Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 5

  “What’s the idea?” asked George, lighting a cigarette. “Trying to look like a Famous Author, an American Ambassador or a British Prime Minister?”

  From a cloud of smoke Finch answered—“I don’t know what you are driving at. I’ve been smoking a pipe for some time—off and on. It’s less trouble and more economical.”

  George chuckled. “You’re choosing an original time for economy. Just when you’re twenty-one and more money in the offing than you’ll know how to spend.”

  “Well, I suppose it’s simply that I’ve come to the age for smoking a pipe,” said Finch, with dignity. “Besides, it’s good for me. You know, my nerves are pretty rocky. You’ve no idea how odd I feel sometimes. Absolutely up in the air for next to nothing.”

  “I’d feel odd, too, if I was about to fall heir to a fortune.”

  “I wish,” observed Finch, rather nettled, “that you wouldn’t talk as though I were a millionaire. What is a hundred thousand dollars!”

  “I’ve no idea. I can’t imagine such a sum.”

  “You say that, and you a broker!”

  George, a junior clerk in a broker’s office, liked the appellation. He became serious. “Oh, well, one’s business is so impersonal.”

  “Yes, but look here. A hundred thousand isn’t so very much in these days. My two uncles each went through that much and have scarcely a penny left.”

  “And yet they grudge you your chance!”

  Finch flushed deeply.

  “Sorry,” said George. “But I couldn’t help hearing things. They didn’t take many pains to hide their feelings about it.”

  “I don’t blame them!” cried Finch, twisting his long fingers together. “I don’t blame them a bit... for anything they said.”

  “Perhaps, but it makes it hard for you.”

  “Oh, yes, awfully hard.” He had to compress his sensitive upper lip on the pipe to keep it from quivering. He was lost in unhappy thoughts for a moment, then his eyes sought George’s with a look of almost triumph in them. “But they are quite different about it now. They’re awfully decent to me. I went into my Uncle Ernest’s room this afternoon. He and Uncle Nick and Renny and Piers were there. I could see when I went in that they had been talking about me. I felt uncomfortable for a bit. Then I found out that what they’d been talking about was a dinner for me—on my birthday.” No amount of compression would keep the lip still now. He clenched his teeth on the stem of the pipe.

  George was impressed. “A dinner, eh? That’s very decent of them. I wonder who thought of it first.”

  “I don’t know, but it was Piers who first spoke of it. It’s to be just a small dinner party; but we scarcely ever have people in, you know, and I think on the whole it will be less of a strain for us if we’ve a few guests to look after. Don’t you agree?”

  George reflected, trying to put himself in the place of these high-spirited, skittish Whiteoaks. The dinner party then was to be a bridge between the day before Finch’s birthday and the day after. Across this bridge the family might march in gala procession. He said—“I like the idea. It should certainly help you out.”

  “I wish it were all over,” said Finch, with almost a groan. “There’s another thing I’m dreading. That is telling Renny that I’m not going back to ‘Varsity. I simply can’t do it.”

  George regarded him without surprise. “I think you’re very sensible. I had to give it up. Too much of a strain. I suppose you’ll go in for music?”

  “Lord, I don’t know! That is, if you mean my making a career of it; I don’t believe I have it in me.”

  “What rot! You’ve got more talent than any chap I know. Everyone who hears you play thinks you’re wasting your time doing anything else.”

  “I know I am. Yet I don’t believe I’ll ever be good at concert work. When I played at that recital last month I played my very worst. My teacher was awfully disappointed. He’d slaved over me. He expected something really good from me. And I’d practised like hell. But—you know how it was—I nearly broke down twice.”

  “You’ll get over all that nervousness,” said George comfortingly.

  “No, I shan’t. If I had felt nervous I’d be more hopeful about myself. But I didn’t. I just felt half-dead. I didn’t care about anything. Nothing looked real to me. The piano didn’t look real. And when I nearly broke down it wasn’t because I was nervous, or forgot. It was just that I felt too bored to go on. It was as though something inside the piano said to me— ‘You blasted fool, do you think you can bring me out whenever you want, and show me off? I’ll show you off for what you are-just a hopeless idiot.’”

  George looked solemn at this. “I think the trouble with you, Finch, is that you take yourself too seriously. All your family are inclined to take themselves too seriously. It’s in the blood. All that talk about the Court nose! And the Court temper! I tell you, it isn’t done nowadays. It isn’t worthwhile feeling yourself different from other people. As to there being something inside the piano that jeers at you and tells you things, when what you are is just frightened, that’s letting your imagination get the upper hand of you. When I was a kid I used to imagine things, so I know all about it. That big stuffed owl that stands in the niche of the stairway was one of the things I got nervous about. I knew quite well that he was only a queer specimen my grandfather had shot in the North somewhere. I knew he was moth-eaten. But I got it into my silly young head that there was something queer about him... that he didn’t like me.”

  “Did you really?” Finch leant forward, his eyes full of intense curiosity. He had never heard George talk like this before, and it brought them very near each other.

  “Yes. And I’d never go up the stairs without wondering if it wasn’t in his mind to nip me on the left leg as I was passing. I could have sworn that he moved on his perch.”

  Finch saw before him George—not the sober-eyed youth who faced him—but a little boy creeping up the stairs, his frightened gaze held by the owl’s dark stare, his soft hair rising into a halo.

  George gave a chuckle. “Well, one night, on my way to bed, I was so sure that he was going to nip me that I went up the stairs in about three leaps. My heart was pounding so I could hardly breathe. I stood at the top, hanging on to the banister and glaring down at my left leg to make sure it was all right. Just then Father came out of his study and looked up at me. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, and I whined that I was afraid the owl was going to nip my leg. Well, he ran up the stairs and picked me up and carried me back to the niche where the owl was. He said—‘Now put your leg right under his beak, and, if he bites you, I’ll throttle him.’ So I did, and of course nothing happened. Even after that I was a bit nervous. But the next night I got my courage up and 1 stopped on the step that was on a level with his niche. I stuck my leg in and I squeaked—‘Bite me, old owl, if you dare!’ And when he didn’t, I gave him a good swift kick and ran on upstairs... Ever since then I am done with imaginings.” His eyes beamed into Finch’s. “Of course, I’m not comparing the fancies of a silly kid to the fancies of a grown man, but their root is in the same place, and the place is fear. I think if you had had someone like my father to take you in hand you mightn’t be so full of fancies today. He did more for me that night than he ever knew of.”

  Finch nodded. “If one of my brothers had found out that I was afraid of a stuffed owl, he’d have told me things about its habits that would have curdled my blood.”

  “Look here, old fellow, take my advice. Get yourself in hand and make up your mind that you’ll not let anything frighten you out of doing what you want to. You do want to be a great pianist, don’t you?”

  Finch mumbled—“I don’t know what I want, George, and that’s a fact, except that I don’t want to go on with my University course. I could howl when I think of all the money Renny’s wasted on me. He’s got to let me pay it back. If I could just have a few months to myself—to think—to get used to myself. There’s no use in talking—you can’t imagine what it’
s like to be such a duffer as I am!”

  They smoked in silence for a space, George regarding Finch’s bowed head affectionately, Finch’s mind playing, in spite of himself, about the white owl. George said suddenly:

  “Well, you have your own life. Your own work, whatever it’s going to be; and if you don’t want to work at all you are your own man, no one can force you. Do you realise that?”

  Finch started. “What’s that? Oh, yes, my own man! Of course... I can do what I like.”

  “Yes,” went on George, solidly. “You can do what you like just when you like. Now I think the first thing you should do is to take a trip. Travel round a bit and see things. You’d get a different slant on your life. You’d get used to yourself. You’d get away from the family.”

  Finch began to laugh. “Funny you’d suggest that. It’s just what I have been planning—with one big difference. I’m thinking of taking my uncles with me.”

  “You’re not in earnest!”

  “Yes, I am! They’ve been wanting for years to visit the Old Country again. Their sister lives in England, you know. They are getting old. Haven’t much time to waste. I know what it would mean to them. And if it came through me, you understand, well... it would make a kinder feeling.”

  George rumpled his hair in deep puzzlement. “It’s your idea, then, to start out to see the world, and do this thinking you talk about, with an ancient uncle on either side of you,” he said musingly. “And your sightseeing would be to visit an ancient aunt. Well, all I can say is, you are the world’s champion philanthropist!”

  “Rot! I’ll go off on my own whenever I like. And I’m awfully fond of my aunt. I’ve been wanting to visit her all my life... My position is so peculiar, George. I can’t quite explain, but it amounts to this. I can’t really enjoy my money, and all the possibilities it opens up to me, until I’ve done something—not necessarily a big thing—but something quite decent for each of the others. It’s as though there were a spell on me that I must work through.” His eyes were fixed, with an expression George thought hallucinated, on the smoke from his pipe that hung in a level blue plane before him.

  “Of course, of course,” he agreed, yet thought—“What a queer egg! But one must take him as he is.” Like the piano, the banjo, the mandolin, Finch was accepted by George for the peculiar qualities that gave companionship in season.

  “What have you thought of doing for Piers?” he asked; and he remembered, a little grimly, times when Piers had bullied Finch.

  “I don’t know. Something he’ll like for his work, or perhaps something for Pheasant. I’m not going to be in a hurry about it. They’d say at once that I was showing off. No, it’s got to come slowly, beginning with the uncles.” His gaze that had been remote, now moved, with speculative interest, to the stovepipe hole in the floor. A low murmur of voices came from the kitchen below.

  “Yes,” said George, “they’re still at it—Lizzie and her steady—and they get no forrarder, as far as I can see.” He moved to the extreme edge of his chair and peered through the opening as though into a cage at the Zoo. Finch also moved nearer, crouching beside him, their heads touching.

  They could see one end of a clean kitchen table on which stood a dish of red apples. They could see a pair of man’s hands, middle-aged and horny, paring an apple with a thick-handled pocket knife. The apple was being pared meticulously so that the paring should not be broken, but removed whole from stem to blossom. The two above watched, fascinated, seeing the fine rosy skin of the fruit drop from it, leaving the fruit itself, white as a woman’s breast, in the coarse fingers. The paring was pushed across the table to an unseen person; the apple was halved. Then a slice was cut from it, impaled on the knife and put into the mouth of the peeler himself. They glimpsed his grizzled forelock as his head advanced to it. Another slice was impaled and presented to the mouth across the table, and so, a slice at a time, the apple was demolished. The clumsy hands gathered up seeds and core, disposed of them somewhere, picked up another apple and began to pare it. There was an indistinct mumbling of talk.

  Finch returned to his seat with a sigh. “How long has this been going on?” he asked.

  “About five years.”

  “God, isn’t life wonderful?”

  “Love is certainly a queer thing. Especially when it takes them like that.”

  “I expect it’s queer no matter how it takes you.”

  “Been seeing much of girls lately?”

  “No. Too busy.”

  “You liked Ada Leigh, didn’t you?”

  “H’m—h’m. She’s been in France with her mother.”

  “I don’t believe you’ve a great opinion of that sex, Finch.”

  “Oh... I don’t know,” he sighed deeply. “I haven’t had much experience of them.”

  George folded his arms and spoke rather ponderously. “A really dazzling one comes into our office sometimes, about investments, you know. A rich widow. She always seems to want my advice about things. 1 can’t see why, because I’m only a junior. She always seems to want to know just what I think about. everything. Some women are odd, aren’t they?”

  “How old is she?”

  “I couldn’t possibly tell. Once they’re past twenty I’m all at sea.”

  “But you’ve a way with you, large,” said Finch affectionately. George unfolded his arms and unknit his brow. “How about a little music?” he asked.

  On the way down the stairs, Finch had stopped to look at the stuffed white owl. He had thrust his hands under its great folded wings and felt the deep downiness there. He had put his face close to the black beak, the glittering eyes. A sensuous pleasure had run over his body at the feel of the owl’s downiness. He thought of the pure whiteness where his hands were hid...

  All the way home he exulted in thoughts of it. The face of the earth seemed to him like the owl’s breast; the stars had the cold glitter of the owl’s eyes; the bitter wind was its hoot... It had left its perch and swept through the open door of the Rectory with him, and had become one with the night, the beating of its wings the rhythm of the universe.

  He left the road and took his customary shortcut through the fields, though the path had long been obliterated. The snow lay in great drifts, light as mounds of fallen feathers. He dashed through them, bounding, with each leap, as high as he could. All his instinct revolted against being grown up. He wished only to be a wild, half-mad boy, that the passage of time might not touch him... He pulled off his cap and ran bare-headed, dancing with his shadow, trying to wrest his spirit from his body, and toss it, a glistening essence, into the frosty air. He fancied how the great owl would pounce on it, a tender morsel for its starry-eyed young, and sweep Poleward with it, uttering a whoo-hoo that would shake the universe.

  He left the fields and ran through the pinewood. He left the pinewood and ran through the birchwood, where the silvery trees bathed themselves in the moonlight as in a sea, laying their round boles in it, keeping nothing of themselves from it, shivering in their naked whiteness as they drowned themselves in it.

  He ran through the apple orchard, where the gnarled black shapes of the trees were like old men dancing. There was an icy pathway there from which the wind had blown the snow, and he slid along it, cap in hand, in long graceful glides.

  He ran through the young cherry orchard, where the trees stood in straight rows like timid, half-grown girls, and, as he emerged into the garden, he saw the lights of the house welcoming him.

  As soon as he saw them the shadow of the owl grew smaller, but still, he thought, it followed him, swooping, lower and lower, towards his legs. A sensation of terror took hold of him. He ran panting, his consciousness trickling from his brain to his nether parts. Would it catch him before he reached the door?

  It was level with him, its eyes afire. He plunged across the lawn, and flung himself against the door. It flew open, and, at the same instant, he felt a cruel nip on the left leg!

  “My dear boy,” said Uncle Ernest, “what a d
raught you’re letting in. Shut the door quickly! And you may as well bolt it for the night.”

  IV

  THE BIRTHDAY

  IT CAME on the first day of March. He had narrowly escaped being born on the twenty-ninth of February, which, in addition to having been born with a caul, would have singled him out with a directness almost ominous. As it was, he was quite satisfied to have first seen the light with the arrival of spring; and, on this particular birthday, the season did not, as was its wont, appear crouching under the cloak of winter. On the contrary, it was a day of remarkable mildness for the time of year. Rain had fallen steadily all the preceding day and night, and by the time the sun had emerged from the rain clouds there were already patches of bare ground on the lawn. By noon that part of it which was not in shadow lay revealed to the warmth of the sun. Last year’s grass had retained something of its colour, and even seemed to have grown, as the hair of a dead person is said to flourish morbidly for long after burial.

  The withered forms of last year’s asters and calendula lay sodden on the soaking soil of the flower border; under the hedge last year’s leaves lay in a discoloured ridge. Yet all was enlivened by a boundless hope. The abnormally large drops of rain and melted snow that were strung on every twig and blade and ledge were glancing with radiant brightness. The sky was swept clean of all that came between its sun and the earth. No return of cold and snow could efface the promise of this day.

  The door into the hall stood wide open letting in the sun. It was on such a day as this that old Adeline would take her first walk of the year. Wrapped in innumerable cloaks, scarves, and petticoats, so that she looked a very battleship of a woman, she would come into view, supported by her sons, and present herself foursquare to the reviving world. “I’m out again!” she would exclaim. “Ha! 1 like the smell of the fresh air!”