# Whiteoaks of Jalna/Chapter 10

Rags carried in the mail and laid it before Renny, who was sitting on one side of the fireplace, his injured leg propped on an ottoman, the top of which was worked in a design in green and silver beads, portraying an angel carrying a sheaf of lilies. On the opposite side of the fireplace sat Nicholas, his gouty leg supported by an ottoman of exactly similar pattern, a glass of whisky and soda at his elbow. He was chuckling deeply over a month-old copy of Punch. At a small table sat Ernest, stringing afresh a necklet of enormous amber beads for his mother. His long face drooped above the task in hand with an expression of serene absorption. Old Mrs. Whiteoak, leaning forward in her chair, watched every movement of his fingers, gratifying from the glow of the amber in the firelight her love of colour, as a heavy old bee might extract sweetness from a flower. Her breath came and went more noisily over her thrust-out underlip than was usual, partly because of her attitude, and partly because of the effort of concentration. This gusty breathing and the occasional chuckle from Nicholas were the only sounds as Renny read his letters, and they served but to emphasize the seclusion of the room, the sense of an excluding wall against the rest of the world which a group of Whiteoaks always achieved.
None of his elders inquired for letters of Renny. Not one of the three received more than one or two in the whole year, and then it was, as likely as not, an advertisement.
Wakefield came into the room. "Aunt Augusta wants to know," he said in his clear treble, "if there are any letters for her."
"Two from England." Renny gave them to him.
"How nice for her!" said Wakefield, looking over his ​shoulder. "Why, there's another, Renny, with an American stamp. It's addressed to Lady Buckley, isn't it?"
"Take her what I gave you," said his brother, curtly, and Wakefield trotted off to tell Augusta that Renny was holding back some of her mail.
When time enough had passed for her to read the two letters from England, she appeared in the doorway.
"Are you sure you have not overlooked one of my letters, Renny?" she asked. "I was expecting another."
He patted the seat of the sofa beside him. "Come and read it here," he said.
Lady Buckley looked annoyed, but she came and placed herself beside him, very upright, with eyebrows almost touching her Queen Alexandra fringe.
"I'll open it for you," he said, and with a large paper knife, the handle of which was formed of the foot of a fawn, he carefully slit the envelope, taking time with the business, as though he liked to touch this particular letter. She divined whom the letter was from.
She perched her eyeglasses on her nose and took the letter with an impassive face, but she had barely read a line when she exclaimed on a deep note: "Thank heaven, he is safe!"
Renny hitched his body nearer to her and peered at the letter. "Well, I'll be shot!" he muttered.
"Read," she commanded, in a whisper, and they perused the letter together.
When they reached the line, "You may tell Renny that I absolutely refuse to send his address," she pointed to it with a dramatic forefinger, and Renny's teeth showed in a smile that was an odd mingling of chagrin and gratification.
Wakefield, behind the sofa, intruded his head between theirs and asked: "Is it about Finch? Has anything happened to Finch?"
Hearing the name, Ernest looked up quickly from his beads. "Is anything wrong?" he asked. "Any bad news of the boy?"
"He is found," announced Augusta. "He is in New York. He is well."
​"The young devil," observed Nicholas, laying down his Punch. "He ought to be brought home and given a sound hiding!"
For once the gentle Ernest agreed. "He ought indeed. I've worried myself ill over that boy."
"Who is the letter from?" asked Nicholas.
"Alayne. Keep still and I will read it to you." Impressively she read the letter aloud.
"I'm the only one she sent a message to," cried Wakefield, "excepting Renny, and his isn't a nice one. She says she won't tell him where Finch is, doesn't she?"
"Hush," said Augusta. "We don't wish to hear any of your chatter at a moment like this."
"Alayne," asserted Nicholas, "put ideas in that boy's head from the very first. It was she, you'll remember, Renny, who persuaded you to give him music lessons."
"You play the piano yourself," retorted his sister, tartly.
Nicholas puffed at his pipe imperturbably. "I do. But I don't lose my head over music. I could never become hag-ridden by art. Finch was not sane about it, and it did him no end of harm."
Renny said: "To think of his having the guts to go to New York alone! He must have saved all the money he made from that fool orchestra."
"The question is," said his aunt, "what is to be done? It is shocking to think of Finch exposed to the temptations of that terrible city."
"He must be brought back at once!" exclaimed Ernest, dropping a bead in his agitation.
So long as he had been faithful to his task, handling the honey-coloured spheres with delicacy and precision, old Mrs. Whiteoak had chosen to pay no heed to the conversation, but now she raised her massive head in its beribboned cap and threw a piercing glance into the faces about her.
"What's the to-do?" she demanded.
They looked at each other. Had they better tell her?
The look did not escape her. She rapped with her ​stick on the floor. "Ha! What's this? What's the to-do? I will not be kept out of things."
"Easy on, Mama," said Nicholas, soothingly. "It's nothing but young Finch. We've found out where he is."
A feeling of breathlessness came over the room, as always happened when a piece of news had just been broken to her. How would she take it? Would there be a scene? Every eye was fixed on that hard-bitten, smouldering old face.
"Finch, eh? You've found out where Finch is!"
"He's in New York," went on Nicholas. "We have had a letter from Alayne. She's seen him."
"Ha! What's he doing there?"
"He seems to have some sort of job. I fancy Alayne got it for him."
"Oh, did she? I had always thought she was well connected." She dropped her chin to her breast. Was she thinking deeply, or was she fallen into one of her dozes? Boney hopped from his perch and began to peck at the ribbons on her cap. He pulled at the ribbons till the cap was a trifle askew.
Suddenly she raised her head and said, emphatically: "I want him. I want to see Finch. Take the bird away. He's disarranging my cap."
Ernest gingerly replaced Boney on his perch, but not until he had received a wicked peck on the wrist.
"Haramzada!" screamed Boney, flapping his wings. "Iflatoon! Chore! Chore!"
Renny observed: "I think it would be a damned good idea to leave him there for a while. He'll soon get sick of it. Teach him a lesson."
Grandmother arched her neck and turned her beaklike nose toward him. "You do, eh? You would, eh? And you his guardian! Always ready to cross my will! Unnatural grandson! Unnatural brother!" Purplish red suffused her face.
"Nonsense," said Renny. "I'm nothing of the sort."
"You are! You are! You like nothing so well as to cross people. You'd like to be a tyrant like my father. Old Renny Court. Red Renny, they used to call him ​in Ireland. He cowed all his eleven children but me. Me he couldn't cow." She shook her head triumphantly, then was transported by rage. "To think that I should bring another like him into the world!"
"Thanks for nothing!" retorted the master of Jalna. "You didn't bring me into the world."
"Didn't bring you into the world!" she cried. "You dare contradict me? If I didn't bring you into the world, I should like to know who did!"
"You forget," he returned, "that you are my father's mother, not mine."
"Well, I should like to know who you'd have been without your father! An English gentleman, and your mother only a poor flibbertigibbet governess."
His face was nearly as red as hers. "Now you're confusing me with his second family. My mother was Dr. Ramsay's daughter. Surely you don't forget how you hated her."
"Haramzada!" added Boney, rocking on his perch. "Iflatoon! Iflatoon!"
Nicholas broke in, rumblingly: "Stop baiting her, Renny! I won't have it. Look at the colour of her face, and remember that she's over a hundred."
His mother turned on him. "Look at the colour of your own face! You're only envious that you haven't our hot blood. What we want is to have our quarrel out in peace."
"It's very bad for you, Mama," said Ernest.
"Go on with your bead-stringing, ninny!" ordered his mother.
Augusta cried: "Can we never discuss anything without dissension?"
"Would you serve beef without mustard?" replied the old lady.
"I wonder," observed Wakefield, "if Finch will get into the crime wave they're having in that country. Rags was telling me about it."
"The child has touched the keynote of the matter," said Augusta. "Finch will be sure to come under some bad influence if he is left in New York. How could ​Alayne watch over him? What can she know of the temptations that befall a young man?"
"Man!" rumbled Nicholas. "Callow boy!"
"He must be fetched," said Grandmother, "and that at once. Ernest shall go for him."
If Ernest had been told that he was to join an Arctic exploring party, he could not have looked more surprised. "But, Mama," he said, "why me?"
"Because," she responded, vigorously, "Nick cannot travel on account of his knee. Renny cannot travel on account of his leg. Piers is too busy, and, besides, he has never been there. Eden—what's become of Eden?"
"He's away, Mama."
"Hmph. I don't like this going away. I want the young folk about me. You had better fetch him, too. You're the one to go."
"I quite agree with Mama," said Augusta.
Mother and daughter looked at each other, amazed to find themselves in accord.
Old Mrs. Whiteoak moved and settled her teeth into a more efficient position in her mouth with a crunching noise.
"Mama, must you do that?" asked Ernest.
She disregarded the question, but, with a grim grin at her daughter, remarked: "Well spoken, Lady Bunkley."
After the first consternation had worn off, Ernest was thrilled through all his being by the adventure of going to New York. He had always intended to visit it again. Europe seemed out of the question. But he had procrastinated, because of lack of money and indolence, till the intention had become more and more shadowy, and would have melted into the shadow of other unfulfilled intentions had not the family forced him to action.
Two days later he was eating his dinner in the train. He felt extraordinarily pleased with himself as he bent his head above the menu under the deferential black gaze of the waiter, and felt beneath him the deep, purposeful throbbing of the wheels. He even enjoyed the unaccustomed ice water.
As he sipped his coffee at the end of the meal, he did ​not worry in the least about his digestion. He felt firm and strong. He gazed out of the window at the wooded ravines, at the dark blue hills and ridges slipping by. His eyes delighted in the vineyards, in the peach orchards, where thousands of little peach trees, white with bloom, marched above the rich red loam, dyed redder by the setting sun. The ground beneath the cherry trees was white with their lost petals. All the farmlands beamed and shone with promise.
The dark hand of the waiter taking up the tip pleased him, the faces of the other passengers interested. Round-faced, shrewd-looking New York business men, some of them. He thought rather ruefully: "Been looking after their interests in Canada, I suppose. . . . Well, if we haven't the initiative or capital to develop our own country, and if the Mother Country doesn't do it, why, there's nothing for it but to let the Americans undertake it."
In the smoking compartment he had a cigar. He would have liked to engage the man nearest him in conversation, but as soon as the man showed a disposition to talk Ernest looked down his nose with an expression of absorption. He could not talk to a stranger, much as he would have liked to discuss some of the great questions of the day with someone besides his family and his few intimates. Of the last there were really only two: Mr. Fennel, whose interests were centred in protecting his vegetable garden from insects and his parish from ritualism, which two elderly married ladies and a single young man were determined to introduce; and a Mr. Sinclair, the last survivor of another English family, whose father had also retired from the army and built a house five miles from Jalna. But as he lived alone, and so had no one to talk to, he came to his discussions with Ernest so full of explosive vitality that he left him exhausted, and as he believed nothing that was not in the London Times, and it was three weeks old when he got it, companionship with him had its limitations.
Ernest had travelled little in America, and had forgotten the dreadful publicity of the sleeping cars. He ​had difficulty, too, in putting out his light. When at last he was tucked in, the man in the berth above him snored so persistently that he could not sleep for a long while. Still, sleep came at last, fitful, restless because of lack of air, but still better than lying awake. By sunrise he was propped on one elbow peering out of the window. He was among the first to enter the dining-car, having already bought a New York paper and exchanged a dignified "Good-morning" with two of his fellow passengers. He was glad that they could not know how long it was since he had travelled by night.
How good the bacon and eggs and coffee were! How interested that handsome blonde woman at the table opposite! Every time he raised his eyes she was looking at him. He hoped there was nothing wrong with his collar or tie. He passed his hand over his head to make sure that his hair was smooth. A faint colour rose in his cheeks.
His heart was thudding uncomfortably as they neared the Grand Central Station. His knees trembled as he stood while the porter brushed his clothes. Then came terrible suspense as the man disappeared with his bag, a good English bag that he had bought himself at Drew's in Regent Street. Then relief at the capture of the bag on the platform. And scarcely had relief raised its head, like a too early spring flower, before it was frozen into dismay by the sight of a "redcap" darting into the throng, the bag clutched in his hand.
By the time the bag was recaptured, Ernest's head was wet with sweat. He sank on to the seat of a taxi, and, taking off his hat, mopped his brow, gazing meanwhile anxiously through the window into the unbelievably crowded street. He had directed the driver to take him to the Brevoort, because it was there that he had stayed during his last trip to New York twenty years ago.