Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“If
he
decides,” laughed Finch. “That’s a funny way of putting it — if
he
decides.”
“Well, I’m the one, aren’t I,” said Dennis, “who has to bear the punishments?”
“But this is different!” Maurice spoke eagerly, his brown gaze warm with sympathy. “It’s to be an interesting experience for both of us — if it comes off.”
Dennis took a step towards Finch. “what do you want me to do?” he asked, with an air of throwing himself on Finch’s affection, rather than his mercy.
“I want you to go,” said Finch.
There was silence for a space; then Dennis turned and ran out of the room. He ran with a child’s grace and abandon. They saw him pass the window and disappear among the trees.
“You have been awfully kind, Maurice,” said Finch. “I won’t deny that you have solved a problem for me. I did not know what to do about Dennis. He’s a problem that’s beyond me.”
“He’s greatly attached to you,” said Maurice.
“Oh, Lord, don’t speak of that,” said Finch.
Dennis did not appear at any of the family houses for lunch. There were plenty of ripe strawberries and of these he made a meal. Indeed, he was not very hungry.
A Hundred Years Old
A heat wave heralded the centenary celebration. The flowers of the garden drooped in the heat. Fruit ripened with unwonted speed. In the poultry runs young chicks scratched and pecked. Horses and cattle sought out the shade. The stream moderated its springtime flow and dallied with reeds and under the rustic bridge. In the five houses occupied by the family, every single member, not excepting the infant Ernest, had something new to wear. There was Jalna itself, in its new coat of fresh paint, its new mantle of Virginia creeper leaves that this season seemed larger and glossier than ever. There were all the family sporting new clothes for the occasion. There were the dogs, having shed their winter coats and grown summer ones and been groomed to the point where pride ends and annoyance begins.
In the afternoon, farmers and their wives, also acquaintances of the countryside, were invited to a garden party. In the evening there was a party for friends from a distance, and young people. A small orchestra was engaged. There was to be dancing. The day was to end in fireworks — with a bang.
At the Fox Farm, the Bells were dressing for the evening party.
“Thank goodness,” said Patience, “it has got cooler. The temperature has dropped seven degrees.”
“why are you eternally consulting the thermometer?” said Humphrey, his features tied up tightly, as he tied his tie. “It seems to me a most fruitless occupation.”
“It helps,” said Patience.
“Helps whom?” he asked crossly. “How?”
“whatever is the matter with you, darling?” Patience gave him a maddeningly solicitous look. “Won’t your tie tie?”
“I’ve been to one party today,” he retorted. “why should I dress for another?”
“After all,” she said, “your new TV play is liked by the producer. That’s something.”
“Do you think that is all I ask for in life?” he demanded. The truth was that Patience had utterly spoiled him. Their little house was hot and breathless, yet try as he would Humphrey could not look hot, because of his extremely pale albino-like colouring, whereas Patience could glory in flushed cheeks and perspiring forehead.
To please him she said, “Victoria was greatly admired at the garden party this afternoon.”
He tried to stop himself from making the remark, but he could not. He said, “She can’t hold a candle to young Ernest for looks. He’s a knockout.”
During all their married life Humphrey had not before made such an unfeeling remark — and that was about their own little daughter! Patience stared at him, scarcely able to believe her ears. She feared he might be sickening for something. She was thankful that Victoria could not comprehend what had been said. She chose to ignore the remark. Still, it was right that he should be punished a little. “That cut on your chin looks rather bloody,” she said. “I hadn’t noticed it before.”
Humphrey’s beard, or lack of it, was a tender subject with him. He observed his reflection in the looking-glass. “Perhaps I’d better not go,” he said dolefully.
“I’ll put a bit of plaster on it,” she comforted, “and it’ll never be noticed. Otherwise you look quite passable.”
A few minutes later they descended into the ravine, which was not yet sought out by evening coolness. They crossed the bridge and panted up the steep path to the small gate that opened on to the lawn of Jalna. Renny and Alayne came forward to meet them. They were the first arrivals. An enormous moon was rising, as though ordered for the occasion. There were lights among the rich leaves of the trees and a really strong one in the porch. The small orchestra was tuning up.
Renny Whiteoak peered at Humphrey Bell’s chin. “I see you have cut your chin,” he remarked genially.
Trying to keep his temper, Humphrey said, “I think I had better not stay — I’m in such a bloody mess.”
Alayne, overhearing, was conscious of the word “bloody,” and felt a moment’s shock that the mild young man should use such a word, but Patience quickly put her right. “It’s the heat,” she said. “He bleeds easily in the heat.”
Relieved, Alayne exclaimed, “Does he? I had thought he looks nicer than usual.”
Adeline and Archer now came racing out of the house and were reprimanded by their parents for their dilatoriness.
“I had practically to dress Archer,” said Adeline. “He couldn’t find a blessed thing.”
“How soon will the party be over?” asked Archer. “I love the end of a party. Just to see the guests depart. The race is run.
Consummatum est.
”
At the Rectory the car, with the Rector at the wheel and Meg at his side, was waiting for Roma and Fitzturgis.
“Two parties in one day,” said the Rector, “are a burden in this heat. As we went to the garden party, we should not be expected to go to the evening party.”
“Neither is a duty.” Meg spoke as patiently as she could. “Both are pleasures. Long-expected pleasures — for we have been looking forward to this centenary for a hundred years.”
“I shall be glad when it is over,” he said, “and that I shan’t be here for the two hundredth.” He then said to the motor car, “whoa, Nelly,” remembering his old mare, which had been dead for many a year.
Meg was not amused. She said, “I do wish Roma and Maitland would hurry. She never kept us waiting till she married him.”
“She married him promptly,” remarked Mr. Fennel. “I hope she won’t live to regret it.”
“Maitland is a dear fellow,” said Meg.
“I don’t like this going back to Ireland,” said the Rector. “It’s never done by the Irish.”
“My dear old grandmother,” said Meg, “frequently remarked that she wished she were back, but of course she couldn’t go — not with all us descendants. Dear me, why don’t that pair hurry? Sound the horn, Rupert.”
Inside the Rectory, Roma was giving a final brushing to her hair, which was folded like wings back from her temples. Fitzturgis was putting on his shoes and saying, “I hope I shan’t be expected to dance.”
“There’s one thing about our parties,” said Roma, “we always have plenty of men.”
“Even if I were in the mood to dance,” he said, “which I’m not, I couldn’t dance in this heat.”
“I could dance all night,” softly sang Roma, then added, “Just listen to that motor horn! Does the silly old blighter think we’ll be ready any the sooner for that?”
Fitzturgis stood waiting.
At The Moorings Piers and his family were on the point of leaving for the party when Pheasant summoned them to admire Ernest as he slept. They came on tiptoe, Piers gazing down with a doting smile at the infant; the young men, Christian and Philip, a little bored but still admiring.
“Have you ever seen anything so exquisite?” demanded Pheasant. “And when I think of the narrow escape he had on his christening day I tremble — almost drowned, poor darling! I shall never like that boy Dennis. He’s not to be trusted.”
The object of their admiration lay, with lightly folded hands, a tuft of fair curls on his crown, a smile on his lips, as though consciously posing.
Mary was calling to everyone to come and say good night. They trooped into her room, bent over her cot and in turn kissed her. At that hour even the kisses of her brothers were welcome.
“Funny,” said Philip when they had left, “how Mary seems to like you at bedtime. She’ll give you a kiss and a hug then, as though she had some affection in her.”
“That’s because she is afraid,” said Christian. “She knows that when the light is put out she’ll be terrified. I well remember the feeling.”
“If I thought,” said Pheasant, “that Mary was afraid, I’d go straight back to her.”
“Children love terror. I remember how I’d pull the bedclothes over my head, waiting for the strange shapes that came out of the darkness. I was terrified, yet I would not for the world have missed their mouthings and their eyeless faces. Yet I was frightened of the dark.”
“That’s the artistic temperament,” said Piers. “I’ll bet Philip had no such imaginings.”
“My head scarcely touched the pillow when I was asleep,” said Philip, with satisfaction.
The car from the Rectory passed them. Meg waved and, when Roma saw Meg wave, she too waved.
At Jalna a number of guests had arrived. As soon as it was possible for the young people of the family to leave the guests and collect in a body in front of the portraits of the young Adeline and Philip, which Renny had caused to be framed and hung in the dining room, facing those of the great-grandparents, they did so.
“These new portraits,” Christian said dolefully, “compare very badly with the old ones. I wish I had never undertaken them.”
“I like them,” said Philip. “Adeline likes them. That ought to be enough.” He put his arm about his fiancée’s waist and looked possessive.
She was about to move away from him when she had a glimpse of the face of Fitzturgis, who had remained outside and now looked moodily through the window at the group in front of the portraits. With Roma and Fitzturgis regarding her through the window, Adeline could not resist languishing against Philips shoulder and flickering her eyelashes at him. He flushed in pleasure and a dimple indented his cheek.
“Look at that young ass,” Maurice whispered to Pat Crawshay, gripping his friend’s fingers. “And Adeline doesn’t really care a damn for him. She’s just showing off. She couldn’t care less.”
“She’s to marry him.”
“My dear fellow, it was all arranged. They had little to say about it.”
Pheasant appeared in the doorway. “Come, all of you,” she cried, “and join the reception line on the lawn. Guests are pouring in.”
They trooped after her.
Maurice and Pat Crawshay were the last to follow. Maurice already had had a drink. Its visible effect — for he carried his drink badly — was to lend an unneeded brightness to his eyes and a truculence to his bearing. Now he laid his hands on the portraits of the young Philip and Adeline and pushed them askew.
“There,” he said, with a humourous yet malicious glance at Crawshay, “that expresses what I feel about them. The whole affair is crooked.”
The two left together and immediately Fitzturgis entered. He put the portraits straight, then stood before them in an attitude of reflection. The sound of the orchestra, the chatter of voices, came to him as from a long way off.
He remembered his first meeting with Adeline on board ship on the way to Ireland. He had been returning after a visit to his married sister in New York. She had been accompanied by Finch and Maurice, the three bound for Maurice’s house. How excited she had been by the visit in prospect — how unreservedly happy. He had not wanted to fall in love with her but he could not stop himself. And she was so openly, so generously in love with him. Two years had passed before he came out to Canada to make himself useful at Jalna — if he could — and to marry her. He had done neither. He turned from regarding her portrait and passed through the hall and to the porch, to see her standing with her parents welcoming their guests.
It was a gay scene: the orchestra playing a Viennese waltz, the light dresses of the women, the summer suits of the men, pale against the majestic darkness of the trees. The trees maintained their primeval darkness and grandeur, despite the levity of the music, the laughter, and the Chinese lanterns suspended from their luxuriant boughs. Every window in the house was alight and it appeared to Renny Whiteoak to wear an expression of reflective brightness, as though it remembered the lively spirit and strong heart of its first mistress, that other Adeline Whiteoak who herself had lived to be a hundred years old — a gallant and stubborn-willed centenarian. Many of the guests still remembered her. Some were descendants of families who were important in the province in her day but whose names were now seldom heard. There were quite a number of young people, and before long dancing began.
Renny remained in the porch, from which he could see, through the French windows, the dancing in the drawing room and library. They looked crowded, especially as some of the women wore the new bouffant dresses that took up so much room.
Renny saw two figures approaching across the lawn, one tall, one very small. He saw that they were Finch and Dennis coming from the direction of Vaughanlands. He went to meet them and said, in a welcoming voice:
“You’re late. We’ve missed you.”
“We were having a little argument,” said Finch. “I did not intend to bring this fellow along but he was determined. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Mind? We’d have minded greatly if he hadn’t come! There’s a nice girl in there, Dennis, longing to dance with you.”
Dennis did not believe him. He stared about him in wonder. “How pretty everything looks,” he said. “It’s like a fairy tale. I’d like to stay out here and listen to the music. I couldn’t dance well enough.” He left them abruptly and ran to look in at the dancers.
“How does he take the proposed visit to Ireland?”
“He seemed quite calm about it — till tonight. Suddenly he said he couldn’t go. He said it was too far away — that he wanted to be here with me.”