Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“And so do I,” said Ernest. “She is so sensible and so thoughtful for one’s comfort!”
Nicholas said—“I suppose Renny is at the fox farm.” He gave a humorous glance at his brother.
“I suppose so. That friendship persists, though Alayne shows so plainly that she dislikes Mrs. Lebraux.”
“I dislike her too,” declared Augusta. “I disliked her from the first moment I saw her. She struck me as unfeminine.”
“Perhaps that is what attracts Renny,” said Nicholas.
“Never! An excessively masculine man like Renny cares only for the truly feminine in woman. Look at Alayne. She is all feminine.”
“I spoke of attraction, not love,” returned Nicholas testily.
“He is very fond of the child—Pauline—” put in Ernest, “and she has clung to him since her father’s death.”
“Well,” growled his brother, “here comes Redhead himself. Let us ask him what is in his heart.”
Renny, followed by Wakefield and the terrier, was striding along the drive, his every movement vibrant with temper. As soon as he was within speaking distance he said loudly:
“I suppose you have all heard of it!”
The three old people looked at him startled, and, even in his anger, he noticed the family resemblance among them, a resemblance deeper than and beyond feature and colouring. They answered simultaneously:
“Heard of what?”
“Why, the trees! The fool Council, or Public Works or something, is out to butcher them! I thought everyone but me knew about it.”
Augusta looked warningly at him. This excitement was not good for Ernest. He gave no heed to the look but went on, in his rather metallic voice:
“They’re widening the road and they propose to take a few feet off Jalna—you know what that would mean—the oaks—and they’re straightening the
dangerous curve
—my God, I’d put a curve on their sterns if I had them here!”
Alayne emerged from the house just as he shouted these words. A shadow darkened her eyes, her lips tightened. He
was in a mood she hated, one of noisy rage. That had been bad enough in his grandmother, an old woman of violent temper, but in a man, and that man her husband… For the hundredth time since their marriage she compared him unfavourably with her father. She realised that it was stupid of her to compare them, for one had been a gentle New England professor and the other was a horse-breeder—a country gentleman—but still a breeder of horses, a companion of grooms and horsy, rough-talking men. She had loved and revered her father, who would have referred to Renny’s remark as “indelicate.” She loved Renny with all the passion that was in her but she moved toward him with disapproval hardening her face. He saw it and his eyes, which had eagerly sought hers, turned quickly away. He callously repeated what he would like to do to the Council.
“But they dare not touch
our
trees,” said Augusta, on a deep note.
“Why—why—” stammered Ernest, “it would be too horrible. Why—they must be mad!”
“It would be the last straw,” muttered Nicholas heavily. “I shall interview the Minister myself.”
“We’ll all go,” said Renny. “You, too, Auntie! You ought to have a say in it. We’ll all go.” He looked proudly at his elders, confident of the weight of their personalities. He was suddenly cheerful and gave a laugh. He ran his fingers through the hair on the top of his head, making it rise in a crest.
“I pity them if they interfere with us,” he said confidently.
His uncles and aunt began a vigorous discussion of the case. They recalled former instances, some of them sixty years ago, when attempts had been made to impose the will
of the community on the Whiteoaks, always without success. Yet no family in the neighbourhood, probably not one in the Province, was held in such affectionate regard.
This discussion inflamed their pride so that they appeared younger. Nicholas heaved himself out of his chair and strode up and down before the house, now and again casting enquiring looks at it, as though seeking its commendation. He flung out his gouty leg with scarcely an effort.
Ernest stretched himself in his chair, displaying his full length. He folded his arms and stared truculently up at the others, with nostrils dilated. “Thank heaven,” he said, “that I am sufficiently recovered to go with you. We’ll give these coarse-grained vandals something to think about.”
More than ever Augusta looked affronted. She drew in her chin, on which a few grey hairs curled, her eyes brightening with emotion. “Mamma and Papa,” she said, “walked under those trees, a stately young couple, when I was a babe in arms. It was on that very curve that their carriage collided with old Mr. Pink’s and he had a thigh bone fractured.”
“I should think,” said Alayne, who had come down the steps, “that that proves the curve to be dangerous.”
“Not at all,” returned Augusta. “Mr. Pink was a man of the poorest judgment. He could not dance a quadrille without collisions.”
“As an infant,” said Wakefield sententiously, “I was wheeled in my baby carriage around that curve, under those oaks. My first feeble speculations were concerned with their girth. My earliest—”
A look from Renny cut him short.
“Even Wakefield,” remarked Augusta, “is deeply affected.”
“Yes,” agreed Ernest, “and no wonder, for the day he was born and his mother lay dying, a gale tore one of the finest up by the roots and laid it across the road.”
“Well,” said Renny, “we’ll not worry any more about the trees. We will go to headquarters and put stop to it.”
The dinner-gong sounded from within. Wakefield hastened to help Ernest to rise. Nicholas took his sister by the arm and Renny and Alayne followed last. She took a pinch of his sleeve in her fingers and delayed him in the hall. She looked up into his face half provocatively, half accusingly.
“You have not kissed me today.”
“I have not seen you.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Not mine. I knew that the kid had disturbed you last night, so I kept away this morning. Right after breakfast I had business at the stables.”
“That was something new, wasn’t it?”
He was quick to notice the sarcasm in her voice and to take offence where his horses were concerned. He answered hotly:
“I should like to know where we should be if it weren’t for the horses!”
“In pocket, I sometimes think,” she answered.
“Oh, well, I can’t expect any sympathy from you.” He jerked himself away and moved toward the door of the dining room. From there came the appetising smell of chicken pot pie, and the animated mingling of voices.
She caught his arm and held it. “Renny! You’re unjust, and you know it. I do sympathise in everything you do. But I think it hard that I should have to ask for kisses.”
He turned to her and gave her a kiss that had no more tenderness in it than a bite. She pushed him toward the dining
room with a little laugh. “Please go and have your dinner. Don’t think about me.” Her cheeks were flushed angrily.
He drew out her chair, pushed it under her with more force than politeness, then took his place at the head of the table. Wragge regarded them out of his shrewd grey face with pessimistic understanding. Alayne resented his watchful attitude, resented still more his leaning over Renny and whispering something in a tone of commiseration. She caught the words “grand old trees” and “knew as ‘ow upset you’d be, sir.”
Renny was serving the stewed chicken and dumplings with speed and discrimination. Breast and a wing for each of the women, breast alone for Ernest, breast and the little oyster-shaped pieces from the back for Wakefield, the upper part of a leg to Nicholas, who preferred dark meat, a drumstick to his small nephew, Maurice, and what was left to Piers and himself, well flanked by dumplings. Every eye was on him. If he had faltered in his serving of the dinner, his hard-won prestige would have suffered, the solidarity of table tradition been shattered.
On one side of the table Augusta sat between her two brothers. On the other Piers, his wife, Pheasant, and Wakefield. Between Piers and Renny, six-years-old Maurice industriously scooped up his gravy with a spoon.
Piers gave Renny curious side glances out of his full blue eyes. He wondered where his feelings of outrage for the trees would carry him; how far he would go if his efforts to bring the authorities to his way of thinking were futile. He himself was sorry about the trees, about the picturesque curve in the road, but—one must move with the times, and the times moved with motor cars. He asked casually:
“What shall you do if—well, if they won’t listen to reason?”
Renny thrust a piece of hot dumpling into his mouth and stared at Piers. Alayne took the opportunity to speak. She said in a tone of restrained calm, which was obviously intended to be an example to her husband:
“What could he do, Piers, but submit as any gentleman must?”
Piers grunted, without taking his eyes from Renny’s face.
Wragge gave a sneering grin which he hid behind his sallow fingers and a cough.
Renny bolted the dumpling.
“Do”—he repeated—“do—why, I will take my gun down to the road and put a shot into the first man who lays an axe to one of my trees!”
Such an abrupt silence—made more intense by the suspension of even mastication—followed this outburst, that little Maurice laid down his spoon and looked from face to face, astonished.
Then Nicholas broke into subterranean laughter, followed by a high-pitched giggle from Pheasant. Ernest turned deep pink.
“That’s the way to talk,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed Piers, “if he wants to get into trouble.”
“Trouble nothing,” retorted Nicholas. “We’ll show them from the start that we’ll not be browbeaten. My God, when I think of our trees…”
Augusta added:
“And the road that was once absolutely ours…”
“And it,” said Ernest, “disfigured by bungalows.”
“And now the kink taken out of it,” put in Wakefield.
Augusta drew a deep sigh. “Things are changing both here and in England.” She looked about the table as she said this as though expecting astonishment at her announcement.
“And for the worse, too,” came from young Pheasant.
“They can change as fast as they like,” said Renny, “if they’ll just let me alone.”
Rags spoke in a sentimental tone from the doorway.
“Ah, I expect I’d see great chynges in old London if I was to go back naow!”
Lady Buckley looked through him. Alayne looked down her nose. But Renny ejaculated warmly:
“I’ll bet you would, Rags! We must go over some time before long.” He had finished his chicken and now set his plate, swimming with gravy and scraps, on the floor in front of Piers’s terrier.
Piers, who had not seen her since her bath, when she had left his hands white as the snow, gazed down at her with a scowl.
“Where has she been?” he demanded.
“Taking a walk with me.”
“You might have kept her out of burrows. I’m taking her into town this afternoon to show her to a man who is interested in her next litter.” He bent down to take the plate from her. “She’s not allowed to eat table scraps.”
Renny, who always gave his dogs titbits from his plate, also bent and caught Piers’s wrist and held it. “Let her alone,” he said. “She looks half starved.”
“That’s what I say!” cried Pheasant. “She never has enough to eat.”
“What do you know about it?” growled Piers, still trying to remove the plate while Renny still held his wrist.
“I know what it is to have young,” she declared.
There was a laugh at Piers’s expense. He sat up, red-faced. The tablecloth had been pulled askew between the brothers, and Mooey’s mug of milk was overturned. The terrier,
who had been fearful of losing her dinner, had in great haste licked the plate lean and now turned her attention to the milk that dribbled like manna from above.
“Look what you’ve done, you young idiot!” said Piers to his son.
“You did it yourself,” returned Renny, straightening the cloth.
Alayne looked apologetically at Augusta, who suddenly exclaimed:
“Enough! Enough! You are making the child unruly.”
“What I want to know,” interrupted Ernest, “is how soon we can go to the office of this official. I must conserve my energy.”
“Directly the meal is over,” said Renny, attacking the black currant roly-poly that Wragge had placed in front of him.
Ernest eyed it longingly.
“Uncle Ernie?”
“Perhaps I had better not.”
“Do you good.”
“A small helping then.”
Circular pieces of the suet pudding oozing purplish black jam hastened after each other down the board.
“Mooey, you tripe, we’ve come to you! Much or little?”
“Much!” shouted Mooey, joggling in his chair.
“Strange how unruly he grows,” said Augusta.
Piers put his hand on the child’s head and pressed it down. He said:
“It would be better to find out if the Minister is in town before you go. You should make an appointment.”
Nicholas answered—“No, no. He might try to get out of seeing us. We’ll risk not finding him at home. Better strike while the iron is hot.”
Piers shrugged. “You’ll find it a stifling drive at this hour.”
“We shall take the new car,” said Renny.
It was still called the new car though it had been bought three years before. Piers gave an astonished look at Renny, who had always refused to use it.
“Why, look here,” he said, “I’m taking it myself this afternoon. I’m sorry”—but, after all, it was his car.
“You may take the old one,” said his senior pleasantly.
“Certainly,” agreed Nicholas. “We must not go in looking shabby. It is just possible that the man may not have heard of us. We must appear as people of substance.”
“Not heard of us!” exclaimed his sister.
“Well”—Nicholas’s voice was sombre—“you never know who these fellows are.”
Ernest interjected—“Yes, we must appear as people of substance. I shall wear my silk hat, I think.”
“For God’s sake…” mumbled Piers.
The telephone rang loudly in the sitting room. It had been installed at the time of Ernest’s illness. Its most frequent use since had been for conversations between Renny and his horsy friends. He sprang up now to go to it, leaving his pudding. One of his Clumber spaniels came sedately from under his chair and laid its muzzle on the seat as though to guard it for him.