07 Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  Peace possessed him as Mrs. Brawn produced the bottle, uncorked it, and set it before him with the straws.

  “How is the old lady?” she inquired.

  “Nicely, thank you. We’re hoping she’ll reach one hundred yet. She’s trying awfully hard to. ‘Cos she wants to see the celebration we’ll have. A party, with a big bonfire and skyrockets. She says she’d be sorry to miss it, though of course we won’t have it if she’s dead, and she couldn’t miss what never really happened, could she, even if it was her own birthday party?”

  “You’ve a wonderful gift of the gab.” Mrs. Brawn beamed at him admiringly.

  “Yes, I have,” he agreed, modestly. “If I hadn’t, I’d have no show at all, being the youngest of such a large family. Grandmother and I do a good deal of talking, she at her end of the line and I at mine. You see, we both feel that we may not have many years more to live, so we make the most of everything that comes our way.”

  “Oh, my goodness, don’t talk that way. You’ll be all right.” She was round-eyed with sympathy. “Don’t worry, my dear.”

  “I’m not worrying, Mrs. Brawn. It’s my sister does the worrying. She’s had a terrible time raising me, and of course I’m not raised yet.” He smiled sadly, and then bent his small dark head over the bottle, sucking ecstatically.

  Mrs. Brawn disappeared into the kitchen behind the shop. A fierce heat came from there, and the tantalizing smell of cakes baking, and the sound of women’s voices. What a good time women had! Red-faced Mrs. Brawn especially. Baking all the cakes she wanted and selling all those she couldn’t eat, and getting paid for them. How he wished he had a cake. Just one little hot cake!

  As he drew the lovely drink up through the straws, his eyes, large and bright, roved over the counter. Near him was a little tray of packets of chewing gum. He was not allowed to chew it, but he yearned over it, especially that first moment of chewing, when the thick, sweet, highly flavoured juice gushed down the throat, nearly choking him. Before he knew it—well, almost before he knew it—he had taken a packet from the tray, dropped it into his pocket, and gone on sucking, but now with his eyes tightly closed.

  Mrs. Brawn returned with two hot little sponge cakes on a plate and set them down before him. “I thought you’d like them just out of the oven. They’re a present, mind. They’ll not go on your account.”

  He was almost speechless with gratitude. “Oh, thank you, thank you,” was all he could say, at first. Then, “But what a shame! I’ve gone and drunk up all my soda and now I’ll have to eat my cakes dry, unless, of course, I buy another bottle of something.” His eyes flew over the shelves. “I believe I’ll take ginger ale this time, Mrs. Brawn, thank you. And those same straws will do.”

  “All right.” And Mrs. Brawn opened another bottle and plumped it down before him.

  The cakes had a delicious crisp crust and, buried in the heart of each, about six juicy currants. Oh, they were lovely!

  As he sauntered from the shop and then climbed the steep steps to the church, he pondered on the subjects assigned for today’s lessons. Which of his two most usual moods, he wondered, would Mr. Fennel be in? Exacting, alert, or absent-minded and drowsy? Well, whatever the mood, he was now at the mercy of it, little, helpless, alone.

  He trotted through the cool shadow of the church, among the gravestones, hesitating a moment beside the iron fence which enclosed his family’s plot. His eyes rested on the granite plinth bearing the name “Whiteoak”; then, wistfully, on the small stone marked “Mary Whiteoak, wife of Philip Whiteoak.” His mother’s grave. His grandfather lay there too; his father; his father’s first wife—the mother of Renny and Meg; and several infant Whiteoaks. He had always liked this plot of ground. He liked the pretty iron fence and the darling little iron balls that dangled from it. He wished he could stay there this morning and play beside it. He must bring a big bunch of the kingcups that he had seen spilled like gold along the stream yesterday, and lay them on his mother’s grave. Perhaps he would give a few to the mother of Renny and Meg also, but none to the men, of course; they wouldn’t care about them; nor to the babies, unless to “Gwynneth, aged five months,” because he liked her name.

  He had noticed that when Meg brought flowers to the graves she always gave the best to her own mother, “Margaret,” while to “Mary”—his mother and Eden’s and Piers’s and Finch’s—she gave a smaller, less beautiful bunch. Well, he would do the same. Margaret should have a few, but they should be inferior—not wilted or anything, but not quite so fine and large.

  The rectory was a mellow-looking house with a long sloping roof and high-pointed gable. The front door stood open. He was not expected to knock, so he entered quietly, first composing his face into an expression of meek receptiveness. The library was empty. There lay his books on the little desk in the corner at which he always sat. Feebly he crossed the worn carpet and sank into his accustomed chair, burying his head in his hands. The tall clock ticked heavily, saying, “Wake-field—Wake-field—Wake—Wake—Wake— Wake—” Then, strangely, “Sleep—sleep—sleep—sleep...”

  The smell of stuffy furniture and old books oppressed him. He heard the thud of a spade in the garden. Mr. Fennel was planting potatoes. Wakefield dozed a little, his head sinking nearer and nearer the desk. At last he slept peacefully.

  He was awakened by Mr. Fennel’s coming in, rather earthy, rather dazed, very contrite.

  “Oh, my dear boy,” he stammered, “I’ve kept you waiting, I’m afraid. I was just hurrying to get my potatoes in before the full of the moon. Superstitious, I know, but still— Now, let’s see; what Latin was it for today?”

  The clock buzzed, struck twelve.

  Mr. Fennel came and bent over the little boy. “How have you got on this morning?” He was peering at the Latin textbook that Wakefield had opened.

  “As well as could be expected, by myself, thank you.” He spoke with gentle dignity, just touched by reproach.

  Mr. Fennel leaned still closer over the page. “Um-m, let’s see. Etsi in his locis — maturae sunt hiemes — ”

  “Mr. Fennel,” interrupted Wakefield.

  “Yes, Wake.” He turned his shaggy beard, on which a straw was pendent, toward the boy.

  “Renny wondered if you would let me out promptly at twelve today. You see, yesterday I was late for dinner, and it upset Grandmother, and at her age—”

  “Certainly, certainly. I’ll let you off. Ah, that was too bad, upsetting dear Mrs. Whiteoak. It must not happen again. We must be prompt, Wakefield. Both you and I. Run along then, and I’ll get back to my potatoes.” Hurriedly he assigned the tasks for tomorrow.

  “I wonder,” said Wakefield, “if Tom” (Mr. Fennel’s son), “when he’s got the pony and cart out this afternoon, would drop my books at the house for me. You see, I’ll need both dictionaries and the atlas. They’re pretty heavy, and as I am late already I’ll need to run every bit of the way.”

  He emerged into the noontide brightness, light as air, the transportation of his books arranged for, his brain unfired by encounters with Caesar or Oliver Cromwell, and his body refreshed by two sponge cakes and two bottles of soft drink, ready for fresh pleasurable exertion.

  He returned the way he had come, only pausing once to let an importunate sow, deeply dissatisfied with the yard where she was imprisoned, into the road. She trotted beside him for a short distance, pattering along gaily, and when they parted, where an open garden gate attracted her, she did not neglect to throw a glance of roguish gratitude over her shoulder to him.

  Glorious, glorious life! When he reached the field where the stream was, the breeze had become a wind that ruffled up his hair and whistled through his teeth as he ran. It was as good a playfellow as he wanted, racing him, blowing the clouds about for his pleasure, shaking out the blossoms of the wild cherry tree like spray.

  As he ran, he flung his arms forward alternately like a swimmer; he darted off at sudden tangents, shying like a skittish horse, his face now fierce with rolling ey
es, now blank as a gambolling lamb’s.

  It was an erratic progress, and, as he crept through his accustomed hole in the cedar hedge on to the shaggy lawn, he began to be afraid that he might, after all, be late for dinner. He entered the house quietly and heard the click of dishes and the sound of voices in the dining room.

  Dinner was in progress, the older members of the family already assembled, when the youngest (idler, liar, thief, wastrel that he was!) presented himself at the door.

  II

  THE FAMILY

  THERE seemed a crowd of people about the table, and all were talking vigorously at once. Yet, in talking, they did not neglect their meal, which was a hot, steaming dinner, for dishes were continually being passed, knives and forks clattered energetically, and occasionally a speaker was not quite coherent until he had stopped to wash down the food that impeded his utterance with a gulp of hot tea. No one paid any attention to Wakefield as he slipped into his accustomed place on the right of his half sister Meg. As soon as he had begun to come to table he had been set there, first in a high chair, then, as he grew larger, on a thick volume of British Poets, an anthology read by no member of the family and, from the time when it was first placed under him, known as “Wakefield’s book.” As a matter of fact, he did not need its added inches to be able to handle competently his knife and fork now, but he had got used to it, and for a Whiteoak to get used to anything meant a tenacious and stubborn clinging to it. He liked the feel of its hard boards under him, though occasionally, after painful acquaintance with Renny’s shaving strop or Meg’s slipper, he could have wished the Poets had been padded.

  “I want my dinner!” He raised his voice, in a very different tone from the conciliatory one he had used to Mrs. Brawn, Mrs. Wigle, and the rector. “My dinner, please!”

  “Hush.” Meg took from him the fork with which he was stabbing the air. “Renny, will you please give this child some beef. He won’t eat the fat, remember. Just nice lean.”

  “He ought to be made to eat the fat. It’s good for him.” Renny hacked off some bits of the meat, adding a rim of fat.

  Grandmother spoke, in a voice guttural with food: “Make him eat the fat. Good for him. Children spoiled nowadays. Give him nothing but the fat. I eat fat and I’m nearly a hundred.”

  Wakefield glared across the table at her resentfully. “Shan’t eat the fat. I don’t want to be a hundred.”

  Grandmother laughed throatily, not at all ill-pleased. “Never fear, my dear, you won’t do it. None of you will do it but me. Ninety-nine, and I never miss a meal. Some of the dish gravy, Renny, on this bit of bread. Dish gravy, please.”

  She held up her plate, shaking a good deal. Uncle Nicholas, her eldest son, who sat beside her, took it from her and passed it to Renny, who tipped the platter till the ruddy juice collected in a pool at one end. He put two spoonfuls of this over the square of bread. “More, more,” ordered Grandmother, and he trickled a third spoonful. “Enough, enough,” muttered Nicholas.

  Wakefield watched her, enthralled, as she ate. She wore two rows of artificial teeth, probably the most perfect, most efficacious that had ever been made. Whatever was put between them they ground remorselessly into fuel for her endless vitality. To them many of her ninety-and-nine years were due. His own plate, to which appetizing little mounds of mashed potatoes and turnips had been added by Meg, lay untouched before him while he stared at Grandmother.

  “Stop staring,” whispered Meg, admonishingly, “and eat your dinner.”

  “Well, take off that bit of fat, then,” he whispered back, leaning toward her.

  She took it on to her own plate.

  The conversation buzzed on in its former channel. What was it all about, Wake wondered vaguely, but he was too much interested in his dinner to care greatly. Phrases flew over his head, words clashed. Probably it was just one of the old discussions provocative of endless talk: what crops should be sown that year; what to make of Finch, who went to school in town; which of Grandmother’s three sons had made the worst mess of his life—Nicholas, who sat on her left, and who had squandered his patrimony on fast living in his youth; Ernest, who sat on her right, and who had ruined himself by nebulous speculations and the backing of notes for his brothers and his friends; or Philip, who lay in the churchyard, who had made a second marriage (and that beneath him!) which had produced Eden, Piers, Finch, and Wakefield, unnecessary additions to the family’s already too great burdens.

  The dining room was a very large room, full of heavy furniture that would have overshadowed and depressed a weaker family. The sideboard, the cabinets towered toward the ceiling. Heavy cornices glowered ponderously from above. Inside shutters and long curtains of yellow velours, caught back by cable-like cords, with tassels at the ends shaped like the wooden human figures in a Noah’s ark, seemed definitely to shut out the rest of the world from the world of the Whiteoaks, where they squabbled, ate, drank, and indulged in their peculiar occupations.

  Those spaces on the wall not covered by furniture were covered by family portraits in oil, heavily framed, varied in one instance by the bright Christmas supplement of an English periodical, framed in red velvet by the mother of Renny and Meg, when she was a gay young bride.

  Chief among the portraits was that of Captain Philip Whiteoak in his uniform of a British officer. He was Grandfather, who, if he were living, would have been more than a hundred, for he was older than Grandmother. The portrait showed a well-set-up gentleman of fair skin, waving brown hair, bold blue eyes, and sweet, stubborn mouth.

  He had been stationed at Jalna, in India, where he had met handsome Adeline Court, who had come out from Ireland to visit a married sister. Miss Court not only had been handsome and of good family—even better than the Captain’s own, as she had never allowed him to forget—but had had a pleasing little fortune of her very own, left to her by a maiden great-aunt, the daughter of an earl. The pair had fallen deeply in love, she with his sweet, stubborn mouth, and he with her long, graceful form, rendered more graceful by voluminous hooped skirts, her “waterfall” of luxuriant dark red hair, and most of all with her passionate red-brown eyes.

  They had been married in Bombay in 1848, a time of great uneasiness and strife almost throughout the world. They felt no unease and anticipated no strife, though enough of that and to spare followed, when much of the sweetness of his mouth was merged into stubbornness, and the tender passion of her eyes was burned out by temper. They were the handsomest, most brilliant couple in the station. A social gathering without them was a tame and disappointing affair. They had wit, elegance, and more money than any others of their youth and military station in Jalna. All went well till a baby girl arrived, a delicate child, unwanted by the pleasure-loving couple, who with its wailing advent brought a train of physical ills to the young mother which, in spite of all that the doctors and a long and dull sojourn in the hills could do, seemed likely to drag her down into invalidism. About the same time Captain Whiteoak had a violent quarrel with his colonel, and he felt that his whole world, both domestic and military, had somehow suddenly become bewitched.

  Fate seemed to have a hand in bringing the Whiteoaks to Canada, for just at the moment when the doctor insisted that the wife, if she were to be restored to health, must live for some time in a cool and bracing climate, the husband got notice that an uncle, stationed in Quebec, had died, leaving him a considerable property.

  Philip and Adeline had decided simultaneously—the only decision of moment except their marriage that they ever arrived at without storm and stress—that they were utterly sick of India, of military life, of trying to please stupid and choleric superiors, and of entertaining a narrow, gossiping, middle-class set of people. They were made for a freer, more unconventional life. Suddenly their impetuous spirits yearned toward Quebec. Philip had had letters from his uncle, eloquent on the subject of the beauties of Quebec, its desirability as a place of residence, its freedom from the narrow conventionalities of the Old World, combined with a grace
of living bequeathed by the French.

  Captain Whiteoak had a very poor opinion of the French—he had been born in the year of Waterloo, and his father had been killed there—but he liked the descriptions of Quebec, and when he found himself the owner of property there, with a legacy of money attached, he thought he would like nothing better than to go there to live—for a time, at any rate. He visualized a charming picture of himself and his Adeline, clinging to his arm, parading the terrace by the river after Sunday morning service, he no longer in an uncomfortable uniform but in tight, beautifully fitting trousers, double-breasted frock coat, and glittering top hat, all from London, while Adeline seemed literally to float amid fringes, ruches, and gaily tinted veils. He had other visions of himself in company with lovely French girls when Adeline would possibly be occupied with a second accouchement, though, to do him justice, these visions never went beyond the holding of velvety little hands and the tranced gazing into darkfringed eyes.

  He sold his commission, and the two sailed for England with the delicate baby and a native ayah. The few relations they had in England did not proffer them a very warm welcome, so their stay there was short, for they were equally proud and high-spirited. They found time, however, to have their portraits painted by a really first-class artist, he in the uniform he was about to discard, and she in a low-cut yellow evening gown with camellias in her hair.

  Armed with the two portraits and a fine collection of inlaid mahogany furniture—for their position must be upheld in the Colony—they took passage in a large sailing vessel. Two months of battling with storms and fogs and even icebergs passed like a nightmare before they sighted the battlements of Quebec. On the way out the ayah died and was buried at sea, her dark form settling meekly into the cold Western waters. Then there was no one to care for the baby girl but the young, inexperienced parents. Adeline herself was ill almost to death. Captain Whiteoak would sooner have set out to subdue a rebellious hill tribe than the squalling infant. Cursing and sweating, while the vessel rolled like a thing in torture and his wife made sounds such as he had never dreamed she could utter, he tried to wrap the infant’s squirming chafed legs in a flannel barrow coat. Finally he pricked it with a safety pin, and when he saw blood trickling from the tiny wound he could stand it no longer; he carried the child into the common cabin, where he cast it into the lap of a poor Scotswoman who already had five of her own to look after, commanding her to care for his daughter as best she could. She cared for her very capably, neglecting her own hardy bairns, and the Captain paid her well for it. The weather cleared, and they sailed into Quebec on a beautiful crisp May morning.