Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny (24 page)

“It is Mrs. Whiteoak!” she called out.

The door opened and he stood there, in his shirt and trousers but barefoot. He said, in his soft voice: —

“Come in, Missis. My boss he want to see you. You wait here and I bring him. You go inside and shut the door.”

She entered the house.

Tite’s copybook was open on the table. He had been at work, the ink was still wet on his laborious pothooks. Her heart was warm with pity for Wilmott as she looked about the room where he had made himself so comfortable, so mentally at ease. It was very tidy. Try as he might he would never shake off the punctilious habits inflicted on him by that wife. He came quickly into the room alone and closed the door behind him. He looked pale and his eyes were heavy.

“You have not slept either,” she said.

“I did not trouble to go to bed. But I’m sorry you should lie awake on my account. After all, we have jumped to a conclusion.
There might conceivably be another Mrs. Wilmott — one who would be welcomed by her husband.” He smiled grimly. “I must try to find out more particulars from Miss Vaughan. Yesterday my mind refused to work. I was as near to panic as I have ever been.”

“I’m afraid you have reason for it,” she said. “When I had Daisy to myself I brought up the matter again and found that the Mrs. Wilmott she met came from the very part of London you lived in. She was pretty, too — very neat in appearance, Daisy said, and precise in her speech, with a high-pitched voice and a little quirk at the corner of her mouth.”

“My God,” he exclaimed, “you’ll have the girl suspicious!”

“I don’t think so. Anyhow, we had to make certain. I think we can be certain, don’t you?”

“My wife will never rest till she finds me!” he exclaimed. He looked wildly about the room.

“Don’t look so desperate.”

“I
am
desperate. I tell you, Adeline, I will not live with my wife again. I’ll hang myself from one of these rafters first!”

“She must not find you.”

“She will find me! You don’t know her. I tell you she’s indefatigable. Nothing will stop her.”

“You tell me this,” cried Adeline. “Yet you took passage to Canada without changing your name! You lived in Quebec under your own name! What did you expect?”

He spoke more calmly. “I thought she would abide by my decision.”

“Was that her habit?”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Adeline. I left her well provided for. She had the child. Why should she follow me?”

“Oh, listen to the man!” Adeline folded her arms to imprison her exasperation. “Oh, the innocence! It is no wonder she is seeking you, James. For what a blank you have left in her life! How can she be herself without you there to badger and to hector and harass? God help her, she is like a waterfall with nothing to fall over!”

“Well, she won’t have me! I shall clear out. To think that she may walk in here at any moment! Did she mention a child?”

“Yes, she spoke of her daughter who had mumps on the voyage out.”

Wilmott’s face showed no fatherly concern at this news.

“Is the girl like her mother?” asked Adeline.

“No, but she is absolutely under her influence.”

“Who wouldn’t be!” exclaimed Adeline. “Who could live in the same house with such a woman and not be under her influence? You couldn’t, James.”

“I kept my secret hidden from her all those years,” he said grimly. “My secret intention to leave her.”

“You did well. What have you told Tite?”

“That I may be going away.”

She swept to him and took his head between her hands. She looked compellingly into his eyes. “You shall not go!” she said.

He drew violently away from her. “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me — I love you too well! I have to keep telling myself that Philip is my friend.”

“We must take Philip into our confidence.” Her hands had dropped to her sides as though they had not touched him. She looked at him calmly. “We must tell him all. He and I will go to the town and see if we can find out where your wife is. It’s just as you say, she’s had plenty of time to follow you here.”

“What will Philip think of me?”

“He’ll be on your side. You have impoverished yourself for her. You can’t deliver over your body to her. What man would expect you to? Not Philip!”

“I wish it were not necessary to tell him.”

“Tell him yourself. As man to man you’ll make him understand.”

“If anyone can do that, you can, Adeline.”

She smiled. “Ah, I might do it too well.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I get carried away. I might make the situation too melodramatic.
Philip might want to keep out of it. I’ll send him to you. You shall tell him in your own dignified way.”

“I still think it would be better for me to leave.”

“There is no need for that,” she declared.” I’ll tell the woman you are dead.”

Wilmott gave a sardonic laugh. “She’ll never believe you,” he said.

Adeline’s eyes were blazing when she turned on him. “Not believe me!” she cried. “If I can’t convince a flibbertigibbet like that, my name is not Adeline Court!” She took his hand, as though sealing a compact. Then she went to the door. “To think,” she said, “that Henrietta may walk up this path at any moment!”

Then she showed her white teeth in a mischievous smile. “Leave Henrietta to me,” she said.

Wilmott stood looking at the russet plaits of her hair beneath the little velvet hat, and the intimate grace of her nape as it melted into her shoulder. It was hard for him to believe in the existence of Henrietta.

“The first thing is to find Philip,” she said finally, “and to send him here to you.”

“My God, what an interview!”

He went with her to where the horse was tethered, and helped her to mount. “Everything will be all right,” she called back to him as she rode away.

She was halfway to Jalna when she saw a carriage approaching. It was of the type hired out by livery stables and drawn by a pair of lean horses. She saw that a woman and a young girl were in the seat behind the driver.

Adeline’s heart began to thud rapidly against her side. But she hastened forward. As she passed the dust-covered carriage she took a good look at the occupants.

The driver wore a shabby livery and weather-beaten top hat. He had a harassed, almost plaintive look. He was comforting himself by chewing tobacco, a trickle from which discoloured his chin. Behind him, very upright on the uncomfortable seat,
sat a smallish, fresh-coloured woman. She was pretty and self-possessed, looking young to be the mother of the lumpish girl at her side. She gave Adeline a keen look, then leaned forward and poked the driver in the back.

“Stop the horses,” she commanded.

Either from stupidity or self-will he continued on his way, his eyes fixed on the flies that buzzed above the heads of the horses, moving with them in a horrid halo.

Mrs. Wilmott poked him again but more fiercely.

“I shall certainly complain of you to your master,” she declared. “You are the stupidest man I have ever seen. Stop the horses and try to attract that lady’s attention!”

The driver gave her a lowering look over his shoulder. “Did you say
master
?” he growled. “We don’t call no on master in this country. This here country is a free country. But if you want me to holler to the lady, I will.”

He gave a loud bellow of — “Hi there, ma’am! You’re wanted!”

His horses had not required any order to stop but now made as though to go into the ditch where they saw the long grass. He wrenched at the reins. “Whoa,” he bellowed. “Stay on the road, can’t you? It’s bad enough to traipse all over the countryside without you pullin’ the arms of me!” The horses, with hanging heads, settled down to wait.

Adeline had drawn bridle and was slowly approaching. Her colour was high. She looked more composed than she felt. When she had stopped her horse beside the carriage she looked down inquiringly into the face of Mrs. Wilmott, who said: —

“I wonder if you can give me any information of the whereabouts of Mr. James Wilmott. I am told he bought a property in this locality.”

“Yes,” returned Adeline, in a deep quiet tone, “he did. A little log cabin it was, far up the river where the swamp is, and an acre or two of land. An Indian boy was with him.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Wilmott’s face showed a faint look of shock. “Really. A swamp, did you say? An Indian! How degrading!”

“It was not all swamp. He had a cow and a pig and a few fowls. He might have been worse off.”

“Is he gone from there?”

“Yes. He’s gone.”

Mrs. Wilmott drew a deep breath, then between pale lips she said, in a tense tone — “I should like to speak to you privately.” She looked at the slumping back of the driver. Then she said: —

“Just drive along the road a short distance while I converse with this lady. Hold the horses steady while my daughter and I get out of the carriage. Now be very careful. Steady the horses!”

“Remember I’m paid by the hour,” he grumbled. “You’ll have a pretty bill.” He shifted his tobacco to the other cheek and looked vindictively over his shoulder at her.

“I shall certainly complain to your master,” she declared. “You are disobliging and impudent.”

“There’s no master here!” He glared at her. “No master, I tell ye! No masters!”

“Mind your manners, my man!”

“There’s no manner here neither and no ‘my man-ing.’ It’s a free country. Now are you goin’ to get out or sit there complaining?”

Mrs. Wilmott alighted cautiously, followed by her daughter. The driver went a little distance down the road. Adeline dismounted and led the way to a grassy knoll. Her horse began at once to crop the dry herbage. She said: “We can talk quite privately here. Will you sit down?”

She invited Mrs. Wilmott to be seated as though in her own drawing-room. Mrs. Wilmott looked at her inquisitively, and at the same moment explained herself. Adeline’s gaze was sympathetic.

“I am Mrs. Wilmott,” she said. “I am here to seek my husband. You must think the circumstances very strange. They are indeed. My husband is a very strange man. He is a very peculiar man. I’ve had to come all the way from London, England, in search of him. My father, Mr. Peter Quinton, he is descended from Sir Ralph Quinton who was a great inventor and scientist of the sixteenth century — you may have heard of him — I mean Sir Ralph, of
course, not of my father. Not that I should say my father is not a man of some importance, for he has stood for his borough more than once and been not too badly defeated. But naturally, he is not as important as Sir Ralph. He said to me and much as I dislike repeating the private remarks of my family to a stranger, I shall repeat this to you, for you appear so exceedingly reliable and sympathetic — he said to me — that is, my father, not Sir Ralph, said to me — ‘Henrietta, a man who had no more consciousness of his responsibilities than to go to a distant country on a pleasure trip and remain away for a year and a half without writing a line home, is not worth seeking,’ but I’m not of that opinion. A husband’s place is with his wife, I insist. Don’t you agree?”

“If it can be done,” said Adeline, her sympathetic eyes on Mrs. Wilmott’s face.

“That’s just what I say. And I have left no stone unturned till I have tracked James down. You have met him, I gather.”

“Yes. I have met him.”

“And how were you impressed by him? Pray do not try to spare my feelings. If he lived here, as you say, in a swamp with a cow and a pig, he must have reached a very low ebb.”

“He had.”

“Dear me! It is mortifying to think of such a situation. And where did he go from here? I must ask you your name. Really I never have been so informal in my life. Anyone seeing me sitting in this dusty ditch would scarcely credit what my position in London is. My father, Mr. Peter Quinton, who, I think I mentioned, is — ”

The young girl here distracted her mother’s attention by the ferocity with which she was scratching mosquito bites on her plump legs.

“Hettie!” cried Mrs. Wilmott. “Stop it!”

“I can’t,” returned Hettie, in a hoarse whimpering voice. “They itch.”

“What if they do! No lady would scratch her limbs under any circumstances.”

“Can I go into the fence corner to scratch them?”

“No. I say no, Hettie.”

“They itch.”

“I say no. That is final.” Mrs. Wilmott turned to Adeline. “I was about to ask you your name and where Mr. Wilmott went from here, but this child has me at my wit’s end with her disabilities. Since we left England she has suffered in turn from train sickness, seasickness, mumps, dyspepsia, hives, ingrowing toenails, sties, and now it is bites.”

“They itch,” said Hettie.

“Of course they itch!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilmott, in complete exasperation. “What else are they for?”

“I hate midges.”

“Well, hate them or not, you are to stop scratching.” Again she turned her eyes questioningly to Adeline.

“I am Mrs. White,” Adeline answered, swallowing the last syllable of the name. “My husband and I came over on the same ship with Mr. Wilmott. We saw a good deal of him.”

“Oh, how fortunate that I should find you! How did my husband conduct himself on the voyage?”

“Very miserable,” said Adeline.

“Did he speak of his family?”

“Never a word.”

“Dear, dear! How unfeeling of him! Dear me! What a man! And he has left this place, you say?”

“Some time ago.”

“Where did he go? Wherever it is I shall follow him.”

“He left in the darkness of night, with no word to anyone, but ’tis said he went to Mexico and died of a fever there. Now, I can give you the address of the two Irish gentlemen who are staying in New York and who can tell you much more about him than I can. If any two men on this continent can help you to discover what the true end of your husband was, these are the two.”

“He died!” cried Mrs. Wilmott, on a note of frustration. “You say he died! Oh, surely not. He never had a day’s illness in his life. He can’t be dead.”

“’Tis said he died in Mexico,” said Adeline, plucking a handful of grass.

“Who says so?”

“The word came and went. I cannot remember who said it first.”

“I must talk to these people. Who are they?”