The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (575 page)

M
AZO DE LA
R
OCHE

The Coming of the Lover

A
LAYNE TURNED FROM 
the mirror to Renny. “Do I look all right?” she asked, with an odd little smile, as though she deprecated her interest in her appearance at this moment. And she added, “Not that he’ll have any eyes for me.

Renny moved back a step to have a better look at her. It had been a distress to him when her beautiful hair, very fair, which she had worn long, had, in the space of a few years, turned silvery white. He had always admired her hair. He had liked the way it flew up, following her hairbrush, not wavy but so full of life. For a time he had avoided looking at the white hair, as though it were some kind of disfigurement that had descended upon her. People had remarked how distinguished she looked with that silvery French roll up the back of her head, but he still had looked the other way. Then one day, less than a year ago, she had suddenly appeared before him with her hair cut short and curled all over her head. He had given her an outraged look — how had she dared have her hair cut without consulting him? Then he had looked again, had been impressed by the charm of her new aspect, the jaunty look which never in her young days had she worn. He liked it, and, with his eyebrows still expressing outrage, he had given her a grin of approval.

Now he said, “He’ll have eyes for you all right. A man usually takes a good look at his future mother-in-law.”

She gave a shrug of impatience. “Don’t say that, please. This affair may well fade into nothing before he’s been here a week.”

“Not if I know Adeline.”

“Renny, how can you know her, any more than she can know herself? She likes to think she is the reincarnation of your grandmother — a woman of one great love — but remember how young she is. Twenty!”

“Would she know better if she were twenty-five?”

“Certainly.”

“Did you?”

Alayne flushed. “You need not have reminded me of that,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. Only to remind you that the great age of twenty-five is not always infallible.”

She put a hand on either side of his head, drew it down, and kissed him. She said, “when I met you I could not help myself.” She turned then and began briskly to tidy the things on her dressing-table.

He looked at his watch. “The train is due,” he said, then added, with a touch of chagrin, “Funny Adeline didn’t want me to go with her to meet him.”

“I think it was only natural. Those first moments together w ill be something just for them. Perhaps a little embarrassing, and an outsider would have made it worse.”

“Me an outsider!” he exclaimed in astonishment.

“You’re outside their love.”

“I wish to God,” he said, “that Adeline had fancied someone I know. One thing is certain: she can’t go back to Ireland with him. He’ll have to settle down here.”

“That’s what he wants, he says.”

Staring out of the window, Renny said, with his back to her:

“Alayne, for some reason I suspect this Fitzturgis. I can’t bring myself to like the thought of him.”

She made a little ironic sound against her lipstick. “You’d feel just the same about any man Adeline was engaged to.”

“No. I deny that. I shouldn’t feel like this if it were Maurice.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. Maurice is her cousin — one of the family. I do believe that if you had your way all the cousins would marry each other. How would it end? With inbreeding. You don’t do that with livestock, do you?”

He argued, for the sake of arguing, “There’s something in knowing the background of one’s son-in-law.”

“Well, Adeline has told us quite a lot about him. His mother is a garrulous widow — his sister rather odd — his land unproductive.”

“Are you trying to reassure me?” Renny exclaimed.

“It’s just my pessimistic way.”

“You don’t relish this any more than I do!”

She was silent a moment and then answered, “I think Adeline is terribly vulnerable.”

He did not like this conception of their daughter.

“She is made of good stuff,” he said.

“Of course she is, but she’s very inexperienced; and this Fitzturgis — well, you know what he’s been through.”

“Married and divorced, you mean.”

“Yes.”

Renny gave a sudden bark of laughter. He said, “Think how inexperienced I was! And you’d been married and divorced.”

He had known before he said this that it would annoy her but had not been able to stop himself.

“It’s in such bad taste,” she said. “That’s what I mind.”

“I never was in good taste, was I?” he grieved.

In a tone of the most extreme politeness she said, “I think we had better go downstairs. It will be easier to meet them there, don’t you agree?”

“I agree to anything,” he returned.

She looked at him coolly. She thought: “You are in one of your unashamed bad-boy moods, but you will find no response in me.” She asked, “Is Uncle Nicholas resting?”

“In bed. He wants Fitzturgis brought up to his room before he settles down for the night.”

“Dear me — I hope it won’t be too much for him.”

“Too much! Not a bit of it.” It was a part of his protectiveness towards his old uncle that he would not acknowledge the deterioration of his heart. He followed Alayne down the stairs to the drawing-room, where tea was laid. The windows were open and the summer breeze was warm.

Renny cast an appraising glance about the room.

“Everything looks shining,” he said, and put his nose into a bowl of roses.

Their son Archer came into the room. He was a tall boy of nearly sixteen, with a high forehead and clear light eyes. He hid his feeling of superiority toward almost everyone else beneath a retiring manner. He never smiled.

Now, looking over the tea-table, he remarked in his clear incisive voice, “I suppose we’re to starve while Adeline collects the Irishman.”

“Surely, Archer,” said his mother, “you wouldn’t have us begin without our guest.” She looked at him dubiously. She had fervently hoped that Archer would be like her father. Now ironically she found him rather too much like her father — an exaggeration of his less attractive qualities, with the gentleness, the politeness, left out, and in their place some disconcerting qualities of the Whiteoaks.

Archer said, “Probably by the time we’ve seen this Fitzturgis we’ll not want our tea.” Archer was a confirmed tea drinker, caring little for coffee, disliking milk, abhorring lemonade, ginger ale, Coca-Cola, and all soft drinks. Surreptitiously he had sampled the contents of every decanter on the sideboard and passed a cool judgment thereon, in favour of port wine.

In a moment of nervous horseplay Renny reached for his son, intending to ruffle his hair, but Archer eluded him, placing the tea-table between them.

Wragge, the houseman, appeared in the doorway. After thirty years in Canada his cockney accent still was crisp and confident. When he arrived, having been Renny Whiteoak’s batman in the First World War, he had looked old for his age. Now he looked young for it.

He said, particularly addressing Renny, which he invariably did as if no others were present, “I thought you’d like to know, sir, that the train ’as been ’eard to whistle.”

“Good,” said Renny, looking as though it were the reverse of good. “They’ll soon be here.”

A step was heard in the hall, and Wragge moved aside, with the air of making way for a personage, to allow Renny’s sister, Meg Vaughan, to enter. She was two years older than he, a stout widow of sixty-six, and in great contrast to him, for while her face was smooth and the curve of her lips retained the sweetness of her girlhood, his thin weather-beaten face was strongly lined, marked by endurance and fortitude, and his thick red hair that grew to a point on his forehead showed scarcely a grey hair, while hers was of a fine iron-grey and naturally curly. Her movements were slow, while his had an incisive swiftness. It was the same with their speech.

Now she said, “I simply could not resist dropping in to see the Irish fiancé. How excited Adeline must be! I’m sympathetic to her, you know, but …” She waited till Wragge was out of hearing, then added, “If only it might have been Maurice.”

“That’s just the way I feel,” said Renny, putting her into a comfortable chair.

She smiled at Alayne and put out a hand to Archer as though she would draw him toward her, but with a frosty glance he avoided it.

Meg said, noting Alayne’s expression, “I know I shouldn’t have said that in front of the boy. But you’ll forget what Aunty Meg said, won’t you, dear?”

“That is
‘lex non scripta
,’” he returned, dropping into Latin in an irritating way he had. But it did not irritate his aunt and she exclaimed admiringly, “How clever Archer is! He picks up dead languages the way the other boys pick up slang.”

“You can say that again, Aunty,” said Archer.

“Archer!” reproved his mother. His father once more stretched out a hand to rumple him and again Archer eluded it.

Desultory talk prolonged rather than shortened the period of waiting. Renny Whiteoak consulted his watch every three minutes. Archer surreptitiously felt the temperature of the teapot. Meg sighed and remembered her personal worries. Alayne was the first to hear the approaching car.

It appeared now on the smoothly raked gravel sweep, and all four in the room peered from the shelter of the window curtains to have their first glimpse of the visitor.

“Oh, he’s good-looking,” exclaimed Meg in relief, for she attached much importance to looks, “but less tall than I had expected.”

Archer remarked, “A little short in the leg for the breadth of the shoulder.”

“A well-built fellow,” said Renny, his appraising glance moving swiftly from Fitzturgis to the glowing face of Adeline. She had waited two years for the coming of this man. That she should be happy in the reunion was what mattered above all else.

Happiness shone from the burnished copper of her hair to her light step as she led the way into the house. The spaniel, the bulldog, and the little Cairn terrier greeted the pair noisily in the porch. Fitzturgis bent to pat them and called each by name, for Adeline had so often talked of them and written of them. But, for all her glow of happiness, she was nervously excited too. Her pallor showed it and the swift glance almost of entreaty which she gave the group that now had come into the hall.

“Welcome to Jalna,” said Renny, shaking the young Irishman’s hand.

Meg, Alayne, and Archer in turn greeted him: Meg with warmth; Alayne with calm relief, for she liked his looks better than she had expected; Archer with suspicion.

“Did you have a good crossing?” enquired Meg.

“Almost too good,” answered Fitzturgis. “The Atlantic was much smoother than your lake.”

“And the railway journey — was it comfortable?”

“Fairly. But very long. And very hot.”

Alayne put in, “You must be quite ready for tea.” She moved to the tea-table, Archer close after her. He felt the teapot. He said, in a stage whisper, “He’d probably prefer whisky.”

Fitzturgis answered, “Thank you, but I like tea.”