“What about that gold pen?” demanded Philip, fixing a stern eye on him.
“I’m sorry, Papa,” said Ernest, “but I’ve lost it.”
“Already?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Come here,” said his mother.
Adeline opened wide her arms to her child and he ran into them.
What this family scene would have developed into was never known, because Mrs. Coveyduck, very red and flustered, now appeared. Without preliminary she announced, “Coveyduck and me — we think we’d better be going.”
“Oh, this is the last straw,” declared Adeline.
“I’m sorry for ’ee, madam,” said the cook, “but Coveyduck and me — we’re not used to working with darkies. Already they’re making a fine mess in the kitchen I’ve just cleaned. That new married pair are claiming the basement bedroom I’m just making ready for me and my ’usband. It’s more than human flesh and blood can bear. Those darkies be a murderous lot, if you ask me.”
Little Philip now toddled into the porch, calling out, “Cubbyduck! Cubbyduck!” He threw himself on her, clasping her knees.
Adeline spoke with dignity. “Baby welcomes you. We all welcome you. The blacks will be here only a short while …”
Mrs. Coveyduck said mournfully, “They tell me their massa is dead.”
“No, no, he is just delayed by a meeting with Mr. Lincoln. In the meantime you and your husband may use the bedroom in the attic. It’s a long climb for you from the basement, but it will be for only a little while, as I have said. Try to bear with the blacks. If you knew how tired I am you’d not desert me.”
The Coveyducks were persuaded to remain. The Negroes again took possession of the basement. Lucy Sinclair moved like one in a melancholy trance. When Philip sought to return the pearl necklet, the gold watch and chain, the moonstone ring, she at first refused them but was persuaded. With the first spark of her former mettle she said, with vehemence, that when she was sent for, if ever, she would restore them to Adeline and the children.
Some days later, when she had recovered from the exhaustion of the fruitless journey, she told Philip that she had decided to sell Jerry and Belle. They were a healthy, active young couple and should bring a good price. Did Philip know of anyone here in Canada who would be likely to offer her a good price? She had not yet grasped the fact that emancipation had taken place.
Ten days passed. Fall weather was threatening the last of the flowers. A flock of bluebirds about to migrate gathered in the garden. They sang their pretty songs, they showed, without peacock pride, their heavenly colour.
Philip Whiteoak tried, by every means possible, to get news of Curtis Sinclair. He considered the possibility of buying a small house for Lucy and her retinue. Certainly things could not go on as they were. There was a limit to what a man could endure. He would sit brooding — wondering what to do next.
Then the unexpected happened. From the railway station, in a hired carriage, appeared Mr. Tilford. He was a man of influence. He had come, armed with passes, plentifully supplied with money, to conduct Lucy Sinclair to Charleston. He was an old friend, a connection by marriage of her family. He had little time to spare. The southbound party must leave the following day.
XIV
THE VISIT OVER
An almost feverish excitement swept through Jalna like a forest fire, with the coming of Mr. Tilford. It spread from basement to attic, from barn and stables to the two cottages occupied by farm labourers. Everybody knew of his coming and that the lovely Southern lady would, early next morning, leave for her perilous journey, to meet her strange husband. All the neighbourhood knew of her leaving. All agreed that the journey was perilous. All agreed that the husband she was rejoining had something strange about him. Yet Mr. Tilford viewed the situation with fatalistic calm. He had little to say about Lucy Sinclair’s terrible disappointment in not being met on her first attempt to return to the South. He had little to say about the ruin of the plantations. It was obvious that he himself was not financially ruined. He was a shrewd business man — still youngish, with a future far from dark ahead of him. His mother was a Northerner and it had been through her relatives that he had gone into the cotton trade with England. He did not in his talk with the Whiteoaks show any violent partisanship. He knew so much and the Whiteoaks and Lucy Sinclair so truly little of the intricacies of the situation in the States that he preferred to skirt the edges rather than attempt to plunge into the depths.
Lucy Sinclair had gone to her room to make final preparations, which consisted in putting her hair in curlers, packing small things in a small dressing case and taking them out again, ordering her maids to do certain services for her and then expressing amazement that they had so done. As for Cindy and Belle, it seemed doubtful if they would close their eyes in sleep that night.
They would have sat up half the night talking, but it was necessary for Mr. Tilford to get rest. At midnight he was shown to his room, walking steadily, clear-headed in spite of all the Scotch whisky he had consumed. As for the Whiteoaks, they felt that they had a new grasp of the situation in the United States, the possible results of the civil war in that country, and its probable future. They lay awake a long while talking. At last there was silence from Philip to whom Adeline had put a question of (she considered) extraordinary importance. She repeated it on an imperative note. Now there came from him a bubbling snore. She was angry — outraged. “Insensate pig,” she tried to hiss, but could make no sound beyond a whimper. She doubled her fist and tried to strike him, but when the blow landed it was no more than a pat.
She was brought back to consciousness by a knock on the door. It was Mrs. Coveyduck with early-morning tea. It was seven o’clock. Outside the window a turkey-cock gobbled his pleasure in this Indian summer morning, and spread his splendid tail for the admiration of his several wives who trailed their long feet on the dew-soaked lawn. Philip and Adeline sat up in bed and attacked the tea and thinly cut homemade bread, spread with freshly churned unsalted butter. The Coveyducks were again in charge.
Another knock came on the door. This time it was no more than a tap. Still, the tapper had the courage of his need and he came straight in. It was Ernest in his little white nightshirt, with a frill round the neck.
“Well, young man,” said Philip, “and why are you barging in here, so early in the morning?”
“I’ve a splinter in my heel,” said Ernest, and at once began to get into bed with his parents.
“The tea!” cried Adeline. “Be careful of the teapot.”
“Get in on your mother’s side,” ordered Philip.
Ernest crept in beside Adeline. “I’ve brought a needle with me. Gussie can’t get the splinter out. She said to come to you. She was near fainting. May I have tea?”
Adeline held the teacup to his lips. “Ah,” he gurgled in ecstasy, and helped himself to a piece of bread and butter.
“Isn’t this lovely?” he said.
“What? Having a splinter in your heel?”
“Having early tea with you.”
Philip put in, “Be quick about it. Then I’ll take the splinter out.”
All too soon the tea had been drunk, the bread and butter eaten. Ernest’s pink heel was exposed. Philip attacked the splinter with the needle. Ernest screamed.
“Come, come, be a soldier,” said Philip.
“It hurts too much — I can’t bear it!”
Philip said, “You’ll find in life that the more you struggle, the worse you’ll get hurt. Be still! Ah, there’s the splinter — look!” He held it up on the needle. “A small thing to howl about, eh?”
Ernest was in ecstasy. He ran upstairs, taking the splinter to show Gussie. From then on the morning sped with incredible swiftness. A substantial breakfast was set out in the dining room, but Lucy Sinclair was unable to eat for excitement. Yet she had enjoyed the first untroubled sleep she had known since the news of her husband’s capture. Fortunately Adeline had a substantial hamper packed for th
e travellers. Lucy Sinclair was dressed with care and had an air of real elegance, somewhat incongruous considering the journey she was to undertake. Like one in a dream she said her goodbyes.
Mr. Tilford kissed Adeline’s hand. “Goodbye, dear lady,” he said. “May we meet again under happier circumstances.” He added, in a lower tone, “You must not for a moment worry about Mrs. Sinclair. I will see to it that she and her servants reach their destination in safety. Also remember that I have ample funds for every contingency.”
“Ample funds!” The children overheard those words and, when the horses and carriages had moved away, they gathered about Adeline.
“Mamma,” Nicholas asked, in an ingratiating tone, “did Mrs. Sinclair return our presents?”
“Grasping, greedy boy!” cried Adeline. “How can you think of presents at such a moment as this? Certainly she did not return them.”
“Then we have nothing,” said Nicholas, “for all our trouble. Even Ernest has lost his gold pen.”
“It may turn up,” said Ernest.
Augusta gave him a long look out of her large serious eyes.
Philip had accompanied the travellers to the railway station.
How different was this setting out compared to the previous one! Then, emotionally uplifted, Adeline and her children had waved goodbye from the porch. Thrown kisses, held up their beautiful gifts to show their pleasure in them. Then, confident that all would be well, they had awaited Philip’s return. Now Mr. Tilford had taken everything into his own hands. Philip would be a spectator. Yet Adeline would scarcely have been surprised if the entire party had returned with him.
Although she had warned Mrs. Coveyduck that this might be possible, Mrs. Coveyduck had thrown herself with passion into the obliterating of all traces of the foreigners (so she called them). She and Bessie scrubbed, polished, swept, dusted, threw wide the windows to let the gusty wind blow away “the smell of the darkies,” which she declared lurked in every corner.
Philip drove up the drive and reined in his horses in front of the porch sooner than Adeline would have believed possible. Coveyduck, thickset and cheerful, was awaiting him there. Philip sprang out of the wagonette and the three children scrambled in, to drive to the stable.
“Don’t be long,” Adeline called out. “Cook is making a boiled pudding with custard sauce!”
“Hurrah!” shouted the boys.
Philip ran up the steps to Adeline’s side. He gave her a hearty embrace. “They’ve gone,” he said. “The train was on time, for a wonder. Everything was done in order.”
“Are we actually by ourselves again?” she asked, looking at him as at one returned from a long and perilous journey. “Is this house actually ours?”
“We are — and it is,” he said, and added, “Thank God!”
He snatched up his youngest and sat him on his shoulder.
“Off we go,” he said, and galloped prancing along the hall.
There was an unbelievably holiday feeling. Clean sheets were blowing wetly on the clotheslines. The pudding was merrily bubbling in the pot. Twin Jersey calves were born in the stable. Mulberries were lying darkly on the lawn. Yet, though effort was involved in these activities — the sheets had had to be washed, the pudding concocted, the cow had laboured to produce the calves, the tree had struggled against storm and drought to produce the mulberries, Philip and Adeline had been through stress and strain during the long visit from the Sinclairs — yet, on this day of Indian summer, all might have been spontaneous and without effort, so happy were all living creatures at Jalna.
Augusta said, “It seems to me that this would be a good day for a picnic.”
“I was just going to remark,” said Ernest, “that this would be a good day for a picnic.”
“A lovely thought,” said Adeline. “We’ll have a picnic by the lake and go in bathing. I’ll pack a hamper with good things to eat. We’ll invite James Wilmott and the Laceys. Will that suit you, Philip?”
“It’s just what I need,” said Philip, “a picnic by the lake.”
“I was going to remark,” said Ernest, “that what I need is a picnic by the lake.”
Philip fixed him with a cold blue stare. “We can do without any remarks from you,” he said.
“He pushes into everything,” said Nicholas, “as if he were the most important person in the house.”
Ernest hung his head. Yet he was not subdued for long. Soon he was taking part, as well as he could, in preparations for the picnic. There was much running up and down stairs with bathing suits; much panting up and down, from and to the basement, on the part of Mrs. Coveyduck and Bessie with provisions. Messengers were dispatched by Philip with invitations for the Laceys and James Wilmott.
Wilmott appeared, wearing a light-coloured jacket, tight trousers, large dark cravat, and wide-brimmed straw hat. He carried a basket containing fillets of salmon that had been stored in his ice-house — on ice cut from “his own river,” as he called it. All the way from the sea these salmon came to spawn in the river, so he said. He deplored the fact that every year there were fewer of them.
The Laceys too came happily to the picnic — the parents, the two little daughters who were the age of Nicholas and Ernest, and their son, Guy, who was still on leave from the Royal Navy. The sight of him was as thrilling to Augusta as the sight of the azure lake that sent its countless gleaming ripples to the edge of the sandy beach, on which a flock of sandpipers strutted without fear of the picnickers, till Nero routed them with boastful barks. Curly-pated, woolly footed, he romped up and down the beach. There was nothing he enjoyed more than this annual picnic by the lake.
Baby Philip also was of the party. It was his first sight of the lake and he stood thunderstruck by its immensity. He had not known that any body of water could be so large. He, every night at bedtime, was put into his own tin bath. It was painted blue, like the lake, and to his mind was large enough for any purpose.
Now his father picked him up and made as though to throw him into the water.
The little one in fear clutched the lapel of Philip’s jacket. “No — no!” he whimpered.
Nicholas and Ernest came to see the fun.
“Papa,” said Ernest, “would you really throw him in?”
“Of course I should,” shouted Philip. “Hoopla, out you go!”
Augusta had had enough of such teasing. “Papa,” she said firmly, “please give Baby to me. If he is frightened he is sure to wet himself.”
In haste Philip tossed the little one into her arms. He said sternly, “That’s a very bad habit and he should be broken of it.”
“Males,” Augusta said sedately, “are more addicted to wetting than females.”
Philip had no answer to that. He stared truculently at his daughter out of his rather prominent blue eyes and then strode off to throw sticks into the lake for Nero to retrieve.
It was decided to have a dip in the lake before supper. This Mrs. Lacey and her husband would not take part in, but retiring behind some shrubs with her little daughters, she put them into flannel nightgowns and drawers gathered at the knee, to serve as bathing dresses. Philip and Adeline wore navy blue outfits, his somewhat tight, for it had been made some years ago; hers with a sailor collar and full skirt reaching to the knee, both collar and skirt trimmed with rows of white braid. Nicholas and Ernest had proper bathing suits of grey flannel with red belts of which they were very proud, even though they were not quite comfortable. Augusta had, with the help of Lucy Sinclair, made herself a bathing costume of light blue serge, the skirt rather short, the sleeves reaching only halfway to the elbow. With this she wore long white cotton stockings and shoes with elastic sides. It was the first time this garment had been worn.
Augusta emerged from the bushes feeling very self-conscious. She wondered whether she were indeed decently covered. She envied Adeline her self-possession, even while she disapproved of her flaunting of herself in front of Admiral Lacey and his son.
Everybody now turned to
see Augusta. The two small boys had just been ducked by Philip and ran dripping out of the lake.
“Look at Gussie!”
“Hello, Gussie!”
“Do you think you’re a mermaid, Gussie?”
They shouted at her, dancing up and down, half-mad with spirits.
Admiral Lacey said patronizingly, “You look very nice, m’dear. Quite comme il faut, eh, Guy?” But he had eyes only for Adeline.
Guy Lacey had made friends with Baby Philip and held him in his arms. But the little fellow wanted to go to Augusta. “Gu-gussie,” he stammered, marvelling at the strangeness of everyone’s appearance. This was a new world to him.
Augusta took him into her arms. In an odd way she felt that his small familiar body would be a shield for the inadequacy of her bathing dress. He clasped her tight.
Guy Lacey’s appearance was even more embarrassing to Augusta than was her own. It was all very well for her father and brothers to romp on the beach in semi-nakedness, but — this young man whom she was accustomed to meet in uniform!
“Come on in,” said Guy.
“Yes,” called out Adeline. “Go on in, Gussie.”
Adeline took possession of her youngest. Guy took Gussie firmly by the hand. They walked sedately, as though for a ceremony, into the bright water of the lake. Gussie felt that she should make some conversation. The trouble was she could think of nothing to say excepting, “The lake is very large.” When those words had passed her lips, she saw them in her imagination as a sentence at the top of a page in a copy book. “The lake is very large.” Write carefully, children. No blots, please. Then she saw a primer, a first reader, with a lesson that began: “The lake is very large. I see the lake. It is as big as the sea.” She could not stop herself from saying, in her clear voice which, when she was grown up, would be contralto, “It is as big as the sea.”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 49
