Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
He reviewed his friendship with Arthur Leigh. How different from his friendship with George, which had begun in babyhood and continued at the same temperate level to their school days. He had not seen Arthur either since his return. Leigh had been in Europe with his mother and sister. Difficult to bridge a gap of absence with them, Finch feared. He had an inexplicable dread of meeting Leigh, and, more especially, his sister Ada again. Now that he had passed his exams, he would be going to the University in October. Arthur would be there. What would he think of Finch’s having all that money left him? Perhaps it would not seem so very much to Arthur, for the Leighs were rich. Their faces rose before him too, Arthur’s sensitive, questioning, rather supercilious; Ada’s ivory-pale, heavy-lidded, provocative; and Mrs. Leigh like a sister rather than a mother, more golden, less bronze than Ada, her eyes more blue than grey, desiring to please rather than dubiously offering to be pleased. How little he knew of girls! And yet they were often in his mind, when, lying awake, he would make fantastic pictures of the girl who might possibly love him. Sometimes their faces were mocking variations of the face of Ada Leigh, sometimes they were impossible faces with disproportionately large, mournful eyes or wide red mouths like flowers.
Sometimes they showed no face at all, only a flat, white disc borne above heavy breasts that pressed against flowing garments.
He reviewed his life in New York as costing clerk. His determined efforts to learn the routine of business, his rides on the Fifth Avenue buses, his visits to Alayne’s apartment, the jolly kindness of Rosamond Trent. Looking back at this period, he seemed not to have been himself at all, but a strange translation into a being of another world, already becoming so shadowy that it was hardly to be grasped at.
He went over the happenings of the summer—his practising, his playing in the church at night, the walks home by moonlight, the secret meetings with his grandmother. When his imagination reached the point of her death, her funeral, the reading of the will, and the scene afterward, a protective instinct drew a film, like a fine veil, between the eyes of his spirit and these pictures, so that it might not be bruised by the cruelty of them.
These various experiences presented themselves as sections of a screen, which shut him off from what might have been a shrinking contemplation of his future at Jalna. He lay supine, indolently dreaming of life, not daring to think how close he had been to death.
Meg’s notion of rehabilitating him in his old niche, or something better, was to feed his body with the best that her kitchen could provide. Her intuition, and some self-reproach, told her that he needed tempting food and plenty of it. He was tempted like an invalid and ate like a field labourer. Renny, coming to visit him and finding him propped up over half a broiled chicken, thought, and declared vehemently at Jalna, that Meggie was perfect. Her remarks about Alayne had faded as breath from a glass. These were women’s ways
and beyond his ken. But he could take in the significance of Meggie’s plump white hand stroking Finch’s lank hair, or a crisp section of broiled fowl surrounded by green peas. The family at Jalna were told that Finch had had a “ nervous breakdown
”
(most convenient of illnesses) just as he arrived at the Vaughans’ house, had been taken in, and was being nursed back to health by the blameless Meggie, and that it would be a good thing if they could bring themselves to treat him with indulgence on his return. It was a relief to all to have him out of the house for that week. The sight of his angular, drooping form and the knowledge that here was the heir to old Adeline’s fortune might have produced other nervous breakdowns. As it was, the talk rolled on and on without even the insignificant let or hindrance of his presence. Augusta was shortly returning to England. Never again would she endure another Canadian winter. She had had the good fortune not to have been born in Canada. She had no intention of dying there of the cold. This she affirmed with the thermometer at eighty-five degrees in the last fever of summer. She urged her brothers to return with her for a visit.
Meg thought that a talk from Mr. Fennel would be good for Finch. She did not tell the rector that he had done anything so desperate as attempt to take his own life, but she intimated that he had lost control of himself in a very strange and inexplicable fashion. Mr. Fennel shrewdly guessed that there had been a disturbance at Jalna over the will, and that Finch, made ill by the excitement, was being kept at the Vaughans’ till the smell of the fat died away. He came to see him and talked, not religion or behaviour, but about his own young days in Shropshire, and how he had wanted to be a stage comedian, and did Finch so much good
by his wit and sagacity that he was able to be out of bed that evening, and the next morning steadied himself still more by an hour at the piano.
The next day George Fennel, back from camp, came to see him, and still further forwarded his recovery. George was beaming over his friend’s good fortune, and blithely indifferent to the disappointment of the rest of the clan. He sat, solid, rumpled, sunburnt, on the side of the bed, and discussed the endless possibilities of a hundred thousand dol-lars.
“Why, look here,” he said, “you can get up a
regular
orchestra of your own, if you want. We could take it on a tour across the continent. Some sort of striking uniform— blue with lots of gilt. 1 suppose your family would object. My father would, too. He hasn’t much imagination. Hates anything stagey. But it’s the sort of life I’d like,” His eyes shone. He took from his pocket the usual crumpled cigarette packet that invariably contained from one to three enervated cigarettes, and offered Finch one. They puffed together in the sweet renewal of good fellowship after absence.
“And look here,” he went on, “you should get yourself a concert grand piano. I’d like to hear you on a concert grand. Playing some of those things from the
Chauve-Sonris.
It would make a tremendous difference to you, having a piano like that. You might become famous… Of course, for my part, I like the idea of a swell orchestra. Great Scott, we had some fun with the old one, didn’t we? And we worked for what we got! My finger-ends used to get so sore that the banjo strings seemed red-hot. Do you remember the last night, and that girl who tried to make up to you? They were a pretty tough crowd. Do you remember what a time we had getting home, and how we bought milk from a milkman and
it was frozen? I should never have got home if it hadn’t been for you.”
George broke into his peculiar, sputtering laughter, then became serious. “Last night I had dinner in town with a Mr. Phillips. He’s got absolutely the best radio I’ve ever heard. It’s an expensive one, but he says it gives perfect satisfaction. We heard wonderful grand-opera music and some fellow on the piano—just the sort of thing you’d like. You really ought to have one of those. It would be good for you, too, because you could hear all the best things and not bother about the jazzy stuff… Good Lord, do you remember the way we used to pound out ’My Heart Stood Still’?”
He sputtered again and then made an even more significant suggestion. “Do you know, Finch, up in the North where I was there was a wonderful bargain in a summer cottage. It was a log-cabin sort of thing built by some American who finds it too far to come. He’s going to sell it awfully cheap. It would be splendid for you to own such a place to rest in, in the summer, and take your friends to, and recuperate and all that. It’s got an enormous stone fireplace and raftered ceilings, and the deer come almost up to the door. Why, one night this American said a porcupine kept him awake gnawing at the foundation.”
“It would be splendid,” agreed Finch, his head suddenly very hot with excitement.
“And there’s another thing I’ve just remembered,” pursued George. “There’s a chap up there who has a motor launch for sale. It’s the fastest one I’ve ever been on. Goes through the water like a knife. If you had that, with the cottage, you could have no end of fun. I wish I’d found out more about the launch. However, I think you’ll be safe in risking it. It’s quite different with a motor car. When you buy a car
you should get one of the best English makes. There’s nothing like them for standing the wear and tear.”
‘The trouble is,” said Finch, “that I don’t get this money till I’m twenty-one.”
“The time will soon pass,” said George, easily “I dare say these people would hold the cottage and launch for you. I’ll bet that you could raise money any day on your prospects. That’s often done.”
Finch lay bewildered, speechless before the vista opening before him.
His meeting with Arthur Leigh was very different and, though less riotously stirring, had an equally healing effect on his bruised spirit. He had a note from Arthur that ran:
MY DEAR OLD FINCH—
What is this dazzling news I hear of you? I met Joan on the street and she told me some about a huge bequest. I am delighted, and Mother and Ada almost as much so. Please come and spend a week with us (my womenfolk insist that it shall be no less) and we can talk day and night. It will take seven of them for all I want to say to you.
To think that I have never seen you since your mysterious disappearance to New York! And in all this time I have never had so much as a line from you!
Yours ever,
ARTHUR.
Finch’s heart was quick with love for his friend when he had read this note. The plain but heavy notepaper, bearing the Leighs’ crest and Arthur’s small black handwriting, symbolized for him the dignity and elegance of Arthur’s life. The
fact that he was a Court and a Whiteoak meant nothing to Finch; this note written by Arthur’s small exquisite hand was truly impressive. He carried it in his pocket as a kind of charm when he returned to Jalna.
It required great fortitude to return. So tremulous were his nerves when he entered the house, he feared a wry look or word lest they should betray him into an hysterical outburst. The very smell of the house sent a quiver through him. The smell of the thick, heavily gilded wallpaper, the shabby tasselled curtains, the faint Eastern odour that hung near his grandmother’s room, where now reigned inviolable stillness. Did he imagine it, or was there still the odour of coffin and funeral flowers in the empty drawing-room? He stood in the hall, not knowing where to go, listening to his own heartbeats. He felt desolate and afraid in spite of George’s visit, of Arthur’s letter. For the first time he realized his grandmother’s death, and the loss those visits to her room would be to him. He realized with a constriction of the throat how much confidence he had got from those weeks of intimacy with her fierce and extravagant nature.
Standing in the hall, he saw himself, a tiny boy not more than three, descending the stairs, a step at a time, on his little seat, lonely even then, a pathetic infant with a limp, fair lock dangling over his eyes. It had seemed a tremendous journey down those stairs, and the smells then had been strange and disturbing as now. He remembered the long-legged, red-haired big brother who, striding in leather leggings along the hall, would snatch him up and throw him, screaming with frightened laughter, across his shoulder. He remembered the smiling, teasing boy of ten that was Eden, and the ruddy-cheeked one of seven, whom he worshipped and feared, that was Piers. And the uncles… Standing there,
he meditated a separate penitential apology to each for the trick he had played them, For, however unwittingly, he felt that there must have been something tricky in the way he had supplanted the others. Else they could not have felt toward him as they did. He feared that among them all there was not one who had not inwardly withdrawn from him, unless it were perhaps Eden. Eden! What a muddle! Could he go to them separately, make them understand, and still keep his self-control?
The very thought of it took the sap out of him. His knees felt weak. He pictured the interviews as a series of finedrawn agonies. No—he could not do it. They must think of him what they would, endure his moneyed presence as best they could.
He heard a step behind him and turned. Augusta was coming down the hall. In the dim light cast by the stained-glass window he saw that she was very pale and looked troubled. He raised his eyes humbly, wondering how she would greet him. She was beside him before she noticed his presence. Then she concentrated on him a look of melancholy relief.
“It is you, Finch! I’m very glad you have come. I wish you would come to my room so that I may discuss something with you. I believe you are just the one I need to help me.”
To be needed! Oh, sweet words! He followed her up the stairs, wishing that he might lift the hem of her black cashmere dress and bear it as a train. To be regarded without bitterness! To be taken under Aunt Augusta’s crepe-trimmed wing!
In her room, she said. “It is about my dear canary that I am worried. I actually made my plans for returning to
England without considering him. Now I cannot turn back. He will die unless he is tenderly cared for. Finch, dear, can I trust him to you? Will you do this for me?” Her Queen Alexandra fringe drooped above the gilded cage where the canary trig as a daffodil, searched for hempseed in his cup.
“Tweet, tweet!” said Augusta. “Thank Heaven, he can know nothing of what is passing in my mind. Tweet, tweet! I tell you, Finch, he knows more than all the cats and dogs of the family put together. I do not boast about it, but I take the greatest pleasure in his sagacity. Can I,
can
I trust you to care for him?”
“Yes, Aunt, I’ll do my very best for him. I suppose he’s pretty delicate.”
“His health is perfect. But he needs perfect care. I shall give you minute directions about his bath, his seeds, his lump sugar, and his lettuce-leaf.”
The canary wiped his bill vehemently on his perch and cocked an eye at them.
“Tweet, tweet,” said Augusta, in a mournful contralto. “Tweet, tweet,” echoed Finch hoarsely.
Poor bird, he was to know some vicissitudes under Finch’s care!
Finch kissed his aunt fervently and, with a lightening of the shadow that hung over him, ran upstairs to his attic room to look over his clothes. He took them from the closet, examined them near the window, then laid them on the bed. The more he looked at them, the more certain he became that he must refuse Arthur Leigh’s invitation to spend a week with him. The new black ready-to-wear suit which had been hastily bought him for the funeral did not seem to help things out at all. Most of his underthings and socks had holes in them. His best hat was no better than his worst. Some ties
he had bought in New York were satisfying, but scarcely enough to make him presentable. His visit to Leigh’s must be short, for, even if he could persuade Renny to buy him new clothes, they would not be ready at once, and Leigh wanted him at once.