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

by Mazo de La Roche

  What a start that would give him! She pictured his heavy, untidy face startlingly concentrated into dismay.

  “What’s that?” he would exclaim. “What’s that, you little devil?”

  Then she would hiss: “It’s true. I’m going to be married this very day. And I’m going to marry into the Jalna family who wouldn’t have you, my fine fellow.”

  Instead of this she said meekly: “Oh, Maurice, I’m afraid I’ll have to take my dinner at half-past twelve. I’ve an appointment with the dentist in Stead at two o’clock.”

  She wondered why she had said that, for she had never been to a dentist in her life. She did not know the name of one.

  “What are you making appointments with the dentist for?” he growled. “What’s the matter with your teeth?”

  “I’ve been troubled by toothache lately,” she said, truthfully, and he remembered an irritating smell of liniment about her at odd times.

  They went on with their breakfast in silence, she, a wave of relief sweeping over her at the absence of active opposition, drinking cup after cup of strong tea; he thinking that after all it were better the child should not be at the table with the two men who were coming. Martin had a rough tongue. Not the sort of man a decent fellow would want to introduce to his young daughter, he supposed. But then, what was the use of trying to protect Pheasant? She was her mother’s daughter and he had had no respect for her mother; he had very little for himself, her father. Not all the beastly allegations current about the countryside against him since his first mishap were true, but they had damaged his opinion of himself, his dignity. He knew he was considered a rip, and always would be even when the patch of white that was coming above one temple spread over his whole head.

  As for Pheasant, she was filled by sudden unaccountable compassion for him. Poor Maurice! Tomorrow morning, and all the mornings to come, he would be eating breakfast alone. To be sure, they seldom spoke, but still she was there beside him; she carried his messages to Nannie; she poured his tea; and she had always gone with him to admire the new colts. Well, perhaps when she was not there he would be sorry that he had not been nicer to her.

  She was so inexperienced that she thought of going to live at Jalna as of removal to a remote habitation where she would be cut off permanently from all her past life.

  When Maurice had swallowed the last mouthful of tea, he rose slowly and went to the bow window, which, being shadowed by a verandah, gave only a greenish half-light into the room. He stood with his back toward her and said: “Come here.”

  Pheasant started up from her chair, all nerves. What was he going to do to her? She had a mind to run from the room. She gasped: “What do you want?”

  “I want you to come here.”

  She went to his side with an assumed nonchalance.

  “You seem to be playing the heavy father this morning,” she said.

  “I want to see that tooth you’re talking about.”

  “I wasn’t talking about it. It’s you who are talking about it. I only said I was going to have it filled.”

  “Please open your mouth,” he said, testily, putting his hand under her chin.

  She prayed, “Oh, God, let there be a large hole in it,” and opened her mouth so wide that she looked like a young robin beseeching food.

  “H-m,” growled Maurice. “It should have been attended to some time ago.” He added, giving her chin a grudging stroke: “You’ve pretty little teeth. Get the fellow to fix them up properly.”

  Pheasant stared. He was being almost loving. At this late hour! He had stroked her chin—given it a little dab with his fingers, anyway. She felt suddenly angry with him. The idea of getting demonstratively affectionate with her at this late hour! Making it harder for her to leave him.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be a beauty if I keep on, shan’t I?”

  He answered seriously: “You’re too skinny for beauty. But you’ll fill out. You’re nothing but a filly.”

  “This is the way fillies show their pleasure,” she said, and rubbed her head against his shoulder. “I wish I could whinny! But I can bite.”

  “I know you can,” he said, gravely. “You bit me when you were five. And I held your head under the tap for it.”

  She was glad he had reminded her of that episode. It would be easier to leave him after that.

  He went into the hall and took his hat from a peg.

  “Goodbye,” she called after him.

  She watched him go along the path toward the stables, filling his pipe, walking with his peculiar, slouching, hangdog gait. She threw open the window and called after him:

  “Oh, hullo, Maurice!”

  “Yes?” he answered, half wheeling

  “Oh—goodbye!”

  “Well, I’ll be—” she heard him mutter, as he went on.

  He must think her a regular little fool. But, after all, it was a very serious goodbye. The next time they met, if ever they met again, she would be a different person. She would have an honourable name—a name with which she could face the world. She would be Mrs. Piers Whiteoak.

  VII

  PIERS AND PHEASANT MARRIED

  HE HAD ARRIVED on the very tick of two. She had been there twenty minutes earlier, very hot, but pale from excitement and fatigue; she had jogged—sometimes breaking into a run—for nearly half a mile, lugging the heavy portmanteau. She had been in a state of panic at the approach of every vehicle, thinking she was pursued. Three times she had fled to the shelter of a group of wayside cedars, to hide while a wagon lumbered or a car sped by.

  Piers stowed the portmanteau in the back of the car, and she flung herself into the seat beside him. He started the car—a poor old rattletrap, but washed for the occasion—with a jerk. He looked absurdly Sundayish in his rigid best serge suit, and with an expression rather more wooden than exultant.

  “They needed this car at home today,” he said. “I’d a hard time getting away.”

  “So had I. Maurice was having two guests to dinner, and it had to be later, and he wanted me there to receive them.”

  “H-m. Who were they?”

  “A Mr. Martin and another man. Both horse breeders.”

  “Receive them’! Good Lord! You do say ridiculous things!”

  She subsided into her corner, crushed. Was this what it was like to elope? A taciturn, soap-shining lover in a bowler hat, who called one ridiculous just at the moment when he should have been in an ecstasy of daring and protective love!

  “I think you’re very arrogant,” she said.

  “Perhaps I am,” he agreed, letting the speed out. “I can’t help it if I am,” he added, not without complaisance. “It’s in the blood, I expect.”

  She took off her hat and let the wind ruffle her hair. Road signs rushed past, black-and-white cattle in fields, cherry orchards in full bloom, and apple orchards just coming into bud.

  “Gran said at dinner that I need disciplining. You’ll have to do it, Pheasant.” He looked around at her, smiling, and seeing her with her hair ruffled, her eyes shining, he added: “You precious darling!”

  He snatched a kiss, and Pheasant put her hand on the wheel beside his. They both stared at the hand, thinking how soon the wedding ring must outshine the engagement ring in importance. They experienced a strange mixture of sensations, feeling at the same moment like runaway children (for they had both been kept down by their elders) and tremendous adventurers, not afraid of anything in this shining spring world.

  They were married by the rector of Stead, a new man who had barely heard the names of their families, with perhaps a picturesque anecdote attached. Piers was so sunburned and solid that he looked like nothing but an ordinary young countryman, and Pheasant’s badly cut dress and cheap shoes transformed her young grace into coltish awkwardness. He hoped they would come regularly to his church, he said, and he gave them some very good advice in the cool vestry When they had gone and he examined the fee which Piers had given him in an envelope, he was surprised at its
size, for Piers was determined to carry everything through as a Whiteoak should.

  As they flew along the road which ran like a trimming of white braid on the brown shore that skirted the lake, Piers began to shout and sing in an ecstasy of achievement.

  “We’re man and wife!” he chanted. “Man and wife! Pheasant and Piers! Man and wife!”

  His exuberance and the speed at which they drove the car made people stare. The greenish-blue lake, still stirred by a gale which had blown all night but had now fallen to a gentle breeze, beat on the shore a rhythmic accompaniment, an extravagant wedding march. Cherry orchards flung out the confetti of their petals on the road before them, and the air was unimaginably heavy with the heady incense of spring. Piers stopped the wagon of a fruit vendor and bought oranges, of which Pheasant thrust sections into his mouth as he drove, and ate eagerly herself, for excitement made them thirsty. As they neared the suburbs of the city she threw the rinds into the ditch and scrubbed her lips and hands on her handkerchief. She put on her hat and sat upright then, her hands in her lap, feeling that everyone who met them must realize that they were newly married.

  Piers had spoken for rooms in the Queen’s Hotel which the Whiteoaks had frequented for three generations. He had not been there very much himself—a few times to dinner in company with Renny, twice for birthday treats as a small boy with Uncle Nicholas.

  Now on his wedding day he had taken one of the best bedrooms with bath adjoining. His blood was all in his head as the clerk gave a surreptitious smile and handed the key to a boy. The boy went lopsidedly before them to the bedroom, carrying the antiquated portmanteau. All the white closed doors along the corridor made Pheasant feel timid. She fancied there were ears against all the panels, eyes to the keyholes. What if Maurice should suddenly pounce out on them? Or Renny? Or terrible Grandmother Whiteoak?

  When they were alone in the spacious, heavily furnished hotel bedroom, utterly alone, with only the deep rumble of the traffic below to remind them of the existence of the world, a sudden feeling of frozen dignity, of aloofness from each other, took possession of them.

  “Not a bad room, eh? Think you’ll be comfortable here?” And he added, almost challengingly: “It’s one of the best rooms in the hotel, but if there’s anything you’d like different—”

  “Oh, no. It’s nice. It’ll do nicely, thank you.”

  Could they be the young runaway couple who had raced along the lakeshore road, singing and eating oranges?

  “There’s your bag,” he said, indicating the ponderous portmanteau.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I’ve got the bag all right.”

  “I wonder what we’d better do first,” he added, staring at her. She looked so strange to him in this new setting that he felt as though he were really seeing her for the first time.

  “What time is it?”

  “Half-past five.”

  She noticed then that the sun had disappeared behind a building across the street, and that the room lay in a yellowish shadow. Evening was coming.

  “Hadn’t you better send the telegrams?”

  “I expect I had. I’ll go down and do that, and see that we’ve a table reserved; and, look here, shouldn’t you like to go to the theatre tonight?”

  Pheasant was thrilled at that. “Oh, I’d love the theatre! Is there something good on?”

  “I’ll find out, and get tickets, and you can be changing. Now about those telegrams. How would it do if I just send one to Renny, something like this: ‘Pheasant and I married. Home tomorrow. Tell Maurice.’ Would that be all right?”

  “No,” she said, firmly. “Maurice must have a telegram all to himself, from me. Say: ‘Dear Maurice—’”

  “Good Lord! You can’t begin a telegram, ‘Dear Maurice.’ It isn’t done. Tell me what you want to say and I’ll put it in the proper form.”

  Pheasant spoke in an incensed tone. “See here; is this your telegram or mine? I’ve never written a letter or sent a telegram to Maurice in my life and I probably never shall again. So it’s going to begin: ‘Dear Maurice.’”

  “All right, my girl. Fire away.”

  “Say, ‘Dear Maurice: Piers and I are married. Tell Nannie. Yours sincerely, Pheasant.’ That will do.”

  Piers could not conceal his mirth at such a telegram, but he promised to send it, and after giving her body a convulsive squeeze and receiving a kiss on the sunburned bridge of his nose he left her.

  She was alone. She was married. All the old life was over and the new just beginning. She went to the dressing table and stood before the three-sectioned mirror. It was wonderful to see her own face there, from all sides at once. She felt that she had never really seen herself before—no wonder her reflection looked surprised. She turned this way and that, tilting her head like a pretty bird. She took off her brown dress and stood enthralled by the reflection of her charms in knickers and a little white camisole. She turned on the electric light, and made a tableau with her slender milky arms upraised and her eyes half closed. She wished she could spend a long time playing with these magical reflections, but Piers might come back and find her not dressed.

  A bell in some tower struck six.

  She saw that her hands needed washing and hoped there would be soap in the bathroom. She gasped when she had pressed the electric button and flooded the room with a hard white light. The fierce splendour of it dazzled her. At home there was a bathroom with a bare uncovered floor on which stood an ancient green tin bath, battered and disreputable. The towels were old and fuzzy, leaving bits of lint all over one’s body, and the cake of soap was always like jelly, because Maurice would leave it in the water. Here were glistening tile and marble, nickel polished like new silver, an enormous tub of virgin whiteness, and a row of towels fit only for a bride. “And, by my halidom,” she exclaimed—for she was devoted to Sir Walter Scott—“I am the bride!”

  She locked herself in and took a bath, almost reverently handling the luxurious accessories. Such quantities of steaming water! Such delicate soap! Such satiny towels! As she stepped dripping on to the thick bath mat she felt that never till that moment had she been truly clean.

  Her hair was sleekly brushed, and she was doing up her pink-and-white dress when Piers arrived. He had sent off the telegrams—and not neglected the “Dear” for Maurice. He had got orchestra chairs for a Russian vaudeville. He took her to the ladies’ drawing-room and set her in a white-and-gold chair where she waited while he scrubbed and beautified himself.

  They were at their own table in a corner where they could see the entire dining room: rows and rows of white-clothed tables, glimmering with silver, beneath shaded lights; a red-faced waiter with little dabs of whisker before his ears, who took a fatherly interest in their dinner.

  Piers whispered: “What will you have, Mrs. Piers Whiteoak?”—and put everything out of her head but those magic words.

  Piers ordered the dinner. Delicious soup. A tiny piece of fish with a strange sauce. Roast chicken. Asparagus. Beautiful but rather frightening French pastries—one hardly knew how to eat them. Strawberries like dissolving jewels. (“But where do they come from, Piers, at this time of year?”) Such dark coffee. Little gold-tipped cigarettes, specially bought for her. The scented smoke circled about their heads, accentuating their isolation.

  Four men at the table next them did not seem able to keep their eyes off her. They talked earnestly to each other, but their eyes, every now and again, would slide toward her, and sometimes, she was sure, they were talking about her. The odd thing was that the consciousness of their attention did not confuse her. It exhilarated her, gave her a certainty of poise and freedom of gesture which otherwise she would not have had.

  She had carried the gold-embroidered India shawl that had been her grandmother’s down to dinner, and when she became aware that these four dark men were watching her, speculating about her, some instinct, newly awakened, told her to put the shawl about her shoulders, told her that there was something about the shawl that suit
ed her better than the little pink-and-white dress. She held it closely about her, sitting erect, looking straight into Piers’s flushed face, but she was conscious of every glance, every whisper from the four at the next table.

  When she and Piers passed the men on their way out, one of them was brushed by the fringe of her shawl. His dark eyes were raised to her face, and he inclined his head toward the shawl as though he sought the light caress from it. He was a man of about forty. Pheasant felt that the shawl was a magic shawl, that she floated in it, that it bewitched all it touched. Her small brown head rose out of its gorgeousness like a sleek flower.

  The Russian company was a new and strange experience. It opened the gates of an undreamed-of and exotic world. She heard the “Volga Boat Song” sung in a purple twilight by only dimly discerned foreign seamen. She heard the ragings and pleadings in a barbarous tongue when a savage crew threw their captain’s mistress overboard because she had brought them ill luck. The most humorous acts had no smile from her. They were enthralling, but never for a moment funny. The moonfaced showman, with his jargon of languages, had a dreadful fascination for her, but she saw nothing amusing in his patter. To her he was the terrifying magician who had created all this riot of noise and colour. He was a sinister man, at whom one gazed breathlessly, gripping Piers’s hand beneath the shawl. She had never been in a theatre before. And Piers sat, brown-faced, solid, smiling steadily at the stage, and giving her fingers a steady pressure.

  Passing through the foyer, there was a dense crowd that surged without haste toward the outer doors. Pheasant pressed close to Piers, looking with shy curiosity at the faces about her. Then someone just behind took her wrist in his hand, and slid his other hand lightly along her bare arm to beneath the shoulder, where it rested a moment in casual caress, then was withdrawn.