“Thanks very much but I must go. I must get this thing settled.”
Nook had returned to the room. There was a haziness in his eyes as though he had been crying. Piers gave him a quick look.
“How did you get on at school today?” he asked.
“All right, Daddy. But I wish I could have lessons with Adeline, the way I used to.”
Piers looked almost pathetically at Renny. “Where did I get such a son?” he demanded. “He’d rather have lessons with little girls than go to a good boys’ school.”
“I don’t think it’s that, Piers,” said his wife. “I think it’s because he is naturally studious and Alayne makes lessons so interesting.”
“It’s unnatural” said Piers, and looked sternly down into the little face. “Why were you crying?”
“W-wasn’t crying, Daddy.”
“Come — don’t lie!”
“It’s his locomotive,” said Pheasant. “I’m afraid Philip has broken it.”
Piers looked more kindly at Nook. “If he has broken it you should give him a good punch. Bring it here and I’ll see if I can mend it.”
Nook flew upstairs, followed by Philip, shouting — “I’ll get there first!”
“Well, I must be off,” said Renny.
“It’s getting dark and blowing harder than ever. Do stay to supper.”
“Yes,” added Piers. “Then I’ll drive you home. I’d like to be there when you break the news.”
“Thanks. I’d rather walk, with the roads like this.”
He had an unaccountable nervousness of motorcars and, as he strode homeward through the early dusk, he found the exercise in the biting wind not unpleasant. There was a dear saffron streak in the sky and, above it, a pale blue radiance, a promise that Spring was soon to draw back the curtain from her wonders. It seemed to Renny that there was a different quality to the wind in the last hour. It was biting as ever but there was a certain erratic playfulness in it, as though it had new ideas in its head. Then, out of the sky, came the loud cawing of crows. He saw their black shapes blown from a grove of pines and scattered like leaves across the pale dear space. They were the first birds of spring, reckless and rowdy. Whatever sweet-singing birds came after, these were the heralds and bore the soul-piercing news.
“It is spring!” thought Renny, tramping through the icy slush with his ears tingling and his nose almost raw. Every branch was as bare as a bone, the ground was frozen to a depth of two feet, but the crows never lied.
“Caw — caw — caw!” they shouted and swung on the wind, made flails of their wings and fairly threshed the floor of the sky, took beak-dives, then strained their lungs to shout, “Caw — caw — caw — caw!” Night was falling and it was time they had found a perch, but they did not care. They streamed along the wind, rioting sable gangsters, with all heaven open to them.
“God,” thought Renny, “I shall see spring in Ireland!”
The whole icy, windy, slippery scene about him vanished and he saw himself in County Meath, with billowy clouds floating low, the hawthorn in bloom, a bright-green paddock surrounded by white railings and his Cousin Dermot coming across it to meet him, leading Johnny the Bird. A tender smile softened his features. A quick fire of exhilaration pierced his being and the smile became a grin.
Down in a hollow, overflowing with evergreen trees, he could see the orange squares which were the windows of his sister’s house. For a moment he had a mind to go there and tell Meg and Maurice the news. He had a feeling that they would be sympathetic, but then, his feelings were not always right and he decided to go home. He was far from certain that he would meet with sympathy there but go he must eventually, so, with the grin still lightening his face, he turned his steps in that direction.
He heard a small scrabbling on the road behind him and looked round to see Piers’s wire-haired terrier, Biddy, at his heels. Since puppyhood she had had an infatuation for him, greatly to Piers’s chagrin. She had tried to follow him when he left the house but Piers had stopped her. Renny could imagine how, at the first opening of the door, she had slid out into the dusk. She was panting violently but delighted with her achievement. He bent to pet her. “Little devil,” he said.
But her companionship was pleasant. It was a lonely thing to be on a road without a dog. She kept up a methodical jog trot at his heels. It was as though she were tied to him. He opened a gate and crossed a field so rough with snow which had melted and frozen again that he picked up the terrier and tucked her under his arm. She gave his nose a quick lick of gratitude.
It was the first time this year he had taken the short cut and the walking was even worse than he had expected. But he had the feeling of spring in his blood and this was his gesture of welcome to it.
From the field he entered a bare oakwood and from there, quite suddenly, charming grounds surrounding the small house where his uncle. Ernest Whiteoak, lived. Ernest’s wife was Renny’s wife’s aunt, so the relationship was doubly close. He had a mind to go in and see them but he knew that, once he got inside the door, their interest in what he had to tell them would be so great and Uncle Ernest would have so many reminiscences of bygone meetings with Dermot Court that it would be a long time before he could get out again. Instinct told him to be on time for dinner that night.
He drew near the lighted window of the living room and could see the two sitting happily by a table where tea things were placed. Uncle Ernest’s long fair face was animated as he talked, while Aunt Harriet regarded him admiringly out of round, intelligent eyes. The waves of her silvery hair looked lovely in the lamplight. Biddy ran on to the porch and began to scratch at the door. With a stride Renny had her by the scruff, tucked her under his arm once more, and half walked, half slithered and slipped, down the steep path into the ravine where the stream lay curled beneath a bolster of snow. Pillows of snow propped the rustic bridge that spanned the stream and, as the snow pressed in over the tops of his boots, he said to the terrier: —
“I guess you wish you’d stayed at home, Biddy.”
Not she. She strained upward to reach his face with her cold little muzzle. She was excited and pleased. She was no longer young but she had a great zest for life. He hugged her to him.
At the top of the rise on the far side of the ravine he stood for a moment to get his breath. A low wicket gate was in front of him and beyond it his own house standing among its trees, the wide lawn showing patches of earth through the snow, the windows shining in the dark bulk of the house. He never came on it suddenly like this without his inmost being dilating, as it were, to receive that sight in its fullness. The house, though substantial, might have been unimpressive to many a man and no more than the solid residence of solid people, but it was to him the very distillat ion of all that his life and the lives of his forbears had stood for. Here they had been born, had lived, loved, and suffered. Here they had carried on their traditions in a changing world. Here he would live as long as he had life in him and, if he had his way, his children after him. Even a multimillionaire with half-a-dozen mansions might, after his first glance, have discovered something unique in the old house. For it was certain that the highly individualistic people who had lived there had left some mark of their sojourn. There was something in the way its chimneys gave their smoke, in the way the roof leaned down to the porch and the porch raised itself to shield the front door from intrusion, in the way the staunch network of the old Virginia creeper clasped the brick walls, marking the place where every new leaf would spread its greenness, in the very way in which two bare branches of a pine played an unmusical but stubbornly vigourous tune, that spoke of character and continuance.
When he stepped into the hall he was met by a very old spaniel, a young sheep dog, and a bulldog who rose from their happy roasting by the almost red-hot stove to welcome him. He bent to touch their heads and Biddy, whom he still held under his arm, bared her small teeth in a grimace of warning. She could not bear at that moment to share his affection.
Re
nny heard his wife’s step. She appeared at the top of the stairs and began slowly to descend.
“Oh, hullo,” he said. and moved to the side of the banister, holding up his face for a kiss.
She leant over and gave him one, with the air of depositing it lightly on his cheek. There was something faintly defensive about her as though she were not certain what the tone of their meeting would be.
Casting his mind quickly back to their last meeting he remembered some slight disagreement, though what it was he could not recall. Nothing very serious, he was sure. He set down Biddy. She moved growling among the larger dogs, who sniffed her with tolerant amusement.
Alayne scanned his face with an almost fierce pleasure in having him back in the house with her, for the day had been long and uneventful and she had had trouble with the children. She pretended that she did not notice the large clots of snow that had come in on his boots. He saw, however, that she did and exclaimed: —
“By George, I forgot to wipe my boots! I came home through the ravine and the snow is deep, I can tell you. It was right over their tops.”
He sat down on the step below her and pulled off his boots.
Fresh clots of snow fell out of them and she could see that his grey woolen stockings were wet. She said: —
“It doesn’t help things to take them off here, does it?”
Quickly he snatched up the clots of snow and returned them to the empty boots. He then padded to the front door, opened it, and deposited them in the porch. The four dogs, thinking he was going out again, jostled each other through the door and he closed it on them.
“How is Uncle Nick?” he asked.
A shadow darkened her eyes. It was strange that his first question should be about his uncle and not as to how she had spent her day.
“Very well, I think,” she answered, coolly. “Uncle Ernest spent most of the afternoon with him. Then some papers came from England and a letter from Wakefield.”
“Good.” He came back to her and took her in his arms, holding her close. She clung to him, feeling at once passionate love and a kind of anger. She passed her hand over her hair, smoothing it. He saw the silver among its bright fairness, and gave it a quick caress with his lips.
“Sweet girl,” he murmured.
Linked together, they went into the drawing room, where a fire was burning low on the hearth. Nicholas had left his newspapers scattered about. To Alayne the room looked uninviting and felt chilly, but to Renny it was a haven of exemplary neatness and warmth. He sat down and stretched his feet toward the fire.
“I’ll run up and get your shoes,” she said.
He caught at her skirt but she eluded him.
“No, no,” he said, “I’ll get them myself.”
She was back with them in a moment and put them on him one after the other.
“You have feet just like your grandmother,” she said.
He was pleased. “Have I?”
She sat down beside him and he asked the question she had been waiting for.
“What have you been doing this afternoon?”
Because it was at the end of a long winter and because her activities were seldom of the intellectual sort she would have liked, a note of complaint came into her voice.
“No need to ask me what I have been doing. The same old round. How thankful I shall be when this slush and sleet are over and the children can play outside. The noise they have made today has been appalling, and as for lessons — well, I feel sometimes that I must just throw up the job. It takes too much out of me. When Nook was here it was often quite fun for he enjoyed the work. I really think we shall have to send Adeline to boarding school.”
He gave her a horrified look “But Meg never went to boarding school!”
“I don’t see what that has to do with Adeline. She’s an entirely different type.”
At this moment he did not want to oppose Alayne in any way so he sat silent, looking into the fire, his mouth down at the corners.
“Oh, well,” she said, “I suppose I can go on for a while longer. Spring will soon be here. As a matter of fact, Adeline did not give me as much trouble today as Archer.”
She saw his stern look and added hastily — “It was mostly a matter of fidgeting. He just couldn’t keep still.”
Renny took one of her smooth white hands in his. “If the kids bother you,” he said. “I’ll skin them alive.”
The barbaric threat comforted her, though to see him lay a hand on them was dreadful to her.
He asked rather abruptly — “Is there anything decent on at the theatre? We might go. Or would you rather see a picture?”
“Candida is being played. I was going to speak of it, but I know you hate Shaw.”
“Well, I should like to see that one, as Wake has played in it. Let’s get tickets. I’ll ring up the theatre now.”
He sprang up impulsively and crossed the hall to the sitting room. She heard him talking loudly over the telephone and she ran into the room and shut the door so the children could not hear his voice and come running down to him. She stood behind him. She saw the admirable set of his head on his shoulders as he telephoned, and how his close-cut red hair was not yet even touched by grey. She heard him order five of the best seats and would have rushed to stop him but, possibly conscious of this contingency, he hung up the receiver with a triumphant bang and turned to face her.
“Are you crazy?” she asked.
“Not at all. I want to give a little theatre party. That’s all. I’ve been thinking of it for some time. Uncle Nicholas loves a good play. Aunt Harriet and Uncle Ernest both admire Shaw. We’ll have dinner in town and make an evening of it.”
“But those seats! You need not have bought such expensive ones.”
“No use in taking Uncle Nick anywhere but in front. He’d not hear a word.”
“Yes, that’s so.”
He looked at her anxiously.
“You’re pleased, aren’t you?”
“Of course.” But she had a sharp stab of disappointment. She wanted to go alone with him. Just the two of them! His solicitude for these old people was sometimes deeply irritating to her. But she forced herself to conceal it.
They had barely reseated themselves in front of the fire when the dogs began to scratch on the front door and raise their voices in complaint. Renny sprang up to let them in. Alayne never had got used to his way of turning repose into lively action at a moment’s notice, just the way the children did, and felt that she never could.
The dogs came in, talking of the cold and wet outside. Biddy looked in at the drawing-room door but when Alayne cried “No!” she turned away and leaped on to a chair in the hall. Uncle Nicholas could be heard coming heavily down the stairs. He came slowly and carefully, leaning on the banister, for he would be eighty-eight on his next birthday and had been a victim of gout for many years. In truth none of the family but himself remembered the time when his knee had not troubled him. His brother, Ernest, could have remembered but it was easier to think of Nicholas so afflicted because he had somehow fitted this affliction into his strong personality.
Renny went to meet him and the old man leaned heavily as he made his way to his accustomed chair. “Hullo, dogs,” he mumbled under his drooping grey moustache. “Hello, dogs! Been out in the fresh air, eh? Lucky dogs! Hullo, Biddy! Over here again? Your master will have it in for you, old girl. Now then — let me down, Renny! Ha — this weather plays the devil with me!”
He smiled at Alayne, who had to smile back, though the moment before she had been thinking somewhat grudgingly of his presence at the theatre party.
“Well, and what have you been doing this afternoon, sir?” he demanded of his nephew.
“I’ve had a busy day. One thing on top of another. I think I have a likely purchaser for the bay colt. Alayne and I have just arranged a theatre party for tomorrow night. I hope you’ll enjoy seeing Candida. It’s the play Wakefield acted in, you know.”
“Yes,” said Nicholas,
gravely. “I remember.”
“Mr. Shaw would be flattered!” exclaimed Alayne.
Nicholas beamed. “I shall be delighted to go. How kind of you two!”
“It was Renny’s thought.”
“No it wasn’t! You said yourself you’d been thinking of it.”
How generous he was! Any irritation she had felt toward him was gone. She had a sudden exhilaration in the prospect of tomorrow night. She smiled happily at the two men. Though she had lived so many years at Jalna she had not made friends in the neighborhood. She had begun by considering it a backwater and feeling impatient of its Victorian traditions. The old neighbors were not intellectual and, when newcomers did appear among them, the Whiteoaks held themselves aloof and she did not meet them. Nor did she want to. She had always been of a reserved nature and though she deplored the self-sufficiency of the Whiteoaks, it suited her better than she knew. Yet it was her fate often to be longing for what she would not put out her hand to acquire.
A sound of rushing steps and a clamour of children’s voices came from the top of the stairs. It grew nearer like a rushing wind, inexorable and boisterous, till the three children were in the room. They were Alayne’s and Renny’s two children and the child of Renny’s brother, Eden, who was dead and who had been Alayne’s first husband. She had divorced him and married Renny. Now the presence of his child in her home was an unhappy reminder to Alayne, of Eden. The child had his colouring and his smile that sat oddly on her little face. Though Alayne thought of herself as modern and widely tolerant, her upbringing had been somewhat puritanical and she judged others, more often than she guessed, by the standards of her forbears. So little Roma’s irregular birth would have made a barrier between her and Alayne if nothing else had. Alayne saw her as set apart from her own children — first as Eden’s child, second as the offspring of Eden’s connection with that laughing English girl of few morals, Minny Ware.
The boy of the little group was four-year-old Archer. That had been Alayne’s maiden name and it was an annoyance to her that Renny should call him Archie. And of course, since Renny did, Adeline imitated and was being constantly reprimanded for it. He himself, proud of his name and wishing to emphasize it, pronounced it with a strong accent on the last syllable which was almost as irritating to his mother as the abbreviation.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 112
