Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 2

  “He’s got a birthday coming. Young Finch, I mean.” And he added, looking straight into the fire—“He’ll be twenty-

  Nicholas pressed the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with his finger. He made little sucking noises, though it was not yet lighted. Ernest said eagerly:

  “Yes, yes—by George, I’d forgotten! How the time goes! Of course, he’ll be twenty-one. Hmph... yes... It seems only the other day when he was a little boy. Not so very long ago since he was born.”

  “Born with a caul,” mumbled his brother. “Lucky young devil!”

  “That’s only a preventative against drowning,” said Ernest nervously.

  “Not a bit of it. It’s luck all round. Good Lord, he’s had luck, hasn’t he?”

  Nicholas made no effort to keep the heaviness out of his voice, no pretence of raising his head above the long wave of disappointment that, ever since the reading of his mother’s will, had submerged him at intervals. He had no need to be reminded of the date of Finch’s coming of age. It stood out as the day of sunny fulfilment for the boy, through the darkness of his own eclipse. “He’ll be coming into his money, eh?”

  Ernest thought—“It’s up to me to be cheerful about this birthday. We must not seem bitter or grudging. But Nick’s so selfish. He acts just as though he had been perfectly sure of the money when really Mamma was more likely to leave it to me. Or even Renny. I was quite prepared to hear that it would be Renny’s.”

  He said—“There must certainly be some sort of celebration. A party—or treat of some kind for Finch.” He still thought of Finch as a schoolboy.

  “I should say,” said Nicholas, “that the hundred thousand itself is treat enough.”

  Renny broke in, ignoring the last remark. “Yes. That’s what I’ve been thinking, Uncle Ernie. We ought to give him a dinner—just the family, and one or two friends of his. You know—” he knotted his reddish brows in the effort to express the subtle convictions of his mind.

  “I know,” interrupted Nicholas, “that Piers had no party when he came of age.”

  “He was up North on a canoeing trip at the time.”

  “Nor Eden!”

  “He’d just been suspended for six weeks from ’Varsity. Likely I’d give him a party! There were great doings when Meggie and I were twenty-one.”

  “Meggie was the only daughter, and you were the eldest son and heir to Jalna.”

  “Uncle Nick, do you seriously mean that you don’t want any notice taken of the boy’s birthday?”

  “N—no. But—why pretend to rejoice over his coming into what all three of us had hopes of inheriting—more or less?”

  “Then, I suppose, if I had got Gran’s money, you’d have—”

  “No, I shouldn’t. I’d have been comparatively satisfied— if either you or Ernest...”

  Ernest spoke, with a tremor of excitement in his voice. “Now, I’m quite with Renny in this. I think we should do something really nice for Finch. We were, all of us, pretty hard on him when we heard that he’d got everything.”

  Renny jerked out—“I wasn’t!”

  Nicholas muttered—“I don’t remember your congratulating him.”

  “I could scarcely do that with the rest of the family on its hindlegs tearing its hair!”

  After the impact of his voice—metallic when raised—there was a space of silence through which came hesitatingly from below the sound of the piano. The three were mentally reconstructing the hour when the family on “hindlegs” had created a memorable scene with the poor piano player as its centre.

  Darkness had fallen outside. The invisible activities of the snowstorm were still further transforming the landscape, obliterating, softening; producing hive-shaped mounds where shrubs had been; pinnacles where had been posts; decorating with ingenious grotesqueness every projection of the house. So wasteful was the storm of its energy, its material, that, after changing the aspect of a tree by the delicate depositing of flake upon flake on each minute twig, or clinging cone, it would fling the entire erection into glittering particles with one contemptuous blast, then begin again to express the unhampered fantasy of its pattern.

  Wragge, a white-faced, small-nosed Cockney, with a jutting chin and impudent mouth, came in carrying a lighted lamp. The lamplight fell on the shiny sleeves and shoulders of the black coat he always wore after his morning’s work was done. “Rags,” as he was called by Renny and his brothers, half affectionately, half in derision, had been brought to Canada with Renny after the War, and had married, almost on the day of arrival, another Londoner, a cook of no mean powers but with a taste for spirits and heated controversy. The pair were so firmly established at Jalna as cook and house-parlourman that the disapproval of the uncles and the genuine dislike of Renny’s wife had no power to undermine their position. Wragge had been Renny’s batman when he had been an officer in the Buffs, and a bond, seldom made manifest except in furtive, almost conspiratory glances between them, existed. Renny liked Mrs. Wragge’s cooking, he liked her red aggressive face and stout body presiding in the brick-floored basement kitchen. He liked Wragge. And Wragge had the cocksure attitude of the unscrupulous servant who knows that his situation is secure.

  He placed the lamp on the table and drew the curtains. He drew them as though he were scarcely less than the Almighty drawing the curtains of evening against the closing day. His nerves, sensitive to the moods of the family, were conscious of a feeling of dissension. He enjoyed dissension among the members of the family. Even when he felt it, rather than heard it expressed in resonant tones, it was exhilarating to him. Mrs. Wragge could always tell by the jauntiness of his descent into the basement that there were “doings upstairs.” She would raise her face from peering into a saucepan and demand—“Well, and wot’s up now?”

  He lingered, arranging the folds of the curtains, hoping they would let themselves go a little. He noted the sombre look of Nicholas, the worried pucker on Ernest’s brow, the half grin that denoted temper in the master of Jalna. But silence prevailed.

  “Shall I mend the fire a bit, sir?” he asked, looking at Renny. He spoke in a hushed tone, and the fact that the question he asked of Renny concerned Ernest’s own fire was intensely irritating to Ernest. He answered sharply:

  “No, don’t touch it.”

  Rags continued to gaze, almost beseechingly, into Renny’s face. “It’s getting very low, sir.”

  It was indeed. A chill was creeping across the room.

  Renny said—“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to put more coals on, but, of course, if you don’t want them, Uncle Ernest—”

  Ernest answered only by looking down his nose and making the gentle line of his mouth firmer. Wragge turned away and picked up the tea tray. He did not close the door behind him, but made way for two people who were just coming into the room. These were Piers and his little son Maurice, who rode on his shoulder. Mooey, as they called him, shouted, as he reached the fireside group:

  “I’ve got a norse to wide! I’ve got a nish ’Orsie!”

  “Good boy,” said Nicholas, taking a little dangling foot in his hand.

  Ernest remarked: “He does not speak as nicely as Wakefield did at his age. Wakefield always spoke beautifully.”

  “Because he’s always been such a conceited little devil,” said Piers, setting his small son on the arm of Nicholas’s chair, from where he scrambled on to his great-uncle’s big relaxed body, repeating—“I’ve got a norsie to wide!”

  “Now, now,” admonished Piers, “less noise.” Piers, like Renny, showed the vigour of an outdoor life, but his skin had the fresh fairness of a boy’s, and his full lips had a boyish curve, half sweet, half stubborn, that could harden into a line of cruel contempt without changing the expression of his bold blue eyes.

  “I wish,” said Ernest, “that you would shut the door, Piers. Between the noise of the piano and the noise of the child, and the draught from the stairway and the fire being almost out, I feel my cold getting worse.”

  Corne
ring him, Renny observed—“I thought you said the cold was only threatening.”

  Ernest flushed slightly. “It was only threatening. Now it’s here.” He took out a large white silk handkerchief and blew his nose with an aggressive toot.

  The piano below broke into a tempestuous Hungarian dance.

  “I’ll shut the door,” cried Mooey, and he scrambled down, ran across the room and pushed the door so that it closed with a bang.

  Ernest was fond of his nephew, he was fond of his little grand-nephew, but he wished they had not chosen this particular evening for congregating in his room. He thought rather resentfully of the number of afternoons when he sat alone, unless he went down to the drawing-room. When even Nicholas did not come to keep him company. Now, just when he was feeling rather off colour, they were crowding in. If one came others were always sure to follow. Then there was this troubling question of Finch’s birthday party. He did not see any sense in it. He, like Nicholas, thought that a fortune of one hundred thousand dollars was treat enough in itself. Considering, of course, the way the lad had come by it. Mamma’s leaving it to him had been such a surprise, such a shock, that to make Finch’s coming of age a moment for festivity seemed too cruel. Yet, there was another way of looking at it. Might not the excitement of a party help to drown the bitterness of the moment for Finch’s elders, as the clamour of a wake smothers the sorrow of the bereaved? Might they not well join their hands and sing—“For he’s a jolly good fellow—-,” even while in their hearts they mourned—“Oh, sorrow, sorrow the day”? He grasped the nettle, as was his wont when driven to it, and, raising his eyes to Piers’s face, said calmly:

  “We’ve just been discussing some sort of celebration for Finch’s coming of age. What would you suggest?”

  Renny, with concentrated gaze, began to poke the fire. Nicholas turned his massive head and regarded his brother sardonically. So that was the way old Ernest was going to save his face! Well, let them see what Piers would say about it. Piers was a tough-fibred fellow, no damned sentiment about him.

  Piers stood stock-still, his hands pushed into his pockets, considering the full import of the question. His mind moved slowly round it, as a horse might move round a suspicious object suddenly placed in his paddock. He knew by the way Renny beat the smouldering lump of coal in the grate, by the hunch of Uncle Nicholas’s shoulders, by the nervously defiant expression of Ernest, that the discussion had not been one of purely affectionate interest in the event. How could it be? He himself, though he had never said so, had had keen hopes of inheriting Gran’s fortune. She had said to him time and again—“You’re the only one of the lot who looks like my Philip. You’ve got his eyes, and his mouth, and his back, and his legs. I’d like to see you get on in the world!” God, that had been something to go on, hadn’t it? He had lain awake of nights thinking how much he looked like his grandfather. He had stood below the oil-painting of him, in the uniform of a British captain, that hung in the dining room, trying to look more like him. He had stood under the portrait pursing his lips, denting his brow, at the same time making his eyes more prominent, till his face felt rigid and he half expected the old boy to wink at him as though they had a secret in common. But it had not worked, it had not worked. Finch, with his lanky form, his hollow cheeks, and the limp lock hanging on his forehead, had, somehow or other, wormed his way into Gran’s affections, had got the money. How he had got it was a question now dead, and why dally with the corpse? The living fact was Finch’s birthday, Finch’s fortune dropping like ripe fruit on that birthday, into the midst of the family.

  He said, in his voice that had a ring of heartiness which made the labourers of the farm he rented from Renny put up with a good deal of arrogance from him:

  “I think it’s a very good idea. As for the sort of thing, anything at all will please Finch. Just the idea of goodwill, and all that—”

  Renny was glad of this unexpected support from Uncle Ernest and Piers. He would have given the dinner party in any case, but he preferred that the guests should not be unwilling. (Even Nicholas gave a grunt that might be taken for acquiescence.) He thought—“We’re closer together than anyone knows, far closer than anyone could know.”

  Piers swayed a little, hands in pockets, and went on— “We gave Finch rather a nasty time after the will was read. We were pretty rough on him. He went out and tried to drown himself, didn’t he?”

  “No need to drag that up,” said Renny.

  Ernest clenched his hand and examined the whiteness of his knuckles. Nicholas pressed Mooey to him. Suddenly flames sprang from the fire, filling the room with warm colour, turning Sasha, curled on the hearthrug, into a glowing golden ball.

  “Well, there’s just this need,” returned Piers, ’it reminds us that it’s up to us to make him feel that that sort of thing’s all done with. Make him feel that he’s forgiven—”

  Renny interrupted— “There isn’t anything to forgive.”

  “Perhaps not. But you know what I mean. I know that all this year and a half—or whatever the time is—he’s felt like a sneak—”

  “And wasn’t he a sneak?” demanded Nicholas.

  “Yes. Probably he was. But he’s got the money. And he’s as weak as water. If his family don’t stand by him, there’ll be lots of other people who’ll make up to him. Mark my words, he’ll go through Gran’s money in no time. And do no good to anyone—not even himself.”

  “A Daniel come to judgment,” murmured Nicholas.

  Piers smiled imperturbably. “You may be as sarcastic as you like, Uncle Nick, but you know I’m talking sound sense. Finch is bound to be a dud when it comes to handling money.”

  He broke off rather suddenly, halted by the expressions of the three others who could see the door to which he had his back. The door had been hesitatingly opened and Finch’s long face had looked around it.

  “Hello, Unca Finch!” cried Mooey. “I’m here!”

  “Come in, come in, and shut the door!” said Ernest almost too heartily.

  “We were just talking about you,” said Piers cheerfully.

  Finch stood with his hand on the doorknob, a sheepish grin making his face less attractive than usual. “I—I guess I won’t come in then.”

  “Shall I tell him what we were saying?” Piers asked of Renny.

  Renny shook his head. “Time enough for that.” He moved along the settee to make room for Finch.

  Finch dropped beside him, drew up one bony knee and clasped it in his long shapely hands. “Well,” he said, “it’s been an awful day/hasn’t it? Lucky for me it’s Saturday, so I haven’t to go into ’Varsity. How is your cold, Uncle Ernest?”

  “Getting steadily worse.” Again he tooted his nose into his silk handkerchief.

  “It has threatened, arrived, and grown steadily worse, all in the space of an hour,” said Nicholas, in a soft voice.

  “I’ve got one too,” said Finch, and he coughed without restraint.

  “You shouldn’t have been hanging about the stables this afternoon,” said Renny.

  “I got fed up with the house. Been in all day. Swotting.”

  He was devoured by curiosity to know what they had been saying about him. He was sure they often talked of him. He had an uneasy and morbid sense of importance. He wished they would begin again. And yet he shrank, definitely, and quiveringly, from being the centre of discussion. He was like a convert to Catholicism who dreads the confessional yet yearns for it all too frequently.

  Renny was conscious of Finch’s unease. Through their bodies, in contact on the settee, there passed a communion instinctive as the passage of a bird by night. As though to give the boy confidence, his elder pressed closer against him, then, lest that should seem like a caress, he turned to chaffing.

  “You should have seen this fellow’s face!” he exclaimed. “He appeared in the door of Cora’s stall just as she was dropping her foal. He was absolutely goggle-eyed. You’d have thought he’d been born only yesterday himself, he looked so sh
ocked.”

  “Look here,” cried Finch hotly, “you know, I always keep away from those things. I didn’t know what was going on till I got there. I—it’s just that I don’t care about seeing—”

  “Of course, you don’t,” comforted Renny. “And you sha’n’t! We’ll not let you be frightened again.”

  “Oh, hell, I wasn’t frightened! It was only so beastly— coming on it all so suddenly.”

  Piers observed—“You see, he had thought all along that colts were brought into the world like babies. He believed that the vet brought them in his Ford, with their manes all crimped and their tails tied up with ribbon, and a little celluloid bit in their mouths in place of a comforter?”

  Finch joined, in spite of himself, in the burst of laughter at his expense.

  Mooey sat up and looked from one strongly marked laughing face to another. He declared, solemnly—

  “Oh, hell, I’m not f’ightened!”

  His father stared at him. “What’s that you said?”

  “I said—” he put his hands across his eyes and peeped between his fingers.

  “Well, don’t say it again!

  “He should not be sworn before,” remarked Ernest.

  “Whose boy are you?” asked Nicholas, bouncing him.

  “Yours!” shouted Mooey, reaching for Sasha’s tail.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” admonished Ernest. “If you hurt the kitty, out you go!”

  Renny had been reflecting joyously on Cora’s safe delivery, on her marvellous intelligence. He said, raising his voice to drown out the others:

  “I wish you could have heard her trying to tell me all about it. It was all over, and I’d been to the office for some tea. I thought I’d look in to see how she was getting on before I came to the house. The vet and Wright were with her. Everything was nice and tidy. She’d got clean straw and she was nuzzling the foal. But the moment she heard my step she lifted her head. She gave me a look. Well—you can talk about the looks in women’s eyes, but I’ve never seen a look like that in the eyes of any woman I’ve ever known. They simply beamed. And she pricked her ears and whinnied to me—’Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho’—like that!” Softly and with scrupulous understanding he imitated the maternal whinny.