08 Whiteoaks of Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  When they arrived at the stables Piers was there. He asked as Renny alighted: “Well, how did the matinee idol get on?”

  “He took the part of an idiot. Too damned well.”

  “He would,” said Piers.

  VII

  THE ORCHESTRA

  BESIDE Arthur Leigh, Finch had one other friend. This was George Fennel, the rector’s second son. But his friendship with George lacked the sense of adventure, the exhilaration of his friendship with Arthur. Arthur and he had sought out each other. They had bridged barriers to clasp hands. But George and he had been thrown together since infancy. Each thought he knew all there was to know about the other. Each was fond of the other and a little despised him. Their bonds were hatred of mathematics and love of music. But where Finch toiled and sweated over his mathematics, and ached with desire for music, George made no effort to learn what was hard for him, concentrating with dogged purpose on the subjects he liked, early determining that, square peg as he was, he would be fitted into no round hole. He played whatever musical instrument was handy without partiality. He liked the mouth organ as well as the piano, the banjo as well as the mandolin. He made them all sing for him of the sweetness of life.

  He was a short, thickset youth, yet somehow graceful. His clothes were always untidy and his hair rumpled. Arthur Leigh thought him boorish, commonplace, a country clod. He did what he could to draw Finch away from him, and Finch, during that winter, till the time of the play, had never seen so little of George. But after the play he had yearned toward George. For some reason which he could not have explained, he was no longer quite so happy at the Leighs’. Not that his passage with Ada had made any palpable difference. He did not follow his advance by another step or by a repetition. She seemed to have forgotten it. Mrs. Leigh was even kinder than before. She asked many questions about the family at Jalna, and when she learned that one of the uncles was a student of Shakespeare, and that one of the young men was a poet, she took to talking quite seriously to Finch about literature. She was disappointed that Renny was unable—Arthur thought unwilling—to accept two subsequent invitations to dinner.

  Whether it were this new interest, this refined probing into the relationships, temperaments, and tastes of his family, or some change in Arthur’s attitude toward himself, which made him less happy in the Leighs’ house, he did not know, but he felt the change, which was not so much a change as a development, a new aspect in Arthur’s affection for him. Arthur had become oversensitive, exacting, critical of him. Finch was now often finding out that he had, by some gruff or careless remark, hurt Arthur; that he had, by some coarseness or stupidity, offended him; that, when he loudly aired his opinions, Arthur winced. Yet they had hours of such happiness together that Finch went home through the snow joyous in all his being. The trouble was, he decided, that Arthur loved him so well that he wanted him to be perfect, as he was perfect, not knowing how impossible that was.

  How different with George! George expected nothing of him and was not disappointed. They could spend an evening together in his tiny bedroom in the rectory, working at an uninspired level of intelligence, chaffing, telling each other idiotic jokes, littering the floor with nutshells, and finally descending to the parlour for an hour of music before Finch must hasten home. Finch at the piano, George playing the banjo, his older brother Tom the mandolin, while the rector would sit smoking, the long pipe nestling on his beard, reading the Churchman, with rare imperturbability. Tom was a lazy fellow who did everything badly (except gardening, for which he had a genius), but Finch never tired of hearing George play the banjo, of watching him as he sat squarely on his chair, his thick hands playing with great dexterity and spirit, his eyes softly beaming from under his untidy hair.

  George, like Finch, was always hard up. Sometimes they had not between them two coins to rub together. When Finch was with Arthur he was continually accepting favours, continually being given pleasures which he could only repay by gratitude. At times he felt that the fount of his gratitude must dry up from the unceasing flow.

  “But you must not thank me!” Leigh would exclaim. “You know that I love to do things for you.”

  But perhaps, when Finch on the next occasion was silently pleased, Leigh would ask, with a slight frown denting his smooth forehead “Are you pleased, Finch, old chap? Do you like the idea?”

  How different with George! There was nothing about which he need be grateful to George. They were both about as poor in this world’s possessions as they well could be. Each owned a few shabby clothes, his schoolbooks, his watch, and a cherished object or two, such as George’s banjo and an old silver snuffbox which Lady Buckley had given Finch. When he was going to the rectory, Finch would fill his pockets with apples; Mr. Fennel would carry a plate of crullers to the boys; they would both rifle Mrs. Fennel’s pantry. It was a pleasant and inexpensive give and take.

  But now that George was seventeen and Finch eighteen they experienced great longings for more money to spend. Finch had tried several ways of earning it. He humbly had asked Piers if there were any work he could do for him on Saturdays, and Piers had put him to sorting apples in the twilight chill of the apple-house. Between handling the icy fruit, standing on the cement floor, and the draught from the open door, he had contracted an attack of bronchitis that had kept him in his bed for a fortnight. Piers had come to the bedside.

  “How long did you work?” he had asked.

  “Nearly all the day,” Finch had croaked.

  “How many hours, exactly?”

  “From nine till four; 1 think, and, of course, I laid off for dinner.”

  “A day is from seven to five. Well here is two dollars. Better buy yourself a bottle of cough stuff. And the next time you want to earn some money, get a job in a conservatory.” He had thrown a new banknote on to the quilt. Finch had later spent the money on roses for Ada Leigh.

  Bronchitis was bad, but missing school for weeks was worse. He had lain, feverish, his chest torn by coughing, lonely in his attic room, listening to the sounds that came from below for companionship, unable to eat the too substantial meals Rags had carried to him, worrying all the while lest he fail again in his examinations.

  But, when he was better, the urge to earn some money had come again. This time he asked Renny for work, and Renny had given him a saddle horse to exercise. All the Whiteoaks could ride, but the horses seemed to know that there was no masterfulness in Finch, and they tried all their favourite tricks when he rode them.

  This one, just recovering from an accident, supposedly quiet as a sheep, had, in sportive caper, shied at her own gate, and given Finch a tumble on the driveway. Everyone, from Grandmother to Wakefield, had joked about Finch’s mishap, and because the mare, elated by her riderless condition, had galloped to the woods, and an hour had been spent in capturing her, her flank grazed by a broken branch, Renny had paid Finch, not with money, but with a curse. The pain of a wrenched ankle was borne in silence, but a scowl darkened his forehead as he limped to and from the station. To be a figure of fun, that was his supreme humiliation.

  One evening George said to him: “I know a fellow who would rig up a radio for us for next to nothing.”

  “H’m,” grunted Finch, tearing a bite from a russet apple. “If we only had that next to nothing.”

  “They’re any amount of fun,” sighed George. “You can get wonderful concerts from New York, Chicago—all over, in fact.”

  “Good music, eh? Piano playing?”

  “Rather. You’ve heard Sinclair’s radio, haven’t you?

  “Yes, but he always tunes in for jazz.”

  “Why don’t you interest your family in them? One would be great fun for your grandmother and your aunt and uncles.”

  “I’d never get near it. Besides, they wouldn’t spend the money on it. All the old ones are as close as bark to a tree.”

  “What about Renny or Piers?”

  “They detest them. Besides, money is awfully tight at home this winter. Gosh, you k
now I can’t get any money for anything but my fees and my railway ticket. What are you talking about?”

  George leaned forward, his square, roguish face twinkling. “1 know how we can earn some money, Finch.”

  Finch flung the core of the russet into the wastepaper basket. “How, then?” His tone was sceptical.

  “By getting up an orchestra.”

  “An orchestra! You’ve gone dotty, haven’t you?”

  “Not by a long shot. Listen here. The other day my father was making a sick call in Stead, and I drove him there. These people have a greenhouse, and while I waited outside I strolled about looking through the windows at the plants. A fellow came out and we got to talking. He was a grandson and he’d just come out from town because of the sickness. I soon found out that he plays the mandolin. He’s got a friend who plays it, too, and another who plays the flute. They’ve been thinking for some time they’d like to get up an orchestra if they could find some fellows to play the banjo and piano. He was awfully excited when I told him we might go in for it.”

  Finch was staggered. “But your father—what will he say?”

  “He won’t know. You see, I didn’t tell this fellow I was Dad’s son. He thinks I’m just employed by him. I thought it was better because one’s people are so darned silly about who you go with. Of course, these other fellows are all right, but you know how unreasonable one’s family can be.” And he added softly: “One of the chaps is a tailor’s assistant—he’s the flautist—and the other works in the abattoir.”

  “Gee!” exclaimed Finch. “Do you mean to say he kills things?”

  “I didn’t ask him,” returned George testily. “The point is that he can play the mandolin.”

  “So you’ve met them!”

  “Yes. At the noon hour. They’re awfully decent chaps, and they’re quite old, too. The one I first met is twenty-three, and other looks about twenty-six or so. They’re awfully anxious to meet you.”

  Finch began to shake with excitement. He took out a box in which were two cigarettes, and offered it to George. “Have a fag?”

  They lighted up.

  Finch was too excited to look at George. He fixed his eyes on the stovepipe-hole in the floor, through which sufficient heat was supposed to penetrate to warm George’s room. He began to wonder whether their voices could be heard in the kitchen below.

  “What about the pipe-hole? Is the servant down there?”

  “She couldn’t possibly hear. Besides, she’s got her steady with her.”

  “’Who is he?”

  “Jack Sims. From Vaughans’.”

  Murmuring voices came from below. The boys moved softly near the pipe-hole and peered down. In the light from a feeble electric bulb they saw two arms lying along the dresser. The hands were clasped. One hand, projecting from a blue cotton sleeve, was plump, a rawish pink from much washing of clothes; the other, the hairy wrist of which protruded from coarse cloth, was the gnarled hand of a middle-aged farm labourer. The voices had ceased and the only sound was the ticking of the kitchen clock.

  The two intertwined hands fascinated Finch. They became for him symbolic of the mystery, the reaching out, the groping for support of life. He felt the tenderness, the fire, that each hand drew from the other and gathered like herbs of comfort for the lonely heart…

  George was whispering: “It’s a fact they never get any further than that.”

  “You mean any nearer, don’t you?”

  “I mean any forwarder.”

  They broke into suffocating giggles. They threw themselves on the lumpy couch, uttering explosive squeaks. But, though Finch giggled hysterically, his mind’s eye was still peering down the pipe-hole, his soul burning to know what were the thoughts of the two below

  “Why didn’t you tell me about them before? We might often have taken a squint down at them.”

  “There was nothing to it.” George’s face turned glum. “Now, look here, Finch, which are you most interested in, the orchestra or those two silly spoons in the kitchen?”

  Finch returned, still grinning: “There’s no earthly use in talking about an orchestra to me. I wouldn’t be let go to town for practising or playing at places. There’d be a hell of a row if I proposed such a thing.”

  “No need for you to mention it. I’ve got it all arranged. You don’t object to making five dollars every now and again, do you?”

  Finch sat up and stared. “Would I get that much?”

  “Certainly. Lilly, that’s the leader’s name, says we can easily get twenty-five dollars a night for playing at dances in restaurants. That’s five each. Not bad, eh, for strumming a few hours? Now don’t interrupt. It’ll be the simplest thing in the world for us to work the thing. By bolting a bit of lunch, we can get in an hour’s practice at noon. Sometimes we can do it after five o’clock by staying in town for the seven-thirty train. That’s easy. Now, for the dances. You remember my aunt, Mrs. St. John, has been widowed lately”

  Finch nodded.

  “She’s a favourite with your family, isn’t she?”

  Again he nodded with deep solemnity.

  “Very well. My aunt was saying only yesterday that she would like me to spend a night with her once a week for company. She would be pleased if I were to bring you along, and, seeing that she’s a favourite of your darned old family, I don’t suppose they’d object to your spending a night in her house, when she’s widowed and all that, and I guess Renny thinks you’re more likely to study when you’re with me than with that Leigh chap.” George, in his quiet way, thoroughly disliked Leigh.

  “But your aunt, won’t she be suspicious?”

  George smiled gently. “It all fits in beautifully. Auntie is ordered to bed by her doctor at eight every night. She’ll see us get our books out—the library’s downstairs—and then toddle off to her bedroom and go bye-bye. The dances begin at nine. We’ll see life in those restaurants, too, mind you. And five bucks apiece…”

  They whispered, planning together, till it was time for Finch to go home. There he sat, wrapped in a quilt, studying, to make up for lost time. But between him and the page returned again and again the vision of the two clasped hands lying on the kitchen dresser, then Ada’s face with mouth tremulously smiling, quivering from the kisses he had given her. With an effort he would put these pictures away and drag his mind back to its task.

  Difficult, unlikely as it had seemed, the orchestra came into being. It flourished. Lunches were bolted and the noonday period was spent in practice in the parlour above the tailor’s shop, into which penetrated the pungent smell of hot iron pressing damp cloth. The tailor’s assistant was cousin to the tailor, and he and his girl-wife and puny infant lived also above the shop. He was the oldest member of the orchestra, being twenty-six. His name was Meech. Finch soon became well acquainted with all the family, and, as they were kind to him and admired his playing, his affection rushed out to them. Often, when the practice was over, he would stay awhile, making himself late for school, to play Chopin or Schubert before the friendly circle. Then the thin girl-wife of the young tailor would crouch at the end of the piano watching his hands as he played. She was so close to him that she was in his way, but he would not ask her to move. Sitting so, with her eyes on him, music springing up beneath his hands, he felt firm and strong, free as air.

  “Come along.” George would urge, his banjo under his arm, “we shall be late.”

  “Don’t wait for me.” Finch would say over his shoulder, and would be happier when the banjo, the first and second mandolins, were gone and he was left alone with the flute and his family.

  Finch now saw a new kind of life, the life of shopgirls and their beaux seeking pleasure at night in cheap restaurants. On the mornings when the orchestra had an engagement to play that evening, he awoke with a start, excited in all his being. The way had always been paved the night before with his family. Poor Mrs. St. John wanted George to spend the night at her house and would like to have Finch also. There was never any diff
iculty. Finch found it was the easiest thing in the world to lead a double life. Aunt Augusta would send a box of little cakes or a pot of marmalade to Mrs. St. John. His aunt, though she looked at him coldly, her head drawn back with her air of offence, had a tender spot in her heart for the boy. To his amazement, he had won the prize canary in the raffle, and had smuggled the cage to her room, swathed in paper, a present for her on her seventy-sixth birthday. It had come as an inspiration to him that the day on which he had received it was her birthday. She had told him that his winning the lottery was a good omen for his future. The two were drawn together. He often visited her room to see the canary, and they gloated over the prize together. She soon grew to love it extravagantly. Now she must always keep the door of her room shut tightly for fear old Mrs. Whiteoak should hear it sing. Grandmother would never have tolerated any other bird in the house with Boney. Then there was the feat of Sasha, Ernest’s yellow Persian cat, who had taken to making her toilette on Augusta’s doormat. Ernest also grew fond of the canary. He too would go to his sister’s room to hear it sing, and they would gaze enraptured at the little throbbing body while it dipped its yellow head from side to side, warbling first to one long-faced listener, then to the other.

  These days Finch lived in a kind of haze. He felt life changing all around him. New forces were drawing him this way and that. At times he felt an aching in his breast that was almost a pain, a yearning for what he knew not. Not for religion. Not for love—he had not attempted to make love to Ada again—but for something of which religion and love were only a part. His eyes were troubled, he grew thinner. Yet he was always hungry. On the days when there was no practice of the orchestra, he would go, after the school luncheon, to a large shop much frequented by the boys when they were in funds. There he would wander up and down past the glittering glass cases of tempting foods displayed; platters of ham and tongue; fiery red lobsters, and little pink shrimps; he would droop over the case of cheeses, fascinated. The cream cheese, Swiss cheese, Camembert, Roquefort, Oka, the dear little cheeses made by the Trappist monks in Quebec. He thought he should like to be a monk working in the cool rooms of the monastery, and he would buy this particular cheese, though he did not much like it, because of the thought it brought. And at the other side of the shop would be George, giving his money for cakes and chocolates, and bottled fruit from California.