The Whiteoak Brothers. Mazo de la Roche

The bare branches of an old lilac-tree bent before the gale.

      “The first of March, eh? And coming in like a raging lion. Well, well, what a day for …”

      Now she was going to say it! What a day for your birthday. But she only said — “Put my pillows behind me. Prop me up.” She gave a sniff, as though she had a cold in the head.

      He placed the huge feather pillows at her back, his eager eyes on her face beseeching her. My birthday, his heart pleaded, don’t forget my birthday, Gran…. But how could he expect an old woman, almost a hundred years old, to remember his birthday?

      When he had her propped up he looked down into her face. He could remember it since he was little more than a baby and it had always fascinated him. The dark eyes were so alive, the nose so finely arched, there was a look of courage, of boldness, in the very structure of the face, so that toothless as she was, dominance was enthroned there. There was craft in the face too. It might have belonged to an old empress, seasoned in the intrigues of a court. Yet her realm had been Jalna. She was little known beyond the surrounding countryside. In Ireland where she had spent her youth, and in India where, in a British Military Station, she had spent the first three years of a happy marriage, she was forgotten.

      “My teeth,” she now demanded, “give me my teeth.”

      The two sets were in a tumbler of water on a bedside table. Finch held it in front of her while she, with a look of pleasurable anticipation, retrieved them and, with a clicking sound, put first one denture, then the other, in place.

      “Good,” she said, “now —”

      But her eldest grandon’s voice interrupted her. “Finch! What the devil are you doing?” he shouted.

      “Oh, gosh,” groaned Finch, “the logs!”

      Renny was striding down the hall. Before Finch could intercept him he was at the door of the bedroom and had stumbled over the logs and almost plunged on to the bed. Old Adeline Whiteoak held out her arms to him.

      “Bless me, what an entrance,” she exclaimed. “What a clumsy fellow you are! Can’t you see where you are going?” She knew she was to blame and so smothered his explosion of anger in an embrace. She held him close while Finch gathered up the logs. She drew strength from Renny.

      Finch found the fire merrily burning up the kindling and the family group at ease. Meg was knitting something for Wakefield.

      “Let me put on the logs,” begged the little boy.

      Finch gruffly pushed him away and built up the fire, laying the logs carefully, almost caressingly in place. The sweet scent of these pleased him. Wakefield crouched close beside him, the flames reflected in his large brown eyes. He held up his little hands to the fire. Finch had a sudden desire to hold him close. He picked him up and pressed his small body against his own, rejoicing in its weakness, finding sensuous comfort in it.

      Meg beamed up at them.

      Wakefield whispered — “It’s your birthday, isn’t it, Finch? I know.” He looked mischievous.

      Finch quickly set him on his feet. “Forget it,” he said.

      Renny appeared in the doorway. He said, in his decisive voice — “Gran’s awake, Meg. I’ve rung for her breakfast, can you go to her?”

      Meg rose at once. She would be thirty-nine in a few months but already had a matronly figure and a strand of grey in her light-brown hair at the temples. She had a particularly sweet smile but a stubborn nature. She was devoted to her brother and her young half-brothers and was held up by all the neighbourhood as the model of what a sister, a niece, and a granddaughter should be.

      The spaniels were stretched in front of the fire and now two other pets entered the room, passing Meg in the doorway with a supercilious air. These were Nip, a Yorkshire terrier belonging to Nicholas, and Sasha, a yellow tortoise-shell cat, which was Ernest’s. Each made straight for its owner, Nip scratching on Nicholas’s leg in a peremptory way till he was lifted to his knee; Sasha, in a graceful bound, reached Ernest’s chest and then his shoulder, rubbing her cheek on his.

      “Lucky little brute,” observed Eden, stretching his supple body to its indolent length.

      “This is a perfect morning for study,” said Ernest. “You should bring your books down here by the fire, boys.”

      “Good idea,” agreed Piers. “I’ll race you upstairs, Eden.” As though shot from a bow both darted into the hall and up the two flights of stairs. Eden flew up so lightly, with such eager grace, it was hard to believe that only a moment ago he had been as relaxed as the cat Sasha.

      Nicholas was filling his pipe, Ernest was reading aloud something from the morning paper. Renny was putting on his mackintosh, Wragge was about to carry a tray into the grandmother’s room, from where her voice and Meg’s came, amiably discussing the weather. Grandmother was saying — “It was just such a day as this when he was born. I well remember it and his mother in labour for six hours.”

      Meg interrupted — “Sh-h. He’s just outside in the hall. He’ll hear you.”

      At the same moment Grandmother’s parrot broke in with vigorous imprecations in Hindustani, directed, the old lady liked to think, against the weather. She exclaimed — “Poor Boney, poor Boney. How he does hate this climate — and so do I.”

      Wragge’s voice came. “Your breakfast, madam.”

      She said, with gusto, “Good — good — I’m ready for it too.”

      Finch, whose heart had halted at mention of his birthday, now slowly mounted the stairs.

      What was the matter with everybody? Why did they treat him with such indifference? On his fourteenth birthday they’d been very decent to him. What had happened? He had not been in disgrace or complained about by his schoolmasters. Yet not one present, not even one good wish, had come his way. Three times had it been spoken of and then hushed up as though it were a disgrace. Of course he knew he was not as attractive as the other boys, but what was the sense of rubbing it in? There was no sense — no sense in anything. The world was a senseless bewildering place. He wondered how he could endure it for fifty or sixty or — if he lived as long as Gran — eighty years more. But then he’d probably die young. Yes, he was pretty sure he’d die young.

      He looked into the bedroom he shared with Piers. Bessie, the maid, was making the bed. Her round pink wrists and capable hands were moving above the sheets. He wanted her to say a kind word to him but she was smiling to herself — busy with her own thoughts. There was no place for him in the house or in anyone’s thoughts. He was alone — as perhaps few in the world were alone….

      There was a long narrow box-room at the end of the attic, where trunks, old clothes, old magazines, old picnic hampers, birdcages, fishing tackle, and a thousand odds and ends were kept. There was the old brass-bound leather trunk where was kept the splendid uniform which his grandfather had worn. Every spring there was a ceremony when the contents of this trunk were carried to the grassy lawn at the back of the house, hung on a clothes-line, brushed and aired. The grandmother always presided over this ceremony, supported on the arm of one of her sons and ejaculating in her harsh old voice that had been one of the sweetest in Ireland — “Oh, but he was a fine-looking man! You don’t see his like nowadays. Nor even in his time. How the women stared at him! But I kept him for my own…. Is that a mothhole, Nicholas? Let me see … Thank God, no…. Let me feel the cloth in my fingers…. Ah …” And tears would roll down her cheeks.

      Finch laid his hand on that trunk wherein was locked his mother’s wedding dress and veil. Who kept the key of that, he wondered. Meg, he supposed. And why had he never been shown these things? He had as much right to mourn over relics as anyone. His mother had died soon after Wakefield’s birth and she’d had a hard time at his own birth. Six hours in labour, his grandmother had said … on such a day as this…. He shuddered…. Why might he not see the things in the trunk? Why was he treated so? Downstairs this miserable day was being tolerably passed by the group about