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

by Mazo de La Roche

  At last she came quite suddenly upon the bridge and, standing in fishing boots, in the stream below, was a young man with a rod. She got out of the car, leaned against the railing of the bridge and called out, — “I’m sorry to trouble you but can you please direct me to where a Mr. Maitland Fitzturgis lives?”

  The young man looked up. For a moment he seemed transfixed by the figure on the bridge, then he came out of the water, clambered up the bank to her side and demanded in a high querulous voice:

  “who is it you want to find?”

  When she told him he said, — “It’s not an aisy place to find but I’m going that way myself and if you’ll give me a lift I’ll direct you to the very gate.”

  Gladly she opened the door of the car to him and shyly he seated himself beside her. All the directions he gave, and they were so intricate she wondered how she would ever find her way back again, he gave in that same high sad-sounding voice.

  “It’s very much farther than I had thought,” she said.

  “Ah, we’re very inaccurate about distance,” he answered, “and you’ll find that few will tell you the way correctly.”

  “Do you know Mr. Fitzturgis?” she could not help asking.

  “I do not. But my father knew his father. He was a well-off man once.”

  They passed among the bare green hills and in the valleys below saw rich greenness and fields with stone walls about them, and white farmhouses. There was a man in one of the fields swinging a scythe.

  “How peaceful it is!” Adeline exclaimed.

  “Yes, it’s peaceful enough. Haven’t you peace where you come from?”

  “Ah,” she spoke in Ernest’s very tone, “the country’s not what it used to be. It’s mechanized. The young men want to go to the cities. They’ve no love for the land … Did you say you’d never seen Mr. Fitzturgis?”

  “I’ve never set eyes on him, but I’ve heard that he’s a nice young man. Here we are at his gate. You’ll see himself.”

  He got out of the car, bowed politely and sauntered down the road, soon disappearing between high hedges, for here was a place of richer soil, where flowery hedges grew, and the house in front of her was hidden by rhododendrons massed with white and coral-pink blooms. She could only glimpse the white stucco house, half-hidden in wistaria, with a glass vestibule and a small conservatory and a smooth-shorn lawn in front.

  For some reason she could not have explained, she was disappointed in the house. It was not the sort of house she had expected him to live in. And suddenly she was very shy. How could she drive up to the door and ask for him? If only she would see him walking down the road — smiling with delight to discover her! Instead of him she saw coming a herd of cattle, ambling on and off the road, driven by two barefoot boys who waved sticks at them, shouted at them, but to whom they paid little attention. She would be surrounded by them. In panic she drove through the gateway and stopped the car just inside. A buxom girl was walking down the drive. Adeline alighted from the car and went to meet her.

  “Can you tell me if Mr. Fitzturgis lives here?” she asked.

  “Indeed he does,” answered the girl, in a hearty voice, “but he’s off.”

  “He’s not at home?”

  “No miss.”

  It was too bad to believe. She had not counted on this. She stood staring forlornly at the girl.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said the girl, “you’ll find him at ould Tim Rafferty’s, for he said he was goin’ there. It’s across the road and down a bit.”

  “May I leave my car here?”

  “Sure you may, and it’s myself will show you the way to Tim Rafferty’s.”

  They went through the gate and into the midst of the cattle. The boys hallooed and whacked them with their sticks. A small low cloud threw down a spatter of rain. The girls had to move into the squelchy ditch and Adeline gave a wild hop to avoid stepping on a beaming rosette of primroses.

  A short way along the road, its thatched roof just visible as it perched on the steep hillside, was the whitewashed cottage.

  “Are you sure he’s here?” Adeline asked nervously.

  “I saw him pass through the gate itself. Ould Tim was worritin’ about somethin’ and Mr. Fitzturgis went to pacify him.”

  “I see. Thank you very much.” She watched the girl go down the road, then opened the wicket gate and, escorted by half-a-dozen hens, crossed the little yard to the door of the cabin.

  It stood wide open and on a bench by the fire she saw Maitland Fitzturgis sitting beside a sturdy rosy-cheeked old man, with a grey moustache and thick grey hair growing low above his forehead. One glance showed her that, then her eyes, in joyful wonder, were fixed on Fitzturgis. It seemed to her so long since she had seen him that she half expected him to be changed. But no — there he was, just as when they had parted at Cobh, excepting that now his face was lighted by astonishment, by incredulity, as though he saw a vision.

  XV

  FITZTURGIS AT HOME

  “Hello, Mait, I thought I’d look you up,” Adeline said, her voice trembling, a pulse in her throat throbbing.

  “Adeline,” he gasped, coming to her with hands outstretched. “Is it possible?”

  She could not answer. The trembling of her voice now had become the trembling of her whole being. So had her love swept through her at the sight of him standing there, his intent eyes fixed on her, his troubled smile, the beautifully moulded structure of his face, his curly hair that seemed to have no colour of its own, but, where the firelight touched it, was edged by bronze.

  “who brought you?” he demanded.

  “I came alone.” She could no more than whisper the words.

  “Alone,” he echoed. He raised his arms as though to take her into them, then let them fall.

  His uncertainty gave her strength. “Yes,” she said boldly, “and no one knows I came.”

  Now her strength was coming back to her. They stood looking into each other’s eyes, seeing there the sea at night and the two of them alone on the deck, feeling how the circling of their blood had joined and, as in a miracle, flowed together.

  “No one knows you came,” he repeated, under his breath, and she saw the colour mount to his forehead, as though he were embarrassed that she had to seek him out, instead of his going in search of her.

  The old man sat on the bench, his bright eyes full of curiosity. In his left hand he held an egg which he had been eating from the shell, and in his right a spoon which he raised as though in salute. His bare feet were planted side by side on the earth floor.

  “This,” said Fitzturgis, “is Tim Rafferty. Tim — this young lady comes all the way from Canada.”

  Rafferty spoke in a voice so hearty that it was almost a roar. “Welcome to this country and welcome under my roof,” he roared, “and I wish I might stand up to welcome you proper but I’ve the rheumatics so bad from bein’ in the wather so much that ’tis all I can do to get from me bed to me bench here, wid the help of me niece.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Adeline, holding out her hand, but it was clear that he did not ask for pity. He beamed benignly up at her, laid down his spoon on the seat beside him and clasped her hand in his warm grasp.

  The slatternly middle-aged woman came forward, smiling sadly, and shook hands also.

  “I must tell you,” said Fitzturgis, “that Tim has been a great fisherman in his day. There isn’t a stream hereabout that he doesn’t know by heart —”

  “And all the fish in it,” roared Rafferty. “Never did I cast me line in vain and ’twas fishin’ be day and night that gave me the rheumatics.”

  He made room for Adeline on the bench beside him, his niece first dusting it with her soiled apron. Fitzturgis seated himself opposite, the fire burning low on the hearth between. The stone fireplace filled one end of the little room. The hens picked for breadcrumbs.

  “Do please finish your egg,” Adeline said anxiously.

  “Och, it can wait. It’s not often we have a visitor as
foine as you, my lady.” With his spoon he pointed proudly to Fitzturgis. “This gentleman’s father I worked for, and his grandfather, and he owning all the land about and as fine a man as ye’d meet in a lifetime. Go into the bedroom, Katie, and bring his picture to show the young lady.”

  Adeline saw then that the niece was barefoot too. Her black hair hung in strings about her face. She came back carrying a large framed photograph of a man of forty, wearing a large cravat and sidewhiskers. It too she polished with her apron.

  “He’s very nice,” said Adeline to Fitzturgis, across the picture of his grandfather. “Do you remember him?”

  “No. I wish I did.”

  Rafferty began a long story about the grandfather, his brogue so enriched as he talked that Adeline could not follow it. She wanted to go, to be alone with Fitzturgis. Why did he sit there smiling as though they had hours to spare, when in truth the day was nearly done? A sense of foreboding crept into her mind. At last she said:

  “I think I must be going.” She stood up.

  “Yes. Of course.” He stood up too. “Perhaps Miss Whiteoak will come again, Tim. Then you can finish your story.”

  “And there’s your egg to be finished,” said Adeline. “It will be quite cold.”

  Rafferty made a grand gesture with the egg. “Sure it will kape,” he declared, “but if ye must be going, I’ll wish ye God speed, and may God bless ye, young lady, and give ye the foine husband ye deserve.”

  “Would ye like to see the bedroom then?” asked the niece.

  Adeline said she would and was led into the one other room. The niece returned the picture to its place on the wall. She remarked, — “The beds is not made yet, miss, because of the wakeness that comes over me in the marnins. I’ve hardly the strenth to move at all.” She looked at the two tumbled beds that almost filled the room, as though she longed to creep into one. She began to pour out the details of an operation she had undergone. In the other room the old man was roaring jovially at Fitzturgis.

  When at last he and she stood on the road together the sun was sliding down through misty clouds toward the mountain. On a little river far below, the wild swans moved among the rushes. Fitzturgis asked, in an almost matter-of-fact tone, — “where is your car?”

  She answered, in a small voice, — “In the driveway of your house. A maid was coming out and she told me where you were. You see,” she hurried on, “I had the car out and I knew this was your direction and — I thought I’d just drop in and see you.” She was faint for food, her heart was beating heavily. Suddenly a gulf had come between her and Fitzturgis. He was almost a stranger. She turned her head to look at him and their eyes met but only for an instant. Then they looked away again as though even a glance of intimacy was unbearable. “what is the matter?” she thought. “what has spoilt everything?” Even the earth beneath her feet felt less secure, and she who walked as lightly as a young doe stumbled. He caught her arm, and her name came from his lips in solicitude.

  “Come in here and sit down,” he said and he led her through the gate, past the car, and to a seat beneath a grim grey-green cork tree. It was twilight in here and there was a smell of damp. He picked up a mossy twig from the mossy ground and tried to break it but it only bent.

  “Adeline,” he began.

  “Yes?” she encouraged, her eyes, her whole being waiting.

  “I want to talk to you,” he said, “to explain why I’ve acted as I have — though nothing I say can make it right.”

  “Not right,” she repeated, the sense of duty that had been implanted in her raising its head.

  “I had no right,” he went on, in a low voice, “to make love to you — I mean, to say those words of love to you.”

  A light broke on her. “You mean you’re already engaged?”

  “No.”

  “Married?”

  “No.” He had managed to break the twig. He threw it to the ground and now his hands hung limp between his knees. “Not married — but I am not free. I’m irrevocably tied. You asked me if I lived alone and I told you my mother came to stay with me sometimes. The truth is that she lives with me. She’s dependent on me because my father lost everything he had — drank himself to death.”

  “Is that all!” she exclaimed, relieved.

  “I wish it were. But my sister also is dependent on me. She lives here too.”

  “I thought she lived in New York.”

  “That’s the married one. This one is younger. She’s twenty-eight. She was married to a friend of mine. He was in the Air Force. She was going to have a baby. He came to London on a few days’ leave. She loved this chap with all her heart. There was an air-raid and she saw him killed — horribly. She was splashed with his blood. Then the baby was born dead and she nearly died. It unhinged her and she was in a mental home for several years. Then the war was over and I was back in London. The mental homes were crowded and my sister was said to be almost well. She was brought back to my mother, and now — the two of them — they’ve no one but me. They’re quite incapable of looking after themselves — as you will see.”

  “Do you want me to meet them?”

  “Of course. But now you see why I had no right to say one word of love to you. I’m not a free man. And I’m a poor man. It’s all I can do to keep this place going.”

  “It’s a terribly sad story, Mait. I wish you’d told me before.”

  “It was such a happy time I hadn’t the heart to tell you. Everything would have been changed.”

  “Nothing is changed in me.” She spoke in a low but confident voice. In truth she could not discover what all this had to do with their love. Their love was like the hills beyond the valley. Though clouds hung over them the hills were not changed.

  “I did wrong,” he persisted, “to rouse any feeling in you of love for me.” And he spoke like a man who knew his power.

  “You could not help it,” she said. “Just to be near you made me —” She could not continue. Her voice trembled. She pressed her hands together between her knees.

  From the far end of the bench his deep-set eyes were fixed on her in pity and longing.

  “It’s very hard on you,” she said.

  He gave a short laugh. “I hadn’t thought of being sorry for myself, not till you came on the scene. Now I confess I am.”

  “Can’t anything be done?”

  “Wait till you meet my mother and sister. That will be answer enough.”

  A shadow, darker than the tree, closed over them. Raindrops fell on the leaves. His hand moved along the bench and closed over her two hands pressed together. She turned her face toward him. Her eyes, eager and loving, were raised to his but her lips were firm in her innate dignity.

  “It’s beginning to rain,” she said.

  He bent his head above her hands and kissed them.

  “I must go,” she said, and gently withdrew her hands.

  “Go!” he repeated blankly, and straightened. “You can’t go without coming into the house, meeting my family. However did you find your way here?”

  “I asked.”

  “And they — Finch and Maurice — let you come alone?”

  “I’ve told you — they don’t know.”

  “Good God — what will they think?”

  She smiled. “I can’t imagine.”

  “Did you have lunch?”

  “No.”

  “Nor tea?”

  “No.”

  “why, my darling —” he exclaimed in consternation, “you must be starved.”

  “I am rather hungry. No — I think I’m past being hungry.”

  He looked at his watch. “It is five o’clock. I must take you straight to the house and my mother will give you tea.”

  She said reluctantly, — “Do you think your mother will want to meet me?”

  “She’ll be delighted. Make no mistake about that.”

  “And your sister?” The word he had used about her — unhinged — came to Adeline’s mind and she found she wa
s afraid of the sister.

  “Oh, she’s very quiet,” he answered in a matter-of-fact tone.

  They stood up. The tree let down a veil of rain in front of them.

  “We must run for it,” he said. “Give me your hand.”

  She put her hand in his. They bent beneath the branches and then ran along the drive to the house. The front door stood open. On a table in the hall there was a bowl of tulips. He led her past it into a long low room where a table set with tea-things stood beside a small fire of greenish wood that gave off more smoke than flame. At the table sat a woman in her fifties, with a round pale face, rather puffy eyes and a mass of hair that was dyed a rich henna. She wore a green knitted pullover, a necklet of heavy beads and long earrings to match. A stare of astonishment widened her eves. Fitzturgis said:

  “Mother, this is Miss Adeline Whiteoak. We met on board ship. She comes from Canada.”

  Mrs. Fitzturgis took Adeline’s hand in a warm soft clasp and held it. “Ah, yes,” she said, “how very nice! I’m so glad you’ve looked us up. We are so few in this benighted spot that we’re glad of a call from literally anyone. I mean we are a great many people but they’re all the wrong sort. I mean that to a woman like myself who has been accustomed to pick and choose it’s simply ghastly to live in so isolated a way. Upon my word, if ever I’d known I should come to such a point I’d have gone stark staring — no, of course, I don’t mean anything so drastic as mad — certainly not. But I’d have resented it deeply.”

  “Yes, Mother,” put in Fitzturgis. “And will you please give us tea? Miss Whiteoak is starving.”

  Mrs. Fitzturgis at once sprang to her feet and snatched up the teapot. So precariously did she balance it that a driblet of tea ran from its spout to the carpet. Fitzturgis put out his hand to the pot. “Mother, see what you’re doing!” he exclaimed.

  She was unperturbed. “That old carpet,” she said scornfully. “I’m sure Miss Whiteoak will see that nothing can make it look worse.” She now shifted the teapot so that its dribbling pointed toward Adeline.