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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Of course, you did,” said Nicholas. “You can’t deny that.” He heaved himself about in his chair and glared at her. “You have taught us to call our soldiers boys. We used to call ’em men. You’ve taught our boys to call their sweethearts babies, to call their pals buddies, to call their dogs pups! Younger and younger! More and more inane.”

  “I agree with all you say,” she patted his arm comfortingly.

  “That’s handsome of you. Still, I’m ninety and have a right to say what I think.”

  “At this minute,” she said, “you don’t appear a day past seventy.”

  “Ha, and what of that old fellow?” He pointed with the stem of his pipe at his brother.

  “Sixty-five!” she declared.

  Ernest was pleased. In truth, with his pink complexion and blue eyes, he looked many years younger than his age.

  “Boys — buddies — babies — pups,” growled Nicholas. “Bah, it’s sickening!” Still with his pipe he pointed at the radio. “Take that thing,” he said, “can one get any pleasure out of it nowadays? No. Two-thirds of it is advertising, the other third flaccid sentimentality. And the songs!” He could not continue for the disgust that made his utterance unintelligible.

  Ernest continued for him. “They have revived the word ballad,” he said, “which once conjured up the thought of a charming old song. But I always say that the ballads sung over the radio are composed by the illiterate, sung by the illiterate, for the pleasure of the illiterate.”

  Nicholas had got control of his voice. “Crooners!” he growled. “Just enough vitality to crawl to the microphone and be sick into it.”

  “Nick!” reproved Ernest. “Remember that Miss Trent is here.”

  “I don’t mind,” she laughed gaily. “I feel just the same.”

  “But you Americans invented it.”

  “We invented a good many things that have got out of control.”

  “Then you ought to be ashamed,” Nicholas returned brusquely.

  “Let us talk of the opera,” said Ernest, soothingly. “I think the Metropolitan opera is splendid.”

  “I like light opera.” Nicholas lighted his pipe and drew on it with some placidity. “I like Gilbert and Sullivan. Do you have Gilbert and Sullivan down there?”

  “Do we! I guess there isn’t a country in the world where their operas are presented so often. I just wish you could have seen the jazzed-up version of the Mikado at the World’s Fair. It was the funniest show you can imagine. Now we have two versions of Pinafore running on Broadway. One is a Negro version. The other is called Hollywood Pinafore. It’s terribly clever.”

  As these words fell from Miss Trent’s lips, Nicholas’ pipe fell from his, into his shaking hand. His jaw dropped.

  “Is there no law against it?” he demanded.

  She stared. “Against what?”

  “Such — sacrilege? The Mikado jazzed up! Pinafore done by Negroes! A Hollywood Pinafore!”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so. Don’t you like the idea? That’s too bad. I’m sorry I told you.”

  He returned sonorously, “Like it? Like it? There ought to be a law against it. There ought to be a law prohibiting any but the English from doing Gilbert and Sullivan. They are the only people with the voices, the personalities, to present them properly.”

  Nicholas took a large silk handkerchief from his pocket and, spreading it over his face, laid his leonine head against the back of his chair.

  “I’m sorry to appear unsociable,” he said, “but I’m an old man and I need a little nap. Please excuse me.” A moment later a bubbling snore fluttered the handkerchief against his moustache.

  “I must apologize for him,” said Ernest, colouring, “but I’m afraid I agree with him.”

  Outside, in the hall, Finch said to Rosamond Trent:

  “You mustn’t mind what my uncles say. They find some of these changes hard to bear. They think they’re changes for the worse.”

  Her handsome face lighted with a good-natured smile. “One thing is certain,” she said. “I wouldn’t have those old dears changed. They’re perfect as they are.”

  “As for that loan,” he continued, “you should not have paid all that interest on it. In fact, I’d forgotten all about it.”

  She threw both arms about him and gave him a hearty hug. “My only fear is,” she said, “that I have not given you enough.”

  When they separated a few minutes later Finch went straight out of doors. He felt extraordinarily young and carefree. There was a high, pale-blue sky, a piercingly fresh wind with the dampness of melting snow in it. The thin layer of snow that accented the irregularities of the ground, soon would disappear. The red berries on the barberry bushes shone out. The sound of horses’ hooves came sharply from the road. Finch swung his arm like a flail and ran down the drive, the wind blowing through his hair. His eldest brother, on horseback, was trotting in at the gate.

  “Hullo,” he exclaimed, as he saw Finch. “You look nice and sportive.”

  “You’d feel sportive too,” laughed Finch, “if you’d just had happen to you what I have.”

  Renny drew rein. “Tell me,” he said. “what was it?”

  Finch caressed the smooth shining leather of Renny’s leggings. “Rosamond Trent has just paid me the ten thousand dollars she borrowed from me — with five thousand dollars interest.”

  “The hell she has!” Renny’s hard features broke into an expression of complete astonishment. “How splendid! You are in luck.”

  “I never was so surprised. I’d long ago given up any hope of the debt being paid. But just now she took a cheque for fifteen thousand dollars out of her handbag and simply forced it on me.”

  “Forced it on you! You aren’t telling me that you had to be forced to accept it, are you?”

  “Well, not exactly forced, still — it was embarrassing.”

  “I should think the embarrassment would have been on her side. What are you going to do with it?” He looked down into Finch’s face with a genial smile.

  Finch gave a little laugh. “Oh, I shall find lots to do with it.”

  “You’ll not need to save it for your boy. He will have as much as is good for him.”

  Now Finch was stroking the mare’s muscular chestnut neck. He said, hesitatingly, “You know, Renny, I’m not altogether happy in the life of a pianist.”

  Rennys smile took on a sardonic gleam. “I don’t know what you could do,” he said, “that would make you happy. You’re just not the happy sort.”

  “I suppose I’m not. But — I want to see — to experience a different sort of life. I’m not ambitious.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that.”

  “I think I’ve worked damned hard,” exclaimed Finch hotly.

  “Of course, you have. What you mean is, you’re not particularly ambitious to be rich or famous.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Renny. “You want to enjoy life. Not be a slave to your profession.”

  “Yes. I’ll just invest this money till I need it.”

  “Good. What shall you invest it in?”

  “I haven’t thought about that. I haven’t had time.”

  His elder brother looked down at him speculatively. “You must be cautious.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  “No lending it to an irresponsible person.”

  “No, no. I’ll put it into some sound stocks.”

  “It’s hard to tell,” said Renny, combing the mare’s mane with his fingers, “just what stocks are sound.”

  “I suppose so — in times like these.”

  Renny regarded him almost tenderly, then he said:

  “If I were you, I’d invest it in Jalna.”

  “In Jalna?”

  “why not? You couldn’t make a better investment.”

  “But Renny — just what do you mean?”

  “I mean that the stables have got run down during the war. They need building up. I mean that there is goi
ng to be a lot of money in horses when the war is over — as it will be in a few months. If I had fifteen thousand dollars now, I could double it — there is no knowing what I could do with it.”

  “Well — but what,” stammered Finch “— just what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to invest this little windfall to the best advantage, to yourself and to Jalna. Come along to my office and I’ll tell you exactly what I have in mind. You’ll catch a cold standing here.”

  The mare had grown impatient. The gravel showed a groove where her hoof had pawed it. Now Renny let her go at a gallop toward the stables. Finch stood looking after them. He remembered all that Renny had been through. And now he was apparently as well as ever, able to gallop off on a new quest, as though he never had had a care in the world. Well, there was no reason, thought Finch, why he too couldn’t be carefree. He had nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing in the world to worry him, except that his feet were cold as ice. Again swinging his arm like a flail, he set off after horse and rider, at a jog trot.

  XXXIII

  INTO THE YEAR NINETEEN FORTY-FIVE

  ALAYNE SHOULD HAVE felt happy with Renny restored to her, not only in the flesh but in soundness of spirit. What had happened to her that she was not happy? she asked herself. Was the power of happiness atrophied in her by long disuse during five years of war, to say nothing of the harassment of the theft? Was her spirit no longer flexible enough to resume the shape of happiness? She could feel sudden joy — could experience an hour’s content. But happiness was a different thing. It came as easily as breathing to the children, when all went well with them, but was hurled aside on the slightest provocation of anger or discipline — to be as easily resumed. The two old men were better at it than she, Alayne thought. Morning after morning they came downstairs cheerful after a night’s sleep. The dark days of early winter did not depress them. They listened with rapt interest to every detail of Renny’s plans for improving the stables in the following spring. They accepted the loan to Renny of the fifteen thousand dollars, as an excellent thing. It filled Alayne with a kind of shamed anger, for even though Finch were paid a high interest on the money, she did not believe the principal would ever be repaid. She was ashamed for Renny who, with this money in his pocket, showed a hardy forgetfulness of everything but the pleasure of spending it. It was hard for Alayne to forgive him for not telling her of the presence of Finch’s child in the house, before the child was put in her arms to embrace. There had been something callous in that, she felt, and she realized afresh how impossible it was for them to look at any event from the same point of view. She could not even guess what his point of view would be, except to be certain it would be different from hers.

  Alayne was willing to accept Dennis as a member of the family. The friendship between her and Finch was of such long standing and so dear to her, that she was willing to make this sacrifice in its support. Sacrifice it was, for Dennis was a spoilt child, excitable and highly strung. But she admired the self-assurance with which he encountered life at Jalna, though it must have been strange to him. He came into a room as though certain of his welcome, his green eyes alert below his fringe of fair hair. He took possession of what he saw that pleased him and only a will stronger than his could force him to let go. There were few wills stronger than his. Archer’s was one of these and soon there were screams and stampings, as Archer proved the fact. Once Renny put him across his knee and smacked his seat with a hard hand. Set once more on his feet, Dennis looked at Renny in astonishment and said, “That hurt.”

  “See to it,” said his uncle, “that you behave yourself or you’ll get hurt again.”

  “I don’t like you.”

  “Yes you do. You like me very much.”

  “You don’t like me.”

  “I like you when you’re good.”

  “I’m good now.”

  Renny picked him up and kissed him.

  “Dennis is a fine little fellow,” Renny said to Alayne. “You must try to be a mother to him.”

  She looked doubtful. She found it trying enough to be a mother to her own two. Soon the holidays would be upon her, an exuberant young girl in the house, and she so tired! It would take her a year to rest, she thought. She would like to go away with Renny to some balmy, relaxing climate for a year. Then the thought of Renny in a balmy, relaxing climate made her smile. Surely he would take the balm out of a South Sea island and turn it into something northern.

  She yearned over Archer with inexpressible longing for him to develop into a man worthy to be the only grandson of her father. Archer had inherited the high, noble brow, the penetrating, blue gaze of Professor Archer. Sometimes he made remarks so profound for his years, it seemed to her, that she was filled with elation. At other times, in truth at most times, she could have wept at Archer’s insane egotism, his senseless chatter, his preoccupation with things that were worse than useless. Renny was more tolerant of Archer’s peculiarities than she. “He’ll come through it all,” Renny would comfort her. “I’ve seen boys act like imbeciles before this.”

  Archer’s fancy would be captivated by some word or phrase that he could not get out of his head. He would go about, as though in a daze, muttering or chanting the charmed words. If they had been beautiful words or phrases, Alayne would have been happy. She would have thought her boy was going to be a writer of distinction. But no, the words that fascinated Archer were not distinguished or beautiful. Sometimes they were embarrassing, and his craze for them lasted so long! For a month, for perhaps two months, they were his constant companions. Alayne was thankful that Rosamond Trent was not there to hear his latest spellbinder. It was the one word, saliva.

  Up and down, in and out Archer would go, declaiming the horrid syllables, his head up, his back so straight that he seemed almost to lean backward. Alayne reasoned with him, she ignored him, she used every device she had read of in her books on child training. Nothing impressed Archer but the one word, saliva.

  “Oh, saliva — saliva — saliva,” he would chant, while his hallucinated gaze saw what she dared not guess.

  Finch was not helpful. He just went into shouts of laughter. Renny was not helpful, for he joked about Archer’s obsession. “Saliva, is it?” he would say to Archer. “Well, spit it out. Get rid of it.”

  But Archer did not smile. There was nothing funny in it to him. He continued in his single-hearted impervious way. After standing by the piano singing Christmas carols, with a look so pure it went straight to Alayne’s heart, he would stalk away chanting, “Saliva — oh, saliva.”

  The singing of carols each afternoon before the children’s tea, was begun by Finch’s playing the piano for the uncles at that hour. Someone had started a carol, all had drifted in from other rooms and joined in the singing. An artist, with a taste for large colourful canvases, might well have enjoyed painting the scene. There stood the old piano reflecting the firelight, the mirror with its tarnished frame reflecting the family group; Finch at the piano, singing as he played, Alayne standing with one elbow on the instrument, one arm about her son’s shoulders. At Finch’s other side Adeline, now home from school, looking, as it seemed to Alayne, fairly ready to push her elders off the face of the earth by her exuberance. The term at school had done wonders for Roma who now also was in glowing health. How was it, Alayne wondered, that boys never looked like that? Boys might look strong and healthy but they did not look like that.

  The mirror also reflected Nicholas and Ernest, at ease in their padded chairs, little Dennis perched on the arm of Nicholas’ chair, his little pipe joining with the not unmusical rumblings that came from his great-uncle’s chest. The mirror did not reflect Renny who always sat somewhat apart on the window seat, the Cairn terrier and the bulldog on his either side, the sheepdog at his feet. The dogs thoroughly disliked the singing but so enjoyed the warmth of fire and of human companionship that they endured it with tolerance.

  Almost every evening Piers and his sons joined the group. No one o
f the family enjoyed singing more than Piers. His fine baritone was a great addition to the volume of song and both Nooky and Philip had charming trebles. Finch arranged “Good King Wenceslaus” as a part song, and it was in the treble part that the two had their chance to shine. They stood up straight, singing with all their might. It was hard to believe they were ever anything but sweet and good. In truth Nooky seldom was but Philip’s days were spent in getting into scrapes and getting out, with considerable disturbance to school masters and family. Pheasant usually did what she could to conceal his misdeeds from Piers but now and again she stepped aside and let him get what he well deserved.

  Meg and Patience often joined the carol singers. Mr. and Mrs. Fennel too, and Miss Pink. But the best addition, in the way of music, was the coming of the Griffiths. Their voices had a spirituality, a strange wildness, as of the hills where they had been bred. It was Finch who had urged them to come to Jalna for the singing. It was some time before they could make up their minds to cross the ravine, enter the house and sit down among the family whose doings were at once so familiar to them and so remote. It was Althea’s doing that her sisters were shy and distrustful of themselves in the company of outsiders. Garda was naturally sociable. Gemmel was naturally bold. Both were under an influence they scarcely were aware of, in Althea’s ethereal presence.

  Eugene Clapperton was no singer but he liked music and he bitterly resented not being invited to join the party. Instead of being thankful that Gemmel was able to go to Jalna with her sisters, he reiterated to himself that she was ill, that no one had a right to ask her to go where he was not invited, that she should not want to go where he was ignored.

  One day Renny Whiteoak met him face to face on the road. It was a day of slushy snow and dim sunshine. Squirrels sped from tree to tree on last minute urgency of business. It was a colourless day of wan foreboding of winter. It was one to make the average human being look his worst. The squirrels had looks to stand it. Black or red, occasionally grey, they were pretty as ever. But Eugene Clapperton was not pretty, as he doggedly plodded along the road. He was out for exercise. He was not going to allow himself to get soft, not with a young bride awaiting him in the spring. Next winter he would take her south. They would leave slush and snow behind them, stroll in warm sunshine in Florida, if he could find a place that was not horribly overcrowded. His face was sallow, his lips were blue, his eyes the colour of oyster shell. He was a contrast to the figure he now saw approaching. It was the master of Jalna, riding his handsome old mare Cora. Horse and rider were warmly coloured, yet in their warmth they harmonized with the scene in its bleakness. They had had their troubles. Pain might be ahead of them but as Cora planted her hoofs nonchalantly in the slush, as he drooped in the saddle, they shared an enviable serenity of spirit. Eugene Clapperton wished he had gone in the other direction. He gave a quick glance up into Renny’s face, his lips scarcely moving as he said: