Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 4

  Her eyes met his with a commanding look, saying—“Go no farther,” but her lower lip quivered, saying—“Go as far as you like.”

  He sat down on the side of the bed and drew her on to his knee. He hid his face against her neck. She would have relaxed in his arms, but she remembered the new embroidered bedspread and sprang up. She took him by the lapels of his coat and gave him a little tug.

  “You must not sit there!” she exclaimed. “You are crushing it dreadfully.”

  He got to his feet and looked on ruefully while she stroked the heavy silk. He always admired the grace of her wrists when she performed any quick and capable act with her hands. She had good hands on the rein too. That was one of the things that had attracted him to her.

  She straightened herself and looked at him with a half-tender, half-reproving wrinkling of the nose. “Darling, I’m sorry! But I really can’t let you sit there... And, don’t you think you had better change your things? You smell... quite, quite a little of the stable.”

  He gave a noisy sniff at himself. “Do I? But 1 always do. It’s a part of me. Do you mind so much?”

  “This time there’s a smell of disinfectant mixed with it.”

  “I scrubbed my hands in the office.”

  “Oh, my dear! Why will you do that? Icy water and a coarse towel! No wonder your hands look scraped!” She took one in hers and examined it. “And such shapely hands, too!”

  “Well,” he spoke with resignation, “if I must, I must! Come along with me while I do it.”

  As they went toward his room she remembered their first day at home after the return from their honeymoon. They had gone over the house, linked together, seeing it in the new light of their union. Each room they had entered had thrust forward its crowd of old memories to greet them. “Here we are!” memories had cried in the drawing-room; and there was Grandmother at her game of backgammon, her purple velvet tea gown rich in the firelight, her rings flashing on her strong old hands. There were family gatherings, family bickerings, and last, Grandmother, nobly extended in her coffin, with Uncle Ernest weeping at her feet. “Here we are!” memories had cried in the sitting-room; and there was Eden, pale and subdued, lying on the sofa, as he had looked when they had brought him home ill from New York. And again, there was the scene of the reading of the will, one not to be dwelt on. She had not been present at that scene, but she had heard about it and she knew it would be long before the room would surrender the memory of it. Memories had shouted—“Here we are”—in the dining room. Never, never could she change the dining room. She felt as impotent before it, its massive furniture, its heavy curtains, its family portraits, as a querulous mouse might feel nibbling at the base of a colossal cheese. There, was and always would be, the stronghold of the Whiteoak tradition. There, was and always would be, the shade of old Adeline vexed by any delay of the dinner, most forward of all in the sending back of her plate for renewals of food, her fiery brown eyes under their rust-red brows gleaming with satisfaction. There, were the unconquerable memories of heavy meals, eaten with all the more gusto because of dissension. And in old Adeline’s bedroom across the hall, where her parrot Boney still perched on the headboard of her painted bed, feeding on his memories of her, Renny had said, hesitatingly—“I have sometimes thought I should like to sleep here. She left me the bed in her will, you know. God, what extraordinary dreams one might have!”

  Upstairs, from every bedroom, memories had crowded out to them. They had begun their new life hampered by far too many memories. They had passed the room that had been hers and Eden’s, with averted eyes, and had gone with relief to the open door of Renny’s room. Looking about she had wondered how she would ever make herself at home in it, what could be done to ameliorate the uncompromising masculinity of it. Luckily it was large and airy. Two new walnut beds with straight lines there must be to take the place of the ugly light oak bed that sagged in the middle from his weight. Those hideous curtains that must surely have been his sister’s choice, and that he usually kept tied in knots that they might not obscure the air and light, must give place to soft-toned casement-cloth, of mauve perhaps—no, not of mauve. Mauve would fade from the very atmosphere there before the sun had touched it. Mulberry would be better, or green... And the wallpaper... And the pictures on the wallpaper...

  He had broken in on her thoughts by saying in a somewhat constrained voice:

  “I wonder if you would mind very much taking Meggie’s room for yourself. It’s next door, and it would leave me free to look after Wake. He has always slept with me, you know.”

  She had been startled, even angered by the request. Yet withal a subtle sense of relief had entered into her feelings after the first moment. The idea of a retreat of her own, a harbour for her tastes and her reserves, had not been unpleasant. But to give up the shelter, the provocation of his presence... even more, to think that he was suggesting, almost laconically suggesting, the giving up of her presence in his room. After what they had been to each other for three months! After all he had confessed to her of his fevered longings for her when she had been in that house as Eden’s wife! Had his longings developed into no desire for sweet companionship?

  “Well?” he had asked, with a sidelong look at her.

  Something stubborn in her made her say:

  “I think Wakefield would be much better sleeping alone. You must often disturb him coming in late. And your habit of smoking while you undress.”

  “I don’t disturb him nearly as often as he disturbs me.”

  “All children—especially delicate ones—are better sleeping alone.”

  “Not Wake. Not with his nerves and heart!”

  “It’s quite all right, Renny, but—why do you only tell me now?” She had felt both irritation and mortification, unhappy feelings that he always had had, and always would have, the power to rouse in her, by a tone in his voice, by his silence.

  “I didn’t want to.” He had spoken like a wayward child, and yet with a taciturnity that put him out of her reach.

  That was all over now, but the recollection of it often returned to her, for it had seemed to show her quite definitely that her coming could change nothing of Jalna, that Renny had taken possession of her life, but that she could never do more than enter into his as a fresh stream into the salt sea.

  Now, as they went together to his room, they passed Wakefield, still leaning against the banister in an attitude of dejection. He kept his eyes averted from them, and Renny did not glance at him. Alayne was conscious of the child’s jealousy of her and she suspected that Renny also was conscious of it. She had a feeling that Wakefield grudged her the freedom of Renny’s room, that he would have liked to give her such a forbidding look as she had given him, even reduce her to the condition of lolling disconsolately against the banister.

  She closed the door with decision. Renny sat down and began to unlace his boots, the metal tips of the laces making small hurried sounds and, at last, the heavy soles two distinct thuds on the floor. She liked to watch him doing things, however commonplace. He was a delight to her and she wanted him all for her own, in tenderness, and in completeness. She said:

  “Why can’t we see more of each other, alone? I was for two hours this afternoon in the drawing-room! I hoped you would come.”

  Eagerly he began to explain, but she stopped him. “Oh, I know about the colt. It was beautiful having it come along so well. But there were others there. Surely you didn’t have to stay with her all the time.”

  He looked about, with a troubled expression, for his shoes, as though, once in them, he would be impervious to her onslaught. She continued, love and peevishness making her voice tremble:

  “You may not believe it, but I’m lonely sometimes. When I think of our honeymoon in England—travelling about—the voyage home—it all seems so lovely! And now you’re so absorbed by things!” She sat down on the side of the bed with a disconsolate look. “And it isn’t as though you were like many American husbands, absorbed by big
enterprises that demand concentration—”

  She was stopped by the outraged expression of his face. Egotism, hurt pride flamed there. She had thought his lean face could be no more red, but it was more red. And, deep in his eyes, was a look of sorrow.

  “But—but—” he expostulated, “can’t you understand?”

  “No, I can’t,” she answered relentlessly. “Why, I really believe that if I were going to have a baby you wouldn’t make a bit more fuss!”

  “You’re jealous!” he exclaimed. “Jealous of a mare! I never heard of such a thing.”

  Her womanhood was submerged by a desire to be petted. She said, with the whining intonation of a five-year-old—“I don’t care. It’s perfectly true! If I were having a baby this minute you couldn’t do anything more for me than you did for her!”

  “Yes, I could! I’d take to the woods, blizzard and all, and never come out again until it was all over!”

  He came to her and sat down beside her on the bed.

  “Do you know,” he said, drawing her against him, “that for a sensible woman, an intellectual, almost high-brow woman, you can be sillier than any woman I’ve ever known.”

  She knew that what he said was true. She knew that he was both surprised and amused by her silliness, but she had worked herself up into this state and she did not care. She pressed closer to him pushing her shoulder under his arm. The room was grey and cold. He disengaged one hand and extracted a cigarette from his case. He lighted it, throwing the match on the floor. The smoke curled about their heads, fragrant in their nostrils. They held each other close, rocking together gently in the twilight. He said:

  “Isn’t it nice that there’s one floor we can throw matches on, and one bedspread we can rumple?”

  Downstairs in the drawing-room Pheasant waited for Piers to bring young Maurice to her. It was time the child was put to bed, but she was in no hurry to leave the pleasant warmth of the fire. She sat very upright on a beaded ottoman before it, thinking of Alayne and Renny. Were they happy? Was their marriage going to be a success? Speculation on the relations between men and women was the frequent subject of her thoughts. She had known too much of the suspense, the cruelty of these relations in her short life. There had been no mother to throw a protective shadow between her and her father. The two had been alone together—he unhappy, thwarted, his affection for her, when it was not negligible, half a sneer. Hers, for him, half deprecating, half defiant. He had let her run wild... and she had run wild—straight into her marriage with Piers. They too had had their own troubles. And when she had time to spare from their affairs, she had watched the complications hinging on the diverse personalities about her. She felt herself old in the wisdom of life. She felt maternal towards Alayne, who was ten years her senior, even though Alayne had been married and divorced, and was married again. And to Whiteoaks each time! Ah, there lay the trouble! The Whiteoaks! Alayne never would—never could understand them. She was an alien, not so much in country as in soul. Pheasant had been brought up next door to the family at Jalna. She had been familiar with Renny since she could toddle. She wondered sagaciously if she might not come to the point one day of giving some good advice to Alayne. She laid her knitting in her lap, and her eyes became large as she pictured herself giving it. But still she could not imagine what the advice would be.

  Piers and Mooey were descending the stairs, not with a rush as Renny had done, but slowly and carefully, to suit the legs of the little boy. All the way down Mooey was talking, reiterating the fact that he was not afraid, that he was not going to fall.

  “Don’t keep repeating that,” Pheasant heard Piers say. “It’s babyish.”

  “I’m not a baby,” said Mooey stoutly; and after a moment of deep thought, he added—“Oh, hell, I’m not f’ightened!”

  “What’s that I hear my baby saying?” said Pheasant.

  “He, has nothing,” said Piers, in the doorway, “between babbling like a babe in arms and cursing like a trooper.”

  “Oh, he hears too much, the poor darling!” and Pheasant held out her arms to him.

  He flew into them, burying his face in her lap. The firelight brought out a ruddy tinge in his brown hair.

  “Look!” exclaimed Pheasant, touching it. “I believe he’s going to have a tinge of the Court red in his hair.”

  “I hope not. One of them in the family is quite enough. What’s that you’re knitting?”

  “A new jersey for baby. See, doesn’t the colour become him?” She held it under his bright face.

  “Where are the others?” asked Piers, sitting down, facing her across the fire.

  “Renny and Alayne went upstairs. Wake went tagging after them. Really, Piers, I think she gets awfully fed up sometimes—never having him to herself.”

  “Does she? What does she want him to herself for?”

  “Well, after all, they’re practically newly married. And days go by when she scarcely sees him alone unless she tramps through the snow to the stable and corners him there. And she told me herself that when she does he’s quite likely to ignore her and to stand gazing at some old horse as though he’d never seen it before. For my part, I have great sympathy with her.”

  Piers listened to all this with a broadening grin. He threw himself back in his chair, thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and said:

  “Now what do you suppose the latest is? A birthday party for young Finch! With the family, ancients and babes, dancing around a birthday cake, with a cheque for a hundred thousand tucked away in the middle of it!”

  III

  THE TWO FRIENDS

  FINCH felt that he must see George Fennel that night. He had not seen him for more than a fortnight, and ever so often the desire to open his bosom to this particular friend came upon him. It was not that George was sensitively receptive or understanding. In truth he often stared at Finch from under his tumbled dark hair with an expression in which humorous contempt mingled with bewilderment at Finch’s rhapsodies or despairs.

  There was nothing rhapsodical or despairing about George Fennel. Like Finch, he loved music better than anything else, but his pleasure in it was calm. If a piano were not at hand he would play on a banjo. If the banjo were out of order his brother’s mandolin would do. If all else failed, well, there was the mouth-organ in his pocket! From these diverse instruments he drew much the same sensation—one of quiet comfort, of cheerful oblivion against the world. Finch’s ecstasies, like Finch’s despairs, were inexplicable to him; but he was fond of Finch, and he had a suspicion that this hungry-eyed friend possessed some strange inner quality that might either bring him fame or “land him in the soup.”

  What Finch found in George was the never-failing comfort of a friend who is always the same. George always met him with the same degree of warmth. Discussed by the hour, with stolid cheerfulness, the things that interested him. The only subject that caused George’s serenity to flame into excitement was the subject of spending money like water. Then his eyes would beam and his quick sentences explode in reckless gaiety at the very thought of such felicity. All their lives the pockets of the two youths had been almost empty. It was George’s invincible idleness that made the thought of a superfluity of money so captivating. Money without working for it. That was what Finch was going to have, and its advancing brightness already was touching Finch’s lanky figure.

  That figure, as George opened the rectory door, stood silhouetted against the moonlit snow with an air almost mysterious, the face in darkness, for the dim light in the hall marked no features but his eyes.

  “Oh, hello, Finch!” said George, in a laconic welcome.

  “Hello, Jarge!” boomed Finch, feeling suddenly hilarious. He entered, stamping the snow from his boots and flinging his cap and coat on the rack. “What’s your latest crime?”

  “Murdering Mozart,” said George. “I’ve been playing him on the mandolin.” He banged the door and kicked the snow that Finch had brought in off the rug into the corner. “Awfully cold, isn’t
it?”

  Finch struck his hands together trying to bring feeling into them. “Cold, yes, but glorious coming across the fields! You’d think it was the first snow that had ever fallen, it’s so white. And the shadows! Every smallest twig—as though it were done in blue-black ink. And my own shadow—I wish you could have seen it! It simply leaped and danced along beside me like a wild thing!”

  “Now I wonder what made it do that,” said George, looking at him round-eyed.

  “Don’t be so beastly prosaic, Jarge! If you had been there you’d have danced too.”

  “I don’t see myself out on a night like this unless there is a girl or a party at the other end. I wish it hadn’t stopped snowing though, because if it had kept on all night at the rate it was falling I shouldn’t have been able to get into business on Monday.”

  Although George was a year younger than Finch, his course at the University had already come to an end and he had gone into a broker’s office. He had chosen the career of broker’s clerk because it seemed to him an easy life and one in which money was talked about largely even though not seen. He led the way upstairs to his own small room. It was as uncomfortable as a room could well be, its only warmth rising through an uncovered stovepipe hole from the kitchen below, but a kind of soft glow that emanated from George’s compact person and the memory of hilarious times they had had there gave it a peculiar charm for Finch. He sank down on the sagging sofa and took out a pipe. George had never seen him smoke anything but a cigarette, and he looked on with astonishment while Finch filled it from an old pouch that had once belonged to Nicholas. Finch was a little embarrassed. He had had the pipe with him on his last visit to the Rectory, but had lacked the courage to produce it. He fancied that he looked more of a man when it hung from the corner of his mouth, though he could never hope to look so thoroughly at ease with it as Piers with his.