The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (541 page)
Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“I thought you’d like a little fresh air,” he said. “It’s terribly hot in here.”
“Please don’t leave that door open,” exclaimed his wife. “We shall freeze.”
“I should certainly be forced to go to my room,” said Ernest.
Nicholas was silent, brooding on the spilt tea, though he had a freshly-filled cup in front of him.
“It’s like spring outdoors,” said Renny. “The birds are chirping. It would do you good to get the air.” He stood beside the tea table smiling down at them, tall, wiry, his dark red hair lightly touched with grey at the temples, his high-coloured face animated by a teasing smile.
Alayne thought, — “How can he look younger than I, when he is much older! It isn’t fair. And yet it is fair because he has the power to do what I have not the power to do — draw happiness out of some deep well within himself — out of some pagan link with the primeval.” She rose and, with her graceful walk, went to the outer door and firmly closed it. When she returned to her place Renny sat down and took Dennis on his knee. “How often,” thought Alayne, “I have seen him with a child on his knee! A child on his knee or sitting astride a horse — those are the two ways I picture him most easily. I’m not particularly fond of children. I don’t very much like horses, but Renny still fascinates me.” She poured a cup of tea for him and handed it to him with a smile.
Nicholas had regained his spirits. There was a deliciously soft fresh cake and he was eating it with relish. His few remaining teeth, which were mercifully hidden behind his drooping grey moustache, were capable only of masticating soft food. He said:
“It’s high time this young lady of ours saw something of the world. I was saying to Ernest less than an hour ago that it’s high time she saw something of the world.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more, Uncle Nick,” said Adeline.
“what Adeline should have been doing in these past months,” said Alayne, “is to have gone to a university. I very much wanted to enter her at Smith, as you know.”
“Never heard of it,” declared Nicholas. “where is it?”
Nicholas had, since the war, become tremendously anti-American. No one quite knew why. He took no trouble to conceal this feeling, for he could not remember, no matter how often he was reminded, that Alayne was an American. Though she had spent almost half her life in a British country she still was very conscious of her American roots. She subscribed to the more intellectual of American periodicals. She kept in touch with what was going on in the political scene. It was seldom she allowed herself to be stung by any of the old man’s remarks but, for some reason, this last remark of his did annoy her.
“It is the most notable women’s college on the continent,” she returned.
“Never heard of it,” he persisted, and emptied his teacup with audible gusto.
Ernest’s loved wife had been an American and he now said, — “How well I remember my dear Harriet’s descriptions of her life there. They were both enlightening and entertaining.”
Nicholas heaved himself about in his chair to look skeptically at his brother. “Never heard Harriet speak of it,” he said.
“I myself am a graduate of Smith College.” Alayne spoke with a little asperity.
“Ha,” returned the old man. “That accounts for the only fault you have.”
Alayne looked enquiringly at him.
“An air of superiority, my dear.”
Alayne flushed a little. “It is remarkable,” she said “that I should still retain that, after more than twenty years at Jalna.”
Renny laughed. “But you do,” he declared. “You do.”
“Adeline,” put in Ernest, “matriculated with honours. It is a great pity that she has not gone on with her education in a university.”
“I didn’t want to,” said Adeline. “I mean I’m not that sort of girl.
“But you are,” insisted her great-uncle. “Otherwise you would not have done so well in your exams.”
“I know enough now,” returned Adeline laconically.
“There you show your ignorance,” said Alayne. “If you want any sort of career — but” — she gave a little shrug — “we’ve been through all this before. I know you think life at Jalna is career enough for you. I only hope you won’t regret it.”
“Never fear,” put in Renny. “She won’t regret it. She’s her father’s daughter. Not one of the boys has been as keen about horses as she.”
He often spoke of his brothers as though they were his sons, of which he had only one, a boy of almost fourteen, at a preparatory school.
“The point is,” said Adeline, “that I am dying to go to Ireland with Maurice.”
Nicholas had finished his tea and his chin had sunk to his breast. He was indulging in a short nap. Now he brought himself up with a snort, subconsciously aware that something of real interest had been said.
“what is that?” he demanded. “Ireland? who’s going to Ireland?” The very name of Ireland uttered was enough to rouse him from sleep, for from there had come his strong-willed mother as a young woman, to there she often had returned to visit; Ireland she had constantly elevated as the greatest of countries, its speech had coloured her own, and though she never had been able to get on with her relations there, she had boasted of them as superior in wit and breeding to the Whiteoaks.
“Ireland,” Nicholas repeated. “We haven’t a living relation there now — except old Dermot Court.”
“He died years ago, Uncle Nick, and left his property to young Maurice. Don’t you remember?” Renny looked anxiously into the old man’s face. “Maurice goes over this spring to claim it.”
Nicholas’ brow cleared. “Ah, yes. I remember now. And a very nice property it is. I saw a good deal of Dermot at one time. Best manners of any man I ever knew. Who’s going to Ireland, did you say?”
“Me!” Adeline gave a daring look at her father.
“I wish you would try not to be aggressive,” said Alayne.
“I do try. But you’ve no idea how hard it is.”
She now threw a coaxing look about the circle of grown-ups. “It will be such a wonderful opportunity for me to see something of the world. You know the war kept me from ever being taken anywhere. I actually don’t know anything of life outside Jalna, do I?”
“The thing for you to do,” said Ernest, with a sly smile, “is to marry Maurice and go to Ireland on your honeymoon.”
The suggestion of marriage for Adeline was distasteful to Renny. He expected that, in due course, she would marry but he looked on that time as years distant. He regarded Adeline as a child. He did not want Adeline to marry till the perfect mate for her appeared — if such a one existed. He did not think Maurice and she were suited to each other. He was not even sure that Maurice cared for Adeline except as a cousin. Alayne, on the other hand, would have liked to see her daughter’s future secure. She was convinced that Maurice was attracted to Adeline, and, in truth, felt that, if there would be any unsuitability in the match, it would be because he was finer-fibred and more sensitive than Adeline. The young girl, with her passionate love of country life, of horses and dogs, her tardy approach to things intellectual, was not and never had been a congenial companion to Alayne. She had been surprised and pleased by her excellent standing in her studies but it had been disappointing to find that Adeline’s attitude toward scholastic achievement seemed to be that she could do well in anything she chose but that, once she had rded what was in the books, she had little further interest in them. Alayne’s hopes for intellectual companionship lay in her son, whose school reports showed that he was already impressing his teachers with his ability. Archer was an omnivorous reader. Adeline liked the old romantic novels she found on the bookshelves in the library. Many of these had belonged to her great-grandmother for whom she was named, and Alayne sometimes suspected that part of the child’s interest in them was because they had been handled and read by the woman whose portrait she so much resembled. She had devoured the old copies of the
Boys’ Own
and the books of Talbot Baines Reed that were heaped in a corner of the attic. Not long ago Alayne had discovered her reading
Tom Jones
.
“Do you like it?” Alayne had asked, herself hating the book excepting in an academic fashion.
“Oh, yes,” Adeline had answered. “Those were the days. I wish I’d lived then.”
“Well, don’t give it to Archer,” Alayne had said.
“Of course not,” Adeline had agreed promptly. “But he probably knows more than you think.”
“Yes,” Ernest now repeated. “Marry your cousin and go to Ireland on your honeymoon.”
“She’d better not suggest such a thing to me,” said Renny.
“I can’t very well till Maurice suggests it to me,” laughed Adeline.
“Come now, come now —” Ernest shook his head teasingly at her.
She flushed. “I want to go to Ireland for fun,” she said. “Not on a honeymoon.”
“No better fun,” rumbled Nicholas, but stopped himself at a look from Alayne.
“I want to go to Ireland,” Dennis said in his high clear voice. “My mother came from Ireland.”
“Did she!” Adeline exclaimed. “I always thought she was an American like my mother.”
Nicholas gave a thump on the arm of his chair. “The ignorance of these children is unbelievable,” he declared. “Dennis’s mother was a Court. She was of a good old Irish family. Nothing American about her.”
“I wasn’t ignorant,” said Dennis. “I knew she was Irish.”
“But she died in the States, didn’t she?” Adeline asked.
“Yes,” Renny answered curtly. Then demanded, — “what has put the idea of going to Ireland into your head?”
“Well, I went there once with you,” she said, “and it was the best time I’ve ever had in my life.”
“You said,” put in Dennis, severely, “you’d never been anywhere.”
“Don’t be cheeky,” ordered Nicholas, and put a piece of cake into Dennis’s hand.
“what I meant,” said Adeline, “was that the war had stopped me going back to Ireland. Oh, I do so want to go when Maurice goes and I don’t see what’s to prevent me.”
“If Maurice’s mother were going as she planned to do, it might be possible for you to go too,” said Alayne, “but she can’t get away any more than I can.”
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t be proper for two young cousins to go on a voyage together.”
“It would be highly improper,” said Ernest, “unless —” He could not keep his mind off the thought of the marriage.
“We are always talking about going to Ireland,” Adeline muttered, “yet nobody goes.”
Ernest patted her knee. “Maurice is now his own rd. We shall see what happens. You may be able to go with him in a relationship that will please everyone.”
“Did I hear my name?” asked a voice from the doorway. All turned to look at Maurice Whiteoak.
THE COUSINS
He was a slender, graceful young fellow, with a sensitive lace, a contrast to his father, Piers Whiteoak, who in middle age had grown thickset and who looked on the world with a challenge. When no more than a child Maurice had been sent to Ireland to live, at the invitation of a childless relative, Dermot Court, in the acknowledged hope that he would be made the old man’s heir. What might have been a boring experiment for the man and a tragic experience for the boy had turned out well. Each had been happy in the other’s company. A deep love and understanding had grown up between them, and when, five years later, Dermot Court had died, Maurice had inherited from him his large house which was in fair repair, and an income sufficient for its maintenance. He had returned to his parents’ house, a stranger, a shy, proud stripling of seventeen, financially independent of them, but vulnerable as ever to his father’s sarcasms.
Now Nicholas said to him, — “We’re wishing we might go to Ireland with you, Mooey.”
“Especially your cousin Adeline wishes it,” Ernest added.
“I should be glad to entertain all of you,” said Maurice. “You’d be welcome at Glengorman.”
Dennis carried the plate of cakes to him. “Have one,” he said, ingratiatingly.
“Bread and butter first, thank you.” Maurice helped himself to a piece, then sat down beside Adeline.
Nicholas said, — “Your Uncle Ernest and I will never see Ireland again. Nor England.”
“Alas, no.” Ernest drew a deep sigh.
“Nonsense,” exclaimed Renny. “You may at any time now. The change would do you good.”
“I hear,” Ernest said, “that travelling is most uncomfortable. I even hear the word austerity used in connection with it — a word I have always disliked.”
“I wasn’t aware you knew the meaning of it,” said Nicholas.
“It is extraordinary,” Ernest spoke with severity, “that you should choose to belittle what I endured during the war. I did without many comforts to which I was accustomed, didn’t I, Alayne?”
“You did indeed, Uncle Ernest.”
“Once you arrive in Ireland,” said Maurice, “you shall have everything you want.”
“That is very kind of you.” Ernest leant forward to pat his great-nephew’s knee. “Very kind indeed. Well … I’ll consider it. But, you know, I shall be ninety-five in the spring. It’s pretty old for travel. Still — if you’d like to have me, Mooey.”
“I should indeed,” said Maurice. He was particularly fond of this old uncle who always had shown kindness to him and understanding of the traits in him which were irritating to Maurice’s father, had sympathized with his preference for books above horses, had encouraged his attachment to Adeline.
“Go ahead, Ernie, and have your last fling!” Nicholas’ voice, singularly robust for his age, boomed into a laugh. “Go ahead, and take my love to the gals we used to know there — if any of ’em are above ground.”
Adeline laughed across the chasm of years that separated her from Nicholas.
“I’ll bet they are, Uncle Nick,” she said. “I’ll bet there’s many a lonely old lady in Ireland who would like to get a nice message from you.”
“Well, well,” he said, “I’ll never see ’em again.”
“We gave a pretty good coming-of-age party for you,” Ernest remarked to his great-nephew. After a pause, he added, — “The last Whiteoak to inherit a fortune on his twenty-first birthday was Finch. How well I remember the party we gave for him! We had a dinner party and a dance. Finch made a speech. He was very nervous. After all the guests were gone he and Piers, you and I, Nicholas, sat up for a long while talking and drinking. It was then that Finch suggested that Nick and I should go to England for a visit at his expense. And now here is this dear boy, Mooey, offering to take us to Ireland.”
“You four got pretty tight that night,” said Renny. “Do you remember? I was waked by your singing and I came downstairs and took you off to bed.”
The two old brothers laughed, as at the recollection of a good joke. Young Maurice regarded them anxiously. The thought of paying their travelling expenses to Ireland had not occurred to him. Adeline, seeing his discomfiture, gave him a teasing smile. He ignored it and said to her:
“I have some rather good new records. Like to come over to our place and hear them?”
“I’d love to.” She got up, gave herself a small stretch and asked, — “Does anybody want me for anything?”
Nobody did and she and Maurice went into the hall.
“Did you come in a car?” asked Adeline.
“Yes.”
“I thought you would. Lazy dog.”
“Surely you wouldn’t expect a fellow to walk through slush to his ankles.”
“You could wear rubber boots.”
“Don’t you like a car?”
“Certainly I like a car. But I think a walk would do you good. You’re soft.”
“You’re always criticizing me,” he said, resentfully.
Adeline laughed. They jostled each other as they passed through the door into the porch. Antagonism and attraction struggled between them. “If only she were different,” he thought, “I could love her with all my heart.” “If only he were different,” she thought, but she did not think of love. He wanted her to be like the girls over whom he brooded in his solitude. Physically she was perfect to him. Her smile enchanted him. Why should she be so careless of those charms, bestowing her smile where it was not appreciated, for Maurice felt that no one but himself appreciated her! Yet on him she looked critically. She wished, he was sure, that he were more like her father. Once he had told her so.
“Goodness, no,” she had said. “One of him is all I can cope with.”
“Still you’d like me better if I were,” he had insisted.
“One of him is all I want,” she had repeated.
Now he said, — “Aren’t you going to put on a jacket or something? You’ll freeze.”
“I suppose I’d better.” She darted back into the house and returned with a jacket.
A flock of pigeons flew from the roof toward her. They sought to alight on her head and shoulders. Holding up her arms to protect herself from this demonstration of their affection she ran to the car and scrambled in. Maurice sprang in after her and slammed the door. The pigeons circled above the moving car, then were about to return to the roof when a long glittering icicle fell from the eave to the steps, with a sound of splintering glass. The pigeons swept away in the direction of the stables, their plumage shining in the sunlight.
Maurice was happy to have her in the car with him. In its isolation he had a feeling of possessiveness over her. She sat acquiescent in the seat beside him, her burnished chestnut hair waving close about her head, the formation of her nose and chin, which, in middle age, would show the strength of her great-grandmothers profile, was now softened by youthful curves. Her lips, Maurice thought, looked unusually sweet-tempered. Conscious of his scrutiny she turned to him and smiled.
The car bumped over a rut in the snow-drifted road. The two were bounced on the seat.
“I hate the winter,” he exclaimed.
“I thought you liked skiing.”
“I do. It alleviates the monotony of cold and snow outdoors and dry heat indoors. I was made for a temperate climate, moist and gentle and green. I like tranquil people.”
“People like me?”
“I don’t
like
you, Adeline.”
“what do you think of my going to Ireland?” she asked hurriedly.
“I’ve always intended you should come.”
She gave a little grunt of surprise and exasperation.
“You are the most supercilious person I know,” she exclaimed. “You look so gentle and you speak so gently, yet you’re terribly superior inside. I guess it was your life in Ireland with that old Cousin Dermot. He spoilt you terribly. Everybody says so.”
“what about you? You’re a spoilt child.”
“Me? I’ve been very strictly brought up.”
Maurice turned the car into the driveway of the grey stucco house.
“Mother and Dad are out,” he said.
He glanced sideways at Adeline to discover whether she were pleased or disappointed that she was to be alone with him. She showed neither feeling. Simply she wore an expression of pleasurable anticipation at the prospect of hearing a new record. They went into the comfortable living room which clearly showed one woman’s struggle against four males to preserve the freshness of its chintz, the plumpness of its cushions, the firmness of its upholstery. She had not quite succeeded or quite failed. It was a long narrow room, and in one corner stood the radio-gramophone and record cabinet.
Adeline whistled. “Goodness, you have a lot of records. They must have cost a pretty penny.”
“I’ve made rather a hobby of collecting them,” he said. “It’s something to do.”
“I should think you’d have plenty to do with your university work.”
Maurice gave a faint shrug. “Oh, I don’t work very hard. And you must remember I’m just getting over a bad attack of the flu.”
“You do catch things, don’t you?” she said.
Maurice thought there was a little disparagement in her voice. He answered quickly:
“No more than most people. You’re almost too healthy.”
Adeline laughed. “One of us has got to be strong,” she said.
“Just what do you mean by that?” he asked eagerly.
“Nothing — excepting that the new generation can’t afford to be delicate and elegant.”
“I’m not delicate.” he returned hotly. “But just because I’ve never been keen about horses and sports, you think I am.”
“You get annoyed,” she said, “if I suggest that you’re delicate. Yet you said, a moment ago, that I’m too healthy.”
“Forgive me, Adeline.” He put his arm about her. “I wouldn’t for worlds have you different.”
Something in his voice made her feel their isolation in the house. Detaching herself she turned on the radio. The voice of a male crooner came out, whiningly, urging his loved one to surrender.
The two young people, with expressionless faces, stared at the radio.
When the song was finished Adeline said, — “Imagine surrendering to
that!
”
“I don’t believe you will ever know what surrender means.”
“I don’t think I shall,” she returned serenely.
Maurice turned off the radio and adjusted the machine for records. He put on the waltz from Tchaikovsky’s
Serenade for Strings
. Adeline felt that here was music she could understand, very different from the lifeless sounds that had just come over the radio. She pictured Finch bending above the keyboard of the piano at Jalna. She stood by the window looking out at the snowy scene, the bare black limbs of the trees, each limb topped by a sharply defined rim of snow, the sky red in the burnished sunset.
“That music makes me happy,” she said, at the end. “I could fly — I could dance like an angel to it.”
“You do dance like one.”
“Thanks.”
“Would you like to dance now?”
“I thought I came here to listen to records.”
“We can do both.”
“Let’s have the records first.”
Maurice put on several classical records. She gave her judicial attention to each. She said:
“I like the Tchaikovsky one best.”
“I knew you would. You see, I can guess your taste.”
“We don’t go in for records.”
“Adeline, will you dance?”
“No. I’m not in the mood,” she answered tersely.
He offered her a cigarette and they sat down side by side on the sofa.
“I can’t tell you,” he said, “how excited I am at the thought of going back to Ireland. You know I should have gone when I came of age but my mother was ill. Wouldn’t you like to visit me in my own house, Adeline?”
“Of course I should. We’ve always planned it. I’ll persuade Daddy to come too. See if I don’t.”
Maurice said dreamily — “Everything is going to be different from now on. I shall be my own rd. So long as I am under this roof I’m conscious of my father’s authority.”
Adeline gave a little sympathetic grunt. Then she said, — “Mooey, you haven’t changed a bit since you came home. Excepting, of course, to grow up.”
“The years I spent in Ireland were the happiest of my life,” he said, in the reminiscent tone of an elderly man.
“I think it was a very queer thing,” declared Adeline, “for your parents to do. I mean to let you go all that distance to live with an old forty-second cousin. Why, you might have died of homesickness. I’m sure I should have.”
“It was pretty bad at first.”
“Still, it turned out well, as he left you all his money.”
“Adeline, you are a materialistic little beast.”
“No, I’m not. I just look facts in the face. You live in a kind of dream. You like to pretend that you don’t care about money but you like it just as well as anybody.”
A motor car turned into the drive. In a moment the front door of the house was thrown open. Piers Whiteoak, his wife, and his youngest child entered the hall with a stamping of snowy feet and the barking of a small dog. Child and dog ran into the room.
This baby girl was Adeline’s favourite and pet. She snatched her up and kissed her.
“Do you remember,” she asked Maurice, “how, when Baby was born, you and I agreed never to marry but always to be friends and have her for our child?”
“I never agreed to any such thing. It’s an idiotic idea.”
“It would save a lot of trouble.”
“Don’t be silly.”
Adeline opened her eyes wide. “why, Mooey, I thought it was all arranged.”
Piers and Pheasant came into the room. Piers, at forty-four, still retained his fresh-coloured complexion, the brightness of his blue eyes. Pheasant, two years younger, had the figure of a slim girl, an eager questioning look in her eyes. What that question was she did not herself know. Even the devoted love she gave Piers did not answer it, nor even his loyal love for her.
Piers said to his son, — “That car of yours was left directly in my way. The result was that your mother had to wade through deep snow to get round it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” exclaimed Maurice contritely but with a tremor of anger in his voice at the anger in Piers’s.
The little girl said proudly, — “Daddy carried Baby in. Baby didn’t walk in the snow.”
