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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Of course he’s a colonel now.”

  “Yes. Just think — he went over in the spring of 1940. I haven’t seen him since. When he and Piers come home — if they ever do — they’ll be different men.”

  “They’ll not change, Alayne.”

  She gave a little shrug. “Perhaps not. But they’ll find the rest of us greatly changed. They’ll not recognize their own children. Why, Finch, you should see Maurice. He’s a young man. He’s charming. But Piers won’t understand him or get on with him — even as well as he used. As for Philip, his mother can do nothing with him. Maurice has had several actual fights with him, trying to make him behave.”

  “Hmph.” Finch’s expression became grim. “I pity him when Piers comes home. How are your own children, Alayne?”

  Her face lighted in pride. “Oh, they are developing wonderfully. Adeline amazes me. When I think of what I was at her age! Really I was a baby. She will take on any sort of responsibility. I honestly believe she thinks of herself as the master of Jalna while Renny is away. She’s as strong as a pony.”

  “And Archer?”

  “He has a remarkable mind and a will like iron. He thinks everything out for himself.”

  Again Finch muttered, “Hmph.” A nice lot were growing up at Jalna.

  He did not ask for Roma, his dead brother Eden’s daughter. He knew that the child’s presence in the house was a sore point with Alayne.

  They went to the basement kitchen and Alayne made coffee. The kitchen, with its brick floor, its deep fireplace, was quiet and warm. They sat down by the table to drink the coffee and Finch lighted a cigarette. It was not till then that Alayne said:

  “Would you like to tell me something about your — separation from Sarah?”

  “It’s not a separation. It’s a divorce. Or soon will be. As you know, she went to Reno and got what they call a divorce there. Now I’ve filed a petition in Ottawa. God knows I have grounds for it!”

  “She has married again, hasn’t she?”

  “Yes. To a Russian.”

  “And you will be free to marry!”

  “I don’t think I shall risk it again.”

  “I think you’re very sensible.”

  He gave a little laugh. “But you did, Alayne. You married again.”

  “Yes,” she returned calmly, “but I was in love with Renny before my divorce from Eden. I don’t think you’re in love with anyone, are you?”

  “Not a bit. And don’t intend to be.”

  After a silence she said, “I think you should go to see the uncles. They’ll be so delighted. Life is pretty dull for them these days. We all are so busy.” She felt that Finch did not want to talk about himself. She saw that he was nervously tired.

  He looked about the kitchen. “How peaceful it is here!” he said. “God, what a world! I’d like to stay down here till the war is over.”

  “You’d not find the Wragges very peaceful company. They’re really terrible but I don’t know how we should have got on without them.”

  A bell jangled violently. Alayne looked up at the row of bells on the wall. “That is Uncle Nick’s,” she said. “I wonder what he wants.”

  She sighed, like a poor overworked housewife. Was this the Alayne, Finch wondered, who, in the old days, had never raised her hand unless she chose. Now she said:

  “They’re not so feeble as they think they are. It is simply that they’ve been waited on hand and foot all their lives. They’re spoilt.”

  “Don’t you come,” said Finch. “I’ll get whatever it is Uncle Nick wants.”

  “Thanks. But don’t go in too suddenly.”

  “I’ll whistle as I go.”

  The bell rang again.

  “That’s the way they go on,” exclaimed Alayne, “I wonder the Wragges stand it.”

  Finch ran up the stairs. Nicholas was standing in the passage outside his bedroom. He extended both arms to Finch. He gathered him in and embraced him. He said:

  “I heard your voice below. I couldn’t wait. I wanted to see you. Gad, what a long time it seems! Ernest! Here’s Finch!”

  Ernest came out of his room. “Come right into my room,” he said. “We’ll have a good talk. You look well, dear boy, but a little tired. How nice it is to have you home again! Mooey is back. Did you know that Mooey is back? A different boy. So improved. Such good manners. Not that he wasn’t a gentle boy. But now he has a manner. He’s grown up. Ireland’s been good for him.”

  The two old men placed Finch in an armchair and beamed down at him.

  “Did you get the newspaper cuttings I sent?” asked Finch.

  “Yes, yes,” answered Ernest. “They were very good. Very appreciative. We’re very proud of you. Proud of all our nephews. But we do miss you. Things are very different here. Alayne does the best she can, poor girl, but she has no real executive ability.”

  “Alayne does very well,” put in Nicholas.

  Ernest continued, “But she has no real authority over the Wragges. They do as they like. She cannot control the children and, if we try to do it for her, she doesn’t like it. She gets quite upset.”

  “I pulled Archer’s ear for him yesterday,” muttered Nicholas.

  “She didn’t like that — not at all,” said Ernest.

  “Neither did he! Neither did he! But have you seen Adeline? She’s a beautiful girl, Finch.”

  “No, I haven’t seen her. I’ve just come.”

  Nicholas regarded him quizzically. “Been getting divorced, eh?”

  “Yes, Uncle Nick.”

  “Just like me, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s right. If wives misbehave, get rid of them. Who’s this fellow she has married?”

  “A Russian. I can’t pronounce his name. Ends in ski.”

  Nicholas blew out his breath. “Well, well — ski, eh? I’ll bet he gets away with every dollar of her money.”

  “what a pity!” said Ernest. “So much could have been done with a nice fortune like that.”

  “I don’t want any of it,” exclaimed Finch, hotly.

  “Not for your family’s sake?” Ernest asked reprovingly.

  “Well, perhaps for them.”

  “what does this Russian do?” enquired Nicholas.

  “Nothing, that I know of.”

  “what about your little boy?”

  “I am to have him with me a part of the time.”

  “How old is he?”

  “He will be four on Christmas Eve.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  Ernest remarked, “It seems strange to think that a man, with a name ending in ski, should bring up a Whiteoak.”

  Finch laughed. “He will have nothing to say about the bringing up. Sarah allows no interference.”

  “You seem oddly detached about your son,” said Ernest. “That is unusual in our family.”

  A flush came into Finch’s cheeks. He said, “Everything has been unusual in my connection with Sarah. Even my relations with her child.”

  “Her child!”

  “Our child, then.”

  “Sarah was a damned queer woman from the first,” rumbled Nicholas. “when she went off with that Russian you should have got an order from the courts to give you complete possession of the boy.”

  “Sarah is an adoring mother. I’m not an adoring father. Dennis scarcely seems like my child.”

  “Yet you have always been so fond of the children of the family,” exclaimed Ernest.

  “I know.”

  “Are you in doubt as to whether the child is yours?” asked Nicholas, his large, deep-set eyes searching Finch’s face.

  “I’m positive he is.” After a moment he added, “If I weren’t so positive I might have been a happier man — if you know what I mean.”

  “That woman,” said Nicholas, “concentrated every atom of her queer being on you. I’ve never seen the equal of it. It doesn’t do.” He took his pipe from his pocket and began to fill it.

  “How do you think Al
ayne looks?” asked Ernest.

  “Rather tired.”

  “She fusses too much,” declared Ernest. “From morning to night she thinks of things that ought to be done or shouldn’t have been done. Now I look at it this way: here we are — helpless, you might say. There is a war. We’ve got to accept things as they come. Our little doings are so paltry compared to the stupendous happenings in Europe, they’re not worth worrying about.”

  “Then why do you worry,” asked his brother, “when your meals are late?”

  “Because late meals give me indigestion. I am fearful of becoming ill and adding to the burdens of the household.”

  Nicholas winked at Finch.

  “Grand old boy, your Uncle Ernest,” he said. “Never fusses. Never gives any trouble.”

  Ernest smiled good-humouredly. The two settled down for a long conversation with Finch. The familiar quality of this atmosphere which was of the very essence of Jalna, closed in about Finch. His concerts, his long train journeys, seemed far away and unreal. Here was his reality. No matter if it were extraordinary to other people, it was his reality. Looking back on his life with Sarah he saw how she had laid waste its freshness and its vigour. Almost from the first he had felt something insensate in her. She was a figure in porcelain who somehow had managed to inspire passion in him, to devastate his life. But now he was free of her. Never again! The grip of those arms … those lips … but now he was free and in his own place! He was not the man he might have been if he had never known her. On the other hand he could look back on the poignant spasm of his desire for her as a thing conquered, outlived. Perhaps the great love of his life lay ahead. With the surface of his mind he basked in the company of the two old men. In its depths he explored his past.

  Late in the day he wandered alone through the fields and woods. The land lay in the dreaming beauty of Indian summer. It was many months since he had been weary from outdoor exercise. He turned toward the stables, thinking he might find Adeline there. It was likely she would pay the horses a visit soon after her return from school. He remembered his own school days and how hard it had been to spend the lovely fall months in those journeyings on train and long sessions in classrooms.

  The doors of the stables were wide open to let in the mild sweet air. The horses had been bedded and fed. The smell of clean straw came to him and, when he stepped inside, the sounds of placid enjoyment of the evening meal. The occupants of stalls and loose boxes looked out at him as he passed, with a kind of noble unconcern, as though recognize him they could, if they but thought it worth the while. He was a part of Jalna, they knew, but a being of no importance.

  How different he was from the young girl who stood beside the aged mare, Cora, in the loose box at the farther end of the passage! The very sight of her, the sound of her voice, created a stir of pleasure that was transmitted in some mysterious way from stall to stall. Finch now saw her leaning against the mare’s shoulder, her auburn hair touched by sunlight slanting through a small window so that there was a look of the young crusader about her, or the young saint.

  Finch smiled at this fancy. Adeline, he guessed, was a very human child and probably badly spoilt. She was looking up into Wright’s face who lounged beside her, and they talked with the air of intimates. Wright had put her on her first pony when she was five. Since then horses had been the absorbing subject of all their conversations. Finch heard her say:

  “If we can’t show our horses properly, what’s the use of keeping them?”

  Wright returned glumly, “That’s just what the mistress thinks. She don’t see no sense in it. She’d like to see the lot of them sold.”

  “And have my father come home and find empty stables!”

  “Sure. Except for Cora here and the roan and the work horses. She’d like to see ’em all sold.”

  “Never!” exclaimed Adeline hotly. “We’ll never do it, Wright! You’ll stand by me, won’t you?”

  Wright threw the most profound feeling into his voice. “I’d rather,” he said, “part with my wife and child than with these here horses. But the mistress — she don’t understand how you and me and the boss feel.”

  “Let her keep out of this! Let her attend to her own affairs!”

  Finch now thought it better to appear. He did so with an air of innocence, as having overheard nothing. He kissed Adeline. It was like kissing a flower, her cheek was so cool, so fresh. The freshness, the newness of her was so potent. Her nose no longer looked too large for her child’s face. It was superb. And what nostrils — designed to express pride, fierceness, if need be! The mouth no longer a rosebud but with the smiling lips of a happy girl.

  “I was pretty sure,” said Finch, “where I should find you.”

  “Wright and I,” returned Adeline proudly, “run the stables.”

  “It keeps us busy, I can tell you, sir,” put in Wright grinning. Then he added soberly, “I don’t know what I’d do without Miss Adeline. There’s nothing she won’t turn her hand to. She rides at all the best shows. Of course, there aren’t any real big ones since the war but there’s a good many. Gosh, you ought to see her ride, sir! I often say to my wife that one of the reasons I hope the boss will come out of this war alive is so he can see her ride.”

  “I hope he will,” said Finch.

  Wright went on, “I can’t say we get all the cooperation from the big house that we should, sir. It makes it hard to carry on. There’s things that need doing about the stables and we can’t get permission to have them done. It will be different when the boss comes home.”

  “I write to him every week,” said Adeline.

  “To tell him how well you are getting on at school, I suppose,” said Finch.

  “I hate school!”

  “So did I.”

  “It spoils everything. You can’t get on with what you really want to do.”

  “I never bothered much about school,” said Wright. “They learned me how to read and write. That was enough for me. Now take Mr. Maurice, he likes book learning. But he hasn’t got no use for horses.”

  “He hasn’t got any use for anything that looks like work,” declared Adeline. “We thought when he came home he’d be an extra man. But he’s a lazy dog. Gosh, isn’t he lazy, Wright?”

  Wright, with a straw between his teeth, laughed derisively. “Say, I’d back one of his two little brothers against him for work, any day. Just to see him take a hold of anything manual, shows he hasn’t any interest in it. But he’s got the dough, so he’ll be able to do what he likes.”

  Finch said, “Come along, Adeline, I want to talk to you.”

  “Don’t you want to see the horses first?”

  “I’ll see them tomorrow. It’s Saturday. You’ll be at home.”

  Outside he said to her, “Look here, I don’t think you ought to discuss family affairs with Wright. He’s too familiar.”

  Her fine brows went up. “who shall I discuss them with?”

  “I don’t think you should have said what you did about your mother — just as I was going in I heard you.”

  “Pooh — that was nothing!”

  “It wasn’t respectful to her.”

  “I’m always respectful to her.”

  “But you should be, behind her back, as well as to her face.”

  “I know. But you can’t think how hard it is for Wright and me, with her always interfering. Do you know she wants to send me to boarding school? She knows we can’t afford it but she wants to send me away from Jalna. Yet we sold the horse I rode at the Yelland show, for eighteen hundred dollars! what do you think of that?” Her eyes flashed pride at Finch. Her slender body was taut with pride.

  “Splendid!” he exclaimed.

  “The American who bought him said he wouldn’t have made an offer if he hadn’t seen me ride him.”

  “Fine!”

  “Well, that was a lot of money, wasn’t it, Uncle Finch?”

  “It was. Does your father know?”

  “I wrote right away. I gues
s he’ll have my letter by now. You can see how it’s necessary for me to be here. Yet Mummy’s always talking of sending me to boarding school.”

  The calm golden beauty of the October evening was descending on the orchard as they passed by. It was dusk already beneath the trees but great mounds of apples could be seen, and some of the branches hung low with their weight.

  “It looks a profitable crop,” remarked Finch.

  Adeline drew her brows together in a line of troubled responsibility. “If we can harvest them! We simply can’t get men.”

  “I will turn in tomorrow morning,” he declared.

  “Tell Mummy that. She will be glad.”

  Adeline’s tone was so heartfelt that Finch turned to look down at her, striding beside him. There was something pathetic, he thought, in the little figure, for all its courage. Above it arched the immensity of the sky; behind rose the bulk of the stables, their occupants to be cared for, exercised, exhibited at shows; there stretched the army of apple trees, their fruit to be garnered and sold; ahead the dark shape of vine-embowered house with all its problems. The child, he felt sure, was eager to thrust her slender shoulders under the weight of responsibility, never considering herself a responsibility or problem.

  Oh, it was good to be home! He put out his hand and took one of Adeline’s in it. They swung along together.

  “Tomorrow morning,” he said, “you’ll have a new hired-man. The thought of physical work is bliss.”

  “Good,” she returned stoutly. “Tomorrow is Saturday. I’ll be working with you.”

  As they neared the house he looked across the ravine where dark night was settling. “How are those girls who live at the fox farm?” he asked.

  “They’re a funny lot. They keep to themselves. They lead a very confiscated life.”

  “Do you mean isolated?”

  “I expect I do. Their sister’s an actress and she supports them. They’re queer but I like them. Do you know them?”

  “A little. I think I’ll go to see them on my afternoon off — if you can spare me.”

  III

  THE SISTERS

  ON THE FOLLOWING day the three sisters who lived in the house called the fox farm were gathered about a round table eating their evening meal. The house had once been occupied by people who bred silver foxes, and though that had been years ago the name still clung. The three had lived here since the first year of the war. Their step-sister had brought them out from Wales that she might better provide for them. Though they were grown up they were helpless as children when it came to looking after themselves. Before coming to Canada they had lived on a remote farm in the heart of the Welsh hills. They had seen almost no one outside their own family. Then their father had died, their brother been killed in an airplane accident. They had been helpless, like frightened children, and had obediently and eagerly journeyed to this new world to which their step-sister, herself only a young girl, had urged them to come. She was an actress whose occasional appearances on the screen made it possible for her to provide for them. Yet her heart was with the legitimate stage and it was there she hoped to make her name.