Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course

by Mazo de La Roche

  Piers scratched the sow’s back with his stick, rubbing it along the pink corrugated skin of her back on which white bristles stood up like a bleached forest. Her moist muzzle twitched. She put one huge ear forward as though listening to the rasping of the stick on her back. Her white eyelashes blinked rapidly, half-concealing her roguish eyes. The men stood silent as the spell was worked on her, then as, with a grunt, she rolled on to her side, Renny gave a short laugh, half amusement, half embarrassment. He wondered why Piers had made no reply to his confession of the loan to Eden. He repeated then:

  “I had to send him a thousand. I couldn’t refuse him.”

  Piers returned, still scratching the sow:

  “Well, all I can say is that you were a fool to do it.”

  It was the second time within an hour that he had been called a fool, but he felt more hurt than angered.

  “What would you expect me to do?” he asked. “Let him starve?”

  “That’s what he deserves.” Piers turned away, as though he could not trust himself to speak on the subject of Eden.

  The sow was unconscious that he had desisted from his attentions. She lay with closed eyes; her great side, under which dozed eleven little pigs, gently heaving, her small hooved feet sticking straight out.

  Renny stood, with arms folded on the gate, looking down on her, old Ben sat close beside, pressing his hairy body against his legs. Renny thought—“Why, even when I tried to kiss Alayne at breakfast, she pulled herself away. Whatever is the matter with the girl?”

  Piers went to the orchard to speak to the men who were giving the trees a final spray. He watched the misty fall of spray, glancing green in the sunlight, shroud the trees in its protective vapour. He examined the blossom from which the petals had now fallen, and reckoned that the crop would be a good one. He saw Pheasant walking among the strawberry beds with Mooey by the hand, and he could not resist a word of gossip with her, even though it was a busy time for him.

  “Hello, Piers! We’re hunting for ripe strawberries. Mooey has found three. Isn’t he clever? There’s a tremendous crop.”

  “You never can be sure of strawberries,” he said, looking at the plants critically. Certainly the greenish-white berries were plentiful and looked large for early June. Here and there a pink one twinkled against the moist leaves, and Pheasant held to his mouth one that was actually ripe. His eyes smiled at her as he ate it.

  “What do you suppose,” she said breathlessly. “Renny and Alayne have been having a quarrel! They’ve been married a year now, and it’s the first time I’ve heard them having words. And, Mooey, tell Daddy what Auntie Alayne did to you.”

  Mooey advanced between rows of strawberry plants, his cheeks berry-stained. He said gravely:

  “Auntie Alayne f’owed me out of her room.”

  “What?” His father looked at him sternly.

  “She f’owed me,” he repeated, “out of the door. And I ran to Mummy, and I wasn’t f’ightened.”

  “He is so brave,” cried Pheasant. “He pretends he wasn’t frightened, but he simply howled. I was in my room and I was positively terrified. He came running to me with his mouth wide open and his eyes tight shut and talcum powder all over his head. I was so annoyed.”

  Piers stared at her dazed. “But what had happened? Had she put the talcum on him?”

  “No, silly! He had got into her room and sprinkled it on himself. She found him there and put him into the passage. Ben was in there too, and you should have heard her shout at him. One moment Mooey says that she hit him, and the next that she just pushed him. I think the poor darling was so terrified that he wasn’t conscious of what was going on.”

  Piers looked down at his small son. “Did she hit you?” he asked, speaking very distinctly.

  Mooey was filled with a sudden self-pity. His eyes swam with tears. “She f’owed a slipper at me,” he said.

  “I’ll speak to her about this,” said Piers. “I won’t stand it.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe I’d say anything,” advised Pheasant. “It will only make a bad feeling. The more I see of life, the more I find that you must make allowances for people’s complexes and frustrations and all that sort of thing. I think if all three of us are just a little cool to her for the next day or two it will make just as much impression as having words.”

  “Did you say that she and Renny were quarrelling?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t hear what it was about; but their voices were raised, and she followed him to the door and simply hissed after him—‘You talk like a fool!’ Isn’t it terrible? Well—she’s a brave woman. There’s nothing on earth would tempt me to call Renny Whiteoak a fool.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said she was the worst-tempered woman he’d ever known.”

  Piers grinned. Then his face darkened and he said sombrely:

  “I never had any hope of that marriage turning out well. I wish to God he’d never cared for her!”

  Pheasant cried—“Oh, I like Alayne! She’s really quite a sweet thing. But I won’t have her doing things to my baby.” And she snatched up Mooey and kissed his berry-stained mouth.

  “Well, I have my bit of news, too,” said Piers. “I put my account for feed on his lordship’s desk this morning. He tells me he can’t pay it for another month. Where he is going to get money in the next month I can’t imagine.”

  “What a shame!”

  Piers lifted a soft lock from Mooey’s forehead. “There’s a mark there! A bruise. Do you think she did that!”

  “No. That’s where he fell down the steps yesterday.” She kissed the bruise.

  “Anyway,” said Mooey, “she f’owed her slipper at me.”

  Pheasant shook her head at him. “Don’t let your mind dwell on unpleasant things, my child! I must teach you that poem of Longfellow’s about the world being full of such a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings. Smile, Mooey! Smile itty bitty at oo mummy!”

  Mooey smiled waveringly, his eyes full of tears.

  “Don’t talk baby talk to him,” said Piers.

  “Oh, Piers, you don’t realise what a delightful thing it is for a young mother to talk baby talk to her tiny boy in a strawberry bed on a June day. Only smell the air! Isn’t it sweet? Excepting, of course, when one smells the Bordeaux mixture. And even it looks lovely over the treetops. And those big white clouds flying. And that oriole singing. And the sound of the carpenter’s hammer! And Mooey’s hair all fluffy on his temples!”

  Piers looked at her with a little twisted smile. How funny she was... how long her lashes were... How he loved her!

  He said—“Well, Renny will never get anyone else to take the interest in the farmlands that I do. Ever since I’ve taken them over I’ve improved them. Even when I managed them on a salary, when we were first married, I was improving them. Of course, this way is better for me, even though I pay a good rent.”

  “We get our living as well, don’t we? Three of us, and Bessie does quite a lot for Mooey.”

  “Why, yes, we do.” The thought that their living cost them nothing came as a mild surprise to Piers. He had always taken that for granted. Two or three extra people meant nothing to Jalna.

  “Renny wouldn’t have it otherwise,” he said. “He gets nervy when the house isn’t full of people. Look what he was like at the breakfast table. Wanting this fellow brought down. Be sure you fetch him to dinner, Pheasant. We’ll see what Mrs. Alayne has to say to that!”

  XVIII

  THE FOX FARM

  RENNY drew in the restive young horse he had been exercising and looked over the white gate into the fox farm. He was undecided whether or no he should go in. Before the death of Antoine Lebraux he had been in the house every day. The sick man had become more and more dependent on him. When Lebraux’s periods of drinking had rendered him violent it was to Renny that his wife had come for assistance. After his death Renny had gone to the house constantly, trying to create order out of the disorder of aff
airs they discovered. He had helped Mrs. Lebraux through the cubbing season. He had got Piers to buy some purebred Leghorns for her with which to stock the poultry house. He had sent old Noah Binns to dig the garden for her. He himself had gone about the house putting the rollers of window shades into order, tacking up sagging wallpaper, tinkering at the kitchen tap that dripped. He had interviewed the retired farmer who held a mortgage on the property and persuaded him to give her more time. It was the same man from whom Finch had taken over the mortgage on Vaughanlands.

  In return for these kindnesses Clara Lebraux had insisted that he make use of her stable, for his own were overcrowded. It was all she could do. The horses were company, she said. She gave them their evening meal and bedded them down herself. Between her and Renny had arisen the peculiar intimacy that is created between a man and a woman when he has seen her through distressing times, seen her looking her worst, red-eyed and unattractive or engaged in rough work, has done things about the house for her that a husband or a male relative ordinarily would do. They were as natural in the company of each other as two labourers on Piers’s farm.

  Things were going a little better with her now. She did not need his help so often, and a casual word from Piers had made Renny feel that there was some gossip in the neighbourhood about his frequent visits there. It was characteristic of him that he should dislike being gossiped about. He was overbearing. He could taciturnly ignore criticism. But he did not like to think that the Miss Laceys, Miss Pink, and Mrs. Fennel were giving sly hints over their teacups. He did not like to think that the grooms and stablemen nudged each other when he turned his horse in the direction of the fox farm. It was not fair to Mrs. Lebraux that he and she should create even harmless gossip. Before his marriage he had conducted his casual affairs of the heart with capable secrecy. Since his marriage he had given no thought to any woman save Alayne. His former amorous proclivities had been consumed in the generous fire of his love for her.

  But in Clara Lebraux he had found what he had never known before—friendship with a woman. He could spend hours in her company without remembering her sex except as an intangible something that enriched their intimacy. He never forgot Alayne’s sex. It hung about her as a cloak, clouding his vision of her. It lay about her feet as a magic circle beyond which he had neither the power nor the will to press. His nature was intermittently sensual. At times when Alayne was talking, giving her opinion on some matter with the somewhat elaborate detail natural to her, he would watch her with a look that was both admiring and baffled, and that had in it, as well, something hostile. He was aware that his impregnable masculinity was often irritating to her.

  As he hesitated before the gate the front door of the house opened and Pauline Lebraux appeared. She ran toward him between the dingy white stones on either side of the path, her legs in their black stockings looking excessively long and agile. She threw back her head as she reached the gate to free her face from the uncared-for dark hair that hung like a mane about it.

  “Aren’t you coming in? Oh, please do!” she entreated, gaspingly, as though in excitement.

  He noticed her low white forehead with its pencilled brows, the foreign-looking eyes, the wide, rather thin-lipped mouth with an upward curve at the corners. He said:

  “No. I don’t think I shall go in. Just tell me how you are getting along.”

  “The very same. There’s nothing new. But you haven’t come for three whole days! We’re so lonely. We think you are annoyed with us.”

  “Open the gate, then.”

  She threw it open with a grand gesture.

  “Noah Binns is here,” she said, as though she had searched in her mind for news.

  “Is he? I’ll stir him up a bit then before I go into the house.” He alighted and tied his horse to the fence, and it began eagerly to crop the uncut grass of the yard, taking swift mouthfuls with impatient jerks of the head.

  Pauline Lebraux passed her long thin hands over its smooth sides. She ran to where the grass was mixed with moist Dutch clover beneath an apple tree, and, grasping all she could, carried it to him. She watched him solicitously as he munched, repeating to him endearments in French. Renny went to where he saw old Binns digging. “Hello, Noah,” he said, “how much have you got done today?”

  The old man leant on his spade and turned his dim eyes on Renny. Like Pauline’s, his mind sought for news, but, instead of swooping on it and tossing it to the newcomer as a morsel to excite his appetite, he let his eyes travel the length of the garden, taking in every lump of earth, every weed and every vegetable growth, then, painfully wrenching his morsel of information from the soil, he threw it half-indignantly as a sop to this tyrannical being whose presence was an urge to activity. As his eyes reached Renny’s face he said:

  “Carrots be up!”

  “So I see. And pretty thick too. Not so bad—but you’ve left a lot of thistles along the far end!”

  Noah slowly turned his head so that at last his gaze was focussed on the weeds.

  “Thistles be always up,” he observed.

  Mrs. Lebraux appeared at the side door of the house. She did not speak, but stood there waiting. Renny at once went over to her and they entered the house. They went into the sitting-room that had become so familiar to him. He was used to high ceilings at Jalna. Here he always felt inclined to stoop for fear he should strike his head in the doorways. He looked about the room, which had changed somewhat since he was last there, and said:

  “It looks nice here. What have you been doing?”

  She gave a shrug. “Cleaning house. Making things look different so it will be less depressing. Pauline made that lampshade. Do you like it?”

  He looked at it seriously. It was a parchment shade, somewhat crudely painted with red flowers.

  “It looks nice when it’s lighted,” she said. “It gave her something to do.”

  “What’s this?” he asked, touching a gold-embroidered table-runner.

  “She cut that out of an old evening gown of mine. I must let her do things.” She pushed a box of cigarettes towards him and, striking a match on the under side of the table, lighted one for herself. She stretched out her feet, encased in worn brogues, leant back and clasped her hands behind her head. Her hair, streaked in gold and drab, looked as though it had just been hastily brushed. She stared straight before her out of her round light-lashed eyes and smoked in silence.

  He looked at her, only half seeing her. But he thought she had improved the looks of the sitting-room. The brightness of the table-runner and the lampshade pleased him.

  “Did you have a woman in to clean for you?” he asked.

  “I did it myself. Skinned all my knuckles.”

  He frowned. “It doesn’t cost much to get a woman for a few days.”

  “It costs enough to buy us new shoes, and we both need them.”

  He looked at her shoes, then noticed the hand she extended as she knocked the ash from her cigarette. She had not spoken with exaggeration, either of shoes or knuckles. She was made of good stuff, he thought.

  “I’ll tell Binns to clean out the poultry-house for you.”

  “I cleaned it out myself before breakfast.”

  “Hmph! How’s the poultry doing?”

  “Awfully well, but, of course, the price of eggs is low now. But we eat them twice a day. 1 give the child a raw one in a glass of milk; she’s growing so fast.”

  “It’s too bad the incubator went wrong that first time. I think it’s rather a pity you set it up again. From what I hear these late chickens aren’t up to much.”

  “I used Plymouth Rock eggs this time. They’ll develop quickly into broilers. The lamp acted rather funny last night. I thought the first experience was going to be repeated, so I stopped up half the night with it.”

  “Look here,” he exclaimed, “you’re going to overdo it, you know.”

  “Oh no, I’m not! I’m feeling a thousand times better than I did in the winter. I’m worried about the child, though.”<
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  He looked at her enquiringly.

  “Her education. She simply isn’t getting any. Her father used to teach her, but I can’t. In the first place, it isn’t in me to teach. In the second, my own education was sketchy. Pauline knows more about literature and more Latin that I do. And, naturally—French.”

  “You never learned to speak French from Lebraux?”

  “No. What was the use? He could speak English. He used to laugh when I’d try my schoolgirl French on him. But he always spoke French to Pauline. Now she’ll be forgetting it, I’m afraid.”

  An idea came to Renny. “Why, see here, my wife reads French very nicely! She and Pauline could read some French books together and it would do them both good. Alayne has really no way of passing the time. I’ll ask her.”

  Mrs. Lebraux’s eyes looked blank, but she said:

  “Thanks very much. I’m afraid it would be too much trouble for her.”

  “Not at all. She likes children. She has always been very keen about my young Wake.”

  “Well, I should be very grateful... Pauline wanted to go to Mr. Fennel with your small brother, but she’s a Catholic, you know, and I’m sure Tony would have objected. What do you think? Do you think it is fair to her to hinder her education because of a prejudice?”

  “I think her father’s wishes should be respected. But among us we’ll give her a start. Then, when things are a bit better with you, you can send her to a convent.”

  “She’s going on for sixteen.”

  Renny knit his brows. “Uncle Ernest will be glad to help. I’m sure of that. He’s an Oxford man. Then, my wife for the French... and poetry. She knows all about modern poetry. If you want Pauline to study that. I think myself she’d be better without it... I’m afraid I can’t do much myself. It’s amazing how I’ve forgotten everything I learned at ‘Varsity. Just in one ear and out the other. Money wasted. It was all athletics with me. An amusing thing about my education is this—the little I learned from the governess who taught my sister and me when we were kids is all that sticks with me. I know the dates of all the English kings and of the principal battles. You simply couldn’t catch me up on them. I might teach them to Pauline. It would be something to go on. Not one of my young brothers has hung on to them as I have. I’ve asked them suddenly—perhaps in the middle of their pudding— what are the names and dates of the battles in the Wars of the Roses? Do you think they could get them right? No. Or perhaps—what were the dates of King Stephen? They were sure to be wrong. I couldn’t possibly forget. Eleven thirty-five to eleven fifty-four. Wakefield is pretty good at the kings. Eve said them to him to send him to sleep when his nerves were rocky. It’s the only use my education has ever been to me.”