The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (626 page)

Finch groaned in anger and frustration. Sylvia interrupted, “Let him come! Oh, do let him come.”

“Be good enough not to interfere,” Finch said with severity.

Now the man’s voice came over the wire. “I’m afraid it’s not possible for us to keep your son here, Mr. Whiteoak. It’s not good for him and it’s not good for the other boys. I’m sorry.”

“Send him along,” said Finch.

His bacon and eggs were cold when he returned to the table. He pushed them aside. Sylvia poured him a fresh cup of tea. He gave her a sidelong glance, saw her pallor and laid his hand on hers.

“Don’t look so tragic,” she said. “After all, it’s just the coming-home of a child, a little sooner than he was expected.”

“He’ll behave himself when he comes,” Finch said fiercely, “or I’ll give him a walloping he won’t forget.”

Dennis arrived just as Finch and Sylvia were dressing for the party. He looked tidy and cool, considering the heat of the day, and carried his small belongings to his room with composure.

“We passed Uncle Renny on horseback,” he said, “just at his gate, and he said I was to hurry home and dress. He wants me at the party. May I have a bath?”

“Of course you may,” said Sylvia, and she longed to take his slim little body into her arms.

Finch followed his son into his bedroom and shut the door after them. He said, “After your bath put on clean things and don’t be long about it. Remember, you are in disgrace. You must toe the mark from now on or get into serious trouble. As it is, you should be hanging your head in shame, instead of staring at me as though nothing were wrong.”

“Out of my green eyes,” said Dennis.

“Are you trying to be funny?” Finch demanded.

“Oh, no. But people say they are.” He blinked, as though their colour dazzled him.

“Well,” said Finch heavily, “remember what I’ve said.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Get a move on.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Dennis began to pull off his clothes. In no more than a moment he was stark naked. On his way to the bathroom he wheeled and ran through the living room. Sylvia, dressed for dinner, was putting the room to rights. She turned, startled, and Dennis faced her without embarrassment. “I’ve left some of my belongings in the porch,” he explained, and smiled at her. Again the arms of her spirit opened to him.

He returned from the porch carrying a paper bag. “It’s full of apples,” he explained. “Sweet ones. I bought them for a present. Twenty-five cents.” He carried them to the kitchen, where Finch followed him. The “daily” had left.

Finch said, “Don’t you know better than to run about naked, in front of Sylvia?”

“No,” returned Dennis, almost curtly. His interest was centred on the bag of apples, the bottom of which fell out as he was about to set it on the table, and the apples were scattered over the floor. Dennis broke into loud treble laughter. He picked up an apple and was about to bite into it when Finch, glancing at his watch, exclaimed:

“You little fool. Gather up those apples and be quick about it.”

Still laughing, Dennis cried, “Catch, Daddy!” and threw the apple at Finch. It struck Finch’s glasses, knocking them off.

The kitchen floor was tiled. The frame of the glasses snapped in half. The two lenses lay staring up from the tiles.

Sylvia had appeared in the doorway. Now she cried out that the glasses were broken — as though Finch did not know it!

Finch picked them up. “I have another pair,” he said crossly, as though rebuking her for her emotionalism.

“It was my fault,” Dennis said loudly. He snatched up an apple and struck himself on the forehead with it. Violently he wished to attract Finch’s attention from Sylvia and the glasses to himself. Again he struck himself on the forehead. “Look, Daddy,” he shouted. “This is what I get!”

The three were the last to arrive at the dinner party.

Already in the house were Piers and his family, the prospective bridegroom looking rather too scrubbed, like a schoolboy brought in from the playing fields and tidied for a Confirmation class. And indeed Philip wore a grave expression, as though determined to become his new position. Piers, with his nostrils widened in pride, regarded his son as though he would say, “I begot this young wonder.” In Piers’s mind the achievement of Archer in winning a Rhodes Scholarship was insignificant as compared to Philip’s in winning Adeline.

With Pheasant it was very different. Her thoughts were with her loved first-born. If only Maurice might have married Adeline — Maurice, who had so constantly loved her.…

Little Mary clung to Piers’s hand. She wore a new white dress, with frills and a blue sash. She wished there were not so many voices, talking loudly above her head, which felt hot and rather confused. Her father’s hand, to which she clung, was moist with perspiration. She said “perspiration” several times to herself. She knew it was rude to say “sweat.” Her mother had told her so. Then why did Philip sometimes say he was sweating like a horse? Because Philip was rude, there was no doubt about that.

Dennis was not rude but he was looking at her with eyes that made her uncomfortable. Archer was asking him:

“Been in a fight?”

“No,” said Dennis. “I came home from camp.”

“How did you get that bump on your forehead?”

“I did it myself — with an apple.”

“I hear,” said Archer, “that you’ve been sent home from camp. I’m not going to ask you what you did, but I will say you have the perfect face for a juvenile delinquent.”

“what kind is that?” Dennis asked, interested.

“It’s pale and inscrutable, with somehow the look of a martyr. Your family will be blamed for whatever you do.”

Adeline, overhearing this, said, “Stop it, Archie. He’s conceited enough already.”

Dennis said stiffly, “I came home because I am needed.”

Meg had eyes for no one but her granddaughter, Victoria Bell, who lay on the leather couch in the library with the old knitted afghan that had seen so much service spread over her.

“Oh, the precious lamb!” cried Meg, hovering over her — if one of Meg’s bulk could be said to hover. “I’ve never seen a finer child! whom does she resemble, I wonder?”

“Not me, thank God,” said Humphrey Bell.

“I know,” Meg said, as though inspired. “She looks like Patience’s father. Oh, how proud he would have been!”

The Rector too bent over the baby. “I see no resemblance,” he said, “except in the receding hairline.”

Renny joined them. He blew a whiff of cigarette smoke into the infant’s face, which at once puckered and emitted a tiny sneeze.

“Always like to see them sneeze,” he remarked. “Does them good.”

It was now time to move into the dining room. Little Mary had been given her evening meal before leaving home and she remained with the baby, for she was to be trusted. Therefore sixteen people sat down to table. Alayne, though opposed to this betrothal, had gone to great pains to make the dinner a success. She had decorated the table with old-fashioned, sweet-scented roses. The roast ducks were of the tenderest, the green peas were fresh from the garden, the asparagus succulent and, when it came to the dessert, the Rector declared that the strawberries were at their most perfect — the very hour before they became overripe, when their flavour was at its most seductive. As for the cream from the Jersey cows, it came out of the fat silver jugs in golden blobs. Mrs. Wragge had baked two angel cakes, not the sort out of a package but made with eight large eggs apiece. Renny had, as promised, provided champagne. After a health had been drunk to the young couple, who sat smiling at each other across the table, he proposed another — this to the earlier Philip and Adeline, who looked serenely down at this festive gathering from their massive gilt frames.

The sixteenth member of the family to sit at table was Roma Whiteoak, the niece who lived in New York. She had arrived only that day and had gone straight to the Rectory, for she had lived with Meg for some years. Though she was only two years younger than Adeline, she gave the impression, at first sight, of being almost a child as compared to her, for she was small and her face retained the contours of childhood. Her golden-brown hair waved softly about her cheeks. Yet a closer look into that artless-seeming face would reveal an expression of cool resolve, a bend to the lips that could easily harden into a sneer. At table she had been placed next Archer, who looked her over with a good deal of curiosity.

“Do you like living in New York?” he asked.

“Well, at least, there’s something to do there,” she said. “Not like this place.”

“Have you made friends?”

“As many as I want,” she returned with a shrug.

He inspected her more closely. “You have the face,” he observed, “of the genuine heartbreaker. You don’t even know you are doing it.”

She liked that. Attacking her shrimp cocktail she asked, “How did you find out so much, at your age?”

“Don’t you know you’re talking to a classicist? I have qualified,” he said, “for a Rhodes Scholarship. I have read the classics.”

“Helen of Troy and all that?”

“Mostly all that.”

“I haven’t time for reading,” she said, “except condensations.”

“With all the best parts left out,” he commented.

“You can cover more ground that way,” she said.

“Is it a cause for conceit,” he asked, “to cover more ground?”

Alayne leaned forward a little to overhear this conversation. How these young ones were striving to be grown-up, and how much they had to learn! And possibly with pain. Her heart yearned over her son. She wished, though she would not acknowledge it even to herself, that he had something of the warm, responsive nature of Adeline. Yet when he smiled — which he did so rarely — how sweet was that smile! Now, as she caught his eye with her look of yearning, he returned it with one of frosty condescension.

They sat long at the table, the cool night air blowing gently in at the windows, the leaves of the Virginia creeper, that overlapped in their exuberance of growth, making a scarcely heard murmur. When the family returned to the library they found little Mary fast asleep, her hair falling over her face, while Victoria Bell’s florid countenance was puckered in protest at the delay in her feeding. Their two mothers swept them upstairs, Patience undoing her blouse as she hastened to uncover her flower-white breast. This was attacked by Victoria Bell with infant fury. Pheasant had captured a dish of strawberries and cream for her child before putting her down to sleep.

Alayne, who had come upstairs to tidy her face, glanced in at them. She thought,
Women and children always in evidence … They are hopelessly rumpling that bedspread
. She said, smiling, “Having a little nourishment, eh?” And saw how Pheasant was feeding Mary, like another baby. The little girl’s eyes were shut but she mechanically opened her pink mouth to receive the luscious red strawberries. Cream trickled down her chin. Alayne thought,
One’s own children are enough. Why should one be asked to put up with other people’s?

She turned away to discover Dennis standing behind her. His eyes were fixed on the baby.

“Is that the way I was fed?” he asked, as she reached the door of her own bedroom. There was something in his voice — an unchildlike note — a tone of fierce, contemptuous curiosity.

“what do you mean?”

She turned into her room.

“I mean,” he said, “the way Patience is doing. Was I fed that way?”

“why should it matter to you?” she asked. Her back was to him. She examined her face in the mirror.

He was like a peddlar with his foot in the door who would not budge.

“Because I want to know.”

Alayne tried to think. “I can’t remember,” she said. Then — “No. You were fed from a bottle, I think. Now run along.” She came and closed the door.

He ran down the stairs and out into the languid summer night, heavy with the scent of flowers. The picture of the red-faced infant tugging at its mother’s voluptuous breast haunted him, filled him with disgust. Many a time he had seen animals suckling their young, but this was different. It filled him with angry repulsion. “I hate women,” he said to himself. “They are cows. I hate them.” He saw Adeline and Roma standing together beneath the dark leaves of a maple and turned aside to avoid them. Through the window of the dining room he could see the men still sitting about the table. His eyes sought the figure of Finch and he said aloud, but softly:

“I only love my father. My father.” And he kept repeating those words. “Women are cows.”

Standing in the darkness Roma said to Adeline:

“I’ve something to tell you.”

“what?” Adeline asked with mild curiosity.

“I’m engaged.”

“To whom?”

“Guess.”

“Do I know him?”

“You used to. You thought quite a lot of him — once.”

Adeline looked down at Roma, trying to see her face.

“I can guess,” she said. “Is it Maitland?”

“Yes,” breathed Roma. “Do you mind?”

“Not in the least.”

“I thought you’d perhaps be hurt. Or angry.”

“why?”

“Oh, I don’t know.… I thought perhaps you’d feel you still had some claim on him.”

“For heaven’s sake,” Adeline exclaimed, “be reasonable. I couldn’t care less who marries him.”

“I wanted him to come and make our announcement at the party but he wouldn’t.”

“I wonder why,” said Adeline. The thought of such an announcement at that time was shocking, painful — or was it funny? She chose to think of it as funny, and gave a short laugh. “That would have been a good joke,” she added.

Roma was annoyed. “I don’t see anything funny about it,” she said. “If Mait and I choose to fall in love, I don’t see anything funny in it.”

“Of course not,” said Adeline. “when are you to be married?”

“Next fall.”

“Have you told Sylvia?”

“Not yet. There she is coming toward us. I’ll tell her now.”

Sylvia came across the close-cut dark lawn, on which a heavy dew was falling. She had a way of looking strangely alone. There was about her an air of solitariness even as she joined Adeline and Roma.

“what a lovely night,” she said. “Too lovely for staying indoors.”