“That was my first thought, sir. And to tell the truth, that’s w’y I thought I should bring it to you ’ere, because of the old gentlemen and the dynger of a shock to them in their present styte of ’ealth.”
“How did you know I’d be coming this way?”
Rags bowed his head. “I’m one with you, sir, in all your doings.”
“Hm. Have you a match?”
Rags ostentatiously produced a box and struck one. Renny tore open the envelope and bent his head over the writing. He read—
“Regret to tell you Lady Buckley suffered stroke last night proved fatal.
HOLLINGS vicar.”
In the flare of the match Rags saw Renny’s face turn not pale but, it seemed, almost green. The match burned Wragge’s fingers and he dropped it with an exclamation of pain. He asked, in a trembling voice:
“Is she very ill, sir?”
“She’s dead. Light me another match. I want to read this again.”
Rags struck another and two more after that, while Renny stared with horrified eyes at the cablegram.
“It’ll be the end of the old gentlemen, sir.”
“I’m afraid so. Thank God, you didn’t let them see it! Of course, I’ll not tell them tonight. I’ll go—I’ll see—why, I don’t know what I should do first…” He looked at Rags in bewilderment. Rags said:
“This is terrible news, sir. I had a great respect for her Ladyship and so had my missus. Her visits will be a great loss to Jalner.”
Renny began to walk quickly, half dazed, across the pasture. At first he turned his steps in the direction of the house, then wheeled and went toward the road.
“I must tell my brother,” he said.
At Piers’s they found the lights out. During the walk Renny had talked incoherently, more to himself than to Rags, of the shock this would be to his uncles and of what must be done to ease the blow for them. A keen pain was in his heart at the same time for the loss of Augusta.
He rang the doorbell but there was no answer. Then he knocked loudly with his knuckles. There was a movement at a window above and Piers’s voice demanded:
“Who’s there? What’s the matter?”
“It’s me—Renny. I’ve just had a cable from England.”
“Oh!” There was a moment’s silence, then—“Anything wrong?”
“Aunt Augusta has had a stroke. She’s dead.”
“My God! I’ll come right down. Are you alone?”
“No. Rags is here.”
Piers appeared at the door in his pyjamas. He had switched on the light and Renny stepped into the hall.
“Have you told Uncle Nick and Uncle Ernie?”
“No. Not till morning.” He looked almost pathetically at Piers. “I’m afraid this will kill Uncle Ernest, Piers!”
Piers’s face was troubled but he said:
“Perhaps he will bear it better than you expect.”
Pheasant appeared on the landing wrapped in a kimono. She was sobbing.
“Oh, how terrible it is! Tell me all about it, Renny. I did love Aunt Augusta and she was always so sweet to Mooey!”
Renny handed her the cablegram. He said to Piers:
“First thing in the morning you must get the doctor. Fetch him over to Jalna. I’ll not break the news to them till you arrive.”
Piers nodded. He looked shrewdly into Renny’s face.
“I wonder,” he said, “what brought this on.”
Renny scowled and bit his lip. “I can’t imagine. She seemed perfectly well when she left.”
“I expected her to live to be a hundred—like Gran.”
“She had not Gran’s constitution or her love of life. My God, Piers, this is a blow to me! I can’t help wondering…” He could not continue.
“Wondering what?”
He turned his head away.
“Well,” Piers said, “I’ll be around with the doctor directly after breakfast. Let me give you a spot. You look all in.”
“No, thanks.” He hesitated, then asked—“Perhaps you had better break it to them, Piers. Perhaps you could do it better than I.”
“No, no, I think it’s your place to do it. Just tell them quietly that you’ve had word that she’s very ill and they’ll understand. But I’ll tell Meggie before I go to the doctor’s.”
“All right. I’ll be off, then. Good night. Good night, Pheasant! Get to bed, child!”
Pheasant ran down the stairway and clasped his arm in her hands. She looked up into his face out of wet brown eyes. “Poor Renny,” she faltered.
He bent and kissed her, making an effort to control his lips that trembled. “Good night,” he repeated, and returned to Rags.
After he was gone Piers asked her—“Why did you say ’poor Renny’? I feel just as badly as he does.”
“I know,” she returned gently, “but there was something in his face that made me say it. And then, I never can forget that time when he was so sympathetic and sweet to me when I had that frightful cough and you lay…”
Piers grunted and put out the light.
When Renny and Rags parted in the hall, Rags asked: “Is there anything I can do, sir?”
“No, no. Don’t speak of this to anyone.”
“Not a word, sir… It’s a very sad ending, if you’ll excuse my saying so, sir, to a pleasant evening.”
Renny looked at him sharply. “Good night,” he said, and went up the stairs.
A deep rumbling snore came from Nicholas’s room. Renny paused outside Ernest’s door and heard him moving restlessly in his bed, sighing, muttering to himself. Poor old boy! What might his condition be tomorrow! This blow might well finish him.
He moved on to Alayne’s door and softly turned the handle. Her voice asked:
“Is that you?”
It was the first time he had come to her room since their quarrel.
She sat up in bed. In the feeble light of the waning moon his face looked strange. There was a hungry light in his eyes, as for love. He came and sat on the edge of the bed beside her. She noticed for the hundredth time how beautifully his head was set on his shoulders. It was set there elegantly, warily, like the head of a thoroughbred. A rage of love for him mounted to her brain and, when he said, in a husky voice— “I must tell you something,” she thought—“It does not matter. It does not matter what he confesses. I can forgive him anything!”
“Yes, yes,” she whispered eagerly. “What are you going to tell me?”
He took her hand and held it tightly, as though to steady himself.
“You must be brave,” he said.
She drew his hand between her breasts. Her heart asked for his love. She thought—“Never again will I let anything come between us!”
She whispered—“I’ll be brave.”
“I have just had a cablegram. From the vicar at Nymet Crews. It is about Auntie. She’s had a stroke… I’m afraid we shall not see her again.”
A shudder of revulsion ran through her. For a moment his words were nothing to her but a dreadful disappointment. She bowed her head over his hand and could not speak.
Then the significance of what he said pierced her consciousness and she gasped:
“How terrible! Oh, poor Aunt Augusta! When did you get the cable?”
“Rags was waiting up for me with it. I’ve been over to tell Piers.” He went on to repeat the arrangements for the breaking of the news to his uncles.
“I think,” he said, “that I had better wake Finch and tell him.”
“Oh no! That would be cruel!”
“I think he ought to know. She was very good to him.”
“But wait till morning! Surely you can see that he should have his night’s rest!” Already irritation toward him chilled her voice.
“Very well.” He rose and moved restlessly about the room. He asked:
“Shouldn’t you like to dress and come downstairs? We might as well be up since we can’t sleep.”
“It is so cold,” she answered, and somewhat
petulantly pulled the blanket over her shoulders. “And it is so foolish and unnecessary to stay up. If you go to bed, I’m sure you will sleep.”
He left her and went to his room but he could not stay there. He went downstairs to his grandmother’s room.
He groped his way into it and lighted the night light which stood by the bed. The air was heavy and the smell of old stuffs lingered on it. A film of dust dimmed the bright colours she had loved, and the maroon bedspread was rumpled by the sheepdog who, when opportunity offered, snatched a nap there. Boney slept on his accustomed perch on the headboard. He was sufficiently disturbed to uncover one eye from the shelter of his wing and with its cold brightness scanned the unwelcome visitor.
Renny gazed at the bed, seeing with startling clearness the form of old Adeline resting there, her deep-lined, predatory profile, her handsome hands spotted with liver-marks and bright with jewels clasped on her stomach, her long limbs outlined beneath the bedclothes. Might not her eyes open at his coming and in their burning brown depths might he not see a mother’s grief over her firstborn? But—mingled with the grief there would be a faint contempt, for she had always been contemptuous of Augusta. How often he had seen his aunt issue from that room with chin drawn back in deep affront! How that wicked tongue had scored her! “Lady Bilgely! Lady Bunkum!”—she never could remember the title she so resented! What a terrifying mother-in-law she must have been to little Sir Edwin!
Well—out of that staunch womb had issued Aunt Augusta and three sons, all big, well-shaped, fine-looking people… He picked up a photograph framed in faded plush, the corners bound in silver, of a young family group. Adeline, in billowing skirts, holding a large-eyed infant Ernest on her knee, while at her side lounged Nicholas wearing a braided velvet jacket and a Thames tunnel on his forehead, represented today by his crest of grey hair. Philip, in cravat and tight trousers, held his daughter, her abundant dark curls confined by a circular comb, her white-stockinged legs dangling. The third son was not yet born.
Renny gazed at the small Augusta, trying to associate her in his mind with the elderly woman who had, a few months ago, waved her last goodbye to him from the deck of the steamer at Quebec. He looked long and sadly, for, in losing his grandmother and his aunt, he lost the two women who represented to him all he had known of love approaching the maternal. He could not remember his own mother and, between him and his stepmother, no love had existed.
He sat long at the bedside table, the photograph in his hand, and, at last, as the slow greyness of dawn came through the curtains and settled on the objects in the room, he stretched out his arm and laid his head on it and slept.
There Rags discovered him and brought him a cup of tea, and, when he had drunk it, he took up his grandmother’s yellow ivory-backed brush with the worn bristles and flattened his hair as well as he could. He gave a deep sigh and mounted the stairs to Wakefield’s room.
With Wake following him, half dressed, frightened, he led the way to the attic and roused Finch.
When the breakfast gong had sounded he found Alayne in the dining room ahead of him. He looked apprehensively at the chairs of Nicholas and Ernest.
“Have you seen them this morning?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. But I heard Uncle Ernest sighing, as usual.”
Renny groaned. “Poor old boy! This will kill him.”
“When are you going to tell them?”
“Directly they have something on their stomachs. Piers will be here by that time with Meggie and the doctor.”
“Have you told the boys?”
“Yes. Wake was very brave but Finch lost control of himself of course. I told him not to come down to breakfast… Good Lord, here they come!”
Heavy shuffling feet were indeed descending the stairs. Wakefield’s voice could be heard, on a deep sympathetic note. He was giving Nicholas the support of his shoulder when they came into the room. Ernest followed after, tooting his nose into a large silk handkerchief. He had taken cold and went straight to the window and shut it. His eyes looked watery and the end of his long delicate nose was pink.
Renny sprang forward and drew out their chairs for them. He exclaimed:
“What a fine morning! There’s a wind like the wind from the moors. Like Devon, eh?”
Alayne looked at him blankly. What was in his mind? Was he trying to prepare them by drawing their minds toward Augusta? She sat down behind the large silver teapot and her own small green earthenware pot of coffee.
“I wish to heaven I were there,” growled Nicholas, sinking into his chair and, as he did so, dragging the tablecloth askew.
Ernest also seated himself. “It blows like rain,” he said. “There’s a chill autumnal feeling in the air. Summer is over.” He poured milk over his porridge. The milk dribbled from the lip of the jug and made a wet spot on the cloth.
“I hope you slept well?” asked Renny, addressing them both. “It was a good night for sleeping.”
“Slept badly,” returned Nicholas promptly.
“Well, you were executing a fine solo on the trombone when I passed your door.”
Nicholas made no answer save to sup his porridge noisily.
“I,” said Ernest, “lay awake most of the night. I heard every sound. I had to breathe through my mouth because of the cold in my head. My ears were making a buzzing noise and my left leg was numb. I could not help wondering if they were not forewarnings of a stroke.”
Renny looked at him horrified.
“Oh no, no, no,” he stammered. “You must not think of such things!”
“Well, one is forced to think,” answered Ernest.
“If you had my gout,” said Nicholas, “you might lie awake. Every time I turned over it gave me a terrible twinge. You might have heard me groan.”
Alayne tried to turn the conversation to impersonal things without success. She could not eat. Neither could Wakefield. Renny forced down his food with false gusto. With funereal solemnity Wragge set a platter of fish before him.
“What is that?” asked Ernest distrustfully.
“Salmon trout. It looks very nice, too.”
Ernest shook his head.
“I couldn’t think of it,” he said. “Not after the night I had. I’m sorry there wasn’t a bit of bacon for me this morning. I could have relished that.”
“We’ll have some cooked. Rags, get some bacon. Uncle Nick, you’ll have salmon, won’t you?”
Nicholas had hidden himself behind the London Times, just arrived and twelve days old. From this shelter he growled:
“Bad for my gout. I’ll take bacon too.”
Renny was chagrined, for he had ordered the fish specially to tempt them on this morning. Silence fell while they waited for the bacon. Ernest looked disapprovingly at his nephew’s unshaven chin. He observed:
“You’d have a really ugly red beard if you were to let it grow.”
Renny passed a lean hand over his face. “Yes. I know. I’d look like the devil.”
“How often do you shave?”
“Every day.”
“Hmph.”
“It’s a fact. I didn’t this morning. I—” He gave a mirthless laugh. “I’m off colour myself this morning.”
Nicholas looked at him round the edge of his paper, then returned to it with relief.
An advancing tide of gloom crept into the room. Speech was impossible. Renny gave a noticeable start as the front door opened and closed. Low voices were heard in the hall.
“Oh,” said Alayne to herself, “why cannot they do things simply, like other modern people! Why must they create this overpowering atmosphere!”
She heard Renny say—“I must telephone Piers. I’ve a message from Crowdy for him.” She saw him go into the library and close the door behind him. She knew he could endure the strain no longer. Her eyes met Wakefield’s, and a tense look passed between them, intercepted by a sympathetic gleam from Rags’s eager eye.
Renny sat down beside the telephone and buried his
face in his hands. How was he going to break the news? Lead up to it carefully or simply blurt it out? His uncles seemed even more depressed than usual this morning.
Without taking down the receiver he loudly gave the telephone number and then said—“Is that you, Pheasant? I have a message for Piers from Crowdy…” Then, in a mumbling tone he continued an imaginary conversation. The door leading into the hall opened and Piers came into the library. He said:
“We’re here. Meg and the doctor have gone into the drawing-room. Is breakfast over?”
“Almost. I’m pretending to talk to Pheasant. I had to get away. Said I had a message for you from Crowdy. I’ll tell them you’ve just happened in. God, I hear them getting up from the table now! They’re coming in here! Don’t go, Piers! I wonder if perhaps you had better tell them. Or Meggie! It might come easier from a woman. Has the doctor brought a restorative, do you think?”
Nicholas and Ernest, followed by Wakefield and Alayne, now entered from the dining room. Nicholas was already filling his after-breakfast pipe. Renny said excitedly:
“Piers has just come in. I was telephoning him when he walked in at the door. Sit down here, Uncle Ernie. I’ve something to tell you. I think perhaps Piers had better tell it.”
“No,” muttered Piers.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ernest, looking from one face to another. Meg, drawn by curiosity, appeared in the doorway.
Nicholas went on stolidly cramming his pipe.
Renny turned to Meg. “Wh-what was it you were going to say, Meggie?”
She stared back at him, speechless.
“What is all this mystery?” demanded Ernest with dignity.
“Do you feel a draught?” asked Renny. “Shall I close the windows?”
“Thank you… But why are you all here? Do I see Dr. Fairchild’s car?”
“Yes, yes. He came in to see Adeline’s rash. It’s nothing to worry about, he says. Isn’t that what he says, Alayne?”
Alayne returned his look of appeal, stiff-lipped, frozen. Save in his passion she could not respond to him.
From upstairs, from the very attic, came the sound of loud crying.
Books 9-12: Finch's Fortune / The Master of Jalna / Whiteoak Harvest / Wakefield's Course Page 75