06 The Whiteoak Brothers

by Mazo de La Roche

  Renny pushed up the sleeve to discover a skinned spot. Patting her arm, he said:

  “I’m glad it’s no worse. But you had better go home and take it easy for the rest of the day.”

  He hesitated, then added — “Come into my office first and let me put some ointment on it. I have the very best kind.”

  Wright was holding the mare by the bridle. She looked gently at Pheasant out of her great liquid eyes. Her head, in naked beauty, was motionless, as though carven from bronze. Only her nostrils moved with her breathing.

  Pheasant laid her hand for a moment on the mare’s neck. “Goodbye,” she said, and followed Renny into the stable.

  Piers had dismounted and now walked beside them. He said — “Everybody has a bad day now and then.”

  She turned her face away.

  Renny said — “You had better take Pheasant home, Piers. She’s a bit shaken. But leave her to me now.”

  In the little room that he called his office, where there was a shiny desk and a revolving chair, a file containing the records of all the horses he and his father had owned, and where lithographs of famous horses decorated the walls, he said, after closing the door — “It’s just as Piers says —” Then he stopped, because he saw that in comforting her he was going to break her composure. Opening a cupboard on the wall, he took out a small pot of ointment. But after another look at her elbow he frowned. “I must put iodine on it, I’m afraid. It will hurt.”

  “Go ahead. I don’t mind.”

  “Good girl.” He made a swab with cotton-wool and applied the iodine, asking — “Does it hurt very much?”

  But she was glad of the pain, hugging it to her as a relief from the sharper pain.

  When the elbow was neatly bound he looked down into her face. “You know, Pheasant, it’s not that I haven’t a good opinion of you as a rider; you’ve come on wonderfully. You have fine stuff in you. You have good hands on the rein —” He broke off thinking how terribly young she looked.

  “I know,” she said, in a small shaky voice. “But I’m not good enough for the Show.”

  “I was wrong to think I could train you in so short a while.”

  The sound of the mare’s hooves on the cement of the passage came to them. She was being led in and, either in protest or in pleasure, she raised her voice and whinnied. It was too much for Pheasant.

  “I’m going,” she said breathlessly, and ran toward the door.

  But he caught her by the back of her jacket and held her. “No, no,” he said, “not like that. Come now, be a brave girl. You’ll ride for me some other time —”

  She interrupted — “Please let me go.”

  She struggled and he released her. Almost ceremoniously he held open the door for her, then watched her run along the passage, through the wide door of the stable, and vanish. Scotchmere appeared, carrying a saddle in his hands. He looked after Pheasant with a speculative grin.

  “Too high-strung,” he said. “But she’ll get over it. I guess we’ve done with her.”

  With a taciturn look Renny turned back into his office, reflecting on how difficult it was to do anything without interference. Yet he was not altogether sorry that things had turned out as they had, for in these last days his doubts of Pheasant’s ability to face such an important event had disturbed him.

  Scarcely had the door closed when it was again opened and Meg stood there.

  “Come in,” he said genially, but the look on his face was forbidding.

  She spoke gently. “Scotchmere tells me that you have decided not to allow that girl to ride for you. I’m so thankful.”

  “I’ve said nothing of the sort to him.”

  “Oh, but he knows you so well. And — after what I saw —”

  “Your appearing on the scene had a lot to do with it.”

  “Good heavens, Renny — am I such an ogre?”

  “You have never shown Pheasant any friendliness.”

  “And no one in his right mind could expect me to.” Now her blue eyes were swimming in tears, their pupils enlarged.

  He flung himself into his chair with an exasperated “ha,” and, picking up a nail-file, concentrated on a broken thumbnail.

  She exclaimed — “It sets my teeth on edge to see you do that so roughly. Look — let me.” She took the file from him and also taking possession of his hand proceeded tenderly with the operation. “Such nice hands,” she said in a cooing voice, “and you use them so badly.”

  Ignoring this, he said — “If the mare won at the Show I could sell her for a good price, and I may remark that I need the money. You know this has been an expensive year both for repairs to the house and the stables. You know that one of our best horses died.”

  She clasped the hand she held against the delicious softness of her bosom. “I know, I know, and don’t imagine I’m not sympathetic, but I couldn’t bear —” Her voice trembled and she broke off, actually not knowing, for once in her life, what to say next.

  He said — “Then you put your own personal prejudices above my welfare.”

  She found her tongue. “Never! But — oh, you see how it is. I could not go … she must not ride … even Wright says she won’t do … why not ask Dilly to ride for you? She’s dying to.”

  “Dilly!” He was astonished.

  “Well — she’s been hinting, hasn’t she?”

  “She’s always hinting about something. Why Aunt Augusta brought her here I can’t imagine.”

  “She is a charming girl.”

  “Our ideas differ. What experience of riding has she?”

  “She was practically brought up in the saddle. You know what life in Leicestershire is. Do let her ride the mare. In any case give her a trial.”

  “Gladly. Where is she?”

  Meg’s smile was ineffably sweet. “Oh, she has gone to the house to try on my riding things. You know, I can’t get into them now. I’m sure they’ll fit her.”

  XII

  PHEASANT

  She ran along the path homeward faster than she had ever run before. Her feet scuffed through the fallen leaves, making that sound she ordinarily delighted in, but now she heard nothing. Oh, to be home — in her own room — with the door locked! In that safety she longed to be hidden.

  A projecting root caught her foot and she fell. So confused was she that, for an instant, she thought she had again been thrown from the mare. She felt disgraced to be thrown a second time and gave a little whimper of protest. Then her mind cleared and she lay still, looking up into the blue depths of the sky through the russet oak leaves.

  She heard footsteps padding on the path and scrambled to her feet.

  For a wild instant she thought it might be Renny come to take her back, to say all was well. But now she saw Piers running toward her.

  “Oh, Pheasant,” he called out, “here you are,” and hesitated, a little embarrassed to see her tragic expression.

  Now he moved toward her slowly, his healthy fair face clouded by concern.

  “It’s a damned shame,” he began, but she put out her hand as though to ward him off.

  He stood motionless, reflecting on the peculiar change going on within himself. He felt at one and the same time a confusion of spirit and a sense of power, a desire to be alone and a longing to take Pheasant into his arms and comfort her. Yet the sense of power was so demanding that the longing to comfort became a wish to dominate.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he began, but she interrupted:

  “I won’t talk about it.”

  “You needn’t talk. Just listen to me.” He drew nearer. “Pheasant —”

  She let him put an arm about her and for an instant laid her head on his shoulder. Then she pushed him from her and turned and fled along the path. He did not follow, but stood looking after her, considering how easily he might overtake her if he chose.

  She, as though she heard footsteps in pursuit, ran her swiftest, her heart beating fast in her throat. She did not stop till she was within sight of her
own home. Then she slowed to a trot and entered the cold, dim hall on tiptoe. This house, in spite of Mrs. Clinch’s efforts, always had a faint smell of dust and mustiness. To Pheasant this smell was always associated with the thought of home, and with the loud ticking of the clock with stood at the foot of the stairs and sent out its metallic tick-tock and what always seemed to her its angry strike, both below and above.

  Surprisingly she met her father on the stairs.

  “Hullo,” he said, “and how did the riding go?”

  She forced her voice to be steady. “Not very well. They don’t think I’ll do after all.”

  He gave a short laugh. “I could have told them that.”

  “You’ve never seen me try,” she exclaimed hotly.

  “No, but I can imagine. Jogging about on an old pony is a very different thing from riding a show horse. I think Renny Whiteoak showed very poor judgement in allowing you to try.”

  “Well, it is all over now.” She spoke in Mrs. Clinch’s very tone, as though rather glad to have done with frivolity.

  This meeting braced her to self-control. When she was in her room, with the door shut behind her, she went to the window and laid her forehead against the cool pane. She pressed her fingernails into the palms of her hands. The hurt she had given her elbow began to throb and she welcomed the pain. She repeated again and again, as though she were at the end of all hope in life — “It is all over now.”

  The trees that crowded too close to the house, which was in a hollow, were conifers and made a dark background for a picture of herself victorious at the Show, the leaping mare, glistening like a horse in bronze, clearing every barrier, the band filling the air with the flourish of her triumph. How often she had imagined this scene. Yet now she lay as in the dust, defeated and the mare whom she loved would not give her another thought.

  Her breath made a film on the pane and on this she drew with her fingers an outline of the mare’s head and wrote beneath it the one word Farewell.

  Somehow she felt more self-controlled after that, and before long hunger gnawed at her stomach, for she had scarcely in her excitement eaten properly before going to Jalna. Now she descended the steep back stairs into the kitchen. Mrs. Clinch was making a pie. The parings she took from the apples were so thick that the apples, after the operation, looked very small and naked.

  Pheasant took a lump of brown sugar from the bowl and put it into her mouth.

  “How did you get on?” asked Mrs. Clinch.

  “Fine,” she answered.

  She opened the tin cake-box, with the picture of Balmoral Castle on it, and took out a currant bun. She held it up for Mrs. Clinch to see.

  “All right?” she asked.

  The housekeeper nodded. “You’ll spoil your appetite,” she added with severity.

  “Oh, no, I shan’t.”

  The sun was deliciously warm in the kitchen garden. There had been frost but a few flowers had survived. Strangely these were the most fragile — the little pink petunias and the sky-blue morning glories. These last were climbing along a picket fence, holding up their blue cups as though in a gift to heaven. Two of them, coming from the same stem, were so close that they touched each other, the taller casting its shadow on the other and so turning it to a deeper, tenderer blue. Pheasant, munching her bun, stood watching as a last, lonely bee tumbled the twin flowers for honey. “He’s hungry,” she thought, “and he’s like me — he wants to live.”

  XIII

  THE VEGETARIAN

  He was full of rage, through and through, yet scarcely knew at what he was raging. He felt a moment’s surprise at his own powers of feeling in these days, and a kind of panic because of the sudden sweep of his emotions. What had come over him, he wondered. Yet he would not have had it otherwise. Though often he felt bewildered by the change in him, he felt at the same time a voluptuous relish of his own strangeness. Everything he saw was in stronger colours. He felt himself more and more of an outsider, looking on at this strange, highly coloured world about him.

  But now he was in a rage and banged things about in his bedroom, as though to prove it to himself, for there was no one else to see. Yet it was Saturday. His homework was done — all but those blasted French verbs and he would wrestle with them tomorrow. Something had gone wrong right after breakfast. Now he remembered. His sister Meg had told him to go out and gather vegetables for the Harvest Festival at the church, and he had asked why couldn’t somebody else do it, and she had told him not to be so lazy, and he had answered there was a fat chance of his being lazy with everyone in the house ordering him to do things. Meg had said no more nonsense, please, and at that moment Eden had appeared and told him to hop on his bicycle like a good kid and take his pair of shoes to the shoemaker’s to be half-soled. Eden had put the shoes into his hand and smiled at him, and Finch, in spite of himself, had given a half-grudging smile in return. He had taken the shoes to the shoemaker’s. He had gathered the vegetables and, surveying the great overgrown pumpkins in their golden ripeness, the rosetted cauliflowers in their crisp leaves, the long pale vegetable marrows, his anger had melted from him and he had felt wildly, boisterously happy. He had sung as he collected the vegetables, glad of the noise of the wind that drowned his voice.

  But now it all returned to him. That was the way with him in these days. He would be swept by some sudden gust of feeling, then it would pass, only to return again, like a recurring wave, weaker, perhaps, but still powerful enough to shake him.

  He flung down his books. He stumbled against a chair, his arm struck his clothes-brush that lay on the chest of drawers and knocked it off. He kicked it beneath the bed. He set his jaw and glared after it. He made up his mind that he would leave it there till next he needed it, but a moment later found himself on his hands and knees fishing it out. Shamefaced he brushed the knees of his trousers with it, as if to convince some onlooker that all his movements were intentional and sober.

  He went down the two flights of stairs in a loose jog-trot, his hands in his pockets. Late summer warmth was claiming this day and more to follow. The front door stood open. All that showed beyond it appeared of a more serene yet deeper temper than on the days before. The leaves, still thick on the trees, had, in what a short while, turned to a rich mahogany, a pale gold like the first dandelion, a blazing red or a tender pinkish gold, and these to Finch were the most beautiful. The tips of these pinkish gold leaves of the maples were as though dipped in a deeper essence, so that the variegated splendour of the tree far surpassed the freshness of its spring.

  Finch stood staring in wonder, the clement air moving gently across his face. Pungent scents of the fall rising from the ravine. He had a vague desire to be absorbed into the scene, to forget himself and be a part of it for ever. Now anger was gone out of him, and when Eden called from an upstairs window — “Hullo, there, did you take the shoes?” he answered docilely — “Yes. He said he’d have them ready by Tuesday.”

  “Good,” returned Eden and added — “Thanks.”

  Finch sauntered round the house to where he had left the vegetables mounded in a wheelbarrow. He felt proud of them — so clean, fresh, and well-grown. He had disposed some glossy red peppers among them and some bunches of parsley that had became dark green, strong and curly in the autumn cold. At the last moment he had not been able to resist adding a few onions, stripped of their outer skin and as pretty as could be, he thought.

  Wright drove across from the stables in a light wagon drawn by an old horse, thirty-two years old but still handsome, with her thick arched neck and blond mane. And from the flower border came Meg, her arms full of chrysanthemums and the intensely red blooms of salvia that seemed to be dripping blood.

  Wright, jumping down from the wagon, asked:

  “Is that the lot, Miss?”

  “Yes. Have you the pears?”

  He held up a basket of late pears. “I picked out the best-shaped ones, Miss, and put in a few big pippins. I thought they might come in useful.”

>   “Very, very nice,” she said, examining them with an experienced eye; then remarked the onions.

  “Oh, not onions, Finch, not onions.”

  Wakefield came running out of the house.

  “They smell,” he shouted, and bent over them. “Ugh, they stink!”

  Finch took him by the scruff and pressed his face against the onions.

  “Have a good smell,” he urged.

  Meg interfered. “Now, boys. And Wakefield, don’t let me ever hear you use that horrid word again.”

  Wakefield assumed an elegant air, his fingertips shielding his nose.

  “Quelle odeur,” he said mincingly.

  Meg smiled at Wright and Finch, her eyes saying — “How clever he is!”

  The little boy, suddenly clinging, caught her hand and begged — “May I go with you, Meggie, to decorate the church?”

  “Indeed you may. And here comes Piers with the car.”

  Piers drove up in the family car which still showed signs of its last muddy journey. He sat smiling serenely while Wright arranged the vegetables and fruit in the back of the car.

  Finch wondered, why does he always look so pleased with himself?

  On the seat besides Piers was a basket of purple grapes and a bunch of Michaelmas daisies The grapes, with their bloom, as though of a breath blown on them, had so closely grown in the bunch that not one more could have forced its way in.

  Piers smiled, as though he had invented them.

  “I thought they were pretty,” he said.

  Meg leaned over the door of the car to look. “Oh, how nice! Where did you get them, Piers?”

  “I picked the Michaelmas daisies at the edge of the woods. The grapes I bought in Mistwell.”

  “You must let me pay you back.”

  “No, no. That’s my contribution.”

  Wakefield cried — “I picked the salvia and with nice long stems.

  Finch brought onions! What do you think of onions in a church, Piers?”

  “Good Lord,” exclaimed Piers.