The proprietor of the filling station made a little bow. “Thank you,” he said.
“I like your place,” said the motorist. “It looks as though it had once been a smithy.”
“It was. An old fellow named Chalk kept it. As a small boy I used to come here to have my pony shod. His son works with me now.”
“I guess this road has changed a good deal since then.”
“Oh yes, it’s improving. I get a lot of customers.” His bright eyes looked confidentially into theirs.
At that moment a tall man came out of a nearby cottage, threw a long leg across a fence and, with an antagonistic glance at the motorists, approached the filling station. He was followed by two old spaniels and a very young Cairn terrier.
The motorist’s wife looked up at the sign above the low stone doorway and repeated aloud:
“W. Whiteoak, Motor Repairs.”
The youth gave another of his old-fashioned bows:
“I hope you’ll come my way again.”
“We certainly will, if we’re in this direction. And take my advice, and go to Hollywood.”
Just as the car started, one of the spaniels gave a self-assertive yet listless bark, and moved heavily in front of it. His master sprang to the rescue and it was only by a violent swerve that the motorist avoided an accident. He threw an accusing glare at dog and man as the car lurched on its way. This was returned by a sneering grin from the owner of the spaniel which stood pridefully waving its fringed tail aware, in its blindness, that it had been the centre of disturbance. It turned its head and licked the hand that now released it, listening, with apparent approval, to a well-chosen string of profanities.
Wakefield Whiteoak observed plaintively:
“If there’s any swearing to be done, I think I should be the one to do it. I don’t like my clients sent off in such a mood.”
His elder brother’s expression became somewhat apologetic but he exclaimed derisively:
“Your clients! I like that!”
“So do I,” returned Wakefield tranquilly. “For they are really much more like clients than customers. There is a personal touch between us. I help them and give them good advice. I might sometimes almost call them patients for they come to me with their motors deranged or powerless for lack of petrol. They are like sick people, and I send them away healthy and in good spirits.”
“You like the sound of your own voice, don’t you? You should certainly have been a lawyer. Of course, I always wanted you to go into the Church. You’d have made a first-rate parson and had all the women chasing you in your surplice.”
“That hardly sounds respectable,” returned Wakefield, rather disapprovingly. He laid a restraining hand on the collar of the blind spaniel as a motor lorry sped past. “You ought to keep Merlin on the lead, Renny. He’ll certainly be the cause of an accident one day.”
Renny answered curtly — “Rot! He never leaves my heels. That idiot in the touring car was to blame. Heel, Merlin! Heel, Floss! Where the hell is that puppy?”
Both brothers began to search for him and discovered him investigating a pool of oil in the station. Tucking him under his arm Renny stared at the blackened ceiling where on a rafter were still fixed a couple of horseshoes.
“It seems only yesterday,” he said, “when I used to bring you here for a treat, in front of my saddle, to see Chalk shoe my nag. I hate seeing the place turned into this.”
“Changes will come,” returned Wakefield. “There is Mrs. Brawn’s sweet shop turned into a tea shop. I remember how I used to spend every penny I had at Mrs. Brawn’s, and how once I got an awful licking for spending some ill-gotten gains there. But I don’t trouble myself with such recollections. As Shakespeare says — ‘Let us not burthen our remembrance with a heaviness that’s gone.’”
His elder, as he had expected, was reduced to an embarrassed silence by the quotation. He had as a matter of fact got it only that morning from a Shakespeare calendar, given him by his sister last Christmas, and was anxious to use it before it was forgotten.
Now he said rather dictatorially — “But you really must do something about the eavestroughs on this place, Renny. The one at the back is quite gone and the ground is being completely washed away. Just come and see.”
Renny Whiteoak’s embarrassment turned to a taciturn aloofness at the mention of repairs. He followed his brother and examined the broken eave without interest. His dogs began digging in the cavity formed at the side of the building by the dripping eave. He remarked, abruptly:
“I have just promised Mrs. Wigle to shingle the roof of her cottage.”
Wakefield shrugged despairingly. “I thought that, when I saw you coming from there. Poor Mrs. Wigle! You promise her a new roof regularly every spring.”
“A few odd shingles will patch it up,” answered Renny, easily.
“And what about my eavestrough?”
“I’ll send a man around to look at it.”
Wakefield was forced to accept this. He asked, “Are you going home?”
Renny looked at his wristwatch. “I must stop in at the tea shop. There are some repairs needed there, too. This springtime is the very devil for expense. Want to come?”
Wakefield did want to come. He always wanted to go where his eldest brother went. Renny had been a father to him and more indulgent than most fathers.
They set off along the path that led irregularly alongside the road. The grass was a young green and fresh dandelions pressed brightly against it. The sky looked inclined either to rain or shine, while a small-voiced bird alternately piped or flew from tree to tree, appearing to pursue the brothers on their walk.
They stopped for a moment in front of the church that had been built by their grandfather, Captain Philip Whiteoak, more than eighty years ago and stood listening a moment to the murmur of the stream that curved about the churchyard where their father, his two wives, two infant brothers and a sister, a grown-up brother, and their grandparents were buried. The church on its knoll looked as remote as in those early days when the primeval forest hedged it round and only a wavering path, made by the feet of the Whiteoaks, their neighbours, and the villagers, led to its door. It stood, in the strength of its stones, like an unconquered fort. Renny loved this building, but rather as the shrine of his family than as the temple of his God. It hurt him that Wakefield who was soon to marry Pauline Lebraux, a Catholic, had turned to that Faith. He had not opposed the change, because he was in favour of the marriage, but he seldom lost an opportunity of referring to it with dissatisfaction. Now he said:
“I’m sorry you’ve turned papist, Wake.” He used the term he had always heard used by his grandmother whom, in many ways, both spiritual and physical, he resembled.
Wakefield felt no shrinking from discussing the subject, for he cherished a sanguine hope that he might himself be the instrument of converting the head of the house.
“I’m sure,” he answered, “that you’ll live to rejoice in it.”
Renny felt what was coming and shied, interrupting Wakefield by shouting his dogs to heel. But Wakefield opened his argument and continued it undaunted even though Renny quickened his stride to one incompatible with conversation. Only when he said — “The trouble, the greatest trouble, with the Anglican Church is that She is not holy,” did his elder turn to him and exclaim:
“She’s holy enough for me and I wish you’d shut up about her.”
“Very well,” said Wakefield, resignedly, “but the day will come —”
“Here is the tea shop,” interrupted Renny, and turned abruptly to its door.
Over