“Much better interrupt us than them,” said Mrs. Stroud with an enigmatic smile.
Eden said deliberately, — “All right. I’ll take Mrs. Stroud too. It’s a good idea.”
He left the room. There was a moment’s somewhat embarrassed silence. Then she remarked, looking from Renny to the portrait — “There is a resemblance between you and your grandmother, isn’t there?”
“It has always been remarked,” he replied stiffly.
“It must be extraordinary to be a member of such a large family. I have lived alone so much. I have never had more than one other person in the house with me since I was a child.”
“That partly explains you,” he said.
She was on the defensive. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that, if you had had young brothers, you would know a boy for a boy when you met one.”
She flashed him a look of anger.
“Perhaps Eden is less of a boy than you think.”
“I don’t see,” he said, “how you can be interested in him. However, if you are, you are, and that’s that. There is quite a different matter I should like to talk to you about. I’ll come to see you this evening, if you don’t mind.”
For a moment she felt that she must refuse him. She was conscious of a kind of harsh dexterity in him that might worst her in a conflict. Yet how could she refuse? She heard herself saying:
“Yes, I’ll be glad to see you. Any time this evening.”
Eden had returned. He gave Renny a swift look as though to penetrate what was going on in his mind, then said to Mrs. Stroud:
“I’ve brought the car around. Will you come?”
“Yes. I must say goodbye first.”
Renny bowed gravely to her as she passed him. He went through the folding doors into the sitting room, closing them behind him. Chris was still standing where he had left her.
“They’ve gone, haven’t they?”
He looked out of the window.
“Not yet. Mrs. Stroud and Eden were in the dining room. I’m going to see her tonight.”
“It won’t do any good. She’s adamant. If you had heard the scene she made with Jim last night!”
“But she has been very kind to you in the past, hasn’t she?”
“Yes, but she’s changed. She’s quite different now. What do you think we had better do?” She raised her eyes trustingly to his face.
“We’ll find a way out. Don’t worry. Time enough, if I can’t induce that woman to change her mind. Eden will go home with her after he’s put down the Miss Laceys.”
She looked about the room. “What a nice room! Are all those pipes yours?”
“Just two of them. The rest were my father’s.”
“Was he like you?”
“Not a bit. Much nicer.”
“Then, to judge by what the Miss Laceys and you say, your family is deteriorating. I don’t believe it. I believe that you’re the flower of the flock! Anyhow, I love you. The thought of having to go away makes me sick.” She put both arms around his neck.
He laid his profile against her cheek.
“My pretty heart!”
“You do say such nice things, darling!”
“Not to anyone but you.”
“Well, you must say nice things to Mrs. Stroud tonight. Don’t let her turn us out! If it weren’t for Tod it wouldn’t be so bad. God! I wonder where he is! I must go and find him!”
After some searching she found him sitting on Scotchmere’s knee, a currant bun in his hand, watching a game of quoits. Scotchmere said:
“You’re a fine mother, aren’t you!”
Tod held up his arms to her. She took him and wiped the crumbs from his mouth.
“How are Launceton’s legs?” she asked.
“Filling up,” he answered sourly. “You worked him hard yesterday.”
“Like hell I did,” she rejoined. “Where’s my brother?”
“Over yonder, by the cider barrel. He don’t care what becomes of the baby.”
“Thanks, Scotchmere, for looking after him.”
“Ah, he always makes for me, no matter how many other folk there are about. He knows who his friends are, don’t you, Tod?” He took the child’s foot in his hand and patted it. Tod beamed down at him, then nibbled the currant bun. Chris went to Dayborn’s side and, after a little, the three disappeared along the path that led through the orchard.
Contrary to Renny’s expectations, Eden was home for the evening meal. Their grandmother had retired for the night. Ernest, weary after the strain of the preceding day, was ensconced in his own room with chicken broth and biscuits at his side and his writing folio in readiness for a letter to Augusta. He had much to tell her.
Eden was lively and apparently exhilarated. He directed his conversation to Meg. She liked him in this mood and laughed at his imitations of the Miss Laceys. He avoided Renny’s eyes. Mrs. Stroud had told him of the meeting to take place that night. He anticipated it with suspicion. Finch was lost in dreams, staring into space. Piers eyed Eden warily. He wondered if he had forgotten what had happened that morning.
It was not often that Eden chose to make himself useful but this evening he purposefully unrolled the garden hose and set about watering the flower borders and the grass. Meg approved of him. She wandered in and about, followed by her father’s spaniel, directing the stream toward ailing plants or dry places on the lawn. He stood docile, doing her bidding.
There was the sound of hooves, at a walking pace. Renny, on his favourite Cora, rode along the drive. She did not quite like the hose and, lifting an expostulating foreleg, took a few side steps. Meg turned.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Just for a little exercise. You know Cora hates taking it in the paddock. We’ll not be long. Turn the hose into the shrubbery, Eden. She doesn’t like it.”
As Renny spoke, Piers and Finch appeared, walking slowly from behind the house. They had been pals all the day and Finch was immensely proud. The stream from the hose moved swiftly and Eden, with his mouth drawn in a malicious smile, turned it full on Piers.
For a moment he was galvanized by the shock. Then he wheeled and began to run in the direction whence he had come. Eden ran after him, dragging the hose. The spaniel set up a volley of barking and ran in front of Piers. He fell, sprawling on the gravelled drive. Eden turned the full force of the hose on him. The spaniel, in a transport of delight, raced round and round his prostrate body, barking now at Piers, now at the stream of water.
Meg screamed. Renny shouted — “Look out! What in blazes!” Cora reared. Piers gathered himself up and fled. Finch stood grinning hysterically. Then Eden turned the hose on him. Meg shrieked.
Finch ran to her for protection.
“Go away!” she cried. “I don’t want to get wet! Eden, stop it, this instant!”
Finch ran to seek cover behind the horse.
“By Judas!” shouted Renny, “if I lay my hands on you!”
He warded off Finch with his riding crop. Finch, a small drenched figure, ran despairingly towards the house, the relentless stream following him. Half blinded by water, he fumbled at the door handle. He could not open the door, but it was opened from the inside by Eliza. She staggered back from the full impact of the hose.
Eden, seeing Renny like an avenging centaur rearing toward him, dropped the hose and disappeared into the shrubbery. The final spiral stream flicked Cora on her drum-like belly. Dipping her head she kicked out behind her, just missing the spaniel, then galloped furiously down the drive. The gate was shut. Gathering herself together, she cleared it like a stag and thundered along the road.
XVI
RENNY AND MRS. STROUD
SHE WAS WATCHING for him through the window curtains. She had powdered her face and clipped long gold earrings on her flat, transparent-looking ears. She felt a perturbation which she tried in vain to quiet. She did not know what sort of interview to expect but she was determined to hold her own. Although Ernest and
Eden had often spoken of Renny to her, what they had said had been confusing rather than enlightening. “He is such an individualist,” Ernest had once said, “that he sometimes seems taciturn or erratic when he is neither. He’s very tender-hearted. He has my mother’s keenness. It has been rather a handicap to him that he attracts women with so little effort.” But Eden had said — “I’m always up against his matter-of-factness. He’s fond of his horses and of Jalna. But he has an awfully cruel streak. He never reads a book except on the subject of horse breeding. He and you would find nothing to talk about.” Yet Eden had said that very afternoon, — “He’ll persuade you to let Dayborn stay on. You’ll see.” She had returned, — “No one can do that.” And Eden had laughed, — “Old Redhead has a way with him.”
Well, she would be impervious to any ways of his. Her heartbeat quickened in anger when she thought of Dayborn. She went to the glass and examined her reflection, wondering whether some little curls she had made at her temples became her.
The waning light cast a peculiar greenish shadow over her face. “Surely,” she thought, “I am not that colour!” She ran upstairs to examine herself in the more kindly mirror in her bedroom. Yes, she was quite different in this. What fine eyes she had! The curls became her.
The photograph of her husband was watching, it seemed cynically, from the dressing table. She saw the soft, drooping nose, the common mouth, the shrewd little eyes. She suddenly felt that she could not endure it there. She took it to the wardrobe and laid it on the top shelf. She drew a deep breath, whether of relief or of apprehension, she hardly knew. Her emotions were so intensified in these days that her nerves were suffering. “I was repressed too long,” she thought. “I can’t bear real living. I wish it had come to me earlier.”
He had arrived without her knowing it. She heard his knock on the door and looking out of the window saw his horse tied to the iron ring in the worm-eaten post by the gate. A caller on horseback! How romantic — if one could associate romance with the man Eden had described! She wished their interview were on some pleasant subject. But no, let her take life as it came! It would be fun to tell Eden all about this meeting…. There was a louder knock.
She said aloud — “Impatient, aren’t you? Well, it will do you good to wait.” But she ran quickly down the stairs.
His face cleared when he saw her. He said, — “I was afraid you had gone out.”
“I suppose,” she said with faint sarcasm, “that you are accustomed to doors being thrown open to you at once but, you see, I don’t keep a maid.”
“Oh no, I’m not,” he answered apologetically. “It’s only that I’m anxious to see you.”
They went into the living room.
She sat down facing him, with an air of gravity. She was not going to make it easy for him. As though to aid her Dayborn’s voice came from the other side of the partition singing “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” in a high tenor.
“They are rather close to you, aren’t they?” Renny observed.
She shrugged. “Oh, I’m willing to put up with that sort of thing. It’s his spying and his insolence that I can’t bear.”
“You do like Chris, though, don’t you?”
She spoke almost violently. “Mr. Whiteoak, I have been kind to those people. Ask them if I haven’t. They can’t deny it!”
“They don’t deny it. It’s your former kindness that makes this hard to understand.”
“If you’d lived here all these months you’d wonder how I’d put up with them for so long. They don’t even pay their rent!” Instantly she wished she had not said that and hastened to add, — “Not that that has influenced me in my decision.”
“But it’s very important that rent should be paid,” he objected. “I’m willing to advance Dayborn the necessary money to pay it. I think Dayborn is willing to promise to mind his own business.”
“Then he’s promising the impossible. He no more could mind his own business than I —” She hesitated for a comparison.
“Than you could be unreasonably cruel,” he supplied for her.
“I’m not unreasonable!”
He laughed. “Then you’re not a woman!”
“Can you say that, with such a grandmother, aunt and sister as you have!”
“All three of them are unreasonable.”
“I suppose you think you are reasonable.”
“Perfectly.” He gave the ingratiating smile so like his grandmother’s.
She smiled too, then said, — “Surely you don’t ask me to keep a man in my house who spies on the comings and goings of my friends and makes remarks from his doorstep. We might as well be living on barges. It’s degrading.”
“Dayborn was a year at the front from 1914. He was gassed. It’s probably affected his temper. He’s not really a bad chap.”
“I wish you could hear the things he says to Chris!”
“I do.”
“When?”
“When we’re schooling the horses. I gave him a punch one day.”
“And yet you think he isn’t a bad chap!”
“I’m tolerant.”
She looked at him in surprise. She said:
“I had thought of you as the very reverse.”
“Oh, I have a quick temper.”
Her lips curved. Her eyes rested almost mischievously on his hair.
“Yes,” he agreed, “they go together.”
With a note of intimacy in her voice, she said, — “I have never seen such dark eyes and lashes go with it before.”
“I inherit those from my grandmother,” he returned complacently.
She laughed outright, her eyes searching his face, wondering what there was in it that made his presence in the room dim the images of those who had preceded him. Ernest, Eden, Dayborn, they became suddenly shadowy.
A silence fell between them.
He sat so quietly in his worn riding clothes, his wiry alert frame so composed, that it seemed he could remain thus indefinitely. He was looking through the window at his horse, tethered by the gate. He was thinking about Eden. No, he would not bring Eden into the conversation. Let that come later!
She said, — “I feel that I must tell you something about those people. I think that it’s my duty.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Yes?” He looked at her enquiringly.
She said, her voice deepening impressively:
“Those two are not brother and sister. They are man and wife.”
“Oh yes,” he returned simply, “I’ve known it for some time.”
“Known it!” She stared, transfixed.
“Yes.”
“How did you find out?”
“As for that, how did you find out?”
“Dayborn gave it away by something he said to Chris. I couldn’t help hearing.”
“When you decided to make this house into two, why on earth didn’t you do it properly? It must be like an eggshell.” He rose and rapped the partition sharply with his knuckles.
Dayborn, in consternation, ceased his singing.
She gave a little laugh and said, — “He’s not usually so amenable.”
“I think he will behave in future. I think Chris will see that he does. She has a lot of influence over him.”
“Well, it’s time she began to exert it.” She had spoken tartly; now she added, in a somewhat consciously intimate tone:
“What do you think of their marriage?”
“I think she’s too good for him, but what wife isn’t!”
She gave her deep, musical laugh. “I wonder what sort of woman you will marry.”
“One with as nice a laugh as yours, I hope.”
“Don’t think you will influence me by flattery.”
“I have never flattered any woman.”
She leant toward him. “You must have heard strange stories of me. I wish you would tell me just what you think of me.”
“I’ll tell you when you have told me whether or not you’re going to let Chris and the kid s
tay on.”
“You speak as though they are the only ones who matter.”
“They are — to me. And to you too.”
“Dayborn matters to me.”
“I’ll make him promise to behave himself.”
“He can’t.”
“Give him a chance.”
“It’s no use asking me.”
“Very well. I think you’ll be sorry.” He rose.
At this moment she wanted above all things to impress him. Her craving for experience led her to reach out toward a man in whose presence she felt only unease and self-distrust. She felt that, if she submitted to him, she would instantly pass out of his thoughts. Only by opposition or an attitude of wavering could she hope to hold his interest.
She clasped her hands together in her lap and raised her eyes appealingly to his. She said:
“I’ll do this. I’ll let them stay on for another fortnight. I’ll try to endure him that long — perhaps longer. Will you come to see me in a fortnight? I’ll tell you then if I can go on with it.”
“Good!” He looked down at her almost tenderly. “That is kind of you!
I’ll go straight and tell them. Would you like an apology from Dayborn?”
“No. I don’t want to speak to him.”
“But you will speak to Chris?”
“Yes. Must you go?”
“Chris will be anxious to hear. I’ll come again. Must I wait a fortnight?”
“Come whenever you will.”
He took her hand. “Thanks.” His eyes were searching as he looked into hers. He might have worn some such expression as he examined a new horse, wondering whether it would be a hard- or light-mouthed puller.
She followed him to the door. Night had descended on them. The dark form of the mare was barely visible. The air throbbed with the sounds of night. He put his leg over the low fence and, waving his hand, went to the neighbouring door.
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.
Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna Page 20
