“It’s exactly the setting for a ghost story. All that is needed is a headless monk or something of the sort to come from that cupboard.”
The thought had barely come into his mind when the door of the cupboard actually did move. He felt a creeping down his spine. He felt sick with fright. He riveted his eyes, brilliant with fright, on the moving door. It opened softly and his wife stepped into the room.
So often his imaginings had been fantastic that he did not for a moment think of her as real. He just stared at her, awaiting what might happen next.
But her voice, when it came, dispelled all thoughts of the supernatural. He had thought that Sarah must be dead and her spirit come to reproach him, but that voice, sweeter than any he had ever heard, with the sweetness of the muted notes of a violin, was warm and vibrant with life.
“Finch,” she said, “don’t be angry! I had to see you — just for a moment. I did not go down to dinner because I was afraid it would anger you. I hid here to have the joy of being near you for one little moment. Don’t be angry, Finch. Say you don’t hate me!”
“Sarah!” He said her name in a voice not his own but like the voice of a sleepwalker. “Was that your violin I saw?”
“Yes. I forgot to hide it.”
“I felt that you were near. But — not in the flesh.”
“Finch, my little one, say you don’t hate me.”
“I think — I’m not sure — but — oh, Sarah, I could not get you out of my mind.”
“You wanted me!” She gave a cry of delight and glided to him. How familiar was that gliding walk, in which the legs seemed scarcely to move but the whole body to swim forward.
Without his volition his arms were raised. He closed his eyes, then felt the weight of her against his breast. He felt the sweetness of her breath on his mouth. Strength surged into his body and a delirious wildness into his soul. He carried her to the four-poster, with its tattered brocade canopy, and laid her on it and knelt beside her.
“Finch,” she whispered, “say that we are to he united again. Oh, if you knew what an abyss of loneliness I have been through! Oh, your lovely eyes — let me kiss them!” She drew down his head and laid her lips first on one eyelid, then on another.
The door handle turned softly and Wakefield stood silhouetted against the light in the corridor.
“Did you call me, Finch?” he asked. “I thought I heard your voice.” He peered toward the bed and saw Finch kneeling there.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” he said. “Finch, you are praying and I interrupted you! God bless you, Finch.” He closed the door gently and was gone.
In his own room he stood motionless, his dark head bent in thought. What a queer fellow Finch was! He never seemed to be religious — not outwardly — but in his heart he must be deeply so.
V
JOHNNY THE BIRD
WAKEFIELD SLEPT SOUNDLY, almost dreamlessly. Perhaps it was being in the country again, perhaps it was talking of the purchase of a horse for Renny, but whatever it was his one short dream was about his eldest brother. In it he was himself a child again and sleeping with Renny, as he had been accustomed to do. He had pains in his legs, as he had often had in those years of his delicacy, and Renny was rubbing them with his thin muscular hands. Lying on his back he looked up into that weather-bitten, highly-coloured face, with the lean flat cheeks and the hair growing in a russet peak on the forehead, and noted the concern for him written there. But he felt no gratitude or affection, just anger, and he heard himself say: “I’ve found you out! You can’t deceive me. You’re going to be married! You’ve got her hidden in this room!”
He had dreamed this in the moment before waking. He smiled as he remembered the dream and he looked up still smiling into the face of the pink-cheeked maid who had brought him early tea. He sat up in bed, his hair tousled, while she placed before him the tea and a plate of thin bread and butter.
“What sort of weather is it?” he asked.
“Sure ’tis the loveliest you ever seen. And one of the sheep in the pasture has a little new lamb.”
The air coming in at the window was mild and mistily sunny. Wakefield turned the two slices of bread together and rolled them into a cylinder. He took a large mouthful of tea and gayly greeted Finch when he opened the door.
“Hullo! How did you sleep? I believe the weather has changed.”
Finch closed the door behind him and came to the side of the bed. He looked at Wakefield almost sombrely. He said: —
“Wake, I’ve something to tell you. When you came into my room last night I wasn’t praying. I was kneeling beside Sarah. She was on the bed.”
Wakefield was for a moment astonished into immobility. He sat transfixed. Then he was frightened. He was afraid for Finch’s mind. Something terrible had happened to it. Coming to Ireland, into a house where she might well have visited sometime, had unhinged Finch. He was very tired. His nerves had been troubling him. Wakefield set the tray to one side and moved, with childlike swiftness, to his brother. He gripped his hand.
“It’s all right,” he said. “She hasn’t come back. You’ve been dreaming. You’ll never need to see her again, Finch.”
“I had need,” said Finch harshly. “She is in that room across the passage. She was with me all night. I slept with her.”
“That’s impossible.” Wakefield spoke sternly. “You dreamed it, Finch. You know you did. Sarah is not in this house.”
“If you don’t believe me, come and see her! She is there now, in the flesh. In the flesh, by God!”
Wakefield’s incredulity began to weaken. After all it was not impossible that Sarah should be in the house. She was a cousin of Malahide’s and might visit him, quite probably would visit him, if she thought it might lead to a meeting with Finch. His anger rose.
“Are you telling me in truth,” he said, “that that woman came to your room last night and that you slept with her?”
“Yes,” said Finch, in the same harsh voice, “I did. Not because she tempted me to but because I wanted to. I tell you, Wake, I am mad about her. And the reason everything has gone wrong with me, the reason I am not well, is because I would not live with her. I sent her away from me when I knew she was my salvation.”
“That is preposterous. And you know it. Sarah always sapped the vitality from you and tortured you by her very presence. Didn’t you beg Renny to keep her away from you? Didn’t you run up two flights of stairs and hide yourself in your room when she came into the house? You’ve said with your own lips, to me, that you hated her. This is just the madness of a moment, Finch. Tell me where she is and I will find her and talk to her. You must not see her again.”
Finch began to walk up and down the room, his arms tense at his sides. “I tell you, Wake, it’s no use. I know what I’ve got to do. It’s not a moment’s madness. It’s going back to where I dropped the thread of my life and picking it up again. It’s finishing a composition I threw down in despair but now know has got to be finished or I am lost.”
“There’s no truth in this and no balance. Sarah is not the woman for you. Just now she’s made you feel that she is. She’s got a kind of hypnotic influence over you. If she hadn’t, you wouldn’t have begged Renny to keep her away from you when you were ill. You were afraid of what she’d do to you. I tell you, Finch, I shall look on this visit as one of our greatest misfortunes, if it gives you back to Sarah!”
The door opened and she stood before them.
“I’ve been listening,” she said.
“Very well,” said Wakefield. “I’m glad. You know what I feel without my telling you.”
“I also know what Finch feels and that means infinitely more to me — to hear from his own lips — in confidence to you — that life is meaningless to him — if I am not with him.” She entered and closed the door, standing against it, as though in a frame. “You loved a girl once and broke off your engagement to go into a monastery. What can a man of your type know of a great passion such as Finch and I know! Th
ere’s nothing of the monk about him! He’s flesh and fire. And if he and I separated once, it was because our love had consumed us and we parted to gain more fuel for it.”
As she spoke, Wakefield’s features had taken on a chiselled severity. “Finch left you,” he said, “because he was exhausted spiritually. He wasn’t seeking fresh fuel for passion but forgetfulness of the harm it had done him. And it’s not only a matter of passion, Sarah, it’s just you — the woman that you are. There’s something in you that cannot be accepted — perhaps that’s not the right word but it’s the best I can think of — it cannot be accepted. It’s as though your soul were a pillar of salt. No man could be happy with you. Finch least of all.”
She brought her hands from where they had rested against the door, and clapped them before her. “Ask Finch! Ask Finch if he was happy last night! Ask him if there was anything in me he could not accept.”
“Finch is not in his sane mind this morning.” Wakefield’s voice softened persuasively. “Can’t you see, Sarah, that, as an artist, he’s got to be his own man? He’s got to respect the thing in him that makes him able to play?”
She laughed triumphantly. “Finch told me last night that the sight of my violin on the piano had filled him with a strange joy.”
Wakefield spoke with solemnity. “Yes, Sarah. I don’t doubt it. A strange joy. That’s what you would inspire. But Finch needs normality. He needs naturalness and all that’s wholesome and sane.”
“You sound like a preacher,” sneered Sarah.
“I am preaching. I’m preaching what’s right and true.”
Finch broke out, “I’ve had enough of this! There’s no use in your trying to stop me. I don’t want your interference. Sarah and I —”
He was interrupted by a knocking on the door. Paris called out, “Hullo, in there! May I come in?”
Sarah moved from the door and he threw it open. He stood astonished. “Why — why —” he stammered.
She smiled. “I suppose you are Paris. I’m your fourth or fifth cousin — Sarah Whiteoak. Haven’t your parents mentioned me?”
He came to her and took her hand. “My mother did tell me that a distant cousin was here but —” his eyes swept over her admiringly — “I never thought of anyone so charming.”
“Sarah is my wife,” said Finch. “I’ve told you of her.”
“Yes, but upon my word, Sarah, he didn’t give me any idea of your looks. I expect he’s jealous.” Paris wondered greatly what the raised voices had signified. He suspected that Sarah had been brought there in the hope of a reconciliation between her and Finch. He thought what a fool Finch was to have parted with a woman of such wealth and such looks. His candid face expressed this as he turned to Wakefield when they were alone together.
“What a sweet face!” he exclaimed. “Oh, I could love that girl! Surely you are mistaken about her temper. Do you think she and Finch are going to come together again? God, I hope not!”
As Wakefield went down to breakfast his mind was deeply disturbed. He had looked forward to the visit to Ireland as a happy adventure. But this meeting with Sarah, her recapture of Finch, for Wakefield looked on it as nothing but a shameless recapture, had darkened his sky. What was going to happen? Would she return to London with them? It was impossible to think of living with her in the house in Gayfere Street. If she came, he would go. He would find other lodgings. Then anger against Finch flamed up in him. He hesitated, his hand on the banister, almost ready to go back and begin the feverish discussion once more. But he knew that would be hopeless. There had been a light in Finch’s eyes that told of an invincible resolve to go his own way at this moment. Well — let him go his own way! It would ruin him but let him go! What would Renny say? He would be furious, that was certain. Wakefield turned again down the stairway. Now the thought of the horse troubled him. Had he any right to encourage Renny to take such a risk? He was easily excited about a horse. An enthusiastic letter about this one would probably result in his moving heaven and earth to acquire it; Renny’s wife, Alayne, would feel that his family had little to do to encourage him in such a risk. The buying of a race horse was only the beginning of the outlay it would entail. He had a mind to tell Cousin Malahide that he would not even look at the horse.
He found the family collected in the dining room. Mrs. Court asked him kindly how he had slept. Sarah sat close beside her, as though trying to hide behind the coffee urn.
“She was brazen enough,” thought Wakefield, “up in my room. Now she’s being demure. She’s as two-faced as the devil.”
“What a nice morning,” said Malahide. He wore riding things and was helping himself to sausages and bacon from a dish on the sideboard. “Do have some of this, Wakefield.”
Finch, on Wakefield’s other side, said in a low voice: —
“Don’t look as though the end of the world had come, Wake. I don’t know when I’ve felt so happy as I do this morning. So don’t worry!”
“I’m thinking about the horse, too.” Wakefield felt sudden embarrassment. “I think we ought to back down before it’s too late.”
“After coming over here?”
“Yes. There was ill luck in it.”
Finch gave a sudden relentless grin at him. “You call it ill luck! Not I. Let’s have the horse! All omens are good. He’ll win the Grand National, you’ll see!” He lifted the dish cover and disclosed two sausages and a lonely rasher of bacon. “Here, you have them, Wake! I’ll take some of that cold meat.”
Wakefield gave him a look of hurt. “I’m not hungry. I want only some coffee.”
“Tck!” said Malahide, as Wakefield returned to the table. “No appetite! What a pity! But you’ll enjoy your lunch all the more. Now look at Parry, how he fills himself up.”
He beamed at his son, who had a large dish of porridge before him, his mother having the same.
Finch and Paris were laughing and talking as they ate. Finch’s eyes were bright and he had a fair colour in his cheeks. His unruly lock hung across his forehead. Sarah sat demure, speaking to no one. She seemed hungry.
The pale sunlight slanted across the room. The bleating of newborn lambs came from the meadow.
“To me there is no sweeter sound,” said Malahide. “The dear little lambs!” He placed a scrap of bread on his fork and collected on it the bacon gravy from his plate.
“Do you remember my pet lamb?” asked Paris.
“Can I ever forget her?” answered his mother. “We couldn’t keep her out of the house when she’d grown to a sheep. She was devoted to Parry and would follow him upstairs to his room, bunting her head against the door and bleating till he opened it. Eventually we all hated her.”
Wakefield’s eyes met Sarah’s.
“Poor lamb!” she exclaimed.
“It ended by my sending her to the butcher,” said Malahide.
“The proper place for her,” said Wakefield, grimly.
At eleven o’clock Malahide was waiting in the hall for the young men. In his riding clothes he had a look of vitality in contrast to his white hair and sallow, sunken cheeks. Wakefield and Paris were riding with him but Finch and Sarah were going in the car with Mrs. Court.
Malahide rode a good bay mare but the other horses were old and the one ridden by Wakefield was stiff in the hindquarters. He rode side by side with Paris, seeing, as in a dream, the new tender greenness of the countryside, the white thatched cottages with women standing in the doorways and little children and hens in and out of the doors. A delicate mist still hung in the hills and in the hollows and here and there was the silver flash of a pond with ducks on it.
“I can tell you, Paris,” said Wakefield, in a low voice, “this is one of the unhappiest days of my life.”
“I think I can guess why.” Paris threw him a sympathetic look. “It’s the reconciliation between those two. I can see through her, I think. But how I wish she’d taken a fancy to me! Oh, I could love her fierce enough to satisfy even her! Do you think maybe I could cut Finch out?�
�
“Never. He fascinates her. Everything he does or says is wonderful to her. She told me so herself. Years ago.”
“Well, well,” said Paris, “that’s queer. Now I should say that you’d be far more fascinating to a woman.”
Wakefield turned to look at him in surprise.
“You don’t know Finch. He’s an artist and he has all that implies — where women are concerned. But something happened to him — something went wrong — I don’t know just what it was. It wasn’t altogether marrying Sarah. There have been other things. I think my brother Eden’s death was a great shock to him. Then — when my grandmother died — she left all her money to Finch and the family thought — that is, some of them thought — he’d been scheming and underhand about it. That hurt him terribly.”
“What became of the money?” asked Paris. “He doesn’t seem to have much now.”
“He hasn’t. He gave a lot of it away — to different members of the family. He made some bad investments. He has to work hard. Sometimes I think it would have been better for Finch if he’d not been a musician. I mean, not devoted his life to music. What I’m certain of is that he should never have been reconciled to Sarah!”
They rode on in silence for a space, then Parry said: —
“As Sarah is so much in love with Finch maybe she’d like to buy the horse for your eldest brother, as a sort of bid for his good will. What do you think?”
“Renny would never accept it from her. Moreover she’d not raise a finger to help him. She once held a mortgage on Jalna and Renny had the devil’s own time to pay it off. She was going to foreclose. But he got the best of her and she’s hated him ever since.”
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 118
