They heard strong steps mounting the stairs, then Nicholas, standing in the doorway, regarded with approval the advancing figure. It was the eldest of their five nephews—Renny Whiteoak—and he arrived in an envelope of air so icy that Ernest, with a gesture of self-preservation, put up his hand.
“Do you mind, Renny, not coming too close to me. One of my colds threatening.”
“Well, well, that’s too bad.” He crossed the room, leaving two heel prints of snow on the rug, and stood on the opposite side of the fireplace. He looked down at his uncle with sympathy. “How do you think you got it?”
“I didn’t say I’d got it,” Ernest spoke irritably. “I said it was threatening.”
“Oh! What you need then is a good dose of rum and hot water.”
“That’s what I tell him,” agreed Nicholas, letting himself down into his chair which creaked under him, “but he always fusses more about his digestion than he does about his health.”
“My digestion is my health,” retorted his brother. “But let us talk of something else. It was you who let Nip out, was it?”
“Yes. You should have seen him tear through a snowdrift—after one of the stable cats, screaming like a maniac too.”
Nicholas smiled complacently. “Yes. And Ernest was just saying that he’s getting tubby.”
Ernest asked: “Have you had your tea, Renny?”
He nodded. “In my office. There was a new foal coming and I didn’t want to leave.”
“I remember. Cora was going to have one. How did she get along?”
“Splendidly. She has never done so well before. She’s frightfully proud of herself. When I went to her the last time she tried to tell me all about it. She stopped nuzzling the foal and rolled her eyes at me and went—‘ho-ho-ho-ho-ho,’ like that.” Renny gave a not unsuccessful imitation of a loved mare’s greeting to her master after a triumphant delivery.
The uncles gazed up at him, across the thirty-five years that separated them from him, with the tolerant amusement, the puzzled admiration, he always inspired in them. He was so different from what they had been at his age. They had been lovers of fine horseflesh, but not horsey. They had been living in England at that time and had never missed the races; Nicholas had kept a quite “dashing” pair of carriagehorses, had been a bold hand with the reins, had kept a handsome Dalmatian to run beside the glittering enamel of the carriage wheels, but to have spent a winter’s afternoon in a stable for the consolation of a mare in her labour would have been abhorrent to them. They saw him wiry, in rough tweeds, snow melting on his heavy boots, his knuckles looking chapped, as he spread his hands to the fire, his red hair in a defiant crest above his thin highly coloured face. They saw that face, wary, passionate, kindled by the vitality within, as the flames played over it, intensifying and sharpening it.
“Well, well,” rumbled Nicholas, “that’s good news.”
“Are you sure you won’t have some tea?” asked Ernest.
“No, thanks. Rags brought a plate of buttered toast and a pot of tea strong enough to raise your hair, to my office.”
Ernest thought of the office, in a corner of the stables, its yellow oak desk, where were preserved the pedigrees of horses, overdue bills from the veterinary, newspaper cuttings concerning horse races and shows, and carefully kept accounts of sales. He thought of the bright lithographs of famous horses on the walls, the hard chairs, the bareness, the chill, the unyielding discomfort. He shivered. Yet he knew that Renny had consumed his clammy toast and bitter tea there with the satisfaction with which a plumber might devour his lunch in a flooded kitchen. A queer fellow, but a fine fellow too. Hot-tempered, wilful. “A perfect Court,” as his grandmother had used to say, who herself had been a perfect Court. They had been a family who had glorified their faults under blazing banners of tradition.
Renny sat down and lighted a cigarette. Nicholas took out his pipe. The sound of a piano came hesitatingly from below. Renny turned his head, as though to listen, then he said, with a note of embarrassment in his voice:
“He’s got a birthday coming. Young Finch, I mean.” And he added, looking straight into the fire—“He’ll be twenty-
Nicholas pressed the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with his finger. He made little sucking noises, though it was not yet lighted. Ernest said eagerly:
“Yes, yes—by George, I’d forgotten! How the time goes! Of course, he’ll be twenty-one. Hmph... yes... It seems only the other day when he was a little boy. Not so very long ago since he was born.”
“Born with a caul,” mumbled his brother. “Lucky young devil!”
“That’s only a preventative against drowning,” said Ernest nervously.
“Not a bit of it. It’s luck all round. Good Lord, he’s had luck, hasn’t he?”
Nicholas made no effort to keep the heaviness out of his voice, no pretence of raising his head above the long wave of disappointment that, ever since the reading of his mother’s will, had submerged him at intervals. He had no need to be reminded of the date of Finch’s coming of age. It stood out as the day of sunny fulfilment for the boy, through the darkness of his own eclipse. “He’ll be coming into his money, eh?”
Ernest thought—“It’s up to me to be cheerful about this birthday. We must not seem bitter or grudging. But Nick’s so selfish. He acts just as though he had been perfectly sure of the money when really Mamma was more likely to leave it to me. Or even Renny. I was quite prepared to hear that it would be Renny’s.”
He said—“There must certainly be some sort of celebration. A party—or treat of some kind for Finch.” He still thought of Finch as a schoolboy.
“I should say,” said Nicholas, “that the hundred thousand itself is treat enough.”
Renny broke in, ignoring the last remark. “Yes. That’s what I’ve been thinking, Uncle Ernie. We ought to give him a dinner—just the family, and one or two friends of his. You know—” he knotted his reddish brows in the effort to express the subtle convictions of his mind.
“I know,” interrupted Nicholas, “that Piers had no party when he came of age.”
“He was up North on a canoeing trip at the time.”
“Nor Eden!”
“He’d just been suspended for six weeks from ’Varsity. Likely I’d give him a party! There were great doings when Meggie and I were twenty-one.”
“Meggie was the only daughter, and you were the eldest son and heir to Jalna.”
“Uncle Nick, do you seriously mean that you don’t want any notice taken of the boy’s birthday?”
“N—no. But—why pretend to rejoice over his coming into what all three of us had hopes of inheriting—more or less?”
“Then, I suppose, if I had got Gran’s money, you’d have—”
“No, I shouldn’t. I’d have been comparatively satisfied— if either you or Ernest...”
Ernest spoke, with a tremor of excitement in his voice. “Now, I’m quite with Renny in this. I think we should do something really nice for Finch. We were, all of us, pretty hard on him when we heard that he’d got everything.”
Renny jerked out—“I wasn’t!”
Nicholas muttered—“I don’t remember your congratulating him.”
“I could scarcely do that with the rest of the family on its hindlegs tearing its hair!”
After the impact of his voice—metallic when raised—there was a space of silence through which came hesitatingly from below the sound of the piano. The three were mentally reconstructing the hour when the family on “hindlegs” had created a memorable scene with the poor piano player as its centre.
Darkness had fallen outside. The invisible activities of the snowstorm were still further transforming the landscape, obliterating, softening; producing hive-shaped mounds where shrubs had been; pinnacles where had been posts; decorating with ingenious grotesqueness every projection of the house. So wasteful was the storm of its energy, its material, that, after changing the aspect of a tree by the delicate depositing of flake upo
n flake on each minute twig, or clinging cone, it would fling the entire erection into glittering particles with one contemptuous blast, then begin again to express the unhampered fantasy of its pattern.
Wragge, a white-faced, small-nosed Cockney, with a jutting chin and impudent mouth, came in carrying a lighted lamp. The lamplight fell on the shiny sleeves and shoulders of the black coat he always wore after his morning’s work was done. “Rags,” as he was called by Renny and his brothers, half affectionately, half in derision, had been brought to Canada with Renny after the War, and had married, almost on the day of arrival, another Londoner, a cook of no mean powers but with a taste for spirits and heated controversy. The pair were so firmly established at Jalna as cook and house-parlourman that the disapproval of the uncles and the genuine dislike of Renny’s wife had no power to undermine their position. Wragge had been Renny’s batman when he had been an officer in the Buffs, and a bond, seldom made manifest except in furtive, almost conspiratory glances between them, existed. Renny liked Mrs. Wragge’s cooking, he liked her red aggressive face and stout body presiding in the brick-floored basement kitchen. He liked Wragge. And Wragge had the cocksure attitude of the unscrupulous servant who knows that his situation is secure.
He placed the lamp on the table and drew the curtains. He drew them as though he were scarcely less than the Almighty drawing the curtains of evening against the closing day. His nerves, sensitive to the moods of the family, were conscious of a feeling of dissension. He enjoyed dissension among the members of the family. Even when he felt it, rather than heard it expressed in resonant tones, it was exhilarating to him. Mrs. Wragge could always tell by the jauntiness of his descent into the basement that there were “doings upstairs.” She would raise her face from peering into a saucepan and demand—“Well, and wot’s up now?”
He lingered, arranging the folds of the curtains, hoping they would let themselves go a little. He noted the sombre look of Nicholas, the worried pucker on Ernest’s brow, the half grin that denoted temper in the master of Jalna. But silence prevailed.
“Shall I mend the fire a bit, sir?” he asked, looking at Renny. He spoke in a hushed tone, and the fact that the question he asked of Renny concerned Ernest’s own fire was intensely irritating to Ernest. He answered sharply:
“No, don’t touch it.”
Rags continued to gaze, almost beseechingly, into Renny’s face. “It’s getting very low, sir.”
It was indeed. A chill was creeping across the room.
Renny said—“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to put more coals on, but, of course, if you don’t want them, Uncle Ernest—”
Ernest answered only by looking down his nose and making the gentle line of his mouth firmer. Wragge turned away and picked up the tea tray. He did not close the door behind him, but made way for two people who were just coming into the room. These were Piers and his little son Maurice, who rode on his shoulder. Mooey, as they called him, shouted, as he reached the fireside group:
“I’ve got a norse to wide! I’ve got a nish ’Orsie!”
“Good boy,” said Nicholas, taking a little dangling foot in his hand.
Ernest remarked: “He does not speak as nicely as Wakefield did at his age. Wakefield always spoke beautifully.”
“Because he’s always been such a conceited little devil,” said Piers, setting his small son on the arm of Nicholas’s chair, from where he scrambled on to his great-uncle’s big relaxed body, repeating—“I’ve got a norsie to wide!”
“Now, now,” admonished Piers, “less noise.” Piers, like Renny, showed the vigour of an outdoor life, but his skin had the fresh fairness of a boy’s, and his full lips had a boyish curve, half sweet, half stubborn, that could harden into a line of cruel contempt without changing the expression of his bold blue eyes.
“I wish,” said Ernest, “that you would shut the door, Piers. Between the noise of the piano and the noise of the child, and the draught from the stairway and the fire being almost out, I feel my cold getting worse.”
Cornering him, Renny observed—“I thought you said the cold was only threatening.”
Ernest flushed slightly. “It was only threatening. Now it’s here.” He took out a large white silk handkerchief and blew his nose with an aggressive toot.
The piano below broke into a tempestuous Hungarian dance.
“I’ll shut the door,” cried Mooey, and he scrambled down, ran across the room and pushed the door so that it closed with a bang.
Ernest was fond of his nephew, he was fond of his little grand-nephew, but he wished they had not chosen this particular evening for congregating in his room. He thought rather resentfully of the number of afternoons when he sat alone, unless he went down to the drawing-room. When even Nicholas did not come to keep him company. Now, just when he was feeling rather off colour, they were crowding in. If one came others were always sure to follow. Then there was this troubling question of Finch’s birthday party. He did not see any sense in it. He, like Nicholas, thought that a fortune of one hundred thousand dollars was treat enough in itself. Considering, of course, the way the lad had come by it. Mamma’s leaving it to him had been such a surprise, such a shock, that to make Finch’s coming of age a moment for festivity seemed too cruel. Yet, there was another way of looking at it. Might not the excitement of a party help to drown the bitterness of the moment for Finch’s elders, as the clamour of a wake smothers the sorrow of the bereaved? Might they not well join their hands and sing—“For he’s a jolly good fellow—-,” even while in their hearts they mourned—“Oh, sorrow, sorrow the day”? He grasped the nettle, as was his wont when driven to it, and, raising his eyes to Piers’s face, said calmly:
“We’ve just been discussing some sort of celebration for Finch’s coming of age. What would you suggest?”
Renny, with concentrated gaze, began to poke the fire. Nicholas turned his massive head and regarded his brother sardonically. So that was the way old Ernest was going to save his face! Well, let them see what Piers would say about it. Piers was a tough-fibred fellow, no damned sentiment about him.
Piers stood stock-still, his hands pushed into his pockets, considering the full import of the question. His mind moved slowly round it, as a horse might move round a suspicious object suddenly placed in his paddock. He knew by the way Renny beat the smouldering lump of coal in the grate, by the hunch of Uncle Nicholas’s shoulders, by the nervously defiant expression of Ernest, that the discussion had not been one of purely affectionate interest in the event. How could it be? He himself, though he had never said so, had had keen hopes of inheriting Gran’s fortune. She had said to him time and again—“You’re the only one of the lot who looks like my Philip. You’ve got his eyes, and his mouth, and his back, and his legs. I’d like to see you get on in the world!” God, that had been something to go on, hadn’t it? He had lain awake of nights thinking how much he looked like his grandfather. He had stood below the oil-painting of him, in the uniform of a British captain, that hung in the dining room, trying to look more like him. He had stood under the portrait pursing his lips, denting his brow, at the same time making his eyes more prominent, till his face felt rigid and he half expected the old boy to wink at him as though they had a secret in common. But it had not worked, it had not worked. Finch, with his lanky form, his hollow cheeks, and the limp lock hanging on his forehead, had, somehow or other, wormed his way into Gran’s affections, had got the money. How he had got it was a question now dead, and why dally with the corpse? The living fact was Finch’s birthday, Finch’s fortune dropping like ripe fruit on that birthday, into the midst of the family.
He said, in his voice that had a ring of heartiness which made the labourers of the farm he rented from Renny put up with a good deal of arrogance from him:
“I think it’s a very good idea. As for the sort of thing, anything at all will please Finch. Just the idea of goodwill, and all that—”
Renny was glad of this unexpected support from Uncle Ernest and Piers. He
would have given the dinner party in any case, but he preferred that the guests should not be unwilling. (Even Nicholas gave a grunt that might be taken for acquiescence.) He thought—“We’re closer together than anyone knows, far closer than anyone could know.”
Piers swayed a little, hands in pockets, and went on— “We gave Finch rather a nasty time after the will was read. We were pretty rough on him. He went out and tried to drown himself, didn’t he?”
“No need to drag that up,” said Renny.
Ernest clenched his hand and examined the whiteness of his knuckles. Nicholas pressed Mooey to him. Suddenly flames sprang from the fire, filling the room with warm colour, turning Sasha, curled on the hearthrug, into a glowing golden ball.
“Well, there’s just this need,” returned Piers, ’it reminds us that it’s up to us to make him feel that that sort of thing’s all done with. Make him feel that he’s forgiven—”
Renny interrupted— “There isn’t anything to forgive.”
“Perhaps not. But you know what I mean. I know that all this year and a half—or whatever the time is—he’s felt like a sneak—”
“And wasn’t he a sneak?” demanded Nicholas.
“Yes. Probably he was. But he’s got the money. And he’s as weak as water. If his family don’t stand by him, there’ll be lots of other people who’ll make up to him. Mark my words, he’ll go through Gran’s money in no time. And do no good to anyone—not even himself.”
“A Daniel come to judgment,” murmured Nicholas.
Piers smiled imperturbably. “You may be as sarcastic as you like, Uncle Nick, but you know I’m talking sound sense. Finch is bound to be a dud when it comes to handling money.”
He broke off rather suddenly, halted by the expressions of the three others who could see the door to which he had his back. The door had been hesitatingly opened and Finch’s long face had looked around it.
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