The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (578 page)

Meg was in the hall as Roma came running down the stairs. She just touched Meg’s cheek with hers and said, “Oh, Aunty Meg, I forgot to say I’ll not be at home for supper. Norman and I are going to see a friend of his in Mistwell.”

Meg put out a hand toward Roma, as though to draw the girl to her, but she was gone, running along the path, between the borders of annual stock, to join Norman in the car. Meg, from the doorway, called:

“We’re invited to Jalna this evening to meet Adeline’s friend from Ireland. I think you should be there, Roma.”

Roma consulted with Norman. She called back, “All right, Aunty Meg. I’ll come. Bye-bye.”

The car moved swiftly down the road, Norman’s lacquered head bending to Roma. Meg gave a deep sigh and slowly climbed the stairs. But she arrived soon enough to discover Patience peering out of the window after the car. There were both girls, their minds fixed on the one young man, and he, to Meg’s way of thinking, quite undesirable. It seemed hard to Meg that this rift should have come to separate the three in her house. She had, in her placid way, yearned over, planned for, the two girls.

Often she had sought to trace a resemblance to Eden in Roma’s childish face but could find none. Neither could she find a likeness in nature, for Eden had been demonstrative in his affection; and if Roma felt affection for her or for Patience, certainly she did not show it.

Meg wanted to love and be loved. Now she went to Patience, put an arm about her. Here were caresses for the asking. Patience hugged her mother almost fiercely and promised to put on her prettiest dress for the evening.

“This is quite an event,” Meg said. “Something we’ve all been looking forward to ever since Adeline’s visit to Ireland. Maitland Fitzturgis must be a captivating young man to have fascinated Adeline at their meeting and held her fancy ever since. Now she will marry him. The first marriage among you young cousins, and naturally you will be maid of honour, with Roma as bridesmaid and little Mary as flower girl. What a pretty affair it will be! You know, we haven’t had any pretty weddings in our church. Mine was a small affair with just the family. Renny and Finch married their wives in England. Piers eloped. As for Eden — well, the less said about his connections with women, the better. But he was a poet, and — whatever Piers may say — you can’t expect poets to behave like ordinary men.”

The Welcome for Fitzturgis

N
ICHOLAS HAD MADE
up his mind that he would go downstairs that evening.

“I will not,” he had said, “meet Adeline’s fiancé up in my bed like an old invalid. After all, I’m only ninety-eight. My mother was up and about when she was a hundred. By Jove, I haven’t been downstairs in a month. I will go down tonight.”

“Good,” said Renny. “Shall you come down to dinner or just for a while in the evening?”

“To dinner, certainly. Will you lay out my clothes, like a good fellow, and be ready to give me an arm when the time comes? I don’t want that Irishman to see me being helped down the stairs. Tell Adeline to keep him out of the way.”

“I will, Uncle Nick.” Renny smiled his encouragement but thought dubiously of the journey down the stairs. Still, if the dear old boy wanted to undertake it, nothing should hinder him.

When the time came Renny helped him get into his clothes. He had already shaved him and made his hair spruce. When he was dressed he had to rest a bit and take a little tablet from the doctor, before starting the descent. Renny looked down at him with a mixture of admiration and sadness. How different he had been not so long ago. Yes, he had been different indeed. His clothes had set well on him. His firm, aquiline face had expressed well-being and a sardonic humour. But time had dealt differently with him than with his mother. Her it had coarsened, brought out wiry hairs on her chin, roughened her voice, given a truculence and daring to her aspect as though she challenged death itself. But the face of Nicholas had fined down. His features had taken on an almost cameo-like delicacy. The shadow of melancholy touched it.

Yet sometimes he was surprisingly like the Nicholas of old, and tonight was one of the times.

“Now,” he said in his still deep-toned voice, “let us make the descent. I’m all set to make a good impression on this Irishman. Heave me up, Renny. Egad, my leg is stiff!”

Alayne was nervous about his going down. She came to the door and spoke in a low tone to Renny. “Don’t you think I should send Archer to help?”

Renny shook his head. “I can manage.”

“He looks tired already.”

“what’s that?” demanded Nicholas.

“Are you a little tired, Uncle Nicholas?”

“Not a bit of it,” he said, trying to make himself sound like his old mother. “I want my dinner.” He smiled at Alayne and put out his hand to her. She came and kissed him.

“You look really elegant,” she said.

“Good. Now let’s make the start.”

Renny’s strong arm about his waist, he hobbled to the stairs. For many years he had suffered from gout. Alayne anxiously watched the descent of the two heads, one of them iron-grey that had never turned to white, the other that narrow head with its thatch of dark red hair, the sight of which always had the power to hold her. To Archer — who had appeared, it seemed, from nowhere — it was merely a question as to whether Renny would get the old man down without help. There was no admiration, no sadness, nothing of retrospect in his young mind.

By the time the two reached the hall below, Renny was half carrying his uncle.

“Steady on,” growled Nicholas, as though encouraging Renny. “We shall make it.”

Now they were in the hall and making good progress toward the drawing-room.

“Strange,” said Archer to Alayne, “how, when people are either very old or very young, they are always wanting to do something they shouldn’t do.”

“So already you are a student of human nature,” smiled Alayne.

“I have so much of it about me.”

“But you should not be so critical at your age, Archer.”

“It only proves what I say. I want to do what I shouldn’t do at my age.”

“Don’t we all,” sighed Alayne.

“It seems to me that when you’re not so very young or not so very old the trouble is that you don’t want to do what you should do.”

“You do make things complicated, Archer.”

“They are more interesting that way.” He drew aside the curtain of the window at the landing and peeped out.

“There is Adeline and her boyfriend. She’s keeping him out of the way till Uncle Nicholas is settled in his chair. Somehow I don’t think the two of them look well together.”

“Not look well together? why?”

“I can’t tell yet. Later on I’ll let you know.”

Alayne also peeped out. She said, “I think they look very well together. They look happy too.”

“I wonder what it feels like.”

“why, Archer, what a thing to say!”

“Well, happiness seems so positive. I should think it would soon be boring.”

Renny passed through the hall carrying a glass of whisky and water to Nicholas. He waved his hand to the two on the landing.

“He’s fine,” he called up. “I’m just taking him a bit of stimulant.”

A little later Adeline brought Fitzturgis to the drawing-room and he was formally presented to Nicholas, who laid down the newspaper he was reading and grasped him warmly by the hand.

“I’m glad indeed to meet you,” he said. “I’ve waited a long while and began to be afraid I’d not have the opportunity.”

Fitzturgis bowed over his hand with a deference pleasing to Nicholas. He sat down on one side of him and Adeline sat on the other. There was a moment of decorous restraint in which Nicholas inspected the visitor. Then — “And how did you leave Ireland?” he asked, looking as though pleased by what he had seen.

“Much the same as usual — fairly content in feeling sorry for herself and blaming England for all her troubles.”

“Ah, it’s a lovely country. I used often to visit my mother’s people there, but it’s years since I have seen it. You’ll find it quite a change — living in this New World. What happy, happy people we are! Just look, Mr. Fitzturgis.”

“Maitland, Uncle Nicholas,” put in Adeline. “You’ll want to be called that by us all, won’t you, Mait?”

“I shall indeed.”

“Very well — Maitland,” Nicholas agreed and held his newspaper spread in front of Fitzturgis. “Now see what a happy people. In all these pictures of politicians, clubwomen, teenagers — have you teenagers in Ireland? — there is none who is not grinning. See these brides and grooms, Adeline. How they grin! How enormous are the mouths of the brides! Surely they will devour the groom when they are tired of him — just the way the female spider does! The only ones who have seriousness and dignity in our newspaper prints are the very young children who have not yet learned to grin.”

“I see,” said Fitzturgis. “But are all those people really happy? Do their grins mean anything?”

“I take them at their face value,” said Nicholas.

“Archer,” put in Adeline, “never smiles.”

“I can make him smile,” said Renny, and put out a hand toward his son, who eluded it.

Rags sounded the gong. Nicholas, buoyed by the whisky and water, moved, on Renny’s arm, quite strongly to the dining room. Adeline whispered to Fitzturgis:

“I do hope you like him. We think he’s a grand old man.”

“He is indeed. And what remarkable eyes for a man of his age — for a man of any age.”

“There’s where he got them.” She laughed and pointed to the portrait of her great-grandmother that hung above the sideboard.

“And now you are the inheritor,” said Fitzturgis, with one of his rare, ardent looks.

Nicholas saw that they were looking at the portrait. He gave a little bow toward it and said, “My mother — a granddaughter of the Marquess of Killiekeggan; and the companion portrait is my father, in the uniform of an officer of Hussars.”

Fitzturgis was conscious that the eyes of all were on him, even the eyes of young Archer, as though to observe the effect of the portraits on him. It was as though they wanted him to understand the influence which these two people, long dead, still exerted on the lives of all at Jalna.

Nicholas was saying, “I should like you to have met my brother. He sat next me at table here. He died — bless my soul, it will be two years in July.”

Fitzturgis’s face clouded. He was not likely to forget that death, the summons to return to Jalna for the funeral in the very hour when he and Adeline had counted on days of enchantment in London. He said glumly, “I remember.”

Renny shot him a look. What had the fellow in his mind?

Nicholas was drinking his soup audibly from the cup. He set it down and wiped his grey moustache. “Ireland,” he said. “what times that name conjures up! what stories of my mother of her girlhood! And my brother and I had many a good visit there. Let me see — do you remember my cousin Dermot Court?”

“I have often heard of him.”

“He had beautiful manners. You don’t see such manners nowadays, though my brother Ernest had very good manners — hadn’t he, Alayne?”

Nicholas was exhilarated by dining once more downstairs, and with the company as well. He ate his share of the roast lamb, new potatoes and peas. He praised the cherry pie. He was in a mood for reminiscence rather than for giving his attention to the talk of others. The eyes of Adeline and Fitzturgis met across the table. They were outwardly attentive but inwardly wondering what experience the future would bring, she striving toward its enrichment of her life, he trying to picture himself as part of this scene.

A decanter of burgundy was set on the table. Its glow in the glass produced a brightness to all eyes, and Archer was moved to quote,
“‘Dum vivimus vivamus.’”

“I was in England,” said Nicholas, “in 1930. That year the Grand National was won by an Irish horse, Shaun Goilin. His dam, Golden Day, was at grass in a paddock in Ireland, and in an adjoining field there were a number of two-year-olds. During the night several of these rascals jumped the fence between and the result was Shaun Goilin. No one ever knew which colt was his sire, but it was a lucky bit of wildness.”

“‘Qui capit —’”
began Archer, but Adeline interrupted him.

“For goodness’ sake don’t be always showing off,” she said in a loud whisper.

He gave her an icy look, and Fitzturgis began to wonder if he were going to dislike his future brother-in-law.

“Life,” Nicholas was declaring, “can only be understood backward.”

“Quotation from Kierkegaard,” said Archer under his breath.

Nicholas continued, “Now I see so clearly all the mistakes I made and could have avoided.”

“I don’t think you made many mistakes, Uncle Nick,” said Renny.

Nicholas blew under his drooping moustache, emptied his glass and set it sharply on the table. “You young people,” he said, “have your lives ahead of you, but I shall soon be extinguished. I don’t mind telling you I shall be sorry to leave this world. I find it very interesting. But my marriage turned out badly.” He fixed his eyes on Fitzturgis. “Don’t let your marriage turn out badly. It’s a new experience for you. Be guarded — be guided — what I mean is — well, you’ve never been married before. You don’t know what marriage is.” Nicholas had quite forgotten that Fitzturgis was a divorcé.

“I was married,” said Fitzturgis, looking steadily at him.

“No! Really — dear me, then I shouldn’t have said that. Well, well, perhaps it’s better for you to have had experience. Not that mine helped me. A little more of the burgundy, please, Renny.”

Renny, filling his glass, remarked, “We all are the better for experience. Divorce is of little account in this modern world.” He glanced at his wife to see if he had said the wrong thing.

Her eyes were on Fitzturgis, sympathetic to his flushed embarrassment.

Nicholas, fortified by more wine, now said to him, “I suppose your wife was an Irishwoman.”

“No. An Englishwoman.”

“Ah, I remember now! An actress. But I just cannot recall her name.”

Fitzturgis burst out, “Must we discuss this now?”

Adeline smiled across the table at him. “I don’t mind, Mait.” Turning to Nicholas, she said, “Her name is Georgina Lennox, Uncle Nick. She lives in London. She’s a friend of Uncle Wakefield’s.”