07 Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

“Yes, I am.”

  “Well, not many.”

  “You don’t call this many, do you?”

  “I’ve seen you twice, no—three times before today.”

  Finch raised his voice. “You see a darned sight too much.”

  “Why, I’d never tell on you, Finch.” Wake’s tone was aggrieved “I only want one little puff.”

  With a growl, Finch took the cigarette from his own lips and stuck it between his small brother’s. “Now, then,” he said, “make the best of your time.”

  Wake inhaled deeply, luxuriously, his eyes beaming at Finch through the smoke. He exhaled. Again, again. Then he returned the cigarette to its owner, still more battered and very moist. Finch looked at it doubtfully a moment, and then put it back philosophically into his own mouth. He felt happier. He was glad after all that Wake had called him. Poor little devil, he had his own troubles.

  The darkness pouring into the room from the strange, dreamlike world outside had a liberating effect on the minds of the two boys. The tiny light of the candle, reflected in the mirror on the dresser, only faintly illuminated their faces, seeming to draw them upward from an immense void.

  “Finch,” asked Wake, “do you believe in God?”

  A tremor ran through Finch’s body at the question. He peered at the child, trying to make out whether he had divined any of his imaginings.

  “I suppose I do,” he answered. Then he asked, almost timidly, “Do you?”

  “Yes. But what I’m wondering is—what kind of face has He? Has He a real face, Finch, or—just something flat and white where His face ought to be? That’s what I think sometimes.” Wake’s voice had fallen to a whisper, and he pulled nervously at the coverlet.

  Finch clutched his knees, staring at the candle that was now sputtering, almost out.

  “His face is always changing,” he said. “That’s why you can’t see it. Don’t you ever try to see it, Wake; you’re too young. You’re not strong enough. You’d go nutty.”

  “Have you seen it, Finch?” This conversation was like a ghost story to Wake, frightening, yet exhilarating. “Do tell me what you’ve seen.”

  “Shut up,” shouted Finch, springing up from the bed. “Go to sleep. I’m going.” He lunged toward the door, but the candle had gone out and he had to grope his way.

  “Finch, Finch, don’t leave me,” Wake was wailing.

  But Finch did not stop till he reached his own bed, and threw himself face downward upon it. There he lay until he heard the others coming up the stairs.

  XV

  MORE ABOUT FINCH

  THE NEXT MORNING a mild, steady wind was blowing, which had appropriated to itself every pungent autumn scent in its journeying across wood and orchard. It blew in at the window and gently stirred the hair on Finch’s forehead, and brought to his cheeks a childish pink. He did not hurry to get up, but stretched at ease a while, for it was a Saturday morning. His morbid fancies of the night before were gone, and his mind was now occupied in making a momentous decision. Should he put on some old clothes and steal out of the house with only something snatched from the kitchen for breakfast, thus avoiding a meeting with Eden’s wife, for this morning he was shy of her, or should he dress with extra care and make a really good impression on her by appearing both well-turned-out and at ease?

  Those who were early risers would have had their breakfast by now and be about the business of the day, but Eden never showed up till nine, and Finch supposed that a New York girl would naturally keep late hours. He wanted very much to make a good impression on Alayne.

  He got up at last, and after carefully washing his face and hands and scrubbing his neck at the washstand, he took from its hanger his new dark-blue flannel suit. When it was on and his best blue-and-white striped shirt, he was faced by the problem of a tie. He had a really handsome one of blue and grey, which Meggie had given him on his last birthday, but he was nervous about wearing it. Meg would be sure to get on her hind feet if she caught him sporting it on a mere Saturday. Even wearing the suit was risky. He thought he had better slip upstairs after breakfast and change into an old one. Perhaps he had better change now. He was a fool to try to please Alayne’s fastidious New York eye. He hesitated, admiring his reflection in the looking glass. He longingly fingered the tie. The thought of going to Piers’s room and borrowing one of his ties entered his mind, but he put it aside. Now that Piers was married, young Pheasant was always about.

  Damn it all! The tie was his, and he would wear it if he wanted to.

  He tied it carefully. He cleaned and polished his nails on a worn-out buffer Meggie had thrown away. Meticulously he parted and brushed his rather lank fair hair, plastered it down with a little pomade which he dug out of an empty jar Eden had thrown aside.

  A final survey of himself in the glass brought a grin, half pleased, half sheepish, to his face. He sneaked past the closed door of his sister’s room and slowly descended the stairs.

  It was as he had hoped. Eden and Alayne were the only occupants of the dining room. They sat close together at one side of the table. His place was on Alayne’s left. With a muttered “Good morning” he dragged forth his chair and subsided into it, crimson with shyness.

  After one annoyed glance at the intruder, Eden vouchsafed him no attention whatever, speaking to Alayne in so low a tone that Finch, with ears strained to catch these gentle morning murmurings of young husband to young wife, could make out no word. He devoted himself to his porridge, humbly taking what pleasure he could draw from the proximity of Alayne. A fresh sweetness seemed to emanate from her. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the movements of her hands. He tried very hard not to make a noise over his porridge and milk, but every mouthful descended his throat with a gurgling sound. His very ears burned with embarrassment.

  Alayne thought she had never before seen anyone eat such an immense plate of cereal. She hated cereals. She had said to Eden almost pettishly: “I do not want any cereal, thank you, Eden.” And he had almost forced her to take it.

  “Porridge is good for you,” he had said, heavily sugaring his own.

  He did not seem to notice that this breakfast was not at all the sort to which she was used. There was no fruit. Her soul cried out for coffee, and there was the same great pot of tea, this time set before her to pour. Frizzled fat bacon, so much buttered toast, and bitter orange marmalade did not tempt her. Eden partook of everything with hilarity, crunching the toast crusts in his strong white teeth, trying brazenly to put his arm about her waist before the inquisitive eyes of the boy. Something fastidious in her was not pleased with him this morning. Suddenly she found herself wondering whether if she had met him first in his own home she would so quickly have fallen in love. But one look into his mocking yet tender eyes, one glance at his sensitive, full-lipped mouth, reassured her. She would, oh yes, she would!

  She addressed a sentence now and again to Finch, but it seemed hopeless to draw him into the conversation. He so plainly suffered when she attempted it that she gave up trying.

  As they got up from the table Eden, who was already cherishing a cigarette between his lips, turned to his brother as if struck with an idea.

  “Look here, Finch. I wish you’d show Alayne the pine grove. It’s wonderful on a morning like this. It’s deep and dark as a well in there, Alayne, and all around it grow brambles with the biggest, juiciest berries. Finch will get you some, and he’ll likely be able to show you a partridge and her young. I’ve got something in my head that I want to get out, and I must have solitude. You’ll take care of her, won’t you, Finch?”

  In spite of the lightness of his tone, Alayne discovered the fire of creative desire in it. Her gaze eagerly explored his face. Their eyes met in happy understanding.

  “Do go off by yourself and write,” she agreed. “I shall be quite content to wander about by myself if Finch has other plans.”

  She almost hoped he had. The thought of a tête-à-tête with this embarrassed hobbledehoy was not alluring. He drooped
over his chair, his bony hands resting on the back, and stared at the disarranged table.

  “Well,” said Eden, sharply, “what are your plans, brother Finch?”

  Finch grinned sheepishly. “I’d like to take her. Yes, thank you,” he replied, gripping the back of the chair till his knuckles turned white.

  “Good boy,” said Eden. He ran upstairs to get a sweater coat for Alayne, and she and Finch waited his return in absolute silence. Her mind was absorbed by the thought that Eden was going to write. He had said one day that he had an idea for a novel. Little tremors of excitement ran through her as she pictured him beginning it that very morning. She stood in the bow window looking out at the dark hemlocks, from which issued a continuous chirping as a flock of swallows gathered for their flight south.

  Rags was beginning to clear the table. His cynical light eyes took in every detail of Finch’s attire. They said to the boy as plainly, as words: “Ho, ho, my young feller! You’ve decked yerself all up for the occasion, ‘aven’t yer? You think you’ve made an impression on the lidy, don’t yer? But if you could only see yerself! And just you wait till the family catches you in your Sunday clothes. There won’t be nothink doing, ow naow!”

  Finch regarded him uncomfortably. Was it possible that these thoughts were in Rags’s head, or did he just imagine it? Rags had such a secret sneering way with him.

  Eden followed them to the porch. They met Meg in the hall, and the two women kissed, but it was dim there and Finch, clearing his throat, laid one hand on the birthday necktie and concealed it.

  It was a day of days. As golden, as mature, as voluptuous as a Roman matron fresh from the bath, the October morning swept with indolent dignity across the land. Alayne said something like this to the boy as they followed a path over the meadows, and, though he made no reply, he smiled in a way that lighted up his plain face with such sudden sweetness that Alayne’s heart warmed to him. She talked without waiting for him to reply, till by degrees his shyness melted, and she found herself listening to him. He was telling her how this path that led through the birch wood was an old Indian trail, and how it led to the river six miles away where the traders and Indians had long ago been wont to meet to barter skins of fox and mink for ammunition and blankets. He was telling her of the old fiddler, “Fiddler Jock,” who had had his hut in this wood before the Whiteoaks had bought Jalna.

  “My grandad let him stay on. He used to play his fiddle at weddings and parties of all sorts. But one night some people gave him such a lot of drink before he started for his hut that he got dazed, and it was a bitterly cold night, and he could not find his way home through the snow. When he got. as far as Grandad’s barnyard he gave up and he crawled into a straw stack and was frozen to death. Gran found him two days after when she was out for a walk. He was absolutely rigid, his frozen eyes staring out of his frozen face. Gran was a young woman then, but she’s never forgotten it. I’ve often heard her tell of finding him. She had Uncle Nick with her. He was only a little chap, but he’s never forgotten the way the old fellow had his fiddle gripped, just as though he’d been playing when he died.”

  Alayne looked curiously at the boy. His eyes had a hallucinated expression. He was evidently seeing in all its strangeness the scene he had just described.

  They had now entered the pine grove. A shadow had fallen over the brightness of the morning like the wing of a great bird. In here there was a cathedral hush, broken only by the distant calling of crows. They sat down on a fallen tree, on the trunk of which grew patches of moss of a peculiarly vivid green, a miniature forest in itself.

  “I don’t believe I’d mind,” said Finch, “going about with a fiddle and playing tunes at the weddings of country people. It seems to me I’d like it.” Then he added, with a shade of bitterness in his tone, “I guess I’ve just the right amount of brains for that.”

  “I do not see why you should speak of yourself in that way,” exclaimed Alayne. “You have a very interesting face.” She made the statement with conviction, though she had just discovered the fact.

  Finch made a sardonic grimace that was oddly reminiscent of Uncle Nicholas. “I dare say it’s interesting, and I shouldn’t be surprised if old Fiddler Jock’s was interesting, especially when it was frozen stiff.”

  She felt almost repelled by the boy’s expression, but her interest in him was steadily growing.

  “Perhaps you are musical? Have you ever had lessons?”

  “No. They’d think it a waste of money. And I haven’t the time for practising. It takes all my time to keep from the foot of the form.”

  He seemed determined to present himself in an unprepossessing light to her. And this after all the anxious care over his toilet. Perhaps the truth was that, having seen a gleam of sympathy in her eyes, he was hungry for more of it. But it was difficult to account for the reactions of Finch Whiteoak.

  Alayne saw in him a boy treated with clumsy stupidity by his family. She saw herself fiercely taking up cudgels for him. She was determined that he should have music lessons if her influence could bring them about. She drew him on to talk, and he lay on the ground, sifting the pine needles through his fingers and giving his confidence more freely than he had ever given it before. But even while he talked with boyish eagerness, his mind more than once escaped its leash and ran panting after strange visions. Himself, alone with her in this dark mysterious place, embracing her with ecstasy, not with the careless passion of Renny’s caressing of the strange woman. After one of these excursions of the mind he would draw himself up sharply and try to look into her eyes with the same expression of friendly candour which she gave him.

  As they were returning to the house and Alayne’s thoughts were flying back to Eden, they came upon a group in the orchard consisting of Piers and several farm labourers, who, under his supervision, were preparing a number of barrels of apples for shipment. Piers, with a piece of chalk in his sunburned hand, was going about marking the barrels with the number of their grade. He pretended not to notice the approach of his brother and Alayne, but when he could no longer ignore them he muttered a sulky “Good morning,” and turned to one of the labourers with some directions about carting the apples to the station.

  Finch led Alayne from barrel to barrel with a selfconsciously possessive air, knowing that the farm hands were regarding them with furtive curiosity. He explained the system of grading to her, bringing for comparison apples from the different barrels. He asked her to test the flavour of the most perfect specimen he could find, glossy, red, and flawless as a drop of dew.

  “Mind that you replace that apple, Finch,” said Piers curtly in passing. “You should know better than to disturb apples after they are packed. They’ll be absolutely rattling about by the time they reach Montreal.” He took a hammer from one of the men and began with deafening blows to “head in” a barrel.

  Finch noticed Alayne’s discomposure, and his own colour rose angrily as he did as he was bid. When they had left the orchard Alayne asked: “Do you think Piers dislikes me?”

  “No. It’s just his way. He’s got a beastly way with him. I don’t suppose he dislikes me, but sometimes—” He could not finish what he had been going to say. One couldn’t tell Alayne the things Piers did.

  Alayne continued reflectively:

  “And his wife—I just noticed her a moment ago disappearing into the shrubbery when she saw us approach. I am afraid she does not approve of me either.”

  “Look here,” cried Finch, “Pheasant’s shy. She doesn’t know what to say to you.” But in his heart he believed that both Piers and Pheasant were jealous of Alayne.

  He parted with her at the front door and went himself to the side entrance, for he was afraid of meeting his sister. He entered a little washroom next the kitchen—which served as a sort of downstairs lavatory for the brothers—to wash his hands. The instant he opened the door he discovered Piers already there, but it was not possible to retreat, for Piers had seen him. He was washing before going to the station wi
th the fruit. His healthy face, still red from the towel, took on an unpleasant sneer.

  “Well,” he observed, “of all the asses I’ve ever known! The suit—the tie—the hair—good Lord! Has she taken you on as her dancing partner? Or what is your particular capacity? Pheasant and I want to know.”

  “Let me alone,” growled Finch, moving toward the basin and twitching up his cuffs. “Somebody has to be decent to the girl, I guess.”

  Piers, drying his hands, moved close to him, surveying him jocularly.

  “The tie, the hair, ‘the skin you love to touch,’” he chuckled. “You are all the toilet advertisements rolled into one, aren’t you?”

  Finch, breathing heavily, went on lathering his hands.

  Piers assumed the peculiarly irritating smile characteristic of Mr. Wragge.

  “I do ‘ope,” he said, unctuously, “that the young lidy appreciates all your hefforts to be doggish, sir.”

  Goaded beyond bearing, Finch wheeled, and slapped a handful of soapy water full in his brother’s face. A moment later Renny, entering the washroom, found young Finch sprawling on the floor, the birthday tie ruined by a trickle of blood from his nose.

  “What’s this?” demanded the eldest Whiteoak, sternly looking first at the recumbent figure, then at the erect, threatening one.

  “He’s too damned fresh,” returned Piers. “I was chaffing him about dressing up as though he were going to a party when he was escorting Eden’s wife to the bush, and he threw some dirty water in my face, so I knocked him down.”

  Renny took in the boy’s costume with a grin, then he gently prodded him with his boot.

  “Get up,” he ordered, “and change out of that suit before it’s mussed up.”

  When Finch had gone, he turned to Piers and asked: “Where is Eden this morning?”

  “Oh, he’s writing in the summerhouse, with a few sprays of lilies of the valley on the table beside him. Pheasant peeked in and saw him. I expect it’s another masterpiece.”

  Renny snorted, and the two went out together.