Everything was in terms of Piers. Alayne asked:
“What is your book? Not so interesting as the mushrooms?”
“It’s very good. It belongs to Piers. One of Jules Verne’s.”
Alayne had hoped that they might talk about the book, but she had read nothing of Jules Verne. She asked instead:
“Have you known Piers many years? I suppose you have, for you were neighbours, weren’t you?”
Pheasant stiffened. She did not answer for a moment, but bent forward plucking at the coarse orchard grass. Then she said in a low voice, “I suppose Eden has told you about me.”
“Nothing except that you were a neighbour’s daughter.”
“Come, now. Don’t hedge. The others did, then. Meg—Gran—Uncle Nick?”
“No one,” answered Alayne firmly, “has told me anything about you.”
“Humph. They’re a funny lot. I made sure they’d tell you first thing.” She mused a moment, biting a blade of grass, and then added: “I suppose they didn’t want to tell you anything so shocking. You’re so frightfully proper, and all that.”
“Am I?” returned Alayne, rather nettled.
“Well, aren’t you?”
“I had not thought about it.”
“It was one of the first things I noticed about you.”
“I hope it hasn’t turned you against me,” said Alayne, lightly.
Pheasant reflected, and said she did not think so.
“Then what is it?” persisted Alayne, her tone still light, but her face becoming very serious.
Pheasant picked up one of the misshapen apples of the old tree and balanced it on her palm.
“Oh, you’re different; that’s the principal thing. You don’t seem to know anything about real life.”
Alayne could have laughed aloud at the answer, that this ignorant little country girl should doubt her experience of life. Yet it was true enough that she did not know life as they in this backwater knew it, where no outside contacts modified the pungent vitality of their relations with each other.
She sat a moment in thought and then she said, gently:
“You are mistaken if you think that I should be easily upset by anything you would care to tell me. Not that I want to urge your confidence.”
“Oh, it’s not a matter of confidence,” exclaimed Pheasant. “Everybody in the world knows it but you, and of course you’ll hear it sooner or later, so I may as well tell you.”
She laid the apple on the grass, and, clasping her ankles in her brown hands, sat upright, with the air of a precocious child, and announced: “I’m illegitimate—what Gran in her old-fashioned way calls a bastard. There you are.” A bright colour dyed her cheeks, but she flung out the words with pathetic bravado.
“I am sorry,” murmured Alayne, “but you do not suppose that that will affect my feelings for you, do you?”
“It does most people’s.” The answer came in a low husky voice, and she went on hurriedly: “My father was the only child of an English colonel. His parents doted on him. He was the delight of their old age. My mother was a common country girl and she left me on their doorstep with a note, exactly the way they do in books. They took me in and kept me, but it broke the old people’s hearts. They died not long after. My father—”
“Did you live with him?” Alayne tried to make it easier for her by a tone of unconcern, but her eyes were filled with tears of pity for the child who in such quaint phraseology— “the delight of their old age,” indeed—told of the tragedy of her birth.
“Yes, till I was married. He just endured me. But I expect the sight of me was a constant reminder—of what he’d lost, I mean.”
“Lost?”
“Yes, Meg Whiteoak. He’d been engaged to her, and she broke it off when I appeared on the scene. That’s why she has that glassy stare for me. All the Whiteoaks were against the marriage, of course. It was adding insult to injury, you see.”
“Oh, my dear.”
The significance of looks and chance phrases that had puzzled her became apparent. She was pierced by a vivid pain at the thought of all the unmerited suffering of Pheasant.
“You have had rather a hard time, but surely that is all over. Meg cannot go on blaming you for what is not your fault, and I think the others are fond of you.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“I should be if you would let me.” Her hand moved across the grass to Pheasant’s. Their fingers intertwined.
“All right. But I warn you, I’m not a bit proper.”
“Perhaps I am not so proper as you think.” Their fingers were still warmly clutched. “By the way, why doesn’t Piers like me? I feel that it will not be altogether simple to be your friend when he is so—well, distant.”
“He is jealous of you—for my sake, I think. I just think that, mind you; he’s never said so. But I think he finds it pretty beastly that you should be thought so much of and me so little, and that you should be made so welcome and me so unwelcome, when after all we’re just two girls, except that you’re rich and I’m poor, and you’re legitimate and I’m up against the bar sinister, and Piers has always taken such an interest in the place and worked on it, and Eden only cares for poetry and having his own way.”
Alayne was scarlet. Out of the tangle of words one phrase menaced her. She said, with a little gasp: “Whatever made you think I was rich? My dear child, I am poor—poor. My father was a college professor. You know they are poor enough, in all conscience.”
“You may be what you call poor, but you’re rich to us,” answered Pheasant, sulkily.
“Now listen,” continued Alayne, sternly. “My father left me five thousand dollars insurance, and a bungalow which I sold for fourteen thousand, which makes nineteen thousand dollars. That is absolutely all. So you see how rich I am.”
“It sounds a lot,” said Pheasant, stolidly, and their hands parted and they both industriously plucked at the grass.
The significance of other allusions was now made plain to Alayne. She frowned as she asked: “What put such an idea into your head, Pheasant? Surely the rest of the family are not suffering from that hallucination.”
“We all thought you were frightfully well off. I don’t know exactly how it came about—someone said—Gran said—no, Meg said it was—” She stopped short, suddenly pulled up by a tardy caution.
“Who said what?” insisted Alayne.
“I think it was Uncle Nick who said—”
“Said what?”
“That it, was a good thing that Eden—oh, bother, I can’t remember what he said. What does it matter, anyhow?”
Alayne had to subdue a feeling of helpless anger before she answered, quietly: “It does not matter. But I want you not to have the notion that I am rich. It is ridiculous. It puts me in a false position. You knew that I worked for my living before I married Eden. Why did you think I did that?”
“We knew it was publishing books. It didn’t seem like work.”
“My child, I was not publishing. I only read manuscripts for the publisher. Do you see the difference?”
Pheasant stared at her uncomprehendingly, and Alayne, moved by a sudden impulse, put her arm about her and kissed her. “How silly of me to mind! May we be friends, then?”
Pheasant’s body relaxed against her with the abandon of a child’s. “It’s lovely of you,” she breathed, “not to mind about my—”
Alayne stopped her words with a kiss. “As though that were possible! And I hope Piers will feel less unfriendly to me when he knows everything.”
Pheasant was watching over Alayne’s shoulder two figures that were approaching along the orchard path.
“It’s Renny,” she said, “and Maurice. I wonder what they’re up to. Renny’s got an axe.”
The men were talking and laughing rather loudly over some joke, and did not see the girls at once. Alayne sat up and stroked her hair.
“I’ll bet it is some war joke,” whispered Pheasant. “They’re always at it when they’re together.�
� Pheasant took up an apple and rolled it in their direction. “Hullo, Maurice, why such hilarity?”
The two came up, Maurice removing his tweed cap. Renny, already bareheaded, nodded, the reminiscent grin fading from his face.
“Alayne,” he said, “this is Maurice Vaughan, our nearest neighbour.”
They shook hands, and Alayne, remembering having heard a reference to the fact that Vaughan drank a good deal, thought he showed it in his heavy eyes and relaxed mouth. He gave Pheasant a grudging smile, and then turned to Renny.
“Is this the tree?” he asked.
“Yes,” returned Renny, surveying it critically.
“What are you going to do?” asked Alayne.
“Cut it down. It’s very old, and it’s rotting. It must make room for a new one.”
Alayne was filled with dismay. To her the old apple tree was beautiful, standing strong and yet twisted with age in the golden October sunshine. From it seemed to emanate the spirit of all the seasons the tree had known, with their scents of fragile apple blossoms and April rains, of moist orchard earth and mellowing fruit. A lifetime of experience was recorded on its rugged trunk, the bark of which enfolded it in mossy layers, where a myriad tiny insects had their being.
She asked, trying not to look too upset, for she was never certain when the Whiteoaks would be amused at what they thought soft-heartedness or affectation, “Must it come down? I was just thinking what a grand old tree it is. And it seems to have borne a good many apples.”
“It’s diseased,” returned Renny. “Look at the shape of the apples. This orchard needs going over rather badly.”
“But this is only one tree and it is such a beautiful shape.”
“You must go over to the old orchard. You will find dozens like this there.” He pulled off his coat and began to roll up the sleeves from his lean, muscular arms. Alayne fancied that an added energy was given to his movements by her opposition.
She said nothing more, but with a growing feeling of antagonism watched him pick up the axe and place the first blow against the stalwart trunk. She imagined the consternation among the insect life on the tree at that first shuddering shock, comparable to an earthquake on our own sphere. The tree itself stood with a detached air, only the slightest quiver stirring its glossy leaves. Another and another blow fell, and a wedge-shaped chip, fresh with sap, sprang out onto the grass. Renny swung the axe with ease, it and his arms moving in rhythmic accord. Another chip fell, and another, and the tree sent up a groaning sound, as the blows at last penetrated its vitals.
“Oh, oh! Let me get my things,” cried Pheasant, and would have darted forward to rescue her hat and mushrooms had not Vaughan caught her by the wrist and jerked her out of the way.
It seemed that the dignity of the gnarled old tree would never be shaken. At each blow a shiver ran through its far-spreading branches and, one by one, the remaining apples fell, but for a long time the great trunk and massive primal limbs received the onslaughts of the axe with a sort of rugged disdain. At last, with a straining of its farthest roots, it crashed to the ground, creating a gust of air that was like the last fierce outgoing of breath from a dying man.
Renny stood, lean, red-faced, triumphant, his head moist with sweat. He glanced shrewdly at Alayne and then turned to Vaughan.
“A good job well done, eh, Maurice?” he asked. “Can you give me a cigarette?”
Vaughan produced a box, and Pheasant, without waiting to be asked, snatched one for herself and, with it between her lips, held up her face to Vaughan’s for a light.
“There’s a bold little baggage for you,” remarked Renny to Alayne, with an odd look of embarrassment.
Pheasant blinked at Alayne through smoke. “Alayne knows I’ve been badly brought up.”
“I think the result is delightful,” said Alayne, but she disapproved of Pheasant at that moment.
Pheasant chuckled. “Do you hear that, Maurice? Aren’t you proud?”
“Perhaps Alayne doesn’t realize that he is your happy parent,” said Renny, taking the bull by the horns.
Vaughan gave Alayne a smile, half sheepish, half defiant, and wholly, she thought, unprepossessing. “I expect Mrs. Whiteoak has heard of all my evil doings,” he said.
“I did not connect you two in my mind at all. I only heard today—a few minutes ago—that Pheasant had a father living. I had stupidly got the idea that she was an orphan.”
“I expect Maurice wishes I were, sometimes,” said Pheasant. “I don’t mean that he wishes himself dead—” “Why not?” asked Vaughan.
“Oh, because it’s such fun being a man, even an ill-tempered one. I mean that he wishes he had no encumbrance in the shape of me.”
“You encumber him no longer,” said Renny. “You encumber me; isn’t that so?”
“Will somebody please get my hat and book and mushrooms?” pleaded the young girl. “They’re under the tree.”
Renny began to draw aside the heavy branches, the upper ones of which were raised like arms in prayer. An acrid scent of crushed overripe apples rose from among them. His hands, when he had rescued the treasures, were covered by particles of bark and tiny terrified insects.
Vaughan turned toward home, and Pheasant ran after him, showing, now that they were separated, a demonstrative affection toward him that baffled Renny, who was not much given to speculation concerning the feelings of his fellows.
As for Alayne, her mind was puzzled more and more by these new connections who were everything that her parents and her small circle of intimates were not. Even while their conduct placed her past life on a plane of dignity and reticence, their warmth and vigour made that life seem tame and even colourless. The response of her nature to the shock of this change in her environment was a variety of moods to which she had never before been accustomed. She had sudden sensations of depression, tinged with foreboding, followed by unaccountable flights of gaiety, when she felt that something passionately beautiful was about to happen to her.
Renny, lighting a cigarette, looked at her gravely. “Do you know,” he said, “I had no idea that you were so keen about that tree, or I should have left it as it was. Why didn’t you make me understand?”
“I did not want to make too much fuss. I thought you would think I was silly. Anyone who knew me at all well would have known how I felt about it. But then—you do not know me very well. I cannot blame you for that.”
His gaze on her face became more intense. “I wish I did understand you. I’m better at understanding horses and dogs than women. I never understand them. Now, in this case, it wasn’t till the tree was down and I saw your face that I knew what it meant to you. Upon my word, I wouldn’t have taken anything—why, you looked positively tragic. You’ve no idea what a brute I feel.” He gave a rueful cut at the fallen tree to emphasize his words.
“Oh, don’t!” she exclaimed. “Don’t hurt it again!”
He stood motionless among the broken branches, and she moved to his side. He attracted her. She wondered why she had never noticed before how striking he was. But then, she had never before seen him active among outdoor things. She had seen him rather indifferently riding his roan horse. In the house she had thought of him as rather morose and vigilant, though courteous when he was not irritated or excited by his family; and she had thought he held rather an inflated opinion of his own importance as head of the house. Now, axe in hand, with his narrow red head, his red foxlike face and piercing red-brown eyes, he seemed the very spirit of the woods and streams. Even his ears, she noticed, were pointed, and his hair grew in a point on his forehead.
He, having thrown down the axe at her words of entreaty, stood among the broken branches, motionless as a statue, with apparently a statue’s serene detachment under inspection. He scarcely seemed to breathe.
One of those unaccountable soarings of the spirit to which she had of late been subject possessed her at this moment. Her whole being was moved by a strange exhilaration. The orchard, the surrounding fields, the
autumn day, seemed but a painted background for the gesture of her own personality. She had moved to Renny’s side. Now, from a desire scarcely understood by herself, to prove by the sense of touch that she was really she and he was no one more faunlike than Renny Whiteoak, she laid her hand on his arm. He did not move, but his eyes slid toward her face with an odd, speculative look in them. He was faintly hostile, she believed, because of her supersensitiveness about the tree. She smiled up at him, trying to show that she was not feeling childishly aggrieved, and trying at the same time to hide that haunting and wilful expectancy fluttering her nerves.
The next moment she found herself in his arms with his lips against hers, and all her sensations crushed for the moment into helpless surrender. She felt the steady thud of his heart, and against it the wild tapping of her own. At last he released her and said, with a rather whimsical grimace: “Did you mind so much? I’m awfully sorry. I suppose you think me more of a brute than ever now.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed quiveringly, “how could you do that? How could you think I would be willing—”
“I didn’t think at all,” he said. “I did it on the spur of the moment. You looked so—so—oh, I can’t think of a word to describe how you looked.”
“Please tell me. I wish to know,” she said icily.
“Well—inviting, then.”
“Do you mean consciously inviting?” There was a dangerous note in her voice.
“Don’t be absurd! Unconsciously, of course. You simply made me forget myself. I’m sorry.”
She was trembling all over.
“Perhaps,” she said, courageously, “you were not much more to blame than I.”
“My dear child—as though you could help the way you looked.”
“Yes, but I went over to you, deliberately, when—oh, I cannot say it!” Yet, perversely she wanted to say it.
“When you knew you were looking especially lovely—is that what you mean?”
“Not at all. It’s no use—I cannot say it.”
“Why make the effort? I’m willing to take all the blame. After all, a kiss isn’t such a terrible thing, and I’m a relation. Men occasionally kiss their sisters-in-law. It will probably never happen again unless, as you say, you brazenly approach me when—what were you trying to say, Alayne? Now I come to think of it, I believe I have the right to know. It might save me some stabs of conscience.”
Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna Page 75
