Variable Winds at Jalna. Mazo de la Roche

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      I

      The Coming of the Lover

      ALAYNE TURNED FROM the mirror to Renny. “Do I look all right?” she asked, with an odd little smile, as though she deprecated her interest in her appearance at this moment. And she added, “Not that he’ll have any eyes for me.

      Renny moved back a step to have a better look at her. It had been a distress to him when her beautiful hair, very fair, which she had worn long, had, in the space of a few years, turned silvery white. He had always admired her hair. He had liked the way it flew up, following her hairbrush, not wavy but so full of life. For a time he had avoided looking at the white hair, as though it were some kind of disfigurement that had descended upon her. People had remarked how distinguished she looked with that silvery French roll up the back of her head, but he still had looked the other way. Then one day, less than a year ago, she had suddenly appeared before him with her hair cut short and curled all over her head. He had given her an outraged look — how had she dared have her hair cut without consulting him? Then he had looked again, had been impressed by the charm of her new aspect, the jaunty look which never in her young days had she worn. He liked it, and, with his eyebrows still expressing outrage, he had given her a grin of approval.

      Now he said, “He’ll have eyes for you all right. A man usually takes a good look at his future mother-in-law.”

      She gave a shrug of impatience. “Don’t say that, please. This affair may well fade into nothing before he’s been here a week.”

      “Not if I know Adeline.”

      “Renny, how can you know her, any more than she can know herself? She likes to think she is the reincarnation of your grandmother — a woman of one great love — but remember how young she is. Twenty!”

      “Would she know better if she were twenty-five?”

      “Certainly.”

      “Did you?”

      Alayne flushed. “You need not have reminded me of that,” she said.

      “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Only to remind you that the great age of twenty-five is not always infallible.”

      She put a hand on either side of his head, drew it down, and kissed him. She said, “When I met you I could not help myself.” She turned then and began briskly to tidy the things on her dressing-table.

      He looked at his watch. “The train is due,” he said, then added, with a touch of chagrin, “Funny Adeline didn’t want me to go with her to meet him.”

      “I think it was only natural. Those first moments together w ill be something just for them. Perhaps a little embarrassing, and an outsider would have made it worse.”

      “Me an outsider!” he exclaimed in astonishment.

      “You’re outside their love.”

      “I wish to God,” he said, “that Adeline had fancied someone I know. One thing is certain: she can’t go back to Ireland with him. He’ll have to settle down here.”

      “That’s what he wants, he says.”

      Staring out of the window, Renny said, with his back to her:

      “Alayne, for some reason I suspect this Fitzturgis. I can’t bring myself to like the thought of him.”

      She made a little ironic sound against her lipstick. “You’d feel just the same about any man Adeline was engaged to.”

      “No. I deny that. I shouldn’t feel like this if it were Maurice.”

      “Of course you wouldn’t. Maurice is her cousin — one of the family. I do believe that if you had your way all the cousins would marry each other. How would it end? With inbreeding. You don’t do that with livestock, do you?”

      He argued, for the sake of arguing, “There’s something in knowing the background of one’s son-in-law.”

      “Well, Adeline has told us quite a lot about him. His mother is a garrulous widow — his sister rather odd — his land unproductive.”

      “Are you trying to reassure me?” Renny exclaimed.

      “It’s just my pessimistic way.”

      “You don’t relish this any more than I do!”

      She was silent a moment and then answered, “I think Adeline is terribly vulnerable.”

      He did not like this conception of their daughter.

      “She is made of good stuff,” he said.

      “Of course she is, but she’s very inexperienced; and this Fitzturgis — well, you know what he’s been through.”

      “Married and divorced, you mean.”

      “Yes.”

      Renny gave a sudden bark of laughter. He said, “Think how inexperienced I was! And you’d been married and divorced.”