Early in December, Augusta, Lady Buckley, came from England to visit her family. It would probably, unless her mother proposed to live for ever, be the last Christmas the ancient lady would be on earth. At any rate, Augusta said in her letter, it would be the last visit to them in her own lifetime, for she felt herself too old to face the vagaries of ocean travel.
"She has said that on each of her last three visits," observed Nicholas. "She makes as many farewells as Patti. I'll wager she lives to be as old as Mamma."
"Never," interrupted his mother, angrily, "never. I won't have it. She'll never live to see ninety."
"Augusta is a handsome woman," said Ernest. "She has a dignity that is never seen now. I remember her as a dignified little thing when we were in shoulder-knots."
"She always has an offended air," returned Nicholas. "She looks as though something had offended her very deeply in early infancy and she had never got over it."
Mrs. Whiteoak cackled. "That's true, Nick. It was on the voyage from India, when I was so sick. Your papa had to change her underthings, and he stuck her with a safety-pin, poor brat!"
The brothers laughed callously, and each squeezed an arm of the old lady. She was such an entertaining old dear. They wondered what they should ever do without her. Life would never be the same when she was gone. They would realize then that they were old, but they would never quite realize it while she lived. They were taking her for her last walk of the season. This always occurred on a mild day in December. After that she kept to the house till the first warm spring day. Peering out between the crimson curtains of her window, she would see something in the air that marked the day as the one for her last walk. "Now," she would exclaim, "here goes for my last walk till spring!" A thrill always ran through the house at this announcement. "Gran's going for her last walk. Hullo, there, what do you suppose? Gran's off for her last toddle, poor old dear."
She invariably went as far as the wicket gate in the hedge beside the drive, a distance of perhaps fifty yards. They had arrived at the gate now, and she had put out her hands and laid them on the warm and friendly surface of it. They shook a good deal from the exertion, so that a tremor ran through her into the gate and was returned like a flash of secret recognition. Those three had stood together at that gate nearly seventy years before, when she was a lovely-shouldered young woman with auburn ringlets, and they two tiny boys in green velvet suits with embroidered cambric vests, and cockscombs of hair atop their heads.
They stood leaning against the gate without speaking, filled for the moment with quaint recollections, enjoying the mild warmth of the sun on their backs. Then Ernest:—
"Shall we turn back, Mamma?"
Her head was cocked. "No. I hear horses' hoofs."
"She does, by gad," said Nicholas. "You've better ears than your sons, Mamma."
Renny and Alayne were returning from a ride. Like soft thunder the sound of their galloping swept along the drive. Then horses and riders appeared, the tall bony gray mare and the bright chestnut; the long, drooping, gray-coated figure of the man, and the lightly poised, black-habited girl.
"Splendid!" cried Nicholas. "Isn't she doing well, Ernie?"
"One would think she had ridden all her life."
"She's got a good mount," observed Renny, drawing in his horse, and throwing a look of pride over the chestnut and his rider.
Alayne's eyes were bright with exhilaration. In riding she had found something which all her life she had lacked, the perfect outdoor exercise. She had never been good at games, had never indeed cared for them, but she had taken to riding as a water-fowl to the pond. She had gained strength physically and mentally. She had learned to love a gallop over frozen roads, against a bitter wind, as well as a canter in the temperate sun.
Renny was a severe master. Nothing but a good seat and a seemly use of the good hands nature had given her satisfied him. But when at last she rode well, dashing along before him, bright wisps of hair blown from under her hat, her body light as a bird's against the wind, he was filled with a voluptuous hilarity of merely living. He could have galloped on and on behind her, swift and arrogant, to the end of the world.
They rarely talked when they rode together. It was enough to be flying in unison along the lonely roads, with the lake gulls screaming and sweeping overhead. When they did speak it was usually about the horses. He kept a sharp eye on her mount, and when he tightened a girth for her, or adjusted a stirrup, a look into her eyes said more than any words.
Sometimes Eden and Pheasant and Piers rode with them, and once they were joined by Maurice Vaughan, to Pheasant's childlike delight. It was on this occasion that Eden's horse slipped on the edge of a cliff above the lake, and would have taken him to the bottom had not Renny caught the bridle and dragged horse and rider to safety. He had pushed Piers and Maurice aside to do this, as though with a fierce determination to save Eden himself. Did he covet the satisfaction, Alayne wondered afterward, of risking his life to save Eden's, to make up to him for winning the love of his wife, or was it only the arrogant, protective gesture of the head of the family?
Now at any time the bitterness of winter would descend on them. The rides would be few.
"Watch me," cried Grandmother. "I'm going back to the house now. This is my last walk till spring. Ha—my old legs feel wobbly. Hold me up, Nick. You're no more support than a feather bolster."
The three figures shuffled along the walk, scarcely seeming to move. The horses dropped their heads and began to crop the dank grass of December.
"You've no idea," said Renny, "how much the old lady and the two old boys mean to me."
His grandmother had reached the steps. He waved his riding-crop and shouted: "Well done! Bravo, Gran! Now you're safe till spring, eh?"
"Tell them," wheezed Gran to Nicholas, "that when they've put their nags away they're to come and kiss me."
"What does she say?" shouted Renny.
Nicholas rumbled: "She wants to be kissed."
When they had installed their mother in her favorite chair, he said in a heavy undertone to Ernest:—
"Those two are getting in deeper every day. Where's it going to end? Where are Eden's eyes?"
"Oh, my dear Nick, you imagine it. You always were on the look-out for that sort of thing. I've seen nothing. Still, it's true that there is a feeling. Something in the air. But what can we do? I'd hate to interfere with an affair of Renny's. Besides, Alayne is not that sort of girl—"
"They're all that sort. Show me the woman who wouldn't enjoy a love affair with a man like Renny, especially if she were snatched up from a big city and hidden away in a sequestered hole like Jalna. I'd be tempted to have one myself if I could find a damsel decrepit enough to fancy me."
Ernest regarded his brother with a tolerant smile.
"Well, Nick, you have had affairs enough in your day. You and Millicent might be—"
"For God's sake, don't say that," interrupted Nicholas. "I'd rather be dead than have that woman about me."
"Ah, well—" Ernest subsided, but he murmured something about "a dashed sight too many affairs."
"Well, they're all over, aren't they?" Nicholas asked testily. "Ashes without a spark. I can't even remember their names. Did I ever kiss any one in passion? I can't recall the sensation. What I am interested in is this case of Renny and Alayne; it's serious."
"He scarcely seems to notice her in the house."
"Notice her! Oh, my dear man—" Nicholas bit off the top of a cigar, and scornfully spat it out.
"Well, for an instance, when the young Fennels were in the other night, and the gramophone was playing, Alayne danced oftener with them and Eden, and even young Finch, than with Renny. I only saw her dance with him once."
Nicholas said, pityingly: "My poor blind old brother! They only danced together once because once was all they could stand of it. I saw them dancing in the hall. It was dim there. Her face had gone white, and her eyes—well, I don't believe they saw anything. He moved like a man in a dream. He'd a stiff smile on his face, as though he'd put it on for convenience: a mask. It's serious with him this time, and I don't like it."
"There will be a pretty row if Eden gets on to it."
"Eden won't notice. He's too damned well wrapped up in himself. But I wonder Meggie hasn't."
Ernest took up a newspaper and glanced at the date. "The seventeenth. Just fancy. Augusta will arrive in Montreal to-morrow. I expect the poor thing has had a terrible passage. She always chooses such bad months for crossing." He wanted to change the subject. It upset his digestion to talk about the affairs of Renny and Alayne. Besides, he thought that Nicholas exaggerated the seriousness of it. They might be rather too interested in each other, but they were both too sensible to let the interest go to dangerous lengths. He looked forward to seeing Augusta; he and she had always been congenial.
She arrived two days later. She had made the passage without undue discomfort, never indeed missing a meal, though most of the passengers had been very ill. She had become such a hardened traveler in her infancy that it lay almost beyond the power of the elements now to disarrange her.
Lady Buckley was like a table set for an elaborate banquet at which the guests would never arrive. Her costume was intricate, elegant, with the elegance of a bygone day, unapproachable. No one would ever dare to rumple her with a healthy hug. Even old Mrs. Whiteoak held her in some awe, though behind her back she made ribald and derisive remarks about her. She resented Augusta's title, pretended that she could not recall it, and had always spoken to her acquaintances of "my daughter, Lady Buntley—or Bunting—or Bantling."
Augusta wore her hair in the dignified curled fringe of Queen Alexandra. It was scarcely gray, though whether through the kindness of nature or art was not known. She wore high collars fastened by handsome brooches. She had a long tapering waist and shapely hands and feet, the latter just showing beneath the hem of her rather full skirt. That air of having never recovered from some deep offence, of which Nicholas had spoken, was perhaps suggested by the poise of her head, which always seemed to be drawn back as though in recoil. She had strongly arched eyebrows, dark eyes, become somewhat glassy from age, the Court nose in a modified form, and a mouth that nothing could startle from its lines of complacent composure. She was an extremely well-preserved woman, who, though she was older than Nicholas or Ernest, looked many years younger. Since it was her fate to have been born in a colony, she was glad it had been India and not Canada. She thought of herself as absolutely English, refuting as an unhappy accident her mother's Irish birth.
She was most favorably impressed by Alayne. She was pleased by a certain delicate sobriety of speech and bearing that Alayne had acquired from much association with her parents.
"She is neither hoydenish nor pert, as so many modern girls are," she observed to her mother, in her deep, well-modulated voice.
"Got a good leg on her, too," returned the old lady, grinning.
Lady Buckley and Alayne had long conversations together. The girl found beneath the remote exterior a kind and sympathetic nature. Lady Buckley was fond of all her nephews, but especially of the young boys. She would tell old-fashioned stories, some of them unexpectedly blood-curdling, to Wakefield by the hour. She would sit very upright beside Finch while he practised his music lesson, composedly praising and criticizing, and the boy seemed to like her presence in the room. She endeared herself to Alayne by being kind to Pheasant. "Let us ignore her mother's birth," she said, blandly. "Her father is of a fine old English military family, and, if her parents were not married—well, many of the nobility sprang from illegitimate stock. I quite like the child."
It was soon evident that Meg resented her aunt's attitude toward Piers's marriage, her admiration for Alayne, and her influence over Finch and Wakefield. She first showed her resentment by eating even less than formerly at the table. It would have been a marvel how she kept so sleek and plump had one not known of those tempting secret trays carried to her by Rags, who, if he were loyal and devoted to any one on earth, was loyal and devoted to Miss Whiteoak.
She then took to sitting a great deal with her grandmother with the door shut against the rest of the family, and a blazing fire on the hearth. The old lady thrived on the scorching air and gossip. There was nothing she enjoyed more than "hauling Augusta over the coals" behind her back. To her face she gave her a grudging respect. Since Augusta approved of Finch's music lessons, it was inevitable that his practising should prove a torture to the old lady.
"Gran simply cannot stand those terrible scales and chromatics," Meg said to Renny. "Just at the hour in the day when she usually feels her brightest, her nerves are set on edge. At her age it's positively dangerous."
"If the boy were taking lessons from Miss Pink," retorted Renny, bitterly, "the practising wouldn't disturb Gran in the least."
"Why, Renny, Gran never objected to his taking from Mr. Rogers! It doesn't matter to her whom he takes from, though certainly Miss Pink would never have taught him to hammer as he insists on doing."
"No, she would have taught him to tinkle out little tunes with no more pep than a toy music-box. If the youngster is musical, he's going to be properly taught. Alayne says he's very talented."
The words were scarcely out before he knew he had made a fatal mistake in quoting Alayne's opinion. He saw Meg's face harden; he saw her lips curl in a cruel little smile. He floundered.
"Oh, well, any one can see that he's got talent. I saw it long ago; that is why I chose Mr. Rogers."
She made no reply for a moment, but still smiled, her soft blue eyes searching his. Then she said:
"I don't think you realize, Renny, how strange your attitude toward Alayne is becoming. You have almost a possessive air. Sometimes I think it would be better if Eden had never brought her here. I've tried to like her, but—"
"Oh, my God!" said Renny, wheeling, and beginning to stride away. "You women make me sick. There's no peace with you. Imagine the entire family by the ears because of a kid's music lessons!" He gave a savage laugh.
Meg, watching him flounder, was aware of depths she had only half suspected. She said:—
"It's not that. It's not that. It's the feeling that there's something wrong—some sinister influence at work. From the day Eden brought the girl here I was afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Afraid of something in her. Something fatal and dangerous. First she wormed her way—"
"'Wormed her way'! Oh, Meggie, for heaven's sake!"
"Yes, she did! She literally wormed her way into the confidence of the uncles. Then she captivated poor Finch. Just because she told him he was musical, he is willing to practise till he's worn out and Granny is ill. Then she turned Wake against me. He won't mind a thing I say. And now you, Renny! But this is dangerous. Different. Oh, I've seen it coming."
He had recovered himself.
"Meggie," he said, stifling her in a rough tweed hug, "if you would ever eat a decent meal—you know you literally starve yourself—and ever go out anywhere for a change, you wouldn't get such ideas into your head. They're not like you. You are so sane, so well balanced. None of us has as sound a head as you. I depend on you in every way. You know that."
She collapsed, weeping on his shoulder, overwhelmed by this primitive masculine appeal. But she was not convinced. Her sluggish nature was roused to activity against the machinations of Alayne and Lady Buckley.
That evening when Finch went to the drawing-room to practise he found the door locked. He sought Renny in the harness-room of the stable.
"Look here," Finch burst out, almost crying, "what do you suppose? They've gone and locked me out. I can't practise my lesson. They've been after me for a week about it, and now I'm locked out."
Renny, pipe in mouth, continued to gaze in whole-souled admiration at a new russet saddle.
"Renny," bawled Finch, "don't you hear? They've locked me out of the drawing-room, and I met Rags in the hall and he gave one of his beastly grins and said, 'Ow, Miss W'iteoak 'as locked up that pianer. She's not goin' to 'ave any pianer playin' in the 'ouse till the old lidy's recovered. She's in a pretty bad w'y, she is, with all your rattlety-bangin'.' I'd like to know what I'm to do. I may as well throw the whole thing up if I'm not allowed to practise."
Renny made sympathetic noises against the stem of his pipe and continued to gaze at the saddle.
Finch drove his hands into his pockets and slumped against the door jamb. He felt calmer now. Renny would do something, he was sure, but he dreaded a row with himself the centre of it.
At last the elder Whiteoak spoke. "I'll tell you what I'll do, Finch. I'll ask Vaughan if you may practise on his piano. I'm sure he wouldn't mind. The housekeeper's deaf, so her nerves won't be upset. I'll have the piano tuned. It used to be a good one. Then you'll be quite independent."
Soon young Finch might be seen plunging through the ravine on the dark December afternoons to the shabby, unused drawing-room at Vaughanlands. He brought new life to the old piano, and it, like land that had lain fallow for many years, responded joyfully to his labor, and sent up a stormy harvest of sound that shook the prismed chandelier. Often he was late for the evening meal, and would take what he could get in the kitchen from Mrs. Wragge. Several times Maurice Vaughan asked him to have his supper with him, and Finch felt very much a man, sitting opposite Maurice with a glass of beer beside him, and no question about his smoking.
Maurice always managed to bring the conversation around to Meggie. It was difficult for Finch to find anything pleasant to tell about her in these days, but he discovered that Maurice was even more interested to hear of her cantankerousness than her sweetness. It seemed to give him a certain glum satisfaction to know that things were at sixes and sevens with her. Finch had not been so happy since he was a very little fellow. He had perhaps never been so happy. He discovered in himself a yearning for perfection in the interpretation of his simple musical exercises, which he had never had in his Latin translations or his maths. He discovered that he had a voice. All the way home through the black ravine he would sing, sometimes at the top of his lungs, sometimes in a tender, melancholy undertone.
But how his school work suffered! His report at the end of the term was appalling. As Eden said, he out-Finched himself. In the storm that followed, his one consolation was that a large share of the blame was hurled at Renny. However, that did him little good in the end, for Renny turned on him, cursing him for a young shirker and threatening to stop the lessons altogether. Aunt Augusta and Alayne stood by him, but with caution. Augusta did not want her visit to become too unpleasant, and Alayne had come to regard her position in the house as a voyageur making his difficult progress among treacherous rocks and raging rapids. She could endure it till the New Year—when Eden was to take a position in town which Mr. Evans had got for him—and no longer.
At this moment, when Finch, a naked wretch at the cart's tail, with fingers of scorn pointing at him from all directions, alternately contemplated running away and suicide, he suddenly ceased to be an object of more than passing scorn, and little Wakefield took the centre of the stage. Piers had for some time been missing cartridges. Wake had for an equal length of time seemed to have an unlimited supply of marshmallows. And a sneaking stable-boy had "split," and it was discovered that Wake was emptying the cartridges, making neat little packets of the gunpowder, and selling it to the village boys for their own peculiar violences. When cornered, Wake had denied all knowledge of gunpowder, whether in cartridges or bulk. But Meg and Piers, searching his little desk, had come upon the neat little packets, all ready to sell, with a box full of coppers, and even a carefully written account of sales and payments. It was serious. Meg said he must be whipped. The young Whiteoaks had set no high standard of morality for a little brother to live up to, but still this was too bad.
"Flog him well," said Gran. "The Courts stole, but they never lied about it."
"The Whiteoaks," said Nicholas, "often lied, but they never stole."
Ernest murmured: "Wakefield seems to combine the vices of both sides."
"He's a little rotter," said Piers, "and it's got to be taken out of him."
Alayne was aghast at the thought of the airy and gentle Wake being subjected to the indignity of physical punishment. "Oh, couldn't he please get off this time?" she begged. "I'm sure he'll never do such a thing again."
Piers gave a short scornful laugh. "The trouble with that kid is he's been utterly ruined. If you'll let me attend to him, I'll wager he doesn't pinch anything more."
"I strongly disapprove of a delicate child like Wakefield being made to suffer," said Lady Buckley.
The culprit, listening in the hall, put his head between the curtains at this and showed his little white, tear-stained face.
"Go away, sir," said Nicholas. "We're discussing you."
"Please, please—"
Renny, who had been captured for the conclave and who stood gloomily, cap in hand, with snow-crusted leggings, turned to go. "Well, I'm off."
"Renny!" cried his sister, peremptorily. "Why are you going? You have got to whip Wake." The opposition of Alayne and Augusta had turned her sisterly anxiety to correct the child into relentless obstinacy.
Renny stood with bent head, looking sulkily into his cap. "The last time I licked him, he shivered and cried half the night. I'll not do it again." And he turned into the hall, pushing Wakefield aside and slamming the front door behind him.
"Well, of all the damned sloppiness!" broke out Piers.
"Don't worry," said Meg, rising. "Wakefield shall be punished." Her immobile sweet face was a shade paler than usual.
"This isn't a woman's job," declared Piers. "I'll do it."
"No. You'll be too hard on him."
"Let me flog the boy," cried Grandmother. "I've flogged boys before now. I've flogged Augusta. Haven't I, Augusta? Get me my stick!" Her face purpled with excitement.
"Mamma, Mamma," implored Ernest, "this is very bad for you."
"Fan her," said Nicholas. "She's a terrible color."
Meg led Wakefield up the stairs. Piers, following her to the foot, entreated: "Now, for heaven's sake don't get chicken-hearted. If you're going to do it, do it thoroughly."
"Oh, don't you wish it were you?" exclaimed Pheasant, tugging at his arm.
"Which?" he laughed. "Giving or getting one?"
"Getting, of course. It would do you good."
Nicholas and Ernest also came into the hall, and after them shuffled Grandmother, so exhilarated that she walked alone, thumping her stick on the floor and muttering: "I've flogged boys before now."
Finch draped himself against the newel post and thought of thrashings of his own. Augusta and Alayne shut themselves in the living-room.
Eden came out of his room above to discover the cause of the disturbance, but Meg would not speak. With set face she pushed Wakefield before her into her room and closed the door. However, Piers, in vehement tones, sketched the recent criminal career of the youngest Whiteoak.
Eden perched on the handrail, gazing down at the faces of his brothers, uncles, and grandmother with delight. He said, dangling a leg:—
"You're priceless. It's worth being interrupted in the very heart of a tropic poem to see your faces down there. You're like paintings by the great masters: Old Woman with Stick. The Cronies (that's Uncle Nick and Uncle Ernest). Young Man with Red Face (you, Piers). Village Idiot (you, Finch). As a matter of fact, I was at my wits' end for a rhyme. Perhaps brother Wake, in his anguish, will supply me with one."
"What's he saying?" asked Gran. "I won't have any of his back chat."
Ernest replied mildly: "He's just saying that we look as pretty as pictures, Mamma."
"She's beginning at last," announced Piers, grinning.
A sound of sharp blows cascaded from Meg's room, blows that carried the tingling impact of bare skin. Staccato feminine blows, that ceased as suddenly as they had begun.
"He's not crying, poor little beggar," said Eden.
"That's because he's not hurt," stormed Piers. "What does the woman think she's doing? Giving love taps to a kitten? Good Lord! She'd hardly begun till she'd stopped. Hi, Meggie, what's the matter? Aren't you going to lick the kid?"
Meg appeared at the door of her room. "I have whipped him. What do you want me to do?"
"You don't mean to say that you call that a licking? Better not touch him at all. It's a joke."
"Yes," agreed Nicholas, "if you're going to tan a boy, do it thoroughly."
Grandmother said, her foot on the bottom step: "I'd do it thoroughly. Let me at him!"
"Steady on, Mamma," said Nicholas. "You can't climb up there."
"For God's sake, Meggie," exclaimed Piers, "go back and give him something he'll remember for more than five minutes!"
"Yes, yes, Meggie," said Ernest, "a little swishing like that is worse than nothing."
"Give him a real one! Give him a real one!" bawled Finch, suddenly stirred to ferocity. He had suffered, by God! Let that pampered little Wake suffer for a change.
Boney screamed: "Jab kutr! Nimak haram! Chore!"
Meg swept to the top of the stairs. "You are like a pack of wolves," she said at white heat, "howling for the blood of one poor little lamb. Wake is not going to get one more stroke, so you may as well go back to your lairs."
Eden threw his arms about her, and laid his head on her comfortable shoulder.
"How I love my family!" he exclaimed. "To think that after the New Year I shall be out of it all. Miss such lovely scenes as this."
Meg did not try to understand Eden. She knew that he was pleased with her because he hugged her, and that was enough. "Do you blame me for telling just how heartless I thought they were?"
"You were perfectly right, old girl."
"Eden, I hope you won't mind what I'm going to say, but I do wish Alayne would not interfere between me and the children. She has such ideas."
"Oh, she has the habit of wanting to set everything right. She's the same with me. Always telling me how unmethodical I am, and how untidy with my things. She means well enough. It's just her little professorial ways."
"Poor lamb!" said Meggie, stroking the shining casque of his hair.
Wake's voice came, broken by sobs: "Meggie!"
Meg disengaged herself from Eden's arms. "There, now, I must go to him, and tell him he's forgiven."
The party downstairs had retreated after Meggie's attack, leaving a trail of wrangling behind them. Piers reached for his cap, and, stooping at the door of his grandmother's room, said, loud enough for Alayne to hear: "They're spoiling the two kids among them, anyway. As for Eden, he's no better than another woman!"
"He's like his poor flibbertigibbet mother," said Gran.
The cloud under which Wakefield awoke next morning was no more than a light mist, soon dispelled by the sun of returning favor. Before the day was over he was his own dignified, airy, and graceless self again, a little subdued perhaps, a little more anxious to please, a shade more subtle in the game of his life.
The game of life went on at Jalna. A stubborn heavy game, requiring not so much agility of mind as staying power and a thick skin. The old red house, behind the shelter of spruce and balsam, drew into itself as the winter settled in. It became the centre of whirling snow flurries. Later on, its roof, its gables, and all its lesser projections became bearers of a weight of slumbrous, unspotted snow. It was guarded by snow trees. It was walled by a snow hedge. It was decked, festooned, titivated by snow wreaths, garlands, and downy flakes. The sky leaned down toward it. The frozen earth pressed under it. Its habitants were cut off from the rest of the world. Except for occasional tracks in the snow, there was little sign of their existence. Only at night dim lights showed through the windows, not illuminating the rooms, but indicating by their mysterious glow that human beings were living, loving, suffering, desiring, beneath that roof.
Christmas came.
Books for Alayne from New York, with a chastely engraved card enclosed from Mr. Cory. More books, and a little framed etching from the aunts up the Hudson. An over-blouse, in which she would have frozen at Jalna, from Rosamund Trent. Alayne carried them about, showing them, and then laid them away. They seemed unreal.
There were no holly wreaths at Jalna. No great red satin bows. But the banister was twined with evergreens, and a sprig of mistletoe was suspended from the hanging lamp in the hall. In the drawing-room a great Christmas tree towered toward the ceiling, bristling with the strange fruit of presents for the family, from Grandmother down to little Wake.
A rich hilarity drew them all together that day. They loved the sound of each other's voices: they laughed on the least provocation; by evening, the young men showed a tendency toward horseplay. There was a late dinner, dominated by the largest turkey Alayne had ever seen. There was a black and succulent plum pudding with brandy sauce. There were native sherry and port. The Fennels were there; the two daughters of the retired admiral; and lonely little Miss Pink, the organist. Mr. Fennel proposed Grandmother's health, in a toast so glowing with metaphor and prickling with wit that she suggested that if he were three sheets in the wind on Sunday he would preach a sermon worth hearing. The admiral's daughters and Miss Pink were flushed and steadily smiling in the tranced gaiety induced by wine. Meg was soft and dimpled as a young girl.
A great platter of raisins smothered in flaming brandy was carried in by Rags, wearing the exalted air of an acolyte.
Seeing Rags's hard face in that strange light carried Renny as in a dream to another very different scene. He saw Rags bent over a saucepan in a dug-out in France, wearing a filthy uniform, and, oddly enough, that same expression. But why, he could not remember. He had picked Rags up in France. Renny looked up into his eyes with a smile, and a queer worshipping grin spread over Rags's grim hard-bitten face.
The raisins were placed on the table in the midst of the company. Tortured blue flames leaped above them, quivering, writhing, and at last dying into quick-running ripples. Hands, burnished like brass, stretched out to snatch the raisins. Wake's, with its round child's wrist; Finch's, bony and predatory; Piers's, thick, muscular; Grandmother's, dark, its hook-like fingers glittering with jewels—all the grasping, eager hands and the watchful faces behind them illuminated by the flare; Gran's eyes like coals beneath her beetling red brows.
Pheasant's hands fluttered like little brown birds. She was afraid of getting burned. Again and again the blue flames licked them and they darted back.
"You are a little silly," said Renny. "Make a dash for them, or they'll be gone." She set her teeth and plunged her hand into the flames. "Oh—oh, I'm going to be burned!"
"You've only captured two," laughed Eden, on her other side, and laid a glossy cluster on her plate.
Renny saw Eden's hand slide under the table and cover hers in her lap. His eyes sought Eden's and held them a moment. They gazed with narrowed lids, each seeing something in the other that startled him. Scarcely was this unrecognized something seen when it was gone, as a film of vapor that changes for a moment the clarity of the well-known landscape and shows a scene obscure, even sinister— The shadow passed, and they smiled, and Eden withdrew his hand.
Under the mistletoe Mr. Fennel, Grandmother having been carefully steered that way by two grandsons, caught and kissed her, his beard rough, her cap askew.
Uncle Ernest, a merry gentleman that night, caught and kissed Miss Pink, who most violently became Miss Scarlet.
Tom Fennel caught and kissed Pheasant. "Here now, Tom, you fathead, cut that out!" from Piers.
Finch, seeing everything double after two glasses of wine, caught and kissed two white-shouldered Alaynes. It was the first time she had worn an evening-dress since her marriage.
Nicholas growled to Ernest: "Did you ever see a hungry wolf? Look at Renny glowering in that corner. Isn't Alayne lovely to-night?"
"Everything's lovely," said Ernest, rocking on his toes. "Such a nice Christmas!"
They played charades and dumb crambo.
To see Grandmother (inadvertently shouting out the name of the syllable she was acting) as Queen Victoria, and Mr. Fennel as Gladstone!
To see Meg as Mary Queen of Scots, with Renny as executioner, all but cutting off her head with the knife with which he had carved the turkey!
To see Alayne as the Statue of Liberty, holding a bedroom lamp on high ("Look out, Alayne, don't tilt it so; you'll have the house on fire!"), and Finch as a hungry immigrant!
You saw the family of Jalna at their happiest in exuberant play.
Even when the guests were gone and the Whiteoaks getting ready for bed, they could not settle down. Ernest, in shirt and trousers, prowled through the dim hallway, a pillow from his bed in one hand. He stopped at Renny's door. It was ajar. He could see Renny winding his watch, Wake sitting up in bed, chattering excitedly. Ernest hurled the pillow at Renny's head. He staggered, bewildered by the unexpected blow, and dropped his watch.
"By Judas," he said, "if I get you!" With his pillow he started in pursuit.
"A pillow fight! A pillow fight!" cried Wake, and scrambled out of bed.
Ernest had got as far as his brother's room. "Nick," he shouted, in great fear, "save me!"
Nicholas, his gray mane on end, was up and into it. Piers, like a bullet, sped down the hall. Finch, dragged from slumber, had barely reached the scene of conflict when a back-handed blow from Eden's pillow laid him prostrate.
Nicholas's room was a wreck. Up and down the passage the combatants surged. The young men forgot their loves, their fears, their jealousies, the two elderly men their years, in the ecstasy of physical, half-naked conflict.
"Boys, boys!" cried Meg, drawing aside her chenille curtain. "Steady on, old lady!" and a flying pillow drove her into retreat.
Pheasant appeared at her door, her short hair all on end. "May I play, too?" she cried, hopping up and down.
"Back to your hole, little hedgehog!" said Renny, giving her a feathery thump as he passed.
He was after Nicholas, who had suddenly become cognizant of his gout and could scarcely hobble. Piers and Finch were after him. They cornered him, and Nicholas, from being the well-nigh exhausted quarry, became the aggressor, and helped to belabor him.
Eden stood at the top of the stairs, laughingly holding off little Wake, who was manfully wielding a long old-fashioned bolster. Ernest, with one last hilarious fling in him, stole forth from his room, and hurled a solid sofa cushion at the pair. It struck Eden on the chest. He backed. He missed his footing. He fell. Down the stairs he went, crashing with a noise that aroused Grandmother, who began to rap the floor with her stick.
"What's up? What have you done?" asked Renny.
"My God! I've knocked the lad downstairs. What if I've killed him!"
The brothers streamed helter-skelter down the stairs.
"Oh, those stairs," groaned Eden. "I've twisted my leg. I can't get up."
"Don't move, old fellow." They began to feel him all over. The women emerged from their rooms.
"I have been expecting an accident," said Augusta, looking more offended than usual.
"Oh, whatever is the matter?" cried Alayne.
Ernest answered, wringing his hands: "Can you ever forgive me, Alayne? Piers says I've broken Eden's leg."