Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 8

  Renny had met and liked him. He had ridden over frequently to see how the foxes were progressing. The first litters were admirable. The change of climate had done Lebraux good, and his malady had shown signs of improvement. But good luck did not follow in good luck’s train. His most valuable vixen had somehow dug her way out and was never seen again. The later litters were weakly, a vixen died, then, when fresh stock had been bought in the hope of raising the stamina, thieves had broken in and stolen the best of them. The bodies of the foxes had been found less than a mile away, stripped of their pelts. All this told on the health of Lebraux. He had become so irritable that Renny’s heart had gone out to his wife and daughter. When Lebraux had at last been confined to the house he had begged Renny to come to him as often as possible. He could forget his sense of disappointment, of failure, of impending disaster in Renny’s presence. “I like you!” he had often exclaimed. “I like you to be near me. You and I have an appreciation of the fine and sensitive things of life.” Renny had never been told this before, and it pleased him. And so they had talked of horses and foxes and women.

  Lebraux had taken to drinking brandy. He had had uncontrollable outbreaks of despair, during which he would threaten to do away with himself. Only the presence of Renny would calm him. Often Mrs. Lebraux had sent her young daughter all the way to Jalna with a note for Renny, begging him to go to her help. When, in January, Lebraux had died, Renny had spent half his time in the house. Her brother had kept out of the way as much as possible, for he shirked the responsibility that he felt was moving toward him.

  It had been Renny’s idea to invite the mother and daughter, an idea that had not met with much favour from the rest of the family. Mrs. Lebraux had called on Alayne soon after her marriage. The call had been returned, and there had been an end to intimacy. Alayne had felt pity and, at the same time, had been repelled by the family. The uncles had agreed with her that they were strange people. “Not at all the sort of people who used to settle here.” Meggie had not called. Piers was contemptuous of Lebraux, his failures and, what Piers considered, his spinelessness. He made fun of Mrs. Lebraux’s thick yellow hair, that was turning dark in streaks, her round, light-lashed eyes, and red hands. But Renny had his way. The poor woman had never been anywhere since her husband’s death, and the little girl would keep Wake in countenance.

  If Mrs. Leigh and Ada had looked like sisters as they entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Lebraux and little Pauline seemed of no relation to each other. She had a blonde, hardy, wholesome look, was the daughter of a Newfoundlander who had made a good deal of money in the fisheries, and somehow lost it, and she resembled him. Pauline was like Lebraux, a thin, dark child of fifteen, in white, with the promise of some beauty. Her parents had met on the great toboggan slide by the Chateau Frontenac, and had precipitately slid into matrimony.

  It was an odd, mixed party, Alayne thought, as they filed in to dinner, but it was the first time she had entertained since her marriage, and she was rather wrought up over it, fearful lest all should not go well. But she need not have had any apprehension on that score. Where there were Whiteoaks gathered there was no danger of dullness. The family was all talking at once, as a garden of hardy flowers might burst into vigorous bloom at the first encouragement of the sun. A festive occasion, the prospect of a good dinner with plenty to drink with it, was sun enough for them. Ernest took in Mrs. Leigh; Nicholas, his old flame, Miss Lacey; Vaughan, Mrs. Fennel; Finch, Ada Leigh; Renny, Mrs. Lebraux, with the others distributing as congenially as possible down to the two youngest, who came last, smiling gravely at each other, she half a head taller than he.

  Whatever Mrs. Wragge’s faults might be, it would never be said of her that she was not a good cook. Fowls, under her hand, shed their earthly plumage and turned into glistening forms of celestial sweetness. Her vegetables were drained at the critical moment, the pastry was light. Only her pudding was heavy, and there was no pudding tonight. Wakefield could scarcely credit his own senses when he saw all the best china and silver on the table at once. Things that usually lived in cabinets, behind glass, were now on the table looking as though they were used every day. Several wineglasses were clustered at each place, even his own and Pauline’s.

  “Have you ever been to anything like this before?” he asked her, trying to feel not too important.

  “No; isn’t it lovely?” She smiled, and he thought how prettily her lip curled from her little white teeth. He noticed her long white hands, then stared at her mother across the table.

  “You don’t look a bit like your mother,” he remarked, settling his chin above his Eton collar.

  “No, I look like my daddy.” She stopped eating, and withdrew into herself, a look of sad remoteness shadowing her small face.

  “My father,” he observed, looking hard at her, “died before I was born.”

  She was startled into regarding him with an almost fearful interest. “Did he really? I didn’t know they could. I always thought you had to have both father and mother when you were born.”

  “I didn’t. My father was dead and my mother died when I was born.”

  She breathed—“How awful for you!”

  He agreed.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m what is called a posthumous child. I think it has preyed on my mind. I think it is what has made me so delicate. I’m not able to go to school, you know. I go to Mr. Fennel for lessons, but I haven’t been for weeks because of the weather.”

  “I wish I could go to him, too. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  He looked dubious.

  “Yes... but you’re a Catholic, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “But Mother isn’t. I don’t believe she’d mind. Do you think he’d have me?”

  “Well, he might. If you’d promise not to try to convert me or anything. He’d not like to risk that.”

  “Oh, I’d promise!”

  Around the table conversation flowed easily Alayne perhaps was less at ease than the others. She was so anxious that things should go well, especially because of the Leighs. Rags was a constant irritation to her. His shabby trigness, his air of anxiety over the two hired maids, his bending over Renny to whisper to him with an expression of portentous significance. And why did Renny grin up at him in that way? She did wish that Renny wouldn’t talk to Rags at mealtime. Rags seemed always to be hovering behind his chair like an evil genius, and Renny never looked more like his grandmother than when he was grinning up at Rags. What was he saying to that Mrs. Lebraux? She strained her ears to catch the words.

  He was saying—“Well, I’ll be very grateful if you will let me have the use of your stable. I could keep two horses there. We’re terribly short of room, as it is.”

  Mr. Fennel, on the other side of Mrs. Lebraux, joined in. “I am glad to hear that you are staying on in your house, Mrs. Lebraux. I do hope you are comfortable.”

  She turned her round pale-lashed eyes on him. “Comfortable! No, I’m not very comfortable. But I’m getting along somehow—”

  Then Ernest’s musical voice came to Alayne. He was saying to Mrs. Leigh:

  “Yes, I’m doing a work on Shakespeare. I’ve been working on it for many years now. One can’t hurry with that sort of thing. But I do feel that the result will be...”

  Nicholas was booming to his old flame, Miss Lacey:

  “He’s never talked since she died. Isn’t it extraordinary? There he sits on his perch, in her room, just brooding.”

  Then came Meg’s voice, as she claimed Mr. Fennel’s attention. “You’d never believe the things she does and says. Sometimes she quite frightens me. Only this morning, she said—’Mummy, I want to see God!’”

  Pheasant and Arthur Leigh were laughing together. She was saying—“But, truly, I know a man who saw a two-headed foal...”

  Finch’s head was inclined toward Ada Leigh. Alayne caught just a snatch: “Oh, I dare say I’ll travel round a bit. You can’t stick in one place forever.”

  How the Whiteoaks lo
ved to talk, she thought. From all about her their voices came, and yet their plates were the first to be swept clean of each course. They seldom asked a question. They took their world as they found it, without curiosity. Only Piers and Miss Pink, whom he had taken in, did not trouble to speak, but were devoting themselves to the business of eating and drinking. She lived alone, and her great economy was food. Now she had allowed her gauze scarf to slide from her shoulders, for even it had seemed to impede her progress toward repletion. Piers was drinking a good deal. His lips were taking on that sweet, mysterious curve they had when he was becoming oblivious of his surroundings, and only wished to be left alone that he might give his full attention to the pleasant phenomenon that was taking place inside him.

  There was champagne. Nicholas had seen to that. Rags could not have been more solemn about the drawing of the corks if he had bought and paid for it out of his own savings. Something intangible but vital drew them all nearer each other. The fingers of their spirits touched.

  Mr. Fennel rose, glass in hand, to propose Finch’s health. Finch saw it coming, and drooped still closer to Ada Leigh for support. His hour had struck. He was twenty-one and Mr. Fennel was going to propose his health.

  The confusion of voices sank into a gentle sigh. All eyes, made brighter or dreamier by wine, were turned on the Rector. All eyes, with the exception of Piers’s, which were looking into a tranced and pleasing space. Mr. Fennel said:

  “What I am about to do is very agreeable to me. That is to propose the health of a member of this household who today has reached the estate of manhood. It is not easy for me to believe this, because it seems only a few years ago since I held him in my arms at the font and baptized him in the church his grandfather had built. His grandfather had built the church in what was at that time a sparsely settled community. He established there the religion of his fathers. And his descendants have never failed in their support of that church. At Jalna he established a family which preserves today the traditions of a fine old English family, as few families do in these times of standardisation and irreverence for tradition... The memory of his devoted wife—whose presence I seem to feel among us tonight—will long remain fresh in the minds of all who knew her. Her faults—for none of us are perfect— were far outshone by her virtues... This member of her family who has just attained the age of twenty-one—an age that seems quite unbelievably fresh and glowing to me—has been the companion of my sons all his life. With them he has run in and out of the Rectory a thousand times on the mysterious quests of boyhood. In their room they have held with him innumerable conferences on the mysterious business of youth. He has enlivened many an evening for us with his music. We have known him in many moods, but none of us have ever known him to do a cruel or shabby thing. I wish him well from the bottom of my heart. I know you will all join me in this. I give you the toast—Finch Whiteoak!”

  Mr. Fennel sat down with the unruffled air of a man who had just as lief make a speech as not.

  Finch crouched between Ada Leigh and his sister-in-law Alayne with the air of a man to whom the making of a speech would be a task of appalling torture. The heads of those about him swam toward him goggle-eyed like goldfish in a round glass bowl. There was clapping of hands, glasses clinked. The glass of the bowl shivered into splinters, and Finch was left gasping, looking piteously like a stranded goldfish himself, trying to rise to his feet.

  Ada Leigh smiled soft encouragement. She said—“It will be all right... just anything that comes into your head... now!” She touched his arm with an impelling gesture.

  Renny’s voice came down the table, metallic and commanding. “Up you get, Finch!” and others added jovially— “Speech, speech!”

  But it was Alayne who got him to his feet. Her father and her grandfathers had been New England professors, monitors of the young. Out of the background of their authority, her blue-grey eyes looked dominantly into his, saying— “Rise and give tongue!” Her fingers clutched his under the tablecloth so tightly that it hurt. He twisted his own about them as he spoke.

  How different this was from doing a part in a play! Then, in velvet cloak or in vagabond tatters, he could abandon himself to the portrayal of another’s moods. But now he was simply his naked self, and a dozen words were harder to get out than a torrent of talk on the stage. He heard his voice with a curious kind of croak in it.

  “It’s frightfully good of you—all. I never had such nice things said about me before... in all my life... and I don’t quite know what to do about it. Mr. Fennel and Mrs. Fennel couldn’t possibly have been kinder to me if I’d been their own son... and, of course, everyone present... has been the same...”

  “Hear, hear,” said Piers, without moving his lips.

  “I can’t tell you how much I am enjoying... this occasion,” he continued, looking the picture of despair. “If I should live to be as old as my grandmother—”

  “You’ll never do it,” interrupted Piers, without any appearance of having spoken.

  Renny threw Piers a fiery look down the table.

  “I’d never forget this dinner... and... I do most heartily”— here his voice broke—“thank you. I hope no one here will ever be sorry that... sorry that...” Good Lord, what was he about to say? Sorry that what? Oh, yes, sorry that Gran had left him her money—but he couldn’t say that—it would be horrible—but what could he say?—“Hope no one here will ever live to be sorry—” he stammered, and sought the ruddy sunrise of Piers’s face for inspiration—“be sorry—”

  “That we let you live till you were twenty-one,” supplied Piers without seeming to utter a word.

  There was a burst of hilarious applause. The hero of the occasion sat down.

  He took a gulp of champagne.

  “You did splendidly,” whispered Ada Leigh, and Alayne squeezed his fingers before she uncurled hers from them. He was flushed, and happily conscious that he might have done worse. He had been delighted at the burst of applause and laughter, though he could not quite recall what he had said that was so witty.

  After the speeches, voices rose to a babble. The faces about the table were changed to a noticeable degree. Those which were ordinarily vivacious became dreamy, those which were usually somewhat stolid were transfigured into liveliness. The two maids stood together motionless now, like black-and-white drawings of maids, unbelievably trig. Rags drifted ceaselessly around the table refilling glasses, the creator, it seemed, of this animation, these changes of expression, this babble. Ernest had got to the point of telling Mrs. Leigh of his life in old London, the times he and Nicholas had had. Nicholas had reached the point of intimating to Miss Lacey, by look rather than by word, that he wished he and she might have been joined together in wedlock, rather than he and that other from whom he was divorced. Renny and Mrs. Lebraux were engaged in a low, earnest conversation which excluded the existence of all others. Piers had picked up Miss Pink’s gauze scarf from the floor where it had fallen and laid it about his own shoulders. He, only, did not talk, but his lips were curved in that same enigmatic, Mona Lisa smile.

  The rugs had been taken up in the drawing-room and hall and the floor waxed, but it was late before anyone suggested that they dance. It was George Fennel who sat down at the piano, very square, very upright, his hands drawing insidious sweetness from the keys. The latest dances from the world of jazz were tossed by George as invitation to this mixed company, some of whom still danced in the style of forty years ago. And how gallantly they responded to the invitation! They thought it “queer stuff—very modern, you know—and not at all easy to keep step with.” But somehow they contrived to do it, the couples moving in small circles, conversing lightly and gaily all the while. Nicholas and Ernest with the two Miss Laceys, with whom they had danced the quadrille, the polka, and the schottische on this very floor when they were young men and girls. Mr. Fennel had Pheasant tightly clasped to him, his beard, now and again, tickling her bare shoulder. Like a captive bird she cast wistful glances at her mate, wishing
she might fly down the room with him, in long graceful strides, their bodies as one. And there he was dancing with Miss Pink, who was quite old enough to be his mother!

  The younger men had no flowers of speech to offer to their partners. Up and down the drawing-room, in and out of the hall, they moved, their faces as void of expression as a clean slate, their very souls set in the mould of jazz.

  Miss Pink had been afraid she could not do it. But when once Piers had got hold of her she found that she could, and not only that, but she wished she might go on doing it forever. As for Piers, he scarcely knew whom he was dancing with—old or young, skilful or amateurish, it did not signify. She had been at hand when his forceful body had responded to the inexorable call of the dance.

  Alayne was dancing with graceful Arthur Leigh. Wakefield had almost more than he could cope with in Meggie’s solid frame. Meg had an eye on Maurice and Mrs. Leigh, who seemed to her to be dancing altogether too well.

  Finch had been going to ask Ada Leigh to dance, but had turned away as he saw Tom Fennel loping towards her. He must not be selfish at his own party With whom would he dance then? He looked rather vaguely about the room. There was Mrs. Fennel in a comfortable chair near the fire, with a dish of crystallised fruit beside her. And, in the farthest corner, on the settee, was Mrs. Lebraux in her black dress, with Renny keeping her company, his back half turned to the dancers. And staring into the cabinet of curios from India was the Lebraux child, her skirt too short, her legs too long, and the back of her head looking as though it needed combing. Her hair stuck out in thick black tufts, giving her an odd, elfin look. He went to her and said:

  “Would you like to dance, Pauline?”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder and shook her head. “Can you dance?” He felt a stirring of curiosity about her.