“Good,” he returned tranquilly. His eyes swept over the fine buildings of the stables. “Your horses are well housed,” he said.
Adeline’s eyes shone in pride. “They have everything,” she declared. “We may go without. Not they.” Half shyly, yet with an impulse not to be resisted, she caught his hand in hers. “Do you think you will like living here, Mait?” she asked.
“It would be a strange person who wouldn’t,” he returned, his fingers tightening on hers. “why, it’s hard to believe that there’s a town within a hundred miles. It’s hard to believe that yesterday I was in New York.”
“And I’ve never asked you how your family are — your mother and sister!”
“Mother is well. Sylvia is much better.”
“And they’re going to live in New York?”
“Yes.”
One of the doors of the stables opened and a man of about forty-five came out. He hesitated on seeing them, then strode on to meet them, walking with firmness and confidence considering that he had lost a leg in the war. Indeed his whole aspect was one of firmness and confidence, owing something possibly to the fullness of his clear blue eyes, the healthy pink and white of his smooth cheeks and the stubborn curve of his lips. “Oh,” Adeline cried eagerly, “here comes Uncle Piers. You will like him.” Fitzturgis inspected him with interest as he approached, trying to discover some resemblance to this man’s son who lived not far from Fitzturgis in Ireland, but he could discover none. Maurice Whiteoak was as different from his father as he well could be.
“Uncle Piers” — Adeline’s voice trembled a little from excitement — “this is Maitland. There’s no need, is there, for me to tell you his surname?”
“How do you do, Mr. Fitzturgis” Piers said a little stiffly, shaking hands with him.
After a few moments of talk Piers turned back into the stables with them. In here it was cooler than out in the sun-warmed air. Two stable-men were bedding down the horses for the night. There was the scent of clean straw and the pleasant smell of well-groomed horseflesh. A benign and contented atmosphere permeated the stables. For the farm horses the day’s work was over. For those darlings, the saddle horses, had come the pleasant reward of exercise or the agreeable return to loosebox after freedom in the paddock. Adeline was eager to show Fitzturgis her own mare, Bridget, with her first colt, Bridie’s Boy. They were in a loose-box together; the son, inheritor of his mother’s beauty, stood proudly beside her. Both bent their heads to nuzzle Adeline when she entered the box. The sight of her, with the mare and her colt, made Piers smile at Fitzturgis. “A pretty trio,” he said.
“A very promising trio,” Fitzturgis admiringly agreed.
“Come in,” cried Adeline. “She’s as kind as can be and so proud of her son.”
When Piers Whiteoak stopped his car on his own driveway some time later he saw his wife planting seedlings in the flower border. She sat back on her heels and raised her dark eyes expectantly to his face. “Well,” she asked, “did you meet him?”
“Yes, but only for a short while in the stables. Adeline had brought him to see the horses.”
“why, Piers,” she exclaimed, disappointed, “I thought you would have gone to the house for tea and had a good look at him.”
“Good Lord, how long do you think it takes me to size a man up?”
“Did you like him?”
“He seems a nice fellow.”
“Good-looking?”
“Quite. Likes horses but doesn’t know much about them.”
Pheasant thrust her trowel into the earth, folded her arms and demanded, “Does he strike you as good enough for Adeline?”
“I’ll tell you that when I’m acquainted with him.”
“Of course. I suppose it was a silly question…. Piers, did he mention Maurice?”
“Yes, though I gather they don’t see much of each other.”
“I thought Maurice might have come over with him. He promised, you know.”
“He’ll come later.”
A silence fell between them, as so often happened when they spoke of their eldest son. Piers and this son had never got on well together. Not that there had been open conflict between them. Rather it had been that when they were in the house together there was unease in the atmosphere. In her secret mind Pheasant had accused Piers of being unfair to Maurice. She had never quite forgiven Piers for sending the boy to Ireland at the whim of an old cousin, Dermot Court, even though that visit had made Maurice Dermot’s heir. Maurice’s future had been settled for him. He was a well-off, idle young man. Piers envied him his affluence and deplored his idleness. Almost two years had passed since they had seen their eldest-born.
Pheasant patted the earth about the last of the annual stocks. “I’m late getting them planted,” she said. “But then I’m always late getting things done.”
“You undertake too much,” he said, almost roughly, and, putting his hands beneath her arms, lifted her to her feet. He bent his face to hers and kissed her. He said, “If Adeline and her Irishman get along as well as we do there’s no need to worry.” He kissed her again, this time with an amorousness produced by congenial work in the outdoors and the springing, effulgent warmth of the summer. She relaxed against his shoulder, forgetting everything but her love for him.
But their loverlike attitudes were an embarrassment to their youngest son Philip, who, returning from a day’s fishing, cleared his throat loudly to announce his arrival.
“Hullo, Mum and Dad,” he called out. “Are you too busy to see what I’ve caught?”
His parents separated and strolled toward him. He displayed a catch of gleaming brook trout.
“Oh, lovely,” exclaimed Pheasant, then added, “Poor pretty things.”
“Listen to her,” laughed Philip, “pitying fish!”
“why not? Think how happy they were swimming about in their cool stream.”
“Not half so happy as I was to catch them.”
Philip was seventeen and had become in the past year, as Alayne said, quite outrageously beautiful. He always had been a handsome boy, but of late the clear fairness of his skin, the sheen of his hair, his heavy-lidded azure eyes, the perfection of his features, all had been intensified. As he had grown in stature, so he had grown in beauty. Piers, looking at him now, thought he was, as Pheasant declared, the image of what he had been as a boy, but the truth was that young Philip much more resembled his great-grandfather, Captain Philip Whiteoak. The young Whiteoak males, sons of Renny, Piers, and Finch, appeared to assert, almost arrogantly or at least proudly, the Northern origin of their race: the long narrow-hipped body, the long flat cheek, the fair skin.
“I stopped in at Jalna,” Philip said, “and left a couple of trout for Uncle Renny’s breakfast.”
“Good,” said Piers, but he spoke without heart. Philip’s devotion to Renny was rather irritating to Piers. The boy would take trouble for Renny that at home would be unthinkable.
Pheasant looked at her son charitably, as she did at all males. She asked, “Did you see Adeline’s Irishman?”
“No, but we’re all invited there this evening to inspect him.”
“Good God!” exclaimed a voice just emerging from the house. “A gathering of the clan to greet the betrothed of the fair daughter of the house! what does he bring as an offering? Six head of lean cattle from the Kerry hills or a litter of starving pigs?”
The owner of the voice, a particularly pleasant one, now appeared. He was the second son, three years older than Philip. He had been christened Finch; but as that name belonged to another of the family, he had been, for some inexplicable reason, called Nooky, which childish name was later shortened to Nook. He was an art student and already several of his pictures had been shown in small exhibitions.
This was Piers’s favourite son. He condoned in Nook what would have seemed intolerable in Maurice. In truth he was proud of Nook’s artistic bent. He liked his pictures. Piers could bear a good deal from his sons (or thought he could)
provided they did not write poetry. He had allowed Nook to turn the old carriage house into a studio. He looked tolerantly on the paint-stained smock in which Nook now appeared. But he was no longer to be called by any childish nickname. It would have been impossible for a painter of ambition to live down such a name, he said, and the family agreed. He must have a name of some dignity as signature to his pictures. What of his real name “Finch”? That was already borne by the uncle for whom he was named. Finch Whiteoak was a concert pianist. His name was well known on this continent and abroad. It would be confusing to have two Finch Whiteoaks in the world of art. It would create, in the first instance, a spurious interest in the younger, and later might well be an impediment to him. But what was Nook to call himself? He had been given only the one Christian name. One Christian name! As he remarked this, on a note of reproach to his parents, he had a sudden idea. “I have it!” he exclaimed. “I shall call myself Christian.” And then added, “With your permission, of course.” For though Nook always took his own way he took it so politely that Piers and Pheasant were under the impression that, of all their children, he was the most dutiful and considerate of them. Whereas young Philip had an air of demanding what he wanted, which frequently set Piers against it.
So when Nook had suggested calling himself Christian Piers had only remarked, “An odd sort of name for a Whiteoak.”
“Surely no odder than Finch,” said his son.
“I guess I made a mistake in naming you after my brother Finch,” said Piers, “but at the time it seemed a good idea. For one thing he’d lately had a fortune left him.”
“That was a pretty good reason, but what was the other?”
“Well, he was and is a decent sort of fellow.”
Nook agreed. “I like that reason best. I’ve always admired Uncle Finch, but I don’t believe he’d thank me for setting out to distinguish myself under his name.”
“Anyhow,” said Pheasant, “he’ll scarcely make you his heir when he has a son of his own.”
“Just the same,” said Piers, “he might do more for Nook, if Nook didn’t take another name.”
“On the other hand,” put in the boy, “he might be induced to pay me for changing it.”
Pheasant said, “You wouldn’t be disgracing the name if you painted good pictures.”
Piers looked judicial and added, “No one in the public eye wants another of the same name in it.”
“You speak,” said Pheasant, “as though people in the public eye were motes.”
Nook asked, “Has anyone any objection to Christian as a name?”
“It’s too much like Pilgrim’s Progress,” said Piers.
“Then there are the kings of Denmark,” said his wife, preferring kings to pilgrims. “I think I can get used to it in time.”
“Do you object, Dad?” Nook would not go openly against the grain of the family. “Do you think Uncle Renny will object?”
Piers at once became brusque. “It’s not for him to say.”
“But it would do no harm to ask him,” said Pheasant.
“I’m quite willing. I mean I have nothing against Christian. That ought to be enough for Nook.”
“And we can still call you Nooky in private, can’t we?” Pheasant put her arm about the youth and pressed him to her.
That had been months ago. Now the name Christian had become firmly attached to Nook outside the family and was ceasing to be a joke inside it. Christian himself did not mind being laughed at. What he could not bear were anger and unkind words. He was quick to retaliate in them but as quick to be sorry and to say so.
The artist’s smock in which he now appeared somehow accentuated his extreme erectness and thinness. His dark eyes were bright in his fair face.
Pheasant said, “We must be very nice to this Maitland Fitzturgis. His visit here means a great deal to Adeline.”
“Visit!” repeated Philip. “I thought he’d come to stay.”
“Do you mean as Adeline’s husband?” asked Pheasant.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“People don’t get married in that offhand way.”
“You and Dad eloped, didn’t you?”
Piers gave a shout of laughter. He said, “We’d given lots of thought to it. It wasn’t offhand.”
Philip said, “Adeline and he have been corresponding for two years. Why didn’t he come sooner?”
“He had to settle his affairs. Find a purchaser for his property.”
“I hope he’s well off. Somehow I feel he isn’t.”
Christian asked, “Did he speak of Maurice coming any time soon?”
“Yes,” answered Piers. “He hopes to come this summer.”
In this family there were the three sons and, as though an afterthought, at the end of the war, a little daughter, Mary. She ran to join the others now with the careless grace of the five-year-old. But there were marks of tears on her cheeks. She had been in one of her own secret places shedding a few private tears.
Her mother and brothers ignored these, but Piers asked, “what has my little girl been crying about?”
She thought a moment and then murmured, “Because Nooky has two names.”
“Always Nooky to you,” he said.
“what a silly kid,” observed Philip. “I’m glad we have only one girl.”
Mary looked up pathetically into the faces of those about her, as though searching for a friendly one. Piers picked her up and she pressed her pink face to his cheek.
“whom do you love best?” he asked.
Suddenly smiling, she answered emphatically, “Uncle Renny.”
“Well, I like that — after all I do for you!”
He set her on her feet, took her hand, and led her into the house. Skipping happily beside him, Mary chanted, “I love Uncle Renny best — best — best!”
Piers called over his shoulder, “Pheasant — it’s time for this child’s tea and bed.”
Nook returned to his studio, his refuge, the place where he was happiest. He stood before the unfinished picture on the easel — the study of a cloud above a summer field — and regarded it absently. He did not see it clearly because Adeline’s vivid face came between him and the canvas. He had a feeling of something like anger toward her for bringing the Irishman on the scene, in the very summer when Maurice was expected home on a visit. Maurice had always shown a fondness for Adeline, had once confided to Nook that he loved her. It did seem a shame that Fitzturgis should, after two years of what Nook thought of as shilly-shallying, come to claim Adeline. And of what use would he be at Jalna?
“That’s what I’d like to know,” he said aloud, as he scraped his palette.
A voice behind him asked, “what would you like to know?”
He wheeled and faced his cousin Patience, who had dropped in, as she so often did, on her way home, after her work at Jalna.
“This Maitland Fitzturgis. Of what good will he be at Jalna?”
“Quite a lot, I imagine — to Adeline.”
“He can’t just come here and sponge on Uncle Renny. There are enough already trying to wrench a living out of Jalna.”
Patience laughed good-humouredly. “Oh, Christian, what a horrid description of us! For I suppose it includes me.”
“Andmyself.”
“In what fashion do you wrench your living?”
“Well, I paint its fields and clouds.”
“Have you sold a picture yet?”
“I haven’t tried. It’s too soon.”
She came and stood in front of the canvas. “This is lovely. It makes you feel peaceful and as if things don’t matter.”
He gave her a swift appraising glance. He said, “You have a peaceful look, Patience. Some day, when I’m better at it, I’m going to paint you. You’ll make a good subject in those blue overalls, with your short dark hair, grey eyes and your complete lack of …” He hesitated, not wanting to hurt her feelings.
“Go on,” she urged. “It’s fun to be noticed.”
; “Very well then — I’ll say what the newspapers call ‘sleek sophistication.’”
Patience made a sound of derision. “I never can hope to have that,” she said.
“Do you like it?”
“I envy it, Nooky.”
“I think it’s disgusting.”
“You say that, but you probably admire it when you see it.”
“I admired Roma before she achieved it. I didn’t admire her much, but I quite liked her looks.”
“You did three pictures of her last year.”
“Look about and see if you can discover them.”
Patience looked vaguely about her. “I don’t see them.”
“No one ever will. They’re obliterated.”
“I don’t understand you,” she said. “Roma is admired by almost everyone.”
With a frankness which brought colour to her cheeks he said, “I suppose you’re thinking of Norman Green.”
For a moment she could not speak, then she said in a consciously matter-of-fact voice, “Well, I must be going. I suppose you’ll be at the party this evening.”
“I suppose so.”
“Goodbye, Christian.”
“Goodbye, Patience. Love to Auntie Meg.”
“AndRoma?”
“Of course.”
She looked back at the studio, wondering what life had been like when it was a carriage house in the old days. Rather nice, she thought, to have lived in those days and not bothered about makeup and nylons and sophistication. Not that she bothered much, but there they were, rankling at the back of her mind, especially in these last unhappy months.
The road past the church was quiet. It was quiet when she turned into her own home, through the brown wicket-gate set in the hedge. The hollyhocks against the wall of the house were just coming into bloom, shyly unfolding their pink rosettes, low down on the stalk in the shelter of the rough leaves and keeping the round green buds of the later bloom tightly curled at the top. Patience paused to look at the hollyhocks, feeling an odd affinity with them. Two robins were on the little lawn — father and son. Son was as large as father but speckle-breasted, large of beak, hungry of eye. Every movement of father was avidly watched by son, hopping close behind. Father picked up an almost invisible something and with an incredibly swift movement thrust it into son’s mouth. He then flew off, with son in wide-winged pursuit. Patience said aloud, “He’ll not keep that up much longer. He’s tired of being a parent.”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 477
