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

by Mazo de La Roche

  If Finch was resentful, Meg was furious.

  “To think,” she exclaimed, “that Alayne would foist her impecunious old relation on us for the rest of her days! And after the way she had behaved to Renny — going off and sulking, as everyone knows she has! She could always wind him round her finger. I think we should rebel. Simply refuse to get Aunt Augusta’s room ready for Miss Archer. I think you should write and tell Renny so, Uncle Nick.”

  Nicholas looked dubious. “Well, Meggie, I don’t think I could quite do that. I dare say we’ll find her very nice. And — as Renny says — she’s lost all her money —”

  “That’s the awful part!” interrupted Meg. “If she had any money we might tolerate her! I dare say, if the truth were known, we should find that Alayne has little enough of her own left — the money she was so penurious with.’’

  Maurice put in — “Renny always had a foolhardy generosity.”

  “Well,” said Piers, “it’s Renny’s own house, and if he chooses to make it an asylum for relatives who pay nothing for their keep, it’s his own affair, isn’t it?”

  Nicholas glared at him. “Is there any personal insinuation in your remark?”

  “Yes,” agreed Ernest nervously, “I should like very much to know.”

  “Of course there isn’t!” exclaimed Pheasant.

  Piers looked at his boots and blew out his cheeks. He said slowly:

  “Yes, I think there is. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of this for some time.”

  Meg looked at him, blinking a little. She did not know what he was going to say, or which side she was going to be on.

  He said — “You two uncles have made a long visit here. You’re both far from impecunious. It looks to me as though you were staying on indefinitely. Now — what about it?”

  “What about it? What about it?” repeated Ernest huffily. “What about your coming in here, young man, and poking your nose into affairs that are none of your business?”

  “But they are my business,” said Piers. “Maurice speaks of Renny’s foolhardy generosity. I quite agree with him. I call it foolhardy to support two well off old gentlemen who own a house in Devonshire, without getting a penny in return for it. I’m damned if I’d do it!”

  Nicholas returned, with less temper than might be expected — “Renny would be insulted if we offered him money.”

  Piers gave a snort. “Try him! Just try him!”

  “Everyone is not such a money-grubber as you are, Piers,” said Ernest severely. “Renny is a real Whiteoak, a true Court. He has a mind above such pettiness. If you had a better memory you would recall the stories my mother told of her father’s house in Ireland and of the relatives who lived there with him — free to come and go as they pleased — free as the air!”

  “I have an excellent memory,” said Piers. “I remember Gran telling how one of those relatives lived with him because Great-grandfather had won all his money at cards and the poor devil had nowhere to go. I’ve also heard her tell how, at the day of his death, her father had never paid for her wedding trousseau. Renny Court didn’t trouble to pay his debts. Our Renny is a man of honour.”

  “It is small wonder if my mother’s trousseau was not paid for,” said Ernest. “It filled seventeen trunks when it was taken to India.”

  Nicholas said — “Could you expect a woman of her appearance to be satisfied with less?”

  “I should expect her father to pay for it,” retorted Piers.

  “When I think,” said Meg, “of the modest trousseau I had when I was married!”

  “It was your second,” said Piers. “Remember the one you had twenty years earlier. There was nothing modest about that.”

  Meg gave him a scornful look. “What can you know about it?” she said. “You were a babe in arms.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  Pheasant was scarlet. Maurice stared at the ceiling. With his gaze still on it he said:

  “I agree with Piers that Renny would not in the least object to your uncles giving him something regularly. It’s surprising what a help paying guests are. If it weren’t for them Meg and I should be on the rocks.”

  Nicholas heaved himself in his chair. “It’s intolerable” he said, “that you and Meg should depend on that!”

  “What I think is intolerable,” said Meg, “is that Alayne should force her wretched aunt on us.”

  “I suppose she considers that one more in such a houseful doesn’t matter,” said Piers.

  Nicholas turned his deep gaze on him. “You seem to forget,” he said, “how you and your wife and child lived here for years without responsibility.”

  “I was working the farm. Paying rent for it.”

  “And being paid in turn for the feed you raised.”

  “When Renny would fork over.”

  “He told me only lately that he had paid you a large bill.”

  “Yes — poor devil — I hated to take the money.”

  Meg put in — “I wish I had a close-up of you hating to take money.”

  Ernest said with dignity — “There is no disgrace in liking money. As a family we like it for what it will bring — not for its own sake.”

  “What about Gran?” cried Meg. “She hoarded hers for its own sake!”

  “She hoarded it for the power it brought her,” said Piers. “She knew she had us all on a string.”

  His sister groaned. “Oh, if only she had divided it among us! Or left it all to Renny — or, perhaps me! Anything but what she did do!”

  A brooding silence fell on them all. The wind swept shrewdly against the house, carrying bright particles of snow and depositing them wherever there was any roughness of surface. Through the window the turquoise blue of the day showed a new phase in winter’s progress. The sunlight brought out the heavy lines in Nicholas’s face, the pinkness of Ernest’s scalp showing through his hair, the increasing greyness of Meg’s and Maurice’s heads, Piers’s fresh colouring and the length of Pheasant’s lashes.

  Ernest continued, as though there had been no interruption — “I repeat that we do not care for money for its own sake. I say this specially of my brother and myself. If Renny wants us here — and I know he does want us for he has said so — on a business basis, we shall be only too glad to pay him whatever he demands; isn’t that so, Nick?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll ask him as soon as he comes home.”

  “He’ll never tell you,” said Piers. “Or, if he does, he’ll name a ridiculously low figure.”

  “What should you suggest?” asked Ernest, lifting his lip at Piers.

  Piers considered. “Well — hm, supposing you give him eighty dollars a month. I think that would be fair.”

  “You mean between us?” asked Ernest.

  “No. I mean apiece.”

  “My God!” said Nicholas.

  “It seems a lot,” said Ernest.

  “It will make a tremendous difference to Renny,” said Piers.

  “My P.G.’s paid that,” said Meg, “and they hadn’t half the comforts you have.”

  “There’s the truth from you for once, Meggie!” said Piers.

  “They had all the comfort in the world,” said Maurice huffily.

  “What I mean is,” pursued Meg, “that they hadn’t such beautiful furniture in their rooms, or such a variety of food or the run of a wine cellar.”

  Nicholas filled the room with his sardonic laughter. “The run of a wine cellar! A glass of port after dinner — perhaps thrice a week! A bottle of beer occasionally! Let me tell you, young woman, my father would have never dignified the meagre supply in this basement by the name of wine cellar. Added to that, on every special occasion I buy something out of my own purse. The very whiskey and soda Maurice is taking now was bought by me, if you must know.”

  Maurice looked into his glass. “It’s very good,” he said.

  “As for the furniture in our rooms,” said Ernest, “it is our own to do with as we choose. No — eighty dollars is too much. We ca
n’t think of it.”

  “We shall talk it over between ourselves,” said Nicholas.

  “Well, it’s awfully sweet of you,” said Meg, “and I’m sure Renny will be delighted.” Having patted her uncles on the back she went on — “But you really should object to his bringing that old Miss Archer here. If you both object I’m sure he won’t do it. What you say carries so much weight with him.”

  But though Nicholas and Ernest pretended that they would show opposition to Miss Archer’s coming to Jalna, they did nothing of the sort. They were secretly very favourable to it. Like their mother, they enjoyed fresh arrivals and delighted in preparation for them. They had Augusta’s room turned out and thoroughly cleaned. They had some of the heavier pieces of furniture carried to the attic, substituting for them less cumbersome ones which would be more likely to please such a woman as they pictured her to be.

  They pictured her as the New England spinster of tradition. As Augusta’s hair had maintained to the end a purplish-brown colour they endowed Miss Archer’s in imagination with the same tinge and thought of it as worn in a Queen Alexandra fringe. They believed she would be rather didactic, rather reserved. It would take some time to get acquainted with her.

  They were therefore not at all prepared for the vision of elderly loveliness escorted by Renny into their midst a week later. Harriet Archer had made up her mind to one thing, and that was to look her best before these Whiteoaks. She instinctively felt that the more attractive she looked the warmer would be their welcome. She had the New York woman’s instinct for clothes and how to wear them. She was not even aware that the family knew that she was without means. She had yet to understand their intimacy. And she wanted Alayne to be proud of her.

  She appeared before Ernest and Nicholas in a pale grey, fur-trimmed ensemble. She wore a small, grey velvet hat from beneath which her silvery hair showed in exquisitely finished waves. Renny, obviously proud of her, had just divested her of a handsome mink coat. Her skin was of a fragile fairness and her pastel blue eyes large and appealing. She put a small, soft, ringless hand into each of the brother’s in turn.

  “I have heard so much about you from Alayne,” she said.

  Renny returned to the car to help Alayne up the icy steps. The presence of Miss Archer made the meeting between her and the family less embarrassing. She felt as though she were in a dream entering that house again. All was so familiar yet seen as though from an overpowering distance. The tears she had shed here…. What a confused sense of life she had! If only she could straighten things out … see them clearly … as she used to before she loved Renny. Now she could feel his arm strong and taut, half-carrying her up the stairs. She was so glad that Aunt Harriet had said that bed was the best place for her…. On the landing they met Finch. He came toward her shyly, holding out his hand. Her eyes filled with tears as she saw how ill he had been. There was something of extreme youth in the gaunt delicacy of his frame…. His lips touched her cheek, then he went down the stairs. Adeline was shouting her excitement in Ernest’s arms.

  “Do you want a peep at my room?” Renny asked Alayne.

  “I’d love to see it.”

  They went in and her eyes took in the shabby room with its furniture brought incongruously together. She saw the cabinet and china he had bought at Clara’s sale.

  “If you like,” he said, “I’ll have those taken out.”

  “No, no — leave them where they are!”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do! I’ll give them to Meggie! I’d rather not have them.”

  “Do that then. Yes — it would be better.”

  “Should you like to see your aunt’s room?”

  “No … I’m so tired.”

  She lay on her own bed. She lay there marvelling at all that had happened since she had left that room. There, on the desk, lay the blotting pad on which she had written her letter to her aunt, saying that she was going to her. The intimacy of her possessions wrapped her about. Here was the echo of her voice and Renny’s, raised loud in their distress. Here were spun the fine filaments of their relationship. Now he moved about the room, doing things to the curtains, laying out the articles from her dressing case. She marvelled at his easy movements, the dexterity of his hands. She felt so heavy…. He bent over her and kissed her. She drew him close.

  XXVII

  THE NEWCOMERS

  “SHE’S A VERY attractive woman,” Nicholas said to Renny when he and Ernest had him to themselves. “I expected to see someone much — plainer, less affluent-looking.”

  “You said in your letter,” said Ernest, “that she had lost practically everything.”

  Renny realized that he had made a mistake in branding Miss Archer as impecunious. He enquired:

  “How did Meg take it?”

  Nicholas answered — “She was furious. She wanted us to refuse to have a room got ready for her. As though we should interfere!”

  “On the contrary,” said Ernest, “we went to no end of trouble to make things nice.”

  “That was decent of you.”

  “Just what is Miss Archer’s position?” asked Ernest.

  “She looks like a million dollars.”

  “Well — she owns a very nice house which she has let. But she has had very heavy losses. I didn’t inquire into them. You know what Americans are. They cry poverty if they have to do without all their accustomed luxuries.”

  The minds of his uncles were profoundly relieved. They lost no time in letting the rest of the family know that Miss Archer’s losses had still left her affluent. There was nothing to fear from her; possibly something to gain. The family came to see her and their verdict was, in every case, favourable. Meg said that if only Alayne had had the good sense and sympathetic tact of her aunt she would never have brought dissension into Jalna.

  Certainly Alayne had never made the individual study of the Whiteoaks which Harriet Archer now began. She had read a good deal of psychoanalysis. Often she had wished for an opportunity to make use of what she knew. Here was a field so virgin, so rich, that it required a mind of dauntless activity such as hers to attack it. The truth was that she had never had nearly enough to occupy her mind and in studying the peculiarities of the Whiteoaks she got rid of some of her own inhibitions.

  If she were to live with this family she would leave no stone unturned for the understanding of them. It might be supposed that she would rely on Alayne’s judgment. But of that Harriet had a poor opinion since her acquaintance with Renny. From Alayne she had got the impression of a calculating roué. She had found him high-tempered but touchingly affectionate and of a generosity not before equalled in her experience. She had been led to believe that Adeline was a difficult, unloving child, with whom her own mother could do nothing. She had found her overflowing with love, biddable as an angel. Alayne herself had, on close acquaintance, turned out to be not the perfect niece she had always seemed but a highly irritable and often morose woman, without that larger understanding of life on which Harriet prided herself.

  For her future guidance Harriet Archer had bought herself a large notebook in which she made entries of various characteristics as they came to her notice. For instance — “Observe what large and well-shaped hands Nicholas has, with fine nails. Yet his wrist is too small in proportion … Does his habit of loudly tooting his nose every time he blows it portend anything?… Note how Finch uses his hands and how Ernest sniffs each time before he talks of his old life in England…. Note how Maurice looks at Meg when he is addressing someone else, and Piers’s habit of laying his hand on Pheasant’s nape…. Notice how frequently the eyes of one or another of the family turn toward the grandmother’s portrait.”

  So, from the first morning of her life at Jalna, Harriet Archer made a study of her new relations and not a day passed but she added to her knowledge. And she did not neglect the old house itself. On that first day she begged Renny to show it her and, if anything were needed to further cement their friendship, her exclamations of delight from
attic to cellar accomplished it.

  Her pleasure was not affected. She had never seen a house at all like it. Outside a museum she had never seen such beautiful pieces of Chippendale and Sheraton as were in the drawing room. The china used in the basement kitchen was such as she was accustomed to see cherished in a cabinet. On the other hand, there were corners uglier and more stuffy than any she had beheld. She felt a genuine pleasure in these too, partly because of the egotism that allowed them to exist, of the very unconsciousness of their existence. Renny escorted her to the kitchen and she praised the Wragges to their faces — Mrs. Wragge’s cooking and his silver-cleaning — even while, after seeing their pantries, she thought drawing and quartering too good for them.

  In her Nicholas found a fresh receptacle for his reminiscences. Everyone he knew had long ago heard all he had to tell, over and over again. Now here was a mind fresh as a child’s, eagerly interested in his memory of the London of the nineties. He unearthed old photographs to show her. He read old letters to her. At last he unburdened himself of the whole sorry tale of his marriage and divorce. They enjoyed themselves thoroughly.

  Ernest told her about his annotation of Shakespeare which he had long ago begun, and still pretended he hoped one day to finish. He was amazed to find that Harriet knew Shakespeare’s plays as well as he did, had seen the great actors in them and showed a helpful but not too critical interest in his opinions. He thought her clothes were charming and told her so. She began to dress more especially for him than for the others. Together they talked over the relations between Renny and Alayne and felt a reflected emotion in these discussions. Ernest took one of the watercolours he had long ago done, from the wall of his room and gave it to her for hers. It was the first thing her eyes saw each morning when they opened — a thatched Devon cottage, half smothered in roses and honeysuckle.