Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“Flat on their lovely faces,” he mourned, “and I have only myself to blame, for I could have staked them up. Many people,” he went on, “think of hollyhocks as rather common flowers. That is because they will flourish with little or no attention in the workingman’s garden. But to me there is something regal in their height and their simplicity. They do not realize that the can so easily be toppled — ”
Meg interrupted — “Rupert dear, surely you are thrilled by the news Renny brings us? Just think. Adeline and Philip are going to be married next year and right now we are to have a dinner party at Jalna in celebration.”
“Very nice. Very nice indeed,” said the Rector. “I am glad Adeline got rid of Fitzturgis. He was too experienced … A divorcé and all that. Too experienced altogether for Adeline. Not really nice. But — if I have an objection to Philip it is that he’s not experienced enough. Why — it seems only yesterday when I held him in my arms at the font, and he looked such surprise out of his big blue eyes. Let’s see, what names did I give him? Philip … yes, Philip Vaughan.… Do you think you could hammer these stakes into the ground for me, Renny, to support the hollyhocks? Dear me, their stalks appear to be cracked. I do hope the sap will be able to find its way through to the blossoms.”
He put a hammer into Renny’s hand. With stakes and raffia they rescued the hollyhocks, which, standing again upright, looked serenely unconscious of past downfall.
“Well,” said Renny, “I’m glad you are pleased by the engagement. On my part I think nothing so heartening has come my way for many a year.”
“Not East Wind?” asked the Rector.
“There’s a wide difference between a racehorse and one’s only daughter,” Renny said in an admonishing tone, a tone almost clerical, as though he were the clergyman and Mr. Fennel the layman.
The Rector’s mind, however, was on his garden. “See those hydrangeas,” he said, lifting one great white bloom. “How well they bore the storm! They bend but they do not break.”
“They look good enough to eat,” said his wife. “They always remind me of a delicious dish of curds.”
Though Meg had (or pretended she had) little interest in food where she herself was concerned, she took great pleasure in the arrangements for the dinner party at Jalna. In the immediate family there were thirteen to sit down at table, but word came that very week that Piers’s second son, Christian, who had been abroad studying art, would be returning in time for the party.
“Let’s hope,” Piers said to Pheasant, “that he will be able to sell some of his pictures. It’s been an expensive business sending him abroad to study, and I must say he doesn’t appear to appreciate what I’ve done for him. He takes it all for granted.”
“Oh, he appreciates it all right,” said Pheasant. “He’s often said what a generous father you are.”
“Has he? Well, you have never told me that before. It’s a good thing for a father to hear occasionally that he is something more than a mere provider.”
As a matter of fact, Piers was proud of his artist son and never grudged what was spent on him. Neither did he consider that Renny was really the loser, though Piers was badly behind in his payments for rent of the farmland of Jalna. Occasionally the brothers had what they called a “business talk,” in which Piers was able to convince Renny that to run a farm was much harder work and much less profitable than to run stables. Now the engagement of Adeline and Philip had drawn the two men closer.
Little Mary was not sure that Christian’s return was pleasing to her. In his absence, his studio had been hers to do what she liked in. With his coming all was different. New canvases he had brought with him lined the walls. He was here, there, and everywhere, his light pleasant voice bringing its atmosphere of the outer world. He had been home for less than a week when he wrote a letter to his elder brother in Ireland.
He carried it to his mother and said, “I’ve written to Maurice. Have you a message for him?”
“Tell him I shall be writing before long. Tell him we’re looking forward to his coming this fall. Be sure to say that.”
“Should you like to read what I’ve written?”
Pheasant was staking a larkspur. She pulled off her gardening gloves and took the letter from him. As she read, he studied her sensitive face with an artist’s interest.
“Well,” he said, “is it all right?”
“I suppose so. But why do you pretend that you think Maurice has ceased to care about Adeline? I’m sure he hasn’t.”
“It was easier to write that way.”
Pheasant returned the letter to him. “I suppose so,” she said, then added: “It was very hard on Maurice — leaving home when he was only a child — even though it turned out so well for him, in a material way. And — it nearly broke my heart.” Christian kissed Pheasant tenderly.
He had often before heard her say this sort of thing, but he himself felt that Maurice had been lucky.
What Christian had written was:
My Dear Maurice,
Here I am — home again and, after the first excitement, feeling as though I had never been away. Everything is so exactly the same. You of course have had the experience of returning after a long absence, time and again. But this is my first. One of the things I most enjoyed abroad was my visit with you. I feel as though I had not thanked you enough for it but I really am tremendously grateful. I have said everything is the same but it is not — quite. In fact I have one startling bit of news. Mother agreed that I should be the bearer of it. For some reason she seemed to shrink from writing it. I think the reason probably is that she is against the project. But myself I think it is rather a good idea. It certainly is picturesque and traditional and all that.
I know, Maurice, that you were more than a little in love with Adeline. What man wouldn’t be! I was, myself — that is I was in love with her graceful walk and her lovely hair and those eyes of hers. And I still am — as an artist. But in spirit she and I are miles apart and always shall be. When I was in Ireland with you I felt that you too had quite got over your early infatuation or whatever you like to call it. You spoke of her so seldom and, when you did speak of her, you seemed so natural, so uninterested, that I don’t think this news will trouble you …
Maurice Whiteoak was lounging on the sun-warmed steps in front of Glengorman, his home in Ireland, and he was reading the letter aloud to his close friend and confidant, Sir Patrick Crawshay, a young man in his thirties and a neighbour.
Maurice interrupted himself to exclaim: “what the devil is the fellow driving at? why doesn’t he get to the point?”
“Certainly he is mysterious,” said Pat Crawshay. “But read on. Let’s discover who is the happy man.”
“Happy man?” repeated Maurice, as though dazed.
“Obviously he is trying to tell you of Adeline’s engagement to someone.”
Maurice’s eyes returned to the letter, but for a moment he seemed to have trouble in making out the words. Then he read on:
If I had been asked who was the most unlikely suitor I could think of, I should have said this boy. But perhaps he has already written to you himself and made the affair clear. I believe and I’m sure Mother believes that it was engineered by Uncle Renny — you may imagine why — I can’t.
Maurice broke off to say: “For the love of God, get on with the news! what
is
the fellow’s name?”
Yet a sinking of the heart made that name less of a surprise than he would have thought. He read on:
Philip and I were pals, as you know, but the three years between us seems much more since I have been away. Now I feel closer to you. Philip’s just a big boy.
Now it was Patrick Crawshay who interrupted. “Philip … He’s your youngest brother, isn’t he?”
Maurice raised sombre eyes to his friend’s face. “Yes. A big lump of a boy and, though he’s as pretty as a picture, it’s unbelievable that Adeline should fall in love with him.”
“But why,” demanded Patrick Crawshay, “should your uncle favour the match?”
“Family pride. Worship of family traditions. The boy hasn’t a bean. He’s not very intelligent, but — Oh, I can’t talk about it.” Maurice threw himself on his back and stretched out a hand to pull off the infant buds of flowers which bordered the steps. He held the buds to his face from which all colour had fled, and sniffed them, as though he hoped by their scent to revive his spirits.
“This is a blow, Pat,” he said. “There’s no use in denying it. You know — I’ve never tried to hide my love for Adeline. I still love her, without hope. And now — to get this news! My young brother. It’s a hell of a situation. I don’t know how to bear it. I can’t imagine what she sees in him. Why — it’s not so long ago that I laid him across a bench (it was my last visit home but one) and warmed his behind for him. God, I wish I might lay hands on him now!”
“Surely he’s not to be blamed,” said Pat Crawshay. “Adeline is a lovable girl.”
Maurice interrupted — “She’s far from lovable. She’s never been loving toward me. Yet I can’t put her out of my head and I’d forgive her everything if — ”
“Forgive?” questioned Pat Crawshay, gently stressing the word.
“Forgive her what she’s put me through. I can tell you I
suffered
When she got herself engaged to that fellow Fitzturgis.”
“I never liked him. He always behaved as if he had something to hide.”
“I’ll bet he had a lot to hide.”
“Haven’t we all?” laughed Crawshay, who had lived a particularly transparent life.
Maurice answered gloomily, “To hide ourselves from ourselves is the problem. We want to feel brave and unselfish, don’t we?”
“I’m afraid I’ve done just what I’ve wanted to — without thinking.”
“If it had been you who was to marry her,” said Maurice, “I could have borne it, but that whippersnapper — that puppy!”
“I wish it might be me,” said Pat Crawshay. “I fell in love with her, truly I did, when she visited you here — at first sight. I had been fishing and when I climbed the bank to the path, there was she with the two Labradors — looking so proud and so innocent — good Lord, I’ve imagined happy endings for that meeting! But — she thought nothing of me.”
“She did. She thought enough to make me jealous. I’ll tell you what, Pat, when I go to visit my people in the autumn, you must come too — you’ve promised that visit, you know. Between us we’ll cut out this puppy. By God, he shall not have Adeline!”
Pat Crawshay smiled a conspirator’s smile, but all he would say was, “what else is in the letter?”
“Nothing except a rave over the delicious food they had at the dinner. Christian has no heart.”
The Dinner Party
To be free once more from engagements, from railway timetables, from the tyranny of public life, was enough to fill Finch with contentment. Added to this was his happiness in Sylvia. She was, he felt, the perfect wife for him. What a contrast his life with her to his life with Sarah! Married to Sarah he had had little respite from her enfolding presence. She had been as a heavily scented flower — a pale lily whose leaves had shut out light and air from him. Sylvia demanded nothing. She was elusive. She seemed at times to be hiding from him. He would go through the house and into the garden calling her name and, when she answered, a sudden joy surged through him. He would take long strides to reach her, as though he feared she might escape him.
To Sylvia all they owned seemed precious, because it was theirs. She took pleasure in polishing the fine wood of tables and cabinets, especially the piano, through which it seemed to her the soul of Finch reached out to her. Now that the child was out of the house the disappointment of their relations, his antagonism to her were dimmed. She thought of him as needing her love, as being in a sense dependent on her. She would go into his bedroom and picture his return at the end of the summer, coming home, full of the doings of the camp, yet glad to be with his parents again.
Dennis returned sooner than expected. The day before the dinner party celebrating the engagement of Adeline and Philip, there came a telephone call from the owner of the boys’ camp. His robust, genial voice came over the wire to Finch, who had been at the breakfast table.
“Hello,” said the voice, “is that Mr. Whiteoak?”
“Yes,” said Finch, scenting trouble.
“I’m afraid,” went on the voice, “that we can’t keep your son at the camp. I’m sorry to tell you this but I really think he’d be better at home.”
“what has he done?” demanded Finch.
“Nothing in particular. He’s a nice boy but he’s badly adjusted. I’d say he is emotionally disturbed. He’s a boy that’s better at home.”
“But he goes to boarding school,” said Finch. “He’s been at boarding school for years. I can’t understand this.”
But the man persisted, talking on, repeating his clichés. The receiver shook in Finch’s hand. He was trembling with anger. “Send the boy to the telephone,” he said.
Sylvia came to him. “whatever is the matter?” she asked.
“It’s Dennis. He’s giving trouble at camp. They’re bringing him to the telephone.”
“what sort of trouble?” she whispered.
“You ought to know what he’s capable of.” Finch did not realize how harshly he spoke. The severity in his voice caused Sylvia to flinch, to draw back from him. At that moment he bore an extraordinary resemblance to his grandmother, old Adeline Whiteoak.
Now he turned back to the telephone on hearing the treble voice of his son.
“Hello, Daddy.”
“Dennis — I have been hearing very disagreeable things about your behaviour at camp.”
“Yes, I know. Am I to go home?”
“You are not. You are to stay where you are.”
“But I want to go home.”
“You’ll be sorry if you don’t stay there and behave yourself.”
“I don’t think Mr. Brown wants me.”
“Dennis — listen.” A cajoling note (much against his will) entered Finch’s voice. “Listen,” he said, “if you will settle down in camp and try to be like other boys, you will be rewarded when you come home.”
There was a moment’s silence, then the childish treble replied, “But I want to be with you.”