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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Yes, indeed,” he answered politely.

  Ernest said to Nicholas, “He has true Irish politeness. He speaks like Dermot.”

  “How long are you staying?” asked Adeline. “Always?”

  “Till I’m twenty-one.”

  “Are you glad?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  He was a puzzling boy, she thought. You could not tell whether or not he meant what he said.

  “Rags has homemade grape wine for us,” she went on. “Will you come in and have some?”

  “Thank you. I’d like to,” he answered, with a little bow.

  “Uncles, will you have some?” she leant over them, solicitously.

  They gratefully declined but Philip sprang up. “I’ll have some,” he said.

  “Wait till you’re asked,” returned Adeline severely. She led the way into the house. On the table in the dining room stood a squat bottle of grape juice and a plate of small biscuits. Presiding over these was Wragge, the houseman. He was a cockney who had been batman to Renny Whiteoak in the first Great War, had returned with him to Jalna, had become the devoted though critical servant of the family, further entrenching himself by marrying the cook. Again he had followed the master of Jalna to war, helped to save his life at Dunkirk, had later that year been himself severely wounded and in 1941 been discharged from the army and returned to civilian life. His wife, the cook, had always been fat while he was thin. Now she was enormously fat while he was thin to emaciation. She suffered considerably from arthritis, and he more than a little from his old wound. Her temper had always been quick. His was the sort that smouldered and sputtered. Now both were highly explosive. Still she was thankful to have him back in the basement kitchen and he was thankful each morning to discover her mountainous body beside him when he woke. He would put his arm about it, clinging to it as a shipwrecked man to a raft.

  Together they did the greater part of the work in the house that was far from convenient to work in, where there were two old gentlemen who had, from infancy, been waited on and who expected summoning bells to be answered with celerity. To Alayne, Renny’s wife, fell the task of bed-making and dusting, of getting three children off to school in term time, of mending, of darning, of making the little girls do some share of the work, of supervising their studies.

  Early in the war Pheasant and her two boys had come to live at Jalna, their house being let. At the time it had been considered a good arrangement but it had not worked out well — two women with different ideas of how a house should be run — too many children — too much noise for the uncles. At the end of six months Pheasant’s tenants departed and she thankfully returned with her boys to her own home, a general thanksgiving arising at the same time from Jalna.

  Now Wragge came forward, beaming, to greet young Maurice.

  “Welcome ’ome, sir. This is an ’appy day for the family, sir. Not only to see you return but to see you return with a fortune.”

  Maurice shook hands with him. “Thank you, Rags,” he said, rather embarrassed.

  “I remember,” said Wragge, “when you were born, as if it was yesterday.

  I remember when you was a little codger and your father used to carry you about on his shoulder. A great pity about your father, isn’t it, sir?”

  “Yes, it’s a great pity.”

  “He was a well-set-up gentleman and one with a good walk — a soldierly figure. Ah, well, we’ll be glad to see ’im ’ome, no matter ’ow he comes. War is hell and no mistike. I ain’t the man I was, Mr. Maurice.

  You may ’ave noticed.”

  “You do look a bit thin, Rags.”

  “Thin is no nime for it! But — ’ave you seen my missus? She weighs fourteen stone, she does.”

  He filled two glasses with the grape juice, remarking, “We’ve reached a low ebb ’ere, where liquid refreshment is concerned, sir. It’s not like the old days. To be sure, the old gentlemen keep a small supply for their own use but they guards it fierce. This ’ere grape wine my wife made last year and it’s pretty good, if I do say it. Miss Adeline enjoys it. Don’t you, miss? Wot do you think of our young lidy, sir?”

  “I think she’s grown.”

  Rags looked dotingly at Adeline. “Grown! why, she might pass for fifteen and she’s only thirteen! Give her another year and she’ll be ’aving admirers — if she ’asn’t already. I suspect that she ’as, if the truth was known.”

  Adeline smiled imperturbably. But Maurice did not like the man’s familiarity. It was of a different quality from the familiarity of Irish servants. Seeing Adeline standing there under the portrait of her great-grandmother, the wineglass in her hand, Maurice had the desire to protect her. There was a new something about her that appealed to his developing manhood. After all, he thought, I am almost a man, I am the only young man at Jalna. Adeline needs looking after.

  “Ave a biscuit, sir?” asked Rags, proffering the plate. “I’ll bet you don’t get biscuits like these in Ireland.”

  “No, thank you. I’ve had a very late breakfast.”

  Rags exclaimed, “Well, I must be off. I’ve promised to pluck two chickens for Mrs. Wragge.” He hastened down the basement stairs, warning as he left, “Don’t you go drinking too much of that there grape juice, Miss. It ’as a real kick in it.”

  Left alone the two cousins were silent for a space. Adeline was systematically eating the cookies. Presently Maurice asked, in a new intimate tone:

  “Do you like that fellow?”

  “Yes,” she answered laconically. “Don’t you?”

  “No. I don’t. I think he’s cheeky.”

  “Oh, Rags is all right. As a matter of fact, he and I almost run this house.”

  Maurice stared. “You do?”

  “Well, when we want a thing done, we generally get it done.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “This place,” she went on, as she finished the last biscuit, “is going to rack and ruin.”

  “Is it really? why is that?”

  “Well, in the house everything is out of repair. The roof. The plumbing. Everything. There’s no money for repairs. But the farm is far worse. We’ve one farmhand. We used to have four. Wright is the only man in the stables. Wright and I run the stables. If it wasn’t for us they’d be sunk.”

  “You must be pretty busy.”

  She nodded her head vigorously. “You bet I am. Like to feel my muscle?” She drew up the sleeve of her shirt and flexed the muscle in her round brown arm.

  Maurice laid his hand on it and pressed.

  “By George!” he exclaimed.

  “Let’s feel yours.”

  He drew back. “No.”

  “You’re ashamed of it!”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I’ll bet it’s as flabby as a poached egg.”

  “Feel it, then.” He extended his arm.

  She felt his muscle and looked aghast. “Gosh!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you take any exercise?”

  “Well, I play some tennis and I walk a good deal.”

  A smile lit her face, imparting an almost sardonic quality to its childish beauty. She said:

  “You’ll soon get a muscle here.”

  “How?” Maurice spoke defensively, deciding that she was not as pretty as he had at first thought.

  “Oh, hammering in the heads of apple barrels — digging potatoes — there are lots of ways. You don’t like horses, do you?”

  “I don’t like riding,” he answered resolutely.

  “I’ve always heard that about you. Wright says it’s because you had too many falls schooling polo ponies. But falls haven’t turned me against riding. Like to come and see the horses?”

  “I think I ought to go and find my mother.”

  “Come upstairs first and see my room.”

  “Very well.”

  She led the way to the room that had been her father’s. Inside she tried to soften the look of pride that had come over her face. “I used to sleep on the top floor with the other childr
en,” she said, casually, “but last spring I moved down here. It’s more convenient in case the uncles or Mummy need me and I like it because it is Daddy’s.”

  He would get even with her, Maurice thought, for what she had said about his muscle.

  “I guess you like it because it makes you feel important.” He smiled.

  She answered quickly, “I’d feel important if I slept in the basement.”

  “I’ll bet you would. In any case, it’s not a bit like a girl’s room.”

  “I don’t want it to be.”

  “You wish you were a boy, then?”

  “No! I just want it to be like Daddy’s room.”

  Maurice did not think it was an attractive room but he felt that he was expected to praise it. “It’s very nice,” he said.

  “Those pictures are famous horses. Here are his pipes,” she ran her finger across the rack on which they hung. “There are nineteen of them. He just took one with him. His clothes are still in the cupboard. I use only half of it.” She displayed the interior of the cupboard where her childish garments hung among tweed and serge and corduroy. “All his ties and shirts and things are in the drawers waiting for him.”

  “You think a lot of him, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. I suppose you do of your father too.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Isn’t it awful their being gone so long?”

  “Yes, it is pretty awful,” he agreed. “Especially, of course, for our mothers.”

  Adeline looked at him almost sombrely. Then she said, “Well, we’d better go and find the others.”

  Walking with her to the orchard, Maurice thought he had never before known what September heat could be; or perhaps he had forgotten. The sun seemed to have drawn the last drop of moisture from the land. The path beneath Maurice’s feet felt like cement. There was no breeze to stir so much as a grass blade. He wondered how the labourer he could see ploughing in a distant field could endure the heat. He glanced at Adeline. She looked warm — no more.

  “This heat is awful,” he muttered.

  “You’re dressed all wrong. But, if you call this hot, you should have been here last week. It took a terrific storm to clear the air. It’s nice now. There’s Auntie Pheasant with the boys.”

  Philip had returned to the orchard. Boards laid on trestles made a table for the array of baskets which Pheasant and Nook were packing with the reddest apples, Maurice thought, he had ever seen. Philip was bringing them the apples from a great mound on the ground. Pheasant cried:

  “It’s a perfect shame to be working on your first day home, Mooey, but these apples must be put on the train at two o’clock. We’re slaves here, aren’t we, Adeline? Don’t be so rough with the apples, Philip! And look here, Nook, don’t you go putting the best ones on the top or we shall get a bad name.”

  “I don’t do it to be dishonest,” said Nook. “But just because they look prettier that way.”

  “Everyone expects the best apples to be on the top,” said Adeline, tersely. “I looked into some baskets at the market and they all had. And I asked the man and he said they all had.”

  “I’d put the best on top,” Philip declared, “and I’d put rotten ones underneath.”

  “You little scoundrel!” Pheasant gave him a look, half-stern, half-laughing.

  “Not rotten,” said Adeline. “Just not quite so round and rosy. They’d taste just as good.”

  “what would those underneath be like in Ireland, Mooey?” asked Pheasant, her eyes caressing him.

  “Oh, they’d be rotten enough.”

  He took off his jacket and set to work. But he was slow, unaccustomed. The heat was almost intolerable to him. Every time he was near to Pheasant she touched him. She could scarcely believe that she had him back. She said:

  “No one of us is going to do a hand’s turn of work this afternoon. We shall just give ourselves up to the joy of having you back. We’re going to have a picnic tea on the lawn and Mrs. Wragge is making ice cream!”

  “Hurrah!” shouted Philip.

  “Hurrah!” shouted Nook, putting a misshapen apple in the bottom of the basket he was packing.

  Maurice felt like one in a dream. The half-forgotten life of his childhood had opened to receive him, had taken him back. Its walls had closed behind him. He thought of September in County Meath. He drew back to him the picture of Glengorman in September, the hushed cool meadows, the river that seemed scarcely to move, and how it gave back, almost unbroken, the reflection of the slow-flying heron. And the life with Dermot Court! He had been the cherished child of the old man. From the moment he had entered the house he had done just as he had pleased, he could do no wrong. He had been the white-haired boy.

  And now he was home again — where it had once seemed to him that he could do nothing to please his father. Now he was one of many. He did not know what to say to his young brothers. All about him was an activity in which he would be expected to take a part. There was something new, purposeful and practical, in his mother. She was asking:

  “Can you drive a car, Mooey?”

  “Yes, indeed I can,” he answered.

  “Oh, that’s splendid! You will be able to drive the truck to the station. It takes such a lot of Wright’s time and puts him completely out of temper.”

  A strange feeling of loneliness came over Maurice.

  II

  FINCH’S RETURN

  A MONTH LATER Finch Whiteoak was walking along the country road, on his way from the railway station to Jalna. He had taken the local line from the city, not sending word home to say when he would arrive. He wanted the exercise of the walk after the long rail journey across the continent and he wanted to be alone. Yet he was scarcely alone, for with him walked, ran, trudged, or loitered the many selves of his childhood and boyhood who had traversed this road.

  It was October and the countryside had already felt the sharpness of frost. Summer was reluctantly giving way to the coming of winter. Like the banners of a defeated army the trees hung out their scarlet, their gold, and their green. Finch took off his hat that he might feel the crispness of the air on his head. Three days, four nights on the train — he could still feel the vibration.

  He had a vision of himself as a small boy seated beside his grandmother in her phaeton, moving sedately along the road on a summer’s day, behind the glistening flanks of the bays. He could see her handsome old face, framed in her widow’s veil which fell voluminously over her shoulders and down her back. Her expression was purposeful, as it always was when she set out on any expedition, however small. Sitting beside her in the phaeton with Hodge, the coachman’s, back looming in front of him, with the hooves of the bays thudding rhythmically on the smooth road, he had felt more secure, more sheltered from the world than at any other time. Well, she had been dead sixteen years, a long while. A good deal had happened to him since then. He threw back his shoulders, as though he were freeing them from a burden, and took a long breath. He would let the freshness of the morning penetrate through all his being.

  He had not seen Jalna for a year. During the winter and spring he had given a series of concerts in the large cities. Now he was returning from a trip to the Pacific Coast where he had played to Canadian and American servicemen. He was going home for rest he badly needed. He felt humiliated that he was so often tired, that periodic long rests were so often necessary to him. What was wrong with him, he wondered? There was his youngest brother, Wakefield, who had been a delicate boy with a weak heart and a poor appetite, while he himself had been strong and able to digest anything — always hungry. Yet Wakefield had outgrown his weakness. He was a flyer who had seen long hard service, had been decorated for great courage, and now was an instructor in a flying school out West. He had had hard experiences in his private life too.

  Finch Whiteoak was a distinguished-looking man. He strode along the country road, long-legged, with a kind of angular grace. His features were strongly marked, his lips sensitive, the hollows in his cheeks
emphasizing these qualities. He walked so fast that a fresh colour had appeared in his face when he turned into the drive. He ran up the steps of the porch and entered the house. At that instant his brother Renny’s wife came out of the library and almost collided with him. She was carrying a vase in which there were little bronze and yellow chrysanthemums. She had worn a look of anxious concentration which had turned, first to dismay, as she had almost dropped the vase, then to pleasure at the sight of Finch.

  “why, Finch,” she exclaimed. “You here! How nice! why didn’t you send us word to meet you?”

  “I wanted the walk.” He kissed her cheek and took the vase from her. “where shall I put it?” he asked.

  “Just there on the table. Do come and sit down. I want to talk to you before you go to see the uncles.”

  They went into the library, where at this hour the sun blazed.

  “where are the dogs?” he asked, feeling a lack in the room.

  “Outdoors.” She spoke firmly, as though it had not been without struggle that she had kept them there.

  “Oh … How are the uncles?”

  “Just fairly well. They’re still up in their rooms. Are you hungry, Finch? Will you have something to eat now or wait till lunch?”

  “I’ll wait, thanks.”

  “Have some coffee.”

  “I’d love that. But first tell me how you are getting on.”

  Alayne made a gesture of despair. “You can imagine. It’s impossible to get help. There’s an enormous crop of apples. How they’re to be picked, graded, and shipped, heaven only knows. Rags and his wife are out in the orchard now. We had the threshers yesterday. We’re half-dead.”

  He made noises of sympathy. “No wonder,” he exclaimed. Then he added admiringly, “But you always look so nice, Alayne.”

  She gave a faint smile. “Thanks. See how white my hair has got.”

  “It’s lovely. Becoming too.”

  “It’s not much wonder I’m white.”

  “No. Have you heard from Renny lately?”

  “I had a letter last week. He’s still in Italy. He’s well. I believe he could have got leave if he’d tried hard enough. But he seems to think he’s indispensable. Other officers aren’t.”