When at last he and she stood on the road together the sun was sliding down through misty clouds toward the mountain. On a little river far below, the wild swans moved among the rushes. Fitzturgis asked, in an almost matter-of-fact tone, — “where is your car?”
She answered, in a small voice, — “In the driveway of your house. A maid was coming out and she told me where you were. You see,” she hurried on, “I had the car out and I knew this was your direction and — I thought I’d just drop in and see you.” She was faint for food, her heart was beating heavily. Suddenly a gulf had come between her and Fitzturgis. He was almost a stranger. She turned her head to look at him and their eyes met but only for an instant. Then they looked away again as though even a glance of intimacy was unbearable. “what is the matter?” she thought. “what has spoilt everything?” Even the earth beneath her feet felt less secure, and she who walked as lightly as a young doe stumbled. He caught her arm, and her name came from his lips in solicitude.
“Come in here and sit down,” he said and he led her through the gate, past the car, and to a seat beneath a grim grey-green cork tree. It was twilight in here and there was a smell of damp. He picked up a mossy twig from the mossy ground and tried to break it but it only bent.
“Adeline,” he began.
“Yes?” she encouraged, her eyes, her whole being waiting.
“I want to talk to you,” he said, “to explain why I’ve acted as I have — though nothing I say can make it right.”
“Not right,” she repeated, the sense of duty that had been implanted in her raising its head.
“I had no right,” he went on, in a low voice, “to make love to you — I mean, to say those words of love to you.”
A light broke on her. “You mean you’re already engaged?”
“No.”
“Married?”
“No.” He had managed to break the twig. He threw it to the ground and now his hands hung limp between his knees. “Not married — but I am not free. I’m irrevocably tied. You asked me if I lived alone and I told you my mother came to stay with me sometimes. The truth is that she lives with me. She’s dependent on me because my father lost everything he had — drank himself to death.”
“Is that all!” she exclaimed, relieved.
“I wish it were. But my sister also is dependent on me. She lives here too.”
“I thought she lived in New York.”
“That’s the married one. This one is younger. She’s twenty-eight. She was married to a friend of mine. He was in the Air Force. She was going to have a baby. He came to London on a few days’ leave. She loved this chap with all her heart. There was an air-raid and she saw him killed — horribly. She was splashed with his blood. Then the baby was born dead and she nearly died. It unhinged her and she was in a mental home for several years. Then the war was over and I was back in London. The mental homes were crowded and my sister was said to be almost well. She was brought back to my mother, and now — the two of them — they’ve no one but me. They’re quite incapable of looking after themselves — as you will see.”
“Do you want me to meet them?”
“Of course. But now you see why I had no right to say one word of love to you. I’m not a free man. And I’m a poor man. It’s all I can do to keep this place going.”
“It’s a terribly sad story, Mait. I wish you’d told me before.”
“It was such a happy time I hadn’t the heart to tell you. Everything would have been changed.”
“Nothing is changed in me.” She spoke in a low but confident voice. In truth she could not discover what all this had to do with their love. Their love was like the hills beyond the valley. Though clouds hung over them the hills were not changed.
“I did wrong,” he persisted, “to rouse any feeling in you of love for me.” And he spoke like a man who knew his power.
“You could not help it,” she said. “Just to be near you made me —” She could not continue. Her voice trembled. She pressed her hands together between her knees.
From the far end of the bench his deep-set eyes were fixed on her in pity and longing.
“It’s very hard on you,” she said.
He gave a short laugh. “I hadn’t thought of being sorry for myself, not till you came on the scene. Now I confess I am.”
“Can’t anything be done?”
“Wait till you meet my mother and sister. That will be answer enough.”
A shadow, darker than the tree, closed over them. Raindrops fell on the leaves. His hand moved along the bench and closed over her two hands pressed together. She turned her face toward him. Her eyes, eager and loving, were raised to his but her lips were firm in her innate dignity.
“It’s beginning to rain,” she said.
He bent his head above her hands and kissed them.
“I must go,” she said, and gently withdrew her hands.
“Go!” he repeated blankly, and straightened. “You can’t go without coming into the house, meeting my family. However did you find your way here?”
“I asked.”
“And they — Finch and Maurice — let you come alone?”
“I’ve told you — they don’t know.”
“Good God — what will they think?”
She smiled. “I can’t imagine.”
“Did you have lunch?”
“No.”
“Nor tea?”
“No.”
“why, my darling —” he exclaimed in consternation, “you must be starved.”
“I am rather hungry. No — I think I’m past being hungry.”
He looked at his watch. “It is five o’clock. I must take you straight to the house and my mother will give you tea.”
She said reluctantly, — “Do you think your mother will want to meet me?”
“She’ll be delighted. Make no mistake about that.”
“And your sister?” The word he had used about her — unhinged — came to Adeline’s mind and she found she was afraid of the sister.
“Oh, she’s very quiet,” he answered in a matter-of-fact tone.
They stood up. The tree let down a veil of rain in front of them.
“We must run for it,” he said. “Give me your hand.”
She put her hand in his. They bent beneath the branches and then ran along the drive to the house. The front door stood open. On a table in the hall there was a bowl of tulips. He led her past it into a long low room where a table set with tea-things stood beside a small fire of greenish wood that gave off more smoke than flame. At the table sat a woman in her fifties, with a round pale face, rather puffy eyes and a mass of hair that was dyed a rich henna. She wore a green knitted pullover, a necklet of heavy beads and long earrings to match. A stare of astonishment widened her eves. Fitzturgis said:
“Mother, this is Miss Adeline Whiteoak. We met on board ship. She comes from Canada.”
Mrs. Fitzturgis took Adeline’s hand in a warm soft clasp and held it. “Ah, yes,” she said, “how very nice! I’m so glad you’ve looked us up. We are so few in this benighted spot that we’re glad of a call from literally anyone. I mean we are a great many people but they’re all the wrong sort. I mean that to a woman like myself who has been accustomed to pick and choose it’s simply ghastly to live in so isolated a way. Upon my word, if ever I’d known I should come to such a point I’d have gone stark staring — no, of course, I don’t mean anything so drastic as mad — certainly not. But I’d have resented it deeply.”
“Yes, Mother,” put in Fitzturgis. “And will you please give us tea? Miss Whiteoak is starving.”
Mrs. Fitzturgis at once sprang to her feet and snatched up the teapot. So precariously did she balance it that a driblet of tea ran from its spout to the carpet. Fitzturgis put out his hand to the pot. “Mother, see what you’re doing!” he exclaimed.
She was unperturbed. “That old carpet,” she said scornfully. “I’m sure Miss Whiteoak will see that nothing can make it look worse.” She now
shifted the teapot so that its dribbling pointed toward Adeline.
“Mother!” cried Fitzturgis, and again righted it.
“Don’t be so fussy, Maitland. You’ve completely put out of my head what I was saying.” She put a hand to her forehead. “You know, Miss Whiteoak, but indeed you cannot know, for you are far too young to realize, how trouble and continual anxiety can destroy one’s memory, not that I ever had a particularly good memory, for my own mother used to say to me, ‘Alicia, your head is no more than a sieve.’ But you know what young girls are, my dear, being one yourself — and an extremely pretty one. I must take the time to tell you, even though my son is glowering at me so, that your hair is exactly what mine was, not so many years ago. Do you remember, Mait?”
“Yes,” he frowned. “Let me make the tea, Mother.”
“Indeed I shall not. I am very, very exact about tea-making, as you well know.”
“Don’t you think there may still be enough in the pot?” asked Adeline.
“It has lost all its goodness and must be quite cold. We waited for my son till we could not wait any longer. He seems to make a point of being late for tea. Only yesterday — no, it was not yesterday but the day before.”
A low clear voice spoke from a settee in a dim corner.
“For goodness sake, make the tea, if you’re going to.”
Adeline started and turned to see a young woman in tweed jacket and skirt sitting there and smoking a cigarette.
“Oh, Sylvia,” said Fitzturgis, “I didn’t see you.” And with a strained smile he introduced the two girls. “My sister, Sylvia Fleming, Adeline Whiteoak.”
The resemblance between brother and sister was noticeable. Her face had the same modelling, too strongly marked for her extreme thinness to bear with advantage. She had the same crisp curly hair but that hers was fair, and her eyes were large and blue instead of narrow and grey. A feeling of relief came over Adeline. The sister was not so odd as she had expected. She was, in truth, attractive, and when she rose and crossed to the tea table her walk was singularly graceful.
“I’ll bring some more bread and butter,” she said and picked up the plate.
“No, please, no, Sylvia,” said Mrs. Fitzturgis anxiously. “It only fusses me to see you handling a knife. You’re so —”
Fitzturgis interrupted, — “You stay and talk to Adeline, Sylvia, I’ll get the bread and butter. We shall need lots of it.” He followed his mother who left driblets of tea behind her as she crossed the room.
Adeline might feel relieved by Sylvia’s appearance of normality but she did not want to be left alone with her. She had a child’s shrinking from the strange. She tried to speak lightly. “I can’t imagine what my uncle and cousin will think of me being away so long. They didn’t even know I left.”
“You came to look up Mait, did you?”
Adeline flushed. “Oh, no. I was driving in this direction and I lost my way and where I enquired he was there. It’s just a chance meeting.”
Sylvia stubbed out her cigarette. “You’re lucky,” she said, “to have a car to go about in. We can’t afford one and, even if we could — well, they’d not trust me with it. You saw what my mother was like about cutting the bread. They’ve got it into their heads that I’m … very nervous or something … while the truth is it’s they who are nervous. They behave sometimes as though they were nutty.” She lighted another cigarette.
Adeline tried to sympathize, to talk naturally and lightly, but she watched with apprehension both Sylvia and the increasing wind and rain beyond the windows.
“It’s turning into a hell of a night,” remarked Sylvia. “I love it, don’t you?”
“I might — if I hadn’t to go out into it in a strange car, on a strange road.”
“Better stay the night here.”
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
Sylvia regarded her thoughtfully. “My advice to you is — don’t start off your life by taking things hard.”
“Do you?” Adeline asked, and then, in panic, tried to recall the question and could not.
“I used to … Not now. I’ve discovered that nothing is worth tearing yourself to bits for.”
“I suppose that’s sensible.”
“Yes. I’ve worked out a philosophy to suit myself. The worst is they don’t agree.”
“whew,” thought Adeline, “I wish Mait would come back.”
Very soon he and his mother did return. This time he carried the teapot and she a tray on which was a plate of bread and butter, a dish of jam, and a square fruit cake.
“Plenty of fresh tea,” he said. “And plenty of butter on the bread.” He brought a small table and placed it beside Adeline. Mrs. Fitzturgis asked her many questions about her home and her family. She repeated her disappointment that her son had been forced to settle down in Ireland with no prospects to speak of.
“He was doing so well, my dear,” she said, “in a promising job on a rubber plantation in Malaya. Now, of course, that’s out of the question and we decided that the best thing for us to do was to come back to Ireland where this scrap of land is all that’s left of the property my husband inherited. He was one of those unfortunate men, though some people think he was to blame, and indeed everything would be very different now if he had been different, but then you may say that things would be still more different if all of us were different, but I say we’re all the creatures of circumstances which we can no more control than we can control that rainstorm outside though it’s obvious that all my husband needed was a little self-control. Don’t you agree?”
Adeline fervently said she did agree. She was so very hungry, the bread and jam and tea were so delicious, that she forgot her anxiety about the return journey and thought only of her pleasure in the nearness of Fitzturgis. When their eyes met, her heart gave several quick beats, and involuntarily her lips parted in a smile. Sylvia did not speak again but sat smoking, her eyes fixed on the wildly blowing rain beyond the windows.
When tea was over Adeline and Fitzturgis went to the front door which still stood open, with the edge of the storm wetting the stone floor.
“Do you think it will soon stop?” she asked.
“No. And if it did, it is impossible for you to go back to Glengorman tonight. You must stay with us. My mother says so.”
“But I can’t! They’d be wild if I didn’t come.”
“You can telephone them.”
“Oh,” she gave a gasp of relief. “You have a telephone!”
“Yes. It’s necessary for us to be able to call a doctor if he’s needed.”
“I see.” She had a momentary vision of a doctor coming at post haste in the middle of the night to that house. She said, — “I think I’d better telephone right away. They’ll be sure I’ve had an accident.”
He led the way to a small room at the back of the hall. A telephone, a kitchen chair, and a large glossy calendar advertising an Irish whiskey were the only furnishings. He turned on an unshaded electric bulb. Under its light they saw each other’s faces, pale and intimately revealed.
“Shall I call them for you?” he asked.
“Please.”
He looked up the number in the directory, asked for it, then put the receiver into her hand. He left her, closing the door behind him. Maurice himself answered. Even with his first word she was conscious of strain in his voice.
“Hello,” she called.
“Is that you, Adeline?”
“Yes.”
“For God’s sake tell me what’s happened!”
“Nothing. I’m all right. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“where are you?”
She was thankful for the distance between them, thankful that she was not face to face with him. She said haltingly:
“I’m spending the night with Mrs. Fitzturgis.”
She spoke so indistinctly that Maurice did not hear the prefix Mrs. — only the surname.
“Fitzturgis!” he almost screamed. “Are you quite mad?”
“Wrong!” he repeated. “Wrong! Where is his house?”
“I don’t know the way well enough to explain. Don’t worry. I shall be back in the morning.”
“Send that man to the telephone,” Maurice ordered.
“Very well. He’s right here.”
She opened the door and said, — “Could you speak to Mooey, please, Mait ? He’s in an awful rage.”
Fitzturgis stared. “A rage? At you?”
“At both of us, I guess.”
He strode to the telephone, put the receiver to his ear. “Oh, hullo, Maurice,” he said.
Adeline could hear her cousin’s accusatory voice hollow in the telephone. She could hear the rain beating on a skylight in a passage behind the hall. Fitzturgis said:
“There’s no sense in talking that way. Adeline’s quite safe here.”
He listened to another outburst and then exclaimed, — “Good Lord — we’re not alone! My mother and sister are here … Adeline did tell you … I’m sure she did … Look here, Maurice, what sort of blackguard do you take me for?… Well, I hope you will come and see for yourself … About what time?… All right. We shall expect you.”
He turned and smiled at Adeline. “He thought I lived alone,” he said. “In any case, he seems to have a low opinion of me.”
“I told him I was staying at your mother’s!” she cried. “Really, Mooey is impossible to explain things to. He simply doesn’t listen.”
They stood close together in the tiny room. He looked at her intently. He said, in a low voice, — “Now you have seen them, do you understand?”
“You mean do I understand why you didn’t come to see me or write?”
“Yes.”
“Well — I don’t.”
“Adeline —” he spoke almost angrily — “surely you can understand my predicament. I had no right to show you that I love you …”
She interrupted joyfully, — “Then you still do?”
“You have never been out of my thoughts since we left the ship.”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 458
