Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“I hope to God,” said Renny to Nicholas, “that if she’s going to get struck on Finch she’ll lose no time about it!”
“She is a queer stick,” said Nicholas.
“Have you heard,” asked the Master of Jalna, “exactly what has been left her by Leigh?”
“They say,” returned his uncle moodily, “that she has a quarter of a million.”
“I told her tonight,” said Renny, “that Finch is kind-hearted and easy to manage.”
“Don’t say too much. You may make her suspicious.”
“Oh, I just said it casually. I didn’t lead up to it in a heavy manner. I simply said it and then changed the subject.”
Nicholas regarded him with dubious amusement through the smoke from his pipe. The smoke lost itself in the bluish light that now at evening filled the window of his room. He liked to have Renny sit with him at dusk. Many a good talk they had had in this room.
There was a silence while Nicholas made bubbling noises against the mouthpiece of his pipe. Then Renny remarked:
“There’s Eden too. It seems scarcely fair that Finch should have all the luck. But Aunt Augusta says that, in her opinion, Sarah has always been in love with Finch.”
Nicholas remembered the faces of Finch and Sarah when he had found them together making music in Augusta’s drawing-room. He nodded his massive grey head.
“Yes. Perhaps she is right. It’s hard to tell these days. They’re an odd pair. I’m very fond of the lad but I confess that I cannot understand him.”
“Nor I.”
“If he gets Sarah he’ll have his hands full. She’s a subtle minx.”
Renny raised his brows. “Is she? I should have thought she hadn’t two ideas… Now Alayne is what I call subtle.”
Nicholas chuckled.
“Poor Alayne,” he said.
“Do you know,” said Renny, with apparent irrelevancy, “I have not paid the Wragges’ wages for six months.”
The lines in his uncle’s forehead deepened. “By George, that’s bad! I was afraid from something Rags said that you were behind but I didn’t know it was as bad as that.”
“Well, I had the money ready for them but I found that Uncle Ernie was worrying himself sick over his doctor’s bill. Gran had never let a doctor’s bill stand. It made him horribly afraid of being ill again. There were actually tears in his eyes. I couldn’t stand that, so I paid it.”
“Hm… Why didn’t you just give him something on it and the rest to Rags?”
“That would not have done. I wanted Uncle Ernest’s mind put at rest.”
“What about your own mind? It hasn’t had much peace of late.”
Renny laughed. “My mind is a bit easier too. I had enough after the doctor was paid to give the vet something. Now my annual subscription to the church is staring me in the face.”
Nicholas shifted uneasily in his chair, which creaked under his growing weight.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t worry!” exclaimed Renny. “I’m not worrying. Now, look here. Piers and I were talking over things today, and we’ve decided to have a sale of surplus stock. We think it will do quite a lot to help us.”
“But what a time for a sale!”
“It may turn out very well. And it’s bound to give us some cash, which we must have.”
Nicholas listened rather sombrely to the plans for the sale. But, as he listened, his mind, with the resilience characteristic of the family, became more buoyant. It was filled with interest and hope.
For some weeks little else was talked of in the house or out but the preparations and prospects of the sale. Bills announcing it were fixed to the walls of post offices, hotels, and railway stations within a considerable radius. The question of what animals should be sold and what retained was discussed with heat. The three elderly people were dragged to the stables to give their opinions, which indeed were greatly valued, and, once when Nicholas was kept to his room with gout, a young bull and two horses were fetched for his inspection and paraded round the lawn under his window.
Sarah’s presence was almost forgotten. Pheasant was as good a man as any of them when it came to interest in the stables. If it had not been for Alayne, Sarah would have felt neglected. Finch fought shy of being alone with her. He wished profoundly that she had not come to Jalna at that time. He did not suspect the motive Alayne had had in asking Sarah to visit them, but he was conscious of something purposeful in the attitude of the family toward Sarah and he felt that she too was conscious of it, for sometimes an expression of childlike mischievousness flitted across her face and
she, almost too ingenuously, asked the older members for advice about her future.
“She is a little devil,” thought Finch, “and I hate her. I hate her for marrying Arthur without loving him, and I hate her for floating about here in her finery when he is dead.”
Nothing in life, he thought, interested him so much at this moment as the development of his feeling for Pauline. Like a close-folded bud it as yet gave no sign of what peculiar form or fragrance it would later reveal.
Augusta had told Meg of their hopes for Sarah and Finch. They did not wish, she said, to rush the girl callously into a new engagement with her tragic widowhood fresh on her, but it was their duty to guard her, to be kind to her, and, when the proper time came, to provide her with a new husband—and him a Whiteoak if possible. There was little doubt that Sarah had cared, and still cared, for Finch.
Meg was heart and soul with the family. Her eyes had glowed, her full bosom swelled with eagerness while her aunt talked. Oh, it was such a good idea and, oh, she wished she could do something to help!
She asked Maurice if he could think of anything they might do to help, but all he could suggest was a picnic, and that was far too commonplace for a girl like Sarah. Then Meg thought of a little dinner—a delightful little dinner of the sort that really smart people gave. It would show Sarah that her relatives could do things just as well as the Leighs and their friends, if they chose. Of course, there would be no guests outside the family.
Maurice thought of their shabby dining room, their one servant, and looked doubtful. But Meg was sanguine. They had tender young chickens of their own which the maid could cook perfectly. She herself would make the soup and
she would order a meringue from town. They would have plenty of sweets and cigarettes and surely Renny ought to supply the wine.
“No, don’t ask him to do that. We have some sherry and I’ll buy port. I can make a good cocktail.” His face brightened as he arranged this part of the entertainment.
“How many of them shall you invite?”
“Only Sarah and Finch. Then I must have an extra girl for Eden. Pauline Lebraux is a sweet young thing. I’ll ask her.”
“Can you leave her mother out?”
“I’ll have her over another time. She’ll understand that six is quite as many as I can manage.”
Meg was exhilarated by the arrangements for the dinner. It gave her a feeling of well-being. She felt almost prosperous when Maurice’s evening clothes were returned from the cleaners and laid out on the bed. She herself sponged and pressed her black lace dinner gown, but she was disconsolate at the amount of plump leg that showed.
“Whatever shall I do with it?” she asked Maurice pathetically.
“Put a frill on it,” he suggested.
“A frill! A frill of what?”
“Would passementerie do?” he asked. It was the only material he could think of at the moment.
“No!” She gave him a scornful look. “All I can do is to make my legs as inconspicuous as possible. At dinnertime they’ll be under the table and after dinner, in the drawing-room, I’ll keep behind the large brass coffee table.”
“Where is that Indian shawl your grandmother left you? You might throw that across your knees.”
But she took no interest in this suggestion.
The family at Jalna thought that Meg was admirably doing her part. They looked on the dinner as an event of some import and, for the moment, the coming sale was overshadowed by its significance. The only dissatisfied member of the family was Wakefield. He thought it was unkind of Meggie not to invite him, though he had not been told that Pauline was to be a member of the party.
The midday dinner at Jalna was even better than usual that day, ending with a peach pie smothered in cream. Augusta warned both Sarah and Finch not to over-eat lest they should have no appetite for the delicacies under preparation at Vaughanlands.
“Perhaps I had better not eat my tart, then,” Sarah said regretfully. She had had just one bite of it.
“No, I think you had better not.”
Finch had already finished his. He was sitting beside Sarah. He said:
“I’ll eat it for you. I’m always hungry.”
He took it from her abruptly, pushed his plate to one side, and placed hers in front of him.
Sarah regarded him with her sideways, mischievous smile while he devoured it with an air of abstraction.
“I think he’s putting flesh on,” said Renny, eyeing Finch with an air of approval.
Piers showed his white teeth in a derisive smile. He washed the car for them and himself drove it round to the door at the appointed time. Finch was waiting on the steps. Piers suddenly thought—“Why, the fellow looks distinguished! If I didn’t know who he was I’d say he was a remarkable-looking chap.” He said:
“The car doesn’t look half bad, does it? I washed it myself and it was in the hell of a mess after the mud yesterday. No one can say that I’m not doing my bit.”
Finch looked at him with suspicion but said politely:
“Thanks very much. I’d have done it myself if you had told me.”
“Oh, you’re too swanky for that sort of thing now.”
“What rot!”
“No, no, you are quite right to take care of your hands. They are your fortune now that Gran’s money is gone.”
Finch hated this sort of talk. He was helpless against it. He climbed gloomily into the seat vacated by Piers and took the wheel in his gloved hands. Piers leaned against the window of the car, looking in at him with his enigmatic smile. Finch could see the pores in the fresh skin of his cheeks, the downy continuance of the line of his eyebrows above his nose, a reddish vein in the clear white of his right eye, a pale scar on his chin, which had once been cut by a kick from a colt. Any defects he had seemed only to increase his look of wholesomeness. After a scrutiny of Finch’s tie and waistcoat, he said:
“I admire you. I have a deep respect for you, in fact. You remind me of a lawyer Gran used to tell about. He was a brilliant fellow but he always posed before the jury as a rather dull chap who by a lucky chance was always on the right side.”
“Don’t see why I should remind you of him,” replied Finch heavily.
“Oh yes, you do! It’s perfectly obvious. You played Gran like a grand old trout and—you landed her. You’re playing Auntie. You’re playing Sarah. Yet you always manage to look simple.”
“Shut up,” growled Finch.
“Yes, I’m just going to. But first I want to tell you that you are quite right in the way you are handling Sarah’s case.
This he-man stuff—taking the very food out of her mouth— getting into the car and leaving her to clamber in afterward—it’s sure to appeal to her after her life with Leigh.”
“Oh, hell!” said Finch. “I didn’t notice what I was doing.” He scrambled quickly out of the car. In his haste he made no allowance for his height and gave the top of his head a cruel knock. He stood dazed, watching Sarah come down the steps from the house. Against the richness of her black cloak, the bands of her black hair, her face looked startlingly white. There was not much colour in her lips and they were folded together with the serene assurance of the lips in a sculptured head. The eyes looked scarcely more alive than the eyes in a statue in that evening light, and she moved down the steps as though without her own volition. She passed the brothers with no more than a flicker of her lashes and entered the car. Piers tucked the rug about her knees, touching her caressingly as though she were something precious.
“Be happy, Sarah,” he said. “There are good times coming.”
Without looking at him she slid her hand out of her cloak and touched his. He gave a long look into her eyes, trying to sound the depths of her and perhaps coming nearer in his guess than any of the others had done.
Wakefield came around the house. He had not appeared at tea and wore a look of chagrin he did not try to conceal.
“So you’re off,” he said, in his high-pitched boy’s voice. “Well, have a good time! Say—who is going to be there besides you?
“Pauline,” answered Finch, giving him a glance of triumph.
For a second Wakefield scarcely took it in. Pauline invited to dinner at Meggie’s and he not! It was impossible! Anger
surged through him. There was a plot against him. The family had found out that he loved her and were trying to keep them apart! And he had seen Pauline that very morning and she had said nothing to him of the dinner. He had drawn nearer to her that morning than ever before and yet she had said nothing of the dinner! They had sat under a tree and he had taken her hand in his two hands and had laid first his cheeks and then his lips against it—and she had said nothing to him of the dinner. Was she too in the plot? And what was this hellish plot against him? He looked from one to another of them, baffled. He looked again at Finch and saw the triumph hardening his lips. He turned to Piers.
“Did you know that Pauline was going to be there?” he asked. He could not control the quiver in his voice.
“Why yes. Didn’t you?”
“You know I didn’t! Everyone knows I didn’t!” He forgot that he was seventeen, that he was almost a man. Tears stung his eyes. “It was contemptible of Meggie!” he exclaimed.
Piers regarded him with amusement and compassion.
“Why don’t you hop in,” he said, “and go with them? Meg might find a corner for you.”
“He can’t do that!” shouted Finch. He started the engine.
“I will,” said Wakefield fiercely. “I’m not going to be left out of this!”
“You’ll not do it,” muttered Finch. The car would not start for him.
He pressed the accelerator and set the engine roaring. The car jerked and grunted but would not start. Sarah sat looking straight ahead of her, her hands tucked out of sight beneath her cloak.