Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“Where do they live?”
“In that white house behind the church. It stood vacant for years, you remember. Then a Mrs. Stroud bought it. She divided it, so she could let half of it.”
“Oh yes, Meg told me that in a letter.”
“Well, this fellow — Dayborn his name is — lives in the other half. He has a widowed sister and her child with him. They’re English. They’re quite young. He looks about twenty-six. I gather they’re hard-up and Mrs. Stroud is very good to them.”
“Is she another widow?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to see them. Could we go there now?”
“All right.”
“If you think it’s safe for us. Two widows! God knows what may happen to us.”
“I’ll look after you,” said Maurice.
He would have preferred to stay where they were and talk over their whiskey and soda but he knew what Renny was. If he got an idea in his head … They emptied their glasses and set out across the fields, Maurice accommodating his slower step to Renny’s urgent stride.
Renny had many qualities in common with his Irish grandmother and one of them was to let no scheme of his languish for lack of swift attention. Now, in his mind, he saw this young Dayborn as the very man he needed to help him in the work of putting his estate in order. And there was the sister! A girl like that might be a lot of help in schooling ladies’ mounts. He felt full of goodwill toward them. This meeting was to be propitious.
They walked along a path that ran by the side of a field where the delicate spears of fall wheat were an emerald green and the earth took on a warm mulberry tint from the glow in the west. The path mounted gradually to a distant rise of ground, and reaching this they looked back on the house which stood half-hidden. Maurice’s grandfather had built it ninety years before. He had planted sturdy young conifers about it, as though it were not snug enough in its hollow. They, in the long decades, had grown towering peaks, had clasped bough to bough, twined root about root, till there was a prickly wall that not only kept out the cold winter winds but arbitrarily advanced the evening, long before the sun had set.
“You should get some good exercise,” said Renny, “thinning out those evergreens.”
“Yes,” agreed Maurice but without enthusiasm, “they’re far too dense.”
“Now look at Jalna,” wheeling to face his own domain. “There’s light there. We get all the sun, while we’ve lots of trees.”
The house was indeed at this moment almost flamboyantly gay in its setting. The double row of tall balsams and hemlocks that bordered the drive stopped short at the gravel sweep. The lawn was open to sun and a group of silver birches showed trunks as white as the petals of narcissus, while their pointed leaves fluttered in palest green. The vast Virginia creeper that enriched the walls had placed its glittering young leaves with such precision against the old bricks that it seemed a calculated adornment. Certainly the fresh paint of the shutters and porch was in honour of Renny’s return, and the shine of every windowpane from polishing. Behind the house the cherry orchard spread the white veil of its blossoms and, in the ravine that divided the two estates, there were the red stems of willows, the purple and gold of flags that bloomed by the stream, and the stream’s own May-time blossom of foam. The energetic tapping of a woodpecker was the only sound.
“It seems strange,” said Renny, “to own the place. When I left home my father was as sound as a nut. I thought he would live to be as old as my grandmother. I was satisfied to be his eldest son and to be a part of the place.”
“I always admired your father,” said Maurice. “He had a fine physique and that beaming look you seldom see in faces nowadays.”
“Well,” Renny spoke almost brusquely, “he’s gone and I’ve got to get used to it…. Come along, Maurice. Let’s see this fellow. What’s his name?”
“Jim Dayborn. I forget his sister’s name. It was a little short name. Oh yes — Chris, he called her.”
“I’m glad that house is occupied. I remember how desolate it looked standing there.”
“Mrs. Stroud has made the place look very nice, my housekeeper tells me. She had a sort of party there for the Women’s Institute.”
They walked on in silence.
Coming out on the quiet country road they crossed it, and Maurice was about to suggest that they should take a short cut through the churchyard when he remembered the new graves there and turned abruptly toward a narrow path that crossed a field. Renny hesitated a moment, his eyes fixed on the church surrounded by white gravestones, now flushed pink in the sunset. Then he followed Maurice. In a short while they stood in front of the now inhabited white house. It had once been the home of Miss Pink, the organist, but when her parents died she could no longer afford to live there and its rental had been her chief income. She had suffered privations during its vacancy and the fact that it was now sold was as a new lease of life to her.
The two men stood looking at it, remarking, with the interest of those whose roots have long been in the one spot, the alterations that had turned it into a two-family house. Also it had a fresh coat of paint, two green front doors against the fresh whiteness of the walls.
“I’ll make a guess,” said Renny, “that Mrs. Stroud lives in the right-hand side.”
“That’s easy. You can see the man moving about the room in the other half.”
“No. I guessed from the curtains. A woman with a baby wouldn’t have had time for all those frills.”
They strode through the gate and rang the bell. The door was opened almost at once by a very thin young man wearing loose grey flannel trousers and a rough grey pullover. His colouring was nondescript but his movements were so graceful and the bones of his face so fine that he gave an impression of elegance. His expression was gloomy. This changed to a look of expectancy when he saw Maurice Vaughan.
Maurice introduced him to Renny.
Jim Dayborn invited them indoors with no apparent embarrassment for the sparsely furnished, untidy room, the scant meal which looked as though it might have been thrown on to the bare table, and the baby’s diapers drying before the stove. Renny’s first thought on seeing these was — “Why the devil didn’t she dry them out in the sunshine?” He said, when they were seated:
“I hear you understand horses and that you’re looking for a job.”
“Yes,” said Dayborn, “I’m terribly anxious for work. You see, I have my sister and her baby to support. Not that she wants to be dependent. She’s ready to do anything. She’s absolutely at home with horses.”
“Who could look after her baby?”
“Oh, he’s no trouble. Put him down anywhere and he’ll amuse himself.”
“In a stable?”
“If necessary,” answered Dayborn laconically.
“Where did you get your experience?” asked Renny.
“We were brought up in a rectory in Suffolk. Our neighbours kept large stables and we spent half our time in them. We met an American who raised show horses and we came out to work with him. Well, that didn’t last and —”
“Why didn’t it last?”
“The owner was paying attention to my sister. But she didn’t like him. She liked a chap named Cummings. She married him and then Cummings died and my sister could not stick the place without him. The baby was just a few months old. We knew a horse breeder in Montreal and got a job with him. My sister can break in any sort of colt. She’s wonderful. But the man lost a lot of money and sold his horses. We’ve had bad luck since then. If you are wanting two people who aren’t afraid of work, and who understand horses, I hope you’ll give us a chance.”
I’d like to meet your sister,” said Renny.
“Good.” Dayborn left the room with a hangdog grace that repelled Renny, even while he was attracted by his candour. There’s something queer about him, he thought.
Maurice’s eyes swept the disorderly room. He gave Renny a significant look. “If this is an example of her work …” he said under his breath.
“Sh … they’re coming.”
But the young woman who returned with Dayborn was the opposite of slovenly. Her khaki breeches and shirt, open at the neck, were well-cut and clean. Her pale fair hair hung straight and sleek about her small head. She was tall, like her brother, but their only resemblance was their extreme thinness. Compared to them, the baby of fifteen months she carried in her arms, was almost aggressively plump and rosy. He wore white flannel pyjamas, and his golden hair stood moist and curly from his bath.
Dayborn introduced the two men to his sister. As Renny looked into her long amber-coloured eyes, he noticed also the fine line of her nostrils and the firm clasp of her thin calloused hand. When she smiled she showed good teeth with a small corner broken off one of the front ones.
“What a fine child!” exclaimed Renny. “What is his name?”
“Tod.”
“Hello, Tod!”
The baby leant forward and grasped Renny’s nose. He pressed his tiny nails into the flesh and crowed in pleasure.
“No, no, Tod!” said his mother, unclasping the little fingers.
“Come along, then,” said Renny. He took the baby into his arms, where he jumped and chuckled as though that, of all places, was where he most wanted to be.
Renny gave a pleased grin. “He’s taken to me at once,” he said. “I wish my baby brother were half so friendly.”
“Tod is like that with everyone. He has knocked about so much.”
Renny gave her a swift but penetrating glance. “I’m afraid you’ve had rather a rough time.”
She laughed shortly and a faint colour came into her thin cheeks. “It has been pretty bad — but I shouldn’t complain to one who has just come back form the War.”
“But that’s different. You’re a woman and a very feminine one, in spite of your clothes. I’m wondering if the people about here approve of you. They’re very old-fashioned.”
“Mrs. Stroud, our neighbour, seems not to mind. And of course she’s the most important to us — owning the house.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
Dayborn who with Maurice had been standing by the window, exclaimed — “There she is! I believe she’s coming in.”
“She has seen the visitors,” said Chris Cummings. “She’s eaten up by curiosity. No one enters this door but she knows it.”
“I’ll not hear a word against her,” declared Dayborn. “Think of the eggs and fruit she’s given us!”
“Yes. She is kind. But behind her good nature I’ll bet there’s a hell of a temper.”
The girl was unconventional — swearing like that! Renny wondered how she would get on in this Victorian backwater. It was all very well for his grandmother to rip out an oath on occasion but she held a position unique in the community.
She continued — “I’m afraid of people with tempers, aren’t you?”
He said — “If I were my life wouldn’t be worth living.”
“Do you mean that your family have tempers?”
“Yes.”
She eyed him critically. “I’ll bet you have one too.”
He laughed. “Oh, I’m a terror in a rage.”
“I’d like to see you.”
“Perhaps you will — if you’re going to school horses for me.”
Mrs. Stroud was in the room, her short, straight figure advancing almost relentlessly. Dayborn was moving solicitously beside her, as though he would leave no stone unturned to retain her goodwill. His introduction was characteristic.
“This is Mr. Whiteoak, who is going to give us a job. For heaven’s sake put down the kid! This is our benefactress, Mrs. Stroud.”
“I don’t know why you call me your benefactress. Is it because you have taken a house I badly wanted to let?” Her voice was deep and musical. She had fine grey eyes with black lashes and heavy brows. Her thick brown hair was elaborately done. Surely she must spend hours each day over it. One feature was noticeable which scarcely counted in other women. That was her ears. The hair swept clearly away from them, revealing how flat they lay against her head, their waxen pallor, and the fact they had no inward-curling rim. She was dressed in a black skirt, a black-and-white striped silk blouse with an immaculate lace jabot, fastened by a brooch formed of the name Aimee in wrought gold. She pressed Renny’s fingers in a firm clasp. She was thirty-eight.
“You know the houses well, I guess,”
“I knew them when they were one.”
“Don’t you think I was clever to divide it?”
“It is better, I suppose, than having it stand idle. I like things in their original state.”
There was a domineering note in his voice that brought an antagonistic tone into her own. “Well, everyone else thinks the change is for the better. And it’s given me charming neighbours.” She smiled tenderly at the baby.
Renny had set him down and he was staggering about among the legs of the grown-ups as though they were forest trees. He struck at them with a willow wand he carried, as though he would chop them down. He was angelic with his silvery curls and satin skin but he made small, animal noises. Mrs. Stroud knelt in front of him, holding her face, with eyes closed, toward his. He looked at it critically, wondering whether or not to hit it.
Renny turned to Dayborn. “I must talk to you and your sister alone. Will you come to my place tomorrow morning. I’ll show you the stables and horses. We’ll talk over my plans for breeding. I’m cabling for an Irish hunter I saw when I was visiting relations on the way home.”
“We shall be there soon after breakfast. I do hope you’ll take us on.” Dayborn’s thin face showed a painful eagerness.
“I’d like to see both of you ride before I promise anything.”
“You’ll find that we can ride all right.”
Maurice’s deep voice broke in — “Mrs. Stroud wants us to see her house, Renny.”
“Yes,” she put in, “it’s such an event, having strangers here.”
If she had thought to propitiate Renny by this remark she was mistaken. The word stranger stabbed him like an insult. He turned it over in his mouth as though testing its ill-flavour. Then he repeated it aloud, adding — “Maurice and I were born here and our fathers before us.”
“Yes, yes,” she agreed quickly. “But I’ve so dug myself in here that
I
feel like the old-timer. It’s so lovely having a possessive feeling toward a place after knocking about for years. Do forgive me!”
Renny did not want his chagrin put into words but he lifted his lip in a smile which he fancied was amicable and said: