08 Whiteoaks of Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  His greeting to Finch, when the boy sought him out among the groups of men and horses in the enclosure behind the arena, was only a nod. He continued his conversation with a rigid-looking officer in the uniform of an American lieutenant. Finch had seen this man taking part in several jumping events. He had followed Renny with the red ribbon.

  Finch stood humbly by, listening to their talk of horseflesh and hunting. Mutual admiration beamed from their eyes. At last Renny, glancing at his wristwatch, said, “Well, I must be getting on. By the way, this is my young brother. Finch, Mr. Rogers.”

  The American shook hands with the boy kindly, but looked him over without enthusiasm.

  “Grown fast, I suppose,” he commented to the elder Whiteoak, as they turned away together.

  “Oh yes,” returned Renny. “No bone to speak of,” and he added, apologetically: “He’s musical.”

  “Is he studying music?”

  “He was, but I stopped it last summer after he failed in his matric. I feel regularly up against it with him. Now the music is cut off, he has taken to play-acting. It seems that he’d rather do anything than work. But I dare say he’ll turn out all right. Sometimes the most unpromising colt, you know…”

  They were now crossing an open paved space, unlighted save by the blurred beam from a motor car cautiously moving among the horses that were being led to stable or station by shouting attendants. However, a murky daylight made it still possible to distinguish one face from another.

  An ostler, running across the yard, slipped on the thin layer of mud that covered the pavement and plunged forward, his bullet head coming in violent contact with the stomach of a burly fellow leading a rearing blanketed horse.

  He roared: “Keep your blurry ’ead out of my stummick, will yer? Wot do you think this is, a soccer match?”

  The ostler returned a volley of abuse which was drowned by the whinnying of the horse, outraged by the delay in seeking his supper. Inside the building the band could be heard playing “God Save the King.”

  The moving shadows in the yard now became indistinguishable as darkness fell like a palpable covering over all. The rain, which had been fitful, now blew in wildly from the east, and at the same moment the roaring of the lake increased in volume, as though the elements, weary of the activities of men and beasts, had united to obliterate them.

  Renny Whiteoak and the American parted, and Finch, who had been slouching behind, moved to his brother’s side.

  “Gosh, it’s cold,” mumbled the boy.

  “Cold!” exclaimed his elder, in astonishment. “Why, I’m hot. The trouble with you is that you don’t get enough exercise. If you’d go in for sports more, you’d get your circulation up. A foal just dropped wouldn’t feel the cold tonight.”

  A voice called from the car which they were approaching:

  “Is that you, Renny? I thought you were never coming. I’m getting beastly cold.”

  It was young Pheasant.

  Renny got in and turned on the lights. Finch clambered in beside the girl.

  “What a pair!” said Renny, letting out the clutch. “I’ll need to keep you in a nest of cotton wool.”

  “Just the same,” she persisted, “it’s very bad for Baby, my getting chilled, and I’ve been away from him too long already. Can’t you get the car started?”

  “Something’s gone wrong with its blasted old innards,” he growled, then added hopefully: “Perhaps the engine’s just a bit cold.” He did various spasmodic things to the antiquated mechanism of the car, unloosing at the same time, in a concentrated undertone, the hatred of seven years. Loving and understanding horses, he was bewildered by the eccentricities of a motor.

  Pheasant interrupted: “How did I do?”

  No answer came for a moment, then he growled: “Not so badly. But you needn’t have touched The Soldier. Much better not.”

  “Well, I came second, anyway.”

  “Might have come first if you hadn’t. Lord, if ever I get this cursed old bus home!”

  Pheasant’s voice was indignant. “Look at that American girl’s horse! It was a perfect peach!”

  “So is The Soldier,” muttered her brother-in-law, stubbornly.

  Finch reclined in a corner of the car, in a state of depression. The enveloping, dank blackness of the premature night, the thought of the hours of study in his cold bedroom that lay before him, seemed like hands reaching up out of the sodden ground, dragging him down. He was famishing. He had a piece of chocolate bar in his pocket, and he wondered if he could extract it and negotiate its passage to his mouth without Pheasant’s becoming aware of it. He felt for it, found it, cautiously extricated it from its battered silver-paper wrapping under cover of a sudden fierce outburst from Renny which distracted her attention. He crammed it into his mouth, sinking lower into the seat and closing his eyes.

  He was beginning to feel comforted when Pheasant hissed in his ear: “Horrid little pig!”

  He had forgotten how shrewd was her sense of smell. She was going to get even, too. She fumbled in her pocket, produced a cigarette case, and the next instant the sharp flare of a match lighted up her little pale face and showed the sarcastic pucker of her lips cherishing the cigarette. Sweet-smelling smoke lay heavy on the damp air. Finch’s last cigarette had been smoked that noonday. He might, of course, have asked Renny for one, but it was scarcely safe to approach him when he was baffled by the car.

  Presently the eldest Whiteoak threw himself back in his seat with a gesture of despair.

  “We may walk home for all of her,” he observed, laconically. He too lighted a cigarette.

  Smoke and gloomy silence pervaded the car. Rain slashed against the sides, and with each flutter of the ill-fitting curtains a chill draught penetrated the interior. Rain-blurred lights of other cars slid by.

  “But you were splendid, Renny,” said Pheasant, to lighten the depression. “And got the blue ribbon, too! I’d come around, and I saw the whole thing,”

  “I couldn’t help winning on the roan,” he said. “God, what a mare!” Then, after, a moment, he added pointedly: “Though if I’d been ass enough to take the whip to her, I should probably have come only second.”

  “Oh, how cold I am!” exclaimed the girl, ignoring the thrust. “And I can’t help thinking of my poor little baby.”

  Finch was suddenly filled with intense irritation toward them both, sitting there smoking. What had they to do when they did get home but lounge about a stable or suckle a kid? While he would be forced to lash his wretched brains to the study of trigonometry. He swallowed the last of his chocolate, and said, in a hoarse voice: “You seemed to be thick enough with that fool American ‘lootenant.’ Who was he?”

  The abandoned impudence of the words shocked him, even as he uttered them. He would not have been surprised if Renny had turned in his seat and felled him to the floor. He was sure he felt a shiver of apprehension from Pheasant’s corner.

  But Renny answered quietly enough: “I knew him in France. A splendid chap. Very rich, too.” And he added, enviously: “Got one of the finest stables in America.”

  Pheasant moaned: “Oh, my poor little Mooey! Am I never to get back to him?”

  Her brother-in-law’s tone became testy. “Look here, my girl, you must either give up riding in horse shows or having babies. They don’t fit.”

  “But I’ve just begun both in the last year,” she pleaded, “and they’re equally fascinating, and Piers likes me to do both.”

  Finch growled: “Quote someone besides Piers for a change.”

  “But how can I? He’s the only husband I’ve got.”

  “He’s not the only brother I have, and I’m tired of hearing his words chanted as though he was the Almighty.”

  She leaned toward him, her face a white blur against the dark. “Anyone who is as self-centred as you are naturally doesn’t want to hear about anyone else. Anyone who would devour a bar of chocolate with a starving young mother at his side. Anyone—”

 
“Say ‘anyone’ again,” bawled Finch, “and I’ll jump out of the car!”

  The altercation was cut short by a vehement jolt. The motor had started. Renny gave a grunt of satisfaction.

  He slouched behind the wheel, staring ahead into the November night. The roads were almost deserted when they had passed beyond the suburbs. Even the streets of the villages through which they speeded were almost empty. The vast expanse of lake and sky to the left was a great blackness, except for the beam of a lighthouse and two dusky red lights denoting the presence of a schooner ploughing against a headwind.

  His mind flew ahead to the stables at Jalna. Mike, a handsome gelding, had got his leg badly cut by a kick from a vicious new horse that morning. He felt much disturbed about Mike. The vet had said it might be a serious business. He was anxious to get home and find out what sort of day he had passed… He thought of the new horse that had done the damage. One of Piers’s purchases. He himself had not liked the look in the brute’s eyes, but Piers cared nothing about dis-position if a horse’s body was right. Piers would make over the disposition to suit himself. That seemed to be his idea. Well, he’d better make this new nag’s temper over and be sharp about it… He scowled in a way that always moved his grandmother to exclaim ecstatically: “Eh, what a perfect Court the lad is! He can give a savage look when he’s a mind to!”

  He thought of a foal that had been dropped that morning by one of the farm horses. She was a clumsy, ugly-looking beast with a face like a sheep and large flat feet, but, lying there in the box stall with her foal beside her, she had seemed changed. Something noble about the poor beast, as a gaunt, ugly woman may give a sudden impression of nobility bending over her newborn child. Extraordinary things, horses— Nature, an extraordinary thing altogether. The differences between one mare and another—between a farm horse and a hunter. The strange, unaccountable differences between members of the same family. His young half brothers and himself. The boys more difficult to handle than horseflesh, by a long shot. They shouldn’t be, for they were the same flesh and blood, got by the same sire… Yet what two boys could be more unlike than little Wakefield, so sensitive, affectionate, and clever, and young Finch, whom one couldn’t browbeat into studying or shame into taking an interest in games, who was always mooning about with a sheepish air? He had seemed more old, more mopey than ever of late… And then Piers. Piers was different again. Sturdy, horse-loving, land-loving Piers. They were very congenial, he and Piers, in their love of horses, their devotion to Jalna… And Eden. He uttered a sound between a growl and a sigh when he thought of Eden. Not a line from him since he had disappeared after his affair with Pheasant, nearly a year and a half ago. That showed what writing poetry could do to a chap— make him forget decency, spoil the life of a girl like Alayne. What a disgraceful mess it had been, that affair! Piers had been quieter, more inclined to moods ever since, though the coming of the baby had done a good deal to straighten things up. Poor little kid, he must be howling for his supper by now…

  He increased the speed regardless of the slippery road, and called over his shoulder: “Home in ten minutes now, so cheer up, Pheasant! Have either of you got a cigarette? I’ve smoked my last,”

  “I’ve done the same, Renny. Oh, I’m so glad we’re nearly there! You’ve made wonderful time considering the night.”

  “Have you any, Finch?”

  “Me!” exclaimed the boy, rubbing one of his bony knees, which had got cramped from sitting so long in one position. “I never have any! I can’t afford them. It takes all my allowance, I can tell you, to pay my railway fare, and buy my lunch, and pay fees for this and that. I’ve nothing left for cigarettes.”

  “So much the better for you, at your age,” returned his brother, curtly.

  “Chocolate bars are much better for you,” purred Pheasant, close to his ear.

  Renny peered through the window. “There’s the station,” he said. “I suppose your wheel is there. Shall you get it? Or had you sooner stop in the car with us?”

  “It’s a beast of a night. I think I’ll go with you. No—I’ll— yes—oh, Lord, I don’t know what to do!” He peered forlornly into the night.

  Renny brought up the car with a jolt. He demanded over his shoulder: “What the devil is the matter with you? You seem to have a perpetual grouch. Now make up your mind, if it’s possible. I think myself you had better leave the wheel where it is and walk to the station in the morning,”

  “It’ll be a beastly walk in such weather as this,” mumbled Finch, moving his leg with his hands to bring life into it. “My books’ll be all muddy.”

  “Well, get one of the men to run you down in the car.”

  “Piers will want the car early. I heard him say so.”

  Renny stretched back a long arm and threw open the door beside the youth. “Now,” he said quietly, but with an ominous chest vibration in his voice, “get out. I’ve had enough of this shilly-shallying!”

  Finch scrambled out, giving a ridiculous hop as his numb foot touched the ground. He stood with dropped jaw as the door was slammed and the motor rattled away, sending a spray of muddy water against his trouser legs.

  He moved heavily under a weight of self-pity as he went toward the station house. In the room behind the stationmaster’s office he found his bicycle propped against the scales. It might not be a bad idea to weigh himself, he thought. He had been drinking a glass of milk every day of late in the hope that he might put on a little flesh. He mounted the scales and began dubiously moving the weights. The sound of men’s voices came from the inner room, argumentative voices, and high-pitched. The scale balanced, he peered anxiously at the figures, then his face brightened—a clear gain of three pounds. A childlike grin lighted his features. The milk was doing him good, all right. He was gaining flesh. Not so bad that, three pounds in a fortnight. He would drink more of it. He stepped from the scales and was about to remove his bicycle when he discovered that a pedal was pressing on the platform of the scales. Suspicion clouded his brow. Might it not be possible that the pressure of the pedal had something to do with the increase in his weight? He set the wheel aside and again mounted the scales. Eagerly he examined the trembling indicator. The weight flew up. He moved the brass slide. Four pounds less. He had not gained! He had lost. He had lost. He weighed a pound less than he had a fortnight ago!

  Gloomily he picked up the bicycle and steered it out of the station. He heard one of the men ask: “What’s that noise out there?” And the station-master’s reply: “I guess it’s the Whiteoak boy that goes into town to school. He leaves his wheel here.” The voices were lowered and Finch could imagine the disparaging remarks they were making about him.

  He flung himself on to the saddle and pedalled doggedly along the path beside the rails. Darn the old bike! Darn the rain! Above all, darn milk! It was making him thinner instead of stouter. He would have no more of it.

  The driveway that led to the house was a black tunnel. Hemlocks and balsams walled it in with their impenetrable resinous boughs. The heavy scent of them, the scent of the fungus growths beneath them, was so enhanced by the continuous moisture of the past two weeks that it seemed a palpable essence dripping from the dense draperies of their limbs, oozing from the wet earth beneath. It was an approach that might have led to a sleeping palace, or to the retreat of a band of worshippers of some forgotten gods. As the boy passed through the oppressive, embalmed darkness he felt that he was moving in a dream, that he might glide on thus forever, with no light, no warmth, at the end to greet him.

  In there peace came to him. He wished that he might have ridden on and on among these ancient trees till he absorbed something of their impassive dignity. He pictured himself entering the room where the family would be gathered, wearing like a cloak about him the dignity of one of these trees. He pictured his entry as casting a chill over the rough good spirits of these less austere beings.

  As he emerged to the gravelled sweep about the house, the rain beat down on him with increasing vi
olence, and the east wind caused the shutters to rattle and the bare stalks of the old Virginia creeper to scrape against the wall. Warm lights shone from the windows of the dining room.

  He put aside his imaginings and made a dash for the back entrance.

  He pushed his bicycle into a dark passage in the basement and went into a little washroom to wash his hands. As he dried them he glanced at his reflection in the speckled mirror above the basin—a lank fair lock hanging over his forehead; his long nose, his thin cheeks, made pink by the wind and rain. He did not look so bad after all, he thought. He felt comforted.

  As he passed the kitchen he heard the nasal voice of Rags, the Whiteoak houseman, singing:

  “Some day your ’eart will be broken like mine,

  So w’y should I cry over you?”

  He had a glimpse of the red brick floor, the low ceiling, darkened by many years of smoke, of Rags’s buxom wife bending over the hot range. His spirits rose. He raced up the stairway, hung his wet raincoat in the hall, and entered the dining room.