Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“So much the better for you, at your age,” returned his brother, curtly.
“Chocolate bars are much better for you,” purred Pheasant, close to his ear.
Renny peered through the window. “There’s the station,” he said. “I suppose your wheel is there. Shall you get it? Or had you sooner stop in the car with us?”
“It’s a beast of a night. I think I’ll go with you. No—I’ll— yes—oh, Lord, I don’t know what to do!” He peered forlornly into the night.
Renny brought up the car with a jolt. He demanded over his shoulder: “What the devil is the matter with you? You
seem to have a perpetual grouch. Now make up your mind, if it’s possible. I think myself you had better leave the wheel where it is and walk to the station in the morning,”
“It’ll be a beastly walk in such weather as this,” mumbled Finch, moving his leg with his hands to bring life into it. “My books’ll be all muddy.”
“Well, get one of the men to run you down in the car.”
“Piers will want the car early. I heard him say so.”
Renny stretched back a long arm and threw open the door beside the youth. “Now,” he said quietly, but with an ominous chest vibration in his voice, “get out. I’ve had enough of this shilly-shallying!”
Finch scrambled out, giving a ridiculous hop as his numb foot touched the ground. He stood with dropped jaw as the door was slammed and the motor rattled away, sending a spray of muddy water against his trouser legs.
He moved heavily under a weight of self-pity as he went toward the station house. In the room behind the stationmaster’s office he found his bicycle propped against the scales. It might not be a bad idea to weigh himself, he thought. He had been drinking a glass of milk every day of late in the hope that he might put on a little flesh. He mounted the scales and began dubiously moving the weights. The sound of men’s voices came from the inner room, argumentative voices, and high-pitched. The scale balanced, he peered anxiously at the figures, then his face brightened—a clear gain of three pounds. A childlike grin lighted his features. The milk was doing him good, all right. He was gaining flesh. Not so bad that, three pounds in a fortnight. He would drink more of it. He stepped from the scales and was about to remove his bicycle when he discovered that a pedal was pressing on the platform of the scales. Suspicion
clouded his brow. Might it not be possible that the pressure of the pedal had something to do with the increase in his weight? He set the wheel aside and again mounted the scales. Eagerly he examined the trembling indicator. The weight flew up. He moved the brass slide. Four pounds less. He had not gained! He had lost. He had lost. He weighed a pound less than he had a fortnight ago!
Gloomily he picked up the bicycle and steered it out of the station. He heard one of the men ask: “What’s that noise out there?” And the station-master’s reply: “I guess it’s the Whiteoak boy that goes into town to school. He leaves his wheel here.” The voices were lowered and Finch could imagine the disparaging remarks they were making about him.
He flung himself on to the saddle and pedalled doggedly along the path beside the rails. Darn the old bike! Darn the rain! Above all, darn milk! It was making him thinner instead of stouter. He would have no more of it.
The driveway that led to the house was a black tunnel. Hemlocks and balsams walled it in with their impenetrable resinous boughs. The heavy scent of them, the scent of the fungus growths beneath them, was so enhanced by the continuous moisture of the past two weeks that it seemed a palpable essence dripping from the dense draperies of their limbs, oozing from the wet earth beneath. It was an approach that might have led to a sleeping palace, or to the retreat of a band of worshippers of some forgotten gods. As the boy passed through the oppressive, embalmed darkness he felt that he was moving in a dream, that he might glide on thus forever, with no light, no warmth, at the end to greet him.
In there peace came to him. He wished that he might have ridden on and on among these ancient trees till he
absorbed something of their impassive dignity. He pictured himself entering the room where the family would be gathered, wearing like a cloak about him the dignity of one of these trees. He pictured his entry as casting a chill over the rough good spirits of these less austere beings.
As he emerged to the gravelled sweep about the house, the rain beat down on him with increasing violence, and the east wind caused the shutters to rattle and the bare stalks of the old Virginia creeper to scrape against the wall. Warm lights shone from the windows of the dining room.
He put aside his imaginings and made a dash for the back entrance.
He pushed his bicycle into a dark passage in the basement and went into a little washroom to wash his hands. As he dried them he glanced at his reflection in the speckled mirror above the basin—a lank fair lock hanging over his forehead; his long nose, his thin cheeks, made pink by the wind and rain. He did not look so bad after all, he thought. He felt comforted.
As he passed the kitchen he heard the nasal voice of Rags, the Whiteoak houseman, singing:
“Some day your ’eart will be broken like mine,
So w’y should I cry over you?”
He had a glimpse of the red brick floor, the low ceiling, darkened by many years of smoke, of Rags’s buxom wife bending over the hot range. His spirits rose. He raced up the stairway, hung his wet raincoat in the hall, and entered the dining room.
T
HE
F
AMILY
T
HERE
was a special dish for supper that night. Finch was aware of that, before ever he sniffed it, from the ingenuous air of festivity brightening the faces of those about the board. Doubtless Aunt Augusta had ordered it because she knew that Renny would be famished after his long day and strenuous exertion in the horse show. Finch was supposed to have a hot dinner at school, but he preferred to husband his allowance by buying a light lunch, and so having a respectable sum left for cigarettes, chocolates, and other luxuries. Consequently he had always an enormous appetite by night, for he did not get home in time for tea. The amount of food that disappeared into his bony person without putting any flesh upon it was a source of wonderment and even anxiety to his aunt.
The special dish was a cheese souffle. Mrs. Wragge was particularly good at a cheese souffle. Finch’s eyes were riveted on it from the moment when he slid into his chair, between his brother Piers and little Wakefield. There was not very much of it left, and it had been out of the oven long
enough to have lost its first palate-pleasing fluffiness, but he longed passionately to be allowed to scrape the last cheesy crust from the bottom of the silver dish.
Renny, after helping him to a thick slab of cold beef, fixed him with his penetrating gaze and, indicating the souffle by a nod, asked: “Want the dish to scrape?”
Finch, reddening, muttered an assent.
Renny, however, looked across the table at Lady Buckley. “Some more of the souffle, Aunt Augusta?”
“No, thank you, my dear. I really should not have eaten as much as I have. Cheese at night is not very digestible, though cooked in this way it is not so harmful, and I thought that you, after your—”
The master of Jalna listened deferentially, his eyes on her face, then he turned to his uncle Nicholas. “Another helping, Uncle Nick?”
Nicholas wiped his drooping grey moustache with an immense table napkin and rumbled: “Not another bite of anything. But I should like one more cup of tea, Augusta, if you’ve any left.”
“Uncle Ernest, more of this cheese stuff?”
Ernest waved the offer aside with a delicate white hand. “My dear boy, no! I should not have touched it at all. I wish we might not have these hot dishes for supper. I am tempted, and then I suffer.”
“Piers?”
Piers had already had two helpings, but, with a teasing look out of the corner of his eye at Finch’s long face, he said: “I shouldn’t mind another spoonful.”
“Me, too!” exclaimed Wakefield. “I’d like some more.”
“I forbid it,” said Augusta, pouring her third cup of tea. “You are too young a boy to eat a cheese dish at night.”
“And you,” put in her brother Nicholas, “are too old a woman to swill down a potful of tea at this hour,”
The air of dignified offence, always worn by Lady Buckley, deepened. Her voice, too, became throaty. “I wish, Nicholas, that you would try not to be coarse. I know it is difficult, but you should consider what a bad example it is for the boys.”
Her brother Ernest, desirous of preventing a squabble, remarked: “You have such excellent nerves, Augusta, that I am sure you can drink unlimited tea. I only wish that my digestion—my nerves—”
Augusta interrupted him angrily: “Whoever heard of tea hurting anyone? It’s coffee that is dangerous. The Whiteoaks, and the Courts, too, were all indefatigable drinkers of tea.”
“And rum,” added Nicholas. “What do you say, Renny, to having a bottle of something really decent to celebrate the prowess of our nags?”
“Good head!” agreed Renny, spreading a layer of mustard over his cold beef.
Piers in the meantime had helped himself to more of the souffle, and then pushed the dish to Finch, who, gripping it in one bony hand, began savagely to scrape it clean with a massive silver spoon.
Wakefield regarded this performance with the patronizing wonder of one who had shared the dish in its first hot puffiness. “There’s a little stuck on there, just by the handle,” he said, helpfully pointing to the morsel.
Finch desisted from his scraping long enough to hit him a smart blow on the knuckles with the spoon.
Wake loudly cried, “Ouch!” and was ordered from the table by Lady Buckley.
Renny shot a look of annoyance down the table. “Please don’t send the kid away, Aunt. He couldn’t help squeaking when he was hit. If anyone is sent away it will be Finch,”
“Wakefield was not hurt,” said Augusta, with dignity. “He screams if Finch looks in his direction.”
“Then let Finch look in another direction.” And Renny returned to the consumption of his beef with an air of making up for lost time, as well as putting an end to the matter.
Nicholas leaned toward him. “What do you say, Renny, to a bottle?” he rumbled.
Ernest checked him, tapping his arm with a nervous white hand. “Remember, Nick, that Renny is in the high jumping tomorrow. He needs a cool head.”
Renny began to laugh uproariously. “By Judas, that’s good! Aunt Augusta, do you hear that? Uncle Ernie is afraid that a glass of spirits will make my head hot, and look at the colour it is already!” He rose energetically from the table.
“Can’t Rags get it?” asked Nicholas.
“Of course. And swipe a bottle for himself… The key of the wine cellar, please, Aunt.” He went around to Augusta and looked down on her Queen Alexandra fringe and long, rather mottled nose. She took a bunch of keys from a chatelaine she wore at her waist.
Wakefield bounced on his chair. “Let me go, please do, Renny! I love the cellar and I hardly ever get there. May I go to the cellar for a treat, Renny?”
Renny, key in hand, turned to Nicholas. “What do you suggest, Uncle Nick?”
Nicholas rumbled: “A couple of quarts of Chianti.”
“Oh, come now, I’m in earnest.”
“What have you got?”
“Besides the keg of ale and the native wine, there’s nothing but a few bottles of Burke’s Jamaica and some sloe gin— and Scotch, of course.”
Nicholas smiled sardonically. “And you call that a wine cellar!”
“Well,” replied his nephew, testily, “it’s always been called the wine cellar. We can’t stop calling it that, even if there is nothing much in it. Aunt?”
“I thought,” said Ernest, “that we had half a bottle of French vermouth.”
“That’s up in my room,” replied Nicholas, curtly. “A little rum and water, with a touch of lemon juice, will suit me, Renny.”
“Aunt?”
“A glass of native port, my dear. And I really think Finch should have one, too, studying as he does.”
Poor Finch did not wait for the ironic laughter which followed this appeal in his behalf to slump still lower in his chair, to crimson in deprecatory embarrassment. Yet, even as he did so, he felt a warm rush of love toward Augusta. She was not against him, anyhow.
Renny moved in the direction of the hall, and, in passing Wakefield’s chair, he caught the expectant little boy by the arm and took him along, as though he had been a parcel.
They descended the stairs to the basement, where their nostrils were assailed by the mysterious smells that Wake loved. Here was the great kitchen with its manifold odours, the coal cellar, the fruit cellar, the wine cellar, the storeroom, and the three tiny bedrooms for servants, of which only one was now occupied. Here the Wragges lived their strange subterranean life of bickerings, of mutual suspicion, of occasional amorousness, such as Wake had once surprised them in.
As soon as their steps were heard by Rags he appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, the stub of a cigarette glowing against his pallid little face.
“Yes, Mr. W’iteoak?” he inquired. “Were you wanting me, sir?”
“Fetch a candle, Rags. I’m after a bottle.”
The light of sympathy now brightened the cockney’s face. “Right you are, sir,” he said, and, dropping the cigarette stub to the brick floor, he turned back to the kitchen, reappearing in a moment with a candle in a battered brass candlestick. They had a glimpse of Mrs. Wragge, rising from the table at which she had been eating, and assuming an attitude of deference, her face as much like the rising sun as her lord’s resembled the waning moon.
With Rags leading the way, the three passed in Indian file along a narrow passage that ended in a heavy padlocked door. Here Renny inserted the key, and the door, dragging stubbornly, was pushed open. Mingled with the penetrating chill were the odours of ale and spirits. The candlelight discovered what was apparently a well-stocked though untidily arranged cellar, but in truth the bottles and containers were mostly empties, which, in accordance with the negligence characteristic of the family, had never been returned.
Renny’s red-brown eyes roved speculatively over the shelves. A cobweb, hanging from a rafter, had been swept off by his head, and was now draped over one ear. He whistled through his teeth with the sweet concentration of an ostler grooming a horse.