“Well,” he asked, “who’s for it?”
His grandmother peered at the bottle.
“I thought ’twas to be port wine,” she said.
Meg added — “Yes. I have the port glasses ready.”
Ernest exclaimed, disappointed — “Why the change? Cognac does not agree with me, nor, I think, will the ladies wish for it.”
“They’ll need it,” said Renny.
“I like a drop of cognac,” his grandmother declared. “Let me have the glass in the curve of my hand to warm it.” She eagerly watched the ceremony of filling her glass.
Lady Buckley asked — “May I enquire why this air of mystery?”
“Yes,” said Meg, “we’re curious to know what was going on down in the wine cellar.”
Renny said — “There is no mystery, Aunty. The plain fact is that this man Kronk has skipped out with the spondulics.” He stood, with the tray of glasses in his hands, like a man dispensing poison. Yet a flicker of mordant amusement crossed his lips as he scanned their faces, observing the effect of his words.
“Incredible,” said Ernest. “I don’t believe a word of it.”
Nicholas heaved a noisy sigh. “It’s true enough.”
“Who told you?”
“It’s in the evening paper. Read it to them, Renny.”
Renny sat down the tray, took the paper from his pocket, and began to read aloud. “‘Disappearance of promoter of Indigo Lake Mine. Swindled many thousands of dollars from credulous investors both here and in the United States.’” He hesitated, letting the words sink in, then finished the brief article, inconspicuous in a back page of the paper.
A palpable movement ran through the room, as though each were conscious of sudden physical discomfort. Then Ernest rose, with an unfolding of his long person, and crossed to his mother.
“Mamma,” he said, “don’t you think you had better go to bed?”
“Why?” she demanded. “It’s still early.”
“You’ve had a tiring day....”
“All my days are tiring now.... What did Renny read from the newspaper?”
“Oh, that was nothing,” he lied. “Nothing of interest. Do please let me help you to your room, Mamma.” He patted her back, encouraging her.
Eden had sprung up, come to Renny, and was devouring the article over his shoulder. “It’s impossible,” he said, but even while he denied its possibility, a chill gripped his heart.
Nicholas rumbled, in an undertone — “We’ve been fleeced. Among us we seem to have lost a tidy sum.”
Old Adeline caught the word lost. “What’s lost?” she demanded. “Let me be, Ernest.” She struck at his hand that patted her. “I want to know what’s lost. Is it a dog? A horse? A reputation? Come now — out with it!” She took a sip of brandy and sat up straight in her chair. She looked alert, eager.
Renny said in an undertone to Nicholas — “She’ll have to know it eventually. I think I’d better tell her now.”
“My money!” cried Meg. “Don’t tell me that man has run off with my money!”
“I’m afraid he has, my dear,” said Nicholas.
Meg’s face flamed to scarlet. “Eden, you led me into this! I trusted you.”
Piers, equally flushed, glared at Eden. “I trusted him too. I put everything I had earned into Indigo Lake.”
Renny said — “Without my leave. You young rascal! Well, now you’ve lost it.” He turned to Eden. “You’ve made a pretty mess of things.”
Eden’s face had gone white. “I’ve lost too.”
“What had you to invest?”
“What I made on commission. Quite a lot.”
“Good Lord!”
Lady Buckley said — “I went with Eden to that wicked man’s office.
He talked most convincingly. I trusted them both.”
“You would have done well, Aunty,” said Renny, “to have consulted me. I’d have warned you.”
She gave a groan. “Oh, how I wish I had!”
The grandmother’s eyes had moved from one speaker to the other, her face expressing both frustration and an arrogant will to delve to the bottom of all this. She thumped on the floor with her stick. Her voice came out harsh and strong.
“I will be told,” she said, and turning to the most vulnerable — “Meg, explain. Has somebody lost money?”
Through tears Meg answered — “Yes, Granny.”
“Who?” she demanded.
The answer came, with a grin, from Renny.
“You, Gran.”
“Me? I couldn’t.”
“Oh, yes, you could. It’s quite easy — with a young fool like Eden and a swindler like Kronk to help you.”
Ernest said — “That is not the way to break the news to my mother.”
His mother said — “Hold your tongue, Ernest. I want the plain truth.” And sitting upright and resolute there she looked well able to bear it.
“After all,” growled Nicholas, “she’s not ruined.” But he thought ruefully — “She’ll have that much less to leave behind her.”
She said — “It was a gold mine. What happened to the gold?”
“There was a mistake, Mamma,” said Ernest. He took out his handkerchief and mopped his high white forehead.
“I made no mistake,” she said emphatically. “I invested my money, safe and sound, in a gold mine.”
Ernest asked, almost tremblingly, for he expected to be her heir — “How much money did you invest, Mamma?”
She snapped out — “Twenty thousand dollars.”
This was a shock indeed. Eden hastened to say — “She forgets. It was far less.”
She heard him and demanded — “How much have I made?”
“Nothing,” said Renny. “You’ve lost. Look here.” He took the newspaper and held it under her nose.
“Is it in print there?” she asked.
Nicholas said, under his breath — “She may as well know the truth.”
“But what a shock for her,” said Ernest.
Augusta put in — “Mamma is able to bear it, and the loss. It means less to her than to any of us.”
Renny tapped the newspaper with his forefinger. “See, Gran? Can you read it? The broker has skedaddled, taking everybody’s money with him.” He threw a glance over his shoulder at Dilly. “Fun, isn’t it?”
Dilly gave a hysterical laugh.
Adeline demanded — “You others — have you lost money too?”
“Everybody,” answered Renny for them. “All but me.”
She shook her head dolefully and a momentary heavy silence enveloped them.
Finch had been too embarrassed to remain in the room. He had left but had lingered in the hall, listening, not so much to the words that were said, as to the tones of the voices which went tingling through his nerves. He now heard his grandmother say loud and clear — “Come here, sir.” He saw Eden cross the room with an almost lounging step and stand in front of her.
“You rascal,” she then said raspingly. “You scallywag. You led me into this.”
“I’m sorry, Gran,” he said, “terribly sorry.” He knelt with his body very straight, in front of her, as though deliberately making the picture of the penitent. But he went on composedly — “I was as much deceived as you. I thought the mine — everything — was authentic. Even now there may be a mistake.”
“You brought these pictures to me. You persuaded me with all your talk. You can’t get out of that. How much have I lost?”
Nicholas, a little too eagerly, added — “Yes. How much has she lost?”
That was enough to make her recoil from what she thought of as prying into her affairs. She said tartly — “I will not tell what I have lost — not till every one of you comes out with his folly. Now, Nicholas, what about you?”
Nicholas blew into his moustache, then tugged it into place. “Enough,” he said. “A tidy sum. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I see.... Now you, Ernest — what did the rascal get
out of you?”
He answered with dignity, though his voice shook — “I think I agree with Nicholas that we should refrain from giving figures.”
She retorted — “Aye, but Nicholas asked how much I had lost. That was different, eh?” She turned to her daughter, speaking with mock formality. “Lady Buckley, pray how much lighter is your purse?”
Augusta said — “I cannot remember clearly at the moment. I shall tell you tomorrow.”
Old Adeline gave an ironic smile. “She’ll tell me tomorrow.” And she imitated Augusta’s manner of speaking. Then, fixing Meg with a compelling look — “You, Meg — what are the damages?”
Meg sprang up, as though suddenly conscious of Wakefield’s presence. “The child,” she cried, “up till this hour! I must take him to bed.” She heaved him from the rug and led him to the door.
There he halted, turning back into the room.
“I must say goodnight to everybody.”
“Very well, but do be quick about it.”
He felt himself small and good, aloof from all the mysterious and troubled talk going on about him. He made the round of the room, giving a hug to those he liked best, offering a cool cheek to those not so favoured. Meg waited by the door on tenterhooks till the goodnights were accomplished, then bore him off. Finch had already disappeared.
The grandmother still held the centre of the stage, determined that no loss experienced by the others should equal the dramatic quality of her own. She said —
“This means little to the rest of you, but think what it is to be impoverished at my time of life.”
Nicholas said — “You will never notice the loss, Mamma.”
“How do you know,” she retorted, “when I haven’t told you what I invested?”
He could not say to her that her needs now were few but she guessed what was in his mind.
“I have my ambitions,” she said. “There’s things I want to do.” The remembrance of her new fur coat smote her. “And there’s my Persian lamb coat to be paid for! Dear, oh dear, I wonder if I can return it to the shop.”
Ernest answered — “I’m afraid not. You sent a cheque for it yesterday, Mamma.”
She threw up her hands in despair. Then turned to Eden, who had risen to his feet and was standing apart, with folded arms and hanging head. “Oh, Eden, you deceitful rogue! You came to me secretly with the bright pictures to entice me into a thimblerig. If only your uncles had been with me, you’d never have trapped me, but you came in the time when I was alone.” A tear of pity for herself glistened in her eye.
Renny said — “Have another sip of brandy, Gran?”
Tremblingly she took another sip and was refreshed. “This means little to you others,” she repeated.... “Little to any but me.”
Piers was saying under his breath, through clenched teeth — “It means little to me, eh?”
Eden did not hear what was being said. While kneeling in front of his grandmother, in his nostrils the scent of the eastern perfume she used, the aquiline contour of her face, the bright colours of her gown, filling his eyes, the thought of a new poem had come to him. It was no more clear than a pale star in early twilight, but it was there, challenging the futile flow of words about him. If only he dared to take it up to his room, to capture it on paper, to forget all the turmoil of disappointment and chagrin that seethed within him. But he dared not leave.
His grandmother was saying — “Then there are the new cushions I bought for the pews. Do you think we might stop the making of them?”
“They are to be in the church tomorrow,” said Augusta sombrely.
“Still, if I sent word quickly that no one is to sit on them, mightn’t they be returned?”
“It is too late,” said Augusta.
“Too late — too late — too late.” She repeated the fateful words, between each repetition taking another sip of brandy till the small glass was empty. She then asked abruptly — “What was I grieving about?”
“The money you have lost in Indigo Lake, Mamma,” said Ernest.
Nicholas growled — “Better let her forget it.”
“I have no intention of forgetting it,” she said. “And how could I? Now I’m dependent on charity.” The final sip of brandy had been a little too much for her. She stretched out a trembling hand to her eldest grandson.
He clasped it. “Nothing will be different at Jalna, Gran. Your living here has cost you nothing, nor will it ever.”
She did not like this reference to her freedom from responsibility in that house for so many years. She turned to Ernest. “I wonder,” she said, “if I ought to see the doctor. I feel strangely weak.”
“It is the cognac,” said Nicholas. “What you need is bed.”
Ernest said to Eden — “This is a terrible thing you’ve done to my mother.”
“I know, I know,” he said absently, and wondered if he might decently escape. His artist’s imagination had perversely chosen this moment for activity. The poem was taking shape.
“Help me up,” he heard his grandmother say. She was raised to her feet and, brushing aside those who had aided her, walked a little unsteadily to the window.
“No moon,” she said. “A dark night. And a black night for me. A black night indeed.”
Meg now returned to the room, with an enquiring glance about her, to discover what had happened during her absence. Avoiding her grandmother, she went to Piers and dropped to the window seat beside him.
“What have they been saying?” she whispered.
He gave her his angry boy’s stare. “Nobody has a chance to say anything. Nobody but Gran. Talk of egotism!”
“It is ridiculous,” she agreed.
Old Adeline turned from the window. She asked — “Was Eden’s name in the paper too?”
“Thank God, no,” answered Ernest.
“Well, it should be. He swindled me too.”
Eden said loudly — “Everything I did, I did in good faith. I thought it was a sound investment. So did a lot of people.”
Nicholas said — “You did very wrong to approach my mother.”
Ernest demanded — “Why did you keep everything secret?”
Eden answered — “Because you all wanted it kept secret.”
“The truth,” said Augusta, “was bound to come out.”
Eden fairly exploded — “It did come out to — tonight, and look how happy we were till Rags brought in the newspaper.”
Now the talk broke out in full volume. Accusation, self-defence, reproach, tears from Meg, an outburst of swearing in Hindustani from the disturbed Boney. In the midst old Adeline stood leaning on her stick, a rock about which the storm of words beat. She was not without a certain pleasure in this letting loose of emotion, for hers was an emotional nature that was irked by self-restraint. She liked to watch her descendants at it, hammer and tongs. But by now she could not add more than her presence to the scene, for her brain was more than a little confused and her body very weary. Lower she bent over her stick and finally suffered herself to be assisted to her room. In the doorway she halted, gathered her wits together, and said:
“My husband, he that built this house, would turn over in his grave if he knew the swindling that has gone on inside it.”
Dilly had taken no part in the scene but had sat leaning forward, a fascinated spectator, unnoticed by the Whiteoaks.
XIX
SCENES AT NIGHT
Eden went to the table where the cognac stood and poured himself another drink.
Meg said, her voice ringing clear — “You may well need something to support you, considering what you have done. Oh, Eden, what a responsibility to take — the investing of the fortunes of your own family! I don’t see how you had the temerity.”
His hand shook a little. He said — “Oh, I have plenty of that.”
“It’s the secrecy all round that staggers me,” said Renny.
Ernest gnawed his lip in chagrin. He said — “I blame myself for speculating. I sh
ould have restrained Eden if possible.”
“You should have told me,” said Renny, “what he was up to.”
Nicholas blew through his moustache. “Goodbye,” he said, “to all our airy castles. I think we each should tell what they were and then try to forget about ’em. What had you in mind, Ernest?”
“Travel, Nick. London and Paris.”
“And you were going off without me, you dirty dog?”
“Well, I knew what you would say if I spoke of speculating. You’d call it gambling and remind me of former losses. I little thought you were into it too.”
“Lord, I wish I hadn’t been.”
“What was your particular castle?”
“The Riviera. Egad, I could smell the mimosa.”
Meg said — “I had no such dreams. I just wanted to add to my poor little pile of savings. And now, instead of that, I’ve lost.”
Renny asked — “How much did you invest, Meg?”
“I forget the exact amount,” she hedged. “But it was much more than I can afford to lose.”
Renny smiled across the room at Dilly Warkworth. “There is one investor,” he said, “who has not squealed, and I admire her for it.”
Her face was as though the sun had shone on it. She said — “I don’t mind. It was fun.”
Piers said — “Perhaps you can afford to lose. I can’t. I put every dollar I had into it. Five hundred and fifty dollars.”
“You’ve got what you deserve,” said Renny. “You led me to believe that you’d put it all in the bank.”
“I believed the Indigo Lake was as safe as any bank.”
“Why didn’t you ask my advice?”
“Because Eden wanted everything kept quiet.”
Meg cried — “It’s the same with me. Eden said he wanted everything kept quiet.”
Lady Buckley, after settling her mother for the night, now returned.
Renny said — “I suppose, Aunty, that you’re another victim whom Eden told to keep mum.”
“I don’t like your way of putting it,” she said, “but that is how it was.” She swept to her chair by the fire with the effect of wearing a train. “Eden gave me to understand that secrecy was advisable.”
06 The Whiteoak Brothers Page 19