The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (352 page)

They glared at each other. There was an interval of silence while the younger members of the family absorbed what they could of these ancient revelations. One of the pine sticks on the fire gave forth an angry crack. The three dogs leaped from the hearth rug and stood in cowed attitudes gazing at the fire. Then slowly they returned to the rug and once more disposed themselves on it.

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 obliged 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 chivvied 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 say”

“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 them 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 queer
unnatural
end. Writing without violence I may say that I consider Renny’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?”

He 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 came—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 didn’t you hold on? I never dreamed that you would let it go!”

Ernest turned on her. “So, you were into 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, sceptically. “That remains to be seen. Now, my friends, this lad has about 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, isn’t it, to see how rapidly money can be dispersed?” He tugged his grey 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 his advice about his affairs and Renny 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 Renny, who also was silent. Finch, hedged round 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.

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 horn. 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 was 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! Eve 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 fruitcake 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.