Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
Mooey was thinking — “That was a hard tumble the grey pony gave me yesterday. I feel more and more sore, the longer I sit. I’m afraid of the grey pony and he knows it; Daddy says that’s why he acts so skittish with me. Next time I ride him, I’ll set my teeth and show him I’m not afraid. But it would only be pretending. He’d know. I wish I didn’t have to ride at the Show….” The voice of his uncle was borne into his consciousness.
“At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed, there he fell down dead.”
Mooey thought — “Funny how just bowing down killed him dead. If he’d had the fall I did he’d have had something to die for…. I do like Uncle Renny. Those were delicious candies he gave me…. I wonder if his shoulder hurts as badly as my sore spot.”
Adeline, lolling on the end of the pew thought — “What a big big house! God’s house. This is His party. We must be good. I am good. I am as good as — oh, I see Daddy’s legs under his white dress! Daddy, Daddy, Mummie, Mummie, I can say prayers as well as anybody — Gentle Jesus — I know more words every day. I look like dear old Gran. Soon I’ll be four. I know all the words Daddy reads. Uncle Piers holds me too tight.”
Daddy was reading — “So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years.” He paused, then — “Here endeth the First Lesson.”
Adeline yawned, showing without reserve the charming interior of her mouth. She too had had a poor night. Piers took her on his knee and she rested her head against his shoulder.
She was good all through the service, even when he left her and joined Maurice in taking up the offertory. But she was a little troubled till Mooey whispered to her — “Have your penny ready.” She held it tightly while she watched the progress of her uncles up and down the aisles. At last Piers held the alms dish in front of her. She was amazed by all the silver and copper she saw on it. She placed her penny in the middle and would have taken a piece of silver in return had not Piers passed on with the dish.
He and Maurice stood shoulder to shoulder at the chancel steps while Mr. Fennell advanced to meet them and Miss Pink sounded triumphant notes on the organ. As churchwarden, Renny cast a speculative glance at the offertory.
The service seemed long that morning. The air coming in at the windows was so inviting, so filled with the promise of fine days to come that Whiteoak flesh and blood longed passionately to be out in it. Those living ones gathered about the green plot for an exchange of greetings as they always did while the rest of the congregation was departing. The Easter flowers on the graves were still comparatively fresh. It was Meg who had laid them there and, while no grave was flowerless, the offerings were ranged in importance from the wreaths on her grandparents’, parents’, and Eden’s graves to the few daffodils that marked the graves of her stepmother and infant half-brothers and -sisters.
Renny was the last to join the group. She turned to him with an affectionate — “Well, dear, I’m glad to see that you are able to be out this morning. But you look quite pale for you. How sweet Adeline was!”
“Next Sunday,” said Piers, “you may have her in your pew.”
“Oh, Piers,” exclaimed Pheasant, “she was no trouble at all! We liked having her, didn’t we, Nook?”
Nook smiled doubtfully. He was rather afraid of Adeline. The children began to run about the low iron fence that enclosed the plot, enjoying the new springiness of the grass, the escape from restraint.
Renny looked from Meg’s face to Maurice’s, from him to Piers and then to Pheasant. There was a frown on his brow that drew them visibly closer together. They looked enquiringly at him. He said:
“Well, I’ve a pretty piece of news for you. I haven’t heard anything in many a long day that has made me as sick as this.”
Maurice took off his hat and passed his hand over his greying hair. Meg’s mouth became an “O” of apprehension, Piers stared and blew out his cheeks and Pheasant exclaimed:
“I’m not surprised! I have felt something hanging over us. I walked under a ladder at the stables yesterday. The last three times I’ve been to the pictures I’ve had seat number thirteen. Last night I dreamed of wild animals and at breakfast Piers upset the salt.”
Meg said disapprovingly — “I think those are queer sayings for a Christian just come out of church.”
Renny glared at them. “Have you finished? Now, what I want to tell you is this — Wakefield says he is going into a monastery — going to be a monk — going to throw Pauline over and be a monk! What do you think of that?”
The news was so different from anything she had expected that Meg scarcely knew how to take it. If it had been fresh money losses she would have groaned. If it had been bad news of absent loved ones she would have wept. But for this she was quite unprepared. She closed her eyes and said — “I think I’m going to faint.”
Maurice, with conjugal skepticism, said — “I don’t think you are — just keep calm.”
But Renny clasped her in his sound arm and said excitedly:
“Run to the pump quick, Piers, and fetch water; she
is
fainting! She’ll be unconscious in a moment.”
Piers ran, leaping across the graves toward the old pump in the rear of the church. The children, not knowing what was wrong, ran joyously after him. Pheasant began to fan Meg with her prayer book. They supported her on the iron railing till Piers returned with the water in a tin mug. She kept her eyes closed till he approached her, then, fearing he might dash it in her face, she opened them and sat upright.
“Just give me a drink of the water,” she said. “It will revive me.”
The children gathered about, staring into her face.
“I knew she’d take it hard,” observed Renny.
Piers said — “There’s no use in our getting upset, we’ll simply not allow it. He’s not of age. He can’t do it.”
“Do you think he is in earnest?” asked Maurice.
“Absolutely. He’s been wrestling with the idea for a month, he says. Had it out with his soul, he says.”
They turned the words over in their minds. Meg took a draught of water from the rusted mug. Piers gave it to Mooey to return to the pump and the other children trailed after him.
“This comes,” said Piers, “of allowing his engagement to Pauline. I always thought it was a mistake. I never thought that he really knew his mind. Now this is just something new that attracts him. But he must be stopped before it’s too late.”
Meg exclaimed — “I will go to him — on my bended knees! I will tell him what it will mean to the family if he deserts us. Oh, to think of it! To think he’d not confide in me! I’ve been a mother to him. I wore myself out nursing him — a puny little baby, with such eyes and such a mass of dark hair! Do you suppose they’ll shave his head? I couldn’t bear
that
! I’ll go to him at once!”
Maurice put it — “You can’t, Meggie. Remember the P.G.s’ Sunday dinner. You like to oversee that.”
Meg rose. “Yes. I must be home for that. But, this afternoon — we will come to tea. My child shall implore him not to do anything so dreadful.” She looked almost serene as she saw this scene in mind’s eye, saw the deferential faces of her men folk.
Piers said — “Among us we’ll put a stop to it. He’s a queer kid. And look at Finch. He’s certainly got a queer streak in him.”
They remembered Finch’s queer streak. They remembered Eden. Meg looked down almost accusingly at her stepmother’s grave. She pointed a suede-gloved finger at it.
“There,” she said, “is the source.”
Piers looked uncomfortable. “Oh, I don’t know about that. Some of the Courts had queer streaks.”
“But not this sort!” cried Meg. “Did you ever hear of a Court entering a monastery? Did you ever hear of a Court doing the sort of thing Finch has done? No, Piers, you cannot deny that your mother was different. You might well kneel here by the graves of our loved ones and thank God that you are a Whiteoak — even while you respect her memory.”
Piers looked mollified. He did indeed thank God for it.
The four children trooped back. Adeline crept beneath the iron railing from which chains and spiked iron balls depended, as though to restrain the dead within their cramped divisions, and seated herself astride her grandmother’s grave. She jogged up and down, as if on horseback, clucking her tongue and slapping the grave in encouragement.
“Young ruffian!”
“Oh, Adeline!”
“Look at her!”
“Take her from the grave!”
“Oh, naughty — naughty!”
“Ha, ha, ha!”
The laughter from Renny. Piers said sternly:
“I don’t see how you can laugh at her. It’s beastly disrespectful toward Gran.”
“Gran would laugh too, if she were here. She’d say — ‘A pickaback, eh? I like the youngsters about me.’”
“Renny,” said Meg, “I command you to take your child away from there. If you are willing to let her behave so, Piers and I, at least, don’t want to see such an example set our children.”
“I should think not,” agreed Piers.
“Adeline,” said Renny, “come to Daddy.”
Adeline jumped from her imaginary mount, her round, bare thighs flashing. She now stood astride a small mound marked by a headstone bearing the words — ‘Gwynneth, Died April 13th, 1898, aged five months.’ Piers exclaimed angrily:
“Now she is on my little sister’s grave! I won’t have it!” He grasped Adeline by the arm and lifted her roughly over the railing. She smiled up at him daringly.
“You talk,” said Renny, with equal heat, “as though Gwynneth were your sister only. What do you mean by it?”
“Well, she was only your half-sister.”
Renny was cut. “Do I cast it into your teeth that you are only my half-brother? I care as much for Gwynneth’s memory as you do. As a matter of fact, you never even saw her.”
“Yes,” agreed Meg, with one of her inexplicable veerings in fraternal discussion. “Gwynneth might never have a flower laid on her grave if she had to depend on you, Piers. It is I, her half-sister, who bring them.” And she looked down complacently at three narcissi and a spray of pussy willow.
Piers did not know what to say. He stared sulkily at his boots.
Maurice examined his wristwatch.
“Our P.G.s will be starving, Meg.”
She gave an exclamation of consternation.
The very mention of the paying guests was distasteful to Renny. He said sarcastically:
“I suppose you dish up for them and Maurice ambles round with the trays.”
“You seem to think it is all right,” declared Meg, “for Mrs. Lebraux to run a tea shop.”
“Yes,” said Piers, “he goes to the length of breaking his bones to help her in the work.”
“Oh, to think of it! And you allow Wakefield to keep a filling station!”
Renny retorted in exasperation — “Don’t worry! Mrs. Lebraux is going to live with her brother and Wake is entering a monastery.”
Before Meg could answer this she was led away by Maurice who took the welfare of his guests deeply to heart. Patience ran after them. Renny and his child crowded into the car with Piers, Pheasant, and their boys.
A tremor might well be supposed to have quivered through the dense earth that lay on old Adeline’s coffin as the group departed, and her spirit have exclaimed — “What’s the to-do? I will not be kept out of things!”
Alayne was waiting for them in the sitting room. She had often felt it rather an ordeal that these relatives should always take Sunday dinner at Jalna. Today she welcomed them.
She had a flat, strange, unreal feeling. The thought of making conversation took from her what strength she had. She would let the others do the talking. The Whiteoaks had one never-failing subject of absorbing interest — horses and the breeding and training of horses. For all his keenness in farming, Piers could not make it pay. He and Renny were breeding more horses, polo ponies and children’s saddle ponies. Curiously little Maurice had not inherited his parents’ love of horses. He loved the sounds and scents of the fields and woods, but he desired no stirrups between him and the earth. An erratic swift-moving creature beneath him filled him with nervous apprehension. Even Pheasant did not realize the depth of this emotion though she shielded him from rough experiences as much as was in her power. Mooey lived a double life, feigning a keenness unnatural to him in the activities of the stables, disappearing when he had the chance into the great depths of the woods or hiding in his attic room to pore over the old books which the Miss Laceys had left stored there.
Alayne liked Mooey and she felt a compassionate understanding of him, but it was little Nook who was her favourite. He was the sort of child she would have liked for her own. He was sensitive, shy, aloof, slow to give his affection but staunch in the giving of it. Between him and Alayne there was a curious understanding. He ran to her now and clasped one of her hands in both of his. She sat down and took him on her lap. She and Pheasant were in the sitting room while their two husbands, Adeline between them, had gone to the stables before dinner. Mooey hesitated in the hall, uncertain whether or not he should follow his father.
Pheasant glanced shrewdly at Alayne. She saw the heaviness of her eyes, the lines about her mouth. Something was wrong, she thought, something beyond an ordinary quarrel. Alayne looked ill. Her skin had a sallow tinge. “Men
can
make you suffer,” she said out loud before she could stop herself, and then added, breathlessly — “Oh, Alayne, I should not have said that!”
Alayne sifted Nook’s fine hair between her fingers. “It doesn’t matter. I expect I do look awful. I couldn’t sleep last night.”
Pheasant burst out — “As long as you love each other, I don’t believe in lying awake suffering in your mind! I say it’s better to make friends at any cost — dignity or high ideals or — anything! And I know you have lots of both.”
Alayne’s lips twisted in a little smile. She answered composedly, not being able to enter into intimate depths of marital discussion.
“We are naturally worried about Wakefield.”
Pheasant was unconvinced. She could not believe that Wake’s decision to enter a monastery could make Alayne look like that. She said: