LITMIR.BIZ

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died before I was born.”

      “Well, you’ve heard of him often enough — Dr. Ramsey — your own grandfather.”

      “You forget,” said Piers, “that we are half-brothers?”

      An unpleasant reminder that, to the master of Jalna. He wanted the relationship to be intervolved, with no break. He frowned and asked, “Then who was your maternal grandfather?” He would not do him the courtesy of remembering him.

      “He was a London journalist — drank rather heavily, I believe.”

      “Oh, yes. I remember now. Well, never mind — we had the same paternal grandfather, and what a man he was! Philip Whiteoak!” He mused on the name a moment, then added: “I’m glad you named one of your sons for him and that the boy is the very spit of him.”

      “He’s a rascal,” said Piers. “He’ll be coming home from college soon and I have a thing or two to say to him about his extravagance. Christian will be coming from Paris, too.”

      “And Maurice from Ireland,” cried Pheasant. “All three brothers at home! Won’t that be lovely, Mary?”

      Mary was not at all sure it would. In truth, home seemed pleasanter to her, more her very own, when those three unruly, loud-talking young men were away. After lunch, with clean dry socks and shoes on, and a warm sweater, she wandered again into the garden. Somehow there was a difference in all the growing things. It was as though they heard spring singing in the distance, and were poised to listen. She discovered the moth, that morning freed from the prison of its cocoon. It was clinging to a newly opened leaf, in a ray of pale sunlight. It attracted the attention of a bird which hovered above it. But the moth, in self-protection, raised its wings, vibrating them. From its hind wings two spots like eyes glared in threat. The bird, alarmed by this insect ferocity, flew away. Yet it did not fly far. Somewhere by its hidden nest it burst into a cheeping song that was the only one it knew.

      Mary thought of all the houses she had that morning visited, of the people in them. They all were parts of the family. They were the family — her world. They were separate, yet they were one. Their faces were distinct, yet merged into the weather-beaten countenance of her Uncle Renny.

      II

      II

      Finch’s Return

      Homecomings, thought Finch, are 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 “naive, 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 — or 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 windowsills, 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 fervor 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 has, 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

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