She wanted to be near him. But yet she could not bear the nearness. It was as though she, being cold, could not bear the heat of the fire. She had loved her father with all the force of her sensitive child nature. Her father had loved Renny Whiteoak. She told herself that her feeling for Renny was a sacred heritage from her father. She moved away and went to Wakefield’s side.
The fire of his presence was a softly burning fire. She could comfort her spirit there. Yet there was something in him too that frightened her. There was something watchful about him. He watched but he did not let himself be seen…
As the brothers returned along the path they had come, Renny talked of the trees, of the beauty of the road as it stood, of the outrage of suggesting that the boundary of Jalna should be moved back from the road so much as a foot. He talked of the winding roads of old England. He would not enter the house without first going to the edge of the meadow beyond the lawn to see that the ancient oaks were still intact. He took off his hat as though to salute them. He stood beneath the summer spread of their green leaves, the serene strength of their branches, with head thrown back, his fiery brown eyes penetrating their sunlit heights with an expression of passionate protectiveness.
II
FAMILY TREE
THE FIRST REAL HEAT OF SUMMER had come that day, and it was delicious. The new leaves, bright and smooth as though waxed, sunned themselves in it. Each spear of grass stood up, full of life, as though declaring—“I am the lawn.” The flower blossoms that hitherto had opened with discretion, now cast caution aside and threw wide their petals like welcoming arms. The earth that till now had only been warmed on its surface, absorbed the fire of the sun deeper and deeper into its fibre. Jock, the bobtailed sheepdog, left the porch where he had been sunning himself, and stretched his shaggy body in the shade of a balsam.
But it was the old house itself that most greedily drank in the heat. Its walls, which had cracked in frost, shivered in bitter winds, now turned a mellow rosy red in the bright radiance. Pigeons strutted and slid up and down its warmed roof. Its windows—those windows through which old Adeline, for seventy-five years the centre of its activities, had so often stared—beamed tranquilly. A blue smoke-wreath from the kitchen chimney settled above it like a rakish halo.
Ernest Whiteoak sat in an armchair with cushions piled behind him, on the gravelled sweep in front of the house, where his long, thin body received the full force of the sun. He had been seriously ill of influenza two months before and he still clung to the pleasant ways of convalescence.
It was so nice to stand in the doorway, watch Wragge, the Cockney manservant, who had been Renny’s batman in the War, carry out the weighty chair, one of the womenfolk follow with the cushions, his brother Nicholas seek out the most sheltered spot, then himself follow, leaning on the ebony stick that had been his mother’s.
He had been sitting there an hour and twenty minutes. In another twenty minutes it would be one o’clock—time for dinner. His appetite was good, his digestion better than for some time. He looked forward to the hot meal and the long nap afterward on his own soft bed. He was already drowsy because of the heat, and the sun gleaming on the bright hair of Renny’s wife sitting close beside him actually made him wink. She was trimming his nails for him, an office she had undertaken when his hands had been shaky after the fever. He was quite able to do it himself now, but one day when Nicholas had suggested it he had become very peevish and exclaimed— “I suppose you don’t mind if I cut off the ends of my fingers!”
Alayne was thorough in all she did. Each nail was trimmed to correspond with the curve at its base. They were well-shaped nails. She had brought out her own polisher and was now rubbing them briskly. Ernest’s eyes were on his fingers in bland concentrated interest. He was barely conscious of the brightness of Alayne’s hair in the sun and the pretty curve of her wrist.
Nicholas slouching in a deep wicker chair watched the two of them, a mocking light in his eyes beneath the heavily marked brows. Spoiled old boy Ernest was. And this illness had made his comfort all too precious to him. If Mamma were living she would take the kink out of him. In fancy Nicholas could hear her say—“Don’t act like a ninny, boy!” She would still call him boy though he would be seventy-eight this summer. Well… it was splendid to see him about again, after the scare he’d given them, with his cough and his fever and all his aches and pains. He looked good for a score or more of years yet.
Alayne, he thought, looked considerably older since her baby was born. She was something more than a charming girl now. She was a woman of experience, the character of her face making one wonder what lay behind. Well, she loved Renny, that was evident, and it must be no joke for a woman of Alayne’s sort—for there would be always something straitlaced about her—to love a man like Renny. She had had a deal of tough experience since she had first come to Jalna as Eden’s wife.
“There,” said Alayne, returning Ernest his hand, “you’re all fixed up for another few days.”
“Next time he’ll be able to do it for himself,” observed Nicholas.
“I am mending slowly,” Ernest returned mildly.
“You’re getting a look of positive brute strength,” said his brother.
“Did you have your eggnog?” asked Alayne.
“Yes, thank you.”
Nicholas scoffed—“And now going in to devour a hot dinner!”
Alayne gave him a look of affectionate reproval. “He must be built up,” she said, “and nourishing food is better than medicine.”
A contralto voice asked from the porch:
“Is Renny hereabout? Someone wants to speak to him over the telephone.”
All three looked around. They saw Lady Buckley, sister of Nicholas and Ernest, tall and distinguished-looking, still holding herself upright, though she had passed her eighty-first birthday, her Queen Alexandra fringe still of a strange magenta black. In spite of the warmth of the day she wore a dress of woollen material, a very dark brown with wide velvet hem, a shade not at all kind to her speckled sallow skin. She still held her head high, her chin drawn in, the full eyes wide open with an air of startled offence, but her cheeks had grown hollow, thus giving greater prominence to the mouth with its curve of tolerance. She had had an anxious time over her brother Ernest and it had told on her. She had come from England to be with him in March, enduring a stormy voyage and an exhausting journey by rail. She felt happy at sight of the little group in the sun, with Ernest, flushed a delicate pink, as its centre.
“I have not seen him since breakfast,” answered Alayne. “I’ll go to the telephone, Aunt Augusta.” She went swiftly into the house and Lady Buckley joined her brothers.
“Whatever,” she demanded of them, in her deep voice, “should we do without Alayne? I quite lean on her.”
“And so do I,” said Ernest. “She is so sensible and so thoughtful for one’s comfort!”
Nicholas said—“I suppose Renny is at the fox farm.” He gave a humorous glance at his brother.
“I suppose so. That friendship persists, though Alayne shows so plainly that she dislikes Mrs. Lebraux.”
“I dislike her too,” declared Augusta. “I disliked her from the first moment I saw her. She struck me as unfeminine.”
“Perhaps that is what attracts Renny,” said Nicholas.
“Never! An excessively masculine man like Renny cares only for the truly feminine in woman. Look at Alayne. She is all feminine.”
“I spoke of attraction, not love,” returned Nicholas testily.
“He is very fond of the child—Pauline—” put in Ernest, “and she has clung to him since her father’s death.”
“Well,” growled his brother, “here comes Redhead himself. Let us ask him what is in his heart.”
Renny, followed by Wakefield and the terrier, was striding along the drive, his every movement vibrant with temper. As soon as he was within speaking distance he said loudly:
“I suppose you have all heard of it!”
&
nbsp; The three old people looked at him startled, and, even in his anger, he noticed the family resemblance among them, a resemblance deeper than and beyond feature and colouring. They answered simultaneously:
“Heard of what?”
“Why, the trees! The fool Council, or Public Works or something, is out to butcher them! I thought everyone but me knew about it.”
Augusta looked warningly at him. This excitement was not good for Ernest. He gave no heed to the look but went on, in his rather metallic voice:
“They’re widening the road and they propose to take a few feet off Jalna—you know what that would mean—the oaks—and they’re straightening the dangerous curve—my God, I’d put a curve on their sterns if I had them here!”
Alayne emerged from the house just as he shouted these words. A shadow darkened her eyes, her lips tightened. He was in a mood she hated, one of noisy rage. That had been bad enough in his grandmother, an old woman of violent temper, but in a man, and that man her husband… For the hundredth time since their marriage she compared him unfavourably with her father. She realised that it was stupid of her to compare them, for one had been a gentle New England professor and the other was a horse-breeder—a country gentleman—but still a breeder of horses, a companion of grooms and horsy, rough-talking men. She had loved and revered her father, who would have referred to Renny’s remark as “indelicate.” She loved Renny with all the passion that was in her but she moved toward him with disapproval hardening her face. He saw it and his eyes, which had eagerly sought hers, turned quickly away. He callously repeated what he would like to do to the Council.
“But they dare not touch our trees,” said Augusta, on a deep note.
“Why—why—” stammered Ernest, “it would be too horrible. Why—they must be mad!”
“It would be the last straw,” muttered Nicholas heavily. “I shall interview the Minister myself.”
“We’ll all go,” said Renny. “You, too, Auntie! You ought to have a say in it. We’ll all go.” He looked proudly at his elders, confident of the weight of their personalities. He was suddenly cheerful and gave a laugh. He ran his fingers through the hair on the top of his head, making it rise in a crest.
“I pity them if they interfere with us,” he said confidently.
His uncles and aunt began a vigorous discussion of the case. They recalled former instances, some of them sixty years ago, when attempts had been made to impose the will of the community on the Whiteoaks, always without success. Yet no family in the neighbourhood, probably not one in the Province, was held in such affectionate regard.
This discussion inflamed their pride so that they appeared younger. Nicholas heaved himself out of his chair and strode up and down before the house, now and again casting enquiring looks at it, as though seeking its commendation. He flung out his gouty leg with scarcely an effort.
Ernest stretched himself in his chair, displaying his full length. He folded his arms and stared truculently up at the others, with nostrils dilated. “Thank heaven,” he said, “that I am sufficiently recovered to go with you. We’ll give these coarse-grained vandals something to think about.”
More than ever Augusta looked affronted. She drew in her chin, on which a few grey hairs curled, her eyes brightening with emotion. “Mamma and Papa,” she said, “walked under those trees, a stately young couple, when I was a babe in arms. It was on that very curve that their carriage collided with old Mr. Pink’s and he had a thigh bone fractured.”
“I should think,” said Alayne, who had come down the steps, “that that proves the curve to be dangerous.”
“Not at all,” returned Augusta. “Mr. Pink was a man of the poorest judgment. He could not dance a quadrille without collisions.”
“As an infant,” said Wakefield sententiously, “I was wheeled in my baby carriage around that curve, under those oaks. My first feeble speculations were concerned with their girth. My earliest—”
A look from Renny cut him short.
“Even Wakefield,” remarked Augusta, “is deeply affected.”
“Yes,” agreed Ernest, “and no wonder, for the day he was born and his mother lay dying, a gale tore one of the finest up by the roots and laid it across the road.”
“Well,” said Renny, “we’ll not worry any more about the trees. We will go to headquarters and put stop to it.”
The dinner-gong sounded from within. Wakefield hastened to help Ernest to rise. Nicholas took his sister by the arm and Renny and Alayne followed last. She took a pinch of his sleeve in her fingers and delayed him in the hall. She looked up into his face half provocatively, half accusingly.
“You have not kissed me today.”
“I have not seen you.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Not mine. I knew that the kid had disturbed you last night, so I kept away this morning. Right after breakfast I had business at the stables.”
“That was something new, wasn’t it?”
He was quick to notice the sarcasm in her voice and to take offence where his horses were concerned. He answered hotly:
“I should like to know where we should be if it weren’t for the horses!”
“In pocket, I sometimes think,” she answered.
“Oh, well, I can’t expect any sympathy from you.” He jerked himself away and moved toward the door of the dining room. From there came the appetising smell of chicken pot pie, and the animated mingling of voices.
She caught his arm and held it. “Renny! You’re unjust, and you know it. I do sympathise in everything you do. But I think it hard that I should have to ask for kisses.”
He turned to her and gave her a kiss that had no more tenderness in it than a bite. She pushed him toward the dining room with a little laugh. “Please go and have your dinner. Don’t think about me.” Her cheeks were flushed angrily.
He drew out her chair, pushed it under her with more force than politeness, then took his place at the head of the table. Wragge regarded them out of his shrewd grey face with pessimistic understanding. Alayne resented his watchful attitude, resented still more his leaning over Renny and whispering something in a tone of commiseration. She caught the words “grand old trees” and “knew as ‘ow upset you’d be, sir.”
Renny was serving the stewed chicken and dumplings with speed and discrimination. Breast and a wing for each of the women, breast alone for Ernest, breast and the little oyster-shaped pieces from the back for Wakefield, the upper part of a leg to Nicholas, who preferred dark meat, a drumstick to his small nephew, Maurice, and what was left to Piers and himself, well flanked by dumplings. Every eye was on him. If he had faltered in his serving of the dinner, his hard-won prestige would have suffered, the solidarity of table tradition been shattered.
On one side of the table Augusta sat between her two brothers. On the other Piers, his wife, Pheasant, and Wakefield. Between Piers and Renny, six-years-old Maurice industriously scooped up his gravy with a spoon.
Piers gave Renny curious side glances out of his full blue eyes. He wondered where his feelings of outrage for the trees would carry him; how far he would go if his efforts to bring the authorities to his way of thinking were futile. He himself was sorry about the trees, about the picturesque curve in the road, but—one must move with the times, and the times moved with motor cars. He asked casually:
“What shall you do if—well, if they won’t listen to reason?”
Renny thrust a piece of hot dumpling into his mouth and stared at Piers. Alayne took the opportunity to speak. She said in a tone of restrained calm, which was obviously intended to be an example to her husband:
“What could he do, Piers, but submit as any gentleman must?”
Piers grunted, without taking his eyes from Renny’s face.
Wragge gave a sneering grin which he hid behind his sallow fingers and a cough.
Renny bolted the dumpling.
“Do”—he repeated—“do—why, I will take my gun down to the road and put a shot into the
first man who lays an axe to one of my trees!”
Such an abrupt silence—made more intense by the suspension of even mastication—followed this outburst, that little Maurice laid down his spoon and looked from face to face, astonished.
Then Nicholas broke into subterranean laughter, followed by a high-pitched giggle from Pheasant. Ernest turned deep pink.
“That’s the way to talk,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed Piers, “if he wants to get into trouble.”
“Trouble nothing,” retorted Nicholas. “We’ll show them from the start that we’ll not be browbeaten. My God, when I think of our trees…”
Augusta added:
“And the road that was once absolutely ours…”
“And it,” said Ernest, “disfigured by bungalows.”
“And now the kink taken out of it,” put in Wakefield.
Augusta drew a deep sigh. “Things are changing both here and in England.” She looked about the table as she said this as though expecting astonishment at her announcement.
“And for the worse, too,” came from young Pheasant.
“They can change as fast as they like,” said Renny, “if they’ll just let me alone.”
Rags spoke in a sentimental tone from the doorway.
“Ah, I expect I’d see great chynges in old London if I was to go back naow!”
Lady Buckley looked through him. Alayne looked down her nose. But Renny ejaculated warmly:
“I’ll bet you would, Rags! We must go over some time before long.” He had finished his chicken and now set his plate, swimming with gravy and scraps, on the floor in front of Piers’s terrier.
Piers, who had not seen her since her bath, when she had left his hands white as the snow, gazed down at her with a scowl.
“Where has she been?” he demanded.
“Taking a walk with me.”
“You might have kept her out of burrows. I’m taking her into town this afternoon to show her to a man who is interested in her next litter.” He bent down to take the plate from her. “She’s not allowed to eat table scraps.”
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 44
