Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
Finch was remembering his last visit to Ireland and his reconciliation with his wife from whom he had been separated. She had sought him out, not he her. She had rekindled the dark fire of his passion for her. Dennis had been conceived. When Dennis was born her love had been transferred to him. She had thrown off her infatuation for Finch as a snake sloughs its skin. How different she had been from the traditional Irishwoman! She had been reserved, with a strange stillness in that white face of hers. Never could she have been called laughter-loving or gay. The very jet-black convolutions of her hair, worn long when other women wore theirs short, had a classic coldness. And how rigid had been her movements! Before they had parted for the last time the sight of her crossing a room had called forth an antagonism from him, yet with all this coldness, this rigidity, there had been the hooded passion of her secret nature.… And now she was dead and buried. How long had she been dead? Was it four years? Sarah dead.… He pictured her grave in the Californian cemetery and, for a moment’s abhorrence, what lay in the grave.… The country they were passing through was indistinct before his eyes. Dim curtains of colour opened, closed, melted into each other. Patsy’s voice came from the front seat but no intelligible words.
Now he saw the bare hills in their rocky greenness, the wooded valley where a stream ran, an empty mansion, with its roof burned off.
At last they reached Glengorman, passed through the stone gateway, along the drive to the house. Adeline was satisfied with the gargoyles above the door. That was as it should be. But she was disappointed because there was no line of bowing domestics to welcome Maurice, only Patsy’s wife, Kathleen, a wisp of a woman, not nearly so impressive as Mrs. Wragge. And what did she do but throw both arms about him and kiss him. “Just for ould times’ sake, when you were a darlin’ boy!”
Later Patsy said to his wife, — “There’s no nature in him. Hardly a word did he spake and him with all this waitin’ for him.”
“I’d respect him less if he chattered,” returned Kathleen. “He’s mourning for the ould rd, and right and proper it is. You must remember too that he’s part English.”
Lunch was waiting and, when they sat down at table, Maurice was in the heavy carved chair where once old Cousin Dermot had sat, Adeline on his right, Finch on his left. Beyond them the table stretched empty. Maurice was embarrassed, shy, proud, all at once. Here he was very much “somebody,” instead of a young unimportant member of a large family. Adeline was elated by the changes of scene, her eyes bright, as though poised to receive all that came to her. Finch’s dark thoughts had slid away from him, like seaweed from a swimmer, and he was ready to strike out boldly, to enjoy this freedom from the stress of life.
Maurice looking at Adeline thought, — “I’m a fool to let myself be troubled by that fellow. She’ll forget him in no time here.” His spirits lifted. Thoughts of his new free life crowded in on him. There were so many things he would do. He was freed from his father’s critical gaze that always both angered and took the pith out of him. He looked forward to the day when Piers would visit him at Glengorman, see him as rd there.
“This house makes Jalna seem small, doesn’t it, Adeline?” he asked.
“Small? No. Jalna’s big enough. This is too big.”
“You think so?”
“Well, we have more land. You have only two hundred acres. We have five.”
“Children, children —” grinned Finch.
“what I mean is,” she said, “it is the land that counts. It’s rather silly for one boy to live alone in a house this size.”
“I shan’t always be alone.”
“Good luck to you, Mooey, whoever you choose.”
“All this means nothing to you, does it?” he exclaimed angrily, as though they two were alone.
“Everything concerning you means a lot to us, doesn’t it, Uncle Finch?”
“We’ve got to be very civil to Mooey,” said Finch. “He has us at his mercy.”
“Adeline loves to deflate one,” Maurice complained.
“So did Gran,” said Finch.
Adeline preened herself, tossing back her russet locks.
“It’s been a great mistake,” declared Maurice, “this telling Adeline how much she resembles Gran. She might have been a nicer girl …”
“Wait till I’m a hundred and you’ll see how nice I shall be!” she cried.
“I shall not be here to see. I’ll die long before you.”
“Of course you will. You’ll give up the ghost at the first creak in your joints.”
“And you’ll hang on, I suppose, till everyone is tired of you.”
“No one was tired of Gran.”
“People could endure more in those days.”
They were always on the verge of a quarrel.
Patsy came in carrying a bottle of wine. He said:
“This is a bottle of rare good wine, sir. I managed to save it when the executors locked up the cellar and all. It’s been waitin’ on ye all these years and ye couldn’t find a betther, if ye scraped Ireland with a small tooth-comb.” His little eyes glistened under his coarse grey brows.
Amity reblossomed. Maurice’s health was drunk and his future happiness at Glengorman.
He had left his dog, a fawn-coloured Labrador bitch, behind him when he returned to Canada. After lunch she appeared with her son, as large as she. She sprang on Maurice and made much of him.
“She remembers me!” Maurice cried delighted.
At first shyly, then a little closer, gambolled the son, his muscular body brimming with careless vitality. His mother and he locked jaws and pushed one another this way and that. Their life was one long-drawn amiable wrestling.
Now Maurice set out to show his property to cousin and uncle. They climbed a long flight of moss-grown stone steps between high walls in the garden. Rhododendrons heavy with bloom pressed close to the walls, hung over them. The dogs took the steps in bounds and stood waiting at the top where, on level ground, were the stables, their only occupants a cow and several hens and geese with their broods.
Adeline went from stall to stall. “Splendid!” she declared. “what a fine place for horses!” She caught her cousin by the arm. “Mooey, will you let me fill these stalls with horses for you? Wouldn’t you like to spend some of your money on your stables?”
“Not a penny,” he returned curtly. “I’m quite satisfied to keep chickens. I like them.”
The tiny chickens ran about the stable yard. The gander thrust out his neck and hissed.
Maurice led the others through the formal gardens to a knoll where an ancient beech spread its mossy limbs and where Adeline was afraid to step for fear she should tread on a primrose. Their clusters grew thick, creamy-gold, arranged as though to pattern the knoll. Maurice raised his arm and pointed. “There is the sea!”
“May we go to the shore now?” she asked.
“I’d rather show you the house first — if you don’t mind.”
“Yes, show us the house first,” said Finch.
“Oh, yes, we’d love to see the house,” agreed Adeline, and thought, — “The shore can wait. I’d like to go there all by myself.” She took a hand of each and linked together they returned to the house.
It had the chill of a place long shut up. Now all the windows stood open and the mild sunshine entered. It sought out dim mirrors and tarnished gilt frames, the rosewood of cabinets and the china figures inside. It gleamed on the smooth stone flags of a passage and on the glass doorknobs of the bedrooms. Maurice pointed out a group of little pictures — portraits of fighting-cocks, made from feathers.
“Look!” he cried. “I remember admiring those the very first day I was here. Aren’t they clever?”
Adeline read the words beneath one of the cocks.
“‘The Bronze Cyclone who was known to kill two other cocks in five minutes.’ whew!” she gasped. “He was a little terror, wasn’t he?”
“I never looked at the words,” said Maurice, drawing back, “only at the bird.”
“He’s lovely,” breathed Adeline, her eyes held by his spurs. “You’re lucky to own such interesting things.”
“Now I feel I’m really at home,” he said. “Everything had grown a little dim. And yet, in a way, it’s unreal with Cousin Dermot gone … I called him Grandfather, you know.”
“Yes, I know … But it won’t seem unreal for long — not with me here. Will it, Mooey?”
LOVE’S PROGRESS
Adeline chose a path that led from a corner of the garden half-hidden by rhododendrons and then on through a plantation of specimen trees brought from foreign parts by some former Court. These had, through the long years, grown to enormous size and a great silence reigned among them. Some had such strange leaves that she paused to examine them; some were cloaked in grey moss; the branches of some, when they drooped to the earth, found succour there and sent down new roots and up rose a new tree; some had bark with such deep crevices that she could lay her hand in them. Wherever there was an open space where sunshine fell, a rhododendron presented its mass of pink or coral-coloured or mauve flowers. Never still, the two Labradors moved swiftly through the long grass, noses to earth, their golden backs smooth as snakes, their long tails waving against the bluebells.
To be alone, that was what she had been longing for. This was her second day at Glengorman and always Finch or Maurice had been by her side, calling her to come and see this or come and do that. She craved solitude by the sea and in that solitude to savour the joy of this new emotion that possessed her, that ran through her like a quick fire in the grass.
She crossed steep hillsides, their only growth grey boulders, and now she saw the glistening blue floor of the inlet, and beyond it the bare, mountainous, grey-green land. Calling the dogs she ran down the hillside to the rocky shore. On a little grassy point among the rocks she threw herself down, her cheek on the grass, her eyes seeing no more than that small space, the clumps of sea-pinks, the smooth shoulder of rock, the scrap of sky. It was enough. She could not have borne more. Deep down among the rocks, the small waves came and went, repeating without one weary note the first song they had learned.
She was conscious of all her being; of her feet that had run so gladly down the hillside and now lay side by side, the toes pressing the earth; of her knees, strong and supple, that so often had clasped a horse’s sides; her loins, her sides, her breast rising and falling with the weight of the salt air. One hand curved about a clump of sea-pinks to protect them in case she made a sudden movement. She did not know what she might do next. She felt as inconsequent as the two dogs who came and sniffed her and then ran off again, satisfied to know she was there.
She closed her eyes and swam in the crimson and gold world behind their lids. She drew long slow happy breaths of the salt air. She tried to think, to realize that she was here, to be entirely conscious of her inner self. What came to her was the image of Fitzturgis, surrounded by a scarlet and gold aura, like the image of a saint. That image stood high above all the world and she held it a moment, in breathless worship … what had he done to her in those few days? Her spirit melted in pity for herself and her eyes filled with tears.
She opened them and the translucent spring world formed itself and the sound of the wavelets in the crevice below came to her …
Her hand was still curved about the cluster of sea-pinks. She touched them with her fingers, then sat up and looked about her, as though for the first time. A little freighter, foreign-looking, was moving past in the direction of Cork. The hills and woods on the opposite shore were brighter. Set in a park she could make out a large white mansion and, here and there, a farm-house.
The Labrador bitch came and nuzzled her coaxingly, then planted a large paw on the sea-pink cluster.
“Oh, naughty Bridget!” cried Adeline and heaved up the paw. In distress she examined the flowers. They were not broken. One by one the little heads would rise again. Down to the very water’s edge grew their fellows. A scrap of earth no bigger than a thimble made a cradle for their young.
Now, with the two dogs, she scrambled up the steep and ran along the stony path up to a barren hilltop. There the wide sea stretched before her, lustrous in the sunshine like a damascened shield. There was wind here and it pressed her thin skirt against her thighs, caught at her breath and blew out the bright waves of her hair. She threw up her arms and stood on her toes, straining upward as though on wings. “Oh, Maitland Fitzturgis,” she sang, “I do love you!”
She laughed at herself, but sang it out again and again, running over the hilltop, not knowing what to do with herself for joy. The dogs leaped about her and about each other, carrying on their endless loving combat. Rolling over and over, gnawing, making as though to swallow one another. The son was the more persistent, the mother in the last event the stronger.
So they progressed, over the hill, down into a valley, in whose shelter rhododendrons had sprung up, and bluebells. She saw the figure of a man standing, fishing rod in hand, on a jutting rock. She saw his arm rise and in a sweeping movement throw out the line. She saw the glitter of the fly as it danced above the pool. Again and again he cast and at last, swimming brightly into the air, came a fish. Detaching it from the hook he laid it in a fishing basket and she saw that there were others there.
The man, who was young, became aware that he was watched. Still squatting beside the basket he raised his face and looked up at her. They stared motionless, taking each other in, appraising each other; she, moved to admire the tweed-clad figure bent, with that air of solicitude, above the basket; he, startled to pleasurable surprise by the windblown figure of the girl, a dog on her either side … why, he thought, those are the dogs from Glengorman! And the girl must be Maurice’s cousin, Adeline Whiteoak. So — Maurice had arrived.
He slapped the lid on the basket, and, with it and the rod in his hands, began to clamber over the rocks and come toward Adeline. She waited, amused. It had not taken much to cause him to give up his sport. Just the sudden appearance of a strange girl. But perhaps she was no longer on Mooey’s land. Perhaps the man was coming to order her off for trespassing. That was the reason, she decided, and awaited him, with more than a little truculence in her air.
He came steadily upward, with the certainty in his movements of one who knows every inch of the way. The dogs, after one perfunctory bark, ran to meet him with tails waving.
“Hullo, Bridget,” he said. “Hullo, Bruce!” Then to Adeline, — “I think you must be Miss Whiteoak. I’m Maurice’s friend —”
“Don’t tell me!” she interrupted. “Let me guess.”
He stood smiling, his sanguine fair face flushed, waiting to be named.
She would have said, — “You’re Pat Crawshay,” but he had been so ceremonious with his
Miss
Whiteoak, that she said with dignity, — “I guess you are Sir Patrick Crawshay.”
“Do you really remember me?” he exclaimed, pleased.
“I know you are Maurice’s neighbour.”
“But you don’t remember me?”
“Yes, I do. I met you at the Hunt when I was over here as a child.”
“Good. I shall never forget you — and our parting after the Hunt. Do you remember our parting?”
She did indeed. He had asked her to kiss him goodbye and she had tried to prove her strength by the hug she gave him. She laughed at the recollection. They both laughed.
“How long are you staying?” he asked.
“All the summer.”
“Splendid. There’ll be no hunting for you but there’ll be other things.”
“May I see your fish?” she asked.
He opened the basket and she saw the firm shapes, the iridescent scales, the last quick tumble of life in that small space.
“Oh, lovely!” she breathed, in admiration.
“Do you like fishing?”
“I don’t know. I’ve not had much opportunity. I’d like to cast, the way you do.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“Thanks, but not now. They’ll be wondering what has become of me.”
“I’ll walk back with you, if you’ll let me.”
She watched him as they walked together and thought how different he was from all the boys she knew. She tried to think what the difference was. First, but least important, there was his complexion, ruddy against white, as though sun had never tanned him or dry hot winds sucked the moisture from his skin. Then there was that look of innocent careless strength about him, as though he had never been disciplined, never been tried. He was like an innocent healthy young animal. He looked, she thought, as though he’d always had just what he wanted, and what he wanted had never been wrong.
As they walked she kept turning over in her mind how she might bring the conversation round to Fitzturgis. He was never out of her thoughts. But, try as she would, it could not be manoeuvred. At last she asked out plain:
“Have you ever heard of a man named Maitland Fitzturgis?”
“Maitland Fitzturgis,” he repeated, in his liquid Irish voice. “No, I haven’t.”
“Never heard of him?” It seemed impossible.
“Does he live nearby?”
“I — don’t know. At least — I guess it’s quite a long way off. I met him on shipboard.”
“Oh, I see … what was he like? A young man?”
“Quite a lot older than you. He was in the war.”
“He would be that. An Irishman, you say.”
“With that name, of course.”
“Names get mixed up between the two countries.”
“His mother was English.”
“Ah, I see.”
“I suppose you wondered why an Irishman would go to the war.”
“They did — lots of them — Montgomery for one.”
They were nearing the house. She halted and faced him. She said, with her colour rising, — “I’d rather — please —” She could not get the words out.
“Yes?” he encouraged.
“Please don’t say that I asked about Maitland Fitzturgis … Maurice didn’t like him.”
She felt that she had given herself away. She was swept by shame and, to hide it, she stalked proudly and coldly into the hall where Maurice and Finch were waiting.
“It’s about time,” exclaimed Maurice. “We were just organizing a search party —” Then, seeing young Crawshay, he ran to greet him. “Hullo, Pat! This explains it all. How splendid! Uncle Finch, this is my friend Pat Crawshay.”
He stayed to lunch. Finch watched Maurice with pleasure, seeing him expand in giving hospitality, seeing a new and confident Maurice. Piers had been bad for him, no doubt of that. And what a pity Pheasant was not here to see her boy!
They were a gay laughing party at lunch. Afterward Finch and Adeline went to write letters, leaving the two youths alone. It was not long before Maurice asked:
“Is there a fellow named Fitzturgis anywhere in the neighbourhood?”
“Dozens of them — for all I know.”
“This fellow was on board ship with us. He’d heard of you.”
“what was he like?”
Maurice gave a little shrug. “I didn’t take to him.”
“Did your cousin?”
“Adeline? Oh, she liked him well enough.”
“why are you interested in him?”
“I’m not particularly. It’s just that — well, there’s something a bit odd about him.”
“Did he tell you what village he’s near?”
“No.”
“what does he do? Has he money?”
“He does a little farming. I think he has a small income. I believe he has a pension. He was badly wounded in the East.”
“Good-looking?”
Maurice laughed. “what a question from you, Pat! As though you’d care!”
“Somebody else might.”
“who?”
“Your cousin.”
“Has she asked you about him?” Maurice demanded, with an edge to his voice.
“Well, now — as though she would! why, I’ve barely met her.”
“She did! She did — the little fool!”
“For heaven’s sake, don’t let her know you caught me out.”
“You couldn’t lie to me, Pat.” The friends sat close together on a deep window seat. They lighted fresh cigarettes.
“It’s splendid having you back,” exclaimed Pat Crawshay. “I’ve had no other friend to take your place. But I wager you made lots of friends over there.”
“Not one. Pleasant acquaintances. Not one friend.”
They smoked in silence for a space, then Maurice demanded abruptly, — “How did she come to ask you about him?”
“I don’t remember. I think just out of the blue.”
“Good Lord!”
“But it’s nothing. Any girl …”
“Adeline isn’t just any girl. She’s never shown any preference —”
“She’s got to begin sometime. Let her begin on him.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I think I understand that you’re pretty fond of her yourself, Maurice.”
“It doesn’t matter what my feelings are,” said Maurice bitterly. “what matters is that she must be kept away from this fellow.”
“I’ll find out about him.”
“Do, Pat, like a good friend, but don’t mention him to her.”
“You did like him at the first, didn’t you?”
“Very much.”
“Then it is just jealousy,” thought Pat Crawshay. He himself felt a twinge of jealousy toward the unknown Fitzturgis.
Three days passed before he had news of him for Maurice. In the meantime he had spent many hours at Glengorman and the three Whiteoaks had dined with him and his mother. On this afternoon he drew Maurice into a chill little room off the hall, where stood a desk, with the telephone on it, and the walls were lined with old books.
“I’ve heard something about the villain,” he said lightly, as though it were a matter of small import to either of them.
Maurice, trying to smile also, asked, — “Well, what about him?”
“His father was Irish, his mother English. He went to school in England and to Oxford University. From there into the Army and went through the Burma campaign. After the war he and his mother came to Ireland and bought the small place where they live. He and I both live with our mothers. There the resemblance ends. My mother is a dear but I gather that his is not. He has a married sister in America — that was the reason for his trip over. I’m told they keep strictly to themselves. There is something wrong about them — I mean they have made no friends.”
Maurice drummed with his fingers on the windowsill. “Thanks,” he said thoughtfully. “I guess we’ve seen the last of him.” Then he added, — “Mind you, I have nothing against the fellow. I liked him, till I found he’d been making up to Adeline on the sly. It was a shame because she’s only a kid and I’m supposed to look after her.”