“No, I haven’t seen her. I’ve just come.”
Nicholas regarded him quizzically. “Been getting divorced, eh?”
“Yes, Uncle Nick.”
“Just like me, eh?”
“Yes.”
“That’s right. If wives misbehave, get rid of them. Who’s this fellow she has married?”
“A Russian. I can’t pronounce his name. Ends in ski.”
Nicholas blew out his breath. “Well, well — ski, eh? I’ll bet he gets away with every dollar of her money.”
“What a pity!” said Ernest. “So much could have been done with a nice fortune like that.”
“I don’t want any of it,” exclaimed Finch, hotly.
“Not for your family’s sake?” Ernest asked reprovingly.
“Well, perhaps for them.”
“What does this Russian do?” enquired Nicholas.
“Nothing, that I know of.”
“What about your little boy?”
“I am to have him with me a part of the time.”
“How old is he?”
“He will be four on Christmas Eve.”
“Yes, I remember.”
Ernest remarked, “It seems strange to think that a man, with a name ending in ski, should bring up a Whiteoak.”
Finch laughed. “He will have nothing to say about the bringing up. Sarah allows no interference.”
“You seem oddly detached about your son,” said Ernest. “That is unusual in our family.”
A flush came into Finch’s cheeks. He said, “Everything has been unusual in my connection with Sarah. Even my relations with her child.”
“Her child!”
“Our child, then.”
“Sarah was a damned queer woman from the first,” rumbled Nicholas. “When she went off with that Russian you should have got an order from the courts to give you complete possession of the boy.”
“Sarah is an adoring mother. I’m not an adoring father. Dennis scarcely seems like my child.”
“Yet you have always been so fond of the children of the family,” exclaimed Ernest.
“I know.”
“Are you in doubt as to whether the child is yours?” asked Nicholas, his large, deep-set eyes searching Finch’s face.
“I’m positive he is.” After a moment he added, “If I weren’t so positive I might have been a happier man — if you know what I mean.”
“That woman,” said Nicholas, “concentrated every atom of her queer being on you. I’ve never seen the equal of it. It doesn’t do.” He took his pipe from his pocket and began to fill it.
“How do you think Alayne looks?” asked Ernest.
“Rather tired.”
“She fusses too much,” declared Ernest. “From morning to night she thinks of things that ought to be done or shouldn’t have been done. Now I look at it this way: here we are — helpless, you might say. There is a war. We’ve got to accept things as they come. Our little doings are so paltry compared to the stupendous happenings in Europe, they’re not worth worrying about.”
“Then why do you worry,” asked his brother, “when your meals are late?”
“Because late meals give me indigestion. I am fearful of becoming ill and adding to the burdens of the household.”
Nicholas winked at Finch.
“Grand old boy, your Uncle Ernest,” he said. “Never fusses. Never gives any trouble.”
Ernest smiled good-humouredly. The two settled down for a long conversation with Finch. The familiar quality of this atmosphere which was of the very essence of Jalna, closed in about Finch. His concerts, his long train journeys, seemed far away and unreal. Here was his reality. No matter if it were extraordinary to other people, it was his reality. Looking back on his life with Sarah he saw how she had laid waste its freshness and its vigour. Almost from the first he had felt something insensate in her. She was a figure in porcelain who somehow had managed to inspire passion in him, to devastate his life. But now he was free of her. Never again! The grip of those arms … those lips … but now he was free and in his own place! He was not the man he might have been if he had never known her. On the other hand he could look back on the poignant spasm of his desire for her as a thing conquered, outlived. Perhaps the great love of his life lay ahead. With the surface of his mind he basked in the company of the two old men. In its depths he explored his past.
Late in the day he wandered alone through the fields and woods. The land lay in the dreaming beauty of Indian summer. It was many months since he had been weary from outdoor exercise. He turned toward the stables, thinking he might find Adeline there. It was likely she would pay the horses a visit soon after her return from school. He remembered his own school days and how hard it had been to spend the lovely fall months in those journeyings on train and long sessions in classrooms.
The doors of the stables were wide open to let in the mild sweet air. The horses had been bedded and fed. The smell of clean straw came to him and, when he stepped inside, the sounds of placid enjoyment of the evening meal. The occupants of stalls and loose boxes looked out at him as he passed, with a kind of noble unconcern, as though recognize him they could, if they but thought it worth the while. He was a part of Jalna, they knew, but a being of no importance.
How different he was from the young girl who stood beside the aged mare, Cora, in the loose box at the farther end of the passage! The very sight of her, the sound of her voice, created a stir of pleasure that was transmitted in some mysterious way from stall to stall. Finch now saw her leaning against the mare’s shoulder, her auburn hair touched by sunlight slanting through a small window so that there was a look of the young crusader about her, or the young saint.
Finch smiled at this fancy. Adeline, he guessed, was a very human child and probably badly spoilt. She was looking up into Wright’s face who lounged beside her, and they talked with the air of intimates. Wright had put her on her first pony when she was five. Since then horses had been the absorbing subject of all their conversations. Finch heard her say:
“If we can’t show our horses properly, what’s the use of keeping them?”
Wright returned glumly, “That’s just what the mistress thinks. She don’t see no sense in it. She’d like to see the lot of them sold.”
“And have my father come home and find empty stables!”
“Sure. Except for Cora here and the roan and the work horses. She’d like to see ’em all sold.”
“Never!” exclaimed Adeline hotly. “We’ll never do it, Wright! You’ll stand by me, won’t you?”
Wright threw the most profound feeling into his voice. “I’d rather,” he said, “part with my wife and child than with these here horses. But the mistress — she don’t understand how you and me and the boss feel.”
“Let her keep out of this! Let her attend to her own affairs!”
Finch now thought it better to appear. He did so with an air of innocence, as having overheard nothing. He kissed Adeline. It was like kissing a flower, her cheek was so cool, so fresh. The freshness, the newness of her was so potent. Her nose no longer looked too large for her child’s face. It was superb. And what nostrils — designed to express pride, fierceness,