06 The Whiteoak Brothers

by Mazo de La Roche

  He tried to fill up upon chocolate bars and nuts. He ate large numbers of apples and bananas but his stomach cried out for meat. Meg had fish cooked especially for him but he had never liked fish. He did like macaroni and cheese, but that same night he was teased by the delicious scent of baked ham. Wakefield would learn forward to watch him eat as though he were an animal in a zoo. Otherwise his abstinence was unnoticed.

  One night when all the household were out with the exception of himself, studying in the library, and Grandmother and Wakefield tucked up in bed, his resolve broke. There had been cold roast pork for supper, fine and tender, with a crisp rind. He dropped his books and stole down the stairs to the basement. He turned on the light in the kitchen where there was a pleasant warmth from the fire in the coal range. Some copper utensils, brought from England by his grandparents but now unused, hung on the walls. They caught the light, eagerly, as though meaning had been given back to them. He could see his reflection moving in them from one to another.

  He opened the door of the larder. There were leftovers in bowls on the shelves. There was a side of bacon hanging from the ceiling. There was a platter of uncooked sausages and half a meat-pie. But beneath a large dish-cover he found what he wanted — the remainder of the roast pork. It had been cooked with stuffing and some of this lay crumbled on the platter. He collected a little mound of it with his fingers and put it into his mouth. Oh, the delicious flavour! He tore a crisp rind from the joint and crunched it almost savagely. How long was it since he had tasted meat? He could not remember. It seemed half a lifetime. He found a sharp knife and cut himself a large slice of the fine white meat. He felt like the discoverer of roast pork. He ate a second slice. Then he turned his attention to the cold meat-pie. His hunger surprised even himself but at last it was satisfied.

  He turned out the lights and stole softly up the stairs. He heard his grandmother snoring as he passed her door.

  No more study for him that night. He lay back in Nicholas’s leather armchair replete. He did not think but merely felt a deep animal content — like a tiger that has devoured his prey.

  But next day the problem was there. How to make the complete face-about. All day long at school it kept nagging at him. Could he go to Meg and persuade her to say the doctor had ordered meat for him, that if he did not eat meat he would die? But everyone knew he was not ill. There was nothing to do but to face the music. Meat he must have.

  At supper there was a very substantial dish of beef stew with dumplings, for Renny and Piers had been at a fall fair at some distance. Their cheeks were ruddy from the strong northwest wind they had faced. And there, sitting opposite him, was his grandmother who had had no exercise whatever, waiting eagerly for her share.

  “Granny, dear,” Meg was saying, “don’t you think you had better have a poached egg?”

  Ernest added — “I agree that she had better have a poached egg.”

  His mother peered up at him truculently from under the lace frill of her cap. “I want a dumpling,” she said.

  “But, Mamma, they are so hard to digest.”

  “Speak for yourself,” she retorted. “I can digest ’em.”

  Ernest said, out of the side of his mouth nearest Renny — “A small one, then.”

  “What’s that he says?” she demanded. “A small one? Nothing of the sort. A big one! I say a big one, Renny. You would not starve your poor ould grandma, would you?” She spoke these last words in the rich Irish brogue she had heard in her girlhood days.

  Nicholas chuckled — “Give her a dumpling, Renny, and let her put up with the consequences.”

  “What fun!” exclaimed Dilly.

  Finch looked glumly down at the fried potatoes, fried eggs, and rather watery stewed tomatoes which Wragge had set before him.

  Meg enquired — “What is the matter, dear? Aren’t you hungry? Would you rather have some blancmange?”

  Renny leant toward him, with a cajoling air. “Have a little of the stew,” he said.

  Every eye was on Finch. But he did not care.

  “Yes,” he said firmly, “I’ll have some of the stew — quite a lot.”

  Everyone watched fascinated while Renny mounded a plate with the juicy meat, the rotund dumplings, the rich gravy, in which small mushrooms were smothered.

  With an unrestrained giggle Wragge removed the fried eggs from in front of Finch and set the stew in its place.

  “If he’s been rude,” said the grandmother, “he shouldn’t have his supper. Take him out and cuff him, Renny. That’s the way my father kept them polite.”

  “He’s all right,” grinned Renny. “Go to it, Finch.”

  Amid an outburst of laughter Finch applied himself to the steaming stew. All about him he heard — “Ha-ha-ha! ho-ho-ho! he-he-he!” and from Wakefield — “Ba-ba-ba!” One would think, he said to himself, that nothing quite so funny had ever happened before, but he was impervious to derision or chaffing. He continued doggedly to enjoy the stew. Fortunately at this moment Grandmother mislaid her dumpling.

  “Where is it?” she demanded, peering all about her.

  All eyes were not on her plate. At last Wragge discovered it on her lap. He gathered it up in her table-napkin and she was given a fresh one. This effectively took the attention of the family from Finch. She herself was vastly amused.

  “A dumpling,” she chuckled, “a dumpling in my lap — of all things!” The talk then turned to the fall fair and the meal ended on a high cheerful note.

  It was so mild this evening that the front door stood open. The dogs saw a rabbit cross the lawn and rushed out to chase it. Then Wakefield scampered after them. And after him — all the others — even the grandmother.

  “Give me your arms, boys,” she said to her elderly sons. “I want to see the moon.”

  The harvest moon was indeed a sight of great splendour. The sun had sunk, a resplendent red ball, in the luminous west. Now it was as though it rose again, in the dark-blue east, so like it was to the red harvest moon. The Virginia creeper that covered the front of the house had, in the frosty night, turned to a rich tapestry of bronze and gold and scarlet. Adeline Whiteoak, as a young woman, had planted it there, had guided its puny tendrils in its first year, had held a watering can high above it to refresh it in the drought. Now she stood bent, nearly a hundred years old, gazing up at it as it embraced and beautified the house, clung to it, fastened its hold in every crevice, draped its tendrils over the porch, and soon would cast down its leaves and rest till its next budding time.

  Already many of the leaves of birch and maple had fallen and had that day been raked into a heap on the lawn. Wakefield ran into its midst and began kicking the leaves about, throwing an armful in Finch’s face. Now Finch was after him, throwing an armful in Finch’s face. Now Finch was after him, showering leaves on him. And Piers was after Finch, and Eden after Piers, and Renny after Eden, in a storm of flying leaves. Now Eden was down and his brothers were burying him in leaves. He lay acquiescent while they made a great mound on him.

  “Here lies a dead poet!” chanted Piers, and Eden was up again and the leaves flying about him.

  “Ha,” said old Adeline Whiteoak, “I like to see the whelps rioting. I like to see the harvest moon. Now I shall go to bed…. A dumpling in me lap. Who would have thought of it! Tck-tick.”

  XIV

  THE FALLING LEAVES

  Now almost all of the leaves had fallen, though the strong brown oak leaves were slow to loose their hold and, when they did, sailed majestically to the ground with an air of intention rather than defeat. There seemed no end to the leaves that fall. Their density on the trees seemed scarcely to account for their great numbers when they fell. They were raked into heaps and burned, blazing brilliantly for a little, then declining to a quietly glowing mass, the sweet-smelling incense from which rose to the blue sky. But no matter how many were burned our how many law in hollows or in the ravine, many were left to be blown about by the untiring wind. It was not a playful wind but a st
rong, chill wind that spoke of icy gales to come. The leaves were blown across paths and roads, first in one direction then another. Scarcely were they settled in one spot when they were hurled back where they had come from. And so, like refugees without a country, they could find nowhere to rest.

  The time of the Horse Show was one of the high spots of the year at Jalna. This year it was especially so because of the pleasurable excitement of speculation that ran through the house. Even Renny, who knew nothing of this, who never had heard of Indigo Lake, was conscious of this undercurrent of exhilaration and was pleased by it.

  Meg remarked to him — “How gay the uncles are! I haven’t seen them so animated in a long while.”

  “It’s having Aunt Augusta here,” he said.

  “It’s more than that,” she insisted.

  “It’s Dilly, then.”

  “Nonsense. They’re not all that sort of elderly men. And Aunt Augusta too. How lively she is!”

  “It must be Dilly.”

  “No. Aunt Augusta said only yesterday that she rather wished she had not brought her.”

  “Why?”

  “Well — she laughs too much.”

  He stared. “Laughs too much?”

  “Yes. She’s not the sort of girl Aunty thought she was.”

  “You mean suitable for me?”

  “Well, possibly.”

  He put his arm about her plump middle. “I shall never marry, Meg. Nor you, I guess. We have our hands full with these young brothers.”

  She sighed. “Yes, indeed.”

  The youngest now came running up. He had been in the apple house, as they called the squat little building which was half-underground, where a quantity of apples were stored till the prices should rise. From its open door the scent of the apples came to Renny and Meg. Wakefield carried a large Northern Spy in one hand and in the other a small Tolman Sweet and a russet.

  “Look,” he said, “aren’t they nice?”

  “You must not stay long in the apple house,” said his sister. “You will catch cold.”

  “Look,” he repeated. “Try one.”

  His elders looked, not at the apples but at him, with the solicitude of parents. The small boy was a posthumous child whose mother had died not long after his birth. But he was stronger than he appeared.

  Renny took the apples from him and, one after another, held them to his nose and sniffed the fragrance.

  “How distinct they are and how good,” he said. “I’m glad our orchard is still untampered with, but in twenty years, Meggie, when these damned experts at the Agricultural College have had their way, no one in the towns will be able to buy apples with the flavour of these. All varieties will look fine but they’ll all smell and taste alike.”

  “Hm,” his sister agreed absently. She was still brooding on Wakefield. He now had to run to meet Piers who, standing on a light wagon laden with barrels of apples and drawn by a dapple-grey gelding which he greatly prized, was on his way to the railway station.

  “Hullo,” he called out. “Anything you want me to do in the village?”

  “May I go?” shouted Wake. As the wagon drew up he was already clambering into it.

  “Oh, I don’t think he should,” said Meg.

  “Don’t coddle him The more he is outdoors the better for him.”

  “I wish he were able to go to school.”

  “Why, Meg, I thought you liked teaching him”

  “I do. But he’s become so difficult. He needs a man.”

  “Well, I certainly haven’t the time. I wonder if the uncles would undertake it.”

  “It would be no better.”

  The pleasant sound of the gelding’s hoofbeats was dying away. A fresh storm of leaves was blown from the elm by the apple house and scurried down its moss-grown roof. Renny went and shut its low, broad door. When he came back, Meg said — “I wonder if he might go to the Rector for lessons. Mr. Fennel is so kind but quite firm. Firmness is what Wake needs.”

  “He needs his behind warmed,” said Renny.

  “He’ll talk of anything but his lessons,” complained Meg. “And he won’t sit down. He stands, leaning on my shoulder, playing with my hair or my earrings. How can I teach him when he won’t listen?”

  “I’ll see Mr. Fennel about him.” Then he added, reflectively — “Piers is a fine healthy boy. No trouble with him. I wish Eden were more like him.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have Eden different. I’m sure he has a brilliant future ahead of him. Uncle Ernest is convinced he will.”

  “I wish I were.”

  “Think of the poems he’s had accepted by magazines — and he not yet twenty-three.”

  “Poetry and law — what a combination!”

  “Has he read you any of his poems lately?”

  “No. But Uncle Ernest showed me one about a door in a wall. To tell the truth, I thought it rather silly and very obscure.”

  “Oh, I love that one and the one about trees. Here he comes — and Finch too. They have walked from the station. How the day flies!”

  “Yes, and I still have things to do.”

  The two youths were carrying their books, and their hair was blown by the wind. Against it Finch held his head down but Eden was looking up into the treetops. Neither saw Meg and Renny till they were near by. She called out:

  “Hello, boys! What a lovely day it’s been! Did you have a good day?”

  “A hell of a day,” returned Eden. “They had the heat on and I was roasted — boiled — suffocated.”

  “We had no heat at school,” said Finch, “and I was frozen.”

  “What a shame!” said Meg to both of them. “Do go to Mrs. Wragge and she will give you a nice cup of tea. It cools and it warms, you know.”

  “Thanks, no,” they murmured sulkily.

  “What a pair!” laughed Renny. “Come over to the stables with me and I will give you some exercise.”

  But they did not intend to be drawn into this. They turned with one accord and a muttered something about study to be done and went toward the house. Inside, Finch clattered straight to the basement kitchen to get something to eat. Eden went through the hall and out of the side door. He stood concealed, till he saw Meg return indoors and Renny go to the stables. Then he followed the path past the orchard, across a stubble-field, and entered the wood.

  Here the wind had lost its power. Scarcely could it stir the pine needles that lay on the ground, but it whistled through the highest branches like a wind at sea. The golden evening sky bent above them and now and then a pine cone fell. Eden’s mind was weighted with the accumulation of the day — the voices of the lecturers — the faces of the other students — the smell of the overheated air — the sound of shuffling feet, coughing — the return home by train with young Finch sitting opposite and obviously taking a cold.

  The air beneath the pines was delicious. He drank it to the depths of his lungs and held it. “For all my dreams of the South,” he thought, “I am a Northerner.” A flurry of snow fell from a sudden cloud and he raised his face to it. It was the first of the season and lasted only a few minutes, then there was the clear gold only again, and a flock of blue jays moving southward above the treetops.

  The two first lines of a poem he had conceived in the night before came into his mind but the third line eluded him. It had been clear enough while he had been dressing that morning, but now it was mingled with the prosaic happenings of the day. He stood for a little, motionless, trying to recall it. He tried passionately to draw it back to him, as though his future happiness depended on it, and at last he did. Yet after his first relief he was disappointed in it. He had felt that it was one of the best things he had written. Now, declaiming it aloud, it sounded less impressive. Still it was good — all but one word. He tried other words as he strode along but none quite satisfied him. He found it difficult to concentrate. Then, abruptly, before his mind’s eye, he saw the little form of his bank deposit book. It obliterated all else. Worse still, he found himse
lf willing. Willing to be dragged — not, not dragged but drugged — by the entrancing figures written therein. He experienced a feeling of shame that this should be so, then thought — “It is not the wonder of possession that holds me, but the thought of what it can do for me — free me from this study of law which I hate.”

  He had not realized that he had come out of the pine wood and was already on the path that led across a pasture field to the country road.

  Then he remembered that not since the spring had he walked on this road. That was the day when he and Finch had discovered the felling of the two silver birches by Noah Binns. He was in the mood to look morbidly on the place where they had stood and to picture them in their autumn beauty fluttering their thousand delicate golden leaves.

  Now he stood before the white picket fence staring sombrely at the dry lawn, from which even their stumps had been removed. The blinds of the house were drawn and Noah Binns was raking the dead leaves into a tremulous dry mound. When he saw Eden he clumped across the grass plot to his side, with a peculiar bending at the knees, as though he were trying to avoid a creaking board on a floor.

  Eden gave a dramatic gesture toward the place where the young trees had stood.

  “I’m glad you’ve taken the stumps out,” he said. “They were a sickening sight. I hope Mr. Warden is satisfied.”

  Noah grinned, showing his black teeth. “He’s satisfied all right.”

  “Did the grass do well? I hope not.”

  “Do well? No. He would have a load of manure dug in, though I warned him what would happen. And happen it did. That manure was full of weed seeds and up they sprung and choked the grass.” Noah leant against the fence in silent laughter.

  “Serve him right.”

  Suddenly sober, Noah said — “There’s two ways of lookin’ at that. He wanted room for scope and them trees hindered him.”