The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (627 page)

Adeline put an arm about her. “Prepare yourself for great news,” she said. “Roma has something to tell you.”

“You tell her,” said Roma, suddenly young and shy in manner.

“Is it about my brother and you?” asked Sylvia.

Roma nodded, her hair falling softly about her forehead.

“He has already told me,” said Sylvia. “I had a letter from him two days ago.” She bent to kiss Roma. “I hope you will be very happy,” she said.

The three stood there in silence. The voices of the men came to them, as they emerged from the house. Roma said, “I think I shall go and break the news to Uncle Renny.” She gave a childlike little skip as she crossed the lawn. She tossed her hair and ran and caught Renny by the arm. He smiled down at her.

She said: “I’ve a secret.”

She was like a little girl, he thought, and let himself be led to the path that found its way, through grass and ferns and wild flowers, into the ravine. There the stream was singing in the darkness and there was the smell of moist earth.

“Uncle Renny,” she said, now that she had him there — speaking in an almost matter-of-fact tone, as though the childishness had been but play-acting — “I’m going to be married to Maitland Fitzturgis.”

If her news had not caused the sensation she had expected when she told it to Sylvia and Adeline, certainly there was no disappointment for her in Renny’s reception of it. He had been about to light a cigarette and the flare from the match showed his astonished face.

“Marry Fitzturgis?” he repeated. “why — I can’t believe it! I thought — well, I thought you had no more than a passing fancy for him. Roma, are you sure you care enough about him to marry him?”

“It’s pretty obvious that I do,” she said coolly. She opened a little sequined evening bag and took from it a ring set with small diamonds. She slipped it onto her third finger. “I didn’t want to wear this till I had broken the news,” she said. She put her head on one side to admire the ring, which shone mildly in the moonlight that now drifted through the branches of trees growing so close together that their leaves allowed only narrow shafts of light to penetrate.

Renny Whiteoak reflected on how his daughter had for two years awaited the coming of Fitzturgis from Ireland, had loyally awaited her marriage to him — and now here was Roma, who had wrecked that engagement, primed herself to marry him. Yet always he had appeared to Renny as an unlovable man.

“It’s a pretty ring,” he said. “Fitzturgis seems to be doing well in New York. I hope he’s in a position to keep you properly.”

“We shall manage,” said Roma in a tone that did not invite questioning.

She had told him her news and had little more to say. Voices and laughter came down to them from the lawn above and then the sound of a Chopin waltz played by Finch. Renny took Roma by the hand, kissed her, and led her up the path to the house.

When the guests had gone, he drew Adeline into her own room behind the stairway, the room that had for so many years been occupied by his grandmother. Even today, with the belongings of a young girl scattered about, the atmosphere, the flavour of the room could not be subdued. Renny could not enter it without seeing again the bent figure of the old, old woman, her penetrating gaze beneath the lace frill of her cap, her beringed hands, her mordant grin. He could see again the green plumage of her parrot, perching on the painted bedstead.

“Tired?” he asked Adeline.

“No. It’s been a lovely evening.”

“what do you think of Roma’s engagement?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“why?” he persisted.

“Because I don’t know. My brain is all confused where those two are concerned.”

“Mine isn’t,” he said. “I think they’ll lead each other the devil of a life.”

“I don’t see why. They are, both of them, pretty tolerant — not jealous and quick-tempered — like me.” She took off her dress and, opening the window wider, leaned out toward the night breeze.

Renny dropped a kiss on her shoulder. She was like a fresh flower, he thought, a new-blown rose, set in a rococo vase. “You’re like me,” he said, “and like Gran. How she would have admired you! You and Philip.”

She said over her shoulder, “He’s a nice boy.” In that moment she was remembering Fitzturgis and the wild surge of her love for him.

“Philip has developed tremendously since his engagement to you,” said Renny.

“Has he?” She turned and faced him, as though in mild surprise.

“And so have you.”

Now she gave a little laugh. “That’s funny,” she said, “because I feel younger. Almost a child again.”

“It’s a good way for a woman to feel. Let the men do the planning — and worrying.”

He said goodnight to her; closed the front door, against which the three dogs were leaning. They longed to go to bed and followed him gladly up the stairs and into Archer’s room.

The boy was sitting on the side of his book-littered bed, reading a French novel. “I’m trying to enjoy it,” he said glumly, “because I hear that all Paris is enjoying it.”

“I thought,” said Renny, “that you disliked doing what it is ‘the thing’ to do.”

“Very true,” Archer agreed. “I do. But I shall be going to Paris. I must make some little preparation.”

“Now, look here, Archie,” said Renny, “no one in Oxford or Paris will care what you read or whether you’re able to read.”

Archer laid down the book. “I suppose they’ll ask me questions about Canada — a country in which I’m not particularly interested. I don’t, in fact, know one totem pole from another.”

“You’re a queer egg,” said Renny, to whom his son was a constant source of amusement, while he filled Alayne with a confusion of mingled pride and humiliation.

“
Quid dem? Quid non dem?
”
mused Archer. “
Renuis tu quod jubet alter.
”

“
Hm,
”
said Renny, “that’s Greek to me.”

“It was Latin,” Archer said politely, “to the one who wrote it. It’s not a very apt quotation, but the only one I can think of at the moment. These family parties leave me flattened.”

“Better get to bed,” said his father. “It’s late. You should have plenty of sleep before you carouse in Oxford and Paris.”

“Mercy!” said Archer.

The dogs were so eager for bed they yawned and whined in pleasure as Renny turned into his own room. The cairn terrier leapt straight onto the bed, while the bulldog and spaniel went under it. Renny remembered how the room which was now Archer’s had been the bedroom of Uncle Ernest. That dear man — how interested he would have been in Archer, as indeed he had been in all his nephews.

Renny thought of his brothers — his half-brothers they were, but closer to him than many a full brother: Eden, dead this many a year; Piers; Finch; and Wakefield. It was a disappointment that Wakefield had not been able to come to the party because of an engagement in New York. Wake’s love affairs, his delicate health had been a source of anxiety to Renny. He had given Wake a more fatherly affection than ever he had given to Archer. And now Wake was a man of thirty-eight and a successful actor.

As though to crystallize Renny’s thoughts, a letter from New York caught his eye. It lay on the table beside his bed and was addressed in Wakefield’s handwriting — a small scholarly hand, taught him by Uncle Ernest. How proud the family had been of the little boy’s writing, so different from Finch’s scrawl.…

When Renny had opened the letter and read it he went straight to Alayne’s room.

The Letter

Alayne was already in bed, graceful in a lace bedjacket. She was reading a book of essays to calm her for the night. She raised her eyes from it to look inquiringly at Renny. He came at once to the foot of the bed.

“I’ve had a letter from Wakefield,” he said. “He’s ill.”

All her married days she had been used to Renny’s periods of anxiety over this youngest brother’s health. He had had a weak heart. He had suffered (often willfully, it had seemed to Alayne) from his nerves. He had been a posthumous child, a precocious child, and the family had shown a solicitude toward him that had been denied Finch. It had been Alayne who had first realized Finch’s talent and had urged music lessons for him. Wakefield was talented too. Eden, Finch, Wakefield — poet, pianist, actor — they were remarkable, these brothers, she had often thought, and what a contrast to Renny and Piers!

Now, looking concerned, she asked, “what is wrong? Nothing serious, I hope.”

“Terribly serious, I’m afraid. His right lung is affected. He’s been having treatments. The doctors say he must rest for several months, in bed. They say rest will complete the cure, but — can we believe them?” Renny’s forehead was furrowed by apprehension. “Oh, Alayne, what if he should go, as Eden went?”

Resolutely she put that image away from her and said — in a reassuring tone — “Wakefield will recover. Care and rest will cure him, as the doctors say.”

“He wants to come home,” said Renny — eyeing her to watch the effect of his words — “home for the rest they prescribe.”

She sat up straight in bed. Her eyes looked almost fiercely into his. “To come here,” she said, “where there are two young people? He can’t — he can’t possibly do it.”

“He does not suggest coming into this house. What he wants is to come to Fiddler’s Hut. You remember Fiddler’s Hut?”

“Fiddler’s Hut?” she repeated unbelievingly. “Surely not. Why, I haven’t seen it in years! It must be a tumbledown ruin by now.” She might have added that she hoped never again to see it.

“It is not a tumbledown ruin,” he said defensively. “Although it stood here when my grandfather bought the property, it was built of stones from the fields. It’s solid still. In the old days a fellow called Fiddling Jock lived there and my grandmother — ”

“I’ve heard that story a hundred times.” She spoke in sudden uncontrollable anger. “I know how he lived there and how he died and how I nursed Eden there through his first illness. Fancy your asking me if I remember it!”

“Well, you often say you forget things.”

“Not that sort of thing.”

“Alayne” — his eyes were dark with foreboding as he repeated — “what if Wake goes — the way Eden did?”

“He won’t — not if he has the right care, and guards his health in the future, which Eden never did.” Now she spoke calmly, reassuringly. “But I cannot think that tumbledown shack — ” she reiterated.

“It’s not a shack and it’s not tumbledown.”

“Call it what you will,” she said wearily. “All I’m trying to say is — how can Wakefield get the proper care? who is to look after him?”

Renny avoided her eyes. He said, in a low, almost conciliatory voice, “Molly is coming to nurse him.”

His words appeared to electrify Alayne. “That girl!” she said violently. “It’s impossible. They’ve been living together — without marriage — and you are the one who knows why. They are of the same blood.”

“You forgave me that,” he said, “and it was long before I met you.”

She felt that she had borne more than any woman should be asked to bear. She put a hand to the back of her neck. “Do you want me to lie awake the rest of the night?” she said, her voice shaking with anger.

“All I said was,” he repeated, “that Molly was born long before I ever met you and, if you could have known the circumstances — ”

“My God,” she cried, “do you imagine that I will endure to hear the details of your randy youth? I want to settle down and sleep — if I can.”

He flung out of the room. But, in his own room, one word she had used rankled in his mind. He returned to her.

The bedside lamp was still burning but the sheet was drawn up to her chin and her eyes shut tight. She opened them just a slit when he entered.

“You used a word about me just now,” he said, “that I don’t like.”

“A word,” she repeated, as though mystified.

“Yes — a word — and I want it explained.”

She looked self-conscious now. “what word?”

“Randy. You spoke of my randy youth.”

“Did I?”

“Well — I’ve heard the word before and, as I’ve said, I don’t like it. I don’t like the idea of your going about collecting odd words to throw in my teeth.” And he marched out of the room. In the doorway he turned to say, “I’ve been called many things in my life but never — ”

She sat up in bed.
“Sh!”
she commanded. “Archer will hear you.”

He banged the door after him and she heard him go down the stairs with his light, quick step. He was clever, she thought, in his own instinctive way, to have put her in the wrong with something as flimsy as a word offensive to him; yet — and she smiled to remember it — he had been genuinely hurt.

The dogs, too, had heard him go downstairs but it was not till he opened the front door that the cairn terrier jumped off the bed and the spaniel and the bulldog came from under it. They were so afraid he would leave the house without them that they bundled themselves down the stairs and shouldered each other through the doorway in panic. They overtook him on the drive and created, with whines of pleasure and gambollings, a reunion as though after long separation. “Good boys,” he said, patting each in turn — and added, “It’s well that somebody loves me.”

The least Alayne might do, he thought, was to show some concern over Wakefield’s illness. He was deeply troubled by it. These half-brothers of his, he reflected, with the exception of Piers, had not much stamina. They had had a delicate mother — a pretty, graceful woman, but fragile.

He turned his steps past the stables, for the very thought of the sanguine beasts it housed was comforting. The path led to the back of Finch’s property. A stile had lately been built where a fence divided it from Jalna and Renny now perceived, perched on it, the lanky figure of Finch. The dogs, too, had discovered him; and, after a few warning barks, ran joyfully to greet him. A tender summer haze enveloped all.

“Hullo,” called out Finch. “That you, Renny?”

He clambered down from the stile.

“why are you about so late?” Renny asked.

“Well, I couldn’t sleep and the night is lovely.”

“Yes.” Renny absently looked up into the night’s radiance, then said, “Come for a walk. I have something I want to tell you.”