05 Whiteoak Heritage

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Renny began, then the screams broke out afresh. The little boy kicked and struggled. The dogs followed them into the room. The spaniel, fearful that Wakefield was being hurt, stood on her hind legs and pawed at the intruder. Her nails scratched Wake-field’s bare leg. He kicked and screamed more loudly than ever. The dogs barked.

  Meg rose from her chair and flew to her darling’s rescue.

  “Come to Meggie then! Meggie’s pet!” She took him to her breast.

  “Why, his leg is bleeding!” exclaimed Ernest. “Whatever have you done to him?”

  “Good God!” said Nicholas. “It’s enough to give him a fit.”

  Eliza was examining the scratch.

  “I’ll get Vaseline and a bandage,” she said. “Come with Eliza, my pet.”

  “No, no!” he shrieked. “Won’t go! Send the bad man away!”

  “Give him to me,” commanded Lady Buckley. “I can quiet him when no one else can.”

  It was true. On her ample lap, her clean handkerchief bound about his leg, he became tranquil and beamed at the faces about him. His grandmother was only half sympathetic. She did not like the delay. She wanted her dinner. She looked critically at Renny as he prepared to take his place. He himself was concerned at the unfortunate introduction to the last-born of the family. He dropped into his chair with an apologetic air.

  “Put the dogs out,” said Ernest. “They are irritating Sasha.” The cat was indeed arching her back and swinging her tail on his shoulder.

  “Must they go out?” asked Renny. “They used to stop in. Do you remember how Dad used to pull burrs out of them and hide the burrs under his chair?”

  This sudden unexpected reference to the dead Philip fell almost brutally on the ears of those about him. The tremor of laughter in his voice shocked the elders and made the three boys grin in response. In truth Renny had not yet come to believe in his father’s death. Jalna was so bound up in his thoughts of Philip that to return to the one was to bring the living presence of the other to his mind.

  But how he felt that he had said something unseemly. His already high-coloured face took on a deeper tinge. He picked up the carving knife and said nervously — “So I am to do this job! Well, I’m afraid I shall make a hash of it.” He talked excitedly of his journey while he carved.

  His uncles, his aunt, and Eliza standing by, thought he showed no proper appreciation of the honour done him. They were not consoled by the fact that he showed little discrimination in his apportioning of the birds. It was disconcerting to see eleven-year-old Finch stuffing his greedy young mouth with the tenderest breast. It was annoying to see heedless Piers devouring those juicy ovals of flesh dug out of the back which the knife’s tip, just north of the Pope’s nose.

  But his sister and his grandmother were satisfied. To Meg the sight of him opposite her, his red head bent above his task, his eyes, under their dark lashes, giving her quick glances of affection, filled her with bliss. She could not eat.

  “You’re eating nothing, Meggie!” he exclaimed.

  “I’m too happy,” she answered. “Besides I never eat much. And I’ve Baby to feed.” She was offering morsels to the little boy, who refused them, turning his face against his great-aunt’s breast with petulance.

  “I hope you are not spoiling him,” said Renny.

  A derisive laugh came from Piers. “Spoiling him!” he exclaimed. “He’s the most spoilt kid in the world.”

  “No, no,” said Lady Buckley. “His delicacy makes a certain amount of humouring necessary.”

  “It is not well to cross him,” agreed Ernest. “He needs encouragement. I was a delicate child and I know how such a one can suffer at the hands of people of coarser grain.”

  “I should like to know who caused you suffering,” rumbled Nicholas. “I seem to remember how you always had the best of everything because you were ailing.”

  Their mother spoke in a tone of surprising energy. “I took great care of my children. I wrapped ’em up against the cold. I kept ’em out of the heat of the sun. I dosed ’em with sulphur in the spring and senna in the fall. I never lost a child. My mother lost five out of sixteen…. Hm, well, I don’t know what this is you’ve given me but I can’t eat it at all. You don’t carve the way your uncle did.”

  “Sorry,” said Renny. “I know I’m damned awkward but I shall get used to it.”

  “There’s a nice bit of breast,” said Nicholas, pointing with his fork. “Cut that off for her.”

  Renny complied.

  “Renny,” said Finch, “when can I see your wounds?”

  Meg turned horrified eyes on Finch.

  “How can you say such things? It was bad enough to know that Renny was wounded without speaking of it the moment he arrived.”

  “I always say,” declared Lady Buckley, “that delicacy of mind cannot be instilled too early. I don’t see much of it in these boys.”

  “What we want,” said Piers, “is to hear Renny talk about the War. We want to hear how he carved up the Germans. Tell us about when you won the DSO, Renny.”

  “Time enough for that later,” answered Renny gruffly.

  “You must come to my room,” said Eden, “and tell everything.”

  Meg interrupted — “Isn’t Wakefield pretty, Renny?”

  “Pretty as a picture. Are you going to make friends with me, you young scamp?”

  “Whom do you think he is like?”

  “Renny considered the little face. “I don’t know. Me?”

  “A little. He’s got the Court nose.”

  “Rot,” said Eden. “His nose is like mine.”

  “He has glorious eyes.”

  “He looks like my brother Thaddeus,” said their grandmother, peering round her hawk’s nose to stare at him.

  “Who are you like, you rogue?” cooed Meg.

  Finch stared pessimistically at his little brother. Why all this fuss? Why should he have been so important from the day of his birth while himself had such casual treatment? He gave Wakefield’s empty high chair that crowded his elbow a push, then helped himself liberally to chow-chow.

  “Renny,” he said, with his mouth full, “I do want to see your wounds!”

  “Now,” said Meg, “you may leave the table. You’re a naughty boy.”

  He flushed and began reluctantly to drag himself out of his chair.

  “Please don’t send him away,” exclaimed Renny; “not at my first meal at home.”

  “But he’s making me feel faint.”

  “Nonsense, Meggie, — you’re made of better stuff than that.”

  “Very well. If Renny wants you to stay. But see that you behave.”

  Wakefield’s little voice penetrated. “Baby wants to go to Uncle Ernest.” He struggled from Lady Buckley’s lap.

  Ernest was flattered. He took the child on his knee and mounded his own fork with mashed potato for him.

  “More g’avy,” demanded Baby.

  Ernest plastered gravy on the potato. The little mouth opened wide. The fork was inserted. Baby beamed at everyone.

  “Gad!” ejaculated Nicholas. “I’d almost forgotten the champagne!”

  He rose and limped to a side table where the bottles were cooling on ice. “This is my contribution to the feast. Renny, we’re going to drink to your health, my boy.”

  They did. All the family stood about him, wishing him prosperity and a long and happy life. He was moved. His eyes glistened and his mouth softened to an expression of protective tenderness. There they were — his own flesh and blood — clustered about him, wishing him well, drawn close to him in the bond of kinship, from the old, old grandmother down to the baby, Wakefield. The years of separation, of confusion, were over. Now there would be peace for the rest of their days. The roof bent over them. The walls closed about. He had taken his place as the head of the family. He would be a father to these boys. As he raised his own glass to his lips he had a physical sensation of the tightening bonds between himself and each
of the others about the table, as though his very sinews were taut in the dark close bonds.

  Old Adeline left her place and came in the voluminous folds of her dress to his side. She took him in her arms.

  “Ha!” she exclaimed, kissing him almost vehemently on the mouth. “I’ve lost my son … Philip is gone … but I’ve got you!” She hugged him close. “Lord, how hard you are! You give me strength…. This old body of mine hasn’t lived in vain! The lot of you … you’d never have been … if it wasn’t for me!”

  Still clinging to Renny she looked triumphantly about. “Augusta, Nicholas, and Ernest…. Not a child among ’em! Well — I’m rotting old timber but you’re young and tough, Renny. Bless you!”

  “Champagne,” whispered Ernest to Meg, “always goes straight to Mamma’s head.”

  II

  FATHER AND DAUGHTER

  PHEASANT WAS THINKING, to the rhythm of swinging legs that dangled from the broad damp bough of an old apple tree: “This is a wonderful year for me. In a month I shall be thirteen — in my teens — and in an hour I shall see Maurice. I don’t know which amazes me most.”

  Her expression, always rather startled, became amazed, by her own will. She sent up her eyebrows, parted her lips and breathed pantingly. As though amazement was transmitted through her into the old tree, a tremor ran through it and it scant pinkish-white blossoms filled he air with a startled scent. Her thin legs, in the brown lisle thread stockings, swung in a kind of syncopated rhythm, as though beyond her control. She thought: “In a few minutes I shall go in and brush my hair and clean my nails and put lots of scent on my handkerchief.”

  The apple tree stood by itself in a small irregular field by the side of the creek. She always thought of it as her own tree, for none but she paid any attention to it. The apples it produced were small and warped and rough-skinned but to her taste had the sweetest flavour of all. If she shut her eyes and tasted carefully it was almost like a pear but far better. The trouble was that the old pony, which pastured in this field, was just as fond of the apples as she was. He would stand beneath it, waiting for them to fall, or stretch his rough-maned neck to tear them from the bough.

  He ambled toward the tree now and rolled his full, blue-black eyes at Pheasant with the look of a conspirator, as though they were both thieves. Yet the apples were still no more than ideas in the heads of the buds.

  “Hello, you old rogue,” said Pheasant. “You don’t know who’s coming home today!”

  The pony blew out his lips and the faintest whicker stirred his insides. Little drops of moisture hung on the hairs about his mouth. She put down a foot and scratched his back with it.

  “It’s Maurice who’s coming,” she said. “I suppose you know more about him than I do. I wish you could speak, Sandy. You could tell me a lot.”

  The pony was twenty-eight years old and had belonged to Maurice when he was a small boy. Pheasant in her turn had ridden him about the fields but he was fat and lazy and would not move out of a protesting jog-trot. Now Pheasant pictured him young and feeling his oats, with little Maurice on his back, galloping along the country road where there were no motor cars, Maurice laughing and happy.

  Sandy moved from under her foot and began to crop the scant young grass. He gave a look askance at her when she caught him by the forelock and told him: “Your master’s coming home! Do you hear! Your master and my father.”

  There was a strange lightness inside her, half fear and half joy. She had lived so solitary that the thought of sharing the house with a large, almost strange man, changed the very aspect of the spring day for her. Colours were deeper, more intense, there was mystery in the murmuring of the creek. Father — father — father — it kept saying. Yet she had never called him anything but Maurice. Mrs. Clinch, the housekeeper, was getting old. She was hard of hearing and suffered from lumbago. She had lived in the Vaughans’ house for forty years and seemed as permanent as the very walls to the little girl. Mrs. Clinch looked on Pheasant as a disgrace to the name of Vaughan and, while to the outer world she carried herself proudly, she never came suddenly on the child without a shock to her innermost self, and the thought: “This is the skeleton in our cupboard and it’s my duty to care for it….” If only she might have had a properly born, greatly welcomed child to look after!

  She was kind to Pheasant, without tenderness. Her idea of a child’s goodness was that it should be keeping still. Pheasant’s idea of getting on with Mrs. Clinch was to stop doing whatever she happened to be doing, when Mrs. Clinch appeared, and stand quite still. The housekeeper would scrutinize her, appear satisfied and return to her little sitting room off the kitchen. She had a rocking chair there that gave a sharp crack each time it swung backward. When Pheasant heard this noise she knew she would be unobserved for the next hour.

  Till she was eight Pheasant had spent much of her time in keeping away from Mrs. Clinch and in watching Maurice, unseen. She would follow him through the fields, hiding behind blackberry bushes or among the tall corn, sometimes in the house, always in the room he had just left. Everything he did fascinated her. She would stand with her eye to the crack of the bathroom door watching him shave, watching the deft lathering of his face, the controlled sweep of the razor, the smooth-skinned face that emerged. She would spy on him as he cleaned his gun, read his paper, or mixed himself a drink, always trying to imagine what it would be like if he was fond of her and wanted her near him. Pheasant knew that in some mysterious way she had spoiled Maurice’s life. She was sorry for him and wished she could think of something to do to make up for this.

  Now this morning she stood in the dining room taking in the unaccustomed brightness of the room. During Maurice’s absence the blinds had always been drawn except when Mrs. Clinch had opened up the room for airing and cleaning. The sideboard had been bare, the table covered by a sheet. It had been a game of Pheasant’s to dare herself to lift the corner of the sheet and look beneath it. Once, rigid with fear, she did. There were some cushions beneath. That was what had made it look as though a body lay there. But she had run from the room terrified. What might not lie beneath the cushions. This morning bright sunlight flowed into the room, caught and held by the polished silver on the sideboard, making a shining shield of the walnut top of the table. Silver and wood were evidence of the state of Mrs. Clinch’s hands. She now came into the room just in time to see Pheasant run her palm over the table top.

  “Don’t touch!” exclaimed Mrs. Clinch, as though speaking to a child of three.

  Pheasant drew back and stood still, her arms at her sides. She saw that the housekeeper was shiny and neat as the room, her grey hair flattened, a stiff white apron over her grey dress. Her hands, clasped in front of her, were her only spot of colour. They were a greyish pink from the silver cleaning powder.

  “It all looks lovely,” said Pheasant, speaking loudly because Mrs. Clinch was deaf.

  “It ought to,” returned Mrs. Clinch. “I’ve been rubbing and polishing for three days. You’ll have your lunch in here with him.”

  “Me?” Pheasant turned pale with excitement. “I couldn’t eat. I’d be too frightened.”

  “Nonsense. There’ll be no more meals with me. Your place is here from now on. You had better dress yourself now. There’s no time to spare.”

  “Shall I put on my white dress?”

  “Goodness, no. The plaid one. Then come to me and I’ll give your hair a good brushing.”

  Pheasant flew upstairs. There was a fluttering in all her pulses. She felt that she surely must weigh less than usual. She felt as though she were blown up the stairs and into her room.

  She put on the plaid dress and tried to find a pair of stockings without a hole in them, but could not. She ended by putting on one each of two different pairs. The shades were not an exact match but she thought the difference would not be noticed. She looked at herself in the glass and saw a face, two eyes that sparkled back at her and a mass of brown hair. There seemed to be more plaid stuff than features to
her. But she was not dissatisfied with her appearance. She snatched up her hair brush and ran down to the kitchen.

  There were agreeable smells about. Coffee was bubbling in the pot. Mrs. Clinch ignored Pheasant and the hair brush. She seemed to take a pleasure in walking about, doing things, with the child dumbly following her. Then suddenly she turned abruptly and said:

  “Well, then, let’s have it.”

  She swept the brush ruthlessly over smooth locks and tangled locks alike. Pheasant set her teeth and her eyes watered as a twig from the apple tree was detached from a tangle.

  “No wonder the birds are building nests in your hair,” Mrs. Clinch said.

  She had barely given a dozen strokes when the sound of a motor was heard and voices at the front of the house. Mrs. Clinch exclaimed:

  “There he is now! Poor young gentleman!” Mrs. Clinch usually ended any remark she made about Maurice with the words “poor young gentleman,” and for some reason they always made Pheasant ashamed. Now she stood hesitating, not quite knowing what to do. The housekeeper hurried to the door.

  Pheasant went slowly into the hall.

  The front door had been opened wide. The fresh spring air, as though it had been shut out to long from that gloomy house, rushed in, freighted with the scents of warm earth, opening buds, and damp leaf mould. It was as though the side of the house had been taken out and all secrets, all unhappiness blown away.

  Maurice, stalwart in his uniform, came in. He was followed by a small wiry man laden with luggage. Maurice shook hands with the housekeeper. He paid the taxi driver. The door closed and Pheasant felt suddenly too shy to face Maurice. But he saw her and came down the hall.