Renny's Daughter by Mazo de la Roche

Author:Mazo de la Roche
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2010-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

XV

FITZTURGIS AT HOME

“Hello, Mait, I thought I’d look you up,” Adeline said, her voice trembling, a pulse in her throat throbbing.

“Adeline,” he gasped, coming to her with hands outstretched. “Is it possible?”

She could not answer. The trembling of her voice now had become the trembling of her whole being. So had her love swept through her at the sight of him standing there, his intent eyes fixed on her, his troubled smile, the beautifully moulded structure of his face, his curly hair that seemed to have no colour of its own, but, where the firelight touched it, was edged by bronze.

“Who brought you?” he demanded.

“I came alone.” She could no more than whisper the words.

“Alone,” he echoed. He raised his arms as though to take her into them, then let them fall.

His uncertainty gave her strength. “Yes,” she said boldly, “and no one knows I came.”

Now her strength was coming back to her. They stood looking into each other’s eyes, seeing there the sea at night and the two of them alone on the deck, feeling how the circling of their blood had joined and, as in a miracle, flowed together.

“No one knows you came,” he repeated, under his breath, and she saw the colour mount to his forehead, as though he were embarrassed that she had to seek him out, instead of his going in search of her.

The old man sat on the bench, his bright eyes full of curiosity. In his left hand he held an egg which he had been eating from the shell, and in his right a spoon which he raised as though in salute. His bare feet were planted side by side on the earth floor.

“This,” said Fitzturgis, “is Tim Rafferty. Tim — this young lady comes all the way from Canada.”

Rafferty spoke in a voice so hearty that it was almost a roar. “Welcome to this country and welcome under my roof,” he roared, “and I wish I might stand up to welcome you proper but I’ve the rheumatics so bad from bein’ in the wather so much that ’tis all I can do to get from me bed to me bench here, wid the help of me niece.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Adeline, holding out her hand, but it was clear that he did not ask for pity. He beamed benignly up at her, laid down his spoon on the seat beside him and clasped her hand in his warm grasp.

The slatternly middle-aged woman came forward, smiling sadly, and shook hands also.

“I must tell you,” said Fitzturgis, “that Tim has been a great fisherman in his day. There isn’t a stream hereabout that he doesn’t know by heart —”

“And all the fish in it,” roared Rafferty. “Never did I cast me line in vain and ’twas fishin’ be day and night that gave me the rheumatics.”

He made room for Adeline on the bench beside him, his niece first dusting it with her soiled apron. Fitzturgis seated himself opposite, the fire burning low on the hearth between.

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