Nodding her cap with satisfaction their mother agreed that winter had come. “I’m glad of it too. I shall wear my new fur coat to church tomorrow.”
Ernest cried — “Do you think you should venture out in such cold, Mamma?”
“I must wear my new coat. Just once. Then I’ll put it away for the winter.”
A groan went round the table at the thought of such extravagance.
She went on — “And I want to sit on the new cushions I’m giving for the pews. Have they come yet?”
Meg said — “They are due next week, Granny.”
“Good. Everything will be spruce for Christmas. Shall you buy yourself a new coat, Eden?”
“Me, Gran? Out of that ten dollars I got for my last poem?”
A mischievous gleam brightened her eyes. “I’ll buy you a new top-coat, boy. Any colour you like. What about blue? Indigo blue?”
“Good idea, Gran,” said Renny. Then the name Indigo struck him. He recalled the certificate, which during the stress of the Show he had forgotten. He leant toward her with a penetrating look. He asked, “What’s this about Indigo? I seem to have heard that word before. Is it some secret password?”
Now she looked sly. “I don’t know what you mean,” she mumbled, but she was enjoying herself.
He jabbed the carving knife in her direction. “Gran, the truth! What about Indigo?”
He unaware of the intricate web of deception woven about that table, she unaware that any but herself was involved, faced each other with a mixture of playfulness and antagonism. A tremor of amazement tightened the nerves of the other investors. Was she also into it? At her age! Her sons and daughter looked from her to Eden, from Eden to each other, and back again to her.
Eden thought — “Now it’s coming out. The whole damned thing is coming out.” Somehow he did not mind. Everybody had made a lot of money. Everything was bound to come out. He caught Dilly’s eye and his lips formed the words — What fun! But, after one intimate glance and the flash of a smile, her eyes toward Renny, with a look of — what was it, Eden wondered. It seemed almost like hate.
Nicholas thought — “That rascal Eden. Now I understand Mamma’s behaviour of late. I wonder if old Ernie is into it too. I shall advise her to sell.”
Ernest thought — “No wonder Mamma has acted mysteriously. The fur coat … the cushions for the pews … I wonder how much she has made.”
Piers squeezed Eden’s knee under the table. Piers was shaking with suppressed laughter. Eden caught his wrist. The two dared not look at each other. Piers said out of the side of his mouth — “Gold, you old devil.”
Renny, having with considerable expedition served the company, now persisted — “Out with it, Gran. What about Indigo Lake?”
She answered tartly — “Mind your own business. Indigo Lake is mine and a very lucrative business it is.” She put up her hand and set her cap at a jaunty angle. From uner its lace edge she gave him a daring look. She repeated — “A lucrative business. Don’t you wish you had a share in it?”
Her eyes sought Eden’s and he laughed. “Now the fat’s in the fire,” he thought. On the whole he did not mind. He laid down his knife and fork and prepared for a battle.
Renny turned to Nicholas. “What’s this all about?”
Nicholas answered — “My mother has told me nothing.”
“Is this a secret, Gran?” asked Renny.
“It’s a secret,” she returned stoutly, “between Eden and me.”
With the eyes of his uncles and his aunt on him Eden flushed. His heart quickened its beat, but he did not speak.
Augusta demanded, in rather an accusing tone — “Are you telling us, Mamma, that you have been speculating?”
“There’s naught to hinder me, is there, if I take a notion to?”
“Of course not.”
Dilly said — “Mrs. Whiteoak and I are a reckless pair. We’ve a bit of the gambler in us. Haven’t we, dear Mrs. Whiteoak?”
“This is no gamble. This is solid gold, eh, Eden?”
Renny turned to him sharply. “What have you to do with it, Eden?”
Before Eden had framed an answer Ernest broke in with: “I don’t like this secrecy. I don’t like it at all. If Eden — if Eden — if Mamma —”
He became tangled in words and could not go on for a space, then he got out — “I like openness — frankness.”
“Then,” asked Nicholas, “why weren’t you open and frank yourself?”
Ernest reddened. “I had made mistakes before. I acknowledge it. I didn’t want to be accused of — of folly.”
Meg said — “Folly is scarcely the word, Uncle Ernest. Not in an investment as safe as this.”
Renny stared at her astounded. “You too, Meg?”
“And why not? I like to make a bit of money as well as anybody.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Renny scrutinized the faces about the table.
“I seem to be the only one who isn’t into this!”
Eden said — “I gave you an opportunity.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You weren’t interested.”
“What do you think you are? A broker?”
“Well — I’ve had some experience.”
Meg put in — “I call it very clever of Eden.”
Renny said to him — “I’ll see you later.”
Wakefield’s child’s treble broke in. “Has somebody been stealing? Is there an enigma?”
“There’s a pot of gold,” said his grandmother. “Indigo Lake Gold.”
Rags had been changing the plates. He now placed a sizzling hot dish of pancakes and a large jug of maple syrup on the table.
Meg said to Wakefield — “Sit up straight and don’t make a noise eating your celery. You should have finished it by now.”
“Finch makes a noise. So does Gran.”
“Finch has not yet learned table manners,” said his grandmother.
“I’ve forgotten ’em. When you reach my age you haven’t the time for ’em.” She bit off a morsel of celery with gusto.
Augusta remarked with some severity — “The child is too much inclined to making personal remarks.”
“He is so observant,” said Meg. “He notices everything.”
“And what eyes he has,” exclaimed Dilly.
“Aye,” agreed the grandmother. “We run to fine eyes in this family.”
And she opened hers wide and rolled them at her eldest grandson. “Blue or brown, they’re well-shaped and bright. Now, that rascal there —” and she pointed her stick of celery at Piers — “he has the eyes of his grandfather, him in the portrait — blue as the sky on a May morning, ha!” She gazed for a rapt moment at the pictured face. “You’d look into those eyes and your heart would melt.”
Dilly also gazed rapt. She said — “I always admire a blue-eyed man.”
Old Adeline craned her neck to look at her. “You do? I thought you admired yon dark-eyed devil at the end of the table.”
Dilly stared. “Are his eyes dark? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Dark they are and his hair is red and you hadn’t noticed! What a girl! Not like most of them, eh, Renny?”
He replied — “When Dilly and I are together we have no time for frivolities.”
Rags was whispering to Renny, an annoying habit he had. “I heard you mention Indigo Lake, sir, and I thought this item in the evening paper might interest you.” He laid a neatly folded page of a newspaper by Renny’s plate.
“Thanks.” Renny bent his head to read the marked article.
Wakefield said — “No enigmas, please.”
Grandmother was talking of the approach of Christmas. “Well I do remember when I was a girl in Ireland how we had a roast peacock for dinner and his tail feathers spread like a fan above him. No turkey ever tasted so good.”
“What fun!” cried Dilly.
The pancakes were golden brown, delicious. Butter lay in little shining globules along their edge. The m
aple syrup filled every crevice and formed a pool on the plate. It was amazing how many of them Piers could tuck away. But the master of Jalna seemed to have lost his appetite. He gazed abstractedly at his plate, then his eyes searched the faces of those about the table, as though he were making some sort of calculation.
Ernest was saying, with almost a simper — “I think we should have a sort of general confession in the drawing-room, when the young boys have retired. I feel that the time for subterfuge is at an end. We all have, apparently, done so well — so extremely well — that I think —”
Nicholas took the words from his mouth. “It’s time we had a celebration, in short. I don’t mind telling what I’ve made.”
Piers said, raising an imaginary glass — “‘Then let us the cannikin clink!’”
“Good idea.” Nicholas beamed at him. “I shall go to the cellar and bring up something special I have stored there. Some really good port.”
Finch asked — “What’s all this about? I wish I could ever make any money.”
Wakefield cast a reproving look on him. “Once I gave you a quarter,” he said, “and you wouldn’t have it.”
Meg asked — “What’s the matter, Renny? You’re not eating.”
“He is brooding,” said Dilly, “on my bad horsemanship.”
Wakefield asked — “Shouldn’t you say horsewomanship?”
Ernest gave the little boy an approving smile. “I have never known a child,” he said, “with such a feeling for words.”
“I’ve never known one,” said Finch, “so conceited.”
Ernest returned benignly — “The point about conceited people is that usually they have something to be conceited about. They value themselves.”
Dilly exclaimed — “How I wish I did! I think nothing of myself.”
Piers put in — “Why don’t we talk about Indigo Lake? I’m dying to know what everybody has made.”
Now came Augusta’s contralto voice. “I think Eden is the only one who can tell you that.”
Nicholas wiped his drooping grey moustache. He said — “I think we are all shy. No one wants the rest to know how much he has made.”
“I don’t mind,” said Dilly. “I invested a thousand dollars and I’ve doubled it.”
“Dilly!” Augusta said, on a deep accusing note. “You should not have done that without consulting me.”
Wakefield, spurred on by Ernest’s approval, quoted, in a high-pitched chant —
You should not go down to the end of town
Without consulting me!
“What a memory he has,” said Ernest.
Dilly apologized — “Sorry, Lady Buckley.”
Nicholas helped himself to a bunch of grapes. “When I get the sweet taste of the syrup out of my mouth,” he said, “I’ll go to the cellar and fetch that port.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Renny.
“Let me come too,” cried Dilly. “I must see that cellar before I leave!”
“You’ll get all cobwebby,” objected Nicholas.
“I don’t mind.”
Renny gave her a sulky look, nevertheless she sprang up. It required a formidably repressive one from Augusta to put her back in her seat. The two men retired, followed by the sheepdog, descended the stairs to the basement kitchen, where Nicholas paused to compliment Mrs. Wragge on her pancakes, went along a passage out of which opened the Wragge’s bedroom and a storeroom, and reached the locked door of the wine cellar.
“It’s scarcely worth locking up nowadays,” said Renny.
Nicholas groaned. “What a cellar my father kept!”
The light of the candle Renny carried fell on starkly bare bins and shelves and on those which still boasted a fair store of spirits and wines.
It illumined the strongly marked features of the two men, at the same time heightening the contrast between them — Nicholas, the man of the world, his mind enriched by experience and travel, detached, not given to extremes of joy or sorrow — Renny, his life concentrated on the activities of Jalna, circumscribed by his own tastes, high-mettled as one of his own hunters, with a kind of virgin elegance about him.
With the bottle of port in his hand, Nicholas said — “I expect you had quite a surprise tonight.”
“Yes. I had.”
“A pity you aren’t in this too.”
“I’d as lief not.”
“You are an odd chap. Aren’t you interested in making some easy money?”
“I don’t like losing it.”
Nicholas chuckled. “That trait must have come from your Scotch grandfather. I mean caution. Not that I think you are generally cautious. As for me, I’ve sold my shares in Indigo Lake. Thought it well to get out while the going was good.”
Renny looked relieved. “I’m glad of that. Did you get your money?”
“A cheque is on the way.”
“Are you positive?”
“Why are you looking like that?” Nicholas asked this question with an abruptly startled air.
“Read this.” Renny took the folded newspaper from his pocket and held it in the candlelight.
Nicholas said testily — “I can’t without my glasses. What is it?”
Renny read — “‘Disappeareance of Lemuel Y. Kronk, mining broker. Promoter of non-existent mining stock?’ That is the heading, Uncle Nick. The article just goes on to say that he has fleeced a lot of people and skipped out.”
“I can’t believe it! Let me see the paper.” He frowned at it and was able to make out the gist of the article.
“What sort of man was he? How did you meet him?”
“I didn’t meet him. Eden did the investing for me. I guess for all of us.”
Renny drew back from him in consternation. “My God, Uncle Nick, are you telling me you handed over your good money to that boy and an unknown and unlicensed broker?”
“Was he unlicensed?”
“This article says so. He’s been swindling people not only here but in the United States. Lots of them.”
Nicholas raised the bottle of port as though he would like to break it over Mr. Kronk’s head.
“The scoundrel,” he said. Then he remembered the other investors, waiting upstairs to celebrate, and a sardonic smile bent his lips.
“What will my brother say? And my mother! Good God — my poor old mother!”
Steps approached along the passage and Finch looked in at the door. He said — “Meg sent me down to find out if anything is wrong. They’re all in the drawing-room waiting. They’ve brought out the best wineglasses and there’s a fresh fire. I wish I had something to celebrate.”
Nicholas ruefully asked of Renny — “Shall I bring the port?”
“Brandy might be better.”
“Right. We’ll drink brandy.”
“Why?” asked Finch. “Why change?” In the candlelight his pink-cheeked boy’s face shone bright with curiosity.
They did not trouble to answer him. The port was replaced and Renny produced a bottle of the French brandy in its stead. The candle was on a slant so that the wax melted and fell in hot globules on his hand. Abstractedly he rubbed them off; the little procession formed and marched back to the drawing-room. The fresh fire in the fireplace had a quantity of dry kindling in it. The flames leaped and crackled, as in joy at being set free. The light of the lamp paled beside them. Those present appearead to have arranged themselves as for a ceremony. Her chair in the full light of the fire, old Adeline Whiteoak was a figure strangely resembling that of the parrot Boney whose tall perch stood behind her. Both held their heads forward a little. In her extreme age her profile tended to a predatory outline, as did his. He was clothed in bright plumage, while she wore a tea-gown of dark-green velvet, its wide sleeves lined with red and with a red collar. With his claws he firmly gripped the perch, while she as firmly held to the arms of her chair, for she was stirred to a pleasurable excitement not often experienced of late. The rubies, diamonds, and emeralds of her rings caught and held the firelight. “Com
e, come,” she was saying. “What’s all this delay? Let’s get together and celebrate. Let’s hear what money everyone has made, eh, Boney?” And she raised her face to the parrot.
Uttering throating caressing sounds he shook his plumage, then said a few words in Hindustani.
“Hear that?” she cried. “Pearl of the harem, he calls me.... Ah, the darling!” And she stretched up a hand to him which he fondled with his beak.
Wakefield had thrown himself on the fur rug at her feet. It was his bedtime but no one gave him the command to go. He lay sprawled at ease, his dark eyes roving with indolent assurance from one point of interest to another.
Eden and Piers sat side by side on the window seat, fresh-coloured, eager for the coming disclosure. Piers felt himself a man among men. He had made money. He had speculated on the stock market and made more money. He laughed to himself when he remembered how he had that morning overtaken Pheasant on the road and given her a lift as far as the post office. She had been on her way to post a letter for Mrs. Clinch. She had looked prettier than he had ever seen her. He could not get the thought out of his head. Yet, strangely, he could not see her face with clarity. It had been so changeful during that drive. It had gone from shyness to composure and then to mirth, when something he said had made her laugh. It was her laughter, high and pure, that remained with him so clearly, and, now hearing it in imagination, he laughed within himself.
Ernest and Dilly were seated side by side on the sofa, their expectant faces turned toward the door. They had exchanged brief but exhilarating confidences on the subject of speculation. Each had declared that the act was the exciting thing about it. The profit was of only secondary consideration. Dilly was smoking a cigarette, a spectacle which Meg looked on with disapproval. She and Ernest shared an ashtray. He looked like a man about to propose a health.
Lady Buckley and Meg had pieces of embroidery in their laps but their hands were idle and their eyes fixed on the three who now entered. Nicholas came first with the air of a French aristocrat on his way to the guillotine. After him came Renny bearing the bottle of brandy, and lastly young Finch wearing, for reasons known only to himself, a hangdog air.
Renny set the bottle on the small table beside the glasses.
06 The Whiteoak Brothers Page 18