Читать книгу Wakefield's Course - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 4

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Renny Whiteoak had done well to provide himself against the weather, for, though it was now March, the wind was as icy as in winter and it needed his rubber boots to keep out the icy slush of the road. He had thrust his bare hands into his pockets, pulled a battered felt hat over his eyes, and drawn his chin into the shelter of his coat collar, so that the only parts of him exposed to the elements were his ears, which were somewhat pointed, and his bony, aquiline nose. The wind and the sleet did their worst to these so that his ears were whipped to a bright red. His nose, however, showed an invincible defiance and looked only a little more weather-beaten than usual.

He walked with bent head, in a state of almost ecstatic concentration, so that the time it took him to walk from his own stable to his brother Piers’s house might be estimated as a few moments or half a lifetime. His mind was concentrated on one problem—should he respond to Wakefield’s cablegram, and to another which he had received from his cousin Dermot Court, or should he not? Common sense and a keen sense of duty told him no. But what were they compared to the wild clamour that shook his soul when the idea of acquiring a grand new horse possessed it? If an observer watching his progress along the country road could have looked at the same time into his mind he would have seen there a strange conglomeration of shapes, a strange and antagonistic medley of shapes—the shape of a bankbook, the outline of a wife’s accusing face, a steamship ploughing across the sea, innumerable hurdles and hedges over which flew, in hypnotic leapings, the shape of the unknown horse.

He was so intent that he had overtaken two small boys before he saw them. They belonged to his brother Piers and were on their way home after their day at a school in the town. It was a long walk from the railway station, and the younger, Nook, looked tired. He was barely nine. Renny took his hand and remarked:

“Drifts too high for the car, eh? That’s why I’m walking, too.”

Nook nodded. “Mummie says she’s never known such a March and she’s lived a long time.”

“Not nearly so long as I, and I’ve never seen such a one. But it’s still early in the month. Any day you will wake to find a warm sun and the snow going off in a hurry. Is your father at home?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t. That was a damned silly question, but then I’m in a damned silly mood.” He grinned down at them. “What’s the matter, Mooey? Haven’t you anything to say for yourself?”

“Not specially, except that I have a blister on my heel and I think one of my toes is frozen and I’m hungry.” Being tired and somewhat disgruntled, he added: “I’ll bet there’s something for dinner I don’t like.”

“I’ll bet,” said Nook, “that Philip has taken my train apart. I just had it on my birthday, but it doesn’t matter!”

“He smashes all my things,” said Mooey. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“What a pair of grousers! Here we are! We’ll go in and find what damage is done.”

The house was of wood, painted white with green shutters, pointed gables, and long sloping roof. Though it was nearly a hundred years old it had a spruce, youthful appearance. In summer it was surrounded by a charming old-fashioned garden, but at this time of year it looked rather bare. The two boys darted ahead and threw open the door, Renny could hear them heralding his approach at the top of their voices.

His sister-in-law, Pheasant, slender, brown-haired and brown-eyed, came eagerly down the stairs to meet him.

“How nice of you to come! It’s been such a dull day. Wind and rain and sleet. I’ve lived a good many years and I’ve never known such a March.”

“So your boys were telling me.” He touched her cheek with his cold one and asked—“Where’s Piers? They told me at the stables he’d come home, and of course the phone’s out of order.”

“He hasn’t come. But probably he soon will.”

Her youngest son, Philip, came prancing in from the kitchen. He wore a toy leather harness with bells and was eating a rosy apple. He was six years old, fair-haired, pink-cheeked, with bright-blue eyes. His eyes still had the wonder of the cradle in them but he carried himself with an air of purpose and even pugnacity. He demanded at once:

“Have you brought the lollipops you promised me, Uncle Renny?”

Renny pulled a wry face. “I’ve forgotten them! But I’ll buy them to-morrow and send them by your dad. I promise you.”

“Has Philip played with my train?” Nook asked of his mother.

“Yes,” answered Philip for himself. “I did play with your train and the funnel came off.”

Nook waited to hear no more. He fled from the room and up the stairs to investigate the damage for himself.

“What I go through with these boys!” exclaimed Pheasant. “Nook values his things so, yet he leaves them about where Philip can get them.”

“You can’t hide away a locomotive like you can a thimble,” said Mooey sternly.

Philip was astride of Renny’s knee, taking small quick bites of the red apple. “I busted it but it wasn’t my fault,” he said. He gave a shout of joy. “Here comes Daddy!”

Piers came in, shining in oilskins and his own fresh complexion. At sight of him Renny’s face assumed a look of great gravity. He fixed his brilliant brown gaze on his brother’s face.

“I have had a most important cable,” he said.

Piers stared. “Who from? The boys? Is anything wrong?”

“Yes. From Wakefield. Nothing wrong. It’s about a horse.”

“My God!” said Piers. He went out into the hall and removed his wet outer garments.

Pheasant looked uncomfortable. Renny joggled the child on his knee and whistled softly between his teeth. In a moment he said:

“That was silly of Piers. Surely he doesn’t imagine that I will do anything without due consideration.”

“He thinks you are impulsive where horses are concerned.”

Piers returned, wearing an expression of defence. But he knew he was not proof against Renny’s urge to buy a horse. He said:

“May I read the cablegram?”

Renny handed it to him.

“Certainly,” said Piers, “Wake has gone to a lot of trouble to make this animal sound enticing. But Malahide! Surely you wouldn’t trust him!”

“I’ve had another cable. It’s from Cousin Dermot. Read it.” He fished it from a pocket and gave it to Piers, who passed both on to Pheasant.

“How thrilling!” she exclaimed. “Of course you’ll buy him!”

Renny beamed at her. “You think I ought?”

“Well—it seems a marvellous opportunity.”

Piers struck his fist on the table. “Never—never without seeing him first! You’ll have to go over. No—you can’t possibly—it will make the horse too damned expensive. Upon my word, I think it’s a harebrained scheme. Neither Finch nor Wake is capable of judging a horse. And how do you know what Malahide or that old Dermot Court has up his sleeve? It may be a put-up job to fleece you.”

“On Malahide’s part it might. On Cousin Dermot’s, never. He’s a grand old boy. I absolutely trust him. Both as a judge of horses and as a kinsman.”

“I do love to hear you use that old-fashioned word!” cried Pheasant. “It might be your grandmother speaking.”

“If Gran were here,” said Piers, “she’d counsel you not to take such a risk. Just think! Either you buy this horse without seeing him or you take an expensive journey to see him——”

“I shall cross tourist——”

“I can picture you doing that!”

“You’re not denying that I can be economical, are you?”

“In some ways you can be as close as bark to a tree.”

“What?”

Renny’s colour rose. He stared hard at Piers.

“I only mean——”

“Well—go on.”

“You know yourself that you won’t buy the new farm implements we need.”

“I know that the old ones are adequate.”

“You are the only one who thinks so.”

Pheasant’s pacifying voice broke in. “Surely if Renny trusts Cousin Dermot’s judgment and thinks well of Wake’s——”

“I do indeed.”

“Then surely it’s worth considering. If the horse should win the Grand National, Renny could sell him for a stupendous sum. It may be a gamble, but what a glorious one!”

“Piers would prefer,” said Renny, “that I should take any extra money I have for farm implements, in order that he can make a few dollars extra on the crops—which I don’t believe he could.”

“I could do with less hired help.”

“If I win the Grand National,” said Renny, “I’ll buy you anything you want.”

“Thanks.” Piers gave an unbelieving laugh.

“Then you are dead against the project?”

“No. I’m not. I’m keen about it. But—I think the risks are too great. You would have to depend on other people to superintend the training. Then you’d make a second trip across the ocean to see the race. You’d want to see your horse win, wouldn’t you?”

His elder brother had listened to him with the colour deepening in his already high-coloured face. Now he tilted Philip from his knee and rose in anger to his feet. He strode up and down the room.

“Am I,” he asked passionately, “to spend the rest of my days at Jalna and never go anywhere? Am I to rusticate here like a vegetable? I tell you I’ve got to have a change!”

“I never get a change,” said Piers doggedly.

“You never want one.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re welcome to go anywhere at any time you want. Why, you were in Montreal just before Christmas, about that consignment of apples!”

“You were all over the place during the polo season.”

“Yes,” returned Renny bitterly, “and generally came back with a pulled tendon or a broken collar-bone!”

“You did that just once! Also, you rode in the New York Horse Show.”

Renny’s tone was almost plaintive. “Yes, and got a ’flu germ that laid me up for a fortnight! I can tell you that I made up my mind months ago to go to Ireland this spring to see my Cousin Dermot. I visited his father, old Dermot, in 1919. I’ve always promised myself I’d go back. Now the son is an old man and if I delay it may be too late. He must be nearly eighty.”

“Oh,” cried Pheasant. “I do think you ought to go!”

The passion in his eyes melted to an enfolding warmth as he looked at her.

“Do you really?” he asked.

“Yes, I do.”

Philip shouted—“Go to Ireland and buy the horse!”

His uncle picked him up, hugged him, and gave him a kiss. He said:

“If I do go I’ll buy you a present. Choose whatever you like.” Renny then turned to Piers. “Well, what do you say?” he asked.

Piers’s bright-blue eyes smiled up at him.

“Well,” he said, “if you’re going over in any case, you might as well drop in and have a look at the nag.”

“You know,” said Renny to Pheasant, “I think it’s damned disagreeable of Piers to be sarcastic about this.”

Piers lighted a cigarette and laughed. “I’m just being philosophical. I only hope that Alayne will be equally so.”

“I don’t think Alayne will oppose me in this. She knows that financially things are much better with me than they were a few years ago. Some of her own investments are recovering. I think myself that things are looking up with us from every side. As for that new reaper you want, go ahead and buy it. I dare say we need it.” He gave a sigh and picked up his hat from the top of the coal-box where he had laid it. A rivulet of water ran from its brim.

“Don’t go,” said Pheasant. “Stay and have supper with us.”

“Thanks very much, but I must go. I must get this thing settled.”

Nook had returned to the room. There was a haziness in his eyes as though he had been crying. Piers gave him a quick look.

“How did you get on at school to-day?” he asked.

“All right, Daddy. But I wish I could have lessons with Adeline, the way I used to.”

Piers looked almost pathetically at Renny. “Where did I get such a son?” he demanded. “He’d rather have lessons with little girls than go to a good boys’ school.”

“I don’t think it’s that, Piers,” said his wife. “I think it’s because he is naturally studious and Alayne makes lessons so interesting.”

“It’s unnatural,” said Piers, and looked sternly down into the little face. “Why were you crying?”

“W-wasn’t crying, Daddy.”

“Come—don’t lie!”

“It’s his locomotive,” said Pheasant. “I’m afraid Philip has broken it.”

Piers looked more kindly at Nook. “If he has broken it you should give him a good punch. Bring it here and I’ll see if I can mend it.”

Nook flew upstairs, followed by Philip, shouting—“I’ll get there first!”

“Well, I must be off,” said Renny.

“It’s getting dark and blowing harder than ever. Do stay to supper.”

“Yes,” added Piers. “Then I’ll drive you home. I’d like to be there when you break the news.”

“Thanks. I’d rather walk, with the roads like this.”

He had an unaccountable nervousness of motor-cars, and, as he strode homeward through the early dusk, he found the exercise in the biting wind not unpleasant. There was a clear saffron streak in the sky and, above it, a pale-blue radiance, a promise that Spring was soon to draw back the curtain from her wonders. It seemed to Renny that there was a different quality to the wind in the last hour. It was biting as ever, but there was a certain erratic playfulness in it, as though it had new ideas in its head. Then, out of the sky, came the loud cawing of crows. He saw their black shapes blown from a grove of pines and scattered like leaves across the pale clear space. They were the first birds of spring, reckless and rowdy. Whatever sweet-singing birds came after, these were the heralds and bore the soul-piercing news.

“It is spring!” thought Renny, tramping through the icy slush with his ears tingling and his nose almost raw. Every branch was as bare as a bone, the ground was frozen to a depth of two feet, but the crows never lied.

“Caw—caw—caw!” they shouted and swung on the wind, made flails of their wings and fairly threshed the floor of the sky, took beak-dives, then strained their lungs to shout, “Caw—caw—caw—caw!” Night was falling and it was time they had found a perch, but they did not care. They streamed along the wind, rioting sable gangsters, with all heaven open to them.

“God,” thought Renny, “I shall see spring in Ireland!”

The whole icy, windy, slippery scene about him vanished and he saw himself in County Meath, with billowy clouds floating low, the hawthorn in bloom, a bright-green paddock surrounded by white railings, and his Cousin Dermot coming across it to meet him, leading Johnny the Bird. A tender smile softened his features. A quick fire of exhilaration pierced his being and the smile became a grin.

Down in a hollow, overflowing with evergreen trees, he could see the orange squares which were the windows of his sister’s house. For a moment he had a mind to go there and tell Meg and Maurice the news. He had a feeling that they would be sympathetic, but then, his feelings were not always right, and he decided to go home. He was far from certain that he would meet with sympathy there, but go he must eventually, so, with the grin still lightening his face, he turned his steps in that direction.

He heard a small scrabbling on the road behind him and looked round to see Piers’s wire-haired terrier, Biddy, at his heels. Since puppyhood she had had an infatuation for him, greatly to Piers’s chagrin. She had tried to follow him when he left the house but Piers had stopped her. Renny could imagine how, at the first opening of the door, she had slid out into the dusk. She was panting violently but delighted with her achievement. He bent to pet her. “Little devil,” he said.

But her companionship was pleasant. It was a lonely thing to be on a road without a dog. She kept up a methodical jog-trot at his heels. It was as though she were tied to him. He opened a gate and crossed a field so rough with snow which had melted and frozen again that he picked up the terrier and tucked her under his arm. She gave his nose a quick lick of gratitude.

It was the first time this year he had taken the short cut and the walking was even worse than he had expected. But he had the feeling of spring in his blood and this was his gesture of welcome to it.

From the field he entered a bare oak-wood and from there, quite suddenly, charming grounds surrounding the small house where his uncle, Ernest Whiteoak, lived. Ernest’s wife was Renny’s wife’s aunt, so the relationship was doubly close. He had a mind to go in and see them, but he knew that, once he got inside the door, their interest in what he had to tell them would be so great and Uncle Ernest would have so many reminiscences of bygone meetings with Dermot Court, that it would be a long time before he could get out again. Instinct told him to be on time for dinner that night.

He drew near the lighted window of the living-room and could see the two sitting happily by a table where tea-things were placed. Uncle Ernest’s long fair face was animated as he talked, while Aunt Harriet regarded him admiringly out of round, intelligent eyes. The waves of her silvery hair looked lovely in the lamplight. Biddy ran on to the porch and began to scratch at the door. With a stride Renny had her by the scruff, tucked her under his arm once more, and half walked, half slithered and slipped, down the steep path into the ravine where the stream lay curled beneath a bolster of snow. Pillows of snow propped the rustic bridge that spanned the stream and, as the snow pressed in over the tops of his boots, he said to the terrier:

“I guess you wish you’d stayed at home, Biddy.”

Not she. She strained upward to reach his face with her cold little muzzle. She was excited and pleased. She was no longer young but she had a great zest for life. He hugged her to him.

At the top of the rise on the far side of the ravine he stood for a moment to get his breath. A low wicket gate was in front of him and beyond it his own house standing among its trees, the wide lawn showing patches of earth through the snow, the windows shining in the dark bulk of the house. He never came on it suddenly like this without his inmost being dilating, as it were, to receive that sight in its fullness. The house, though substantial, might have been unimpressive to many a man and no more than the solid residence of solid people, but it was to him the very distillation of all that his life and the lives of his forebears had stood for. Here they had been born, had lived, loved, and suffered. Here they had carried on their traditions in a changing world. Here he would live as long as he had life in him and, if he had his way, his children after him. Even a multi-millionaire with half a dozen mansions might, after his first glance, have discovered something unique in the old house. For it was certain that the highly individualistic people who had lived there had left some mark of their sojourn. There was something in the way its chimneys gave their smoke, in the way the roof leaned down to the porch and the porch raised itself to shield the front door from intrusion, in the way the staunch network of the old Virginia creeper clasped the brick walls, marking the place where every new leaf would spread its greenness, in the very way in which two bare branches of a pine played an unmusical but stubbornly vigorous tune, that spoke of character and continuance.

When he stepped into the hall he was met by a very old spaniel, a young sheep-dog, and a bulldog, who rose from their happy roasting by the almost red-hot stove to welcome him. He bent to touch their heads, and Biddy, whom he still held under his arm, bared her small teeth in a grimace of warning. She could not bear at that moment to share his affection.

Renny heard his wife’s step. She appeared at the top of the stairs and began slowly to descend.

“Oh, hullo,” he said, and moved to the side of the banister, holding up his face for a kiss.

She leant over and gave him one, with the air of depositing it lightly on his cheek. There was something faintly defensive about her as though she were not certain what the tone of their meeting would be.

Casting his mind quickly back to their last meeting he remembered some slight disagreement, though what it was he could not recall. Nothing very serious, he was sure. He set down Biddy. She moved growling among the larger dogs, who sniffed at her with tolerant amusement.

Alayne scanned his face with an almost fierce pleasure in having him back in the house with her, for the day had been long and uneventful and she had had trouble with the children. She pretended that she did not notice the large clots of snow that had come in on his boots. He saw, however, that she did and exclaimed:

“By George, I forgot to wipe my boots! I came home through the ravine and the snow is deep, I can tell you. It was right over their tops.”

He sat down on the step below her and pulled off his boots. Fresh clots of snow fell out of them and she could see that his grey woollen stockings were wet. She said:

“It doesn’t help things to take them off here, does it?”

Quickly he snatched up the clots of snow and returned them to the empty boots. He then padded to the front door, opened it, and deposited them in the porch. The four dogs, thinking he was going out again, jostled each other through the door and he closed it on them.

“How is Uncle Nick?” he asked.

A shadow darkened her eyes. It was strange that his first question should be about his uncle and not as to how she had spent her day.

“Very well, I think,” she answered coolly. “Uncle Ernest spent most of the afternoon with him. Then some papers came from England and a letter from Wakefield.”

“Good.” He came back to her and took her in his arms, holding her close. She clung to him, feeling at once passionate love and a kind of anger. She passed her hand over her hair, smoothing it. He saw the silver among its bright fairness, and gave it a quick caress with his lips.

“Sweet girl,” he murmured.

Linked together, they went into the drawing-room, where a fire was burning low on the hearth. Nicholas had left his newspapers scattered about. To Alayne the room looked uninviting and felt chilly, but to Renny it was a haven of exemplary neatness and warmth. He sat down and stretched his feet toward the fire.

“I’ll run up and get your shoes,” she said.

He caught at her skirt but she eluded him.

“No, no,” he said, “I’ll get them myself.”

She was back with them in a moment and put them on him one after the other.

“You have feet just like your grandmother,” she said.

He was pleased. “Have I?”

She sat down beside him and he asked the question she had been waiting for.

“What have you been doing this afternoon?”

Because it was at the end of a long winter and because her activities were seldom of the intellectual sort she would have liked, a note of complaint came into her voice.

“No need to ask me what I have been doing. The same old round. How thankful I shall be when this slush and sleet are over and the children can play outside. The noise they have made to-day has been appalling, and as for lessons—well, I feel sometimes that I must just throw up the job. It takes too much out of me. When Nook was here it was often quite fun, for he enjoyed the work. I really think we shall have to send Adeline to boarding-school.”

He gave her a horrified look. “But Meg never went to boarding-school!”

“I don’t see what that has to do with Adeline. She’s an entirely different type.”

At this moment he did not want to oppose Alayne in any way, so he sat silent, looking into the fire, his mouth down at the corners.

“Oh, well,” she said, “I suppose I can go on for a while longer. Spring will soon be here. As a matter of fact, Adeline did not give me as much trouble to-day as Archer.” She saw his stern look and added hastily—“It was mostly a matter of fidgeting. He just couldn’t keep still.”

Renny took one of her smooth white hands in his. “If the kids bother you,” he said, “I’ll skin them alive.”

The barbaric threat comforted her, though to see him lay a hand on them was dreadful to her.

He asked rather abruptly—“Is there anything decent on at the theatre? We might go. Or would you rather see a picture?”

“Candida is being played. I was going to speak of it, but I know you hate Shaw.”

“Well, I should like to see that one, as Wake has played in it. Let’s get tickets. I’ll ring up the theatre now.”

He sprang up impulsively and crossed the hall to the sitting-room. She heard him talking loudly over the telephone and she ran into the room and shut the door so the children could not hear his voice and come running down to him. She stood behind him. She saw the admirable set of his head on his shoulders as he telephoned, and how his close-cut red hair was not yet even touched by grey. She heard him order five of the best seats and would have rushed to stop him, but, possibly conscious of this contingency, he hung up the receiver with a triumphant bang and turned to face her.

“Are you crazy?” she asked.

“Not at all. I want to give a little theatre party. That’s all. I’ve been thinking of it for some time. Uncle Nicholas loves a good play. Aunt Harriet and Uncle Ernest both admire Shaw. We’ll have dinner in town and make an evening of it.”

“But those seats! You need not have bought such expensive ones.”

“No use in taking Uncle Nick anywhere but in front. He’d not hear a word.”

“Yes, that’s so.”

He looked at her anxiously.

“You’re pleased, aren’t you?”

“Of course.” But she had a sharp stab of disappointment. She wanted to go alone with him. Just the two of them! His solicitude for these old people was sometimes deeply irritating to her. But she forced herself to conceal it.

They had barely reseated themselves in front of the fire when the dogs began to scratch on the front door and raise their voices in complaint. Renny sprang up to let them in. Alayne never had got used to his way of turning repose into lively action at a moment’s notice, just the way the children did, and felt that she never could.

The dogs came in, talking of the cold and wet outside. Biddy looked in at the drawing-room door, but when Alayne cried “No!” she turned away and leaped on to a chair in the hall. Uncle Nicholas could be heard coming heavily down the stairs. He came slowly and carefully, leaning on the banister, for he would be eighty-eight on his next birthday and had been a victim of gout for many years. In truth none of the family but himself remembered the time when his knee had not troubled him. His brother Ernest could have remembered, but it was easier to think of Nicholas so afflicted because he had somehow fitted this affliction into his strong personality.

Renny went to meet him and the old man leaned heavily as he made his way to his accustomed chair.

“Hullo, dogs,” he mumbled under his drooping grey moustache. “Hullo, dogs! Been out in the fresh air, eh? Lucky dogs! Hullo, Biddy! Over here again? Your master will have it in for you, old girl. Now then—let me down, Renny! Ha—this weather plays the devil with me!”

He smiled at Alayne, who had to smile back, though the moment before she had been thinking somewhat grudgingly of his presence at the theatre party.

“Well, and what have you been doing this afternoon, sir?” he demanded of his nephew.

“I’ve had a busy day. One thing on top of another. I think I have a likely purchaser for the bay colt. Alayne and I have just arranged a theatre party for to-morrow night. I hope you’ll enjoy seeing Candida. It’s the play Wakefield acted in, you know.”

“Yes,” said Nicholas gravely, “I remember.”

“Mr. Shaw would be flattered!” exclaimed Alayne.

Nicholas beamed. “I shall be delighted to go. How kind of you two!”

“It was Renny’s thought.”

“No it wasn’t! You said yourself you’d been thinking of it.”

How generous he was! Any irritation she had felt toward him was gone. She had a sudden exhilaration in the prospect of to-morrow night. She smiled happily at the two men. Though she had lived so many years at Jalna she had not made friends in the neighbourhood. She had begun by considering it a backwater and feeling impatient of its Victorian traditions. The old neighbours were not intellectual and, when newcomers did appear among them, the Whiteoaks held themselves aloof and she did not meet them. Nor did she want to. She had always been of a reserved nature and though she deplored the self-sufficiency of the Whiteoaks, it suited her better than she knew. Yet it was her fate often to be longing for what she would not put out her hand to acquire.

A sound of rushing steps and a clamour of children’s voices came from the top of the stairs. It grew nearer like a rushing wind, inexorable and boisterous, till the three children were in the room. They were Alayne’s and Renny’s two children and the child of Renny’s brother Eden, who was dead and who had been Alayne’s first husband. She had divorced him and married Renny. Now the presence of his child in her home was an unhappy reminder to Alayne of Eden. The child had his colouring and his smile that sat oddly on her little face. Though Alayne thought of herself as modern and widely tolerant, her upbringing had been somewhat puritanical and she judged others, more often than she guessed, by the standards of her forebears. So little Roma’s irregular birth would have made a barrier between her and Alayne if nothing else had. Alayne saw her as set apart from her own children—first as Eden’s child, second as the offspring of Eden’s connection with that laughing English girl of few morals, Minny Ware.

The boy of the little group was four-year-old Archer. That had been Alayne’s maiden name and it was an annoyance to her that Renny should call him Archie. And of course, since Renny did, Adeline imitated and was being constantly reprimanded for it. He himself, proud of his name and wishing to emphasise it, pronounced it with a strong accent on the last syllable which was almost as irritating to his mother as the abbreviation.

As the greater part of his days was spent with girls much older than himself, Archer had to make the most of his masculinity. He was very straight, and the straightness was exaggerated by his carrying his chest high and his neck rigid. His face was inclined to thinness, but his arms and legs were sturdy, so that the pedestal of his small being looked firm indeed. He had fair hair, not sleek and glossy like Nook’s or fluffy like Roma’s, but dry and rather stiff. His forehead was high and white and beneath it his blue eyes looked out with an expression almost piercing. This expression seldom changed. He seemed to be searching for something and determined not to rest till he found it. His lips were thin and his mouth wide and usually turned down at the corners. When he did smile his look was sweet and rather surprised, as though he had not believed himself capable of being amused. He was the apple of Alayne’s eye and her constant annoyance. As an infant he had been perfect. She had thought of him as the reincarnation of her beloved father. But, as he developed, he was often an enigma. She could not believe that her father had ever behaved in such a way. She could only believe that he had inherited some perverse strain from the Whiteoaks or the Courts, and she spent many of her waking hours in trying gently to eradicate it and lost sleep over it at night. However, Archer went his own way with a kind of blind persistence. He apparently had some scheme of life, known only to himself, which he felt obliged to follow, no matter what suffering it caused to himself or others.

He was a source of amusement to nine-year-old Adeline, partly as a human being and partly because she saw that his behaviour was the cause of grave concern to their mother. This was not so much from cruelty as from a mischievous pleasure in the antics of the little brother who, till he was nearly four, had been held up to her as a paragon of goodness and on whom endearments were lavished which had never been bestowed on her.

She was her father’s darling and she knew it. She knew that she was the image of the great-grandmother whose portrait, in a yellow satin evening-dress, hung in the dining-room. Her great-uncles never let her forget that she had the same dark-red hair, the same brilliant brown eyes, the same milk-white skin and scarlet lips as were depicted in the portrait. She had the same nose, too, and the same temper. She did not know from where she had got her abounding vitality, for she did not know that she possessed it. She only knew that she could ride for hours on a spirited horse and at the end be ready for any kind of wildness. Yet she could on occasion be quiet and even contemplative and sometimes showed real self-restraint. Toward the younger, weaker Roma, she was generous and protective.

“Children! Children!” exclaimed Alayne. “I wish you wouldn’t come into the room like that.”

“But it’s the first time I’ve seen Daddy since early morning,” said Adeline. She got on to his knee and clasped his neck tightly. She kissed him again and again on the mouth. Roma went and sat on one of the beaded ottomans near the fire. She moved constantly on it as though it were her will to rub the beads off.

“Roma!” cried Alayne. “Please get off that ottoman. It has a lovely covering and it is being ruined.”

“Little rascal,” said Nicholas, looking sternly at the child.

Roma held herself suspended above a chair. “Has this a lovely covering?” she asked.

“Come and sit on my other knee,” said Renny. “Nothing can hurt it.” He looked sternly at his son. “And what have you been up to to-day?”

Archer, for a reason known only to himself, had lately decided that he wanted to be a baby again. Now he held up both hands, in a feeble, flapping kind of way, and tottered across the room. He lisped, in a nasal whine:

“Can’t walk yet. Somebody help Archer walk.”

This was painful to Alayne but Renny grinned from ear to ear. He asked:

“How old are you, then?”

“Don’t know,” whined Archer. “Can’t walk yet. Want a bottle to thuck.”

“Archer,” said Alayne sternly, “come here.” She reached out and drew him to her. He took one of her hands and began to gnaw at it in a toothless way. “Thumthing to thuck,” he urged.

“Do you want to go straight back upstairs?” she asked.

He began an affected imitation of an infant’s wail.

Renny stretched out a leg and poked him in the seat with his toe. “Come,” he said, “enough of that!”

Archer continued to make infantile noises and mouth Alayne’s hand. She rose and took him by the arm. “Very well,” she said, “you must go upstairs, I am afraid.”

“Archer can’t walk. Give Archer a pick-a-back.”

She bent over him and whispered in his ear.

“Give him a good smack,” suggested Nicholas.

Archer, propelled by Alayne, took a few wobbling steps into the hall. Out there he shouted in his own loud voice:

“I won’t go up! I want to stay with Daddy!”

“If I come after you, you’ll be sorry,” called out Renny.

From the drawing-room they could hear Archer stamping up the stairs, yelling as he went.

Renny scarcely knew what was going on about him, his mind was so occupied by the problem of how he should break the news of his proposed trip to Ireland. He heard Nicholas’s voice rumbling on and on. He felt the two little girls snuggling warm against his breast.

Adeline said—“I do like the smell of you when you’ve been in the stables, washed your hands with Windsor soap, then walked in the frosty air.”

Roma snuffed, and declared—“I like your smell best when you’ve just shaved and had a smoke.”

Renny hugged them to him. “What would you think of me if I won the Grand National?”

“It would be the happiest day of my life,” said Adeline.

“What is the Grand National?” asked Roma.

“It’s the greatest race in the world, little silly,” said Adeline.

Suddenly Renny pushed them from him and leaned toward his uncle.

“Look here, Uncle Nick. Read these. I had them to-day.” He handed him the two cablegrams.

Nicholas put on his spectacles and read them. It took him some minutes to absorb their import.

“What’s it all about? Oh yes, a horse. Dermot Court, eh? Wants to sell you a horse, eh? No, no, don’t you do it! I wouldn’t trust any Court, when it comes to a horse deal.”

“My God, Uncle—he doesn’t want to sell me a horse! He’s recommending one to me.”

“Who owns it? Malahide? Worse still.”

“No. A farmer named Madigan.”

“What a cable that boy Wakefield sent! It’s like a letter. He could have said it in half the words.”

Renny replied testily—“He had to make it clear and he had to make it urgent. What do you think of the idea?”

Nicholas took off his spectacles and stared at Renny from under his shaggy brows.

“I think it’s a very foolish scheme. I don’t like it at all. Five hundred guineas is a lot to risk.”

“I know. And I’d never do it without seeing the horse first.”

As he said these words Alayne returned to the room leading Archer by the hand. She said:

“Archer says he will be quiet and good, if someone will play a game of dominoes with him. Will you, Adeline?”

“I want to hear about the horse.”

“I’ll play with him,” said Roma.

“Thank you, dear,” said Alayne, but her eyes were cold as they rested on the child’s face.

“Archie!” exclaimed Renny.

Archer turned his piercing gaze on him.

“Do you know what the Grand National is?”

“It’s a steeplechase!” He began to gallop about the room, leaping imaginary obstacles.

“Good legs, hasn’t he?” observed Renny. “Go it, old boy!”

“Roma, will you please take him to play dominoes?” said Alayne.

“Yes, Auntie Alayne.”

But Archer prostrated himself on the floor.

“I’m down,” he said, “I’m hurt.”

Alayne went to him, her face tense but her voice gentle.

“Archer, darling, you must get up.”

He began to rock rhythmically on the floor, as in a cradle. “I’m a baby,” he lisped. “Ca-an’t walk. Give me pick-a-back!”

Adeline stood smiling.

“You make him worse,” said Alayne angrily. “Stop smiling at him instantly. You do it purposely.”

Renny sprang up. “Come, Archie!” He caught up his son and threw him to his shoulder. “Come, Roma.” He took the children to the sitting-room.

“Adeline has such a tormenting spirit,” said Alayne to Nicholas.

“She inherited it from Mamma,” he answered complacently. “Mamma always enjoyed the discomfiture of weaker natures.”

Alayne thought—“Smug old man! Everything the family does is right. I feel half suffocated by them all to-night.” She passed her hand across her forehead.

“Headache, my dear?” enquired Nicholas solicitously. “No wonder. This weather is appalling.”

Renny returned with Adeline clinging to his arm. He had overheard his uncle’s words and he too gave Alayne a sympathetic look. He said:

“I quite agree. For my part I’ve never been so affected by weather. I don’t know what is the matter with me.” He sat down, rested an elbow on a knee and his head on his hand.

If the cast-iron stove in the hall had come into the room and announced that the weather was affecting it, Nicholas and Alayne could scarcely have been more surprised. Alayne asked:

“When did you begin to feel like this? Does your head ache? Do you think you have a temperature?”

“I just feel seedy. A sort of lassitude.” The word, on his lips, was terrible.

Alayne sprang up, came to him and put her hand on his forehead.

Nicholas remarked—“You ate a hearty lunch.”

“Yes. I did.”

“When did you have tea?” asked Alayne.

“I had none.”

“Would you like some now?”

“No, thanks. I believe I’ll have a whiskey and soda.”

“Have you got a chill?” asked Nicholas.

“No. There’s not much wrong with me. I guess I need a change. I’ve thought so for some time. Do you know”—he turned to Alayne with an ingratiating smile—“I have it in my mind to go to Ireland.”

“To Ireland!” she repeated, on a suddenly suspicious note. “But why?”

He tightened his arm about her. “Well, for one thing, the climate agrees with me, and for another I promised dear old Dermot Court, in 1919, that I’d go back to see him before he died. I’ve just heard from him and he wants me, most particularly, to go over soon.” His eyes had a deep light of sincerity in them. His mouth took on the lines of classic truth.

Nicholas made deep unintelligible noises inside himself. He made as though to hand the cablegrams to Alayne, then changed his mind and stuffed them into his pocket. After all, they weren’t his to show, and if Renny chose to approach the matter from a sentimental angle, let him.

“Is Daddy ill?” asked Adeline.

“Ask him,” answered Nicholas. “I’m inclined to think it’s a kind of horse fever.”

“Did he catch it in the stables?”

“Partly. And partly inherited it. It’s incurable but not fatal. Except to the family of the afflicted one.”

“Now you’re talking rubbish,” Adeline said.

Alayne firmly detached herself from Renny.

“Really,” she said. “I wish you would tell me what all this is about.”

Renny answered. “It’s quite true that I need a change. It’s quite true that I promised Dermot Court I would go back to Ireland to see him. It is also true that there is a horse for sale who has got it in him to win the Grand National.”

The sympathy that had softened her features fled, leaving them sharpened, her eyes intense.

“I do wish,” she said, “that you would be candid.”

“I am candid.”

“You made me believe that you were not well, when all that was wrong was your craving to see this horse. Uncle Nicholas, do help me persuade him not to do this! It’s insane. How much do they ask you to pay for the horse?”

“Only five hundred guineas,” he answered.

“Five hundred guineas!” Angry colour flooded her face and she added bitterly—“I have seen you at your wit’s end for five hundred dollars.”

“I know,” he answered quietly. “But things are better now and I count myself fortunate that I can spare the money to buy this horse. Now listen, Alayne, let me read these cables to you. When you hear them you’ll understand——”

“I’ll not listen to them,” she retorted. “I know only too well what they contain. If you go to Ireland and see this horse, you will buy it. It’s as certain as that I am standing here. You will spend any amount of money in having it trained. But it won’t win the race. It will break its leg or its neck or some woman will kill it—like that other one was killed!”

He looked at her, speechless, too astonished for words. Then he said, his lip trembling a little:

“That was unkind of you, Alayne.”

She turned away and went to the window. There was blackness outside, and the sound of rain. Wragge, the houseman, came in and put coals on the fire. He went about drawing curtains. She moved from the window and went to the mantelpiece and laid her hands on it.

When Wragge had gone, Renny said—“Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do. The family is coming to dinner on Sunday. This is Friday. We’ll talk the thing over and, if the majority is set against it, I’ll give up the idea. But I warn you I shall be throwing away one of the best chances of my life.”

Already Nicholas was beginning to weaken. He said:

“By gad, I never knew Dermot to back a horse that was not a sound one! The only time Ernest ever won a pot of money at the races was on a tip he got from Dermot. Does Ernest know about this horse?”

Affection for his uncles shone in Renny’s eyes. He felt that they would be on his side. Pheasant already was. Piers could be won over. Meg was easily caught up by his enthusiasms. That left just Maurice and Aunt Harriet, and he anticipated little opposition from them.

“I don’t want any family conclave about the matter,” said Alayne. “If you’ve made up your mind to go, go.”

“I have not made up my mind and I want to hear what the family thinks about it.”

With her back still toward him she said:

“All the family knows that when your mind is made up to buy a horse nothing will stop you. Adeline, run off to the other children.”

Adeline spoke breathlessly. “Daddy, if you go to Ireland, may I go with you?”

“I’m not at all sure if I’m going,” he returned.

“Adeline, I asked you to leave the room.”

“I think I might be answered that one little question.”

“Really, you are ridiculous.”

“Why?”

“To speak of an ocean voyage as a little thing.”

“I didn’t.”

“Will you leave the room?” There was such tension in Alayne’s voice that both men were startled. When the child had gone, Nicholas rumbled:

“End of a long winter. Hard on nerves.”

Alayne thought—“I cannot have a few words with my husband in private. And I’m losing all my self-restraint. But it’s no wonder. Adeline is exactly like them. She’s unbearable. That look she gave Renny before she left the room ...”

“I’m willing to bet,” said Renny, “that Uncle Ernest and Aunt Harriet will say I ought at least to see the horse—to say nothing of keeping my promise to Dermot Court. I’ll say nothing more about my need of a change of air. I’ve survived a good many winters and I dare say I shall survive this.”

Alayne laid her forehead against the mantelpiece and began to laugh. Nicholas joined in.

“You think,” said Renny, “that because I look as hard as nails I have no feeling. Well, perhaps I shall surprise you some day.”

Alayne turned and faced him.

“How can you say such things!”

“I think I’m justified.”

“Nonsense!” said Nicholas. “Alayne and I are merely envious of your health.”

Wragge sounded the gong in the hall. The dogs, once more established about the stove, rose to their feet as one and stretched. The noise of the gong had hurt Biddy’s head. She raised her high soprano in a howl. The bob tailed sheep-dog joined in, his voice seeming to emanate through all his shaggy coat. But the bulldog, his under jaw projecting in an expression of intensely masculine scorn, led the way toward the dining-room. Alayne forestalled them.

“No,” she said firmly, “I can’t have you in here. Your coats smell in this weather. Please don’t let them in, Wragge.”

She said nothing, however, against Renny’s sixteen-year-old blind spaniel Merlin, already lying by the side of his chair.

Adeline was the only one of the children who shared the evening meal with the grown-ups. She sat very upright, facing Nicholas, whose gaze frequently was raised from her small face, surrounded by its mass of dark-red hair, to the portrait of his mother behind her. Her eyes flew from the face of one parent to the other, her partisanship of Renny showing in the smile that curved her lips when she looked at him, and the wary look that came into her eyes when they met her mother’s.

Alayne was determined there should be no discussion at the table. Meal-time at Jalna had too often been the field of heated argument, and she was striving to uproot this long-established habit while her children were still young. Renny knew what was in her mind and somewhat taciturnly applied himself to his broiled chop. He gave it the extra dose of Worcester sauce which Adeline had learned to associate with the mood he was now in. She stretched out a leg that was growing long, and gave him a little poke with her toe beneath the table. He flashed her a look of understanding, and, as their eyes met, an electric vibration caused Alayne to give them both a cool, detached glance. But she began to talk cheerfully of an article she had been reading, in an American weekly, on the situation in Europe. Nicholas was interested and they bore the conversation between them. Wragge waited solicitously on Renny as he always did in crises such as this.

The telephone rang in the next room. Wragge hurried to answer it. It was Aunt Harriet wanting to speak to Renny. He rose with alacrity as though a telephone talk in the middle of this meal were a relief. Those sitting at table could hear all he said.

“Oh, yes, Aunt Harriet,” he was saying, “I’ll have the roof attended to at once. A pity it leaked on your best bed. Yes, I’ll come round and look at it myself. I want to talk to you in any case. I want Uncle Ernie’s opinion—and of course yours too—about two cables I’ve had from the Old Country. One is from Wakefield. He’s getting on fine. He’s been to Ireland to see a most extraordinary horse. It has a great future ahead of it.... Yes, it is interesting, isn’t it? Our cousin, Dermot Court,—Uncle Ernie must have spoken of him to you,—is frightfully keen about this horse. He urges me to let nothing stand in the way of my seeing it—not even the ocean! Ha, ha! But I don’t expect to go across—even though it’s the chance of a lifetime.... Would you? But of course you’re one woman in a thousand. Ha! ha! Yes, I know you would. What do you suppose young Adeline wants? She wants to go with me, if I go! But there’s not much likelihood of a change for yours truly.... Yes, I still have a bit of a cough. But it’s nothing. I’m as strong as a horse. It’s Alayne who needs a change. I wish she would go South. You and she might go together, eh? ... Yes, it would be a wonderful thing for Adeline to go to the Old Country. She’s old enough now to appreciate it. Oh, well, perhaps the day will come. It’s lucky you rang up. I was wanting to speak to you. Alayne and I are having a little theatre party to-morrow night and we want you and Uncle Ernie to join us. Candida. Is that highbrow enough for you? You’re a New England intellectual, aren’t you? Or once were.... No longer one, eh! No wonder, living among us! Well, whatever you are, you suit me!” There was a long silence while Aunt Harriet apparently relieved herself of much pent-up desire for conversation. Occasionally he made small noises of appreciation or gave a chuckle. Wragge had removed his plate from the table to keep his chop warm. Nicholas had made no attempt to eat but had sat with his hand curved about his ear determined to hear what was being said in the next room. Drops of moisture gleamed on the ends of his grey moustache and the shapely old hand lying on the tablecloth trembled a little.

Leaning toward Alayne, he asked—“Are they coming? Is he going?”

“I have no idea,” she returned remotely.

Adeline answered—“Yes, they’re coming, Uncle Nick, and I think—I’m pretty sure—he’s going.”

“You have no reason for making either statement,” said Alayne.

“I guessed by the way he spoke.”

“Please don’t speak of your father as he.”

Adeline looked daring. “Renny, then.”

“Now you’re being just silly.”

Renny turned to the room.

Nicholas demanded, without waiting to swallow a mouthful of peas, “Are they pleased about the play? And what do they think of your going to Ireland?”

“Aunt Harriet is delighted to go to Candida. As to the other, well—she’s not unsympathetic. Rags, my dinner!”

Wragge placed it before him as though he were an invalid. Renny shot a quick glance at Alayne. “Sorry to have interrupted the meal,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter.” She was thinking, with a good deal of irritation, of her Aunt Harriet. Just a few years ago Harriet Archer had been a typical New England spinster of the intellectual sort, elderly, well-turned-out, with an admirable, though not stiff-necked, loyalty to her traditions. Her investments had gone wrong. She had lost almost all she had. Renny Whiteoak had invited her to spend the rest of her life at Jalna. There she had met Ernest, and he and she had found each other so congenial that they had made a match of it.

This was all very well and Alayne had been happy for her aunt’s sake. What she could not understand was her aunt’s desire to remodel herself on the Whiteoak design. Aunt Harriet, of course, denied that she had. She simply said that her new environment had brought out a latent something in herself. The very traits in the family which most irritated Alayne were interesting or amusing or even admirable to her aunt. To Alayne there was something affected in this. She did not believe in Aunt Harriet’s sincerity. She thought Harriet was posing and she hated poseurs.

So their relations, though affectionate, were not so sympathetic as they once had been. Alayne was quite prepared to find her aunt favourable to Renny’s scheme and surprised at her own opposition to it.

The theatre party was to have dinner in town. Uncle Ernest and Aunt Harriet appeared at Jalna promptly at five o’clock. Ernest was always glad of the opportunity to wear evening clothes, and he wore them extremely well. A man of sixty might well have been proud of the slender, upright figure of him, at eighty-five. His wife, many years younger, was a pretty sight in a black velvet evening-gown, with jade necklace and earrings which had once graced the person of old Adeline Whiteoak. Her silvery hair was charmingly curled and her neat features and clear blue eyes expressed almost girlish anticipation.

Nicholas, Renny, and Alayne rose to greet them. There was a pleasant flutter of excitement in the room. Alayne put aside her misgivings and prepared to enjoy the evening.

“Well, my boy,” Ernest said to his brother, “and how are you? You’re looking very well, considering the weather.”

Nicholas drew him aside. He said—“Alayne’s greatly upset over the Irish question. If he takes that trip and buys that horse and loses that race, she’ll be a sick woman, and no wonder!”

Ernest smiled tolerantly. “He’ll not lose the race. I have implicit trust in Dermot Court. I shall never forget the tip he gave me. I should not hesitate, if I were a few years younger, to buy the horse myself.”

Nicholas was impressed. “Well, well, you’d better say something like that to Alayne.”

Harriet took Renny’s hands in hers and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the chin.

“All our good wishes go with you, my dear!” she exclaimed.

Renny was embarrassed. “Nothing is settled yet.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” put in Alayne, with a sharp tremor in her voice. “Everything is settled. Everything was settled from the moment the cables came. Don’t let any qualms of mine cramp your style!”

“Alayne, darling,” said Harriet earnestly, “you must not feel like that.”

“I should try to feel that all is for the best, eh?”

Harriet coloured slightly. “I never could stand up against sarcasm. But I do feel that, from what I know of Dermot Court, we owe it to ourselves to take his advice.”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed her husband, “it’s the chance of a lifetime.”

“Hmph, well,” mumbled Nicholas, “it’s a big step to take. Quite a sum involved. Egad, I’ve lost my opera-glasses! Wherever can they be?”

They were found for him. Coats and wraps were put on. The car was waiting and Rags ushered them out to it with his grandest air. A bright new moon was just hesitating between rising and setting above the tree-tops. Harriet saw to it that she was beside Renny, asking him innumerable questions about horse-racing, strengthening him, as Alayne thought, in his wrongheadedness. But she had given up struggling against it. If he had made up his mind to do this thing, let him do it. There must not be coldness between them. Better anything than that. A mistiness dimmed her eyes. As he was helping her from the car she said softly:

“If your heart is set on this trip I want you to go.”

He gave a delighted smile. He drew her for a second against his side.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“And you will come with me? You must!”

“At this time of year! Nothing would induce me. You know what a bad sailor I am.”

Ernest was saying—“There’s a new feeling in the air to-night. Spring is certainly on the way. I hear an orchestra playing. I do enjoy a dinner party in a hotel, don’t you, Harriet?”

“There’s nothing I like better,” she said stoutly.

Nicholas exclaimed, “My opera-glasses! Egad, I’ve left ’em in the car!”

Renny tore after the car, bareheaded. Looking after him, Alayne thought:

“The darling!”