Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“Are you very tired, my dear?” asked Mrs. Vaughan, herself looking very tired.
“Not at all,” answered Daisy, “though it was monstrous hot and dusty travelling. The friends I was travelling with from Montreal were half-dead but I seem to be made of India rubber.”
As she spoke she untied the wide ribbon of her bonnet from beneath the brim of which her face looked out with an eagerness that seemed to express determination to take in at one glance everything that was to be seen.
“She is like no Vaughan that ever was,” thought her uncle.
“I do hope she is not a minx,” thought Mrs. Vaughan.
“Egad, what a small waist,” was Philip’s inward comment.
“Ugly, but dangerous.” Adeline was taking her in. “A grinning hussy. Let her keep away from me!” She said: “You are not in the least like a daisy. Your parents should not have named you till they’d had a better look at you.”
Daisy looked sideways at her. “Can you think of a flower name that would suit me better? They were set on a flower name.”
“In Ireland,” said Adeline, “there’s a wild flower the peasants call Trollopin’ Bet.”
Philip caught Adeline’s fingers in his hand and pressed them sharply. “Behave yourself!” he said. He gave a startled look at Daisy.
Adeline jerked away her hand like a child who says — “I will do as I please!”
“You can’t offend me,” laughed Daisy. “I’m made of India rubber, as I told you.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Vaughan. “What did Adeline say?”
“She said I should have been named for that red-haired Queen Elizabeth,” answered Daisy. She took off her bonnet and disclosed luxuriant dark hair, dressed elegantly.
The scornful emphasis on the word
red-haired
had brought the colour to Adeline’s cheeks. She sought for words to fling at the newcomer which would not affront her host and hostess.
“If ’tis my head —” she began.
“Good God!” interrupted Philip. “Nicholas is going to fall downstairs!”
He sprang up the steps, three at a time, to catch the baby who, on hands and knees, had crept to the top to see what was going on. Philip ran down with him in his arms and held him up for visitor’s inspection.
“What do you think of this,” he demanded, “at nine months!”
“The angel!” exclaimed Daisy Vaughan.
Nicholas knew not what shyness was. He sat on his father’s arm, his hair rising in a curly crest, and beamed at the visitor. He had a look of unutterable well-being. When she held out her hands to him he went to her with great good-humour and examined her face with interest.
It was a short face with high cheekbones, narrow eyes, and a turned-up nose. The mouth was large and full of fine teeth. When the under lip met the upper, which it did not often do, it caused the chin to recede a little though not enough to be disfiguring. She was thin but not bony. Her waist was indeed incredibly small. To this part of her Adeline bent a look of extreme exasperation, for she had recently made certain that she herself was to have another child. The sight of that waist and the thought of what lay before herself was enough to put her out of temper.
“I know nothing of babies,” said Daisy, “but to me this one seems the most beautiful I have seen. Is he your only child?” She raised her eyes to Philip’s face.
“We have a little daughter,” he answered. “She’s up there somewhere with her nurse.”
“How lovely! How old is she?”
“I’m not quite sure. How old is Gussie, Adeline?”
“I’m damned if I know,” returned Adeline, bitterly. “But I know I had her.”
She took care to lower her voice so as not to be heard by Mrs. Vaughan, who now exclaimed: —
“Gussie is the dearest child and so intelligent! Will you let me take you to your room now, my dear, then you must have something to eat.”
David Vaughan went to the dining room to fetch a decanter of sherry. Robert followed his mother and Daisy up the stairs, carrying Daisy’s dressing case. The Whiteoaks were alone in the hall. Philip had again taken Nicholas into his own arms. He said with a stern look at Adeline: —
“You seem determined to disgrace yourself. You must know the Vaughans aren’t used to such talk.”
She wound a lock of her red hair on her finger. “They will be used to it before I leave,” she said.
“You may have to leave sooner than you are prepared for, if you go on like this.”
“I am prepared for anything!” she answered hotly.
“Where would you plan to go from here,” he returned, “with the roof not yet on his house?”
“I could stay with Mr. Wilmott.” She gave him a roguish look.
He laughed. “I believe Wilmott could manage you.”
“You little know him,” she returned.
“That’s a funny remark,” he said.
“Why?”
“It sounds as though you had a peculiar knowledge of him.”
“I’m a better judge of character than you.”
“You only jump to conclusions, Adeline. You have taken a dislike to this Daisy Vaughan for no reason whatever. For my part, I think she is an interesting creature.”
“Of course you do! Just because she made eyes at you.”
Philip looked not ill-pleased. “I didn’t see her make eyes,” he said.
“Oh, Philip, what a liar you are!” she exclaimed.
Nicholas leaned from his father’s arms to embrace Adeline. Their heads were close together. David Vaughan returned with the sherry. “I hope the ladies won’t remain too long upstairs,” he said. “What a nice family group! I think Nicholas has come on well, since his dresses are shortened. He appears freer in his movements.”
“He gets into more mischief,” said Philip.
Nicholas took his mother’s finger into his mouth and bit on it. She suffered the pain because his new tooth must come through.
I
T WAS WONDERFUL
to see the roof begin to spread above the walls. It was music to hear the tap-tap of the carpenters’ hammers as they made secure the shingles, one overlapping the other. The shingles were new and clean and sweet-smelling. Up the slopes of the gables they climbed, and down they crowded to the eaves. Above all rose the five tall chimneys never yet darkened by smoke, awaiting the first fire. Now the house had a meaning, a promise. It rose against the brilliant autumn foliage as something new and tough-fibred to be reckoned with in the landscape. The house was windowless, doorless, in some places floorless, the partitions were incomplete but, with the roof bending above it, it spoke for the first time. Adeline and Philip would stand with linked fingers, gazing up at it in admiration. For generations their families had lived in old houses, heavy with traditions of their forebears. Jalna was hers and Philip’s and theirs only.
Robert had gone off to his university. It had been as he foretold, Daisy had interfered sadly with his enjoyment of his last days at home. Her thin supple figure edged itself into every crevice of companionship. She had something to say on every subject and though she tried, almost too assiduously, to make what she said
agreeable, a jarring note, and edged word, often crept in. Adeline declared there was malice in everything she said and did. Philip persisted that she was an interesting creature and went out of his way to be pleasant to her, to make up for Adeline’s coolness, he said, but Adeline said it was because Daisy flattered him. If she had been a fragile little thing, Adeline could better have endured her but she was lithe and strong and she imitated everything that Adeline did. If Adeline walked swiftly across the temporary bridge of logs that spanned the stream, Daisy ran across it. She screamed in fright as she ran but she did run. If Adeline penetrated the woods to gather the great glossy blackberries, Daisy pressed just ahead snatching at the best ones. Adeline had a horror of snakes but Daisy showed a morbid liking for them. She would pick up a small one by its tail, to the admiration of the workingmen. When they carried home the pretty red vines of the poison ivy, it was Adeline who suffered for it. Daisy was immune.
A spacious barn was being erected at some distance from the house. Later on Philip would have stables built but at present the underpart of the barn was to serve as shelter for horses and cattle. Adeline and Daisy strolled over to inspect it one afternoon in Indian summer. The framework of the barn stood as a lofty skeleton against the background of dark green spruces, balsams and pines, with here and there a group of maples like a conflagration of colour. Piles of lumber lay about filling the air with the sweet smell of their resin. Great chips and wedges of pine were scattered on the ground, showing a pinkness almost equal to that colour in the sea shell. Slabs of bark were scattered too, and strands of moss and crushed fern leaves. But hardly did anything die here before a fresh growth pushed up to take its place, or erase its memory, if there had been eyes to notice it. Birds were migrating and now a cloud of swallows had settled on the framework of the barn to rest. It was Sunday and no workmen were about. There was a primeval stillness that was broken only by the myriad twitterings from the swallows’ throats. They sat on the scaffolding not in hundreds but in thousands. They perched wing to wing as close
as they could sit. Their forked tails made a fringe beneath their perch. They changed the skeleton edifice from the colour of freshly hewn wood to bands of darkness. Only a few darted overhead as guides and watchers. When these saw the two young women draw near they made some word or sign, for a slight stir took place among the swallows but they showed no real alarm. There they were, guardians of land and fruit and flower, benign toward man, capable to hold down any insect pest that ever rose, powerful to protect every kind of crop and harvest. Insects were their food. All these thousands of sharp beaks, bright eyes and swift wings, were alive for the destruction of insects.
Adeline snatched up a wedge of pine and threw it up among the birds. Daisy’s predatory laugh rang out and she also began to throw chips at them. The birds bent their heads, looking down in surprise. They rose in a body, forming themselves into a whirling cloud, making the sound of wind among the trees with their twitterings. They flew in all directions yet remained within their own system, and that moved southward.
“Don’t go, don’t go!” cried Adeline. She turned in anger to Daisy. “You should not have frightened them! ’T will bring bad luck to the barn. They had made it their resting place and now they are going.”
“You threw first, Mrs. Whiteoak.”
“I only tossed a wee stick among them to see if they would notice it.”
“But you went on throwing. You didn’t stop. You were quite violent.”
“It was because you excited me. You should remember that I was a girl among a horde of brothers who were always ready to let fly a stick. But you — you were an only child — a little girl alone. You should be gentle.”
“I am gentle, Mrs. Whiteoak.”
“You were not then! You were showing all your teeth and laughing as you threw the sticks.”
“Not one bird was struck.”
“But they’re going! They’ll never come back! Look at them.”
The swallows had risen high in the air. They looked no more than specks sinking and rising. They were like a floating sediment in the translucent bowl of the sky.
“It is natural for them to go to the South,” said Daisy. “I wish I were.”
Adeline raised her arched brows. “Then you aren’t contented here?” she asked.
“What is there here for me?” asked Daisy.
“What do you want?” asked Adeline surprised.
“Experience. I’m not just a young girl.”
“But you have been about a good deal, haven’t you?”
“Always at other people’s beck and call. You don’t know what it is to be poor, Mrs. Whiteoak.”
Adeline gave an ironic laugh. “Oh, no — I don’t know what it is to be poor! Let me tell you, I never had two sovereigns to rub together till my great-aunt died and left me her money.”
“How lucky you are! A fortune left you! And such a husband!”
“Aye, he’s a good fellow,” said Adeline curtly.
They had come to the barn and now stood gazing up into its towering framework. A ladder of scantlings was built against its base and up this Daisy began to climb. She climbed nimbly considering her voluminous skirts. At the top of the ladder she set out to walk along a beam while her fingers, just touching another, supported her.
“You are silly!” exclaimed Adeline. The girl was ready for any adventure, she thought.
“Oh, I love heights!” cried Daisy. “No height makes me dizzy. I revel in this.”
“You should have been a tightrope walker.”
“The view is lovely!” Daisy now walked with arms extended in precarious balance. “You look no more than a pigmy down there. Do come up.”
“I daren’t.”
“Why not?”
“In the first place I have no desire and in the second I’m going to have a baby.”
This announcement was more of a surprise to Daisy than Adeline had expected. It was almost a shock. She stiffened and stood still. Then she gave a cry, swayed and sank to the beam that supported her, crouching there in an attitude of terror. Her skirts stood about her like a balloon.
“I’m going to fall!” she cried. “Oh, Mrs. Whiteoak, save me, I’m going to fall!”
Adeline turned pale but she said sternly — “Come back the way you went. Surely you can do that! Just take hold of yourself and move carefully. You’ll be all right.” But the space from where Daisy clung, to the ground, seemed very far.
Daisy crouched shivering on the beam. “I daren’t move,” she said, in a tense voice. “Get help quickly! I’m going to fall!”
The thought of leaving Daisy in this predicament while she sought help made Adeline hesitate. At that moment Philip strolled out of the wood and came toward them. Adeline ran to him.
“That interesting creature, as you call her,” she said, “has climbed to the top of the barn and is stuck there! She says she is going to fall.”
“My God!” exclaimed Philip, looking up at Daisy. “She is likely to break her neck!” He called out — “Don’t be frightened! I’ll come and fetch you. Just keep calm and look upward.”
He mounted the ladder and walked cautiously but steadily along the beam. A feeling of nausea came over Adeline. She closed her eyes for a space. When she opened them Philip had reached Daisy and was leading her back toward the ladder. When his feet were secure on it, Daisy collapsed against his shoulder.