“You were never pleased with me.”
“How could I be? I have been more worried than I can tell you. I’ve seen you and Adeline preparing to take a disastrous step. I’ve seen nothing but trouble ahead.”
“I will try,” said Fitzturgis, “for Adeline’s forgiveness —”
“You’ll never get it.”
“My God, that’s impossible to believe! If she had been there, in the lake, bathing with us, it might have happened. Roma was swept into my arms by a wave. I kissed her. That was all.”
“I quite understand,” Renny said mildly. “But Adeline can’t and never will. You might have a talk with her ...”
“You agree to that?”
“My dear fellow, I am human. I have had temptations. I know what it is to be weak, but — fortunately for me — I have a gentle, old-fashioned, forgiving wife. Adeline is none of these. But — you can try. And if she should bring herself to forgive you, and you are willing to stay on here — to begin all over again —”
“It would never do,” broke in Fitzturgis. “We should have to go somewhere else.”
“where?”
“Possibly New York. No — not there — I realize that she would not be happy in a city.”
“I’m glad you understand her so well,” Renny said blandly.
In some way this attitude of kindliness cast a deeper gloom over Fitzturgis. He drew a heavy sigh which was echoed by the sighing of the hemlocks and spruces beneath the rain.
“I must tell you,” said Fitzturgis, “that I am grateful for the way you have taken this, and I still think that Adeline and I may make it up.”
“I’m willing for you to have a try,” and somewhat enigmatically the master of Jalna added, “if you can manage it.”
It was almost dark under the heavy-boughed trees. The rain was coming down harder. One of the dogs, returning after some urgent business of his own and in great anxiety about his supper, passed them without a look. Fitzturgis said:
“I’ve left my sister waiting in the summerhouse. I must go to her.”
“In the summerhouse, eh? A nice old place — or would be, if it were in repair. I really must see to that.”
They separated, and Renny strode to the house. In the hall he found Piers waiting for him.
“I’ve just dropped in to tell you,” said Piers, “that Maurice has gone to stay with Finch. Things have not been very pleasant between us — I can’t put up with his drinking, and it’s a bad example to the younger boys. So far as I am concerned I’m glad that he should go, but it has hurt Pheasant, and I wish you would tell him so — tell him he must come back and try to behave himself. His visit —”
Renny interrupted, “Yes, yes, we can attend to that later. But here is wonderful news, Piers. Adeline has caught Fitzturgis and Roma in the act of kissing — in the lake bathing, mind you — she’s broken off her engagement to him!” In the exhilaration of the moment Renny threw his arms about his brother and pressed him into the execution of some triumphant dance steps down the hall. Piers, however, was concerned for his artificial leg and planted himself firmly just outside Adeline’s door.
“She’s in there,” whispered Renny, “and what I want you to do is to take her home with you and keep her there till he’s out of the way. He’s all out to have another try for her forgiveness. God knows she might forgive him. I’m running no risks.”
Piers’s healthy face was close to his. Piers whispered hoarsely, “It’s the best news I’ve heard in many a day. And it’s just like Roma — God bless her.”
“There’s not a minute to spare.”
“I’m your man. Bring Adeline along. My car is outside.”
“Drive it to the side door.”
Renny tapped on the panel of Adeline’s door. Twice he tapped before a muffled voice asked, “who’s there?”
He did not answer but went softly into the room. It had an air of desolation. She lay stretched on the bed, her face pressed into the pillow, but when he spoke she put out her hand to him.
He took the hand and bent over her. “Adeline,” he said, “you’d rather not meet Fitzturgis again, I’m sure.”
She sat up and raised her troubled eyes to his. “Have you been talking to him?” she asked.
“Yes. I’ve told him that I quite agree with you in breaking off the engagement.”
“what did he say?”
“I think he understands that it’s hopeless. But — you would find it very embarrassing to meet him at table. I want to save you that, my pet....”
“I’m not going to the table.”
“Of course not. Now look here. Uncle Piers is at the door with his car. He wants to take you to his house. Everything will be much easier for you. It will be more comfortable all round. Come.” He half lifted her from the bed. He felt there was no time to spare. She was confused, willing to be led. He led her, supporting her through the side door, outside which Piers was waiting in the rain. Like a sick person she was supported by the brothers, half lifted into the car. It moved off.
Renny blew out his breath in relief. He returned to the hall and closed the door of Adeline’s room. He heard the voices of Sylvia and Fitzturgis in the porch and darted up the stairs to avoid them. He knocked on the door of Alayne’s room. “It’s me, Renny,” he said.
She opened the door and stood there, in her lace-trimmed nylon slip, the silvery waves of her hair, looking so cool, so fresh that he spent a moment in admiring her before he spoke. Then he said, “I have some good news for you, Alayne.”
His idea of good news did not always agree with hers. Therefore when he came in and closed the door behind him she awaited what he had to say with a degree of uncertainty. She was ready to accept his news as good when she had heard it, not before.
“Yes?” She gave him a look of cool enquiry.
“I’m getting rid of Fitzturgis.” For some reason which he could not have defined he used the tone in which he might have informed her of the dismissal of a groom. Possibly he was remembering how she and Fitzturgis seemed naturally to come together in a room.
She could not at the first take in his meaning. She stared, bewildered. Then she said, “But you couldn’t ... I don’t understand.... Do you mean that you and he have quarrelled?”
“No, indeed,” he ejaculated, as though thankfully. “I simply mean that the engagement is off. Adeline is free.”
“But why?” she cried. “what has happened?”
He turned, with finality. “Adeline discovered him and Roma in a compromising situation, so — she broke off her engagement to him.”
“Roma,” repeated Alayne. A painful colour flooded her face and neck.
“Yes,” he said. “There was nothing else for Adeline to do.”
“I suppose not,” Alayne agreed faintly. “where is Adeline?”
“She’s gone to spend the night with Pheasant and Piers. He’d dropped in most conveniently.”
“Is Adeline very much upset?”
“Naturally she’s a bit upset. What woman wouldn’t be?”
“And you tell me you have seen him since — talked with him?”
“Yes.”
She put her hand to her throat, as though to help her to get out the words. “And ... What does he appear to feel?”
“He’s very much ashamed. What man wouldn’t be! He realizes that it’s all over between them. I think he’ll be leaving quite soon. He and I are parting quite civilly. I think it’s best, don’t you?”
“Yes. I’m sure it’s best.”
“Alayne, what do you feel about this?”
“I — I’m staggered, but ...” She hesitated, to moisten her dry lips.
“But what?”
“Well, I never thought that Adeline and he were suited to each other.”
“I quite agree. They would have been a very badly matched pair.” He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Not a bit like us.”
Alayne felt extraordinarily shaken. She grasped Renny’s arms in her two
hands, as though to dispossess herself of any wild and weak thoughts, to hold herself strong by his strength.
The air reverberated to the sound of the dinner gong. Nowadays Alayne seldom heard it without thinking, “Soon the Wragges will be leaving. Gongs will be a thing of the past.” But this evening it brought the one thought, “How can I bear to meet Maitland after what has happened?”
“I think I shall not go down,” she said.
“I know just how you feel.” He patted her on the back. “But I think you must — for Sylvia’s sake. That poor girl isn’t herself these days. Possibly she suspects something between her brother and Roma. God knows he has managed to pull the wool over my eyes.”
Alayne longed to have a few moments to herself while she finished dressing, but Renny remained with her and they descended the stairs together. Fitzturgis, Sylvia, and Archer were in the porch but now joined them. Fitzturgis showed extreme pallor beneath his tan. He avoided meeting Alayne’s eyes. He gave a swift glance to the dinner table noting that no place had been laid for Adeline.
Renny said to him in an undertone before taking his own place, “Adeline has gone away for the time being. I thought it was best to let her go. We shall be more comfortable without her, I think.”
At the thought of comfort at that meal Fitzturgis gave a sardonic smile.
“Consummatum est,”murmured Archer.
In reverent hush, as for a corpse in the house, Rags waited at table. Somehow tonight he looked wan and old. There was a fringe on the edge of his cuff.
Alayne pulled herself together. She and Sylvia talked in high excited tones about an anthology of poetry they had been reading, about recipes for blackberry cordial, about which varieties of dahlias they best liked. Now and again Renny joined in with some facetious remark. Fitzturgis was almost silent. When silence fell, Archer, with uncanny tact, held forth in a monologue on his opinion of a scientific broadcast he had heard concerning the weather variations of the past season.
“I wish,” he said, “that we might have television. Some of the discussions on it are very interesting.”
“Television,” repeated Alayne, to whom the word conjured up visions of repulsive faces and still more repulsive sounds. “Oh, surely not, Archer.”
“I am too old to he harmed by it,” he said, “and too young to be revolted.”
“Also,” said Alayne, “the cost is prohibitive.”
Archer turned to give an appraising look at his father, who, in response, winked at him.
The meal was somehow finished with, everyone moved out of doors. The rain had ceased and the air was incomparably fresh and sweet. The grass of the lawn had that day been mown and lay in several wet sweet-smelling mounds. A family of robins were busy in search of their evening meal. Archer was faintly amused to see to what length a worm could be stretched in its unearthing.
Renny looked at his watch. “I must go to the stables for a few minutes,” he said. “Wright is a little anxious about one of the brood mares.”
As he moved in that direction Fitzturgis followed him. He said, as he overtook him, “My sister and I are planning to return to New York by the morning train. I had hoped to see Adeline again, but — she has made it plain that she doesn’t want to see me. I think I ought to go, don’t you?”
There was a note of appeal in his voice, as though he would put himself in Renny’s hands, as though his longing to see Adeline must be subdued to what her father thought was right. Yet, even as he said the words, he felt stirring in him a restiveness, a desire to free himself from the bonds that clamped him to this place, to this long-legged, redheaded man who faced him. If only he might have taken Adeline away with him.... But how often she had said to him, “I could be happy nowhere but at Jalna.”
Renny agreed, not too readily but as though with proper consideration. He would arrange, he said, to have the car on hand whenever Fitzturgis required it. He added, suddenly descending from dignity to something like a grin, “Well, from having a double wedding in view, we have nothing and are even losing our servants!”
In return, Fitzturgis achieved a rather grim smile. He turned back toward the house and found Alayne standing alone in the porch. He joined her, quite unable to control the embarrassment, the shame on his face.
Alayne, always ready to give him a look of interest, now looked away, then again forced her eyes to meet his which were fixed on her with a look almost tragic.
He exclaimed, “Mrs. Whiteoak, what must you think of me? The worst, I’m afraid.”
Alayne was indeed less stung by his fault than by what her own feelings for him had been. She had so warmly accepted him into the family circle, not so much as Adeline’s fiancé, but as a new member congenial to herself who had in him something almost lover-like in his attitude to her. Now a word which had been a favourite of her mother’s, in the expression of contempt, came into her mind — the word odious— but whether it came as applied to Fitzturgis or to herself she did not know or try to discover. She was unhappy enough without analysis of the situation.
Fitzturgis put one foot on the bottom step and, raising his eyes to hers, said, “There seems nothing left for me to do but put on a hang-dog look and skulk away — as a man who had the bad taste to make love to another girl while engaged....”
“Don’t,” Alayne interrupted. “Please, don’t....”
“You have been so perfectly charming to me,” he got out. “I shall never forget that.”
She coloured deeply. She could find nothing to say.
Archer appeared, a railway timetable in his hand.
“There is no choice of trains,” he said. “You could not catch the evening train. I have marked the hour when the morning train leaves. You asked for this, didn’t you?”
“I did,” said Fitzturgis. “Thanks. I suppose I had better do my packing tonight.”
“Can I help in any way?” Archer enquired almost affably. He was one of those people who always are glad to see visitors depart.
XVIII
Renny’s Birthday
A NIGHT, A day, and another night had passed, yet Adeline still remained in Piers’s house. She felt that she could not yet bear to return home. Pheasant had shown her such a sweet sympathy, not in words but in an enfolding warmth of heart; Piers and his sons had so splendidly behaved as though nothing were wrong; little Mary had trotted after her and confided in her, so like a little angel, that Adeline’s outraged feelings, her anger and soreness of heart, began to be a little eased.
On this second morning she saw Patience and the poodle coming along the path to the door. The poodle was carrying a small basket in its mouth and looked so ridiculously like a china poodle of Victorian days that Adeline had to smile and felt it strange to discover herself smiling.
“We’ve brought you a present,” called out Patience.
After some persuasion the poodle consented to relinquish the basket, for it felt that it was giving up considerable prestige in doing so. From the basket Patience produced a late fledgling wrapped in a bit of flannel. The poodle stood expectant, hoping it would be given to her.
“Wright found it chilled through,” said Patience. “It must have flies caught for it. At the moment it’s absolutely stuffed, but it will soon be hungry again.” The two girls sat down on the steps of the porch, guarding the fledgling.
“It’s a dear little thing,” said Adeline, “but I expect it will die. They generally do.”
“Not if you feed them often enough. This fellow is quite strong.” They sat talking in confidential tones of this and that but always keeping from the subject nearest their hearts, till suddenly Patience said:
“when are you going home?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“You know that he and his sister have left?”
“Yes. Did they say goodbye to you, Patience?”
“No. They left a sort of general goodbye. Sylvia said she would write. It’s all rather a miserable ending to the summer, don’t you think?�
�
“I shall never feel the same again.”
“The only person,” said Patience, “who has come through this summer unscathed is Roma.”
“what has she to say for herself?”
“Nothing.”
“Yet she must be triumphant, after two such killings.”
“I avoid her. I begged Mummy to keep off the subject, but she tackled Roma when they two were alone. Roma simply looked at her, cool as a cucumber, and said she’d done nothing. It isn’t her fault, she says, if men like her.”
“The viper!”
“Uncle Renny came and had a talk with her.”
“Oh, I wish he hadn’t. She’ll be more and more pleased with herself.”
“I scarcely think Uncle Renny talked to her about thatsort of thing. He told Mummy he wanted to find out what Roma would like to do. She told him she’s yearning to go to New York and take a course in something — dress designing, I think it is. Well, she has the money to pay her way. None of us will weep to see her go — God knows.”
“It’s been tough on you,” said Adeline, “having her always in the house with you.”
“Oh, I haven’t particularly minded,” Patience said tranquilly, “not till she took Norman away from me, and I don’t much mind that now. It’s surprising how one gets used to things.... The truth is, Adeline, that I’ve found someone I care for — more than ever I did for Norman.”
“Humphrey Bell?”
“Yes.... He doesn’t know that I care for him, and he’s said nothing to me, but it goes to show that one can recover — that one does not die of a broken heart.”
“My heart isn’t broken,” Adeline said fiercely. “It’s had a hell of a jolt, but it’s not broken.” She gave a sudden wild laugh as she remembered the scene by the lake shore. “Oh, Patience, if only you had been there to see me stoning them!” But, even as she laughed, tears sprang to her eyes.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 500
