Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
The fields about were bluish-green like the sea and the grass moved slowly in the breeze. Cattle stood knee-deep in the grass. Swallows darted overhead. Adeline was looking beyond the fields. The roof of her home showed above the trees of a park where deer grazed. She cried: —
“There is the house, Philip! Lord, to think it is nearly five years since I’ve seen it! It’s more splendid than anything I’ve set my eyes on since! Look at it! Isn’t it grand, Philip?”
“It’s fallin’ to pieces,” said Patsy, over his shoulder, “and divil a one to spend a five-pound note on it.”
“It was indeed a fine old house, though not so fine as Philip had expected, judging by Adeline’s description of it. Though he was no judge of architecture he could see that several styles had, at different periods, been added to the original. All were now blended into a sufficiently mellow whole. But it was not the noble pile she had described and at a glance he could see signs of dilapidations. Not even its rich cloak of ivy concealed the crumbling stonework.
Adeline craned her neck in delight to see every bit of it.
“Oh, Philip,” she cried, “isn’t it a lovely house?”
“It is indeed.”
“Your sister’s little house is nothing, compared to it.”
“Augusta’s house was built in the time of Queen Anne.”
“Who cares for Queen Anne!” laughed Adeline. “Queen Anne is dead and so is that stuffy cathedral town. Oh, give me the country! Give me Ireland! Give me my old home!” Tears rained down her cheeks.
“I’ll give you a smack,” said Philip, “if you don’t control yourself. No wonder you’re thin.”
“Oh, why did I marry a phlegmatic Englishman!” she exclaimed. “I expected you to go into raptures over the place.”
“Then you expected me to behave like a fool which I am not.”
They had now stopped before the door and a half-dozen tame deer had sauntered up to see them alight from the carriage. Adeline declared that she could recognize each one and that they remembered her.
The footman who opened the door was in handsome livery though rather too tight for him. He greeted Adeline enthusiastically.
“Ah, God bless you, Miss Adeline! It’s grand to see ye back. My, ’tis yourself has got thin in the body! What have they been doing to you out yonder? And is this lovely gentleman your husband? Welcome, sir, y’r honour. Come right in. Patsy, look after the luggage o’ thim and be quick about it.” He turned then and shouted at three dogs which had begun to bark loudly.
Philip felt suddenly self-conscious. He did not quite know how to meet his wife’s family. All she had told him of them made them seem less, rather than more, real. He was prepared not to like them, to find them critical of him, yet the tall gentleman who now came quickly down the stairway held out his hand with a genial smile.
“How d’ye do, Captain Whiteoak,” he said, taking Philip’s finger in a thin muscular grasp. “Welcome to Ireland. I’m very glad to see you, sir. I apologize for not going to the station myself but I had a wearisome business at the Courthouse that must be attended to.… And now, my girl, let’s have a look at you!”
He took Adeline in his arms and kissed her. Philip then had a good look at him.
Adeline had spoken of her father, Renny Court, as a fine figure of a man, but to Philip’s mind his back was too thin and certainly not flat enough at the shoulders, and his legs were not quite straight. It was amusing to see how Adeline’s lovely features had been modeled on this man’s bony aquiline face. And his hair must once have been auburn too, for there was a rusty tinge across the grey of his head. Certainly his eyes were hers.
Philip became conscious that others had come into the hall, a woman somewhat beyond middle age, and three youths.
“Oh, Mother, here I am!” Adeline turned from her father and flung her arms about her mother.
Lady Honoria Court still retained beauty of a Spanish type which had been handed down in her family since the days of the Armada when a Spanish don had remained to marry an ancestress. Honoria was a daughter of the old Marquis of Killiekeggan, who, with the famous Marquis of Waterford, had raised the sport of steeplechasing from a not very respectable one to its present eminence.
One of the dogs, an Irish staghound, raised itself on its hind legs against the ayah, in order to look into Gussie’s face. Both nurse and child shrieked in terror. Renny Court ran across the hall, caught the hound by its heavily studded collar and, dragging it away, cuffed it.
“Did you ever see such a dog!” cried Lady Honoria. “He does so love children! What a sweet baby! We have a man in the town who takes the loveliest daguerreotypes. You must have one made of her while you are here, Adeline.”
Lady Honoria laughed a good deal. Unfortunately she had lost a front tooth and each time she laughed she hastily put a forefinger across her lips to hide the gap. She had beautiful hands which Adeline had inherited, and her laughter rang out with contagious mirth. Philip, before he had been two days in the house, decided that she feared her husband’s temper but that she circumvented and thwarted him many a time. She had an air of triumph when she achieved this and he a wary look, as though waiting his turn to retaliate. Often they did not speak to each other for days at a time but each had a keen sense of humour, each found the other an amusing person and their sulks were often broken in upon by sudden laughter from which they recovered themselves with chagrin. Lady Honoria had had eleven children of whom four had died in early infancy, but she was still quick and graceful in her movements and looked capable of adding to her family.
Adeline was embracing each of her three young brothers in turn. She led them to Philip, her face flushed, her eyes brilliant in her excitement at being home again. Her bonnet had fallen back and her auburn hair rose in curls above her forehead.
“Here they are,” she cried, “the three boys! Conway, Sholto, and Timothy — come and shake hands with your new brother!”
The three offered their hands to Philip, the first two sheepishly, the third with an air almost too bright. Philip decided that there was something queer about him. There was a remarkable resemblance among the three. Their hair was a pale red, their eyes were greenish, their faces long and pointed, their noses remarkably well-shaped with slender, supercilious nostrils. The eldest, Conway, tormented Philip by his resemblance to someone he had met, till he discovered that he was the image of the Knave of Diamonds, in his favourite pack of playing cards.
“Look at them!” exclaimed Renny Court, with a scornful flourish of his hand toward the two elder boys. “’Tis a shameful pair they are, I can tell you. They’ve disgraced me by being sent home from their English school for attacking one of the masters. I knocked their heads together for it but here they are on my hands and God knows what I shall do with them! Put them to work in the stables — or in the fields — ’tis all they’re fit for! I must tell you that I have two other sons, and fine fellows, too. But my wife would have done well to halt before she had these!”
Conway and Sholto grinned with a hangdog air but young Timothy threw his arms about Adeline and hugged her again.
“Oh, it’s grand to have you home again,” he said. “I’ve been saving up things to tell you but now they’ve gone right out of my head and I can only be glad.”
“You have nothing to tell but mischief,” said his father, “and devilment and slyness from morning to night. You have one child, Captain Whiteoak. Stop there and have no more! For it’s children that are bringing my red hairs in sorrow to the grave.”
Lady Honoria interrupted him with solicitude for the travellers. She herself led them to the rooms which had been prepared for
them. They bathed and changed their travel-worn garments and descended to the drawing-room.
A married son who lived at some distance arrived in time for dinner. He was a dark, handsome young man and rode a horse he had purchased that very day and intended entering for the Dublin Races. They all crowded out to see the new horse and were delighted by his appearance. This son was evidently Renny Court’s favourite of the moment. He could not make enough of him and praised his skill as a rider and his perspicacity as a buyer.
There was a certain grandeur in the dining room and dinner was served by two footmen in livery. The food and the wine were good and, as the meal progressed, Philip felt more at ease with his new relatives. They talked and laughed a great deal. Even the two youths forgot their position of disgrace and raised their voices excitedly. But when their father would cast a piercing look on them they would instantly subside and for a few moments be silent. An old gentleman named Mr. O’Regan appeared at table, spoke little but drank a good deal. Adeline told Philip afterward that he was an old friend of the family who had once lent a large sum of money to them and, as it was impossible to collect the debt, had come to live with them. Mr. O’Regan wore a glum, yet rather calculating expression, as though he watched with morbid interest the decrease year by year of Renny Court’s debt to him. Renny Court, on his part, treated his guest with a kind of grim jocularity, pressed him to eat and drink more and inquired solicitously after his health. Mr. O’Regan seemed to resent this and would give no more definite answer than — “Oh, I’m well enough. I think I’ll last —” Though till what, he did not explain.
Renny Court was no absentee landlord, living in England on the rents from a neglected tenantry. He employed no callous bailiff, but himself attended to the business of his estate and knew every man, woman, and child on it.
The Whiteoaks’ visit there passed amiably with the exception of a few fiery encounters between Adeline and her father. In truth they could not be together for long without their wills opposing.
She was the only one of his children who did not fear him. Yet she loved him less than did the others. It was to her mother she clung and from whom she dreaded to part. Lady Honoria could not talk of her departure for Canada without weeping. As for Renny Court, he poured out his full contempt for the project.
“What a life for a gentleman!” he would exclaim. “What will you find out there? Nothing but privation and discomfort! What a place for a fine girl like Adeline!”
“I’m willing to go,” she interrupted. “I think it will be glorious.”
“What do you know about it?”
“More than you do, I’ll be bound,” she retorted. “Philip has had letters from his uncle describing the life in Quebec and he knows a Colonel Vaughan who lives in Ontario and loves it!”
“Lives in Ontario and loves it!” repeated her father, fixing her with his intense gaze. “And has Colonel Vaughan of Ontario told Philip what the roads are like there? Has he told him of the snakes and mosquitoes and the wild animals thirsting for your blood? Why, I know a man who stopped in one of the best hotels there and there was a mud puddle in it, and a frog croaking all the night through by a corner of the bed. And this man’s wife was so frightened that the next child she had had a face like a frog on it! Now what do you think of that, Adeline?” He grinned triumphantly at her.
“I think if it’s Mr. McCready you’re quoting,” she retorted, “his wife has no need to go all the way to Ontario to have a frog-faced child. Sure, Mr. McCready himself —”
“Was as fine a figure of a man as there was in all County Meath!”
“Father, I say he had the face of a frog!”
Philip put in — “Adeline and I are bound for the New World, sir, and no argument will talk us out of it. As you know, my uncle left me a very nice property in Quebec. I must go out there and look after it and, if what he said was true, there is a very respectable society in the town. And, in the country about, the finest shooting and fishing you can imagine.”
“You will be back within the year,” declared Renny Court.
“We shall see,” answered Philip stubbornly. His blue eyes became more prominent as he flashed a somewhat truculent look at his father-in-law.
The two boys, Conway and Sholto, were fired by a desire to accompany the Whiteoaks to Canada. The thought of a wild life in a new country, far from parental authority, elated them. They could talk of little else. They would cling to Adeline on her either side and beg her to let them throw in their lot with hers. On her part she liked the idea. Canada would not seem so remote if she had two of her brothers with her. Their mother surprisingly did not oppose the idea. She had borne so much dissension because of these two that the thought of parting with them did not distress her greatly. They promised to return home within the year. Renny Court was willing enough to be rid of the nuisance of them. Philip did not relish the idea of such a responsibility but to please Adeline he agreed. He felt himself capable of controlling Conway and Sholto much more efficiently than their parents could. He thought, with a certain grim pleasure, of the discipline that would make men of them.
Even little Timothy talked of immigrating to the New World but this could not be considered. Timothy spoke with a strong Irish accent, from being so much with his old nurse who had brought him up from delicate babyhood. He had a beautiful yet strange face and was demonstratively affectionate to an extent that embarrassed Philip. A stern word from his father would apparently terrify him, yet the very next moment he would be laughing. His hair was sandy — he was freckled and had beautiful hands which Philip discovered were decidedly light-fingered. He missed his gold studs, he missed his best silk cravats, his pistols inlaid with mother-of-pearl, his gold penknife. Each of these articles was in turn retrieved from Timothy’s bedroom by Adeline. She made light of it. She declared that Tim could not help it but it made Philip angry and uncomfortable.
In truth the longer he stayed with Adeline’s family the less congenial they were to him, with the one exception of Lady
Honoria. He felt that Renny Court, for all his devotion to his land and his tenantry, mismanaged them both. Far too much money and time were spent on steeplechasing. As for politics, they hardly dared broach the subject, so violently were their views opposed. But Renny Court would encourage Mr. O’Regan to hold forth on the theme of British injustice to Ireland. Philip was unable to defend his country because the old gentleman was too arrogant and also too deaf to listen to any views but his own. He would sit close to the blazing fire, his florid face rising above his high black stock like an angry sun above a thundercloud, while words poured forth in a torrent.