Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
He left the door open behind him and all that he said was audible in the dining room.
“Hello! Yes—it’s Whiteoak speaking… Certainly I wanted to see the mare. You were to let me know… I got no message… No—not a word… And Collins bought her? It’s a damned shame!… Why didn’t you call again?… My wife! She gave me no message… yes, I suppose—thinking about a
new dress… yes, women all alike… yes, I’ll give her your reproaches… yes, I’ll tell her you said she was a naughty girl—ha! ha! Oh no, she’d not be annoyed…”
He came back to the table grinning, but the grin faded when he saw his wife’s expression.
“No wonder,” exclaimed Pheasant, “that Alayne looks mortified. Playful messages from that old Crowdy! I wonder at his cheek.”
Renny gave a deprecating glance at Alayne from under the thick black lashes that lent his looks an added charm for women. “Crowdy is a decent head and Alayne has no reason for feeling hurt,” he said. “It is I who ought to feel hurt at not getting his message. It was very important that I should see that mare.”
Alayne made no answer. She was in a mood of helpless childlike anger against him. Hot tears were behind her eyes and a cold smile on her lips. But why was she angry? She scarcely knew. Perhaps it was just because she loved him so fiercely, and fierce love was against her nature and hurt her. Perhaps it was partly because all he did was so important to her that she saw his faults under her magnifying absorption in him. It was possible that she had a perverse pleasure in being hurt by him. But her unhappiness of the moment was real. She excused herself from the table, after a stiff apology for her forgetfulness, and went upstairs to relieve the nursemaid who was looking after her child.
As she entered the shabby attic room which they had turned into a day nursery she noticed how hot it was up there under the sloping roof, and the thought crossed her mind, as it had often before, that if the family were not so large she might have arranged a beautiful modern nursery next her own room. She despised Alma Patch, the young girl
who came in by the day to help with the children. She disliked her ill-kept hair and nails, her wet underlip, her timid whispering voice, and she allowed her to have as little to do with her child as possible. It was nervous, highly strung. She had its crib in her bedroom and devoted the greater part of the day to its care.
Pheasant’s younger son, named Finch, but called Nooky, was still sitting in his high chair emptying the last drops from his mug of milk. He was two years old, a delicate, shy child, with sleek fair hair and hazel eyes. He was very fond of Alayne, and she often wished that her own child would show so much affection for her.
That child came toward her now with the triumphant walk she had just acquired, her dense, dark-red hair on end, her small being overflowing with vitality. She was not a pretty child, for she had too large a nose for her infant face, and the expression of her mouth showed little of the appealing softness of eighteen months. She looked at Alayne out of Renny’s eyes, and in some strange way that intense gaze was a barrier between them. For in the babe it was feminine and antagonistic.
She lifted up the child and kissed it. It grasped her neck fiercely, pressed its knees spasmodically against her stomach and rubbed its satin cheek against hers.
“Gently, Baby,” she begged. “You
must
not be so rough!”
“Me, too! Me, too!” cried the little boy.
She bent over and kissed the top of the silky head. Before she could prevent it the baby had grasped a handful of his hair and pulled it vigorously. He broke into loud wails, his mug was knocked to the floor and broken.
Alayne set down the baby, forcing back a desire to shake her, and exclaimed:
“Adeline, you
must
be more gentle! See how you have hurt dear little Nooky!”
Alma Patch, picking up bits of broken china, said:
“She’s after him all the time, ma’am. She takes his own playthings off him and, if he don’t give them up quick enough to please her, she pulls his hair. It’s really awful to see her sometimes.”
Little Adeline was angry at being put down. With head and heels on the floor, she arched her plump diaphragm and rent the air with her shrieks. Alayne picked her up and carried her swiftly down the stairs and into her own bedroom. Again she sat her down, regarding her with an expression more suspicious than maternal. Would she hurl herself on the floor again? And, if she did, would it be better to go out of the room and leave her to her rage, or stay and try to control her?
Adeline did not throw herself down, however. She stood, with chest expanded, screaming, and hitting savagely at her mother when she laid a restraining hand on her. Alayne was almost frightened at the anger which her own child had the power of rousing in her. She abhorred the cruel desire to hurt which she felt battling within her. Yet to see her child suffer would have been terrible to her.
Adeline held her breath for a more sustained effort and in the interval Alayne heard Nooky still wailing above. Children—how she once had idealised them!
She heard Renny’s step in the passage. Adeline heard it too, and the scream she had been preparing issued from her scarlet lips in a gurgle of laughter. She ran to the door and rattled the knob. Alayne, fearful that the opening door might strike her, swept her up and was rewarded by kicks and writhings.
They faced Renny as he came in, mother and daughter, with no trait, mental or physical, in common, antagonistic, yet loving each other and him.
He took the child from Alayne’s arms, tossed her up and kissed her. There had been no tears in her eyes. Now they shone like stars. Her exertions had flooded the cream of her cheeks with a delicious pink. Renny regarded her with pride.
“Wouldn’t Gran have gloried in her?” he demanded.
Alayne nodded. She was too disturbed by the fracas for speech.
“She’s a wonder,” he continued, “a wonder, and a peach of peaches. I wish Gran could see her! She’d appreciate her. She’s in a class by herself—the prize filly,—aren’t you, my pet?”
The object of his ecstasies well knew that she was being praised. She preened herself, drew in the corners of her mouth, and looked at him out of the sides of her dark eyes.
Then he drew her close and, planting his mouth on hers, devoured her with kisses… Alayne stood looking at them, remembering how she had wished for a child, had felt that, with her child in his arms, the bond between him and Wakefield, which seemed to her neurotic, would be naturally loosened. This had not been the case. Renny’s heart had only expanded to make room for the new love. And his demonstrations of love for the small Adeline were too extravagant, too reminiscent of his grandmother, to please her. How could she properly train her child with Renny’s laughter, Renny’s scowl, or his boisterous praise, always intervening at the wrong time? Even now Adeline showed plainly that her mother’s opinion was of little value to her as compared with her father’s.
She laid herself out to please him, changing her expression from that of a small fury to one befitting a seraph, at his
approach. She would show off her tricks before him like an actress. She delighted in pulling the ears and tails of the dogs but, at the sound of his step, she would stroke and blandish them. All the family (except Wakefield, who was jealous of her) spoiled her. “How she favours dear Mamma!” “She is a perfect Court!” “Do not cross her! Her high spirit should not be broken!” Or “She’s the spit of dear old Gran.” These were the exclamations Alayne was constantly hearing. She was beginning to despair of ever training her as she should be trained.
“She has been behaving very badly,” she said. “Pulling Nooky’s hair for nothing at all.”
He kissed her again. “She loves the feel of hair in her hands. She doesn’t realise that it hurts. Pull your Daddy’s then! He has a tough scalp.”
The baby filled her hands with his strong red hair and pulled until she drew herself upright in his arms.
Suddenly he set her on her feet. “I must be off,” he said.
After a moment of astonishment she broke into screams and beat her little hands in anger on the door he had shut behind him.
T
HE
F
ELLING
T
HE INTERVIEW
between the elder Whiteoaks, Renny, and the Minister of Highways had been partially successful. The road in front of Jalna was to be widened entirely on the opposite side. The trees that shielded the old house from the gaze of the public were to be spared. But the beauty of the road would soon be a thing of the past, living only in the memory of those who, like the Whiteoaks, had grown up beside it.
The noble oaks, serene in their strength, proud, sound as saplings, had completed the green galaxy of their summer foliage before the first blow from the axe bruised their bark. They formed an arch above the white road, stretching out their leaves like hands, to touch those opposite. The strong sun threw the mantle of their shadows on the worn paths beneath. Squirrels, chipmunks, blackbirds, and orioles flashed in and out of their sheltering boughs. Bright drops of resin oozed from them in their exuberance.
The day on which the first one was felled was a day of mourning at Jalna. The uncles were sunk in melancholy, but Augusta, leaning on Pheasant’s arm, walked down the road
as far as the bend to look at their unbroken ranks for the last time. It was a lovely day and the path was smooth with pine needles. Pheasant’s short brown hair blew in the breeze. She pressed Augusta’s arm against her side in a comforting way, as they passed under the trees. They might have been entering a chamber of death.
“To think,” Augusta exclaimed, “that there are people so insensate as to cut these down!”
“It is a blessing,” said Pheasant, “that Gran did not live to see this.”
“She would never have allowed it!” declared Augusta. “And I will do these people the credit of thinking that they would never have suggested it in her lifetime. They look on my brothers as younger and less firmly attached to tradition.”
“Yes, of course. We’re none of us nearly so old as Gran.”
Augusta looked down into the small oval face with its pencilled brows.
“You are very young,” she said. “I hope that you are happy with Piers.”
“Oh yes! And with dear little Mooey and Nooky. I really think I am a happier woman than Alayne. We’ve both been through a good deal.”
“You have,” agreed Augusta deeply. “It was so different with me in my married life, which was complete bliss.”
“Married life like that must be wonderful.” Pheasant remembered the photographs of Uncle Edwin, looking out of pale eyes between thin whiskers.
“Wonderful… He has been in his grave for many years.”
“Shall we turn back, Auntie? It will be quite a long walk for you.”
Walking back they forgot the trees in their own thoughts. Scenes from Augusta’s childhood and girlhood
came back to her with remarkable clearness, and Augusta’s question as to her happiness turned Pheasant’s thoughts back to her affair with Piers’s brother Eden. That had almost wrecked her life with Piers. Seven years ago… she had been only eighteen then… and it was more than four years since Eden had gone off with Minny Ware! He had not been home since. His name was not mentioned—in front of her, at any rate—but she knew that Renny heard from him occasionally, for she had seen letters addressed in his hand. She wondered if Alayne often thought of her married life with him, and if he had become shadowy, like a figure in a dream, to Alayne, as he had to her. She could not clearly recall his features, but his smile—that veiled, half-sad smile—and the touch of his hands—the memory of them was branded on her soul… She shivered as she walked under the trees. Never, never did she want to see him again! She would be glad if she could hear that he had died in foreign parts. The hands of her spirit stretched out towards Piers and her children. She quickened her steps to return to them… Oh, perhaps it had been well that this nest which she and Piers had built had been almost broken, for she would ever fly back to it with the greater ardour…
As the trees were felled and lay with shattered limbs across the path, Renny, of all the family, could not bear to be long away from the scene of destruction. He would tear by the workmen in his dilapidated old car at a rate so furious that they would have to leap aside to save their lives. Sometimes he would stop the car beside them and point out to them how they were ruining the beauty of the road. They were Italians and, even if they did not understand half of what he said, they understood his gestures and his love of the beautiful trees. He managed to waste a good deal of their time for them, so that their foreman hated the sight of him.
As the devastation progressed he took to visiting the scene on horseback so that he might draw closer to the men and thread his way among the fallen trees. It was a spirited beast he was exercising, and more than once a panic was caused by its rearing and plunging when a tree fell. He knew that the foreman hated him, so he kept as near to him as possible, shouting occasionally:
“Good for you! Keep them at it! You’ll soon have the place looking like hell!”
The farmer from whom Clara Lebraux rented her fox farm had been one of the petitioners for widening the road. When Renny met him he called to him:
“You may thank God that I have good control of myself!”
But when the old trees were laid flat and the road stretched bare and hideous, he suddenly ceased to worry about it. Such things would happen, and he was thankful that the authorities had been persuaded to spare his own oaks. He drove his car past the gang of workmen without looking to right or left.
He found his gate shut and got out of the car to open it. As he turned, the comforting feel of it under his hand, he looked, with a sense of bewilderment, along the disfigured road. After this he would take the back road whenever it was possible. He was an alien on this.
He saw a man walking slowly along the path who seemed strangely familiar. Surely it was someone he knew very well. He must have passed him without noticing him. He narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the features. His heart gave a quick throb of mingled pleasure and pain as he recognised Eden. Pleasure at seeing him again after nearly five years, pain at his changed looks. He had always been slender, but now he was terribly thin. His cheeks were hollow and
there was a feverish light in his eyes. He hurried forward at the sight of Renny waiting by the gate.