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

by Mazo de La Roche

  Adeline tossed her mane of hair, burnished to red by the sun, caught Sylvia’s hand, and the two ran down the stairs. Roma blew a column of smoke down her nostrils.

  “Now you’ve done it,” she said.

  “Done what?”

  “Put Adeline’s back up. It doesn’t take much.”

  As though asking for comfort he said, “All I remarked was that I’d seen enough of horses.”

  “Oh, she’ll soon get over it. She’s very sweet really. Just a bit spoilt.”

  “I can see that her father dotes on her.”

  “And she on him! I love that word. Dote. I wish someone doted on me.”

  “Norman shows every sign of doting.”

  “Please don’t bring Norman into this conversation.”

  “I thought girls always liked to talk of the chaps they’re engaged to.”

  “I talk enough of Norman when I’m with Norman. His plans, his propositions. The big things he’s going to do.”

  “Don’t we all like to talk of ourselves?”

  “Not me.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “I’m not interesting.”

  “You’re very interesting to me.”

  “I wish I could believe you. But perhaps you’re one of those fellows who think anything in a skirt is fascinating.”

  “Have I given you that impression?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. When I’m with you I’m always thinking I’d like to fight with you.”

  Fitzturgis gave her an amused, a speculative look. She met it with daring and the warm yet challenging smile she had inherited from her mother.

  “This place, this family, are getting me down,” she said. “I’d like to go a thousand miles away. Or five hundred would do — perhaps New York.”

  Alayne came into the hall below, looked up at the sound of their voices, then, with an air of not having seen them, returned to the library.

  “She hates me,” said Roma. “Firstly because of something I did when I was a child. Secondly for being who I am. I’m the daughter of her first husband, you know, and I guess she hated him. He ran off and left her and I don’t blame him. I’d do the same if I were her husband.”

  Abruptly she said she must be going. They went down the stairs together. She departed, and Fitzturgis turned into the library, where Alayne was selecting a book from the shelves. When first she had come to Jalna there had been few books there — mostly romantic novels of the mid-nineteenth century, belonging to old Mrs. Whiteoak, and books on the breeding of show horses, histories of the Grand National and other great racing events, books on farming and the rearing of farm stock. But during the years of what might almost be called her regime Alayne had changed all that. Byron and Moore, old Adeline’s favourites, had been the only poets represented. To these Alayne had added many volumes of poetry, old and new, novels, works of philosophy, history, essays. It had been necessary to build new shelves to accommodate the books she had collected. It was not only in the library where her influence during the years of her marriage to Renny had been exercised. All over the house it could be seen. It was progress, it was revolution, and much of it had been painful. How many struggles, both silent and vocal, had taken place in the basement kitchen between her and the Wragges! There was the subject of the refrigerator. Should fruit be kept where its scent would taint butter and milk? Should the refrigerator be kept religiously clean or was a wiping with a dish-cloth now and again enough? Should mouldy scraps be allowed to accumulate in the bread-box? Should the good old English dinner service be put into a fiercely hot oven to warm? Should the dogs be allowed to lick the platters? Well — dogs had been licking platters in that kitchen for seventy-five years before ever she had entered it!

  By Alayne (and she had paid for this out of her own purse) a proper heating system had been installed to take the place of the huge old stove in the hall and the numerous fireplaces that had caused so much work.

  Cupboards that had not in decades seen the light of day had been emptied out. A vacuum-cleaner had been bought, though the servants much preferred the old carpet-sweeper that rattlety-banged over the rugs, dropping out almost as much dust as it took up. In some rooms modern pale-coloured wallpaper replaced the dark, heavily scrolled and gilded paper which many years ago had been the pride of old Adeline Whiteoak. Leaks in the roof, which formerly had been accommodated with a basin underneath, were mended, loose shutters made secure. Certain renovations had been opposed by the master of Jalna, yet carried through by Alayne. But there were others which he would not endure. Several ornate and ugly pieces of mid-Victorian furniture which she considered out of place beside the fine old Chippendale, Renny tenaciously clung to and would not have banished.

  He refused to have the Virginia creeper that draped the house kept in decent restraint. It seemed to Alayne that the rugged vine, whose stock was thick as a man’s arm, laughed at her — laughed and sent out fresh tendrils to take possession of every spot where a vine could cling. Every autumn its fallen leaves clogged the eaves, so that they overflowed and there was flooding in the basement. Small birds built nests in the vine, innumerable bees hummed in it, it climbed the chimneys and festooned them. There was a time when Alayne forgave the Virginia creeper all its tenacity. That was when the first frosts had touched it. Then it flamed into extraordinary beauty. It became a gorgeous tapestry of scarlet, mahogany red, and golden russet. For weeks it enveloped the house in glory, then abruptly, on a night of gales, its cloak would be cast and the naked vine would be revealed in its countless veinings against the dim brick walls.

  It seemed to Alayne that the long yellow velour curtains at the windows of dining-room and library with which Renny refused to part laughed at her. As they heavily undulated in the warm summer breeze they seemed to say, “We shall hang here when you are gone.” In truth she sometimes felt that the very essence of the house was antagonistic to her, and this was her mood when Fitzturgis now came into the room. He stood in the doorway, smiling a little, and said:

  “I’m interrupting you. I’ll go.”

  “No, no — please come in.” Her smile was warmly welcoming. There was no one whom she would have welcomed at that moment but Fitzturgis. There was in him some quality that appealed to her sense of aloneness, as though they two, under certain circumstances, might be in the same boat together. Doubtless the fact that he was to marry into the Whiteoak family had something to do with this feeling. Yet, too, there was something else. She felt that though she was so many years older than he she could talk to him, meet him on his own ground, as could no one else in the family. She was many years older than he, but when she was with him she felt almost his contemporary. He had experience of the world outside that circle which she still at times found stifling. There was in him, she thought, a potential intellectuality which she longed to cultivate. There was in him a dark, underlying something she could not or would not have named that puzzled yet attracted her. It was plain that he liked to be with her. Already there had grown between them an understanding that required no words.

  Now she said, feeling it to be the proper thing to say, “I like your sister so much.”

  “It’s very kind of you to have her here,” he said.

  She went on more warmly, “I can see how fond Adeline is of her. It is a good beginning.”

  He said with a rueful smile, “I’m in Adeline’s black books.”

  “Goodness — am I to know why?”

  “It’s because I said I’d seen enough of horses for today. They’ve gone to the stables.”

  Alayne gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “Adeline is so like her father.”

  “I wish,” he said boldly, “that she were just a little like you.”

  She smiled into his eyes. “I should not wish anyone to be like me. Least of all a Whiteoak.”

  He came and stood beside her. “You find plenty,” he said, “to amuse you — in all these books.”

  “They have been more than amusement. Almost life itsel
f.”

  He had looked on her as happily married, but now he wondered. He was conscious of her interest in him and was flattered by it, warmed by it. He knew that Renny had not that day been quite pleased with him. Adeline had been openly displeased. Sylvia, in passing, had given him one of her scornful little smiles. He felt himself to be the bad boy of the family and reached out toward Alayne’s sympathy. What a lovely woman she was! The lines in her face were of experience, of character, he thought, rather than age. What had she found in that hard-riding, overbearing husband of hers to attract her? Surely the dead poet would have been more in her line.

  She took a volume of essays from the shelves and recommended it to him. As the book passed from her graceful hands to his their hands touched and they exchanged a glance which was to him intriguing but to her profoundly moving. She seldom met a man who interested her. She told herself how glad she was that she was to have Fitzturgis as her future son-in-law, yet a perverse pity for herself and for him ran tremblingly through all her nerves. Not since the days of her frustrated passion for Renny had she felt like this toward any man. Not that this present emotion was comparable in intensity, but it was enough to shake her, to make her call herself a fool.

  The front door stood wide open, and as Fitzturgis finally left the library and Alayne a fresh breeze was sweeping the hall. At the end of the hall, behind the stairs, was Adeline’s room, the room occupied for nearly eighty years by her great-grandmother. She was proud to occupy this room. Never did she find it oppressive or its furnishings tarnished and unsuited to her youth. All her life, she thought, whether her life were long or short, she would keep this room as it was.

  Archer, coming in from outdoors, met Fitzturgis in the hall. Archer’s fine fair hair was blown upright. A flicker of something that was almost a smile passed across his lips. He remarked, without preliminary, “I don’t wish to deprecate the intellect, but occasionally I find myself longing for the tough life. Funny, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” said Fitzturgis. “I hope you are able to gratify this longing.”

  “No. That’s the worst of it. I simply don’t know how.”

  “why don’t you confide in your father? He might help you.”

  “Mercy!” said Archer. “He is the last person I’d confide in.”

  Fitzturgis stood fondling the cluster of grapes and their leaves carved on the newel post at the foot of the stairs. “How smooth this is,” he said, “as though it has been much handled.”

  “A French-Canadian woodcarver came all the way from Quebec to carve that a hundred years ago. Do you consider that our family has improved or degenerated?”

  “Ask me that in ten years,” said Fitzturgis.

  “We’ll scarcely both be here in ten years.”

  “where are you thinking of going?” asked Fitzturgis.

  Archer, slowly ascending the stairs, said over his shoulder, “Oh, I guess Ishall still be hanging around.”

  He had barely disappeared when Dennis came sliding down the banister. Arriving at the bottom, he laid himself over the carven grapes. He gave a slanting look at Fitzturgis out of his greenish eyes. He said, “Your sister has been to see our new house — the house where I live with my father.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “My father,” said Dennis, “is a famous pianist. My mother played on the violin, but she got killed in a motor accident. I was there. Did you ever see anyone killed?” Now he sat upright, his hands on the bunch of grapes.

  “Lots,” said Fitzturgis.

  “where?” Dennis looked skeptical.

  “In the war.”

  “That’s nothing,” laughed Dennis. “That’s what they go to war for.”

  “You’re an odd sort of boy,” said Fitzturgis.

  “I resemble my father. He was an odd sort of boy. Auntie Meg says how proud they were of him. My father and I do everything together. When he’s on a tour he writes to me every week. He wrote and asked me to leave the summer camp early so he shouldn’t miss any of my company. He’s a widower. I’m his only child.”

  He now slid off the banister, walked rather stiffly past Fitzturgis out on to the lawn. He lay flat on his back on the grass. He plucked handfuls of it and scattered it over his pale handsome little face. When Fitzturgis spoke to him he did not answer.

  The Irishman went upstairs, and when he heard his sister come to her room he followed her. Casually they embraced, then she held him off, and with a smile half affectionate, half mocking, scanned his face.

  “Good,” she said. “You are standing the racket pretty well.”

  “Racket?” he frowned. “what do you mean, racket?”

  “I mean the turbulence — the living between hawk and buzzard of your life here, the working with Renny and Piers Whiteoak. I’ve met them both this afternoon.”

  “My past life,” he said, “has not been exactly tranquil.”

  “No one will be better pleased than I,” she returned, “if you fit in here.”

  “But you doubt it, eh? I hope you’re not doubtful of my love for Adeline.”

  “Indeed I am not. Adeline has a face a man might die for, and I don’t doubt she’d give her life for you, but …”

  “But what, for the love of God?”

  “There are other places beside Jalna.”

  “Are you suggesting escape? For me, Sylvia?”

  “For you both.” She said this quietly and simply.

  “Look here,” he exclaimed in exasperation. “You arrived just a few hours ago, yet you take for granted that you understand everything — understand us better than we understand ourselves.”

  “Anyhow,” she said, “you can’t say that that’s just like me, for I have never interfered in your affairs.”

  “No,” he returned with heat, “we have both been far too harassed by your affairs to think of mine.”

  She put out her hand to touch his. Her eyes filled with tears. She said, “Don’t imagine I forget all you’ve been to me … all we’ve been through together.”

  “Anything I have done for you,” he said, with a break in his voice, “I have done because I wanted to.

  “I know…. You may not believe me, but sometimes I actually writheto think of what I’ve put you through because of my damned nerves.”

  He dropped a kiss on top of her head. “You’re all right now, Sylvia. We’re beginning a new life.”

  “That’s just it,” she exclaimed. “A new life — and I don’t want us to begin by making mistakes.”

  “Well, you are making a mistake,” he said lightly, “if you think everything is not OK between Adeline and me.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I know you love and trust each other…. But it’s this place. These people.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t be so serious. That’s the trouble with you, Sylvia. You take things too seriously.”

  “Very well.” She laid herself down on a hard little sofa in a corner of the room. “We’ll not speak of this again. Oh, how tired I am!”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Rest yourself before you must dress.” He lingered a moment, looking down at her as she lay flat on her back, her chin pointing upward, then left the room.

  Adeline was on the window seat where he had sat with Roma. He put an arm about her and asked, “where can we be alone

  “Here,” she said, arid drew the long velour curtains in front of them.

  He clasped her to him. “I adore you,” he whispered, “and always shall. No one else in the world matters.”

  As they kissed, there was deep silence in the house, except for the croak the grandfather clock gave before it struck.

  “Can you say the same?” he asked.

  “A lot of people matter to me,” she said, “but you have the power to make me suffer.”

  “May I be cursed,” he said, “if ever I make you suffer.” Now the clock struck, solemnly, benignly, as though it had them all under its watchful care.

  IX

  The Occasional Tab
le

  SEVERAL HAPPENINGS OF importance to those at Jalna took place within the two following days. Adeline and Renny conducted Sylvia on a tour of the estate. As in any well-conducted tour, they pointed out to her every object of interest in orchard, farm, and woodland. Here was the spot where a magnificent horse, Launceton, who was capable of winning the Grand National, had died (by treachery) in the snow. Here was the hut where a queer old character named Fiddling Jock had lived before Jalna was built. Here was the pine wood where stood the primeval trees, sheltered, secure from the axe. Here, overgrown by grass, was the “old orchard,” the saplings brought from England by Captain Whiteoak. Some of the trees were dead but were the support of a tangle of the wild grape, the wild cucumber, the wild rose. (“Look out, Sylvia — there’s poison ivy!”) But some trees, moss-trunked, half-reclining, still bore fruit. (“And what a flavour, Sylvia! None of the new varieties can equal them.”) This was a sanctuary for birds and bees. (“Look out, Sylvia — there’s a snake! Ah, it’s only a little garter snake — and it won’t harm you.”) And here was the orchard of today, kept in apple-pie order by Piers.

  They led her beyond the borders of the estate to where a river flowed, and showed her the tiny house where had lived an Englishman named Wilmot who had come out on the sailing vessel with the Whiteoaks. He had been their dear friend and had lost his life in saving their small son Philip from drowning when he had come here to fish, though forbidden to do so. (“Daddy, I shall name one of my sons James Wilmot, in memory of him.”)

  Father and daughter vied with each other in showing Sylvia the sights. Never had they had such an enthusiastic visitor. Joy in the place made her spirits feel on holiday. She felt careless and carefree. These two, with their red hair and dark eyes, had the power to make her forget the thoughts that dragged her down, to turn a fresh page in life. Not in years had she had such an appetite for her dinner; never had she seen so much fruit.

  That same day Finch moved to his own house. He went alone, for Dennis’s room was not yet furnished. Meg and the two girls were to remain in her house till after the double wedding. Already preparation for this stirred the air. Two trousseaux were being made. Renny was to pay for Roma’s. Meg, an exquisite seamstress, was making pretty things for her. Alayne and Adeline visited the shops together.