Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
“I cannot,” she sobbed. “I cannot take another step!”
“You’re quite safe,” said Philip. “Just hang on to me. I’ll carry you down.”
Daisy did hang on to him and, as they reached the bottom, her cheek was against his tanned neck. She was sobbing.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said as he set her gently on her feet.
“You have need to be,” said Adeline, “for you gave me a monstrous scare and risked Philip’s life. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Philip was still supporting Daisy. “Don’t scold her,” he said. “Any girl is likely to do harebrained things. It’s a good thing Miss Daisy’s light. I should have had a time of it to carry you down, Adeline.”
“I should have stayed up there till Doomsday before I’d have asked you to.” She turned away. She looked up at the last of the swallows, now winging swiftly above the treetops.
“I was on my way to Wilmott’s,” said Philip. “Should you like to come with me? Do you feel able to walk, Miss Daisy?” He had released her from his arm.
“I shall do whatever you say,” she answered, in a new sweet voice.
“I think I shall go back,” said Adeline, coldly.
“In that case, we’ll all go back,” said Philip.
“I am quite capable of returning by myself.” But she was ready to be persuaded by him.
“Come along,” he said, coaxingly.
They took the path which was now beaten by usage and led to where Wilmott lived, two miles away. Philip led the way, holding back branches when they intervened, striking with his stick at brambles that would have torn their skirts. High above, the cloud of swallows moved, as though leading them.
Daisy’s misadventure and Philip’s rescue of her had made a constraint among them. They spoke little and then only of what they saw. Sometimes the path was edged by bracken and sometimes by the purplish foliage of blackberries. Sometimes it was carpeted with pine needles, or the scarlet leaves of the soft maple, the first to fall. Mushrooms as large as dinner plates sprang up on it or scores of little ones marched like soldiers. An owl and her five young ones sat in a row on the limb of a beech tree. Philip raised his arm to point them out to his companions. The mother owl shot past him like a bolt, dealing him a blow that nearly felled him. The young one stared down imperturbably.
Adeline flung her arms about Philip.
“Oh, are you hurt?” she cried. “Let me see!” Clasping his head in her hands she examined his scarlet cheek.
“It’s all but bleeding,” she said, his head still possessively in her hands.
“That’s why I don’t like this country,” said Daisy. “You never know what will happen next. I always have the feeling that something wild is going to happen, and it depresses me.”
“I thought you said you longed for experience,” Adeline said, beginning to walk along the path again.
“I meant experience in myself — not to be buffeted about.”
“I can tell you that owl gave me a clout,” said Philip. “It’s monstrous strange how having young makes the female wicked.”
Adeline’s eyes burned into his back and he remembered. He looked over his shoulder and gave her a wink. “I don’t mean you,” he said, in a low voice. He plucked a red maple leaf and stuck it in his hat, as though in salute to her.
They found Wilmott fishing from his flat-bottomed boat on the broad breast of the river. Equinoctial rains had swollen it but it lay tranquil, reflecting the bright colour of the foliage at its brink. Wilmott sat, with an expression of bliss, his eyes fixed on the little red float that moved gently on the water.
“What a way to spend Sunday!” exclaimed Adeline.
Wilmott rose in his boat and drew in the line. “I look on this as necessary toil,” he said. “I’m fishing for my supper. I suppose you have just returned from afternoon church service.”
“No need to be sarcastic,” said Philip. “There was no service today. What have you caught?” Wilmott held up a pickerel.
“Go on with your fishing,” said Adeline. “We’ll watch you. It will be a nice rest after all we’ve been through.”
“I must come over here and fish with you,” said Philip. “But the fact is I have little time for anything save the building of my house. Just one thing after another happens.”
“Yes, I know,” said Wilmott. “It’s the same here.” He laid the fish on the bottom of the boat and picked up the oars. He dipped them lazily into the calmness of the water.
“Why, you’re making a lovely little wharf,” exclaimed Adeline.
“Yes,” he answered, rowing gently toward her. “Tite and I work at it in our spare time.”
“This is Mr. Wilmott, Daisy,” said Adeline. “Miss Vaughan, James.”
Wilmott steadied the boat with the oars and bowed gravely. Daisy returned his greeting and all stared down at the small landing stage on which tools lay.
“A nice saw,” said Philip, picking it up. “And a new hammer.”
“They belong to Tite,” said Wilmott. “He has very good tools. A man he worked for couldn’t pay him the cash, so he paid him with tools.”
“What lots of nails!” said Daisy. “Did he pay him with nails too?”
“He found the nails,” answered Wilmott. “Someone had dropped them on the road.”
“I bought a supply of good tools,” said Philip. “They have a way of disappearing, so I carve my initials on the handles.” He turned the hammer over in his hand.
“Why, here is a clear P.W. on the saw!” cried Daisy.
Wilmott got out of the boat and tied it to the landing. He bent his head beside Philip’s.
“Let’s see,” he said. Then he added — “I’ll be hanged, if your initials aren’t on the hammer!”
“That’s the way with half-breeds,” said Philip, easily. “Keep the tools. I have finished with them. You’re quite welcome.”
“Oh, no,” returned Wilmott. “I shall return them when we have finished the work. I couldn’t think of keeping them.”
“As you like.”
“Oh, what an enchanting little house!” cried Daisy. “Will you show it to me?”
As they went in at Wilmott’s invitation they saw Tite rapidly picking up things from here and there and carrying them into the kitchen. Before he disappeared he gave Adeline his gentle smile in which there was a touch of sadness.
Daisy was delighted with the place which Wilmott had indeed made homelike, if in rather an austere fashion. She exclaimed at everything but especially at the oddity of encountering so many books in a log house.
“I love reading,” she said. “I wonder if you would lend me a book to read. Have you the new one of Bulwer-Lytton’s”
“I’m afraid not,” said Wilmott. “But, if you can find anything to please you, do take it.”
“Will you help me choose?” she asked Philip. “I should like something you can recommend.”
“I’m no great reader,” he answered, “but I’ll do what I can.”
She and Philip went to the bookshelves. Adeline turned to Wilmott.
“Are you still happy here?” she asked.
“I’m serenely and consciously happy every hour of the day and, I could almost add, of the night. This life just suits me. I could live a hundred years of it, without complaint. I lack only one thing.”
“And what is that?”
“More frequent glimpses of you. Of course I have no right to say it but seeing you, talking to you, gives an added zest to everything I do.”
Daisy had taken up an exercise book and was examining it.”
“I am teaching my young Tite to read and write,” explained Wilmott. “He is very intelligent.”
“What lovely pothooks!” exclaimed Daisy. “Look, Captain Whiteoak, what lovely pothooks!”
“You must teach him to read my initials, Wilmott,” said Philip.
“Wilmott!” repeated Daisy. “Why, I thought your friend’s name was Wilton!”
“No — Wilmott.”
“Now here’s a coincidence,” she cried. “Before I left Montreal I met a Mrs. Wilmott. Let me see, where did I meet her? Oh, yes, it was at a
soirée
given by the wife of a Montreal banker. This Mrs. Wilmott — I remarked the name because it is not a common one — this Mrs. Wilmott struck me as quite unusual. She seemed a
woman with a purpose. She is out here from England — I think to meet her husband.”
Wilmott had taken Tite’s copybook into his hands. He bent his gaze on it in an absent-minded way. Adeline came over and looked over his shoulder. She said, in an undertone: —
“I shall come over tomorrow morning — soon after breakfast.”
“Names are amusing,” Philip was saying. “I knew of another Vaughan in the Army in India. He was no relation to your uncle, Miss Daisy, but he had the same name. He even looked like him. Did you ever notice that people who look alike have similar voices?”
“Tomorrow morning,” whispered Adeline, into the copybook, “and — don’t worry.”
H
ENRIETTA
A
NXIOUS AS
A
DELINE
was she drew in the reins and slackened the pace of the quiet bay horse so that she might look up the drive that led to Jalna. There was no gate as yet. The drive was no more than a rough track. Piles of lumber, heaps of brick and sand disfigured the ground before the house, but there stood the house with its roof firmly on, its five chimneys staunch and tall, waiting for her and Philip! There was a sagacious look about it, as though it were conscious that it had no drab destiny, but was to be the home of two people who were beloved by each other and who loved life. The builder promised that in early spring they should move in.
Adeline could scarcely endure the waiting for that day. She had now been five months at Vaughanlands. No people could have put themselves about with a better grace than the Vaughans. Still, two grownups, two children and their nurse, were a large addition to the work of the house. Domestic help was cheap enough but untrained and ignorant. All her life Adeline had been waited on. Work got done somehow and never had she troubled her head as to how. In the past months she had often seen Mrs. Vaughan tired-out. Yet, when she tried to help her she did everything wrong and experienced dreadful boredom into the bargain. It took all the
nurse’s time to care for the children and to wash and iron their little clothes. She saw to it that it took all her time. Adeline at last appealed to Patsy O’Flynn.
“For the love of God, Patsy-Joe, take hold and help with the housework! For if you can’t make yourself useful I shall have to send you back to Ireland.”
“Me make mesilf useful!” he cried, affronted. “If I haven’t, I’d like to know who has! How would your honour have got here, with the babies and the goat and the dog and all — if it hadn’t been for me! ’Tis yersilf has many a time said so and now you throw me uselessness in me teeth and expect me to swallow it!”
“Very well, Patsy-Joe,” Adeline said sadly. “I’ll clean the silver and wash the glass and make the beds myself, if you are to talk like that.”
“Well, I’ll do what I can,” he grumbled, “but ’tis the most small, inconvenient house I iver was in, and the servants the worst.”
He did turn in and help with the work and might have been heard saying to the housemaid — “Mind yer manners, ye ill-taught wench. Curtsy and say ‘Please, yer honour!” whin ye sake to the misthress, or I’ll be the death of ye.” The buxom girl took it in good part. Wherever Patsy-Joe went he was a favourite.
The horse’s hoofs moved quietly in the deep dust of the road. In spite of early autumn rains, the land lay dry as tinder. Even the heavy dews at night could do no more than moisten the parched lips of the plants. But colour was bright on every side. With careless flamboyance the trees ran the bold scale from bronze to fiery red. The fields showed the hot blue of chicory and yellow stubble, the fence corners, the crimson sumacs. The purple clusters of elderberries looked ready to drip from the trees in their overripeness. Ten thousand crickets filled the lazy air with their metallic music. How much, thought Adeline, they could do with two single notes! One note was grave and one was gay, and with the two they could do anything.
She had slept little last night. It was only by strong curbing of herself that she had remained in bed. She had felt that by springing up and pacing the floor she might find some means of
saving Wilmott from discovery by his wife. The aghast look in his eyes had frightened her. What if he were gone when she arrived at his house? He had looked capable of anything at the moment when Daisy had told of the meeting with that woman. But Daisy and Philip had seemed to notice nothing. Wilmott was not a man you would suspect. Not that he seemed without mystery but he appeared to carry it in his heart and not as a physical covering. You wouldn’t think of him as hiding from a woman, thought Adeline. But hiding he was and must be protected. Her love for Philip never wavered but the small, unbridled something in her that would stray loved Wilmott also, with a bold protective love.
His bit of river was as smooth as a blue glass plate and the rushes along its verge, even in their dryness, were too still for whispering. The little new landing stage shone out clean and white. His fishing tackle lay on it and the flat-bottomed boat was moored beside it. Everything was so still that Adeline had a sense of foreboding as she knocked at the door. There was no answer but she saw the window blind move and had a glimpse of Tite’s thin dark hair.
“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.”