Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage Whiteoak Brothers Jalna Whiteoaks of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche

Author:Mazo de la Roche
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781459723047
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2013-09-11T04:00:00+00:00

VIII

WELCOME TO JALNA

THE CAR moved slowly along the winding driveway toward the house. The driveway was so darkened by closely ranked balsams that it was like a long greenish tunnel, always cool and damp. Black squirrels flung themselves from bough to bough, their curving tails like glossy notes of interrogation. Every now and again a startled rabbit showed its downy brown hump in the long grass. So slowly the car moved, the birds scarcely ceased their jargon of song at its approach.

Piers felt horribly like a schoolboy returning after playing truant. He remembered how he had sneaked along this drive, heavy-footed, knowing he would “catch it,” and how he had caught it, at Renny’s efficient hands. He slumped in his seat as he thought of it. Pheasant sat stiffly erect, her hands clasped tightly between her knees. As the car stopped before the broad wooden steps that led to the porch, a small figure appeared from the shrubbery. It was Wakefield, carrying in one hand a fishing rod, and in the other a string from which dangled a solitary perch.

“Oh, hullo,” he said, coming over the lawn to them. “We got your telegram. Welcome to Jalna!”

He got on to the running board and extended a small fishy hand to Pheasant.

“Don’t touch him,” said Piers. “He smells beastly.”

Wakefield accepted the rebuff cheerfully.

“I like the smell of fish myself,” he said pointedly to Pheasant. “And I forgot that some people don’t. Now Piers likes the smell of manure better because working with manure is his job. He’s used to it. Granny says that one can get used—”

“Shut up,” ordered Piers, “and tell me where the family is.”

“I really don’t know,” answered Wakefield, flapping the dead fish against the door of the car, “because it’s Saturday, you see, and a free day for me. I got Mrs. Wragge to put me up a little lunch—just a cold chop and a hard-boiled egg, and a lemon tart and a bit of cheese, and—”

“For heaven’s sake,” said Piers, “stop talking and stop flapping that fish against the car! Run in and see what they’re doing. I’d like to see Renny alone.”

“Oh, you can’t do that, I’m afraid. Renny’s over with Maurice this afternoon. I expect they’re talking over what they will do to you two. It takes a lot of thought and talk, you see, to arrange suitable punishments. Now the other day Mr. Fennel wanted to punish me and he simply couldn’t think of anything to do to me that would make a suitable impression. Already he’d tried—”

Piers interrupted, fixing Wakefield with his eye: “Go and look in the drawing-room windows. I see firelight there. Tell me who is in the room.”

“All right. But you’d better hold my fish for me, because someone might look out of the window and see me, and, now I come to think of it, Meggie told me I wasn’t to go fishing today, and it slipped right out of my head, the way things do with me. I expect it’s my weak heart.

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