II
The Welcome for Fitzturgis
NICHOLAS HAD MADE up his mind that he would go downstairs that evening.
“I will not,” he had said, “meet Adeline’s fiancé up in my bed like an old invalid. After all, I’m only ninety-eight. My mother was up and about when she was a hundred. By Jove, I haven’t been downstairs in a month. I will go down tonight.”
“Good,” said Renny. “Shall you come down to dinner or just for a while in the evening?”
“To dinner, certainly. Will you lay out my clothes, like a good fellow, and be ready to give me an arm when the time comes? I don’t want that Irishman to see me being helped down the stairs. Tell Adeline to keep him out of the way.”
“I will, Uncle Nick.” Renny smiled his encouragement but thought dubiously of the journey down the stairs. Still, if the dear old boy wanted to undertake it, nothing should hinder him.
When the time came Renny helped him get into his clothes. He had already shaved him and made his hair spruce. When he was dressed he had to rest a bit and take a little tablet from the doctor, before starting the descent. Renny looked down at him with a mixture of admiration and sadness. How different he had been not so long ago. Yes, he had been different indeed. His clothes had set well on him. His firm, aquiline face had expressed well-being and a sardonic humour. But time had dealt differently with him than with his mother. Her it had coarsened, brought out wiry hairs on her chin, roughened her voice, given a truculence and daring to her aspect as though she challenged death itself. But the face of Nicholas had fined down. His features had taken on an almost cameo-like delicacy. The shadow of melancholy touched it.
Yet sometimes he was surprisingly like the Nicholas of old, and tonight was one of the times.
“Now,” he said in his still deep-toned voice, “let us make the descent. I’m all set to make a good impression on this Irishman. Heave me up, Renny. Egad, my leg is stiff!”
Alayne was nervous about his going down. She came to the door and spoke in a low tone to Renny. “Don’t you think I should send Archer to help?”
Renny shook his head. “I can manage.”
“He looks tired already.”
“What’s that?” demanded Nicholas.
“Are you a little tired, Uncle Nicholas?”
“Not a bit of it,” he said, trying to make himself sound like his old mother. “I want my dinner.” He smiled at Alayne and put out his hand to her. She came and kissed him.
“You look really elegant,” she said.
“Good. Now let’s make the start.”
Renny’s strong arm about his waist, he hobbled to the stairs. For many years he had suffered from gout. Alayne anxiously watched the descent of the two heads, one of them iron-grey that had never turned to white, the other that narrow head with its thatch of dark red hair, the sight of which always had the power to hold her. To Archer — who had appeared, it seemed, from nowhere — it was merely a question as to whether Renny would get the old man down without help. There was no admiration, no sadness, nothing of retrospect in his young mind.
By the time the two reached the hall below, Renny was half carrying his uncle.
“Steady on,” growled Nicholas, as though encouraging Renny. “We shall make it.”
Now they were in the hall and making good progress toward the drawing-room.
“Strange,” said Archer to Alayne, “how, when people are either very old or very young, they are always wanting to do something they shouldn’t do.”
“So already you are a student of human nature,” smiled Alayne.
“I have so much of it about me.”
“But you should not be so critical at your age, Archer.”
“It only proves what I say. I want to do what I shouldn’t do at my age.”
“Don’t we all,” sighed Alayne.
“It seems to me that when you’re not so very young or not so very old the trouble is that you don’t want to do what you should do.”
“You do make things complicated, Archer.”
“They are more interesting that way.” He drew aside the curtain of the window at the landing and peeped out.
“There is Adeline and her boyfriend. She’s keeping him out of the way till Uncle Nicholas is settled in his chair. Somehow I don’t think the two of them look well together.”
“Not look well together? Why?”
“I can’t tell yet. Later on I’ll let you know.”
Alayne also peeped out. She said, “I think they look very well together. They look happy too.”
“I wonder what it feels like.”
“Why, Archer, what a thing to say!”
“Well, happiness seems so positive. I should think it would soon be boring.”
Renny passed through the hall carrying a glass of whisky and water to Nicholas. He waved his hand to the two on the landing.
“He’s fine,” he called up. “I’m just taking him a bit of stimulant.”
A little later Adeline brought Fitzturgis to the drawing-room and he was formally presented to Nicholas, who laid down the newspaper he was reading and grasped him warmly by the hand.
“I’m glad indeed to meet you,” he said. “I’ve waited a long while and began to be afraid I’d not have the opportunity.”
Fitzturgis bowed over his hand with a deference pleasing to Nicholas. He sat down on one side of him and Adeline sat on the other. There was a moment of decorous restraint in which Nicholas inspected the visitor. Then — “And how did you leave Ireland?” he asked, looking as though pleased by what he had seen.
“Much the same as usual — fairly content in feeling sorry for herself and blaming England for all her troubles.”
“Ah, it’s a lovely country. I used often to visit my mother’s people there, but it’s years since I have seen it. You’ll find it quite a change — living in this New World. What happy, happy people we are! Just look, Mr. Fitzturgis.”
“Maitland, Uncle Nicholas,” put in Adeline. “You’ll want to be called that by us all, won’t you, Mait?”
“I shall indeed.”
“Very well — Maitland,” Nicholas agreed and held his newspaper spread in front of Fitzturgis. “Now see what a happy people. In all these pictures of politicians, clubwomen, teenagers — have you teenagers in Ireland? — there is none who is not grinning. See these brides and grooms, Adeline. How they grin! How enormous are the mouths of the brides! Surely they will devour the groom when they are tired of him — just the way the female spider does! The only ones who have seriousness and dignity in our newspaper prints are the very young children who have not yet learned to grin.”
“I see,” said Fitzturgis. “But are all those people really happy? Do their grins mean anything?”
“I take them at their face value,” said Nicholas.
“Archer,” put in Adeline, “never smiles.”
“I can make him smile,” said Renny, and