Finch's Fortune: A Novel

XIV

MRS. COURT raised no difficulties over Sarah’s engagement. In fact, she seemed to be delighted with the idea of having Leigh for a nephew. She told Augusta that she believed she herself had brought about the match by her tact and understanding of the young people. Augusta was offended because of her plans for Finch and Sarah. She had an inward conviction that Mrs. Court was making the best of a bad job. If she had to lose an unpaid companion, she would get what credit she could out of the affair and trust that Sarah, in her future affluence, would not forget her kind old aunt.

At once Mrs. Court took a motherly tone with Leigh, was anxious about his paleness. She was having a course of cod-liver oil and begged him to join her in it. Leigh, always nervous in regard to his health, was persuaded. After each meal Ellen carried a small tray to Mrs. Court, on which were a bottle of the oil and a tablespoon. The rest of the party watched fascinated while she measured out the nauseous dose, turned away as she opened wide her thin-lipped mouth and gulped it, turned back again, with sickly smiles, to see her lick the spoon.

‘It’s all in getting used to it,’ she declared. ‘Once you are used to it, it grows on you.’

The moment Leigh consented to try it she ordered two tablespoons to be brought. She poured out his dose herself and trotted round to his side, balancing it on the spoon. He opened his mouth. She thrust it in. His expression of heroic suffering delighted Sarah. She threw one of her malicious looks at Finch.

Inside of a few days Mrs. Court could perceive an improvement in him. ‘Is n’t he getting a pretty boy?’ she cried. ‘I call him my poppet! My pretty poppet.’

It was arranged that Mrs. Court and Augusta should take Sarah to London to buy clothes for the wedding. Arthur was to accompany them.

When Nicholas and Finch found themselves alone at Lyming for a space they were pleased rather than otherwise. Nicholas had been finding it increasingly difficult to get on with Augusta. He was tired of Mrs. Court, her passion for bridge and playing accompaniments, her habit of taking cod-liver oil in public. He was tired of hearing her extol the virtues of Thomas Court and condemn the habits of Dennis, for he had disliked one and liked the other. Besides, he wanted an opportunity of seeing something of Eden and Minny. He resented the fact that because of Mrs. Court he could not have Eden come to see him at the Hall.

Nicholas suggested that they ask ‘the lodge keeper and his lady,’ as he called Eden and Minny, to spend the Sunday evening with them. The maids, excepting Ellen, would be out, and Ellen knew how to hold her tongue. ‘Even if Augusta finds out that they’ve been here, I don’t believe she’ll mind much. Though she does wear a Queen Alexandra fringe, she dates from before Victorian days.’ And, looking hard at Finch from under his shaggy brows, he added, ‘I want to see Eden. I want to see Minny. I like the young folk about me.’ Finch thought, ‘Good Lord, he’s at it again ! It’s a good thing Uncle Ernie is n’t here. It upsets him so to hear Uncle Nick being like Gran.’ He agreed that it would be jolly to have a little party.

The two from the lodge arrived looking tidier than Finch had yet seen them. Minny, poor girl, had got a new frock of summer silk, purchased through the advertisement of a London shop’s July sale. Eden had himself trimmed her thick hair. And, surely enough, there were the dabs of rouge on her ears!

‘I’ve turned barber!’ Eden exclaimed. ‘How do you like Minny’s hair?’

‘I like her ears,’ said Nicholas, and pinched one.

Minny caught his hand. ‘May I call you Uncle Nick?’

‘My dear! What else should you call me?’

There was hilarity at supper. Eden swore that it was the first good meal he had had in months. Minny cooked so badly, he said, that he had to do most of it himself. But it was impossible to offend Minny. Like the yielding fulfillment of hot July itself, she opened her mouth, and laughter and breath as sweet as clover issued from it. Nicholas was generous with Augusta’s best wine.

After supper Nicholas and Eden talked, and Finch and Minny listened. Then there was music, and the talkers listened.

On the way back to the lodge Minny said, holding tightly to Eden’s arm, ‘Oh, darling, would n’t it be thrilling if we owned a place like that!’

‘We never shall, my child,’ he answered. ‘You and your poet must sing on other people’s doorsteps.’

When the others came back from town all was haste and preparation for an early wedding. Leigh was nervously intolerant of delay. The pangs of his love could not brook the loss of summer weeks with Sarah as his bride. His mother and sister were in British Columbia. His mother had had an illness and it would be some time before she could make a long journey. He would have liked to be married in a registry office, but neither Augusta nor Mrs. Court would hear of any such thing. The wedding might be simple, the guests few, but it must be properly done. Augusta thought it augured well for their happiness that Renny and Alayne had been married from her house the year before. Only people from the neighboring houses and a few friends of Leigh’s from London would be present.

Since Sarah’s coldness had melted into love under Arthur’s passion, Finch wondered at his friend’s feverish unrest. He looked tired after the week in London. Suddenly one day he confided to Finch: —

‘I often feel as though site were slipping away from me. I’ve never been quite so near her again as that first day by the stile. I feel half frightened. . . . And irritated. . . . Then I’m angry at myself. She’s so absolutely sweet and adorable. Yet she puzzles me. I think when I’ve had her in the flesh it will be different. We’ve disagreed about the honeymoon, I wanted to go to Norway, but no — she wants to go to the sea. Some place quite near here. She hates society. She scarcely spoke to my friends in London when I brought them to see her.’

‘Has she ever told you about her childhood?’ asked Finch.

‘Nothing except that she was orphaned at thirteen, and that Mrs. Court adopted her then — educated her, took her traveling. My feeling is that Sarah has no spark of gratitude toward her for what she’s done. I think she’s an old dear.’

Finch hesitated as to whether or not he should tell Arthur of the manner of Dennis Court’s death. A longing to keep something of Sarah secret to himself prevented him. If she had wanted Arthur to know of her strange childhood, she would have told him. In any case, Finch’s conversations with her in the garden were his own to forget or to meditate on as he chose. He was glad that she had told Arthur nothing.

‘I agree with Sarah,’ he said. ‘I can’t think of anything better than a honeymoon on the seacoast here. Renny and Alayne had a cottage in Cornwall for a month and they were awfully keen about it.’

‘I like the idea of a cottage. I must speak to Sarah about it.’

They hired a motor, for the keeping of one was an extravagance Augusta did not allow herself, and went into Cornwall. They sought out agents and had one disappointment after another. All desirable places had been let months ago. It was within a few days of the wedding, and Leigh was in despair, when an agent in Polmouth told him of a house belonging to a well-off, retired Cornish farmer. It was a fine house, he said, vastly superior to the places that were usually to let. The two youths rattled off in their hired car to inspect it.

It stood on the outskirts of the town, in its own garden, a square, ugly house, with white sun blinds and curtains gleaming frostily behind each polished pane. Not a fallen leaf lay in the spruce garden, not an atom of dust within. They were shown into the dining room, where, seated on the mahogany chairs upholstered in crimson plush, they were critically interviewed by the lean husband. With a hard, quizzical gleam in his small eyes, he sat entrenched behind the dining table, tapping on it with his spectacles while the rent was discussed. The plump wife, with a yearning beam in her large eyes, sat silent, with submissively folded hands. Finch soon discovered that her chance of visiting her married daughter in Scotland depended on the letting of the house. Something in the Cornishman roused a feeling of antagonism in Leigh. Finch was astonished to hear him haggle over the rent. There were periods of terrible silence while they sat at grips, the old man tapping with his spectacles, Leigh looking stony. By the time all was settled and the rent had been reduced by twenty-two and six a week, Finch and the wife were in a state of abject depression.

Leigh and the Cornishman were suddenly beaming, pleased with each other. Finch thought, ‘I begin to see why Arthur’s people all made money.’ Yet, Arthur was so extravagant. Finch and the wife smiled at each other and drew sighs of relief.

In the car Leigh threw himself back with a gesture of dismay.

‘To think,’ he ejaculated, ‘that I should be taking my lovely Sarah to such a mausoleum! It seems too bad to be true! Did you see the dreadful whiteness of the bedrooms? Why did you let me do it?’

‘ I don’t think it will be so bad,’ comforted Finch. ‘Look at that, and you’ll see how little the house matters.’ He pointed to the sea, stretching to the blue horizon in an incalculable multitude of advancing foamfringed waves. ‘You should worry,’ he grinned, ‘about lace curtains and texts on the walls!’

Arthur looked out; his face brightened. ‘Is n’t it glorious! Oh, if only you were going to be with us to enjoy it, too!’ His eager eyes turned to Finch with a compelling look. ‘There is no reason on earth why you should n’t.’ He smote Finch on the leg. ‘You must! You must! Think of those fine white bedrooms! Don’t refuse me this, Finch! You’ve no idea how much I want you.’

‘Well,’ said Finch, ‘it’s the rummest suggestion I ever heard. To want to take your best man on your honeymoon! Why, Sarah’d never stand for it. It would be awfully upsetting for her. A honeymoon is about enough for a girl to take on, let alone a groomsman thrown in!’

‘ Rot! Sarah would love to have you. She likes you tremendously — she’s told me so. And it’s not only that we’d like to have you — there’s something more.... I can’t quite explain. . . . Finch, darling, I want your support. You may think that my love for Sarah has come between you and me. You’re wrong. I think more of you than ever. And I want to have you near me in these weeks. I want the woman I love and the man I love beside me. I want the two different loves merged into one beautiful whole. I want our love to be as clear as the brightness of a three-pointed star. Do you understand?’ He held one of Finch’s hands tightly in his.

‘But — had n’t we better begin it a little later?’ asked Finch. His very flesh and bones seemed to melt into some ethereal substance at Arthur’s words, Arthur’s touch, but he was assailed by doubt at the thought of sharing the honeymoon.

‘No, we can’t!’ Arthur returned, fiercely. ‘It’s begun already. Now is the time to hold it to us. Cherish it. Make it part of us, don’t you see?’

Finch felt rather bewildered, but he agreed. ‘You won’t want me right at the first, will you?’

‘Of course we shall!’ Arthur pulled his hat petulantly over his eyes. He relapsed into brooding silence.

The day of the wedding was a day of soft rain. Everything felt warm and damp to the touch. The pensive air held the sound of the wedding chimes as though reluctant to let it go. The chimes beat, quivered, pulsed through the patter of the rain, and died at last in the mist of the moor. Arthur was delighted at the thought of giving money to bell ringers at his wedding.

Mrs. Court annoyed Augusta excessively by beating a tattoo with her heels throughout the service. Augusta shed a dignified tear or two, since there was no one else to do it. She had also done this for Renny and Alayne.

That part of the church not occupied by guests was filled by curious villagers and country people. They agreed that the groom was a pretty young man and that the bride was proud and cold. They thought that the best man was a kind-looking young man, but sad. An aged Court, almost stone deaf and with an appetite even greater than Finch’s, came over from Ireland to give Sarah away. He evidently mistook her for some other great-niece, for he continually addressed her as Bridget.

At first Augusta and Mrs. Court had thought the idea of taking a third person on the honeymoon a far too unconventional one. Arthur persuaded them, however, that on the contrary it was really one of archpropriety. Sarah herself was acquiescent. The thought of a house near the coast pleased her, for her aunt’s house was inland and she longed for the sea.

XV

They were taking their first picnic to the shore. After three days of wind and rain the sun shone warmly and a period of tranquil summer weather was foretold. The wings of the gulls shone between sea and sky of equal blueness. All the life of Polmouth that had retreated, damp and discouraged, to the shelter of its slaty roofs now leaped out rejoicing. The links were dotted with figures of golfers with upraised bare forearms. On the downs the black-faced sheep exposed the dampness of their wool to the sun. On the porches of the boarding houses appeared rows of drying bathing suits.

‘What a pity,’ said Leigh, ‘that we have no bathing suits! We must buy some in the town.’

After that they went bathing almost every day, the limbs of Arthur and Finch turning a ruddy brown, and Sarah’s a pale coffee color. She bought a black bathing cap that fitted closely about her face, which looked like a strange pale flower appearing from its dark sheath. They had almost to carry her down the steep steps cut in the rock. She relaxed in their arms like a young child, seeming to give no thought to the difficulty of the descent. The cave was assigned to her for a chamber, while they undressed in a sand-strewn crevice of the cliff. Then she must be guided among the small sharp rocks jutting from the sand. Finch cast a shy look at her legs, wondering that she was not able to make better use of them. They were thin but shapely. When she was safely on the sands that gleamed like wet brown satin she glided at her accustomed pace to the surf.

When it was too cold to bathe they built a fire of driftwood in a sheltered coign of the cliff and boiled a kettle for tea. It was at these times only that Sarah attempted to give any assistance. She would stand sheltering the fire from the wind with her shawl until it began to crackle and the flames licked about the kettle. They would sit smoking, while Leigh talked happily, watching the sun sink into the sea, cloud flakes, like a flock of butterflies, drifting above it.

As the sultry days passed, their gayety was tempered by pensiveness which grew into a faint melancholy, making them sit silent in each other’s company, feeling troubled, they knew not why.

Toward the end of the month they were caught in a sudden squall. It was Sunday, and there were many people abroad. In order to escape these they walked to a point more distant than any they had reached before. They sat on the brow of a cliff enjoying the new view of headland beyond rocky headland stretching northward. Vast cloud formations were reared like cities gilded and glorified by the sun’s splendor, then were disintegrated, dissolved before their eyes, leaving the sky a tranquil arch of unbroken blue.

The squall, the driving rain, were on them before they had time to do more than collect their belongings and run to the shelter of a hedge. They huddled together while wind and rain beat on them. Near by a flock of sheep took refuge.

When the worst was over they set out on the walk back, wet, but rather exhilarated by the experience. The twilight was silvered by rain. Dense clumps of furze loomed black as pools before them. The boys ran down the long slopes of the downs with Sarah between them. She ran, as she walked, with a peculiar gliding motion that left her upper part immobile. Finch had the fancy that she was on wheels, and that he and Arthur were drawing her. His nerves were intensely alive.

As they were passing through a gap in a high hedge, they made out the figures of two people who had found refuge there. They did not seem to be in a hurry to leave the shelter. The woman lay with her head toward the hedge, and the man, raised on his elbow, beside her. They Were oblivious of the three who were passing. Finch saw the bulk of the man’s shoulders and the movement of his arm as he caressed the woman. They were shadows thrown against a wall of rain. The woman half sat up. The man’s head, bent above her, was as motionless as the head of a gargoyle on a church tower. She sank back.

4 Heavens, what a night! ’ exclaimed Leigh, when they had passed through the gap. ‘What a night, and what a place for love!’

‘I can think of worse nights — and worse places,’ said Sarah. ‘Have you my shawl safe, Arthur?’

‘I have it, and it’s as safe as anything is.’

He spoke crisply, feeling suddenly irritated by her, irritated by Finch, by the rain that was trickling down his neck.

Finch thought of the two by the hedge. They must be soaked through, but they would be unaware of the discomfort. They were lying there wounded, shot through by the fire of love. They were natural — that’s what they were. People were n’t intended to go into houses, to hide themselves away from the rain and the blown spray of the sea. He gloried in it wetting his cheeks, plastering his hair on his forehead. For the first time in his life he gloried in his maleness, feeling it strong and untamed and bitter within him. He gloried in the feel of Sarah’s fingers caught in his, clinging to him for support and guidance, in the jolt of their bodies together as they passed over a rough bit of ground. He felt a creeping antipathy for Arthur. It crept through him like a slow fire through grass, sending a choking feeling like smoke through his being. He would like to order Arthur to go on alone, to leave Sarah and himself together. . . . He would kiss the raindrops from her face. He would know what it was like to be kissed by her. . . . Heavy hatred for Arthur surged through him. He was afraid of himself — afraid of what the storm and the sight of those two in the hedge had done to his mind. . . . He remembered Arthur’s saying, ‘You are both Courts. You have the same ancestors behind you.’ That must be the explanation of something wild in them both.... If only he might talk to Sarah alone!

Not watching where he was going, he stepped into the opening of a burrow, hidden in grass, and fell headlong, almost dragging the others with him. When he gathered himself up he found that his ankle was strained. He could walk no farther. He sat down on a low crumbling wall and nursed his ankle. The rain was ceasing and the faces of Sarah and Arthur were pale disks in the glimmering moonlight.

‘You must stay here while I go and fetch a car,’ Arthur said, in a flat voice. He felt no sympathy for Finch’s suffering, only irritation. The three had been isolated too long in each other’s company. ‘Sarah will wait with you.’ He was glad to leave Sarah behind, to put down the heavy basket on the wall beside her. He set off gloomily toward the blurred lights of the town below.

They listened to the soft suck of his retreating stops. Sarah took her shawl from the basket and wrapped it round her. Her nearness, the consciousness that they were shut in by the walls of the night, made Finch forget the ache in his ankle. This was a pain that obliterated all others.

She said, ‘This is as it used to be—in the garden.’

‘It’s not at all as it was there.’

‘Why is n’t it?’

‘ Because now I’m mad about you. ’

‘And you were n’t then?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps I was. But I did n’t realize it. Now it’s too late.’

‘I’ve loved you all along. From the first day you played my accompaniments.’

‘Sarah!’ His voice broke. He tried to see her face. ‘You loved me, and married Arthur!’

‘You did not ask me.’

‘You did n’t give me time.’

‘You never made a sign. You say yourself that this is different — that you don’t know what your feelings were then.’

‘But you! You knew yours!’

‘What could I do?’

‘Could n’t you have made a sign? Don’t women let men know? Never once — never once did you give me any intimation that you cared for me!’

‘I met you almost every night in the garden. You knew I was deceiving my aunt.’

‘But a word — a look! You were as cold as ice! I don’t believe you love me! You just want to torture me.’ He buried his face in his hands.

‘I love you more than you love me.’

He gave a bitter laugh, ‘What do you know of love? Marrying one man — loving another! ’

‘What do you know? It’s new to you. It’s partly the night — the storm — those lovers we saw. You’re excited.’

‘ You ’re as cold as ice. As cruel. And what a shame for Arthur — if what you say is true!’

‘He need not know.’

’He will know. He’s too sensitive not to find you out. Even now — he’s not happy.’

‘Did he tell you so?’

‘No, but I feel it.’

‘He will be happy again when we are away from you.’

‘Yet it was Arthur who insisted on my coming! And you let me come— loving me?’

‘You said just now that you do not believe I love you.’

‘I was wrong! You do love me, Sarah! Oh, my darling, beautiful Sarah! Tell me you love me! ’

She put her arms about him. In the darkness they kissed. A mighty primeval urge rose to them from the earth. The triumphant beating of their hearts almost stifled them. A great wave thundered on the beach and filled the night with its murmuring.

Finch tore himself from Sarah’s arms. ‘We must not!’ he gasped. ‘Arthur — my best friend — never again! . . . We must forget all this — never let him guess — that I — that you — ’

Sarah folded her arms under her shawl. She gave her small, mysterious smile.

XVI

Mrs. Court surveyed them critically. ‘Arthur is the only one,’ she said, ‘who looks the better for the stay by the sea. But probably it was that dosing of cod-liver oil I gave him that put flesh on him. Finch’s cheeks look more hollow than ever. As for Mouse, she looks exactly the same. Let her bask in the sun or live in a hole, she’s always the same — Mouse and Mole!’

The young people stood looking down at her, the youths rather shamefaced before her scrutiny, her niece as aloof as ever.

‘The house depressed Sarah,’ said Arthur. ‘If you had seen the house, you would not have wondered that she could not play in it. But it did n’t affect Finch. His music is its own roof and walls. He used to play to us in the evenings while we sat by the fire.’ He told them then how they had changed the aspect of the house in the first hour of arrival and how they had forgotten the original position of things when they set about restoring it at the last.

‘You can picture Finch and me,’ he laughed, ‘running distractedly about with antimacassars in our hands trying them first in one place, then another, discovering that they looked natural nowhere. There was a doormat with “Watch and Pray” on it and we tried it in seventeen doorways before we found the right one.’

‘And which was the right one? ’ demanded Augusta.

‘Ah, Lady Buckley, don’t ask me. Let me tell you about the aspidistras! There was a large one in a glazed pot in each of the principal rooms. Finch agreed to take them all into his bedroom. I don’t know what he did to them, but they grew so that when we carried them out they would scarcely pass through the door. His room looked like a jungle.’

‘In my house,’ observed Mrs. Court, ‘I have three aspidistras, nine begonias, and fifteen cactuses.’

‘Cacti!’ boomed Augusta.

‘I call ’em cactuses. Funguses, cactuses. I never did like la-di-da pronunciations.’

‘What is the plural,’ asked Ernest, ‘of candelabrum? I mean the sensible, unaffected plural.’

‘Brums,’ answered Mrs. Court curtly, but she eyed him with suspicion.

Soon she carried off Sarah and Arthur to another room where she could question them without interruption.

‘Well,’ said Nicholas, when the door had closed behind them, ‘I can’t imagine what young Leigh saw in that girl.’

‘She is certainly a very strange person,’ agreed Ernest. ‘She says almost nothing, yet one feels she thinks too much. She seems to be amiable, but one wonders what is behind it all. One feels baffled.’

Finch asked, ‘Have you heard from home while I have been away?’

‘Yes,’ answered Nicholas, ‘and not good news. Meggie has not been well. It will be necessary for her to have an operation, the doctor says.’

Finch was aghast. ‘An operation! But wh-what’s the matter? I had n’t heard of anything wrong with Meggie.’

‘Well, I don’t think it’s anything very serious. Something that has been troubling her since Patience was born. But it will be worrying for them.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Ernest. ‘Poor Meggie!’

Poor Meggie? Finch’s heart contracted with fear for her. And there his uncles and aunt had sat discussing this and that as calmly as though all were well at home! How callous, how self-absorbed they were! And they had no secret trouble such as he had.

He had had no peace of mind since the scene on the downs. He had suffered shame, wild desire which there was no hope of assuaging, and an unreasoning, bitter anger against both Sarah and Arthur. He had sat by the hour brooding on what had passed between himself and Sarah. In tacit understanding they had avoided each other, but one look into that face, mysterious as a closed flower, was enough to set his nerves on fire.

And now there was this worry over Meggie! No love could make him unheedful of Meggie, so tender, so unselfish, so kind. Did Eden, he wondered, know of it? He did not ask the others whether they had told Eden, but set out at once toward the lodge, moving slowly with the aid of a stick.

As he limped down the drive he noticed how things were beginning to take on the appearance of late summer. The climbing roses that half hid the lodge had attained their full growth of the season.

He found Minny swaying indolently in a hammock hung between two apple trees. The lichen-covered trees were so old and bent that they tottered under the weight of Minny’s fresh, exuberant form. She looked up at Finch smiling, mirth in her oddly colored slanting eyes.

‘Did you enjoy yourselves? Was it a nice honeymoon?’

Finch answered seriously.

‘Yes, I enjoyed it very much. The sea bathing was glorious.’

‘You did n’t find yourself de trop?’

Finch gave a little laugh and began gently to swing the hammock. ‘You’d better ask them that.’

‘Even Eden,’ said Minny, ‘thought you were an unconventional lot.’

‘I suppose we are, but Arthur and I are such pals. He’s a curious fellow. Very sensitive and easily upset.’

Minny burst out laughing, then pressed her hand to her month, glancing fearfully at the lodge, where Eden was writing.

‘ Minny,’ asked Finch, rocking her a little harder, ‘what do you think of my cousin? Do you like her?’

‘Very much. I think she’s the most striking girl I’ve ever seen. But I don’t think they’re suited to each other. I don’t think she’ll make him happy.’

Finch turned away his face. He watched a flock of rooks wheeling above the park.

Minny continued, ‘You and she would have been much better suited in my opinion. I know I should n’t say that, but I’m hopelessly candid.’ She looked curiously into his face, but for once it revealed nothing.

‘I strained my ankle,’ he said, tapping his boot with his stick, as though forcibly to attract her mind from the dangerous subject of Sarah.

‘Oh, what a pity!’

‘It’s nothing. What is worrying me is some bad news about my sister. She’s not well. She’s got to have an operation.’

‘I have heard of that already. You must n’t worry. I ’m sure she will be quite all right. She complained when I was with her, but I don’t think it was anything serious.’

She was made for the comforting of men, Finch thought. Her very tone gave him reassurance. The relaxed curves of her body gave him a feeling of tranquillity.

‘How kind you are, Minny!’ His hand dropped to hers. She clung to it, swinging herself by it, smiling up at him.

When, after a few days, Arthur persuaded Sarah to go on a motor trip and they left for London to buy a car, Finch said good-bye to her almost apathetically. He had no desire to experience again the passionate emotions she had aroused in him. Between him and Leigh an inexplicable coolness had arisen, in which each felt that the other was the withholder of confidence.

Two days after their departure Mrs. Court returned to Ireland. She already had in her mind another niece to take Sarah’s place.

XVII

Nicholas and Ernest decided to return to Jalna while the fair weather held. They went to London, intending to spend ten days there before sailing, but the ten days became a month and they ended by making the voyage in heavy gales toward the end of October. By the time all their expenses had been paid, Finch found that his present of a trip to them had been an expensive one. But he did not regret it. He scarcely felt interested in the fact.

Nicholas remarked to Ernest, ‘The boy seems very down in the mouth. I think he should go up to London with us. He’s really wasting his time in the country when he ought to be seeing life.’

‘He’s a strange, moody boy,’ Ernest had replied.

‘He ought to come up to London with us. He needs a change. He’s a bundle of nerves like his poor flibbertigibbet mother.’ The shadow on Ernest’s face, caused by his anxiety over Finch, deepened to gloom at what he could only consider Nick’s mimicry of their mother.

But when they approached Finch on the subject of accompanying them he said that he wanted to remain in Devon. While Augusta was flattered by his desire to remain, the thought of being entirely rid of visitors was not unpleasing to her. She was afraid, too, that if Finch stayed behind she would see more and more of Eden and Minny. It was becoming the problem of her life how to get them to remove from the lodge. But she could not definitely ask Eden to go, since he had no money to go on. Really, she thought, what with two difficult elderly brothers in the house, and a fidgety friend like Mrs. Court, and a moody boy, she needed a rest.

Well, what was Finch going to do? Was he going to London later? Was he going to Paris or Rome? It was usual for young men to sow a few wild oats in these places, the elderly men suggested.

Yes, he would see those places later. Just now what he wanted was to be let alone. Soon after this Nicholas and Ernest left for the return journey.

Finch took long walks about the countryside. The ankle he had strained at the sea was still weak and he learned to ease it by the carrying of a stick. Soon the figure of the tall thin boy with the stick was familiar to all the neighborhood.

He came to hate the thought of Sarah. When the subject came up between him and Augusta he now disparaged her. ‘She’s a queer sort of girl,’ he said once. ‘I’m afraid poor Arthur has made a big mistake, I think he’s going to find himself up against it. I should hate to be in his shoes.’

‘I shall be very sorry if the match turns out badly,’ said Augusta. ‘He’s such a nice boy. And I’m fond of Sarah, too. You know, dear, when you first came I thought you and Sarah were going to be fond of each other, but I see how mistaken I was. You never would have got on with her.’

‘Get on with that girl! Never! I’m attracted by an entirely different sort. I like a girl that can be a pal to a fellow.’

This expression, as a matter of truth, was repugnant to him. The thought of a woman he loved being a pal to him was distasteful. He only used the word because it implied something so different from what Sarah was or ever could be.

Another time he said, ‘You should have seen her walking on the downs, Aunt! There was no more freedom in her movements than in the movements of a Chinese woman. I don’t know what’s the matter with her, but she seems to be too tightly put together.’ And almost at the next moment a pang of cruel desire for her went through him.

Leigh wrote to him dilating on the beauties of the Lake Country; then, a month later, France, where they were going to spend the winter. Finch read the letters greedily, noting how much Arthur wrote of what he was seeing and how little of what he was feeling. He fancied that Arthur wrote cautiously. He did not answer either letter. Leigh and Sarah both wrote several times to Augusta. Finch listened judicially, smoking his pipe, while Augusta read Arthur’s letters aloud. But when she began to read Sarah’s letter to him he exclaimed:—

‘Please don’t trouble to read her letters to me! I know just the sort of boring thing she’d write.’

‘It’s not at all boring,’ said Augusta, as she reached the end. ’It’s very bright.’ She folded the letter and put it in her writing bureau.

When she had gone upstairs after lunch to lie down, Finch went to the bureau and took out the letter. He turned it over several times in his hands, then he opened it and read it. It was unexpectedly simple and girlish. He read and reread it, his eyes dwelling on the words ‘Please remember me affectionately to Finch.’ He went to the piano and played almost noiselessly, so as not to disturb his aunt, some of the pieces he had played with Sarah.

He saw her with the utmost clarity standing beside the piano with her violin under her chin. He could hear the piercingly sweet notes of it as in imagination he accompanied her. He could see her sweet secret mouth, the pinched elegance of her nostrils. He held his breath for fear her face would contort in the expression of agony which it sometimes assumed for him. But, as long as he played, it remained steadfastly serene and as though lighted by some inner radiance.

In the late autumn he heard of the stock-market crash in New York. He read the newspaper headings concerning it with very little emotion. Augusta was distressed when he told her that he had lost thirty thousand dollars. She blamed his brothers and hers for having allowed him to invest so much in a foreign country. Eden, too, was aghast. He told Finch that since it was his intention to throw away his money, he might as well throw some of it in his direction. Finch did not remind Eden that when he had first spoken of the investment Eden had applauded his initiative.

The mortgage on Vaughanlands which Finch had taken over was fifteen thousand dollars. The interest, payable twice yearly, was now due, and a letter in Maurice’s handwriting arrived. He wrote:—

I thought perhaps you would not mind waiting a bit for the money. Things have gone rather badly with me this year. And now this operation of Meggie’s is giving me a lot of worry. I have had a large bill to pay to the doctor already, and the specialist who is going to operate will of course charge a big price. You can be certain that I care nothing about the cost if only he can bring her through it safely. They say the danger is not great, but one can never tell how those things will go. Meggie is as courageous as possible. She sends her best love. She would have written you long ago, but she has been ailing all summer. Patty is growing prettier all the time. The other day Meggie asked her, ‘Where is Uncle Finch?’ And Patty answered, ‘ In Heaven!’ Well, I suppose Devon is almost heaven. You are lucky. I expect to be in hell for the next few days, at any rate. Meggie goes into the hospital to-morrow.
Will you give my kind regards to your aunt. Meg and Patty both send love and kisses.
Yours,
MAURICE.

Finch folded the letter with shaking hands. His Meggie, his darling sister Meggie, in such danger! Perhaps he would never see her again. . . . He remembered the time when he had been ill at Vaughanlands and she had sat by him and fed him as though he were a baby. He remembered the feel of her tender feminine hands on his hair, the ineffable sweetness of her smile. Oh, she was so loving, so unselfish! If only all the brothers had been like her, how happy they might have been!

He reflected, as his mind calmed a little, that if she had not come through the operation he should have had a cable by now. Perhaps, some day soon, he would get a letter to say she was doing nicely. In the meantime better not say anything to Aunt Augusta to worry her. Though she knew the operation was pending, she did n’t know of its imminence.

XVIII

Rain was steadily falling on the old house. It was a cold rain for the end of May and it fell, not in drops, but in a slanting sleet that beat against the panes and ran down them in rivulets to form puddles on the sills. The fact that the panes could not be seen through was a matter of no significance, for the eyelids of all in the house were closed in sleep. The changes worked on the flower beds, trees, and lawn by the rain, cold as it was, would not be observed until the morning sun revealed flowers from yesterday’s buds, buds from yesterday’s sheaths, leaves shaken out to full size, and grass in a thousand springing spears.

The rain entered the house at two points, the attic and the basement. Through rotted shingles it dripped into Finch’s vacant room. Soon after Finch had gone abroad, Rags had placed a basin on the floor during a heavy rain, to catch the drip. He had not been in the room since, so he had not observed that the basin was full. Now the drops falling from the ceiling struck the water with a clear musical note, sending tiny ripples to the brim that overflowed silently on to the worn carpet. The daylight would show this room with a bereft air. Its furniture, most of which needed repairing, had been the ramparts of Finch’s world. In the cupboard hung his worn clothes, still showing the impress of his body.

The rain came into the basement through a crack beneath a window, outside which it collected from the soaking ground above. From the window ledge it dropped with a smart rapping sound to the brick floor beneath. This sound, entering Rags’s consciousness, caused him to dream that he was back in the trenches and that the Germans were bombarding the British position. His sleep became more and more troubled. His snores turned to gaspings, and Mrs. Wragge, awakened by his distress, put out her hand to quiet him. The result was the opposite of what she intended. The instant the large heavy hand was placed on his head he imagined that a fat German had captured him and he uttered a yell of fright.

Old Benny, the bobtailed sheep dog, who slept on a mat in the hall above, heard in his sleep the echo of the yell. He had been dreaming of a strange creature, half tramp and half sheep, that had been prowling about the shrubbery. He had been stalking it through illimitable spaces of time without its having perceived him. Suddenly it turned, peered at him with the face of a man, uttering at the same time the metallic bleat of a sheep. His hackle rose and with a sonorous growl he leaped and caught it by the throat.

Upstairs Nip slept in Nicholas’s armchair. He refused to sleep anywhere but in his master’s bedroom, and always had one car cocked for the sound of the deep voice he loved. Now he was in his first sleep of the night and the sound of Ben’s growl came up to him. It came as the voice of his master saying, ‘Nip, Nip! Catch a spider, Nip!’ He stood on the seat of the chair, quivering. He gave tremulous whines, part pleasure and part fear. His eyes were fixed on the door, though the darkness hid it from him.

Wakefield, snuggled against Renny’s side, was the only one of the family who heard Nip’s whining. He opened his eyes, saw that it was black night, heard the little quavering sound again, and shivered all over.

‘Renny,’ he whispered, tugging at his brother’s sleeve. ‘What’s that noise?’

Renny grunted sleepily. ‘Nothing. Go to sleep.’

‘But I heard something strange. Like someone crying.’

‘Mooey. Having a bad dream.’

Wakefield sat upright listening. Nip, at that moment, jumped from the chair to the floor and scratched at the door. ‘There! Listen to that! There’s something very queer going on.’

Renny, to satisfy Wake, got up and went into the passage. He listened, but heard nothing. Nip had gone back to bed. Then the growl came again, from below. Renny remembered a loutish stableboy he had dismissed that day for kicking a horse. He had pitched him bodily out of the gate and the fellow had gone off shaking his fist. It might be as well to see that everything was all right downstairs. He lighted a candle and made the round of the principal rooms. All was quiet, Benny curled up again on his mat wagging his stub of a tail to show that he was quite capable of handling the situation.

The light from Renny’s candle fell across Piers’s face as he passed the latter’s door. Piers’s eyelids slowly raised and he looked sleepily about, wondering what had waked him. He was deliciously comfortable. An earthly tenderness was diffused through all his being. Pheasant’s breathing came quick and soft beside him like that of a sleeping fawn. He drew her to him, his lips touching her bare shoulder.

It might be considered, then, that the falling rain which opened new flowers in the garden that night was also responsible for the conception of a new Whiteoak.

XIX

It had been many a long year since the family at Jalna numbered as few as six. It had taken those who remained some time to get used to the empty places at table. The vacancy left by the heavy figure of Nicholas was especially hard to get used to. Renny did not like it at all. It was like losing his grandmother over again to have her sons, whom he had always had at his side, go off like this. Alayne suggested that they take the leaves from the table so that they might draw closer together about it, but the idea was abhorrent to him. So he and she continued to sit facing each other across the long stretch of tablecloth on which stood the ponderous silver that made even breakfast seem a weighty meal. On one side of the table sat Pheasant and Piers, on the other Wakefield, looking very small and self-important.

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ ejaculated Renny one morning. ‘We’ll have Mooey take his meals with us. He’s plenty old enough. Have a place set for him at dinner, Alayne. He can sit beside Wake.’

The thought of a child of barely three sharing the family meals was distasteful to Alayne. She pictured a crumby face and a baby voice reiterating demands for helpings of the grown-up food. She tried to keep her voice even and her expression unruffled, but both failed her. Her voice had a little rasp of irritation in it and a pucker appeared on her forehead as she answered, ‘Don’t you think Mooey is too small? I’m sure Pheasant does.’

Pheasant’s first thought had been, ‘Oh, how sweet to have the little darling at the table!’ But when she found that Alayne did not want him she turned doubtfully to Piers and asked, ‘What do you think? Is he too small ? ’

Piers, with a swift glance at Alayne’s face, answered, ‘Wake sat up at table when he was smaller.’

Renny broke into laughter at the recollection. ‘Of course he did! I can just see him. All eyes. And Gran used to dip bits of biscuit in her wine and feed him.’

Alayne could imagine the scene. The old woman, even then past ninety, popping wet morsels into the mouth of the baby boy. She said sharply, ‘Perhaps that is the reason why Wakefield’s digestion is not stronger to-day.’

‘Nonsense,’ retorted Renny. ‘Gran often said that she saved his life! He’d no appetite. It was only she who could tempt him.’

‘I remember! I remember!’ cried Wakefield. ‘I’d be sitting between Meggie and my grandmother and I’d have no appetite at all. Meggie would be holding a spoon in front of me and I’d turn my face away and say, “No, no.” And then Gran would lean over me and she’d look simply enormous with her cap and a shawl, and she’d say, “Open your mouth, Bantling,” And I’d open it wide and she’d put the most delicious little blob of biscuit into it and the wine would run down my chin on to my bib!’

Rags had been an interested listener to the conversation. He was cognizant of every slightest change of inflection or expression. He now said, in his nasal voice: —

‘I hope you’ll pardon me speaking, madam. But I ’ad just arrived at Jalna at that time. And it was always my opinion that the little boy might ’ave pined away an’ died if ’e ’ad n’t got the attentions ’e did from ’is grandmother. Coming right after the sights I’d seen in the War, madam, I thought it was the prettiest picture I’d ever seen.’

Alayne regarded him with icy disapproval. But Renny grinned up at him showing every tooth, resembling his grandmother to a degree very irritating to Alayne, though in this he was blameless.

Piers said, ‘Well, of course there would be one advantage in having the kid take his meals with us. As it is, the kitchenmaid has to look after him just when she’s needed in the kitchen, or he has to be down there during mealtime.’

‘And always the dynger of getting scalded! ’ put in Rags.

Alayne looked into the marmalade jar. ‘Please take this to the kitchen and have it filled,’ she said sternly. ‘It’s been put on the table almost empty, and you can see what the edge is like.’

Rags gave her an astonished look as he took the jar, as though he would say, ‘Well, who comes ’ere ordering me abaht! ’

Since her return to Jalna as mistress, Alayne had been diffident about giving orders to Rags. It was easy enough to give orders to the cook or the kitchenmaid. They were respectful and friendly. But she felt a cold antagonism in Rags, a resentment, and a desire to thwart her at every turn. He was aware, she felt sure, of her dislike of his intruding into the conversation of the family, and consequently he intruded the more often. He was aware that she was sensitive to drafts, and it seemed to her that there was one in every room. In old Adeline’s time she had felt stifled often for lack of air, but it seemed not to matter to the Whiteoaks whether the air they breathed was vitiated or a veritable whirlwind. Sometimes the presence of the little cockney in the house was almost more than she could bear.

When he had gone she said, ‘I think Bessie can easily be spared at mealtime to look after Mooey. She gets the vegetables ready for cook, brings in the fuel, and after Pheasant goes to him Bessie is ready to wash up. I can’t see that she is needed in the kitchen at mealtime.’

‘That’s quite beside the point,’ said Renny. ‘It’s the servants’ business to get their work done whether or no. I was talking about the look of the table. Too damned lonely.’

Wakefield, responsive to Renny’s mood, exclaimed, ‘I think the table looks awfully lonely! ’

‘Well,’ said Alayne, ‘I think you’re the most sentimental people I’ve ever known. For my part I think we could be very cosy if only you would take the leaves out, as I suggested, Renny, and make the table smaller.’ She had longed to speak sharply to Wakefield, but had managed to restrain herself.

Piers said, ‘Where is the marmalade? It was here a moment ago.’

‘I gave the jar to Wragge to have it filled,’ said Alayne. Piers could not have failed to see her do it. He was doing his part to irritate her, evidently.

Piers looked at his wrist watch. ‘Well, I must be off. I can’t wait for it.’

‘Oh, don’t go without your marmalade, Piers!’ said Pheasant, holding him by the sleeve. ‘You’re so fond of it. Do ring the bell, Wake, and hurry Rags along!’

Wakefield ran to the bell cord and pulled it violently. It was seldom used now and had become frayed and unable to bear strain. At the second tug it broke in his hand.

‘Now, there,’ exclaimed Renny, ‘what are you trying to do?’

‘There was no need to be so rough,’ said Pheasant. ‘Alayne, I do wish you had not sent the marmalade pot away before Piers had some. There was plenty in it for him.’

‘Go to the top of the stairs and shout to Rags,’ said Piers.

Wakefield, waving the end of bell cord, ran to the stairs crying, ‘Rags! Hurry up!’ Before he returned to the table, he ran twice around it, waving the cord.

‘Sit down!’ growled the master of Jalna, and he gave an apologetic grin towards Alayne’s end of the table. His eyes avoided hers.

Rags came panting into the room.

‘Where is the marmalade?’ demanded Pheasant.

Rags looked injured.

‘W’y, I was just fetching it, ’m, when first came the ring of the bell and right on top of that a shout. It gave me such a turn that I dropped it. I thought there must be something urgent, ’m.’

‘It is urgent. Did you break the jar?’

‘Well, ’m, I ’ope not. I know I was a bit long, but Mrs. W’iteoak,’ he made a bow, half cringing, half impudent, to Alayne, ‘she complained of the way the jar was washed, so I ’ad to find Mrs. Wragge to get ’er to wash it — the maid being upstairs minding the little boy, ’m — and I was just fetching it when the ring and the shout came.’

‘Please bring some more, and hurry. Mr. Piers is waiting.’

Alayne sat silent, sipping her tea, trying to control her irritation, to conceal her hatred of the little cockney. She said to herself, ‘It is nothing. I must not be easily upset. This is my life.’ . . . A mental picture was presented to her of breakfast at her father’s table. The little embroidered mats on the round polished table, the slender silver vase holding perhaps three roses, the fragile china, the grapefruit, loosened from its rind, sweetened and decorated with maraschino cherries by her mother the night before, the delicious coffee. Her father reading an editorial from the New York Times in his slow, precise New England voice. Her mother exquisitely neat, with her special digestive bread and her dish of stewed figs before her. Before Alayne was aware of it her eyes filled with tears.

Her thoughts were broken by the sound of Mooey’s voice at the door. Rags was standing in the hall with the little boy on his sloping shoulder.

‘Oh, what a nish brekkus!’ Mooey was saying, ‘Hello, Mummy! I’ve got a nish ’orsie to wide! ’

Pheasant cried, ‘Hello, darling!’ Then: ‘Why did you bring him down, Rags?’ But she was obviously pleased.

Rags answered, ‘’E was cryin’ ’is little eyes out, ’m. being left alone by Bessie for a bit while she went to answer the door, I being in the kitchen at the time, along o’ the marmalade jar.’

‘ He deserves a licking for crying for that,’ observed Piers, eating marmalade as though it were a delicacy he had never tasted before.

‘Don’t be such a harsh parent, Father,’ said Pheasant.

‘Don’t Father me!’

Pheasant continued, ‘But it is rather inconvenient taking Bessie from the kitchen to mind him when he’d be quite all right here, is n’t it?’ She cast a propitiatory glance at Alayne.

Wakefield exclaimed, through a mouthful of toast, ‘Come to your old uncle, Mooey!’

‘I want to go to Unca Renny,’ said Mooey, holding out his arms.

Rags sidled into the room with the child. Renny took him on his knee.

It was a small thing, thought Alayne, but it showed their attitude toward her. They had all known that she did not want the child brought to the table, but his presence was to be inflicted on her nevertheless. The presence of such a young child was an infliction, she persisted in her mind. There would be still less possibility of sensible conversation now. Not that the conversation at Jalna was ever intellectually stimulating to her. But now she foresaw that the cleverness or naughtiness of a baby would be its centre. Renny was already looking pleased, feeding the child from his plate, Rags beaming down at them.

Alayne rose from the table. ‘I think you will have to excuse me,’ she said. ‘I must see cook at once about the dinner.’

Renny half rose, still holding the child. He caught her dress as she passed and drew her to him. She went rigidly like an offended little girl. The moment he touched her, dignity seemed to fall from her. Her intellectual clarity made her aware of this, and, while she despised herself for her weakness, her resentment, toward him increased. He held up his face to he kissed, his lips pouted, the darkness of his eyes deepened. She was in no mood to kiss him, still less in the presence of the family. She shook her head, compressing her lips.

His eyebrows went up. He formed with his lips, ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Kiss him! Kiss him!’ cried Mooey, tugging at her.

Alayne kissed Mooey instead. He had left a sticky mark on her sleeve where he clutched her.

‘Don’t mind us!’ cried Pheasant gayly. ‘I’ve never seen you two kiss and I’d love to.’

‘ Our form improves as the day wears on,’ returned Renny.

Alayne was offended and she did not trouble to hide it. Yet as she descended the stairs to the basement she had the feeling of having been priggish.

Mrs. Wragge usually came upstairs for her orders. She greatly preferred to do this, for, as she put it to her husband, ‘I don’t want none of the ladies nosin’ about in my kitchen. Miss Meggie, she stayed out of it. Mrs. Piers, she stays out of it. Now let Mrs. Renny stop out of it!’

Consequently Alayne received a very glum greeting when she appeared in the kitchen.

Holding her head high, she preceded the cook into the larder and began to investigate conditions there with a rather quaking spirit.

First of all was the smell. She did not like the smell at all.

‘I don’t see what it can be, ’m,’ declared Mrs. Wragge, sniffing. ‘There ain’t nothing ’ere to smell. Bessie scrubs it out on ’er ’ands and knees every day of ’er life.’

‘What is in this crock?’ asked Alayne, lifting its lid. It was half full of biscuits and small cakes tossed in together. She picked up a biscuit. It was as limp as a bit of flannel. ‘Don’t you know,’she said severely, ‘that biscuits should not be put in with cakes? After this, keep them quite separate.’

She saw butter on three different dishes, all uncovered. She saw a large bowl which had held preserves and now was empty but unwashed, with a lining of green mould, across which a spider scuttled. She saw a cheese half finished, while a fresh one was cut into. She saw milk and cream at every stage from that morning’s to wrinkled sourness. Lifting a heavy silver dish cover, she discovered a roast of meat that was unquestionably the cause of the smell. For all these things she reproved Mrs. Wragge. When she discovered an old Staffordshire bowl filled with left-over beetroot, her reproof was inflamed to denunciation of such practices.

She went to the kitchen and drew Mrs. Wragge’s attention to the blackened condition of the saucepans. She drew her attention also to the fact that the glazing on every one of the platters in the big platter rack was cracked from overheating.

Bessie was in the scullery plucking fowls. Their feathers whitened the floor like snow; they were even in her thick black hair and sticking to her plump neck. She was a pretty girl with a turned-up nose and full red lips. She got to her feet when Alayne appeared, looking rather frightened. She held a fowl by one leg, its ghastly beak touching the floor. Its fellows, already plucked, lay on the table beside her.

‘Don’t you think, Bessie,’ said Alayne pleasantly, ‘that it would be better if you were to have a box to put the plumage in?’

Bessie did not know what plumage was and she looked still more frightened.

Alayne remained a little longer, trying to talk cheerfully and arranging with Mrs. Wragge to have a tour of inspection of the basement once every week. Next time, she thought, it would be much easier. Then she would penetrate into the mysterious bricked passage that led to the wine cellar. She longed to see the place in perfect order. It would help to fill in the time to keep it so, for time often hung heavy on her hands. On the way to the stairs she passed a disheveled bedroom and had a glimpse of Rags making the bed, a cigarette in his mouth.

She felt tired, but not ill pleased with herself, as she went to her bedroom. She would show these servants that she was not a figurehead. She would show Piers and Pheasant that she was as much mistress of Jalna as Renny was master. She would show Renny. . . .

She was astonished to find Mooey in her room. He was standing in front of her dressing table and he had a tin of talcum powder in his hand. She saw that he was sprinkling all her toilet articles with the powder, that he had already whitened his hair, and that the rug and chairs showed what could be done with a single tin of talcum.

She was tired and irritated or she would not have been so sharp with him. ‘Oh, you naughty boy!’ she said, giving him a shake. ‘Don’t ever dare come into my room again!’

He looked up at her, tears springing to his eyes. He made his mouth square and uttered a howl of woe. She hustled him to the door and pushed him into the passage. As she turned back she saw that old Benny was lying in the middle of her new mauve silk bedspread. He was curled up tightly, one hazel eye rolled toward her, with an air that intimated that it would take more than her disapproval to budge him from this new-found nest.

It was perhaps the first time in Alayne’s life that she had experienced the violence of primitive rage. She knew that Benny had fleas, for she often saw him scratching himself. And after last night’s rain his paws were certain to be muddy. She snatched up a slipper and struck him sharply with the heel of it, first on the head, then on the stern. The effect of retribution on Mooey was as nothing compared to its effect on Ben. He screamed as though all the bad dreams he had ever had were come true. He jumped from the bed, leaving a dark moist imprint of himself, but instead of running out of the room he took refuge under the bed. From there, on hands and knees, Alayne was obliged to dislodge him with the slipper. By now she was almost beside herself. She followed him to the door and threw the slipper after him. He bounded down the passage yelping hysterically.

Mooey was still wailing. Pheasant appeared at the door of her room with the child in her arms.

‘Why, Alayne! Mooey says you hit him! Whatever had he done?’

‘He threw powder all over my room,’ answered Alayne hotly. ‘ Really, Pheasant, he must not be allowed to go in there by himself. He’s too mischievous.’

‘Was that all?’ said Pheasant coldly.

Renny came up the stairs with Benny mourning at his heels. ‘ What have you been doing to poor old Ben? I’ve never heard him make such a row.’ When he saw Alayne’s face he burst into loud laughter. She had got the talcum on her hands, then on her nose and chin. Her hair, for once, was ruffled.

Quite unconscious of her appearance, she regarded him with an air of hauteur.

‘You may think it is amusing, but I don’t. That dog has ruined my silk bedspread, and that child has made my room look no better than Bessie’s scullery.’

Pheasant said, patting her son on the back, while he stared at Alayne wet-eyed, as though she were an ogress, ‘I think that cats and a canary would suit you better than dogs and a baby, Alayne.’ She returned to her room, still comforting Mooey.

‘I like dogs and children as well as anybody, but I like them to behave themselves and to know their place.’

‘Let’s see what the damage is,’ said Renny, leading the way into her room. He glanced at the floor, the dressing table, and the bed. ‘That will all brush off,’ he said soothingly.

‘It may off the rug,’ she returned, ‘but the bedspread is ruined !’

‘Can’t you send it to the cleaners?’

‘Of course I can! And have it come home all slimsy as my dress did. The cleaners here are n’t nearly so good as I’m used to.’

He could not take her seriously, looking as she did. His face broke into a smile as he said, ‘Only look at yourself in the glass and you’ll forget all your troubles.’

She looked, and was angrier than ever.

Old Benny thought, ‘With my master here I think I’m pretty safe in getting on the bed again.’ Accordingly he hopped with airy lightness on to the silk spread, avoiding the spot he had soiled before. His legs were strung with little beads of dried mud. He began to lick the place on his stern where the heel of the slipper had hit him.

Alayne had barely turned from the survey of her face when she saw him. It was one of those things that seem too bad to be true. Snatching up the other slipper, she flew at him, striking him again and again. Renny caught her wrist.

‘I won’t have him beaten like that,’ he said sharply.

‘ Keep him out of my room, then! He’s a perfect brute! ’

‘Come along, Ben! This is no place for us.’

‘You talk like a fool!’ said Alayne.

He stopped in the doorway to look back at her. ‘I think, ’ he said, ‘that you are the worst-tempered woman I’ve ever known.’

(To be continued)