08 Whiteoaks of Jalna Read online

  II

  THE FAMILY

  THERE was a special dish for supper that night. Finch was aware of that, before ever he sniffed it, from the ingenuous air of festivity brightening the faces of those about the board. Doubtless Aunt Augusta had ordered it because she knew that Renny would be famished after his long day and strenuous exertion in the horse show. Finch was supposed to have a hot dinner at school, but he preferred to husband his allowance by buying a light lunch, and so having a respectable sum left for cigarettes, chocolates, and other luxuries. Consequently he had always an enormous appetite by night, for he did not get home in time for tea. The amount of food that disappeared into his bony person without putting any flesh upon it was a source of wonderment and even anxiety to his aunt.

  The special dish was a cheese souffle. Mrs. Wragge was particularly good at a cheese souffle. Finch’s eyes were riveted on it from the moment when he slid into his chair, between his brother Piers and little Wakefield. There was not very much of it left, and it had been out of the oven long enough to have lost its first palate-pleasing fluffiness, but he longed passionately to be allowed to scrape the last cheesy crust from the bottom of the silver dish.

  Renny, after helping him to a thick slab of cold beef, fixed him with his penetrating gaze and, indicating the souffle by a nod, asked: “Want the dish to scrape?”

  Finch, reddening, muttered an assent.

  Renny, however, looked across the table at Lady Buckley. “Some more of the souffle, Aunt Augusta?”

  “No, thank you, my dear. I really should not have eaten as much as I have. Cheese at night is not very digestible, though cooked in this way it is not so harmful, and I thought that you, after your—”

  The master of Jalna listened deferentially, his eyes on her face, then he turned to his uncle Nicholas. “Another helping, Uncle Nick?”

  Nicholas wiped his drooping grey moustache with an immense table napkin and rumbled: “Not another bite of anything. But I should like one more cup of tea, Augusta, if you’ve any left.”

  “Uncle Ernest, more of this cheese stuff?”

  Ernest waved the offer aside with a delicate white hand. “My dear boy, no! I should not have touched it at all. I wish we might not have these hot dishes for supper. I am tempted, and then I suffer.”

  “Piers?”

  Piers had already had two helpings, but, with a teasing look out of the corner of his eye at Finch’s long face, he said: “I shouldn’t mind another spoonful.”

  “Me, too!” exclaimed Wakefield. “I’d like some more.”

  “I forbid it,” said Augusta, pouring her third cup of tea. “You are too young a boy to eat a cheese dish at night.”

  “And you,” put in her brother Nicholas, “are too old a woman to swill down a potful of tea at this hour,”

  The air of dignified offence, always worn by Lady Buckley, deepened. Her voice, too, became throaty. “I wish, Nicholas, that you would try not to be coarse. I know it is difficult, but you should consider what a bad example it is for the boys.”

  Her brother Ernest, desirous of preventing a squabble, remarked: “You have such excellent nerves, Augusta, that I am sure you can drink unlimited tea. I only wish that my digestion—my nerves—”

  Augusta interrupted him angrily: “Whoever heard of tea hurting anyone? It’s coffee that is dangerous. The Whiteoaks, and the Courts, too, were all indefatigable drinkers of tea.”

  “And rum,” added Nicholas. “What do you say, Renny, to having a bottle of something really decent to celebrate the prowess of our nags?”

  “Good head!” agreed Renny, spreading a layer of mustard over his cold beef.

  Piers in the meantime had helped himself to more of the souffle, and then pushed the dish to Finch, who, gripping it in one bony hand, began savagely to scrape it clean with a massive silver spoon.

  Wakefield regarded this performance with the patronizing wonder of one who had shared the dish in its first hot puffiness. “There’s a little stuck on there, just by the handle,” he said, helpfully pointing to the morsel.

  Finch desisted from his scraping long enough to hit him a smart blow on the knuckles with the spoon.

  Wake loudly cried, “Ouch!” and was ordered from the table by Lady Buckley.

  Renny shot a look of annoyance down the table. “Please don’t send the kid away, Aunt. He couldn’t help squeaking when he was hit. If anyone is sent away it will be Finch,”

  “Wakefield was not hurt,” said Augusta, with dignity. “He screams if Finch looks in his direction.”

  “Then let Finch look in another direction.” And Renny returned to the consumption of his beef with an air of making up for lost time, as well as putting an end to the matter.

  Nicholas leaned toward him. “What do you say, Renny, to a bottle?” he rumbled.

  Ernest checked him, tapping his arm with a nervous white hand. “Remember, Nick, that Renny is in the high jumping tomorrow. He needs a cool head.”

  Renny began to laugh uproariously. “By Judas, that’s good! Aunt Augusta, do you hear that? Uncle Ernie is afraid that a glass of spirits will make my head hot, and look at the colour it is already!” He rose energetically from the table.

  “Can’t Rags get it?” asked Nicholas.

  “Of course. And swipe a bottle for himself… The key of the wine cellar, please, Aunt.” He went around to Augusta and looked down on her Queen Alexandra fringe and long, rather mottled nose. She took a bunch of keys from a chatelaine she wore at her waist.

  Wakefield bounced on his chair. “Let me go, please do, Renny! I love the cellar and I hardly ever get there. May I go to the cellar for a treat, Renny?”

  Renny, key in hand, turned to Nicholas. “What do you suggest, Uncle Nick?”

  Nicholas rumbled: “A couple of quarts of Chianti.”

  “Oh, come now, I’m in earnest.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Besides the keg of ale and the native wine, there’s nothing but a few bottles of Burke’s Jamaica and some sloe gin— and Scotch, of course.”

  Nicholas smiled sardonically. “And you call that a wine cellar!”

  “Well,” replied his nephew, testily, “it’s always been called the wine cellar. We can’t stop calling it that, even if there is nothing much in it. Aunt?”

  “I thought,” said Ernest, “that we had half a bottle of French vermouth.”

  “That’s up in my room,” replied Nicholas, curtly. “A little rum and water, with a touch of lemon juice, will suit me, Renny.”

  “Aunt?”

  “A glass of native port, my dear. And I really think Finch should have one, too, studying as he does.”

  Poor Finch did not wait for the ironic laughter which followed this appeal in his behalf to slump still lower in his chair, to crimson in deprecatory embarrassment. Yet, even as he did so, he felt a warm rush of love toward Augusta. She was not against him, anyhow.

  Renny moved in the direction of the hall, and, in passing Wakefield’s chair, he caught the expectant little boy by the arm and took him along, as though he had been a parcel.

  They descended the stairs to the basement, where their nostrils were assailed by the mysterious smells that Wake loved. Here was the great kitchen with its manifold odours, the coal cellar, the fruit cellar, the wine cellar, the storeroom, and the three tiny bedrooms for servants, of which only one was now occupied. Here the Wragges lived their strange subterranean life of bickerings, of mutual suspicion, of occasional amorousness, such as Wake had once surprised them in.

  As soon as their steps were heard by Rags he appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, the stub of a cigarette glowing against his pallid little face.

  “Yes, Mr. W’iteoak?” he inquired. “Were you wanting me, sir?”

  “Fetch a candle, Rags. I’m after a bottle.”

  The light of sympathy now brightened the cockney’s face. “Right you are, sir,” he said, and, dropping the cigarette stub to the brick floor, he turned back to the kitchen, re
appearing in a moment with a candle in a battered brass candlestick. They had a glimpse of Mrs. Wragge, rising from the table at which she had been eating, and assuming an attitude of deference, her face as much like the rising sun as her lord’s resembled the waning moon.

  With Rags leading the way, the three passed in Indian file along a narrow passage that ended in a heavy padlocked door. Here Renny inserted the key, and the door, dragging stubbornly, was pushed open. Mingled with the penetrating chill were the odours of ale and spirits. The candlelight discovered what was apparently a well-stocked though untidily arranged cellar, but in truth the bottles and containers were mostly empties, which, in accordance with the negligence characteristic of the family, had never been returned.

  Renny’s red-brown eyes roved speculatively over the shelves. A cobweb, hanging from a rafter, had been swept off by his head, and was now draped over one ear. He whistled through his teeth with the sweet concentration of an ostler grooming a horse.

  Wakefield, meanwhile, had espied an old wicker fishing basket pushed under the lowest of a tier of shelves. He dragged it forth and saw in the candlelight three dark squatty bottles, cobwebbed, leaning toward each other as though in elfin conspiracy. A liquid clucking sound came from them as they were disturbed, and, as he cautiously drew one out, a lambent bronze light played beneath its dusty surface.

  “Oh, I say Renny,” he exclaimed, in awed tones, “here is something stimulative!”

  Renny had made his selection, but he now set the bottles on a shelf and, snatching Wakefield’s treasure from him, restored it to its fellows and pushed the basket hastily out of sight.

  “If you had dropped that, you young devil’s spawn,” he observed, “I should have put an end to you on the spot,” And he added, grinning at his henchman: “A man must have a secret in his life, eh, Rags?”

  A secret in his life! The little boy was filled with ecstasy at the thought. What magic potion had his splendid brother hidden in this subterranean place? What stealthy visits did he perhaps make here, what charms, what wizardry? Oh, if Renny would only make a partner of him in his secret doings!

  He was told to hold the candle while Rags locked the door. He saw Renny’s eyes fixed shrewdly on the servant’s greyish-white hands. He saw the eyes narrow; then Renny transferred one of the two bottles he carried to his armpit and, with the hand thus freed, gave a sharp tug to the padlock. It slipped off into his palm, “Try again, Rags,” he said, and his carven face with the long Court nose looked uncannily like his grandmother’s.

  Rags remarked, this time successfully securing the door: “I never did know ’ow to manage them blinkin’ padlocks, sir.” He was unabashed.

  “Not with me looking on, Rags. There, take the candle from the youngster. He’s got it tilted sidewise.”

  “Yes, sir. But just before I do, let me remove that cobweb from your ’ead, sir,”

  Renny bent his head and Rags unctuously lifted off the cobweb.

  They formed an odd procession, with something of the quality of a strange religious rite. Rags, in advance, might have been some elfish acolyte, the full light from the candle showing sharply the bony structure of his face, the shallow nose, the jutting chin, the impudent line of the jaw; Wakefield, in his wistful absorption, a young altar boy; Renny, carrying a bottle in either hand, the officiating priest. The narrow brick passage along which they passed had a chill that might well have been associated with the crypt of some ruined cathedral, and from the kitchen, where Mrs. Wragge was, as usual, burning something on the range, drifted a thin blue veil of smoke, like incense.

  At the foot of the stairway Rags stood aside, holding the candle aloft to light the others as they mounted upward. “A pleasant evening to you, sir,” he said, “and good luck to the Jalna ’orses. We’ll be drinkin’ yer ’ealth down ’ere—in tea, sir,”

  “Keep it weak, Rags. Better for your nerves,” adjured his master, callously, as he pushed the door at the top of the stairs shut with his heavy boot.

  In the dining room Nicholas sat waiting, his large shapely hand, adorned by a heavy seal ring, stroking his drooping moustache, an expression of humorous satisfaction in his eyes. Ernest’s expression was already one of regret, for he knew that he would drink and he knew only too well that his digestion would suffer for it. Still, a kind of tonic gaiety was in the air. He could not help smiling rather whimsically at the faces about him, and at the foreshadowing of his own lapse!

  Augusta sat admirably upright, her cameo brooch and long gold chain rising and falling on her breast, which was neither large nor small, but corseted in perfect accordance with the model of her young-womanhood. She drew back her head and regarded her nephew expectantly. He dusted the bottle of port and set it down before her.

  “There, Aunt. The corkscrew, Wake… Uncle Nick— Burke’s Jamaica… That rascal, Rags, was for leaving the cellar, door unlocked, so he could sneak in and swipe something for himself. But I caught him, thank goodness,”

  “He’s an incorrigible rascal,” said Nicholas.

  “He deserves to be flayed alive,” agreed Ernest, pleasantly.

  “I’d have done the same myself,” laughed Piers.

  Pheasant had come downstairs and had drawn up a chair beside his. She was eating a bowl of bread and milk, and the sight of her brown cropped head and childish nape bent over it brought an amused yet tender smile to Piers’s lips. He stroked her neck with his strong sunburnt hand, and said: “How you can like that pap beats me.”

  “I was brought up on it. Besides, it’s frightfully good for Mooey.”

  “Put a little rum in it,” advised Nicholas. “You need something to warm you up after that long cold drive. Incidentally it would be good for young Maurice, too. Help to make a Whiteoak and a gentleman of him.”

  “He’s both, already,” said Pheasant, sturdily, “and I’ll not encourage my offspring in a taste for spirits even at second hand.”

  Augusta looked upon the redness of the wine in her glass and remarked: “Our old nurse used to put a little wine in the bottom of our shoes when we went out in the wet to prevent our taking a chill. We did not know what it was to wear rubbers, and we never had colds.”

  “You forget, Augusta,” interposed her brother Ernest. “I had severe colds.”

  Nicholas said: “That was because you were always kept in when it was wet.”

  “I can remember,” went on Ernest, “looking down from the nursery window when I had one of my colds and watching you two—and, of course, Philip—romping on the lawn with the little pet lamb we had. By and by Papa would come along. He would pick up little Phil and ride him on his shoulder. I can see him. He looked so magnificent to me. I can remember how the wood pigeons were always calling then… I used to shout to him and throw kisses down from my window.”

  He had had only one glass of rum and water, but it took only that to imbue his gentle spirit with sentimental melancholy.

  “Yes, I remember,” said his brother. “Poor little beggar that you were, you would have a red flannel bandage about your throat, and, likely as not, your ears stuffed with cotton wool, smelling of camphor.”

  “Good Lord!” said Renny. “If only the wood pigeons were thick as that now! What shooting! Eh, Floss? Eh, Merlin?”

  His tone, the word “shooting,” which they perfectly understood, aroused the two clumber spaniels sleeping on either side of his chair. They sprang up with joyous barks.

  Above the barking of the dogs Finch raised his voice: “I think I might have something. A fellow going on nineteen can stand a drink or two, I guess.”

  Renny gently cuffed his dogs. “Down, Merlin. Down, Floss, old pet. What’s that Finch?”

  There was silence now and Finch’s voice boomed loudly but with an ominous break in it. “I say I’m eighteen and I don’t see why I can’t have a drink.”

  Piers said: “Give him a sip of your wine, quickly, Aunt Augusta—he’s going to cry.”

  Finch with difficulty controlled his temper, gazing do
wn at the remnant of apple tart that had been saved for him from the family dinner.

  “Give the boy a glass of rum,” said Nicholas. “Do him good.”

  Renny put out a long arm and pushed the decanter, which he had filled with port, across to Finch. “Help yourself, Finch,” he said, with a suddenly protective air.

  Finch selected a glass and took up the decanter. He was afraid that his hand was going to shake. He set his teeth. He would not let it shake… Not with the eyes of all the family on him. All the family hoping he would do some fool nervous thing… Piers’s white teeth showing already between his lips, all too ready for a jeering laugh… He would not let it shake. Oh, God, he was saying to himself, keep my hand from shaking! He knew that he no longer believed in or feared God, yet the less he believed in and feared Him, the more often he flung out these silent invocations for His support.

  His hand was steady enough until the glass was almost filled; then it began to shake. He barely escaped slopping the wine on to the table. By the time he had set the decanter down he was trembling from head to foot. He quickly tweaked his cuff over his thin wrist and threw a furtive glance at the faces of those about him.

  Everyone at the table had begun to talk at once. Not noisily or confusedly, but pleasantly in accord. Smiles flickered over their faces as visible signs of the geniality emanating from within. Aunt Augusta began to tell of the old days at Jalna, when Papa and Mama had entertained in lavish fashion, had even entertained a Governor General and his lady. Then, of course, she drifted to social life in England in the eighties and nineties, when, she now liked to imagine, she had held an important social position. Nicholas, too, talked of London, but of a different London, where he and his wife, Millicent, had enjoyed themselves in the racing set till his funds gave out, and she left him, and he was obliged to return to the shelter of Jalna.

  After two glasses, the mind of Ernest was centred on one thing only—what he should wear to the horse show the next day. He had a new fall overcoat of expensive English melton, made by the best tailor in town, such an extravagance as he had not indulged in for years. It had been bought with an eye on the horse show, yet the weather was so cold and wet that Ernest, with his dread of afflicting his delicate chest, was in a quandary. The tailor had told him that he had never seen a man of his age with such a slender, upright figure. Not much like poor old Nick, Ernest thought, who had grown so heavy and who generally had to lean on a stick because of his gouty knee… Yet what about the delicate chest? A severe cold at that time of year might lead to anything. “Now, Renny,” he was saying, “what about the atmosphere in the Coliseum? Was there a noticeable chill there today?”