  Finch yawned. “I’m going for a walk,” he said. “Do you mind, Parry? I’ve got to have air.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “I like the rain.” Finch rose to his long, loosely made length.

  “Sure I don’t mind,” answered Paris. “Wake will put up with me for a bit.”

  “I want the rain on my face. I’m going to walk by the river,”

  “I dare say I’ll still be here when you come back.”

  “Good.” Finch touched his cousin’s shoulder affectionately in passing.

  When he had left the house Paris remarked: — “I always feel that Finch is unhappy, even though he’s so talented. Do you think maybe he still hankers after that wife of his?”

  “You don’t know Finch. He’d run the other way if she appeared on the scene. He hates her and fears her too.”

  “Well,” Paris spoke musingly, “that doesn’t mean that he may not hanker after her. She may have done something to him that he can’t get over.”

  “I believe that’s true. I mean that she did something to him — just as you say. But no power on earth could make him go back to her. What Finch has always wanted is peace and somehow the poor devil has never been able to get it.”

  “I wish I’d had his chance with that rich cousin of ours. To think of a Court having money! And such masses of money! It’s incredible. I can’t tell you how poor my family is. I can tell you we’ve nearly reached the point of bringing the family skeleton out of the cupboard and putting him in the pot for the juice that may still be in him.”

  Wakefield’s mind flew back to the stories he had heard at home of how Malahide Court had come to visit at Jalna and stayed so long he had had to be ejected almost by force. He said: —

  “You’ll do something for the family fortunes some day, I’m certain of that, Parry.”

  Paris turned his blue gaze ingenuously on Wakefield. “Please God, I shall,” he said solemnly. He drew his chair confidentially closer. “I’ve just had a letter from my father. In it he tells me of a beautiful young horse he can buy at a great bargain. He says that it has no end of possibilities as a racer. It’s a rare beauty on the track. My father knows that your brother Renny has had the ambition to win the Grand National and he says there isn’t a likelier horse in these Islands than this one. And I myself say that there isn’t a finer judge of horseflesh in these Islands than my father. Now he says that he could buy this horse for your brother, have him trained, and your brother could come over for the glorious finish of it and reap the profits. After this horse has won the Grand National he’ll be worth his weight in gold, mind you.”

  Wakefield’s eyes shone. If only such a triumph could be achieved for that eldest brother who had done so much for him and who had had so much hard luck!

  “Renny did train a horse for the Grand National” he said, “when I wasn’t much more than a baby. But it never ran. It got killed. Young as I was I can still remember the excitement and how wild Renny looked and how he got drunk and came into the house singing.”

  “Poor man,” said Paris. “But this would be different. This horse wouldn’t get killed and my father says it can win any race it’s put into. He says he’s willing to back it with all he has and that’s saying a good deal for a man of his age.”

  Wakefield was swept along by the idea. He walked eagerly up and down the room.

  “I’ve just been writing to Renny,” he exclaimed. “I’ll open the letter and put in another sheet telling him about the horse. You must give me all the details you can.”

  Paris shook his head. “I don’t think that’s the way to go about it. What my father wants you to do is to come straight over to Ireland and see the horse for yourself. Then, when you’ve got an eyeful, you can write and tell your brother what you think. He mightn’t take my father’s word for it and I expect you couldn’t grow up at Jalna without knowing a good deal about horses.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Wakefield. “Could we go tomorrow? Rehearsals are to begin in a few days. Then it will be impossible to get away. I wonder what Finch will say.”

  “Don’t let him stand in your way,” said Paris.

  IV

  AT COUSIN MALAHIDE’S

  FINCH HAD FELT only misgivings at this proposal by Paris to inspect an unknown horse on Renny’s behalf. He had no confidence in his own opinion and he distrusted Wakefield’s enthusiasms. He liked Paris and believed him to be sincere, but he had heard Cousin Malahide called a sneak, a traitor and a sponge, as long as he could remember. Yet the thought of going to Ireland came as a lovely surprise. If he went he would throw aside, for a few days, the strain of preparation for his recital. He believed that, in the long run, it would do him good. His eyes, the nerves in his head, were feeling the strain. His sleep was broken. He felt himself nearing one of those periods of despair and bitter doubts of his future. He found himself envying the men working at the side of the road, eating their lunch there in easy contempt of the traffic, joking as they ate their bread and cheese.

  He decided to go to Ireland but to make no promises. He would write all details to Renny and let him decide if he would be willing to take such a risk. He felt in himself such a snatching at those few days of respite that they began to seem of vital importance to all his future. Wakefield, Paris, and he could talk of nothing else.

  Then, one misty evening, they found themselves in a mudsplashed car bumping along a country road in County Meath, with rooks sailing dark against the sky and the cattle raising their heads, with the young grass tender in their mouths, to see them go by. A rough-haired young man called Leo was driving the car and Paris kept asking him questions about his father and mother.

  “How is my mother’s rheumatism, Leo?”

  “A bit betther, sor.”

  “Is she having any luck with her poultry?”

  “Aye. She have forty young pullets as plump as pigeons.”

  “Has my father had the drains attended to?”

  “No, sor, fur the plumber has been dead this three months and no other dare succeed him, he was so unpopular.”

  “Are there any visitors in the house?”

  “There was a young lady, a cousin, but she’ve gone. I never heard her name,”

  Wakefield’s eyes sparkled at Finch. “I can scarcely bear to wait to see Cousin Malahide,” he whispered. “What a letter I shall write home!”

  Paris looked over his shoulder. “Did I hear you say you can scarcely wait to see my father? No wonder. He’s a wonderful man and the best judge of horses in the county. And you should see him jump the tallest hedges at the Hunt and he well past seventy.”

  The dark clouds, massed in the western sky, let only a dim shaft of sunlight down to the moist earth. The brown thatch of the cottages by the roadside looked no more than humps of the earth itself. On a rise of ground, with a slow stream encircling it, stood a long low house. A double row of linden trees led to the front door.

  A small light in an ancient lantern was hung at the side of the door, and of the long rows of windows only one was lighted. A stone turret at a corner of the house had fallen and lay crumbled. Enough earth had collected among the shattered stones to make a foothold for tall ferns and a graceful fuchsia the size of a tree. The place was enfolded in an air of melancholy and decay. The hollow ringing of a cowbell on the marshy land below only increased this. The air was mild and moist, like the kiss of a person in tears.

  Paris did not appear depressed by all this. He spra
ng from the car and ran lightly up the steps. Before he could open the door it was opened from within and an old manservant poked out a bony bald head.

  “Lord bless us, Mr. Paris, ’tis glad I am to see you,” he said and showed the rest of himself. He wore a mulberry-coloured livery, very faded, and he had not a tooth in his head.

  “Hello, Jamesie,” said Paris. “How are things going with you?”

  “Ah, I’ve no more than me share of throubles! But we shall all be aisier in our minds for this sight of you.”

  “These are cousins from Canada,” said Paris. “They’ve come all the way from London to look at the horse my father has told us of.”

  “My God in Heaven!” exclaimed Jamesie. “You couldn’t find a lovelier horse in the length and breadth of Ireland. He runs so fast that the shweat dries on him between one shtride and the next. He’s halfway to the goal before the rest of the beasts has left the starting p’int.”

  “I believe you,” said Parry, “but we’re standing out in the rain. Are my parents in the drawing room?”

  “Aye. With their eyes fairly dropping out of their sockets with watching for you. Come away in.”

  The hall was so large that it made the one at Jalna seem small and cozy in Wakefield’s memory. Two lighted candles on a carved oak chest dimly illumined the paneled walls. From it they went through a small, still dimmer room into the drawing room. It was lighted by an ornate and ghostly chandelier, the crystals of which were too dim with dust to reflect the light. They hung cold and motionless, like frozen fog. On a gilded sofa, by the side of a small fire, sat two dark figures who rose and came forward eagerly to meet the three young men.

  As Paris embraced his mother, Wakefield’s eyes swept the room and the bent figure of Malahide Court. He saw the brocaded upholstery in holes, the pictures dim in their tarnished frames, the piece of embroidery hanging on the wall worn into ribbons by age and damp. If Paris Court was the traditional gay young Irishman, Malahide was the traditional decadent aristocrat. His long, ivory-coloured face was like the face of a mediaeval Spanish portrait. His large dark eyes looked from under arched black brows but his hair, which he wore rather long, was silvery white. His expression, as he came forward with outstretched hand, seemed to Wakefield both sneering and conciliatory, as though he had forgotten nothing of the past but was determined that his visitors should.