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

by Mazo de La Roche

  “You are right,” he said. “After all, we are no more than these snowflakes that are falling.”

  “It’s stopped snowing,” Adeline said, in a practical voice. They did not speak again till their brief, almost abrupt goodbye, when they reached Jalna and he left her to walk back to the Rectory.

  “It must be very late,” he said.

  “I have no idea of the time.” But, as she opened the door, they heard the clock strike two.

  “It’s two o’clock,” she said over her shoulder. “Are you sure you know the way to Auntie Meg’s?”

  “Quite sure. Good night.” He turned away and was gone.

  As Adeline was about to close the door she saw a small figure standing close against the wall in the porch. It was Dennis.

  “Hello,” he said, coming into the light. “I guess I’ve frightened you.”

  “You ought to be in bed,” she said, taking him by the arm and leading him indoors. “why aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know where to go.”

  “Not know where to go?” she repeated. “where did you spend last night?”

  “I don’t remember,” he replied, in his clear boy’s treble. “I don’t remember last night.”

  She heaved a sigh, as though his coming were indeed the last straw. “Very well,” she said, “we’ll go upstairs and find a bed for you. Come along. Keep your voice down.”

  But he clasped the newelpost and hung there. He raised his eyes pleadingly to hers. “I’m afraid to be alone in there, Adeline. Please let me stay here with you.”

  “There’s no bed for you.”

  “I’ll sleep with you,” he pleaded. “Please let me sleep with you.” His lips quivered.

  There was something in his face, in his voice, on the verge of tears, that made her agree to this added burden on this night of sadness. She gave a groan of sudden weariness as she went down the hall to her bedroom behind the stairs. She turned on the light and took warm pajamas from a drawer.

  “These will be miles too big,” she said, “but, if you’re as tired as I am, you’ll not mind. You may go up to the bathroom first. You must keep quiet. Then I’ll take my turn.”

  Dennis agreed with almost passionate docility. Sleeves down to his knuckles, he crept into bed and lay, slim and straight, next to the wall. He put his arm across his eyes either to shield them from the light or to shut himself off from conversation.

  “Did you wash?” inquired Adeline, reaching out toward commonplace matters for ease from the tension of the past hours.

  “Yes,” he said, almost in a whisper.

  “You haven’t said your prayers. Better get up and say them.”

  Dennis burst into tears. Beneath the bedclothes his legs kicked as though in agony.

  “Don’t ask me to pray,” he sobbed. “I can’t — I can’t.”

  “All right,” Adeline said hastily. “I’ll say them for both of us.”

  She brushed the burnished chestnut of her hair and, going inside the clothes cupboard, took off her clothes and put on a nightdress. She turned out the light and knelt down beside the bed. She tried to say her prayers, but suddenly she was unutterably tired and could not remember a word. Kneeling there she fell asleep. She had opened the window and the frosty air blew in on her. Yet she slept, and was waked only when the boy’s timid hand touched her.

  “Hadn’t you better get into bed, Adeline?” he said.

  She grunted. Where was she? Had she been asleep? Was all that had passed a terrible dream?

  “Hadn’t you better come to bed?” Dennis repeated.

  She opened her dark eyes on the darkness and crept into bed. She put an arm about Dennis and patted his back. She did not speak, but the consolation of her nearness drew him to turn over and press his face against her breast. Again he began to cry.

  Now she was all awake.

  “Stop it,” she said sternly. “You can’t go on like this. I tell you I’ve borne enough.”

  Now he was speaking, and she made out the words.

  “I killed her.… I didn’t mean to, but I killed her.…”

  “Killed whom?”

  “Sylvia. I made her help me with the snowman. I had her alone and I hated her but I didn’t mean she should die. Oh, Adeline, I didn’t phone for the doctor, but the vet!”

  “That’s all nonsense,” said Adeline. “You had nothing to do with it. Sylvia would have died anyway. The doctor says so. A boy like you shouldn’t be mixed up in such things, but I’ll tell you this. Women aren’t all alike. For some it’s dangerous to give birth. Sylvia was one of those.”

  “I taunted her,” he said. “I killed her.”

  He continued in his morbid self-accusations and questioning, which she quieted as best she could, till at last he fell asleep, holding fast to her, as though in her soundness he would hide himself.

  She lay thinking. The scene with Fitzturgis, the strange, confused confession of the sleeping child, mingled in her mind like dark birds seeking rest. The death of Sylvia, the marriage of Roma and Fitzturgis, filled her with shrinking from the experience of marriage, of childbirth. The touch of a man’s hand laid on her, even in tenderest love, was more, she thought, than she could endure. She put the thought of Philip away from her in fear.

  Then, as though summoned by her thought of him, she heard Renny’s light step in the hall. He opened her door a little and put in his head.

  “Adeline, are you awake?”

  “Yes, Daddy.” Her heart began to beat quickly, in apprehension of she knew not what.

  “Have you seen Dennis? I’ve been telephoning all the family and nobody seems to know.”

  “He’s here. In bed with me. Fast asleep.”

  “Good Lord.” Renny turned on the light and bent over the bed.

  Adeline said, “Don’t wake him, Daddy. He’s been terribly upset — by everything.”

  “He can’t stay here,” said Renny. “If he must sleep with someone, it had better be me.”

  “Oh, Daddy, he’ll begin all over again.”

  “He’ll be all right with me. I’ll carry him upstairs. He weighs nothing.”

  Renny drew the boy from beneath the blankets and laid him against his shoulder. Dennis lay inert, like someone rescued from drowning. Adeline, relieved of his presence in the bed, stretched herself and raised her eyes to Renny’s face.

  “Do you think we shall ever be happy again, Daddy?” she asked.

  “Of course, we shall. This is a bad time. It’s like a storm at sea. It rocks the ship but doesn’t sink it. We’ll recover and sail on. I’ll carry this youngster up to my room, then come back and tuck you up.”

  She lay, awaiting his return, with an almost blissful melancholy. Her clothes and the boy’s clothes lay on the floor. She shut herself off from the thought of Dennis — from the thought of Finch and of Fitzturgis — and waited only for Renny’s return. She asked, when he reappeared:

  “Did Dennis wake?”

  “Yes, but fell right off again. He seemed dazed. What did he say to you?”

  “He babbled in a strange way. I could make no head or tail of what he said — except that he blames himself for — everything. Daddy, what time is it?”

  He looked at his watch. “Four o’clock.”

  “I’m hungry,” she said. “If only I had a biscuit I could go to sleep.”

  “I’ll get you something more substantial.”

  “No, no, just a biscuit.”

  He went across the hall to the dining room. From the sideboard he took a biscuit jar, then filled two glasses with sherry and set them on a small silver tray. When he returned to Adeline she was sitting up in bed. She gave him a tremulous smile. He sat on the side of the bed and they ate biscuits and sipped sherry together. He began to talk of his horses, and on that healing subject, and in the power of his presence, Adeline found tranquility. Scarcely had he tucked her up and left the room when she fell asleep.

  XXIV

  The Tolling of the Bell

&nbs
p; Sylvia’s mother was prostrated by the shock of her daughter’s death. That sweet-tempered yet rather vague Irish woman had built high hopes on the coming of the grandchild who would, she was sure, complete the restoration to health which a happy marriage had begun. The older sister of Fitzturgis remained in New York to nurse their mother, but his American brother-in-law came up to Canada for the funeral.

  The New Year was on the way and for it the weather had turned brilliantly but bitterly cold. A gusty wind, straight from the Arctic, blew the fine snow in bright clouds across the crusted surface of the deep snow in the graveyard. The snow lay so deep on the graves that they were almost hidden beneath it and showed only as gentle undulations in the sea of snow. The gravestones looked less than impressive, as any slant from the upright was made the more noticeable by the meticulous austerity of the surroundings. If the gravestones were of white marble they were inclined to look dingy against the immaculate whiteness. The graves of the family were, however, marked by a granite plinth which, unaffected by weather, stood up with sombre dignity to point out to the passerby where the Whiteoaks lay in their last rest.

  Inside the church it was fairly warm, though with each opening of the door the outer cold rushed into the vestibule. The church was not warm with its accustomed Sunday warmth but with the sudden warmth of an unexpected weekday service. It was filled with people, in spite of the fact that it was the holiday season, the very season of the birth of Christ. But, here at the chancel steps, lay the body of a young mother who had died in giving birth to her child. Although Sylvia had lived in the neighbourhood but a short while, she had been greatly admired and liked for her shy friendliness, her simple, unpretentious air of a woman of the world. Her sudden death had come as a shock. The hearts of all went out in sympathy to Finch, sitting there among his brothers.

  Throughout the service, Finch’s eyes, when he was not kneeling, were fixed on the coffin, on the marble profile of Sylvia, as she lay, a lily among the lilies, a pale rose among the roses. Fitzturgis, on the contrary, continually shielded his eyes with his hand.

  The Rector was so much moved when reading the service that more than once his voice faltered. Even when he was able to read steadily and with feeling, he found his mind wandering, recalling another burial service, when snow had covered the ground, when another young person from that same family had died — Eden Whiteoak. And there was Eden’s little daughter, Roma, a grown woman, and married … How the years flew — the scene changed — yet the Church and its services remained the same. Surely something to cling to, in a changing world. He experienced, too, a certain feeling of gratitude toward the Whiteoaks for retaining, more or less, the quality of their forebears who had built and been loyal to this small church. His eyes, moving over the family as they sat in the below, rested a moment on the smooth head of Dennis, the youngest present, and he wondered what thoughts were in that little head, what the child would make of all this ritual, this intrusion of death into his young life.

  The Rector spoke of Sylvia, of her gentle nature, and how she had endeared herself to all who knew her. He spoke but shortly, for he could not trust his voice to remain steady, not with the sight of Meg weeping in the pew below, of Finch’s stricken eyes fixed on that lovely face in the coffin.

  The moment came when the lid was closed, when the pallbearers raised their burden to their shoulders. The bearers — Renny, Piers, Wakefield, Christian, Philip, and Humphrey Bell — were followed down the aisle by Finch and Fitzturgis; close after them, Dennis and Sylvia’s American brother-in-law; then the remainder of the family.

  Fortunately only the surface of the earth had been frozen. The disfiguring yellow mound of this had been covered by an emerald-green rug of artificial grass. The wind was bright with tiny snow particles. It sang its own heedless song to those grouped about the grave. It froze the tears on the cheeks of the women, and lay in waiting to freeze the flowers that were laid on the grave.

  Now Mr. Fennel spoke the final words, the wind snatching them from his mouth; but to those standing by the grave these few were clearly audible: “… cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; … fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.…”

  At last all the dark figures moved away across the whiteness of the snow and the graveyard was deserted.

  XXV

  The Stolen Flowers

  An unobserved spectator had watched the ceremony by the grave with keenest interest, yet little understanding or sympathy. It all was so new and strange to her. This was the small Mary Whiteoak who, dressed in a warm blue snowsuit, was hidden behind a group of shrubs at the edge of the graveyard. White berries grew sparsely on these shrubs and birds came there to eat them. Just before Mary’s arrival, a cardinal had tilted there, like an exotic blossom on this northern shrub, but her coming had frightened him away, and he was now hidden in the twilight of a massive spruce tree. From there, as the funeral cortège moved from the graveyard, he gave a joyous whistle, as though boldly to give voice to the life that was in him.

  Now Mary emerged from her hiding place and cautiously drew near the new grave. Yet it was not the grave she wished to examine but the flowers laid by it. These delicate flowers, blooming in the wintry cold, were fascinating to her and she had a great longing to possess even a very few, to smell their perfume in that arctic air.

  This longing was irresistible. Indeed, she did not try to resist but with nervous care chose and plucked two white roses, a golden lily, three freesias and a carnation. These she hastened with — taking care not to fall — away from the graveyard. She kept her eyes on them as she ran across the snowy field and the bare woodland, where there was a path, to the Hut.

  It was not easy to open the door, which squeaked in protest, but she laid all her strength against it and it opened. Sheltered from the wind, it felt comparatively warm in the Hut, and so welcoming, and so truly her own, that her lips parted in a smile of pleasure to find herself there.

  She well knew how to melt snow in a saucepan to make water for the flowers to stand in. This accomplished, she filled a vase and arranged the two roses, the lily, the three freesias and the carnation in it. She set it on the table in the middle of the room and gazed in rapture. She wished that Sylvia might be there to admire with her. But Sylvia, she knew, was in heaven, flying with beautiful wings, above green pastures and still waters, as in the Twenty-third Psalm. She was not to be pitied, yet Mary could not help pitying her a little for not being there to admire the flowers from her own funeral.

  Mary had been given a real little wristwatch on Christmas, to make her more conscious of the passing of time. She viewed it with mingled pride and apprehension, for she was not at all sure that she was able to tell the time.

  Now she examined its face slowly, trying to make sure whether it said twenty-five minutes to five or twenty-five minutes past seven. She turned her wrist this way and that, peering at the enigmatic face of the watch, but she could not discover. Then she heard the barking of dogs and a man’s whistling. She peeped out of the window and saw her uncle Renny taking his dogs for a walk.

  Suddenly the Hut seemed rather chill and lonely. A saffron cast from a saffron sky made the room strange. Mary thought she would like to join Renny and his dogs. Slipping through the door, she ran after them and put her small bare hand into his. He did not seem surprised to see her, but, gripping her hand, strode on. She noticed, then, that he was all in black, which seemed odd.

  After they had walked a short distance, he remarked:

  “You should learn not to drag your heels over the crusty surface of the snow. It will wear holes in your snow boots, and they cost money.”

  XXVI

  In Search of a Home

  Two days later the women of the family were gathered at the tea hour, in the cozy warmth of the drawing room at Jalna. But, though the room was cozy and warm, those concerned in this meeting were experiencing emotions which had neither of these qualities. They were, in fact, trying to settle on at least a temp
orary home for the infant left behind by Sylvia.

  One thing Alayne felt she must make clear. It was that there was no place at Jalna for a crying baby. As she was explaining this, she was interrupted by her daughter. “But, Mummy,” said Adeline, “I shouldn’t in the least mind looking after him. No more than another puppy or a foal.”

  “You have no faintest idea of what such an undertaking entails,” said Alayne. “But you do know that I have been suffering for some time with insomnia.” She lowered her voice, showing how well she knew that such a disability was not worth discussing with the young. “There are nights when I have not closed my eyes before three o’clock.”

  “But this house is so large,” said Meg. “The baby and his nurse could sleep in the attic.”

  “It’s chilly up there.” Alayne now spoke quite emphatically. “Also, quite soon I expect Maurice and Patrick Crawshay to return. I cannot heap too much work on Wragge and the cook. They are no longer young and often have too much to do.” She now turned to Roma. “It seems to me,” she said, “that, as Sylvia’s sister has been married for some years and has no children, she and her husband are the natural ones to take the child into their home. Also her mother is there to help.”

  “They live in an apartment,” said Roma. “They have no facilities.”

  “what about you and Maitland?” persisted Alayne.

  “We live in an apartment,” returned Roma. “We have no facilities.”

  “There is nothing I should enjoy more,” broke forth Meg, “than to welcome that poor darling little waif into the Rectory, but I must think of Rupert. Never, never could he write his sermons with a crying infant in the house.”

  “I love having the little one with me,” said Patience, “but I must think of Humphrey. Two babies in one small house are absolutely fatal to his work. Both of them were crying at three o’clock this morning, and, as though that weren’t hard enough on him, I fell halfway downstairs with a saucepan of warm milk!” She held out a skinned elbow as proof.