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

by Mazo de La Roche

This was a happy time for Finch and Sylvia. She awaited her confinement with more tranquility than even a few months ago she would have thought possible. Rather than harming her by exposure and fatigue, the holiday by the lake had done her good. Despite the increasing bulkiness of her body, her spirit was light. She was given confidence by the knowledge that Finch was to remain at home till after the birth of her child. He would finish the composition on which he was working before Christmas. After Christmas he was to go to New York to see a publisher. This sonata claimed him, as did his wife and the coming birth. Between the two his mind shuttled, never at rest, but without apprehension. The fates were smiling on him. All would go well.

  The snowfall was light. They took long walks. In the evenings Sylvia would read aloud to him, or others of the family would come to spend an hour or two. Sylvia and Patience had confidential talks regarding the trials and triumphs of maternity. The marriage of Roma to Maitland Fitzturgis was a puzzling event to Sylvia. Brother and sister had passed through times of deep emotion together, intimate in spirit, alternately tender in their love, or angry when he had sought to control the vagaries of her past mental illness. Now that she was secure in Finch’s love, Sylvia felt that she should be happy that her brother had married into the same family. Yet she could not be happy about this marriage. In their short acquaintance she had found little to attract her in Roma: she appeared not only cold, but shallow.

  What was there behind that charming face beyond a narrow self-seeking — an indolent distaste for exerting herself in the affairs of any but herself? And why had Maitland chosen to fall in love with two young girls — one after the other?

  This question she put to Finch, as they sat together watching through the window the pheasants feeding on grain he had scattered for them.

  “One after the other,” said Finch, “is better than both at the same time.”

  “But it’s not like him. He’s not an impulsive, out-giving person. He’s reserved. He needs understanding.”

  “Possibly he feels that a woman his own age would understand him too well.”

  “Oh, Finch, you must not be too critical of Mait. He’s been so good to me.”

  “I know he has and I’m grateful.”

  “But you don’t like him.”

  “I do — with reservations.”

  “what reservations?” She leaned forward eagerly.

  “I don’t need to tell you — you know him better than I do.”

  She sank back, closing her eyes for a moment. Then she said, “I understand what you mean. There’s something in Mait that you can’t get near. You wonder whether he is hiding his real self or whether he is just aimlessly drifting. It makes me angry with him.”

  “Not me,” said Finch. “I seldom think about him.”

  “That’s strange,” she said. “I’m always thinking about him. I do wish I could see him.”

  “You will very soon,” said Finch. “He and Roma are coming for Christmas.” Then he added, “Oh, I shouldn’t have told you that. Meg said it was to be a surprise.”

  “Meg — how could she know?”

  “They are to stay at the Rectory.”

  “How lovely! And yet — ”

  “And yet,” he repeated, “why not? I think it is a good arrangement. It would be too much for you to have them here and it would be impossible for them to stay at Jalna.”

  “I suppose so,” she said thoughtfully. “Heavens — why should family relations be so complicated?”

  “They’re terrible,” said Finch, “and wonderful. They’re the very stuff of life.”

  A fortnight later Sylvia and her brother sat together in that same room.

  “No need,” he said, “to ask you how you are. I’ve never seen you look better. But it’s strange to find you settled here in this lovely new house — an expectant mother.”

  “And you,” she exclaimed, “settled in New York — both of us so far from Ireland! I can’t say I’ve never seen you look better. You’re paler, and, I think, thinner. But perhaps that’s because you wear your hair shorter.”

  He passed a hand over his curly mouse-coloured hair. “No Irish tweeds either,” he said. “I’m trying hard to look American.”

  “You’ll never succeed. But — the thing is: do you like your job?”

  “As well as I like any sort of work.”

  Then she came out bluntly with the question — “And do you like being married?”

  “Possibly not as well as you do, but better than some.”

  “One can never get a straight answer out of you, Mait.”

  “Give me a straight answer to this — how do you like being a stepmother?”

  He saw at once that he had touched on a tender subject. Sylvia flushed and looked unhappy. She said — trying to keep her voice steady — “I’ve tried hard to get near Dennis but I cannot. Sometimes he’s almost affectionate, but I feel no sincerity in him — except in his adoration of Finch. That’s terribly sincere.”

  “And Finch? Does he dote on the boy?”

  “Ah, that’s one of my worries. Finch is so cold toward Dennis — it really hurts me. If his feelings toward Dennis were different — then Dennis might be more kind to me. I believe he blames me for Finch’s attitude toward him. But Finch never has loved his son. He’s told me so.”

  “whatever our faults as a family,” said Fitzturgis, “we have love for each other.”

  Sylvia gripped his hand, as though by that clasp she would sustain herself. “You’ve always been so good to me!” she said, and there were tears in her eyes.

  “why should you worry over this youngster?” he exclaimed. “Put him out of your mind. You have done your best — that’s all you can do. How old is the boy?”

  “He will be fourteen this month, and looks like twelve — rather a childish twelve.”

  “Fourteen! Boys of that age have usually got over hero-worshiping their father.”

  “Dennis is a very odd boy. In some ways he’s precocious. In others he behaves like a boy of seven. I never know which side of him to expect.”

  At this moment Dennis entered.

  Sylvia said, “This is my brother, Dennis. Do you remember him?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Dennis. “Only the other day my father and I were speaking of you.” He offered his hand to Fitzturgis.

  “Something pleasant, I hope,” said Fitzturgis.

  “I forget, my father and I talk of so many people and things.”

  “Music, I suppose,” said Fitzturgis. “Do you play an instrument?”

  “I play the violin — as my mother did. Would you like to see my violin? It was hers, of course. She had been playing on it the very day she was killed. She would play — specially for me — the tunes I liked. I was only five. Would you like to see the violin?”

  “Yes, indeed.” As the boy moved away, Fitzturgis cast a look toward Sylvia that said, “what an uncomfortable youngster.” His intent eyes then returned to the boy, who was taking the violin from its case.

  “Someone has been meddling with this,” said Dennis.

  “You left it lying on the piano,” Sylvia said sharply. “I simply laid it back in its case.”

  “I don’t like it interfered with,” said Dennis, and carried the violin to Fitzturgis. “It’s a very valuable one,” he explained. “An old Italian violin. Very valuable.” He ran his small fine hand caressingly over the violin.

  “Will you play for me?” asked Fitzturgis, from curiosity rather than desire to hear the boy perform.

  “Some other time,” said Dennis. “Just now I’m out of practice because of school exams.”

  He was listening. In a moment Finch came into the room.

  He greeted Fitzturgis and sat down beside Sylvia. Those were the three males, she thought, most nearly bound to her — irrevocably bound — Finch, by love — Maitland, by blood — Dennis, by the iron forging of circumstance. She was deeply conscious of these bonds. At this moment they tugged almost painfully on the eagernes
s of her spirit to be strong and free for the ordeal which awaited her and which, in spite of her happiness, she mortally feared. She clung to Finch’s protectiveness, yet shrank from his brooding hold on her. The presence of Fitzturgis brought all too painfully the remembrance of her unhappy illness, when he had heroically striven to save her from her despair. She could not look into that intent face without recalling scenes in Ireland that she would like to wipe from her memory forever. As for the boy, Dennis, she felt toward him a kind of fear. In spite of his small frame, his pale and delicate features, she thought she sensed in him a stony cynicism, an almost insane hatred toward herself that frightened her. Yet, when Finch spoke sternly to him, her instinct, already maternal, spread itself like wings, to protect him from harshness.

  After a little desultory talk between the two men, Fitzturgis said, “I hear that your son is talented too. He’s promised to play the violin for me one day.”

  “May I not be here,” said Finch, half-laughing.

  Fitzturgis, seeing the boy look crestfallen, said, “I’m sure he plays very well. Anyhow, I’m not a severe critic. I’d like to hear him play.”

  Dennis, with a slanting look at Finch, said — with a catch in his breath — “I’ll play for you, right now, if you like. If you can bear a few mistakes.” Even as he spoke he picked up the violin, as though to make certain that nothing would hinder his intention.

  “Good,” said Fitzturgis, and settled back with a smile, to listen.

  Dennis made a charming picture, the violin tucked beneath his chin, his right arm upraised with the bow.

  Sylvia said, “Will you play the accompaniment, Finch?”

  Without speaking, Finch moved to the piano seat. Dennis laid the sheet of music before him.

  “Schubert,” muttered Finch. “Can you really play this?”

  “I’ll try,” said Dennis, and began.

  Finch did not support the boy’s unaccomplished playing as he might have done. The attempt ended in a breakdown, accepted by the boy with almost negligent calm — by Finch, with intense irritability. Fitzturgis, nevertheless, applauded. Shortly afterward he left. Outside, he stood gazing into the noble darkness of a group of pines that had escaped the fire which, a few years ago, had swept away the original house and many of its trees. These pines remained and would still be casting their mysterious shadow when the new house and its occupants were no more. He wondered about Sylvia. Was she happy? And why was she so affected by the presence of the boy Dennis? For she was strongly affected, Fitzturgis was aware of that. On his own part, he was oddly attracted by the boy. A vague wish flickered through his mind — a wish that Dennis might have been his son.

  Inside the music room Finch turned on the piano seat to face Dennis, who stood, still holding the violin.

  “The next time,” said Finch, “that you persist in playing, don’t ask me to accompany you. I want to be free to leave the room.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” said Dennis.

  “I asked you,” said Sylvia, and in agitation rose to her feet. “To me,” she added, “it seemed that Dennis played very well.”

  “Then you weren’t listening,” said Finch. “It was atrocious. There is nothing so devilish as the squeaking of a fiddle can be. I refuse to listen to it.”

  Dennis stood transfixed. Beyond the window he could see the masculine darkness of the group of pines; set against them, inside, clear and heavy, the terribly female bulk of Sylvia. Rage surged within him, from bowels to brain. He raised his arm, and, pointing the bow of the violin at her, he said to Finch:

  “You used to like to hear me play till she came on the scene.”

  The formidable weight of the words, the smallness of the speaker, might have made the scene almost ridiculous, but the effect on Sylvia was as of a blow. “No, no, no,” she gasped and clung to the back of her chair for support.

  Finch strode to her side. “Come,” he said, “you must lie down.” Keeping his eyes off Dennis, he supported her into their room and closed the door.

  There she drew on all her strength. She stood upright. “what a fool I am,” she said, “to let something said by a child upset me! He couldn’t know how it hurt.”

  “He’s a little devil,” said Finch, “and I’ll go out to him and break that damned violin over his back.”

  Between him and Sylvia he had a sudden vision of his dead wife, Sarah, playing on her violin — that same instrument which Dennis cherished today. Sarah was gazing at him with possessive intensity, gazing at him as though every inch of him were of extravagant importance to her.

  “Let’s not take this too seriously,” Sylvia was saying. “Dennis was upset because — ”

  Finch interrupted, “I’ll teach him a lesson. I won’t have him insulting you.”

  She sank to the bed. “No, no,” she sobbed. “I can’t bear any sort of scene.”

  “You’ll know nothing about it.”

  “I can’t bear it,” she repeated. “Please, please don’t punish him.”

  “what do you want me to do?”

  “Say nothing more. Dennis will be sorry.”

  “It’s not in him to be sorry.”

  “Oh, Finch, he adores you, and it makes him madly jealous. We should not have let him come home and see me — like this.”

  “I’ll send him away.”

  “You can’t. Not just at Christmastime.”

  “I’ll send him to Jalna.”

  She snatched at the relief of that. “Yes, yes,” she said, “but don’t tell them — everything. I should be ashamed for them to know. I’d look such a failure.”

  What she did look, to Finch, was infinitely touching. To give her peace he agreed and, making her comfortable on the bed, returned to the music room. He did not close the door after him because he wanted to assure her that he would not so much as raise his voice when with Dennis.

  When Finch went in to his son he found that the violin had been put away neatly in its case. Dennis, in his grey flannel suit, stood with bowed head, like a prisoner awaiting sentence. He held his clasped hands in front of him, as though they were manacled.

  Finch said, in a controlled voice: “I should take you to Sylvia and make you apologize before punishing you. What I am going to do is to send you to Jalna, if Uncle Renny will have you, for the rest of the holidays. You are to understand that you are banished from here. Don’t show your face about home. You’re getting off very easily.”

  “But I don’t want to go away,” Dennis said earnestly. “I want to be with you.”

  “If you thought half as much of me as you pretend to think, you would realize that Sylvia’s happiness is the greatest thing in life to me.”

  “I’ll be different from now on,” said Dennis. “Please let me go and tell — ” He hesitated a moment, then brought out the word “Mother” in a still lower voice. “Let me go and tell Mother I’m sorry, I won’t do anything like that again, I promise. But please let me stay at home.”

  Sylvia must have been straining her ears to hear. Now she called out, “Let him come!”

  Finch stood undecided, dreading another scene.

  Dennis looking up into his face said, “She wants me to go to her. May I go?”

  “Very well,” Finch said. “But be careful what you say. I’ll be listening.”

  The small figure moved lightly past him and into Sylvia’s room. She was on the bed, but leaning on her elbow. Dennis had the power of making her feel that a crisis of some sort was at hand. Now she was aware of this sensation as he came to her bedside. She noticed a bruise on his smooth child’s forehead.

  “You have hurt yourself,” she said.

  He gave a little laugh and put up his hand to feel the spot. “I don’t even remember how I bumped it.”

  His eyes moved from her face and came to rest on the protuberance at her middle. Then he averted them and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said what I did about you. I know it isn’t true. Will you please forgive me and let me stay at home?”r />
  “Of course, I shall — if your father agrees.” She put out her hand to him. He caught it, bent over it, as though in curiosity to examine the delicate blue veins in its thinness. Then he wheeled and ran from the room to Finch and caught him by the arm.

  “She wants me to stay at home,” he said eagerly. “She says so herself. Please don’t send me away, Daddy. I’ll be different. I’ll behave the way you’d like me to. I won’t play the violin, or be cheeky — or anything. Please.”

  “what I should like,” said Finch, “is to see you behave more like other boys.”

  “I try,” said Dennis, “but somehow I can’t. At the camp they said I’d been spoiled at home. Do you think that’s the trouble with me?” He looked ready, thought Finch, to discuss his disposition at length.

  Sylvia was now calling from her bed, and Finch went to her.

  “Have you told Dennis he’s not to be sent away?” she asked.

  “No. I think it would be better if he went.”

  “I can’t bear it,” she said. “A child sent away at Christmastime. No — no.”

  Finch returned to the boy. “We,” he said, stressing the we, “have decided to let you stay here, if — ”

  Dennis interrupted — catching Finch’s arm in his hands.

  “How good you are, Daddy — how kind to me — both of you.”

  XXI

  The Snowman

  Ninety-nine Christmases had been celebrated at Jalna. In its first Christmas Philip and Adeline Whiteoak had been young people and their three children infants. Now all those five were in their graves and the youngest to join in the celebration were Victoria Bell, who arrived in her father’s arms, and the unborn Whiteoak, still curled up in his mother’s womb. Victoria Bell, strong of back and bright of eye, sat upright, enthralled by all she saw. Boughs of spruce and hemlock made every doorway seem the entrance to a bower. Evergreens and holly were entwined on the banister. Mistletoe was not forgotten.Victoria bore with patience the dandling from one pair of arms to another, the compliments on her complexion and on her dimpled knees. The smell of roast turkey with sage-seasoned stuffing that rose from the basement did not make her mouth water. The only smell that interested her was the warm milky smell of her mother’s breast. But she enjoyed being the centre of interest on this, her first Christmas. What were the thoughts of the unborn Whiteoak in his slumberous retreat, it would be difficult for the most fervent imagination to guess. Did those thoughts ooze darkly through his brain, causing no stir, or did they strike as a blinding blow, making him twitch and bound in his effort to escape what they portended?