“I’ve been talking to a man,” Maurice said. “A nice fellow. An Irishman.”
Adeline was at once interested.
“He’s standing over there lighting a cigarette. I’ll introduce him now if you like.”
“Wait till tomorrow,” said Finch. “Adeline’s going to bed.”
“Are you going to be a killjoy, Uncle Finch?” asked Maurice.
“Well — I promised this child’s mother —”
Adeline gave him a hoot of scorn. “Point out the Irishman to me,” she said, “and if I like his looks I’ll meet him tonight, if I have to do it over Uncle Finch’s dead body.”
“I did point him out,” said Maurice. “He’s just at the foot of the stairs. His first match went out. Now he’s lighting another. There — don’t you see him?”
Adeline glanced at him. “I like his looks,” she said, “well enough — but I think I’ll wait till tomorrow to meet him.”
The flare of the match had illumined an intent dark face, topped by upstanding curly hair. He took the cigarette from his lips now and revealed a strongly marked mouth that was both humorous and sensuous. His curious glance took in the face of each person who passed him.
“what part of Ireland is he going to?” asked Finch.
Maurice replied, — “Quite near to me. He hasn’t lived there long. He was in the Army in the East. Now he’s bought a small place and apparently is settled down.”
“what’s his name?”
“Maitland Fitzturgis.”
“Help!” said Adeline. “what a name!”
“It is rather a mouthful. You must meet him tomorrow.”
“How old is he?”
“In his early thirties, I should say.”
Suddenly Finch thought, — “I have left my thirties behind.” And he felt it strange.
The ship was rather crowded. It was easy to meet people and then lose sight of them again. Next morning there was a strong breeze and the dark blue sea was rough, carrying the ship jauntily beneath quickly moving white clouds. Up on the sports deck the breeze was almost a gale. Maurice and Adeline soon had enough of deck tennis. They wandered to a sheltered part where, overshadowed by lifeboats and funnels, a number of people were stretched out in the sun. In a corner by themselves they almost stumbled over Finch and the Irishman, Fitzturgis.
“Don’t get up,” cried Adeline, and dropped to the deck beside Finch. “Do you mind if Maurice and I sit here too?”
He put an arm about her. “Adeline, this is Mr. Fitzturgis.”
They were soon all four talking together with ease. Adeline was eager to tell how this was not her first visit to Ireland and that she had visited New York once before. She did not say that she had been only four years old at the time and Finch and Maurice kept silent on that point. The heat of the sun combined with the crisp coldness of the air was exhilarating. The four were soon on friendly terms. Finch knew America as well as one who merely tours a country filling engagements can know it but he was looked on as an authority by the other three. Fitzturgis felt that he had seen a good deal of New York, had tasted its promises and foretasted its disappointments. After a time Finch and Maurice wandered away and Adeline and the Irishman were alone together.
“I’m really only half Irish,” he said. “My mother is English and I was sent to an English school.”
“That’s why I’m disappointed in you,” she returned. “I expected you to talk Irish.”
“Not really!” he laughed. “Well, if you want me to, I certainly shall.” And, assuming a rich brogue, he began to rave over the beauty of sky and sea.
Adeline lay on her back looking up at him, her teeth white between her parted lips, her dark eyes laughing beneath the shade of their thick lashes.
“That’s lovely,” she said, “but you mustn’t do it anymore because it’s not real. It is like my great-grandmother who used to go all Irish when her feelings were hurt.”
“Do you remember her?”
“Oh, no. But in our house they don’t let her memory die. We never seem to forget anything in our house.”
“Do you like that?” he asked quickly.
“Yes, because if you let things die that belong to your family, your life has no meaning.”
He looked at her in astonishment.
“what a strange thing for a young girl to say!”
“Don’t you feel that?”
He closed his eyes for a moment before he answered. “No. I like to forget.”
“Do you? Of course, I haven’t much — not really anything to forget — yet. But there’s been handed down to me a lot to remember.”
“All pleasant, I’ll wager.”
“No, indeed. Some of it very sad.”
He frowned down at her, as though angry that there should be anything to cloud her happiness. “And you actually want to hold in your memory what was sad?”
“Yes, because it’s a part of me, though I wasn’t there to see.”
“Do you know,” he said, “I tremble for you. I think you have a great power of suffering … what are you going to do when things happen to you — bad things, I mean?”
“Bear them, I suppose, like other people do.”
“No, not like other people,” he objected. “You’ll never do anything — just like other people.”
She gave a little laugh. “You seem to know a great deal about me, considering that we’ve just met.”
“I don’t feel as though we’d just met.”
“That’s funny. I feel as though I’d known you quite a long while. I guess the truth is we don’t know anything about each other.”
“Sometimes,” he said, rather dictatorially, “one finds out a great deal in the first meeting.”
“I suppose that means I’m easy to see through!”
He answered quickly, — “No, not at all. I think it means that there’s a good deal in you to see, to know, and you’re so unaffected. I’ve met girls — since the war especially — who spend their time leading you on and when you arrive — there’s nothing there.”
There was silence for a time, then Adeline asked abruptly, — “Won’t you tell me about your life in Ireland? To judge from what my cousin says, there are only two sorts of people — the rich ones who do nothing and the poor ones who do nothing.”
“I’m neither.” Fitzturgis spoke rather sombrely. “I raise Kerry cattle. That is, I’m beginning in a small way. I’ve a rather nice house, with a lot of rhododendrons round it. Very secluded. Mountains all about — I suppose you’d just call them very high hills.”
“It sounds nice but — rather lonely, for a young man.”
He laughed. “I thought you’d look on me as almost middle-aged.”
She drew back from that idea. “Oh, no. You see, I live in the house with my two great-uncles who are past ninety. I call them old. I don’t call a man middle-aged till he’s sixty. That’s what my father is.”
She went on to talk of all her uncles, telling their ages and what she considered their dispositions to be. She told him proudly of Finch’s achievements as a pianist, of Wakefield as an actor, of Eden’s great talent as a poet. She was obviously surprised and a little hurt that he had not heard of one of them. She thought the less of him for that.
“But, you see,” he explained, “I was away in the East for years and since I came back I’ve been buried in a rustic spot in Ireland.
“Have you no one to look after you?”
“I’ve a woman who comes in daily. She looks after me very well.” Abruptly he changed the subject to say, — “Tell me about yourself. Have you any special talent?”
“Me? Oh, yes — if you call riding a talent. You should see the rows of cups and ribbons I’ve won. I’ve inherited that from my father. There’s no better horseman in the Dominion. As for high-jumping! I don’t suppose there’s a bone in his body that hasn’t been broken at one time or another.”
“Well …”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, if you
like! I’ll go to my cabin and bring up a photograph of him on horseback to show you.”
“It’s too far.”
“No, no, I’d love to. I can’t sit still for very long. Just a minute!” Before he could answer she was gone.
He lay on his back on the deck, watching from narrowed eyes the black streamer of smoke that spread, at first dense, from the funnel, then wavered and was lost in the blue.
Considering the flights of steps she must have descended and mounted she was back in an incredibly short time. Her breath came quickly. A brightness, as of the morning at sea, shone from her. She proudly put the photograph in his hands. Now he was standing beside her.
“what a fine-looking man,” he exclaimed, “and what a lovely horse!”
“Isn’t she? Don’t you think I’m like my father?”
It was plain that she wanted to be told that she was the image of this hard-featured, bony, weather-beaten parent. She — so lovely and with such a tender curve to her cheek! But, if she wanted it, she must have it.
“I see a striking resemblance,” said Fitzturgis.
She smiled happily. “Oh, yes, it’s there. And the funny thing is that he is the image of his grandmother. He and she and I all have red hair. His has never turned grey and I hope it never will.”
“Have you ever cared for any person outside your family?” he asked abruptly.
She gave this serious thought and then answered, — “No, I don’t think I have. There were school friends, of course, but I forgot them as soon as I was away from them. I don’t exchange reams of letters with other girls.”
“Your mother,” he said, as they leant against the rail, looking down at the tumbling jade-green waves, “tell me about your mother.”
“She is beautiful and clever. I can’t compare with her in either way.”
“And you’re an only child?”
“I have a small brother. He’s thirteen and he is clever too, but — well, I can’t explain Archer. You’d have to know him to believe in him. He’s cold and hard and yet he is sort of clinging. Now tell me about you. Are you an only child?”
At once he withdrew behind the barrier of the years between them. He could not pour out descriptions of his family as she did. In fact he shrank from talking of himself. All he could say was:
“I have a sister, married and living in America. I’ve just been over for a short visit. Three weeks. I hadn’t seen her since before the war.”
“All those years,” she said, “and you stayed only three weeks!”
“It is impossible for me to be away for long,” he said, a little stiffly.
“I suppose it is the livestock,” she said sympathetically.
“Yes. The livestock.”
That set her to talking about the livestock at Jalna, the horses in particular. Never before had she met anyone in whom she had wanted to confide, for, as the days of the voyage went on and they saw more of each other, she told him of her thoughts, of her unsophisticated ideas about life, in conversations that were absorbing to them both; to her because of this new experience of having a man friend — a man, not just a boy like Maurice; to Fitzturgis because of the pleasure, half-tender, half-sensual, of watching her vivid face, of glimpsing the woman who was coming into being. There was something in the Irishman’s intense face that captivated Adeline’s fancy. When she was alone in her cabin, his face would come before her, when she woke in the night to the sound of the waves, she saw him — now looking at her with those intent eyes — now gazing tranquilly out to sea.
Finch and Maurice liked him too. They invited him to share their table. The four played deck tennis together, sat together at the horse races; Maurice and Adeline danced together, for the other two did not dance. Dancing with her, Maurice remarked:
“You’ve got very friendly with Mait, haven’t you?”
By now they called him by this abbreviation of his Christian name. There was a note of jealousy in his voice.
“Well, haven’t you? You were the first to call him Mait.”
“One has to call him something and his name is rather a jawbreaker.”
“But you do like him, don’t you, Mooey?”
“Yes. But you’re usually standoffish with men. Humphrey Bell feels it, I know.”
“He makes me shy, he’s so shy himself.”
Maurice steered her among a group of Irish-Americans bouncing through the dance. “Remember,” he said, “that you’re in my charge.”
“The dickens I am! Uncle Finch is looking after me.”
“I’m the one your doings most concern, Adeline.”
“I don’t need anyone to look after me,” she laughed.
Into the minds of both there came simultaneously the memory of a summer’s night three years before, when Adeline was no more than a child. Maurice had taken her to the theatre to see Othello and with them had gone a man named Swift who was at that time tutoring Maurice for his matriculation examinations. Swift had volunteered to take Adeline up the long driveway of Jalna to the house, while Maurice went on to his home. In the darkness of the hemlocks Swift had suddenly made amorous advances to the young girl, taking her in his arms and violently kissing her. She had fought herself free and Renny, waiting for his daughter, had come upon them and knocked Swift down. Maurice had got into trouble with Renny and with his own father, for he had taken her to the play without permission. It had been a humiliating remembrance to him and now he wondered if Adeline ever gave it a thought. He doubted it, for he looked on her as much less sensitive than himself.
It had, in truth, made a wound on her spirit that was still not perfectly healed. The scar was there and the scar was tender. Even the most tentative advance by a man had caused her to withdraw. In dancing she did not abandon herself to the music as it was in her nature to do. She was guarded in her acquaintance, even with boys of her own age. She had felt both curiosity and fear toward older men.
But with Fitzturgis it was different. She was conscious of a guardedness in him. Though he watched her so intently, listened to her so eagerly, sought her out at every opportunity, there was always a reticence on his side that gave her a feeling of safety. There was exhilaration in his companionship. It made her happy just to stand beside him looking at the sea. She was glad to think he lived not far from Maurice.
“And do you live all alone?” she asked, toward the end of the voyage.
He hesitated and then answered, — “Sometimes my mother comes to stay with me. She’s there now.”
“And she looks after things while you are away?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to meet her.
“You must,” he answered without enthusiasm.
A feeling of sadness came to her. He does not mind if he never sees me again, she thought. She could not contain her sadness at this thought and her eyes filled with tears.
The shadow of a gull passed across the sunny deck. “Look,” exclaimed Fitzturgis, as though in relief, “a message from the land!” But she stood gazing at the place where the gull’s shadow had passed. Her eyes were clouded; the feeling of confidence she had had in this new and exciting friendship was shaken. She became conscious of the difference in their ages and of the accumulation of experiences he had passed through and — she had known so little of life!
But when night came it was different. It was the last night aboard for those who were disembarking at Cobh. They were a mixed lot — Irish-Americans of the peasant class returning for their first visit to the Old Land since the war, a group of nuns, a few priests, an Irish countess, an Englishman who owned land in Ireland, the three Canadians and Fitzturgis. He and Adeline sat in deckchairs in a sheltered corner. They were wrapped in rugs, for the night was cold. There was a gentle movement to the ship, as though she swayed to the sound of the music from within. A few dark figures could be made out standing by the rail in the bow, as though to get the feel of Ireland before it came into sight. Adeline, snug inside her wrapping, felt the excitement a butterfly mig
ht feel, still folded in its cocoon, but intending the very next morning to go forth into the world. Little ripples of excitement ran, now and again, through her nerves, but sometimes she lay just expectant, giving herself up to the pleasure of the gentle movement of the ship, the muted sound of the music. She wore her travelling jacket and skirt.
She wondered if Fitzturgis was feeling the same or comparably the same sensations as she. She put out her hand and just touched him.
“what were you thinking?” she asked.
His voice came muffled, as though his hand were against his mouth. “Of you, my darling.”
The word darling was not bandied among the Whiteoaks. When they said it they meant it. Now Adeline could scarcely believe her ears. She thought she must have misheard.
“Did you mean that, Mait?” she whispered.
Now his hand came through the folds of the rug. He caught hers and held it.
“Yes,” he said low.
She gave a little laugh of ravishment. “Oh, I’m glad,” she breathed. “I was thinking of you too — darling.”
She was so inexperienced, knew so little what to say, that the best she could do was to repeat what he had said. But though it was imitation it went through him like fire.
“I think of nothing but of you,” he said to the pale disc that was her face.
“I’m just the same — I think of nothing but you.”
He threw back the rug and put both arms about her.
“Oh, Adeline,” he cried, “if you knew how I’m longing to pour out my love to you.”
“You don’t need to,” she whispered. “I can feel it through your arms.”
His arms tightened on her. He gave a deep sigh which the waves caught and magnified, drew out till it was almost a moan.
She laid her head against his. “Oh, Mait, I’m so happy. I knew this was going to be a wonderful voyage but I never dreamed it would be as wonderful as this.”
“Adeline — I loved you the moment I saw you.”
“Tell me all about your feelings and then I’ll tell you all about mine.”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 453
