Finch's Fortune: A Novel

XXVIII

FINCH was back in his own room. It was unbelievable. He had passed through terrific things and was home again — back in the very room where he had dressed for his birthday party a year ago. He had landed at St. John from a steamer armored in ice; he had rambled through days and nights on the train; Piers had met him at the station in style, driving the new car. When they had turned into the side road at Weddels’, what drifts, what ruts there had been! All the trees along the drive drooped their branches under the weight of snow. On each side of the porch rough mounds of it had been shoveled from the steps, but on the lawn it lay virgin white and unbroken.

The first greetings were over and he had run up to sec his room before dinner. It was all ready for him, clean counterpane and pillowcases — why, the curtains were freshly laundered and a new rug had been laid on the worn spot before the chest of drawers! He could scarcely believe in his room or in himself. The room seemed to turn about — and he turn in it — as the snowflakes floated and turned outside the window. There was the very chair he had sat in, wrapped in his quilt, waiting for the moment of his birthday dinner! There was the table, ink-stained and shabby, at which he had swotted for his exams! There were the shelves with his books! Lord, there was the stain on the ceiling where the roof leaked, and there was the basin on the floor waiting for the next drops!

He opened the door of the clothes cupboard and looked in. There were the clothes that had been too old to take away with him! They would come in very well now that he was home again. Why, there was the brand-new sweater that Uncle Ernest had not allowed him to take because it was too loud for England! He had forgotten all about it. How he wished that he had bought, a new supply of clothes in Eondon! What a dud he was! The fellows would be sure to ask him what new clothes he had got.

The gong sounded for dinner. He felt so natural descending the attic stairs that all the past year seemed suddenly a dream. Yet he realized that it was no dream when Mooey appeared outside his mother’s door grown almost half a head taller. And there was Pheasant, — he had only seen her for a moment, — how terribly different she looked! Her little face looked tired and white and her body so heavy that movement seemed painful. Poor young Pheasant ! She had looked like a boy in her tweed coat and cropped head the day he left.

‘Hello,’ he said lo Mooey, ‘do you remember me? I’m Uncle Finch.’

‘What did you b’ing me? Mummy says Unca Finch will b’ing p’esents.’

Finch almost staggered in his dismay. He had been in such a hurry to get home that the thought of presents had never once crossed his mind. What a blasted fool he was! The first day he had been in London he had stared in shop windows choosing imaginary presents for each one, and then, when the time came for buying them, he had forgot! He gave a sickly smile at Mooey.

Mooey took a threatening step forward. ‘I want my p’esent,’ he demanded.

‘Why, look here,’ stuttered Finch, ‘look here, the presents are n’t unpacked yet.’

‘Unpack them, then,’ commanded the child.

‘Mooey,’ called Pheasant’s voice from within the room, ‘you must not ask for your present till after dinner!’

Finch skulked down the next flight of stairs to the hall. The family were already in the dining room. He stood hesitating, knitting his brow, as he tried to think what to do about presents. He would just have to say that the bag they were packed in had gone astray. At the first opportunity he would go into town, ostensibly to inquire about it, and buy presents all round. He must make sure that each was marked with the name of an English firm. It would be terrible to be caught in so callous a deception.

He stood for a moment in the hall, absorbing the feeling of home. Old Benny and the two spaniels lay beside the round stove, which glowed, almost red-hot. He thought of the cellar-like atmosphere of the hall at Lyming. And not a dog in the house — not even a cat. He remembered the dining room —he and his aunt facing each other across the not too well laden board. It needed long absence and experience abroad to make one appreciate home.

The Vaughans had come to dinner. Finch sat between Piers and Wakefield. On his left, Wake’s narrow, olive-tinted hands. On his right, those of Piers, whitened by the loug winter, broad, strong, the sight of them bringing recollections of rough handling, of hearty thumps. How often Finch had felt helpless in the grasp of those hands!

Across the table was Meggie smiling at him, looking even plumper than before, but rather pale.

‘Just the tiniest bit of beef, Renny! No — not a scrap of the fat! Perhaps — when spring comes —I shall get my appetite back! ’

Renny scowled as he watched her help herself to a morsel of caulillower from the dish Rags held. He said, ‘You are not eating enough for a baby. You will never get your strength back at this rate. Does she go on like this at home, Maurice?’

‘Just the same,’ returned Maurice.

‘Well, you should force her to eat.’

Alayne gave an impatient movement and began to talk to Ernest on her left.

Meg said, ‘The doctor insists that what I need is a change. He suggests a month in Florida. Fancy suggesting Florida to me, when he knows it has almost ruined us to pay for my operation!’

‘Oh, no! Not quite,’ objected Maurice, somewhat embarrassed. ‘But certainly a trip to Florida is out of the question.’

Rags ostentatiously proffered a dish of buttered turnips to the convalescent.

‘No, no, Rags! But how nice they look! I only wish I could!’

Renny asked Maurice in an undertone, ‘Does she have many little lunches at home?’

But Meg overheard. She replied for her husband.

‘I have nothing else. I have never had a real meal since . . She did not need to finish the sentence. She put her elbow on the tabic and rested her head in her hand. She smiled, but her smile was pensive.

Finch remembered a letter in his pocket, and said, ‘Oh, Meggie, I have a letter for you from Aunt Augusta!’ He pushed it across the table to her.

It had the desired effect. Meg must peep into the letter to see what Augusta had written.

Finch said, ’Look here, I’ve just discovered that a suitcase is missing. The worst of it is that it was the one that had the presents in it. I must go to town and see about it.’

‘Are you sure you’re not bluffing?’ asked Piers.

Finch flushed angrily. ‘Of course I’m not!’

‘What did you bring me?’ demanded Wakefield.

‘Wait and see.’

‘May I guess?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I see that you’re as great a nuisance as ever.’

‘Tell him what you have brought him,’ said Renny. ‘He’ll like to be thinking about it.’

‘Very well. . . . I brought you a camera!’

Wake shouted, ‘One of the sort you can take moving pictures with?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good! Good! Oh, splendid! Oh, thank you, Finch!’

The family was genuinely impressed. Each speculated pleasurably on what Finch had brought him.

Finch was the last to leave the dining room. Rags said, with an ingratiating smile, ‘I do ’ope as ’ow the little purse you were kind enough to accept on your birthday ’as been of use, sir.’

Finch muttered that he did not know how he should have got along without the purse. Outside he thought, ‘Lord, he expects something, too!’

Renny and Piers were standing by the stove in the hall. They were smoking, and Renny was pulling the ears of his spaniels, which had reared themselves against him. Both brothers turned toward the traveler, their faces expressing amused friendliness. Here he was, young Finch, back in their midst with the varied experiences of a year behind him. They wondered what he had been up to during that year. At that moment he felt very much the man of the world, almost patronizing toward these stay-at-home brothers. Piers offered him a cigarette and looked him over.

‘I can’t say that you’ve improved,’ he said. ‘You look half starved as always. Have n’t you any new clothes? That’s the suit you went away in.’

‘I bought a few things. But I have n’t unpacked them yet.’

‘Perhaps they’re in the suitcase with the presents.’

Finch colored. What a shrewd devil Piers was! It was plain that he suspected something.

‘Just what did you buy in the way of clothes?’ asked Renny. ‘They’re so much cheaper over there that I hope you got a good supply.’

‘Not as many as I should, I’m afraid. You see, I was in the country almost all the time.’

His brothers stared.

‘HOW long were you in London ? ’

‘A fortnight,’ he answered heavily.

They could scarcely believe him.

‘And Paris. How long were you there?’

‘I did n’t get across to Paris.’

Good God! He had n’t got across to Paris!

Had he seen the Derby? Had he been to Newmarket? Any boat races? Polo? What shows had he seen?

As they questioned and he answered, he felt that his stock had irrevocably gone down so far as they were concerned. He thought what either of them would have done with a year in England. He could not tell them all his real experiences. He mumbled his negations, avoiding their eyes.

‘By Judas!’ exclaimed Renny. ’You are the limit! I send you off when you are twenty-one to see the world. You take two aged uncles with you and spend ten months in the house with an aged aunt! You’ve seen nothing — done nothing so far as I can see but mope about a village green, passing the time of day with the village idiot. Did you keep up your music?’

A shiver ran across Finch’s nerves. He began to feel that this questioning was too much for him. He was relieved to see Maurice emerge at that moment from the coat room behind the stairs, where he had been in search of his pipe. He came up to them, filling it from the pouch which he held in his disabled hand.

‘Come and join the wonderstruck circle,’ said Piers. ‘Hear what this bright young man is telling us poor yokels about his trip abroad.’

Maurice grinned expectantly. ‘ Well, the girls are out of the way. Let’s have the dregs! I have n’t been shocked for a dog’s age.’

‘ Well, I am shocked,’ said Renny. ‘ What do you suppose Finch has just told us? He spent a fortnight in London — that was with the uncles when he first arrived —and the rest of the year he never left his auntie’s side! What do you make of it, Maurice?’

‘He’s telling you just what is good for you to know, are n’t you, Finch? Meg and I have said all along that you must be having a devil of a time, since you never put pen to paper.’ He lighted his pipe with a sly look at Finch.

Renny said, ‘No, Maurice. You’re wrong. He has n’t been having a devil of a time. I’ve never known anyone so absolutely incapable of enjoying himself. Set him down in the middle of a harem and he’d have all the houris and himself in tears inside of the hour.’

‘The point is,’ returned Maurice, ‘that he’s too subtle for you. He has ways of enjoying himself that you know’ nothing of.'

‘You’ve hit it!’ ejaculated Piers. ‘Why did n’t we think of that? He has spent the whole year in sucking up to Aunt Augusta. He’s after her money! Gran’s wasn’t enough. He wants to be lord of the manor at Lyming!’

Although Piers was laughing as he talked, it was clear that he was half convinced of what he said. The other two looked suddenly serious. Through the tobacco smoke that enveloped them, they stared at Finch with misgiving.

‘Lord, I had n’t thought of that!’ said Renny.

‘You’ll think of it,’ said Piers, ‘when Auntie’s will is read and you find yourself, with all your charms, left out in the cold.'

‘Don’t be an ass!’ growled Finch. ‘If you think I want another legacy, you’re mistaken. I went through too much with the last one.’ He searched his mind for something to say that would astonish them, something that would show himself in a quite different light from their stupid imaginings.

He burst out, ‘Well, I’ll tell you one thing I did. I went on a honeymoon — not my own, either — a whole month by the sea.’

‘Whose honeymoon?’ asked Piers, unbelievingly.

‘Arthur’s and — Sarah’s.’

He cursed himself instantly for having told of it. There was a roar of laughter.

Piers said, ‘Well, you certainly must have been a death’s head at the feast! However, I can believe anything of that sissy Leigh.’

Renny made a ribald remark in the vein of his grandmother, and Finch, furious with himself, as with them, turned away and went into the drawing-room.

XXIX

He stood in the doorway a moment quieting his nerves with the peaceful, reassuring scene.

Ernest had got his magnifying glass and was showing Wakefield, who perched on the arm of his chair, the texture of the skin on the back of his hand. ‘Oh, Uncle Ernest, you’re just like a lovely pink hippopotamus!’ Nicholas, his gouty leg stuck out stiffly, was on the piano seat, thoughtfully strumming one of the frothy melodies of his youth. Alayne sat near by on the sofa. She held a book, but was gazing appreciatively at Nicholas’s massive gray head silhouetted against a window. Meg had unearthed an old photograph album and sat by the fire, in a low comfortable chair, turning its pages with an expression of pensive sweetness. Finch went across to her and sat down on an ottoman embroidered in beadwork in the design of an angel carrying a sheaf of lilies,

‘I have been looking at old photographs,’ she said. ‘Is n’t this an adorable one of the uncles and our father in braided velvet dresses? Do you think Patty is like Papa?’

‘A bit. But she is like Maurice, too.’ He lifted her hand from the album and raised it to his cheek. ‘Meggie,’ he whispered, ‘ I can’t bear to see you ill. You must go to Florida. I’ll foot the bill.’

She beamed at him. ‘That would be lovely! And I could take Wake with me. The change would do him so much good. And, as he often says, the child has been nowhere.’

’Right you are. I’d intended doing something for each one of you and this will be your treat and Wake’s.’

The three men entered from the hall. Renny went straight to Alayne and sat down by her side. He picked up the book she was reading, looked at the title, and laid it down with a grimace. Maurice turned toward Ernest and Wakefield, putting his fingers inside the boy’s collar. Piers joined Meg and Finch. He regarded Finch wdth animated interest, having convinced himself that Finch was a subtle devil well worth watching.

Nicholas continued to play half-forgotten fragments. The dogs also had come in and stretched themselves, with intermingled bodies, on the hearthrug.

Rags entered, carrying the coffee, which was taken in the drawing-room on festive occasions such as this.

From above, the laughter and pattering feet of the children could be heard.

Meg raised her voice. ‘What do you suppose Finch has done? He has promised to send me South for my health. And I’m to take Wake with me.’

‘By George, that’s good of you, Finch!’ said Maurice warmly. He was glad he had not joined in ragging Finch in the hall.

Wake uttered three staccato yells of triumph.

Nicholas stopped playing to demand, ‘What’s the to-do?’

‘It’s Finch,’ answered Meg. ‘He’s going to send Wake and me South for our health.’

‘Well, I call that handsome of him. If you two enjoy your trip as much as Ernest and I enjoyed ours, it will certainly be a success.’

Renny said, looking at his boots, ‘I can’t let you take the kid away on a long trip like that without me.’

‘Not let me take him! You must be crazy, Renny! Do you think I can’t look after him properly?’

‘You’d let him over-exert and eat too many sweets. The last time he visited you he came home and had a bilious bout.’

‘Rubbish! As though you watched him all the time!’

‘I do.’

‘Then a change from so much coddling would be good for him. I hope I can look after my own little brother!’

Wakefield sat, his bright eyes flashing from one face to another, while his fate was being discussed. Even while he had shouted in triumph he had not really believed that the adventure would come to pass. It was too stupendous. Such things were not for him.

Everyone was against Renny in the matter with the exception of Alayne, who had not spoken. Meg turned to her and said, ‘Surely you agree that Renny is being very perverse, Alayne! ’

Alayne thought he was, but she said, ‘I think Renny understands Wake as no one else does.’

‘Well, I suppose he must decide, but it seems rather hard that the child should be deprived of such a change.’

Nicholas rose from the piano scat. He said, ‘Give me an arm, Piers. My gout is very bad to-day.’

Piers went to him and assisted him to an easy-chair. He sat down beside his uncle.

‘I suppose,’ he said, with his prominent eyes on Finch, ‘that you have all heard of Finch’s honeymoon.’

‘I have not heard of Finch’s honeymoon,’ returned Meg with solemnity. ‘But I have heard other things about Finch that have upset me terribly.’ She took a deep breath, drew in her chin, and looked accusingly at Renny. He had offended her.

Finch gave her an agonized look. What was she going to say? To what new torture was he to be subjected? Involuntarily he drew away from her, but she laid her arm about his shoulders, her hand with fingers outspread, in a gesture at once pliant and commanding — such a gesture as that with which a cat draws her kitten to her.

Renny did not like the look or the gesture. He stared aggressively at her.

‘Finch has brought me,’ she proceeded, ‘a letter from Aunt Augusta. I have managed to keep what she says to myself until dinner was over.’ Finch writhed under her arm.

‘What the devil does she say?’ asked Renny.

Meg answered, ‘I need not read you all her letter. Just the bits of it that I think you should hear.’ She had it ready in her freehand and held it close to her eyes, for she was shortsighted. She read: —

“‘I have been observing Finch closely.’” Meg turned from the letter to observe him closely herself. All the family observed him closely. Then she went on: —

‘"He has been in a state of melancholy brooding.” ’

’Brooding on his honeymoon, I suppose,’ said Piers.

‘Sh-h!’ exclaimed his sister furiously. ‘This is not a matter for joking.’

‘Look here,’ exclaimed Finch, ‘I don’t know what this is all about, but you’re not to read that letter!’

‘I must read it!’ she continued. ‘“No wonder he broods, poor boy. It is terrible for him to think that he has been the victim of mercenary relatives. I feel that I must speak out to you, Meggie, so that you may use your influence to prevent my mother’s money from being scattered to the four winds. I should write this to his guardian, Renny, but I find from careful questioning of Finch that Renny has utterly failed in his duties as a guardian. He has given him not one word of advice regarding investments. He has allowed this inexperienced boy to lend his money (to give it, one might better say) to any and every one who importuned him. I shrink from the disclosure I am about to make, but I feel it is my duty. I have discovered that a certain Rosamund Trent of New York —

Ernest interrupted in a shaking voice: ‘I will not have Miss Trent brought into this!’

Nicholas gave vent to subterranean chuckles.

Ernest turned on him with an air of outrage. ‘Nick, this is your doing!’

’I never mentioned Miss Trent’s name to Gussie,’ answered his brother.

‘Finch, then it was you!’

Finch answered heavily, ‘I only told Auntie that I had lent money to Miss Trent and that she had lost everything in the Wall Street crash. I did n’t mind a bit lending it. You must know that, Uncle Ernest.’

Nicholas exclaimed, ‘You lent her money! This is the first I’ve heard of that. Ha, the hussy! So she was just making a dupe of you, Ernie! She got at Finch’s money through you, eh?’

Ernest was too affronted for speech. He sat making faces, his fingers twisted together.

Meg could be almost heard to purr. She never released her protective hold on Finch. She said, ‘I think Miss Trent is your friend, is n’t she, Alayne?’

Alayne answered in a controlled voice, ‘Yes. She met Finch through me. No one can regret more than I do that Finch lent her money. I honestly believe that she will pay it back.’

Renny, with hands deep in his pockets, continued to stare at his boots.

‘What’s this,’ asked Piers, ‘about Uncle Ernest and Miss Trent?’

Nicholas answered, his voice indistinct with mirth, ‘ Why, Finch and I were almost frightened to death on shipboard! We thought he was going to propose to her. You should have seen them clutched at the fancy-dress ball — she in a pink domino, he in a mauve.’

Ernest’s face went a violent pink. ‘I’ll not forgive you this in a hurry!’ he snarled.

Nicholas ignored him. ‘Why, he toddled all over England after her, ransacking the country for antiques for her shop!'

The color in Ernest’s face subsided as quickly as it had risen. He said, ‘Miss Trent is a charming woman. It was a pleasure to me to have her company on shipboard. I enjoyed going about with her a little in England. I did not know that I was making myself ridiculous.’

Piers said, ‘Well, Miss Trent evidently has a gathering eye. How much did you lend her, Finch?’

‘Ten thousand.’

‘It’s perfidious,’ said Nicholas, ‘that my mother’s money should be thrown about like this.’

‘Miss Trent will pay it back, never fear!’ exclaimed Ernest.

Meg said, ‘Now I will read a little more of the letter. “I do not know whether you are aware of it, but Finch borrowed money before he attained his majority in order to maintain Eden in France while he worked on his new book. Arthur Leigh, from whom he borrowed it, told me this as an evidence of Finch’s magnanimity. Finch himself told me that he gave (why should I trouble to say lend!) another thousand to Eden before his return to France in December. Eden must be looked after until his health is regained or he has become famous, but why should Renny shift the responsibility of this to Finch’s young shoulders?”’

’I sent him a thousand in the summer!’ put in Renny hotly.

To two of those present the bringing in of Eden’s name was almost unbearable. The others were conscious of this, so the loan to him was allowed to pass with no more than a faint sputter of exclamation.

Meg was oldiged to remove her arm from Finch’s shoulder in order to find the next part of the closely written letter. He straightened himself, and a certain mordant pleasure in the scene took possession of him. Well, let her go through with it! Let them see what he had done with the money they had made such a howl about his inheriting!

‘Here endeth the first lesson,’ said Vaughan, jocularly. ‘Now for the second.’

‘The second,’ said his wife with her eye on Piers, ’is the piggery.’

‘I’d like to know what anyone has to say against the piggery!’ exclaimed Piers.

Meg replied by reading from the letter. ’“If Mamma had wished to build an expensive piggery, she would have built one long ago.”’

‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Ernest, glad of the introduction of a subject so far removed from himself. ‘She detested piggeries.’

Meg read on: ‘“If Mamma had wished her money to be spent on an expensive motor car, she would have bought one long ago. The one motor ride she had was the one which conveyed her to her grave. She would turn over in that grave, I am sure, if she knew of all that has been going on.” ’ And Meg added briskly, ‘I quite agree.’

Piers eyed her truculently. ‘I suppose you do. But what about the mortgage?’

‘What mortgage?’ she asked, in a shocked tone.

‘Why, your own mortgage. The one you chivied young Finch into taking over. I’ll wager that you’ve never paid the interest on that yet!’

Meg’s glance was benign as she turned to Finch. ‘Tell him, Finch.’

‘She paid me this morning. As soon as she came over.’

‘Before she’d read that letter?’

‘Yes.’

Piers shouted with laughter. ‘You’ve managed to save your face, Meggie!’

‘Nothing but extreme necessity because of my operation delayed the payment,’ she returned.

‘I like the new motor car,’ said Wakefield.

‘Of course you do,’ Piers answered. ‘And you’re not the only one that likes it. Everyone here seems willing to make use of it. You jumped at the chance of being driven to the hospital in it, Meg.’

Meg folded her short plump arms and surveyed Piers with sisterly disapproval. ‘You are far too critical, Piers, for a young man who has had no more experience of life than you have. Where have you been? As far west as Niagara Falls. As far east as Montreal. Think of it! Yet no one in the family is so aggressive as you!’

‘Where have you been yourself?’ he flared.

‘I leave shortly for Florida.’

‘That’s still in the future. In the past, all you’ve done is to move across the ravine just in the nick of time to have a baby!’

‘Maurice!’ shouted Meg. ‘Are you going to let him insult me?’

Maurice made himself heard above the general laughter. ‘You let my wife alone!’ He scowled, as he knew Meggie expected him to scowl, at the brother-in-law who was also his son-in-law.

Piers, unabashed, continued, ‘As for the piggery, it’s not mine at all. It simply adds to the value of Jalna. It belongs to Renny,’

‘The hell it does!’ said Renny. ‘I won’t have it!’

Piers turned to Finch. ‘Whom does the piggery belong to?’

‘Jalna,’ answered Finch. Gradually, from being most unhappy, he had become rather pleased with himself. Here he was, the centre of a row, yet no one was blaming him. He took Meggie’s hand and replaced it on his shoulder. She gave him a tender smile. ‘What this poor boy has suffered!’ she exclaimed.

Nicholas said, ‘The great mistake was to allow him absolute control of the money at twenty-one. I should have been made his trustee.’

Renny shot him a look. ‘You! I was his guardian.’

‘A lot you’ve guarded him,’ retorted Nicholas. ‘You’ve allowed him to follow every whim.’

‘I wanted to keep out of the affair.’

‘But why? It was your business more than anyone’s, as you say.’

‘It would have been very different,’ said Ernest, ‘if Mamma had given me control over the money.’

‘Hmph!’ growled his brother. ‘Out of the frying pan into the fire, I should sav.’

‘What I have never been able to understand,’ said Meg, ‘is this. Why did Granny leave me nothing but her watch and chain, and that old Indian shawl? No one carries such a watch now. And she thought so little of the shawl that she used to let Boney make a nest in it. And then to give Pheasant that gorgeous ruby ring!’

‘For God’s sake, forget about that ring!’ ejaculated Piers. ‘When Gran’s things were divided you got two rings.’

‘Neither of them could compare with the ruby! And how can I forget it when Pheasant is so ostentatious with it? Why, she’s taken to wearing it on her forefinger!’

‘She’ll wear it on her nose if she chooses!’

Maurice scowled without any urging from Meg. He refilled his pipe and lighted it with a coal from the fire.

‘All I got was her bed,’ said Renny.

Meg curled her short upper lip in a sneer. ‘A pity about you, truly! When you have the whole estate!’

‘Yes,’ grunted Nicholas. ‘Jalna thrown in!’

Ernest added, ‘He did not think Jalna worth considering!’

The face of the master of Jalna became as red as his hair. ‘Gran had nothing to do with my getting Jalna! I got it through my father.’

Another silence ensued, in which each seemed to be searching his own mind for a weapon to turn against the others. Alayne refilled the coffee cups. The pot was emptied. She thought, ‘I cannot endure to stay here. I must leave t hem to have their row out in their own way.’ But she did not go. Since her return the life at Jalna had become her life, as never before. If she left the room she would be tacitly acknowledging that she was of weaker fibre than they. She would stay, no matter how her head ached, no matter how she inwardly shrank from the things they said.

Wakefield’s clear voice was heard. ‘ Was there anything more in the letter, Meggie?’

‘Yes. There is more in the letter.’ There was an increased tension as she read: “‘Are you aware that Finch invested thirty thousand dollars in New York stocks and lost it? He informed me of this without visible emotion. But he was never the same again. He seemed sunk in apathy. As for me, no words can express my pain at seeing the fortune, so many years hoarded by my mother, come to such a f|ueer, unnatural end. Writing without violence, I may say that I consider Benny’s callous neglect to be at the bottom of the disaster.’”

A smile flickered across Finch’s pale face. Now what would they make of this? He clasped his knee in his hands, and his eyes, in which the large pupils were unusually bright, took in the scene before him without moving.

Nicholas’s voice came from a long way off. ‘You have lost thirty thousand dollars in stocks! What stocks?’

Finch answered, in a low, hurried voice, ‘I bought on margin. Fifty thousand each in Universal Autos, Upstate Utility Corporation, and Cereal Foods. . . . I put up a twenty per cent margin. My broker cabled me, when the crash eame, that I must put up the eighty per cent balance if possible — if I was to save my holdings. ... I refused.’

‘You refused!’ shouted Piers. ‘You blithering young ass!’

‘You let the money go!’ said Maurice. ‘My God! But why?’

‘I was sick of the business. I wasn’t going to throw good money after bad.

Alayne cried, ‘Oh, Finch! And I cabled you, too! Oh, why did n’t you hold on? I never dreamed that you would let it go!’

Ernest turned on her. ‘So you were in it, too, Alayne! I’m astonished at you. This is terrible.’ He took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow.

Piers asked of her, ‘Did you hold on? Finch told me that you had invested.’

‘Yes, I am holding on.’

‘You’re lucky. They’ll be rising again.’

Meggie spoke. ‘Alayne Archer, it is your fault that my brother has lost all this money. You excited him by your own speculations. The decent thing for you to do is to make up his loss to him out of what your aunt left you. He is only a poor misguided boy!’

‘ She ’ll do nothing of the sort,’ said Renny emphatically.

Nicholas said, ‘You evidently knew of the investment, Piers, and you told us nothing. It’s a damnable shame!’

‘He told me in confidence.’

‘It was your duty to speak. You were the only one who knew.’

‘You are greatly to blame, Piers,’ said Ernest.

Maurice and Meg, who had both approved the investment, kept silent.

‘Let us calculate,’ said Nicholas. ‘There is this absolute loss of thirty thousand. There is the ten thousand to the Trent woman —'

‘He will get that back,’ interjected Ernest.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ rejoined his brother, and continued, ‘That’s forty thousand. Then, we’ll say five thousand for Eden. Another five for the motor car and that accursed piggery —’

Piers put in, ‘Don’t forget your trip abroad, Uncle Nick!’

Nicholas went on imperturbably. ‘Well, add another five thousand for that. Then, there’s the fifteen thousand mortgage for the Vaughans —'

‘ Merciful heaven! ’ cried Meggie. ‘ You ’re not counting that as a loss, are you?’

Nicholas regarded her skeptically. ‘That remains to be seen. Now, my friends, this lad has about thirty or forty thousand dollars left of Mamma’s bequest to him. And by the time he has paid for this visit to Florida he will have still less. Interesting, is n’t it, to see how rapidly money can be dispersed?’ He tugged at his gray moustache and smiled bitterly at his kinsmen.

‘Renny, Renny,’ said Ernest, ‘you are greatly to blame for this! You treated Finch as a child till he was twenty-one and then you threw him out from the nest to do what he willed.’

‘It’s true enough,’ said Piers. ‘Several times, in my hearing, Finch asked Renny’s advice about his affairs and Rennv simply turned away and left him.’

‘His pigeons will come home to roost,’ said Meggie.

‘A fat lot they will,’ said Piers. ‘Here’s his wife with a fresh fortune left her.’

They all looked at Alayne. She had probably never felt quite so embarrassed in her life. To add to her embarrassment, Renny began sulkily to play with her fingers, For the first time in her life she could think of nothing to say. She opened her mouth and shut it. Her mind floundered among the wreckage of argument and complaint that had been cast upon this sea of dissension. They did not wait long for her to speak; they were all talking at once. The talk surged about her and Benny, who also was silent. Finch, hedged around with Meggie’s solicitude, sat clasping his knee, an enigmatic smile on his face, now and then replying to a question in the same untroubled tone.

XXX

At last Piers rose, stretched himself, and went to the dining room. He returned with a decanter of whiskey, a siphon, and some glasses.

‘How about something to light up the old innards, Uncle Nick?’ he said. ‘Have a spot, medicinally, Uncle Ernie.’

Finch drifted to the piano. He could not understand why it was, but he wanted to play to the family. All the tremors of the past months had left his nerves. He felt strong and free and, for some subtle reason, rather proud. They had been waiting for, watching Gran’s money since before he was born. He had suffered obloquy because it had been left to him. Now two thirds of it had melted and they were still talking, but blaming each other now rather than him. His music had come back to him, flowing through his veins like wine. The past year was not wasted. He had loved and he had suffered. He was home again in his own place. He would work hard and become a great musician yet. He would spend every cent of what he had left on his music. He felt his heart go out with longing toward Renny.

He played Chopin to them. He pictured himself as sweeping them along with him on those deep masculine waves of melody. Through Brahms and the faint sounds of Debussy he led them to the tolerance and tranquillity of Mozart. He played for an hour. Then he looked round with an almost mystic curiosity to see the effect of his spell.

Nicholas, Maurice, and Piers formed a group around the siphon. From them came a rumble of talk that was apparently agreeable, for it was broken by low laughter. Wakefield now sat on the ottoman beside Meggie. Finch could hear them discussing means of transportation to Florida, and whether or not, in the event of his going, Wake should take his fishing tackle. Ernest was on the sofa beside Alayne. They were apparently discussing him. They smiled at him and Ernest said, ‘Splendid, Finch! I’ve never heard you play so well!’ Alayne said nothing, but there was a glowing look in her eyes that meant more than words.

Rags brought in the tea. There was a fruit cake which Finch particularly liked and small cakes filled with custard and covered with cocoanut icing. He was ravenous.

Alayne asked Meg to pour the tea, and said, ’Run and find Renny, Wake, please! I do hope he has not gone to the stables.’ She wondered if he had been very angry when he had left the room. His expression had been gloomy, and no wonder, after so much combined criticism. She herself felt tired out. There had been a time when she would not have been able to eat a morsel after such a wrangle, but now she found herself eagerly devouring bread and jam like the rest of them. A lock of hair had loosened and hung into her eyes. She looked pale and wan.

Meg began talking to her in the most friendly way, asking her advice about clothes for the South. Alayne waited impatiently for Wakefield’s return.

He came running in and instantly snatched up a piece of bread. ’I can’t find him anywhere,’ he said, with his mouth full. ‘I’ve been up to his room and down to the kitchen. Wright had just come in and he said Renny was n’t at the stables. His hat is hanging on the rack and his dogs are lying in the hall.’

‘I should think he would hide his head,’ observed his sister. ‘I think he has taken Aunt Augusta’s letter very much to heart. He realizes, too, that we all blame him in this matter.’

‘He’d be deaf as a post if he didn’t,’ said Piers.

’He has found,’ said Ernest, ‘that such high-handedness only reacts against himself.’

Nicholas growled, ‘Renny has inherited all the worst traits of the Courts and the Whiteoaks combined.’

‘And yet,’ cried Meg, ‘I have heard him boast that he had inherited the best from each family! What was that he said to us, Maurice, just the other day?’

’He said, “From my English forbears I got my love of horses. From my Irish the instinct for selling horses. And from my Scotch my horse sense.’”

’That was it!’ cried Meg delightedly. ‘Did you ever hear of such conceit?’

Piers said, ‘I’d forgotten that Renny’s mother was Scotch.’

‘She was Scotch,’ affirmed Meg, ‘and of an excellent family. Very different from —’ She did not finish the sentence.

‘Just the same,’ said Piers, ‘I think the poor old chap should have his tea. I’ll have a look for him myself.’

‘Oh, I wish you would!’ breathed Alayne.

Piers left the room and before long returned with a puzzled expression on his candid face.

‘He’s gone to bed.’

‘To bed!’ they echoed, in one voice.

‘But I was in his room,’ said Wakefield. ‘He was n’t in bed then.'

Piers answered, ‘ He’s not in his own bed.’

Once more the family turned and looked at Alayne. She felt her face tingling with the blood that had rushed to it. Like Ernest, earlier in the afternoon, she could utter no sound, only make grimaces.

Ernest laid his hand on hers. ‘Never mind, dear girl,’ he said soothingly. ‘It’s only natural.’

Finch gave a loud guffaw and his eyes sought those of Piers, which beamed hack full of laughter.

Piers said, ‘He’s not where you think he is. He’s in Gran’s bed — the old painted bed he inherited from her.’

Food which was being masticated lay undisturbed in the mouths of the Whiteoaks, or was hastily bolted. It was as though old Adeline herself had walked into their midst, her velvet tea gown trailing, her cap with the purple ribbons set for their subjection, her rings, which had been divided among them, again flashing on her long fingers. ‘Renny in my bed? Well, why not? I left it to him! I bore his father there. Renny is bone of my bone. . . . Let him rest his red head on my pillow and cool his hot temper in my bed. It’s his own place.’

Nicholas got himself with difficulty out of his chair. He hobbled toward the door, and, after a moment’s wavering, all the others rose and followed him. They went down the hall, where the late sunlight diffused through the stained-glass windowcast bright splotches of color upon them. Rags had built a groat fire in the stove. Its sides were red and the smell of overheated pipes made the air heavy.

Nicholas opens the door of his mother’s room and looks in. There, propped on two pillows, lies the master of Jalna. His eyes closed, his thin muscular hands clasped on the coverlet, he appears to be lying in state. Boney, on his perch by the head of the bed, his plumage less bright than the plumage of the painted birds on the headboard, lifts his wings in a rage at the intrusion. He is moulting, and with the flapping of his wings bright feathers are thrown from him and drift on to the bed.

‘Shaitan! Shaitan ka batka! Iflatoon! Chore! Chore!’ He pours forth a volley of horrible Hindu oaths. All the curses that have lain simmering in his drowsy brain, without utterance for the past three years, now come hurtling through his beak. His eyes revolve like the lamps in a lighthouse. At one moment he turns them, full of ire, on the family collected about the bed. At the next they beam, full of possessive affection, on the occupant of the bed.

‘Is he ill, do you think?’ whispers Ernest.

‘I don’t like it at all. He has gone too far,’ growls Nicholas.

‘To think that Boney should talk again — after all these years!’ says Meg. She goes to the bed and lays her hand on her brother’s forehead. ‘Speak, Renny. Are you ill? Or is it just that your feelings are hurt?’

‘Oh, their glorious lack of self-consciousness!’ thinks Alayne. ‘How I wash that I could so grandly let myself go! That I could be so magnificently a fool!’

‘Bring Wakefield! He will notice the child,’ says Meg.

Piers, his teeth gleaming, pushes the boy forward.

Wakefield has been sadly overwrought. He bursts into tears and wrings his slender hands. ‘ Renny, you ’re not dying, are you? ’

Renny opens his eyes. They look black in the dim light.

‘Somebody —’

Nicholas interrupts him. ‘You are not to say that! That’s carrying things too far!’

‘Somebody fetch me a cup of tea.’

‘Go and fetch him tea. Piers!’ cries Meg ‘Oh, Renny dear, whatever is the matter?’

He turns and hides his face in the crook of his arm. ‘Everyone is against me. . . . No one has ever understood me but Gran.’

XXXI

It was Finch’s first Sunday at home. Sitting in church, he thought of all that had happened to him since he last sat in that seat, and it seemed unbelievable. His brothers had jeered at him for sticking in one spot while away, but he wondered whether, if he had toured the whole of Europe, he could have had deeper and more varied experience. He had left in Nymet Crews a part of himself that could never be regained. He had brought away something within himself that would not die. The mood of hope and purpose that had risen in him the day before had not failed. He still felt that he would do great things with his life.

He left the church with Renny and Wakefield in the old car.

’I’m driving round by the fox farm,’ observed Renny. ‘I must see Mrs. Lebraux for a moment on business.’

As the car stopped before the fox farm Wakefield asked, ‘Are you going to let me go to Florida, Renny?’

Renny gave him a rough caress in passing. ‘You will stay with me,’ he said.

When he had gone Wake threw himself back in the car, exclaiming, ‘I might have known! It was too good to be true! Yet — I shall always look on you as my benefactor, Finch, even though I don’t go!’

‘Don’t be a young ass,’ admonished Finch. He added, ’Tell me about Mrs. Lebraux and Pauline. How have they been getting on?’

‘Not very well. You see, they have no man about the place.’

‘I can’t see what good Lebraux was to them.'

‘Well, he made them a widow and an orphan. Women cannot be even those without a man having been about.’

Finch laughed and looked curiously at his young brother. He noticed his growing length of limb, the new curves of mouth and nostril. Whom was he going to be like? There was something of Eden about the lips, something of Gran in the eyes. A strange combination. One for poetry, passion, and pride.

‘Finch, will yon be my friend?’

‘Of course I will.’

‘Will you shake hands on it?’

‘Rather.’

Finch grasped the. slender hand in his and they smiled into each other’s eyes.

They saw Pauline Lebraux approaching along the empty white road. Her movements were uneven as she walked over the deep ruts in the snow. The sun had the warmth of approaching spring in it and the snow was becoming soft and wet. As she drew near, Finch saw that she still wore no touch of color, but that her face, under the black beret, was flushed delicately pink by the exertion. She wore goloshes, above which her black-stockinged legs showed long and thin.

He opened the door of the car and sprang out but when he was face to face with her he did not know what to say. He just stood smiling inanely, noticing the worn little prayer book and rosary she held in her hand.

Wakefield was out beside him. He said, in the patronizing tone Finch found so irritating, ‘Pauline, do you remember my brother Finch?’

She smiled and gave Finch her hand. Again he saw that shadow of pain in her smile. It was purely physical, — the sensitive curling of the lip, — but it moved him to a strange compassion toward her. In spite of the hardships which he knew she must undergo in her life, he thought of it as an idyllic one. He thought of her as a lovely young wilding, untouched by common things.

‘I am glad you are back,’ she said.

Did she really mean that, or was it just politeness?

‘Won’t you come and see our foxes?' she asked Finch.

She led the way, and as the boys followed her Wakefield whispered, ‘Her education is being neglected. She knows almost nothing — except French. Renny tried to make Alayne read French with her, but Alavne refused. We had a terrible time.’

‘I feel very sorry for her. Think of her walking almost four miles to Mass! I think we ought to send a car for her.'

’I might go with her. I think it would suit me very well to be a Catholic.’

They found Mrs. Lebraux and Renny standing in deep snow by the enclosures. Mrs. Lebraux wore a heavy jersey that had been her husband’s, breeches tucked into gray woolen stockings, and moccasins. She stood leaning on a snow shovel and smoking a cigarette. She was bareheaded, and her hair, with its unusual shadings of brown and tow color, stood out about her face in short thick locks. Finch’s eyes moved from mother to daughter. He was disturbed by the sharp contrast between them.

Renny put his arm about Pauline and drew her to his side. ‘Are you feeling better?’ he asked. ‘Have you got over the tragedy?’

Mrs. Lebraux explained to Finch: ‘Pauline has been inconsolable. One of the vixens got out of her own pen into the next one and the foxes there attacked her. They tore off a leg and she had to be killed.’

‘It was not the pet fox, I hope.’

‘No, but one of her favorites. She is far too tender-hearted. Life is going to be hard for her.’

Finch felt angry with Mrs. Lebraux. Why should she be dressed as a man, shoveling snow, sending her child to church alone? Yet, though he felt angry, he could not help liking her.

The snow in the pens was indented by many little footprints, but most of the foxes had hidden themselves in their kennels at the approach of strangers. However, the old dog fox stood at a distance surveying them, his clear-cut shadow bluish on the snow. Pauline had run into an outhouse to bring fox biscuit to tempt them from their dens. She had put her prayer book and rosary into Finch’s hand to hold for her. Clara Lebraux glanced at them, then into his eyes, and said, ‘Poor child!’

What did she mean by that, he wondered. There was something mysterious about her. He felt a troubling, exquisite intimacy in holding these things belonging to Pauline.

She came back running, and threw biscuits into one pen after another. The foxes, surprised at being fed at this unusual hour, crept out timorously, snatched the biscuits, and fled with them to their kennels. But her pet fox ran to her, bounding about her like a dog. She went into the run and brought him out in her arms, displaying him proudly to Finch and Wakefield. Her face showed lively above his long fur that was electric with health and the keen air.

On the way home Finch said. ‘Wake tells me that they are having rather a hard time of it.’

Renny sent the car over a drift that almost threw the boys from their seats. ’Yes. Things are rough for them. But they will make a success of it yet. Clara Lebraux is one woman in a thousand and that little Pauline is wonderful with the foxes. She has a stove in the outhouse. Cooks meat for them. Makes all their mashes herself. The worst is that they must sell some of their best stock this spring just for lack of capital.’

Finch asked hesitatingly, ‘How much would it take to tide them over?’

‘A few thousand would do wonders for them. Practically save the situation.’ Finch was sitting in the front seat with him and Renny had lowered his voice so that Wakefield might not hear. ‘I let them have a thousand myself — last year. But this spring — I simply hadn’t got it. They’ll have to get along as best they can.’ He sighed.

‘I’d love to help them — if you think they would n’t mind,’ said Finch in a low tone.

Renny shot him a quick, grateful look. ’Oh, would you? That would be splendid. There would be no risk, but she could not pay a high interest.’

As they turned into the drive he muttered, ‘Don’t say’ anything of this to the family. They are down on Mrs. Lebraux.’

Finch was elated. He was hand in glove with Renny. Between them they were going to look after Pauline. . . .

What of Pauline? He could not put the thought of her out of his head. That sweet face, delicately flushed by the long walk through the snow, was between him and all he saw. A bright stream flowed between Jalna and the fox farm. Along it his spirit moved in exaltation, like a ship with all sails spread in full moonlight. That other face, clear, remote, with its close-set mouth, was as a distant promontory, veiled by clouds.

XXXII

Pheasant had her mind set on one thing. That was that her baby should be born on Finch’s birthday.

In the first place, it would be a remarkable coincidence. A double birthday in the family would be an event of great importance. In the second place, she thought the date a lucky one. Finch was talented, and he had inherited a fortune. In the third place, if the baby was born on Finch’s birthday, Finch would, in all probability, take a keen interest in it, feel a personal pride in its advancement.

Now here it was five o’clock in the afternoon on the first day of March, and no baby! The doctor had been to see her and was coming back in a few hours. Her time was drawing near. Yet so was midnight, and the second day of March. She had had a cup of tea, but she could not eat anything. She sat by the window in her dressing gown, her face flushed, her eyes feverish, her short brown hair in damp tags on her forehead. Piers was walking about the room. He fidgeted with things on the dressing table, played with the tassel on the blind. He had a reassuring smile ready for her when their eyes met, but when he looked at her unobserved his face wore an expression of acute anxiety.

Above the treetops, in the translucent green sky, he saw the pale curve of the new moon.

‘There’s the new moon, little one! It’s a good omen!’

‘Oh, oh!’ she said. ‘I must wish on it! But don’t let me see it through glass! Open the window.’

He opened it and the cold air came in on her. There had been a fresh fall of snow; every twig bore its fragile burden of whiteness. She placed herself sideways in the window. ‘I must see it over my right shoulder!’ He took her head in his hands and turned it so that she faced the new moon across her shoulder. He pressed his fingers against her head, and a well of tenderness rising in him constricted his throat, blinded his eyes with tears. She opened hers.

‘Now,’ he urged, ‘wish quickly! I must not let you take cold,’

She fixed her eyes on the moon that looked no more than the paring from a silver apple, and murmured to herself, ‘Oh, let it come soon — before midnight, please, moon!’

Piers put down the sash.

‘There,’ she sighed, ‘perhaps that will help! But I don’t feel as much like it as I did two hours ago.’

‘ I wish you had n’t set your mind on such an idiotic thing,’ he said. But in spite of himself he was influenced by her. Then there was the anxiety to have it all over. He counted the hours till midnight. Iry to eat something, to please me!' He brought a plate on which was a thin piece of bread and butter. He cut it into small bits and fed them to her. She held up her mouth like a young bird for the morsels. As he put the bits of bread into her mouth and saw the confiding look in her eyes he thought, ‘ I did n’t feel like this when Mooey was born. . . . She must be going to die.’

They could hear Mooey and Patience laughing and running in the passage. Patience had been brought to spend the day with her small cousin.

‘Do those kids annoy you?’ asked Piers. ‘Where the dickens is that Alma Patch? She ought to be minding them.'

‘Bring them in here for a moment. I’d love to see them.’

He opened the door of the bedroom and the two came running in side by side, with the air of having intended to do this particular thing at this particular moment. They had been having their tea in the kitchen, and they wore their bibs, on which were buttery crumbs of toast. Patience carried a toasting fork.

‘I made toas’!’ she cried. ‘I made my own toas’! And Mooey’s.’

Mooey went to his mother and stood gravely by her knee. She laid her fingers among the soft rings of his hair. ‘Darling, would you like a baby sister?

‘Yes!’ He spoke emphatically, softly thumping on her knee with his shut fist. ‘She could fall downstairs.’

‘Oh, but she would n’t! You’d take care of her, would n’t you?’

‘Yes. I’d pick her up and put her in a bastick.’

‘Patty, would you like a baby cousin, this very night?’

Patience made her eyes enormous. ‘Oh, the darling! I’ll wide her on my pony!’ She looked about the room. ‘Where is she? Patty wants to see her! ’

Pheasant said, ‘Open the window, Piers, and let the children wish on the new moon.’

‘Don’t be silly!’ He patted her back. ‘It will only let in the cold and it will do no good — if that’s what you’re thinking of.’

‘One can never tell. Why, I’ve heard tell how, in the War, Kitchener or some other great general said, when he heard a battle bad been won, “Somebody must have been praying!” Just think of that! A great general and a battle! And this just the matter of a different birthday for my baby! Surely it might help!’

To please her he opened the window. She turned the two little faces up toward the moon. ‘Now say after me, “I wish that the new baby may come before to-morrow.’” Obediently they lisped the words after her.

‘I don’t see anything religious in that,’ observed Piers. ‘It’s purely pagan.’

‘I am tolerant,’ she said sagely, ‘of all religions.’

‘Not only tolerant. You believe in them all.’

Patience stabbed her toasting fork in the direction of the moon. ‘Patty wants the moon!’ she cried. ‘Come down, moon, and be toasted!’

‘I’m not f’ightened,’ said Mooey.

Piers shut the window. Already the lower point of the moon had touched the treetops. She was fast sinking. Pheasant looked at Piers with a strange stare in her eyes. Then she uttered a cry.

‘Take them away! Oh, take them away from here!’

Piers caught a child in each hand and hurried them from the room.

But five hours later, when he and his brothers and uncles were waiting below, the birth had not taken place. Pheasant had asked for an egg and was eating it. . . .

Finch stood by the window looking into the starless night while the others played a half-hearted game of bridge. How could Piers play cards when his girl lay in dreadful anticipation in a room above! He pictured himself in Piers’s position. He would not be able to endure it. His spirit would bear every pang. ... He shrank from the thought that any woman should go through that because of him. No, let him go childless to his grave rather than that. Even though it were possible to bring his child into the world without pain, better far that no child should inherit the torment of his nerves. Had he ever been really happy? He could not remember it, even in childhood. There had always been that haunting of fear, that moving shadow of the unknown.

He could discover just one pale star. The soul, perhaps, of this new Whiteoak waiting to descend, when the moment came, into the troubled body.

Nicholas was dealing and he said: ‘I remember well twenty-two years ago tonight, We sat at this very table playing cribbage — Ernest and I — your father walking the floor. We were waiting for young Finch to arrive. And he was tardy enough about it.’

‘Philip was very nervous,’ said Ernest. ’I remember that when we gave him a glass of rum and water, to quiet him, the glass rattled in a quite alarming manner against his teeth. Poor Mary was suffering greatly.’

Piers held his hand above the table. ‘Look at that. Steady enough, eh?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Ernest, ‘but all is not over upstairs.’

‘Pheasant will be all right,’ said Rennv. ‘The doctor is with her. And Mrs. Patch. Meg and Alayne in the next room.’

Piers was examining his cards. ‘Alayne ought to be having this baby. It’s her turn,’ he muttered.

‘ We don’t all of us have families,’ replied Penny. ‘ I ’ve responsibility enough as it is.’

They played out the hand.

Piers looked at his watch. Half-past ten.

A year ago to-night,’ observed Ernest, as he dealt, ‘we were in the midst of your birthday party, Finch.’

Finch turned from the window. ‘It was a very different birthday from this. It seems years ago.’

‘You made a good speech that night,’ said Renny. ‘ You had everybody laughing.’

Finch looked pleased. ‘I forget what I said. It was awful rot, I guess.’

‘No. It was very good. By the way, I met Mrs. Leigh and Ada in town to-day. They’re expecting Leigh and his wife next month. But you did n t like her, did you?’

‘No, I did n’t like her.’

Play! said Nicholas. His tone was testy because of the delay.

Finch turned again to the window. Why had Sarah been mentioned to-night? Why had that pale face, with its indrawn mouth, been introduced into his thoughts? It was there, outside the pane, looking in at him, mocking, beseeching, by turn. It was of the figment of night. Of pale starlight. Of shadow darker than darkness. And from it issued that voice which would always trouble his soul, that voice sweeter than the sweetness of her violin.

From above came a piercing cry. Piers threw down his cards and ran up the stairs.

At twenty minutes to twelve the new Whiteoak came weeping into the world. Meg brought the news down to them.

She put her arms about Piers and kissed him. A little son, Piers! Quite strong and well. And on your birthday, Finch!’ She kissed him, too. ‘Many happy returns to you both, darling boys!’

Piers said, ‘He did it, by the skin of his gums!’

‘Did what?’

‘Arrived on Finch’s birthday. Pheasant had her heart set on that.’ His face was contorted. He was between laughter and tears.

Nicholas hobbled up and down the room. ’Well, well, this is good news! Another boy, eh? And on your birthday, Finch! A new Whiteoak. I remember how a year ago to-night we sat up till dawm in this room celebrating.’ And he began singing, in an undertone, —

Piers’s head was hidden in the long maroon window curtain. His shoulders were shaken by sobs.

XXXIII

The next day was Sunday. Just as breakfast was over, Wright brought a package addressed to Finch which he had got from the post office the night before. Wakefield carried it, with an important air, to Finch. ‘Wright is awfully sorry that lie forgot this last night. Whatever do you suppose it is?’

He stood by expectantly while Finch undid it. It was a book, fresh from the press. Poetry, by the look of it. Wake read the title — ‘ New France, by Eden Whiteoak.’ He wanted to take it in his hands, but Finch held him off. ‘No — let me see first.'

He took off the jacket. The cover was green with gold lettering, and there was a design of lilies. How well Eden’s name looked in the gilt letters! How jolly nice of him to have sent this to Finch for his birthday! Finch had not known it was published yet. He raised the cover and looked inside. On the dedication page he read, ‘For Brother Finch.’

Wakefield read it, too. They looked at each other, stunned by the magnificence of it. Eden had dedicated his new long poem, which had taken him a year to write, to Finch! Finch was overcome. What had he done to deserve being singled out for such an honor? Eden . . . New France ... for Brother Finch! God, life was terrific!

He carried it to the dining room to show it to his uncles and Benny, who were still at the breakfast table. They were duly impressed. Bags, with a tray in his hands, bent his inquisitive gaze upon it.

‘I’m sure we’re all proud of both you and Mr. Eden, sir,’he said. ‘You’ve both on you turned out better than we could ’ave ’oped.’

Wakefield had rushed back to the sitting room at the sound of a plaintive cry there. Now he hastened back to the dining room, exclaiming, ‘Come quick! Piers has something to show you!'

Nicholas made his table napkin into a ball. Benny heaved him to his feet. Nip. who had been on Nick’s knee, circled about the table yapping joyously. One of Renny’s spaniels reared itself beside the table and licked the toast crumbs from his plate. Ernest surreptitiously took an indigestion tablet. All these excitements tended to discourage the gastric juices. . . .

In the wintry sunlight Piers was holding something on a pillow. In his eyes was pride, and on his lips a deprecating tenderness.

They gathered about the newcomer, staring at him ruthlessly, while his weak eyes shrank from the light and he made a shamefaced grimace as though he would ask nothing better than the opportunity to obliterate himself. Young as he was, he had been put into clothes. Bands, napkins, safety pins, hampered him. His tender arms had been thrust into sleeves by Mrs. Patch. He had been washed, the faint down on his head had been brushed. His nose had been wiped. He was ready for life.

Benny caught sight of Mooey in the hall. From a disorganized household the tiny boy had escaped to the coal cellar and was smudged from head to foot. With a stride Benny was on him. He snatched him up and carried him to join the circle.

‘ Mooey, you sweep! ’ he shouted. ' Mooey, you miserable tripe! Come and see your baby brother!’

Mooey, with a sooty forefinger in his pink mouth, stared long and dubiously at the newcomer. Then — ' Oh, hell! I’m not f’ightened! he said.

His uncles and great-uncles agreed that, while not handsome, the infant showed unmistakable signs of having the Court nose.

Piers fixed his prominent blue eyes on Finch’s face. He had got an idea. Why, look here,’ he said, ‘this kid’s got a long nose, a long, melancholy face — he’s a depressed-looking cuss! By George, we’ll call him Finch!’

‘Not after me?’ cried Finch, incredulously.

‘Yes. Why not? Pheasant was awfully keen to have him born on your birthday. Thought he might shine in your reflected rays. I believe he’s going to take after you. I’d like damned well to call him Finch if you don’t mind!’

‘Good idea!’ said Nicholas.

‘Splendid!’ said Ernest.

‘He might do worse than take after his uncle Finch,’ said Benny.

‘Do you mind?’ reiterated Piers.

‘Mind!’ Finch was touched to the heart. His features broke into a tender smile. He took the tiny pink hand in his large bony one. ‘Mind! Why, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had done for me in all my life!’ His voice trembled with emotion.

(The End)