Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
He thought of Meg, his sister, and what a stiff time she and her husband had been up against. They had taken in paying guests this spring and did not seem to mind it. Though it went against his grain to think of a Whiteoak doing such a thing and he believed it was enough to make his grandmother turn over in her grave.
He thought of his wife and his little daughter, but they had barely entered into his mind, taken privileged possession of it, when the hoot of a motor horn made him look to his dogs. His brother Piers was in the car. He stopped it and said:
“Hello! Want a lift?”
Piers’s wire-haired terrier Biddy was on the seat with him. Beside herself with excitement at seeing the spaniels, who were old friends, and the Cairn, of whom she roundly disapproved, she leant over the seat and literally screamed as Renny and his dogs established themselves in the back of the car. Merlin raised his muzzle and gave a troubled bark.
Piers asked, over his shoulder — “Where do you want to go?”
“Where are you going?”
“Home. Then to the farm. I must see what the men are doing in the back fields. I’ve just sold those Jersey calves to Crockford.”
“Good. Did he pay you?”
Piers grunted and took some notes from his pocket. He handed them over his shoulder to his brother. Renny pocketed them with satisfaction. Then, remembering that he owed Piers for hay and oats, he assumed a jocular air and began to tease Biddy, throwing her almost into hysteria. The car started with a jerk.
Though there was a considerable stretch of years between the brothers it appeared less than it was, for Piers, sitting solidly at the wheel, had a look of self-confident maturity, while Renny’s vivid glance, his quick, wary movements, combined with his leanness, made him appear much younger than his years. Yet, in spite of Piers’s sanguine masculinity, an observer would have felt that Renny, with his bony features, his sculptured head, and arrogant mouth, was the more formidable of the two.
It was but a short distance to Piers’s house, set in an old-fashioned garden just coming into flower. The rough-cast walls had taken on a warm tone in the sunlight and all the windows were open. At one of them, holding her year-old baby, stood Piers’s wife, Pheasant. She took the child’s tiny hand in hers and waved it at the two men. She put on a small voice and called:
“Hello, Daddy. Hello, Uncle Renny!”
Piers gave Renny a sidelong glance of pride. “Not a bad-looking pair, eh,” he muttered.
“Fine — both of them,” said Renny. He called out — “Hello, young Philip. I’ve a present for your mother. Come and see!”
“A present!” cried Pheasant. “There’s nothing so rare in these days. I’m mad to see it.”
“Don’t be excited,” said Renny, as she ran along the flagged walk and opened the gate. “It’s only sweets from The Daffodil.”
But Pheasant had expected nothing more important. She took the box in one hand while with the other she clutched her child to her.
“Oh, thanks! How perfectly lovely! Pauline is a marvel at making sweets.”
Piers asked — “How are they getting on with the tea shop?”
The line between Renny’s brows deepened. “Well, the season has just opened. It’s hard to say what it will be. Two people came while Wake and I were there.”
There was something self-conscious in the way he mentioned the fact that Wakefield had been with him when he visited The Daffodil. His thick bronze lashes flickered over his eyes. Pheasant thought — “If I were Alayne, I’d see through all this. But she doesn’t — she doesn’t! She’s never really understood him though she loves him terribly. I’m glad Piers isn’t so attractive to women. And, even at that, he is handsomer.” Her eyes flew to Piers’s face.
“Coming in?” she asked.
“No. I’ve work to do. Where is Mooey?”
“He has a headache, Piers. I think he concentrates too much at school. He’s
so
eager to learn!”
“Good Lord! Concentrates! An eight-year-old, at a little private day school!” His face darkened. “These Saturday headaches — they make me tired. What they mean is simply that he funks coming over to Jalna to ride. He funks it, just because he’s had a fall or two. And here I am with a fine pair of ponies to show which must have a child rider.”
Renny said — “Promise him a present if they win at the Show.”
“I’ll promise him a damned good hiding if he doesn’t toe the scratch. Where is he?”
“I sent him out for a walk. I thought it would do him good.”
Piers made a sound of disgust. “Upon my word, the only Whiteoak among my three is this one. No mistake about him.” He tickled the baby whose resemblance to himself was remarkable. “And, in our family, I am the only one who takes after our father, and he was the spit of his dad. It’s the authentic face for four generations straight.”
Renny looked critically from father to son, then, cocking an eyebrow, he said:
“One like Piers is enough, eh, Pheasant?”
“Well, I do think,” she returned, with her air of a sedate child, “that Piers might be more lenient with Mooey and Nook. It’s not their fault if they don’t take after him. Knowing what I do of horse breeding, I should say it is his own.”
Renny grinned derisively at Piers. “A dud sire and no mistake.”
Piers looked as nearly sheepish as was possible to him. He said gruffly — “Well, I can’t waste any more time,” and started the engine. The baby, at the same moment, tugged at the necklet of red beads that Pheasant was wearing and broke it. The beads flew in all directions.
“Oh, oh, my precious necklet!” cried Pheasant. She set her baby down and began a search for the beads. Suddenly Nook’s voice called from an upper window — “Mummie, he’s eating one!”
Pheasant snatched up the child, held him head downward and extracted the bead from his mouth, he immediately looking as though nothing had happened.
“A close shave!” ejaculated Renny.
But Piers had seen two heads at the window. His face flushed and he rapped out sharply:
“Mooey, come down here!” He stopped the engine.
“Now, Piers,” implored Pheasant.
He turned on her. “What did you mean by telling me he was out?”
“I thought he was. He must have just come back. Don’t be rough with him, please.”
Young Maurice now appeared in the doorway and came slowly toward them, followed by his shadow, little Nook. It was true that neither boy showed any resemblance to Piers. Nor did they particularly favour their mother, though both had her quality of elusiveness, the look of sensitive woodland creatures, defensive yet vulnerable. Mooey was too tall for his age, thin, and rather pale. His brown hair fell in thick locks on his forehead, giving him a gypsy air. He was physically timid yet spiritually he could show great fortitude for his years. Nook had a look of real fragility, an exquisite skin, sleek fair hair, and hazel eyes, one of which showed a slight cast.
Piers stared at his first-born.
“Well,” he said sarcastically, “I hope your headache is better.”
Mooey answered, not without dignity, “Yes, thank you, Daddy.”
“I hope you feel able to come to Jalna and help school the ponies.”
“Yes.” He stood hesitating as to whether he should get into the front seat with his father and Biddy or into the back with his uncle and the spaniels. Renny settled it by opening the door next him. “In you get,” he said, “mind you let me have a good account of your riding.”
Piers looked at his wristwatch and exclaimed at the hour. The car started with a jerk. Pheasant and Nook were left searching in the grass for red beads.
Renny, indicating the boxes of sweets, said, out of the side of his mouth — “Make a good showing with the ponies, Mooey, and I’ll leave one of these in the saddle-room for you, on the shelf below the ribbons.”
Mooey smiled soberly and nodded, then looked straight ahead of him at his father’s stalwart back.
Piers stopped the car at the gate of their sister’s low-set rambling house and Renny and his dogs alighted. The dogs were met by an Airedale who greeted them as friends. An elderly lady, sitting in a deck chair on the lawn, called out — “Good morning, Mr. Whiteoak! Won’t you come and talk to me?”
He gave her a somewhat surly nod and strode quickly toward the front door. Here he had to make way for an incredibly sallow man coming out. The man stared at him almost aggressively.
Followed by the dogs he went straight to his sister’s sitting room. He found her there alone.
The eldest of the family, she was now aged forty-nine, would be fifty before the year was out. Her complexion had the clear freshness of Piers’s, only paler, her grey-blue eyes had an expression of innocent candour, and her pouting pink lips were girlish in their stubborn sweetness. Only greying hair, her thick waist, and over-plump neck showed her years. Her voice was caressing when she greeted him. She put both short arms round his neck and drew his hard-bitten, high-coloured face down to hers.
“Dearest, dearest boy — I haven’t seen you for days and days! What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Who the devil are those people?” he growled against her cheek.
“My P.G.s! You’ve met the old lady before — Mrs. Binkley-Toogood. I hope you weren’t as rude to her as you were the last time. The yellow gentleman is a newcomer.”
He drew back and scowled at her. “Meggie, how can you take these people into your house?”
She folded her arms across her full bosom and said reproachfully — “What can I do? With Maurice’s stocks going down and down — with my child growing older? I tell you, Renny, these paying guests are our salvation. And such nice people, too. I quite enjoy having them. Mrs. Binkley-Toogood has travelled in the East and the gentleman you met in the doorway has had the most interesting diseases. It’s all very broadening. I do wish you and Alayne would try it at Jalna. I think you ought to when you have a mortgage on the place and need money so badly.”
“Alayne and I — at
Jalna
!” His eyebrows, his nostrils, the lines from nostril to corner of mouth were bent to his horror at the idea.
“Surely,” returned his sister, “surely Alayne does not consider herself so much better than I am —”
He interrupted — “It’s not that. It’s the thought of paying guests — or whatever you call them — at Jalna. I’d starve first.”
“Well, I don’t see any sense in it.”
“Meggie — you do! You’d never ask me to do such a thing. Why, Gran would turn over in her grave!”
“I dare say she would. She’s the sort of dead person who would turn over in their grave. But she’d just have to get used to the new order of things as we all do.”
A retort was on his lips, but a shooting pain through his shoulder made him wince.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I heaved the porch at the tea shop and gave my shoulder a crick.”
“Poor dear!”
“It’s nothing serious.”
“But I hate you to be hurt. How is Mrs. Lebraux getting on?”
“Not too badly. Everything looks nice.”
“Doesn’t it? And such good tea! I was passing the other day and she called me in to have a cup. She absolutely refused to let me pay for it.”
“As though she’d let you pay for it! She likes you, Meg, and you’ve always been nice to her. She’s had a hard time of it since Lebraux died — and before, God knows!”
“I
admire
her,” said Meg fervently, all the more fervently because Renny’s wife had always been very cool toward Clara Lebraux.
He produced the boxes of sweets. “I’ve brought you and the kid these. One each. The daffodils on the top are rather nice, aren’t they?”
“Charming!” Meg’s eyes glowed as she opened the box. She had no modern ideas about keeping slim. She bit eagerly into a piece of maple cream fudge. “I have never been without sweets since the tea-room opened and as I eat almost nothing at table they are really good for me…. Ah, there is Patience! Come, darling, and see what Uncle Renny has brought us.”
Patience came in through the low open window, straddling the sill with her bare brown legs. She was a charming child with her father’s wide grey eyes and her mother’s sweet pouting smile. She knew exactly what she wanted and almost always managed to get it. Dimples dented her cheeks when her favourite uncle put his offering into her hands. She hugged the box to her.
“Oo,” she exclaimed, “just what I love! And one for Mums too! You are a darling!”
“Be careful how you squeeze him!” warned Meg. “He’s hurt his shoulder.”
“How?”
“Lifting the side of a house,” he grinned.
“You
are
a tease!” She threw herself on him.
With these two he was happy. He settled himself in a stuffed chintz chair and lighted a cigarette with Patience on his knee. He suddenly thought of himself as extraordinarily blessed. He thought of Clara and Pauline Lebraux, of his long friendship and protective care for them. He thought of young Wakefield, to whom he had been as a father and mother. Soon Wake’s marriage to Pauline would weld the link stronger. He thought of Piers and Pheasant and their three boys. A vision of his two old uncles in their house in Devon hid all else for a moment from his eyes — dear old boys, he hoped they would come over for a visit this summer. He thought of his brother Finch, six months married, living with his bride in Paris, getting on well in concert work — a young fool in other ways, but most affectionate. His thoughts reached out to those distant parts drawing, in dark invisible strength, the images of his own flesh and blood nearer. Then his mind turned to Jalna and his own wife and child. He thought of Alayne and of their troubled, passionate life together, like a spring bubbling out of the dark earth, unable to give a tranquil reflection of its surroundings. Then the face of his child obtruded itself, vivid, dark-eyed, scarlet-lipped, and his own lips softened into tenderness.
Meg and Patience had been watching him.
“A penny for your thoughts,” said Meg.
“You’re such a dear old funny-face!” cried Patience.
He gathered her to him with his sound arm and hugged her. “I was thinking of my dinner,” he said.
All the way home, across the fields and down through the ravine, his thoughts were on his wife and child. Like some primitive ancestor he quickened his steps, as though anxious lest some harm had befallen them in his absence. He paused just once to examine the trunk of a great pine tree from which a branch had been cut the autumn before. Over this scar the resinous lifeblood of the tree had collected in amber-coloured coagulations and, in one place, had formed into an elongated thread reaching almost to the ground. Renny bent his head and sniffed the pungent smell. He laid his hand on the trunk of the tree.