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

by Mazo de La Roche

  He trembled and said, in an unsteady voice, “It was my fault.”

  “Your fault? what do you mean?” demanded Wakefield.

  “I couldn’t remember the doctor’s number.” He looked wanly unhappy.

  “It’s been a terrible experience for him,” said Alayne. “We’ll talk of it no more, please — not in front of him.”

  “I suppose,” said Adeline, “I should go in to see Uncle Finch. But I dread meeting him.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Dennis. “I want to see him.”

  “I think you had better stay here with me,” Alayne objected, but only halfheartedly, for she felt something overriding in the boy that baffled her. Boys! Strange beings. And what an odd boy her own son Archer was. She had a sudden rush of gratitude for Adeline’s frankness and warmth. She took the girl’s hand in hers and pressed it.

  “Don’t go to Finch,” she said, “not now. Wait till you get over the first shock.”

  “Better have it over with,” said Wakefield. “We’ll go together.” He led Adeline and Dennis to the drawing room.

  “Everything is being attended to at your place,” Renny was saying to Finch. “You had better stay here at Jalna.”

  “No, no,” Finch said loudly, “I must go to her. To Sylvia.” He got heavily to his feet.

  Adeline, with a great effort, controlled her lips and spoke to him, but she could not control the tears that ran down her cheeks.

  “Don’t cry, dear,” Finch said, comforting her.

  Piers was saying in the low voice to Renny, “Do you think we should let him go?”

  “Yes. Nothing else will satisfy him. But you must go with him. I couldn’t possibly — not into that house.” The eldest Whiteoak, after fighting in two wars, had an invincible abhorrence for the presence of death.

  “Very well,” said Piers. “I’ll take him.”

  Dennis was timidly touching Finch’s sleeve. “May I come too?” he asked.

  Finch, with his wide-open, dazed eyes, looked down at him. “I don’t want you about,” he said.

  Meg hastened to add, “Dennis dear, what your daddy means is — not now. He’ll very much want you later.”

  Finch turned to Meg. “Does Fitzturgis know?” he asked. “He was leaving today, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. He and Roma were getting ready when the news came. It’s terrible for him. He and his sister were so close.”

  “Were they?” said Finch, as though not comprehending.

  “Better have another cup of coffee before we go out into the cold,” said Piers.

  “Tea would have done him more good,” said Meg. “No drink is so comforting.”

  “I’ll take the coffee, as it’s here,” said Finch.

  He drank more coffee; then Renny helped him into his coat, as though he were an invalid.

  The house was full of the resinous scent of pine and balsam which wreathed the banister and decorated doorways and pictures. The Christmas tree still towered in the library. Finch passed these evidences of the holiday season without appearing to see them, but outside he stopped to turn his tragic eyes on the pigeons that had come down from the chimney-warmed roof to peck at the grain Adeline had scattered on the drive.

  A grimace of pain twisted Finch’s lips, as he got out the words, “Sylvia loved birds.”

  “I know, old man,” said Piers, and waited patiently while Finch stared, in lost bewilderment, at the pigeons whose coral-coloured feet made attenuated imprints on the soft snow.

  While the two brothers were on their way by car along the road, the small figure of Dennis might have been seen running through the ravine, climbing the steep path that led to Vaughanlands. Reaching the grounds, it stopped stock-still, as though in wonder to find the house still standing, to find all looking as it had yesterday.

  Dennis was panting from the exertion of the climb, the running through deep snow, when he faced the snowman — stout, jolly, pipe in mouth, rakish hat, neatly tied scarf, coal-black eyes — and it was but a few moments before the car, driven by Piers, turned into the drive. Dennis darted behind the snowman and hid there. He must not let his father see him or he would be angry. “Keep them out of my sight,” he had said — meaning his children.… “Keep them out of my sight.”

  The brothers got out of the car and entered the house by the front door. The curtains were drawn. Dennis had seen his father’s profile turned, had made sure that Finch had not discovered the snowman. And never, never should he see the snowman, who had been the instrument of the evil that had befallen them. The snowman must be obliterated.

  Dennis walked about the snowman, moving with that pleasing sensation of power which made him feel capable of rding all opposition. He walked lightly, almost jauntily, conscious of his power. He saw the gay plaid scarf that he had taken from Sylvia and tied round the snowman’s neck. Now, with an imperative gesture, he whipped off the scarf and then wound it tightly about the bulging neck. He pulled fiercely on the ends of the scarf.

  “You’re being throttled,” he said to the snowman. “This is a garrotte. You’re being garrotted. Do you understand? Well — I’ll make you understand, you monster. That’s what you are — a monster!” In an excess of fury he put all his strength into this act of retribution, for the snowman had become to him the symbol of his own obloquy.

  “why don’t you turn purple in the face?” he growled. “why don’t your eyes start out of your silly head?”

  Down fell the snowman’s pipe, out fell his coal-black eyes. Next his hat was tumbled in the snow. “Monster — monster,” growled Dennis. “Now you’re getting what’s coming to you.”

  The head fell off and Dennis kicked it up and down the snowy lawn till there was nothing recognizable left of it.

  He would have attacked the body also, but it had hardened. He needed something more than his hands for its destruction. He remembered where the snow shovel stood, by the back door, and ran round the house to get it. He was startled to find a small black motor van outside the back door. A young man in dark clothes was in the driver’s seat. Dennis went up to him and asked:

  “Do you want to see somebody?”

  “No,” answered the young man, “I’m just waiting for the technicians who are in the house. We’re from the Smith and Smythe Funeral Home.”

  Dennis stood dumfounded. This was his first experience of the trappings of death. He stared at the house, silent, though a tumult of thoughts thronged his mind. He made a movement toward the house. The man said, “You’d better not go in there, little boy, unless you’re one of the family.”

  “I am one of the family,” said Dennis. “How old do you think am?”

  The man looked him over, “About eleven, I guess.”

  “Well, you guess wrong,” Dennis said. “I’m older — a good deal. I could go in if I wanted to, but what I want is this snow shovel.”

  “Okay,” said the man, as if shovel and house both belonged to him. He spoke with authority.

  Dennis put the snow shovel over his shoulder, and, holding himself very straight, marched round to the front of the house. A sound of music was in his head, as though he marched to the distant playing of a band. Large, soft snowflakes were beginning to fall.

  He no longer felt rage, nor even resentment toward the snowman. Methodically he set to work to break him up, to beat the white blobs of his remains to softness, to spread the remains over the lawn. He threw the coal-black eyes into the shrubbery. He put the pipe into his pocket, and carefully folded the scarf. With it and the hat in his hands he returned to the back door. The undertaker’s van was still standing there, but the young man had disappeared. The daily woman came out of the house, her eyes reddened by weeping. She looked very surprised to see Dennis.

  “why, you poor little soul,” she exclaimed, “what are you doing here? Your uncle told me you was at Jalna.”

  Dennis handed her the hat. “This is an old hat of my father’s,” he said. She took it with a doubtful look, then spied the scarf. �
�I’ve seen the poor lady wear that,” she said, and her reddened eyes filled with tears.

  “Take it, too,” said Dennis. He was glad to be rid of it. The sight of it made him tremble with a terrible sense of guilt. He put the pipe also into her hand.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked, wanting to do something for the child. “Will you come into the kitchen and let me fix you something to eat?”

  “No, thanks,” said Dennis, drawing back. He wanted to ask what was going on inside that austerely curtained house that seemed no longer home, but only one question could his lips form. “where is the baby?” he asked.

  “Poor little mite,” said the woman. “It’s safe and sound with Mrs. Bell. She took it to her house this morning. Poor little mite.”

  The words resounded in the boy’s ears. He said them over and over to himself on his way to the Fox Farm. Strangely, he was too tired to run. His legs were weak. He could not run and yet he must keep moving. Combined with extreme weariness was an inward something that drove him on. He would have liked to retreat to the safety of home, but he felt that he had no home. He pictured himself as homeless, alone in his guilt, wandering in a snowy world.

  The mysterious snow-weighted trees reared their cloaked boughs about the small house. One might think nobody lived there, so silent it was, and no path made in the deep snow. Dennis went to the door and lifted the iron latch. He stepped inside where it was warm and there was the smell of soap and hot water — yes, and milk.

  He stood there in the narrow passage, his sense of smell and hearing intent. From upstairs there came the faint sound of a typewriter; from the kitchen the sudden loud cry of an infant. He heard Patience moving about in bedroom slippers, speaking in a reassuring voice to her child. Then the crying ceased and he pictured Victoria Bell guzzling at her mother’s breast. He went softly to the door of the kitchen and looked in.

  Patience was gently rocking, in an old-fashioned rocking chair, the downy-haired blissful child in her arms. She was not startled by the sudden appearance of Dennis, but gave him a welcoming look and held out her hand, almost as though she had expected him.

  He looked at her gravely and asked, “where is the other baby?”

  “On the couch in the living room. Want to go and see it? It’s just been fed. This bottle business is new to me and I was nervous, but I think it’s all right.”

  Dennis bent over the crimson-faced mouthing infant, newborn, scarcely recovered from its terror of suffocation.

  “He’s all right,” said Patience, “even though he does look miserable. It’ll be nice for you to have a little brother.”

  “We must keep him out of my father’s sight,” said Dennis. “Both of us must keep out of his sight. He doesn’t want to see his children about.”

  XXIII

  Aftermath

  When Adeline went to Finch’s house that same evening, she found Fitzturgis standing before the door trying to make up his mind to enter. Any embarrassment he had felt on their meeting at Christmas had now given place to a reaching out to the warmth, the almost painful compassion of her presence. She, too, remembered at this moment nothing of their past love, except that it was a common ground for their present sorrow. The hush of a heavy snowfall enfolded them. He said, in a low voice, without preliminary:

  “You have been here before, I suppose.”

  “No. I had not the courage to come. Not till now.”

  “Neither had I.” He looked at her questioningly and added, “This has happened, I suppose? I’m not dreaming?”

  “It’s happened,” she said sombrely, and held out her hand to him. So, holding to each other’s hands, they entered the cool, flower-scented house.

  They could hear low voices from the back of the house but the music room was silent and lighted only by candles. That was where Sylvia lay, surrounded by pale flowers.

  In silence they stood looking down at her, then Adeline said, “How beautiful she is! I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful.”

  Fitzturgis did not speak but bent and kissed the marble-white forehead, on which the fair curls lay. He drew back from that cold touch and suddenly and utterly lost command of himself. He broke into wild sobs that shook him.

  “No — no,” Adeline said, in fear as much as in pity. “Mait — you must not.”

  “My sister — oh, my sister,” sobbed Fitzturgis and, giving himself up to his grief, sank on his knees beside the coffin.

  On an impulse that she could not and did not even try to restrain, Adeline flung herself to the floor beside him, put both arms about him and mingled her weeping with his harsh sobs.

  Meg and Finch came in from the adjoining room.

  Finch’s tragic eyes accepted this abandon of grief as though nothing were too extreme to be fitting to the occasion — not even to the tearing of hair and the rending of garments. There was something almost noble in the kneeling figure of Fitzturgis — in his reiterated: “My sister … my sister.”

  Finch did not speak, but Meg laid a hand on the head of each of the kneeling figures. “Come — come,” she said soothingly yet reprovingly, “we must try to resign ourselves to God’s will.”

  Fitzturgis, with difficulty it seemed, got to his feet. He made as though to reply to Meg, but could only turn away his face and repeat, “My sister … my sister …” He came then to Sylvia and, laying his hands on the coffin, said, “She won’t speak to me. I can’t make her hear.”

  Finch touched Adeline on the shoulder. He said, “You must take Mait out of here. There are people coming. I hear a car. Please take him away.”

  Adeline rose and took Fitzturgis by the hand. He allowed himself to be led from the room out into the enfolding silence of the snowbent trees. More snow was falling. For a moment they were in the bright light of a standing car; they heard low voices, then were alone under the trees. In silence they plodded along the quiet road. Now Adeline had the strange, new sensation of being the older of the two, and with this she experienced a new tenderness for Fitzturgis. She said gently:

  “I’m not going to talk of my grief, Mait, because I know that yours must be far greater, but I never have had a sister and I loved Sylvia like a dear sister.”

  “She suffered so much in her life,” he said brokenly, “and then this.”

  “You always were so good to her, Mait.”

  “No — I wasn’t,” he denied passionately. “Looking back, I think I was sometimes harsh with her. In Ireland, I mean, when her nerves were in such a bad way. You were there once, I remember.” He wheeled, as he said the last words, and, pulling his hand from Adeline’s, he began to retrace his steps.

  “where are you going?” she demanded, in sudden fear.

  “Back to Sylvia,” he said. “I must see her again.”

  But Adeline caught his arm and held him fast. “You can’t — not now. You shall see her again tomorrow. Come — let us walk along this road and talk of her.”

  “Will you come with me tomorrow?”

  “Yes, if you will be good and come with me tonight.”

  She spoke to him as to a deranged child. Standing there in the falling snow, she looked stately as a young queen. She had tied a black veil over her head and beneath it Fitzturgis could dimly see her pale face. He gained control of himself and said docilely:

  “Very well — if it will not tire you.”

  “Nothing tires me,” she said, and they plodded on through the snow that lay heavy on the road.

  As they walked they talked of Sylvia. Adeline recalled her first meeting with her and of how their attraction for each other had flowered into love. “It was love on my side, anyway,” she said, “and I do think Sylvia was fond of me. Did she speak of me as though she were?”

  Fitzturgis tried to recall a time when he and Sylvia had talked of Adeline, but he could think only of his present grief for his sister.

  “Sylvia had great affection for you,” he said briefly, then went on to talk of youthful days in Ireland. As he talked, his nerves grew steadier.
Adeline drew him by questions to recall the past. They walked on and on, their hands linked. At last he fell silent for a space. She too was silent, brooding on the monumental consequences of life, trying in her simplicity to understand.

  Now he looked about him bewildered; the white fields, the gaunt trees that edged the road looked alien. The snow had ceased to fall and a wan moon moved in and out among the clouds.

  “where are we?” exclaimed Fitzturgis. “Do you know, Adeline?”

  “These roads I know like the palm of my hand,” she said. “We have walked a long way.”

  They turned back and again were silent, as though there were nothing left to say; but, as they reached the road that led to the church, he remarked, with somber resignation:

  “I have lost my sister and I have lost you.”

  “You still have a sister,” she said, “and you have a wife.”

  “My older sister,” he said, “means little to me, as compared with Sylvia. Any affection I am capable of giving Roma is slight compared to the love I gave you. Oh, we get along very nicely, but — sometimes I wonder how we came to marry. I suspect that Roma wanted a husband and I more or less filled the bill.”

  Adeline drew the width of the road, away from him. “You mustn’t say that — it’s wrong.”

  She gave him a look, almost of appeal, as though she doubted her own strength to deny what he, in this moment, might say.

  Fitzturgis, however, went on: “And you can’t make me believe that you are able to give that handsome boy, Philip, the love you once gave me. Oh, I know I’m nothing to you now, but I stick to it that we’ve lost something terribly valuable, and that we shall never find its like again. Do I flatter myself?” He tried to see her face but could not. He went on to say, “I’ll wager you never give me a thought.”

  “I do think of you. I’m not one to forget. But — it’s all over between us — I can’t talk about it.” She spoke with a sudden weary finality, as if she had borne all of stress and strain that she was able to bear.