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

by Mazo de La Roche

Christian yawned. “As she would bore anyone with brains.”

  “She and Norman,” said Patience, “consider themselves intellectuals.”

  “You’re making me ill,” said Christian.

  “Perhaps, but I couldn’t possibly understand the books they read.”

  “Do theyunderstand them, d’you think? Or do they just carry them about as the badge of the Lodge they belong to?”

  Patience knit her brow in puzzlement. “Well, they know the names of the authors and the tables of contents.”

  Christian shouted with laughter. “I’ll bet they do. And Roma is damned proud of being the daughter of a poet. She knows the titles of all Uncle Eden’s poems, but has she ever read one of them? I doubt it.”

  Renny now joined them. He said, “It’s time your Uncle Nicholas went to bed, but he’s so enjoying himself I hate to suggest it.”

  “when he does go up,” said Adeline, “I’ll take Maitland out of the way. Uncle Nick doesn’t like to be seen being helped.”

  “Bless his heart,” said Patience.

  A car was glimpsed coming slowly up the drive.

  “Our little friend Roma arrives,” said Christian.

  The car stopped but remained hidden behind the hemlocks. Roma came, trudging crossly along the gravel sweep, her eyes fixed on the group in the porch.

  “She has just two expressions,” said Christian. “She either smiles or doesn’t smile.”

  “She has just two tones of voice,” said Adeline. “She speaks soft and sweet or matter-of-fact and down to earth.”

  “Hello,” called out Roma. “Hello, Uncle Renny.” She was the only one of the young Whiteoaks not fond of Renny. Too often he had read her a lesson.

  Now he called back, “You are very late.”

  “Better late than never,” she returned.

  Christian said low, “She doesn’t smile.”

  To Roma Adeline said, “Come on in and meet Maitland.”

  All returned to the drawing-room. Fitzturgis was devoting himself to Nicholas, who drew Roma to the arm of his chair. “This little girl,” he said, “is my nephew Eden’s daughter. Eden was a poet — the first of the Whiteoaks to turn to things artistic, though my brother Ernest had quite a bent toward writing and always intended to do a book about Shakespeare but never found the time. Of course you’ve heard that young Nooky — what is it he calls himself now?”

  “Christian,” said Roma.

  “Ah, yes — Christian, he’s turned to painting. And Finch is a concert pianist, and Wakefield is an actor. And there’s a young man nearby who writes. What’s his name, Roma?”

  “Humphrey Bell.”

  “That’s it. And what does he write?”

  She answered, as though in a lesson, “Short stories in the American and Canadian magazines. He’s done some radio scripts and a little work in television.”

  “Well, well,” said Nicholas. “Before we know it we shall have an artists’ colony here in place of the settlement of retired British officers we set out with. Do you think that will be a change for the better, Roma?”

  “I haven’t thought about it,” she returned.

  Nicholas’s head sank on his breast. He looked unutterably weary. Adeline came to them. “Say goodnight to Uncle Nicholas, Mait. He’s off to bed.” She stroked the old man’s belligerent crest of hair, then drew Fitzturgis to join the other young people outdoors. They strolled down into the ravine. Roma hesitated, as though not quite knowing what to do, then followed them. At the path that led to the stream they stood in a group talking for a little. Fitzturgis held Adeline’s fingers in his.

  Indoors Nicholas was being half carried to his room by Renny and Piers. They looked at him with anxiety. They had never seen him look so old.

  “How do you feel?” asked Piers, when they had set him in his own big chair. “Pretty tired?”

  “No, no, not too tired,” he growled, “but ready for my bed. Get me one of my pills, Renny. And you, Piers, my pyjamas.” He looked longingly at his bed.

  They busied themselves waiting on him, in that room where as little boys they had felt it a privilege just to be admitted; to which he had returned, a traveller, from the mysterious outside world. Now, instead of awe, he moved them to pity and protection. Yet when he was safe in bed, propped up by his pillows, he looked imposing. He was pleased with himself, too, and inclined to take a favourable view of Fitzturgis.

  “I like the man,” he said. “He appears to be a very agreeable fellow, but I can’t somehow picture him at Jalna. Can you, Piers?”

  “Not for the life of me,” said Piers. And, as though Renny were not present, he went on, “I can’t imagine what Renny’s going to do with him. He’ll be of no use to anyone.”

  Renny retorted, “You’re always complaining that you have too much to do.”

  “what I need,” said Piers, “is another good farm hand, not a gentleman farmer to share the profits.”

  “I understand from Adeline that he’ll do anything.”

  “You may understand it from her, but has he said so?”

  “My God!” exclaimed Renny. “The man has barely arrived.”

  “He tells me,” said Nicholas, “that his brother-in-law has offered him a position in New York.”

  “what sort of position?”

  “He didn’t say. Ah, yes, it had something to do with advertising.”

  Renny frowned. “Adeline would never go to New York. There’s plenty for him to do at Jalna.”

  “Is there plenty of money for the support of another family?” asked Piers.

  Renny, looking him full in the eyes, answered, “Yes.”

  Piers was shaking with internal laughter. He patted his uncle’s shoulder. “Goodnight, Uncle Nick. It’s been splendid seeing you downstairs again.”

  When he had gone Nicholas asked, “when is the marriage to take place? I hope it will be fairly soon. I should like to be there.”

  “It wouldn’t go off properly without you, Uncle Nicholas…. Shall I put out the light?”

  “Yes. I’m pretty tired but glad to have been downstairs. From now on I shall be down every evening.”

  As the first light was extinguished the face on the pillow was dimmed. With the putting out of the second light the face was gone.

  “Are you all right?” asked Renny.

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight…. What are you waiting for?”

  “I’m going now.” But he lingered till he heard a rhythmic snore.

  In the cool night air he crossed the lawn and descended halfway down the path to the ravine. From there he could see by the misty moonlight the figures of Adeline and Fitzturgis on the bridge above the stream. He experienced an odd constriction of the heart to see her in this attitude of loving isolation with another man, in the spot where she had so often stood with him. Yet, at the same time, his almost predatory patriarchal nature reached out to draw Fitzturgis into the fold. “There is plenty for him to do here,” he thought. “Plenty for us all.”

  With these contradictory emotions moving him he went to the stables. He opened the door and entered the straw-scented quietness. How different the effect of the moonlight coming in at these windows! Outdoors it whitened the paths, turned the grass to dark velvet, sought out the mystery of each separate tree. Here it showed the dim shapes of the resting horses, some lying in the straw, others standing. The moonlight caught the brightness of a buckle, the lustre of a pair of startled eyes. It turned an exquisitely made spiderweb to silver and its watchful occupant to gold. Even the enmeshed fly had its moment’s beauty.

  A three-days-old foal lay secure against its dam’s side. In the darkness, the warmth, the seclusion, it felt as safe as it had within her body. Even when Renny entered the loose-box it felt no alarm. The mare gave him a low rumble of greeting as he bent to pat her.

  “Good girl,” he said. “You have a lovely baby. I’m proud of you.” And his pride in his horses seemed to enter t
heir consciousness. They moved, and low whickers came from stall and loose-box at the sound of his voice. He felt pity for the man whose pride was in his motor car, that showy piece of mechanism whose glamour perished with its glitter, whose life blood was gasoline, which rolled out of factories in mass production.

  III

  Getting Acquainted

  FITZTURGIS HAD COME to Jalna with mingled feelings of apprehension, self-distrust, and remembered love. In what was he involving himself? As an Irishman, the close-knit family life was not new to him. But life at Jalna would be different from any he had known. Somehow he could not picture himself as resident son-in-law (so he grimly put it) to the man who figured so largely in Adeline’s letters. How deeply in love was he? He could not have said. Certainly he had felt an ardour for Adeline never before experienced by him. But was it enough? He realized that there was within himself a desire for almost melancholy retreat from the closest human relations. And the events of his life had strengthened this — his life in these last years with his mother and sister — his sister’s mental illness. Yet the remembrance of Adeline in his arms, of her trust in him and her joyous confidence in the future, was a sunshine to burn away these mists of doubt. Standing on the rustic bridge with her, the darkling stream scarcely audible below, he felt a passionate upsurge of desire and a determination to be steadfast in his love.

  On the following morning Renny mounted him on a peppery grey gelding and took him on a tour of the estate. showed him the fields with the wheat tall, golden, and stately, soon to be reaped; the orchards where Piers was spraying the apple trees; the cherry orchard where pickers were filling their baskets with the glossy red fruit; the old apple orchard, planted by his grandfather, where the fruit would rot unpicked, where the old trees leant to the knee-high grass.

  “These apples,” said Renny, “are no longer marketable. Their varieties are forgotten, but I say they are better flavoured than the showy sort they sell in the shops today. I’m sure you’ll think so.” He took it for granted that Fitzturgis would remain at Jalna.

  On his part the Irishman was not sorry to dismount at the stable door. The gelding, in his irritable shyings, had shown an invincible desire to throw him, and Fitzturgis disliked the thought of such an ignominious exhibition. He made no pretence of being an accomplished horseman. He preferred going about in a motor car. He had a disagreeable suspicion that Renny Whiteoak had mounted him on this particular horse to test his powers. Well, thank God, he’d stuck on him.

  “Good,” said Renny, with his genial grin, which Fitzturgis found somehow disparaging.

  Inside the stable they found the elderly ruddy-faced head groom, Wright, directing a new hand in his work.

  “Wright,” said Renny, “has been with me for over thirty years. In all that time he has scarcely taken a holiday — unless you call going to the Horse Show in New York a holiday. Eh, Wright?”

  “I call it hard work, sir,” said Wright, “but it’s holiday enough for me.” He stood squarely, sizing up Fitzturgis out of his round blue eyes.

  Renny went on, “He’s been to Ireland, too. It was he who took Maurice over when he was a little fellow.”

  “And a nice little boy he was,” said Wright. “I’d no trouble with him. I guess it was a lucky trip for him, though it seemed hard at the time.”

  “He’s coming here later,” said Fitzturgis without warmth. “Home he still calls it.”

  “I should think he would,” exclaimed Renny. “This is always home to all of us.”

  Wright asked, “Would you like to see the foal, sir?” He led the way to the loose-box where it stood, proud in its infant strength, beside its mother. “It has her head,” said Wright, “and its sire’s body. I believe it’ll be a good one.”

  “Is the sire well-known?” Fitzturgis asked, for something to say.

  “I’ll say he is,” said Wright. “He won the King’s Plate once and might have done wonders, but he has one fault. As long as there were fences in front of him he was OK, but the moment the run-in was reached he lost interest and wanted nothing but to get off the course. His rider could never tell when he might run out to the left.”

  The three men stared at the foal, which stared as though in challenge.

  Renny said to the foal, caressing it, “See to it that you inherit only your dad’s virtues.”

  “That’s easier said than done,” said Wright. “I think we’re all inclined to inherit faults.”

  “You say that, Wright,” laughed Renny. “Yet you call Miss Adeline perfect.”

  “She’s the exception, sir.” Wright turned to Fitzturgis and added in his old-fashioned way, “I hope I may make free to congratulate you, sir. I’ve known the young lady all her life. I carried her about these stables in my arms before she could walk, and she never knew the meaning of fear.”

  “I agree,” said Fitzturgis, “that she’s perfect.”

  In the passage they were joined by Patience, wearing a blue overall, a bottle of liniment in her hand. “I’ve been rubbing Frigate’s leg,” she explained. “It’s much better this morning.” She joined them in an inspection of the stables, showing a pride even in excess of Wright’s. Their order, their modern comforts, were indeed something to be proud of, and Fitzturgis said so.

  “where is Adeline?” asked Patience.

  “I wanted Mait’s strict attention,” said Renny, “so I left her at home.”

  “Uncle Finch is coming,” Patience announced. “Mother had a letter from him this morning. Isn’t that good news?” She turned to Fitzturgis. “You will be getting confused with us all, I’m afraid.”

  “Not at all,” he answered. “For one thing, I’ve met Finch. For another, Adeline has kept me en rapport with the doings of the family for the past two years.”

  “when is Finch coming?” asked Renny.

  “In three days. It’s sooner than we expected. The funny thing is that he doesn’t want us to prepare for him He just wants to be left alone.”

  “what’s the matter with him?”

  “Nothing, he says. He’s just tired and wants to be left alone.”

  “He couldn’t come to a better place,” Renny said cheerfully. “You must know” — his eyes were now on Fitzturgis — “we don’t bother much about the outer world, aside from the activities of our professions — if one can call the breeding of show horses a profession.”

  “I do,” said Patience, “and a mighty exacting one.” She added, not without pride, “I breed dogs too. Fashionable ones. Want to come and see my kennels?”

  “A little later,” said Renny. “I’d like to show Maitland my office first.” He found it difficult to call Fitzturgis by his Christian name, for the Whiteoaks were not accustomed to bandy first names till acquaintance had ripened. Yet how could he “mister” the man Adeline was to marry?

  In truth he found it hard to feel at complete ease with his guest. The man was still a mystery to him, in spite of his air of frankness. He realized, a little wryly, that he might have felt nearer to him if he had not been engaged to Adeline. As he looked at Fitzturgis he could not help thinking, “Here is the man who will supplant me.”

  Now, leading the way into his office, he said, “You would not think that girl had lately had a disappointment in love, would you?”

  “Indeed, no. She strikes me as being very serene.”

  “Oh, she’ll get over it,” said Renny. “The fact is, she’s well rid of him. He seems a poor creature. Unluckily young Roma is now engaged to him. Have a drink?”

  “Thanks.” Fitzturgis settled himself in the chair facing the shiny desk. His deepset eyes took in the pictures of horses on the walls.

  “Later,” said Renny, “I’ll show you the tack-room and our trophies.”

  “I’d like that,” said Fitzturgis, and added: “Roma’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she? Innocent and rather wistful-looking.”

  “She is,” agreed Renny. “She’s a nice girl at times. At other times I should like to take a stick to
her back. Her father, my brother Eden, died a good many years ago. I sometimes wonder what he would have thought of her.” He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, selected one and unlocked a cupboard. Fitzturgis glimpsed a strange assortment of objects, from among which Renny selected a bottle half filled with Scotch and a syphon of soda-water.

  Their drinks in their hands, they regarded each other across the desk in an odd, forced intimacy, having nothing to build on but their love for Adeline, each a little suspicious of the other’s love for her. Had Renny the intention of managing their lives for them, Fitzturgis wondered. He looked capable of trying it on — rather a hard customer, one might guess, sitting there, his dark red head bent above his glass, his dark eyes wary. In his turn Renny wondered whether this Irishman’s love were of the enduring sort — whether he would settle down comfortably at Jalna — and also, with concentrated interest, how much money he had. Well, surely a man had a right to know what were his future son-in-law’s prospects. He said:

  “I hope you did well in the sale of your property.”

  Fitzturgis gave an audible sigh. “Not too well. Not as well as I’d hoped. Still, there is enough to support my mother and my sister. Later on, my sister hopes to get work in New York.”

  “You could find no better investment for your money,” said Renny, “than the stables at Jalna. I’ve done very well in the past few years, but I need more capital. There is a good deal of money to be made from show horses and racehorses. They have become the rich man’s plaything. I have a friend named Crowdy, who owned just one racehorse but it turned out to be a good one. He not only made a lot of prize money, but he lately sold the horse to a millionaire for a fancy price.”

  “I warned you,” said Fitzturgis, “that I am a poor man. But I look forward to working for Adeline.”

  “Good,” said Renny, and a silence fell, broken by the incessant lowing of a cow. “They’ve taken her calf, poor thing,” he added.

  Fitzturgis said, “My brother-in-law can get me a job in New York, in advertising.”

  Renny Whiteoak looked blank, then repeated, “In advertising,” as though he wondered what that might be.