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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “How peaceful it is here,” said Wake. “You know, in some ways, I envy you living in such a prehistoric sort of place. You may read of upheavals and war but you can’t believe in them.”

  “I like it here,” said Christopher, puffing at his pipe. “It just suits me. I don’t think I shall ever want to live anywhere else.”

  “What would you feel if war came?”

  “Oh, I’d join up at once, but I should hate it,” he answered simply, and added — “Do you think there’s going to be war?”

  Always the same question, wherever you went! Always that look in the eyes, as though the questioner had a vain hope of reassurance.

  “Yes,” Wakefield said. “I think it’s coming but perhaps not very soon. I hope not soon.” He laughed and added, “I don’t want you to leave your lambs, or Molly and me our play.”

  “I don’t think it will come,” said Christopher tranquilly.

  Wakefield had a glimpse of Garda, laboring up the stairs, carrying a large tray. “Dinner for Papa,” he thought. He discovered that Gemmel’s room was off the parlor.

  Christopher said: “I expect she’d like to be with us.” He went into the house and returned carrying Gemmel on his back. She smiled mischievously over his shoulder at Wakefield. Christopher deposited her on the seat beside him. Soon they were joined by Molly and Garda. A slip of a moon had risen above the Abbey. Its grey stones looked ethereal now. It might float away at any moment like a cloud. The breeze was light and playful as though it mocked the austerity of the mountains. The boys and girls sat talking together like old friends. But Gemmel could not leave Christopher in peace. She teased him. She got his pipe from him and hid it behind her and seemed to expect admiration from Wake for these tricks. Molly spoke to her as though she were a child.

  After a while Christopher said — “Let’s sing, shall we?”

  “All right,” said Molly, “if Wake doesn’t mind.”

  “I’d love to hear you,” he said.

  “You must sing too.”

  Wake saw that Althea had come into the porch. She sat in the corner beside Christopher, half hidden by his broad shoulder.

  How they could sing! Their young voices filled the night air with silvery strength and sweetness. It was like the moonlight turned into song, Wake thought. He added his own good tenor to their voices. Molly exclaimed: —

  “It’s just what we needed! Isn’t it, Christopher?”

  “It’s splendid,” he said with satisfaction. “There’s nothing I like in the evening so well as singing.”

  They sang for an hour. Wakefield strained his ears to catch the separate sound of Althea’s voice. He did, and thought it was the best of all. He turned to smile at her. She put up her hand as though to shield her face and, after a moment, went into the house.

  A casement upstairs was thrown open and a man’s voice called out: —

  “If you’re going to keep up that row any longer, I wish you’d go into the mountains.”

  Dead silence fell in the porch. The casement closed.

  “Father is not very well today,” said Christopher. “Perhaps we’d better go to bed.”

  Wakefield realized that he was very tired. The little group dissolved but he had a moment alone with Molly.

  “I love your family,” he said.

  “I’m so glad. I never hoped you’d fit in so well. But then, you’re so adaptable — you’d fit in anywhere. You mustn’t mind Father’s speaking like that. He’ll be all right tomorrow. Probably very glad to see you.”

  “Shall we walk together on the mountain tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Good night, Wake.” She swayed almost imperceptibly toward him. He put his arm about her and laid his cheek against hers. He would not kiss her. No — that precious moment was to be kept for the mountaintop.

  Mr. Griffith’s voice came from above. “If they’ve stopped that row down there you may open my window.”

  “Don’t mind,” said Molly. “He isn’t really like that. He loves singing himself. He has a fine bass voice.”

  “Has he?” said Wakefield lamely.

  Christopher reappeared in the doorway.

  “I’ve been listening to the news,” he said. “I don’t at all like the sound of it.”

  Molly and Wake gave each other an anxious, yet shamefaced, look. They were thinking about their play. They couldn’t help it.

  XVII

  IN THE RUINED ABBY

  ALL THE BEAUTY of the night sky foretold nothing. The next day the rain came down relentlessly. It drummed on the roof like an advancing army. It ran down the mountainsides in rivulets and drew a curtain between the house and the ruin of the Abbey. Christopher and the shepherd, attending a sick sheep, came in dripping. Molly was bitter in her disappointment.

  “It will do this for a week, you’ll see!” she said, in despair. “We might as well have stayed in London.”

  “It will clear,” said her brother. “This can’t last more than a day or two.”

  “You’re always so horribly optimistic, you don’t cheer me at all. You make me feel worse.”

  He looked at her ruefully. “Anyhow,” he said, “you will have seen us.”

  “I know, and that is worth everything to me, but here is Wake longing to explore the mountain.”

  “Here am I,” said Wake, “completely happy.”

  But he wondered when he would have Molly to himself. Garda brought out her collection of butterflies to show him. Christopher rarely had another young man to talk to and he wanted Wakefield’s views on a number of subjects. When Wake slipped into the chill parlor, hoping Molly would follow, he found Gemmel peering up at him from beside the hearth. She was knitting.

  “I’m beginning a pullover for your birthday,” she said. “Molly tells me it is this month. Come here, please, and let me see how the colour suits you.”

  He went and sat down beside her. She held the golden-brown wool next his cheek.

  “Lovely!” she exclaimed.

  “It’s frightfully kind of you.”

  “Do you like me?”

  “How can I help — when you’re so kind?”

  “I mean do you like me for myself?”

  “Of course.”

  “How much?”

  “As much as that.” He held up his hands.

  She pushed her head between them. Her hair was thick and lively and there was a look in her eyes.

  “Well — are you going to?” she asked.

  He kissed her lightly, quickly.

  “I’ve won!” she exclaimed, laughing.

  “What?”

  “Garda and I had a bet as to which of us could get you to kiss her first. She’d no luck with the butterflies. She told me so.”

  Wake laughed. “She didn’t give me time.”

  “Neither did I.”

  She heard her father’s heavy step on the stair. She began to talk fast about her knitting.

  Mr. Griffith came into the room slowly. He held out his hand with a genial smile.

  “I’m so sorry I was laid up yesterday,” he said. “I hope the children are making you comfortable.”

  “I’m teaching him to knit,” said Gemmel.

  Her father smiled down at her indulgently. He was very different from what Wake had expected. He had pictured him as somewhat battered and disgruntled but here was a man well-groomed, well pleased, apparently, with himself and his situation. He was blond, stoutish, and tall. He had a smile that took one into his confidence, a voice that made his most trivial remark telling. No wonder his family stood a good deal from him. He added pleasantly: —

  “I heard your singing last night and wished I could take part in it. I’m very fond of a good song.”

  It was as though a middle-aged London man-about-town had remarked how much he enjoyed a good game of croquet.

  He asked a number of questions about Canada and said he had often considered taking his family out there. The morning passed in talk. In the afternoon it was the same. Mr. Griffith
dominated the scene. They were like children beside him. He arranged amusements like a bachelor uncle entertaining a rather awkward lot of nieces and nephews. He made Christopher sing. He made Garda, who twice broke down doing it, play a piece on the piano. He made Gemmel recite Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” which she did so well that Wake felt a new pang at her helplessness. That girl, he thought, might have somehow made a name for herself. Then Mr. Griffith himself recited and you could see where Gemmel had her talent. Obviously he was proud of his children and seldom had a chance for showing them off. He tried to persuade Althea to display her sketches but she fled from the room. She never spoke.

  The rain came pouring down till evening. The rivulets swelled to rushing streams down the mountainside. The sheep, with the lambs trotting beside them, went into the Abbey and took possession there. The sky rested, in solid greyness, on the mountaintops. But at evening it broke into swinging purple clouds as a strong wind whistled inland from the West. The rain lessened, blew slantwise, then ceased. A clear greenish blue fringed the rims of the clouds. Molly and Wake put on windbreakers and went out. For the first time they were really alone together.

  The air lay like a cool hand on their hot cheeks. They wanted to run up the steep stony path. They were aimlessly wild like birds suddenly set free. They ran here and there, picking up odd stones, finding mountain flowers that, for all their fragility, had captured the wonder of the mountains in their tiny staring faces.

  The Abbey rose pale and rain-washed before them. The sunlight, piercing the purple of the clouds, flickered over the delicately wrought pillars. The stone groinings supported little more than the stormy sky. Here one of the bosses had fallen from a column and lay like a broken lily, there a pilaster was topped by a bird’s nest built of mountain grass. The sheep had discovered that the rain had ceased and they came shouldering each other through the Abbot’s own door, all but one who lay with her lamb beside her on the fallen altar. She lay chewing her cud and blinking coldly at Wake and Molly through her white eyelashes.

  “It’s too overwhelmingly picturesque,” thought Wake. “I can’t say what I want to here. I wish I’d said it in London.”

  Molly looked the sheep over with an appraising eye. “They’re a nice lot,” she said. “Christopher is pleased with them.”

  “Yes. They’re a lovely flock. It’s all lovely and strange and quite unbelievable. Shall we really be back with Ninian Fox next week? I can’t imagine it. I almost wish we could stay here forever.”

  “You’d tire of it.”

  “You forget that I lived in a monastery for a year.”

  “So you did! But I had sooner be working in London.”

  “Well — I want to be wherever you are.”

  Something in his voice made her suddenly aware of herself physically. She moved, as though for more space, to one of the windows and leaned out. He followed her.

  “Look,” she said, “it’s going to be a lovely evening.”

  Mountains and valleys unrolled themselves in a luminous scroll. Some, not before seen, showed themselves in the golden distance. The clouds had gathered themselves into purple immensity and were sweeping toward England. In the clear pale sky above, a skylark was pouring down his song unseen.

  Wakefield’s arm touched Molly’s and a fire passed through them. He felt his breast swell. He felt that he could draw the mountains, the valleys, the very blades of grass into his heart and enfold them there. He felt a constriction in his throat. Moments passed before he could speak, but the skylark spoke for him, pouring out his love.

  Then he drew her toward him. All he had meant to say was suddenly worthless. The simplest words were enough.

  “Molly — I love you — will you marry me?”

  “Yes,” she answered, almost in a whisper. “Yes, Wake, I will.”

  XVIII

  BACK IN TOWN

  THE PLAY HAD reopened with a gala night in its new theatre. The press notices had been even better than at the first. It was established. It was the thing to see. It became fashionable. The younger members of the company began to gather their courage to ask for a rise in salary. Molly, who had always been free to accept any invitation, now had more than she could cope with even by going to two or three parties each night.

  Wakefield seldom rose before noon and often did not come back to Gayfere Street till dawn. Finch and Sarah saw little of him. But they were very proud of him and took some acquaintance to see the play each week. Henriette carried his breakfast to him in almost trembling eagerness for the latest gossip of play or players. She treasured every newspaper cutting connected with them and pasted them in an exercise book. Photographs from scenes in the play were revered almost as sacred pictures in her room.

  Wakefield was deeply happy in his engagement. He did not buy a ring for Molly. He wanted her to wear the ring left him by his grandmother for his intended wife. He wrote letters to each separate member of the family to tell of his engagement and in return received their congratulations, advice, and warnings. Piers wrote — “I hope you’ll be happy in your engagement while it lasts.”

  Now the visit to Wales seemed like a dream except for that moment when he had told Molly he loved her. It stood out like a torch against a misty background. Even when Molly read him letters from home, the members of her family were blurred in his mind like figures in a dream. But he wanted to see them again. He felt tender toward them. They seemed remote yet curiously vulnerable. After his introduction to Althea she had not once spoken to him. Yet he had seen that she wanted to. He had found her book of sketches on a table in the parlor and he was sure she had left them there for him to see. They were curious, wild and harsh, utterly alien, it seemed to him, to the delicate, elusive girl. He had tried to talk to her of her pictures but she had almost run from the room and the sketchbook had disappeared. One day Molly said to him: —

  “You made a great hit with my family. They all like you — especially Althea. I wish you could have heard the things she said about you. I really became jealous.” She laughed and put her arm about his shoulders.

  Wakefield did not tell her that he had kissed Gemmel.

  One hot July day, at the end of a matinee, Ninian Fox overtook Molly and Wake as they were leaving the theatre. He was very excited.

  “There’s a New York manager here,” he said. “He has seen the play and likes it tremendously. He likes you two very much and wants to meet you. Wouldn’t it be splendid if he’d buy it for New York?” He slipped his arm into theirs and walked between them, with a secret air, beaming at them like an old friend.

  Molly felt rigid at his touch. It was like him to be decent to her now, when someone else had discovered her value!

  He propelled them back to his office. They were introduced to Mr. Elias, who was short and smiling and had fleshy aquiline features.

  “I do like this play,” he said, when they were seated. “And I’m going to write to New York about it at once. I like you young people very much. Mr. Fox says he thinks he could replace you if I took you over there. Would you like to come?”

  They would like it so much that they were almost speechless but they showed proper caution in considering the suggestion. Mr. Elias also wanted Phyllis Rhys and the leading man. The other parts could be filled by actors in New York. Mr. Elias seemed to love to make plans. He talked as though the play had already made a fortune in New York. He had Ninian Fox completely baffled, for he had been prepared to handle Mr. Elias with great shrewdness. It seemed unnecessary. Mr. Elias was ready to pour himself out and, with his good will, the gold of the New World. But when it came to the contract he was more than a match for them all put together. The salaries were not so large as the actors had expected. Ninian Fox, after struggling violently, had to take a smaller percentage than he considered his due. The author came out worst of all.

  But things were settled before long and, early in August, they sailed from Southampton. Wakefield and Molly were gloriously happy. They had not a wi
sh unfulfilled. The very sea was kind to them. The voyage was all too short. The morning came when the skyscrapers of New York towered before them in torrid heat. Their foundations seemed to have dissolved in heat, left them suspended in burning sunlight. The ship, through which the salt wind had raced for a week, was sultry and swarming with people. The four members of the company collected in the lounge where aliens were gathered. They waited perspiring, passports in hand.

  Mr. Elias came to meet them. He was in a state of heat that surpassed even their own, but it did not trouble him at all. He was cheery and helpful. He gave each one an oily handshake. After his arrival everything seemed miraculously speeded-up. Their passports were examined: they were on the docks. Their luggage was examined; they were in the taxicabs. Through shabby streets, where newspapers were blown about and dirty children played on the frying-pan pavements, they emerged on to clean streets with soaring skyscrapers to shade them. People in light-coloured clothes thronged the pavements. Wake and Molly looked on each as a potential part of an audience.

  Their hotel was cool but breathless, yet, when they opened their windows, the heat and dust poured in.

  Phyllis Rhys had a sitting room. She was known in New York and already it was filled with bouquets of flowers from her friends and from Mr. Elias. He also had sent a dozen roses for Molly. Wakefield ordered iced drinks for everyone but when he saw the bill he was chilled without the ice. The leading man had got newspapers. There was one apiece. They stood staring at the huge headlines. War, which had receded in the salt spaces of the ocean, now pressed in on them.

  “Is the threat worse,” asked Wake, “or is it just these papers?”