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

by Mazo de La Roche

“May I pass things?” he asked.

  “If you’re very careful.” She began to fill the cups.

  “where is Renny?” asked Ernest.

  The man, Wragge, spoke up. “’E’s in ’is office, sir, going over accounts, but ’e said to tell you he’d be in directly.”

  “Thank you,” said Alayne Whiteoak, with an air of dismissal.

  He did not go at once, however, but lingered to set a chair in place, to adjust a curtain, to empty an ashtray into the fireplace. It was as though he remained to irritate her. When, at last, he had gone she said:

  “I wish Renny would ever be on time.”

  “He has the accounts to do,” Adeline said, defensively. “He can’t very well leave in the middle of doing them.”

  Ernest remarked, to bridge the moment’s tenseness between mother and daughter:

  “The fire needs fresh logs.”

  “I’ll put one on,” cried Dennis. He heaved the largest log on to the fire which sent up a cloud of sparks. Small eager flames beset the log as it settled onto the glowing foundation.

  “Good boy,” said Nicholas. He stretched out his hand to raise the teacup to his lips but miscalculated the distance and overturned the scalding tea onto the rug.

  “Well, well!” he exclaimed ruefully. “That was stupid of me.” He took out his handkerchief and began to mop up the tea.

  “If you would only keep your mind on your movements the way I do,” said Ernest, “you would never upset things.”

  Nicholas blew out his cheeks. “Can’t keep my mind on anything,” he rumbled. “Got very little mind left.”

  “Uncle Nick,” cried Adeline, “you have a wonderful mind! Don’t worry about the rug. I’ll fetch a towel from the dogs’ room.”

  Alayne said, — “I’ll pour you a fresh cup of tea, Uncle Nicholas.” But her hands trembled with irritation as she poured. She kept saying to herself, — “We shall not have him with us much longer. Be patient.”

  Adeline brought a towel and a basin of water, Nicholas and Dennis watching her with concentrated interest as she mopped up the wet spot. Things were barely in order again when Renny Whiteoak entered, bringing with him a gust of cold air.

  “I thought you’d like a little fresh air,” he said. “It’s terribly hot in here.”

  “Please don’t leave that door open,” exclaimed his wife. “We shall freeze.”

  “I should certainly be forced to go to my room,” said Ernest.

  Nicholas was silent, brooding on the spilt tea, though he had a freshly-filled cup in front of him.

  “It’s like spring outdoors,” said Renny. “The birds are chirping. It would do you good to get the air.” He stood beside the tea table smiling down at them, tall, wiry, his dark red hair lightly touched with grey at the temples, his high-coloured face animated by a teasing smile.

  Alayne thought, — “How can he look younger than I, when he is much older! It isn’t fair. And yet it is fair because he has the power to do what I have not the power to do — draw happiness out of some deep well within himself — out of some pagan link with the primeval.” She rose and, with her graceful walk, went to the outer door and firmly closed it. When she returned to her place Renny sat down and took Dennis on his knee. “How often,” thought Alayne, “I have seen him with a child on his knee! A child on his knee or sitting astride a horse — those are the two ways I picture him most easily. I’m not particularly fond of children. I don’t very much like horses, but Renny still fascinates me.” She poured a cup of tea for him and handed it to him with a smile.

  Nicholas had regained his spirits. There was a deliciously soft fresh cake and he was eating it with relish. His few remaining teeth, which were mercifully hidden behind his drooping grey moustache, were capable only of masticating soft food. He said:

  “It’s high time this young lady of ours saw something of the world. I was saying to Ernest less than an hour ago that it’s high time she saw something of the world.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more, Uncle Nick,” said Adeline.

  “what Adeline should have been doing in these past months,” said Alayne, “is to have gone to a university. I very much wanted to enter her at Smith, as you know.”

  “Never heard of it,” declared Nicholas. “where is it?”

  Nicholas had, since the war, become tremendously anti-American. No one quite knew why. He took no trouble to conceal this feeling, for he could not remember, no matter how often he was reminded, that Alayne was an American. Though she had spent almost half her life in a British country she still was very conscious of her American roots. She subscribed to the more intellectual of American periodicals. She kept in touch with what was going on in the political scene. It was seldom she allowed herself to be stung by any of the old man’s remarks but, for some reason, this last remark of his did annoy her.

  “It is the most notable women’s college on the continent,” she returned.

  “Never heard of it,” he persisted, and emptied his teacup with audible gusto.

  Ernest’s loved wife had been an American and he now said, — “How well I remember my dear Harriet’s descriptions of her life there. They were both enlightening and entertaining.”

  Nicholas heaved himself about in his chair to look skeptically at his brother. “Never heard Harriet speak of it,” he said.

  “I myself am a graduate of Smith College.” Alayne spoke with a little asperity.

  “Ha,” returned the old man. “That accounts for the only fault you have.”

  Alayne looked enquiringly at him.

  “An air of superiority, my dear.”

  Alayne flushed a little. “It is remarkable,” she said “that I should still retain that, after more than twenty years at Jalna.”

  Renny laughed. “But you do,” he declared. “You do.”

  “Adeline,” put in Ernest, “matriculated with honours. It is a great pity that she has not gone on with her education in a university.”

  “I didn’t want to,” said Adeline. “I mean I’m not that sort of girl.

  “But you are,” insisted her great-uncle. “Otherwise you would not have done so well in your exams.”

  “I know enough now,” returned Adeline laconically.

  “There you show your ignorance,” said Alayne. “If you want any sort of career — but” — she gave a little shrug — “we’ve been through all this before. I know you think life at Jalna is career enough for you. I only hope you won’t regret it.”

  “Never fear,” put in Renny. “She won’t regret it. She’s her father’s daughter. Not one of the boys has been as keen about horses as she.”

  He often spoke of his brothers as though they were his sons, of which he had only one, a boy of almost fourteen, at a preparatory school.

  “The point is,” said Adeline, “that I am dying to go to Ireland with Maurice.”

  Nicholas had finished his tea and his chin had sunk to his breast. He was indulging in a short nap. Now he brought himself up with a snort, subconsciously aware that something of real interest had been said.

  “what is that?” he demanded. “Ireland? who’s going to Ireland?” The very name of Ireland uttered was enough to rouse him from sleep, for from there had come his strong-willed mother as a young woman, to there she often had returned to visit; Ireland she had constantly elevated as the greatest of countries, its speech had coloured her own, and though she never had been able to get on with her relations there, she had boasted of them as superior in wit and breeding to the Whiteoaks.

  “Ireland,” Nicholas repeated. “We haven’t a living relation there now — except old Dermot Court.”

  “He died years ago, Uncle Nick, and left his property to young Maurice. Don’t you remember?” Renny looked anxiously into the old man’s face. “Maurice goes over this spring to claim it.”

  Nicholas’ brow cleared. “Ah, yes. I remember now. And a very nice property it is. I saw a good deal of Dermot at one time. Best manners of any man I ever knew
. Who’s going to Ireland, did you say?”

  “Me!” Adeline gave a daring look at her father.

  “I wish you would try not to be aggressive,” said Alayne.

  “I do try. But you’ve no idea how hard it is.”

  She now threw a coaxing look about the circle of grown-ups. “It will be such a wonderful opportunity for me to see something of the world. You know the war kept me from ever being taken anywhere. I actually don’t know anything of life outside Jalna, do I?”

  “The thing for you to do,” said Ernest, with a sly smile, “is to marry Maurice and go to Ireland on your honeymoon.”

  The suggestion of marriage for Adeline was distasteful to Renny. He expected that, in due course, she would marry but he looked on that time as years distant. He regarded Adeline as a child. He did not want Adeline to marry till the perfect mate for her appeared — if such a one existed. He did not think Maurice and she were suited to each other. He was not even sure that Maurice cared for Adeline except as a cousin. Alayne, on the other hand, would have liked to see her daughter’s future secure. She was convinced that Maurice was attracted to Adeline, and, in truth, felt that, if there would be any unsuitability in the match, it would be because he was finer-fibred and more sensitive than Adeline. The young girl, with her passionate love of country life, of horses and dogs, her tardy approach to things intellectual, was not and never had been a congenial companion to Alayne. She had been surprised and pleased by her excellent standing in her studies but it had been disappointing to find that Adeline’s attitude toward scholastic achievement seemed to be that she could do well in anything she chose but that, once she had rded what was in the books, she had little further interest in them. Alayne’s hopes for intellectual companionship lay in her son, whose school reports showed that he was already impressing his teachers with his ability. Archer was an omnivorous reader. Adeline liked the old romantic novels she found on the bookshelves in the library. Many of these had belonged to her great-grandmother for whom she was named, and Alayne sometimes suspected that part of the child’s interest in them was because they had been handled and read by the woman whose portrait she so much resembled. She had devoured the old copies of the Boys’ Own and the books of Talbot Baines Reed that were heaped in a corner of the attic. Not long ago Alayne had discovered her reading Tom Jones.

  “Do you like it?” Alayne had asked, herself hating the book excepting in an academic fashion.

  “Oh, yes,” Adeline had answered. “Those were the days. I wish I’d lived then.”

  “Well, don’t give it to Archer,” Alayne had said.

  “Of course not,” Adeline had agreed promptly. “But he probably knows more than you think.”

  “Yes,” Ernest now repeated. “Marry your cousin and go to Ireland on your honeymoon.”

  “She’d better not suggest such a thing to me,” said Renny.

  “I can’t very well till Maurice suggests it to me,” laughed Adeline.

  “Come now, come now —” Ernest shook his head teasingly at her.

  She flushed. “I want to go to Ireland for fun,” she said. “Not on a honeymoon.”

  “No better fun,” rumbled Nicholas, but stopped himself at a look from Alayne.

  “I want to go to Ireland,” Dennis said in his high clear voice. “My mother came from Ireland.”

  “Did she!” Adeline exclaimed. “I always thought she was an American like my mother.”

  Nicholas gave a thump on the arm of his chair. “The ignorance of these children is unbelievable,” he declared. “Dennis’s mother was a Court. She was of a good old Irish family. Nothing American about her.”

  “I wasn’t ignorant,” said Dennis. “I knew she was Irish.”

  “But she died in the States, didn’t she?” Adeline asked.

  “Yes,” Renny answered curtly. Then demanded, — “what has put the idea of going to Ireland into your head?”

  “Well, I went there once with you,” she said, “and it was the best time I’ve ever had in my life.”

  “You said,” put in Dennis, severely, “you’d never been anywhere.”

  “Don’t be cheeky,” ordered Nicholas, and put a piece of cake into Dennis’s hand.

  “what I meant,” said Adeline, “was that the war had stopped me going back to Ireland. Oh, I do so want to go when Maurice goes and I don’t see what’s to prevent me.”

  “If Maurice’s mother were going as she planned to do, it might be possible for you to go too,” said Alayne, “but she can’t get away any more than I can.”

  “I don’t see why it wouldn’t be proper for two young cousins to go on a voyage together.”

  “It would be highly improper,” said Ernest, “unless —” He could not keep his mind off the thought of the marriage.

  “We are always talking about going to Ireland,” Adeline muttered, “yet nobody goes.”

  Ernest patted her knee. “Maurice is now his own rd. We shall see what happens. You may be able to go with him in a relationship that will please everyone.”

  “Did I hear my name?” asked a voice from the doorway. All turned to look at Maurice Whiteoak.

  II

  THE COUSINS

  He was a slender, graceful young fellow, with a sensitive lace, a contrast to his father, Piers Whiteoak, who in middle age had grown thickset and who looked on the world with a challenge. When no more than a child Maurice had been sent to Ireland to live, at the invitation of a childless relative, Dermot Court, in the acknowledged hope that he would be made the old man’s heir. What might have been a boring experiment for the man and a tragic experience for the boy had turned out well. Each had been happy in the other’s company. A deep love and understanding had grown up between them, and when, five years later, Dermot Court had died, Maurice had inherited from him his large house which was in fair repair, and an income sufficient for its maintenance. He had returned to his parents’ house, a stranger, a shy, proud stripling of seventeen, financially independent of them, but vulnerable as ever to his father’s sarcasms.

  Now Nicholas said to him, — “We’re wishing we might go to Ireland with you, Mooey.”

  “Especially your cousin Adeline wishes it,” Ernest added.

  “I should be glad to entertain all of you,” said Maurice. “You’d be welcome at Glengorman.”

  Dennis carried the plate of cakes to him. “Have one,” he said, ingratiatingly.

  “Bread and butter first, thank you.” Maurice helped himself to a piece, then sat down beside Adeline.

  Nicholas said, — “Your Uncle Ernest and I will never see Ireland again. Nor England.”

  “Alas, no.” Ernest drew a deep sigh.

  “Nonsense,” exclaimed Renny. “You may at any time now. The change would do you good.”

  “I hear,” Ernest said, “that travelling is most uncomfortable. I even hear the word austerity used in connection with it — a word I have always disliked.”

  “I wasn’t aware you knew the meaning of it,” said Nicholas.

  “It is extraordinary,” Ernest spoke with severity, “that you should choose to belittle what I endured during the war. I did without many comforts to which I was accustomed, didn’t I, Alayne?”

  “You did indeed, Uncle Ernest.”

  “Once you arrive in Ireland,” said Maurice, “you shall have everything you want.”

  “That is very kind of you.” Ernest leant forward to pat his great-nephew’s knee. “Very kind indeed. Well … I’ll consider it. But, you know, I shall be ninety-five in the spring. It’s pretty old for travel. Still — if you’d like to have me, Mooey.”

  “I should indeed,” said Maurice. He was particularly fond of this old uncle who always had shown kindness to him and understanding of the traits in him which were irritating to Maurice’s father, had sympathized with his preference for books above horses, had encouraged his attachment to Adeline.

  “Go ahead, Ernie, and have your last fling!” Nicholas’ voice, singularly robust for his
age, boomed into a laugh. “Go ahead, and take my love to the gals we used to know there — if any of ’em are above ground.”

  Adeline laughed across the chasm of years that separated her from Nicholas.

  “I’ll bet they are, Uncle Nick,” she said. “I’ll bet there’s many a lonely old lady in Ireland who would like to get a nice message from you.”

  “Well, well,” he said, “I’ll never see ’em again.”

  “We gave a pretty good coming-of-age party for you,” Ernest remarked to his great-nephew. After a pause, he added, — “The last Whiteoak to inherit a fortune on his twenty-first birthday was Finch. How well I remember the party we gave for him! We had a dinner party and a dance. Finch made a speech. He was very nervous. After all the guests were gone he and Piers, you and I, Nicholas, sat up for a long while talking and drinking. It was then that Finch suggested that Nick and I should go to England for a visit at his expense. And now here is this dear boy, Mooey, offering to take us to Ireland.”

  “You four got pretty tight that night,” said Renny. “Do you remember? I was waked by your singing and I came downstairs and took you off to bed.”

  The two old brothers laughed, as at the recollection of a good joke. Young Maurice regarded them anxiously. The thought of paying their travelling expenses to Ireland had not occurred to him. Adeline, seeing his discomfiture, gave him a teasing smile. He ignored it and said to her:

  “I have some rather good new records. Like to come over to our place and hear them?”

  “I’d love to.” She got up, gave herself a small stretch and asked, — “Does anybody want me for anything?”

  Nobody did and she and Maurice went into the hall.

  “Did you come in a car?” asked Adeline.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you would. Lazy dog.”

  “Surely you wouldn’t expect a fellow to walk through slush to his ankles.”

  “You could wear rubber boots.”

  “Don’t you like a car?”

  “Certainly I like a car. But I think a walk would do you good. You’re soft.”

  “You’re always criticizing me,” he said, resentfully.