Books 13-16: Return to Jalna / Renny's Daughter / Variable Winds at Jalna / Centenary at Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  The thought of leaving her had been terrible but how glorious it would be to leave the school he hated, to be free from the strain of riding horses he feared, helping to school polo ponies under his father’s critical eye, pretending he liked to ride when even the horses were aware of his fear and made the most of that awareness. And it would get worse as time went on, not better. It had been a shadow constantly darkening his days.

  Uncle Renny had taken him into the hall and had said, when they were alone, “Now, what is it you would like to ask me?”

  He had twisted his fingers together and whispered, “Uncle Renny, will you please not tell Daddy what I’m going to ask?”

  “May I drop dead if I do,” had been the answer.

  “Well —” he had got out haltingly, “I want to know if I’ll have to ride to hounds or school polo ponies.”

  Uncle Renny had reassured him. He was to do just as he pleased, never mount a horse during the whole visit unless he wanted to. And he had said, “I’ll do it. I’ll go. Tell Daddy.” Then he had run swiftly up the stairs to this very room. How far away it now seemed, like a dream. But what he had heard pass between his parents, after Uncle Renny had gone, stood out with terrible clarity. They had just closed the front door after him. He had heard his father say, with an exasperated note in his voice:

  “I don’t want you to think for a moment that I’m urging this. I don’t want to part with Mooey — except for a visit. But you look as though you were giving him up forever.”

  Then her voice had come, a voice choked by tears. “I am! I know I am. And another thing — you don’t love Mooey! You never have!” Yes, she had said that, her voice coming up clearly and loudly to where he was standing shivering in his pyjamas.

  There had been silence for a space, then his father had almost shouted, “That’s a lie! I’ll not let him go! I’ll go right upstairs and tell him not to go!” He had begun to run up the stairs but she had run after him and stopped him. She had burst into tears and sobbed:

  “I didn’t mean it, Piers! I don’t know what made me say such a thing. I want him to go to Cousin Dermot. I know he’ll have a lovely time — poor little boy!” They had gone downstairs again and he had got into his bed.

  Now he was back in that room again. Nook and Philip were staring at him. Nook asked politely, “Shall we bring up your trunk?”

  “Yes,” agreed Maurice, “we had better bring it up.”

  They ran down the stairs together and dragged the steamer trunk from the back of the car. With puffings and gruntings on the part of the small boys they carried it to Maurice’s room. Maurice wandered about looking at the things that were so strangely familiar. Pheasant’s voice came from below. “Wash your hands, boys, and come straight down.” They could smell bacon frying.

  Nook and Philip stood respectfully watching him from the doorway of the bathroom while he washed. Maurice did not know what to say to them. He was not used to small boys. They went soberly down the stair.

  “Now,” said Pheasant, when they stood about the table, “I’m going to put you in Daddy’s place, Mooey. You are the man of the family — till he comes home.”

  How pretty the dining room was, Maurice thought, with its gay curtains, the sun pouring in, the pretty breakfast cloth and vase of marigolds! There was bacon and an egg for Pheasant and each of the small boys but for Maurice two eggs. Nook and Philip looked on him with respect. He was a man.

  “Nook,” adjured Pheasant, “sit up straight and stop holding your fork like a shovel. I don’t know where you get such manners. Just look at Mooey! He doesn’t sit or eat that way.”

  Nook sat upright at once but it was not till Pheasant fixed Philip with a stern eye that he obeyed.

  “After breakfast,” she went on, “I’m going to take you to see Auntie Meg and then we’ll go to Jalna. Oh, Mooey, it’s so wonderful having you home! And just think what it will be when Daddy’s home! I can scarcely imagine the joy.”

  Philip put in, “Daddy’s got only one —”

  “Now, now, Philip. Eat your toast. Pass him the marmalade, Nook.”

  She was not hungry. She talked eagerly, her eyes drinking in the sight of Maurice sitting there. She could not relax.

  “what a time we’ve had,” she said, “running Jalna without any help to speak of! In the house, just Mrs. Wragge and she quite unequal to those basement stairs; she’s fatter than ever! And the two old uncles need a good deal of waiting on. Then there are the three children to get off to school. You should see Adeline, Mooey. She’s lovely ... Poor Alayne! The house would be enough to cope with, but there are the stables — twelve horses still — the stock, cows, pigs, sheep, and poultry! If it weren’t for Wright we’d have gone quite crazy. That’s to say nothing of the farmlands and the fruit. I’ve worked like a farmhand and I guess I show it.” She looked wistfully at him across the table.

  “You still look lovely,” Maurice replied, with a little bow and in Dermot Court’s own manner.

  “Oh, how darling of you to say that, Mooey!” She jumped up and ran round to him and hugged him. Oh, the feel of that brown head of her first-born on her breast once more!

  He put both arms about her.

  When they had cleared away the breakfast things Maurice, carrying a toppling load of dishes, remembered the formality of meals at Glengorman, the white-haired butler and his air of making even breakfast a ceremony. Pheasant led him into the living room and closed the door.

  “There is something I think I ought to tell you,” she said, in a low voice. “About Daddy.”

  “Yes?” He stared at her, startled.

  She took his hand and held it. “Oh, Mooey, he has lost a leg! I never told you in my letters. I couldn’t bear to. I couldn’t bear to tell you, when you were so far from home.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  Maurice did not know what he was expected to do. Cry? Turn pale? His father had lost a leg. It was a calamity. But so far away. He remembered Piers on two strong legs. He had stood strongly on them, as though it would take a great deal to knock him over. And now only one! Maurice said, in a low voice:

  “I suppose it happened years ago — when he was taken prisoner.”

  “Yes ... Oh, I’ve been terribly broken up about it … Of course now I’m getting used to the thought of it ... But it’s new to you, darling.” She put both arms about him. He breathed, against her shoulder:

  “I’m sorry.”

  She drew a deep breath. “Well, we will do all we can to make him forget it, when he comes home.”

  “Yes. Is he pretty well?”

  “I think so.”

  They separated and Maurice’s eyes moved toward the open window.

  “We’re going now,” said Pheasant, then hesitated and added, “It will seem strange to you not to see Uncle Maurice at Vaughanlands. Poor Auntie Meg and Patience are alone there now. You must be sympathetic but cheerful when you meet Auntie Meg.”

  “Yes,” said Maurice dutifully. He had not been much moved when he had been told, more than a year ago, of the death of Maurice Vaughan, his mother’s father. Pheasant’s children had always called him Uncle Maurice because he had been married to Auntie Meg. He had never seemed in the least like a grandfather.

  “It was very sad,” went on Pheasant. “He was ill such a short time. His heart, you remember.”

  “Yes. I remember.” But he had forgotten.

  “Auntie Meg has been very brave.”

  “Yes. She would be brave.”

  “Now we shall go!” Pheasant spoke cheerfully.

  Maurice thought, “I’m glad that’s over.” He asked, “Couldn’t we go to Jalna first? I’d like to see Adeline.”

  “No. Auntie Meg would feel hurt. Nook and Philip will want to come. Oh, Mooey, I do hope you will have some influence over Philip! He’s completely out of hand. There is no one here who can do anything with him.”

  The two small boys now came running in. Philip at ten did indeed look a handful to manage. He looked courageous
and self-willed; while Nook, with his gentle amber eyes and sensitive mouth, had an air of reserve and shyness. Pheasant looked the three over.

  “You’re not a bit alike,” she declared. “Mooey, you are like me, I think. Philip is the image of Daddy. And Nooky,” putting an arm about him, “you are just yourself.”

  Now they were in the car passing between fields of sunburnt stubble and orchards bright with apples. “This is home,” thought Maurice. “How strange it seems! This is my mother and these are my two brothers. My father has lost a leg and Uncle Maurice is dead. It’s as though we were a coloured glass window that had been broken and then put together in a new pattern.”

  Philip would put his hand on the steering wheel. “Philip, will you stop! You’ll have us in the ditch,” Pheasant said, but she could not stop him. It ended by his keeping his hand there. “You see I can steer as well as anyone,” he said.

  What a dusty car! thought Maurice. The windows grimy, mud dried on the wheels. Cousin Dermot would have refused to set his foot inside such a car. But it could go! In a few minutes they were at Vaughanlands, the low, verandahed house standing in its hollow almost hidden in greenery, in which the yellow note of fall was already struck. A bed of scarlet salvia and many-coloured dahlias made the background for a matronly figure in a mauve cotton dress.

  She looked more familiar to Maurice than even his mother and his brothers had done. Among the curving masses of foliage, Meg Vaughan looked nobly in her place. Her hair had become almost white and this set off her fine complexion and the clear blue of her eyes. She clasped Maurice to her breast and exclaimed:

  “Home at last! How you have grown, Mooey! Oh, what sad changes since you left! Your father a prisoner with a leg lost, your uncles gone from Jalna and our sad loss here.” Yet in spite of this sad recital there was a comfortable look about Meg. She did not make Maurice feel unhappy, as his mother had done.

  Now his cousin Patience appeared on the scene, a slim edition of her mother but with grey eyes. Maurice held out his hand but Meg exclaimed, “what formality! You must kiss each other. To think, Pheasant, that they both are seventeen — and practically fatherless!”

  “Mooey isn’t practically fatherless,” said Pheasant, almost fiercely. “Piers is likely to return quite soon. There is talk of an exchange of prisoners.”

  Maurice saw the flash of antagonism between the two, but turned to Patience. He said, “How you’ve changed, Patty! You’re a woman grown.”

  “You speak differently,” she returned. “I suppose you got it from Cousin Dermot. Is it Irish?”

  “Heavens, no!” cried Meg. “An Irish gentleman doesn’t speak with a brogue.”

  “I suppose you’ll despise our ways now,” Patience said, with a teasing look.

  Maurice was embarrassed. He could only say, “Oh, no, I’ll not.”

  “And you’re rich too,” she persisted, “and we are all so terribly poor.”

  Maurice was scarlet. “Indeed, and I’m not.”

  “Listen to the Irish of him!” laughed Patience. “Indeed and I’m not!”

  Meg considered Maurice contemplatively. “what a pity,” she said, “that you don’t come into the money till you are twenty-one! You could do so much with it right now.”

  “Yes, I suppose I could,” he agreed, still more confused.

  “Isn’t it a strange thing —” Meg turned to Pheasant — “that Granny’s fortune was inherited by Finch, a boy of nineteen, and Cousin Dermot’s by Mooey, a boy of seventeen! It doesn’t seem fair.”

  “I hope Mooey’s money lasts longer than Finch’s did,” said Pheasant. “It was shameful the way Finch’s money disappeared.”

  “Shameful!” Meg’s eyes became prominent. “what do you mean, shameful? I certainly never had ...” Suddenly she remembered that Finch had paid off the mortgage on Vaughanlands. It had been only a loan but the interest had been paid more and more irregularly, till at last it was quite forgotten. Meg concluded: “Anything Finch did for us he did because he wanted to.”

  “Of course,” said Pheasant. “I always thought Finch acted as though he wanted to get rid of everything Gran left him.”

  “And now,” put in Patience, “he has got rid of his wife.”

  “With all her wealth!” mourned Meg.

  “I’m afraid,” said Pheasant, “that Mooey will think we are very cynical.”

  “You may be cynical,” retorted Meg, “but I have only the welfare of the family at heart and always have had and always shall.”

  As she stood planted firmly, in front of the rich foliage of late summer, she looked the very spirit of benevolence and there was no one there to contradict her. Patience regarded her with amused devotion; Pheasant, in controlled irritation; Maurice, in admiration; Nooky, in wonder; Philip, speculating as to whether she would give him anything. She gave him a kiss and exclaimed:

  “He grows more like Piers every day! He’s the one perfect Whiteoak among all the children. Poor Alayne, I feel sorry for her, with that boy of hers!”

  Pheasant gave a sigh. “Well,” she said, “we must be off. The uncles will be anxious to see Mooey.”

  “Give them my love — the old dears! You’ll see a great change in them, Mooey. I doubt if they’ll survive till all my brothers are home again.”

  “I don’t think they’ve changed much,” said Pheasant stoutly. “I think it is remarkable how little they’ve changed.”

  “Remarkable — for ninety — yes. Quite remarkable for ninety.”

  “Gran lived to be a hundred.”

  “Men don’t endure like women. Heavens, if a man had gone through what I have! Well, he just couldn’t do it.”

  Again no one contradicted her.

  On the way to Jalna, Pheasant exclaimed, “She may have gone through a lot but — what care she takes of herself! And Patience is just the same. They do nothing to help, though we’re at our wits’ end at Jalna.”

  “Patience is a lazy lump,” said Philip.

  The car was entering the driveway of Jalna. The spruces and hemlocks stood close and dark. To Maurice it seemed not so much an entrance as a defence. The trees reared themselves to conceal the house, to protect the family. Not only the evergreen trees, but the great weeping birch on the lawn, and the oaks and the maples. The Virginia Creeper, nearing its hundredth year, now had difficulty in finding fresh space for its growth. Long tendrils were festooned from the eaves and dangled from the porch, swayed by every breeze, seeming in their avidity to reach for support down to the very humans who passed under. But, at one corner of the house, the vine had been cut away in order to make some repairs, and in that place the rosy red of the old bricks was prominent and bathed, as it were consciously, in the sunshine. Two old gentlemen were seated on chairs near to the birch tree. These were the two great-uncles, Nicholas and Ernest Whiteoak. Nicholas had a plaid travelling rug over his knees. He was somewhat sunk in his chair, his massive head well-thatched by iron-grey hair looking a little large for the body which, in the last four years, that is the years of the war, had considerably shrunk. But his shoulders still were broad though bent, his face because of its strong and handsome bony structure was still impressive, and his hands, which were his one remaining vanity and which he had inherited from his mother, looked the hands of a much younger man. His voice too had power, as he now called out:

  “Hullo, hullo, hullo, Mooey! Come and kiss your old uncle! Come and kiss him quick!”

  Now this was the expression which his mother, Adeline Whiteoak, had often used in her very old age and it annoyed his brother to hear it on Nicholas’ lips. Did Nick imagine that, by repeating expressions so peculiarly hers, he could live to be a hundred, as she had? Ernest could not help feeling annoyed but he smiled eagerly, as he held out both hands to Maurice, and murmured:

  “Dear boy, how you’ve grown! And how like your mother you are, though you have blue eyes.”

  Nicholas was rumbling on, still uttering expressions used by old Adeline, “Bring all the boys
here, Pheasant. I like the young folk about me.”

  His great-uncles had many questions to ask about Dermot Court and more especially about his last illness. Maurice could not recall those days without a feeling of great sadness. He wished he need not talk about them. The three boys had dropped to the grass but Pheasant still stood. Now she looked at her wrist watch, exclaiming:

  “How the day is going! And I have about fifty baskets of early apples to grade and pack. You two small boys must come and help. Mooey, when the uncles have finished their talk with you, you must go into the house and see Auntie Alayne and Adeline.”

  “This lawn,” observed Ernest, “badly needs mowing. I have never before seen it in such a state. The south lawn is no better than hay. It will take a scythe to prepare for the mower. I wonder if you would undertake to mow this front lawn, Mooey?”

  “Oh, yes,” agreed Maurice, doubtfully.

  Pheasant supplied the heartiness. “Of course, he will — he’ll love to. Come along, boys!”

  Nook and Philip dragged themselves to their feet and limply followed her. A quarter hour had scarcely passed when Philip rejoined the group on the lawn.

  “I thought you were helping your mother,” said Nicholas sternly.

  “I couldn’t do it properly,” he returned, and lay down. The front door of the house now opened and Adeline Whiteoak came out to the porch. She wore riding breeches and a white shirt. For a moment she hesitated, looking at Maurice, then ran down the steps and came to him.

  “Hullo!” she said. “So you’re back.”

  Maurice took the hand she held out.

  “Dear boy, kiss your cousin!” urged Ernest. The two young faces bumped softly together. “How firm her cheek is!” thought Maurice. “And as smooth as satin.”

  Nicholas and Ernest looked at each other as though to say, “what a pretty pair!”

  “Mummy had to take Archie to the doctor,” Adeline said. “It’s his tonsils. Roma went too because she needs new shoes. But they’ll not be long. Are you glad to be home again?”