Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  III

  AWAKENING OF SPRING

  Spring, as far too often, seemed reluctant to come into the open. Like a chick in a hard-shelled egg, it pecked faintly at the hard shell of winter till its moist infant presence could barely be perceived. Then, apparently disheartened, it lay curled up dormant for a time, as though never to be hatched. Finally, after a night of wind and rain at the end of April it burst forth in an agony of threshing and writhing and in the morning perched on the earth, its pale gold plumage drying in the sun, its eyes little bright pools. And, like bits of the shell it had cast off, soiled patches of snow and ice lay in the hollows.

  As the sun mounted it showed once more what warmth could be, how every twig that had life in it, every root that had health in it, responded. Soon the countryside belonged to spring. At Jalna none of the family was more conscious of its power than Piers. It appeared to his elders that they could see him growing, and he grew, not in a lanky awkward fashion but with all his parts in serene accord. His neck and shoulders became more muscular, his legs fine pillars to support him. The fair skin of his cheeks and chin produced an authentic yellow beard. His shaving was now worth Finch’s attention.

  Piers was a favourite of his grandmother’s.

  “Ha,” she would exclaim, in admiration, “here’s a stalwart fellow coming on! A back like his grandfather’s. And he’s the only one of the whelps that has. I do like a well-set-up man.”

  And her son Ernest would reply — “To my mind, all the boys are well proportioned.”

  “Well proportioned! Ha — I grant you that none of ’em has legs that are too short or a neck that’s too long, with a great Adam’s apple. That I do hate.”

  Nicholas would put in — “Take Renny. He’s a lithe wiry fellow.”

  “Aye. Take him. You may have him. He’s the very likeness of my father — old Renny Court — and you know what he was.”

  “We’ve heard such different accounts of him, Mamma.”

  “And different he could be — to suit the occasion — smooth as silk — or rough and tough.”

  To draw her on Nicholas would add — “You can’t deny that Eden has looks.”

  “Looks! Of course he has looks. The looks of his poor mother…. No — not one of ’em will ever match your grandfather.” And she would raise her eyes, from beneath their shaggy brows, to the portrait of her long-dead husband, Captain Whiteoak. Her eyes would glow with a love the years could not dim and one of her sons would take her handkerchief and gently wipe away the drop that hung on the tip of her arched nose, and she would put out her shapely old hand and grip his hand, as though to gain strength from him.

  Piers, very conscious of this approval, held his back straighter, tried to put into his eyes that very expression of having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a sword in his hand which distinguished the eyes in the portrait of his grandfather. Once, in the seclusion of the attic, Piers had got into that dashing uniform and stared at his reflection in an old mirror. Piers had been disappointed in the reflection. The uniform had hung loosely on him. It would take several years of growth before he could fill it out. Still he had made a fine figure of a Hussar and he wished he might have presented himself as such to the family.

  But on this lovely morning two months after Finch’s birthday and the first Saturday in May he was happy to be as he was — free as air for the day — filled with an incomparable zest for life. He whistled to the dogs but none answered. As usual they were at Renny’s heels. He crossed the lawn where the yellow heads of dandelions were rosetted against the green velvet of the new grass like brass buttons. He passed through the wicket gate in the hedge, followed the meandering path that led down into the ravine. The stream had overflowed its banks that spring, torn at them, tried to tear down the rustic bridge, but now, its early ardour spent, had subsided to a cheerful gurgling among the stalks of cattails and clumps of watercress.

  Piers stood leaning on the handrail of the bridge, considering what he would do with the day. A succession of pleasant possibilities crossed his mind. There were so many things to do, but at the moment he was content to do nothing but lounge against the bridge, his strong hands stroking the handrail from which the bark had long disappeared, pulled off by the destructive fingers of boys. Initials had been carved on it. His own — his brothers’ — his uncles’ — why had young Finch carved his name Finch, instead of just his initials? He was a conceited young duffer. There was NW for Nicholas and the date 1865. Pretty dim it was. And there were his sister’s initials, entwined with the letters MV. Piers had to think for a moment before he could remember. Ah, yes — MV stood for Maurice Vaughan, their neighbour, and once years ago he and Meg had been engaged to marry. The engagement had been broken off because of a scrape Maurice had got himself into with a village girl. There had been a baby deposited on the Vaughan’s doorstep in truly Victorian melodrama — a tremendous row and the engagement broken off. Piers remembered, with a grin, how shocked he had felt when Eden had told him the story of it when he was fourteen. Somehow Piers seldom connected Pheasant Vaughan with that story — Pheasant, a funny little kid — rather nice — he’d known her all her life. It was months since he’d seen her. It had been on a bitter cold day in January and they’d met on the road. She’d had her head bent against the wind and worn a skirt too long for her that was caked with snow nearly to her knees. She’d looked a funny figure — rather like a little old woman. When they’d said hello and parted and he had looked back at her, she’d been looking back too — her eyes large, as though she were half afraid of him. She must have a dull time of it, being in a house with only Maurice Vaughan and his grim-faced housekeeper Mrs. Clinch. Casually he contrasted it with Jalna, teeming with activity, and gave a moment’s pity to the child.

  But she had passed from his mind when he saw her, or just glimpsed her, crouching among the reeds at the stream’s edge. She must have been there all the while peering into the water. Had she seen him, he wondered. Whether or not she had, she plainly saw him now, for she raised her eyes to look straight into his and beckoned.

  That was all he needed, that and a warning finger she held up, to bring him to her side in a dozen stealthy strides. He crouched beside her, feeling a sudden inexplicable excitement.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “Look — a water snake.”

  It moved lazily, beautifully, near them, in dappled sunlit folds. Piers wondered at her not screaming, as most girls would. But she turned now to him, her lips parted, a rim of white teeth revealed, in a smile that seemed to him an invitation to a moment’s comradeship. But she was only a kid. If she had been older she probably would have screamed, as a girl naturally would.

  “Isn’t it happy?” she whispered.

  Well — that was a silly thing to say about a snake. As though it could be happy!

  “Like to see me kill it?” he asked.

  “Oh, no. I — love it.”

  He broke into laughter. He had a musical laugh, and, as though she could not help herself, she laughed too. The snake, its secretive golden eyes wary of them, moved without haste into the shadowed recesses of the reeds. It had dominated the pool, now it was gone, and the little white faces of the thronging bloodroot stared out from the bank.

  A tremulous silence enveloped the boy and girl. The moist sweet scent of the ravine, the chatter of the stream, closed in about them. They gazed into the pool where the snake had been, and saw there the reflection of their own faces. Her dark hair and eyes turned amber in its shallow. The pink of Piers’s cheek, the blueness of his eyes, the fairness of his hair were merged into the semblance of a golden youth about to discover the meaning of spring. They gazed in silence for a space. Then his arm found her waist — his hand her side where the heart fluttered like a hovering swallow. They turned their heads and looked into each other’s eyes.

  Piers had never before felt tenderness toward any human being. He had felt it toward young lambs. But now tenderness toward Phea
sant welled up through all his sturdy body. Tenderness and an urge to protect her, and an urge to love her. But he only said laconically — “You’re funny.”

  “So are you,” she breathed. “Not a bit like I thought you were.”

  “I guess we’re both funny. Will you kiss me?”

  She nodded without speaking. But the kiss was not a success. Their faces merely bumped gently together. But in some inexplicable way it drew them very close. They felt less shy, more familiar, and strangely happy.

  “How old are you?” he demanded.

  “Seventeen — in a few weeks.”

  “I’m eighteen. Soon be nineteen.”

  They could find nothing more to say. They squatted side by side in silence, as though the sum of their years had left them speechless in wonder. Only the stream spoke. A small bird flew by carrying a piece of white string in its beak, its wing beats ardent in its urge for nest-building.

  At last Piers said — “Well, I must be getting along.”

  She did not say “Stay.”

  “Shall you be coming this way tomorrow about this time?” he asked.

  She nodded, pulling up a blade of grass and examining it. “I’ll be here,” he said. He left her, running across the bridge and up the steep toward the lawn, as though to show his power.

  IV

  A RISE IN STOCKS

  “Poetry and making money,” said Eden, “go extremely well together. I wonder that poets in the past have never tried it.”

  His Uncle Ernest was the only member of the family to whom he openly spoke of himself as a poet. Of course they all knew he wrote poetry and, according to their various temperaments, looked on it as a pleasant pastime, a weakness inherited from his mother, or a waste of the valuable hours which he should be devoting to the study of law. All but Ernest. He appreciated the promise shown by the young poet and, when Eden came to his room and read him his latest verses, he was gratified. Their literary gifts were a link between them. He himself had been engaged, for some years, in the preparation of a book on Shakespeare though he had never yet produced a manuscript to show his family, and Nicholas openly doubted the possibility of his ever producing one.

  Uncle and nephew had had many an agreeable talk in the comfortable privacy of Ernest’s room where the walls were decorated by watercolour drawings of English scenery he had done in his earlier days. In fact there was at least one of these in every room in the house. But never before had they enjoyed a talk of this nature. In the past their talk of money had concerned the lack of it, on Eden’s part, and how quickly it went, on Ernest’s. But, since the speculation in the Indigo Lake Mine, the subject of money had taken on a new and delightful aspect. Today they were hilarious.

  From the very week of Ernest’s investment the price of the Indigo Lake stocks had been rising. Not in a spectacular fashion but steadily, firmly, in a way to give the investor confidence. Mr. Kronk kept Eden informed on the matter each day. Another bright-coloured brochure arrived confirming these reports. Almost every day after his lectures he went to Mr. Kronk’s apartment and, if he were not there, Mrs. Kronk was and always with good news for him. She would give him not tea but a cocktail. Never before had he enjoyed himself in this way. A commission of twenty-five percent on the investments of his uncles and Piers was paid to him by Mr. Kronk — paid with a smile, just as though he’d earned it. Nicholas, picturing a winter on the Riviera, doubled the amount he had invested. After a month of watching the rise of Indigo Lake, Ernest had more than trebled his. Now he saw a gain so splendid that his fingers fairly itched to write still larger cheques.

  He was an agile man, an affectionate one. In the hilarity of the moment he threw an arm about Eden, clasped him in a dancing position, and they waltzed the length of the room. Sasha, his cat, rose from her sleep on the bed to watch them, arching her back, making her legs long and her face a mask of disdain.

  “I couldn’t have believed it,” Ernest exclaimed, panting a little at the end of the waltz. “I had become very nervous about speculation since my last misfortunes. But this — my dear boy, it’s wonderful. To think that a chance meeting on the train …”

  “And if you could meet him! He doesn’t look capable of big business enterprises. Just a confiding little man, with a coy manner. But there’s nothing he doesn’t know about mining. Knows all that north country like the palm of his hand. Apparently taken a real shine to me.”

  Ernest squared his shoulders. “I shall invest more. Do you think we ought to bring your Uncle Nicholas into this? It does seem a shame that he should not share in it.”

  Eden considered. He felt himself to be getting into a corner. He said, “I think we’d better not. You know he doesn’t like speculation.”

  Eden now rather wished that there had been no secrecy in the affair. But how was he to know that it would be such a stupendous success?

  Nicholas, though waltzing was beyond him, was enormously pleased. He beat the arm of his chair with his clenched fist and exclaimed, “By God, this is the best thing that’s happened to me in many a day!” He did not suggest letting his brother in on the affair but rather took a rise out of how surprised old Ernie would be when he discovered what an astute speculator he was.

  Piers, on his part, had never shown such eagerness to help with the work of farm, stables, or orchard. No work was too hard or too tedious. Good farm labourers were scarce and he hired himself to Renny with a zeal for work that amazed his elder. At the same time he showed rather a disconcerting greed as to wages. Whatever he earned he handed over to Eden to invest for him, with a childlike trust. Eden had opened a savings account in a city bank and in it he almost religiously deposited all that he earned in commission. Half a dozen times a day he would take the little deposit book from his pocket and examine it, relishing how the amount increased. He kept a map in his desk, and when he had saved enough to pay his passage to Europe, he drew a red line from Montreal to Le Havre and from there to Paris. He calculated what it would cost him to spend a month there, and the day came when he dared print, still in red ink, a month here. He borrowed books about Paris from his uncles. Ernest brought out an old album of photographs and picture postcards of Paris, the French and Italian Rivieras, Florence, Rome, and Sicily, and, as he pored over them with Eden, he read him bits from a journal he had kept on his travels. It required the greatest self-restraint on the part of Ernest and Nicholas to conceal their exhilaration from each other and from the family. They made no attempt to conceal their feeling of well-being and good humour. Things that in ordinary times irritated them now brought only a tolerant smile to their lips. Wakefield’s noise and naughtiness, their old mother’s irascibility, did not ruffle them. Piers consistently worked, and with equal consistency showed an increasing greed for his pay. All he earned he handed over to Eden to invest for him.

  Before the summer had well begun Eden had persuaded his sister to invest in the Indigo Lake Mine. Meg had little of the speculator in her nature and was averse from acknowledging to the family that she had anything more than enough for her barest needs. Yet she tempted and at last succumbed. When Eden was able to tell her of the rise in the stock of Indigo Lake she was so elated that, if he had not restrained her, she would have hurled all she had into the speculation.

  But his young brother, his sister, and his uncles were small catches for Eden. He longed for an investor possessed of substantial means and more and more often his thoughts turned to his grandmother. The great obstacle was her age. Could he make her understand what the proposition was? Would it be possible to accomplish a transaction without the knowledge of her lawyer, Mr. Patton? All the family were aware that her fortune was invested in the most conservative way, and her sons held it regrettable that this was so and that consequently her income was not as large as it might have been. Not that they ever saw more of it than sufficed for her few needs and the occasional present she gave.

  Several times Eden went to the door of her bedroom before she was up with the determination to sound
her on the subject, but each time his courage failed him. She might give the whole affair away to the family and bring down blame on himself for having suggested such a speculation to her. Of late he’d had quote enough censure over his failure in his exams to last him the rest of his life. Yet — he could not keep his mind off the delightful prospect of landing such a glittering fish as she. And it would be all for her own good! She might indeed be so grateful to him that she would increase the legacy he was sure she had already left him in her will.

  This indecision could not continue and it ended one morning when, in passing her room, he saw that the door stood open and she herself was seated in a low chair beside a stool on which stood a basin of water. She was washing the rings which she wore every day — her wedding ring, her engagement ring, and five others, too many to be in good taste for any woman, to say nothing of a woman of her great age. But somehow they suited her, and her family could not picture her shapely old hands without them.

  She saw Eden’s reflection in the mirror and called out — “Come in, Eden, come in, and tell me what mischief you’re up to.”

  Their eyes met in the mirror. They smiled and he came into the room, closing the door behind him.

  Once he was inside that room and the door shut, its atmosphere enfolded him. She had been reared in a less sanitary period than this.