Centenary at Jalna

Page 1

by Mazo de La Roche

Table of Contents

Return to Jalna One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Renny's Daughter One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Variable Winds at Jalna One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Centenary at Jalna One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Return

to

Jalna

MAZO DE LA ROCHE

DUNDURN PRESS

TORONTO

To Betty and Daniel Macmillan in friendship

I

YOUNG MAURICE’S RETURN

IT WAS MORE than four years since Maurice Whiteoak had left his native land and now he was once more within its borders. Then he had sailed by passenger ship from Halifax to Côbh. He had returned in plane and warship by way of Portugal and New York. He smiled as he considered the change wrought in him by those four years in Ireland. He was a different being, he thought, from the child of thirteen who had gone to live with Cousin Dermot. How timid he had been then! The very marrow of him had shuddered as he had stood waiting with the maid in the hall while old Dermot Court had interviewed Wright, in whose charge Maurice had been. When Wright had come out of the room he had winked at Maurice as they passed and whispered, “I hope you’ll like the old boy better than I do.”

Maurice had slowly but steadily entered the room where Dermot was waiting. Dermot had looked very old, sitting there in the high-backed chair, but his voice had been strong and his handclasp warm. Maurice clearly remembered the first words they had exchanged.

“How do you do?” Dermot had said.

“Quite well, thank you, sir,” he had answered. And the conversation had continued, “I hear you were seasick coming across.”

“A little. After that it was fine.”

Then Dermot had given him a penetrating look and asked, “Do you think you can bear to visit me for a while?”

“Yes. I’m sure I can.” His own voice had sounded very small and wavering even to himself.

“Remember,” — Dermot had continued — “if you don’t like me you may go home whenever you choose.”

“Mummy told me that.”

“But I’ll say this for myself — I’m not hard to get on with. Some of the Courts were, you know.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Dermot Court had laughed. “Your great-grandmother was among ’em,” he had said. “But of course you don’t remember her.”

Maurice had been terribly homesick on that first night in Ireland, but the next day had been warm and sunny; Dermot had shown him the lawns, smooth as bowling greens, the yews clipped into fanciful shapes, the lodge embowered in ivy, the pasture where the mares and their colts grazed. Later, by himself, Maurice had crossed the bluish green fields and climbed the hill, from where he had a glimpse of the sea. It was all so different from his own home.

Jalna had seemed very old to him. The house had been built almost ninety years ago, but ninety years was as nothing in this place. Surely those gnarled oak trees were as old as the Druids! At home he had been the eldest of three small brothers. His father had been sharp with him. At Cousin Dermot’s he became the young, tender, cherished heart of the house, the apple, as everyone said, of the old man’s eye.

At the end of his first summer in Ireland the war had come. It had now been going on for four years. In spite of all the letters from home Maurice had felt remote from the war, as Cousin Dermot felt remote from it. Even when his father and his uncles had gone overseas to fight, even when he had heard that his father was a prisoner in Germany, he had felt remote from the war, leading his peaceful life with his tutor and the old man.

Now Dermot Court was dead and young Maurice Whiteoak was on his way home.

Again he thought of the change in himself. He had gone over in charge of Wright, doing just what Wright had told him to do; he had come back by himself, doing just as he pleased. He had left home wearing the clothes of a small boy. He was returning in the garb of a man. He tried to feel the unconcern of the seasoned traveller, a man who had been abroad and knew all about life. But, as the train neared the city, a tremor ran through him and his mouth became suddenly dry. Who would be there at the station to meet him? Not his father, for his father was still a prisoner in Germany. Perhaps his mother would come! At the thought of her his heart gave a quick thud. It moved in his breast as though it were a thing apart from him, imprisoned there. Her figure rose before him, as he had seen her at the moment of their parting, more than four years ago. Her arms had been held close against her body, as though she forcibly restrained them from clinging to him, but her eyes had clung to him in anguish. She had feared she might never see him again. Now he had a sharp stab of jealousy as he thought how his brothers had been clo
se beside her all these years, and he far away. He was almost a stranger.

He looked out at the fields baked brown in the late summer drought, at the wire fences and the ugly little houses of the suburbs. The train was nearing the city. People were beginning to gather their things together. Two officers in the seat in front of him rose to their feet, looking very rigid and erect. Maurice thought of his uncles and supposed they would look like that. And his father in the prison camp! He pictured him in an old uniform, almost ragged and his hair unkempt but his face still fresh-coloured and authoritative. He had a guilty feeling of relief that his father would not be at home when he arrived there. He remembered his father’s eyes and how they could give you a look that made you tremble. It would be easier to return home with only his mother and his brothers there.

While he was thinking he had got to his feet, scarcely knowing he did so and was moving slowly toward the door of the railway carriage with the other passengers. Agitating memories crowded in on him. He almost shrank from alighting from the train. But now he was on the platform surrounded by people struggling to find porters. There were very few of them and they were almost overwhelmed by luggage. At last he managed to capture one. He was among the last to pass through the station. He kept on the watch for his mother and had a sudden fear that he might not recognize her.

There was no need. He was in her arms before ever he saw her. She had darted from among those who waited and flown straight to him.

“Mooey,” she was saying, “why, Mooey darling, how you’ve grown!” She was holding back the tears from her eyes but they were in her voice.

He put his arm tightly about her and they walked together so linked. “Mooey!” He had not heard himself called by that old pet name for four years. Instead of bringing her closer it had set her apart in a half-forgotten life. He dared not look into her face.

“I have the car here,” she was saying rather breathlessly. “Is that your luggage? why, Mooey, you’re almost a man! Travelling alone — with all those things! Oh, to think you are back again! I can scarcely believe in it.”

She was smaller than he had expected her to be. He remembered having looked up into her face. Now she was looking up into his. The pain of their parting distorted the joy of their reunion. Even as they held close to each other they felt that they were about to be torn apart. They made slow progress through the station crowded with men in uniform.

“How much shall I give the porter?” he asked, displaying some silver coins on his palm.

She took one and gave it to the man. The luggage was in the car. The early morning sunlight was dazzling on the expanse of clean pavement. Pheasant said:

“Hop in, darling. Let’s get out of this — to where we can talk.” He got in and she started the car. There was something new about her, Maurice thought, as though she were used to looking after herself, doing things in her own way. She wore a funny little black beret and she had on quite a lot of lipstick. Somehow he didn’t like that. He wanted everything to be just as it had been before he went to Ireland.

They spoke little until they reached the less busy road that ran alongside the lake. The lake was animated by small bright waves and the air was fresh. She asked questions about his journey, trying to keep her voice steady, trying to drive carefully. Really she scarcely felt capable of driving this morning. She had slept little the night before and her nerves were strung up. She did not dare look at Maurice. He asked his first question.

“How are Nook and Philip? I expected they would come too.”

“They wanted to but I wouldn’t let them. I felt that I must have you to myself at the very first. It was selfish of me. Are you disappointed?”

“Oh, no. I expect they’ve grown a lot.”

“Terrifically. But Philip the most. He’s almost as tall as Nook and weighs more. It’s very annoying to Nook.” She went on talking rather hurriedly of Philip’s escapades. She did not speak of Maurice’s father.

However, he said, “Home must seem strange without Daddy. I can hardly imagine it.”

She nodded, her lips compressed into a thin line. Then she said, “You know, we — myself and the boys — lived at Jalna for a time but it didn’t work. The children were so noisy — Philip especially — I was thankful when I could get rid of my tenants and go home again. Mooey, it will be heavenly having you with us!”

Maurice smiled but he wondered if ever he would feel at home in Canada again. That four and a half years in Ireland, in Cousin Dermot’s house, rose as a barrier of more than a thousand days of misty sunshine, quiet rain, more than a thousand nights — surely there had been nearly two thousand days and nights — nights in that great quiet house where he and the old man had been so happy together. The tranquil life had suited Maurice. Even the longing for his mother had at last subsided. Now that he was with her again he had a strange, an almost bereft feeling, as though of awareness that his old childish self was lost and would never again be found. With memory’s eye he surveyed the two pasts of his life, so completely separated by ocean and by war that they made him into two people. His mother had seen nothing of his life in Ireland. He had no one with whom he could talk about it. In this moment of his return he felt deeply lonely.

They were in the country now, with farmlands all about. There was a dry, pungent smell to the air, as though of dry vegetation, crisped by the sun, and of distant woodsmoke. He remembered the moss-grown oaks of Cousin Dermot’s park, the rich vaporous meadows, the flowery hedgerows, the pollarded willows—but Cousin Dermot was dead and the place belonged to him. He wondered if his mother realized that that estate in County Meath now belonged to him.

Pheasant went on talking, trying to pass lightly over these moments of reunion with her boy. It made her feel suddenly quite middle-aged to see him so grown. Well, she was thirty-five but she still felt like a girl. They were silent when at last the car sped along the quiet side road and turned in at the gate. On either side of it the two small boys were waiting. They stood very still but ready on the instant to spring into action.

“Here we are!” called out Pheasant. “Here’s your big brother!” The car stopped and she and Maurice alighted.

What a difference there was between him and them! They were just children. Maurice had an air of calm, a manner of the old world, acquired from Cousin Dermot in those years of close companionship. Oh, to think that she had had to part with him — to lose all those years out of their lives! Nothing she could do would bring him wholly back to her. He was part stranger and always would be. The loss was not made up by his inheriting Cousin Dermot’s fortune. That somehow made the loss greater. Maurice was independent of her and Piers. He did not need them. He had learned to do without them. But she said gaily:

“Here he is! Now give him a big hug.”

She added this last because the brothers had stood staring shyly at each other, speechless. But now Maurice gravely shook hands with each of them and they in turn gravely shook hands with him. “Just like old gentlemen being introduced!” she thought. She exclaimed:

“what a marvellous complexion you have, Mooey! You used to have no colour. You’re just peaches and cream. You make us look like Indians, doesn’t he, boys?”

She and her younger sons were, in truth, deeply tanned after a summer’s exposure to the Canadian sun. The boys’ arms and legs were as brown as their faces. Maurice, with his creamy skin, the rosy flush in his cheeks, contrasting to the brown of his hair which he had got from Pheasant, looked like a garden flower beside two tough-fibred little weeds. Their fair hair was bleached to tow, it was dry from the hot sun, it stood out in wisps. Maurice’s hair was glossy, softly waving.

He looked cared for. They had the look of running wild.

“I expect it’s the climate,” answered Maurice. “We have a lot of damp, you know.”

We! He identified himself with Ireland. But why not? It was natural. He had spent his most impressionable years there. But it hurt her. It hurt her. She said:

�
��Now we’ll go in and have something to eat. You must be starving. Does the house look natural?”

It looked natural, as the remembrance of a dream might seem natural, but so small, half-hidden behind its lilacs and syringas. He recalled the imposing façade of Glengorman. Surely you might put this small house, built a hundred years ago by a retired naval officer and named by him, The Moorings, into one corner of Glengorman and scarcely notice it! He answered politely:

“It looks very natural.”

“And do I?” Pheasant asked tremulously.

“Oh, yes.”

“Now, Nook and Philip, help Mooey to carry his things upstairs. Your room is waiting for you — just as when you left it. I’ll make coffee.”

She hurried indoors. The two small boys flung themselves on Maurice’s hand luggage. They clattered up the narrow stairway and deposited it, with thumps and bangs, on the floor of the bedroom. Maurice looked about. It had not changed at all, except to look smaller. There was the little bed where he had slept as long as he could remember! He thought of that night when he had first been told of the proposed visit to Ireland. He had been in his pyjamas and had just knelt down to say his prayers. His father’s voice had come up from the hall below. “Mooey, come down here!”

He had been frightened, wondering what he had done. He had scrambled quickly to his feet, then more slowly, hesitatingly moved to the top of the stairs. He had seen his father standing below, waiting for him, his strong figure erect, his face upturned. But he had not looked angry. When Maurice had reached the bottom step his father had put his arm about him and led him into the sitting room. His uncle Renny had been there. All three grown-ups had worn curious strained smiles. Then Uncle Renny, newly returned from Ireland, had told him how old Cousin Dermot lived all alone and how he liked boys and wanted Mooey to pay him a visit. The very thought of going away from home had been terrifying. He had never in all his life been separated from his mother.

“Wake up,” his father had said, “and tell us how you like the idea. Mind, you don’t have to go unless you really want to.”

“How long should I stay?” he had asked.

Uncle Renny had answered, “As long or as short a time as you want.”

His mother had exclaimed, as she watched him standing silent and bewildered, “You don’t want to go, do you, Mooey?” Her eyes had yearned towards him.

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