The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (585 page)

Adeline answered for him. “He enjoys being warm for a change — don’t you, Mait?”

“I enjoy everything,” he said, with a possessive look at her.

She went on, “I can’t remember being really warm all the while I was staying in Ireland. That huge old house of yours was always cold, Maurice.”

“I know, I know. Everything was wrong.”

“Mooey, how can you say that? I had a wonderful time.”

“I’ll wager you had.” He spoke in a tone so low that only she could hear. “Once you and Fitzturgis were together again.”

She was amused. She could not help being a little gratified. “You are an old silly,” she said and put her arm about his shoulders.

A car stopped on the road. Two people alighted from it. They were Roma and her fiancé. She said, “Oh, hullo, everybody. We were passing and saw the light in the studio. We guessed you were having a party. Come on, Norman, and meet Mr. Fitzturgis.” She pronounced the Irishman’s name with a kind of teasing pomposity, as though there were something ridiculous about his being there.

There were introductions. Maurice said, “It’s not much of a party. We have nothing to offer you to drink.”

“I’m sorry,” said Christian. “There’s nothing.”

“I can soon fix that up,” said Norman. “I have several bottles in the car. I bought them for a party I’m giving for a bridegroom-to-be. I’ll bring one in.” He strode purposefully toward the door.

Half-heartedly the others (with the exception of Roma) sought to dissuade him. He strode off determinedly, his black, too-well-groomed hair gleaming like lacquer. Roma examined the picture on an easel. She avoided Adeline. Her round childish face wore an expression of complete absorption in the painted landscape.

Fitzturgis came to her side. “I want you to tell me,” he said, “why you think I’m funny.”

“Me?” she said, making wide eyes at him. “I never said so.”

“You implied it.” He spoke with mock severity.

“I didn’t know. I thought I said things straight out.”

“what girl does!”

“Adeline…. What I was thinking was, it seemed funny to see her engaged.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Well … it’s always been her father … Uncle Renny…. She thinks he’s perfect.”

Fitzturgis looked thoughtful. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve noticed that.”

“I daresay it’s natural,” she went on in her sensible little voice. “All the family sort of look up to him. Not me.”

Fitzturgis searched her face with curiosity. “Not you, eh? I wonder why.”

She gave him her candid look. She said, “He’s too overbearing. I won’t stand it. I like to go my own way — and let other people go theirs.”

“That’s a very nice trait,” he said warmly.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just the way I feel.” Her eyes turned admiringly to Adeline. “Adeline is a strong character,” she said. “She’s like great-grandmother — the one in the portrait.”

“A remarkable likeness,” he agreed.

Roma gave a smile that somehow conveyed disparagement. “It’s to be hoped,” she said, “that Adeline doesn’t grow into what that old woman was.”

He gave her a questioning, puzzled look.

“A regular old tyrant … I never like the thought of her…. For goodness’ sake don’t tell that I said that or they’d all be after me.”

“
After
you?” He was still more puzzled. “Well, I’m a sort of outsider. They all hang together. I don’t think it’s a good idea for a family to hang together too closely, do you?”

“I do not.”

Norman now returned with a bottle of rye. Maurice asked Christian about more glasses and he obediently went to the house for three. He moved very quietly, for fear of disturbing the sleepers upstairs, but in taking the glasses from a pantry shelf he dropped one, and the small tray on which he had placed others tilted. They fell splintering to the floor.

They made but a small crash, yet while Christian was still regarding the broken glass in dismay (for he had chosen the best ones) Pheasant appeared in her nightdress.

“See what I’ve done!” he exclaimed. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Nooky, why did you have to take the best ones? whom have you got in the studio?”

He was trying to gather up the fragments in his hands. “Adeline and Fitzturgis. Roma and Norman. They wanted a drink. Norman brought it.”

Pheasant found a dustpan and brush. She said, “I hope you won’t take more than one drink. And Maurice too. He must be tired. He ought to be in his bed, poor darling.”

Possibly it was the solicitude in the last words that made Christian remark, “Oh, Maurice will drink plenty.”

From her kneeling position she raised startled eyes to his. “what do you mean?”

He hastened to say, “Nothing — except that he feels the heat and he’s thirsty.”

“He ought to be in his bed,” she repeated a little crossly. She stood up, the broken glass collected.

“I hope you’re not saying that about me.” Maurice spoke from the doorway.

“I broke the glasses,” was Christian’s needless explanation.

“Tea cups will do. Anything will do.” Maurice put his arm about Pheasant and dropped a kiss on her hair. “Come on out and join us, Mummy. You look sweet in your nightdress.”

She looked from one loved face to the other. “All I ask is that you boys will not take much to drink. You know what your father thinks about that.”

They chimed in to reassure her and, supplied with fresh glasses, returned to the studio. On the way Maurice said, “Norman seems a decent chap.”

“Well, he’s always ready to supply drinks. I don’t look on him as an interesting addition to the family. However, he is as interesting as Roma is.”

“We thought you two had decided to go to bed,” Adeline exclaimed when they appeared.

“I’ll bet their precious elders were after them,” said Roma. She was sharing a drink from Norman’s glass, sitting beside him on a bench.

Fitzturgis said, “This is an excellent concoction. Is the formula a secret?”

Norman, with almost religious fervour, named the ingredients and the manner of mixing. He went on to talk of various drinks he had savoured in various night clubs. It was plain that he set great store on his experience of night life, which in truth, because of his youth and lack of opportunity, was very limited. Fitzturgis listened to him with tranquil amusement. Ever and again his deep-set eyes rested on Roma, who sat relaxed and silent, with the exception of an occasional interjected remark so banal, so without originality, that he wondered if she spoke seriously. Christian listened with a kind of hypnotized boredom as Norman continued to hold forth. He had taken on the attitude of host and was generous in the continual offering of drink. Of those present Maurice was most ready to have his glass refilled. His heavy eyes regarded Fitzturgis with slumbering jealousy and Adeline with melancholy desire. Adeline’s spirits soared to wildness. She wanted to dance, to laugh, to sing.

She went to a small radio in a far corner of the studio and turned it on. At the first brutal blare of a band playing an American version of native African music Christian sprang up and ran to her. “Are you mad, Adeline?” he demanded and lowered the tone.

“I believe I am — a little,” she laughed. “why not? We’re all of us together again, aren’t we?”

“We shall have Dad down here.”

“who cares? I don’t.” And she called out: “Do you, Maurice?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you care if Uncle Piers comes?”

“I care for nobody but you, Adeline.”

“Come and dance then!”

He rose a little uncertainly.

“It’s too warm for dancing,” said Christian.

“You’re afraid Uncle Piers will be disturbed. You know you are,” Adeline scoffed.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Christian in exasperation. “If you are willing to dance in this heat — go ahead! But not with the radio at full blast.”

Norman said, “The night is still young. Have another drink.”

“Will no one dance with me?” cried Adeline, executing a few steps of a rumba.

“The girl is suffering from frustration,” said Roma. “Somebody dance with her.”

Maurice, glass in hand, stood uncertainly, the light from the unshaded electric bulb throwing shadows as of illness on his pale face. He stammered, “I will dance with you … will dance with you … my angel.”

“No, no,” repeated Christian. “It’s too hot.”

“who says it’s hot?” exclaimed Roma. She sprang to her feet with a sudden energy, startling after her seeming languor.

The two girls faced each other. They threw their mobile bodies with abandon into the South American dance now played by an orchestra. Norman clapped his palms sharply together in the rhythm of the dance. A somewhat macabre beauty descended on the scene, the four young men appearing as under a spell cast by dancing nymphs.

This continued till the music was broken in on by the voice of the announcer.

Adeline went and sat beside Fitzturgis, who laid an arm lightly about her waist. His air was possessive as he said, “That was beautifully done. You made me forget the heat.”

“Not me,” said Christian. “I feel ready to drop from just watching them.”

Norman handed another drink to Roma, who accepted it with cool unconcern. He now filled a glass and carried it to Adeline. “This is the last,” he said.

“Are you telling me we’ve drunk all that?”

“We have. Don’t worry. There’s more where it came from.”

“She shouldn’t have any more,” said Maurice. “I shall drink it for her.” He appropriated the glass and sat down at her other side. “You might make a little more room,” he complained.

“Move over, Mait.” She gave Fitzturgis a little push.

“There is no place here for anyone but us,” he said truculently.

“Do you hear that, Mooey?” she said with a reckless laugh.

There seemed to Maurice something insulting in the stress she put on the old pet name. He gave her a look of mingled reproach and anger. He pressed close to her on the bench, so that her body was wedged between him and Fitzturgis. A scowl darkened the face of the latter and he resolutely stiffened himself.

Maurice tossed off his drink. He leant across Adeline to say, “Move along, you blackguard.”

The fury in his voice was so unexpected that Adeline sprang up in amazement. The two men were left in possession, facing each other.

They looked so ridiculous sitting there that Christian broke into an appreciative chuckle.

“I don’t like your vocabulary,” Fitzturgis said to Maurice.

He retorted hotly, “And I don’t like anything about you. You’re an interloper and I wish you’d get to hell out of here.”

The next moment he was lying on the floor. Fitzturgis had pushed him off the bench.

Adeline uttered a cry of fright. Christian interposed his body between Fitzturgis and Maurice, who had got to his feet and stood swaying in anger and bewilderment. Norman said, “I guess we’d better break up this party. Come on, Roma.”

“what’s the use of everybody getting in a stew?” she objected.

Maurice said thickly, “I demand an apology.”

“I have been insulted,” said Fitzturgis. “And I am ready to defend myself at any time and in any place.”

Adeline took him by the arm. “You both have been drinking too much,” she said. “I call it a shame to get quarrelsome at our first little party.”

“I call it a damned unpleasant party,” said Maurice, nursing an elbow. “And if
Mister
Fitzturgis would like any satisfaction from me I’m willing to give it.”

“Norman certainly did his part,” said Roma.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Norman. With an expression of distaste he emptied the last of the last bottle into a glass and drank it.

Roma regarded him with wide-eyed disapproval. “Remember you’re driving,” she said.

“I flatter myself that I can carry my liquor like a gentleman,” he returned.

“Is that the fellow,” Maurice asked of Adeline, indicating Norman with a trembling forefinger, “who was once engaged to Patience?”

“If you’re going to indulge in personalities,” said Roma, “we’ll say goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Christian said readily.

At Maurice’s words Norman had passed out into the night. The bats moved softly about him.

Drops of sweat stood on Fitzturgis’s forehead beneath his upright curly hair. He asked Maurice in a growling tone, “Do you want to carry on this discussion?”

“I repeat —” said Maurice.

“what?”

“what I said.”

Christian interposed, “The party is over. Goodnight, everybody.”

Roma asked of Adeline, “Want a lift?”

“Thanks, but we’re going to walk.”

As Roma passed Fitzturgis she gave him a look that was neither friendly nor unfriendly but like a signal held out.

Fitzturgis followed her departure with studied attention. He thanked Christian punctiliously for his hospitality, then suffered himself to be led away by Adeline. It was so dark that he would have lost his way had not she taken him by the hand. They went down the road and through a farm gate into a field where dark shapes of cows showed in peaceful humps beneath an elm tree. An extraordinarily sweet and pungent scent had been drawn from the field by the heat — the scent of clover and small wild flowers, the scent of the earth in high summer. The moon had risen and set. The sun was on its fiery way, but there was still an hour before its coming.

Fitzturgis was dizzy, not from the intoxication of the spirits he had drunk but from the languor of the heat and the isolation with Adeline. In the darkness of the field he took her in his arms and pressed her to him, murmuring incoherent terms of endearment and desire.

There was a sensuality in his approach to her that was new and startling. She was like a young doe who has suddenly seen flame on the fringe of the forest. She does not know what it is, but every nerve in her responsive being reports to her of danger.

With a swift and violent movement she pushed him from her.

“No,” she said, and repeated, “No.”

“why, Adeline,” he exclaimed, half laughing, half hurt, “don’t you love me?”

She moved lightly along the narrow path, leaving him to the darkness.

“Very well, then,” he said, “you don’t love me.”

Her voice came back to him. “I do.”