“And that is why you didn’t come in to supper?”
He nodded.
“But why?”
“I can’t tell. I simply couldn’t—knowing that.”
In sudden pain, she asked: “And you weren’t going to tell me? You were going to let me go back to the Hut and find out for myself?”
“I suppose.”
“But how cruel of you!”
He did not answer; his eyes were on the little pearl-white hollow of her throat.
Now her eyes searched the dark depths of his. Was he really cruel, or only shy as a wild animal is shy, afraid of things he does not understand? She remembered the sound of someone moving in the pine wood, of Finch’s odd look when he returned from searching.
“Were you in the woods? Was it you Finch and I heard, then?”
Again he did not answer, but this time he came and put his head against hers, and whispered: “Don’t ask me questions. Love me.”
She felt the fire of his kiss on her neck. She clung to him, her forehead pressed against his shoulder. They could find no words, but their hearts, pressed close, talked together in the language of the surging tides, the winds that bend the branches to their will, the rain that penetrates the deep warmth of the earth.
XXVIII
WILD DUCKS
A MONTH LATER a party was setting out one morning from Jalna for the wild-duck shooting. They were going by motor to the lakes and marshlands haunted by canvasback, mallard, and snipe. With Maurice Vaughan were to ride two friends of his, Mr. Vale from Mistwell, and Mr. Antoine Lebraux from Quebec. Piers and Renny were to take the dogs, which, filled with gladness by the sight of the guns, trotted without rest from point to point of interest—the dunnage bag, the provisions, the weapons, and their masters’ legs, clad in thick woollen stockings or leather leggings. The sky was grey, broken by small patches of cold blue, while the scattered sunshine seemed deliberately to seek out the burning red of the maple trees. A strong wind was blowing from the southeast, bringing with it the smell of the lake and the sound of its thunder on the beach.
Wright came from the house, carrying a heavy canvas-covered hamper, and stowed it in the back of Kenny’s car.
“The bacon’s in this one, sir,” he observed, “and the small tinned stuff. The bag of dog biscuits is in this corner. And this here’s the sperrits.”
“Good.” Renny stuck his head into the car. “We can start directly… All set, Maurice?”
“Yes, it’s time we were off.”
Nicholas, Ernest, Finch, Wakefield, Pheasant, and Mooey were out bareheaded to see the party off. Nicholas wore a heavy red-and-green-plaid dressing gown; his iron-grey mane had not yet been combed, and rose in a crest above his strong features. Ernest stood chatting to the strangers, hands in pockets, looking slender, feeling young again, exhilarated by the bustle. Pheasant, her short brown hair fluttering, was everywhere in pursuit of her son, who, on his feet now, wrapped in a muffler of Piers’s, his small nose blue, was in imminent danger from cars, dogs, men, and the excited racings of Wake.
How Finch wished he were going!
He stood curved like the new moon, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind, watching with a wistful grin the fascinating activities of the hunters.
Piers was passing him with a pointer on a lead, when he stopped abruptly and stared at him. The grin faded from Finch’s face. He stiffened, expecting a sneer. Piers said: “Why don’t you come along?”
Finch returned pleasantly: “Yes, I see myself!”
“I’m in earnest. It’d do those fool nerves of yours good. Set you up for the winter.” He called to Renny, who was peering suspiciously into the engine of his motor. “Why don’t you let young Finch come? He might be of some use.”
“He’d be more likely to put a shot into one of us! He’s never been. Why take him?”
“Why not?” persisted Piers. “Look at him! He’ll never live to enjoy his money if he goes on like this. He’s all legs and nose.”
The two surveyed him. Finch giggled distraughtly, feeling himself to be dangling in mid-air.
“Very well,” agreed Renny, laconically. “But don’t waste any time getting ready.”
Finch flew toward the house.
“Why he’s as keen as mustard,” said Piers, approvingly “Me, too!” clamoured Wake. “I want to go!”
Piers tried to quiet him by standing him on his head, but the moment he was released he got into the car and established himself on the dunnage bag, whence he had to be forcibly ejected.
“Do you know,” he said, tears in his eyes, looking up into Renny’s face, “that I have never been anywhere in my life?”
“You can’t come.” Renny took out some silver and put two fifty-cent pieces into the little boy’s hand. ’Try to have a good time on this.”
Wake had never had such a magnificent sum given to him before. He was effectually quieted, even made solemn by the responsibility.
In his room Finch was throwing clothes and boots into a suitcase. In a fury of haste he dragged a bottle-green sweater over the dark red one he wore. He surveyed himself in the glass. He remembered Wake’s dream of his being a “long, yellowish, rather sad-looking flower.” He burst out laughing. “Gosh,” he exclaimed, “this is fierce!” What he designated as “fierce” can only be guessed, but probably referred to the furious speed with which life was moving. There were Eden and Minny Ware mysteriously disappeared, there were Aunt Augusta and Alayne in England, and here was he off hunting with the other men.
He tore down the stairs, the suitcase bumping against his legs, and appeared wild-eyed before the others. He sprang, bag in hand, into his brother-in-law’s car.
“Here,” objected Vaughan, “you can’t ride in this car! You’ll have to go in the other.”
“Get in here with the dogs,” said Renny.
He put his suitcase on top of the mound of luggage, and wedged himself in with the two spaniels and the pointer. They were trembling with excitement. They licked his hands and face and cried with glad eagerness to be off.
They were off! Maurice’s car was turning into the drive, its three occupants waving and calling out to the group who were left. It was impossible to believe that he was in the car behind Renny and Piers. He put his head out of the window and shouted: “Goodbye, Uncle Nick! Goodbye, Uncle Ernest! Goodbye, kids!”
They shouted back. Wake was dancing up and down with excitement. Uncle Ernest had Mooey in his arms. Pheasant and Mooey were throwing kisses. The joy, the abandon, of it pained him. He could bear unhappiness, but he had no defences against joy.
On either side of the road the oaks and the maples stood up showing their scarlet and mahogany-coloured leaves, a few of which, with every gust, were swept from them and flew a short way like bright birds before they sank to the roadside. As they neared the church the cedars of the graveyard rose in a dark green cluster against the sky. Renny touched Piers’s hand on the wheel. “Go slow here,” he said.
The car crept past the graveyard. The brothers looked up the steep path, remembering how only a short while ago they had carried a coffin up there. Renny took off his cap. He shot a quick glance at the others, and they too pulled off theirs. Piers held his in his brown hand, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Renny for the signal to replace it. But Renny looked over his shoulder and said to Finch:
“Finch, do you remember what her last word was?” “‘Gammon,” answered Finch.
THE END
Finch's Fortune
Mazo de la Roche
For
ELLERY SEDGWICK
I
COMING OF AGE
NICHOLAS AND ERNEST WHITEOAK were having tea together in Ernest’s room. He thought he felt one of his colds coming on and he feared to expose himself to the draughts 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, with paws cur
led under her breast and eyes narrowed against the blaze, lay 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 colour,” observed Nicholas, his eyes on Nip. “He hasn’t begged.”
Ernest regarded the little dog critically. “He doesn’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 doesn’t have disgusting love affairs,” answered his brother with heat.
“What about that last kitten of hers?”
“There was nothing disgusting about that.”
“There wasn’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! He was looking self-conscious, too. His mouth, under his drooping grey moustache, had a half-humorous, half-shamefaced twist. Ernest had frequently observed this tendency in Nick to imitate their mother since her death a year and a half ago, and it never failed to irritate him. It had been one thing to see an old, old woman—over a hundred, in fact, though you never would have thought it—eat sops. Quite another to. see a heavily built man, with at least a dozen of his own teeth still in his head, commit the same breach of niceness. 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.
He regarded his elder with austerity to hide what was almost pain. “Don’t you know,” he said, “that that is very bad for you?”
Nicholas rumbled— “Must do it—teeth are getting wobbly.”
“Nonsense.” Ernest’s tone was sharp. “I saw you eat quite tough venison yesterday without any trouble.”
“Bolted it.”
“Only this morning I heard you crunching a piece of horehound.”
“They do better on hard stuff. Something they can get a grip on.” He took a drink of tea, staring truculently over the cup into Ernest’s eyes. He knew what Ernest was driving at.
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 windowsill, with a soft thud. The shadow of the old mother was shut in the room with them.
A live coal rolled from the fire, across the hearth and on to the rug. Ernest kicked at it, then snatched up the tongs and captured it. The little dog sprang out of the way in terror, then walked with an insulted air to Ernest’s bed and leaped stiffly to the counterpane. Sasha, however, with only a sidelong glance at the coal, rose and stood with her forepaws against Ernest’s chair. She thrust her claws into the velour and withdrew them with a tearing sound. Ernest replaced the tongs and tickled the back of her neck.
“A lot she cares for you,” said Nicholas. “She only tolerates you because you’re her slave. She’d just as lief I’d scratch her head.”
Ernest murmured—“Sasha, Sasha,” and felt familiarly for the most sensitive nerves in her neck.
“You’ll get fur on your fingers. Have this piece of plum cake?”
“She’s not shedding her coat.” He rubbed his fingertips together. “Not a hair. No, no, have the plum cake yourself, I’m better without it.” But he glanced longingly at the cake.
While Nicholas had inherited some physical resemblance to their mother, something of her rugged resolve and tenacity, Ernest had inherited only her love of food, without the grand digestion that had accompanied it. His digestion was weak, but his eyes lingered on the last piece of cake.
There had been five pieces of cake on the tea tray, two small pieces of Swiss roll, two small currant cakes, and one largish slice of the plum cake. Why just one piece of that, Ernest wondered. It was a strange thing for Wragge to have done. It was almost as if he had hoped to cast a shadow, be it ever so slight, on their tea hour. There was something very mischievous, even sinister, about Wragge... One piece of plum cake for two elderly men... very strange indeed.
“I don’t want it,” Nicholas answered, wiping his moustache, and returning his cup to the tray. “Bad for gout. You eat it. It’s supposed to be very nourishing.”
“Rather odd”—Ernest tried to keep the strain out of his voice—“that he should have brought only that one piece.”
Nicholas glowered at the plum cake. “Ask him what he meant by it. Anyhow, I don’t want it.”
“Will you eat half of it?”
“Yes, I’ll take half. Perhaps Wragge thought half was enough for each of us. We’re not getting much exercise.”
“In that case he should have cut it into two pieces. It might easily have been cut into two.”
Nicholas chuckled. “You’re a funny old bird, Ernie.”
Ernest smiled, not ill-pleased, and cut the cake in two portions. He crumbled his bit into morsels, but Nicholas poked the greater part of his into his mouth. Through it he mumbled:
“That cat’s going to tear your chair to ribbons. Only listen to her clawing it.”
Ernest put an admonishing finger under her chin.
“Naughty, naughty,” he said, and her eyes glowed up at him above her three-cornered grin.
“Silly, flibbertigibbet creature,” growled Nicholas.
Ernest could scarcely believe his ears. Had Nick really uttered the word or had he dreamed that he heard it from Nick’s lips? Were they both dreaming? That word—their mother’s, above all words—flibbertigibbet! Was Nick getting queer? Or did he delight in hurting him by conjuring up that loved presence (so recently swept away) by feeble imitations of her habits and her words? And not her nicest habits or her prettiest words either... Well, it was in very bad taste, that was the least he could say for it.
Nicholas was looking down his long nose while he scraped the sugar from the bottom of his teacup that had all the pattern of gilt scrolls and red roses inside and was just plain white outside. He tried to look unselfconscious, but he did not quite succeed. There was an odd quirk to his grey moustache. Ernest made up his mind to ignore the word, to go on as though nothing had happened. He knew that was the best thing to do with young children when they had picked up a stray oath, just to pay no heed to the unseemly word and the child would, in all probability, soon forget it. It would punish Nick, too, for he always liked what he did to be noticed, commented upon. Instead of rebuking him, he would treat him as a naughty child. With sudden misgiving he wondered whether Ni
cholas might truly be getting childish—his second childhood—but he quickly put that idea away from him. One glance into those deep, sardonic eyes was enough to dispel it. No, Nick was sound enough except for his gout. The thing to do was to ignore the word entirely. He said testily:
“I wish you would order Nip off my bed. He’s right on my new eiderdown. He may have fleas.”
“He’ll not have a puppy on it, at any rate.”
Ernest raised his voice. “I don’t like it. Please speak to him.”
Nip’s master rumbled—“Catch a spider, Nip!”
The terrier raised his head and peered sceptically through his fringe of hair, but he did not budge.
“No use,” said Nicholas.
“Try him with cats.”
“Cats!” shouted Nicholas. “Stable cats.”
Nip endured Sasha, but stable cats he would not endure. Galvanised into a hairy fury, he hurled himself from the bed to the window seat. He cocked his head, trying to see through the snow mounded against the pane. He saw, or thought he saw, an inky form slink with lowered belly across the white expanse of the yard. He raged against the window glass. Barks failed him. He made strangling sounds. He hurled himself from the window seat and raged against the door. He uttered ear-splitting screams. Nicholas heaved himself out of his chair and limped hurriedly across the room. Nip held his breath while the door was being opened, then, as its edge approached him, he caught it in his teeth and bit it savagely. He gnawed it, trying to worry it off its hinges, punishing it for hindering him. Then, spitting a splinter from his mouth, he flew along the passage and tumbled down the stairs.
The brothers heard the front door bang. Somebody had let him out. They listened attentively, wondering whether it had been someone just passing through the hall or someone coming in from outside. On these long mid-winter afternoons, when it grew dark so early, the comings and goings of the younger members of the family were of intense interest.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 249