Finch's Fortune: A Novel

XX

ALAYNE watched Renny go and then sat down on a chair by the window, feeling suddenly weak. Her own voice echoed in her mind, repeating, ‘You talk like a fool!’ She had actually said those words to Renny. . . . And what was it he had said? That, too, was echoed in her mind. . . . She was not filled with remorse for her words or cut to the heart by his. She just sat motionless, stunned by the sudden rift between them. It was as though a crack in the earth had suddenly separated them. . . . Could that be bridged? Could she leap back, across the chasm of her words, and stand once more close beside him? ‘The worst-tempered woman he had ever known.’ And he had seen his grandmother in her passions! Had seen her draw blood from the boys with her stick! He had felt the sting of her tongue himself. Ah, but she was his grandmother! To be his wife was different. His wife must be meek. Well, if not meek, she must still not raise her hand against his dog.

Renny slammed the side door behind him, Ben still at his heels. He was glad to get out of the house, but no more glad than he had been a score of times after a family row, when perhaps old Adeline had followed him to the very door, raining recriminations on him. Certainly this tantrum of Alayne’s had been rather a shock. He had thought she had one of the sweetest dispositions possible. And to have beat up old Benny like this, and then to have called him a fool! He gave a kind of hysterical grin as he thought of it. Whatever had got into the girl? Perhaps it was a child? Women got into strange states at those times, he knew. Had tantrums or wanted to eat raw carrots or common starch — anything to be unnatural. Well, he hoped to the Lord it was a child. Meggie and Pheasant had both had them in the year, and now he’d been married a year and never a whisper of one. He’d like a boy resembling himself, except for the red hair. He could do very well without that. If it were a girl he should like it to look like Alayne — only, on the whole, it would be better if it inherited Meggie’s disposition.

He was only a few strides from the door when he was intercepted by Rags. In the bright sunlight the little cockney’s coat looked very rusty and his scalp showed through his graying hair. lie looked up at Renny with a mournful expression, twitching his nose and upper lip before he spoke as was his way when his feelings were hurt.

‘Well, what is it?’ Renny demanded impatiently.

‘I’ve come to give notice, sir. I think that me and me missus had oughter go since we’re not giving satisfaction to Mrs. W’iteoak, sir.’

Renny stared at him, thunderstruck. ‘Mrs. Whiteoak has n’t said anything to me about your not giving satisfaction. What is the trouble?’

‘Well, sir, you saw ’ow it was about the marmalade at breakfast. I was that unnerved that I nearly jumped out o’ me shoes when the bell rang, and I let drop the jar and smashed it. Not but w’at it was cracked already and our second-best one. Then, after breakfast, she came to the kitchen and poured out the vitals of her wrath on Mrs. Wragge. There was n’t a pot nor a crock nor a drawer she did n’t look into, and nothink was right. She even examined of the oven cloths and said they was tea cloths and had no business there. She was after Bessie for the way she plucked the fowls. Bessie’s young and she can tike criticism calm, but Mrs. Wragge ain’t herself this morning along o’ her innards. She ’ad a fry o’ some pork leavin’s last night before she went to bed and at three this morning we both thought ’er hour ’ad come. So she don’t feel able to swallow Mrs. W’iteoak’s unreasonableness, sir, and my nerves won’t stand it neither, so I think we’d better be goin’.'

‘The hell you will!’ said Renny. ‘Get along back to your work. I never heard of such nonsense. You have a very good place here, and if your wife can’t stand a little scolding she ought to be ashamed of herself. Give her a dose of salts and don’t encourage her in her tempers.’ He strode on, but Rags followed. ‘We appreciate the plice we ’ave ’ere. I ’ave it in me to be an old family retainer, but w’at’s the use if we can never do nothink to please the mistress?'

Renny stopped. ‘Rags,’ he said, giving him a look of almost tender familiarity, ‘you and I were through a good deal together. I don’t want to part with you and I don’t believe you want to leave me. You know quite well how to pacify your wife. Probably what happened this morning may never happen again. I ’ve overlooked things in you and you must show your good sense by putting up with a little criticism. Remind your wife of the dozens of times I’ve praised her sauces and her tarts.’

Rags’s gray little face was quite broken up by emotion. ‘Do you mind the time, sir, when we’d moved up in front of Wipers and we arrived in a God-forsaken plice just at dark, and inside of a hour I’d cooked you up a four-course dinner out o’ some bits o’ things I’d brung along in tins?’

‘Do I! I’ll never forget that dinner!’

They stood together talking of old times. Rags returned to the kitchen and told his wife that the master was all on their side and advised them not to ‘take the missus too serious.’

’I could have borne with ’er fault-finding,’ declared Mrs. Wragge, ‘if she ’ad n’t started in about the glazing on the platters. W’y, that was all cracked afore she ever set ’er foot inside this ’ouse.’

‘My! she has a funny way of talking,’ observed Bessie. ‘When she began about the fowl’s plumage I nearly burst out laughing.’

‘Silly!’ said Mrs. Wragge. ‘That’s the American for fevvers.'

Renny and the sheep dog went on toward the stable, but now he was genuinely angry at Alayne. It was all very well to be disagreeable to him — good God, she had told him that he talked like a fool. She had beaten poor old Ben for almost nothing, and now he found that she had all but lost him the Wragges. He remembered how she had drawn away from him when he had wanted to kiss her after breakfast. He sighed in puzzlement.

Usually he visited each of his horses in turn on his arrival at the stables in the morning, but this morning he felt out of sorts. He went straight to his little office and sat down before his yellow oak desk. Things were not going well with him this year. He had lost money at the races. A horse he had backed rather heavily, feeling certain of its quality, for it had been bred in his own stables and later sold to a friend, had fallen, thrown the jockey, and galloped riderless to the finish. A horse of his own, trained by himself as a steeplechaser, ridden by one of his own men, had given a far from brilliant performance. He had hoped to sell it for a large sum. That hope was gone, unless the horse retrieved its reputation in another race. He had sold two of his best horses to a prosperous broker, but for some reason the payment for them was not forthcoming. Renny did not want to sue for the money, but he needed it badly. Added to these misfortunes, a gale in the autumn before had taken the roof from one of the stables and blown down a portion of the wall. Luckily the horses had not been injured, but the carpenter and the mason were becoming anxious for their money. They must be paid somehow.

In the early spring he had had a letter from Eden asking for a loan. Eden was in France, where he had been working all winter, and he wanted to go to England. His health was none too good. He badly needed a change — they had had a dreadful winter of cold and rain on the Riviera. Minny was with him, of course. He could n’t imagine what he should have done without her. Might he have a thousand dollars? And Minny had joined him in sending love.

When Renny had come to that part of the letter he had cocked an eyebrow. There was something about the whole tone of the letter that he had not quite liked. It was an almost impudent tone, as though Eden had said, ‘Well, I cleared out with Minny and made things easy for you and Alayne. A thousand dollars is n’t much to ask! ’ Eden had called it a loan, but Renny knew that he would never pay it back, and Eden knew that he knew. The money had been sent. One could scarcely refuse it to a brother who had almost died of lung trouble. Renny had never mentioned the affair to the family.

He picked up a paper that lay on his desk. It was an account from Piers of the hay, straw, oats, and chop with which he had supplied Renny during the winter. Renny had been expecting this account for some time and he had known that Piers put off the rendering of it because of the shortage of money.

The farm lands of Jalna were rented to Piers at a moderate rental. Renny bought from him the supplies he needed for the stables at the regular market price. Piers also supplied the house with fruit and vegetables at a low price, as they did not need to be packed or shipped. This arrangement had worked out excellently, each brother giving the other a little time when necessary. Their love of Jalna, their love of horses, and their pride in their family were a strong bond between them. In the last two years Piers had been ready with his rent each quarter, on the day of its falling due. Renny, on the contrary, had been obliged to ask Piers for more time on several occasions. He felt chagrin at this. He wondered if he might put off the mason, the carpenter, or some other creditor, and pay Piers at once. He ran his eye over the items of the account. Certainly the nags had got away with a lot of feed. But they were worth it!

He opened a drawer and took out the accounts that had come in at the beginning of the month. He had not paid the vet anything since the New Year. The vet’s bill was mounting to a large figure, and he must be paid something. Urgent notes were attached to the accounts of the mason and the carpenter begging for an immediate settlement. Then there was the notice from the bank telling of a note that had fallen due. Renny had not been able to resist that lovely mare in Montreal, though he really had not needed her. . . . He lighted a cigarette and stared rather blankly at the papers on the desk. A jubilant neigh came from the stallion’s loose box.

He looked out of the window as a car drew up outside and saw Piers alight from it. Since he had got the new car Piers seemed always to have some business that took him on the road. Renny went out and joined him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, rather stiffly, ‘but you’ll have to wait a bit for the money for that fodder account. Money is awfully tight with me just now, and the mason and carpenter are pressing. Other things, too.’

Piers’s face fell. He had done the decent thing, he thought, in delaying the rendering of his account. ‘Could you pay me half?’ he asked. ‘I need the money.’

‘No,’ returned Renny irritably, ‘you’ll have to wait till next month.’

They had walked past the barn to the new piggery for which Finch was paying. The work was proceeding well. It was an up-to-date, solid-looking building. Piers had it in his mind to breed pigs on a large scale.

‘That thing is going to cost a lot of money,’ observed Renny, eyeing it disapprovingly.

‘More than young Finch expected, I’m afraid,’ answered Piers, grinning.

’He shingled the barn for you, too, did n’t he?’

‘Yes. It needed it badly.’

‘It appears to me that if you go on as you are doing you’ll get more out of Gran’s money than anyone else.’

Piers’s lips hardened. If his elder was going to throw Finch’s present to him in his face, he could be disagreeable, too. He said: —

‘When all is said and done, Finch is really doing it for you. The land is yours. The buildings are yours. I only have the use of them. You don’t care what condition the farm buildings are in so long as the stables are kept up. These improvements Finch has made are for Jalna — not for me.’

‘I would never have asked for them.’

‘Of course not. As I said before, you don’t care a damn about the farm buildings.’

‘Well, you’ll have the use of them all your life. You’ll likely outlive me. They don’t mean anything to me.’

‘They mean that you get your rent the day it is due.’

‘I suppose that’s a shot for me because I have to put you off.’ Renny’s red face became redder.

Piers’s eyes were prominent, as they always were when his temper rose. But he spoke quietly. ‘No — but I don’t like your tone about these buildings. You have known what was being done from the first and you’ve never said a word against the improvements until now.’

‘It was none of my business. I don’t care what Finch does with his money.’

Piers answered hotly, ‘But you resent his helping me!’

‘No, I don’t. But I don’t like your saying that he is n’t doing it for you, but for me.’

‘I did n’t say that! I said he was doing it for Jalna.’

‘I’ll look after Jalna —without anyone’s help.’

‘Good Lord! Then you would sooner he had squandered his money? He was bound to do that if he were let alone.’

‘ I don’t want any of it spent on me, that’s all. You will be saying next that he bought the car for me.’

‘Well, I acknowledge that was a present to me.’

‘It would have been better,’ said Renny, ‘if he had helped Eden a bit. He’s not strong. I had to send him a thousand dollars in March.’ He had not intended to tell of the loan, least of all to Piers, but he felt himself forced to tell by what he considered Piers’s surly attitude toward his delay in the payment of the account.

Piers returned, ‘Well, all I can say is that you were a fool to do it.’

It was the second time within an hour that Renny had been called a fool, but he felt more hurt than angered.

‘What would you expect me to do?’ he asked. ‘Let him starve?’

‘That’s what he deserves.’ Piers turned away, as though he could not trust himself to speak on the subject of Eden.

XXI

Renny drew in the restive young horse he had been exercising and looked over the white gate into the fox farm. He was undecided whether or no he should go in. Before the death of Antoine Lebraux he had been in the house every day. The sick man had become more and more dependent on him. When Lebraux’s periods of drinking had rendered him violent it was to Renny that his wife had come for assistance. After his death Renny had gone to the house constantly, trying to create order out of the disorder of affairs they discovered.

He had helped Mrs. Lebraux through the cubbing season. He had got Piers to buy some pure-bred Leghorns for her with which to stock the poultry house. He had sent old Noah Binns to dig the garden for her. He himself had gone about the house putting the rollers of window shades in order, tacking up sagging wallpaper, tinkering at the kitchen tap that dripped. He had interviewed the retired farmer who held a mortgage on the property and persuaded him to give her more time.

In return for these kindnesses Clara Lebraux had insisted that Renny use her stable, for his stables were overcrowded. It was all she could do. The horses were company, she said; she gave them their evening meal and bedded them down herself. Between the master of Jalna and Mrs. Lebraux had arisen the peculiar intimacy that is created between a man and a woman when he has seen her through distressing times, seen her looking her worst, red-eyed and unattractive or engaged in rough work, has done things about the house for her that a husband or a male relative ordinarily would do. They were as natural in the company of each other as two of the laborers on Piers’s farm.

Things were going a little better with her now. She did not need his help so often, and a casual word from Piers had made Renny feel that there was some gossip in the neighborhood about his frequent visits there. It was characteristic of him that he should dislike being gossiped about. He was overbearing; he could taciturnly ignore criticism; but he did not like to think that the Miss Laceys, Miss Pink, and Mrs. Fennel were giving sly hints over their teacups. He did not like to think that the grooms and stablemen nudged each other when he turned his horse in the direction of the fox farm. It was not fair to Mrs. Lebraux that he and she should create even harmless gossip. Before his marriage he had conducted his casual affairs of the heart with capable secrecy. Since his marriage he had given no thought to any woman save Alayne. His former amorous proclivities had been consumed in the generous fire of his love for her.

But in Clara Lebraux he had found what he had never known before — friendship with a woman. He could spend hours in her company without remembering her sex except as an intangible something that enriched their intimacy. He never forgot Alayne’s sex. It hung about her as a cloak, clouding his vision of her. It lay about her feet as a magic circle beyond which he had neither the power nor the will to press. His nature was intermittently sensual. At times when Alayne was talking, giving her opinion on some matter with the somewhat elaborate detail natural to her, he would watch her with a look that was both admiring and baffled and that had in it, as well, something hostile. He was aware that his impregnable masculinity was often irritating to her.

As he hesitated before the gate the front door of the house opened and Pauline Lebraux appeared. She ran toward him between the dingy white stones on either side of the path, her legs in their black stockings looking excessively long and agile. She threw back her head as she reached the gate to free her face from the uncared-for dark hair that hung like a mane about it.

‘Are n’t you coming in? Oh, please do!’ she entreated, gaspingly, as though in excitement.

He noticed her low white forehead with its penciled brows, the foreign-looking eyes, the wide, rather thin-lipped mouth with an upward curve at the corners.

‘No. I don’t think I shall go in. Just tell me how you are getting along.’

‘The very same. There’s nothing new. But you have n’t come for three whole days! We’re so lonely. We think you are annoyed with us.’

‘Open the gate, then.’

She threw it open with a grand gesture.

Mrs. Lebraux appeared at the side door of the house. She did not speak, but stood there waiting. Renny at once went over to her and they entered the house. They went into the sitting room that had become so familiar to him. He was used to high ceilings at Jalna. Here he always felt inclined to stoop for fear he would strike his head in the doorways.

He looked about the room, which had changed somewhat since he was last there, and said, ‘It looks nice here. What have you been doing?’

She gave a shrug. ‘Cleaning house. Making things look different so it will be less depressing.’

‘Did you have a woman in to clean for you?’ he asked.

‘I did it myself. Skinned all my knuckles.’

He frowned. ‘It does n’t cost much to get a woman for a few days.’

‘It costs enough to buy us new shoes, and we both need them.’

He looked at her shoes, then noticed the hand she extended as she knocked the ash from her cigarette. She had not spoken with exaggeration either of shoes or of knuckles. She was made of good stuff, he thought.

‘I’ll tell Binns to clean out the poultry house for you.’

‘I cleaned it out myself before breakfast.'

‘Hinph! How’s the poultry doing?’

‘Awfully well, but of course the price of eggs is low now. We eat them twice a day.

I give the child a raw one in a glass of milk, she’s growing so fast.’

‘It’s too bad the incubator went wrong that first time. I think it’s rather a pity you set it up again. From what I hear, these late chickens are n’t up to much.’

‘I used Plymouth Rock eggs this time. They’ll develop quickly into broilers. The lamp acted rather funny last night. I thought the first experience was going to be repeated, so I stopped up half the night with it.’

‘Look here,’ he exclaimed, ‘you’re going to overdo it, you know.’

‘Oh, no, I’m not! I’m feeling a thousand times better than I did in the winter. I’m worried about the child, though.’

He looked at her inquiringly.

‘Her education. She simply is n’t getting any. Her father used to teach her, but I can’t. In the first place, it is n’t in me to teach. In the second, my own education was sketchy. Pauline knows more about literature and more Latin than I do. And, naturally, French.’

‘You never learned to speak French from Lebraux?’

‘No. What was the use? He could speak English. He used to laugh when I’d try my schoolgirl French on him. But he always spoke French to Pauline. Now she’ll be forgetting it, I’m afraid.’

An idea came to Renny. ‘ Why, see here, my wife reads French very nicely! She and Pauline could read some French books together and it would do them both good. Alayne has really no way of passing the time. I’ll ask her.’

Mrs. Lebraux’s eyes looked blank, but she said, ‘Thanks very much. I’m afraid it would be too much trouble for her.’

‘Not at all. She likes children. She has always been very keen about my young Wake.’

‘Well, I should be very grateful. Pauline wanted to go to Mr. Fennel with your small brother, but she’s a Catholic, you know, and I’m sure Tony would have objected. What do you think? Do yon think it is fair to her to hinder her education because of a prejudice?’

‘I think her father’s wishes should be respected. But among us we’ll give her a start. Then, when things are a bit better with you, you can send her to a convent.’

‘She’s going on for sixteen.’

Renny knit his brows. ‘Uncle Ernest will be glad to help. I’m sure of that. He’s an Oxford man. Then, my wife for the French — and poetry. She knows all about modern poetry — if you want Pauline to study that. I think myself she’d be better without it. I’m afraid I can’t do much myself. It’s amazing how I’ve forgotten everything I learned at Varsity. Just in one ear and out the other. Money wasted. It was all athletics with me.

‘An amusing thing about my education is this — the little I learned from the governess who taught my sister and me when we were kids is all that sticks with me. I know the dates of all the English kings and of the principal battles. You simply could n’t catch me up on them. I might teach them to Pauline. It would be something to go on. Not one of my young brothers has hung on to them as I have. I’ve asked them suddenly — perhaps in the middle of their pudding — what are the names and dates of the battles in the Wars of the Roses? Do you think they could get them right? No. Or, perhaps, what were the dates of King Stephen? They were sure to be wrong. I could n’t possibly forget — 1135 to 1154. Wakefield is pretty good at the kings. I’ve said them to him to send him to sleep when his nerves were rocky. It’s the only use my education has ever been to me.’

Clara Lebraux listened to all this with serious interest. She puffed at her cigarette, scowling intently at him through the smoke. Alayne had heard him say the same words, with detached amusement, wondering at his ingenuousness.

‘The governess was afterwards your stepmother, was n’t she?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Were you fond of her?’

‘Not particularly. I did n’t think much about her. She was often ill, I remember. She’d large blue eyes that she kept half shut, and yellow hair. Eden’s rather like her. She taught me poetry, too. Can you believe that? Tennyson. And I have forgotten every line of it. If Eden had inherited a love of dates from her instead of poetry, it would have been better.’

‘I suppose. I can’t read poetry at all. It bores me.’

They smoked in silence, he gazing thoughtfully at her brogues, thinking how worn they looked; she at his boots, admiring the soft glow attained by the leather after many polishings.

Pauline came in, her small face flushed pink by the sun, her black frock worn at the elbows and too short for her.

Renny said, ‘Now let’s see what you know about history! What are the dates of Henry the Seventh?’

She stood before him startled, then shook her head. ‘I don’t know.

He grinned triumphantly at her mother. ‘I told you! She does n’t know.’ He drew Pauline to his side on the sofa. ‘Never mind! I’ll teach you them. We’re going to educate you among us. How will you like that?’

Pauline thought he was magnificent. She laid her head confidingly against his shoulder. ‘I shall like to have you teach me. Will you come here to do it, or must I go to Jalna?’

’I think I’ll come here. But my wife will read French with you at Jalna.’ By this time he felt sure that Alayne would acquiesce in the arrangement. How could she refuse?

‘I know French already,’ said Pauline rather haughtily.

‘Don’t be ungracious,’ said her mother. ‘It will be quite a different thing to read French literature.’

‘Papa read French books to me.’ Somehow she did not think she would like to read French with Mrs. Whiteoak. There had been something in Alayne’s cool gaze when they had met that had given the child a sense of being repulsed. However, she had been taught to be polite, so she added, ‘But I suppose these would be grown-up books. Quite different. Thank you, Renny.’

Both mother and daughter called him Renny, as Tony Lebraux had done, but he had pronounced it René.

When Renny looked at his watch, Pauline exclaimed, ‘Oh, do stay for lunch! He must, must n’t he, Mummy?’

‘Yes, do stay! You have n’t had a meal with us since January. But I’m afraid there is n’t much to tempt you.’

‘I’ll make an omelet! I can make a splendid one. And there’s ham!’ Pauline was willing, eager to use their supplies for the day to spread a feast for him.

She tied a white and blue checked apron under her chin and turned back the cuffs of her black frock. Renny stood beside the stove watching her as she frowned anxiously at the mixture in the frying pan. What if the omelet would not rise? What if it rose and fell again?

No need to worry. It rose in a yellow foam; at its height it attained just enough firmness to support it; it turned a golden brown. She laid it on the heated platter and Renny went to the garden to get parsley; he brought enough to garnish a roast young pig, but Pauline would use it all. So the omelet came to the table resting on a bank of green, resembling a verdant mountain capped with the gold of sunset.

Pauline felt a quivering sense of pride in her achievement, elation at the presence of a guest — and that guest Renny. She smiled, lifting her lip and showing her small white teeth. They talked of foxes, and Pauline told of the habits, the knowing tricks, of each. The man who worked for them had made her a seat in one of the shady trees about which the enclosures were built, and there she sat by the hour watching the foxes. They had become so used to her that even the shyest no longer scurried into his den when she climbed the steps to her seat. The boldest knew her. They knew, she said, the names she had given them. The cubs loved her. They were wonderful foxes, no two of a like disposition.

‘She knows more about them now than I do,’ said Clara Lebraux.

‘Experience shows,’ Renny said, ‘that the more foxes are handled as tame animals the better they thrive. Better cubs. Better fur.’

‘If only,’ cried Pauline, I might keep them all! But I have my pets and they must always be kept for breeding.'

‘You must not be sentimental,’ he said. ‘I would sell any horse I own.’

‘But not to be skinned!’

‘Well, perhaps not. I agree that that’s hard.’

While Mrs. Lebraux cleared away the luncheon things Pauline led Renny upstairs to the vacant room next her mother’s where the incubator was kept.

‘What do you think I do?’ she exclaimed, squeezing his arm when she had him alone. ‘I steal eggs from the poultry house and feed them to my baby foxes!’

‘But that is wrong,’ he said, looking down at her as severely as he could. ‘Those eggs are worth something.’

‘Bah, a few eggs!’ she cried, with the exact expression of her father.

‘But look at these! See what they are doing!’ He pointed through the narrow glass door of the incubator.

An egg next the glass was rocking like a little boat on the sea. Another showed a dark triangular chip. Through a third was thrust a gaping yellow beak. Far in the twilight at the back staggered a pitiable object, wet, goggle-eyed, half-fainting, hemmed in by the rows of uncompanionable spheres in which slept, cheeped, chipped, or lay dying his contemporaries. His woebegone expression showed his consciousness of being hatched too soon.

Renny struck a match and held it near the glass. They peered in, rough black head and red head touching.

‘Is n’t he a sight?’ breathed Pauline in ecstasy.

‘Poor devil,’ said Renny. ‘That’s what it is to be born the eldest of a family.’

XXII

Since the departure of Nicholas and Ernest, Rags had been laying tea in the dining room instead of carrying it to the drawing-room as was the custom in old Adeline’s day. Her sons would have resented the change, but the younger members of the family enjoyed having their bread and butter, cakes and jam, spread out before them and sitting around the table to eat.

Renny had not returned until teatime. He entered the house in rather a propitiatory mood toward Alayne. In spite of her hard words to him, he felt that, as a sensitive and fastidious woman, she had probably had a good deal to annoy her that morning. He knew that the servants were not what they should be, but he felt quite sure that nothing she could do would change them. He knew that he and old Benny the sheep dog were not all they should be, from her point of view, but he hoped that in time she would become accustomed to them and their ways.

He rather admired the spirit she had shown that morning. He had never seen her in a temper before. To think that she would hit the old dog with her slipper! And tell her husband that he talked like a fool! He grinned when he thought of it. He was elated by the idea of getting Alayne to read French with little Pauline. He felt that, if she would agree, it would be the means of drawing her and Clara Lebraux together. It would be good for each of them to find a friend in the other. It would be especially good for Alayne to have an interest outside Jalna, for he realized that often time hung heavy on her hands.

He went up to his room and changed into another suit, after having scrubbed his face and hands till they were red, and flattened his hair with a damp brush. This was done in order that she should to-day have no complaint that he brought the smell of stable with him.

She was pouring tea when he went into the dining room, sitting at her end of the table with a book she had been reading open beside her. Piers and Pheasant were talking with rather ostentatious good spirits to each other. Mooey had been brought to the table and was perched on the large volume of British Poets. As he ate his bread and butter his eyes were fixed on Alayne with a wondering look, as though he expected her at any moment to attack him. Since his parents were present to protect him, he would not have been altogether sorry to see her make some such demonstration. He smiled up at Wakefield, who sat beside him, and whispered, ‘I’m not f’ightened of Auntie Alayne.’

‘Of course you’re not,’ said Wakefield, patting his head. ‘So long as you do just what Uncle Wakefield tells you, nothing can harm you.’

Renny grinned at the children, then went and sat near Alayne. She had given Rags a few roses for the table, which he, in a conciliatory mood, had placed in a vase beside her plate. As he entered the room with a fresh pot of tea for Renny he cast his eyes on the roses and then on Alayne, emphasizing the fact that they were his gift to her.

She looked up from her book and smiled at Renny, — a somewhat forced smile, — then lowered her eyes again, abstractedly eating a small iced cake while she read. With her book, her roses, and her cake, she was separated from the other members of the family in a kind of frosty seclusion.

At tea Renny liked a pot to himself, which Rags always ostentatiously placed beside him. He was very hungry after the lunch at the fox farm, accustomed as he was to a solid one-o’clock dinner. He ate in silence for a time, feeling himself in rather an uncomfortable position midway between the opposing factions at the table. Vaguely he wondered what he could do to please Alayne, to show her that the words she had cast at him that morning had not rankled. He discovered the roses and drew the vase across the table to him. Glancing at Alayne from under his thick lashes to make sure that she was observing him, he sniffed each rose in turn, thrusting his handsome bony nose into the heart of each like some enormous predatory bee.

‘These smell awfully nice,’ he said. ‘Out of our own garden?’

‘Yes,’ she returned, closing her book on her finger. ‘You had better put them in the centre of the table. I don’t know why Rags should have set them by my place.’

Piers and Pheasant had ceased their animated talk long enough to listen to this exchange of words. Now they began to talk again, their eyes dancing. They paid no attention to their child, who sat gazing in astonishment at the large piece of cake Wakefield had put on his plate wdiile he still held another piece in his hand.

Alayne returned to her book and Renny set the vase of roses carefully in the middle of the table. His first effort had failed. Rags had come into the room and was gazing at him with an adoring expression. He came and bent over him, whispering, ‘Is your tea all right, sir?’

‘Oh, yes, it’s quite all right.’ He looked up into Rags’s pale eyes as though for inspiration.

It might be well, he thought, to show Alayne that he was definitely on her side regarding Mooey’s misbehavior of the morning. He fixed his nephew with his gaze and said: —

‘What’s this I hear about you? Going into Auntie Alayne’s room and flinging her powder about! Let me catch you in there again and I’ll warm you so that you’ll not want to sit down for a week.’

Mooey’s eyes overflowed with tears. He laid down the cake he had been eating beside the piece he had not yet begun, and clutched his head in both his sticky hands. He made his mouth square and emitted a wail. Piers shook his finger at him.

‘None of that! ’ he said. ‘Sit up and take your medicine. Take that cake off his plate, Wake.’

Mooey gulped back his woe and wiped his eyes on a corner of his bib.

‘It’s pretty hard,’ exclaimed Pheasant, ‘always to restrain a small child so that he’ll never get into the least little bit of mischief!’

‘You must manage it somehow,’ said Renny.

‘If only Alayne would keep her door shut! Mooey can’t manage door knobs yet.’

‘Alayne can’t keep her door shut. She does n’t want it shut. She likes the air to stir through it.’

‘But she’s always complaining of drafts!’

‘A draft in the sitting room and a draft in her bedroom are two very different things.’

Alayne sat listening with the feelings of one engaged in a lawsuit who sits silent, made to writhe alternately by the attorneys for and against. She had come to tea scarcely knowing how to face Renny. She had brought her book to the table as a protection. Now Renny’s attitude of aggressiveness on her behalf gave her an agreeable sense of power. For the first time she felt the possibility of influence over him. If only she had him to herself! But how little likelihood there was of that, since even now he was fretting at the smallness of the family! While he was in his present mood it might be timely to introduce the subject of a nurse for Mooey.

She said, looking down the table at Pheasant and speaking gently, ‘I know it is quite impossible to keep babies out of mischief. Don’t you think it would be better if you had a nurse for Mooey? It would give you so much more freedom. Mrs. Patch has a young niece who might easily be got to come by the day.’

‘I can’t afford a nurse for him. Pheasant has nothing else to do and Bessie takes him off her hands sometimes,’ said Piers.

‘One could see this morning,’ returned Alayne, still looking at Pheasant, ‘how well Bessie looks after him. He might easily have got into danger.’

‘I quite agree,’ said Renny, ‘We’ll engage the Patch girl, and I’ll pay her wages.’

This was not at all what Alayne had intended. It was not fair. Already he was doing far more than was necessary for Pheasant and Piers. Alayne sometimes wondered if they or he realized what the cost of keeping three people amounted to in a year. In spite of her effort to control it, her face fell, the corners of her mouth went down.

Piers’s eyes were on her. He smiled triumphantly as though at a victory beyond mere matter of money, and said, ‘Thanks awfully, old man! There’s no doubt that it will be a relief for Pheasant and we shall all feel reasonably sure that the kid won’t be upsetting Alayne. For my part I think it would be much better if he did n’t come to the table.’

‘ He shall come to breakfast and tea, but not to dinner or supper,’ said Renny dictatorially.

Mooey did not like this discussion about his meals. He laid his forehead against the edge of the table and wept. Piers got up, threw him across his shoulder as though he were a parcel, and carried him out.

Before she followed him Pheasant said, ‘Thank you very much, Renny. It will be nice having a nurse. I’m not going to be excessively grateful, though, because I think you are doing it much more for Alayne than for me.’

They were alone, except for Wakefield. How often it seemed to Alayne that they were alone except for him! He had grown quieter of late. He was growing taller, too, and he often had a brooding, half-sulky air. Then again he would be his mischievous precocious self.

Renny turned sideways in his chair and crossed his legs, regarding her with a pleased air. ‘I’ve got something nice for you to do,’ he said. Wakefield also turned sideways in his chair, crossed his legs, and folded his arms. Alayne drew the vase of roses from the centre of the table toward herself, withdrawing her hand just at the spot where the roses and their foliage would intervene between her face and Wake’s. This was an unpremeditated gesture. It was simply that she must do something, though it were merely symbolic, to shut him off from herself and Renny.

‘What is it?’ she asked, trying to look pleasantly eager.

‘I’ve arranged for you to read French with the little Lebraux girl. You see, she has no one to speak it witli now.’

‘But why should I? I suppose she reads French better than I do already. And I speak it very little.’

‘Then it will be a Help to you as well.’

‘But I don’t want to do it!’ The thought of reading or speaking French to a child whose native tongue it was bored and intimidated her. She would not have minded teaching a child ignorant of the language, but that the child should know it better than she, would perhaps go home to criticize her accent to her mother, was not to be endured.

‘Don’t be silly! I’ve promised for you.’

‘It is impossible.’

In exasperation he poured down a cup of scalding tea. ‘That’s because you dislike Clara Lebraux.’

‘So her name is Clara!’

‘Why not?’ He had nothing to conceal, but the color of his face deepened at the implication of intimacy in her tone.

‘No reason at all. It is a name I’ve never cared for. And I do not feel attracted to Mrs. Lebraux. But that has nothing to do with my refusal to read French with her child.’ Her voice wavered. She picked up a morsel of bread and began to pulverize it between her finger and thumb. ‘Renny, can’t you understand? It would be embarrassing for me to attempt to teach that girl! ’

‘Not to teach! To read with. There’s a vast difference.’

‘I am sorry, but I can’t make the effort.’

‘Not to please me?’

‘To please you!’ she repeated, raising two blazing eyes to his face. ‘Why should it be so necessary to your pleasure?’

‘It’s not. But I hope I have some compassion in me. Give me one sensible reason why you won’t do this and I’ll try to understand.’

’I have explained.’

‘If anyone else offered such an excuse, I can imagine what you’d say!’

‘Can you?’ She turned her head aside indifferently.

‘Yes. You’d say they were being self-conscious and self-centred.’

She directed a hurt and angry look at Wakefield, then rose from the table. ‘Not before an outsider, please,’ she muttered, and left the room.

Renny took out his cigarette case, extracted a cigarette, and lighted it. He smoked in silence, his face twisted into a peculiar grimace which, if it had been observed by one of his kin, would have been translated as expressing a mood of defiance and chagrin. No one saw it. Wakefield was sitting with his elbow on the table, his head resting on his hand. The last of three sighs, drawn from the depths of his being, disturbed Renny’s reflections. He shot an inquiring glance at the boy, noticed the despondent droop of the smooth dark head and the thinness of the childish wrist.

‘What’s the matter, kid?’ he asked gently.

‘Nothing.’

‘Are n’t you feeling well? Are you tired?’ A tone of anxiety at once came into the elder’s voice. Behind the sheltering hand he saw the boy’s mouth trembling.

‘Come here,’ he said, and pushed his chair back from the table. Wakefield came round to him with averted face. Renny pulled him to his knee. ‘Tell me,’he repeated, ‘are n’t you well? Is it your heart? ’ He put his arm about Wake and pressed his thin muscular hand above the weak organ as though he would impart some of his vitality to it.

Wakefield shook his head. Then he said, twisting a button on Renny’s coat, ’It’s Alayne. She does n’t like me any more. Just before she went she called me an outsider. Did you hear her?’

Renny gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘That meant nothing! Married people call others outsiders sometimes — I can’t just explain why.’

‘Well — if you can’t explain — it’s just as though you call me an outsider, too.’

Renny answered, impatiently, ‘When married people make love or quarrel they generally like to be unobserved.’

‘You did n’t mind my being here. And it was n’t only what she said — it was what she did. She pulled the bouquet so that it shut me out. She did n’t think I noticed, but I did. She’d like to shut me out altogether and there’s no use in your saying she would n’t, Renny.’ He began to cry softly, producing a ball of a handkerchief and rubbing his eyes with it.

Renny burst into noisy laughter. ‘Why, you little idiot, you know very well that a dozen wives could n’t come between you and me!’ He hugged Wake to him and kissed him repeatedly. Wakefield’s crying rose to almost hysterical sobs.

Alayne had left her book in the room and, thinking that by now Renny would have gone, she was returning for it. However, when she reached the door and saw the brothers, she quickly passed on toward the drawing-room.

‘Alayne!’ Renny called. ‘Come here!’

She returned to the doorway and looked in at them, with a self-controlled expression on her pale face.

‘You have hurt Wake’s feelings by calling him an outsider. I explained that to him. Now he says that you moved the flowers so that they would shut him off from us!’ He gave her an entreating look as though to say, ‘I can’t have him worried! You must bear with his whims and with my love for him.’

She saw the look and read in it only a repetition of his willingness to impose a disagreeable obligation on her that he might gratify someone who roused the protective instinct in him. The sight of Wakefield clinging about his neck, Wakefield’s shuddering sobs, Renny’s look of entreaty, filled her with cold anger. What Renny wanted her to do, she felt, was to come in and pet and reassure the boy. She could not do that; something reticent in her forbade the demonstration. She felt that even to deny that she had moved the flowers for a purpose was a debasement of her dignity.

After an inward struggle she said, ‘I had no idea that I should hurt Wakefield’s feelings. I’m sorry, if I did. But I can’t help thinking it is a pity he hears so much of the grown-up talk. He’s too introspective. He’s becoming neurotic, I’m afraid. And is n’t a boy of his age too big to be kissed?’ She spoke in jerky, uneven sentences.

Renny said, ‘His father was dead before he was born. His mother died when he was born. He’s always been — well — I’ve often wondered if I should rear him. You can’t wonder — ’

She interrupted, ‘But anyone who knows anything of child psychology knows that to talk that way before him is the worst thing possible for him. It puts into his mind the thought of forlornness, dependence, weakness. Can’t you see?’

‘No, I can’t,’ he answered hotly. He glared at her with the look of old Adeline. ‘If your father had been a horse dealer, instead of a New England professor, we might understand each other better.’

‘Renny,’ she cried, ‘how can you?’ And she flew upstairs to her room.

Her room was to be her refuge more and more often in the following weeks. Her feeling of estrangement from the family increased rather than decreased. For Renny, to the springs of whose life she had joined her own in faith and in passion, she experienced a strange numbing of the emotions. She waited till this darkness should pass like a trailing cloud, and the light of their love burst forth again. She withdrew herself spiritually as well as physically. On his part, he treated her with more than usual politeness before the others and avoided her in secret. Piers and Pheasant believed that harmony had been restored between Renny and her, but believed also that a delicate balance was being maintained in their relations which might easily be upset.

Wakefield brooded on the scene in the dining room, but repeated nothing of it to the other members of the family. At this time he acquired the curious habit of going to the room he occupied with Renny when Alayne retreated to hers. When she closed her door, she often heard the closing of that door, as though in mockery. Sometimes, as she sat writing, she heard the door open, then, after a space, close again, as though lie had stood in the doorway listening. What did the boy do in there? She was convinced that he did nothing but brood or dream, that he went for no purpose but to vex her.

The weather was hot, and her room, shaded by a giant fir tree, was always cool and pleasant. Mr. Cory, of the New York firm of publishers for whom she had been a reader, sent her several advance copies of new books from his autumn list, asking for her opinion of them. He flattered her by telling her that he had found no one adequate to take her place, on whose judgment he could so rely. The books he sent, the subjects of which were history, biography, and travel, interested her intensely. She wrote him long letters about them. So she created, for the time, an independent world of her own within the walls of Jalna, in which she recaptured some of the spirit of tranquillity and contemplation of her old life.

It was a false tranquillity, a contemplation born of her passion to conceal her real state from herself. A word, a glance, would have been enough to shatter her self-control. But each day, as the heat increased, her face became more of a cool mask. She became even more fastidious in her dress. Renny, as though fastidiousness were a weapon which he could use as well as she, became more and more careful of his dress, too. Pheasant and Piers, in emulation, made themselves as spruce as possible. Even Wakefield wore his best clothes every day, and Mooey screamed for a silver napkin ring for his bib. Piers had forbidden Pheasant to bring him to the table and Renny had not again expressed a desire to have him there. A depressing quiet hung over their meals, often broken only by Rags’s whispered conversations with Renny.

In late July, Alayne had a letter from her aunts on the Hudson expressing their intention of visiting her. The thought of a visit from them was both delightful and worrying. They had never been to Jalna and she longed to show them the old house and the rambling estate. Yet would she be able to conceal from their shrewd and loving eyes the present volcanic barrenness of her life? Might not an eruption be possible during their visit?

She was all the more apprehensive because her aunts had never met Renny. They had given their hearts to Eden at first sight. The divorce and her remarriage to Eden’s brother had been a shock to them. It was only now that they could make up their minds to visit her. She wished that the elder Whiteoaks were at home. The presence of Augusta, Nicholas, and Ernest appeared to her now as a protecting wall behind which she might conceal her own heartache. She had always thought how interested she would be if she could see her aunts, so refined, so whimsically proper, so gingerly perched above all ugliness in life, in the same house with the three elderly Whiteoaks, across whom lay the lusty shadow of old Adeline.

How she had welcomed the departure of Ernest and Nicholas for England! She had looked forward to a summer of greater freedom in her life with Renny, a summer of fulfillment, of spiritual development of their love. And it had come to this! If the uncles had not gone away, things might not have come to this pass. Even that thought came to her. Over and over again she lived through their misunderstandings and tried to see what she might have done to prevent them. She could not discover anything in her most self-accusing mood that would have prevented them except the humbling of her spirit to his and the absolute conforming to the life of the house. She believed that if she had it all to live over again she would do just that — humble her spirit and conform absolutely.

Perhaps, if only she had agreed to read French with that unattractive Lebraux child, all might have been well. But the thought of the child brought the thought of the mother, and the thought of the mother brought a rush of anger and jealousy that drove all else from her mind. She discovered that she was bitterly jealous of Mrs. Lebraux, that she was even jealous of little Pauline. When Piers made a remark to Renny in reference to the fox farm, and Renny answered in obvious familiarity with its affairs, she dared not look at them lest they should read the anger in her eyes.

Looking back over her acquaintance with Renny, she recognized that he had always irritated her, excited some latent antagonism in her, sometimes as though deliberately, more often by simply being himself. She and Eden had never quarreled. From the first her love for him had in it a maternal quality. There was nothing maternal in her love for Renny. It was instinctive, violent, and without rest. And though there was no rest in it, no peace in it, neither was there growth. It was like the sea, eternally beating against its shores, yet eternally bound by them.

What had they been quarreling about? Old Benny — the sheep dog. Mooey — the baby. Pauline and Wakefield — children. Was their life together to be ruined by quarrels over dogs and children? If only she had a child of her own, things might be different. But Renny had never expressed a desire for a child of his own. . . .

XXIII

Alma Patch was the girl who came as nursemaid to young Maurice. She was the niece of the village nurse, and her aunt was well pleased to be the means of installing her at Jalna. The village nurse was also the village gossip, and, as the Whiteoaks were the mainstay of rumor and of tattle, Alma would be a conduit through which a continuous supply would flow.

She was a strong girl with sandy hair and a freckled face, and she never raised her voice above a whisper except when she sang or laughed, which she did in a piercingly high soprano. She was as lazy as possible and very fond of children. To sit on the grass minding Mooey, while he trotted about her in his play, sometimes stopping to throw grass on her or hug her or even kick her, was Alma’s idea of bliss. Then to fill her stomach with good food, and her mind with rich gossip, and return home at dusk an object of rare importance to her friends, constituted a life of such perfection as it is given to few to enjoy.

About the time of Alma’s appearance at Jalna, Pauline Lebraux gave Renny a nine-months-old Irish terrier named Barney, which had been sent to her for her birthday by a friend of her father’s in Quebec. It had been impossible for her to keep the dog because he spent all his time in barking at the foxes, exciting them to frenzy. So, though she loved him, and because she loved him, Pauline presented him in turn to Renny on his birthday. As though he needed another dog!

But Renny seemed to have unlimited room in his affections for dogs and children. He looked on Barney as the one dog to fill a long-felt want. But the terrier was the wildest, most untamable creature that had ever been on the place. Piers thought he was excessively inbred. Renny, who was an advocate of inbreeding, insisted that Barney was the victim of a system of raising dogs like wild animals. He guessed that he had been brought up in an enclosure without a word of kindness. To make friends with him, to teach him what companionship of man and dog might be, this was a task after Renny’s heart. And Barney, who was beautifully set up, had, beneath the untamed look in his eyes, a look of desperate need.

But he would not allow himself to be touched. He scarcely knew his name. He carried his meals into a corner, growling like a wild animal while he devoured them. He slept in Wright’s room over the garage, but he did not make friends with Wright. From the moment he was released in the morning he ran hither and thither as though half demented by the multitude of strange sights about him and the vast open spaces where he might run at will. The fields of grain were tall and a deep golden color. Barney spent most of his days in them as in a jungle. Deep in a field a movement might be seen stirring the ears of wheat or barley, and then stillness again, for it was sultry weather and no breeze touched the grain. Sometimes when Renny walked past the fields, followed by his two clumber spaniels, Barney’s face would appear, watching them cautiously from the shelter of the grain. He would let them get a little way ahead, then, in his concealment, he would bound after them till he was again abreast and again he would peer out with that same desperate look in his eyes.

The spaniels appeared to understand all about him. In his own way Renny had explained the situation to them. They would give a friendly look in his direction but no more, walking with dignity at their master’s heels.

At last a day came when he emerged from the shelter of the grain and ran in the open for a little way near Renny and the spaniels.

‘Just watch,’ Renny advised Piers,who had been inclined to jeer, ‘and you will see a splendid dog in him yet. He’s never had a chance till now and he’s responding to it every day.’

‘He’s getting to look a little beauty, no doubt about that,’ acceded Piers. ‘He’s grown a lot since he came. But I’m willing to bet that it will be cold weather before he comes of his own accord to you and lets you pet him,’

‘What will you bet?’

‘A fiver.’

‘Done.’

Renny won the bet by a wide margin. He was riding his favorite roan one morning at a canter along the path through the woods when suddenly he came upon Barney, his head in a burrow. When the dog withdrew his head he seemed too astonished for movement. He stood sniffing the roan’s legs, then raised himself to sniff Renny’s boots. When horse and rider moved on he trotted close behind. From that time he followed the roan whenever and wherever he could. Inside of a month he had come to Renny of his own accord and laid his head on his knee.

Renny’s pleasure in this achievement was so great that he boasted of it even to Alayne, who cared little for dogs, and for this dog less than others, since it had come from the fox farm. But she tried to soften her face, which felt rigid, into a sympathetic smile.

One day in late August, when a thunderstorm was pending, Renny and Piers, accompanied by Wright, went in the car to a sale twenty miles away. Pheasant was in bed that day, feeling ill. She had told Alayne that morning that she believed she was going to have a child.

Alayne wandered about downstairs trying to settle herself at something; but the air was full of electricity, there was a sulphurous light in the sky, which seemed uncomfortably near the treetops, and she felt disturbed, even shaken, by Pheasant’s news.

A second child for her and Piers! Perhaps another son! And there were no signs that she herself might become a mother. She had not yet been married a year and a half, but she had a morbid premonition that she was to be childless — that she was to see Meggie and Pheasant rejoicing in their motherhood, see Renny carrying their children in his arms, and feel herself married without the fulfillment of marriage. She leaned against the window of the sitting room looking out on the side lawn, where, in the sultry shade, Mooey lay stretched flat on his back idly lifting first one leg and then the other. Alma sat beside him, her face a blank from contentment and heat. Alayne wondered what went on in that head under the sandy hair. She watched the girl’s large pink hands pluck blades of grass and tickle her own lips with them.

As she was wondering thus, Alma’s eyes became round and prominent with terror. She opened her mouth wide and gave a piercing scream. The shock to Alayne was all the greater for never having heard the girl utter a sound above a whisper up to this moment. Mooey sat up and looked at Alma.

‘Do it again!’ he said.

As though at his bidding Mina repeated her scream, and now Alayne saw what she was screaming about. Barney was flying round and round the lawn in a kind of aimless fury, his jaws snapping rhythmically and foam whitening his lips. He passed beneath her window then and she saw his eyes fixed in a hallucinated glare. From a window above came Pheasant’s shrieks, then her agonized call to Alma to run with Mooey to the house.

‘This way!’ cried Alayne. ‘This way! Bring him to me!’

Alma snatched up the child and passed him through the window to Alayne just as the dog again flitted by like a creature from a nightmare. Somehow Alayne managed to drag the girl in also.

She ran to the hall and met Rags there. His pale face had become ashen.

‘Did you know that that dog of Mr. Witeoak’s ’as gone mad, ma’am? Is n’t it terrible?’ He ran to the front door, shut and locked it.

Alayne could hear a commotion of voices in the basement. She could hear Pheasant frantically questioning child and nurse upstairs. One of the farm laborers, named Quinn, appeared at the back of the hall.

‘Don’t you think we’d better shoot the dog, ma’am? He’s gone clean mad!’

‘Yes, yes — we must have him destroyed! It’s too terrible. Oh, I wish Mr. Whiteoak were here! ’

‘The cook said that if you would let me have Mr. Whiteoak’s gun — I could use that.’

‘His gun . . .’ She looked at him blankly.

‘The cook says it’s in his room.’

‘I’ll fetch it, ma’am,’ put in Rags.

‘No, Wragge. I will get it.’

She ran up the stairs, feeling electrified to strength and competence. Pheasant followed her to the door of Renny’s room. ‘It’s in a leather case,’ she said, ‘in the cupboard.’

Alayne found the case, rapidly unbuckled the straps, and took out the polished gun. Her hands were steady as she carried it down to Quinn and put it in his hands. She suddenly remembered Wakefield and asked where he was.

‘Oh, ma’am!’ cried Rags. ‘’E’s over there with ’is pony, and the dog has run to the stables! ’

Quinn hurried off with the gun.

Pheasant called from upstairs, ‘Alayne! Come — quick! You can see him from my bedroom window!’

Alayne flew up to her, but when she reached the window, though the stables were visible, nothing living was to be seen but Quinn running toward them with the gim in his hands.

‘Had you seen the dog to-day before this happened?’ she asked.

Pheasant pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘Yes. I saw him following Quinn. Quinn was taking the roan and one of the farm horses to be shod. Barney was following the roan. I thought it was funny, because I’d never seen him go out on the road before. . . . There! Quinn has gone into the stable! Oh, is n’t it horrible? Shall I close the window so we shan’t hear the gun go off?’

Mooey shouted, ‘I want to hear the gun go off! Bang! Bang! I’m not f’ightened!’

‘I don’t think you had better shut it. It is stifling — the hottest day I have seen this summer.’

They stood staring in the direction of the stables, — of which only a part could be seen through a break in the row of firs that had been planted with the object of hiding them, — as though they expected to see something frightful enacted there. Presently they heard shouts, and their fascinated eyes saw figures running past the open space. Then, between the firs, the terrier appeared, and ran on to the lawn in a strange, lolloping gait, evidently at the point of dropping. There was a tear on his haunch from which the blood dripped to the grass. He raised his head and looked up at the windows where they stood.

Quinn and two other men ran into view carrying hayforks. One of them, a youth from a Glasgow factory, kept well behind the other two, his round face stupid with fear. Pheasant and Alayne did not realize what the men were going to do until they ran up to Barney and began to jab their forks into him. He fell, bleeding in a dozen places.

Then the Glasgow youth pressed forward and thrust his fork so deep into the body that he had to put his foot on it in order to pull out the prongs.

Alayne had Pheasant, fainting, on her hands.

Young Maurice asked, ‘Why did they do that? But Barney was naughty, was n’t he? Why does Mummy want to sleep?’

By the time Alayne had got Pheasant back to her bed and had restored the child to his nurse, Wakefield had rushed into the room. His eyes were glittering with excitement.

‘Did you see?’ he cried, ‘hasn’t it terrible? I was standing quite close, behind the bushes. I saw everything, you know. Quinn did n’t understand Renny’s gun. He could n’t make it go off. They chased Barney round and round the stable and Quinn managed to wound him, but he got away and ran toward the house. I believe he thought he’d find Renny here. Won’t Renny be surprised when he comes home? I hope I can be the one to tell him! ’

The car, in which rode Renny, Piers, and Wright, did not turn into the drive until late afternoon. It went straight to the stables, and there were half a dozen men about eager to tell the news.

‘You fools!’ exclaimed Piers. ‘The dog no more had rabies than yon have! He was hysterical. Nothing more.’

Wright said, ‘If I had been here, he’d never have been killed. We’ve had them like that before this and they got over it, did n’t they, sir?’ He turned to Renny.

Renny was staring at Quinn, who had told excitedly of his prowess, but who was now looking slightly abashed. The Glasgow youth stood close by, eager for praise, if there was any, but disclaiming all responsibility in the act.

‘Do you mean to tell me,’ said Renny, ‘that four of you chased that puppy through the stables with pitchforks, then rounded him up on the lawn and butchered him?’

‘The gun would n’t go off,’ muttered Quinn.

‘What gun was it?’

‘Yours, sir. Mrs. Whiteoak went and got it for me.’

‘Why did n’t you shut him in the loose box?’

‘Gosh, I would n’t have touched him on a bet, sir. He looked something fierce.’

‘Where is he?’

They had buried him.

‘Dig him up! I want to see him.’

They led the way to the spot, and the Glasgow youth, eager to put himself right, snatched up a spade and thrust it violently into the ground.

Renny took it from him. ‘Here!’ he said. ‘Do you want to crack his skull? I’d sooner see yours cracked.’

He began cautiously to uncover the body. When it lay exposed, he bent over it. He turned it on its other side, frowning at the wounds. He ran his hand along the spine in a quick caress, then straightened himself.

‘You made a pretty mess of the job,’ he said. He added, to Wright, ‘Have the head taken off, Wright. I shall send it to be examined. He should never have been taken on the road in a heat like this.’

He returned to the house. In the hall he met Alayne.

‘Well,’ he said with a grin, ‘so you managed to murder my dog among you, while I was away!’

(To be continued)