Finch's Fortune: A Novel

APRIL, 1931

BY MAZO DE LA ROCHE

I

NICHOLAS and Ernest Whiteoak were having tea together in Ernest’s room. Ernest thought he felt one of his colds coming on and he feared to expose himself to the drafts of passage and hall in such weather. He had had tea brought up to him, therefore, and had asked Nick to join him. They sat before the open fire with the tea table between them — Ernest’s cat sitting with paws curled under her breast and eyes narrowed against the blaze, close to her master’s feet, and Nicholas’s Yorkshire terrier, flat on his side, twitching in a dream. The brothers divided their attention between their tea and their pets.

‘He’s a bit off color,’ observed Nicholas, his eyes on Nip. ‘He has n’t begged.’

Ernest regarded the little dog critically. ‘He does n’t get enough exercise. Why, he scarcely leaves your side. He’s getting tubby. That’s the worst of terriers. They always get tubby. How old is he?’

‘Seven. Just in his prime. I can’t see that he’s tubby.’ Nicholas spoke testily. ‘It’s the way he’s lying.

He may have a little wind on his stomach.’

‘It’s lack of exercise,’ persisted Ernest. ‘Now look at Sasha. She’s fourteen. She’s as elegant as ever, but then she goes off by the hour, even since this last snowfall. Only this morning she brought a mouse from the stables. Tossed it up and played with it, too.’

He dropped his hand, and his white fingers rested for a moment on the cat’s tawny head.

Nicholas responded without enthusiasm. ‘Yes. That’s the cold-blooded thing about cats. They’d slink off to catch mice or have a disgusting love affair if their master were dying.’

‘Sasha does n’t have disgusting love affairs,’answered his brother with heat.

‘What about that last kitten of hers?’

‘There was nothing disgusting about that.’

‘There was n’t! She had it on your eiderdown.’

Ernest felt himself getting angry, and that was bad for his digestion. The recalling of that morning when Sasha, with a cry of triumph, had deposited her young on his bed (and he in it!) upset his nerves. He forced himself to say coldly: —

I don’t see what Sasha’s kitten has to do with Nip’s getting tubby.’

Nicholas had broken his last bit of scone in his tea. Now he carried it in his spoon to his mouth and almost immediately swallowed it. Why did he do that, Ernest wondered. How often their ancient mother had irritated them by this very habit! And now Nicholas was taking it unto himself! If only Nicholas would imitate Mamma’s fine qualities, of which there were so many — but no, it was always what he himself had deplored in her lifetime that he reproduced. And there was just enough resemblance — the shaggy brows, the long Court nose — to give Ernest a queer sinking sensation.

They were well past seventy, and the shadow of their fierce old mother still dominated them. Snowflakes flattened themselves against the windowpane, clung there. Other snowflakes fell on these and clung. They were shutting the world out, wreathing themselves like a white muffler about the house. A quantity of drifted snow slid from the roof and was deposited on the window sill, with a soft thud. The shadow of the old mother was shut in the room with them.

The brothers heard the front door bang and listened attentively. On these long midwinter afternoons, when it grew dark so early, the comings and goings of the younger members of the family were of intense interest.

They heard strong steps mounting the stairs, then Nicholas, standing in the doorway, regarded with approval the advancing figure. It was the eldest of their five nephews — Renny Whiteoak — and he arrived in an envelope of air so icy that Ernest, with a gesture of self-preservation, put up his hand.

‘Do you mind, Renny, not coming too close to me? One of my colds threatening.’

‘Well, well, that’s too bad.’ Renny crossed the room, leaving two heelprints of snow on the rug, and stood on the opposite side of the fireplace. He looked down at his uncle with sympathy. ‘How do you think you got it?’

‘I didn’t say I’d got it!’ Ernest spoke irritably. ‘I said it was threatening.’

‘Oh! What you need, then, is a good dose of rum and hot water.’

‘That’s what I tell him,’ agreed Nicholas, letting himself down into his chair, which creaked under him, ‘but he always fusses more about his digestion than he does about his health.’

‘My digestion is my health,’ retorted his brother. ‘But let us talk of something else. Have you had your tea, Renny?’

‘In my office. There was a new foal coming and I did n’t want to leave.’

‘I remember. Cora was going to have one. How did she get along?’

‘Splendidly. She has never done so well before. She’s frightfully proud of herself. When I went to her the last time she tried to tell me all about it. She stopped nozzling the foal and rolled her eyes at me and went “Ho-ho-hoho-ho!” — like that.’ Renny gave a not unsuccessful imitation of a loved mare’s greeting to her master after a triumphant delivery.

The uncles gazed up at him, across the thirty-odd years that separated them from him, with the tolerant amusement, the puzzled admiration, he always inspired in them. He was so different from what they had been at his age. They had been lovers of fine horseflesh, but not horsy. They had been living in England at that time and had never missed the races; Nicholas had kept a quite ‘dashing’ pair of carriage horses, had been a bold hand with the reins, had kept a handsome Dalmatian to run beside the glittering enamel of the carriage wheels; but to have spent a winter’s afternoon in a stable for the consolation of a mare in her labor would have been abhorrent to them. They saw Renny wiry, in rough tweeds, snow melting on his heavy boots, his knuckles looking chapped, as he spread his hands to the fire, his red hair in a defiant crest above his thin, highly colored face. They saw that face wary, passionate, kindled by the vitality within, as the flames played over it, intensifying and sharpening it.

‘Well, well,’ rumbled Nicholas, ‘that is good news.’

‘Are you sure you won’t have some tea?’ asked Ernest.

‘No, thanks. Rags brought a plate of buttered toast to my office and a pot of tea strong enough to raise your hair.’

Ernest thought of the office, in a corner of the stables, its yellow oak desk, where were preserved the pedigrees of horses, overdue bills from the veterinary, newspaper cuttings concerning horse races and shows, and carefully kept accounts of sales. He thought of the bright lithographs of famous horses on the walls, the hard chairs, the bareness, the chill, the unyielding discomfort. He shivered. Yet he knew that Renny had consumed his clammy toast and bitter tea there with the satisfaction with which a plumber might devour his lunch in a flooded kitchen. A queer fellow, but a fine fellow, too. Hot-tempered, willful. ‘A perfect Court,’ as his grandmother used to say, who herself had been a perfect Court. They had been a family who had glorified their faults under blazing banners of tradition.

Renny sat down and lighted a cigarette. Nicholas took out his pipe. The sound of a piano came faintly from below. Renny turned his head, as though to listen; then he said, with a note of embarrassment in his voice: —

‘He’s got a birthday coming. Young Finch, I mean.’ And he added, looking straight into the fire, ‘He’ll be twentyone.’

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! Good Lord, he’s had luck, has n’t he?’

Nicholas made no effort to keep the heaviness out of his voice, no pretense 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 fulfillment 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 should n’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 was n’t!’

Nicholas muttered, ‘I don’t remember you congratulating him.’

‘I could scarcely do that with the rest of the family on its hind legs tearing its hair!’

After the impact of Renny’s voice — metallic when raised — there was a space of silence, through which came insistently from below the sound of the piano. The three were mentally reconstructing the hour when the family on ‘hind legs’ had created a memorable scene with the poor piano player as its centre.

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 cookgeneral and house-parlor man 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, existed between them. Renny liked Mrs. Wragge’s cooking; he liked her red, aggressive face and stout body presiding in the brickfloored 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, then 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 vigor 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 draft from the stairway and the fire being almost out, I feel my cold getting worse.’

Cornering 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 nephews, he was fond of his little grandnephew, 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 color, 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 clamor 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 toughfibred fellow; no damned sentiment about him.

Piers stood stock-still, his hands pushed into his pockets, considering the full import of the question. 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, had n’t it? But 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 laborers 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 good will, 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, did n’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 color, 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.’

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 door knob, 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 had n’t to go in to 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 should n’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 shocked.’

‘Look here!’ cried Finch hotly.

‘You know I always keep away from those things. I did n’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 shan’t! We’ll not let you be frightened again.’

‘Oh, hell! I was n’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 looked at Piers.

‘Tell him, if you like.’

‘Tell him what?’

‘About his birthday.’

If a bomb had been thrown at Finch he might have been less staggered. To be told about his birthday! That day which was advancing on him like a Juggernaut. That day when he would come into possession of that to which he could never feel that he had the right. When he must, under the eyes of his uncles and brothers, take, as it were, the food out of their mouths. Though, in truth, none of them had seen the color of old Adeline’s money for thirty years before she had died. All that time she had been hoarding it and living on Renny — and Renny’s father before him.

‘My— my birthday!’ he stammered. ‘What about it?’

Piers had been watching Finch’s face. He had read his thoughts there as one might observe the shadows of frightened birds. He answered tolerantly: —

‘Only that we’re going to celebrate it. Give you a party of sorts. Is n’t that the idea, Renny?’

Renny nodded, and Ernest said, ‘Yes, we were talking about it before you came in. We thought a nice little dinner — some of your own friends — and Nicholas and I, if you don’t think we’re too old.’

‘Champagne,’ put in Nicholas, heavily. ‘I propose to buy the champagne. And drink some, too, though it will play the devil with my gout.’ Something in Finch’s face had touched him. He gave the boy a smile that was not grudging.

They were not pulling his leg. They were not trying to make a fool of him. They were in dead earnest about the birthday party. Finch’s throat contracted so that he could not speak for a moment. Then he got out: —

‘Why — I say — it’s frightfully good of you! I’d like it, of course. But, look here, if it’s going to be much trouble or expense — please don’t bother! But I’d like it, all right!’

But, even as he stammered the words, doubt assailed him. Could he really stand the strain of a party on that birthday? Would n’t it be better if he were to sneak away so that the brazen glare of its sun might not beat on him as the central object of its rising?

‘Look here!’ he cried. ‘I don’t think you’d better do it! I really don’t think you’d better do it!’

‘ Why ? ’ Four vigorous voices boomed the question at him.

‘Because,’ he almost whispered, ‘I — I really think — I’d just like to spend the day quietly.’

He was not, at any rate, allowed to spend the next few minutes quietly. Laughter engulfed him, closed over him, submerged him. And when, at last, there was comparative silence again, he heard himself mumbling, with scarlet face: —

‘Oh, well, if you really want to give a birthday party for me, you can do it! I don’t give a darn.’

II

While the men of the family were gathered in the lamplight in Ernest’s room, the two women of the family and the youngest brother, Wakefield, a boy of fourteen, were sitting in the twilight of the drawing-room below. The windows of this room faced southwest, so that a reluctant daylight still made the occupants visible to each other. Finch had been playing the piano to them before he had been drawn upstairs by the magnet which a group of the Whiteoaks in talk together invariably became to one of their number outside the circle.

‘I don’t see why he should have gone,’ remarked Pheasant. ‘It was so nice having him play to us in the twilight.’ She had drawn her chair as close as possible to the window to catch the last light on the diminutive jersey she was knitting for Mooey. She felt rather than saw the way with the needles now, her cropped brown head drooping on her slender neck above them.

‘It’s the same old thing,’ said Alayne, quietly. ‘They can’t keep away from each other. It’s that amazing fascination they have for each other.’ Then, remembering that Wakefield was curled up in a wing chair in a dim corner of the room, she added, with a constrained lightness in her tone, ‘I’ve never known a family so attached.’

Wakefield asked, in the clear, probing voice of the precocious child: —

‘Have you known many families, Alayne? You are an only child, and almost all the friends you ever talk about are only children. I don’t see how you can know what other large families are like.’

‘Don’t be so cheeky, Wake,’ said Pheasant.

‘No, but truly,’ he persisted, raising his face, a small white disk, in the shadow of the chair, ‘I don’t see how Alayne knows really anything about large-family life.’

‘I know all that I need to know,’ returned Alayne, with a little asperity.

‘All you need to know for what, Alayne?’

‘Why, for understanding this particular family. Its peculiarities and its moods.’

He was sitting cross-legged, his hands clasped before him, and he began to rock gently on his buttocks, as boredom gave place to enjoyment. ‘But I don’t think, Alayne, that understanding a family’s peculiarities is all you need to understand when you’ve got to live with them like you’ve got to live with us, do you?’

‘What is it that you think I should understand since I must live with you all?’

Continuing to rock himself, he answered, ‘It’s why we’re so fond of each other and why we can’t keep away from each other. That’s what you ought to understand.’

‘Perhaps you’ll be good enough to explain it to me.’

He unclasped his hands and spread the fingers. ‘I couldn’t possibly explain. I feel it, but I can’t explain it. Does n’t your woman’s infruition tell you?’

Alayne forgave him his precocity, his impudence, for that exquisite mistake. She laughed delightedly. But Pheasant, not far from childhood herself, saw nothing amusing in the word. She said: —

‘I think it’s a very good word. It sounds like a very good psychological kind of expression.’

‘I am wondering,’ said Alayne, for she was rather tired of the little boy’s presence in the room, ‘why you don’t go up to join the others. How can you be happy away from them?’

‘I’m not happy,’ he answered sadly. ‘I’m just killing time. I’d join the other men like a shot, only that I’m not on speaking terms with any of them.’

‘But why? What has happened?’

‘Oh, just one thing and another.’

The twilight was turning to dusk, and Pheasant rose to light the squat lamp that stood on the centre table.

‘Light the candles instead,’ pleaded Alayne. ‘Let us have something different for this evening.’

‘Yes, do!' cried Wakefield. ‘It may cheer us up. I like the candlelight.’

The candlelight, she thought, liked him. It played across the clear pallor of his face and in the brown depths of his eyes as though in a conscious caress. It had a mind to Pheasant, too, as she sat down under the branching silver arms, shining with a kind of tremulous serenity on her thin young hands as they moved above the scarlet of the little jersey.

Alayne began to walk restlessly about the room looking intently at objects the minutest details of which she already knew by heart, picking up a small china figure and holding it in her two hands, as though to absorb something of its cool smoothness. She saw her reflection in the mirror over the mantelpiece and furtively examined it, wondering whether or not her looks had failed her in the past year. Sometimes she thought they had. And if they had, or were failing her, small wonder, she thought. She had been through enough to fray the velvet edge of any woman’s bloom. Her first marriage — that disastrous marriage with Eden. His infidelity. The torture of her thwarted love for Renny. Her separation from Eden. Her return to New York and the exactions of her work there. Her second visit to Jalna to nurse Eden through his illness. His affair with Minny Ware. Their divorce. Her marriage to Renny last spring. All this in four years and a half!'

She had been married to Renny almost ten months, and she understood no better than before she had married him what his conception of life and love truly was. What did he think? Or was he guided only by instinct? What did he really think of her, now that he had got her? He had no taste for selfanalysis. To dig into the depths of his desires, his beliefs, and produce the ore of his egoism for her inspection would have been abhorrent to him. And apparently he had no curiosity about her beyond the most primitive. His absorpt ion in his own life was immense. Did he expect her, she wondered, now that she was harnessed to his side, to gallop through her life without question, sniffing the bright air, grazing in the comfortable pasture, and returning at night to the dark privacy of their mutual passion? He had none of her relentless desire to see things clearly. His conception of their rela☺tionship was so simple that it was almost repellent to her finical mind.

She smiled ironically, wondering if all these stirrings in her mind might possibly be reduced to the old feminine questions, ‘Does he still love me?’ ‘Does he love me as much as ever?’

She heard him coming down the stairs noisily, as he always did, as though there were not a moment to spare. He seemed to her like the winter wind, sharp, full of cold energy, rushing by her. He must not pass the door of the drawing-room, perhaps go out again, without speaking to her! She went swiftly to the door, but just as she reached it he opened it wide. He stood, startled and smiling to find her so close to him.

‘I was coming to find you,’ he said.

She returned, with childish reproach in her voice: —

‘I have been here all the afternoon. I heard you going upstairs ever so long ago.’

‘Yes? I heard the piano as I passed, so I supposed Finch was playing to you. You know I can’t sit down and listen to music in the middle of the afternoon.’ He put his arm around her. His eyebrows shot up as he saw the lighted candelabrum. ‘Well, you are a ghostly-looking trio! What’s the matter with the lamp?’

Pheasant answered, ‘We like the candlelight. It’s so mysterious.’

His eyes rested appraisingly on the slender curve of her neck. ‘It’s becoming, at any rate. I did n’t know you’d such a pretty little neck, Pheasant.’

‘I was just thinking,’ said Wakefield, ‘that she looks like Anne Boleyn. What a nice little neck for the headsman!’ He uncurled himself and came over to the two, pushing his dark hair from his forehead, smiling up at Renny.

Pheasant dropped her knitting and clasped her neck with her fingers. ‘Oh, don’t, Wake! You make me shiver!’

Renny drew the boy to his side and kissed him. ‘How have you been to-day, youngster?’ he asked, with a solicitude that had once been touching to Alayne, but of late had more often irritated. He felt nothing of her irritation, but Wakefield did. He pressed against his brother, putting his arms under his coat, and looked sideways at Alayne, as though to say, ‘I can get nearer to him than you can.’ He murmured, ‘Not very well, thanks, Renny.’

Renny sighed. ‘Too bad.’ He bent and kissed him again. ‘Now, I’ll tell you something to cheer you. Cora has had a fine little foal this afternoon, and they’re both as well as possible.’ He turned to Alayne. ‘You know, out of four foals she’s lost two, and the others were weakly. But this! Why, it’s a regular rip!’

‘How splendid,’ said Alayne, trying to feel excited. Her voice was drowned in the enthusiasm of Pheasant and Wakefield.

Was it a filly? Was it like the dam or the sire? A filly. The very image of Cora. Up on its legs. A very grenadier of a foal. They talked all at once, their eyes shining. Mooey’s jersey dropped to the floor.

Renny disengaged himself from Alayne and Wakefield and stood in the middle of the room making quick gestures as he talked, his highly colored face alight.

Alayne watched him, scarcely hearing what he said, preoccupied by her love for him, by the fascination his presence had for her. She waited impatiently for him to finish his recital, eager to draw him away upstairs, where she might have him to herself, away from these others who seemed always coming between them. She held a pinch of his tweed coat in her fingers, and, when the opportunity came, she drew him toward the door. ‘Come upstairs,’ she said. ‘I have something in my room I want to show you.’

‘Can’t we see it later?’ he asked. ‘Won’t it be cold up there for you?’

‘That does n’t matter.’

‘I’ll come, too!’ Wakefield clasped Renny’s arm.

‘No,’ said Alayne sharply. ‘It’s much too cold for you up there.’

But he walked doggedly behind them into the hall and followed them up the stairs. Renny hesitated at the door of his room. ‘Is it in here you want me to go?’ He spoke like an obedient but slightly unwilling child.

‘No; in my room.’

She stood with her hand on the door knob letting him go past her into the room, but, as Wakefield attempted to pass, she gave him a look so forbidding that he drew back and leaned across the banister pretending to gaze at something in the hall below to hide his chagrin.

She closed the door behind her and looked at Renny with a sudden feeling of wry amusement. She was like a jailer, she thought.

‘Well,’ asked Renny, looking restively about, ‘what is it you want to show me?’

‘This.’ She indicated an embroidered mauve bedspread she had been making and had that afternoon laid in its graceful simplicity on the bed.

He frowned, looking at it. ‘It looks like a stage bed. The whole room has a stagy effect to me. It’s unreal. It’s not comfortable. There’s nothing inviting about it. Of course, I know it’s in frightfully good taste and all that, but—’ he gave the grin that was so like his grandmother’s — ‘ it’s lucky I usually come in here in the dark or I might get depressed! ’

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 I always do. It’s a part of me. Do you mind so much?’

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

‘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. They had begun their new life hampered by far too many memories. They had passed with averted eyes the room that had been hers and Eden’s, 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.

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 harbor for her tastes and 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 did n’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.

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 incompleteness. 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 did n’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 — traveling 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 is n’t as though you were like many American husbands, absorbed by big enterprises that demand concentration —'

She was stopped by the outraged expression on 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 would n’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-yearold, ‘I don’t care. It’s perfectly true! If I were having a baby this minute you could n’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 highbrow woman, you can be sillier than any woman I’ve ever known! ’

III

Finch’s birthday came on the first day of March; and on this particular birthday the season did not, as was its wont, appear crouching under the cloak of winter. On the contrary, if was a day of remarkable mildness for the time of year.

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, scarfs, 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! I like the smell of the fresh air! ’

Finch thought a good deal about her to-day, recalling their strange delayed intimacy that had drawn them so mysteriously together, wondering if it were possible for him to live in a way that would have won her approbation. Still, she had known him for what he was, had loved him, had accepted him as one of ‘the whelps’ her son Philip had got by his second wife.

He stood in the porch sunning himself, and watched Rags furbishing up the hall. How shabby both hall and servant looked in the noonday brightness! The slender walnut banister and carved newel post were elegant enough, but the wallpaper along the stairway showed dingy where small hands had pressed against it. Certainly the walls had never been repapered in his time. The carpet on the stairs was threadbare. The Turkish rug on the floor had lost all its fringe. The fringe had reappeared miraculously on the cuff of Rags’s coat. This cuff was being violently agitated as he polished the mirror in the hatrack, above which the carved head of a fox sneered down at him.

‘Well,’ he said, seeing Finch, ‘many happy returns of the d’y to you, sir!’

‘Thanks, Rags.’

‘We could n’t ’ave a finer d’y for the occasion, not if it ’ad been hordered! It’s a fine thing to be twenty-one, sir, and to ’ave all the money in the family.’ He looked over his shoulder at Finch with an air of innocent envy.

Finch felt like taking the fellow by the scruff of his grizzled neck and shaking him. He said, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Rags.’

The little cockney proceeded imperturbably : —

‘It’s a ’appy d’y for us all, I’m sure, sir. Mrs. Wragge was saying to me just a bit ago that she’d prayed for a fine d’y. I don’t go in for prayer much myself, but, as the saying is, strawrs tell which way the wind blows. Not that she is much like a strawr, sir. More like a strawrstack, I’d say. I ’ardly dare to go into the kitchen this morning, she and Bessie are that worked up with excitement. And the thought of those caterers coming out from town with all their paraffinaliar! ’ He came to the door and shook out his cloth. He then produced a small, foreign-looking leather pocketbook from somewhere about his clothes. He proffered this to Finch with a bow.

‘Will you accept this from me, Mr. Finch, as a little offering? I brought it ’ome with me from the War. It belonged to a German officer. And I’ve always thought that if the d’y come when I ’ad a pot of money, I’d use it myself. But the d’y ’as n’t come, and it looks as though it never would come, — not in this country, and at this job, — so, if you’ll accept it, I’ll give it to you with my best wishes, and may it always be full!’

Finch took it, embarrassed. It was a handsome pocketbook, and there was something touching in Rags’s expression as he offered it; but Finch always had the uncomfortable feeling that Rags was laughing in his sleeve at him.

‘Thanks, very much,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s an awfully good one.’ He opened it, looked in it, shut it. Rags regarded him with an expression of mingled sadness and pride. He gave his duster another shake and reëntered the hall.

Mooey was descending the stairs on his little seat, a step at a time. Finch watched him, feeling suddenly very happy. Everyone was amazingly nice to him. Renny had given him a wrist watch; Piers and Pheasant, gold cuff links; Uncle Nicholas, a paper weight; and Uncle Ernest, a water color from the wall of his own room. Alayne had given him a crocodile traveling bag, and Wakefield a large clothes brush which, he explained, would ' come in handy to whack his kids with when he had any.’ Meggie’s present was yet to arrive.

‘Bump!’ sang out Mooey. ‘I’m toming! Bump! Bump! Bump! I’m not f’ightened! ’

Finch went to the foot of the stairs and snatched him up. He put the child on his shoulder, and out of the shadows of the past came a picture of himself, caught up thus by Benny. A queer thing, life. . . . One tall strong body, one little weak body after another.

. . . Some day Mooey would stand at the foot of the stairs and shoulder some tiny boy just as to-day he was doing.

. . . And Mooey would be twenty-one, and whose would be the tiny boy? Some little Whiteoak, out of a Whiteoak body. . . .

Mooey clasped Finch’s head, and pressed his round flower-like face to Finch’s thin one. ‘I want to go out on the nish g’een g’ash,’ he said.

‘The grass may be green, but it’s not nice. It’s nasty and soggy.’

‘I l-like nawsty, soggy fings.’

‘Very well, I’ll carry you out and stand you on your head on it.’ He ran out the door and down the steps.

‘There’s a nish soggy spot,’ said Mooey, pointing out a puddle.

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do!’ cried Finch. ‘I’ll take you to the stables to see Uncle Renny.’ He had got an idea. He would find Renny and broach the subject of quitting the University this very hour. Renny was always more or less absent-minded and goodhumored when he was among his horses. The presence of Mooey would be a help, too, for Renny had a wTay of staring at him speculatively and only half listening to what was being said.

They found the master of Jalna in the paddock, mounted on a bright bay mare which he was training as a high jumper. Two grooms stood by a hurdle, the top bar of which they raised and lowered in accordance with the shouted directions of the rider.

Between the two men, the mare, and her rider there existed a sympathy not needing the expression of words. When she felt panic and sheered off from the jump or valiantly essayed it and failed, a like shadow seemed to fall across all four. She blew out her breath in what seemed a great sigh. The grooms dubiously replaced the bar; and Benny, wheeling her about, drew his brows together in a rueful frown. But when she sw’ung clear of the hurdle, and hung like a bird for a space against the sky, before she alighted triumphant and cantered down the course, a brightness of aspect descended as the sun’s rays on men and marc.

Finch thought, ‘She has done well; I believe it’s a good time to speak.’

Renny had dismounted and given the bridle to one of the grooms and was strolling toward him, scrubbing the palms of his hands with a crumpled handkerchief.

‘Was n’t she splendid?’ asked Finch, scrutinizing his elder’s face. ‘I think she’s going to be a wonderful jumper.’

‘I hope so. She’s a sweet thing. I intend to ride her in New York this fall, if possible.’ He turned to Mooey. ‘Hello, what’s the matter with your nose?’ He gave the small feature a decisive wipe with the handkerchief.

Mooey, his nose quite pink, observed : —

‘I’m going to jump a nish ’orsie and not be f’ightened neider.’

‘He talks too much about not being frightened,’ said Renny. ‘It sounds as though he were trying to reassure himself. I hope he’s not going to be a duffer at riding, like you.’

‘I hope not,’ returned Finch dolefully. It took so little to cast him down.

There was silence for a moment while Renny struck at the flakes of mud on his legs with his riding crop, then Finch set the little boy on his feet and, turning to his brother, broke out with the energy of despair: —

‘Look here, Renny, it’s impossible for me to go back to Varsity! I simply can’t do it! ’

Renny continued to strike at his leg with his riding crop, but he did not speak. His face hardened.

Finch continued, ‘You can’t know how it is with me. You ’re always doing the most congenial work. Varsity is n’t congenial to me. It is n’t anything to me but a grind and a flatness and an unreality. I don’t see any sense in sticking it out.’

The fiery brown eyes, before which he quailed, were raised to his. ‘What the hell is congenial to you? I wish you’d tell me. I thought music was, and I’ve let you take lessons and spend hours practising when you ought to have been studying. Then, when you play at a recital, you play your worst, and you tell me that audiences are n’t congenial —’

‘I didn’t!’ cried Finch. ‘I didn’t say that! I said that I was afraid of audiences —’

‘Afraid! By God — afraid! That’s the trouble! You’re always afraid! No wonder the kid there whines about not being frightened! You’ve put it in his head!’

Finch had turned white. He had begun to shake.

‘Renny! Look here! Listen! I — I — you don’t understand — ’

‘Of course I don’t! Nobody understands. You’re not like anyone else, are you? You’re a student, and you can’t study! You’re an actor, and you can’t act! You ’re a pianist, and you can’t play! You’re twenty-one, and you act like a girl in her teens! I suppose you think that because you’re of age to-day and are coming into some money —'

‘No! No, I don’t! I only thought I’d like to tell you — at least, ought to tell you — ’

‘Why did n’t you tell me long ago? Why did you let me go on planning for your education —’

In spite of the unhappy turmoil of his emotions, Finch could not help wondering what effort of the brain Renny had spent on him beyond the tardy digging up of his tuition fees, and the determination that he should not evade one lecture or examination.

He got out, hoarsely, ‘ You shall have it all back!’

‘Not a cent! I won’t have a cent of it back!’

‘But why? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t!’ cried Finch distractedly.

‘There’s every reason. I won’t take a cent of it.’

‘But why?’

‘Because if I took it back I should not have reared you and educated you, as it was my duty to do.’

‘But there’s no reason in that! I know how hard it is for you to get money. All along I’ve said to myself, “I’ll make it up to Renny!” The thought of that bucked me up to tell you this to-day. Renny, you must take it back!’

‘Not a penny. Well, I can’t force you to go on, but I can feel that I’ve done my best, and if you’re a mess it’s not my fault!’ He had worked himself into a temper. He showed his teeth, Finch thought, as though he would like to bite him. Things were blurred before Finch’s eyes. The sunlit scene before him began to revolve. He put his hands on the palings and held himself together with an effort.

Mooey looked from one uncle to the other, his lip quivering. ‘I’m not f’ightened!’ he said.

Renny made as if to strike him with his riding crop. ‘Say that again and I’ll thrash you!’ Nothing on earth would have induced him to touch Mooey with the riding crop, but he felt and looked as though he could. Mooey raised his voice in a howl.

At this moment Piers drove up to them in the car. He had been to the village and had brought the mail. He got out with the letters in his hand. His son moved toward him screaming, in a kind of dance.

Renny said, ‘That’s a nice young milksop you’ve got! He’s frightened of his own shadow! He takes after his Uncle Finch!’

Piers’s fatherliness was roused. He picked up his child and comforted him. ‘What’s it all about? What’s he been doing? It seems to me that you look fierce enough to frighten anyone.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Renny. ‘Only Finch has just been telling me that he’s not going to Varsity any more. It’s uncongenial to him.’

Piers’s prominent blue eyes took in the situation. He did not speak for a moment while he turned the matter over in his mind. Then he said in his deep voice: —

‘Well, it’s no surprise to me. I always knew he did n’t like college. I did n’t like it myself. I don’t see any sense in his taking a course in arts — going in for a profession — unless he wants. If I were in his place I’d do just as he is doing.’

Without another word Renny turned and strode toward the stable. Piers looked after the tall retreating figure with composure. ‘You’ve got his back up,’ he said. ‘He’ll not get over this to-day.’

‘I don’t know what I’m to do,’ said Finch bitterly. ‘I could n’t go on with it. And I thought I could make it up to him — but he won’t let me. He simply got in a rage.’

‘Gran will never be dead while he lives! You may have her gold, but he has her temper.’

Finch broke out, ‘I wish he had them both!’ His jaw shook so that he had to clench his teeth to control it.

‘Keep your shirt on,’ said Piers soothingly. ‘You won’t be twenty-one for long. My advice is to make the most of it. Go away for a while and he’ll forgive you and want you back.’ He looked over the letters. ‘Here is one for you from England. A birthday greeting from Aunt Augusta, I guess.'

Finch took the letter and glanced at the spidery handwriting. He turned, with an ache in his throat, in the direction of the house. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered; and added, ‘And thanks for standing up for me.’

On the way to the house Finch opened his aunt’s letter. He had a deep affection for her. She had shown him many kindnesses on her visits to Jalna, had worried considerably over his thinness and tried unsuccessfully to fatten him. It was like her to have remembered his birthday, and to have posted her letter in time to reach him on the very day.

LYMING HALL
NYMET CREWS, DEV ON
18th February

MY DEAR NEPHEW, &emadh;
When you receive this letter you will, I trust, be well and happy, and at the proud moment of attaining your majority. You are arriving at manhood surrounded by the most auspicious circumstances. I only wish I might be with you to give you my good wishes in person. But I very much doubt whether I shall ever visit Canada again. The mere undertaking of the journey at my age is terrific. The sea voyage with its attendant nausea, the exhausting journey by rail in the discomfort and heat of your trains, and, added to this, the sad knowledge that my dear mother no longer awaits with extended arms for my coming. Neither do my brothers invariably show me that consideration which they should. Particularly I mention Nicholas. Mentioning him, of course, in the strictest confidence.
I should like very much to have you visit me this summer during your holidays. Even a short stay in England at this period of your life would help to broaden you.
I wish I could offer you lively society, as I might have done once; but those days are past. They are gone like the days when my parents entertained so lavishly at Jalna.
But I can offer you young company in the shape of Sarah Court, your cousin once removed. She and the aunt (by marriage) with whom she lives are coming from Ireland to spend part of the summer with me. Mrs. Court’s husband was the brother of Sarah’s father. They were the sons of Thomas Court, my mother’s youngest brother. Mrs. Court is an Englishwoman, though still living in Ireland, and you would never think that Sarah herself was Irish. She is twenty-five, a quite superior girl intellectually, musical like yourself. I have always esteemed the aunt, though she is a very peculiar woman and places too much importance (in my opinion) on her high blood pressure. I am sure you and Sarah would get on together.
If you would like to visit me, I shall write to Renny and tell him that it is my desire to have you. It was such a delight to me that he and Alayne were married from my house and spent their honeymoon near by. Give my fondest love to my other dear nephews and nieces, my brothers (I so often long to see them), and my baby grandnephew.
I hope you will be very’ happy, my dear Finch, and I think you may rest assured that not one of us harbors any feeling of malevolence towards you in the matter of your inheritance.
Your affectionate Aunt,
AUGUSTA BUCKLEY

P. S. — Quite recently I had a letter from Eden. He approached me for money. He did not mention that woman. — A. B.

Finch carried the letter to Alayne, where she was arranging carnations on the birthday table.

‘I’ve just had a letter from Aunt Augusta. Have you time to read it now?’

‘Yes, I’d love to.’ She sat down on the arm of a chair near a window, in an attitude that suggested both repose and capability of purpose. Finch’s eyes rested on the sheen of her hair, the blue of her dress. Seeing her so, he felt, as he often felt about her, that she never had and never could become one of them, even to the fitting of her person into the surrounding objects of the house.

She looked up and found his eyes on her and smiled.

‘What a characteristic letter!’ she exclaimed. ‘I think her underlining is delicious. And her adjectives! . . . Oh, my dear, what could be more perfect than malevolence?’ She turned the page and read the postscript, but she made no comment on it, except by a scornful movement of the lips.

‘What do you think,’ asked Finch, ‘of my going over to visit Aunt Augusta? I’d like to go. I’ve just told Renny that I can’t go back to Varsity.’

‘How did he take it?’ She was not surprised, because they had talked of that together. But she could not speak of renny without all her being quivering into oversensitiveness.

‘Just what you’d expect. We had a row.’

‘ Oh, I’m sorry! What a shame — on your birthday!’

‘Well — now he knows. One unexpected thing happened. Piers took my side.’

She wondered why Piers had taken his side. She suspected Piers of being shrewd, and she could never be unconscious of his dislike for her, though it was concealed behind an air of heartiness. He had welcomed her even less as mistress of Jalna than he had welcomed her when she had first come there as Eden’s wife. He would have liked Pheasant to be the only woman in the house, his wife, a young girl and docile, though she had been wanton once.

Alayne said, ‘You must go to England. You must!’ She took him by the lapels of his coat and gave him a quick kiss. She realized his spiritual hunger, and the kiss was a gesture, not only of comfort, but of urge to the fulfillment of that hunger.

He felt a high excitement. His eyes shone. ‘How beautiful you are to me,’ he said, taking her hands in his.

‘Do you know,’ she said, teasingly, ‘I believe Aunt Augusta has it in her mind to make a match between you and this Sarah Court.’

‘Nonsense! She looks on me as a boy.’

‘Yes, but boys grow into husbands. Especially in a house with an attractive cousin.’

‘I don’t like the sound of her.’

‘She’s musical.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

‘Well, don’t think I should want you to marry. You ought not to marry till you are fully matured. Not for years and years.’

It seemed that the afternoon would never pass. Finch hung about the house, watching the preparations, playing snatches at the piano, teasing Pheasant, and, when possible, having moments of serious conversation with Alayne on that subject of never-failing interest — himself.

He and Wakefield went to the kitchen in the basement and surveyed the fowls all trussed up for roasting, and the wineglasses all polished up for filling, and the moulds of jelly, and the buckets filled with chopped ice into which were thrust the containers holding the Neapolitan ice sent out from town. They had never seen Mrs. Wragge’s face so purple, or Rags’s so pallid, or Bessie’s arms, as she scrubbed the celery, so mottled. All were atwitter with excitement. They looked at Finch with wonder in their eyes, to think that he had attained this pinnacle.

Long before it was time to dress for dinner he was in his attic room. The night had turned cold. He got into his dressing gown, a gayly colored one that had once been Eden’s, his bedroom slippers that had once been Renny’s, took his bath towel, one of a pair given him by Meggie at Christmas, and descended to the bathroom. There was a chill there, too, but he had told Rags to fill the tin tub with very hot water, and it was hot enough in all conscience. Hot enough to boil him. When he ran upstairs again he was pink from heat and in a state of high excitement.

Already he had laid his evening clothes on the bed. They had only been worn twice before, once at a dance at the Leighs’ and once at the recital. The jacket became him well, he thought, surveying himself in the small glass. Alayne had given him a white carnation to wear. He brushed his moist hair, giving special attention to the lock that had a habit of dangling on his forehead. He polished his nails and wished that his fingers were not so stained by cigarettes. A shiver ran over him which he did not know whether to attribute to excitement or to the change from the hot bath to the cold room. God! How well the new cuff links and the new wrist watch looked! He glanced at the face of the watch. ... It was an hour and a half before dinner time!

What to do! He could not go downstairs at this hour, looking like a fool, with a carnation in his buttonhole. Yet he would die of cold if he spent the intervening time up here. He cursed himself for his stupid haste.

Somehow or other he must put in the next hour and a quarter in that cavern of coldness. He looked longingly at the bed. If only he might lie down and cover himself with the quilt and keep warm! But his suit would be ruined by wrinkles in no time. The next best thing was to wrap the quilt about him and find something to read. He folded it carefully about his shoulders, keeping one hand curved above the carnation to protect it. He felt utterly miserable. . . . What hell coming of age was!

He heard Wakefield running below and gave a piercing whistle to attract him. Wake came flying up the stairs.

‘Hello,’ he said, ‘what are you wrapped up in a quilt for?’

‘Been having a bath and got chilled. Look in that top drawer and hand me the package of cigarettes, like a good kid.’

‘I say,’ exclaimed Wake, as he produced the cigarettes, ‘how funny you look! You’re wrapped in a quilt, and yet I can see your pumps and pants underneath!’

Finch scowled at him in what he hoped was a terrifying way, but he dared advance no more than his fingers from the quilt toward the cigarettes because of his cuffs. Yet Wake held them just out of reach.

‘Give them here!’ snarled Finch out of the side of his mouth like a stage villain.

‘I am giving them.’ Wake’s tone was meek, but his eyes were on a narrow aperture in the quilt and he brought the cigarettes no nearer. ‘Here they are. Why don’t you take them ? ’

‘How the hell can I take them when you hold them away off there? ’

‘It’s not away off. It’s just a little bit of a way. What’s the matter with you? Do you feel sick? Because, if you do, perhaps you’d better not smoke.’

Exasperated beyond endurance then, Finch shot forth his hand from the quilt and snatched the packet of cigarettes, instantly drawing the quilt once more tightly about him. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘clear out of here and no more of your cheek!’

Wakefield seemed to drift out of the room and down the stairs, so pensive was his mien. Finch felt hot all over. He let the quilt slide from his shoulders and put a cigarette between his lips. He reached for a match, but just as he struck it he heard Wakefield and Piers talking in the passage below. He held his breath and heard soft steps ascending the stairs. Like an arrow from the bow he leaped to the door. Just as Piers reached the landing he threw himself against it. He shot the bolt. Smothered laughter came from outside.

‘Look here, Finch,’ came Piers’s voice, ‘ can you let me have a cigarette? ’

‘No,’ growled Finch. ‘Haven’t got any up here.’

‘The kid says you have.’

‘He’s a little liar.’

‘Well, look here, I’d like to speak to you a minute.’

‘Sorry. I can’t just now. I’m busy.’

‘Is anything wrong? The kid says you did n’t seem very well when he was up before.’

‘Let me alone!’ roared Finch, and he showed, furthermore, that the example he had had before him in the matter of swearing had not been entirely lost.

When they had gone he looked down at the carnation. He had flattened it against the door. . . . He looked at his wrist watch. . . . The fracas had done one thing for him, at any rate. It had made time fly.

(To be continued)