So when Nook had suggested calling himself Christian Piers had only remarked, “An odd sort of name for a Whiteoak.”
“Surely no odder than Finch,” said his son.
“I guess I made a mistake in naming you after my brother Finch,” said Piers, “but at the time it seemed a good idea. For one thing he’d lately had a fortune left him.”
“That was a pretty good reason, but what was the other?”
“Well, he was and is a decent sort of fellow.”
Nook agreed. “I like that reason best. I’ve always admired Uncle Finch, but I don’t believe he’d thank me for setting out to distinguish myself under his name.”
“Anyhow,” said Pheasant, “he’ll scarcely make you his heir when he has a son of his own.”
“Just the same,” said Piers, “he might do more for Nook, if Nook didn’t take another name.”
“On the other hand,” put in the boy, “he might be induced to pay me for changing it.”
Pheasant said, “You wouldn’t be disgracing the name if you painted good pictures.”
Piers looked judicial and added, “No one in the public eye wants another of the same name in it.”
“You speak,” said Pheasant, “as though people in the public eye were motes.”
Nook asked, “Has anyone any objection to Christian as a name?”
“It’s too much like Pilgrim’s Progress,” said Piers.
“Then there are the kings of Denmark,” said his wife, preferring kings to pilgrims. “I think I can get used to it in time.”
“Do you object, Dad?” Nook would not go openly against the grain of the family. “Do you think Uncle Renny will object?”
Piers at once became brusque. “It’s not for him to say.”
“But it would do no harm to ask him,” said Pheasant.
“I’m quite willing. I mean I have nothing against Christian. That ought to be enough for Nook.”
“And we can still call you Nooky in private, can’t we?” Pheasant put her arm about the youth and pressed him to her.
That had been months ago. Now the name Christian had become firmly attached to Nook outside the family and was ceasing to be a joke inside it. Christian himself did not mind being laughed at. What he could not bear were anger and unkind words. He was quick to retaliate in them but as quick to be sorry and to say so.
The artist’s smock in which he now appeared somehow accentuated his extreme erectness and thinness. His dark eyes were bright in his fair face.
Pheasant said, “We must be very nice to this Maitland Fitzturgis. His visit here means a great deal to Adeline.”
“Visit!” repeated Philip. “I thought he’d come to stay.”
“Do you mean as Adeline’s husband?” asked Pheasant.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“People don’t get married in that offhand way.”
“You and Dad eloped, didn’t you?”
Piers gave a shout of laughter. He said, “We’d given lots of thought to it. It wasn’t offhand.”
Philip said, “Adeline and he have been corresponding for two years. Why didn’t he come sooner?”
“He had to settle his affairs. Find a purchaser for his property.”
“I hope he’s well off. Somehow I feel he isn’t.”
Christian asked, “Did he speak of Maurice coming any time soon?”
“Yes,” answered Piers. “He hopes to come this summer.”
In this family there were the three sons and, as though an afterthought, at the end of the war, a little daughter, Mary. She ran to join the others now with the careless grace of the five-year-old. But there were marks of tears on her cheeks. She had been in one of her own secret places shedding a few private tears.
Her mother and brothers ignored these, but Piers asked, “what has my little girl been crying about?”
She thought a moment and then murmured, “Because Nooky has two names.”
“Always Nooky to you,” he said.
“what a silly kid,” observed Philip. “I’m glad we have only one girl.”
Mary looked up pathetically into the faces of those about her, as though searching for a friendly one. Piers picked her up and she pressed her pink face to his cheek.
“whom do you love best?” he asked.
Suddenly smiling, she answered emphatically, “Uncle Renny.”
“Well, I like that — after all I do for you!”
He set her on her feet, took her hand, and led her into the house. Skipping happily beside him, Mary chanted, “I love Uncle Renny best — best — best!”
Piers called over his shoulder, “Pheasant — it’s time for this child’s tea and bed.”
Nook returned to his studio, his refuge, the place where he was happiest. He stood before the unfinished picture on the easel — the study of a cloud above a summer field — and regarded it absently. He did not see it clearly because Adeline’s vivid face came between him and the canvas. He had a feeling of something like anger toward her for bringing the Irishman on the scene, in the very summer when Maurice was expected home on a visit. Maurice had always shown a fondness for Adeline, had once confided to Nook that he loved her. It did seem a shame that Fitzturgis should, after two years of what Nook thought of as shilly-shallying, come to claim Adeline. And of what use would he be at Jalna?
“That’s what I’d like to know,” he said aloud, as he scraped his palette.
A voice behind him asked, “what would you like to know?”
He wheeled and faced his cousin Patience, who had dropped in, as she so often did, on her way home, after her work at Jalna.
“This Maitland Fitzturgis. Of what good will he be at Jalna?”
“Quite a lot, I imagine — to Adeline.”
“He can’t just come here and sponge on Uncle Renny. There are enough already trying to wrench a living out of Jalna.”
Patience laughed good-humouredly. “Oh, Christian, what a horrid description of us! For I suppose it includes me.”
“Andmyself.”
“In what fashion do you wrench your living?”
“Well, I paint its fields and clouds.”
“Have you sold a picture yet?”
“I haven’t tried. It’s too soon.”
She came and stood in front of the canvas. “This is lovely. It makes you feel peaceful and as if things don’t matter.”
He gave her a swift appraising glance. He said, “You have a peaceful look, Patience. Some day, when I’m better at it, I’m going to paint you. You’ll make a good subject in those blue overalls, with your short dark hair, grey eyes and your complete lack of …” He hesitated, not wanting to hurt her feelings.
“Go on,” she urged. “It’s fun to be noticed.”
“Very well then — I’ll say what the newspapers call ‘sleek sophistication.’”
Patience made a sound of derision. “I never can hope to have that,” she said.
“Do you like it?”
“I envy it, Nooky.”
“I think it’s disgusting.”
“You say that, but you probably admire it when you see it.”
“I admired Roma before she achieved it. I didn’t admire her much, but I quite liked her looks.”
“You did three pictures of her last year.”
“Look about and see if you can discover them.”
Patience looked vaguely about her. “I don’t see them.”
“No one ever will. They’re obliterated.”
“I don’t understand you,” she said. “Roma is admired by almost everyone.”
With a frankness which brought colour to her cheeks he said, “I suppose you’re thinking of Norman Green.”
For a moment she could not speak, then she said in a consciously matter-of-fact voice, “Well, I must be going. I suppose you’ll be at the party this evening.”
“I suppose so.”
“Goodbye, Christian.”
“Goodbye, Patience. Love to Auntie Meg.”
&n
bsp; “AndRoma?”
“Of course.”
She looked back at the studio, wondering what life had been like when it was a carriage house in the old days. Rather nice, she thought, to have lived in those days and not bothered about makeup and nylons and sophistication. Not that she bothered much, but there they were, rankling at the back of her mind, especially in these last unhappy months.
The road past the church was quiet. It was quiet when she turned into her own home, through the brown wicket-gate set in the hedge. The hollyhocks against the wall of the house were just coming into bloom, shyly unfolding their pink rosettes, low down on the stalk in the shelter of the rough leaves and keeping the round green buds of the later bloom tightly curled at the top. Patience paused to look at the hollyhocks, feeling an odd affinity with them. Two robins were on the little lawn — father and son. Son was as large as father but speckle-breasted, large of beak, hungry of eye. Every movement of father was avidly watched by son, hopping close behind. Father picked up an almost invisible something and with an incredibly swift movement thrust it into son’s mouth. He then flew off, with son in wide-winged pursuit. Patience said aloud, “He’ll not keep that up much longer. He’s tired of being a parent.”
The front door opened and Meg appeared.
“Oh, here you are, dear!” she exclaimed in her warm, welcoming voice. “Did you say something?”
“Just to myself, Mummy.” The two exchanged kisses. “I was watching two robins.”
“what a wonderful time they have, after all the rain! Did you have a good day, Patience?”
Meg looked into her child’s face with solicitude. She had not very much liked young Green, but she suffered in seeing Patience deprived of him. She was conscious that Patience had been ready to devote the rest of her life to making Green happy; and if she thought the object of her devotion not worthy of Patience, she never said so. In fact Meg displayed greater tact than ever before in her life. She lived in the house with the two girls, her daughter and her niece, through a crisis that might have left them either not on speaking terms or in open antagonism. But toward both girls Meg retained her attitude of loving calm. Patience was the child of her body, her own child. But to Roma she gave a tender love. Roma was the daughter of her dead brother Eden. Eden had been a poet. He had been what Meg called “wild,” but she had loved him dearly, had nursed him through his last illness. Meg thought of herself as a poor widow bearing the responsibility of those two young lives.
Mother and daughter had just entered the house, hand in hand, when a sports car appeared on the tree-shaded road, then stopped outside the gate.
Meg said, “It’s Roma — and him.”
Patience turned toward the stairs. “I must clean myself up. What time are we expected at Jalna?”
“Oh, soon after supper. Do put on something pretty, Patience. I must tell Roma. Norman’s not getting out of the car.”
As though she had not heard, Patience went slowly up the stairs.
“Tired, dear?” her mother called after her.
“Not a bit. Just bored by having to dress up.”
Patience turned into her own room just as Roma reached the top of the stairs. Roma sang out “Hullo” in a cheerful voice but did not glance into her cousin’s room as she passed. Patience could hear her opening and shutting drawers, running water in the bathroom, then hurrying down the stairs. Not till she heard Roma’s steps running toward the gate did she move from her motionless attitude of attention. It was as though Roma’s smallest act were important to her. She was conscious of this and gave a little grimace of pain, remembering how unimportant Roma used to be to her. Now she moved slowly to the wide open door of Roma’s room and saw the usual disorder — shoes and stockings strewn on the floor; the bed littered with underclothes, hairbrush and writing pad; the dressing table strewn with so many odds and ends that Patience wondered how she ever found anything. Yet find what she wanted she did and came out of that room shining with a sleekness Patience never achieved. Her lips curling in disgust, Patience returned to her own room where she kept her possessions in almost military order. She looked dispassionately at her reflection in the glass and thought, “No wonder Norman likes her best.”
Meg was in the hall as Roma came running down the stairs. She just touched Meg’s cheek with hers and said, “Oh, Aunty Meg, I forgot to say I’ll not be at home for supper. Norman and I are going to see a friend of his in Mistwell.”
Meg put out a hand toward Roma, as though to draw the girl to her, but she was gone, running along the path, between the borders of annual stock, to join Norman in the car. Meg, from the doorway, called:
“We’re invited to Jalna this evening to meet Adeline’s friend from Ireland. I think you should be there, Roma.”
Roma consulted with Norman. She called back, “All right, Aunty Meg. I’ll come. Bye-bye.”
The car moved swiftly down the road, Norman’s lacquered head bending to Roma. Meg gave a deep sigh and slowly climbed the stairs. But she arrived soon enough to discover Patience peering out of the window after the car. There were both girls, their minds fixed on the one young man, and he, to Meg’s way of thinking, quite undesirable. It seemed hard to Meg that this rift should have come to separate the three in her house. She had, in her placid way, yearned over, planned for, the two girls.
Often she had sought to trace a resemblance to Eden in Roma’s childish face but could find none. Neither could she find a likeness in nature, for Eden had been demonstrative in his affection; and if Roma felt affection for her or for Patience, certainly she did not show it.
Meg wanted to love and be loved. Now she went to Patience, put an arm about her. Here were caresses for the asking. Patience hugged her mother almost fiercely and promised to put on her prettiest dress for the evening.
“This is quite an event,” Meg said. “Something we’ve all been looking forward to ever since Adeline’s visit to Ireland. Maitland Fitzturgis must be a captivating young man to have fascinated Adeline at their meeting and held her fancy ever since. Now she will marry him. The first marriage among you young cousins, and naturally you will be maid of honour, with Roma as bridesmaid and little Mary as flower girl. What a pretty affair it will be! You know, we haven’t had any pretty weddings in our church. Mine was a small affair with just the family. Renny and Finch married their wives in England. Piers eloped. As for Eden — well, the less said about his connections with women, the better. But he was a poet, and — whatever Piers may say — you can’t expect poets to behave like ordinary men.”
II
The Welcome for Fitzturgis
NICHOLAS HAD MADE up his mind that he would go downstairs that evening.
“I will not,” he had said, “meet Adeline’s fiancé up in my bed like an old invalid. After all, I’m only ninety-eight. My mother was up and about when she was a hundred. By Jove, I haven’t been downstairs in a month. I will go down tonight.”
“Good,” said Renny. “Shall you come down to dinner or just for a while in the evening?”
“To dinner, certainly. Will you lay out my clothes, like a good fellow, and be ready to give me an arm when the time comes? I don’t want that Irishman to see me being helped down the stairs. Tell Adeline to keep him out of the way.”
“I will, Uncle Nick.” Renny smiled his encouragement but thought dubiously of the journey down the stairs. Still, if the dear old boy wanted to undertake it, nothing should hinder him.
When the time came Renny helped him get into his clothes. He had already shaved him and made his hair spruce. When he was dressed he had to rest a bit and take a little tablet from the doctor, before starting the descent. Renny looked down at him with a mixture of admiration and sadness. How different he had been not so long ago. Yes, he had been different indeed. His clothes had set well on him. His firm, aquiline face had expressed well-being and a sardonic humour. But time had dealt differently with him than with his mother. Her it had coarsened, brought out wiry hairs on her chin, roughened he
r voice, given a truculence and daring to her aspect as though she challenged death itself. But the face of Nicholas had fined down. His features had taken on an almost cameo-like delicacy. The shadow of melancholy touched it.
Yet sometimes he was surprisingly like the Nicholas of old, and tonight was one of the times.
“Now,” he said in his still deep-toned voice, “let us make the descent. I’m all set to make a good impression on this Irishman. Heave me up, Renny. Egad, my leg is stiff!”
Alayne was nervous about his going down. She came to the door and spoke in a low tone to Renny. “Don’t you think I should send Archer to help?”
Renny shook his head. “I can manage.”
“He looks tired already.”
“what’s that?” demanded Nicholas.
“Are you a little tired, Uncle Nicholas?”
“Not a bit of it,” he said, trying to make himself sound like his old mother. “I want my dinner.” He smiled at Alayne and put out his hand to her. She came and kissed him.
Books 13-16: Return to Jalna / Renny's Daughter / Variable Winds at Jalna / Centenary at Jalna Page 82