Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“Why — what is wrong, Wake?” Renny’s tone changed to one of anxiety.
Wakefield crumbled a bit of toast on his plate and answered, almost in a whisper — “I have decided that I should not marry. I want to go into a monastery.”
Renny looked at him dumbfounded; Alayne with a bitter smile. She said:
“I think you are very sensible. It is better to shut yourself away from life—not give yourself to anybody.”
Renny exclaimed harshly — “How can you say that? What about Pauline? It would break her heart. As for me — why, Wake, you don’t know what you are talking about! It’s a ghastly life — unthinkable for a Whiteoak.”
“I’ve been thinking of nothing else for a month.”
“But — only yesterday — you were perfectly natural — you and Pauline — at The Daffodil.”
Alayne’s eyes, icy, accusing, pierced him. So — he was there, with Clara, yesterday morning! She said, “I suppose it was there that you hurt your shoulder.”
He coloured but with a sudden defiant grin answered — “Yes. I was raising the porch of the tea shop.”
Wakefield ignored the interruption. He said — “The time to speak had not come. Now it has come.”
Renny sprang from his chair and began to walk up and down the room.
“You can’t do it!” he cried. “You can’t! It’s appalling. I forbid it! You’re not of age. I’ll see these damned priests.”
Wakefield answered calmly. “I wish you would. You’d find that I had no encouragement from them.”
Renny thrust out his lips in scorn.
“Ha! They’d never let you know! They’re too sly for you. Well, I’ll put a stop to it! God, if Gran were here, she’d raise the roof with her shame for you!”
Wakefield returned — “You forget that one of the reasons why Grandfather left Quebec was that Gran showed Catholic sympathies.”
“Rot! She was young. She was in a strange country. She got bravely over it. And so must you. Lord — when I think that you’d turn religious — when other young fellows are turning pagan!” He took out his handkerchief, wiped his forehead, sat down resolutely at the table and drank his tea in a few gulps. Then he said:
“We’ll not talk about it now. We’ll have it out later, Wake, when we’re quite cool and composed.”
“I am cool and composed now,” returned Wakefield with gravity. “I have had it out with my soul. That is the important part. And Pauline will understand. I think she will be very happy for my sake.”
The mention of Wakefield’s soul took the pith out of Renny. He leant back in his chair helpless, staring disconsolately at his untouched breakfast. Alayne looked at him with cruel amusement. She could not help herself. He had made her suffer. Now let him suffer — in his love for Wake, in his pride, in his tenderness for those Lebraux women!
Adeline finished her breakfast. She was sweet and good, taking no notice of her elders. A heavy scent of cologne came from her. She liked it and drew up the front of her dress to sniff.
Renny turned to Wakefield. “I suppose you have been to early Mass,” he said.
“Yes — I am going now to see Pauline.”
Renny turned to him almost tragically. “Wakefield, I want you to promise me one thing. I want you to promise me that you will not speak of this to Pauline till I have seen your priest. You must promise me that.”
Wakefield answered irritably — “Oh, I suppose I can promise you that! Though it makes it difficult for me. And I can promise you something else and that is that nothing anyone can say will prevent me doing what I have made up my mind to do.”
“But you promise — mind, you promise!”
Wakefield gave a muffled assent then rolled his table napkin meticulously and put it into his napkin ring drawn by a small silver goat. He had always loved the little goat, now he gave it an unconscious caress.
Adeline looked at it enviously. She said — “I wish I had a little goat like that.”
Wakefield gave her his charming smile. “You shall have it, Adeline! I am going away soon and must give away all my belongings. You shall have the little goat.”
She laughed delightedly. “Go today, please!”
“I wish I could.”
At these words, at the thought that Wakefield wished he might leave his home today, Renny’s mouth went down at the corners as though in physical pain. He gave a short nervous laugh, then said to Alayne:
“I don’t suppose you’ll be coming to church this morning?”
She shook her head, looking down at her clasped hands.
“I have a mind,” he went on, “to take Adeline with me. It is time she began to go to church and she will be off your hands for the morning. She can sit with Pheasant.”
“Very well, though I think she is much too young.”
She could not deny her relief at the thought of being free of the child’s activities for an hour or two.
But she kept Adeline with her until it was time to go. For the first time that spring they heard the church bell across the fields. She put a fresh dress on Adeline, her little fawn-coloured coat and new straw hat and led her to the front porch. She sat her on the seat there and said — “Wait here till Daddy comes.” She bent and kissed her, but coldly. She wondered suddenly how Renny would manage his surplice with his arm in a sling.
He thought he would like to take the path across the fields with the child. He could not drive the car and he wanted no one with him. He remembered the family party that used to set out on a Sunday morning — the old phaeton, driven by Hodge now dead, Grandmother, the uncles and young Wakefield established in it, the car following with himself, one or two of the whelps and perhaps Aunt Augusta and, of course, Pheasant…. Finch walking across the fields as he was now — what a tribe! But that was the way to live — one’s flesh and blood under one’s own strong roof!
Adeline was serenely happy. In her almost four years she had never felt quite so good and so happy as this. She tried to express this in her very walk, in the way she clutched her father’s fingers. Every time he looked down at her or pointed things out to her she smiled up at him in utter goodness. She would not ask to pick the tiny wild orchids that showed in the grass. Alayne had not known that she was to walk and had put on her thin patent leather shoes. The path became wet and Renny was forced to heave her up on his one efficient arm. It was more effort than he could have imagined and he was glad when they reached the road to the church. The last bell was ringing.
He felt proud of his daughter as he led her along the aisle. He saw people looking at her, surprised and pleased. Meg stared out from the Vaughan pew, round-eyed with amazement. Renny put Adeline in the Whiteoak pew beside Piers, Pheasant, and their boys. Piers gave Renny an amused look. Pheasant and the boys were in a flutter. It took them a moment to decide on the best place for Adeline to sit. Miss Pink began to play the organ.
A live bee was clinging to the rector’s surplice as he was about to put it on. He carried it, resting with spread wings on the snowy surplice, to an open window and flicked it with his finger out into the sunshine. He found Renny with compressed lips, struggling to get into his surplice. Ever since the building of the church a Whiteoak had acted as lay reader.
“Why, my dear fellow, what has happened? Your arm — nothing serious, I hope.” But though his tone expressed solicitude he felt no real concern. He could scarcely have recalled the various occasions when his lay readers had appeared before him, in slings, in bandages, or limping. They spent their days among horses. They were headlong. They were always getting hurt. And they were a tough-fibred lot. He had seen old Mrs. Whiteoak, rather than miss the christening of one of her grandchildren (Piers, he thought it was), carried to the family pew by a sweating coachman and groom, when a fall from a horse had done something to her kneecap. She had never ridden again. She must have been nearly eighty-three.
“Collarbone,” returned Renny laconically, “broken.”
“Tch — is it very painful?”
“Only when I aggravate it.”
Mr. Fennell noticed then that his usually high-coloured face was pale, that his eyes had not their customary brightness. “I’m afraid you had a bad night with it.”
“Rather. It’s time we went in.”
One arm only projected from his surplice. His other side looked oddly bulky. Against the dark wood of the chancel his sculptured head stood out incisively. In the hymn, “The strife is o’er,” his voice dominated the rather feeble choir of four men and seven women who, always defeated in their contests with the vigorous Whiteoak voices, felt themselves defeated before they had opened their mouths.
In the general confession Renny looked from the shelter of his hand at Adeline. She was being good. He felt his heart strengthen in pride. She was a fine child and the spit of old Gran. He had begot her. Alayne had borne her. Together they had produced that rosy flower of a child. Then the thought of all that had transpired the night before came to taunt his spirit. It was characteristic of him that he scarcely gave a thought to Clara. His mind was concentrated on Alayne’s alienation from him. His mind dwelt on it darkly. There was projected into it a scene of passion in which he would forcibly overcome her antagonism, but he thrust this from him. His lips mechanically repeated the words of the confession. “We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep…. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done….” Alayne’s face was blurred. In its place came a picture of Wakefield in a monk’s robe, with shaven crown. Wake, whose engagement to Pauline had seemed so promising of happiness — Wake, his boy! He remembered his delicacy — the nights he had sat up with him, the fear that he would not rear him. The fear that he would be a poet like Eden. Then his pride in the boy’s growing strength, in his eagerness to work, to make a place for himself. It had been a sting to his pride to see Wake’s name over a filling station but — now how desirable that seemed when Wake wanted to give up his name and become Brother Something or Other! Well — he would see the priest and do everything in his power to prevent it! He felt a sudden hot anger at the boy. The young shuffler — to jilt Pauline for a whim! He had always been full of whims — a spoilt boy. What was it Gran had said? “The ingratitude of the spoilt child is sharper than the stallion’s tooth.” He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he remained kneeling after the others had risen, his face shaded by his hand. He realized what had happened and stood up imperturbably. His vigorous voice was heard — “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.” Adeline dropped her penny and it rolled beneath the seat.
When the time of the First Lesson came, Renny mounted the steps behind the brass eagle. Meg watched him with sisterly pride. She thought — “How nice and white his surplice looks! Of course, they were all laundered at Eastertide. It makes such a difference. And the Easter flowers are lovely. I do like things bright and cheerful about a church because it’s naturally rather a depressing place. What was he reading?”
“Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in judgment and walk by the way…. Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.”
She thought — “I always did like this Lesson, though how people went through the things they did then, I can’t imagine … strange how Alayne let him come to church alone, when it is a wife’s duty to encourage her husband in any religion he may have…. To think that Maurice would come with those old tight trousers on! His legs look ridiculous.”
Maurice thought — “He looks seedy this morning. I suppose it’s his arm. But he wouldn’t stay away — no, not if he’d cracked both collarbones! Churchgoing is more and more of a bore to me. I wish Meggie cared no more for church than Alayne does. I’d be satisfied to stay at home with the Sunday papers. Darling little Patience — drinking in every word! Wonder what she makes of it.”
“They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses, fought against Sisera. The river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength.”
Maurice thought — “Why is Meggie staring at my trousers? Oh yes, they’re the tight ones! But I must have another turn out of them.” He tried to make his legs look smaller.
Patience thought — “I like to watch Uncle Renny’s face when he’s talking. He does nice things with it that make me want to hug him. I don’t care a bit what he’s reading. I just like watching his face. I wonder what it feels like to have a broken collarbone. Very disagreeable, I expect. I hope I don’t fall off my pony and get anything broken. What lots and lots of flowers there are! What funny ears that old gentleman in front has! I think they might have put Adeline in the pew with me. Why is Mummie looking at Daddy’s trousers?” She too peered at them.
The voice, in a level tone, proceeded — “Then were the horse hoofs broken by the means of the prancings, the prancings of their mighty ones.”
Piers thought — “I don’t see how that could be. I’ve seen a good many horses plunge about in my time but I’ve never known them break their hoofs doing it. I wish Pheasant would stop fussing over the children. It only makes them fidget more. I guess the best thing to do is to put Adeline at the end of the pew. Lord, I hope she goes to sleep during the sermon!” He moved Adeline to the place next the aisle. She was delighted and gave him a look of beaming gratitude before she began to loll over the end of the pew and try to see what was going on along the aisle.
“Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent. He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen’s hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.”
Pheasant thought — “Those were the days! If a woman didn’t like the way a man behaved she hit him on the head with a hammer. They talk a lot about the new freedom of women, but I don’t see it…. Renny is almost handsome this morning. It suits him to look pale and tired. He has such good bones in his face. Adeline is surprised to see him up there in a surplice but she’s awfully good. I rather wish I had a little girl. Perhaps the next…. No, no, I don’t want to go through that again! Please, God, don’t let there be a next! Not that I don’t love all my little children — but I did mind having them — especially young Philip who was so robust…. Mooey has a funny expression. I wonder what he’s thinking.”