She stepped sturdily on to the soil which old Adeline had left as a young girl to go to India.
IX
DERMOT’S LONELINESS
DERMOT COURT AND Renny Whiteoak sat on that first evening, over their wine and cigars, strengthening the friendship that had budded when Renny had come to Ireland after the Great War. Dermot’s two sons were long dead and his only grandson had been killed in a hunting accident ten years ago. He had no near relatives left. The only one of those he had who was accessible was Malahide Court, and he thought little of him. He wished very much that Renny lived near, for he was a man after his own heart.
“No man,” he said, “has a right to do what my grandfather did. He had nine sons and planted them over the countryside. Now they crop up in all sorts of unexpected places. The first and second generations of them have passed on but the other day I came across a Court who had a bicycle repair shop. I would have thought he had no right to use the name — till I saw the Court nose on him! It was one of the finest specimens I’ve seen. I had to have some excuse for going into his shop, so I bought a bicycle bell and sounded it all the way home in my distress.”
“I hear from my boys,” said Renny, “that Paris Court is a nice young fellow.”
“He is indeed, or seems so. I can’t trust any son of Malahide’s. I wish you were my son, Renny. You know, when I last saw you I was very hard-up indeed, and for many years after. But now, in my decline, at the last hurdle, my affairs have looked up. A brewery I own shares in has begun to make some new soft drink and, such is the degeneracy of the day, it’s selling like wildfire. I’ve had the old house put in order, as you’ve seen. Now what I lack is an heir.”
Renny fixed his bright eyes eagerly on his kinsman and moved his chair a shade closer. Dermot Court went on: —
“I want to fool all these relatives of mine. Especially I want to fool Malahide, who, if he can get me to himself often enough, will somehow worm my money out of me. I feel a weakness coming over me when I’m with him.”
“Good God,” said Renny, “you must keep away from him!”
Dermot dolefully shook his head. “Easier said than done. In a weak moment I told him about the brewery and since then he’s dogged my footsteps like a bailiff. Now what I want is a child in the house — a boy. I’ve a good ten years more of life in me. I’d like a boy with new blood — from the New World. Now your brother Piers has three boys. Do you think he’d let me have one of them?”
For a moment Renny was too surprised to speak or even think. Then the faces of Piers’s three boys flashed before his mental vision. What a chance for one of them! Particularly Mooey, with whom Piers did not get on any too well. He said, gravely: — “I think it’s doubtful if Piers and his wife would consider parting with one of them. In any case, none of them are Courts, though the eldest sometimes has a look of the family. But he’s a thoughtful boy and not very keen about horses.”
“I like a thoughtful boy. I was too harum-scarum myself. How old is he?”
“Thirteen.”
“Just the right age. I’d last till he was twenty-one, — I’m sure of it, — barring accidents. They wouldn’t be giving him up entirely. He could visit them every year or so.”
There was something pathetic in Dermot’s desire for a boy. Renny looked at him consideringly, thinking how extremely nice it would be if he himself might be selected as heir. But to have anyone of the family chosen would be great good fortune.
Adeline came in to say goodnight. She was in pale blue pyjamas with a little padded silk jacket. Dermot Court put an arm about her and scanned her face.
“It’s a sin,” he said, “that you shouldn’t grow up in Ireland.”
“I’m only one-eighth Irish,” she said, rather defiantly.
“You are all your great-grandmother,” he replied.
When the men were alone again, Dermot exclaimed: “What a woman she’ll make!”
“Yes,” agreed Renny. He spoke absently. Once again he had taken up Johnny the Bird’s record and was studying it.
“He hasn’t done much,” said Dermot, “but that doesn’t signify. I tell you, he has it in him to win the Grand National. Unknown horses that were picked up for a song have done that. He’s got stamina and that’s what counts in that race. Just think of the course! Thirty jumps and each one as high as your chin! It tears the heart out of me every time I see them rushing in at the start. I’d buy this horse myself, Renny, but I’m too old.”
“I’ll buy him,” said Renny.
“No — you mustn’t say that. Not till you’ve seen him. We’ll ride over first thing in the morning.”
“It’s a pity,” said Renny, “that you daren’t take the risk. I could wait. How many times have you entered for it?”
“Seven times — and never won it! But that’s nothing. I have a friend who has tried twenty-five times and had only one win. But any one of my horses might have done it. You mustn’t be discouraged.”
Renny was not discouraged. He was tingling with his desire to have a fling at the great race.
“The first horse I entered,” went on Dermot, “was a poor-looking fellow. But I knew he had stamina. He’d have won if the blasted jockey hadn’t been sick after eating too much lunch and so held him up.”
“Bad luck,” groaned Renny.
“Well, I sold the horse and he won the race the following year.”
“My God!” said Renny.
“Another time I’d have won if the jockey hadn’t ridden over someone’s lunch paper and frightened the poor horse to death. Anything may happen but I insist that you have a good chance with this nag.”
Renny could see that the old man was getting tired. They were to rise early the next morning. They said goodnight and Renny was left alone with his pipe and a glass of whiskey and soda. An Irish staghound came and lay at his feet. For a while he thought of nothing but the race. The magic name of Aintree shone before his eyes. He felt that he could not sleep that night. He wondered if Adeline slept. He began to think of his family, particularly his brothers. One after another their faces passed before him. But he dwelt longest on Eden’s. It was good that he was to see Finch and Wake so soon. He had had Wake’s letter, telling that Sarah and Finch were together again, on the eve of his sailing. It had been a shock. He had felt deeply angry at Finch. But that had passed and something fatalistic in him had resigned him to this second trial of marriage for them. For his part the thought of Sarah, as a wife, was impossible. But Finch must know what he was about and if he found himself happier with her than away from her, let him take her on again! Marriage was like the Grand National. Anything might happen. He thanked God that he had such a good wife, that they’d somehow got over their hurdles and were now running pretty easily on the flat — and had lovely children, too! Adeline upstairs — how proud he was of her! And young Archie — there was a character! Renny gave a small, malicious grin as he remembered how, in Archer’s babyhood, Alayne was continually remarking on his resemblance to her sainted father. She didn’t remark that so often now. Somehow — he didn’t know how he’d managed it — but somehow he’d got a little of the Whiteoak devil into his son. You couldn’t thank God for a thing like that. Still, he was glad of it. It would make Archie a better companion when he was older.
He liked this old house. It reminded him a little of Jalna only, of course, bigger. He saw the room peopled by the dim shapes of his ancestors. Courts with long bodies and long legs and big noses — and a look in their eyes of being all alive. He wouldn’t have given his father for the whole bunch of them. That father with his broad shoulders and flat back, his bold blue eyes and fresh colouring. Still, he liked to think of the Courts. And while he was thinking of them his chin sank on his chest and he fell fast asleep.
X
A PURCHASE AND A HUNT
AN INTERESTING QUARTETTE rode to Madigan’s the next morning. Side by side rode Renny and Dermot Court. Behind them Adeline and a young groom. All were well mounted, for Dermot w
ould have none but good horses in his stables. In his heyday he had ridden to hounds with three grooms on three good hunters behind him, in case he needed an extra mount or to lead the way over gates. He was as happy this morning as an old man well can be. He had had a good night’s rest. He had no more than a twinge of rheumatism. He had with him two of his own kin whom he liked and admired and he was going to look at a horse which might well bring honor to the family. He was an inveterate talker and he gave a running commentary on people and places they passed. Once he drew up and pointed with his whip to a splendid wall about a large park.
“D ’ye see that wall?” he demanded. “That represents five thousand pounds that by right belonged to me! My godmother, Lady Moynihan, promised to leave it me but somehow this fellow, Richards, got round her and she left it to him. And he put it all into a wall! It’s an insult to me every time I pass.”
Adeline did not look at the wall but over it at the bright array of crocuses that blazed on a sunny slope. Only a little while ago she had left a land frozen and grim, leafless, with icy slush as the only promise of spring. And here were a misty blue sky, swelling buds, and a road soft beneath her horse’s feet. Dermot Court had long ago forgotten such happiness existed as was hers this morning. If, for one blazing moment, it could have returned to him, he might well have dropped dead from its excitement. But the young groom had not forgotten. His freckled face wore a grin of admiration and fellowship.
Mr. Madigan met them with his same look of spurious intensity. He gripped Renny’s fingers as though he would prove his own honesty by hurting him. They went straight to the stable, the owner leading the way with his rolling gait. Adeline had not smelled the inside of a stable for nearly a fortnight and she drew a deep breath.
Johnny the Bird stood waiting for them, his hazel eyes cool and speculative in his grey face. He had a habit of sitting on the edge of his manger and now, against its sharp edge, he rested, a straw dangling from the corner of his mouth. There was a devil-may-care look about him.
“Does he often sit like that?” Renny asked of Mr. Madigan.
“He does, and almost never lies down. I had a leather pad put on the edge of the manger to ease him but he ripped it off and threw it on the floor. He prefers it as it is, don’t you, Johnny?”
Renny grinned delightedly. He put out his hand and touched the horse’s shoulder. A tremor ran over his hide like a rippling wave over a granite shore.
Mr. Madigan began to extol his good points but Renny scarcely listened. He needed no man to tell him about a horse. This one certainly was not beautiful but muscles stood out all over him. Renny said: —
“I’d like to see him jump.”
Mr. Madigan mounted him himself. The paddock was in such a state of slush that he rode him on to the grass beside the house. He trotted him about, then put him into a gallop. Renny wondered what he was going to jump him over. It turned out to be a garden seat standing near. Johnny the Bird took it in a tremendous jump, half as high again as was necessary. Then he took him over a table, then a tall iron fence. Renny and Adeline watched this with fixed smiles on their faces. Her hand was held close in his.
In Mr. Madigan’s parlor, over a glass of whiskey and water, the bargain was clinched. Renny wrote a check. Just as he signed it, Cousin Malahide was shown into the room. A beaming smile illumined his sallow face. In his soft voice, that the Whiteoaks had called oily, he greeted Renny like a loved brother. Obviously he was to get a commission on the sale of the horse.
The two had not met since Renny was twenty years old. Then there had been a feud between them. Renny could not have believed Malahide would look so familiar. The greatest change was the white hair, which gave him a look of benevolence contradicted by his cynical lips.
“Dear boy,” said Malahide, “how glad I am to see you! What recollections you bring of my happy time at Jalna! Then your grandmother was alive. She was my idea of what a woman of noble breeding should be — the truth is, I loved her! Though she was eighty and I half that age!”
He exclaimed at Adeline’s resemblance to her great-grandmother and bent and kissed her. A quiver ran through Adeline. She had heard too much against Cousin Malahide not to hate him at first sight. She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand.
Malahide drew Dermot and Renny aside when there came an opportunity and smiled into their faces. Renny thought, “One would think we were conspirators, and in some dirty business too — instead of buying a horse in an ordinary and decent way.”
Malahide lisped — “I think this is one of the best days’ work we’ve ever done. I’m sure you have a winner there, Renny. You’ll make a lot of money out of that horse. All I ask for my trouble is your success. I do hope you and your daughter can come to lunch with us. And of course Cousin Dermot.” He laid his arm about the old man’s shoulders and drew him close. “A good talk with him is one of the few pleasures I have left.”
A hangdog look came into Dermot’s eyes. He raised them appealingly to Renny’s. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Do you want to have lunch with Malahide, Renny?”
Renny didn’t, but he hated to go back to Jalna and say he hadn’t. The uncles would want to know all about Malahide’s home life. He agreed to go. Dermot gave him a look of whimsical despair when he heard this but, when Malahide pressed him to come too, he accepted the invitation. Mr. Madigan and the groom helped him onto his horse.
Renny watched Johnny the Bird being led away with pride in the thought that he now owned him.
“Look,” he said to Adeline, “how his hind legs stride past his forefeet as he walks. That’s a sure sign of stamina.”
She stood with folded arms, forehead puckered into an imitation of the corrugations on her father’s weather-beaten brow, her mouth pursed into a firm red bud.
“If she were ten years older,” said Malahide, “I should wish nothing better for my son than that he should marry her.”
“Her father would have something to say to that,” said Dermot.
Malahide flushed. “My son is good enough for any girl living,” he said. “Indeed I might well hesitate to let my son marry one of the Whiteoak clan, for they are barbarians, if ever there were.”
Mrs. Court evidently expected them. She had the air of being dressed for an occasion and she met them at the door. She looked at Renny with interest, for in all her married life she had heard him more abused and vilified than anyone else.
Adeline was the centre of interest and liked it. Her eyes swept Mrs. Court, and the room they were in, with a keener perception than Renny’s. She saw that Mrs. Court’s dress was “funny” and did not fit like her mother’s clothes did. She saw her shabby shoes and her uncared-for hands. She saw the satin covers splitting from the cushions, the holes in the carpet, the wallpaper in patches of damp. She did not see these things with the cold disparaging gaze of the precocious child, but simply as a part of the scheme of life that was opening up before her. Some people and places were like this, some like that; all were, in a kind of way, right. There was a faded elegance in the house that pleased her.
But her poise was shaken when lunch was served. Never in her life had she seen so little food on a table and never had she been hungrier. Dermot Court had a small appetite and seemed satisfied. Malahide minced over his plate and never stopped talking. He was an entertaining talker. He had been everywhere and done everything but his conversation was of a sly, slanting sort that repelled a child’s interest. Adeline could think only of how her stomach was struggling to clasp her backbone and how it clamoured for more after each morsel she gave it. When the servant held the dish of green peas beside her (Mrs. Court had already refused them) Adeline calculated that, with three men to follow her, she must not take more than twelve peas. When the sweet appeared her spirits rose, for it looked a huge mound. But it turned out to be beaten white of egg flavoured with fruit juice and there was no body to it. She raised her eyes to her father’s and found his gleaming with amusement while he took a bit of froth d
aintily on the tip of his spoon.
Malahide was as good as his word, possibly for the first time in his life, concerning the portrait of the elder Adeline as a child. He might have found it convenient to forget the promise but he had truly had a great admiration for his kinswoman and here was her great-granddaughter, enough like the portrait to be its subject.
As they stood before it he said — “When Finch was here I told him I was going to give this to you and, now that I’ve seen Adeline, I’m not only resigned to parting with it, I’m delighted.” He placed Adeline beneath the portrait. Like a showman he gave a flourish of his hand.
“It might be she!” he exclaimed.
“By Judas,” exclaimed Renny, “was that Gran? I’ve never heard of the picture. Strange that my uncles never mentioned it to me.”
“They didn’t see it. I always hid it when any of your family were about. I was afraid they would ask for it and that I, being incurably generous, would give it. But now it’s little Adeline’s by right and she shall have it.” He removed the picture from the wall and placed it in Adeline’s arms. “Take it, my dear, and may you have as long a life as your great-grandmother, with the same zest for it.”
Mrs. Court saw that the back of the picture was draped in cobwebs. She opened a drawer, took out a duster, and possessed herself of the portrait. She began thoroughly to dust it. Its removal had left a damp, yellowish square on the wall, many shades lighter than the surrounding area.
Renny was strangely touched. Looking at the little face smiling from the tarnished frame, he felt tears behind his eyes.
“Thank Cousin Malahide, Adeline,” he said.
Adeline embraced Malahide with all her strength. He had leant down to receive her embrace but was not prepared for its primitive onslaught.
“Easy on, old lady,” cautioned Renny. He caught Malahide in time to keep him from toppling over and, at the same moment, gripped his hand. “Thank you,” he said. “We deeply appreciate your doing this. My uncles will love having the portrait.”
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 123
