05 Whiteoak Heritage

by Mazo de La Roche

  It was ajar. He tapped on it with his knuckles, then pushed it open and entered. Chris was alone in the living room. She came toward him, her face small and pale in the lamplight.

  “Where’s Jim?” he asked.

  “He’s gone to post a letter. What did she say?”

  “At first she wouldn’t hear of your staying on. Later she agreed to another fortnight. If Jim behaves himself everything will be all right.”

  “Is she angry at me?”

  “Not specially. It’s all Jim. I think you might write her a little note and thank her.”

  “Very well. But I hope we can find somewhere else to go. I hate this place now.”

  “I’ll find somewhere else for you. Why are you so pale?”

  She put her hands to her temples. “My head aches. I feel tired.”

  “No wonder your head aches.” He turned off the light nearest them and took her in his arms. She stood close to him, trembling.

  “Take a day off,” he said. “Rest tomorrow.”

  “It’s not rest I want — it’s you! I love you so, Renny!”

  He kissed her. His hands held her close. He said:

  “I thought you’d be happier when I told you you might stay on. Poor darling!”

  “What would you say if I were free?”

  “I’d say, thank God!”

  “Why?”

  “What a question!”

  “Do you think you’d want to marry me?”

  “Yes. I’d love to marry you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “What have I done to deserve that?”

  “You don’t really need me. You don’t need me as much as poor Jim does.”

  “Will you rest tomorrow?”

  “No. I don’t want to rest. I want to be with you. Do you remember that night by the lake?”

  “Kit!”

  She felt him tremble. He picked her up, then sat down with her in his arms. He buried his face against her breast.

  “I wish you were unhappy too,” she said. “It’s horrible of me but I want you to be unhappy, like me. Then I might feel more sure of your love.”

  He raised his dark eyes to hers. “If you want me to be unhappy — I will be.”

  She put her fingers on his eyes and closed them. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It isn’t! I’m getting unhappier every moment. Feel me crying.”

  She felt his breast heave. “How dare you!” she exclaimed.

  But, when she took his face between her hands and looked into it, she saw that there were tears in his eyes. She stroked his hair with a mothering gesture.

  The mare neighed. They heard Dayborn’s steps on the path. Chris went toward the door to meet him. A malicious smile lighted his thin face when he saw Renny.

  “Well,” he asked, “what’s that hag next door got to say?”

  “Ssh!” exclaimed Renny and Chris simultaneously.

  “I expect she has her ear against the partition.”

  “You don’t deserve,” said Renny, “to have anything done for you.” He raised his voice and spoke very distinctly. “Mrs. Stroud has been very kind. She agrees to extend your time here to a fortnight. In return she expects you to attend to your own affairs and leave her to manage hers. I’m pretty sure that you can stay on indefinitely, if you behave yourself.”

  Dayborn, seeing what was expected of him, also raised his voice.

  “I’m sure we’re very grateful to the lady,” he said in a nasal whine. “Being the undeserving poor, we lap up all favours and try to prove ourselves worthy of them.”

  “Like hell you do,” said Renny under his breath.

  “But Jim,” said Chris, “it is a good thing, isn’t it, that we don’t have to move out of here tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know what’s good and what’s bad,” he returned. “I only know that life is sweet and that I damn well want a drink.”

  He opened the door of the sideboard and took out a bottle of rye whiskey. He set three glasses on the table. He filled them with whiskey and water, then picked up his own. Raising it he turned, so that he faced the partition.

  “Here’s to you, kind lady,” he said, “and mud in your eye!”

  The toast was drunk.

  Yet a strain of conventionality in Renny made him resent the toast. He felt that Mrs. Stroud deserved some gratitude for what she had done, and he himself a little, as the bearer of good news. He remained for a time while they discussed the horses and, as a second glass was emptied, the possibility of Launceton’s winning the Grand National.

  They went to the door with him and the stream of light from it fell on the waiting mare. The satin smoothness of her shoulders was illumined. Her large ears that gave her head a look of intelligence slanted expectantly toward Renny. She gave a loud whinny.

  “Good night,” said Dayborn. “It’s nice to have visitors of our own for a change. One gets envious of seeing the other people have all the visitors. One wonders what one has done —”

  Chris took him by the arm and dragged him back into the hall. Across his shoulder she threw a kiss to Renny.

  He mounted the mare who cantered eagerly toward her stable, oblivious to the beauty of the night, longing only for the comfort of her stall.

  XVII

  THE CANOE

  EDEN WAS IN a state of not unpleasant lassitude that sometimes bordered on melancholy. His mind was filled with thoughts which he longed for the leisure to clarify. He wanted to write poetry, but each morning when he woke the routine of the day lay ahead of him, the lying in bed to the last possible moment, the scrambling into his clothes and through his breakfast, the race for the train, the sitting through lectures that, more often than not, bored him, the return home, the snatched hours with Amy Stroud. There were so many books he wanted to read, so little leisure for reading them. He was not yet nineteen. He had grown fast. Sometimes as he hurriedly dressed in the morning, after too little sleep, he felt alternately excited and weary, elated and depressed. Above all, he felt a distaste for responsibility, a longing to enjoy the lovely autumn weather in his own way. He longed to spend hours each day with Mrs. Stroud. His triumphant, if theatrical, winning of her from Ernest had made her more desirable to him though less real. His feelings toward her, as toward himself and his family, were so subtle as to be apparently contradictory. Yet what he wanted was simplicity and freedom.

  He resented his young brothers accompanying him on the train. If it were not for them he would be able to escape for an occasional day. Time and again he thought of plans, only to discard them as hopeless. But at last he invented a fellow student whom he called Powell. He spoke of him several times, envying him his drive to town in a motor car. The car was Powell’s own and he was an earnest student. A little later he told Meg that he had been invited to join Powell sometimes in the drive. There was no trouble at fall with the family. Meg said she was glad Eden had found a serious-minded friend. Renny observed that Powell’s father must have more money than sense to give a boy of that age a car. Eden at once killed off Powell’s father. He was the only son of an indulgent mother. The two lived in the country, so Eden would have to wait for the car on the back road.

  On the first morning when he accomplished this, he stood in a little thicket by the roadside till he saw Dayborn and Chris pass on their way to the stables. He then jumped over the fence and swung along the road to Mrs. Stroud’s. He felt light-hearted and unscrupulous. He had told her the night before to expect him. He hated being surprised himself, so he would not surprise her, perhaps in a dusting cap doing her floors. He wanted everything prepared for him.

  The road was elastic and moist after a rain, and gay with the goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace growing by its side. The air was vibrant with the twitterings of a flock of swallows assembling for their journey south. With each gust of the variable wind a few bright coloured leaves detached themselves from the bough and floated tranquilly through the air. He had filled his pockets with apples in the orchard.


  She opened the door, smiling.

  “Oh, how naughty you are!” she exclaimed.

  “And how happy!” he added.

  They stood on the doorstep in the arching sunlight. She breathed deeply, feeling at the moment no older than he.

  When they were inside she asked:

  “Do you know why your uncle doesn’t come to see me any more?”

  He looked at her blankly.

  “Doesn’t he?”

  “Never.”

  “How funny!”

  “Have I offended him?”

  “How could you?”

  “I should think it would be easy. He’s so sensitive — I was wondering —”

  “What?”

  “If he is — but that would be ridiculous.”

  “Jealous, you mean. But, after all, I was here first —”

  “Have you said that to him?”

  “Well, if you want the truth, we gambled for you. Threw dice.”

  Her expression for a moment was outraged. Her jaw dropped.

  “How funny you look!” He laughed delightedly.

  “But it’s disgraceful!” Her puritanical past revolted at the thought. Then suddenly colour flooded her face. Why — it was like having a duel fought for her! “And you won?”

  “Yes, I won.”

  “And he isn’t coming here again?”

  “How funny you look! No, he isn’t coming again. He’s taken his defeat gracefully and settled down to his work, as he calls it. He writes a little and plays a little at backgammon with my grandmother. I really think he’s relieved. It’s no joke, you know, for a man of his age to have a love affair on his hands.”

  “It wasn’t a love affair,” she said in a trembling voice. “It was a very pleasant friendship and I shall miss his visits.” She sat down, looking at her clasped hands.

  He knelt beside her and put both arms about her.

  “Aimee, darling, I’m so sorry you’re hurt. I’ve put the thing crudely. But the trouble is, we couldn’t go on as we were. It stuck in my gizzard to have Uncle Ernest as a rival. He isn’t capable of loving you and I am. Don’t you agree that that was a horrible evening we all had together?”

  “Yes, but some day you will desert me. Then I shall be alone.”

  The last word had its poignant effect on her. She began to cry.

  “I shall never leave you,” he said fervently. “It’s been a wonderful experience, the times we’ve had together in this room, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes, but it’s made me too emotional. I can’t control myself. I find myself crying or getting angry, I scarcely know why.” She laid her hands on his shoulders, pressing him close to her.

  “Well, you’re neither going to cry nor get angry any more. You’re going to be happy as the day is long. I wish we had some way of getting out on the lake! It’s as blue as a harebell these days and as smooth as silk. My family have never enjoyed it as they should. They think that if they have two picnics on the shore in the season they’ve done well. I wish I had a canoe. Oh, Aimee, I saw one advertised in the post office the other day! If only I had the money, I’d buy it for you! We’d paddle and drift about for hours, reading poetry and talking.”

  “I’ll buy it,” she exclaimed. “It would be heavenly! I have never been in a canoe in my life.”

  “No, I can’t let you buy it. I’ll get the money somehow.” He put his fingers against his knit brow and thought deeply. “I’ll tell you what. You buy it now and I’ll repay you when I can get hold of the money. It gets scarcer in our house every day since the War. Renny spends more and more on the stables. He’s had new drainage put in and now he’s installing electric light. You couldn’t believe how close-fisted he is in other ways.”

  “Tell me about him,” she said quietly.

  “That’s just what I’ve been doing, isn’t it?”

  “I mean — what sort of man is he, really?”

  “I don’t know him very well myself. You see, he only came home last spring, and when he went away I was a kid.”

  “He persuaded me to allow those people next door to stay on, just as you said he would do. Did he tell you?”

  “He tells me nothing except his usual table talk about his horses. But I wish you hadn’t let him persuade you. I shall have to go on dodging them and eventually, I suppose, they’ll see me and give the whole show away.”

  “I detest Dayborn,” she said almost bitterly.

  “Then why did you let him stay on? I’ll find you a new tenant. One who’ll pay his rent. I wish I could take the place myself! Wouldn’t it be lovely if I lived there, Aimee?”

  “Divine.”

  “If they stay on the family will be sure to find out that I’m not going in with Powell.”

  “What is this Powell like?”

  “Like nothing on earth. He doesn’t exist. I invented him. Don’t you think I’m clever?”

  “I think you’re terribly reckless. How much is the canoe?”

  “Sixty-five dollars. A beauty, and like new.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The advertisement said so. Shall I go and look at it today? Will you trust me? Are you sure you want it? I can’t bear to lead you into anything you’ll regret.”

  “Of course I want it.”

  Eden had an idea for a poem in his head. He sat down at the writing table in the corner and stared at the clean sheets of paper she had laid in front of him. She crept about on tiptoe, afraid of distracting him. But she need not have feared. The idea was flown. He drew a dog’s head on the paper, then thought it looked more like a cow and added horns to it.

  After a while she cautiously came near.

  He crumpled the paper in his hand. “It’s no good. I hate it. I’ll write another.”

  “But don’t destroy it! Let me see it.”

  There was a small struggle between them for the paper. He exclaimed:

  “Why, how fierce you look! I didn’t know you could look like that.”

  At once she relinquished the paper, at the same moment smoothing out her face. He tore up the drawing and threw it into the wastepaper basket. An hour later he left, with sufficient money in his pocket to buy the canoe.

  She took the torn paper from the basket and pieced it together. She sat staring at the result. She felt angry at him, not only for deceiving her but for being such a boy. If only he were even five years older!

  She delayed lunch an hour, waiting for him, then ate hers alone and without appetite. She hated the sight of the dishes she must wash and put away. She felt like smashing them. Unexpectedly, Dayborn returned to his house. He began to hammer loudly. What on earth was he doing? Something deliberately to annoy her, she felt sure of that. He was moving things about. She heard a small crash. She strolled to her gate, staring at the house, wishing he would come out so that she might tell him to leave the next day. Then she saw that he had broken a pane of glass in one of the windows. It seemed the last straw. She could hardly restrain herself.

  She saw Eden coming along the road, walking fast. Dayborn would be sure to see him. She opened the gate and almost ran down the road to meet him. He held out both arms to her.

  “I’ve got it!” he cried. “I’ve got it!”

  “Are you insane?” she gasped, avoiding his arms.

  “Absolutely. With joy! It’s the loveliest thing you ever saw. Graceful and beautifully shaped. We must go out in her now. I persuaded them to take fifty-five dollars. Here’s your change.”

  He thrust a ten dollar bill into her hand. “Let’s take some food with us. I’ve had nothing but a milkshake. How I hate milk!” he beamed at her.

  But she would not let him return to the house with her. It was arranged that he should wait at the nearest crossroad.

  She flew up the stairs to her bedroom, feeling like a girl having a secret love affair. She changed into a white flannel skirt, shorter than any she had yet worn, and white shoes. She had pretty feet and felt that the new style became her. She put on
a striped shirt, knotting the tie carefully, and a white linen hat. She covered herself with an apron while she made the sandwiches. She was excited and happy when she met Eden at the crossroad.

  He strode quickly along the dusty road, talking the while of the hard bargain he had driven, never noticing how difficult it was for her, in her high heels, to keep up with him. She had never walked much and had little liking for the exercise. But, when they reached the boathouse where the canoe lay, she forgot her weariness and felt only pleasure when she saw awaiting her the fragile boat that moved gently on the ripples. Did she really own such a thing! For an instant her mind flew backward and she pictured her dead husband’s dismay at the thought of such a purchase. She smiled recklessly up at Eden as he helped her into the canoe and placed the cushions for her.

  She had a moment’s trepidation as the shallow craft, like a living thing, skimmed forward into the deep water. She felt that the slightest movement on her part would overturn it. She sat very still, resigning herself to Eden’s care. He had been on canoeing trips and could paddle well. He had rolled up his sleeves, his shirt was open at the throat. He had never looked more attractive to her.

  “Don’t go too far out,” she begged. “I can’t help being a little nervous.”

  “You’ll soon get over that. We’ll go out almost every day. I’ll teach you to paddle. Isn’t the air glorious?”

  It was fresh and sweet in contrast to the air on shore, dimmed by dust, carrying the weight of pollen, the chaff from harvests. The shore looked mysterious and beautiful. Here and there a reddening maple burned against the blue of the sky. In the distance they could see a freighter, dark and purposeful, with its banner of smoke. Quite near there were two yachts becalmed in the still air. But the lake was faintly ruffled. Tiny wavelets gurgled beneath the canoe.

  She had got a coat of sunburn when she reached home. She felt happy and reckless. Her qualms at Eden’s deceiving his family had vanished. Let him do what he liked! They would drift as they had drifted in the canoe.

  A week passed and they had had three such outings, one of them in the evening. He had spent the day with her, he had written the best poem he had yet done, or so she thought, and at sunset they had walked to the lake to where the canoe was kept. She had bought heelless rubber-soled shoes and now enjoyed the walk. She was learning to paddle. She told herself that she had never been so happy in her life, then thought grimly that she had never been happy at all, until this summer. She was conscious, too, that her intensified emotions were reaching out for something more passionate than the affair with this boy which could never develop and which might, at any time, be ruthlessly ended by his family. She felt something ruthless in them, else how could Ernest have dropped her as he had? That had been a blow to her pride, for she had felt in herself the power to fascinate him. Still, she did not regret him, for nothing Ernest could have given her would have equalled the delight of those romantic driftings on the lake with Eden.