Читать книгу Centenary at Jalna - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 5

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Homecomings, thought Finch, were the very best things in life. Home leavings, a kind of death. Though he had faced the publicity attendant on the life of a concert pianist, he had shrunk from it. In the exhilaration of a public performance he would, for the time, forget his audience. Would in fact feel himself one with them. But, at the end, they were his enemies. Then he did not face them in courage, but exhausted, with a smile that women reporters would describe as a “naïve friendly grin” or a “shy boyish grin”. One thing was certain, audiences liked him. They liked his gangling boyish figure as he crossed the platform. They liked the shape of his head, the expressive movements of his long bony hands.

Now, at the end of a tour (and at this moment he hoped he would never have another), he had come home to his own house, his own wife. He had possessed neither for very long. The paint on this ranch house was still fresh. The house had been built on the site of one which had been burned. This new marriage was built on the ruin of his first marriage. His house, he was willing to admit, did not harmonize with the other houses of the neighbourhood—Jalna, with its faded red brick, almost covered by vines, its stone porch, its five chimneys, rising from the sloping roof where pigeons eternally cooed and slid, where their droppings defaced the leaves of the Virginia creeper and the window-sills, where smoke was always coming out of one or more of the chimneys and where the old wooden shingles so often managed to spring a leak.

This house of Finch’s was something new, something different. The family must get used to it. As for himself—he was proud of it. He loved it, he told himself—returning to it. He loved his wife and was hoping, with all the fervour of a nature too often swept by hopes and despairs, that his family would love her and she them.

Now he and she were together in the music-room. Together as they always would be in the future, he thought, and she tried to believe, for she took no happiness for granted. Now, in wonder, she held one of his hands, with its beautifully articulated fingers, in hers.

“I’m thinking of the power in it,” she said.

“I should like to dig in the earth with it.” He clenched it, as though on a spade. “I’m tired of taking care of myself. A kind of beastly preciousness—that’s what one feels of one’s body on a tour. God, when I think of the rough and tumble of my boyhood. When I think of the life my two older brothers lead. It’s natural.”

“But you’re doing what you’ve always wanted, aren’t you?” she said gently.

“Yes,” he granted. “I guess it’s just that I’m tired. You’ve never seen me at the end of a tour. I shall be different in a day or two.... Oh, Sylvia, if only you could know what it is to me to come home and find you waiting for me.... You do like the house, don’t you?”

“It’s perfect. There’s nothing I would change in it. And nothing could be more different from my home in Ireland—I was so ill and unhappy there.”

“Do you see much of my family?” he asked, as though he felt that seeing a good deal of them would complete her cure.

Certainly she knew them quite well, for she had visited at Jalna. Now she said, “I have had dinner there twice a week and have had them here. All the family have been sweet. I’ve told you in letters.”

What a charming voice she had, he thought, and he remembered how sweet had been the voice of his first wife, Sarah. Both of them Irish. But how different! Sarah—with her odd gliding walk, her jet-black hair and green eyes, almond-shaped. Something rigid about her body—while Sylvia was loosely put together, pale-coloured, as a wandering wood spirit. So he thought of her, as he sat holding her hand, thought of her as elusive, where Sarah had been so relentlessly, almost desperately, yet coldly clinging.... Looking into Sylvia’s blue eyes, he sought to put Sarah out of his mind forever.

But now Sylvia was speaking of Sarah’s child. She was saying, “Dennis will soon be coming home for the holidays. It’s so exciting to picture a child in the house.”

“He’s thirteen. Will be fourteen next Christmas. We used to call him Holly. An odd little fellow. Small for his age. Looks about eleven.”

When in a few weeks Dennis returned from school, that was Sylvia’s first thought—how small he was—how compact, firm, and yet how guileless—with his pale hair and green eyes, he was veiled in her mind—the child of another woman by Finch, yet now to be hers to care for, to love. Why, he looked small enough to tuck into bed at night—to snuggle up to one and tell his boyish troubles. She felt, at the moment, quite ridiculously sentimental about him.

As he sat on the arm of Finch’s chair, with an arm about Finch’s neck, she looked into their two faces with affectionately critical eyes.

“There’s no resemblance,” she said. “You two are as different as you can be.” She rather wished the boy had looked like Finch. His unlikeness seemed to set him apart. Suddenly she wondered how she would talk to him. She’d had no experience. But she would find out. Bit by bit they would draw close to each other. She and Finch were setting out with a ready-made family. Three of them! A family to be reckoned with.

Finch removed his son’s arm from his shoulder.

“Shouldn’t you like to run off for a while?” he said.

Dennis from his perch looked down into Finch’s face. “Where?” he asked.

“Oh, anywhere. To Jalna. To the stables.”

“I’ve been there already. I’d rather be here with you.”

Sylvia asked, “Are there any boys of your age in the neighbourhood?”

“I’ve had enough of boys,” returned Dennis. “I’ve been with over a hundred of them all the term.”

Finch got up and gave his shoulders a restive twitch. He went and looked out of the window. The cool unseasonable weather had given way to glowing summer heat. The flowers, as though weary of waiting, had burst into bloom, had, with undue haste, matured.

“The border looks well,” said Finch, “considering it’s been made so short a while.” His eyes were caught by a mass of pansies. He said, “You might go and pick some pansies for Sylvia. You’d like them for the table, wouldn’t you, Sylvia?”

Dennis went off obediently. They watched him, as he squatted by the pansy bed. “How sweet he is!” she exclaimed. “Most boys would think it a great bore.” She added suddenly, “He’s very reserved, isn’t he?”

Finch stared. “Reserved! The opposite, I should say. Too clinging. Don’t let him pester you.”

“What I want is to be friends with him,” she said.

In a surprisingly short while Dennis returned with a neat bunch of pansies. He marched straight to Finch and offered them to him. “Take them to Sylvia,” said Finch sharply. “Don’t be stupid.”

Dennis laid them on the small occasional table near Sylvia. She gathered them up tenderly. Dennis’s eyes were on the table. “That table,” he said, “belongs to Auntie Meg.”

To Finch it seemed that Dennis had purposely spoken of the occasional table because its ownership had been the subject of heated discussion at the time when this house was being furnished.

Now Finch said, “It does not and never did belong to her. Can’t you go off somewhere and amuse yourself?”

“Nothing amuses me so much as being with you.”

Finch gave him a swift glance. Was it possible the boy was ragging him? But no—the small cool face was gently reflective. The green eyes fixed on Finch’s face with longing. Sylvia took the pansies to the pantry to find a vase for them. Finch steadied his nerves and sought to produce a fatherly tone.

“Look here, old fellow,” he said. “If you will leave Sylvia and me for a bit—we have things to talk over, you know—then you and I will go to Jalna to see Uncle Renny who has been away ever since I came home. Will that be all right?” To Finch the fatherliness in his voice sounded hollow and forced but Dennis smiled in pleasure.

“How good you are!” he exclaimed.

Now surely that was an odd remark for a modern boy of thirteen to make. It sounded positively Victorian. And the way he said it, with his small hands clasped against his chest and his eyes shining! It was almost funny.

Anyhow he went and Finch followed Sylvia to the pantry and admired her arrangement of the pansies. They were in two amethyst glass bowls. “One is for the music-room,” she said, “and the other for Dennis’s room—if you think he’d like it.”

“Good Lord,” exclaimed Finch. “If anyone had put flowers in my room when I was a boy I’d have dropped dead from astonishment.”

“Then perhaps I’d better not.”

Sylvia set the second bowl of pansies in the dining-room. She felt oddly, purposefully happy, as though a new invigorating element had come into her life with the coming of the boy. When she saw him set off in the car with Finch to go to Jalna she called out, “Don’t be late for lunch, you two.”

“We two,” repeated Dennis to Finch. “That’s the way it used to be, when we had the house to ourselves.”

Finch stopped the car with a jolt. “Just what do you mean by that?” he demanded sternly.

“I mean I’m not used to women.” Dennis had flushed but he answered with composure.

“Of course you’re used to women. You’ve always had a woman in the house with you.”

“Not in our new house.”

“Now, look here, Dennis, you are to be specially nice and friendly towards Sylvia or—I’ll know the reason why.” Finch made no effort to keep the irritation out of his voice. He longed to enjoy his home without the pushing presence of this odd child. He had been an odd sort of child himself but God knew he had never been pushing.

“Oh, I shall be friendly all right,” said Dennis. “I only thought——”

“I don’t want you to be—well—pushing.”

“Oh, I won’t be pushing,” said Dennis. “I know how to be quiet. Is Sylvia delicate?”

“She was—once.”

“How delicate? Did she have to stay in bed?”

Without answering Finch drove on. Dennis glanced up shyly at him but Finch’s expression was enough to prohibit further questioning. Even a child would be conscious of that. With his hands, palms together, pressed between his bare knees, Dennis sat quietly thinking. It was as though he tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. But his very smallness, his compact paleness, made his presence more noticeable to Finch. If he had been a different type of boy, thought Finch, he would have found him easier to ignore, or perhaps easier to get on with.

But the boy’s peculiar presence seemed no barrier to Renny Whiteoak. They found him at Jalna watching on television a horse race in the States.

“One of the best things I’ve seen on TV,” he said, turning it off. “They do horse races well.”

“Don’t let me interrupt you,” said Finch.

“It’s over.” He got to his feet, took Finch’s hand and kissed him. He had in him abundant power of enjoyment, though combined with it he was capable of deep depression. Now he was all pleasure in his brother’s return.

“You look well,” he said, “for you. Was your tour a success?”

“I had good audiences.”

“How much did you make?”

From this practical question Finch resolutely shied. He knew that Renny had done well with his colt East Wind, but it was an expensive thing to maintain a race-horse. Perhaps Renny was short of money and considered the possibility of a loan from him. However, that apprehension was dispelled.

“I’ve had a good year,” Renny said tranquilly. “But show-horses are my line, not race-horses.” He sat down and drew Dennis on to his knee. The boy looked confidently into Renny’s brown eyes.

“How do you like having a stepmother?” Renny asked with his genial grin. “Has she beaten you yet? Does she make you eat in the kitchen? And sleep on the floor?”

“I’ve just come. She hasn’t yet.” The boy laughed, his face close to Renny’s.

“But she will,” said Renny. “Just give her time.” His expression was now ferocious. “I had a stepmother and she did all those things to me, didn’t she, Finch? Made me eat from the dog’s dish off the kitchen floor, while Finch ate from a gold plate in the parlour. Isn’t that so, Finch?”

Finch nodded, without amusement. This teasing of Dennis, as though he were a six-year-old, bored him, but it was easy to see that Dennis liked it. He snuggled up to Renny, sniffing him with animal pleasure.

“Who’s he like?” Renny asked, studying the child’s face.

“Certainly not me,” said Finch.

“Nor her,” said Renny, referring to Sarah, Finch’s dead wife.

“Eyes and hands.” Finch spoke almost in a whisper.

Dennis blinked his eyes and spread out his hands.

“I’ve been taking violin lessons at school,” he said proudly.

Renny groaned. “Another artistic one. Oh, Lord, what’s the family coming to! Talent on all sides. Thank goodness Adeline has none.”

“I have none, Uncle Renny,” laughed Dennis.

“Splendid! Fiddle away for all you’re worth—so long as you’ve no talent.”

“My father is a genius,” said Dennis.

“It’s time you went.” Finch could bear no more. “Clear out.”

“See you later,” Renny said to Dennis, as man to man. “Go over to the stables and then tell me what you think of the new foal. Here’s Adeline. She’ll go with you.”

Adeline had that moment come into the room. Greeting her, Finch was struck afresh by her beauty. This he remarked to Renny when they were left alone. “She’s really stunning,” he said.

Renny agreed. Then moving close to Finch, he said, “I have a wonderful scheme.” He fell silent, as though overcome by the splendour of his scheme.

What was it, Finch wondered. To enlarge the stables? He hoped not. He would not put any of his hard-earned cash into that all-engulfing maw. He looked with curiosity into his elder’s eyes which, through all vicissitudes, had retained their brightness.

Renny took his arm and led him into the dining-room where hung the portraits of their paternal grandparents. He said:

“Take a good look at them. What do you see?”

But Finch looked at him rather than at the portraits. He thought, “What is it in him that fascinates me? Is it his vitality? His zest for living? Yes—but even more it is because he is mysterious. That’s the quality in him that fascinates me. Yet he looks on himself as a simple uncomplicated fellow!”

“Tell me what you see,” repeated Renny.

With something between a sigh and a groan Finch said, “I see a handsome blond officer in the uniform of the Hussars—the uniform they wore a hundred years ago.”

“Yes—and the other?”

“Well, of course, it’s Gran, when she was about twenty-five.”

“Who is like her—the very spit of her?”

“Young Adeline—without a doubt.”

“And who resembles him? Who’s a chip of the old block?”

“Piers, I suppose.”

“Yes—but much more than Piers.”

“Who then? Whatever are you driving at, Renny?”

Renny gave a shout of laughter that was not all pure enjoyment, for it had an undercurrent of defiance, as though he were expecting criticism. He said, “Just this. If we were to place my young Adeline and Piers’s young Philip under these two portraits, what should we find?”

“A remarkable resemblance.”

“Right. A truly remarkable resemblance. And what is the moral? The point of it? The point is that they should marry. Another Philip and Adeline!”

Finch gave a brief ironic laugh. “It would be fine, if you could persuade them, but I make a guess that they’ve never thought of each other in that light.”

“But they soon will. I’ll see to it that they do.”

“You can’t make people fall in love, especially strong-willed, rather spoilt, young people like those two.”

“I’ve every hope.” Renny spoke with confidence. “Already they admire each other.”

“If it turned out badly you’d never forgive yourself.”

“It couldn’t turn out badly, any more than the marriage of those two turned out badly.” And he cast a confident look at the pair in the portraits who, impersonal, elegant, of a different world, gazed blandly out of their gilded frames.

“The boy,” Finch said, “is only twenty. Give him time to grow up.”

“He’ll be twenty-one next year—the centenary of Jalna—the centenary of Uncle Ernest’s birth.... What a celebration! But mind, not a word of this to the youngsters.”

“Have you spoken of it to Piers?”

“Yes. He’s all for it.”

“And Alayne?”

“I haven’t mentioned it to her yet.”

“She’ll never agree.”

“And why not, I should like to know? Why, it’s destined—ordained—there never was such a suitable match. All I wonder is that I never thought of it before.”

“You, Renny—a matchmaker,” laughed Finch.

“I’ve been making matches all my life. Successful ones!”

“My dear fellow, this isn’t the stables.”

“It’s thoroughbred stock.”

“I can’t decide,” said Finch, “whether you’re a romantic or a hard-headed materialist.”

“Neither. Just a man who loves his family.”

“And is willing to subject them to risks?” But what use was there in talking? Finch turned away, and Renny turned to a high-pitched, somewhat acrimonious telephone conversation concerning the behaviour of a horse he had recently sold.

Finch wandered through the house, so dear to him, and came upon Alayne in the drawing-room. She was putting out of sight a china figure that she had always disliked but which the family cherished. Finch kissed her and said:

“Ah, there’s the dear old shepherdess I’ve always loved. I haven’t seen her in a long while.”

“Take her,” said Alayne. “I’m sure Renny would be delighted to give her to you.” She tried to put the figurine into his hands but he drew back.

“No, no,” he said. “I couldn’t bear to take her away from Jalna. She’s always been here.”

Alayne replaced the ornament on the mantelshelf, with a sigh of frustration. They talked of the sonata which Finch was composing. Alayne was the one above all others of the family with whom he could speak with freedom of his work, knowing that from her he would have sympathetic understanding.

When he left he found Dennis waiting for him in the car.

The boy gave his small sweet smile. “Isn’t it fun,” he said, “to be together again?”