Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course

by Mazo de La Roche

  She leaned forward in her chair, talking volubly and with great clearness, on Renny’s behalf. She was thrilled and exhilarated by her part in such discussions. She was like a theatregoer who had long wished herself an actress and suddenly found herself one. She did not realize that what she said carried little weight with the family.

  Even Ernest was glad when she stopped talking. Even Renny was faintly abashed by her partisanship, though he loved her for it. Alayne on her part sat silent, detached and amused. She knew that all the talk was futile. Renny had made up his mind to go. She had agreed. Nothing they said could stop him. Nothing they said could send him on his way. All was settled. Yet there he sat, when he did not in his excitement stride about the room, behaving as though all hung in the balance.

  She was pleased with herself in this mood. It was one she did not often achieve. And Renny was so happy about going to Ireland. It was true that he needed a change, spiritually if not physically. She knew too that he yearned to see those two of “his boys” who were in London, especially Wakefield. Sometimes she thought that the desire to see him counted for more than his desire to inspect the horse, though it was the horse he talked of.

  When the visitors were gone and Nicholas had heaved himself up the stairs to lie down for a bit, Renny and Alayne were left alone together. She had a feeling of tenderness for him. She had heard him attacked. She had heard him repeatedly justifying his actions. She had felt for the thousandth time that the family did not appreciate him or the generosity that was the very stuff of his being. He was going away from her, they would be separated for weeks, and the thought of the house without him was the thought of a hearth without fire. She went about the room putting it in order. Surely no other family could do so much to untidy a room. Maurice invariably left pipe ashes somewhere. Meg always managed, though no one saw her do it, to replace certain ornaments in the position they had occupied in her day. It was a constant struggle between her and Alayne as to where a certain china gentleman, with a three-cornered hat and a flute in his hands, should stand. Alayne now gave him an accusing look, took him from the mantelpiece and firmly replaced him in his obscure corner.

  “Do you like him there?” asked Renny.

  “I don’t really like him at all.”

  Renny was astonished. “Why, I’ve always admired him, ever since I was Archie’s size.”

  “I quite understand,” she said. “But, you see, I did not meet him till my taste was formed. I think he looks quite well on this table in the corner, don’t you?”

  “He might easily get knocked off. He was one of my mother’s wedding presents.”

  Alayne returned the flute player to the mantelpiece. She bent over Renny’s chair and kissed the top of his head. He caught her and set her on his knee.

  “How long shall you be away?” she asked.

  “Well, by one of the small ships, ten days each way. As the St. Lawrence is still frozen I shall have to sail from New York. Say three weeks coming and going. A week in Ireland. Another in London. Five weeks. Is that too long?”

  “If not for you, I can bear it.”

  “Alayne, come with me!”

  “And add to the expense!”

  “Good God, we haven’t had a voyage together since our honeymoon! Surely we can afford this!”

  “You seem to think that as soon as you have a few thousand dollars ahead you can afford anything.”

  “Anything in reason!”

  She outlined the widow’s peak of hair on his forehead with her finger. “Is Johnny the Bird in reason?” she asked.

  That look of flamboyant honesty which she deplored came into his eyes. She moved her finger from his forehead to his lips and pressed them together. “Don’t say it!” she said. “I don’t want you to be convincing and reasonable. I want you to go because you want so badly to go. Nothing you can say would make me believe in the wisdom of buying this horse.”

  His eyes were almost pitying now. “Of course not,” he said. “Poor little girl! Do say you’ll come! We’d have a lovely time!”

  “I could not possibly face an ocean voyage in March. You would have a dreadful time with me. No — you must take your holiday alone. Make it six weeks or more, if you’re enjoying yourself. Dear knows when you will be able to go again. But, whenever it is, I will go with you.”

  “Me too!” cried a voice from the hall.

  “Adeline,” said Alayne, “you should not creep up on people like that. It makes them feel that you’ve been listening. And you were!”

  “I couldn’t help it. I just came down the stairs in an ordinary way. You were talking. Listen, Mummie! Please let me go with Daddy. I’ve been talking to Uncle Nick. He thinks I ought to go. He says a war may come. Then goodness knows when I can. If I go I’ll not be a bit of trouble. Once, when I was little, I went on the train with Daddy and he often says how good I was.”

  Alayne interrupted — “There is no use of your talking about it. Your father would not want a child with him …”

  “But I’m not just a child. Daddy says himself that I’ve a better head than lots of grown-up people.”

  “About managing a horse! I dare say. But this is quite a different matter.”

  “I’d love to take her,” put in Renny. Then added — “If I can’t have you.”

  “I’d never ask to go,” said Adeline, “if she were going.”

  “You may have sense, Adeline,” said Alayne, flushing, “but you certainly have not tact.”

  Adeline stared. “What is tact?”

  “Being careful never to hurt other people’s feelings.”

  “Are you?”

  “I hope so.” Sometimes she was aghast at Adeline’s power of angering her. It struck her in two ways. First Adeline’s intrepid air — not rude but intrepid, as though nothing could really subdue her. Then her physical vitality. She could never be said to be “bursting with health”; no — it was something much finer than that: the spring of the dark red waves from her forehead, the proud arch of her brows, her chest which seemed as though drawn by an invisible cord upward. Sometimes looking at it Alayne felt apprehension for the day when young breasts would swell there and a woman’s eyes would look at her out of Adeline’s face. She did want to be friends with her child and she did try, but how easily the anger flared!

  Renny felt himself responsible in a fashion for those qualities in Adeline which were trying to Alayne. He slid from under the pressure of this by repeating that she was old Adeline over again, but he still felt himself responsible. He and Alayne had risen and separated. They stood looking down on their daughter, who, planted firmly on her shapely feet, stared up at them.

  “I’d be no trouble at all,” she said. “I know all about dressing and washing. I’m never ill. If I’m sick it’s over with quickly — like the dogs. I have my new coat and hat and three pairs of shoes. And Uncle Nick has a scheme. You wait till you hear it. He’s coming down. He’s rested.”

  “Goodness,” said Alayne. “I thought it would take him hours to rest, after all that talk.”

  “So did he,” returned Adeline. “But when this idea came he forgot his tiredness. He’s coming now!”

  They could hear Nicholas coming, with a shuffling haste, down the stairs. He appeared in flowered dressing gown and with grey hair upright on his head.

  “I’ve got an idea!” he said.

  Adeline flew to him and clasped him tightly about the waist. Nicholas went on: —

  “I want this child to go with you to Ireland, Renny. It was my mother’s country and Adeline ought to see it. By gad, I’d like Dermot Court to see her! It isn’t as though you would be on a prolonged stay. Now, I am willing to pay half her expenses if Ernest will pay the other half. It would be an experience she would never forget and, as I said to her just now, if war comes dear knows what will be left of Ireland!”

  “I’m willing, if Alayne is,” said Renny. “It’s mighty generous of you, Uncle Nick.”

  Adeline turned pale with excite
ment. “Now I can do it, if Uncle Ernest will toe the scratch!”

  Nicholas broke into laughter. He turned to Renny. “Mamma will never be dead while Adeline lives,” he said.

  “That sounded very cold and calculating to me,” said Alayne. “I’m ashamed of you. Adeline.”

  “What should I have said?” asked Adeline.

  Alayne hesitated, feeling helpless to explain. “If instinct does not tell you, I can’t,” she said.

  “Ha, ha,” laughed Nicholas, “instinct did tell her! Now I shall go straight to the telephone and ask Ernest what he thinks about it.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Adeline, “and if he doesn’t” — not wishing to use the offensive phrase again she substituted “seem agreeable, I’ll talk to him!”

  They went off, linked together.

  “No one,” said Alayne, “could bring up children properly, with Uncle Nicholas in the house.”

  “Only too true,” said Renny. “What do you think about it? Are you willing for her to go?”

  In truth Alayne found herself more than willing. Six weeks of freedom from Adeline’s vital activities would be a relief. Yet, even while she was conscious of this, she felt shame that it should be so and, when Adeline came back exultant, Alayne put both arms about her and held her close. Love for her child surged through all her being. Adeline’s response to the embrace was to clasp Alayne’s neck so hard that she feared for a moment it had cracked. She put her hand to it and turned her head from side to side.

  “What a hug!” she exclaimed.

  “Sorry,” said Adeline. “My nature is boiling over. How can I live till the day!”

  From then to the day of departure the time swept on. There were a thousand things to be bought for Adeline, or so it seemed to her. Alayne took her to town and they did their first shopping together as mother and daughter, and lunched happily in a restaurant. They sat smiling into each other’s eyes, eating ice cream and cakes. The most exciting thing to Adeline was being given a cabin trunk that had been her great-grandmother’s and bearing the same initials as her own. Each one of the family gave her a little present before she left. She was full of gratitude, but its richest flow was to her two great-uncles.

  The day came, blustering, wild and sweet, with the first scents of earth on the wind and the first robin singing in the silver birch tree on the lawn. Renny and Adeline looked out of the car window at the assembled family gathered on the steps, and waved their hands. Piers and his boys cheered. Archer ran down the drive after the car and fell. The car turned into the road. The massed evergreens hid the house. They were off.

  Adeline had made up her mind that her father must never regret having taken her with him, or her great-uncles that they had paid her passage. Everything Renny told her about washing, undressing, and sleeping in the train, she drank in with wide-open eyes and parted lips. She did exactly as she was bid, except to sleep soundly. She had always been a poor sleeper. At night her vivid imagination ran away with her. A part of her that was tranquil during the day drew a strange vitality from the night, so that she could do with far less sleep than the normal child and would have liked to dance and sing and shout in the extreme of her lively fancies; indeed she often had and this was one of Alayne’s trials.

  Tonight she lay awake for hours, listening to the throb of the engine, feeling the vibration of it through all her being. The steady roaring, the scream of the whistle at a crossing, the jolts and gratings when the train stopped, jumbled the pictures she carried in her mind, like a pocketful of coins thrown on to a counter. Like faces engraved on coins, she saw her mother’s face with its quick changes of expression: now serene, as she read a book aloud or arranged flowers in a bowl; now smiling, as she played with Archer; now suddenly exasperated or severe; now with the look she had for Renny which fascinated Adeline and filled her with a strange unease. Then the coin with Uncle Nick’s face on it turned up — the thick grey hair and moustache, the big nose, the deep eyes that looked right into you, and the mouth with its smile that was both funny and sad. Then Uncle Ernest, looking as though he had just had a bath and his hair tidied, his lips shaped as they were when he was showing you how to pronounce a word properly — in the English way. Then Roma, with her hair like those things saints wore, or that look her face had when she was going to tell you something she was not supposed to know. Roma’s face lasted a long while, sometimes almost fading away, blurred by those strange tears she often shed for nothing, then suddenly close again and shining like gold. Archer’s little face came and went a dozen times, now contorted by rage, now stretched in some newly discovered grimace, now with that piercing look their mother called spiritual and their father said was caused by wind on the stomach. Piers’s face, Mooey’s face, Nook’s face, the faces of all the fourteen relatives she had left behind, came to keep Adeline from sleep. Even the dogs and the horses came, and the house servants and the grooms and stableboys. She tried to imagine the houses she was going to. She pictured Cousin Malahide as gliding about like a snake; Cousin Dermot as living in a castle. Strange shapes came to torment her, wild music rose from the wheels of the train and hands reached out in the dark to touch her. She burst into tears. She filled her hands with her red hair and made herself rigid with anguish. She kicked the weight of the heavy blanket from her. She thought she saw the black hands of the Negro porter untying the tapes of her curtains. He would kill her!

  “Daddy!” she cried, in spite of her teeth that she clenched against calling. “Daddy!”

  He did not hear but in a moment she heard his voice. He was saying to the porter: —

  “You may get my berth ready now.”

  “Yes, sah. Ah hope your li’l gal is comfortable, sah.”

  “I’ll find out.”

  Cautiously he put his head between the curtains.

  “Sleeping, pet?”

  “Yes, Daddy. Like a top.”

  She put up her arms and drew his head close.

  “I’ll be just across the way,” he said.

  “Good.”

  Soon she was asleep.

  She went on being no trouble, except for the responsibility of her, right through the brief stay in New York and on to the ship. When she found herself actually on the deck, with the glistening skyscrapers of New York retreating and the harbor a tumble of foam-flecked waves, she drew a deep breath, her nostrils dilated to smell the salt air. Her being was too small at that moment to support the spirit in her. She clenched her fist and struck it on the rail. “We’re off!” she exclaimed.

  They stopped at Halifax to take on a cargo of apples. A dock hand loading them fell into the icy water. Adeline sent a shriek for help.

  “Save him!” she screamed. “You’re letting him drown!”

  But he was pulled out of the water and stood shaking with cold on the dock. He put up his hand and saluted her.

  She was beside herself from excitement. Then she noticed that some of the barrels were from the orchard at Jalna. “R. C. Whiteoak” was painted on them. She flew to his side and clutched his arm.

  “Look!” she cried. “Our own apples! On the ship with us!”

  He was almost as pleased as she. They stood grinning down at the barrels. Adeline called out authoritatively to the men: —

  “Don’t you drop those! They’re ours!”

  She was so hot from excitement that she pulled off her hat and the icy wind played with her hair.

  But toward the social life of the ship she was restrained and her behaviour at table was decorous. Ernest had lectured her well before she left. She ate the food Renny ordered for her and, before eating it, bent her head with gravity and said grace. They two had a table to themselves.

  She was standoffish toward the other children on board and reserved when questioned by grownups. Only once did she get into trouble with Renny. That was when he found her throwing the dice for the horse races. When she had finished he beckoned her from the door and, seeing the look in his eye, she went abashed.

&nbs
p; Outside he said, “Don’t ever again let me catch you making yourself cheap in a crowd. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I’ve a mind to take a stick to your back. Throwing dice, with a lot of strange men about you! Don’t do it again, do you hear?”

  “Yes, Daddy.” She was nine and it was hard to understand. In a small voice she asked: — “May I go and look on?”

  “Of course.”

  “And bet?”

  “If you like. But I’ll take you after this.”

  “Thank you.” She squeezed his hand. The blood that had rushed into her face retreated. She made up her mind she would be more careful as to what she did. When next day he asked her if she would like to go to the horse races with him, she said — “Not unless you want me to.”

  “I do,” he said, smiling.

  They sat close together and between them lost five shillings.

  It was a rough voyage. Once, looking about the dining room at lunch, Adeline remarked: —

  “I am the only woman who has survived. What a good thing Mummie didn’t come!” She talked a good deal of those they had left behind, dwelling on their perfections. She exclaimed: —

  “I guess there isn’t a single person on this ship who has so many nice people at home as we have.”

  They landed at Cóbh, in a soft rain and a choppy sea. The tiny boat that took them ashore bounced on the frothy green waves. There was a monk aboard with a brown cassock and a rope about his middle. There were women wearing shawls and selling Irish lace. Out of her own money Adeline bought handkerchiefs with donkey carts embroidered in one corner and shamrocks in another to send to the children at home.