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

by Mazo de La Roche

  Sylvia asked, “Are there any boys of your age in the neighbourhood?”

  “I’ve had enough of boys,” returned Dennis. “I’ve been with over a hundred of them all the term.”

  Finch got up and gave his shoulders a restive twitch. He went and looked out of the window. The cool unseasonable weather had given way to glowing summer heat. The flowers, as though weary of waiting, had burst into bloom — had, with undue haste, matured.

  “The border looks well,” said Finch, “considering it’s been made so short a while.” His eyes were caught by a mass of pansies. He said: “You might go and pick some pansies for Sylvia. You’d like them for the table, wouldn’t you, Sylvia?”

  Dennis went off obediently. They watched him, as he squatted by the pansy bed. “How sweet he is!” she exclaimed. “Most boys would think it a great bore.” She added suddenly, “He’s very reserved, isn’t he?”

  Finch stared. “Reserved! The opposite, I should say. Too clinging. Don’t let him pester you.”

  “what I want is to be friends with him,” she said.

  In a surprisingly short while Dennis returned with a neat bunch of pansies. He marched straight to Finch and offered them to him. “Take them to Sylvia,” said Finch sharply. “Don’t be stupid.”

  Dennis laid them on the small occasional table near Sylvia. She gathered them up tenderly. Dennis’s eyes were on the table. “That table,” he said, “belongs to Auntie Meg.”

  To Finch it seemed that Dennis had purposely spoken of the occasional table because its ownership had been the subject of heated discussion at the time when this house was being furnished.

  Now Finch said, “It does not and never did belong to her. Can’t you go off somewhere and amuse yourself?”

  “Nothing amuses me so much as being with you.”

  Finch gave him a swift glance. Was it possible the boy was ragging him? But no — the small, cool face was gently reflective — the green eyes fixed on Finch’s face with longing. Sylvia took the pansies to the pantry to find a vase for them. Finch steadied his nerves and sought to produce a fatherly tone.

  “Look here, old fellow,” he said, “if you will leave Sylvia and me for a bit — we have things to talk over, you know — then you and I will go to Jalna to see Uncle Renny, who has been away ever since I came home. Will that be all right?”

  To Finch the fatherliness in his voice sounded hollow and forced, but Dennis smiled in pleasure.

  “How good you are!” he exclaimed.

  Now surely that was an odd remark for a modern boy of thirteen to make. It sounded positively Victorian. And the way he said it, with his small hands clasped against his chest and his eyes shining! It was almost funny.

  Anyhow he went, and Finch followed Sylvia to the pantry and admired her arrangement of the pansies. They were in two amethyst glass bowls. “One is for the music room,” she said, “and the other for Dennis’s room — if you think he’d like it.”

  “Good Lord,” exclaimed Finch. “If anyone had put flowers in my room when I was a boy I’d have dropped dead from astonishment.”

  “Then perhaps I’d better not.”

  Sylvia set the second bowl of pansies in the dining room. She felt oddly, purposefully happy, as though a new invigorating element had come into her life with the coming of the boy. When she saw him set off in the car with Finch to go to Jalna she called out, “Don’t be late for lunch, you two.”

  “We two,” repeated Dennis to Finch. “That’s the way it used to be, when we had the house to ourselves.”

  Finch stopped the car with a jolt. “Just what do you mean by that?” he demanded sternly.

  “I mean I’m not used to women.” Dennis had flushed but he answered with composure.

  “Of course you’re used to women. You’ve always had a woman in the house with you.”

  “Not in our new house.”

  “Now, look here, Dennis, you are to be specially nice and friendly toward Sylvia or — I’ll know the reason why.” Finch made no effort to keep the irritation out of his voice. He longed to enjoy his home without the pushing presence of this odd child. He had been an odd sort of child himself, but God knew he had never been pushing.

  “Oh, I shall be friendly all right,” said Dennis. “I only thought — ”

  “I don’t want you to be — well — pushing.”

  “Oh, I won’t be pushing,” said Dennis. “I know how to be quiet. Is Sylvia delicate?”

  “She was — once.”

  “How delicate? Did she have to stay in bed?”

  Without answering Finch drove on. Dennis glanced up shyly at him but Finch’s expression was enough to prohibit further questioning. Even a child would be conscious of that. With his hands, palms together, pressed between his bare knees, Dennis sat quietly thinking. It was as though he tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. But his very smallness, his compact paleness, made his presence more noticeable to Finch. If he had been a different type of boy, thought Finch, he would have been easier to ignore, or perhaps easier to get on with.

  But the boy’s peculiar presence seemed no barrier to Renny Whiteoak. They found him at Jalna, watching on television a horse race in Florida.

  “One of the best things I’ve seen on TV,” he said, turning it off. “They do horse races well.”

  “Don’t let me interrupt you,” said Finch.

  “It’s over.” He got to his feet, took Finch’s hand and kissed him. He had in him abundant power of enjoyment, though combined with it he was capable of deep depression. Now he was all pleasure in his brother’s return.

  “You look well,” he said, “for you. Was your tour a success?”

  “I had good audiences.”

  “How much did you make?”

  From this practical question Finch resolutely shied. He knew that Renny had done well with his colt, East Wind, but it was an expensive thing to maintain a racehorse. Perhaps Renny was short of money and was considering the possibility of a loan from him. However, that apprehension was dispelled.

  “I’ve had a good year,” Renny said tranquilly. “But show horses are my line, not racehorses.” He sat down and drew Dennis on to his knee. The boy looked confidently into Renny’s brown eyes.

  “How do you like having a stepmother?” Renny asked with his genial grin. “Has she beaten you yet? Does she make you eat in the kitchen? And sleep on the floor?”

  “I’ve just come. She hasn’t yet.” The boy laughed, his face close to Renny’s.

  “But she will,” said Renny. “Just give her time.” His expression was now ferocious. “I had a stepmother and she did all those things to me, didn’t she, Finch? Made me eat from the dog’s dish off the kitchen floor, while Finch ate from a gold plate in the parlour. Isn’t that so, Finch?”

  Finch nodded, without amusement. This teasing of Dennis, as though he were a six-year-old, bored him, but it was easy to see that Dennis liked it. He snuggled up to Renny, sniffing him with animal pleasure.

  “who’s he like?” Renny asked, studying the child’s face.

  “Certainly not me,” said Finch.

  “Nor her,”said Renny, referring to Sarah, Finch’s dead wife.

  “Eyes and hands,” Finch spoke almost in a whisper.

  Dennis blinked his eyes and spread out his hands.

  “I’ve been taking violin lessons at school,” he said proudly.

  Renny groaned. “Another artistic one. Oh, Lord, what’s the family coming to! Talent on all sides. Thank goodness, Adeline has none.”

  “I have none, Uncle Renny,” laughed Dennis.

  “Splendid! Fiddle away for all you’re worth — so long as you’ve no talent.”

  “My father is a genius,” said Dennis.

  “It’s time you went.” Finch could bear no more.

  “Clear out.”

  “See you later,” Renny said to Dennis, as man to man. “Go over to the stables and then tell me what you think of the new foal. Here’s Adeline. She’ll g
o with you.”

  Adeline had that moment come into the room. Greeting her, Finch was struck afresh by her beauty. This he remarked to Renny when they were left alone. “She’s really stunning,” he said.

  Renny agreed. Then, moving close to Finch, he said, “I have a wonderful scheme.” He fell silent, as though overcome by the splendour of his scheme.

  What was it — Finch wondered — to enlarge the stables? He hoped not. He would not put any of his hard-earned cash into that all-engulfing maw. He looked with curiosity into his elder’s eyes which, through all vicissitudes, had retained their brightness.

  Renny took his arm and led him into the dining room where hung the portraits of their paternal grandparents. He said:

  “Take a good look at them. What do you see?”

  But Finch looked at him rather than at the portraits. He thought, what is it in him that fascinates me? Is it his vitality? His zest for living? Yes — but even more it is because he is mysterious. That’s the quality in him that fascinates me. Yet he looks on himself as a simple, uncomplicated fellow!

  “Tell me what you see,” repeated Renny.

  With something between a sigh and a groan Finch said, “I see a handsome blond officer in the uniform of the Hussars, the uniform they wore over a hundred years ago.”

  “Yes — and the other?”

  “Well, of course, it’s Gran, when she was about twenty-five.”

  “who is like her — the very spit of her?”

  “Young Adeline — without a doubt.”

  “And who resembles him? who’s a chip off the old block?”

  “Piers, I suppose.”

  “Yes — but much more than Piers.”

  “who then? whatever are you driving at, Renny?”

  Renny gave a shout of laughter, that was not all pure enjoyment, for it had an undercurrent of defiance, as though he were expecting criticism. He said: “Just this. If we were to place my young Adeline and Piers’s young Philip under these two portraits, what should we find?”

  “A remarkable resemblance.”

  “Right. A truly remarkable resemblance. And what is the moral? The point of it? The point is that they should marry. Another Philip and Adeline!”

  Finch gave a brief ironic laugh. “It would be fine, if you could persuade them, but I make a guess that they’ve never thought of each other in that light.”

  “But they soon will. I’ll see to it that they do.”

  “You can’t make people fall in love, especially strong-willed, rather spoiled, young people like those two.”

  “I’ve every hope.” Renny spoke with confidence. “Already they admire each other.”

  “If it turned out badly you’d never forgive yourself.”

  “It couldn’t turn out badly, any more than the marriage of those two turned out badly.” And he cast a confident look at the pair in the portraits who, impersonal, elegant, of a different world, gazed blandly out of their gilded frames.

  “The boy,” Finch said, “is only twenty. Give him time to grow up.”

  “He’ll be twenty-one next year — the centenary of Jalna — the centenary of Uncle Ernest’s birth.… what a celebration! But mind, not a word of this to the youngsters.”

  “Have you spoken of it to Piers?”

  “Yes. He’s all for it.”

  “And Alayne?”

  “I haven’t mentioned it to her yet.”

  “She’ll never agree.”

  “And why not, I should like to know? why, it’s destined — ordained — there never was such a suitable match. All I wonder is that I never thought of it before.”

  “You, Renny — a matchmaker?” laughed Finch.

  “I’ve been making matches all my life. Successful ones!”

  “My dear fellow, this isn’t the stables.”

  “It’s thoroughbred stock.”

  “I can’t decide,” said Finch, “whether you’re a romantic or a hard-headed materialist.”

  “Neither. Just a man who loves his family.”

  “And is willing to subject them to risks?” But what use was there in talking? Finch turned away, and Renny turned to a high-pitched, somewhat acrimonious telephone conversation concerning the behaviour of a horse he had recently sold.

  Finch wandered through the house, so dear to him, and came upon Alayne in the drawing room. She was putting out of sight a china figure that she had always disliked but which the family cherished. Finch kissed her and said:

  “Ah, there’s the dear old shepherdess I’ve always loved. I haven’t seen her in a long while.”

  “Take her,” said Alayne, “I’m sure Renny would be delighted to give her to you.” She tried to put the figurine into his hands but he drew back.

  “No, no,” he said. “I couldn’t bear to take her away from Jalna. She’s always been here.”

  Alayne replaced the ornament on the mantelshelf, with a sigh of frustration. They talked of the concerto which Finch was composing. Alayne was the one above all others of the family with whom he could speak with freedom of his work, knowing that from her he would have sympathetic understanding.

  When he left he found Dennis waiting for him in the car.

  The boy gave his small sweet smile. “Isn’t it fun,” he said, “to be together again?”

  III

  The Promising Boy

  Piers Whiteoak and the youngest of his three sons stood in the green freshness of morning in the cherry orchard facing each other. Piers wore an expression of embarrassment, just lightened by amusement. Young Philip looked completely dumfounded. He really could not take in what had just been said to him.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Piers said, but kindly.

  “But — Dad — why — she’d never do it.”

  “That’s for you to find out.”

  Philip’s bright blue eyes opened wide. His mouth opened and his jaw dropped. His legs, which were as strong as two young pines, suddenly felt weak under him. He stared at Piers, who said, “You’re fond of Adeline, aren’t you?”

  Philip just nodded.

  Now very much in earnest, Piers went on: “Renny and I have talked this over. Mind you, it was his idea in the first place, not mine, but I agree that it would be a first-rate match for both of you. You’d be compatible. It would be establishing the family all over again — in a fine sort of way. Another good-looking, healthy pair — in love with each other and with life at Jalna. As things are going now, you’d have plenty of money to get on with. Not to be rich, certainly, but enough to get on with quite comfortably.”

  Philip found his voice. “But hell, Dad. I’m only twenty.”

  “You’ll grow up fast enough. This marriage would make a man of you.” A smile, with a touch of malice in it, lit Piers’s ruddy face. “Your brother Maurice would envy you. Adeline has refused him, time and again. He has told your mother so.”

  “She’d reject me too,” Philip broke out, almost as though he’d be glad if she did. “She looks on me as a kid.”

  “She’ll soon look on you in quite a different light if you approach her in the right way. You have no objection to the thought of marrying, have you?”

  Philip, looking like a beautiful, bewildered rustic, scratched his head and said, “I’ve always thought — well, I haven’t thought much about it — but always that I’d like to be head over ears in love when I married. As you were.”

  “Naturally,” said Piers. “But let me tell you this — your mother and I had a very tough time of it after we married.”

  “Did you?” Philip was surprised.

  “Yes. We had a tough time. Everyone was against our marriage.”

  “why, Dad?”

  Piers flushed. “Oh, I can’t explain. It was just what any young couple might suffer, when their family thought they were too young and with no means for marrying. But it would be quite a different affair for you and Adeline. Everyone would be delighted.… As for love — marriages are very comfortably arranged in Europe and wear better than
many of the love matches made in this country. You and Adeline would be bound to get on together. But — remember, I don’t want to urge you. Just think it over. And think how you’d enjoy being master of Jalna.”

  “what about Archer?”

  Piers gave a derisive chuckle. “Archer will never be what I call a man. Not that I mind a chap being studious or talented. Christian is artistic, certainly — but he has blood in his veins. Archer will never really enjoy life. You and Adeline could have a happy life at Jalna.”

  “Has she been told anything of this? Because, if she has — I can’t face her. I’d be too embarrassed.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Piers. “Adeline has been told nothing. But I can see that you’re not against the idea.” Piers lighted a cigarette, took a puff, then added, “Don’t let anything your mother may say prejudice you. She’s hopelessly romantic. But a man has to be practical in these days. Remember. Here is Jalna — right in your hand — if only you steer your course properly.”

  “Adeline doesn’t care a damn about me.”

  “You can make her care. Come, Philip,” Piers patted the boy on the shoulder, and gave his jolly laugh, “don’t take it so seriously.”

  “I can’t alter my nature,” said Philip.

  Philip found his mother in the pantry washing up the tea things. He took a clean towel from the rack and began to dry them for her.

  She slid a glance toward him and receiving it he burst out — “I suppose you know what Dad and I were talking about.”

  “Yes,” she said, “and it seems to me that a lot of trouble is being laid up for you young people.”

  “Dad told me you’d probably take it like this.”

  “who do they think they are?” she cried. “Arranging other people’s lives! Pushing them about like pawns! why — you’d think Jalna was a dukedom instead of just an Ontario farm!” Her eyes were bright with anger.

  Philip dried a cup and set it carefully on a shelf. He said, “I’ve heard that you and Dad had a chilly reception at Jalna after you married.”

  “Chilly!” exclaimed Pheasant. “Chilly! It was just the reception that any young couple might have who’d eloped and married without the consent of their people. But we were in love. We were desperately in love. Adeline’s a girl who might make a man miserable if she didn’t love him. Oh, Philip, I know you both so well, and I don’t want you to be rushed into a union you’ll regret — just to please the fancy of your Uncle Renny. Surely Jalna can celebrate its centenary without a wedding.”