Whiteoak Harvest. Mazo de la Roche
you think there should be a new porch?”
“I do,” he said. Then he added, gravely — “But, Clara, if you knew how scarce money is with me, you would not ask even that. The interest on the mortgage fell due last month and I had the devil’s own time scraping it together. I’m down to rock bottom and there are repairs to the stables and farm buildings that are absolutely necessary.”
“I know, I know,” she agreed. “It’s awful. But, if you will just have the porch propped it is all I shall ask. It’s positively dangerous as it is.”
“I’ll attend to it,” he said. “I’ll do it myself. No need to have workmen about. I can do it. It simply needs propping.”
He espied a thick block of wood lying among wooden boxes in a corner of the yard. “We must have this rubbish cleared away and make a nice little garden here.” He dragged out the block of wood and carried it to the porch. “Now I’ll raise the porch and you roll the block under the corner.” He pulled off his coat.
“You can’t do it alone! You’ll hurt yourself! Let me fetch Wake.”
“No, no, he might strain his heart! Do what I tell you, woman.”
The elemental tone of command which he introduced into his voice amused her but it had its effect. She removed her gay flowered apron, laid it beside his coat, and grasped the cobwebbed block in both hands. But she kept muttering to herself — “He can’t do it! He can’t — he’s no right to try.”
Bending his lean back, he gathered all his force and, in one muscle-straining heave, raised the corner of the porch, supporting it on his shoulder. “Now,” he said, between his teeth, “shoot in the block, damn you!”
She thrust it under the porch which he cautiously lowered. He was panting as he straightened himself. A vertical vein in the middle of his forehead stood out like a whipcord. He grinned triumphantly at her but grasped one shoulder in his hand.
“What did I tell you?” he exclaimed. “It’s as steady as a rock. All you need do now is to plant some nice vine or a rambler rose to climb over the corner.”
“You’ve hurt yourself,” she said sternly. “What is it?”
He made a rather shame-faced grimace. “It’s nothing. Just a bit of a wrench. I’ll rub it with liniment.”
She put her short strong hand on his shoulder. She said — “Damn the porch! I wish I hadn’t spoken of it.”
Closing his eyes he stood motionless, as though from her touch he drew ease. Before his closed eyes rose a moonlit autumn wood, the figures of a man and woman in each other’s arms. The magnetic attraction that had drawn them together was of the same quality. They were equal under its force, as two trees receive equally the magnetic current from the earth.
She removed her hand; he opened his eyes and saw the sadness in hers.
“It’s a shame,” she said, “the way Pauline and I have hung on to you — ever since my husband died. And before that — all through his sickness.”
“You know,” he returned, “what Pauline has been to me — like my own child. You know what you have been.”
“Well, you have liked us, that’s one thing,” she returned, in her abrupt, rather sulky voice, and picked up her flowered smock as the bell of the shop sounded. “There — I must go in. They’ll need me.” Her eyes caught the five boxes which he had laid carefully by his coat. She asked — “What are you going to do with those? That story about the five girls was just bluff, wasn’t it?”
He answered gravely — “No, they are absolutely real. I must have sweets for them.”
She knew he lied, and loved him the better for it. She held his coat for him but he objected.
“No, no, I’m blazing hot. Throw it over my shoulders.”
She exclaimed fiercely — “You can’t put it on! You know you can’t.”
He gave her a mocking grimace, touched her lightly on the cheek with his fingers, and, taking the coat from her, turned away. The bell of the tea shop again sounded.
As he walked sharply along the road, with his spaniels padding at his heels and the Cairn puppy weaving a mad pattern among the ten legs that moved so enticingly in unison, his mind was busy with the varied problems of his life. He had a good many of them, he thought, a lot of responsibility, but he would not have minded them so much if money had been less scarce. As it was, the last payment of interest on the mortgage had left him feeling financially flattened, most dreadfully hard up, for the time being. Still — it was paid, and he had six months’ freedom from worry on that score. A sense of pride deepened his inhalations of the spring air as he reflected that, through that mortgage, distasteful as it was to him and bitter to his family, he had been able to prevent the building of a row of bungalows on property adjoining his own. He had added that property, a lovely bit, to his estate. Only that morning he had walked over it just for the pleasure of seeing it free and undefiled, its trees spreading their new foliage in confidence. He had held his dogs back that they might not worry the rabbits he saw scampering there. Short shrift they would have had from the builders!
He thought of Clara and Pauline Lebraux and their venture of the tea shop. He hated that sort of thing for them, but fox farming had not paid and they must do something. Perhaps, if Wake did very well with the garage and petrol station, the tea shop might be discarded after a time. Lord, but it was disappointing to see clever young Wake turn to such a dirty job instead of to one of the professions or, better still, to farming and horse breeding! But Wake could not get on with Piers, the second brother, and there was no use in trying to make them. After the first few months on the farm when Wake had been willing to break his back and to obey Piers in everything, there had been rows. Besides that, Wake was not strong enough for the job. This new work just suited him. And he’d got religious! It was embarrassing the way he was always trying to convert one.
He thought of Meg, his sister, and what a stiff time she and her husband had been up against. They had taken in paying guests this spring and did not seem to mind it. Though it went against his grain to think of a Whiteoak doing such a thing and he believed it was enough to make his grandmother turn over in her grave.
He thought of his wife and his little daughter, but they had barely entered into his mind, taken privileged possession of it, when the hoot of a motor horn made him look to his dogs. His brother Piers was in the car. He stopped it and said:
“Hello! Want a lift?”
Piers’s wire-haired terrier Biddy was on the seat with him. Beside herself with excitement at seeing the spaniels, who were old friends, and the Cairn, of whom she roundly disapproved, she leant over the seat and literally screamed as Renny and his dogs established themselves in the back of the car. Merlin raised his muzzle and gave a troubled bark.
Piers asked, over his shoulder — “Where do you want to go?”
“Where are you going?”
“Home. Then to the farm. I must see what the men are doing in the back fields. I’ve just sold those Jersey calves to Crockford.”
“Good. Did he pay you?”
Piers grunted and took some notes from his pocket. He handed them over his shoulder to his brother. Renny pocketed them with satisfaction. Then, remembering that he owed Piers for hay and oats, he assumed a jocular air and began to tease Biddy, throwing her almost into hysteria. The car started with a jerk.
Though there was a considerable stretch of years between the brothers it appeared less than it was, for Piers, sitting solidly at the wheel, had a look of self-confident maturity, while Renny’s vivid glance, his quick, wary movements, combined with his leanness, made him appear much younger than his years. Yet, in spite of Piers’s sanguine masculinity, an observer would have felt that Renny, with his bony features, his sculptured head, and arrogant mouth, was the more formidable of the two.
It was but a short