Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  “And how did they affect him?” asked Ernest, polishing the nails of one hand against the palm of the other.

  “They amused him, I think. Like yourself, he has difficulty in appreciating the new poetry. Still, he thinks I have good stuff in me.”

  “I wish you could have gone to Oxford.”

  “I wish I could. And so I might if Renny could have been brought to see reason. Of course, he feels now that the education he has given me has been wasted, since I refuse to go on with the study of law. But I can’t, and that’s all there is to it. I’m awfully fond of Renny, but I wish he weren’t so frightfully materialistic. The first thing he asked about my book was whether I could make much money out of it. As though one ever made much out of a first book.”

  “And poetry at that,” amended Ernest.

  “He doesn’t seem to realize that I’m the first one of the family who has done anything to make our name known to the world—” The armour of his egotism was pierced by a hurt glance from Ernest and he hastened to add, “Of course, Uncle, there’s your work on Shakespeare. That will get a lot of attention when it comes out. But Renny won’t see anything in either achievement to be proud of. I think he’s rather ashamed for us. He thinks a Whiteoak should be a gentleman farmer or a soldier. His life’s been rather cramped, after all.”

  “He was through the War,” commented Ernest. “That was a great experience.”

  “And what impressions did he bring back from it?” demanded Eden. “Almost the first questions he asked when he returned were about the price of hay and steers, and he spent most of his first afternoon leaning over a sty, watching a litter of squirming young pigs.”

  “I sympathize with you very greatly, my dear boy. And so does Meggie. She thinks you’re a genius.”

  “Good old Meg. I wish she could convince the rest of the clan of that. Piers is a young beast.”

  “You mustn’t mind Piers. He gibes at everything connected with learning. After all, he’s very young. Now tell me, Eden, what shall you do? Shall you take up literature as a profession?” Eager to be sympathetic, he peered into the boy’s face. He wanted very much to hold him, to keep his confidence.

  “Oh, I’ll look about me. I’ll go on writing. I may join an expedition into the North this summer. I’ve an idea for a cycle of poems about the Northland. Not wild, rugged stuff, but something delicate, austere. One thing is certain—I’m not going to mix up law and poetry. It wouldn’t do for me at all. Let’s see what sort of reviews I get, Uncle Ernie.”

  They discussed the hazards of literature as a means of livelihood. Ernest spoke as a man of experience, though in all his seventy years he had never earned a dollar by his pen. Where would he be now, Eden wondered, if it were not for the shelter of Renny’s roof. He supposed Gran would have had to come across with enough to support him, though to get money from her was to draw blood from a stone.

  When Eden had gone, Ernest remained motionless in his chair by the window, looking out over the green meadows, and thinking also of his mother’s fortune. It was the cause of much disturbing thought to him. Not that it was what one could call a great fortune, but a comfortable sum it certainly was. And there it was lying, accumulating for no one knew whom. In moments of the closest intimacy and affection with her, she never could be ever so gently led to disclose in whose favour her will was made. She knew that much of her power lay in keeping that tantalizing secret. He felt sure, by the mirthful gleam he had discovered in her eyes when the subject of money or wills was approached, that in secret she hugged the joy of baffling them all.

  Ernest loved his family. He would feel no deep bitterness should any one of them inherit the money. He greatly longed, nevertheless, to be the next heir himself, to be in his turn the holder of power at Jalna, to experience the thrill of independence. And if he had it, he would do such nice things for them all, from brother Nicholas down to little Wake! By means of that power he would guide their lives into the channels that would be best for them. Whereas, if Nicholas inherited it—it had been divulged by Mrs. Whiteoak that the money was to be left solidly to one person—well, Ernest could not quite think dispassionately of Nicholas as his mother’s heir. He might do something reckless. Nicholas frequently made very reckless jokes about what he would do when he got it—he seemed to take it for granted that, as the eldest, he would get it—jokes which Ernest was far too generous to repeat to his mother, but it made him positively tremble to think where the family might end if Nicholas had a fling with it. In himself he was aware of well-knit faculties, cool judgment, a capacity for power. Nicholas was headstrong, arbitrary, ill balanced.

  As for Renny, he was a good fellow, but he was letting the place run down. It had deteriorated while he was away at the War, and his return had not stayed the downward progression. The younger nephews could scarcely be looked on as rivals. Still, one never could be certain where the whim of an aged woman was in question.

  Ernest sighed and looked toward the bed. He thought he should take a little nap after such a substantial dinner. With a last look at the pretty green meadows, he drew down the blind and laid his slender body along the coverlet. Sasha leaped up after him, snuggling her head close to his on the pillow. They gazed into each other’s eyes, his blue and drowsy, hers vivid green in the shadowed room, speculative, mocking.

  She stretched out a round paw and laid it on his cheek, then, lest he should rest too secure in her love, she put out her claws just a little way and let him feel their sharpness.

  “Sasha, dear, you’re hurting me,” he breathed.

  She withdrew her claws, patted him, and uttered short throaty purrs.

  “Pretty puss,” sighed Ernest, closing his eyes. “Gentle puss!”

  She was sleepy, too, so they slept.

  IV

  NICHOLAS AND NIP

  AS NEPHEW Eden had sought out uncle Ernest that he might discuss his future with him, so that same afternoon nephew Renny sought out uncle Nicholas that they too might discuss Eden’s prospects.

  Both rooms, the scenes of these conversations, would appear to an outside observer overfurnished. The two elderly men had collected there all the things which they particularly fancied or to which they thought they had a claim, but while Ernest’s taste ran to pale watercolours, china figures, and chintz-covered chairs, Nicholas had the walls of his room almost concealed by hunting prints and pictures of pretty women. His furniture was leather covered. An old square piano, the top of which was littered with pipes, several decanters and a mixer, medicine bottles—he was always dosing himself for gout—and music, stood by the window.

  Nip, the Yorkshire terrier, had a bone on the hearthrug when Renny entered. Hearing the step, he darted forward, nipped Renny on the ankle, and darted back to his bone, snarling as he gnawed. Nicholas, his bad leg stretched on the ottoman, looked up from his book with a lazy smile.

  “Hullo, Renny! Come for a chat? Can you find a chair? Throw those slippers on to the floor. Place always in a mess—yet if I let Rags in here to tidy up he hides everything I use, and what with my knee—well, it puts me in the devil of a temper for a week.”

  “I know,” agreed Renny. He dropped the slippers to the floor and himself into the comfort of the chair. “Have you got a good book, Uncle Nick? I never seem to have any time for reading.”

  “I wish I hadn’t so much, but when a man’s tied to his chair, as I am a great deal of the time, he must do something. This is one Meggie got the last time she was in town. An English authoress. The new books puzzle me, Renny. My God! if everything in this one is true, it’s amazing what nice women will do and think these days. The thoughts of this heroine—my goodness, they’re appalling. Have a cigar?”

  Renny helped himself from a box on the piano. Nip, thinking Renny had designs on his bone, darted forth once more, bit the intruder’s ankle, and darted back growling, fancying himself a terrifying beast.

  “Little brute!” said Renny. “I really felt his teeth that time. Does he think I’m after
his bone?”

  Nicholas said: “Catch a spider! Catch a spider, Nip!” Nip flew to his master, tossing his long-haired body round and round him, and yapping loudly.

  A loud thumping sounded through the thick walls. Nicholas smiled maliciously. “It always upsets Ernie to hear Nip raise his voice. Yet I’m expected to endure the yowls of that cat of his at any hour of the night.” He clapped his palms together at the little dog. “Catch a spider, Nip! Catch a spider!” Hysterically yelping, Nip sped around the room, looking in corners and under chairs for an insect. The thumping on the wall became frantic.

  Renny picked up the terrier and smothered his barks under his arm. “Poor Uncle Ernest! You’ll have him unnerved for the rest of the day. Shut up, Nip, you little scoundrel.”

  Nicholas’s long face, the deep downward lines of which gave an air of sagacity to his most trivial remarks, was lit by a sardonic smile “Does him good to be stirred up,” he remarked. “He spends too much time at his desk. Came to me the other day jubilant. He had got what he believed to be two hundred and fifty mistakes in the text of Shakespeare’s plays. Fancy trying to improve Shakespeare’s text at this time. I tell him he has not an adequate knowledge of the handwriting of the day, but he thinks he has. Poor Ernie, he always was a little nutty.”

  Renny puffed soberly at his cigar. “I hope to God Eden is not going to take after him. Wasting his time over poetry. I feel a bit upset about this book of his. It’s gone to his head. I believe the young fool thinks he can make a living from poetry. You don’t think so, do you, Uncle Nick?” He regarded Nicholas almost pathetically.

  “I don’t believe it’s ever been done. I like his poetry, though. It’s very nice poetry.”

  “Well, he must understand he’s got to work. I’m not going to waste any more money on him. He’s quite made up his mind he won’t go on with his profession. After all I’ve spent on him! I only wish I had it back.”

  Nicholas tugged at his drooping moustache., “Oh, he had to have a university education.”

  “No, he didn’t. Piers hasn’t. He didn’t want it. Wouldn’t have it. Eden could have stopped at home. We could find plenty of work for him on one of the farms.”

  “Eden farming? My dear Renny! Don’t worry. Let him go on with his poetry and wait and see what happens.”

  “It’s such a damned silly life for a man. All very well for the classic poets—”

  “They were young fellows once. Disapproved of by their families, too.”

  “Is his poetry good enough?”

  “Well, it’s good enough to take the fancy of this publisher. For my part, I think it’s very adroit. A sort of delicate perfection—a very wistful beauty that’s quite remarkable.”

  Renny stared at his uncle, suspiciously. Was he making fun of Eden? Or was he just pulling the wool over his own eyes to protect Eden? “Adroit, delicate, wistful”—the adjectives made him sick. “One thing’s damned certain,” he growled; “he’ll not get any more money out of me.”

  Nicholas heaved himself about in his chair, achieving a more comfortable position. “How are things going? Pretty close to the wind?”

  “Couldn’t be closer,” Renny assented.

  Nicholas chuckled. “And yet you would like to keep all the boys at Jalna instead of sending them out into the world to shift for themselves. Renny, you have the instincts of the patriarch. To be the head of a swarming tribe. To mete out justice and rewards, and grow a long red beard.”

  Renny, somewhat nettled, felt like saying that both Nicholas and his brother Ernest had taken advantage of this instinct in him, but he satisfied himself by pulling the little dog’s ears. Nip growled.

  “Catch a spider, Nip,” commanded his master, clapping his hands at him.

  Once again Nip hurled himself into a frenzy of pursuit after an imagined insect. The thumping on the wall broke out anew. Renny got up to go. He felt that his troubles were not being taken seriously. Nicholas, looking up from under his shaggy brows, saw the shadow on Renny’s face. He said, with sudden warmth: “You’re an uncommonly good brother, Renny, and nephew. Have a drink?”

  Renny said he would, and Nicholas insisted on getting up to mix it for him. “Shouldn’t take one myself with this damn knee—” but he did, hobbling about his liquor cabinet in sudden activity.

  “Well, Eden can do as he likes this summer,” said Renny, cheered by his glass, “but by fall he’s got to settle down, either in business or here at Jalna.”

  “But what would the boy do at Jalna, Renny?”

  “Help Piers. Why not? If he would turn in and help, we could take over the land that is rented to old Hare and make twice as much out of it. It’s a good life. He could write poetry in his spare time if he wanted to. I’d not say a word against it, so long as I wasn’t asked to read it.”

  “The ploughman poet. It sounds artless enough. But I’m afraid he has very different ideas for his future. Poor young whelp. Heavens! How like his mother he is!”

  “Well,” mumbled Renny. “He’ll not get around me. I’ve wasted enough on him. To think of him refusing to try his finals! I’ve never heard of such a thing. Now he talks of going down to New York to see his publisher.”

  “I expect this particular germ has been working in him secretly for a long time. Perhaps the boy’s a genius, Renny.”

  “Lord! I hope not.”

  Nicholas made the subterranean noises that were his laughter. “You’re a perfect Court, Renny. No wonder Mamma is partial to you.”

  “Is she? I’d never noticed it. I thought Eden was her pet. He has a way with women of all ages. Well, I’m off. Hobbs, up Mistwell way, is having a sale of Holsteins. I may buy a cow or two.”

  “I should go with you if it were horses, in spite of my knee, but I can’t get worked up over cows. Never liked milk.”

  Renny had got to the door when Nicholas asked suddenly: “How about Piers? Have you spoken to him of the girl yet?”

  “Yes. I’ve told him he must cut out these meetings with her. He never dreamed they’d been seen. He was staggered.”

  “He seemed all right at dinner time.”

  “Oh, we had our little talk two days ago. He’s not a bad youngster. He took it very well. There aren’t many girls about here—attractive ones—and there’s no denying Pheasant is pretty.”

  Nicholas’s brow darkened. “But think what she is. We don’t want that breed in the family. Meg would never stand it.”

  “The girl is all right,” said Renny, in his contradictory way. “She didn’t choose the manner of her coming into the world. The boys have always played about with her.”

  “Piers will play about with her once too often.”

  “That’s all right,” returned Renny, testily. “He knows I’ll stand no nonsense.” He went out, shutting the door noisily, as he always did.

  Nip was still busy with his bone. Regarding him, Nicholas feared that he would be in for an attack of indigestion if he got any more of the gristle off it. He dragged the treasure from him, and with difficulty straightened himself. Once bent over, it was no joke to rise. What a responsibility a little pet dog was! “No, no, no more gristle. You’ll get a tummy-ache.”

  Nip protested, dancing on his hind legs. Nicholas laid the bone on the piano and wiped his fingers on the tail of his coat. Then the bottle of Scotch and the siphon caught his eye. He took up his glass. “Good Lord, I shouldn’t be doing this,” he groaned, but he mixed himself another drink. “Positively the last today,” he murmured, as he hobbled toward his chair, glass in hand.

  A deep note was struck on the piano. Nip had leaped to the stool and from there to the keys. Now he had stretched his head to recapture the bone. Nicholas sank with a grunt of mingled pain and amusement into his chair. “I suppose we may as well kill ourselves,” he commented, ruefully,

  “You in your small corner,

  And I in mine.”

  Nip growled, gnawing his bone on the top of the piano. Nicholas sipped his whisky and soda dreamily.
The house was beautifully quiet now. He would doze a little, just in his chair, when he had finished his glass and Nip his bone. The rhythmic crunching of Nip’s teeth as he excavated for marrow was soothing. A smile flitted over Nicholas’s face as he remembered how the little fellow’s barking had upset Ernest. Ernest did get upset easily, poor old boy! Well, he was probably resting quietly now beside his beloved Sasha. Cats. Selfish things. Only loved you for what they could get out of you. Now Nip—there was devotion.

  He stretched out his hand and looked at it critically. Yes, that heavy ring with the square green stone in its antique setting became it. He was glad he had inherited his mother’s hands—Court hands. Renny had them, too, but badly cared for. No doubt about it, character, as well as breeding, showed in hands. A vision of the hands of his wife, Millicent, came before him—clawlike hands with incredibly thin, very white fingers, and large curving nails... She was still living; he knew that. Good God, she would be seventy! He tried to picture her at seventy, then shook his head impatiently—no, he did not want to picture her at either seventy or seventeen. He wanted to forget her. When Mamma should die, as she must soon, poor old dear, and he should inherit the money, he would go to England for a visit. He’d like to see old England once again before he—well, even he would die some day, though he expected to live to be at least ninety-nine like Mamma. He was a Court, and they were famous for their longevity and—what was the other? Oh, yes, their tempers. Well, thank goodness, he hadn’t inherited the Court temper. It would die with Mamma, though Renny when he was roused was a fierce fellow.

  Nip was whining to be lifted from the piano top. He was tired of his bone, and wanted his afternoon nap. Little devil, to make him get out of his chair again just when he was so comfortable!

  With a great grunt he heaved himself on to his feet and limped to the piano. He took up the little dog, now entirely gentle and confiding, and carried him back under his arm. His knee gave him a sharp twinge as he lowered his weight into the chair once more, but his grimace of pain changed to a smile at the shaggy little face that was turned up to his. He had a sudden impulse to say, “Catch a spider, Nip!” and start a fresh skirmish. He even framed the words with his lips, and a sudden tenseness in Nip’s body, a gleam in his eye, showed that he was ready; but he must not upset old Ernie again, and he was very drowsy—that second drink had been soothing. “No, no, Nip,” he murmured, “go to sleep. No more racketing, old boy.” He stroked the little dog’s back with a large, indolent hand.