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. Th
e 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.
In a moment the trap was bowling swiftly over the road to the rhythmic cadence of hoofs. Mary sank back into the comfortable seat and gave herself up to her relief.
“I’m glad,” said Muriel Craig, handling the reins with conscious elegance, “to see you with sensible shoes. You simply have to come to it in this country.”
“I brought these with me from England.”
“Did you really? Oh, I can tell that now when I look at them. English shoes are the very best.” She smiled at Mary in a way she never had before. Her smile seemed to embrace Mary in its friendliness.
“You must let me out when we come to Stead,” said Mary. “I can easily walk to the railway station.”
“What train are you taking?”
“The next one to Montreal.”
“Then you’re leaving Jalna?”
“Yes.”
“Just a holiday?”
“No. Permanently. I’m returning to England.”
Muriel Craig drew in the horse to a walk. She sat silent. Mary glanced sideways at the retroussé profile, uptilted beneath the down-tilted sailor hat.
Then Muriel Craig spoke. “I guess you’ve had words with someone at Jalna. I suspect it’s Mrs. Whiteoak. I hear she’s very difficult to get on with.”
Mary snatched at this interpretation of her leaving. “Yes, yes, she’s very difficult.”
“I believe she was so overbearing with the other governesses that they could not endure it.”
“I daresay.”
“Have you any position in view?”
“Not exactly. I think you’d better let me out here. I don’t want to take you out of your way.”
“Now, look here. I have something to propose. I do hope you’ll be interested.”
Mary began to understand what people found to like in Muriel Craig. Now that she had dropped her patronizing airs she appeared candid, pleasant, full of dependable common sense.
“This is what I have to propose. I have a friend in New York. Very well off — really rich. She has three tiny children. She would be perfectly delighted to get someone like you to teach them. She must have someone reliable. Then, any time you felt like returning to England, there you would be, right at a seaport. You’d have twice the salary you’d get in Montreal. Now, my dear, you’re not going to be so silly as to refuse. You couldn’t be. This is a heaven-sent opportunity. I’m going to take you straight home with me and you’re going to stay there while I write to my friend.” She put a hand over one of Mary’s and clasped it with comforting warmth. “This friend has been so good to me and I’m dying to do her a good turn. As for you — you’d love her and her sweet little children too.”
Mary was so exhausted by lack of sleep, by the long walk, carrying the portmanteau, that a friendly hand held out to her was irresistible. She felt a rush of contrition for her misjudgment of Miss Craig. Her lips trembled as she answered:
“It seems to be the perfect position for me and it’s so kind of you to offer to take me in but I think I should stay at an hotel.”
“Hotel! The very idea. As though I could tolerate such a thing. No, you’re coming straight home with me. There is that big house, with just my father and me in it and a poor little thing like you talking of going to an hotel.” She brought the whip down sharply on the horse’s flank, clicked her tongue at him, and now they were speeding along the road at a pace that was almost alarming. It was as though Muriel Craig were afraid Mary might change her mind.
Mary was surprised to find Mr. Craig walking across the lawn leaning on his nurse’s arm. He was the sturdiest-looking invalid imaginable and a summer’s tan added to his look of health. He greeted Mary hospitably.
“You are very welcome, Miss Wakefield. Make yourself quite at home … I don’t understand about your being here. Have you left the Whiteoaks?”
His daughter answered for her. “Miss Wakefield is going back to England, Father.”
His particular illness had made him slow to understand. The nurse kept looking at him with a quizzical look, as though of perpetual encouragement.
“Well, well,” he said, “however it is, you look very tired, young lady. You should go and lie down. Get my nurse to make you an eggnog. She’s famous at eggnogs.”
At the earliest possible moment Muriel Craig led Mary upstairs and installed her in a large bedroom. She carried up the portmanteau herself as though it were nothing. She remained for some time giving Mary more alluring descriptions of her friend’s house, her children, her good-heartedness.
“Now,” she said at last, “you must have a good rest while I go and write to my friend. How thankful I am I found you, you poor little thing! You looked such a picture of distress, trailing along the road, lugging that heavy portmanteau.”
Impulsively she came and threw her arms
about Mary and kissed her.
“Poor little thing indeed,” thought Mary, “I’m taller than she. But what vitality! She’s like a steam-roller.”
Mary herself longed for nothing but to throw herself down on the bed and let oblivion enfold her. But what a bed! It was covered by a heavy white counterpane, the ponderous pillows shielded by stiffly starched pillow shams with fluted frills. Mary gingerly lifted one off and stood not knowing what to do with it. And how should she ever arrange the bed to look as it looked now? Oh, for that eggnog which Mr. Craig had advised! Her stomach was touching her backbone. For an idiotic moment she pictured herself as eating the pillow sham in her famine.
She was trembling from fatigue and hunger. She replaced the pillow sham and taking the folded satin quilt form the bed laid it on the floor. She opened a window, for the room was airless and threw herself on the floor, her head pillowed on the quilt. She had thought to fall instantly asleep but a painful throbbing swept through her nerves. She opened her eyes to their widest; a future black as night spread like a desert before them. Alone. Alone! She could not sleep. She was too tired for sleep. Never could she sleep again. The satin quilt, smelling of camphor, suffocated her. She flung it away and lay flat on the carpet. Large greenish medallions on a maroon ground swarmed about her. Like hideous hungry monsters crawling toward her. She pressed her hands to her eyes, shutting them out. That was better. A fresh cool wind made the curtains billow. It blew across her, bringing with it the moist earthy smell of autumn. Mary lay quiet now and presently she dropped into a deep dreamless sleep.
XVIII
THE SEARCH
RENNY’S VOICE CAME down to them from the top floor, clear and high, like someone blowing with all his might on a flute. Nicholas observed:
“What an insane song!”
“I heard Hodge singing it,” said Ernest.
“I often have wondered,” mused Sir Edwin, “why the repetition of meaningless words is fascinating.”
“Yes,” agreed Ernest, “in the songs of Shakespeare’s time it was the same. ‘With a hey nonny nonny,’ you know.”
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 85
