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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s perfectly lovely.”

  “Haven’t you a word to say to your sister?” asked Meg. He turned round in her arms and kissed her.

  “How well you look,” he said. “Look here, I’ve something for you, too!”

  Alayne thought — “How like Meg to arrive just at this moment! And ready to give an envious look, too! Oh, why didn’t he keep the ring till we were alone?”

  “You might kiss Daddy for it!” said Adeline. “He took hours and hours to choose it.”

  “I’m sure he did.” But Alayne felt angry with the child. She drew down Renny’s head and kissed him on the cheek.

  Everyone was opening packages. Nicholas was blowing through his new pipe. Meg’s present could not be found. Renny and Adeline turned the trunk topsy-turvy, searching for it. They unearthed all the presents but hers.

  “Never mind,” she cried, with a slight tremor in her voice. “I don’t want a present. It’s quite enough to have you both back.”

  “Nonsense,” said Maurice. “Of course you want a present. You haven’t looked in that compartment yet, Renny.”

  “Those are the things for Piers’s boys.”

  “Please, please don’t mind me! What a heavenly ring, Alayne!”

  Pheasant and her three boys arrived. Between dogs, people, and trunks, the hall was indeed crowded. Archer rode through the crowd on his tricycle, his eyes fixed blankly in front of him. He had tied the packet containing his present behind the tricycle but had not opened it. It bumped along precariously.

  Renny suddenly remembered that Meg’s present, a brooch, was in his waistcoat pocket. He straightened himself, red in the face, and produced it.

  Two hours later he was walking alone through the path in the orchard. It was strange to have left spring in flowery abundance in England and to find only its first tentative budding here. He remembered orchards gay with daffodils, lawns in velvet grass where the crocuses threw their petals wide to receive the gentle sunlight. He remembered thorn trees that were boughs of pink bloom. Why, there in that hollow, there was a skein of snow! But pushing up through dead leaves near it was the fragile blossom of bloodroot. The air played about him in quick flights as though it possessed wings. All about him was quivering life, scarcely born but already vigorous.

  Suddenly he stopped as though a voice had spoken to him. Some recollection from the past gathered itself together from the trees, from the wind, from the worn path itself, to trouble him. At first it had no shape. Then, with great clarity, it took the shape of a tall slender girl, in riding clothes. It was Chris Cummings, the girl who had schooled horses for him after the War. She was only a girl in appearance, though she was the mother of a sturdy baby boy.

  He moved on among the budding trees Merlin was close at his heels. Strange, what had brought her so vividly to his mind at that moment. Why, she’d been so clear to him he’d not have been surprised if she’d spoken, put out her hand and touched him. Kit, he’d called her. She’d been very dear to him, too. And how she could ride! What hands — what courage! She’d gone back to England. Gran had had her finger in that pie.

  Now he emerged from the orchard into the open. The six hundred acres of his own land were spread about him in the promise of springtime. It was good to be home again. No matter where you went or how you enjoyed yourself, it was good to be home again.

  XV

  YOUNG MAURICE

  THEY HAD ARRIVED home on a Saturday. When Renny woke the next morning he had a moment’s puzzlement as to where he was. Was he at Cousin Dermot’s? In his London hotel? On board ship? Yes, it must be the last, for his bed was heaving. Then he opened his eyes and saw that Merlin had got on the bed with him and was walking heavily about. He could have laughed for pleasure. He put out his arms and drew the old fellow to him.

  “Merlin — glad to have me home again?”

  The spaniel snuffled against his face and made noises of pleasure. Merlin came as near to talking as any dog. Now he said: —

  “Glad! Am I glad? I’ll show you!”

  Old as he was, stout as he was, blind as he was, he gamboled over his master, leaving him and the bedclothes in a state of demoralization.

  “Enough — enough!” gasped Renny. “You’re killing me, old man!” He caught him by the scruff and held him still.

  Suddenly he remembered that it was Sunday. He had been to church only once in England. That was the day he had taken Adeline to Westminster Abbey. Now that he was home he must begin again. He turned his eyes to his father’s large gold watch that stood in a leather frame on the table beside the bed. It was eight o’clock. He could hear the children laughing upstairs. What a pretty laugh Roma had! He wondered if Alayne were awake. How pleased she’d been with the ring! For once he’d made a good choice in a present for her.

  He went across the passage to her door and tapped. “May I come in?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He went in and sat on the side of the bed. He saw that she was wearing the new ring. He took her hand in his.

  “I’m so glad you like it,” he said.

  “I’d be a strange woman if I didn’t. Darling, you should not have bought anything so expensive.”

  “Well, I treated myself to a horse, didn’t I?”

  “I do love sapphires.”

  “Alayne, did you miss me?”

  Her fingers closed about his. She held his hand to her lips. “Terribly.”

  “But you had a nice rest — I mean, with Adeline away. You’re looking lovely. I’d forgotten what beautiful pig-tails you have.” He took one in either hand. “Long and shiny! Are you coming to church?”

  “Oh, don’t let’s go to church this morning!”

  “Very well.” But he looked disappointed.

  “Of course, if you want to go …”

  “Well, old Fennel will expect me. You know, we’ve always gone to church the first morning we were home after a journey.”

  She gave him a smile of mingled irritation and tenderness.

  “If all men were like you,” she said, “the world wouldn’t be rocking.”

  “Is it rocking? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “What do they say in England about war?”

  “A good many people think it’s coming. But you’ll find that Britain and France can handle the Germans.”

  “I hope so, with all my heart.”

  “Will you come with me to church?”

  “Yes, I’ll go. We might go alone — just we two. Uncle Nick is tired. I don’t believe he’ll feel like going.”

  “Very well. I’d like that. It’s a lovely morning. Shall we walk across the fields?”

  “What a good thought! Renny, I don’t know when we’ve had a walk together.” He laid his face on the pillow beside hers. He whispered endearments in her ear.

  It was lovely walking across the fields in the freshness of early May. The land looked proud in its promise, the earth of a rich golden brown. Tiny short-stemmed wild flowers had come into bloom almost as soon as their buds had pushed up from the earth. It was a late spring. There was no time to waste. So thought the robins and song sparrows hastening by with streamers of straw and horsehair. So thought the frogs at the edge of the stream, croaking to their loved ones to come out into the sun. Even the church bell had a note of hurry in its ring. Or perhaps old Noah Binns, having heard that the master of Jalna was returned, was giving him a special summons to worship.

  As Renny and Alayne entered the door they saw him beneath the tower, bent double in the effort of pulling the rope. He gave a toothless grin at Renny.

  “Dang him,” he thought, “he’d better come!”

  Renny had gone round to the vestry to get into his surplice. It was the first time in Alayne’s life that she had walked down that aisle alone. Surely the old grandmother was at her side! Or Aunt Augusta, or Eden! But why should she think of the dead rather than the living? Her answer to her own question was — “I have a naturally unhappy
disposition. No matter how gay I am — as I was gay with Renny a moment ago — I’m far too ready to turn to introspection and melancholy.”

  She saw Piers look over his shoulder and stare in surprise at her. Then Pheasant looked and stared in surprise. Then the three round faces of the little boys showed their surprise over the back of the pew. She went into the pew behind them and knelt down.

  Miss Pink began to play softly on the organ. The Vaughans were just coming in. Alayne saw Meg’s eyes sweep the family already assembled. She saw her whisper the news of her presence to Maurice. He looked decorously across the aisle at her and smiled. Patience was plainly conscious of the new hat with long ribbons that Renny had brought her from London. Alayne now felt the approach of Ernest and her Aunt Harriet. Ernest’s clearing of his throat was scarcely audible yet so characteristic. There was a faint odor of Hoyt’s cologne emanating from Aunt Harriet. Yes — she was right — they were coming into the seat with her.

  Ernest whispered, “Is anything wrong with Nicholas?”

  “He’s just rather tired.”

  She saw the shadow on Ernest’s face. She knew he worried about his brother. He could not tolerate the thought that Nick might be failing. Aunt Harriet leaned across him to say: —

  “How nice it is to see you at church, dear” Alayne smiled in return but her smile was a little wry. She could not help remembering how earnest a Unitarian her aunt had been and how she had always held a gentle contempt for what she thought of as the less intellectual denominations. But Aunt Harriet had considered it a wifely duty to accept her husband’s religious faith. She could not expect, at his time of life, to change his views, but the gusto with which she accepted that faith was highly irritating to her niece. Aunt Harriet had in fact taken the little church, its Rector, and the Book of Common Prayer under her wing. She was President of the Women’s Auxiliary.

  Alayne remembered intellectual religious discussions between her father and Aunt Harriet. She wondered what her father would think if he could see his sister today.

  She heard Noah Binns’s boots squeak as he made his way to a back seat. Miss Pink began to play the Processional hymn. The voices of the choir rose. The chirping of the little birds outside the window near her was silenced. The round heads of the choirboys reached her side. But it was Ernest, Piers, Maurice, Meg, and Renny who led the singing. It was their nature to sing fast. It was Miss Pink’s nature to play slowly. Year in, year out, the duel between Miss Pink and the Whiteoaks went on, without either side losing the sense of their own entire rightness. The heavy notes of the organ clung like millstones round the necks of the family but without avail. The last syllable of the Amen came roundly from their throats before she had tackled the first. Midway between these opposing forces the helpless choir wavered, now hastening with the Whiteoaks, now dragging behind with Miss Pink. Mr. Fennel, the Rector, had long ago solved the problem for himself. He gave no heed to the organist, the choir, or the family, but sang to suit his own mood, in a particularly fine baritone. Now, with his open hymnal before him, his beard spread on his breast, he came at the end of the procession. Renny walked ahead of him, his eyes fixed on the stained-glass windows of the chancel which were dedicated to the memory of Captain Philip Whiteoak and his wife, Adeline.

  As Renny’s surplice touched Alayne’s shoulder she glanced swiftly into his face. How many billions of faces in the world, she thought, yet only one that had the power of making heaven or hell for her. Deeply as she loved her son he could never take his father’s place. Sexual love was stronger than maternity. Yet, knowing herself, she felt that this should not have been so. If she had not been uprooted from her own sphere, she thought, it would not have been so. But she would not have had her life otherwise.

  In the vestry, his head just having emerged through his surplice, Renny had been greeted by Mr. Fennel.

  “It’s good to have you back,” he had said. “I’ve heard that the trip was a great success.”

  “Yes, yes — I bought a grand horse.”

  “In Ireland, eh?”

  “Yes. In Ireland.”

  “How are Finch and Wakefield?”

  “Fine.”

  “You know what the Lessons are?”

  “Yes. Uncle Nicholas found them for me.”

  “Good. There goes the organ. Are you ready, boys?”

  The choirboys shuffled their feet and made their soap-shiny faces solemn. Renny poked one of them with his hymnbook.

  “You’re out of line,” he said.

  They passed through the door and began to move decorously down the aisle.

  Kneeling in the chancel, the smell of his freshly ironed surplice in his nostrils, the worn leather book in his hand, he thought how good it was to be at home again. Wherever he went, no matter how long he stayed, it was good to be home again. This was his place. He had a pity for men who had no fixed or definite place in life. In varying degrees he knew every soul under this roof. A stranger seldom came in at the door. From Noah Binns, whom he had always disliked, to Alayne whom he loved with passion, each one fitted into the scheme of things as the pieces of stained glass fitted into the windows. Each was needed to complete the design. He was conscious of his own dire deficiencies but felt, without humility, that he was needed too. Somehow he was the receptacle of what had once lived in his forefathers. He was tough-fibred and strong. That something he would guard and pass on to his son.

  He went to the lectern to read the first Lesson. He saw Alayne’s eyes on him. He knew she did not enjoy coming to church. She had come to be near him. They would walk back through the fields together. He cleared his throat and read: —

  “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straight-way forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”

  Alayne thought — “What grand words! I wish they might be shouted from the housetops in these days. I wonder what Renny thinks of them. Or does he think about the Lessons? He read better than usual. Today he seems almost perfect to me. If only I could go on feeling like this!” She gave her little ironic smile. One thing she liked about church. It was a good place for thinking in.

  The service was over before she realized it, she was so deep in thought. She had made no attempt to listen to the sermon. In a dream she rose at the end with the others, passed down the aisle and waited outside the door for Renny. She lifted her face to the sweetness of the breeze. The air inside the church had grown close. Not feeling unfriendly but merely aloof, she moved away from the family and walked slowly down the steep path toward the gate. She knew they would not be pleased at her doing this but she did not care. They all would be at Jalna for lunch. She was entitled to this privacy. She wanted to make sure that Renny and she would have the walk home together. She clung, with almost pathetic tenderness, to these first moments of isolation with him. In a strange way the feeling of her first love for him came back to her, its troubled and perilous straining toward their moments alone. She shunned every face she knew and walked out of the gate and down the road alone.

  He came running after her.

  “You are in a hurry!” he said.

  He gave her a swift look, conscious of some emotion in her deeper than she would reveal. He smiled down into her face.

  “I had to shake hands with everybody,” he said, “and they all seemed to know I’d bought Johnny the Bird.”

  “Darling,” she said, and caught his fingers in hers.

  They dallied on the way home, following the stream, looking for the first hepaticas. The sun came out hot. Alayne’s shoes were muddy. It was a long while since she had been so carefree and happy. She was glad that she had not stood in the way of his going to Ireland. “If anythi
ng happens to him,” she thought, “I can say that I did not stand in the way of his doing the things he most wanted to.”

  It was the first time she had ever thought of anything happening to him. He had seemed immune to illness and danger. Since their marriage he had had many accidents but had come through them so well that she had a sudden feeling of shame to remember how calmly she had taken the news of a bone broken in polo, cuts and bruises in his other activities. Suddenly, moving among the trees, he looked strangely vulnerable in his quickness and leanness. Why, a bullet, a splinter of shell, would kill or blind him as easily as any man. She knew that, if war came, he would join his old regiment. What if she should lose him or have him returned to her arms maimed?

  When they reached Jalna the family was there in full possession. Returning and finding them everywhere Alayne felt how slight was her hold on the place, compared to theirs. In truth she never had had any feeling of possession toward the old house. Like an alloy, which it could not absorb into its metal, it rejected her. Yet young Philip Whiteoak, who had not slept half a dozen nights under its roof, seemed as much a part of the place as Piers.

  Nicholas was rested, freshly shaved and eager for company. He and Paris had had a long talk and Nicholas had decided that the young man was as unlike his father as possible and a very lively companion. Everyone asked questions about Johnny the Bird, the Grand National, the house in Gayfere Street and the doings of Finch and Wakefield. Maurice and Meg both said they thought it was a good thing that Finch and Sarah had come together again. It did seem a pity that her fortune should be lost to the family.

  Paris Court had heard Jalna and its occupants so often described by his father, yet described as they were thirty years ago, that he had a strange dreamlike feeling, as though he had slept and woken to find figures in some familiar tale grown up or aged in the interval. What a letter he would write home! He pictured his father and mother laughing over it for weeks. The well-stocked stables, the crowded table, the abundant food, the sense of plenty, gave Paris the feeling that the Whiteoaks were indeed relatives to be cherished, to say nothing of the fact that he liked them for their own sakes. The portrait his father had given Renny was a delight to the family. Adeline, the child, was hung beside Adeline the young woman, and the living Adeline was stood beneath them for comparison and a deep satisfaction.