“What can it possibly matter to you what Tennyson says or doesn’t say about romance?” he asked. “Why would you care enough to state your case so vehemently?”
“Well, what would you have me say?” she reportedly replied. “That his ‘Lady’ made the right decision? She should have stuck to her loom, or, better still, she should have gone outdoors into the fresh air and got some exercise. Reaping barley with the other early reapers would have been a much wiser choice than dying for the likes of Lancelot.” In truth, she thought that the line “only reapers, reaping early in among the bearded barley” was quite beautiful, but she was far too stubborn to admit this.
She wondered, suddenly, how her brother saw her at this moment. As an aging, ill-tempered spinster, undoubtedly, an eccentric maiden aunt. Allowing such a thought to form in her mind increased her irritation in any number of ways. She decided she would spend the following day away from the Ballagh Oisin and asked Branwell to hire a carriage and driver for her so that she could make a tour of the County. She traveled along shore roads near bays and inlets filled with fishing boats, moved slowly down the main streets of several towns where hardware and grocery stores were doing a brisk business, and passed by cultivated fields that would soon be ripe with the barley that was rapidly becoming the staple crop of the region. All this evidence of industry and practicality soothed her wounded spirits somewhat, though she couldn’t say just why, and she returned to the hotel at twilight in much better humor.
A few days later, while helping Marie roll pastry dough in the kitchen, Annabelle glanced out the window and was the first to spot the arrival of her nephew at the end of the leafy lane that led to the hotel. The arrival itself was not unexpected; he often spent some of the summer there with his parents, though, by this time, he had little in common with them and was mildly embarrassed by their station in life, which, to his mind, was entirely defined by their position as innkeepers. What was surprising was the letter that preceded him, a letter in which he had stated his intention to stay for a considerable length of time – long enough to oversee the completion of a house nearby. Maurice, it would seem, had decided to become a gentleman farmer. Neither his parents nor Annabelle could quite fathom this; Maurice, to their knowledge, had shown not the slightest interest in the natural world. In fact, Maurice had shown interest in next to nothing beyond his employment as assistant manager of the Bank of Commerce in Kingston. Added to this was a further surprise. Seated beside him in the approaching buggy was a fair-haired woman. Annabelle, who was standing by the kitchen window watching the couple disembark from the buggy, knew by the woman’s unmistakably commanding gestures, and by her nephew’s obvious attention to those gestures, that this woman had the devil in her as big as a woodchuck. There is going to be trouble here, she thought. She considered returning to Timber Island in order to avoid the drama she sensed was about to take place, but her curiosity got the better of her.
It wasn’t long before she came to know that the trouble she had intuited was not to be of a short duration, for the Badger, as it turned out, had married it. “My name is Caroline Woodman,” the young woman announced as she entered the hall and began removing the pins from her hat. “Maurice and I are married.” Maurice, who was at that very moment struggling with hatboxes and suitcases, and a variety of assorted pieces of feminine luggage, looked uncharacteristically sheepish at the mention of his marriage, but said nothing. “He would have written to you,” the woman called Caroline continued, “but I thought he should tell you in person. After all, I had to tell my papa in person and that was not an easy thing to do, I can assure you.” Having delivered this piece of information, the young woman swept past the small assembly, entered the sitting room, and collapsed on one of the chairs, throwing her feathered hat onto one of the sidetables as she did so.
Annabelle followed the girl into the sitting room in order to observe her more closely. The eyes, she decided, were too small and too close together. There were too many freckles on her otherwise milk-white skin and, by the look of her, she might fatten as she grew older. These were the only physical deformities that Annabelle could find on the person of Maurice’s bride, but they would have to do for now.
“Maurice,” the young woman called in the direction of the hall where her husband and his parents were still standing as if frozen to the floorboards, “come in here and introduce me to this elderly lady. Is she a relation of yours? And who were all those people on the porch?”
Maurice walked into the room and sat down by Caroline’s side. “She is my Aunt Annabelle,” he said. “But,” he added, vaguely embarrassed, “those people we passed on the veranda, those people are the summer patrons.” He seemed to have forgotten altogether about his parents, who were now standing quietly in the doorway. “I am Maurice’s father,” Branwell offered. He put his arm around Marie. “And this is his mother.”
“I’m not elderly,” said Annabelle, glancing at Marie. “Not quite yet.”
“Was it a Catholic ceremony?” Marie asked her son.
Caroline began to laugh. She put her hand on Maurice’s arm. “The state father was in…can you imagine what he would have said had we been married by a papist?”
“We were married secretly,” Branwell said, “by the first minister we could find. A Presbyterian, I think.”
“Lutheran,” Caroline corrected. “A German. Papa wasn’t too happy about that either. He’s always said that he runs a good Methodist business in a good Methodist town, and that all his ships are good Methodist ships manned by good Methodist men.”
Marie, much to Annabelle’s astonishment, had brightened somewhat. “You’re not really married then,” she said to her son, “if there was no priest.” She turned to Caroline. “If your father doesn’t approve, you could tell him that because Maurice was baptized a Catholic, you’re not really married. He might be pleased to hear that.”
Maurice continued to gaze at his bride. “No,” he said, “we are most certainly husband and wife. And, anyway, Mister Gilderson cheered up a bit once we began to talk about the barley.”
“Gilderson?” said Annabelle. “Can you possibly mean Oran Gilderson?”
Maurice nodded.
“Of course,” said Caroline. “I don’t believe there is another Gilderson in the vicinity.”
It took Annabelle a moment to digest this information. Oran Gilderson had been writing letters to her of late, letters in which he had offered to be of assistance with the salvage operations of what remained of the Woodman empire. Annabelle, remembering her father’s distrust of his primary competitor, had grave suspicions about these missives. What exactly had this gentleman in mind for the diminished business toward which she had developed a surprising protectiveness. Thank God Father is dead, she thought, recalling his last words. She was about to say something but changed her mind. “What’s all this about barley?” she asked instead.
The land that Maurice had purchased with his grandfather’s money comprised one hundred acres, the narrowest, eastern-most parameters of which touched the grounds of his parents’ hotel just at the spot where the grass tennis court ended and the poplar woods began. The western edge joined a further hundred acres – acres that were under cultivation and that had been given to him, reluctantly to be sure, by his new father-in-law. Their house would be built on the far side of the woods and was to be, as his bride explained, made of brick and very modern. A great many bay windows and round towers and oddly shaped windows were to be seen in the plans Maurice pulled from a suitcase and unrolled at their feet. The meadow was to be ploughed and the poplar woods cut down.
“Why would you want to do that?” Annabelle was genuinely incredulous.
“Barley,” Caroline said before Maurice had a chance to respond. She went on to explain that there were already ten acres of barley on the property, but they wanted more.
“That’s all very well,” said Branwell to his son, “but what will you have to look at if you are surrounded by nothing but fields of
barley?”
“Look at?” asked Caroline. “Why should we need something to look at? We’ll have a view of the lake, after all, and even barley can be quite lovely when the crop is high.”
Annabelle noted that the young woman had stiffened in her chair. She had the defensive air of one who was vaguely frightened by the company and was asserting herself as a result. Her eyelashes, Annabelle noted, were almost as thick as Marie’s but of a lighter hue, offsetting, quite beautifully, the blue of her eyes and the gold of her hair. Annabelle could see that the young woman was very attractive, but would not have called her pretty. There was something significant missing, and suddenly Annabelle knew what it was. Caroline gave off no light. She did not glow. Rather, in the manner of a coal fire, she smoldered and seemed, somehow, to be just on the edge of emitting a poisonous, though odorless, gas.
“Barley,” said Maurice, “is very profitable. It is right now selling to the Americans at eighty cents a bushel and –”
“Eighty cents a bushel,” interjected young Caroline eagerly, “and bound to go higher and higher. The Americans have a great thirst for beer and other spirits. They simply can’t get enough barley.”
“I fear,” said Annabelle, who was once again wondering about Oran Gilderson’s business plans, “that reapers, ‘reaping early in among the bearded barley’ are more likely to reap profits than those who appear later in the day.” All of this, she thought, might very well be interpreted as the beginnings of the robbery of the lake.
Caroline looked confused.
“Tennyson,” said Annabelle.
“We shall become very rich, Aunt,” said Maurice. “You’ll see.”
Now it was Maurice who became the focus of Annabelle and Marie’s ongoing inquiry into the bewildering nature of the male psyche. When they were once again alone together in the kitchen, the subject of Badger and what he had been thinking when he decided to marry this spoiled young woman was instantly raised. Although Annabelle had become aware early on that, because he was a son, not a husband or lover, Maurice’s character was one that should be discussed with great delicacy, this seemed not to matter in the present circumstances. Normally, when Marie praised the boy, it was best that one nod in agreement. When she complained about her son’s faults and weaknesses, it was best to disagree, the more vehemently the better. But now, when Marie angrily suggested that the catastrophe had occurred because Maurice was quite simply trying to improve his standing in life, was, in fact, like the girl or loathe her, marrying money, or “marrying up” as she put it, Annabelle agreed that, indeed, cold ambition had likely played a large part. “But, there is something else,” she said. “He seems stunned, entranced. I suspect he is actually in love with her.”
Marie looked horrified. “Sacré Dieu,” she said, crossing herself and turning toward the wall.
“And as for ambition,” Annabelle continued, “it will be Caroline’s ambition that will rule the day, not that of poor Maurice, her besotted husband.”
“He should run like a deer,” said Marie.
“Where would he run to? Back to the bank? I’ve heard a lot about this man Gilderson. He would likely have him shot. And, as I said before, Marie, Maurice is smitten. He’s a goner. From now on his life will be all bricks and barley.”
What neither woman said, but both knew, was that come early autumn just before the harvest of the last crop of barley, the entire peninsula would be transformed into various shades of yellow: the poplars, the maples, and the field after field after field of barley, bordered near the water by the paler yellow banner of the sand. Moving through this landscape they had likely felt surrounded by radiance at one time or another: golden September sun, golden apples in the orchards (which were becoming scarce now because of the spread of barley,) golden clouds of sunset coming earlier and earlier to the sky, glasses filled with the dark gold of whiskey in the evenings, or the bright gold of beer in the late afternoon. Sometimes in August, before the harvest, the fields of barley would turn a peculiar shade of lavender at twilight, mysterious, unfathomable, the deep purple shadows of the maples that edged the fencelines like pools or clouds. The prosperity of the previous decade had been both directly and indirectly connected to the increasing production of this crop, a fact that would, in the future, cause the whole epoch to be referred to by citizens of the County as the Barley Days.
These Barley Days might just as well have been called the Brick Days, for central to the years when barley was making people rich was the building of larger and larger brick houses, houses much like the one that rose with alarming swiftness a quarter of a mile from the clapboard hotel. During the early stages of its construction, when the frame of the nuptial home was being erected, the noise of the carpenters’ hammers disturbed the guests, as later did the sound of poplars and birches crashing to the ground. By the time the bricklayers arrived the half-finished skeleton of the house was clearly visible from the upper veranda.
Teams of oxen removed the ruined trunks and roots of trees and, not much later, a steam-powered tractor churned up the earth. Hedgerows that had existed between previously smaller fields were removed. Barley crops were planted. The monstrous brick walls of the new house sprang up as if by magic overnight. What appeared to be a half a mile of gingerbread fretsaw work arrived at the beginning of July, along with big iron pipes for the plumbing, a boiler for central heating, six elaborate mantelpieces, and two claw-footed bathtubs, painted gold. By the end of July, Maurice and Caroline were installed in their new home, the huge shadow of which, at twilight, seemed almost to reach the steps of the Ballagh Oisin.
The young couple’s departure from the hotel was met with general relief. There had been several monumental disagreements during their stay there – the furnishings of the interior were not, apparently, up to Caroline’s standards. Complaints concerning washing with a pitcher and a bowl could be heard some mornings when passing by the door of the couple’s room, and the lack of a private bathtub was a subject that was often raised. When the windows for the new house were delivered and proved to be pointed not curved, Caroline reacted with angry tears, blaming her husband, his parents, even a couple of guests for the mishap.
There were two or three uncomfortable visits from Mister Gilderson himself, who had managed to outlive his third wife (mother of Caroline) by seven years, despite the fact that his frame was twisted by the arthritis that, he claimed, was made much worse by the presence of lighthouses like the one at the end of the small island just off the end of sandy Tremble Point. Lighthouses, he insisted, lured his ships into the path of destruction while, at the same time, they interrupted the currents of fresh air that he believed bought relief to his arthritis. “And,” he once announced, shifting his limbs on the velvet chair that had been offered him, “they accelerate my gout.”
“Poor Papa,” said Caroline.
The other thing that Mister Gilderson despised was discovered when, in attempting to dispel the tense silence that followed, Maurice described a spectacular storm in which he had been caught the previous winter. Gilderson had no tolerance for any story relating to weather in general, and snow in particular. “Do we really have to listen to one more tale concerning blizzards, squalls, drifts, ice, or falling barometers?” the older man said with irritation. “I will not hear of any reference to carriages abandoned by the side of roadways or ships being frozen in harbor. And, please refrain from any mention of November.” Weather was, to Gilderson’s mind, the enemy of business. Like a relative who had caused him embarrassment, he did not wish its name to be spoken and wanted its picture turned to the wall. Annabelle knew that November was the month when, for reasons of safety, all ships, except Gilderson’s steamships, went into retirement until the spring breakup. Several tragedies had occurred during this month, tragedies that, according to her father, Gilderson had measured purely in terms of loss of cargo and vessels with no apparent thought for the attendant loss of life. She looked at him with amused disapproval, then said, wickedly, “I quite l
ike November. Things settle down and become quiet on the island then. Not so much coming and going. You can turn your mind to other things…reading, art.”
Oran Gilderson, who had ignored her until this moment, turned in Annabelle’s direction, as if trying to determine just who she was. When, after a moment or two of concentration, recognition dawned, he smiled, nodded his head in a conciliatory fashion, and said, “Indeed, yes, reading and art, wonderful pastimes for a woman. But I, madam, am a man of business.”
Before she began the journey back to Timber Island, Annabelle took her nephew aside to offer a warning. “Weather isn’t the only culprit,” she told him. “Greed can be an enemy of business as well. Remember that.”
During the next two or three years it would happen that Maurice would prosper to such an extent that not only were his own parents impressed by his successes but he almost won the favor of his father-in law. Barley rose to a dollar a bushel, and more and more of Gilderson’s ships sailed back and forth across the lake carrying the golden cargo to the American market. Caroline added a conservatory to the house and a trellised gazebo to the yard. In the course of one year she bought no fewer than twenty hats, each piece of headgear more flamboyant than the one that had preceded it. When she became pregnant, one of the larger bedrooms was turned into an elaborate nursery, and soon that nursery contained a squalling baby boy who would eventually become my father and whom Maurice decided to call Thomas Jefferson Woodman in deference to the Americans whose thirst was making them so rich. Some of these Americans patronized the Ballagh Oisin, but these were Americans with modest incomes, usually of Irish descent, attracted to the hotel by its Gaelic moniker and its views of a lake that reminded them of the sea.
Jane Urquhart Page 20
