Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny Read Online Free PDF Page B

their father would cast a piercing look on them they would instantly subside and for a few moments be silent. An old gentleman named Mr. O’Regan appeared at table, spoke little but drank a good deal. Adeline told Philip afterward that he was an old friend of the family who had once lent a large sum of money to them and, as it was impossible to collect the debt, had come to live with them. Mr. O’Regan wore a glum, yet rather calculating expression, as though he watched with morbid interest the decrease year by year of Renny Court’s debt to him. Renny Court, on his part, treated his guest with a kind of grim jocularity, pressed him to eat and drink more and inquired solicitously after his health. Mr. O’Regan seemed to resent this and would give no more definite answer than — “Oh, I’m well enough. I think I’ll last —” Though till what, he did not explain.
    Renny Court was no absentee landlord, living in England on the rents from a neglected tenantry. He employed no callous bailiff, but himself attended to the business of his estate and knew every man, woman, and child on it.
    The Whiteoaks’ visit there passed amiably with the exception of a few fiery encounters between Adeline and her father. In truth they could not be together for long without their wills opposing.She was the only one of his children who did not fear him. Yet she loved him less than did the others. It was to her mother she clung and from whom she dreaded to part. Lady Honoria could not talk of her departure for Canada without weeping. As for Renny Court, he poured out his full contempt for the project.
    “What a life for a gentleman!” he would exclaim. “What will you find out there? Nothing but privation and discomfort! What a place for a fine girl like Adeline!”
    “I’m willing to go,” she interrupted. “I think it will be glorious.”
    “What do you know about it?”
    “More than you do, I’ll be bound,” she retorted. “Philip has had letters from his uncle describing the life in Quebec and he knows a Colonel Vaughan who lives in Ontario and loves it!”
    “Lives in Ontario and loves it!” repeated her father, fixing her with his intense gaze. “And has Colonel Vaughan of Ontario told Philip what the roads are like there? Has he told him of the snakes and mosquitoes and the wild animals thirsting for your blood? Why, I know a man who stopped in one of the best hotels there and there was a mud puddle in it, and a frog croaking all the night through by a corner of the bed. And this man’s wife was so frightened that the next child she had had a face like a frog on it! Now what do you think of that, Adeline?” He grinned triumphantly at her.
    “I think if it’s Mr. McCready you’re quoting,” she retorted, “his wife has no need to go all the way to Ontario to have a frog-faced child. Sure, Mr. McCready himself —”
    “Was as fine a figure of a man as there was in all County Meath!”
    “Father, I say he had the face of a frog!”
    Philip put in — “Adeline and I are bound for the New World, sir, and no argument will talk us out of it. As you know, my uncle left me a very nice property in Quebec. I must go out there and look after it and, if what he said was true, there is a very respectable society in the town. And, in the country about, the finest shooting and fishing you can imagine.”
    “You will be back within the year,” declared Renny Court.
    “We shall see,” answered Philip stubbornly. His blue eyes became more prominent as he flashed a somewhat truculent look at his father-in-law.
    The two boys, Conway and Sholto, were fired by a desire to accompany the Whiteoaks to Canada. The thought of a wild life in a new country, far from parental authority, elated them. They could talk of little else. They would cling to Adeline on her either side and beg her to let them throw in their lot with hers. On her part she liked the idea. Canada would not seem so remote if she had two of her brothers with her.