Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“Those are the very things that happen,” Patience said sombrely.
“I’m glad” — he looked at her with questioning rather than seriousness in his blue eyes — “that I care for nobody and nobody cares for me.”
“You have your writing,” she said. “You are safe. You are immune.”
“Comparatively,” he agreed. “Not quite.”
The rain that had been threatening now began gently, almost imperceptibly, to fall. Neither of them noticed it. They could at the moment think of nothing to say.
* * *
When Adeline reached the house she examined the gravel sweep to discover whether there were signs of the arrival of the car from the lake. There were not. Inside, the house appeared deserted. She thought, “when Uncle Nicholas was living it never had this look. He was always here.” And suddenly, because of her emotional stress, she missed him with a poignancy she had not before felt. The tick of the grandfather clock became resounding — louder and louder. “It is,” she thought, “as though it wanted to get all things over and done with.”
She hastened out of the house and to the stable. Evening was coming on. The horses in their boxes were quietly, dreamily munching. Everywhere was clean straw. Alf, the stableman, was singing in a shrill tenor something about being lonesome for you-oo, but he looked perfectly happy. She went to her father’s office and opened the door without knocking. He looked up surprised. He was seated in his swivel chair and without hesitation she shut the door behind her and cast herself on him. She cast herself on him as though she were ten years old, not twenty. The impact caused him to grunt, but he clasped her to him and vigorously patted her on the back. “There — there,” he comforted. “Don’t feel so badly. Anyone is liable to make mistakes.”
She burrowed her face against his neck.
“I’m not feeling badly about that,” she said, “but about Mait.
There
was my mistake!”
“what’s this?” he demanded, putting her from him and scanning her distressed face. All her defences were down. She sought again to burrow into the comfort of him, but he held her off.
“what’s this?” he repeated. “Explain.”
For a moment she could not speak. Then she brought forth all her self-control and said in a shaking voice, “I’ve broken off my engagement. It’s all over between me and Maitland.”
With a supreme effort he drew his brows together in a frown, compressed his lips, concealed the pleasurable — the grateful — astonishment he felt at these words.
“Yes?” he said quietly. “How did it come about?”
“We’d quarrelled.” She, too, now spoke quietly. “You can guess about what.” Her mind flew back to the quarrel.
“Yes? And then?” He put his hand up to stroke, in a brief caress, the hair that clung to her forehead.
“We separated. I went for a walk. I had to be alone. When I came back Archer told me that Mait had motored with Roma to the lake. I followed them there on Bridget.”
Struck afresh by the pang of her discovery, Adeline got to her feet and stood facing Renny, her back to the door.
“They were there, in the lake, bathing,” she said, now speaking quickly to finish the tale. “He took Roma in his arms and held her — and kissed her. She kissed him back. They were like lovers.”
“what did you do?” Renny asked sharply.
“I —” Adeline closed her eyes, then opened them wide. “I stoned them.”
“Stoned them,” he repeated in amazement. “Do you mean you actually
threw stones
?”
“Yes.”
“And hit them?”
“Hard enough to hurt?”
“There was blood on his face.”
Renny gave a bark of laughter. “By Judas,” he exclaimed, “I wish I had been there to see!”
“It was justice,” she said. “I judged them. I thought they deserved stoning. As in olden times.”
“what did he do?”
“He came up to me — out of the water. He tried ... to explain, but ... I told him all was over between us and rode away.”
“You did well. I’m proud of you.”
Adeline swallowed the sob that rose from the very centre of her being.
Renny picked up a paper-knife and balanced it on his hand, hiding the triumph in his eyes.
“It is well,” he said, “that you found him out before you married him. If he could play fast and loose before marriage — well, there’s no knowing what he might be up to later.”
“what had I better do now?” She gave a look of bewilderment about the little room. Still she could hear the muffled beat of the waves, see the embraced figures in their midst.
“I shall go back with you to the house. It’s almost dinnertime. You can go straight to your room. I shall want an interview with the young man, but it will be brief.... Adeline, believe me, he never would have settled down here. Your only chance of a tolerable life with him would be where he might find congenial work. Possibly in New York. Would you like that?”
“No, no — I must have space about me.”
“Now you can see, my pet, that this fellow is not what you thought he was. He’s not what I hoped he was. I’ll not say what I think of him except that when my daughter marries I want her to marry a man worthy of her.”
Renny rose and went swiftly to Adeline. He took her in his arms and held her close to him. He could not see her suffer without himself suffering. The look in her face was now reflected in his own. Yet in his heart there sprang up a fountain of clear elation. It was as though the Almighty had stretched out a finger and toppled Fitzturgis from his pedestal.
Again Adeline clung to Renny, absorbed strength from the feel, the very smell of him. Never had they been more united. She was painfully tearing her spirit from the bondage that for two years had possessed it. She did not realize that these same bonds had for some time been weakening. Nothing would have induced her to acknowledge that the Fitzturgis of today was not the lover she had idealized.
“My darling,” Renny repeated, kissing her in a fervour of protective love. “My darling ... my little pet.”
“It’s hard,” she said, “to lose him to Roma.”
“Don’t let that trouble you.” Gently he stroked her hair. “If it had not been Roma it would have been someone else. He hasn’t it in him to be faithful. She was merely at hand.... Forget him, my dearest; put him out of your mind.... Happy days are coming — for us two!”
* * *
Fitzturgis had knocked on the door of Sylvia’s room. She was not there. He heard from Archer, still immersed in his book but not to the point when he was unaware of what went on about him, that she had gone to the summerhouse. This latticed retreat had been in a state of ruin twenty-five years ago, but still it remained standing. It was on the far side of the house. It was in deep shadow from morning to night. It was rotting, it was the home of earwigs, spiders, and field mice. Almost never did anyone sit there, but Sylvia had discovered it, and in these days of bewilderment and indecision she sometimes hid herself in its seclusion.
Now she heard approaching steps and peering through the clustering wild grape vine that covered the summerhouse, on which hung the green bunches of small sour fruit, she saw her brother coming quickly toward her. When she stood in the doorway she saw the greenish pallor of his face and wondered whether it might be tinged by the shadow of the vine. Yet in a moment she realized that his colour was evidence of deep emotion.
“what has happened now?” she asked, as one accustomed to expect unhappy things.
He stood in the doorway looking sombrely in at her. “what a disgusting spot!” he exclaimed, then added, “Just the right sort of place for the news I have. It’s all over between Adeline and me.”
“But how can it be?”
“We had a disagreement. Some pretty hot words. On her part she seemed to set out to anger me. I was overheated in my temper and in my body. Roma happened to be going to the lake to bathe ... I went with her. Adeline followed us there.... She caught us ... well, Roma was in my arms.... Adeline made a pretty scene. She actually threw stones at us.” He threw up his hand in a gesture of mingled excitement and self-protection. “For Christ’s sake don’t say it’s no more than you expected, Sylvia! I can’t bear that.”
“It’s beyond words of mine,” she cried. “I could not have pictured your doing such an imbecile thing — not unless you were so mad about the girl that you completely lost your head. Surely you haven’t lost your head over that bit of fluff.”
“Can’t you understand?” He scowled in exasperation. “It was the impulse of a moment. It signified nothing.”
“And everything is spoilt,” she exclaimed in distress. “what is wrong with us, Maitland? Can we bring only unhappiness — to ourselves and to others?”
“Well,” he said gloomily, “it appears to be all up with us here. In your case you should not have sent me to Finch. You should have gone to him yourself. You might have told your story in a way which would have made you all the more desirable to him.”
She felt he was dragging in her case that she might be in the same boat with himself. She said humbly, “No way I could have put it would have made Finch see what I did in any but a horrible light.”
“who the hell do these Whiteoaks think they are!” he exclaimed. “Have they lived such puritanical lives?”
“Finch is just naturally good,” she said. “He’s fastidious. It makes him unconsciously cruel. As for Adeline — she’s scarcely grown up. She’s had everything her own way. To please her you’d have to be all she’s imagined you to be. She’s talked to me of you. You should have heard her. God, what a pedestal she’d put you on!”
He said bitterly — “Well, I’ve come off it with a crash. I’ve been toppling for some time. I’ll bet that her father and her Uncle Piers have never lost an opportunity to put in a word against me.”
“Perhaps it’s better, Maitland,” she said, “that Adeline and you should separate before it’s too late. You’re not happy here. Tell the truth — you’ve been trying to make yourself over into a different person. And as long as I’ve known you, darling, I’ve known that nothing can change you.”
“I would make myself into what they want me to be — for Adeline’s sake,” he said stubbornly.
“It’s no use. You can’t. I know you better than you know yourself. We’re defeated. Let’s go back to New York and start all over again.”
He came into the summerhouse, bent over her and kissed her. “You’re a brave girl, Sylvia,” he said.
Steps were heard drawing near. Sylvia, peering through lattice and wild grape, exclaimed, “Renny’s coming. Is he looking for you, I wonder. Oh, Maitland, perhaps you can patch things up. He’d understand.”
“He’ll take damned good care not to understand.”
Fitzturgis strode from the summerhouse and came to meet Renny with an air more defiant than propitiatory. The rain was coming down softly.
“Come into the drive,” Renny said. “The trees will shelter us.” They moved in unison as though for a ceremony.
When they were in the drive Renny halted and said, “Well, Fitzturgis, you’ve turned out no better and no worse than I expected.”
“Just what did you expect?” asked Fitzturgis.
Renny gave him a look which showed a kind of liking for him or rather what might have been liking had Fitzturgis been anyone but the object of Adeline’s, as he thought, misplaced affection. He now added to the look, “I felt from the first that you two were not suited.”
Fitzturgis had not been prepared for anything so mild as this. Withering comment on his lack of honour, determination to make this the object of violent invective, this he had expected. But here was Renny looking at him almost kindly, stroking his left eyebrow as he said:
“Adeline, I must tell you, is the very reincarnation of my grandmother. You may have noticed the portrait of her as a young woman, hanging in the dining room.”
As this portrait and its companion — that of Captain Whiteoak — were the most noticeable objects in the dining room, and as the attention of Fitzturgis had been drawn to the resemblance between the two Adelines on the first day of his arrival, he answered a little testily, “I have noticed the picture.”
Renny continued, “There is in the drawing-room another portrait of my grandmother, one painted in Ireland when she was a child.”
“I have seen that too,” said Fitzturgis, wondering what the devil the man was driving at.
“Would you say the likeness is remarkable?” Renny asked.
“The features appear to be identical,” agreed Fitzturgis.
“And so is the spirit,” Renny exclaimed with enthusiasm. “Proud spirits, both of them! And unlikely to forgive a hurt to their pride.”
So
that
was it!
Fitzturgis said, “Mr. Whiteoak, I want you to believe that my love for Adeline has never wavered. You can understand surely how a man ...”
“Indeed I can.” Renny spoke almost warmly. “But Adeline can’t. She’ll never forgive you, I promise you that.”
“I gave Roma no more than a passing caress,” said Fitzturgis. “It signified nothing. Cannot Adeline be brought to believe that?”
“You could not have made a worse choice for that passing caress. Roma is in Adeline’s black books because she has already broken up the engagement between Patience and young Green. No — Adeline will never forgive you. She told me so. She said, ‘It’s all over between me and Maitland.’ I know my daughter. She’ll never forget or forgive the hurt to her pride. I think you know very well that she won’t. I fancy she made her feelings clear.”
“She threw stones at us,” said Fitzturgis. Unconsciously he put his hand to the bit of adhesive plaster on his cheek. He gave a rueful smile.
Renny regarded him almost solicitously. “Well,” he said, “that was a bit extreme. But Adeline is extreme in her emotions. Certainly she had an infatuation for you. She declared that, like her great-grandmother, she would have only one great love in her life. But her great-grandmother had several lesser loves before settling down to the great one. And so will Adeline, I expect.... I realized before you had been here a fortnight that you never were cut out for this life. I know you have tried. You have tried damned hard.”
“You were never pleased with me.”
“How could I be? I have been more worried than I can tell you. I’ve seen you and Adeline preparing to take a disastrous step. I’ve seen nothing but trouble ahead.”