Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
The kitchen was an immense room with a great unused fireplace and a coal range that was always in use. The table and dressers were so heavy that they were never moved, and one wall was covered by an oak rack filled with platters from successive Whiteoak dinner sets. Many of these would have given delight to a collector, but the glazing on all was disfigured by innumerable little cracks from being placed in ovens far too hot.
Wakefield gave one longing look into the pantry. How he would have liked to forage for his breakfast among those
richly laden shelves! He saw two fat fowls trussed up in a roasting pan ready to put into the oven, and a huge boiled ham, and a brace of plum tarts. But he dared not. Rags would be returning at any moment. On the kitchen table he found a plate of cold toast and a saucer of anchovy paste. Taking a slice of toast and the anchovy paste, he trotted out of the kitchen and along the brick passage into the coal cellar. He heard Rags clattering down the kitchen stairs, muttering as he came. A window in the coal cellar stood open, and mounted on an empty box he found he could easily put his breakfast out on the ground and climb out after it.
He was sorry to see how black his hands and bare knees had become in the operation. He scrubbed them with his clean handkerchief, but the only result was that the handkerchief became black. He did not like to return such a black rag to the pocket of his best suit, so he pushed it carefully out of sight in a crack just under the sill of the cellar window. Some little mouse, he thought, would be glad to find it and make a nice little nest of it.
He carried his toast and anchovy paste to the old carriage house, and sought a favourite retreat of his. This was a ponderous closed carriage that Grandfather Whiteoak had sent to England for when he and Grandmother had first built Jalna. It had a great shell-like body, massive lamps, and a high seat for the coachman. It must have been a splendid sight to see them driving out. It had not been used for many years. Wakefield slumped on the sagging seat, eating his toast and anchovy paste with unhurried enjoyment. The fowls clucking and scratching in the straw made a soothing accompaniment to his thoughts.
“Now, if I had my way I’d meet the brideangroom with this beautiful carriage, drawn by four white horses. I’d have
the wheels all done up in wreaths of roses like the pictures of carnivals in California. And a big bunch of roses for her to carry, and a trumpeter sitting on the seat beside the coachman tooting a trumpet. And a pretty little dwarf hanging on behind, with a little silver whistle to blow when the trumpeter stopped tooting. What a happy brideangroom they’d be!”
“Brideangroom... Brideangroom.” He liked the pleasant way those words ran together. Still, he must not linger here too long or he would not be on hand to welcome them. He decided that there was no time left for cleaning the rabbit hutches. He would go across the meadow to the road, and wait by the church corner. Then he would have a chance to meet them before the rest of the family. He clambered out of the carriage, a cobweb clinging to his hair and a black smudge across his cheek. He set the saucer containing the remainder of the anchovy on the floor and watched five hens leap simultaneously upon it, a tangle of wings and squawks, while a rooster side-stepped about the scrimmage, watching his wives with a distracted yellow eye.
He trotted across the meadow, climbed the fence, and gained the road. He stopped long enough to pass the time of day with Chalk, the blacksmith, and was almost by the Wigles’ cottage when Muriel accosted him from the gate:
“I’ve got ten thents.”
He hesitated, looking at the little girl over his shoulder. “Have you? Where did you get it?” he asked with polite interest.
“It’th a birthday prethent. I’m thaving up to buy a dolly.”
Wake went to her and said kindly: “Look here, Muriel, you’re awfully silly if you do that. A doll costs a dollar or more, and if you save ten cents every single birthday it’d be years and years before you’d have enough to buy one. By
that time you’d be too old to play with it. Better come to Mrs. Brawn’s now and buy yourself a chocolate bar. I’ll buy you a bottle of cream soda to drink with it.”
“I don’t like cream thoda,” replied Muriel, petulantly. She opened her small hot palm and examined the coin lying on it.
Wakefield bent over it. “Why, it’s a Yankee dime!” he exclaimed. “Goodness, Muriel, you’d better hurry up and spend it, because likely as not it’ll be no good by next week.”
Mrs. Wigle put her head out of the window of the cottage.
“When’s your brother goin’ to mend my roof?” she demanded. “It’s leakin’ like all possessed.”
“Oh, he was just speaking about that this morning, Mrs. Wigle. He says that just as soon as he gets this wedding reception off his hands, he’s going to attend to your roof.”
“Well, I hope he will,” she grumbled, and withdrew her head.
“Come along now, Muriel,” said Wake. “I haven’t much time to spare, but I’ll go with you to Mrs. Brawn’s so’s you won’t feel shy.”
He took her hand and the little girl trotted beside him with a rather dazed expression. They presented themselves before Mrs. Brawn’s counter.
“Well, Master Whiteoak,” she said, “I hope you’ve come to pay your account.”
“I’m afraid not this morning,” replied Wake. “We’re so very busy getting ready for the brideangroom that I forgot. But Muriel here wants a bottle of cream soda and a chocolate bar. It’s her birthday, you see.”
They sat on the step outside the shop with the refreshments, Wakefield sucking the sickly drink placidly through a straw, Muriel nibbling the chocolate.
“Have a pull, Muriel,” he offered.
“Don’t like it,” she said. “You have a bite of chocolate.” She held the bar to his lips, and so they contentedly ate it, bite about.
How happy he was! “Brideangroom... Brideangroom.” The pleasant words went singing through his head. A spiral of wood smoke curled upward from a mound of burning leaves in a yard across the street. A hen and her half-grown brood scratched blithely in the middle of the road. Muriel was gazing into his face with slavish admiration.
A car was coming. Their own car. He recognized its peculiar hiccoughing squeaks. Hastily he drained the last drops and pushed the bottle into Muriel’s hands.
“You may return the bottle, Muriel,” he said. “I must go to meet the brideangroom.”
The car was in sight. He espied a clump of Michaelmas daisies growing by the side of the road, and he swiftly ran and plucked a long feathery spray. It was rather dusty, but still very pretty, and he stood clasping it, with an expectant smile on his face, as the car approached. Piers, who was driving, would have gone by and left him standing there, but Eden sharply told him to stop, and Alayne leaned forward full of eager curiosity.
Wakefield mounted the running board and held the Michaelmas daisies out to her.
“Welcome to Jalna,” he said.
I
NSIDE THE
G
ATES OF
J
ALNA
E
DEN
had not been sorry to see his little brother waiting at the roadside with daisies for Alayne. The meeting with Piers, the breakfast in his company at the Queen’s, and the subsequent drive home had not been altogether satisfactory. Alayne had been tired and unusually quiet, Piers actually taciturn. Eden resented this taciturnity because he remembered having been very decent to Piers and Pheasant on the occasion of their humiliating return to Jalna. He had been the first, and the only one except Renny, to stand up for them. He regarded his brother’s solid back and strong sunburned neck with growing irritation as the car sped along the lakeshore road.
Alayne gazed out over the misty blue expanse of the lake with a feeling approaching sadness. This sea that was not a sea, this land that was not her land, this new brother with the unfriendly blue eyes and the sulky mouth, she must get used to them all. They were to be hers. Ruth—“amid the alien corn.”
But she should not feel that they were alien. It was a lovely land. The language was her own. Even this new brother was
probably only rather shy. She wished that Eden had told her more about his family. There were so many of them. She went over their names in her mind to prepare herself for the meeting. A tiny shudder of apprehension ran through her nerves. She put her hand on Eden’s and gripped his fingers.
“Cheer up, old dear,” he said. “We’ll soon be there.”
They had left the lakeshore and were running smoothly over a curving road. A quaint old church, perched on a wooded knoll, rose before them. Then a diminutive shop, two children staring, Eden’s voice saying, “There’s young Wake, Piers!” And a little boy on the running board, pushing flowers into her hand.
“Welcome to Jalna,” he said, in a sweet treble, “and I thought maybe you’d like these Michaelmas daisies. I’ve been waiting ever so long.”
“Hop in,” commanded Eden, opening the door.
He hopped in, and squeezed his slender body between theirs on the seat. Piers had not looked round. Now he started the car with a jerk.
Wakefield raised his eyes to Alayne’s face and scrutinized her closely. “What eyelashes!” she thought. “What a darling!” His little body pressed against her seemed the most delightful and pathetic thing. Oh, she could love this little brother. And he was delicate, too. Not strong enough to go to school. She would play with him, help to teach him. They smiled at each other. She looked across his head at Eden and formed the words “A darling” with smiling lips.
“How is everyone at home?” asked Eden.
“Nicely, thank you,” said Wakefield, cheerfully. “Granny has had a little cough, and Boney imitates her. Uncle Ernest’s nose is rather pink from hay fever. Uncle Nick’s gout is better. Meggie eats very little, but she is getting fatter. Piers
took the first prize with his bull at the Durham show. It wore the blue ribbon all the way home. Finch came out fifty-second in his Greek exam. I can’t think of any news about Pheasant and Rags and Mrs. Wragge except that they’re there. I hope you like your flowers, Alayne. I should have got more, but I saw your car coming just as I was beginning to gather them.”
“They are beautiful,” said Alayne, holding them to her face, and Wakefield close to her side. “I am so very glad you came to meet me.”
In truth she was very glad. It seemed easier to meet the family with the little boy by her side. Her cheeks flushed a pretty pink, and she craned her neck eagerly to catch a first glimpse of the house as they passed between the stalwart spruces along the drive.
Jalna looked very mellow in the golden sunlight, draped in its mantle of reddening Virginia creeper and surrounded by freshly clipped lawns. One of Wake’s rabbits was hopping about, and Renny’s two clumber spaniels were stretched on the steps. A pear tree near the house had dropped its fruit on the grass, where it lay richly yellow, giving to the eyes of a town dweller an air of negligent well-being to the scene. Alayne thought that Jalna had something of the appearance of an old manorial farmhouse, set among its lawns and orchards. The spaniels lazily beat their plumed tails on the step, too indolent to rise.
“Renny’s dogs,” commented Eden, pushing one of them out of the way with his foot that Alayne might pass. “You’ll have to get used to animals. You’ll find them all over the place.”
“That will not be hard. I have always wanted pets.” She bent to stroke one of the silken heads.
Eden looked down at her curiously. How would she and his family get on, he wondered. Now that he had brought her home he realized suddenly that she was alien to his family. He had a disconcerting sensation of surprise at finding himself married. After all, he was not so elated as he had expected to be when Rags opened the door and smiled a self-conscious welcome.
Rags was always self-conscious when he wore his livery. It consisted of a shiny black suit with trousers very tight for him and a coat a size too large, a stiff white collar, and a greenish-black bow tie. His ash-blond hair was clipped with convict-like closeness, his pallid face showed a cut he had given himself when shaving. His air had something of the secretive smirk of an undertaker.
“Welcome ‘ome, Mr. Eden,” he said, sadly. “Welcome ‘ome, sir.”
“Thanks, Rags. Alayne, this is Wragge, our—” Eden hesitated, trying to decide how Mr. Wragge should be described, and continued, “our factotum.”
“Welcome ‘ome, Mrs. Whiteoak,” said Rags, with his curiously deprecating yet impudent glance. It said to Eden silently but unmistakably: “Ow, you may fool the family, young man, but you can’t fool me. You ‘aven’t married a heiress. And ‘ow we’re to put up with another young woman ‘ere Gawd only knows.”
Alayne thanked him, and at the same moment the door of the living room was opened and Meg Whiteoak appeared on the threshold. She threw her arms about Eden’s neck and kissed him with passionate tenderness. Then she turned to Alayne, her lips, with their prettily curved corners, parted in a gentle smile.
“So this is Alayne. I hope you will like us all, my dear. We’re so happy to have you.”
Alayne found herself enfolded in a warm plump embrace. She thought it was no wonder the brothers adored their sister—Eden had told her they did—and she felt prepared to make a sister, a confidante, of her. How delightful! A real sister. She held tightly to Meg’s hand as they went into the living room where more of the family had assembled.
It was so warm that even the low flameless fire seemed too much; none of the windows were open. Slanting bars of sunlight penetrating between the slats of the inside shutters converged at one point, the chair where old Mrs. Whiteoak sat. Like fiery fingers they seemed to point her out as the most significant presence in the room. Yet she was indulging in one of her unpremeditated naps. Her head, topped by a large purple cap with pink rosettes, had sunk forward so that the only part of her face visible was her heavy jaw and row of too perfect underteeth. She wore a voluminous tea gown of purple velvet, and her shapely hands clasping the gold top of her ebony stick were heavy with rings worn for the occasion. A steady bubbling snore escaped her. The two elderly men came forward, Nicholas frowning because of the painful effort of rising, but enfolding Alayne’s hand in a warm grasp. They greeted her in mellow whispers, Ernest excusing their mamma’s momentary oblivion.