Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
They were well past seventy and the shadow of their fierce old mother still dominated them. Snowflakes flattened themselves against the windowpane, clung there. Other snowflakes fell on these and clung. They were shutting the world out, wreathing themselves like a white muffler about the house. A quantity of drifted snow slid from the roof and was deposited on the windowsill, with a soft thud. The shadow of the old mother was shut in the room with them.
A live coal rolled from the fire, across the hearth and on to the rug. Ernest kicked at it, then snatched up the tongs and captured it. The little dog sprang out of the way in terror, then walked with an insulted air to Ernest’s bed and leaped
stiffly to the counterpane. Sasha, however, with only a sidelong glance at the coal, rose and stood with her forepaws against Ernest’s chair. She thrust her claws into the velour and withdrew them with a tearing sound. Ernest replaced the tongs and tickled the back of her neck.
“A lot she cares for you,” said Nicholas. “She only tolerates you because you’re her slave. She’d just as lief I’d scratch her head.”
Ernest murmured—“Sasha, Sasha,” and felt familiarly for the most sensitive nerves in her neck.
“You’ll get fur on your fingers. Have this piece of plum cake?”
“She’s not shedding her coat.” He rubbed his fingertips together. “Not a hair. No, no, have the plum cake yourself, I’m better without it.” But he glanced longingly at the cake.
While Nicholas had inherited some physical resemblance to their mother, something of her rugged resolve and tenacity, Ernest had inherited only her love of food, without the grand digestion that had accompanied it. His digestion was weak, but his eyes lingered on the last piece of cake.
There had been five pieces of cake on the tea tray, two small pieces of Swiss roll, two small currant cakes, and one largish slice of the plum cake. Why just one piece of that, Ernest wondered. It was a strange thing for Wragge to have done. It was almost as if he had hoped to cast a shadow, be it ever so slight, on their tea hour. There was something very mischievous, even sinister, about Wragge... One piece of plum cake for two elderly men... very strange indeed.
“I don’t want it,” Nicholas answered, wiping his moustache, and returning his cup to the tray. “Bad for gout. You eat it. It’s supposed to be very nourishing.”
“Rather odd”—Ernest tried to keep the strain out of his voice—“that he should have brought only that one piece.”
Nicholas glowered at the plum cake. “Ask him what he meant by it. Anyhow, I don’t want it.”
“Will you eat half of it?”
“Yes, I’ll take half. Perhaps Wragge thought half was enough for each of us. We’re not getting much exercise.”
“In that case he should have cut it into two pieces. It might easily have been cut into two.”
Nicholas chuckled. “You’re a funny old bird, Ernie.”
Ernest smiled, not ill-pleased, and cut the cake in two portions. He crumbled his bit into morsels, but Nicholas poked the greater part of his into his mouth. Through it he mumbled:
“That cat’s going to tear your chair to ribbons. Only listen to her clawing it.”
Ernest put an admonishing finger under her chin.
“Naughty, naughty,” he said, and her eyes glowed up at him above her three-cornered grin.
“Silly, flibbertigibbet creature,” growled Nicholas.
Ernest could scarcely believe his ears. Had Nick really uttered the word or had he dreamed that he heard it from Nick’s lips? Were they both dreaming? That word—their mother’s, above all words—flibbertigibbet! Was Nick getting
queer?
Or did he delight in hurting him by conjuring up that loved presence (so recently swept away) by feeble imitations of her habits and her words? And not her nicest habits or her prettiest words either... Well, it was in very bad taste, that was the least he could say for it.
Nicholas was looking down his long nose while he scraped the sugar from the bottom of his teacup that had all the pattern of gilt scrolls and red roses inside and was just plain
white outside. He tried to look unselfconscious, but he did not quite succeed. There was an odd quirk to his grey moustache. Ernest made up his mind to ignore the word, to go on as though nothing had happened. He knew that was the best thing to do with young children when they had picked up a stray oath, just to pay no heed to the unseemly word and the child would, in all probability, soon forget it. It would punish Nick, too, for he always liked what he did to be noticed, commented upon. Instead of rebuking him, he would treat him as a naughty child. With sudden misgiving he wondered whether Nicholas might truly be getting childish—his second childhood—but he quickly put that idea away from him. One glance into those deep, sardonic eyes was enough to dispel it. No, Nick was sound enough except for his gout. The thing to do was to ignore the word entirely. He said testily:
“I wish you would order Nip off my bed. He’s right on my new eiderdown. He may have fleas.”
“He’ll not have a puppy on it, at any rate.”
Ernest raised his voice. “I don’t like it. Please speak to him.”
Nip’s master rumbled—“Catch a spider, Nip!”
The terrier raised his head and peered sceptically through his fringe of hair, but he did not budge.
“No use,” said Nicholas.
“Try him with cats.”
“Cats!” shouted Nicholas. “
Stable cats.”
Nip endured Sasha, but stable cats he would not endure. Galvanised into a hairy fury, he hurled himself from the bed to the window seat. He cocked his head, trying to see through the snow mounded against the pane. He saw, or thought he saw, an inky form slink with lowered belly across the white expanse of the yard. He raged against the window
glass. Barks failed him. He made strangling sounds. He hurled himself from the window seat and raged against the door. He uttered ear-splitting screams. Nicholas heaved himself out of his chair and limped hurriedly across the room. Nip held his breath while the door was being opened, then, as its edge approached him, he caught it in his teeth and bit it savagely. He gnawed it, trying to worry it off its hinges, punishing it for hindering him. Then, spitting a splinter from his mouth, he flew along the passage and tumbled down the stairs.
The brothers heard the front door bang. Somebody had let him out. They listened attentively, wondering whether it had been someone just passing through the hall or someone coming in from outside. On these long mid-winter afternoons, when it grew dark so early, the comings and goings of the younger members of the family were of intense interest.
They heard strong steps mounting the stairs, then Nicholas, standing in the doorway, regarded with approval the advancing figure. It was the eldest of their five nephews—Renny Whiteoak—and he arrived in an envelope of air so icy that Ernest, with a gesture of self-preservation, put up his hand.
“Do you mind, Renny, not coming too close to me. One of my colds threatening.”
“Well, well, that’s too bad.” He crossed the room, leaving two heel prints of snow on the rug, and stood on the opposite side of the fireplace. He looked down at his uncle with sympathy. “How do you think you got it?”
“I didn’t say I’d got it,” Ernest spoke irritably. “I said it was threatening.”
“Oh! What you need then is a good dose of rum and hot water.”
“That’s what I tell him,” agreed Nicholas, letting himself down into his chair which creaked under him, “but he always fusses more about his digestion than he does about his health.”
“My digestion
is
my health,” retorted his brother. “But let us talk of something else. It was you who let Nip out, was it?”
“Yes. You should have seen him tear through a snowdrift—after one of the stable cats, screaming like a maniac too.”
Nicholas smiled complacently. “Yes. And Ernest was just saying that he’s getting tubby.”
Ernest asked: “Have you had your tea, Renny?”
He nodded. “In my office. There was a new foal coming and I didn’t want to leave.”
“I remember. Cora was going to have one. How did she get along?”
“Splendidly. She has never done so well before. She’s frightfully proud of herself. When I went to her the last time she tried to tell me all about it. She stopped nuzzling the foal and rolled her eyes at me and went—‘ho-ho-ho-ho-ho,’ like that.” Renny gave a not unsuccessful imitation of a loved mare’s greeting to her master after a triumphant delivery.
The uncles gazed up at him, across the thirty-five years that separated them from him, with the tolerant amusement, the puzzled admiration, he always inspired in them. He was so different from what they had been at his age. They had been lovers of fine horseflesh, but not horsey. They had been living in England at that time and had never missed the races; Nicholas had kept a quite “dashing” pair of carriagehorses, had been a bold hand with the reins, had kept a handsome Dalmatian to run beside the glittering enamel of the carriage wheels, but to have spent a winter’s afternoon in a
stable for the consolation of a mare in her labour would have been abhorrent to them. They saw him wiry, in rough tweeds, snow melting on his heavy boots, his knuckles looking chapped, as he spread his hands to the fire, his red hair in a defiant crest above his thin highly coloured face. They saw that face, wary, passionate, kindled by the vitality within, as the flames played over it, intensifying and sharpening it.
“Well, well,” rumbled Nicholas, “that’s good news.”
“Are you sure you won’t have some tea?” asked Ernest.
“No, thanks. Rags brought a plate of buttered toast and a pot of tea strong enough to raise your hair, to my office.”
Ernest thought of the office, in a corner of the stables, its yellow oak desk, where were preserved the pedigrees of horses, overdue bills from the veterinary, newspaper cuttings concerning horse races and shows, and carefully kept accounts of sales. He thought of the bright lithographs of famous horses on the walls, the hard chairs, the bareness, the chill, the unyielding discomfort. He shivered. Yet he knew that Renny had consumed his clammy toast and bitter tea there with the satisfaction with which a plumber might devour his lunch in a flooded kitchen. A queer fellow, but a fine fellow too. Hot-tempered, wilful. “A perfect Court,” as his grandmother had used to say, who herself had been a perfect Court. They had been a family who had glorified their faults under blazing banners of tradition.
Renny sat down and lighted a cigarette. Nicholas took out his pipe. The sound of a piano came hesitatingly from below. Renny turned his head, as though to listen, then he said, with a note of embarrassment in his voice:
“He’s got a birthday coming. Young Finch, I mean.” And he added, looking straight into the fire—“He’ll be twenty-
Nicholas pressed the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with his finger. He made little sucking noises, though it was not yet lighted. Ernest said eagerly:
“Yes, yes—by George, I’d forgotten! How the time goes! Of course, he’ll be twenty-one. Hmph... yes... It seems only the other day when he was a little boy. Not so very long ago since he was born.”
“Born with a caul,” mumbled his brother. “Lucky young devil!”
“That’s only a preventative against drowning,” said Ernest nervously.
“Not a bit of it. It’s luck all round. Good Lord, he’s had luck, hasn’t he?”
Nicholas made no effort to keep the heaviness out of his voice, no pretence of raising his head above the long wave of disappointment that, ever since the reading of his mother’s will, had submerged him at intervals. He had no need to be reminded of the date of Finch’s coming of age. It stood out as the day of sunny fulfilment for the boy, through the darkness of his own eclipse. “He’ll be coming into his money, eh?”
Ernest thought—“It’s up to me to be cheerful about this birthday. We must not seem bitter or grudging. But Nick’s so selfish. He acts just as though he had been perfectly sure of the money when really Mamma was more likely to leave it to me. Or even Renny. I was quite prepared to hear that it would be Renny’s.”
He said—“There must certainly be some sort of celebration. A party—or treat of some kind for Finch.” He still thought of Finch as a schoolboy.
“I should say,” said Nicholas, “that the hundred thousand itself is treat enough.”
Renny broke in, ignoring the last remark. “Yes. That’s what I’ve been thinking, Uncle Ernie. We ought to give him a dinner—just the family, and one or two friends of his. You know—” he knotted his reddish brows in the effort to express the subtle convictions of his mind.
“I know,” interrupted Nicholas, “that Piers had no party when he came of age.”
“He was up North on a canoeing trip at the time.”
“Nor Eden!”
“He’d just been suspended for six weeks from ’Varsity. Likely I’d give him a party! There were great doings when Meggie and I were twenty-one.”
“Meggie was the only daughter, and you were the eldest son and heir to Jalna.”
“Uncle Nick, do you seriously mean that you don’t want any notice taken of the boy’s birthday?”
“N—no. But—why pretend to rejoice over his coming into what all three of us had hopes of inheriting—more or less?”
“Then, I suppose, if I had got Gran’s money, you’d have—”
“No, I shouldn’t. I’d have been comparatively satisfied— if either you or Ernest...”
Ernest spoke, with a tremor of excitement in his voice. “Now, I’m quite with Renny in this. I think we should do something really nice for Finch. We were, all of us, pretty hard on him when we heard that he’d got everything.”
Renny jerked out—“I wasn’t!”
Nicholas muttered—“I don’t remember your congratulating him.”
“I could scarcely do that with the rest of the family on its hindlegs tearing its hair!”
After the impact of his voice—metallic when raised—there was a space of silence through which came hesitatingly from below the sound of the piano. The three were mentally reconstructing the hour when the family on “hindlegs” had created a memorable scene with the poor piano player as its centre.
Darkness had fallen outside. The invisible activities of the snowstorm were still further transforming the landscape, obliterating, softening; producing hive-shaped mounds where shrubs had been; pinnacles where had been posts; decorating with ingenious grotesqueness every projection of the house. So wasteful was the storm of its energy, its material, that, after changing the aspect of a tree by the delicate depositing of flake upon flake on each minute twig, or clinging cone, it would fling the entire erection into glittering particles with one contemptuous blast, then begin again to express the unhampered fantasy of its pattern.