“There’s one of our wagons, Renny!”
Again Eden increased the speed.
Giving him a poke between the shoulder blades Renny exclaimed — “Stop the car!”
They were now beside the horses. He gave an admiring look at their sleek sides then noticed that the load they drew was a dozen fat pigs, shouldering each other in the straw, peering at him in a mixture of impudence and foreboding. The driver was new to him. He did not like his looks.
“By George, those are fine pigs!” he said.
“I helped to feed them,” put in Finch. “I often gave them extra feed.”
“Shall we go on?” asked Eden.
Renny enquired of the driver — “Where are you taking the pigs?”
Eden answered for him — “To market. He’ll not get much for them. We’d better be getting along. They’ll have lunch waiting at home.”
“Yes, go on.”
A sudden sense of reality swept over Renny. The sight of the farm horses, their honest eyes beneath their blond forelocks, the smell of their harness, their moist hides, the jostling pigs, swept his future toward him in a living tide. There was an end to war. Life on his own land, his sister and young brothers about him. He realized for the first time that he must be a father to these boys, take their dead father’s place. He must find out what each was and do the best he could for him. The bond already existing between him and them tautened and sought strength in his heart. He drew a deep breath and took Finch’s thin hand in his. He felt its pliable bones quiescent in that clasp. He saw the childish bare knees, close together like twin chestnuts smooth and brown.
Piers hooked his arm over the back of the seat and turned to point out the changes that had taken place since Renny’s leaving. At each Renny gave a grim nod, thinking none of them for the better. He was glad when the car turned into the quiet country road where the great trees still spread their branches and caused a moment’s slackening of motorists’ speed. “I’ll protect them always,” he thought. “There’ll be one road that isn’t mutilated.”
As the car turned in at the gates the sense of naturalness that had come to him with the sight of the farm wagon increased. He felt as though he had never been away from Jalna. Why, there was the old silver birch tree with the circular white seat beneath it, the lacy new foliage moving delicately in the breeze! There was the house itself, the rosy brick a rich background for the spreading Virginia creeper that massed itself about the windows but saved its most delicate tendrils to drape above the porch. There were the dogs stretched in the warm sunshine on the steps, rousing themselves to join in a concert of barking about the car. There were two newcomers that raged about his heels till he put his hand down to them palm upward and they touched it with their nostrils and were satisfied to welcome him as having the true scent of the family.
Then he saw his father’s Clumber spaniel, Fanny, standing quietly by herself in the shadow of the porch, her fringed tail drooping, her eyes questioningly raised to his face.
“There’s old Fan,” said Piers. “She’s forgotten you.”
“Forgotten me! No — she couldn’t! Hello, Fan, old girl! Hello, old pet! It’s me — Renny!” He bent over her, his lean hand running the length of her silky coat.
She reared herself against his legs, her pensive spaniel’s face regarding him from the frame of her long ears. Her eyes were full of a mournful recognition. It was not enough to stroke her. He took her up into his arms and held her close to his breast. And his father was dead! He felt the tears rising in his throat as he hugged the spaniel close. He hid his face against one of the long ears. He heard Meg’s voice.
“Isn’t she an old dear? Oh, how she missed Papa! No one can take his place with her. I think we ought to ring the bell and give them warning inside that we’re here.”
“They’ve had warning from the dogs,” said Eden. “I hear Gran’s voice.”
Meg, however, rang the bell and an instant later the door opened and an elderly maid who had been with the family for nearly thirty years stood smiling a tearful greeting to Renny.
“Eliza!” he exclaimed. He still held the spaniel in his arms, and holding it strode toward the woman, his face alight.
“Keep that grin for me,” said a harsh voice. His grandmother pushed the maid aside with her ebony stick and herself advanced with a vigour that defied her ninety-three years. Her face, invincibly handsome because of its superb bony structure, was creased into a network of lines by her wide smile which displayed her double row of strong artificial teeth. Her brows, though shaggy, still showed their fine original arch above her dark eyes, as might the Gothic arches of a ruined cathedral through their growth of ivy. She wore a much-trimmed cap, a cashmere shawl and large woollen bedroom slippers.
Before her stick had tapped thrice on the floor of the porch she discarded it and it fell with a clatter. She opened wide her arms and Renny, setting down the spaniel, buried himself in her embrace. It was as though the gates of his past had opened, the past of his father and his grandfather who had lived and loved and begot children under this roof, to claim him to carry on their tradition. The memory of what he had witnessed in Europe, of despair and disintegration, he would throw off with his uniform and turn wholeheartedly to the stability of this dear place.
He forgot in his ardour the weakness of the symbol of this life which he embraced in the person of his grandmother. Her shawl fell off, her cap was askew, she was gasping for breath.
“Lord, what a hugger you are,” she got out. Then hastened to add — “But I like it. Don’t you ever be afraid to squeeze my ribs. I’m not made of such delicate stuff as my daughter and granddaughter. If I was I’d not have had three such big sons.”
She kept on talking, as though she would by the flow of her words exclude the rest of the family from their reunion. But her daughter, Lady Buckley, and her sons, Nicholas and Ernest, were close behind her and now claimed their share of Renny’s attention. They were tall handsome men in their middle sixties, Nicholas with a mass of iron-grey hair, a strong aquiline profile and deep-set brown eyes; Ernest blue-eyed, fair-skinned, his fine grey hair brushed smoothly over his narrow head, his sensitive lips trembling a little as he put his arm about his nephew’s shoulders.
“Welcome home, my dear fellow,” he said — “Welcome — welcome. To think we have you back at last!”
Nicholas added, in his deep voice — “By gad, Renny, it’s good to see you! And just the same!”
Renny gripped his uncles’ hands and then embraced his aunt, pressing fervent kisses on her sallow cheek. She was in mourning, her husband having died less than two years before. She held Renny close while her breast, above her high-corseted body, rose and fell in her emotion.
“My dear boy,” she said, in her contralto tones. It was all she could say and she repeated the words several times. “My dear, dear boy!”
It irritated her mother, who exclaimed brusquely — “One would think you’d given birth to him, Augusta! The way you go on! Let the lad loose. You’re smothering him. Haven’t you a word for poor Eliza, Renny?”
He detached himself from his aunt, who drew herself up, with an offended look at her mother. He turned to the maid.
“Just the same old Eliza!” he exclaimed, patting her shoulder.
“That’s right,” said his grandmother. “Tell her she is just the same. She’s got the notion that she’s worn out with working for us and needs to retire. It’s nonsense.”
Eliza smiled palely and handed the old lady’s stick to her. The entire group moved toward the dining room where the one o’clock dinner was laid, the dogs jostling each other alongside. A tawny cat belonging to Ernest glided down the stairs to a convenient height and from there jumped to his shoulder, arching herself