Ernest turned to Piers. “What do you suspect?”
Piers smiled pleasantly. “Well, I went up to Finch’s room one day when I was out of cigarettes and tried to find some. And there, in his cupboard, were the shawl and watch, done up together in paper.”
“They looked like a package of cigarettes, didn’t they?” sneered Finch.
“Not a bit. But some of the fringe was sticking out and I recognised it. And, as you have such a gathering eye, I said to myself—’Here’s Gran’s shawl, and probably her watch wrapped up inside it!’ And so it was!”
“Meggie, Meggie,” said Ernest reproachfully. “How could you give away the things my mother left you?”
Meg bowed her head. “I—I saw that Finch admired them. He had been kind to me and so—I let him have them,” she faltered.
“Let him have them, says she!” jeered Piers.
“Foolish, generous girl!” exclaimed Ernest.
“Ask Finch what he paid for them,” suggested Piers.
His sister turned on him angrily. “Will you stop your interfering? Really, you are abominable! As though Finch and I would do such a thing!”
“No, no,” rumbled Nicholas, “Meggie would never do such a thing. Now my mother’s watch and shawl will fall to Sarah and she will appreciate them and perhaps wear them. They will become her very well indeed.”
Maurice’s face was dark with suspicion. Piers’s was bright with mischief. Meg’s hot with anger. The squabble might have been prolonged but that the group was broken in upon by Pauline and Sarah pursued by Wakefield, pelting them with freshly cut grass from a barrow. Pauline subsided laughing beside Pheasant. Sarah glided swiftly to Alayne’s side. On her other side was Renny and she took a hand of each. Wakefield emptied the last of the lemonade into a glass and drank it. Finch began to eat his cake.
Into this precarious peace the figure of small Adeline was then intruded. She was now three years old, tall and strong. She came running bare-legged, with flying red hair, across the lawn with something brilliant in her arms.
“Look what I’ve got!” she shouted.
They looked and, according to their ages, were delighted or aghast. For it was Boney she carried, flattened against her chest, his bright wings outspread, his beak gaping.
“Good God!” cried Ernest. “She has killed Boney!”
“If the bird is dead,” sputtered Nicholas—“if the bird is dead—if the bird is—”
Alayne screamed.
Renny leaped up and ran toward his child. When she saw him coming she flung the parrot from her with all her strength and he fluttered into the midst of the circle with screams of fury and amaze. His Hindoo curses came from his throat disjointed and broken. None of them had ever heard him curse like this. It was chaotic but it was terrible. Beating his wings on the ground, it seemed that he would swear himself to death. Then, as by an inspiration, Finch threw him his cake. The parrot heard its soft thud on the grass and lowered his grey lids, exposing his furious pupils, and spied the cake. With marvellous dexterity he calmed himself and began to peck at it, ripples of pleasure soothing his throat.
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Ernest, beaming.
“I have warned her time and again,” said Alayne. “He might have pecked out her eyes. I do wish you would keep him in a cage!”
“No, no, no,” said Nicholas. “It would break his spirit.”
Sarah’s pug drew cautiously nearer to the cake, but a scream from Boney and a warning arching of his beak drove him back. When the cake was finished he flew heavily to Nicholas’s shoulder and, with sinuous movements, wiped his beak on Nicholas’s moustache.
“Darling old bird,” rumbled Nicholas.
Boney settled himself peacefully and, in a cooing tone, said into Nicholas’s ear:
“Gussie—Gussie—Gussie Whiteoak—dear, dear Gussie Whiteoak—”
Nicholas looked about him bewildered. Boney had not uttered her name in years.
XXXIII
ALONE TOGETHER AT LAST
CAN it be possible that summer is over? The air is so tenderly warm. It smells of woodsmoke and ripe apples, and, when the breeze stirs, it touches the cheek as lightly as the breath of a child. A gentle vibration passes through the strong limbs of the evergreens; their long, sticky cones ooze sweet-smelling resin. The grass is warm and dry to rest on, and across it pass the shadows of migrating birds. Sometimes a feather is dropped by one of them, and it falls in an exquisite, slow decline to earth. Never has the old house been so quiet.
It is in good order too, for the repairs, paid for by Augusta, have been well carried out. The roof has been mended, the ceilings repaired, and the shutters painted a vivid green. Since the departure of Nicholas and Ernest and the young people, it has been cleaned, the windows made to shine, the carpets taken up and beaten, the curtains washed. To Alayne, coming out of the door and looking back at it from the lawn, it has an air of almost intolerable smugness. It seems to say—“My birds have flown but—they will come back. A price is on my roof but—my memories are without price.” She stands looking back at it, a smile half tender, half deprecatory, on her lips.
She has been through all the rooms, giving the last touch, putting the last thing in place, preparing, not for coming guests, but for this space alone with the one she loves. She has looked with pleasure at the beds that will not be slept in.
Renny has told her that he will be back at this hour and she has dressed herself charmingly to please him… A new flowered dress with little ruches and elbow-sleeves. For some reason she feels herself nearer to him spiritually than for a long time. She feels a warm, tender tolerance of his faults welling up in her like a happy darkling spring. She has perhaps, she thinks, judged him too harshly in the past. He is not sensitive or subtle, but he is full of fire and life, and, though he may not show it, craving for kindness. He is hers and she will accept him as he is. She feels a new pride at having borne his child…
He comes toward her, up out of the ravine, a look of contentment in his eyes. He too is glad, she thinks, that we are alone together. Nothing must interfere, she thinks, with our time alone together. Now we shall get to understand each other as never before. Now our misunderstandings shall migrate, like those birds overhead.
In his hand he carries a short green stalk crowned with red berries.
“What is that?” she asks, going toward him. But he throws it away and will not let her touch it. “It would stain your frock,” he says.
She smiles up into his face.
“We are alone!” she says. “Can you believe it? Do you like it?”
He touches her cheek half timidly with his fingers. “How nice you look! What’s that business about your waist?”
“A peplum. They’re in again. All old-fashioned things are coming in again… Conjugal bliss will be coming in next.”
Adeline darts out of the bushes, running between them, grasping a hand of each. They look down at her proudly and then smile into each other’s eyes.
THE END
Whiteoak Harvest
MAZO DE LA ROCHE
DUNDURN PRESS
TORONTO
For Ted and Fritzi Weeks
I
ADUMBRATIONS
THE OWNER OF the touring car was interested in the filling station from which he was getting a fresh supply of gasoline but his wife was more interested in the young man who was attending to their wants. She had studied art for a time and it seemed to her that she had never studied a model who had so stirred her imagination. She found herself wishing that she could see him on the models’ stand in an attitude that would best display his slender yet vigorous body, his handsome head covered with dark waving hair. She nudged her husband and with a glance drew his attention from the filling station to its owner.
“Streamline,” her husband said, out of the side of his mouth.
“Look at his hands,” she murmured.
“Hm — hm,” he grunted.
“And his eyelashes.”
/>
“Too long.”
The youth turned off the fluid and addressed the driver of the car.
“That will be two dollars,” he said pleasantly. He added, as the motorist produced his wallet: “You have come quite a distance; it’s a Texas licence, isn’t it?”
“Yes, we’ve had a long trip but we’ve enjoyed it. This is a pretty country around here.”
The youth smiled as he pocketed the money. “I suppose it is,” he said, “though I am no judge. I’ve never been anywhere else.”
“Lived here all your life, eh?”
“All my life. I’ve always wanted to travel. But I have never been able to afford it.”
“Oh, well, there’s lots of time for you,” said the motorist, with a rather envious glance at the boy’s slender length.
His wife put in — “You ought to go on the films. You’d make lots of money there.”
“On the contrary, I am about to be married.”
“No!” she exclaimed. “You don’t say so! You’re certainly young.”
“I feel that an early marriage will be best for me,” he returned gravely.
“Well,” said the motorist, starting his engine, “good luck to you!”
“I’ll say she’s a lucky girl!” added his wife.
The proprietor of the filling station made a little bow. “Thank you,” he said.
“I like your place,” said the motorist. “It looks as though it had once been a smithy.”
“It was. An old fellow named Chalk kept it. As a small boy I used to come here to have my pony shod. His son works with me now.”
“I guess this road has changed a good deal since then.”
“Oh yes, it’s improving. I get a lot of customers.” His bright eyes looked confidentially into theirs.
At that moment a tall man came out of a nearby cottage, threw a long leg across a fence and, with an antagonistic glance at the motorists, approached the filling station. He was followed by two old spaniels and a very young Cairn terrier.
The motorist’s wife looked up at the sign above the low stone doorway and repeated aloud:
“W. Whiteoak, Motor Repairs.”
The youth gave another of his old-fashioned bows:
“I hope you’ll come my way again.”
“We certainly will, if we’re in this direction. And take my advice, and go to Hollywood.”
Just as the car started, one of the spaniels gave a self-assertive yet listless bark, and moved heavily in front of it. His master sprang to the rescue and it was only by a violent swerve that the motorist avoided an accident. He threw an accusing glare at dog and man as the car lurched on its way. This was returned by a sneering grin from the owner of the spaniel which stood pridefully waving its fringed tail aware, in its blindness, that it had been the centre of disturbance. It turned its head and licked the hand that now released it, listening, with apparent approval, to a well-chosen string of profanities.
Wakefield Whiteoak observed plaintively:
“If there’s any swearing to be done, I think I should be the one to do it. I don’t like my clients sent off in such a mood.”
His elder brother’s expression became somewhat apologetic but he exclaimed derisively:
“Your clients! I like that!”
“So do I,” returned Wakefield tranquilly. “For they are really much more like clients than customers. There is a personal touch between us. I help them and give them good advice. I might sometimes almost call them patients for they come to me with their motors deranged or powerless for lack of petrol. They are like sick people, and I send them away healthy and in good spirits.”
“You like the sound of your own voice, don’t you? You should certainly have been a lawyer. Of course, I always wanted you to go into the Church. You’d have made a first-rate parson and had all the women chasing you in your surplice.”
“That hardly sounds respectable,” returned Wakefield, rather disapprovingly. He laid a restraining hand on the collar of the blind spaniel as a motor lorry sped past. “You ought to keep Merlin on the lead, Renny. He’ll certainly be the cause of an accident one day.”
Renny answered curtly — “Rot! He never leaves my heels. That idiot in the touring car was to blame. Heel, Merlin! Heel, Floss! Where the hell is that puppy?”
Both brothers began to search for him and discovered him investigating a pool of oil in the station. Tucking him under his arm Renny stared at the blackened ceiling where on a rafter were still fixed a couple of horseshoes.
“It seems only yesterday,” he said, “when I used to bring you here for a treat, in front of my saddle, to see Chalk shoe my nag. I hate seeing the place turned into this.”
“Changes will come,” returned Wakefield. “There is Mrs. Brawn’s sweet shop turned into a tea shop. I remember how I used to spend every penny I had at Mrs. Brawn’s, and how once I got an awful licking for spending some ill-gotten gains there. But I don’t trouble myself with such recollections. As Shakespeare says — ‘Let us not burthen our remembrance with a heaviness that’s gone.’”
His elder, as he had expected, was reduced to an embarrassed silence by the quotation. He had as a matter of fact got it only that morning from a Shakespeare calendar, given him by his sister last Christmas, and was anxious to use it before it was forgotten.
Now he said rather dictatorially — “But you really must do something about the eavestroughs on this place, Renny. The one at the back is quite gone and the ground is being completely washed away. Just come and see.”
Renny Whiteoak’s embarrassment turned to a taciturn aloofness at the mention of repairs. He followed his brother and examined the broken eave without interest. His dogs began digging in the cavity formed at the side of the building by the dripping eave. He remarked, abruptly:
“I have just promised Mrs. Wigle to shingle the roof of her cottage.”
Wakefield shrugged despairingly. “I thought that, when I saw you coming from there. Poor Mrs. Wigle! You promise her a new roof regularly every spring.”
“A few odd shingles will patch it up,” answered Renny, easily.
“And what about my eavestrough?”
“I’ll send a man around to look at it.”
Wakefield was forced to accept this. He asked, “Are you going home?”
Renny looked at his wristwatch. “I must stop in at the tea shop. There are some repairs needed there, too. This springtime is the very devil for expense. Want to come?”
Wakefield did want to come. He always wanted to go where his eldest brother went. Renny had been a father to him and more indulgent than most fathers.
They set off along the path that led irregularly alongside the road. The grass was a young green and fresh dandelions pressed brightly against it. The sky looked inclined either to rain or shine, while a small-voiced bird alternately piped or flew from tree to tree, appearing to pursue the brothers on their walk.
They stopped for a moment in front of the church that had been built by their grandfather, Captain Philip Whiteoak, more than eighty years ago and stood listening a moment to the murmur of the stream that curved about the churchyard where their father, his two wives, two infant brothers and a sister, a grown-up brother, and their grandparents were buried. The church on its knoll looked as remote as in those early days when the primeval forest hedged it round and only a wavering path, made by the feet of the Whiteoaks, their neighbours, and the villagers, led to its door. It stood, in the strength of its stones, like an unconquered fort. Renny loved this building, but rather as the shrine of his family than as the temple of his God. It hurt him that Wakefield who was soon to marry Pauline Lebraux, a Catholic, had turned to that Faith. He had not opposed the change, because he was in favour of the marriage, but he seldom lost an opportunity of referring to it with dissatisfaction. Now he said:
“I’m sorry you’ve turned papist, Wake.” He used the term he had always heard used by his grandmother whom, in many ways, both spiritual and physical, he resembled.
Wakefield felt no shrinking from discussing the subject, for he cherished a sanguine hope that he might himself be the instrument of converting the head of the house.
“I’m sure,” he answered, “that you’ll live to rejoice in it.”
Renny felt what was coming and shied, interrupting Wakefield by shouting his dogs to heel. But Wakefield opened his argument and continued it undaunted even though Renny quickened his stride to one incompatible with conversation. Only when he said — “The trouble, the greatest trouble, with the Anglican Church is that She is not holy,” did his elder turn to him and exclaim:
“She’s holy enough for me and I wish you’d shut up about her.”
“Very well,” said Wakefield, resignedly, “but the day will come —”
“Here is the tea shop,” interrupted Renny, and turned abruptly to its door.
Over the door was a gaily painted sign, with the words — Daffodil Tea Shop — in gold and green, while a large bowl of daffodils stood in the small-paned window, on either side of which yellow curtains were drawn back by pale green ribbons. Inside, the tables and chairs were likewise painted green; yellow freshly laundered cloths set off the flowered china, and a vase holding a few daffodils stood in the centre of each. In a small glass case, boxes of sweets tied with bright ribbons were for sale. The shop was empty but for a yellow cat which arched itself against the oncoming of the dogs.
A bell had rung at the opening of the door and now a strong-looking woman, in her early forties, with short tow-coloured hair and a face in which fortitude and recklessness were rather attractively blended, appeared. She wore a fancy daffodil-strewn smock that badly became her, and, in spite of such flamboyant identification with the shop, she looked strangely out of place there. She was Clara Lebraux, Wakefield’s future mother-in-law.
She gave him an affectionate smile, and he bent and kissed her on the cheek. Between her and Renny a look of intimate understanding was exchanged. In her glance there was an almost masculine ease, combined with a passionate appreciation of his hard, thin grace, the predatory chiselling of his features, beside which Wakefield’s youthful good looks became insignificant.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 77