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

by Mazo de La Roche

  He, too, closed his eyes, murmuring to himself: “Oh, this is terrible!” A tear trickled down his cheek and fell on Renny’s wrist.

  The elder Whiteoak gave the younger a little shake. “Cut that out,” he said. They looked into each other’s eyes.

  “It nearly broke me.”

  “What did, Renny?”

  “Why, the present.”

  “The present?”

  “Rather. The birthday present.”

  “Oh, Renny, for God’s sake—”

  “Stop your swearing.”

  “But what is it?”

  “It’s,” he plunged the word into Wake’s ear, “a pony—a beautiful Welsh pony,”

  After the first ecstatic questions, Wake lay silent, floating in a golden haze of happiness. He did not want to miss the savour of one lovely moment of this day of days. First a pony, then a picnic, and in between, an orgy of other presents. A birthday cake with ten tall candles. At last he whispered: “Is it a he or a she?”

  “A little mare.”

  A mare! He could hardly believe it. There would be colts—tiny, shaggy colts. His very own. It was almost too much. He wriggled against Renny. Adoring him.

  “When will she—oh, I say, Renny, what’s her name?”

  “She has no name. You may name her.”

  No name. A nameless gift from the gods. Oh, responsibility overpowering, to name her!

  “When will she come?”

  “She is here, in the stable.”

  With a squeal of joy Wake leaped up in the bed; then, espying the bugle, he had an inspiration.

  “Renny, wouldn’t it be splendid, if I’d sound the reveille and then we’d both instantly get up? I’d like terribly to sound the reveille for you, Renny.”

  “Fire away, then.”

  Solemnly the boy placed the bugle against his lips and took a prodigious breath. Renny lay looking at him, amused and compassionate. Poor little devil—a man some day, like himself.

  Loudly, triumphantly, the notes of the reveille were sounded. Simultaneously they sprang out on to the floor. June sunshine blazed into the room.

  Downstairs, Wakefield said to Finch: “What do you suppose? Renny has given me a pony. We’ve just been out to the stable to see her. A little pony mare, mind you, Finch. There’ll be colts one day. And thanks again for the bugle. Renny and I both got up by it this morning. And there’s to be a picnic on the shore, and an absolutely ’normous birthday cake.”

  “Humph,” grunted Finch. “I never remember such a fuss on any of my birthdays.”

  “You have always had a cake, dear,” said Meggie, reproachfully. “And don’t forget that nice little engine thing, and your bicycle, and your wristwatch.”

  “You don’t expect the family to rejoice because you were born, do you?” asked Piers, grinning.

  “No, I don’t expect anything,” bawled Finch, “but to be badgered.”

  “Poor little boy, he’s jealous.” Piers passed a sunburned hand over Finch’s head, stroking downward over his long nose, and ending with a playful jolt under the chin.

  Finch’s nerves were raw that morning. He was in the midst of the end-of-the-term examinations, and his increasing preoccupation with music seemed to render him less than ever able to cope with mathematics. He knew with dreadful certainty that he was not going to pass into the next form. The fact that his music teacher was not only pleased with him but deeply interested in him, would not make up for that. Combined with a skulking sense of helpless inferiority, he felt the exalted arrogance of one whose spirit moves on occasion in the free and boundless spaces of art.

  With a kind of bellow, he turned on Piers and struck him in the chest. Piers caught his wrists and held them, smiling lazily into his wild, distorted face.

  “See here, Eden,” he called. “This little lamb is baaing because we celebrate Wake’s birthday with more pep than we do his. Isn’t it a crime?”

  Eden lounged over, his lips drawn in a faint smile from his teeth, which held a cigarette, and joined in the baiting.

  All morning Finch’s heart raged within him. At dinner Meggie and her grandmother both chose to correct him, to nag at him. He slouched, they said. He stuck his elbows out. He bolted his food so that he might be ready for the last helping of cherry tart before poor dear Gran. Furious, he muttered something to himself to the effect that she might have it for all he cared, and that if it choked her—

  She heard.

  “Renny! Renny!” she shouted, turning purple. “He says he hopes it chokes me—chokes me—at my age! Flog him, Renny; I won’t stand it. I’ll choke. I know I will.”

  She glared wildly at the head of the house, her eyes blazing under her shaggy red brows.

  “Mamma, Mamma,” said Ernest.

  “It’s true,” growled Nicholas. “I heard him say it.” Renny had been talking to Alayne, trying not to notice the disturbance. Now, in sudden anger, he got up and in a stride stood over Finch.

  “Apologize to Gran,” he ordered.

  “Sorry,” muttered Finch, turning white.

  “No mumbling! Properly.”

  “I’m very sorry, Grandmother.”

  The sight of his hunched shoulders and unprepossessing, sheepish face suddenly threw his elder into one of his quick passions. He gave him a sound and ringing cuff. Perhaps it was because Finch was not properly balanced that day. In any case it always seemed easy to send him sprawling. The next second he was in a sobbing heap on the floor, and his heavy chair had fallen with a crash.

  Alayne smothered a cry, and stared at her plate. Her heart was thudding, but she thought: “I must hang on to myself. I must. He didn’t mean to do it. He will be sorry. They drove him to it.”

  Renny sat down. He avoided looking at her. He was humiliated at having been drawn into violence before her. However, if she thought him a brute, so much the better.

  Finch gathered up himself and his chair, and resumed his place at the table with a look of utter dejection.

  “Now will you give back chat?” asked Grandmother, and she added after another mouthful of tart: “Somebody kiss me.”

  She kept asking what time the picnic was to be, for she was even more excited about it than Wake. She had her bonnet and cape on long before the hour when the phaeton was to convey her to the shore. She had the picnic hampers ranged beside her chair, and passed the period of waiting by a prolonged and bitter discussion with Boney as to whether or not he should forage among the edibles.

  The picnic party was separated into the same parts as the church party, with the difference that Finch rode his bicycle instead of walking, and Piers arrived late on horseback, for it was a busy season with him.

  As he tethered his mare to an iron stake, which had been driven into that field before any of them could remember, he glanced toward the picnickers to see where Pheasant was. He had not had so much of her company of late as he would have liked. To the regular spring work of his men and himself had been added the setting out of a new cherry orchard and the clearing of a piece of woodland for cultivation. Piers was as strong and wholesome as a vigorous young tree. He was ambitious and he was not afraid of work, but it did seem rather hard that he had so little time to spare in these lovely days of early summer for happy and indolent hours with Pheasant. She seldom came out into the fields or orchard with him now, as she used to do. She looked pale too, and was often petulant, even depressed. He wondered if she were possibly going to have a child. He must take good care of her, give her a little change of some kind. Perhaps he could arrange a motor trip over the weekend. The poor girl was probably envious of Alayne, who had Eden always at her side.

  He saw Pheasant standing on a bluff, her slender figure outlined against the sky. Her short green dress was fluttering about her knees. She looked like a flower poised there above the breezy blueness of the lake.

  The phaeton had been drawn down the narrow stony road that led to the water’s edge between two bluffs. Hodge had loosed the horses, and had led them ou
t into the lake to drink. A fire had been lighted on the beach, and around it the family, with the exception of Pheasant and old Mrs. Whiteoak, were enjoying themselves in their own fashions. Wake, with upturned knickers, was paddling along the water’s rim. Renny was throwing sticks for his spaniels. Nicholas and Ernest were skipping stones. Meg, in a disreputable old sweater, was bent over the fire, cherishing the teakettle. Alayne was carrying driftwood. Lady Buckley, very upright on a rug spread on the beach, was knitting at something of a bright red colour.

  Before Piers joined the others on the beach, he went to speak to his grandmother, who sat regarding the scene from the safety of her seat in the phaeton.

  “Well, Gran, are you having a good time?”

  “Put your head in so I can kiss you. Ah, there’s the boy! Yes, I’m having a very good time. I used to bring the children to picnics here more than sixty years ago. I remember sitting on this very spot and watching your grandfather teach the boys to swim. Nick was a little water dog, but Ernest was always screaming that he was going down. Oh, we had the times! This was a grand country then.”

  “I suppose so, Gran.”

  “Yes, the wood pigeons were so thick they’d fly in clouds that would throw a great shadow. The farm boys would trap them. Pretty, pretty things, with eyes like jewels. They’d put the pretty eyes out of one, the brutes! And they’d throw it in a field; and when the flock saw it fluttering they thought it was feeding and they’d alight in a cloud, and the boys and men would shoot them by hundreds.”

  “No such shooting now, Gran.”

  “Go and see when tea will be ready. I want my tea. And, Philip—I mean Piers—keep your eye on Pheasant; she’s young, aye, she’s young, and her mother was bad, and her father a rip. She’s worth watching.”

  “Look here, Gran, I don’t like your saying such things about Pheasant. She’s all right.”

  “I dare say she is—but she’s worth watching. All women are, if they’ve any looks. I want my tea.”

  Piers was smiling at the old lady’s advice as he strode along the beach. He was tolerantly amused by her, and yet he thought, “There’s a grain of truth in what she says. Girls are worth watching. Still, there’s no one about but Tom Fennel that she could—Eden, there’s Eden; he has nothing to do—might amuse himself—poets—immoral fellows. I’il spend more time with her. I might take her to the Falls for the weekend. There’s that new inn there. She’d like that, poor little young ’un.”

  The lake was the colour of lapis lazuli. Some gulls, disturbed by the barking of the dogs, wheeled, petulantly crying, above its brightness. Beyond them a coaling schooner, with blackened sails, moved imperceptibly, and a steamer bound for Niagara trailed its faint streamer of smoke. Little sailboats were languishing in some yacht club race.

  Piers went up to Renny, whose eyes were fixed on Flossie swimming after a stick, while Merlin, having retrieved his, barked himself off his feet in agonized demand for another opportunity to exhibit his powers. As Piers approached, the spaniel shook himself vigorously, sending a drenching shower over the brothers’ legs.

  “She has got it,” said Renny, his eyes still on Floss, and he called out to her, “Good girl!”

  “Damn Merlin! “ said Piers. “He’s soaked my trouser legs.”

  “All in white, eh?” observed Renny, looking him over.

  “You didn’t expect me to come in overalls, did you? Have we time for a swim before tea?”

  Renny bent and put his hand in the water. “It’s not very cold. Suppose we do. Tea can wait.”

  “Where is Eden?” asked Piers, casting his eyes over the party.

  “He was up on the bluff with Pheasant a bit ago.” Looking up, they saw his fair head rising just above the grass where he lay stretched at Pheasant’s feet.

  “I won’t have him hanging about her,” burst out Piers.

  “Tell him so, then,” said Renny, curtly.

  “By the Lord, I will! I’ll tell him so he’ll not forget.” His mind suddenly was a seething sea of suspicions. “Why even Gran thinks there’s something wrong. She was warning me just now.”

  “No need to get in a stew,” said Renny, throwing the stick for Merlin, who leaped to the water with a bark of joy, while his place was immediately taken by a dripping, importunate Flossie. “Eden and Alayne will be leaving before the first of July. Evans has a job for him then.”

  “What a loafer he is!”

  “You didn’t expect him to work with a broken leg, did you? Don’t grouse about anything now: this is Wake’s birthday party. Come on and have our swim.” He shouted to Wakefield: “Wake, should you like to go in for a swim?”

  Wakefield came galloping through the wavelets.

  “Should I? Oh, splendid! What if I had the pony here? She’d swim out with me, I’ll bet.”

  “Eden!” called Renny. “We’re going in swimming. Better come.”

  They stared up at him as he scrambled to his feet and began to descend the steep path down the side of the bluff. He still limped from the effects of his fall.

  “Won’t it be pretty cold?” he asked.

  “We might have Meggie boil a kettle of water to warm a spot for you,” said Piers.

  “Where’s Finch?” asked Renny. “Finch will want to come.”

  Wakefield answered: “He’s in the little cove already, lying on the sand.”

  The four made toward the cove.

  “Don’t let Uncle Ernest come,” said Eden. “He’s sure to hurt me.”

  “Uncle Ernest! “ shouted Renny. “Eden says you’re not to come. You’re too rough.”

  “Eden, Eden,” cried Ernest, but with a certain pride, “I wish you would let me forget that.”

  Grandmother’s voice came from the phaeton, sharp with the anguish of hunger: “When are we going to have tea? I told Piers to fetch me tea!”

  “I am bringing you a molasses scone to stay you, Mamma,” said Augusta. She was carefully making her way across the shingle, the buttered scone in her hand.

  When the four brothers reached the little willow-fringed cove, they found Finch lying face downward, his head propped on his arms. “Still sulking?” asked Piers. “Did you know, Renny, that the poor youth is obsessed by the idea that we make more of Wake’s birthday than his? Isn’t it heartrending, Wake?”

  Wakefield, smiling and self-conscious, stared down at Finch’s prostrate form.

  “If I get this leg chilled,” observed Eden, “I might have rheumatism.”

  “You won’t get chilled if I am with you,” said Piers, pulling off his coat.

  When the others had plunged into the lake, and Wake was already screaming with delight and terror at Piers’s hands, Renny returned to Finch and said with a fatherly air: “Better come in, Finch; it’ll do you good. You’ve been studying too much.”

  “No. I d’want to,” mumbled the boy against his arm.

  “Don’t be a duffer,” said Renny, poking him with his bare foot. “The more Piers sees he can rattle you the more he’ll do it.”

  “Tisn’t only that.”

  “Well, look here. It was too bad I gave you that cuff before the others. But you were too damned cheeky. Come along and forget it.”

  Finch rolled over, disclosing a distorted red face.

  “Is there no place I can be let alone?” he bawled. “Have I got to go to the end of the world to be let alone? All I ask is to be let alone, in peace here, and you all come prodding me up!”

  “Stay alone, then, you little idiot!” Renny tossed away the cigarette he was smoking and strode to the water’s edge.

  All very well, Finch thought, for a lordly being like Renny, safe, always sure of himself, unmenaced by dreadful thoughts and bewitchment, of whom even Piers stood in some awe. With his head propped on his hand, he watched his brothers swimming, splashing, diving, the sunshine glistening on their white shoulders. As a creature apart, he watched them, with the idea in his mind that there was a conspiracy against him, that each member of the family play
ed a different part against him, talking him over among themselves, sneering and laughing at him; but, in spite of himself, a slow smile of pleasure in their glistening grace, their agility, crept over his features. Their robust shouts were not unmusical. And the shine of their sleek heads, blond and russet and black, pleased his eyes. He saw that Piers was rough with Eden, and he was glad. He wished they would fight, half kill each other, while he reclined on the sand looking on.

  Eden came limping out of the water.

  “Are there any towels?” he asked. “Run and ask Meg for towels, like a good fellow, Finch.”

  Oh, yes! He was a good fellow when there was an errand to be run. But he hurried across the shingle to his sister.

  “Towels? Yes, here they are. This big red-and-white one for Renny, mind! And the two smaller ones for Eden and Piers. And send Wake to me. I must give him a good rubbing so he shan’t take a chill.”

  A sudden mood of savage playfulness came over Finch. Snatching the towels, he went, with a wild fling of his body, back toward the cove. There he hurled the twisted bundle at his brothers.

  “There are your old towels!” he yelled; and as he crashed among the brushwood beyond the willows, he called back, “You’re to go to Meggie, young Wake, and get walloped!”

  Alayne had joined Pheasant on the bluff, and presently Renny too mounted the path, his damp russet head appearing first above the brink, like the ruffled crest of some bird of prey. He threw himself on the short thick clover that carpeted the bluff, and lighted his pipe.

  “It seems rather hard,” said Pheasant in her childish voice, “that Alayne and I could not have bathed. By the noise you made we could imagine the fun you were having.”

  “It was too cold for girls.”

  “It is a scientific fact,” she said, sententiously, “that our sex can endure more cold than yours.”

  “We had no bathing suits.”

  “We should have all brought bathing suits and made a proper party of it. You have no idea how stupid it is to sit twiddling one’s thumbs while you males are enjoying yourselves. ‘Men must work, and women must weep’—that is the Whiteoak motto. Only you translate it into: ‘Men must play, and women—’ Do help me out with something really biting, Alayne.”