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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “You look really elegant,” she said.

  “Good. Now let’s make the start.”

  Renny’s strong arm about his waist, he hobbled to the stairs. For many years he had suffered from gout. Alayne anxiously watched the descent of the two heads, one of them iron-grey that had never turned to white, the other that narrow head with its thatch of dark red hair, the sight of which always had the power to hold her. To Archer — who had appeared, it seemed, from nowhere — it was merely a question as to whether Renny would get the old man down without help. There was no admiration, no sadness, nothing of retrospect in his young mind.

  By the time the two reached the hall below, Renny was half carrying his uncle.

  “Steady on,” growled Nicholas, as though encouraging Renny. “We shall make it.”

  Now they were in the hall and making good progress toward the drawing-room.

  “Strange,” said Archer to Alayne, “how, when people are either very old or very young, they are always wanting to do something they shouldn’t do.”

  “So already you are a student of human nature,” smiled Alayne.

  “I have so much of it about me.”

  “But you should not be so critical at your age, Archer.”

  “It only proves what I say. I want to do what I shouldn’t do at my age.”

  “Don’t we all,” sighed Alayne.

  “It seems to me that when you’re not so very young or not so very old the trouble is that you don’t want to do what you should do.”

  “You do make things complicated, Archer.”

  “They are more interesting that way.” He drew aside the curtain of the window at the landing and peeped out.

  “There is Adeline and her boyfriend. She’s keeping him out of the way till Uncle Nicholas is settled in his chair. Somehow I don’t think the two of them look well together.”

  “Not look well together? why?”

  “I can’t tell yet. Later on I’ll let you know.”

  Alayne also peeped out. She said, “I think they look very well together. They look happy too.”

  “I wonder what it feels like.”

  “why, Archer, what a thing to say!”

  “Well, happiness seems so positive. I should think it would soon be boring.”

  Renny passed through the hall carrying a glass of whisky and water to Nicholas. He waved his hand to the two on the landing.

  “He’s fine,” he called up. “I’m just taking him a bit of stimulant.”

  A little later Adeline brought Fitzturgis to the drawing-room and he was formally presented to Nicholas, who laid down the newspaper he was reading and grasped him warmly by the hand.

  “I’m glad indeed to meet you,” he said. “I’ve waited a long while and began to be afraid I’d not have the opportunity.”

  Fitzturgis bowed over his hand with a deference pleasing to Nicholas. He sat down on one side of him and Adeline sat on the other. There was a moment of decorous restraint in which Nicholas inspected the visitor. Then — “And how did you leave Ireland?” he asked, looking as though pleased by what he had seen.

  “Much the same as usual — fairly content in feeling sorry for herself and blaming England for all her troubles.”

  “Ah, it’s a lovely country. I used often to visit my mother’s people there, but it’s years since I have seen it. You’ll find it quite a change — living in this New World. What happy, happy people we are! Just look, Mr. Fitzturgis.”

  “Maitland, Uncle Nicholas,” put in Adeline. “You’ll want to be called that by us all, won’t you, Mait?”

  “I shall indeed.”

  “Very well — Maitland,” Nicholas agreed and held his newspaper spread in front of Fitzturgis. “Now see what a happy people. In all these pictures of politicians, clubwomen, teenagers — have you teenagers in Ireland? — there is none who is not grinning. See these brides and grooms, Adeline. How they grin! How enormous are the mouths of the brides! Surely they will devour the groom when they are tired of him — just the way the female spider does! The only ones who have seriousness and dignity in our newspaper prints are the very young children who have not yet learned to grin.”

  “I see,” said Fitzturgis. “But are all those people really happy? Do their grins mean anything?”

  “I take them at their face value,” said Nicholas.

  “Archer,” put in Adeline, “never smiles.”

  “I can make him smile,” said Renny, and put out a hand toward his son, who eluded it.

  Rags sounded the gong. Nicholas, buoyed by the whisky and water, moved, on Renny’s arm, quite strongly to the dining room. Adeline whispered to Fitzturgis:

  “I do hope you like him. We think he’s a grand old man.”

  “He is indeed. And what remarkable eyes for a man of his age — for a man of any age.”

  “There’s where he got them.” She laughed and pointed to the portrait of her great-grandmother that hung above the sideboard.

  “And now you are the inheritor,” said Fitzturgis, with one of his rare, ardent looks.

  Nicholas saw that they were looking at the portrait. He gave a little bow toward it and said, “My mother — a granddaughter of the Marquess of Killiekeggan; and the companion portrait is my father, in the uniform of an officer of Hussars.”

  Fitzturgis was conscious that the eyes of all were on him, even the eyes of young Archer, as though to observe the effect of the portraits on him. It was as though they wanted him to understand the influence which these two people, long dead, still exerted on the lives of all at Jalna.

  Nicholas was saying, “I should like you to have met my brother. He sat next me at table here. He died — bless my soul, it will be two years in July.”

  Fitzturgis’s face clouded. He was not likely to forget that death, the summons to return to Jalna for the funeral in the very hour when he and Adeline had counted on days of enchantment in London. He said glumly, “I remember.”

  Renny shot him a look. What had the fellow in his mind?

  Nicholas was drinking his soup audibly from the cup. He set it down and wiped his grey moustache. “Ireland,” he said. “what times that name conjures up! what stories of my mother of her girlhood! And my brother and I had many a good visit there. Let me see — do you remember my cousin Dermot Court?”

  “I have often heard of him.”

  “He had beautiful manners. You don’t see such manners nowadays, though my brother Ernest had very good manners — hadn’t he, Alayne?”

  Nicholas was exhilarated by dining once more downstairs, and with the company as well. He ate his share of the roast lamb, new potatoes and peas. He praised the cherry pie. He was in a mood for reminiscence rather than for giving his attention to the talk of others. The eyes of Adeline and Fitzturgis met across the table. They were outwardly attentive but inwardly wondering what experience the future would bring, she striving toward its enrichment of her life, he trying to picture himself as part of this scene.

  A decanter of burgundy was set on the table. Its glow in the glass produced a brightness to all eyes, and Archer was moved to quote, “‘Dum vivimus vivamus.’”

  “I was in England,” said Nicholas, “in 1930. That year the Grand National was won by an Irish horse, Shaun Goilin. His dam, Golden Day, was at grass in a paddock in Ireland, and in an adjoining field there were a number of two-year-olds. During the night several of these rascals jumped the fence between and the result was Shaun Goilin. No one ever knew which colt was his sire, but it was a lucky bit of wildness.”

  “‘Qui capit —’”began Archer, but Adeline interrupted him.

  “For goodness’ sake don’t be always showing off,” she said in a loud whisper.

  He gave her an icy look, and Fitzturgis began to wonder if he were going to dislike his future brother-in-law.

  “Life,” Nicholas was declaring, “can only be understood backward.”

  “Quotation from Kierkegaard,” said Archer under his breath.

  Nicho
las continued, “Now I see so clearly all the mistakes I made and could have avoided.”

  “I don’t think you made many mistakes, Uncle Nick,” said Renny.

  Nicholas blew under his drooping moustache, emptied his glass and set it sharply on the table. “You young people,” he said, “have your lives ahead of you, but I shall soon be extinguished. I don’t mind telling you I shall be sorry to leave this world. I find it very interesting. But my marriage turned out badly.” He fixed his eyes on Fitzturgis. “Don’t let your marriage turn out badly. It’s a new experience for you. Be guarded — be guided — what I mean is — well, you’ve never been married before. You don’t know what marriage is.” Nicholas had quite forgotten that Fitzturgis was a divorcé.

  “I was married,” said Fitzturgis, looking steadily at him.

  “No! Really — dear me, then I shouldn’t have said that. Well, well, perhaps it’s better for you to have had experience. Not that mine helped me. A little more of the burgundy, please, Renny.”

  Renny, filling his glass, remarked, “We all are the better for experience. Divorce is of little account in this modern world.” He glanced at his wife to see if he had said the wrong thing.

  Her eyes were on Fitzturgis, sympathetic to his flushed embarrassment.

  Nicholas, fortified by more wine, now said to him, “I suppose your wife was an Irishwoman.”

  “No. An Englishwoman.”

  “Ah, I remember now! An actress. But I just cannot recall her name.”

  Fitzturgis burst out, “Must we discuss this now?”

  Adeline smiled across the table at him. “I don’t mind, Mait.” Turning to Nicholas, she said, “Her name is Georgina Lennox, Uncle Nick. She lives in London. She’s a friend of Uncle Wakefield’s.”

  “Ha, ha,” laughed Nicholas. “So — we’re all in the same boat. Alayne, Maitland, and I!”

  “O tempora! O mores!”observed Archer.

  “what of Wakefield’s play?” asked Nicholas. “Did it come on?”

  “It ran for three weeks,” said Renny. “I suppose it was a failure, but I thought it was pretty good when he read it to us, didn’t you, Alayne?” Wakefield was his youngest brother, to whom he had been a father.

  Nicholas turned courteously to Fitzturgis. “I regret,” he said, “if I have brought up a subject embarrassing to you. I am a very old man. My memory fails me. I say things I shouldn’t. But I’m not as bad at that sort of thing as my mother was, am I, Renny?”

  “It’s all in the family,” said Renny. “Maitland will soon be one of us.”

  Fitzturgis looked slightly rueful, but a smile flickered on his lips. “It’s all right,” he said.

  Alayne’s eyes met his. “A neCentenaryomer to Jalna,” she said, “has certain things to get used to.”

  “I suppose you too were very much a neCentenaryomer once,” he said, in a tone which set them apart.

  “Twenty-five years ago I was a neCentenaryomer.”

  Archer said, “I suppose I might be called a neCentenaryomer since I’ve been here only fifteen years.”

  “Very new indeed,” said Alayne repressively.

  “Yet I got used to things in little or no time. Now nothing surprises me.”

  Adeline said, “I pity your wife, if ever any girl is crazy enough to marry you.”

  “No girl will ever get the chance,” he said. “I intend to look at life as an observer. I shall leave it to you to propagate our kind.”

  The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Piers and his family, who always came early. After the introduction to Fitzturgis they crowded about the table, drawing up chairs as though for a meal. They were given a glass of port, Piers raising his toward Adeline and her fiancé with a little bow and a — “to your future happiness.” The two young boys, Philip and Archer, were alike only in their youth — both at the dawn of life — but Philip was as a radiant rosy dawn, while Archer was a pale and frosty one with a penetrating air.

  Philip, with a loving look at Renny, said, “Uncle Renny is going to leave Jalna to me, aren’t you, Uncle Renny?”

  “I might do worse,” said the master of Jalna, with a teasing look at his wife and son.

  Young Philip raised his eyes to the portrait of his ancestor. “Another Philip Whiteoak in possession, that would be.”

  “And the very spit and image of the first one,” said Renny.

  “No more than I am,” said Piers.

  Archer said imperturbably, “It wouldn’t worry me, as I shouldn’t know what to do with Jalna if I had it.”

  Renny looked at him aghast. “You mean to say you wouldn’t mind?” he exclaimed.

  “Of course he’d mind,” said Alayne, in defence of the interests of her son.

  “Well, I am attached to the place,” said Archer, “if that’s what you mean, but I am attached to it only because I’m used to it.”

  “Then I suppose,” said Renny, “that you’re attached to your mother and me for no more than the same reason.”

  “I guess that’s natural,” said Archer. “I guess you’re attached to me for the same reason. You’d scarcely have chosen me for a son if you’d been given a choice, would you?”

  “Philip,” Renny slapped him on the shoulder, “Jalna will be yours.”

  “We’ll hold you to that,” said Piers.

  Alayne smiled kindly at Philip. “Of course you realize that your uncle was joking,” she said.

  “No joking about it,” insisted Piers. “We’ll hold him to it. I call you to witness, Fitzturgis.”

  “It’s too early for me to commit myself,” he said. “On either side.”

  “I call you to witness,” repeated Piers, and Philip went round behind Renny’s chair and laid an arm about his shoulders.

  Pheasant’s eyes were on Adeline and Fitzturgis. Romantically she was considering their suitability to each other. “His is the face of experience,” she thought. “Adeline’s is the face of character. Her face is the warmer, the fierier. His the more sensitive. She will be able to forget herself. He will forget himself — never. Except where his senses are concerned.”

  “Well, Pheasant,” said Renny. “Will he do?” He smiled at Fitzturgis. “She’s sizing you up. She’s of an analytical turn of mind.”

  “And usually wrong,” said Piers. “when she declares someone is trustworthy I hide my wallet.”

  Nicholas asked, “where are Meg and the girls?” Then, imitating his ancient mother, added, “I like the young people about me.”

  “We used,” Renny said to Fitzturgis, “to have a tableful in the old days. As well as those you now see we had my three younger brothers — Eden, Finch, and Wakefield. Eden died, poor chap; Finch is a pianist, now off on tour; Wakefield is an actor in London.”

  “Was I here?” asked Archer.

  “Your type had not yet been invented,” answered his father.

  Adeline spoke up: “Auntie Meg and Patience are at the door.”

  The two alighted from a ten-year-old Ford car and came straight into the dining room. Meg exclaimed with delight on seeing Nicholas at table. Patience was wearing a sleeveless white dress which showed to advantage her shapely brown arms.

  “where is the other one?” demanded Nicholas. “Eden’s little girl?”

  “Oh, she’s off somewhere with her young man,” Meg answered, trying to sound bright.

  “who is he? I don’t remember him.”

  “His name is Norman.”

  “Hm — don’t remember him.” Nicholas blew through his moustache. “Getting terribly forgetful. Can’t remember who the little girl’s mother was.” He looked to Alayne for help.

  She rose. “I think we will go to the drawing-room for coffee,” she said.

  “Drawing-room for coffee!” muttered Nicholas, as he was being heaved to his feet. “All these newfangled ideas.”

  “We have been doing it for the past twenty-five years,” she returned crisply.

  He stretched out a trembling hand to pat her shoulder.
“You’ve been wonderful, Alayne.”

  As Fitzturgis and she passed through the door she said, “You mustn’t mind anything Uncle Nicholas says. He is really a dear and quite excited at being downstairs again. Your coming has done him good.”

  He gave her an admiring look. “I am very happy to be here,” he said. “In fact Jalna is just what I expected it to be.”

  In the porch, two hours later, Adeline isolated Nooky. “Tell me,” she demanded, “what you think of him. Do you like him?”

  “I hated him on sight.”

  “Oh, Nooky — I am disappointed.”

  “That’s nothing. I mean my hating him. I naturally hate the fellows you girls pick out. I hate Norman.”

  “Norman,” she repeated, in an excess of scorn. “But Mait is utterly different.”

  “Yes — he seems well enough.”

  “Oh, Nooky, you arehorrid.”

  “Christianto you.”

  “when did you go formal with me?”

  “when you got engaged to Mr. Fitzturgis.”

  “But you must acknowledge he’s a thousand times more attractive than Norman.”

  “Patience and Roma probably wouldn’t agree to that.”

  “I’m becoming very disappointed in you, Christian.”

  “And I am disappointed in you. I wanted you to marry Maurice.’

  “There never was anything between Maurice and me.”

  “Excepting that he loves you.”

  “He’s over all that.”

  “I hope so. Are Maitland and he friendly?”

  “Mait admires Maurice.”

  Patience now joined them in the porch. She laid an arm about the shoulders of each. She said:

  “I’ve been talking to your Irishman, Adeline, and I do like him. He seems awfully intelligent. He’s a bit older than I expected.”

  “I’m not interested in youths.”

  “Should you call me a youth?” asked Christian.

  “Well, I think you are rather old for your years.”

  “I wonder what Maitland will think of Roma,” Patience said, as though she could not keep her mind off Roma.

  “I expect she’ll bore him,” said Adeline, in happy assurance.