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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “I heard your voice, Daddy,” she exclaimed. “where are you going? To the stables? Hello, Mary.” She kissed the little girl with warmth and a certain possessiveness.

  Renny said, “Mary and I are making the rounds of the family, just to see that everyone is in their place and behaving themselves and to let them know we are on the spot if they want our advice or our help.”

  Mary looked important.

  “Good,” said Adeline. “I’ll go with you as far as the stables.” She wore riding clothes and already had been exercising her favourite horse. That was what had brought the brilliant colour to her cheeks.

  In the stable they inspected the foal — weak, rough-coated, timid of eye, but standing on his legs. A whicker of warning and pride made him move closer to his mother, who showed no sign of the ordeal of giving him birth. At this time she was the heroine of the stables. Nothing was too good for her.

  Mary sniffed the scent of clean straw and hay. She remarked, “It’s warmer here than outdoors. Why is it warmer here than outdoors?”

  “It’s animal warmth,” said Adeline. “It’s the healthiest kind of warmth.”

  “I wish,” said Mary, “that I might go to see East Wind.… He’s my favourite of all the horses.”

  Renny and Adeline exchanged a look over the child’s head. The look said: What an amazingly clever child she is. The things she thinks up!

  “He certainly should be my favourite!” Renny spoke with warmth, for all his present prosperity, so long delayed, was due to the prowess of East Wind on the racetrack.

  The thoroughbred stood now in his loose box, eyeing them nonchalantly. He was big, brawny, without elegance, but full of confidence. No sudden contingency alarmed him. He enjoyed racing. He had an impeccable digestion and iron nerves. Renny Whiteoak had spent a large part of the legacy from a loved uncle in acquiring East Wind. He had bought him in the face of bitter though almost silent opposition from his wife. And how well had that purchase turned out! The rangy colt had won race after race. Wealthy racing men had offered large sums for him, but a kind of stubborn loyalty caused Renny to refuse even the most tempting offers. East Wind’s place was at Jalna as long as he lived.

  It was this same loyalty that led Renny now to the side of his loved old mare, Cora. She was approaching forty years of age but was in fine fettle — her teeth tolerably good; her intelligence, so Renny thought, amazing. She loved him with the ardour of a strong, one-track nature. He now submitted to her moist nuzzling, her pushing and her nipping, giving her in return a playful cuff, as well as a kiss.

  After the visit to the stables, uncle and niece went down a path, through a ravine and across a rushing brown stream that not long ago had been frozen. Now it flowed only a few inches below the small rustic bridge spanning it. “I won’t walk across,” cried Mary. “I won’t! I won’t! I’m afraid!”

  “I’m surprised at you,” said Renny. “Every spring you see this little stream in flood. Why should it frighten you now?”

  “It never came so close before.” Mary looked at it askance. “It’s turned into something different. I don’t like it. I’ll get my feet wet,” she said, as though they could be any wetter. He picked her up, strode across the bridge with her, set her down on the other side. Happily she clambered up the path on the far side of the ravine. Passing through a bit of woodland in whose shelter the first hepaticas, the snow-white bloodroot bloomed, and the crows were cawing, they came to the small house known as the Fox Farm. Here lived Renny’s niece, Patience, married to a writer named Humphrey Bell. She opened the door to them and it could be seen at once that they had called at an unpropitious time. After kissing them she whispered:

  “Humphrey is desperately working on a radio play. He must finish it by evening. I’m so sorry he can’t come down. He’ll be sorry too.”

  “Okay,” said Renny, “if he’s not able to come down, I’ll go up and see him.”

  “Oh, no!” She tried to intercept him, but he was already on his way up the uncarpeted stairs that creaked at every step.

  When the two cousins were left below, Mary remarked, “I like television better than radio.”

  “I like radio best,” said Patience, “because Humphrey makes more out of radio. I do wish Uncle Renny hadn’t gone up.”

  “Shall I go up and tell him?”

  “Goodness, no. It’s very bad for a writer to be interrupted in his work.”

  “We’re making a tour of the family houses.” Mary looked important. “You are second on our list.”

  The two men now descended the stair together, their boots clumping in unison. Patience, who looked on her husband as an artist to be protected and cherished, searched his face in anguish to discover what damage this interruption might have done him. But his was an inscrutable face, principally because of his extreme fairness. He had narrowly escaped being an albino.

  “We’re going to have a drink,” he said to Patience and went to the pantry and brought out a bottle of rye.

  Patience and Mary looked on in a kind of speechless disapproval while the two men, having produced a completely masculine atmosphere, sipped their drinks and talked about the weather.

  “Have another?” Humphrey invited, suddenly looking carefree, as though he had not a living to earn and his wife were not pregnant. On her part she placed her bulk between him and her uncle, as though to protect him.

  “No second drink in the morning,” said Renny. “But this was just what I needed to warm me up.”

  “You never look chilly.”

  “It’s my colouring. Now younever look warm.”

  “I suppose it’s my colouring — or lack of it,” said Humphrey Bell ruefully.

  “Have you,” asked Renny, as he finished his drink, “noticed anything about my hair?”

  “Only,” answered Bell, “how thick it is and — how red.”

  “Uncle Renny can’t help that,” put in Patience. “I’m used to it and I like it.”

  Renny gave her a hug. “Thank you, Patty. However, this child tells me I am going grey at the temples. I don’t want to be self-centred like my poor old grandmother, but it came as rather a shock.”

  Was he being funny? Patience wondered. She said — “I had noticed.”

  “Had you noticed, Humphrey?” Renny demanded.

  “I had noticed,” said Bell, with the air of a man who says — I can face life as well as you.

  “But it was Mary who broke the news to me.” Renny’s dark eyes were fixed on the little girl with an accusing look that brought tears to her own eyes.

  “Give the little one a Coke, Patience,” said Bell kindly. He knew nothing of children but supposed it was the thing to do.

  Renny intervened. “No — never a Coke. My brother Piers said, when Mary arrived, she was never to see a comic or taste a Coke, and he’s stuck to it.”

  “Well, I’m awfully glad you dropped in,” said Bell, wistfully thinking of his work upstairs.

  “We are on a tour, Mary and I, of the family houses.” Renny put an arm about Mary and went on to inform her, “This house, as you know, was once lived in by people who bred foxes.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, thinking of those people.

  “Funny,” said Patience, “how the name stuck to it.”

  “No family has lived very long in this house,” continued Renny, instructing Mary as though in a matter of importance, “but all have been connected more or less closely with Jalna.”

  “Humphrey and I hope to live here a long while,” said Patience.

  “Of course you will,” said Renny cheerfully. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Well, Mary and I must be moving on if we are to complete the tour before lunch.”

  When the Bells were left alone together Patience took his hand and led him back upstairs to his study.

  “Poor dear,” she said tenderly. “Poor, poor dear! what an interruption! Your day’s work will be ruined, I’m afraid. I try so hard to protect you,” she mourned.

  He could not tell her
that she tried too hard, that all he wanted was to be let alone.

  He was a source of wonder to her. She would raise herself on her elbow in bed and brood over his face, as he slept, in mingled curiosity and delight. She had been brought up surrounded by males but they were uncles and cousins. Humphrey was different. He was an enigma. When she heard, on the radio, something he had written, she was almost overcome by pride and her desire to protect him from intrusions on his work. But Humphrey, hearing it broadcast, was ashamed to acknowledge that it was his. Still more ashamed was he of his lack of appreciation for her care of him, his longing to be not fussed over.

  Now he heard her go slowly down the stairs and he had a sudden fear lest she should fall. He ran to the top of the stairs and called, “Be careful, dear!”

  She looked over her shoulder. “Careful of what?”

  “Of falling.”

  “You dear old silly,” she said and plodded on down the stairs.

  He returned to his writing.

  Hand in hand Renny and Mary passed through a gathering of noble oaks, embosomed by evergreens, crossed a stile and were on a new path across a field.

  “That is a nice little house,” said Mary, “where Patience and Humphrey live.”

  “Yes, it’s not a bad little house.”

  “who owns it?”

  “I do. Why do you ask?”

  “Daddy says they should pay more rent.”

  “Well, I like that.”

  “Then why don’t you ask for more, Mummy says.”

  “Mary, you tell your parents that when I want their advice I’ll ask for it.”

  “Yes, Uncle Renny.” She felt rebuffed. She had tried grown-up conversation on him and it had failed. For a short space she plodded beside him in silence. She rather wished she had not come, and she was beginning to get hungry.

  “where are we going now?” she asked.

  He stopped stock-still to say, “Do you mean to tell me you don’t know?”

  She hastened to say, “It’s Vaughanlands, where Uncle Finch lives.”

  As they drew near the house that was built in a hollow, Mary timidly asked, “Do you own this too?”

  Gazing at it without admiration he replied, “God forbid.”

  “God forbids lots of things, doesn’t He?” said Mary.

  “what I mean is that I don’t like the style of this house — its architecture. It’s a new house, built to take the place of a fine old house that once stood here. It was burnt to the ground — do you remember?”

  “Oh, yes, and Uncle Finch built this new one. It’s pretty.” She saw the large picture window in the living room and, looking out of it, a woman wearing a white pullover.

  “That’s Sylvia,” said Mary. “Must we go in?”

  She was shy, but Sylvia Whiteoak came out to meet them. Mary had a strange feeling, an uncomfortable feeling about this new wife of Finch’s, possibly because she herself was so patently shy. Also she had heard it said that Sylvia had once suffered a “bad nervous breakdown.” Mary did not at all like the thought of that. It was mysterious, and Mary half-expected to see Sylvia come to pieces before her very eyes. Also Mary was becoming colder and hungrier. Much as she liked to be with Renny, she almost wished the tour were over.

  He was telling Sylvia about it. “You are the third on our list,” he was saying. “I picked Mary up at her own home. First we visited Jalna. Next the Fox Farm.”

  “How are Humphrey and Patience?” said Sylvia. “I like them both so much.”

  Even that simple remark made Sylvia seem strange to Mary. You did not say you liked or disliked anybody in the family. They were a part of it, so you neither liked nor disliked them. They were just there.

  “You are the third on our list,” repeated Renny, not noticing her remark. “After you we shall call at the Rectory — then to Piers’s in time for Mary’s lunch.” Mary wondered if that time would ever come. Her little cold hand lay acquiescent in Renny’s. She curled and uncurled her toes against the damp sodden soles of her shoes.

  “How interesting,” said Sylvia in her pleasant Irish voice. “But what is the object of the tour?”

  “It’s to make Mary conscious of the connection — the family bond that — well, you know what I mean. She goes to each of our houses in turn. She sees some of the family in every one of them. It gives her a feeling of what we are to each other.”

  For the first time Mary spoke up. “It’s a tour,” she said.

  “Now I understand,” said Sylvia, “and I’m proud to be included, even though Finch is not here. Won’t you come in and have a drink? I can make a quite good cocktail.”

  Renny looked at his wristwatch. “It’s half-past eleven. Too early for a cocktail. But I shouldn’t mind a small glass of sherry, if you have it.”

  Inside the music room that was dominated by the concert grand piano, Sylvia brought sherry in a plum-coloured glass decanter. The window was so large that the newly awakened trees crowded almost into the room. Mary saw how one maple tree had young green leaves and a kind of diminutive bloom, while the tender leaves of another were of a strange brownish shade, but in time they would be green.

  Sylvia was holding a box of chocolates in front of Mary. She took one but, when she bit into it, discovered that the filling was marzipan. This she disliked above all flavours. It made her feel positively ill, yet she had to swallow the morsel she had bitten off.

  “I had a letter from Finch this morning,” Sylvia was saying. “His tour is nearly over and I’m sure he will be thankful. These tours are so tiring!”

  They are indeed, thought Mary. She too would be thankful when her tour was over. She kept the sweet hidden in her hand. She could feel her palm getting sticky from the melted chocolate. She wondered what she could do to be rid of it.

  “Do have another,” Sylvia was urging her.

  “No, thank you.”

  “But surely you can eat two chocolates!”

  “Of course, she can,” said Renny. He took one from the box and put it into Mary’s hand. She bit into it and it was marzipan.

  “Thanks,” she murmured and might have added “for nothing.”

  She sat, holding the two chocolates in her two hands, while Sylvia and Renny sipped sherry and ate biscuits. At last, in desperation, she asked, “May I go to the bathroom, please?”

  “I’ll show you where it is,” said Sylvia.

  “I know.” Mary thought of how she had watched this house being built, before ever Sylvia had married Uncle Finch and come there to live. In the bathroom she put the two chocolates into the lavatory and turned the handle. A great rush of water swept them away. Not a decent little rush such as came at home, when you turned the handle, but a cataract like Niagara that swept the chocolates out of sight forever. But Mary’s palms were still sticky from them. She wiped her hands on a white damask towel and was troubled to see the brown stains left on it. These she folded out of sight and trotted back to the music room.

  When Sylvia and Renny were left alone she said, “what a shy little thing Mary is! It’s a wonder, with three older brothers. One would expect her to be forward.”

  “She’s very like her paternal grandmother. She’s named for her. She came as governess to my sister Meg and me. Then she married my father.”

  “I want so much to be friends with the children of the family,” said Sylvia.

  “There are only two. This one and Finch’s boy, but before long Patience will make her addition to the tribe.”

  “Finch’s boy.… Tell me about Dennis. I did not see much of him in the Easter holidays. Finch and I were busy settling in, and Dennis seemed always to be off about his own affairs. He’s not a very friendly child. Is he shy too?”

  “Quite the reverse. A self-possessed little fellow — small for his age. He’ll be fourteen next December and looks eleven.”

  “He has no resemblance to Finch.” Sylvia spoke wistfully. If the boy had been like Finch she was sure she would have understood him — sure that he w
ould have been easy to make friends with. Finch was such a friendly soul. Finch reached out toward people.

  “Unfortunately Dennis takes after his mother,” Renny said cheerfully. “She was a bit of a devil. You’ll make Finch happy. She only made him miserable.”

  Mary had returned to the room. She overheard these last words, from the strange talk of grown-ups, from which she shrank. Sylvia now took her hand and said:

  “You do like me, don’t you?”

  Mary despairingly searched her mind for an answer.

  “I like youso much,” went on Sylvia.

  She was at it again, talking about things that Mary preferred to keep private. She looked into Sylvia’s lovely pale face and murmured, “I think I must be going. Thanks for the nice chocolates.”

  “Have another.”

  Mary drew back from the proffered box.

  “Better not,” said Renny. “It’s her lunchtime. But first we must go to my sister’s. We’re making the rounds, Mary and I.”

  “Is she walking all the way?”

  “A walk like this is nothing to her, is it, Mary?”

  “Oh, no,” said Mary. “Are we going now?”

  Sylvia kissed her and soon they were outdoors again.

  Striding along the path Renny remarked, “That’s one of these newfangled houses. All very well, if you’ve never lived in anything better.”

  “I’d not like to live there,” Mary said stoutly. “I’d rather live at home.”

  “Or at Jalna,” he suggested.

  She agreed with an emphatic nod. She was suddenly happy. The wind had ceased, the sun come out warm and almost spring-like. Suddenly on a mound a cluster of trilliums rose out of the wet earth, their white blooms held up like chalices, as though they had that instant sprung up from pure joy.

  Renny and Mary stood looking down at them.

  “You know better than to pick, don’t you?” he said.

  “I’ve known that all my life.” She was proud of her knowledge of growing things. “It kills the bulb.… Is Sylvia Dennis’s stepmother?”

  “Yes.”