Return to the Island: An utterly gripping historical romance
Page 6
“Arrangements…” Rose held one hand to her heart, her eyes wide as the implications of what Lucas was communicating began to become clear.
“The first…” Ellen continued and then stopped, hardly able to believe what she was reading.
“Ellen,” Rose implored as she twisted her hands in her apron, pea pods falling and scattering on the weathered boards of the porch. “What does it say? The first what?”
“Yes,” Bert chimed in, leaning forward so he could hear the rest. “The first what?”
Ellen looked up at Rose, her mouth curving in a trembling smile as she read the rest of the telegram, her voice filled with disbelief. “The first guests arrive Friday.”
Chapter Six
The next three days were a flurry of activity and excitement as they all prepared for the guests Lucas had arranged—the wife of one of the partners in his law firm and her two sisters, coming for a week’s holiday and art lessons.
“I don’t know what he was thinking,” Caro complained, although her eyes were sparkling, as she put endless sheets through the mangle. “Three days to set the house to rights! You don’t even have any art supplies. And what about the state of the front parlor?”
“We’ll find a way,” Ellen said, determined to make this work now that it was actually happening. Although at times it felt as if there were a thousand obstacles in their way, at least there was possibility. Hope. She was grateful to Lucas, even if part of her was exasperated with his seeming high-handedness. What if they weren’t ready in time? What if, thanks to the rush, it was all a disaster?
“I’m just grateful dear Lucas is giving us a chance,” Rose said as she tilted her head upwards to survey Peter repairing the roof tiles. “It’s given us all a new energy, even him.” She nodded towards Peter. “At least I think it has.”
“I think so too,” Ellen assured her aunt. Although Peter hadn’t seemed particularly enthusiastic about welcoming guests, he’d set to his ever-increasing list of tasks with a dogged determination that was better than his usual malaise of indifference. “And when Gracie, Sarah, and Andrew all arrive home, we’ll have lots of helpers.”
“But fewer rooms.” Rose sighed, shaking her head. “If I let myself dwell on it all too long, I wonder how on earth any of this can work.”
Ellen laid a comforting hand on her aunt’s arm. “Let’s just focus on this first visit,” she said. “And hopefully the rest will take care of itself.”
Although, in her experience, little took care of itself.
Still, there was plenty to be getting on with—in addition to the roof repairs, they needed to fix the rotten boards in the porch, paint the second bedroom, and plant flowers in the empty beds in the front garden. Then there was the food to get in; Rose had planned elaborate menus that would have her in the kitchen most of the day until Caro convinced her that good, plain country food was what such ladies would be expecting.
“If they wanted Oysters Rockefeller, they should have gone to New York!” she’d declared, making Rose smile.
“I wasn’t going to make oysters. But Chicken à la King might do nicely. I saw the recipe in Woman’s Home Companion.”
It was agreed Ellen would travel to Kingston to put in an order with the grocer’s and also to buy some art supplies for her lessons, a prospect which filled her with both excitement and trepidation. Could she really teach society ladies how to draw and paint? At the moment she didn’t even know where to begin.
Right now, however, she needed to help Caro with all the sheets to be pushed through the mangle, hard and heavy work. They were both red-faced and sweaty by the end of it, with the sodden, dripping sheets still needing to be hung out on the line.
Caro paused in their exertions to give Ellen a frank and anxious look. “What if it’s all a disaster, Ellen? I know Lucas means well, but he’s dropped us right in it, whether he meant to or not. These fancy Toronto women might turn their noses up at all of us!”
“They might,” Ellen agreed. In her darker moments, she thought it likely. Even with new roof tiles and a fresh coat of paint, the farmhouse looked weathered and worn. Lovable, yes, but definitely shabby, and a far cry from the fancy hotels such women would be used to. “But if they do,” she continued with as much optimism as she could muster, “we’re only back where we started. We haven’t lost anything, not really. Not as much as we will lose, if we don’t try.”
Caro nodded soberly. “I don’t want to leave the island,” she confessed quietly. “And I know my mother doesn’t, either. I can’t stand the thought of her heart breaking yet again.”
They shared a look full of sorrow and understanding, before Caro turned back to the sheets and Ellen went to dust the three front bedrooms they’d decided would be for guests. Peter would take the box room off the kitchen, and Caro would share with Rose. When Andrew, Gracie, and Sarah came home, they would be squeezed even more, but still with space for three guest bedrooms.
Back in the house, Ellen paused in the front hallway as she surveyed the rooms she was so familiar with, yet was now trying to see with fresh eyes. The brass runner on the stairs was well worn, the Turkish pattern of vines and flowers faded to pale obscurity. The photograph on the wall of Rose and Dyle’s wedding day—both of them looking so young and so serious—was faded too, to a pale brown tint.
Ellen took a step towards the front parlor, with its overstuffed settee of stiff horsehair, the two faded armchairs flanking the fireplace, the cabbage rose wallpaper that was peeling at one high corner. She’d spent so many happy days in the room—birthday celebrations, and Christmases with everyone gathered around the tree perched precariously by the window, cozy winter nights tucked up with a book or a game of checkers, spring evenings with the windows thrown open to the balmy breezes rolling off the lake.
She loved this room and all the precious memories it held, but would sniffy society ladies from Toronto feel the same? They didn’t have any memories to cherish; what if all they saw was the stuffing coming out of the sofa cushion, or the sun-faded streaks on the curtains?
Well, Ellen resolved, if they did, then so be it. She still wanted to try, and try as hard as she could. Selling Jasper Lane felt like defeat, a surrender none of them wanted. She’d certainly faced more trying circumstances than these in her life—the death of her mother when she was only a child; her father haring off to New Mexico when she wasn’t much older; Aunt Ruth and Uncle’s Hamish’s hard welcome… all of it had made her long for a home, a true home, and this was it. She would do her best to hold onto it.
Turning from the room with a determined step, Ellen headed upstairs.
Although there was much work to do, there was no denying that Lucas’s telegram had put a spring in everyone’s step, a sparkle in their eyes, even if they were all anxious for the plan to succeed—and desperately afraid that it wouldn’t. Even Peter had started to lose a little bit of the dazed, distant look in his eyes as he finished repairing the roof, fixing the porch boards, and even painting the wagon a smart new cream. Ellen just hoped, after all the effort they’d put into sprucing the farmhouse up, it wouldn’t be in vain.
Two days before their guests were due to arrive, Ellen took the train into Kingston and visited an art shop near the university, breathing in the old, familiar smells of oil and turpentine, paint and charcoal. She walked slowly among the aisles, picking up a tube of oil paint and running her fingers through the bristles of a brush.
Trepidation and yearning rolled through her… It had been so long—so very long since she’d even considered drawing anything at all, and yet now she was to instruct others. The thought was incredibly daunting, and yet thrilling too.
“May I help you?” the young woman behind the counter asked politely. “Is there something you need?”
Ellen let out a tremulous laugh. She’d left all her art supplies in Glasgow, so she had nothing, not even a set of pencils. “Yes,” she told the woman with a wavering smile. “There is quite a lot I need, actually.”
“Ellen, you went to a fancy art school and you had your exhibition written up in the newspaper. Who else around here is more qualified to let a few old biddies dabble with pencils or pots of paints?”
“I suppose,” Ellen had said, but she still doubted herself, not that Caro could really understand.
Now, as she walked the path along the pond where she’d once sat so many times and taken pencil to paper, she wondered if it would be too damp and mossy for the ladies. She’d always been happy to curl up on the flat rock that jutted out over the pond, or lean against the base of the huge maple whose leafy branches stretched out over the water. But she could not see ladies from Toronto doing the same.
If they brought chairs, perhaps… Peter could accompany them in the wagon, and Caro could bring tea and muffins to make it all seem a bit more amenable.
“What are you doing here?”
Startled, Ellen whirled around, one hand pressed to her chest. Jed stood by the gate to the Lymans’ field, a silhouette in the oncoming twilight.
“Jed! You scared me.”
“I saw you from afar and thought you might be a tramp,” Jed stated rather flatly. “I heard from Captain Jonah that they’re coming to the island now. Ex-soldiers with nowhere to go.”
“Have pity on them, surely,” Ellen returned gently. “Poor men having endured so much.”
“Some of them have been known to be violent.”
“Not here on the island,” Ellen protested. “I haven’t heard any such thing.”
Jed merely shrugged, and she took a step towards him.
“How are you, Jed?” she asked quietly. “Really?”
In the oncoming darkness, she couldn’t make out his expression. He stood very still, his left hand resting on the gate, his other arm an empty sleeve pinned to his overall.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem—”
“Heard you’re getting gussied up for some city visitors,” he remarked rather flatly.
“Yes, it was Lucas’s idea. Did he tell you? I don’t know whether it will keep us afloat, but we’ve got to try.” Ellen smiled, but she sensed Jed didn’t return it, even though she could hardly see his face.
He merely nodded once, and then turned back to the Lyman farm without another word.
Ellen watched him go, sorrow rushing through her in a wave of poignant memory. Jed… dear Jed… even before she’d fallen in love with him, they’d been friends. Such good friends. She recalled twilit evenings talking in the barn, or playing games of tag among the trees by the pond, their leaves russet and scarlet under a crystalline sky. Where had it all gone? And would they ever be able to get it back? As Ellen watched Jed disappear into the gathering shadows, she feared the answers to those questions more than ever.
Chapter Seven
The day before their three guests were to arrive, Rose brought down three patchwork quilts from the attic that she’d stitched as a young bride.
“They’re a bit musty, but if we aired them out, I thought they might do,” she said nervously. “I’d almost forgotten about them, to tell you the truth. Are they too old-fashioned and fusty?”
“Oh, no, not at all, Aunt Rose, they’re gorgeous,” Ellen exclaimed as she examined the intricate needlework and faded although still lovely colors.
“I know they’re hardly the latest style…”
“They’re exactly what we need,” Ellen declared firmly. “It’s this kind of homely touch that these city types want, isn’t it?” She didn’t wait for Rose’s reply as she continued, “I love these quilts, and our guests will too. I’m sure of it.”
“They are beautiful, Mam,” Caro added as she fingered the rose pattern on one. “I never learned to stitch like this.”
“Well, why would you, when you can buy one made by a machine from the Sears Roebuck catalogue?” Rose sighed as she shook one of the quilts out. “Sometimes I feel as if I’m a hundred years old. It’s meant to be dry tonight—why don’t we hang them up now?”
That evening, after another full day’s work, Ellen, Caro, and Rose all sat slumped around the kitchen table, exhausted by the nonstop scrubbing and cleaning.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the house this clean,” Caro remarked with a tired laugh. “Do you suppose they’ll notice?”
“They’d notice if it wasn’t tidy,” Rose replied practically. “But there’s no point worrying about it either way now.” Their three lady guests were due tomorrow on the four o’clock train to Kingston. It was far past the time for last-minute doubts or panic to set in.
“I wonder what they’ll be like,” Caro mused. “I must confess, I’m picturing them to be snooty and la-di-da like Louisa.”
“Caro,” Rose said in gentle reproof. “Louisa came to appreciate our island ways.”
“Did she?” Caro’s voice was laced with incredulity. “Not that I could see. She high-tailed it to Kingston and them back to the States just as soon as she could. She wasn’t much of a friend to Ellen back in the day, either, as I recall.”
Rose gave her oldest daughter a stern look. “She had her fair share of sorrows, Caro.”
“As have we all,” Caro returned, fiery as ever. “I know you want to be kind and forgiving, Mam, but Louisa treated Jed poorly. Very poorly indeed.”
“We weren’t talking about Jed, but about our guests arriving tomorrow,” Rose replied. “And you don’t know all that goes on in a marriage, Caro. It is not for us to gossip or judge.”
Caro flushed at this rebuke and Ellen gave her a sympathetic look while staying quiet. She did not know her own feelings entirely on the subject of Jed and Louisa’s marriage, and in any case, she had no desire to say any of them out loud.
Rose heaved a sigh as she rose from the table. “I suppose we should all get to bed. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.” She cast a worried glance towards the barn, where the light from a lantern was just visible. Peter had been out there most of the evening, as he often was, simply, Ellen suspected, for the privacy.
Caro put a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “He’ll come in when he comes in,” she said quietly and Rose gave a trembling smile.
“Yes, it’s just I’m afraid when that will be.”
Ellen had the feeling her aunt was talking about more than Peter coming in from the barn.
At half past four the next afternoon, Ellen and Caro stood on the front porch while Rose bustled nervously inside, all of them waiting for Peter to come back from the ferry with their first guests, Viola Gardener and her two sisters. He’d been in good spirits as he’d gone out, whistling while he hitched up the horses. Ellen had smiled to see it.
Lucas hadn’t given any detail in his telegram, or the letter that had followed, filled with encouragement for them all but very little information about their guests beyond that he knew the wife of his employer socially, but only a little.
Would they be kind and understanding, or sniffily disapproving? Or what if they were only coming at all because Lucas had begged for a favor? The possibility brought a flush of humiliation to Ellen’s cheeks. She knew they were desperate, but she still didn’t want charity, and she didn’t think Aunt Rose or any of the McCaffertys did, either. What if that’s all this was?
Her distant gaze focused on the golden-green pasture stretching to the horizon, the sun shining benevolently over it—and then it sharpened on the broken fence between the McCafferty property and the Lymans’.
“Oh, no.”
“What is it?” Rose poked her head through the kitchen doorway, instantly alert. She’d been in a flutter all morning, dusting things that had already been dusted not once but two or three times. When Ellen had come downstairs just after dawn, thinking she had risen early, both Caro and Rose had already been up and about, smiling guiltily and admitting they couldn’t sleep.
“It’s fine,” Ellen assured Rose as she hurried off the porch. Maddie, their dairy cow, had broken the fence several times over the last few months; she seemed intent on getting into the Lymans’ vegetable patch and eating all of their pea shoots.
“Oh, no, is it Maddie again?” Rose asked anxiously and Ellen waved her away before lifting up her skirts to avoid the mud puddles in the barnyard; it had rained last night after all, and the quilts were damp and still airing on the line, yet another worry added to the ones Rose already had.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get her,” she called as she grabbed a length of rope and went in search of the errant cow. Of course this would happen just as they were expecting their new guests! If Peter hadn’t been fetching them from the ferry, he would have done it, but Ellen knew the job now fell to her. She could hardly ask Rose to go tramping through the fields, and Caro needed to be there to support her. If all went well, she could have Maddie in the barn and be back at the house to tidy herself before the wagon came up the lane.
Ellen sighed and then squared her shoulders, determined to bring back their recalcitrant bovine.
The fields between the Lyman and McCafferty properties were wet and muddy from last night’s rain, and Ellen grimaced as her best boots, worn for the ladies’ arrival, were soon slicked with the stuff, the hem of her Sunday dress coated in brown. She was going to look a complete fright when she returned—hardly what three society ladies would want to see!
“Maddie,” she hissed when she caught sight of the cow, smack in the middle of the Lymans’ vegetable patch, blissfully pulling up and chewing their prize shoots. Ellen dreaded to think what Jed or his father would say when they saw the damage. “Come here, you dratted cow!”