“I’m very fond of you.”
“Fond of me — bah!”
The fire brightened, striking answering brightness from the amber of the cognac, the crystal glasses, the eyes of the two on the sofa. Dilly turned her supple neck to look him in the face. She said, as though musing:
“That hair ... those eyes ... and a heart like ice.”
“Dilly,” he said, “you make me laugh.” And he did laugh, so infectiously that she laughed too.
Then she caught herself up in anger, frowning, and he noticed that her eyebrows were a little too heavy. She repeated — “A heart like ice,” then added, to make it worse — “like an ice-cold stone.”
His spaniel Floss had come to him and he fondled her ears. Dilly thought she saw annoyance in the bend of his lips and she was impelled to anger him still further.
“Your position is rather unique,” she said. “Do you realize that?”
He raised his head to return her look.
“Unique?”
“Decidedly. How many young men are there who are in the patriarchal position you are? You own the estate. Everyone here is more or less dependent on you.”
“My grandmother and my uncles aren’t.”
“They prefer to be. Everybody kowtows to you.”
“Kowtows! Good Lord. I wish Gran could hear you say that.”
“When she discovered that she’d lost some money she turned at once to you and you said everything would be as it had always been. You are the patriarch and it’s very bad for you. If you don’t watch out you’ll never marry and you’ll become eccentric.”
He regarded her with some curiosity. He said — “This is something new, Dilly, this role of a preacher.”
She answered, in an offhand way — “It simply means that I am concerned about you.”
“That’s very sweet of you but I like you best as you were.”
“Nothing I could do would make you like me.”
He said, with decision — “I have told you how much I admire the way you’ve taken this loss.”
She exclaimed — “You’ve despised me ever since I rode so badly at the Show.”
“Now,” he said deliberately, “you are taking a hectoring tone. I wonder why.” He had ceased to fondle Floss’s ears and, demanding his attention, she had raised herself, with paws on his chest, and bumped his face with her muzzle. He kissed her between the eyes.
Dilly said bitterly — “You think more of that spaniel than you do of me.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Who could doubt that? She and Merlin have been my companions for years...” He did not finish. Merlin, on hearing his name, rose from his place by the fire and came to Renny.
Dilly sprang up. She exclaimed — “You and your dogs! You’d drive me mad. I’m glad I am going home.”
“I’m sorry you leave us with such feelings,” he said tranquilly.
“I love every member of this family,” she said with violence, “but you.”
“Even Eden?”
“Even Eden.”
A voice asked from the doorway — “Did I hear my name?”
“Yes,” returned Renny. “Dilly has just said that she loves you.”
“And I love her for that,” said Eden, coming into the room.
Renny gave them a benign look. “Bless you, my children,” he said.
Dilly sprang up and went to the fireplace, and Merlin at once took her place on the sofa. She picked up the hearth-brush, made by disabled soldiers, and began to sweep the hearth. She did it vigorously, with the concentration of an immaculate housewife, as though unconscious of the presence of the two men. Yet in her every fibre she was conscious of them.
Renny, dispassionately observing her figure from the rear, wondered how he ever could have expected her to have a good seat on a horse. Eden’s quick glance moved from one to the other and he felt he had perhaps better leave them alone. Renny settled it by saying — “So you’re still about.”
Eden leant over him. “I’ve been telephoning the Kronks’ apartment.”
“Good idea. Any news?”
“Mrs. Kronk was there alone. She has no idea where he is. She feels her position very badly.”
“I’ll wager she’s as guilty as he.”
“No, no. She knew the mine was there. She’d been up north to see it.
But there was no capital to develop it with. That she didn’t know.”
“What about the pictures?”
“Oh, they were faked — pictures of another mine. She didn’t know that, of course. She was crying.”
“Poor little soul,” said Renny sarcastically. Then he added in a different tone — “I’m coming up to your room before I go to bed.”
Eden thought — “Oh, Lord, will this night never end!” But he nodded his acquiescence, with his faint half-smile, and, for some reason he could not have explained, tiptoed out of the room.
Still Dilly persisted in her tidying of the hearth. She took the poker and poked and scratched at the fire.
“It’s all right,” said Renny. “A very nice performance. But please stop.”
Without looking round she asked — “Why?”
“Because it’s getting on my nerves.”
“I wasn’t aware that you had any.”
“You are aware of nothing,” he said, “but your own headstrong emotions.”
She wheeled and faced him, holding the poker upright like a lance.
“What a picture!” he laughed.
“I can tell you,” she said, “I feel dangerous.”
He could not resist saying — “Yet you would like me to believe you’d be an amiable companion.”
“I should not be a tame one, at any rate.”
“I like a placid woman.”
“Oh, I know,” she sneered. “A woman like a cow. Chewing the cud of her adoration of you all day long.”
He gave her an hilarious grin. “Dilly! Don’t tell me you’re becoming literary.”
She looked pleased with herself. “That was pretty good, wasn’t it?” Then added, in a tragic tone — “Of course, you don’t credit me with brains.”
“I haven’t weighed you in that balance but I have never liked you as well as I like you tonight.”
“Patronizing brute! Your vocabulary isn’t great but it has more power of infuriating a woman than any I have ever heard.”
He said tranquilly — “I think you enjoy getting in a temper.”
She returned hotly — “You’ve never seen me in one before tonight.”
“I’ve never seen you enjoy yourself so much.”
She brandished the poker. She said — “I enjoy a bit of sparring.”
“I can see that.”
Her arm fell to her side. She spoke in a low, almost trembling voice. She said — “You see only the surface — never the aching heart beneath.”
Gently he pushed Merlin from the sofa to make room for her. “Come and sit down,” he said, “and tell me about this aching heart of yours. You broke off your engagement, I think. You must have gone through a good deal.”
“Are you feeling real sympathy for me? I doubt it.” She turned her back on him and began once more to poke at the fire, which responded in little angry leaps.
Irritated beyond endurance, he said — “Put down that poker.”
She gave no heed but continued, with renewed energy it seemed, to poke the fire.
He shouted — “Put down that poker, Dilly!”
He sprang up, went to her, and took the implement of torture from her and led her to the sofa. He no sooner had done this than he regretted it, for she at once put both arms about his neck and found a place for her head on his shoulder. She said — “My engagement was rather a tame affair.”
Mechanically he patted her shoulder. He said — “Really?”
“Compared to this.”
There was a silence in which he remembered a brief affair he had had with a girl from British Guiana during a visit to the Horse Show in New
York the year before. She had the same fuzzy hair as Dilly. He knit his brow, trying to remember her name.
Dilly asked — “Do you want me to tell you what is in my heart?”
“Naturally.”
“Naturally?”
“Well, I’m naturally sympathetic.”
She tightened her hold on him. “My past and my future are so intermingled,” she said. “At this moment I am trying to wrench myself free of both. To be only conscious of the present.”
Merlin, displaced from the comfort of the sofa, now tried to scramble onto Renny’s lap. At the same instant a loud thumping sounded from the grandmother’s room.
Renny exclaimed — “There’s Gran calling!”
“Damn your grandmother,” said Dilly. “I have never been in such a house. There’s no possibility of privacy — even at midnight.”
Renny was already on his way to old Adeline’s room. In it the light burned low. Colours were not distinguishable but were overlaid by a rich plum-coloured dimness, as though the past of the one who lay there were made palpable, as though the passions, desires, givings, and takings of a century had cast a mysterious bloom upon the room.
Renny had closed the door behind him. He could just make out his grandmother’s pale shape, raised in the bed. “What is it?” he asked. “Anything wrong, Gran?”
“Bonaparte,” she said, calling the parrot by his full name, “where is he?”
“In the drawing-room, Gran. I’ll bring him to you.”
“How did I come to forget him?”
“Well, perhaps you were a little upset.”
“Was it the brandy?”
“I dare say.”
“Was I perhaps a little tight?”
“Maybe.”
She chuckled and lay back on the pillows. The chuckle turned to deep laughter that came right up from her chest. “I can’t help laughing,” she said.
“Perhaps you’re still a little tight.”
Abruptly her tone changed to one of great seriousness. She said — “I was troubled about something. It’s slipped out of my mind.”
“Let it stay out, Gran. You have nothing to worry about. I’ll fetch Boney.”
He met Dilly carrying the drowsy parrot on his perch.
“I heard her ask for him,” she said.
His eyebrows shot up. “What hearing!”
“All my senses are abnormally acute tonight.”
“Can you see your way in the bedroom?”
She flashed him a look. “What did I say? I could see in the dark tonight.”
The old voice came from the bed. “Free the bird.”
Renny undid the chain that held him by the leg and set him on the leather bed that was painted in gorgeous fruit and flowers. He shook himself in sleepy pleasure and, peering down at the nightcapped head on the pillow, murmured:
“Peariee ... Peariee lal.”
“Hear what he calls me? His dearest ruby. Bless his heart. Did you hear him?”
“Yes,” they both said, gazing down on her. She spoke to the parrot then in soft Eastern words, but he had tucked his head under his wing and looked remote as a carven bird on a tomb.
She peered up and asked — “Who is with you, Renny.”
“Dilly.”
“Dilly who?”
“Dilly Warkworth.”
“Ah. Kiss me, both of you, and go. I’m sleepy now.”
Again in the hall, they heard the grandfather clock strike the midnight hour. He said — “You’d better go to bed, Dilly.”
She raised her face for inspection. “Do I look tired?”
“No. But I promised young Eden to see him. I’ll bet he’s tired.”
He went in where the fire was, to see if it was safe for the night. When he came out he said — “What you need is to have someone put you across his knee and give you a good whacking.”
On her look of outrage he put out the light.
Lady Buckley’s voice came from above, in a contralto whisper. “Dilly, are you still down there?”
“My God — Yes!” answered Dilly, the first two words in a raging undertone, the last clearly, sweetly.
A tall, pale figure leant over the banister. “In the dark, Dilly?” she demanded.
Renny leapt up the stairs to his aunt’s side and to her surprise kissed her. “We’ve been attending to the fire and to Gran. Dilly’s very tired. She’s on her way up.”
Augusta turned, with impressive deliberation, to her own bedroom but she said — “I hope you are not too tired, Dilly, to give me a few moments.”
Passing Renny, Dilly Warkworth remarked to him:
“I do so love these endless conferences. Do you think they will go on all night? Your grandmother and you. You and me. Lady Buckley and me. You and Eden. And there’s your little brother calling you. He wants one too. Bless his heart!”
Wakefield’s voice was coming from Renny’s room where, because of his weak heart, he slept. Now he called out — “Renny ... Renny ...
Renny,” in a small pathetic voice. “I’m not feeling very well.”
Renny bent over the bed and laid his hand on the small body.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he soothed. “Go to sleep, there’s a good fellow.”
“Isn’t my heart beating fast?”
“A bit fast. I’ll sit here till you’re quiet.”
“My legs feel funny.”
“I’ll rub them.”
The rhythmic rubbing of the thin thighs, the monotonous humming of “A hundred pipers and a’,” had their effect. The light coming in from the passage no longer glimmered in Wakefield’s eyes. They were closed. They flew open for a moment, though, when he said:
“I wish that girl Dilly’d go home.”
“Why, Wake?”
“Well, for one thing, her mouth is too red. For another, her eyes keep looking at you. For another, she thinks she’s clever. For another, she can’t ride for sour apples. For another ...” He tried to think of another objection but, drowned in comfort, sank asleep.
Every third step in the stairs that led to the top floor creaked so that Eden was made aware of Renny’s approach by a series of these punctuations. Each one ran threateningly through his nerves, and by the time Renny reached the top Eden was on his feet, facing him. He did not often come up to this room and now he threw a glance of distaste at its disorder. The bed showed that Eden had lain on it but the pillow was on the floor. Books were strewn over it. The short curtains at the windows had been tied in knots to let in all the light possible, and now the wintry moon was framed in the western window. A rising gale was shaking the shutters which, after nearly a hundred years of struggle against those walls, still clung there. If there were few books in the library, the shelves in Eden’s room were overflowing. Some lay on the floor. The open cupboard door revealed disorder within. Partly open drawers of the chest discovered garments half-in, half-out. The desk was littered. A pair of shoes lay in the middle of the floor and, near them, for some unguessed reason, an ashtray full of cigarette-ends. Renny, whose belongings were kept in military order, said:
“I don’t see how you live in this.”
“I tidy up now and again. It just gets this way.”
The light from the student’s lamp cast a greenish pallor on Eden’s face. He said — “Won’t you sit down?” and began to clear the books from the armchair. For answer Renny perched on the edge of the desk.
“Have a cigarette?” Eden asked, with the air of a host.
“No, thanks.” His intense gaze rested on Eden thoughtfully for a space, in silence, then he said — “What are you going to do about this Indigo Lake Business?”
“What can I do? Well — I’m terribly sorry, but I’m just as helpless as any of the others.”
“Did you invest all of your commission, Eden?”
“No. Not quite all.”
“You put part of it in the bank?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s see your deposit book.�
�
Eden hesitated. Hot colour surged up from his neck.
“Show me the book,” Renny repeated.
Eden flung open a drawer of the desk, searched for a moment, handed the little red book to his elder, then, jamming his hands into his pockets, turned to stare out of the window. Now the pale light of the moon was on his face. The moon was soon to be hidden by a snow-laden cloud. The first snowflakes whistled past the pane.
Renny studied the brief column of deposits. There were no withdrawals.
“You’ve been thrifty,” he remarked.
“Something new for me, eh?” There was bitterness in his voice as he added — “I had an object in saving.” He felt what was about to come and now it came.
Renny said — “You must realize that we can’t allow Dilly Warkworth to lose such a sum because of one of us and while she’s visiting Jalna.”
Eden wheeled to face him. He said:
“She went into it with her eyes open.”
“And you didn’t seek her out and lead her to believe that here was the chance of a lifetime?”
“I believed so myself.”
“Why did you keep these transactions secret?”
“Nobody wanted to tell the others.”
“What others? Me?”
“I tried to tell you that day coming from town, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Were you trying to confide in me or were you out to catch another sucker for Kronk?”
Eden paled. “Do you realize what you’re accusing me of?”
“I say that your object all through this was to build up your own little nest egg. Why — even your poor old grandmother was game for you.” His voice rose. “By God, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
Eden blazed back — “You don’t know what it is not to have a bean of your own.”
“I know what it is to have responsibilities I have trouble in meeting.”
“I’ll soon be off your hands, I hope.”
Renny now spoke quietly. “I don’t want you — or any of you boys — off my hands. But I will not stand for a guest in the house losing money through you.”
“I suppose you want me to fork over a thousand dollars for Dilly!”
“Exactly that.”
Eden said, in a shaking voice — “Very well. I will, but I think it’s damned hard.”
“On the contrary, you’re getting off easily. The uncles have been very decent. So has Meg — everyone. And that brings me to Piers.”
Books 5-8: Whiteoak Heritage / Whiteoak Brothers / Jalna / Whiteoaks of Jalna Page 50
