Wakefield awoke each morning now with a feeling of gay excitement. The reason for this was that Finch had given him his Boy Scout bugle. Finch had got over being a Boy Scout very quickly. The only thing about it that had suited him was the fact of his being a bugler. However, he soon tired of that, and, coming to the conclusion that he was not the stuff of which good Boy Scouts are made, he gave it up entirely. To perform his little duties with bright alertness, to be ready, to be helpful, to do a kind act every day, seemed beyond him. So he had skulked out of the organization, and locked his bugle in the under part of the secretary in his room, where Wake might not meddle with it.
Now he had given it to Wake for his birthday. Having once decided to do this, he did not hold it till the day itself. The little boy had been in possession of it for a fortnight. And every morning he wakened with his nerves tingling with delicious excitement, for there, at the head of the bed, was the bugle, and he must not get up until he had sounded the reveille. It was thrilling to sit up in bed and send forth from swelling chest and distended cheeks those glorious brazen notes. Feeble, croaking they might sound to the listener, but to Wake they were round with a noble roundness and stirring to the soul.
Luckily, he was usually the last of the family to awake. But this morning was his birthday and he had been the very first. All, all had been roused by that sleep-shattering reveille. Renny, stretched on his back, his arms flung above his head, had been dreaming of galloping on a great wild horse along a steep precipice. Suddenly, with a neigh that shook the universe, the horse had leaped over the precipice, and plunged with him into the sunlit sea.
With a convulsive twitch of the body, Renny awoke into the sunlight of the early morning, his face so comic in its astonishment that Wakefield laughed aloud, lost his wind, and sputtered helplessly into the instrument. Then Renny laughed too, for the sight of his young brother sitting up in bed, so alert, so important, with hair on end and one dark eye cocked roguishly at him above one bulging cheek, was so ridiculous. He was ridiculous, and he was pathetic, too. "Poor little beggar," thought Renny, "a human being like myself, who will have a man's feelings, a man's queer thoughts one day."
"It's my birthday," quoth Wakefield, wiping his chin.
"Many happy returns," said Renny, trying not to look as though he had a delightful present for him.
"I shall probably not live to be as old as Gran. But I may reach ninety if I have good care."
"Oh, you'll get good care, all right. Cuddle down here a bit. It's early yet."
Wake laid the bugle on the table at the head of the bed and flung himself down into the bedclothes. He burrowed against Renny, putting his arms about his neck.
"Oh! I'm so happy," he breathed. "A picnic to-day if you please. The first of the season. It's June. The first of June! My birthday!" His eyes were two narrow slits. "Renny, have you a—you know what?"
Renny yawned prodigiously, showing two rows of strong teeth. "Well, I guess I'll get up."
"Renny, Renny!" He bumped and struggled against his elder's chest. "Oh, Renny, I could kill you!"
"Why?"
"'Cos you won't tell me."
"Tell you what?" Renny held him as in a vice.
"You know what."
"How can I know if you won't tell me?"
"Oh, you beast, Renny! It's you who won't tell me!"
"Tell you what?"
"Whether you have a—you know what—for me."
Renny closed his eyes. "You sound half-witted this morning," he said, coldly. "It seems a pity, when you've reached such an age."
Wakefield examined his brother's hard, weather-bitten visage with its relentless-looking nose. Certainly it was a forbidding face. A face that belonged to a man who was his adored brother and who had no birthday present for him.
He, too, closed his eyes, murmuring to himself: "Oh, this is terrible!" A tear trickled down his cheek and fell on Renny's wrist.
The elder Whiteoak gave the younger a little shake. "Cut that out," he said. They looked into each other's eyes.
"It nearly broke me."
"What did, Renny?"
"Why, the present."
"The present?"
"Rather. The birthday present."
"Oh, Renny, for God's sake—"
"Stop your swearing."
"But what is it?"
"It's," he plunged the word into Wake's ear, "a pony—a beautiful Welsh pony."
After the first ecstatic questions, Wake lay silent, floating in a golden haze of happiness. He did not want to miss the savor of one lovely moment of this day of days. First a pony, then a picnic, and in between, an orgy of other presents. A birthday cake with ten tall candles. At last he whispered: "Is it a he or a she?"
"A little mare."
A mare! He could hardly believe it. There would be colts—tiny, shaggy colts. His very own. It was almost too much. He wriggled against Renny. Adoring him.
"When will she—oh, I say, Renny, what's her name?"
"She has no name. You may name her."
No name. A nameless gift from the gods. Oh, responsibility overpowering, to name her!
"When will she come?"
"She is here, in the stable."
With a squeal of joy Wake leaped up in the bed; then, espying the bugle, he had an inspiration.
"Renny, wouldn't it be splendid, if I'd sound the reveille and then we'd both instantly get up? I'd like terribly to sound the reveille for you, Renny."
"Fire away, then."
Solemnly the boy placed the bugle against his lips and took a prodigious breath. Renny lay looking at him, amused and compassionate. Poor little devil—a man some day, like himself.
Loudly, triumphantly, the notes of the reveille were sounded. Simultaneously they sprang out on to the floor. June sunshine blazed into the room.
Downstairs, Wakefield said to Finch: "What do you suppose? Renny has given me a pony. We've just been out to the stable to see her. A little pony mare, mind you, Finch. There'll be colts one day. And thanks again for the bugle. Renny and I both got up by it this morning. And there's to be a picnic on the shore, and an absolutely 'normous birthday cake."
"Humph," grunted Finch. "I never remember such a fuss on any of my birthdays."
"You have always had a cake, dear," said Meggie, reproachfully. "And don't forget that nice little engine thing, and your bicycle, and your wrist watch."
"You don't expect the family to rejoice because you were born, do you?" asked Piers, grinning.
"No, I don't expect anything," bawled Finch, "but to be badgered."
"Poor little boy, he's jealous." Piers passed a sunburned hand over Finch's head, stroking downward over his long nose, and ending with a playful jolt under the chin.
Finch's nerves were raw that morning. He was in the midst of the end-of-the-term examinations, and his increasing preoccupation with music seemed to render him less than ever able to cope with mathematics. He knew with dreadful certainty that he was not going to pass into the next form. The fact that his music teacher was not only pleased with him but deeply interested in him, would not make up for that. Combined with a skulking sense of helpless inferiority, he felt the exalted arrogance of one whose spirit moves on occasion in the free and boundless spaces of art.
With a kind of bellow, he turned on Piers and struck him in the chest. Piers caught his wrists and held them, smiling lazily into his wild, distorted face.
"See here, Eden," he called. "This little lamb is baaing because we celebrate Wake's birthday with more pep than we do his. Isn't it a crime?"
Eden lounged over, his lips drawn in a faint smile from his teeth which held a cigarette, and joined in the baiting.
All morning Finch's heart raged within him. At dinner Meggie and her grandmother both chose to correct him, to nag at him. He slouched, they said. He stuck his elbows out. He bolted his food so that he might be ready for the last helping of cherry tart before poor dear Gran. Furious, he muttered something to himself to the effect that she might have it for all he cared, and that if it choked her—
She heard.
"Renny! Renny!" she shouted, turning purple. "He says he hopes it chokes me—chokes me—at my age! Flog him, Renny; I won't stand it. I'll choke. I know I will."
She glared wildly at the head of the house, her eyes blazing under her shaggy red brows.
"Mamma, Mamma," said Ernest.
"It's true," growled Nicholas. "I heard him say it." Renny had been talking to Alayne, trying not to notice the disturbance. Now, in sudden anger, he got up and in a stride stood over Finch.
"Apologize to Gran," he ordered.
"Sorry," muttered Finch, turning white.
"No mumbling! Properly."
"I'm very sorry, Grandmother."
The sight of his hunched shoulders and unprepossessing, sheepish face suddenly threw his elder into one of his quick passions. He gave him a sound and ringing cuff. Perhaps it was because Finch was not properly balanced that day. In any case it always seemed easy to send him sprawling. The next second he was in a sobbing heap on the floor, and his heavy chair had fallen with a crash.
Alayne smothered a cry, and stared at her plate. Her heart was thudding, but she thought: "I must hang on to myself. I must. He didn't mean to do it. He will be sorry. They drove him to it."
Renny sat down. He avoided looking at her. He was humiliated at having been drawn into violence before her. However, if she thought him a brute, so much the better.
Finch gathered up himself and his chair, and resumed his place at the table with a look of utter dejection. "Now will you give back chat?" asked Grandmother, and she added after another mouthful of tart: "Somebody kiss me."
She kept asking what time the picnic was to be, for she was even more excited about it than Wake. She had her bonnet and cape on long before the hour when the phaeton was to convey her to the shore. She had the picnic hampers ranged beside her chair, and passed the period of waiting by a prolonged and bitter discussion with Boney as to whether or not he should forage among the edibles.
The picnic party was separated into the same parts as the church party, with the difference that Finch rode his bicycle instead of walking, and Piers arrived late on horseback, for it was a busy season with him.
As he tethered his mare to an iron stake which had been driven into that field before any of them could remember, he glanced towards the picnickers to see where Pheasant was. He had not had so much of her company of late as he would have liked. To the regular spring work of his men and himself had been added the setting out of a new cherry orchard and the clearing of a piece of woodland for cultivation. Piers was as strong and wholesome as a vigorous young tree. He was ambitious and he was not afraid of work, but it did seem rather hard that he had so little time to spare in these lovely days of early summer for happy and indolent hours with Pheasant. She seldom came out into the fields or orchards with him now, as she used to do. She looked pale too, and was often petulant, even depressed. He wondered if she were possibly going to have a child. He must take good care of her, give her a little change of some kind. Perhaps he could arrange a motor trip over the week-end. The poor girl was probably envious of Alayne, who had Eden always at her side. He saw Pheasant standing on a bluff, her slender figure outlined against the sky. Her short green dress was fluttering about her knees. She looked like a flower poised there above the breezy blueness of the lake.
The phaeton had been drawn down the narrow stony road that led to the water's edge between two bluffs. Hodge had loosed the horses, and had led them out into the lake to drink. A fire had been lighted on the beach, and around it the family, with the exception of Pheasant and old Mrs. Whiteoak, were enjoying themselves in their own fashions. Wake, with upturned knickers, was paddling along the water's rim. Renny was throwing sticks for his spaniels. Nicholas and Ernest were skipping stones. Meg, in a disreputable old sweater, was bent over the fire, cherishing the tea-kettle. Alayne was carrying driftwood. Lady Buckley, very upright on a rug spread on the beach, was knitting at something of a bright red color.
Before Piers joined the others on the beach, he went to speak to his grandmother, who sat regarding the scene from the safety of her seat in the phaeton.
"Well, Gran, are you having a good time?"
"Put your head in so I can kiss you. Ah, there's the boy! Yes, I'm having a very good time. I used to bring the children to picnics here more than sixty years ago. I remember sitting on this very spot and watching your grandfather teach the boys to swim. Nick was a little water-dog, but Ernest was always screaming that he was going down. Oh, we had the times! This was a grand country then."
"I suppose so, Gran."
"Yes, the wood pigeons were so thick they'd fly in clouds that would throw a great shadow. The farm boys would trap them. Pretty, pretty things, with eyes like jewels. They'd put the pretty eyes out of one, the brutes! And they'd throw it in a field; and when the flock saw it fluttering they thought it was feeding and they'd alight in a cloud, and the boys and men would shoot them by hundreds."
"No such shooting now, Gran."
"Go and see when tea will be ready. I want my tea. And, Philip—I mean Piers—keep your eye on Pheasant; she's young, aye, she's young, and her mother was bad, and her father a rip. She's worth watching."
"Look here, Gran, I don't like your saying such things about Pheasant. She's all right."
"I dare say she is—but she's worth watching. All women are, if they've any looks. I want my tea."
Piers was smiling at the old lady's advice as he strode along the beach. He was tolerantly amused by her, and yet he thought, "There's a grain of truth in what she says. Girls are worth watching. Still, there's no one about but Tom Fennel that she could—Eden, there's Eden; he has nothing to do—might amuse himself—poets—immoral fellows. I'll spend more time with her. I might take her to the Falls for the week-end. There's that new inn there. She'd like that, poor little young 'un."
The lake was the color of lapis-lazuli. Some gulls, disturbed by the barking of the dogs, wheeled, petulantly crying, above its brightness. Beyond them a coaling schooner, with blackened sails, moved imperceptibly, and a steamer bound for Niagara trailed its faint streamer of smoke. Little sailing-boats were languishing in some yacht-club race.
Piers went up to Renny, whose eyes were fixed on Flossie swimming after a stick, while Merlin, having retrieved his, barked himself off his feet in agonized demand for another opportunity to exhibit his powers. As Piers approached, the spaniel shook himself vigorously, sending a drenching shower over the brothers' legs. "She has got it," said Renny, his eyes still on Floss, and he called out to her, "Good girl!"
"Damn Merlin!" said Piers. "He's soaked my trouser legs."
"All in white, eh?" observed Renny, looking him over.
"You didn't expect me to come in overalls, did you? Have we time for a swim before tea?"
Renny bent and put his hand in the water. "It's not very cold. Suppose we do. Tea can wait."
"Where is Eden?" asked Piers, casting his eyes over the party.
"He was up on the bluff with Pheasant a bit ago." Looking up, they saw his fair head rising just above the grass where he lay stretched at Pheasant's feet.
"I won't have him hanging about her," burst out Piers.
"Tell him so, then," said Renny, curtly.
"By the Lord, I will! I'll tell him so he'll not forget." His mind suddenly was a seething sea of suspicions. "Why, even Gran thinks there's something wrong. She was warning me just now."
"No need to get in a stew," said Renny, throwing the stick for Merlin, who leaped to the water with a bark of joy, while his place was immediately taken by a dripping, importunate Flossie. "Eden and Alayne will be leaving before the first of July. Evans has a job for him then."
"What a loafer he is!"
"You didn't expect him to work with a broken leg, did you? Don't grouse about anything now: this is Wake's birthday party. Come on and have our swim." He shouted to Wakefield: "Wake, should you like to go in for a swim?"
Wakefield came galloping through the wavelets.
"Should I? Oh, splendid! What if I had the pony here? She'd swim out with me, I'll bet."
"Eden!" called Renny. "We're going in swimming. Better come."
They stared up at him as he scrambled to his feet and began to descend the steep path down the side of the bluff. He still limped from the effects of his fall.
"Won't it be pretty cold?" he asked.
"We might have Meggie boil a kettle of water to warm a spot for you," said Piers.
"Where's Finch?" asked Renny. "Finch will want to come."
Wakefield answered: "He's in the little cove already, lying on the sand."
The four made toward the cove.
"Don't let Uncle Ernest come," said Eden. "He's sure to hurt me."
"Uncle Ernest!" shouted Renny. "Eden says you're not to come. You're too rough."
"Eden, Eden," cried Ernest, but with a certain pride, "I wish you would let me forget that."
Grandmother's voice came from the phaeton, sharp with the anguish of hunger; "When are we going to have tea? I told Piers to fetch me tea!"
"I am bringing you a molasses scone to stay you, Mamma," said Augusta. She was carefully making her way across the shingle, the buttered scone in her hand.
When the four brothers reached the little willow-fringed cove, they found Finch lying face downward, his head propped on his arms. "Still sulking?" asked Piers. "Did you know, Renny, that the poor youth is obsessed by the idea that we make more of Wake's birthday than his? Isn't it heart-rending, Wake?"
Wakefield, smiling and self-conscious, stared down at Finch's prostrate form.
"If I get this leg chilled," observed Eden, "I might have rheumatism."
"You won't get chilled if I am with you," said Piers, pulling off his coat.
When the others had plunged into the lake, and Wake was already screaming with delight and terror at Piers's hands, Renny returned to Finch and said with a fatherly air: "Better come in, Finch; it'll do you good. You've been studying too much."
"No. I d' want to," mumbled the boy against his arm.
"Don't be a duffer," said Renny, poking him with his bare foot. "The more Piers sees he can rattle you the more he'll do it."
"'Tisn't only that."
"Well, look here. It was too bad I gave you that cuff before the others. But you were too damned cheeky. Come along and forget it."
Finch rolled over, disclosing a distorted red face.
"Is there no place I can be let alone?" he bawled. "Have I got to go to the end of the world to be let alone? All I ask is to be let alone, in peace here, and you all come prodding me up!"
"Stay alone, then, you little idiot!" Renny tossed away the cigarette he was smoking and strode to the water's edge.
All very well, Finch thought, for a lordly being like Renny, safe, always sure of himself, unmenaced by dreadful thoughts and bewitchment, of whom even Piers stood in some awe. With his head propped on his hand, he watched his brothers swimming, splashing, diving, the sunshine glistening on their white shoulders. As a creature apart, he watched them, with the idea in his mind that there was a conspiracy against him, that each member of the family played a different part against him, talking him over among themselves, sneering and laughing at him; but, in spite of himself, a slow smile of pleasure in their glistening grace, their agility, crept over his features. Their robust shouts were not unmusical. And the shine of their sleek heads, blond and russet and black, pleased his eyes. He saw that Piers was rough with Eden, and he was glad. He wished they would fight, half kill each other, while he reclined on the sand looking on.
Eden came limping out of the water.
"Are there any towels?" he asked. "Run and ask Meg for towels, like a good fellow, Finch."
Oh, yes! He was a good fellow when there was an errand to be run. But he hurried across the shingle to his sister.
"Towels? Yes, here they are. This big red-and-white one for Renny, mind! And the two smaller ones for Eden and Piers. And send Wake to me. I must give him a good rubbing so he shan't take a chill."
A sudden mood of savage playfulness came over Finch. Snatching the towels, he went, with a wild fling of his body, back toward the cove. There he hurled the twisted bundle at his brothers.
"There are your old towels!" he yelled; and as he crashed among the brushwood beyond the willows, he called back, "You're to go to Meggie, young Wake, and get walloped!"
Alayne had joined Pheasant on the bluff, and presently Renny too mounted the path, his damp russet head appearing first above the brink, like the ruffled crest of some bird of prey. He threw himself on the short thick clover that carpeted the bluff, and lighted his pipe.
"It seems rather hard," said Pheasant in her childish voice, "that Alayne and I could not have bathed. By the noise you made we could imagine the fun you were having."
"It was too cold for girls."
"It is a scientific fact," she said, sententiously, "that our sex can endure more cold than yours."
"We had no bathing suits."
"We should have all brought bathing suits and made a proper party of it. You have no idea how stupid it is to sit twiddling one's thumbs while you males are enjoying yourselves. 'Men must work, and women must weep'—that is the Whiteoak motto. Only you translate it into: 'Men must play, and women—' Do help me out with something really biting, Alayne."
Alayne answered only with a shrug. Renny continued to stare out across the moving brilliance of the water, puffing at his pipe. With a sort of taciturn tyranny he overrode the younger girl's desire for chatter and chaff. She too fell silent, plucking at the grass, and then, after a sidelong glance at the other two, she rose and began slowly to descend the path.
"Why are you going, Pheasant?" called Alayne sharply.
"I think someone should help Meggie to lay the cloth."
"Very well. If I can be of use, please call me."
Now a shudder of excitement ran through her. It was the first time in weeks that she had been alone with Renny. She almost wished that she had followed Pheasant.
For some time he had avoided her. Their rides, which had been interrupted by the heavy snowfalls of January and the illness of Eden, had not been resumed. Although they lived in the house together, they were separated by a wall, a relentless wall of ice, through which each was visible to the other, though distorted by its glacial diffusions. Now on the cliff, in the sunshine, the wall seemed likely to melt, and with it the barrier of her intellectual self-control. If she could only know what he was feeling! His very silence was to her a tentative embrace.
Like incense, the sweetness of the wood smoke rose from the beach. Wake's little naked figure was darting here and there like a sandpiper.
She studied Renny's profile, the carved nose, the lips gripping the pipe, the damp hair plastered against the temples. It was so immobile that a heavy depression began to drown her mood of passionate excitement. Looking at him, remembering Eden, she began to feel that she had had enough of Whiteoaks. She had bruised her soul against their wanton egotism. This Renny whom she loved was as remote, as self-sufficient, as that rock out yonder. His look of passionate immobility might be the mask of nothing more than a brooding desire to acquire some mettlesome piece of horseflesh for his stalls. Yet how could that be, and she have that feeling that his very silence was an embrace! Two shadowy arms seemed to spring from his shoulders toward her, crushing her to him, kissing her with the passion of his kisses in the orchard with, added to them, all the hunger of these months of self-restraint.
His fleshly arms had not moved. One lay across his thigh, the other slanted toward his pipe, the bowl of which lay in his palm.
He took his pipe from his lips, and spoke in a low, husky voice. His words overwhelmed her. She was like a mariner who, fearing certain shoals, watching with both dread and desire for the light that warned of their nearness, is suddenly blinded by that light full in the eyes. Excitement, resentment, depression, all left her. She was conscious only of his love.
"I love you," he said, "and I am in hell because I love you. And there is no way out."
The magical experience of sitting on the cliff with Renny, hearing these words from his mouth, in his restrained voice, filled Alayne with a sense of reckless surrender rather than tragic renunciation. Like a crop from virgin soil, this first profound love gushed upward from her being to embrace the hot sun of his passion.
With Renny it was very different. A man who had loved women both casually and licentiously, who could not speak their language, who had thought to have and craved to have no other sort of feelings toward them, he felt himself betrayed by this new and subtle passion that went deeper than mere possession, that could not be gratified and forgotten. In his eyes was something of the bewilderment of the animal that finds itself wounded, unable to exercise the faculties which had been its chief delight. Love, which had hitherto been to him as a drink of fresh water, now tasted of the bitter salt of renunciation.
He muttered again: "There is no way out."
She said, almost in a whisper: "No, I suppose there is nothing to be done."
It was as though a traveler, pointing to the rising moon, had said to another: "There is no moon."
He caught that strange denial of her words in her tone. Looking into her face, he perceived the warmth and pathos there. He exclaimed, with a groan: "I would cut everything—take you away, if only—he were not my brother!"
In an odd, choking voice that seemed to come from a long way off, she reminded him: "Your half-brother."
"I never think of that," he said, coldly. His attachment to his brothers was so tenacious that it always had annoyed him to hear them spoken of as half-brothers.
After a moment of silence that seemed made manifest by a veil of wood smoke that rose and hung over them for a space, she said, with a tremor in her voice: "I will do whatever you tell me to."
"I believe you would," he answered. With sudden realization, he knew that her life was to her as important as his to himself, and yet she was putting it into his hands with heroic selflessness.
They became aware that those on the beach were calling to them and, looking down, they saw that they were beckoning. The cloth was laid; already Nicholas, with the help of Piers, was letting himself down heavily into the unaccustomed posture of sitting on the ground.
"Tea is ready. Come down! Come!" echoed the voices.
The two rose mechanically, like two untroubled puppets, under the blue immensity of heaven, and turned toward the path.
"Your heels are too high for such a rough place," he said. "Let me take your hand."
She placed her hand in his, and he held it in his thin, muscular grasp till they reached the shingle.