“No. You wore Piers’s old baby clothes. Now go and make it up with Sarah.”
“I don’t want to. I want to stay with you.” Like a boy he rubbed his cheek against her shoulder. The baby stared up at them out of opaque eyes.
This was just what Meg liked — to have one of her brothers clinging to her, in spite of his wife. Now that she came to think of it, she believed she hated all their wives. She cast Dennis Finch, or Dennis Arthur, or whatever his name was, on to the bed in the spare room and clasped Finch to her deep bosom.
“You are a naughty boy!” she said.
An infantile love for Meg welled up in him. He wanted to lie on her bosom, as the baby had done. He wanted to toddle by her side holding to her skirt. He wanted her to pay no attention to anyone but him. He stood rubbing his cheek against her shoulder while she brooded over him.
At last she pushed him away. “Now go and make it up with Sarah. I must take baby back to his cot and then see about lunch. I have a Swedish maid and I smell something burning.”
“I’ll look after the baby. I’ll carry him to Sarah.”
“That’s a good idea. Oh, how nice it is to have you back! All four brothers at home. If only Eden were here! Do you know, Finch, I can sometimes see him as he was at the last, leaning over the banister in that light blue dressing gown, watching me bring an eggnog up to him. He was so weak he’d lean hard on the banister — and that look in his eyes! But he’d smile.” Tears choked her.
“I remember.”
Why should she recall Eden at this moment! Finch pushed the thought of Eden from him when Meg left him. He refused to let the thought of death touch him. He stood motionless in the passage between his wife and his son, undecided what to do. Obscure physical feelings pressed in on him from both directions. What should he do next? Go to Sarah and try to reestablish their old relations or make them over, if possible, into something new? Go to that mysterious being in the spare room who seemed to be lying there sardonically viewing the parents that had given him life? It was settled for him by the sound of Sarah’s footsteps coming toward the door. He darted into the room with the child and knelt by the bed.
She came and looked in. She was one of those rare women who can make a scene, weep or scream, and immediately afterward look as smooth as a cat.
Full of self-protective duplicity, Finch knelt by the baby, gazing into its pink face.
“He’s a miracle,” he said.
“Then you really love him?”
“He’s yours and mine. Isn’t that enough?”
“Then why were you so detached when you first saw him? You asked his name and if he were christened, as though he were a stranger’s child.”
“Everything went out of my head. I felt bewildered. It was all so new and strange.”
He thought — “I’m acting. I’m insincere. But I can’t help it. Something new has got to come out of this.”
She knelt beside him. She was radiant. He saw how easy it was for her to forgive him — if only he would worship at her new shrine.
“You adore him, don’t you, Sarah?”
“I’m like a tigress with her young.” She laughed but she was in earnest.
“And I am nothing but the poor old tiger now, eh, Sarah?”
She gave him an absent-minded caress. “See his hands. He’ll play the piano too, with such hands. Do you really want to add Arthur to his names?”
“Not if you don’t.”
“I agree. Dennis Arthur Finch. I really believe it’s more euphonious.”
Lunch was over before Finch set out for Jalna. It had snowed all the night before and that morning the wind blew, heaping the snow in drifts. The walk would be too much for Sarah. A cap on his head and a muffler round his neck, Finch ran through the drifts across the lawn, leaped the fence, and found the path to Jalna.
He saw smoke rising from the chimney of the fox farm. The girls were settling in. He thought of the four of them, each so different from the others! He had got to know Gemmel and Garda very well on the voyage but Althea remained a mystery. He had not exchanged a dozen remarks with her. She had so openly avoided him that he might well have taken offence, but she was like that with everyone, outside the family, her sisters said. He liked the thought of them in that house. He would go to see them with Wakefield or by himself.
Boyhood reached out to him from the snowy wood where pine needles lay scattered on the drifts. He felt almost miraculously isolated and free. In a sense he was more bound than ever, being the father of a child, yet he had a perverse, wild sense of freedom. Something had happened to him, had given a fresh glow to his day. The air through the pine trees was vibrant with this something. What had the child given him? Somehow it had given him freedom, he was persuaded of that. Sarah’s eyes had not that possessive look in them. Her attention was riveted on the child — a tigress with her young! Journeying toward her he had been filled with the same desolate fancies which her approaching nearness always brought, a sense of frightening loneliness. But now her emotions were focused on the child! Freedom ran through his thoughts like a wind through shocks of ruffled wheat. He hugged it to him like a fairy bride.
The snow was deep in the ravine and, as Renny one day had done, he struggled through it and up the other side. He found Wakefield waiting for him.
“I saw you coming,” he said.
Finch glanced at him sharply. Wake looked like a stranger, he thought. He had always envied Wakefield the light heart he carried but now he saw him as a man with bitterness in his breast. And a pale stoicism was in his face as though he had made up his mind to suffer no more.
“Why —” stammered Finch — “what’s the matter, Wake? You’ve something bad to tell me!”
“Bad enough. I can’t marry Molly.”
After he had spoken he stood with downcast eyes, looking at the snow. The wind swung round to the north and blew a cloud of powdery snow over them. The sun, which had been but well on its way up the heavens, was already beginning to decline. Finch put his arm about his brother’s shoulders and drew him along the path.
“What happened?” he asked.
Wakefield gave a harsh laugh.
“You ask me as though I could tell it all in a sentence! Well, I guess I have told it all. We can’t marry. That’s enough for me.”
“But why? For God’s sake, tell me why, Wake.”
Wakefield raised his eyes to Finch’s face. “I oughtn’t to tell you this, I suppose. But I can’t help it. Remember, it’s to go no further.”
“No need to tell me that.”
“We can’t marry because Renny is Molly’s father. Her mother was an Englishwoman — a Mrs. Dayborn — who helped school the horses at Jalna after the last war.”
Finch stood facing the wind, unable for a moment to realize the import of this statement. As Wakefield’s face was cold and set, Finch’s broke up into compassion and dismay. It was like touching something that had no feeling, to tighten his hand on Wake’s arm.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes. We’re all sure — those of us who know of it. There’s no use in your getting upset, Finch. The marriage is off. We’ve got to make a new life for ourselves. But at this moment the thing I most want to do is to go overseas and be killed.”
It was characteristic of Finch and a certain comfort to Wakefield that he asked no questions. He accepted the tragic truth about Molly’s parentage as something from the passionate past of their eldest brother which neither of them could make clear or change by a thousand questions and answers. He recalled certain remarks of Eden’s concerning an attachment between Renny and a girl who could do anything with a horse. He recalled how, on the night of his recital, when they were seated at a table in the restaurant, he had suddenly thought — “Why, Molly Griffith carries her head as Renny does, and her hair grows in a point like his!” He had been going to remark this but something had interrupted him. Now he said: —
“This is awful for you, Wake…. I wondered what
was wrong but I never dreamed of anything so … so devastating. I don’t know what to say … I wish I could help you. I can see what it’s done to you. What does Renny feel?”
“Oh, he’s sorry.”
“Sorry! I should think you’d almost hate him.”
“I do.”
“There’s one thing, Wake. You have your belief. Your religion. You’re not like a fellow who has nothing spiritual for ballast.”
“I have nothing spiritual for ballast.”
Finch broke out excitedly, “But, look here, you can’t do that! You can’t throw aside your faith just when you need it more than you ever have! Now is your priest’s chance to help you. Go to him.”
“I have been and it’s no use. He was kind. He couldn’t have been kinder. But something inside me has gone hard and cold.”
“That will change.”
“I hope so.”
“Can you depend on him to keep it quiet?”
Wake opened his eyes and stared at Finch. “He is less likely to tell it than I.”
“How many know of it? At Jalna, I mean. Besides we three principals” — Wake gave a short laugh — “only Alayne and the uncles. They’ve been very kind. Especially Uncle Ernest…. Oh, I shall get over it, I suppose, but — just now — I want — what I said.”
They turned at the sharp crunch of footsteps in the snow and saw Renny approaching, followed by Merlin. The blind spaniel recognized Finch and jumped joyously about him but he was stiff from rheumatism.
Renny’s weather-beaten face now showed little sign of the stress and strain he had been through. Its decisive aquiline contours, its high colouring, gave it a kind of invincible sanguineness. He kissed Finch and exclaimed: —
“Hello! Back again! Well, it’s good to see you. You look well.”
He cast a quick glance from one brother to the other, obviously wondering what Finch thought of Wakefield’s changed looks and whether Wakefield had told him of the broken engagement.
Finch coloured under the glance but Wakefield was impassive. His eyes were fixed on a gap in the evergreens where, beyond the stables, he could see the snowy fields, fold upon fold, in white drifts. Renny put a hand on an arm of each and drew them toward the house.
“Come along in,” he urged, “the uncles are wanting to see you.”
Wakefield frowned and turned himself away. A strange antagonism filled him at the touch of Renny’s hand but Finch moved obediently at his elder’s side. They heard a shout and Piers came running toward them.
“Hi!” he shouted. “Wait for me!”
When he saw that they waited he slackened his steps and marched toward them with a military step. Finch was startled to see that he was in uniform. “He looks more than ever like Grandfather,” he thought. After shaking hands he said: —
“I didn’t know you were in training, Piers.”
“I have been, all the fall and winter.”
“Home Guard,” put in Renny tersely.
“Home Guard be damned!” said Piers. “I’m leaving for England in a fortnight.”
Renny could scarcely have looked more astonished if one of the pines in the ravine had lifted its roots and declared its intention of going to the war.
“But you can’t!” he exclaimed.
Piers opened his eyes wide. “I should like to know why!”
“Who will look after Jalna?”
Piers’s eyes became still more prominent. “Why should I be the one?”
“You always have stayed at home.”
“I know I have. I’ve stayed at home while the rest of you have gone out and done things. But — there’s a war on now! And I’m going to be first on the scene! Of course, it would have been a very nice arrangement for you to go off like a conqueror with Rags at your heels — Wake and Paris to get their wings and drop bombs on Berlin — Finch to do some sort of war work in London — and I wait here till I fight the Germans on the doorstep of Jalna! Thanks for nothing! I’m leaving with the next contingent!”
Renny’s face changed. He stood speechless, grinning at Piers’s pugnacity. Piers wheeled, turned, tramped up and down in the snow, he looked fine in his uniform. The window of the sitting room was thrown up and Ernest called out: —
“What’s all the excitement about? Come, Piers, and show yourself! Finch, my boy, your Uncle Nick and I are waiting to see you.”
XXXI
LEAVE-TAKINGS
IT WAS A time of such upheaval at Jalna that Piers’s going overseas was not such a shock to the household as might have been feared. It was not till he had actually departed that the full force of the blow was felt. Then it really was a blow. His going was so sudden, so inexorable, that nothing that might follow seemed impossible. Sometimes in the minds of the old uncles and Meg and Pheasant and Alayne, one disaster after another loomed as probable.
There had been so much to do before Piers sailed that there was little time for reflection. He was here, there, and everywhere, talking over the care of orchards and farmlands with his men, arranging for the future of his wife and sons in the event of his not returning, making his will — though he had little enough to leave. A family dinner party was given for him, the night before he left, at which he got drunk and made a very good speech.
Then suddenly he was gone! It was as though the sound of a bugle had died. It was as though there were a palpable rent in the fabric of Jalna. Whoever came or went, Piers had always been there. With his complexion as fresh as a spring morning, his eyes as blue as June skies, with the hardness of winter in his back and sinews, he had strode over the land throughout the seasons.
His uncles had placed him, in his uniform, beneath the portrait of his grandfather in his uniform. Piers’s health had been drunk, he had been wished Godspeed and been full of pride. Whiteoaks had gone out to fight for England throughout the centuries and why not he?
But Pheasant walked the little empty house alone, wringing her hands, when he had gone. Mooey had been taken to Ireland. Piers had gone to the war. Would she ever again see either of them? The two sons left to her seemed small and weak and remote. Three times she had been brought to bed with Piers’s sons. Now he was gone!
She folded his civilian clothes and laid them away. What a pity he had bought that last suit! He could well have done without it and she had been against buying it, but he would have it. Now here it was, still retaining the roundness of his body. And he was gone! She knelt beside the drawer where she had laid it, shaken by sobs.
The next to leave were Renny and Rags. It was now the first of March. Renny had so recently been in England that it seemed as though he were merely making another visit. The name of Johnny the Bird once more appeared in conversation. The Vaughans and Pheasant and her boys spent much of their time at Jalna. Like their mother, the uncles wanted the young people about them. Alayne lived in a kind of dream. She had felt strangely moved in the parting with Piers. Now in this leave-taking with her heart of hearts she felt dreamlike and almost detached. She did not think “He will come back” or “He will not come back.” Her mind was not capable of such surmise. She only noticed the little things about him she had always loved. She could scarcely take her eyes off him. The passion of her earliest love for him tormented her, yet it was the passion of a dream.
On his part he felt a constant gratitude toward her for the way she had borne the news of Molly’s parentage. Things might have been so bad between them but they were in truth happier than ever. He would sit beside her, holding her hand in his strong fingers, giving her directions as to what should be done in the stables about this or that, in certain eventualities — just as though she understood.
It was the first time he had ever talked to her of his horses in that earnest familiar way, as though he were confident of her understanding and sympathizing. She knew that, in doing this, he was showing his gratitude to her, throwing open that door of his other life. She was touched. But then — everything he did in these days touched her. There seemed a pathos and finality
in all his acts, as though they were last rites before a sacrifice. Sometimes she felt like crying out that he ought not to leave her. He had fought in one war. His brothers were to fight in this. Let that be enough. Sometimes she was almost angered by the loyalty of this young country to the Motherland. Why should all these men be in training for a war in Europe? It might be better, she thought, if there were more hardheaded materialism and less idealism of a bygone generation. But there were other times when she too was carried on the tide and felt herself heart and soul in the struggle.
She talked to him of the children and, for the first time, confessed that she was disappointed in Archer. He had been such a wonderful baby with that noble forehead and that profound look in his eyes which so reminded her of her father. He had been so gentle, showed a thoughtful mind and a touching dignity. But now at five he showed neither ordinary common sense nor dignity. Nothing she could say shamed him. He was utterly absorbed in his own ignoble activities and had no real love for anyone. Tears filled her eyes.
Renny threw back his head and laughed.
“Ashamed of Archie! That’s nonsense. He’s a queer egg, but he’ll come through. He’ll go into business and retrieve the family fortunes. I promise you.”
Before he left he gave Archer his first pony and the little fellow bestrode it with no more fear and no more pleasure than he showed toward his tricycle. He just sat there while the groom led the pony about the paddock looking as though the weight of the world lay on his brow, but Renny noted with pride that he had good hands on the reins and a good leg in the stirrup.
Renny had not seen Molly since she and her sisters had moved into the fox farm. She was taking the train to the town each day to her war work and on her return kept to the house for fear of meeting either him or Wakefield. But he felt that he must speak to her once again before leaving. He wanted to make sure that the girls were comfortably settled in.
On his last Saturday afternoon he went to the fox farm, thinking on this day he would find her in. But he went reluctantly, for he dreaded meeting her. He drank in the pure air and filled his eyes with the sight of the trees, ice-sheathed after a wild storm. He thought he would like to carry this picture away with him.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 143