Variable Winds at Jalna. Mazo de la Roche
It would have been impossible for a painter of ambition to live down such a name, he said, and the family agreed. He must have a name of some dignity as signature to his pictures. What of his real name “Finch”? That was already borne by the uncle for whom he was named. Finch Whiteoak was a concert pianist. His name was well known on this continent and abroad. It would be confusing to have two Finch Whiteoaks in the world of art. It would create, in the first instance, a spurious interest in the younger, and later might well be an impediment to him. But what was Nook to call himself? He had been given only the one Christian name. One Christian name! As he remarked this, on a note of reproach to his parents, he had a sudden idea. “I have it!” he exclaimed. “I shall call myself Christian.” And then added, “With your permission, of course.” For though Nook always took his own way he took it so politely that Piers and Pheasant were under the impression that, of all their children, he was the most dutiful and considerate of them. Whereas young Philip had an air of demanding what he wanted, which frequently set Piers against it.
So when Nook had suggested calling himself Christian Piers had only remarked, “An odd sort of name for a Whiteoak.”
“Surely no odder than Finch,” said his son.
“I guess I made a mistake in naming you after my brother Finch,” said Piers, “but at the time it seemed a good idea. For one thing he’d lately had a fortune left him.”
“That was a pretty good reason, but what was the other?”
“Well, he was and is a decent sort of fellow.”
Nook agreed. “I like that reason best. I’ve always admired Uncle Finch, but I don’t believe he’d thank me for setting out to distinguish myself under his name.”
“Anyhow,” said Pheasant, “he’ll scarcely make you his heir when he has a son of his own.”
“Just the same,” said Piers, “he might do more for Nook, if Nook didn’t take another name.”
“On the other hand,” put in the boy, “he might be induced to pay me for changing it.”
Pheasant said, “You wouldn’t be disgracing the name if you painted good pictures.”
Piers looked judicial and added, “No one in the public eye wants another of the same name in it.”
“You speak,” said Pheasant, “as though people in the public eye were motes.”
Nook asked, “Has anyone any objection to Christian as a name?”
“It’s too much like Pilgrim’s Progress,” said Piers.
“Then there are the kings of Denmark,” said his wife, preferring kings to pilgrims. “I think I can get used to it in time.”
“Do you object, Dad?” Nook would not go openly against the grain of the family. “Do you think Uncle Renny will object?”
Piers at once became brusque. “It’s not for him to say.”
“But it would do no harm to ask him,” said Pheasant.
“I’m quite willing. I mean I have nothing against Christian. That ought to be enough for Nook.”
“And we can still call you Nooky in private, can’t we?” Pheasant put her arm about the youth and pressed him to her.
That had been months ago. Now the name Christian had become firmly attached to Nook outside the family and was ceasing to be a joke inside it. Christian himself did not mind being laughed at. What he could not bear were anger and unkind words. He was quick to retaliate in them but as quick to be sorry and to say so.
The artist’s smock in which he now appeared somehow accentuated his extreme erectness and thinness. His dark eyes were bright in his fair face.
Pheasant said, “We must be very nice to this Maitland Fitzturgis. His visit here means a great deal to Adeline.”
“Visit!” repeated Philip. “I thought he’d come to stay.”
“Do you mean as Adeline’s husband?” asked Pheasant.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“People don’t get married in that offhand way.”
“You and Dad eloped, didn’t you?”
Piers gave a shout of laughter. He said, “We’d given lots of thought to it. It wasn’t offhand.”
Philip said, “Adeline and he have been corresponding for two years. Why didn’t he come sooner?”
“He had to settle his affairs. Find a purchaser for his property.”
“I hope he’s well off. Somehow I feel he isn’t.”
Christian asked, “Did he speak of Maurice coming any time soon?”
“Yes,” answered Piers. “He hopes to come this summer.”
In this family there were the three sons and, as though an afterthought, at the end of the war, a little daughter, Mary. She ran to join the others now with the careless grace of the five-year-old. But there were marks of tears on her cheeks. She had been in one of her own secret places shedding a few private tears.
Her mother and brothers ignored these, but Piers asked, “What has my little girl been crying about?”
She thought a moment and then murmured, “Because Nooky has two names.”
“Always Nooky to you,” he said.
“What a silly kid,” observed Philip. “I’m glad we have only one girl.”
Mary looked up pathetically into the faces of those about her, as though searching for a friendly one. Piers picked her up and she pressed her pink face to his cheek.
“Whom do you love best?” he asked.
Suddenly smiling, she answered emphatically, “Uncle Renny.”
“Well, I like that — after all I do for you!”
He set her on her feet, took her hand, and led her into the house. Skipping happily beside him, Mary chanted, “I love Uncle Renny best — best — best!”
Piers called over his shoulder, “Pheasant — it’s time for this child’s tea and bed.”
Nook returned to his studio, his refuge, the place where he was happiest. He stood before the unfinished picture on the easel — the study of a cloud above a summer field — and regarded it absently. He did not see it clearly because Adeline’s vivid face came between him and the canvas. He had a feeling of something like anger toward her for bringing the Irishman on the scene, in the very summer when Maurice was expected home on a visit. Maurice had always shown a fondness for Adeline, had once confided to Nook that he loved her. It did seem a shame that Fitzturgis should, after two years of what Nook thought of as shilly-shallying, come to claim Adeline. And of what use would he be at Jalna?
“That’s what I’d like to know,” he said aloud, as he scraped his palette.
A voice behind him asked, “What would you like to know?”
He wheeled and faced his cousin Patience, who had dropped in, as she so often did, on her way home, after her work at Jalna.
“This Maitland Fitzturgis. Of what good will he be at Jalna?”
“Quite a lot, I imagine — to Adeline.”
“He can’t just come here and sponge on Uncle Renny. There are enough already trying to wrench a living out of Jalna.”
Patience laughed good-humouredly. “Oh, Christian, what a horrid description of us! For I suppose it includes me.”
“And myself.”
“In what fashion do you wrench your living?”
“Well, I paint its fields and clouds.”
“Have