Centenary at Jalna. Mazo de la Roche
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 toward 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 been 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 Florida.
“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 racehorse. Perhaps Renny was short of money and was considering 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 racehorses.” 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