“I was taught,” said Augusta, “to look on such a character as frail.”
“Now then, Philip,” Adeline spoke with an air of finality, “it’s time to put this nonsense out of your head. I have no doubt that you are not the first with Mary Wakefield. Nor will you be the last …”
“I will not hear another word against her,” he shouted. “And if you won’t believe her, perhaps you’ll believe me. I have never been to bed with her. I swear it — though I despise myself for going to the trouble of denying what anyone who knows Mary …” he could not go on. He stood, with his hands clenched, glaring at them.
“But surely,” said Ernest, “no girl would knowingly damage her own character.”
“She did know,” declared Adeline. “She knew exactly what I said and what she said.”
“Then she is deranged,” said Philip.
“Perhaps her derangement is just love for you,” suggested Nicholas, “and disappointment because she isn’t getting you.”
“She is getting me! Make no mistake about that. I’m going now to find her and I’m going to marry her.”
“You fool,” cried Adeline, “you would marry a girl who will have no rag of reputation left after this!”
In the hall Renny began to sing, in his penetrating treble voice, the new song he had just learned from a stableman.
“‘Ta ra ra boom de-ay
Ta ra ra boom de-ay’”
Adeline called him and he appeared, red-cheeked, red-haired, brown-eyed, brown-jacketed, as in autumn colouring. He had forgotten he had run away but now he remembered and stood rigid.
“Have you seen your governess this morning?” asked Adeline.
“No, Granny. She’s sick.”
“How do you know?”
“She didn’t come out of her room?”
“And you haven’t heard anything about her?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“Very well. Run along now.”
His brow cleared. He relaxed and ran out singing:
“‘Ta ra ra boom de-ay
Ta ra ra boom de-ay’”
XVII
ESCAPE
WITH HER EAR to the panel of the door Mary could hear that Adeline was descending the stairs. She listened for a moment, even after all was silent. Then she came back and stood facing her reflection in the mirror. It was as though she looked at a stranger. A different Mary was looking out at her, a Mary with dilated nostrils and bold, defiant eyes. A stranger. She laughed at her own reflection in triumph. I had the best of Mrs. Whiteoak, she thought, she was dumbfounded, she didn’t know what to say. I had the best of her.
She began to pace up and down the room, unable to think clearly, except for that one thought — I had the best of her. She came up here to humiliate me, to accuse me, but I took the wind out of her sails. She thought she’d frighten me but I was equal to her! Those eyes of hers that seem to blaze into yours — but she found mine could blaze back. Never in my life had I such a moment. It was like something on the stage, only they’d never dare put such a scene on the stage — a girl declaring she was loose, when she was — just the reverse! It would upset all ideas of morality. It would be shameful. People would say what a horrible play. And no wonder! I am a horrible woman … Yet I don’t mind … I don’t care … All that matters to me is that I got the best of her. I did not allow myself to be intimidated. Every single bit of her has been intimidating to me — the way her eyes are set in her head, the way she uses her hands. There’s been something fatal in her for me. But tonight she must have felt stunned … She must be wondering at this minute what on earth to do. She must be wondering what I am going to do. That girl, she’ll think, can never marry Clive now! What if she intends to marry my Philip?
Philip. His name was like a cold hand laid on her heart. Her exalted brain halted in its imaginings. Her taut nerves slackened. Suddenly her legs felt weak and she sat down on the bed. She stared blankly in front of her. She did not know how long a time passed, but she began to be very cold. Her mouth felt unbearably dry yet she could not bring herself to the point of getting a drink. She sat like one doomed, while his name rang like a bell through the empty chambers of her mind.
After a while a few scalding tears filled her eyes. She wiped them away on the frilled cuff of her nightdress. But they freed her from the weakness, the lethargy, that had overtaken her. She looked about the room, noticing the strange shadows thrown by the lamplight. She noticed the worn spot in the carpet in front of the dressing-table. She noticed the wax flowers and fruit under glass on the mantelshelf. She looked down and saw her bare feet, side by side, close together, on the mat by the bed. They looked very white, and somehow pathetic. They will carry me, she thought, far away from this house, as they brought me to it … For now the knowledge that she was going away came clearly to her. In the morning Mrs. Whiteoak would tell Philip what she had said. Never again could she look him in the face after the preposterous lie she had told.
Now she went to the washstand and filled a glass from the water bottle. The coldness of the water showed how the nights were becoming cold. She drank it down thirstily. Then she took the folded “comforter” from the foot of the bed, wrapped it round her and sat down, this time drawing her feet up. She clasped them in her hands. It was hard to know which was coldest, hands or feet, but they comforted each other.
She must think what to do.
Now she could think. The exhilaration of her encounter with Adeline was gone, the exhaustion which followed it, was gone. She could think clearly with a part of her mind. In its recesses there still was a dark turmoil of emotion.
Should she go to Clive, tell him everything? Would she be able to convince him that what she had said to Adeline was a lie? And if she could, would he be willing to marry a girl to whom such a lie would occur? But she did not want to marry Clive! She would die rather than tell Clive what she had done. She would die rather than marry him when she loved Philip with her whole being. Now that Philip had touched the torch of her love from him into full flame she wondered that she ever had contemplated marrying Clive … Yet, if Clive would be disgusted if he knew what she had said in anger, what would be Philip’s contempt! Philip who had told her he loved her, had kissed her in the orchard, had begged her to walk with him in the moonlight. They would not understand, and how could they when she herself did not understand? Even sitting on her bed, wrapped in the comforter, with the chill dawn greying the window, the thought of that moment when she had taken the wind out of Adeline’s sails made her pulses thrill in renewed exhilaration. How those dark eyes whose fire she had found so hard to face, had stared in blank astonishment! How that mouth, with the strong lines about it, had dropped open! At the recollection Mary laughed, even though she knew that in that moment sh had ruined her life.
She thought of the words people used in speaking of a girl who had been seduced. “He ruined her.” Well — it could be said of her that she ruined herself. Mary’s laugh was fixed in an ironic smile which made her pale face oddly older.
One thing was certain. She must leave Jalna. The thought of meeting Philip, the thought of facing the family, was not to be borne. So acute was the stab of this thought that she sprang up and began to put on her clothes. She did not know where she might go. There would be time to make plans when she was safely outside the gate. Standing in her petticoat she poured water from the ewer into the basin. She had always liked this basin with its big red roses shining under the water. The water came from a cistern and was soft, as though just fallen from the clouds. She dashed it on her face, pressed it to her burning eyes. The large linen towel smelt of the outdoors.
She packed her trunk, strapped it, packed things for immediate use in her portmanteau, then put on her hat and coat. She was now breathless with haste. The sun was touching the tree tops. At any moment the servants would be astir, the dogs barking to see her set out. She must not be seen.
She took a last look round to make sure she had forgotten nothing.
This room, so stamped by her emotions, could it ever be the same again? Surely, in far-off years, someone lying in that bed would be conscious of the shadow of Mary Wakefield.
Carrying her portmanteau she crept down the stairs.
Outside Philip’s door she hesitated, her heart seeming to halt its beat while she willed a last message through the panel … “I love you, Philip, and never shall love any man but you. Good-bye, my dearest love.”
She stole down the stairs.
The front door stood wide open and the incomparable sweetness of the September morning poured into the hall. She was not the first member of the household to be about! She heard Mrs. Nettleship’s harsh voice in the kitchen below singing a hymn — “Pull for the Shore, brothers, pull for the Shore,” she sang in quavering appeal. Jake’s acute ear discovered Mary’s soft step in the hall. He scratched at the door of the dogs’ room and whined. In panic she hastened through the door and down the steps. She did not look back till she was safe behind the heavy branches of the evergreens that made the driveway a tunnel of greenness. Then between the branches she looked back at the house. Bluish-grey smoke curled straight up from two of its five chimneys. Where the sun struck warmest on the roof the pigeons had gathered, bowing to each other, making rich confidential noises in their throats, their iridescent breasts gleaming. Now that many leaves of the Virginia creeper had fallen the pinkish red of the brick was shown. The house, now forty years old, was like a comfortable fresh-complexioned matron in early middle age. It looked serene, complacent, confident of the beneficence of the future.
She turned away and trudged down the drive. Strangely enough her thoughts were not fixed on Philip but on Adeline. Since their interview of the night before Adeline’s image was so imprinted on her consciousness that she wondered if ever again it could be erased. If I were a sculptor, she thought, I could do a head of her from memory. Her nostrils, her eyelids, her lips, are clearer to me than my own. The worst of hating her is that something in me has always been drawn to her. But, what matter, for I shall never see her again? Or pass through this gate again, or see his face again.
The portmanteau was heavier than she had expected. It kept thudding against her leg as she walked. She shifted it from hand to hand. The distance to the railway station was little more than a mile, however. She knew there was an early morning train to Montreal. She would take that train and, in Montreal, find some employment, no matter what, and through it save enough to return to England. She might get the passage paid in return for caring for an invalid or children. The one clear purpose in her mind was to go far away from this place. I would starve, she thought, rather than meet any of them again.
She heard the sound of a horse’s hoofs on the road and stepped aside to let it pass. As it grew close she saw that the man in the buggy was Doctor Ramsey. He drew in his horse and stared down at her in surprise.
“Good morning, Miss Wakefield,” he said, “this is a surprise, meeting you abroad so airly. And your portmanteau, too! Are you off for a holiday?”
“Yes,” she returned, “I’m catching a train.”
“And they let you come afoot! And carrying that heavy load. Come, I’ll take you to the station.” He began to tie the reins to the dashboard. “Just a wee minute and I”ll have you and your baggage in the buggy.”
“No — no, thank you. The rest of the walk is nothing. I’d — I’d rather walk. I like it.”
Doctor Ramsey had heard too many women tell too many lies to be taken in by this.
“What’s wrong, Miss Wakefield?” he asked, his shrewd, good-looking face alight with curiosity. “This is no ordinary holiday you are on, I’m sure of that.”
Whatever she said he would go to Jalna and repeat, she was sure of that. She said:
“If you must know, Doctor Ramsey, I’m giving up my situation. I’m returning to England.”
“Well, this is a surprise. I think I know a certain young man who will be heart-broken.”
“No one will be heart-broken, Doctor Ramsey.” For an instant a terrible temptation to burst into tears assailed her. To cry out, through her tears, “No one but me! No one but me!” But she controlled herself and looked straight into his eyes. “I’d much rather walk,” she said. “Good-bye.” She stretched out her hand to shake his.
His hand caught hers in a strong bony grip, a grip to give confidence. Mary felt that, if once he got her into that buggy, he would have the truth out of her.
She made her pale lips smile. “Good-bye,” she repeated. “And please give my love to the children.”
“I’d insist,” he said, “but I’m on an urgent call to a lying-in case. Good-bye, Miss Wakefield, and good luck to you.”
Nothing but the urgency of his call dragged him away from Mary and his desire to drive straight to Jalna and find out what all this was about. With set lips he turned toward duty. He gave his old mare a touch with the whip and it ambled on.
Mary passed the two shops and the few houses of the tiny village. The road into it was guarded by two rows of the noblest oaks and pines in the province. Mary looked up into their massive branches and remembered Mrs. Whiteoak’s possessive pride in them. “One would think she owned the earth the way she looks and acts.”
There were the railway tracks to be crossed, the harsh cinders gritting beneath her feet, the high platform to be mounted. She was beginning to be in a panic for fear she would miss the train. The stationmaster looked out of the wicket through steel-rimmed spectacles. Mary asked for a ticked to Montreal.
“Was you goin’ today?”
“Yes. On this morning’s train. Is it late?”
“Late! It’s gone. Ten minutes ago. Didn’t you hear it whistle?”
“Oh — no, I didn’t hear the whistle.”
It must have passed through while she was talking to Doctor Ramsey. She was filled with dismay. She sat down on a seat in the waiting-room, the portmanteau at her feet. For a time she could not decide what to do. If only she had let the doctor drive her to the station, she would now be miles and miles away. I always seem to do the wrong thing, she thought. If there were nineteen right ways and one wrong, I should choose the wrong. From behind the wicket came the steady ticking of the telegraph.
She went out of the station, closing the door softly so that she might not be heard, recrossed the tracks and set out toward the lakeshore road. She remembered that it was only about six miles to Stead, the next village. She would go there, where there was a good hotel, take a room, and leave on the next train for Montreal. She would almost certainly be offered a lift on the way. But the road was unusually quiet. A great load of hay passed her, a wagon from which two timid calves looked out on her, a buggy whose seat was crowded by a fat married couple, and a man in a gig training a trotter for the Fall Fair trotting races. The speed of this vehicle almost took Mary’s breath away, it seemed dangerous on the open road.
Lake gulls drifted above the fields and back over the lake. It was grey green, roughening because a strong wind was rising. It blew the clouds in great battalions, bright and billowing against the blue, till one covered the sun and turned them to threatening purple. Mary was little more than a mile on her way when a shower came slanting down as though it chose her for its special object. Even the thick hemlock branches beneath which she took shelter were not enough to keep her from getting wet. She looked disconsolately out at the road, stretching long before her. Already she felt tired out. Blisters were forming on her palms. The coil of her hair began to loosen, a hairpin slid under her collar and down her back. The damp earthy smell of the woods came out to meet the smell of the lake.
The shower passed. Once again Mary set out. She had got a pair of gloves from the portmanteau and now the carrying of it was less painful. But it grew heavier and heavier as she plodded on. Her long cloth skirt, wet from the rain, dragged at her knees. Now the sun was out again, the gulls leant in the wind or dropped to ride with assurance on the rowdy green waves.
Surely, surely, Stead was
not far off. Mary stopped at a farmhouse by the road to ask how far. Still another mile she was told, and the farmer’s wife asked her if she would come in and have a cup of tea. A pan of buns had just been taken from the oven. The kitchen was hot and the air heavy with the delicious smell of the baking. Mary was glad to sit down by the table and drink a cup of tea and eat a bun, so hot that the butter melted on it. She realized she was faint for food. She had eaten nothing since the picnic with the children. The farmer’s wife seemed glad of her company. Her own mother had come from England. She told her mother’s name and the name of the village she had come from.
Mary had expected to feel refreshed, stronger to face the rest of the walk, but food and drink had made her sleepy. She felt as though the pith had gone out of her. She stumbled as she walked, with not a thought in her head, save to keep walking. Mechanically she stepped aside to let a wagon pass. She had not the wit now to hail the driver and ask him for a lift. The wagon rumbled on, the blond manes of the farm horses tossing in the wind. The driver was an old man, humped up on the seat. Old brute, thought Mary, he might have seen that I was ready to drop. Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She did not trouble to wipe them away. Her mind was again a blank.
She did not see the shining trap and well-groomed horse coming toward her down a side road till it was quite near. Then she wiped her face with her handkerchief and prepared to appeal to the driver. There was no need. The horse was drawn up sharply by Mary’s side. She looked up into Muriel Craig’s round face, with its cool stare fixed on her.
“Why, Miss Wakefield,” cried Muriel Craig, “To think of meeting you, of all people, trudging along the road so far from home.”
Mary smiled coldly. “I am walking to Stead,” she said.
“Then you must let me give you a lift. I go right past there.”
Mary would have been glad of a lift from the devil himself. She heaved her portmanteau into the trap and clambered in after it. “Thank you,” she murmured.
03 Mary Wakefield Page 23
