01 The Building of Jalna (30 page)

“It’s not what we’ve done,” said Adeline. “It’s the way we have done it.”

“I can look nothing but a scoundrel to anyone.” Wilmott spoke bitterly.

D’Arcy ran his hand through his hair. “Now look here,” he said. “I’m no bachelor. I’ve been separated from my wife for years. I know how you feel. Sometimes you think it may have been your fault.”

“You only had to meet Mrs. Wilmott,” said Brent, “to realize who is to blame in this case. I’d run around the globe to escape that woman.”

“She’s a terror,” added D’Arcy. “You can see that. It’s self — self — self with her and never stop talking.”

“No man could stand it,” Brent spoke in a soothing tone.

D’Arcy raised his voice. “With my wife it was a violent temper. She’d fly off the handle for next to nothing and throw things at me or at the servants.”

Wilmott sat hunched up. He drew back his lips and tapped his teeth with his fingernails.

“You don’t wish I had let Henrietta come here, do you, James?” asked Adeline.

“No.”

“You aren’t sorry I got her out of the country?”

“How can I be?”

“Then what is wrong?”

“Everything.”

“Don’t imagine we did not treat her in a gentlemanlike way,” said Brent. “We were most considerate.”

“It was a lark to you!” exclaimed Wilmott.

“It was no lark at all,” said Brent. “We took it very seriously. We were considerate but firm.”

“You sent her on a fool’s errand to a half-civilized country!”

“Mexico was civilized,” said D’Arcy, “long before this part of
the country. And I think that the lady really wanted to see it.”

“The trouble with Wilmott is that he has too lively a conscience,” put in Brent.

“No, it’s not that,” said Wilmott, “but what I did was a thing that should be kept secret in a man’s own mind. When you bring it out in the light it looks much worse. It looks like a crime, which I suppose it really is.”

“I understand” — D’Arcy spoke patiently — “that you gave your wife practically all you have. You certainly aren’t living in luxury here. All you deny her is your presence.”

To this Brent added — “And to judge from all she said, you didn’t make her happy when you were with her.”

“No — far from it.”

Adeline’s eyes were large and gentle as they rested on Wilmott, but it was to the others she spoke.

“What this poor man needs is a drink. He is tired after his party and all. Is there nothing but that little drop of punch in the house?”

The three looked at Wilmott as though he were an invalid. He felt hypnotized. D’Arcy rose and tiptoed to the cupboard. His shadow on the wall was enormous. He brought out a bottle more than half full of rum. He held it at arm’s length and looked through it at the candle flame. They could hear Daisy laughing on the river.

“There are tumblers on the shelf,” said Wilmott, as though he
were
an invalid.

“Will you have a taste of spirits, Mrs. Whiteoak?” asked D’Arcy.

“No, no, thank you. I shall finish the punch.”

Wilmott took a drink and began to laugh. “It’s all rather funny,” he said. “It’s as though we were in the cabin of the
Alanna
again. Only that outside there is a sea of snow.”

“Thank God we are here and not there,” said Adeline.

There was silence except for the soft flapping of a flame against a log. Then Brent spoke. “Wherever I go I find life amusing. I may be sad for a little but I am soon amused again.”

“I am the same,” said Wilmott.

D’Arcy refilled his glass. “I am never greatly amused or greatly sad. I am critical, analytical, and philosophic.”

“I am the same,” said Adeline.

When the skaters came in, Nero bounded after them. He stood in the middle of the room and shook himself, sending out a snow shower. Then he laid the side of his face on the floor and pushed it rapidly first in one direction, then in another.

“He is like an elephant in the room,” said Wilmott. “When I get a dog it must be a small one I can tuck under my arm. Did I tell you that Tite has a pet raccoon?”

Philip and Daisy had cheeks like roses after the cold air. Their eyes were bright and they had some jokes between them. Both refused anything to drink.

“I am starving,” Daisy said, unwinding yards of pale blue crocheted scarf from about her neck. “I had nothing but a piece of plum cake and a cup of coffee.”

“I’m enormously hungry also,” said Philip. “Have you a cold game pie in your larder, Wilmott? And some bottles of stout?”

Nero lay down at Adeline’s feet and began to lick the snow from his great paws.

“He’s no less than a snowdrift beside you,” exclaimed Wilmott. He sprang up and dragged Nero in front of the fire. Nero gave him a long, puzzled, mournful look, then returned to licking his paws.

Wilmott bent over Philip. “I have nothing in the house,” he said, “but a side of bacon, some eggs from my own hens, some cold boiled potatoes and a jar of apple butter.”

“A meal fit for a prince,” said Philip. “Daisy and I shall cook it.”

Adeline thought — “Miss Daisy when they went out to skate — Daisy when they come back. I wish she’d settle down to chasing only one man.”

Daisy arranged her ringlets on her shoulders. “This is the happiest day of my life,” she said. “If you knew how conventional it’s been you would understand. But now I’ve left all that behind. I’m a pioneer! If I heard a wolf howling outside I’d not be afraid. I’d just take a gun and go out and shoot him.”

A long-drawn howl sounded mournfully somewhere in the darkness. Daisy shrieked and threw herself into Philip’s arms. Nero rose trembling.

The men stared at each other, waiting for the next howl. It came — nearer, louder. Adeline gave a hysterical laugh. Wilmott threw open the door into the kitchen. Tite stood there, slim and dark, his mouth open, shaping another howl.

“You young rapscallion!” said Adeline. “You ought to be flogged.” But she laughed naturally now.

When the Irishmen understood, they were disappointed. It was hard to persuade them that Tite had given those realistic howls. “Do it again!” they cried, like boys. Wilmott looked sternly at Tite.

“No — no!” cried Daisy. “I can’t bear it!” She made wide eyes from Philip’s shoulder.

Brent took the gun from the wall. “Here, Miss Daisy,” he said, “let us see you shoot him. Remember your boast.” He put the gun into her hand.

With sudden swagger she grasped it. There was a loud explosion. The ball entered the wall above Tite’s head. Philip gave Daisy an astonished look and took the gun from her. “That’s enough from you, young woman,” he said. “Behave yourself.”

She stood with her breast heaving and her eyes defiant. “I’m not one to be challenged and not take it.”

“Did the lady mean to kill me?” asked Tite.

Wilmott went into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. He said sternly: —

“Never do such a thing again. You have frightened those ladies terribly.”

“But the Mees Daisy one wanted to hear a wolf how and I can do it so well.”

“You were listening at the door, Tite.”

“Yes. I was wondering if you want something before I go to bed. Did the Mees Daisy one want to kill me?”

“No, no, she was overexcited.”

“Boss,” Tite spoke in a low voice, “do you think she is a harlot? She told me I had long eyelashes and a mouth like a pomegranate flower. Now I repeated this to my grandmother and she says Mees Daisy is a harlot. But since then she has tried to kill me, so perhaps she is reformed.”

“Bring out the bacon, the eggs, and the cold potatoes,” ordered Wilmott. “God knows what we shall have left to eat tomorrow.”

“Another time,” continued Tite stubbornly, “she said my neck was like a bronze statue’s and I told my grandmother and my grandmother said again she is a harlot.”

T
HERE WERE NO
more hospitable people in the neighborhood than the Laceys. Their house was not large but their hearts were. They liked gaiety and movement about them and the two Irishmen satisfied their liking in an extraordinary degree. They were almost always gay and they seldom were still. They settled down for a long visit with the Laceys. They had been travelling so long that they were glad of the change to this backwater. Their expenses had been heavy; they were glad to pay in the coin of good fellowship. Not that they did nothing to make themselves useful. When heavy snowfalls came in midwinter, they armed themselves with shovels and dug the Laceys out, with speed and efficiency. They went over icy roads to the town to shop for Mrs. Lacey and brought her presents of Scotch marmalade and German cheese and French wine. D’Arcy played chess with Captain Lacey and Brent read aloud from the works of Thackeray and Sir Walter Scott.

Wilmott’s skating party had started the ball rolling and that winter saw more dancing, skating and charades, than the neighborhood had ever before known. On Sunday, unless a blizzard were blowing, everybody turned out to attend the church service in the village eight miles away. In rough weather this was often a hardship. Feet and
legs would be numb with cold, faces half-frozen. But the Whiteoak s found the climate mild as compared to that of Quebec. Here zero weather was thought to be very cold indeed.
There
twenty below zero had been accepted as no more than winter’s due.

Before long it was seen by all that Kate Busby had transferred her interest from Wilmott to Brent. Before long her interest amounted to attachment. It was said that Brent himself was smitten. By the time February had arrived it was obvious that he was smitten. At a St. Valentine’s party given by the Pinks he proposed, and so novel was the manner of his proposal that the entire community was startled by it. Mrs. Pink’s ingenuity and originality in entertaining her guests were endless. On this occasion a small gift or favour was laid by the plate of each. These were in the shape of hearts cut from red flannel. Beneath these were attached several other hearts, cut from white flannel and the whole held together by rosettes of red and white wool. In the case of the ladies, bright new needles were stuck in the white hearts, thus converting them into a needlebook. In the case of the gentlemen, a fine new goose feather was thrust through the rosette, only needing to be sharpened to the required point for a pen. And there was a penwiper!

On the spot and before he would eat a mouthful, Brent took out his penknife and sharpened the quill to a long graceful point. He then got possession of Kate’s needlebook. After the meal he disappeared into another room and when he came back restored it to her — but how changed, how glorified! He had cut out a heart from a sheet of notepaper and fixed it among the white flannel hearts. On it he had written: —

To My Valentine
Dearest Kate
I ask no better fate
Than that the rest of my life should be with
you spent.
Your adoring
Michael Brent

His intentions were of the best. If Kate would not live in Ireland he would settle down to live in Ontario. The only obstacle to their marriage was religion. Elihu Busby would not give his consent to his daughter’s union with a Catholic. Every man in that group of friends tried his hand at persuading him — they all liked Brent — but to no avail.

The weather was so severe in February that work on the building of Jalna all but ceased, though the sound of a lonely hammer or saw preserved the sense of continuity. The felling of trees still went on in full swing of axe. The noble growth of fifty years was felled, dismembered, and neatly piled in as many minutes. The men made great fires, partly to warm themselves by, partly to get rid of the wood. In heedless extravagance they heaped the finest oak, maple and pine on the blaze; just as the deer hunters farther north would kill five deer where one would have sufficed and left the surplus carcasses to rot, just as the wild fowl were shot down in mad excess of need, and the singing birds for pleasure.

Adeline expected her child in April and her most cherished hope was to be established in her own home before the birth. In February, with the almost cessation of work, she saw this hope fade. Long ago the architect, the contractor, and the foreman had promised that the house would be ready by April the first. She had never doubted the fulfillment of that promise. When doubt and disappointment crowded in on her she was in despair. One might have thought, as Philip said, that her life and the life of the child depended on the removal. To which, with her head buried in the pillows of her bed, she replied that it was probably so. He said that, if anyone had reason to be worried, it was he. Sitting up, with blazing eyes, she demanded what he had to be worried about. In terse language he told her. They forgot they were visiting and quarreled with the abandon of people who have been snowbound for a week and are frustrated in all their plans. They raised their voices and tried to talk each other down. Mrs. Vaughan in the room below, could hear them and was mortified for them. Daisy, just outside their door, was so fiercely on Philip’s side that she could barely refrain from rushing in and taking part.

Mrs. Vaughan, in her restrained way, was almost as deeply disappointed in the delay as Adeline. The thought of having a birth in the house was terribly upsetting. It was so long since she herself had been confined that the complications of such an event seemed unbelievable. What, for instance, was she to do with Robert who at that time would be home from his university? Certainly he must be sent away somewhere and her pleasure in his vacation ruined. Then there was Daisy. There seemed no prospect of her visit ending for some months to come. In truth, Mrs. Vaughan felt fairly certain that nothing save marriage would remove Daisy from the family circle. She had settled herself far too comfortably into it. Her behaviour had not shown the propriety which Mrs. Vaughan would have liked. Indeed she had more than once been driven to speak to Daisy because of the lack of delicacy she showed in her pursuit of Dr. Ramsey. He dropped in several times each week to see Adeline and, on his way in or out, Daisy was certain to waylay him. She was knitting and immense muffler for him and this had to be tried on. The doctor surrendered himself to the operation with a rather grim grace but he did surrender, and Mrs. Vaughan could not help thinking that in his heart he enjoyed it thought what could be more futile than trying to make a
muffler
fit?