Читать книгу Whiteoak Harvest - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 7

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.

The warmth in Renny’s eyes turned to amusement as he exclaimed:

“You look like the devil in that pinafore, Clara.”

“I know,” she agreed, “but it becomes the shop, and no one will notice me.”

“I like it,” said Wakefield, “and I think it’s becoming too.”

“In short,” added Clara Lebraux, “it was Wakefield’s idea.”

“Just like Wake’s taste! You look much better in a man’s overall, cleaning out your stable.”

She shrugged. “And feel much better, too. But stables don’t pay, and poultry doesn’t pay, and fox farming doesn’t pay. I’m willing to make myself into a figure of fun, if only I can make this tea shop pay.”

He looked instantly serious. “It must pay,” he said.

“It hasn’t yet.”

“You’ve only been open a month. The season has not begun.”

“I’ve sent at least a dozen of my clients on to you,” said Wakefield.

“And several of them arrived. They asked me questions about you and said it was a pity to see such an intellectual young man at your job.”

“I think it pays to bring intellect to any job,” returned Wakefield. “Even this tea shop, if run —”

Clara interrupted — “My goodness, I have no intellect to bring to it!”

Renny asked, “Have you had any customers this morning?”

“Not yet. But it’s Saturday and a fine day. I should have plenty.”

The cat now leaped in furry rage to the top of a table, overturning the flowers and spitting down at the dogs which surrounded her. Renny snatched up the vase, Wakefield put the spaniels outside the door, and the cat was hustled to the kitchen. Clara Lebraux laughed good-humouredly.

“Come now,” she said. “You must sit down and have coffee. There is some freshly made.”

“And I can vouch that it’s good,” said Wakefield. “I come in for a cup every morning, don’t I, Mother-in-law?”

Renny said nothing but sat with crossed legs, fingering his puppy’s ears. Clara went to the kitchen from where came the appetizing smell of fresh coffee.

Renny remarked:

“I must buy a box of Pauline’s sweets.”

“Do,” said Wakefield. “She hasn’t had much sale for them yet. It’s discouraging. I give a box of them to every one of the family on their birthdays but they always look rather knowing, as though they thought I only put money into my own pocket when I buy Pauline’s sweets. The almond creams are good.”

“Yes, I’ll try the almond creams.”

The owner of the tea shop now returned with coffee and biscuits on a tray. There were three cups and she sat herself down by her guests.

The coffee was steaming hot and there was cream for it. The two older ones sipped theirs almost in silence while Wakefield talked animatedly of his work and his approaching marriage. Occasionally the eyes of Renny and Clara met, rested a moment, as though each drew a certain peace from the other’s presence, then turned again to the youth, the man’s with tolerant affection, the woman’s with slight irritation.

The attention of all three was drawn to the door as Pauline Lebraux appeared at it.

“Don’t let the dogs in,” shouted Renny, as though to a child.

Wakefield went eagerly to the door to meet her. She stood smiling at them all, slender and dark, a complete contrast to her mother. She carried a package which Clara at once espied.

“More sweets, darling!” she exclaimed. “Why, I haven’t sold the last lot yet.”

Pauline looked worried. “Oh, haven’t you, Mummie? But you told me it was going very well.”

Renny broke in — “It is going well. It’s very lucky that you have brought this fresh lot, for it happens that I am going to see a man who is likely to buy a horse from me. He has five kids and I must take them some sweets. Five girls” — his voice grew in heartiness — “they’d like a box apiece. It will help to put the deal through.”

Pauline looked at him dubiously. “Are you sure?” she asked.

Wakefield put in — “It’s absolutely true what he says. He was wondering, just before we came in, what he could take those girls.”

Pauline’s forehead was smoothed. “I’m so glad then that I made fresh sweets.”

“No, no,” interrupted Renny, “I’ll take the old lot. They’re only kids. They’ll never know the difference.”

Clara Lebraux rose and selected five boxes of sweets from the glass case. “They are quite fresh,” she said, and handed them to Renny. She arranged the ones Pauline had just brought in the case. “Will you have some coffee, dear?” she asked.

“Thanks, Mummie.” She sat down at the table, and Clara rapped on it for the maid.

Renny got up. “I must be getting on,” he said. He remembered the repairs which Clara was asking for and thought that if he left now, on this note of generosity, she might feel reluctant to demand them.

“Whom shall I pay for the sweets?” he asked.

“Mummie, of course,” answered Pauline in an aloof tone. She could not quite bring herself to believe in the five sweet-craving girls and, as for a long time, she felt no ease in his presence.

He drew out his worn wallet and handed Clara three dollars. She waved them mockingly:

“Look! Pauline makes more than I do!”

But if Renny thought he would escape her demands he was mistaken. She led him out through the kitchen to view a sagging corner of the back porch. At the same moment the front door opened and a well-dressed couple entered the tea shop. Wakefield at once began talking in a high-pitched tone to Pauline.

“Darling,” he said, “ isn’t this the most marvellous find? To think that we have discovered a place where they make such coffee, such tea, and such scones! And I must buy you another box of those chocolates!”

Pauline bent her head, her cheeks reddening. Wake was pressing her foot under the table.

Outside Renny exclaimed — “He’s a regular playboy, as Gran used to say.”

“God! I hope that he and Pauline will be happy together!”

“Of course they will!” He said this more fervently as he was not at all sure of it. “Now what about the porch?”

It was a flimsy wooden addition and it threatened to fall at one corner. He eyed it speculatively.

“All it needs is propping up,” he said, with the hearty ring in his voice that his tenants knew so well.

“Don’t you think there should be a new porch?”

“I do,” he said. Then he added, gravely — “But, Clara, if you knew how scarce money is with me, you would not ask even that. The interest on the mortgage fell due last month and I had the devil’s own time scraping it together. I’m down to rock bottom and there are repairs to the stables and farm buildings that are absolutely necessary.”

“I know, I know,” she agreed. “It’s awful. But, if you will just have the porch propped it is all I shall ask. It’s positively dangerous as it is.”

“I’ll attend to it,” he said. “I’ll do it myself. No need to have workmen about. I can do it. It simply needs propping.”

He espied a thick block of wood lying among wooden boxes in a corner of the yard. “We must have this rubbish cleared away and make a nice little garden here.” He dragged out the block of wood and carried it to the porch. “Now I’ll raise the porch and you roll the block under the corner.” He pulled off his coat.

“You can’t do it alone! You’ll hurt yourself! Let me fetch Wake.”

“No, no, he might strain his heart! Do what I tell you, woman.”

The elemental tone of command which he introduced into his voice amused her but it had its effect. She removed her gay flowered apron, laid it beside his coat, and grasped the cobwebbed block in both hands. But she kept muttering to herself — “He can’t do it! He can’t — he’s no right to try.”

Bending his lean back, he gathered all his force and, in one muscle-straining heave, raised the corner of the porch, supporting it on his shoulder. “Now,” he said, between his teeth, “shoot in the block, damn you!”

She thrust it under the porch which he cautiously lowered. He was panting as he straightened himself. A vertical vein in the middle of his forehead stood out like a whipcord. He grinned triumphantly at her but grasped one shoulder in his hand.

“What did I tell you?” he exclaimed. “It’s as steady as a rock. All you need do now is to plant some nice vine or a rambler rose to climb over the corner.”

“You’ve hurt yourself,” she said sternly. “What is it?”

He made a rather shame-faced grimace. “It’s nothing. Just a bit of a wrench. I’ll rub it with liniment.”

She put her short strong hand on his shoulder. She said — “Damn the porch! I wish I hadn’t spoken of it.”

Closing his eyes he stood motionless, as though from her touch he drew ease. Before his closed eyes rose a moonlit autumn wood, the figures of a man and woman in each other’s arms. The magnetic attraction that had drawn them together was of the same quality. They were equal under its force, as two trees receive equally the magnetic current from the earth.

She removed her hand; he opened his eyes and saw the sadness in hers.

“It’s a shame,” she said, “the way Pauline and I have hung on to you — ever since my husband died. And before that — all through his sickness.”

“You know,” he returned, “what Pauline has been to me — like my own child. You know what you have been.”

“Well, you have liked us, that’s one thing,” she returned, in her abrupt, rather sulky voice, and picked up her flowered smock as the bell of the shop sounded. “There — I must go in. They’ll need me.” Her eyes caught the five boxes which he had laid carefully by his coat. She asked — “What are you going to do with those? That story about the five girls was just bluff, wasn’t it?”

He answered gravely — “No, they are absolutely real. I must have sweets for them.”

She knew he lied, and loved him the better for it. She held his coat for him but he objected.

“No, no, I’m blazing hot. Throw it over my shoulders.”

She exclaimed fiercely — “You can’t put it on! You know you can’t.”

He gave her a mocking grimace, touched her lightly on the cheek with his fingers, and, taking the coat from her, turned away. The bell of the tea shop again sounded.

As he walked sharply along the road, with his spaniels padding at his heels and the Cairn puppy weaving a mad pattern among the ten legs that moved so enticingly in unison, his mind was busy with the varied problems of his life. He had a good many of them, he thought, a lot of responsibility, but he would not have minded them so much if money had been less scarce. As it was, the last payment of interest on the mortgage had left him feeling financially flattened, most dreadfully hard up, for the time being. Still — it was paid, and he had six months’ freedom from worry on that score. A sense of pride deepened his inhalations of the spring air as he reflected that, through that mortgage, distasteful as it was to him and bitter to his family, he had been able to prevent the building of a row of bungalows on property adjoining his own. He had added that property, a lovely bit, to his estate. Only that morning he had walked over it just for the pleasure of seeing it free and undefiled, its trees spreading their new foliage in confidence. He had held his dogs back that they might not worry the rabbits he saw scampering there. Short shrift they would have had from the builders!

He thought of Clara and Pauline Lebraux and their venture of the tea shop. He hated that sort of thing for them, but fox farming had not paid and they must do something. Perhaps, if Wake did very well with the garage and petrol station, the tea shop might be discarded after a time. Lord, but it was disappointing to see clever young Wake turn to such a dirty job instead of to one of the professions or, better still, to farming and horse breeding! But Wake could not get on with Piers, the second brother, and there was no use in trying to make them. After the first few months on the farm when Wake had been willing to break his back and to obey Piers in everything, there had been rows. Besides that, Wake was not strong enough for the job. This new work just suited him. And he’d got religious! It was embarrassing the way he was always trying to convert one.

He thought of Meg, his sister, and what a stiff time she and her husband had been up against. They had taken in paying guests this spring and did not seem to mind it. Though it went against his grain to think of a Whiteoak doing such a thing and he believed it was enough to make his grandmother turn over in her grave.

He thought of his wife and his little daughter, but they had barely entered into his mind, taken privileged possession of it, when the hoot of a motor horn made him look to his dogs. His brother Piers was in the car. He stopped it and said:

“Hello! Want a lift?”

Piers’s wire-haired terrier Biddy was on the seat with him. Beside herself with excitement at seeing the spaniels, who were old friends, and the Cairn, of whom she roundly disapproved, she leant over the seat and literally screamed as Renny and his dogs established themselves in the back of the car. Merlin raised his muzzle and gave a troubled bark.

Piers asked, over his shoulder — “Where do you want to go?”

“Where are you going?”

“Home. Then to the farm. I must see what the men are doing in the back fields. I’ve just sold those Jersey calves to Crockford.”

“Good. Did he pay you?”

Piers grunted and took some notes from his pocket. He handed them over his shoulder to his brother. Renny pocketed them with satisfaction. Then, remembering that he owed Piers for hay and oats, he assumed a jocular air and began to tease Biddy, throwing her almost into hysteria. The car started with a jerk.

Though there was a considerable stretch of years between the brothers it appeared less than it was, for Piers, sitting solidly at the wheel, had a look of self-confident maturity, while Renny’s vivid glance, his quick, wary movements, combined with his leanness, made him appear much younger than his years. Yet, in spite of Piers’s sanguine masculinity, an observer would have felt that Renny, with his bony features, his sculptured head, and arrogant mouth, was the more formidable of the two.

It was but a short distance to Piers’s house, set in an old-fashioned garden just coming into flower. The rough-cast walls had taken on a warm tone in the sunlight and all the windows were open. At one of them, holding her year-old baby, stood Piers’s wife, Pheasant. She took the child’s tiny hand in hers and waved it at the two men. She put on a small voice and called:

“Hello, Daddy. Hello, Uncle Renny!”

Piers gave Renny a sidelong glance of pride. “Not a bad-looking pair, eh,” he muttered.

“Fine — both of them,” said Renny. He called out — “Hello, young Philip. I’ve a present for your mother. Come and see!”

“A present!” cried Pheasant. “There’s nothing so rare in these days. I’m mad to see it.”

“Don’t be excited,” said Renny, as she ran along the flagged walk and opened the gate. “It’s only sweets from The Daffodil.”

But Pheasant had expected nothing more important. She took the box in one hand while with the other she clutched her child to her.

“Oh, thanks! How perfectly lovely! Pauline is a marvel at making sweets.”

Piers asked — “How are they getting on with the tea shop?”

The line between Renny’s brows deepened. “Well, the season has just opened. It’s hard to say what it will be. Two people came while Wake and I were there.”

There was something self-conscious in the way he mentioned the fact that Wakefield had been with him when he visited The Daffodil. His thick bronze lashes flickered over his eyes. Pheasant thought — “If I were Alayne, I’d see through all this. But she doesn’t — she doesn’t! She’s never really understood him though she loves him terribly. I’m glad Piers isn’t so attractive to women. And, even at that, he is handsomer.” Her eyes flew to Piers’s face.

“Coming in?” she asked.

“No. I’ve work to do. Where is Mooey?”

“He has a headache, Piers. I think he concentrates too much at school. He’s so eager to learn!”

“Good Lord! Concentrates! An eight-year-old, at a little private day school!” His face darkened. “These Saturday headaches — they make me tired. What they mean is simply that he funks coming over to Jalna to ride. He funks it, just because he’s had a fall or two. And here I am with a fine pair of ponies to show which must have a child rider.”

Renny said — “Promise him a present if they win at the Show.”

“I’ll promise him a damned good hiding if he doesn’t toe the scratch. Where is he?”

“I sent him out for a walk. I thought it would do him good.”

Piers made a sound of disgust. “Upon my word, the only Whiteoak among my three is this one. No mistake about him.” He tickled the baby whose resemblance to himself was remarkable. “And, in our family, I am the only one who takes after our father, and he was the spit of his dad. It’s the authentic face for four generations straight.”

Renny looked critically from father to son, then, cocking an eyebrow, he said:

“One like Piers is enough, eh, Pheasant?”

“Well, I do think,” she returned, with her air of a sedate child, “that Piers might be more lenient with Mooey and Nook. It’s not their fault if they don’t take after him. Knowing what I do of horse breeding, I should say it is his own.”

Renny grinned derisively at Piers. “A dud sire and no mistake.”

Piers looked as nearly sheepish as was possible to him. He said gruffly — “Well, I can’t waste any more time,” and started the engine. The baby, at the same moment, tugged at the necklet of red beads that Pheasant was wearing and broke it. The beads flew in all directions.

“Oh, oh, my precious necklet!” cried Pheasant. She set her baby down and began a search for the beads. Suddenly Nook’s voice called from an upper window — “Mummie, he’s eating one!”

Pheasant snatched up the child, held him head downward and extracted the bead from his mouth, he immediately looking as though nothing had happened.

“A close shave!” ejaculated Renny.

But Piers had seen two heads at the window. His face flushed and he rapped out sharply:

“Mooey, come down here!” He stopped the engine.

“Now, Piers,” implored Pheasant.

He turned on her. “What did you mean by telling me he was out?”

“I thought he was. He must have just come back. Don’t be rough with him, please.”

Young Maurice now appeared in the doorway and came slowly toward them, followed by his shadow, little Nook. It was true that neither boy showed any resemblance to Piers. Nor did they particularly favour their mother, though both had her quality of elusiveness, the look of sensitive woodland creatures, defensive yet vulnerable. Mooey was too tall for his age, thin, and rather pale. His brown hair fell in thick locks on his forehead, giving him a gypsy air. He was physically timid yet spiritually he could show great fortitude for his years. Nook had a look of real fragility, an exquisite skin, sleek fair hair, and hazel eyes, one of which showed a slight cast.

Piers stared at his first-born.

“Well,” he said sarcastically, “I hope your headache is better.”

Mooey answered, not without dignity, “Yes, thank you, Daddy.”

“I hope you feel able to come to Jalna and help school the ponies.”

“Yes.” He stood hesitating as to whether he should get into the front seat with his father and Biddy or into the back with his uncle and the spaniels. Renny settled it by opening the door next him. “In you get,” he said, “mind you let me have a good account of your riding.”

Piers looked at his wristwatch and exclaimed at the hour. The car started with a jerk. Pheasant and Nook were left searching in the grass for red beads.

Renny, indicating the boxes of sweets, said, out of the side of his mouth — “Make a good showing with the ponies, Mooey, and I’ll leave one of these in the saddle-room for you, on the shelf below the ribbons.”

Mooey smiled soberly and nodded, then looked straight ahead of him at his father’s stalwart back.

Piers stopped the car at the gate of their sister’s low-set rambling house and Renny and his dogs alighted. The dogs were met by an Airedale who greeted them as friends. An elderly lady, sitting in a deck chair on the lawn, called out — “Good morning, Mr. Whiteoak! Won’t you come and talk to me?”

He gave her a somewhat surly nod and strode quickly toward the front door. Here he had to make way for an incredibly sallow man coming out. The man stared at him almost aggressively.

Followed by the dogs he went straight to his sister’s sitting room. He found her there alone.

The eldest of the family, she was now aged forty-nine, would be fifty before the year was out. Her complexion had the clear freshness of Piers’s, only paler, her grey-blue eyes had an expression of innocent candour, and her pouting pink lips were girlish in their stubborn sweetness. Only greying hair, her thick waist, and over-plump neck showed her years. Her voice was caressing when she greeted him. She put both short arms round his neck and drew his hard-bitten, high-coloured face down to hers.

“Dearest, dearest boy — I haven’t seen you for days and days! What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Who the devil are those people?” he growled against her cheek.

“My P.G.s! You’ve met the old lady before — Mrs. Binkley-Toogood. I hope you weren’t as rude to her as you were the last time. The yellow gentleman is a newcomer.”

He drew back and scowled at her. “Meggie, how can you take these people into your house?”

She folded her arms across her full bosom and said reproachfully — “What can I do? With Maurice’s stocks going down and down — with my child growing older? I tell you, Renny, these paying guests are our salvation. And such nice people, too. I quite enjoy having them. Mrs. Binkley-Toogood has travelled in the East and the gentleman you met in the doorway has had the most interesting diseases. It’s all very broadening. I do wish you and Alayne would try it at Jalna. I think you ought to when you have a mortgage on the place and need money so badly.”

“Alayne and I — at Jalna!” His eyebrows, his nostrils, the lines from nostril to corner of mouth were bent to his horror at the idea.

“Surely,” returned his sister, “surely Alayne does not consider herself so much better than I am —”

He interrupted — “It’s not that. It’s the thought of paying guests — or whatever you call them — at Jalna. I’d starve first.”

“Well, I don’t see any sense in it.”

“Meggie — you do! You’d never ask me to do such a thing. Why, Gran would turn over in her grave!”

“I dare say she would. She’s the sort of dead person who would turn over in their grave. But she’d just have to get used to the new order of things as we all do.”

A retort was on his lips, but a shooting pain through his shoulder made him wince.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I heaved the porch at the tea shop and gave my shoulder a crick.”

“Poor dear!”

“It’s nothing serious.”

“But I hate you to be hurt. How is Mrs. Lebraux getting on?”

“Not too badly. Everything looks nice.”

“Doesn’t it? And such good tea! I was passing the other day and she called me in to have a cup. She absolutely refused to let me pay for it.”

“As though she’d let you pay for it! She likes you, Meg, and you’ve always been nice to her. She’s had a hard time of it since Lebraux died — and before, God knows!”

“I admire her,” said Meg fervently, all the more fervently because Renny’s wife had always been very cool toward Clara Lebraux.

He produced the boxes of sweets. “I’ve brought you and the kid these. One each. The daffodils on the top are rather nice, aren’t they?”

“Charming!” Meg’s eyes glowed as she opened the box. She had no modern ideas about keeping slim. She bit eagerly into a piece of maple cream fudge. “I have never been without sweets since the tea-room opened and as I eat almost nothing at table they are really good for me…. Ah, there is Patience! Come, darling, and see what Uncle Renny has brought us.”

Patience came in through the low open window, straddling the sill with her bare brown legs. She was a charming child with her father’s wide grey eyes and her mother’s sweet pouting smile. She knew exactly what she wanted and almost always managed to get it. Dimples dented her cheeks when her favourite uncle put his offering into her hands. She hugged the box to her.

“Oo,” she exclaimed, “just what I love! And one for Mums too! You are a darling!”

“Be careful how you squeeze him!” warned Meg. “He’s hurt his shoulder.”

“How?”

“Lifting the side of a house,” he grinned.

“You are a tease!” She threw herself on him.

With these two he was happy. He settled himself in a stuffed chintz chair and lighted a cigarette with Patience on his knee. He suddenly thought of himself as extraordinarily blessed. He thought of Clara and Pauline Lebraux, of his long friendship and protective care for them. He thought of young Wakefield, to whom he had been as a father and mother. Soon Wake’s marriage to Pauline would weld the link stronger. He thought of Piers and Pheasant and their three boys. A vision of his two old uncles in their house in Devon hid all else for a moment from his eyes — dear old boys, he hoped they would come over for a visit this summer. He thought of his brother Finch, six months married, living with his bride in Paris, getting on well in concert work — a young fool in other ways, but most affectionate. His thoughts reached out to those distant parts drawing, in dark invisible strength, the images of his own flesh and blood nearer. Then his mind turned to Jalna and his own wife and child. He thought of Alayne and of their troubled, passionate life together, like a spring bubbling out of the dark earth, unable to give a tranquil reflection of its surroundings. Then the face of his child obtruded itself, vivid, dark-eyed, scarlet-lipped, and his own lips softened into tenderness.

Meg and Patience had been watching him.

“A penny for your thoughts,” said Meg.

“You’re such a dear old funny-face!” cried Patience.

He gathered her to him with his sound arm and hugged her. “I was thinking of my dinner,” he said.

All the way home, across the fields and down through the ravine, his thoughts were on his wife and child. Like some primitive ancestor he quickened his steps, as though anxious lest some harm had befallen them in his absence. He paused just once to examine the trunk of a great pine tree from which a branch had been cut the autumn before. Over this scar the resinous lifeblood of the tree had collected in amber-coloured coagulations and, in one place, had formed into an elongated thread reaching almost to the ground. Renny bent his head and sniffed the pungent smell. He laid his hand on the trunk of the tree.