Whiteoaks of Jalna/Chapter 7
Besides Arthur Leigh, Finch had one other friend. This was George Fennel, the rector's second son. But his friendship with George lacked the sense of adventure, the exhilaration of his friendship with Arthur. Arthur and he had sought out each other. They had bridged barriers to clasp hands. But George and he had been thrown together since infancy. Each thought he knew all there was to know about the other. Each was fond of the other and a little despised him. Their bonds were hatred of mathematics and love of music. But where Finch toiled and sweated over his mathematics, and ached with desire for music, George made no effort to learn what was hard for him, concentrating with dogged purpose on the subjects he liked, early determining that, square peg as he was, he would be fitted into no round hole. He played whatever musical instrument was handy without partiality. He liked the mouth-organ as well as the piano, the banjo as well as the mandolin. He made them all sing for him of the sweetness of life.
He was a short, thickset youth, yet somehow graceful. His clothes were always untidy and his hair rumpled. Arthur Leigh thought him boorish, commonplace, a country clod. He did what he could to draw Finch away from him, and Finch, during that winter, till the time of the play, had never seen so little of George. But after the play he had yearned toward George. For some reason which he could not have explained, he was no longer quite so happy at the Leighs'. Not that his passage with Ada had made any palpable difference. He did not follow his advance by another step or by a repetition. She seemed to have forgotten it. Mrs. Leigh was even kinder than before. She asked many questions about the family at Jalna, and when she learned that one of the uncles was a student of Shakespeare, and that one of the young men was a poet, she took to talking quite seriously to Finch about literature. She was disappointed that Renny was unable—Arthur thought unwilling—to accept two subsequent invitations to dinner.
Whether it were this new interest, this refined probing into the relationships, temperaments, and tastes of his family, or some change in Arthur's attitude toward himself, which made him less happy in the Leighs' house, he did not know, but he felt the change, which was not so much a change as a development, a new aspect in Arthur's affection for him. Arthur had become over-sensitive, exacting, critical of him. Finch was now often finding out that he had, by some gruff or careless remark, hurt Arthur; that he had, by some coarseness or stupidity, offended him; that, when he loudly aired his opinions, Arthur winced. Yet they had hours of such happiness together that Finch went home through the snow joyous in all his being. The trouble was, he decided, that Arthur loved him so well that he wanted him to be perfect, as he was perfect, not knowing how impossible that was.
How different with George! George expected nothing of him and was not disappointed. They could spend an evening together in his tiny bedroom in the rectory, working at an uninspired level of intelligence, chaffing, telling each other idiotic jokes, littering the floor with nutshells, and finally descending to the parlour for an hour of music before Finch must hasten home. Finch at the piano, George playing the banjo, his older brother Tom the mandolin, while the rector would sit smoking, the long pipe nestling on his beard, reading the Churchman, with rare imperturbability. Tom was a lazy fellow who did everything badly (except gardening, for which he had a genius), but Finch never tired of hearing George play the banjo, of watching him as he sat squarely on his chair, his thick hands playing with great dexterity and spirit, his eyes softly beaming from under his untidy hair.
George, like Finch, was always hard up. Sometimes they had not between them two coins to rub together. When Finch was with Arthur he was continually accepting favours, continually being given pleasures which he could only repay by gratitude. At times he felt that the fount of his gratitude must dry up from the unceasing flow.
"But you must not thank me!" Leigh would exclaim. "You know that I love to do things for you."
But perhaps, when Finch on the next occasion was silently pleased, Leigh would ask, with a slight frown denting his smooth forehead: "Are you pleased, Finch, old chap? Do you like the idea?"
How different with George! There was nothing about which he need be grateful to George. They were both about as poor in this world's possessions as they well could be. Each owned a few shabby clothes, his school-books, his watch, and a cherished object or two, such as George's banjo and an old silver snuffbox which Lady Buckley had given Finch. When he was going to the rectory, Finch would fill his pockets with apples; Mr. Fennel would carry a plate of crullers to the boys; they would both rifle Mrs. Fennel's pantry. It was a pleasant and inexpensive give and take.
But now that George was seventeen and Finch eighteen they experienced great longings for more money to spend. Finch had tried several ways of earning it. He humbly had asked Piers if there were any work he could do for him on Saturdays, and Piers had put him to sorting apples in the twilight chill of the apple-house. Between handling the icy fruit, standing on the cement floor, and the draught from the open door, he had contracted an attack of bronchitis that had kept him in his bed for a fortnight. Piers had come to the bedside.
"How long did you work?" he had asked.
"Nearly all the day," Finch had croaked.
"How many hours, exactly?"
"From nine till four, I think, and, of course, I laid off for dinner."
"A day is from seven to five. Well, here is two dollars. Better buy yourself a bottle of cough stuff. And the next time you want to earn some money, get a job in a conservatory." He had thrown a new banknote on to the quilt. Finch had later spent the money on roses for Ada Leigh.
Bronchitis was bad, but missing school for weeks was worse. He had lain, feverish, his chest torn by coughing, lonely in his attic room, listening to the sounds that came from below for companionship, unable to eat the too substantial meals Rags had carried to him, worrying all the while lest he fail again in his examinations.
But, when he was better, the urge to earn some money had come again. This time he asked Renny for work, and Renny had given him a saddle horse to exercise. All the Whiteoaks could ride, but the horses seemed to know that there was no masterfulness in Finch, and they tried all their favourite tricks when he rode them.
This one, just recovering from an accident, supposedly quiet as a sheep, had, in sportive caper, shied at her own gate, and given Finch a tumble on the driveway. Everyone, from Grandmother to Wakefield, had joked about Finch's mishap, and because the mare, elated by her riderless condition, had galloped to the woods, and an hour had been spent in capturing her, her flank grazed by a broken branch, Renny had paid Finch, not with money, but with a curse. The pain of a wrenched ankle was borne in silence, but a scowl darkened his forehead as he limped to and from the station. To be a figure of fun, that was his supreme humiliation.
One evening George said to him: "I know a fellow who would rig up a radio for us for next to nothing."
"H'm," grunted Finch, tearing a bite from a russet apple. "If we only had that next to nothing."
"They're any amount of fun," sighed George. "You can get wonderful concerts from New York, Chicago—all over, in fact."
"Good music, eh? Piano playing?"
"Rather. You've heard Sinclair's radio, haven't you?"
"Yes, but he always tunes in for jazz."
"Why don't you interest your family in them? One would be great fun for your grandmother and your aunt and uncles."
"I'd never get near it. Besides, they wouldn't spend the money on it. All the old ones are as close as bark to a tree."
"What about Renny or Piers?"
"They detest them. Besides, money is awfully tight at home this winter. Gosh, you know I can't get any money for anything but my fees and my railway ticket. What are you talking about?"
George leaned forward, his square, roguish face twinkling. "I know how we can earn some money, Finch."
Finch flung the core of the russet into the waste-paper basket. "How, then?" His tone was sceptical.
"By getting up an orchestra."
"An orchestra! You've gone dotty, haven't you?"
"Not by a long shot. Listen here. The other day my father was making a sick call in Stead, and I drove him there. These people have a greenhouse, and while I waited outside I strolled about looking through the windows at the plants. A fellow came out and we got to talking. He was a grandson and he'd just come out from town because of the sickness. I soon found out that he plays the mandolin. He's got a friend who plays it, too, and another who plays the flute. They've been thinking for some time they'd like to get up an orchestra if they could find some fellows to play the banjo and piano. He was awfully excited when I told him we might go in for it."
Finch was staggered. "But your father—what will he say?"
"He won't know. You see, I didn't tell this fellow I was Dad's son. He thinks I'm just employed by him. I thought it was better because one's people are so darned silly about who you go with. Of course, these other fellows are all right, but you know how unreasonable one's family can be." And he added softly: "One of the chaps is a tailor's assistant—he's the flautist—and the other works in the abattoir."
"Gee!" exclaimed Finch. "Do you mean to say he kills things?"
"I didn't ask him," returned George testily. "The point is that he can play the mandolin."
"So you've met them!"
"Yes. At the noon hour. They're awfully decent chaps, and they're quite old, too. The one I first met is twenty-three, and other looks about twenty-six or so. They're awfully anxious to meet you."
Finch began to shake with excitement. He took out a box in which were two cigarettes, and offered it to George. "Have a fag?"
They lighted up.
Finch was too excited to look at George. He fixed his eyes on the stovepipe-hole in the floor, through which sufficient heat was supposed to penetrate to warm George's room. He began to wonder whether their voices could be heard in the kitchen below.
"What about the pipe-hole? Is the servant down there?"
"She couldn't possibly hear. Besides, she's got her steady with her."
"Who is he?"
"Jack Sims. From Vaughans'."
Murmuring voices came from below. The boys moved softly near the pipe-hole and peered down. In the light from a feeble electric bulb they saw two arms lying along the dresser. The hands were clasped. One hand, projecting from a blue cotton sleeve, was plump, a rawish pink from much washing of clothes; the other, the hairy wrist of which protruded from coarse cloth, was the gnarled hand of a middle-aged farm labourer. The voices had ceased and the only sound was the ticking of the kitchen clock.
The two intertwined hands fascinated Finch. They became for him symbolic of the mystery, the reaching out, the groping for support of life. He felt the tenderness, the fire, that each hand drew from the other and gathered like herbs of comfort for the lonely heart. . . .
George was whispering: "It's a fact, they never get any further than that."
"You mean any nearer, don't you?"
"I mean any forwarder."
They broke into suffocating giggles. They threw themselves on the lumpy couch, uttering explosive squeaks. But, though Finch giggled hysterically, his mind's eye was still peering down the pipe-hole, his soul burning to know what were the thoughts of the two below.
"Why didn't you tell me about them before? We might often have taken a squint down at them."
"There was nothing to it." George's face turned glum. "Now, look here, Finch, which are you most interested in, the orchestra or those two silly spoons in the kitchen?"
Finch returned, still grinning: "There's no earthly use in talking about an orchestra to me. I wouldn't be let go to town for practising or playing at places. There'd be a hell of a row if I proposed such a thing."
"No need for you to mention it. I've got it all arranged. You don't object to making five dollars every now and again, do you?"
Finch sat up and stared. "Would I get that much?"
"Certainly. Lilly, that's the leader's name, says we can easily get twenty-five dollars a night for playing at dances in restaurants. That's five each. Not bad, eh, for strumming a few hours? Now don't interrupt. It'll be the simplest thing in the world for us to work the thing. By bolting a bit of lunch, we can get in an hour's practice at noon. Sometimes we can do it after five o'clock by staying in town for the seven-thirty train. That's easy. Now, for the dances. You remember my aunt, Mrs. St. John, has been widowed lately."
Finch nodded.
"She's a favourite with your family, isn't she?"
Again he nodded with deep solemnity.
"Very well. My aunt was saying only yesterday that she would like me to spend a night with her once a week for company. She would be pleased if I were to bring you along, and, seeing that she's a favourite of your darned old family, I don't suppose they'd object to your spending a night in her house, when she's widowed and all that, and I guess Renny thinks you're more likely to study when you're with me than with that Leigh chap." George, in his quiet way, thoroughly disliked Leigh.
"But your aunt, won't she be suspicious?"
George smiled gently. "It all fits in beautifully. Auntie is ordered to bed by her doctor at eight every night. She'll see us get our books out—the library's downstairs—and then toddle off to her bedroom and go bye-bye. The dances begin at nine. We'll see life in those restaurants, too, mind you. And five bucks apiece. . . ."
They whispered, planning together, till it was time for Finch to go home. There he sat, wrapped in a quilt, studying, to make up for lost time. But between him and the page returned again and again the vision of the two clasped hands lying on the kitchen dresser, then Ada's face with mouth tremulously smiling, quivering from the kisses he had given her. With an effort he would put these pictures away and drag his mind back to its task.
Difficult, unlikely as it had seemed, the orchestra came into being. It flourished. Lunches were bolted and the noonday period was spent in practice in the parlour above the tailor's shop, into which penetrated the pungent smell of hot iron pressing damp cloth. The tailor's assistant was cousin to the tailor, and he and his girl-wife and puny infant lived also above the shop. He was the oldest member of the orchestra, being twenty-six. His name was Meech. Finch soon became well acquainted with all the family, and, as they were kind to him and admired his playing, his affection rushed out to them. Often, when the practice was over, he would stay awhile, making himself late for school, to play Chopin or Schubert before the friendly circle. Then the thin girl-wife of the young tailor would crouch at the end of the piano watching his hands as he played. She was so close to him that she was in his way, but he would not ask her to move. Sitting so, with her eyes on him, music springing up beneath his hands, he felt firm and strong, free as air.
"Come along," George would urge, his banjo under his arm, "we shall be late."
"Don't wait for me," Finch would say over his shoulder, and would be happier when the banjo, the first and second mandolins, were gone and he was left alone with the flute and his family.
Finch now saw a new kind of life, the life of shopgirls and their beaux seeking pleasure at night in cheap restaurants. On the mornings when the orchestra had an engagement to play that evening, he awoke with a start, excited in all his being. The way had always been paved the night before with his family. Poor Mrs. St. John wanted George to spend the night at her house and would like to have Finch also. There was never any difficulty. Finch found it was the easiest thing in the world to lead a double life. Aunt Augusta would send a box of little cakes or a pot of marmalade to Mrs. St. John. His aunt, though she looked at him coldly, her head drawn back with her air of offence, had a tender spot in her heart for the boy. To his amazement, he had won the prize canary in the raffle, and had smuggled the cage to her room, swathed in paper, a present for her on her seventy-sixth birthday. It had come as an inspiration to him that the day on which he had received it was her birthday. She had told him that his winning the lottery was a good omen for his future. The two were drawn together. He often visited her room to see the canary, and they gloated over the prize together. She soon grew to love it extravagantly. Now she must always keep the door of her room shut tightly for fear old Mrs. Whiteoak should hear it sing. Grandmother would never have tolerated any other bird in the house with Boney. Then there was the fear of Sasha, Ernest's yellow Persian cat, who had taken to making her toilette on Augusta's doormat. Ernest also grew fond of the canary. He too would go to his sister's room to hear it sing, and they would gaze enraptured at the little throbbing body while it dipped its yellow head from side to side, warbling first to one long-faced listener, then to the other.
These days Finch lived in a kind of haze. He felt life changing all around him. New forces were drawing him this way and that. At times he felt an aching in his breast that was almost a pain, a yearning for what he knew not. Not for religion. Not for love—he had not attempted to make love to Ada again—but for something of which religion and love were only a part. His eyes were troubled, he grew thinner. Yet he was always hungry. On the days when there was no practice of the orchestra, he would go, after the school luncheon, to a large shop much frequented by the boys when they were in funds. There he would wander up and down past the glittering glass cases of tempting foods displayed; platters of ham and tongue; fiery red lobsters, and little pink shrimps; he would droop over the case of cheeses, fascinated. The cream cheese, Swiss cheese, Camembert, Roquefort, Oka, the dear little cheeses made by the Trappist monks in Quebec. He thought he should like to be a monk working in the cool rooms of the monastery, and he would buy this particular cheese, though he did not much like it, because of the thought it brought. And at the other side of the shop would be George, giving his money for cakes and chocolates, and bottled fruit from California.
They would go off with their spoil, and at recess they and their friends would devour it in haste, or a feast would be arranged after school, when they could eat at leisure. They contrived, however, to put by a respectable sum for the radio, and toward a camping trip in the summer. Finch would have liked to buy presents for the family from the wealth that poured in so fast, but where would they think he had got the money? But he could not resist a necktie for Renny's birthday, which fell in March. He spent a long time in the haberdasher's choosing it—two shades of blue in a gorgeous stripe. Renny's eyebrows flew up in surprise when it was presented. He was touched. But when he appeared at Sunday tea wearing it, the vivid blue blazing against the highly coloured flesh of his face, his red hair, a storm of protest arose from the family. Renny's beauty—which, they declared, required dark colours to set it off—was ruined by the tie. Now it would have become Piers, with his blue eyes and fair skin. And the next time Finch saw the tie Piers was wearing it.
He had better luck with the box of water colours he bought for Wakefield. To avoid suspicion, for it was a very good box of colours, he said that it was a present from Leigh. Wake, who was condemned to his bed that week, was delighted. He painted pictures day in and day out. Renny, finding his bed littered with them, thought, with a moment's heaviness: "By God, this poor youngster's going to be a genius, too!"
Engagements for the orchestra came thick and fast. The young musicians played with such untiring gaiety; they were so obliging. Finch conscientiously slaved at his books, and, between practising and studying and loss of sleep, grew so thin that even Piers was moved to concern.
"Try to eat more," he advised. "You're growing, and you need plenty of good grub."
"Eat!" cried Finch, his nerves on edge. "I'm always eating. If I'm thin, it's my own business. Please leave me alone."
"But," persisted Piers, feeling Finch's arm, "you're getting thinner. You're soft, too. Now, just feel my muscle."
"I don't want to feel your muscle. If you'd used your muscle less on me, it mightn't be so hard and I mightn't be so thin."
One day in March, George announced an engagement in a restaurant in which they had played several times. The members of some athletic club were having a dance. The two boys had just spent two week-ends with Mrs. St. John and the orchestra had worked very hard learning new dance music. They had played at four dances, so Finch had twenty dollars to add to the hoard hidden on the top shelf of his clothes cupboard in an old fishing basket. When he stayed at home he studied late into every night, apprehensive of again failing in his examinations.
On the night of the dance he was very tired. There had been trouble over spending the night in town, and only a passionate appeal to Aunt Augusta to intervene for him had made it possible. The rector, too, was beginning to think that his sister should be able to get on without George, and even Mrs. St. John herself had become a little less yearning toward her two young visitors. Finch felt that he could stand the strain no longer, that for a while the orchestra should take no new engagements or that someone else must be found to play the piano. Yet he loved it. It was life—making music, watching the dancing, the love-making, being in the streets late at night, the freshly earned money in his pocket.
Mrs. St. John had been slow to leave them that night. Her health was better, and there was no need for such early retiring. It pleased her to sit in the library with the two fresh-skinned youths, watching them at their study, the light touching their thick hair—George's brown, tousled; Finch's fair, limp, with the lock on the forehead oddly appealing to her. She liked to watch their hands—George's small, white, strong, and precise in their movements; Finch's long, bony, yet beautifully shaped, nervous, uncertain.
They had to assume a trancelike absorption before she would leave them, and when she did leave, and the strain was over, they fell into a fit of smothered laughter that, for Finch, threatened to become hysterical.
"Shut up," ordered George, recovering himself, "or she'll hear you and come back."
Finch buried his face in the crook of his arm and gave forth strange squeaks. George glowered at him.
"I never saw a chap like you. You never know when to stop anything." He looked at his watch. "Good heavens, we'll never dare risk taking a tram. I'll have to phone for a taxi." He opened the door of the library and listened. "I hear her running water upstairs. I guess she's safe, now."
He took the receiver from its hook and gave a number. He stared across the table at Finch, who stared back with wet eyes, his lips stretched in a hysterical grin. He looked so silly that George snorted into the telephone. He sputtered idiotically as he ordered the taxi. Finch was squeaking again. "Of course," said George, slamming up the receiver, "if you can't control yourself . . ." He tried his best to look like his father.
George went into the hall and crept up the stairway to the door of his aunt's room.
Returning, he said: "It's all right. She's getting ready for bed. . . . I've told the driver to wait around the corner. Now step on the gas, Finch, for goodness' sake!"
Rushing through the cold spring night, they were filled with the glow of adventure, thinking of the dangerous life they led. George's banjo lay across his knees. Finch held a portfolio of music. As George paid the driver, Finch stared up at a great ruby-red electric sign, advertising chocolates, hot against the heavy grey sky. "Shouldn't be surprised if we had snow," he said. "It's cold enough for it."
But inside it was hot. The room was full of young men and girls—the men, hockey players, lithe and strong, the girls, bare-shouldered, silken-legged, with laughing red-lipped faces. Some of them knew Finch by sight as a member of the orchestra, and waved to him as he sat sounding a note while the musicians tuned up. There was something about him that they liked. "I say, Doris, there's the boy with the blond hair! I think he's a lamb. Shouldn't mind dancing with him."
The flute, the two mandolins, the banjo, the piano, gave voice. They sang of the joy of the dance, of strong limbs, of supple backs, of touching electric finger-tips. All the brightly coloured crowd galloped like huntsmen, led by the five hounds, in pursuit of that adroit fox, Joy.
When the time came for supper, the members of the orchestra rose and stretched their legs. They had been playing for three hours. A waiter brought them refreshments. Finch, trying not to seem ravenous, was irritated when a tall black-haired girl came up to him. "My, you boys can play," she said. "I'd sooner dance to your music than any of the big orchestras."
"Oh, go on!"
"Honestly, I would."
He took another sandwich. His gaze did not rise above her shimmering shins.
"You're a funny boy. Gosh, your eyelashes are almost a mile long!"
He blushed, and raised his eyes as high as the marble whiteness of her chest.
"I wish we could have a dance together, Mister—what's your name?"
"Finch."
"Oh, and the Christian name?"
"Bill."
"Bill Finch, eh? I wish you'd come and see me some night, will you, Bill?"
"Rather."
"No. 5, Mayberry Street. Remember that? To-morrow night? Ask for Miss Lucas."
"No, I couldn't to-morrow."
"The next, then?"
"Yes," he agreed. "The next." He wished she would leave him with the sandwiches.
A stout fellow came up and took her arm. "Here, Betty," he said, "none of that." He led her off, but her bold greenish eyes laughed over her white shoulder at Finch.
He boasted to Meech, the flautist, of the advances she had made, while they hurriedly consumed cake and coffee. "That's a good sort to steer clear of," Meech counselled. "There's a lot of bold-looking hussies here, and no mistake."
The dance went on, the dancers displaying even more freedom of movement and brightness of eyes than before supper. They had been drinking a little, but they were not noisy. At two o'clock Burns, the mandolin player, who worked in an abattoir, passed a flask among the players. They were very tired. A little later they emptied it.
"One dance more!" the dancers begged at three o'clock. "One dance more!" They clapped their hands vigorously. Finch felt ready to drop from the stool. A tendon in his right hand ached horribly. The dancers seemed to him like vampires, sucking his blood, never tiring of the taste of it.
The tall girl disentangled herself from the blur of the crowd and rushed to the piano. She threw her arms about Finch's neck and hugged him. "Another another," she whispered, "and don't forget your promise!" He loathed the hot, steamy smell of her. He gasped for breath, his hands lying, played out, on the keyboard. He tried to draw his head away.
"Don't be so formal, dearie," she said, releasing him, and again the thickset man came and dragged her away.
A waiter appeared with a glass jug and glasses. "Have some ginger ale?" he asked, smiling.
Finch took a glass. Something stronger than ginger ale, he discovered. A pleasant glow passed into him with the first half of the glass. After the second half he felt stronger, firmer. He looked over his shoulder at the others. George Fennel's eyes were shining under his tumbled hair. Meech, the flautist, showed a pink flush on his high, pale forehead. Lilly and Burns were laughing together. Burns said, in a heavy bass voice: "Lilly, here, can't see the strings. He's pipped, aren't you, Lilly?"
But now they discovered that they could go on. A little gush of energy swept them into "My Heart Stood Still." The dancers moved in silence, holding each other tightly. The sliding of their feet sounding like the dry rush of autumn leaves. The cruel white lights showed them as people growing old. A blight seemed to have fallen on them. And yet they could not stop dancing.
Now it was the orchestra that dragged them on. They seemed no more than manikins operated by wires. Jerkily they went through dance after dance, and with hot, moist hands clapped for more. The orchestra broke into song, with the exception of Meech, the flautist. "And then my heart stood still," they sang, for their repertory was limited, and they had to repeat their pieces time and again.
At last the dancing feet stood still. It was past four o'clock when the members of the orchestra descended the narrow stairs and went out into the darkness of the morning.
Snow had fallen deeply. The city street looked as pure as a street in heaven. Marble whiteness everywhere, arched by a dark blue sky out of which hung a great golden moon.
The sweet coldness of the still air was like a joyful caress. They lifted their faces to it, opened their mouths and drank it in. They sought to absorb it into every region of their beings. The soft pure snow beneath their feet was beautiful. They ran in it, ruffling it up. Lilly took off his hat that his head might cool, but Burns snatched it and jammed it on his head again. "No, no, you'll take cold, my little Lilly. My pretty little Lilly," he admonished, rather thickly.
Lilly, his hat over his eyes, trudged along silently, much annoyed.
"I know," went on Burns, "of a place where we could get a good hot supper. I'm starving."
"So am I!" cried George. "Head on, O Burns! You of the significant name! Let's make a night of it."
"I ought to get home," objected Meech, "to my wife and little one."
Burns exclaimed: "Wife and little one be"
"Look out what you say!" interrupted the flautist, standing up to him.
"Keep your shirt on," retorted Burns. "I didn't mean no harm. I only meant I know a place where we can get a good hot supper, and seeing as how we got extra pay to-night I'm willing to stand treat for the crowd. How about it now, eh?"
There was almost instant agreement, and as they tramped along Burns remarked: "My stomach begins to think my throat is cut."
His companions grunted. They thought it was far from taste in him, a butcher, to talk of cut throats.
It was a little ill-lighted dingy restaurant to which Burns led them, but the bacon and eggs were good, and after a whispered consultation the waiter brought them a jug of beer. The five were ravenous. They scarcely noticed the other people in the room until their plates were swept clean and cigarettes were lighted. George then leaned toward his friends, whispering: "For heaven's sake keep your instruments out of sight. They'll be after us to play if they spot them."
There were about two dozen people seated at the tables. It was clear that they were regarding the youths with speculation in their eyes. It was too late to hide the mandolins and banjo.
One of the men came over to them. He said, with an ingratiating grin: "Say, couldn't you fellows give us a tune or two? Some of the girlies are feeling lively and they'd give a good deal to shake a leg."
"What do you take us for?" growled Lilly. "We've been playing all night. Besides, there's no piano."
"Yes, there is. Over behind the screen there. Just give us one little tune. The girlies'll be awfully disappointed if you don't." He wheezed unpleasantly behind Finch's ear.
The "girlies" themselves came, and added their importunities. Something from a bottle was poured into the empty beer glasses. Finch heard a strange buzzing in his head. The air in the room moved as though it were no longer air, but whispering waves. The electric lights were blurred into a milky haze. He was being led to the piano. He felt intolerably sad.
About him the others were tuning up. He heard George swearing at a broken string. He put his hands on the keyboard and blinked at it. It was a white marble terrace with little black figures of nuns in procession across it. He sat staring at them, stupefied, they were so perfect, so black, so sad. Burns said, hoarsely: "My Heart Stood Still."
"Awright," agreed Finch.
It was not he who was playing. It was only his hands, mechanisms which depended on him not at all. Over and over they played what they were told to play, firm, strong, banging out the accented notes. He could see George's face, set like a white mask, and his small white hands plucking vigorously at the strings. The flute soared and wailed in a kind of dying scream; the mandolins chirped away as though they knew no tiring. Burns's red butcher's fists had always made Finch rather sick as they hovered over the strings. The mandolin seemed like some puny little animal he was about to slaughter.
They were in the street again. They were all yelling together. They had no reason to raise their voices. Only some primitive instinct told them it was the time for yelling. They straggled along the snowy street, sometimes in file, sometimes strung across the roadway. The strange snow light—the moon had become too pale to be accounted anything more than a wan presence in the paling sky—lent an unearthly quality to their figures. Their cries seemed the cries of spirits rather than of men.
They did not know where they were going. Up one street and down another, and, coming upon the first street again, they traversed it for the second time without recognizing it. Each variation and eccentric curve was marked on the purity of the snow. Sometimes they were separated into two parties, two going in one direction and three in another. Then the far-away shouting of one group would startle into a panic the other, and they would run, calling each other by name, until they met again on some corner, and the little band would be reunited.
Once the flautist was lost by the other four. It was some little time before they noticed that one of their number was absent, though they realized that all was not well with them. From their hoarse, deep-toned shouts one high-pitched tenor cry was missing. But at last their loss was borne in upon them. They stood stock-still, staring blankly at each other. Who was gone?
Then, all at once, they knew it was Meech.
"Meech! Meech!" they shouted, and they began to run in a body, calling his name and reeling as they ran.
There was no answer, so they called him by his Christian name.
"Sinden! Sinden! Hi, Sinden Meech!"
At last they found him. He had wandered into a wide, well-lit street of the prosperous. His arms were clasped about the standard of an electric light. His head was thrown back and he gazed rapturously upward.
"This is a clock tower," he declared. "I'm trying to find out what time it is. One—two—three—four—five"—and he counted loudly up to twenty-nine. "Twenty-nine o'clock," he announced. "That's as rotten an hour as I ever heard struck."
"Go to hell," said Burns. "That ain't no clock."
"Yes, it is, too! And I'm going to stop here until it strikes again. Next time it'll strike—one—two-three"
The rest of the quintet joined in the counting with explosive shouts.
They were interrupted by a scream from Lilly, doubled up in the middle of the road. They ceased to count and encircled him, all but Sinden Meech, who still clasped the standard.
"What's the matter, Lilly?"
"I've got a pain. Say, you fellers, who d'ye do for a pain?"
"Where is it, Lilly?"
"In m-my belly."
"That's no kind of word to say on the street!"
"Well, what shall I call it then?"
"Diaphragm," said George Fennel.
"All right, then. I've a pain in my diagram."
They shouted with sardonic laughter, hopping about in circles like crows against the snow.
When a lull came, Meech announced, leaving the standard and reeling toward them: "My father brought up ten children on the piccolo."
They gathered about him, interested.
He continued plaintively: "Is it possible that I can't bring up one on the flute?"
They howled.
Three figures were seen approaching, a man and two women. The women were frightened, and the man himself nervous about passing this band of ruffians on the street. He clasped the arms of the women closely, set his face, and marched into their midst.
But there was nothing to fear. The five youths gazed wonderingly into the faces of what appeared to them a portentous apparition. They crowded close, but they said nothing until the three had passed. Then George called: "Bye-bye, ladies!"
And Finch cooed: "Ta-ta, gennelman!"
Then a storm of bye-byes and ta-tas followed the retreating figures.
A window was thrown up in the large house opposite, and a man in his nightclothes appeared in the opening.
"If you hoodlums don't get off this street in double-quick time, I'll call the police. Now, get a move on!"
The members of the orchestra looked at each other. Then they burst into jeers, whistles, and catcalls. Finch packed a snowball and sent it flying through the window into the angry whiskered face. A volley of snowballs followed. The householder retreated. He was going to telephone for the police.
Almost at the moment of his disappearance a thick, helmeted figure appeared at the corner of the street. With terrified looks they snatched up their mandolins, banjo, and flute, silent participators in all this rowdyism, and fled along the street and down a lane. From there they emerged into another street, raced along it, and heard the policeman's whistle on the clear morning air.
Bright red-gold wavelets of cloud appeared in the eastern sky, forerunners of the strong tide of day. Blue shadows became visible on the snow.
Finch and George Fennel found themselves separated from the rest. They ran on for several blocks, and at last made sure that they were not pursued. They halted and looked at each other curiously as people who meet under strange circumstances for the first time.
"Where do you live?" asked Finch.
"With aunt in ole house in College Street."
After a moment's reflection, Finch observed: "I live in ole house, too. Name of Jalna."
"In-deed. Are you going there now?"
"I dunno. Where'd you say you live?"
"I said ole house in College Street."
"Wanna go there?"
"Absolutely. All the time."
"Tha's nice. College Street, you say?"
"Say, have you got anything against that street?"
"No, no. I'm going to take you there."
"All righ', Finch. Goo' friend to me."
Finch put his arm around George's neck and they made a somewhat uneven progression along the street. Coming upon a milkman, they asked him their way, but when he had directed them they questioned his directions so sceptically that he became irritated and whipped up his horse and left them. However, they followed him to his next place of delivery, calling: "Hi, there!"
"Well, what do you want?" he snarled, standing in the bluish snow, with a carrier of milk bottles in his hand.
"Do you stop here or there?" demanded George.
"Funny, ain't you?" sneered the milkman, crashing the carrier into the waggon, and leaping in after it.
"I suppose we can buy a bottle of milk," said Finch.
"Let's see your money," said the milkman, suspiciously, and his horse began to plod heavily along the accustomed route.
Finch, trotting alongside, held up a silver coin. The milkman drew in his horse and sulkily handed out a bottle. "If you'd drunk more o' this," he said, "and less o' the other, you wouldn't be where you are."
But they discovered, when they had opened the bottle, that the milk was frozen. They tried disconsolately to dig it out with a penknife, and, failing this, they broke the bottle off the milk and left the erect frozen shape standing on the nearest doorstep.
Finch again put his arms about his friend's neck, and again they set out to find the house of Mrs. St. John.
Finch cuddled George's head against his shoulder. "What are you?" he asked.
"Goo' boy," responded George.
"Tha's a wrong answer," said Finch, very gravely. "Now tell me again, what are you?"
"Goo' boy," persisted George, doggedly.
"Tha's a wrong answer."
And thus they proceeded with question and answer until, as by a miracle, they stood before the door of the house they sought.
"You live here?" asked Finch, politely.
"Yes. . . . You live here, too?"
"No. I live in ole house named Jalna."
"Oh. . . . Well, goo'-bye."
"Goo'-bye. See you later."
They parted, and Finch on the next street took a taxi and drove to the station. During the ride he kept his face pressed to the window, observing with drunken interest the streets through which they passed.
There was only a short wait until the early morning train left. The conductor on this train did not know Finch, but he had a fatherly eye on him, and awoke him from his heavy sleep before they reached the station at Weddels', and saw him safely to the platform.
Out here in the open, the sunshine poured down in an unobstructed flood. The sun was climbing the clear blue sky, his springtime ardour unabashed by the snowfall of the night before. The snow, in truth, was now nothing more than a thin white garment on the earth. The earth was casting it aside and pushing up her bare brown bosom to the sun. She was straining her body toward him to absorb his heat.
In the ditches, bright runnels of water were gurgling. The bare limbs of the trees shone as though they had been varnished. A rut in the road made a bathtub for a little bird. He agitated his brown wings joyously and sent up a cascade of sparkling drops.
Finch splashed through the melting slush, his face heavy and flushed, his hair plastered over his forehead. Two farmers in a waggon, passing him, remarked that that young Whiteoak was growing up no better than the rest.
He met Rags as he was about to enter the house. The servant observed, with his air of impudent solicitude: "If I was you, Mister Finch, I shouldn't gaow into the 'ouse lookin' like that. I'd gaow round to the washroom and wash my fice. There's no hobject in advertising to the family, sir, wot kind of a night you've spent."