“Jalna is not new,” said Adeline, “but it’s not fusty.”
“There is something so happy about a new house,” Sylvia continued. “No memories to torment one.”
“You begin to collect memories from the very day you move in,” said Adeline. “As for this one — memories will be coming right up through the floor because it is built where an old house stood.”
“Don’t,” said Finch. “I’d rather not think of that.”
Sylvia knew his wife had died. Now she asked, “Have you children?”
He looked vague, then said, “Yes. A small boy.”
“Is he like you?” Now she looked him full in the face, wondering what sort of small boy he had been. The face of the man was so sensitive, so marked by experience, she could not picture him as a child.
Adeline said, “Dennis isn’t at all like Uncle Finch. He’s not even musical.”
“what a pity! Not inheriting that talent, I mean. It’s wonderful to be talented.”
“Have you heard Uncle Finch play?”
“I’m sorry to say, no. I’ve been in Ireland since the war, and before that …”
“Tell the truth,” said Finch. “You’d never heard of me.”
“Oh, but I had.”
“Well,” said Adeline, “you will have the opportunity now. Have you played since you came home, Uncle Finch? Surely you have on this gorgeous piano.” She wanted to show him off, show the piano off.
He stood staring at it, drinking in the beauty of its form in sensuous anticipation. Untouched, awaiting his will, it appeared too massive, too beautiful for the small house. Even in its silence it dominated the house.
Adeline put an arm round each of the others. “what fun we three shall have together!” she said. “And Mait, too, naturally. Oh, I can scarcely believe that the long time of waiting is over. All happy things seem to be happening at once.”
“when is the wedding to be?” Sylvia asked.
“In a month.” A shadow crossed her face. “We are to have a double wedding. I didn’t much want that, but Aunt Meg and Daddy think it is best. And it will certainly save money. A double wedding. Roma and Norman. Maitland and me.” Now she smiled gaily, picturing the four of them, marching triumphant down the aisle. Then she remembered how Finch and Sylvia both had lost their mates. Her eyes grew misty in sympathy and she kissed first one of them and then the other.
She flew off then to investigate a step she heard, thinking it might be Fitzturgis. Finch said, “Adeline’s so completely happy, it makes one afraid for her.”
“I am afraid for her,” said Sylvia.
“You mean no one should take such felicity for granted?”
“I suppose I mean that it’s safer to expect trouble.”
“Adeline has it in her to make a man happy.”
“I love her,” said Sylvia, “more than any woman I have ever met — if you can call her a woman. She’s really still a child.”
Adeline returned then, having discovered Dennis outside. She led him to Sylvia. “This is Uncle Finch’s cross, Sylvia. Dennis, this lady is going to be your cousin. She is Maitland’s sister.”
“How do you do?” said Dennis, offering his square child’s hand. Then he added, “They’re back.”
“Maitland and Daddy? why didn’t they come over here? Do they know Sylvia has arrived?”
“Yes. They’re having a drink.” He took a turn up and down the room with an air of possession. He asked of Sylvia, “Do you like this room?” He looked up and down and around it, as though he had designed it, built the house. “I live here,” he said. “Want to see my room?” He was so small, so young, that they had to look at him — as at a kitten, a puppy. He went and touched one note on the piano. “This piano,” he said to Sylvia, “is a concert grand. My father is going to play on it. Would you like to hear him play?” He spoke as though at his bidding Finch would sit down at the instrument and perform. Yet he cast an uncertain sidewise glance at Finch, as if to anticipate dismissal.
He had it in a quick gesture. He went to the window and stood in an attitude of unconcern looking out at the tall old trees in their dense summer foliage, their greenness unrelieved by the bright colours of flower border or flowering shrub. In the fire that had destroyed the earlier house all these had been burned and the rubble of builders had choked the roots.
Adeline now felt that Sylvia had seen enough of Finch’s bungalow. Once she knew that Fitzturgis was at Jalna her impatient desire was to return there with Sylvia. She, on the contrary, would have lingered. The glimpse she had had in Ireland of Finch had crystallized into a vivid memory. He had the most arresting, the most changeful face she had ever seen. So she thought as she moved beside him from room to room. He was shy, reserved, sensitive, and she wanted to make him forget his shyness, break down his reserve, yet protect his sensitivity. She, who had but lately emerged from a long illness of the nerves, sensed in Finch someone who had suffered as she had.
Finch drove them back to Jalna. (“We should have walked back through the ravine, Sylvia,” Adeline had cried, “but for your nylons. The brambles would have done them in.”) Dennis came with them, but Finch returned to his bungalow. “You’d better stay here,” he had said to the child and had added: “I must be alone. You understand — alone.”
On the way upstairs they discovered Fitzturgis and Roma sitting together on the window seat of the landing. They did not hear the two girls approaching till they were halfway up the stairs. Fitzturgis got to his feet, with a half-apologetic smile for Adeline and a “Hullo, my dear,” to his sister. He kissed her cheek.
Roma slid from the seat and stood with childish unconcern, waiting to be introduced. When this had been done, with a certain abruptness, by Adeline, she turned to Fitzturgis. “You are back sooner than I expected. Did you know Sylvia had arrived?”
“The business was soon settled. Your father bought the horse,” he replied to the first question, and to the second, “Yes. I was told you and Finch had gone to meet her.”
Adeline looked at him steadily. She said, “I am taking Sylvia to the stables to see the horses. Do you want to come?”
“Horses!” he ejaculated. “Good Lord — I’ve had enough of horses for one day.”
“Very well.” She turned away. “Come along, Sylvia.” She darted up the remaining stairs, temper in every movement of her lithe body.
Sylvia followed, a smile of amusement lighting her pale face. In her room Adeline asked, “Can I help you to unpack?”
“Thanks, but I shall just change into other shoes and unpack later. I haven’t much to unpack.”
“You’ll not need a lot of clothes here. We lead a country life. Why do you suppose Maitland wouldn’t come? Even if he has seen enough horses, he’s seen nothing of me today, and you not for weeks.”
“He’s a lazy dog. Surely you have discovered that, Adeline.”
Adeline said, with passion, “I don’t want to drag him about where he doesn’t want to go, but — to think he’d prefer …” She could not finish the sentence but bit her lip in anger.
“Look here,” said Sylvia, “if you’re going to start off by taking Maitland too seriously — why, I pity you.”
“whom should I take seriously if not the man I’m going to marry?”
“what I mean is, you must take him as you find him.”
Adeline’s eyes flashed. “Well, I find him very irritating at the moment.”
Sylvia had now changed into sturdy shoes. “I’m ready,” she said, and added, “Your cousin is very pretty, isn’t she?”
“I suppose so. I haven’t thought about her looks. To tell the truth, she hasn’t interested me. Now Patience — wait till you meet Patience!”
Passing the open door of Nicholas’s room they saw him and Archer engaged in a game of backgammon.
Fitzturgis and Roma were sitting on the window seat, but he now rose and said, “Well, I see you’re ready. So am I.”
“You stay here and rest. Sylvia and
I are quite happy by ourselves. Aren’t we, Sylvia?”
Adeline tossed her mane of hair, burnished to red by the sun, caught Sylvia’s hand, and the two ran down the stairs. Roma blew a column of smoke down her nostrils.
“Now you’ve done it,” she said.
“Done what?”
“Put Adeline’s back up. It doesn’t take much.”
As though asking for comfort he said, “All I remarked was that I’d seen enough of horses.”
“Oh, she’ll soon get over it. She’s very sweet really. Just a bit spoilt.”
“I can see that her father dotes on her.”
“And she on him! I love that word. Dote. I wish someone doted on me.”
“Norman shows every sign of doting.”
“Please don’t bring Norman into this conversation.”
“I thought girls always liked to talk of the chaps they’re engaged to.”
“I talk enough of Norman when I’m with Norman. His plans, his propositions. The big things he’s going to do.”
“Don’t we all like to talk of ourselves?”
“Not me.”
“I wish you would.”
“I’m not interesting.”
“You’re very interesting to me.”
“I wish I could believe you. But perhaps you’re one of those fellows who think anything in a skirt is fascinating.”
“Have I given you that impression?”
“Oh, I don’t know. When I’m with you I’m always thinking I’d like to fight with you.”
Fitzturgis gave her an amused, a speculative look. She met it with daring and the warm yet challenging smile she had inherited from her mother.
“This place, this family, are getting me down,” she said. “I’d like to go a thousand miles away. Or five hundred would do — perhaps New York.”
Alayne came into the hall below, looked up at the sound of their voices, then, with an air of not having seen them, returned to the library.
“She hates me,” said Roma. “Firstly because of something I did when I was a child. Secondly for being who I am. I’m the daughter of her first husband, you know, and I guess she hated him. He ran off and left her and I don’t blame him. I’d do the same if I were her husband.”
Abruptly she said she must be going. They went down the stairs together. She departed, and Fitzturgis turned into the library, where Alayne was selecting a book from the shelves. When first she had come to Jalna there had been few books there — mostly romantic novels of the mid-nineteenth century, belonging to old Mrs. Whiteoak, and books on the breeding of show horses, histories of the Grand National and other great racing events, books on farming and the rearing of farm stock. But during the years of what might almost be called her regime Alayne had changed all that. Byron and Moore, old Adeline’s favourites, had been the only poets represented. To these Alayne had added many volumes of poetry, old and new, novels, works of philosophy, history, essays. It had been necessary to build new shelves to accommodate the books she had collected. It was not only in the library where her influence during the years of her marriage to Renny had been exercised. All over the house it could be seen. It was progress, it was revolution, and much of it had been painful. How many struggles, both silent and vocal, had taken place in the basement kitchen between her and the Wragges! There was the subject of the refrigerator. Should fruit be kept where its scent would taint butter and milk? Should the refrigerator be kept religiously clean or was a wiping with a dish-cloth now and again enough? Should mouldy scraps be allowed to accumulate in the bread-box? Should the good old English dinner service be put into a fiercely hot oven to warm? Should the dogs be allowed to lick the platters? Well — dogs had been licking platters in that kitchen for seventy-five years before ever she had entered it!
By Alayne (and she had paid for this out of her own purse) a proper heating system had been installed to take the place of the huge old stove in the hall and the numerous fireplaces that had caused so much work.
Cupboards that had not in decades seen the light of day had been emptied out. A vacuum-cleaner had been bought, though the servants much preferred the old carpet-sweeper that rattlety-banged over the rugs, dropping out almost as much dust as it took up. In some rooms modern pale-coloured wallpaper replaced the dark, heavily scrolled and gilded paper which many years ago had been the pride of old Adeline Whiteoak. Leaks in the roof, which formerly had been accommodated with a basin underneath, were mended, loose shutters made secure. Certain renovations had been opposed by the master of Jalna, yet carried through by Alayne. But there were others which he would not endure. Several ornate and ugly pieces of mid-Victorian furniture which she considered out of place beside the fine old Chippendale, Renny tenaciously clung to and would not have banished.
He refused to have the Virginia creeper that draped the house kept in decent restraint. It seemed to Alayne that the rugged vine, whose stock was thick as a man’s arm, laughed at her — laughed and sent out fresh tendrils to take possession of every spot where a vine could cling. Every autumn its fallen leaves clogged the eaves, so that they overflowed and there was flooding in the basement. Small birds built nests in the vine, innumerable bees hummed in it, it climbed the chimneys and festooned them. There was a time when Alayne forgave the Virginia creeper all its tenacity. That was when the first frosts had touched it. Then it flamed into extraordinary beauty. It became a gorgeous tapestry of scarlet, mahogany red, and golden russet. For weeks it enveloped the house in glory, then abruptly, on a night of gales, its cloak would be cast and the naked vine would be revealed in its countless veinings against the dim brick walls.
It seemed to Alayne that the long yellow velour curtains at the windows of dining-room and library with which Renny refused to part laughed at her. As they heavily undulated in the warm summer breeze they seemed to say, “We shall hang here when you are gone.” In truth she sometimes felt that the very essence of the house was antagonistic to her, and this was her mood when Fitzturgis now came into the room. He stood in the doorway, smiling a little, and said:
“I’m interrupting you. I’ll go.”
“No, no — please come in.” Her smile was warmly welcoming. There was no one whom she would have welcomed at that moment but Fitzturgis. There was in him some quality that appealed to her sense of aloneness, as though they two, under certain circumstances, might be in the same boat together. Doubtless the fact that he was to marry into the Whiteoak family had something to do with this feeling. Yet, too, there was something else. She felt that though she was so many years older than he she could talk to him, meet him on his own ground, as could no one else in the family. She was many years older than he, but when she was with him she felt almost his contemporary. He had experience of the world outside that circle which she still at times found stifling. There was in him, she thought, a potential intellectuality which she longed to cultivate. There was in him a dark, underlying something she could not or would not have named that puzzled yet attracted her. It was plain that he liked to be with her. Already there had grown between them an understanding that required no words.
Now she said, feeling it to be the proper thing to say, “I like your sister so much.”
“It’s very kind of you to have her here,” he said.
She went on more warmly, “I can see how fond Adeline is of her. It is a good beginning.”
He said with a rueful smile, “I’m in Adeline’s black books.”
“Goodness — am I to know why?”
“It’s because I said I’d seen enough of horses for today. They’ve gone to the stables.”
Alayne gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “Adeline is so like her father.”
“I wish,” he said boldly, “that she were just a little like you.”
She smiled into his eyes. “I should not wish anyone to be like me. Least of all a Whiteoak.”
He came and stood beside her. “You find plenty,” he said, “to amuse you — in all these books.”
�
��They have been more than amusement. Almost life itself.”
He had looked on her as happily married, but now he wondered. He was conscious of her interest in him and was flattered by it, warmed by it. He knew that Renny had not that day been quite pleased with him. Adeline had been openly displeased. Sylvia, in passing, had given him one of her scornful little smiles. He felt himself to be the bad boy of the family and reached out toward Alayne’s sympathy. What a lovely woman she was! The lines in her face were of experience, of character, he thought, rather than age. What had she found in that hard-riding, overbearing husband of hers to attract her? Surely the dead poet would have been more in her line.
She took a volume of essays from the shelves and recommended it to him. As the book passed from her graceful hands to his their hands touched and they exchanged a glance which was to him intriguing but to her profoundly moving. She seldom met a man who interested her. She told herself how glad she was that she was to have Fitzturgis as her future son-in-law, yet a perverse pity for herself and for him ran tremblingly through all her nerves. Not since the days of her frustrated passion for Renny had she felt like this toward any man. Not that this present emotion was comparable in intensity, but it was enough to shake her, to make her call herself a fool.
The front door stood wide open, and as Fitzturgis finally left the library and Alayne a fresh breeze was sweeping the hall. At the end of the hall, behind the stairs, was Adeline’s room, the room occupied for nearly eighty years by her great-grandmother. She was proud to occupy this room. Never did she find it oppressive or its furnishings tarnished and unsuited to her youth. All her life, she thought, whether her life were long or short, she would keep this room as it was.
Archer, coming in from outdoors, met Fitzturgis in the hall. Archer’s fine fair hair was blown upright. A flicker of something that was almost a smile passed across his lips. He remarked, without preliminary, “I don’t wish to deprecate the intellect, but occasionally I find myself longing for the tough life. Funny, isn’t it?”
“Very,” said Fitzturgis. “I hope you are able to gratify this longing.”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 488
