05 Whiteoak Heritage Page 2

  “No one. Both his parents’ eyes were blue. Isn’t Eden like his mother? But so different in disposition. He’s full of character. I can tell you, Renny, those two in the front seat are a handful. I shall be glad to have your help with them. They’ve wills of iron.”

  The elder brother’s eyes turned to the two pairs of well-shaped shoulders, the bright hair and strong necks of the two. “They had better not try any of the iron-will stuff on me,” he said.

  As though conscious that they were being talked about, Eden and Piers glanced toward each other, the first with a mocking smile, the second with a look half mischievous, half daring. Eden increased the speed of the car, for they were now driving between the lake and the fields that lay dark and receptive after the plough. The air was fresh, sweet with the scents of May, and the sun gave promise of summer heat. An approaching team of farm horses stirred the dust to a low cloud about their shaggy feet. Finch found his voice and shouted:

  “There’s one of our wagons, Renny!”

  Again Eden increased the speed.

  Giving him a poke between the shoulder blades Renny exclaimed — “Stop the car!”

  They were now beside the horses. He gave an admiring look at their sleek sides then noticed that the load they drew was a dozen fat pigs, shouldering each other in the straw, peering at him in a mixture of impudence and foreboding. The driver was new to him. He did not like his looks.

  “By George, those are fine pigs!” he said.

  “I helped to feed them,” put in Finch. “I often gave them extra feed.”

  “Shall we go on?” asked Eden.

  Renny enquired of the driver — “Where are you taking the pigs?”

  Eden answered for him — “To market. He’ll not get much for them. We’d better be getting along. They’ll have lunch waiting at home.”

  “Yes, go on.”

  A sudden sense of reality swept over Renny. The sight of the farm horses, their honest eyes beneath their blond forelocks, the smell of their harness, their most hides, the jostling pigs, swept his future toward him in a living tide. There was an end to war. Life on his own land, his sister and young brothers about him. He realized for the first time that he must be a father to these boys, take their dead father’s place. He must find out what each was and do the best he could for him. The bond already existing between him and them tautened and sought strength in his heart. He drew a deep breath and took Finch’s thin hand in his. He felt its pliable bones quiescent in that clasp. He saw the childish bare knees, close together like twin chestnuts smooth and brown.

  Piers hooked his arm over the back of the seat and turned to point out the changes that had taken place since Renny’s leaving. At each Renny gave a grim nod, thinking none of them for the better. He was glad when the car turned into the quiet country road where the great trees still spread their branches and caused a moment’s slackening of motorists’ speed. “I’ll protect them always,” he thought. “There’ll be one road that isn’t mutilated.”

  As the car turned in at the gates the sense of naturalness that had come to him with the sight of the farm wagon increased. He felt as though he had never been away from Jalna. Why, there was the old silver birch tree with the circular white seat beneath it, the lacy new foliage moving delicately in the breeze! There was the house itself, the rosy brick a rich background for the spreading Virginia creeper that massed itself about the windows but saved its most delicate tendrils to drape above the porch. There were the dogs stretched in the warm sunshine on the steps, rousing themselves to join in a concert of barking about the car. There were two newcomers that raged about his heels till he put his hand down to them palm upward and they touched it with their nostrils and were satisfied to welcome him as having the true scent of the family.

  Then he saw his father’s Clumber spaniel, Fanny, standing quietly by herself in the shadow of the porch, her fringed tail drooping, her eyes questioningly raised to his face.

  “There’s old Fan,” said Piers. “She’s forgotten you.”

  “Forgotten me! No — she couldn’t! Hello, Fan, old girl! Hello, old pet! It’s me — Renny!” He bent over her, his lean hand running the length of her silky coat.

  She reared herself against his legs, her pensive spaniel’s face regarding him from the frame of her long ears. Her eyes were full of a mournful recognition. It was not enough to stroke her. He took her up into his arms and held her close to his breast. And his father was dead! He felt the tears rising in his throat as he hugged the spaniel close. He hid his face against one of the long ears. He heard Meg’s voice.

  “Isn’t she an old dear? Oh, how she missed Papa! No one can take his place with her. I think we ought to ring the bell and give them warning inside that we’re here.”

  “They’ve had warning from the dogs,” said Eden. “I hear Gran’s voice.”

  Meg, however, rang the bell and an instant later the door opened and an elderly maid who had been with the family for nearly thirty years stood smiling a tearful greeting to Renny.

  “Eliza!” he exclaimed. He still held the spaniel in his arms, and holding it strode toward the woman, his face alight.

  “Keep that grin for me,” said a harsh voice. His grandmother pushed the maid aside with her ebony stick and herself advanced with a vigour that defied her ninety-three years. Her face, invincibly handsome because of its superb bony structure, was creased into a network of lines by her wide smile which displayed her double row of strong artificial teeth. Her brows, though shaggy, still showed their fine original arch above her dark eyes, as might the Gothic arches of a ruined cathedral through their growth of ivy. She wore a much-trimmed cap, a cashmere shawl and large woollen bedroom slippers.

  Before her stick had tapped thrice on the floor of the porch she discarded it and it fell with a clatter. She opened wide her arms and Renny, setting down the spaniel, buried himself in her embrace. It was as though the gates of his past had opened, the past of his father and his grandfather who had lived and loved and begot children under this roof, to claim him to carry on their tradition. The memory of what he had witnessed in Europe, of despair and disintegration, he would throw off with his uniform and turn wholeheartedly to the stability of this dear place.

  He forgot in his ardour the weakness of the symbol of this life which he embraced in the person of his grandmother. Her shawl fell off, her cap was askew, she was gasping for breath.

  “Lord, what a hugger you are,” she got out. Then hastened to add — “But I like it. Don’t you ever be afraid to squeeze my ribs. I’m not made of such delicate stuff as my daughter and granddaughter. If I was I’d not have had three such big sons.”

  She kept on talking, as though she would by the flow of her words exclude the rest of the family from their reunion. But her daughter, Lady Buckley, and her sons, Nicholas and Ernest, were close behind her and now claimed their share of Renny’s attention. They were tall handsome men in their middle sixties, Nicholas with a mass of iron-grey hair, a strong aquiline profile and deep-set brown eyes; Ernest blue-eyed, fair-skinned, his fine grey hair brushed smoothly over his narrow head, his sensitive lips trembling a little as he put his arm about his nephew’s shoulders.

  “Welcome home, my dear fellow,” he said — “Welcome — welcome. To think we have you back at last!”

  Nicholas added, in his deep voice — “By gad, Renny, it’s good to see you! And just the same!”

  Renny gripped his uncles’ hands and then embraced his aunt, pressing fervent kisses on her sallow cheek. She was in mourning, her husband having died less than two years before. She held Renny close while her breast, above her high-corseted body, rose and fell in her emotion.

  “My dear boy,” she said, in her contralto tones. It was all she could say and she repeated the words several times. “My dear, dear boy!”

  It irritated her mother, who exclaimed brusquely — “One would think you’d given birth to him, Augusta! The way you go on! Let the lad loose. You’re smothering him. Haven
’t you a word for poor Eliza, Renny?”

  He detached himself from his aunt, who drew herself up, with an offended look at her mother. He turned to the maid.

  “Just the same old Eliza!” he exclaimed, patting her shoulder.

  “That’s right,” said his grandmother. “Tell her she is just the same. She’s got the notion that she’s worn out with working for us and needs to retire. It’s nonsense.”

  Eliza smiled palely and handed the old lady’s stick to her. The entire group moved toward the dining room where the one o’clock dinner was laid, the dogs jostling each other alongside. A tawny cat belonging to Ernest glided down the stairs to a convenient height and from there jumped to his shoulder, arching herself and beginning to purr in anticipation of the meal.

  Old Adeline, in the heart of the group, declared:

  “I’m starving. It’s not right for a woman of my age to wait so long for her food.”

  “It is very bad for you, Mamma,” said Ernest. “It simply means that, when you do get food, you will eat too much and eating too much produces flatulence which is dangerous.”

  She stared impatiently into his face as he made his pronouncement, then exclaimed:

  “I’ve had wind on the stomach for twenty years. It doesn’t harm me. I’m like an old sailing ship. Wind moves me!” Chuckling, she shuffled in her woollen slippers toward the agreeable odour of roast chicken that came from the dining room.

  “Look here,” said Renny, “give me time to wash my hands. I’ll just be a moment!”

  He sprang up the stairs and went to his old room.

  “You’ll find hot water waiting there,” called Meg after him.

  “And do make haste,” added his Uncle Ernest. “My mother is faint for food.”

  “I’ll be down in a jiffy,” returned Renny.

  “How wonderful it is to see him running up the stairs again,” said Meg. “Oh, I shall be so glad to have him home; there’ll be someone to lean on.”

  “More likely someone to order you about,” said Eden.

  “I heard him say,” put in Piers, “that he had only a roll and coffee on the train. He’ll be hungry.”

  “Rolls and coffee,” exclaimed the old lady. “What a Frenchified breakfast! But it’s well if he is hungry. We have plenty for him to eat.”

  “I think we had better seat ourselves,” observed Lady Buckley. “It will save time when he comes down.”

  But when they reached the dining room where the spring sunlight poured between the yellow velour curtains on to the table, shining on silver and smooth damask, a surprise made them halt, almost in consternation. Eliza, when laying the table, had placed Renny at its head.

  On the death of Philip Whiteoak, early during the War, Nicholas and Ernest had returned to Jalna from England. To the household of women and young boys left behind, their coming had been a bulwark against the world and a restrengthening of family solidarity. There was their old mother bereft of her youngest son, eager to have one of his older brothers on either side of her. There was Meg who had lost a tender and indulgent father, whose favourite brother was in constant danger of his life in France, ready to throw both arms about her uncles’ necks and absorb the comfort of their nearness. There was Mary, Philip’s widow, soon to give her life for her child, tremulously welcoming their strong masculine presence. Their return had been a success both from the point of view of the family and their own finances. In these last years the income of each had been sorely depleted from earlier extravagance and bad investments. Life at Jalna cost them next to nothing.

  Nicolas had become so used to sitting at the head of the table, facing Meg at the other end, his mother on his right hand, that the thought of relinquishing this place to Renny, who, by his father’s death, had become owner of the house, never entered his head. Neither did it enter the head of his ancient mother, peering at the joint or roasted fowls he carved so skilfully. The tender slices went to her and to Ernest and Meg, while the tough, smothered in gravy, were given to the three strong-toothed boys. Ernest, on old Adeline’s other side, thought the arrangement admirable, he taking the place of Nicholas when an attack of gout kept him in his room.

  “Boys, put out the dogs,” ordered Nicholas.

  There was a skirmish while Piers and Finch tugged several terriers and the spaniel by their collars from the room.

  “Don’t shut the door,” said Lady Buckley. “Stand on guard so that the animals shall not re-enter. It will be more polite to Renny.”

  It was in this moment of confusion that the elders discovered the new order in which they were placed at the table. Nicholas was the first to notice it. He saw that his massive silver table napkin ring which represented a classically draped female figure reclining against a heavily chased cylinder, had been removed to the first place on the right of the carver.

  His hand went up to his grey moustache and he gave it a tug of chagrin. His voice, a deep one, expressed his feelings in a sonorous “Ha!” His brother’s expression was a mingling of annoyance that Nicholas was displaced and a Puckish pleasure in his discomfiture. Meg stood imperturbably by her chair.

  Lady Buckley, looking her straight in the eyes, asked —

  “Was it you, Margaret, who ordered my brother’s napkin ring to be displaced?”

  The stilted expression brought a chuckle from Eden. Lady Buckley turned to him with some severity.

  “There is nothing to laugh at,” she said. “Your uncle has filled your father’s place with dignity for almost four years. I see no reason why he should be put out of it the moment Renny returns.”

  Old Adeline now became conscious that something was wrong. She peered excitedly from one face to another.

  “Who’s put you out of where?” she demanded, supporting herself by the table when halfway into the chair.

  “It doesn’t matter in the least,” said Nicholas. “Now then, old lady,” — he took his mother by the arm — “you must move along one place. You’re to sit between Ernest and me now.”

  But she would not budge. “Who’s being put out of where?” she reiterated. “Not me, I hope. I won’t have it.”

  “It is evidently considered,” said Ernest, “that Renny is the master of the house.”

  The old lady was making a gallant effort to retain her former place at the table but Nicholas urged her toward the next chair. Eliza moved forward from the serving table. She said, addressing Adeline:

  “I placed Mr. Renny at the head of the table of my own accord, ma’am. I thought that as it is him that owns the house it was natural he would like to carve.”

  “Well! Well!” said Ernest. He eyed the pair of juicy roast chickens almost accusingly, as though they had in some way been disloyal to the established order of things. Although he and Nicholas had had their fair share of their father’s money, they could not help the inward twinge of mortification at their younger brother’s inheriting of Jalna. But he had been dead for four years and the sting of it had subsided. Renny’s return, his inheritance through his father and this pointed reminder of it, made them uncomfortably aware of the change in family relations.

  “You should not have done such a thing without an express order,” said Lady Buckley.

  “Certainly not, certainly not,” agreed Ernest.

  “It doesn’t matter,” growled Nicholas.

  “An order from me!” exclaimed old Adeline. “Nothing’s to be changed without an order from me. But it’s right for Renny to be at the head of the table. He’s his father’s eldest son. Jalna is his … Well, now, where do you want me to sit? I begin to feel very weak. I need food.” She peered eagerly at the full-breasted birds on the platter.

  Nicholas got her into her chair. She unfolded her napkin and tucked it deftly beneath her chin.

  “Don’t let those dogs in, boys,” she commanded.

  Eliza stood rigid, her lips puckered, on the defensive against criticism of her act. All eyes were fixed expectantly on the stairway which could be glimpsed through the open
door. Ernest kept repeating under his breath — “Well, well!” Nicholas drummed on the table with his fingers. Eden looked slyly at Meg, urging her to laughter, but she kept her countenance. The dogs made a concerted effort at return but was repulsed by the boys. The shadows of their waving tails were thrown against the pale woodwork of the staircase.

  Renny’s feelings as he went up to his old room were a strange mixture of the familiar and the dreamlike. He had so often imagined it in his years of absence that now in its reality it was dwarfed and pressed in on itself. His own reflection in the mirror stared out at him like a stranger. The shiny lithographs of famous horses that adorned the wall seemed ready to rear in astonishment at his claim to be flesh and blood.

  But he must not keep the family waiting. He went to the washstand and poured warm water from the can into the basin. He had a sudden feeling of childhood, of being sent from the table to wash his hands. But these hands that he now lathered were the weather-hardened hands of a soldier. They had to take into their grasp the reins of a new life.

  As he inadequately rubbed a towel between his palms, his eyes fixed on the fields that spread beyond his windows, he suddenly felt that he was being watched. He wheeled and discovered a tiny figure standing in the doorway. It was a little boy of less than four years, dressed in a white knitted suit, his mass of brown curls and his bright dark eyes contrasting in their vitality to the fragility of his body, his small pale face and his thin little legs. For an instant he could not think who the child was, then it rushed upon him that it was the brother he had never seen, his father’s posthumous child.

  “Hello!” he got out. “And what’s your name?”

  The mite stared at him, his eyes becoming larger, his mouth smaller and rounder in his astonishment.

  “Hello!” repeated Renny, with what he imagined was a friendly grin. “I’ll get you!”

  He dived at him and tossed him up. Well, that was what he did to little boys. But this little boy was evidently different. Instead of squealing in delight and crying “Do it again! Do it again!” he gave a scream of fright and then burst into tears. Renny did not know whether to set him down and leave him or carry him downstairs. He decided to do that last. Tucking him under his arm he ran quickly down the stairs. Wakefield had apparently stopped crying but he was only holding his breath. They reached the dining room.