Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
Piers said—“It would be a good idea, Wake, if you would leave your wages with me and I would save them for you. You’re not used to handling much money, you know, and I have an idea that you’re frittering it away.”
“No, I’m not,” said Wakefield earnestly. “I pinch every penny before I spend it, I assure you.”
Young liar, thought Piers, but he returned to his own barrel.
After a little he asked carelessly—“Do you often see Renny at the fox farm?”
“Very seldom. I don’t think he goes there often.”
“Well, it’s a good thing if he doesn’t. There was gossip about him and Mrs. Lebraux.”
“What would the gossips do without us?”
“Renny doesn’t like being gossiped about, though.”
Finch strolled up to them from the direction of the house. He had been practising for three hours and felt stiff and cold. These fellows out in the sun, he thought, what a pleasant time they had! It was hard luck when one’s work kept one
cooped up indoors. Yet, it was the work he loved—exacting, even cruel, though it might be, he would have no other. He realised, as his eyes took in the scene before him, so full of life and colour, as his nostrils drank the pungent smell of the apples, that he wanted all things from life—music, study, travel, a simple muscular outdoor life, women, the bondage of love, and complete freedom. He threw back his head and drew in the morning air in a great gulp.
Piers ceased his loud hammering on a barrel and threw Finch a look. “The next movement,” he said, “is
allegro,
developing into
minuetto.”
“Don’t be an ass!”
“I’ll try not to be,” returned Piers good-humouredly, “but you do give one a turn, the way you look.”
“He feels proud,” said Wakefield, “and no wonder. I should, myself, if I were going off on a tour.”
Finch, to cover his embarrassment, caught hold of Wakefield and tried to bend him across a barrel. But he misjudged his man. Wakefield not only fought free but it seemed possible that he might succeed in his struggle to place Finch himself in the ignominious position.
“Good boy! Good boy!” encouraged Piers. “Hook your arm round his neck!”
Just then Wright came running up. “The horses that were in the field next Mr. Vaughan’s have broken into his place,” he announced. “Shall I take men off their work to fetch ‘em, sir? Or try to round ’em up myself?”
“My God!” exclaimed Piers in a rage, hurling his hammer to the ground. “Will Maurice never mend his fences?” He said to Wright—“I’ll help you… And, Wake, you go on with this work. I’ll probably not be long… Come along, Finch—you may as well make yourself useful.”
It was a job after Finch’s heart. Running helter-skelter over the fields in the morning air, chasing wild horses, flinging up his arms and shouting. He was soon in advance of the other two.
Wakefield, left to himself, picked up an apple, polished it on his sleeve, and, sitting down on a barrel, began to eat with great relish. From a pocket he took a rather shabby piece of toffee and ate it, bite about, with the apple. He felt tired from wrestling and he was hungry.
He kicked his heel against the side of the barrel and thought of the scores of sound and beautiful apples inside. Life was very pleasant.
Then his thoughts, as their habit had become, turned to Pauline. He pictured her coming toward him through the pine wood, along the path that bordered the fields, and through the orchard to his side. She had done this once or twice before she went on to the house on a message. Renny and Piers were leaving in a few days for their annual duck-shooting, and he would persuade her to come and stay with him while he worked as he had seen Pheasant stay beside Piers. He lost himself in dreams of the time when they would no longer be separated. He considered, with a little anxiety, the possibility of making room for her in the house. Either they, as a married couple, would have to take the spare room, now occupied by Aunt Augusta, or Renny would have to sleep with his own wife, as indeed he should, and leave his place vacant for Pauline. There was a third alternative, and in some ways it seemed to him the most appropriate. It was that he and Pauline should occupy his grandmother’s room, sleep in the old painted bed, with Boney perching on its head. But any of these arrangements would, of course, be temporary. In time, and not too long a time, he would build Pauline a house
for herself… Renny would give him the land—with birch trees standing about.
He had smoked a couple of cigarettes and considerable time had passed before he decided to begin work again. He had had a hard day the day before and he had been up since six, so he felt that a respite was due him. He went into the apple-house and began to carry out crates for the filling of a particularly nice order Piers had got that morning. Piers was doing well with the orchards this fall. That last cheque from Montreal had pleased him mightily. As Wakefield carried out the last of the crates he noticed Piers’s coat hanging on the door of the apple-house, and he wondered if Piers were so careless as to leave his coat there with his pocketbook in it. It had been in it when they had begun work that morning, for Piers had laughingly drawn his attention to its bulk and had said—“That will soon be flattened out when I have paid you and the other blighters who pretend to work for me.”
Wakefield regarded the coat dreamily, then, as it seemed to him, without volition on his part, he put out his hand and turned the coat inside out. Yes, there was the edge of the pocketbook projecting above the worn lining of the pocket! Well, he might as well see how much old Piers had in it. No harm in that.
He took it hesitatingly from the pocket and opened it. There were what seemed to Wakefield a great many banknotes in it. Ten-dollar bills laid flat one upon another. No fives—no twenties—just tens and tens and tens. No wonder it had looked bulky! Nice clean notes they were, too, fresh from the bank, clean, crisp, powerful.
Then between him and the pocketbook he saw Pauline’s hand, and the third finger of her left hand. He saw on it a half-hoop of pearls and diamonds, such as his heart was set
on buying for her. Never till that ring was on her finger would she be properly bound to him. One of these notes, two of them, even three of them, would scarcely be missed. In fact they were really due him, considering the way he worked. And it was so terribly difficult for him to save money. A real start like this would give him courage.
He fluttered the notes under his thumb. Would he? No, no! Would he? Yes—something drove him to it. He grew hot all over. His skin pricked. He shut the pocketbook with a snap—opened it again and looked straight into Piers’s face as he advanced toward the door of the apple-house!
In a frenzy of self-preservation Wakefield slammed the door in his brother’s face, hurled the pocketbook into the darkest corner of the apple-house and fled through the door at the other end, slamming it also behind him. By this time he heard Piers’s feet spurning the cement within. Outside he looked wildly about, hoping Renny might be near to protect him, but no one was about except old Noah Binns, wheeling a barrow of decaying apples in the direction of the piggery.
Wakefield shot past him like an arrow. Without looking back he kept toward the house.
Noah set down the barrow, rubbed his hands in glee, and cried:
“He’s right after ye, sure enough!” and added to himself—“Dang both on ’em!”
Wakefield’s feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, yet, nearer and nearer, he could hear Piers’s in pursuit. He ran behind a small woodhouse and from that dodged into the shelter of a battalion of sheets waving on the line. Terror-stricken, he glanced over his shoulder and saw Piers’s face fiery red bearing down upon him.
He could not reach the house. Piers would be able to head him off and perhaps drag him back into the woodshed. But, nearer than the house, was the old carriage house where the carriage in which his grandmother had always driven to church still stood. If only he could gain it and lock the door! But, when he got to it, the door was shut. A ladder stood against the wall and, without further consideration, he dashed up it and ran across the roof.
There was a skylight in the carriage house and he noticed that it was open. He had a mind to fling himself into it, for a broken neck seemed preferable to being caught by Piers. But, after one glance at the rearing shafts of the carriage below and its glass lamps, he flew on and was just about to jump off the roof to the grass on the other side, when he heard Piers’s footsteps springing from the top of the ladder. He felt paralysed by terror. He could not force his legs to move in any direction. Then he heard a slithering sound, a bump, a groan, and looked round to see Piers’s muscular hands showing above the edge of the skylight.
A sweet feeling of relief welled up in him. It seemed too good to be true. His lungs, which had been cramped with pain, expanded. He crept on tiptoe to the skylight and looked into the aperture.
Piers was clinging desperately to the edge, his legs dangling in space, and underneath him the lamps, the dashboard, and the rearing shafts of the old carriage.
Wakefield tiptoed to the top of the ladder and placed his foot on the nearest rung. He would send help back to Piers. Rather an heroic thing to do, for to leave him to die would be to save himself.
However, Piers heard him and shouted:
“Are you going to leave me here, you filthy young thief?”
Wakefield stood hesitant at the top of the ladder, looking at the beautiful world about him to which he had been so miraculously restored.
“Wake!” came Piers’s voice, with a note of anguish in it, “you little swine, come here!”
Wakefield left the ladder and came slowly toward the skylight. “Were you wanting me?” he asked.
“Of course I want you! How long do you think I can hang here without falling?”
“Well, I was going for help.”
“Don’t leave me!” shouted Piers. “My arms are almost broken! Come and help me out!”
Wakefield approached him gingerly. He saw that Piers was in a bad way, that the projection offered him the slenderest hold, that, if he left him, he would probably go down to his death on the wheels of Gran’s chariot. He squatted beside the skylight and placed his hands under Piers’s armpits.
Piers uttered a grunt of relief. “Lift!” he ejaculated.
Wakefield heaved at him without avail.
“Lift, can’t you! Have you no more strength than a kitten?”
“Are you under the impression that you have no more weight than one?” asked Wakefield severely.
“Shout for help, then!”
But their voices had already attracted Finch, who was returning to the house.
“Anything wrong?” he called from the bottom of the ladder.
“Come quick!” cried Wakefield, “and help me to save Piers!”
Finch’s long face appeared so speedily that he seemed to have ascended the ladder in one bound.
“Thank God!” groaned Piers, as he felt the bony arms grip him.
“Now then,” gasped Finch, “both at once! Heave…”
Up he came, and the three lay in a dishevelled heap on the roof.
Finch was the first to sit up and look at the faces of the other two. He began to laugh hysterically.
“You wouldn’t laugh,” said Piers, nursing his arm, “if you were in my place.”
“Or mine,” chimed in Wakefield.
Piers growled—“I’ve not finished with you.”
“What’s it all about?” asked Finch.
“I’ll not tell you. It’s a disgrace to the family. One thing I will say, and that is that this young man is going to land in gaol some day.”
Wakefield rose. He said, with an attempt at airiness:
“Well, I’m off!”
“No, you’re not,” returned Piers, catching him by the leg. Wakefield struggled.
“Look out!” shouted Finch. “You’ll be off the roof in another minute!” He moved to a safe distance from them.
“If I hadn’t hurt my arm,” said Piers, “he’d get the best hiding of his life!” He jerked Wakefield’s leg from under him and he fell with a crash.
“Be careful what you do!” shouted the boy. “Or I’ll set fire to your old barn.”
Piers gave Finch a horrified look across the prostrate body.
“He’s a downright criminal,” he said. “I always felt that he had it in him.”
“He doesn’t mean it,” said Finch, feeling sorry for Wakefield.
“Doesn’t he? Well, now, I’ll tell you what I caught him doing!”
The culprit threw an arm across his eyes and lay still.
“I caught him in the act,” went on Piers slowly, “of stealing money out of my pocketbook.”
“You did! Well—he’s a nice one.”
A thought struck Piers and he exclaimed—“What did you do with the pocketbook?”
“It’s in the apple-house,” muttered Wakefield. “And all I was doing was looking to see what you had… You’re always crying poverty.”
“Young liar! You were stealing.”
“Well, after all,” said Finch, “he kept you from falling through the skylight.”
Wakefield began to cry. “I saved his life,” he sobbed, “and this is the thanks I get.”
“What rot!” retorted Piers. “I shouldn’t have been much hurt.”
Finch was suddenly on Wakefield’s side.
“You’d have broken your leg, at the least,” he said. “Come along, kid. We’ll go and find the pocketbook. You’d better put some liniment on that arm, Piers.”
With one accord they gathered themselves up and descended the ladder.
But Wakefield spent the weekend at Meggie’s.
T
HE
T
ENTH
T
HURSDAY
A
CCEPTANCE OF LIFE
, and of himself as a frail vessel tossed on its surface, came to Eden on these sharp November mornings while he was in the stable. The mist that always seemed to linger about Vaughanlands, for it lay in a hollow, was chill and penetrating as he crossed the yard, making him shiver, but in the stable there was a comforting animal warmth, there was calm breathing from the massive, barrel-like bodies, a glad glow in the great eyes of the beasts. They reached eagerly toward the hay with which he filled their mangers, plunged their lips into the ice-cold water he offered in the bucket, and made way with decent civility when he cleaned their stalls.