After the long time of waiting, the passengers filed into the room where the passports were to be examined. Finch and Maurice stood close to Adeline like two guards, giving her no chance to speak to Fitzturgis. She looked past them, smiling at him, not caring. There was plenty of time ahead. Feeling important, a traveller, she held her passport firmly. She opened it then and saw the stern young face pictured inside. Maurice glanced at her coldly, accusingly. He felt that she had spoilt his return to Glengorman. How often he had pictured their arrival, their first days, when he would lead her through all the dim old rooms, revisit with her all the hills and valleys, the cottages of the peasants he remembered so well.
The tender came alongside and they went aboard. Everyone was anxious about his own luggage. Irish-American voices called out loudly. Adeline had never seen so many suitcases and trunks in such a muddle. She said, with a tremble in her voice, — “I shall lose all my best things! I know I shall.”
Finch and Maurice began anxiously to scan the disorderly mass of luggage. Though it was May the wind blew icy. A stout man in uniform put his hand on Adeline’s arm.
“It’s too cowld here for ye,” he said. “Get ye into the war-rm.” Gently he pushed her toward the saloon. Finch and Maurice she had got rid of. Fitzturgis was just ahead. She pressed forward till she was beside him. She touched his arm and said, — “Hello, Mait.”
He turned sharply and looked into her eyes.
“I felt you coming,” he said. His low voice went through her like the sound of a bugle and all her nerves sprang to attention.
“Isn’t it glorious?” she said, and held up her face to the wind.
They saw people crowding into the saloon, stout women, men in stiff suits, nuns, a priest or two. They pushed their way along the narrow passage, through another smaller saloon, past people clutching bundles, out on to the foredeck. A thousand waves were playing about the ferry, as though wondering what they would do with her. Seagulls cried out, then winged swiftly, as though in a race, or sailed with wings as still as marble.
Fitzturgis put his body between Adeline and the wind. He said — “We’re almost at our journey’s end. It’s been …” he hesitated and then went on quickly, — “one of the happiest times in my life.”
“And my happiest.”
“No, no, don’t say that.”
“why not?”
“It couldn’t be … except for one reason.”
The warm colour flooded her face. “And that is the reason, Mait.”
Finch came out of the saloon toward them, his brows drawn together in a frown, his sensitive mouth embarrassed.
“I’ve located your luggage, Adeline,” he said.
“Oh, thanks, Uncle Finch.”
“I suppose you’ve been worrying about it,” he said grimly.
“Oh, yes — I mean, oh, no — I knew you’d find it. Thanks so much.”
Fitzturgis said, in his tranquil voice, — “Quite a crowd on board. Two hundred they say.”
“Yes.” Finch put his arm about Adeline. “If you’re determined to stay out here, I must try to keep you warm.”
“We shall soon be there,” said Fitzturgis.
“We are to be met by a car. What about you?” asked Finch.
“I go by train from Cork.”
Adeline put in, — “Can’t you come with us in the car?”
Well, that was forward of her, thought Finch. If she were going to behave like this he wished he’d been in charge of someone else.
“There’ll be lots of room. It’s a big car, Maurice says.”
“Of course, it’s Maurice’s car.” Finch looked hard at her.
Fitzturgis said, — “I have business in Cork. And, in any case, I’m not convenient to Glengorman.”
“I thought you were quite near,” she cried, disappointed.
“No, not very near,” he returned, as though indifferently.
She gave him a mischievous look. (“He is not going to let Uncle Finch see what there is between us.”) She could not discover from Finch’s expression whether Maurice had told him anything. They stood looking at the approaching island, clothed in the pastel freshness of spring.
Maurice now joined them saying — “We’re about to land.” He gave an accusing look at all three, as though they made a conspiracy among them against him. There was a general movement toward the stairs.
Adeline’s fingers touched Fitzturgis. His hand grasped them a moment and held them fiercely.
“Mait,” she whispered, “we’ll stay together as long as we can.”
“Yes. As long as we can.”
Soon they were in the confusion of the customs sheds. The letter W was far from the letter F, yet they soon discovered that the porters were not slaves to initial letters. As some of them could not read they set down the luggage where it was convenient and left the distraught passengers to discover it. So it turned out for Adeline, pressing through the crowd in search of the immense brown suitcase which Ernest had lent her (“I would gladly give it you, my child, but I may need it myself, at any time.” As though he, poor old dear, would ever take another journey!) She searched most diligently in the vicinity of the letter F, and there by the counter that ran the length of the shed, she espied Fitzturgis standing with his belongings opened up in front of a customs officer.
She heard him speak and the sound of his voice drew her like a magnet. She stood beside him, looking eagerly into his face. “Oh, Mait, Uncle Ernest’s suitcase is lost. Have you seen it?”
“No, but I’ll help you search. Where are the others?”
“At the far end. They’ve lost things too.”
The officer was chalking something on the cases. Fitzturgis set them on the floor and took Adeline by the arm.
“We’ll soon find them,” he said.
They pushed their way among the baffled throng, dodged porters pushing harrows of luggage or carrying loads too heavy for them. One was very old for such work, one was very young and thin and ragged, but everyone was so good-humoured it made Adeline happy. The group of nuns had been met by a small, very efficient Mother Superior. She marched here and there giving orders to porters like a diminutive sergeant-major. The youngest nun was small too and extraordinarily pretty. It was plain that she had never been away before. She clung to the hand of one of the other nuns with the look, half-frightened, half-pleased, and wholly trusting, of a little child. When the older nun moved she led her so, a pace behind, glancing down at her with a proud protective look, like a mother with her little one.
“That little nun,” thought Adeline, “knows nothing of the happiness I feel or how amazing it is to be me.”
The cold draught that swept through the shed was beautiful to her. She thought no more about the suitcase but gave herself up to watching Fitzturgis as he intently examined one heap of luggage after another. She wanted to impress his every feature on her memory — the way his crisp curly mouse-brown hair grew on his forehead, his deep-set eyes, high cheekbones and full-lipped mouth. She had no plans, no feeling that could be called desire, only a wild wish to live and to exult in living.
At last the suitcase was found. Again Finch and Maurice joined them. Maurice was too much concerned about his trunks to give a thought to Adeline. One by one the trunks were swung up by a derrick and of them all his were the last. Before he had recovered them Fitzturgis said goodbye. There was regret in his eyes as he shook hands. He was conscious that their attitude to him was not as friendly as it had been. However, Finch said vaguely, —
“I suppose we shall see you before long. You don’t live too far away, do you?”
“About fifty miles. That’s quite a way in Ireland.”
They hesitated, looking doubtfully at each other. Finch raised an enquiring eyebrow at Maurice. (Adeline was willing, — “Oh, Mooey, please, please, please ask him to come to Glengorman.”)
“There’s my smallest trunk!” cried Maurice, and pressed to the platform’s edge.
The stout ma
n in uniform who had driven them back from this narrow platform half-a-dozen times again complained, — “It’s not allowed. Ye must get into the shed. Come, now, young lady —” and he took a pinch of Adeline’s sleeve and himself led her back. How willingly she went! Anything to be separated from her two guardians.
Fitzturgis and Adeline stood alone together in the crowd.
“Goodbye, Mait,” she said and gave him her hand.
He took it and held it. “I will come,” he said.
“How soon can you come?”
“I’ll let you know.” He paused irresolute, as though he tried to say something, then repeated his goodbye and turned away.
But she would not yet part with him. A space had cleared ahead of them. Suiting her step to his she walked beside him toward the main door.
“How soon?” she asked.
“Very soon.”
“We’ve said goodbye, haven’t we?” she said when they reached the door.
“Yes.”
A porter had engaged a car for him and it stood waiting, his suitcases inside.
“My darling one,” said Fitzturgis quietly, “I must leave you now.”
She held up her face to be kissed. He put his arms about her and their lips met. Then he sprang into the car and was gone.
She was in a daze till she found herself in Maurice’s old Armstrong-Siddeley, driven by the same Patsy who had come to meet him when he was a small boy.
“You’re not a bit changed, Patsy,” exclaimed Maurice.
“Och, I’m the same ould Patsy,” he agreed, showing a number of black teeth under a shaggy grey moustache, “but the place is not the same — with the masther dead and gone and you away off in Canada. It’s glad I am ye’ve come home, and everything clane and tidy for your welcome, though me missus says the curtains is like to fall down and the cairpets to break under yer feet, what with the moth and the rot.”
Adeline whispered to Finch, — “Listen to him — calling this ‘home’ to Mooey.”
“And so it will be, from now on. What a pity his mother could not have come to see him in it!”
“Yes,” she agreed, then added happily, “but we’re here to enjoy it and we shall tell her all about it … Look, Uncle Finch, a cart with a darling little donkey! I remember them so well. You know, the time when I was in Ireland before doesn’t seem very long ago, but what a difference! Now I’m grown up.” She added to herself, — “grown up — a woman — deeply in love!”
She mused on herself, at the change in herself …
When they reached Cork the streets were busy. But women with black shawls over their heads moved slowly in an ancient leisure. Over all hung the canopy of a clear blue sky and bright pale sunshine. They went into a restaurant and had buns and hot coffee to warm them. Adeline talked of everything she saw, yet her eyes were in constant search of that one figure. The family at Jalna were proud of their well-shaped bodies. They noticed, more than they should, the proportions, the carriage of other men. So Adeline had noted with admiration that Fitzturgis, though not tall, was admirably proportioned. Now where was he? Hastening along the road toward his home or somewhere in Cork? what would she not have given for just one more glimpse of him!
Maurice avoided her eyes. He would not be friends with her — not yet. Perhaps never again would their relations be the same. And yet, what was this little infatuation for Fitzturgis? Nothing more, in all probability, than a shipboard affair that would be forgotten after a week on land. But try as he would to be philosophic about it Maurice was much disturbed. Never before had Adeline shown a preference for any man. The callow love passages of most girls were not for her.
As the car moved along the country road toward Glengorman Maurice ceased to make response to Patsy’s recital of all that had taken place during his absence and gave himself up to the disappointment of his return.
“She has spoilt it all,” he thought, remembering how he had lain awake most of the night. “Last night — the night before landing — and today — the day I have so long looked forward to — she has spoilt them both. I’ll never forgive her for this.” He was conscious, in every fibre, of her sitting in the seat behind. He could hear her voice and imagined how, the evening before, that same voice had said loving things to Fitzturgis.
Perhaps too easily he felt himself living in the midst of uncertainty, felt himself slighted. He who should have been the proud eldest son, like his uncle Renny, was the son his father liked least. Nothing he could do, he felt, was congenial to his father. Even his mother, whose love for him was so palpable, had let him be sent away to Ireland when he was a small boy, to live with an old man she had never seen. She had, not long ago, confessed to him that it had nearly broken her heart — she had been persuaded by others to give him up. Maurice had not forgiven her. Even though the visit had brought forth the planned-for fruit and he had inherited Glengorman he had not forgiven her. Even though his years in Ireland had been the happiest of his life he would never forgive her. She should not have let him go.
Finch was remembering his last visit to Ireland and his reconciliation with his wife from whom he had been separated. She had sought him out, not he her. She had rekindled the dark fire of his passion for her. Dennis had been conceived. When Dennis was born her love had been transferred to him. She had thrown off her infatuation for Finch as a snake sloughs its skin. How different she had been from the traditional Irishwoman! She had been reserved, with a strange stillness in that white face of hers. Never could she have been called laughter-loving or gay. The very jet-black convolutions of her hair, worn long when other women wore theirs short, had a classic coldness. And how rigid had been her movements! Before they had parted for the last time the sight of her crossing a room had called forth an antagonism from him, yet with all this coldness, this rigidity, there had been the hooded passion of her secret nature.… And now she was dead and buried. How long had she been dead? Was it four years? Sarah dead.… He pictured her grave in the Californian cemetery and, for a moment’s abhorrence, what lay in the grave.… The country they were passing through was indistinct before his eyes. Dim curtains of colour opened, closed, melted into each other. Patsy’s voice came from the front seat but no intelligible words.
Now he saw the bare hills in their rocky greenness, the wooded valley where a stream ran, an empty mansion, with its roof burned off.
At last they reached Glengorman, passed through the stone gateway, along the drive to the house. Adeline was satisfied with the gargoyles above the door. That was as it should be. But she was disappointed because there was no line of bowing domestics to welcome Maurice, only Patsy’s wife, Kathleen, a wisp of a woman, not nearly so impressive as Mrs. Wragge. And what did she do but throw both arms about him and kiss him. “Just for ould times’ sake, when you were a darlin’ boy!”
Later Patsy said to his wife, — “There’s no nature in him. Hardly a word did he spake and him with all this waitin’ for him.”
“I’d respect him less if he chattered,” returned Kathleen. “He’s mourning for the ould rd, and right and proper it is. You must remember too that he’s part English.”
Lunch was waiting and, when they sat down at table, Maurice was in the heavy carved chair where once old Cousin Dermot had sat, Adeline on his right, Finch on his left. Beyond them the table stretched empty. Maurice was embarrassed, shy, proud, all at once. Here he was very much “somebody,” instead of a young unimportant member of a large family. Adeline was elated by the changes of scene, her eyes bright, as though poised to receive all that came to her. Finch’s dark thoughts had slid away from him, like seaweed from a swimmer, and he was ready to strike out boldly, to enjoy this freedom from the stress of life.
Maurice looking at Adeline thought, — “I’m a fool to let myself be troubled by that fellow. She’ll forget him in no time here.” His spirits lifted. Thoughts of his new free life crowded in on him. There were so many things he would do. He was freed from his father’s critical gaze that always
both angered and took the pith out of him. He looked forward to the day when Piers would visit him at Glengorman, see him as rd there.
“This house makes Jalna seem small, doesn’t it, Adeline?” he asked.
“Small? No. Jalna’s big enough. This is too big.”
“You think so?”
“Well, we have more land. You have only two hundred acres. We have five.”
“Children, children —” grinned Finch.
“what I mean is,” she said, “it is the land that counts. It’s rather silly for one boy to live alone in a house this size.”
“I shan’t always be alone.”
“Good luck to you, Mooey, whoever you choose.”
“All this means nothing to you, does it?” he exclaimed angrily, as though they two were alone.
“Everything concerning you means a lot to us, doesn’t it, Uncle Finch?”
“We’ve got to be very civil to Mooey,” said Finch. “He has us at his mercy.”
“Adeline loves to deflate one,” Maurice complained.
“So did Gran,” said Finch.
Adeline preened herself, tossing back her russet locks.
“It’s been a great mistake,” declared Maurice, “this telling Adeline how much she resembles Gran. She might have been a nicer girl …”
“Wait till I’m a hundred and you’ll see how nice I shall be!” she cried.
“I shall not be here to see. I’ll die long before you.”
“Of course you will. You’ll give up the ghost at the first creak in your joints.”
“And you’ll hang on, I suppose, till everyone is tired of you.”
“No one was tired of Gran.”
“People could endure more in those days.”
They were always on the verge of a quarrel.
Patsy came in carrying a bottle of wine. He said:
“This is a bottle of rare good wine, sir. I managed to save it when the executors locked up the cellar and all. It’s been waitin’ on ye all these years and ye couldn’t find a betther, if ye scraped Ireland with a small tooth-comb.” His little eyes glistened under his coarse grey brows.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 455