XXI
THE PLAN
The weather changed that very night. A boisterous wind, with the promise of spring in it, galloped across the land. The three young Whiteoaks had no snowshoes for the morning walk to Wilmott’s, so they were obliged to wear galoshes and trudge through deep snow. Everything, they thought, was against them. They were a sombre trio. Sombre too was Wilmott and darkly tragic was Tite. Annabelle did not appear with the mid-morning cocoa. Wilmott dismissed the children early. It was Easter Saturday.
On the way home they heard the cawing of crows. The black-winged birds swept across the windy sky like pirates across a storm-tossed sea. “Caw-caw-caw,” they shouted as though in challenge to the sleeping earth. Like flails their wings beat the sky.
“It’s slushy,” said Nicholas. “We couldn’t wear our snowshoes even if we had them.”
“There will be no more snowshoeing this year,” said Augusta.
Ernest asked, “Do you suppose Mr. Wilmott is going to keep our snowshoes for himself and Tite and Belle?”
“Quite likely,” said Augusta.
She trudged doggedly on through the slushy snow. She clasped her bare hands, red from cold, together, as though in prayer. She said, “Life has become very dreary.”
“Do you think it will become better or worse?” asked Nicholas.
“Worse,” she replied.
“Still more dreary?” asked Nicholas.
“Still more dreary,” she replied.
“Dreary, my eye!” said Ernest.
A spatter of ice-cold rain fell.
“Papa did not lay a hand on me,” said Ernest. “I told him I have a cold coming on.” Then with a sly look at Nicholas, he asked, “Did the razor strop hurt?”
“Shut up!” shouted Nicholas and gave Ernest a push that landed him flat on his behind in an icy puddle.
From where he sat, Ernest gave a teasing look at his sister. “How did you like the rhubarb powder, Gussie? Was it hard to get down?” Ernest would never have spoken so to Augusta, had he not been sitting in that icy slush and feeling so miserable.
Augusta turned away her head. “I’m going to bring it up,” she moaned and ran into a dense thicket of cedars.
“Now you’ve done it,” said Nicholas and he gave Ernest a smack on the head.
It did not hurt because of the woollen toque he wore, but it terribly hurt his feelings and he sat where he was in the icy slush for some little time after the others had disappeared among the trees. The flock of crows again passed overhead, cawing, it seemed, in derision of him. “Cawcaw-yah-yah-yah!” they screamed. Again a spatter of icy raindrops fell, as though from their wings.
Ernest gathered himself together and trudged homeward. It seemed that he would never arrive. He did not much care if he never arrived. He had a mind to lie down in the snow and be frozen to death. His family would be sorry then. They would cry — even his father. Ernest pictured the scene with satisfaction. The sufferings of Gussie and Nicholas were as nothing compared with his. What were a few whacks with a razor strop or a dose of rhubarb powder compared with his sufferings?
It was a rule of the house that galoshes should be left in the porch unless the side entrance was used. But Ernest walked straight in, leaving snow clots on the rug. Little Philip ran to meet him. It was surprising how, in the past months, he had developed from a baby into a small boy. In spite of his light blue dress, trimmed with braid, in spite of his long hair that hung in golden clusters to his shoulders, he looked and moved like a boy.
“Me go too,” he said, attempting to follow Ernest up the stairs.
“No,” said Ernest. “You can’t come.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m sick.”
“Sick?” repeated little Philip. “Why?”
“Why is anyone sick?” said Ernest. “I shall likely die, and you won’t care. Nobody’ll care.”
The little fellow took this to be a huge joke. He chuckled, then laughed with all his might.
“I ain’t tik,” he said through his laughter.
“What an ignorant way of speaking!” exclaimed Ernest. “I ain’t tik! I suppose you mean you’re not sick. Well, why don’t you say what you mean? That’s what I’d like to know.” He hung on the banister looking down with contempt at his baby brother.
Adeline called from her bedroom. “What do I hear? Someone being unkind to his poor little brother? Up to your room, sir, and change into dry things.”
Ernest dragged himself up the stairs but he did not change his wet clothes. He just threw himself on the bed and fell asleep.
He lay in bed for the next three weeks suffering from a severe attack of tonsillitis. During those weeks winter departed in a roar of floods and a flourish of snowstorms. Spring weather came in unseasonably warm. By the time Ernest was convalescent, the trees had clothed themselves in garments of rosy young buds, dandelions had appeared on the lawn, and chirping, grunting, bleating young creatures in poultry house and barn. Ernest could hear the gurgling of the stream as it threw off its bonds of winter. Nicholas, when he came to do his lessons in their bedroom after tea, could talk of nothing but fishing — what kinds of bait for different sorts of fish — where the best fish were to be found. Nicholas was supposed to come to the bedroom to be company for Ernest, but he did not do his homework. He talked of fishing and sailing a boat.
One Saturday in May Nicholas and Augusta were taken for a sail by Tite Sharrow. Tite had bought or had somehow acquired a small sailing boat. Without permission from anyone he took Augusta and Nicholas sailing on the sparkling expanse of the lake. They rowed down the river from Wilmott’s cottage, Tite at the oars, till they reached the lake. There, on its solitary wooded shore, they found the small boathouse where the sailing boat was sheltered. Tite, with the help of the two young Whiteoaks, drew it across the stony beach and set it dancing on the wavelets. He raised the sail. The May breeze played with it.
“Have you ever enjoyed a sail?” asked Tite.
“You know very well we have not,” answered Augusta. “But there’s nothing we’d like better.”
“Do take us sailing, Tite,” begged Nicholas.
“Would your father allow it?”
“We need not tell him,” said Nicholas. “Or our Mamma either. They have been severe with us, ever since the Good Friday party. We have no reason for being good.”
Tite held the boat steady while brother and sister clambered in. He said, “Freedom is the best thing in life, if you know how to enjoy it.”
Augusta, raising her face to the breeze, asked, “Why did you get married, Tite? Now you must always think of Belle.”
“Do you mean Belle hinders me?” he said.
“Well, you’re no longer free, are you?”
Tite showed his white teeth in an enigmatic smile. “Since I married Belle,” he said, “I have even more freedom. When I go away, she looks after my boss for me. When I am at home, she waits on us both. She does all the work. She is accustomed to being a slave. Freedom is of no use to her. With me it is different. I am descended from Indian braves and from a nobly born French explorer. I must be free or die.”
“And so must we,” said Nicholas, sniffing the spring wind. “Isn’t that so, Gussie?”
The small sailing boat, like a creature alive, sported over the waves, which increased in size as they ventured farther out on the lake. The early green verdure of the shore was one with the bluish-green waters. Water birds flew close to the land. Land birds tried their exulting wings at the lake’s edge.
All was motion. Everywhere was a fluid intermingling of the elements. Augusta felt that never before had she known what true happiness was. It was, she thought, freedom to go where you chose, when you chose. Her eyes sought the faces of her two companions. That odd smile, that so inscrutable smile, never left Tite’s lips. On the brow of Nicholas there was a frown of concentration as he bent all his powers on watching Tite at the sail. Yet there was a deep serenity on his face. Augusta said to him,
“What if we never went back? Remember what Mr. Madigan said about running away.”
“It’s a good idea,” said Nicholas. After a little he remarked to Tite, “I wish we had a light sailing boat like this. It’s just what we need.”
“Why don’t you ask your Mamma to buy you one?”
“Why do you say Mamma?” asked Nicholas. “It is Papa who does the buying.”
“But it is the wife who persuades,” said Tite.
“Does Belle persuade you?”
“We have no money,” said Tite.
“But how can you buy without money?”
“There are other ways.” And he added, with easy satisfaction, “I know them all.”
Augusta threw back her head, drank in the wild sweetness of the spring day, and remarked, “We are thinking — my brother and I — of leaving home.”
It was impossible to surprise Tite. Now he looked as though this was no more than he had expected. But he asked, “What would you live on, my little lady, and where would you live?”
Augusta answered, without hesitation, “We have friends. Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair. They have invited us to come to them at any time and to stay as long as we wish in Charleston. You see, Tite, our parents intend to take us to boarding school in England.”
“And we don’t want to go,” put in Nicholas.
“Young sir,” said Tite “you would receive a beautiful education in England — better than in any other place in all the world. It was in England that my boss got his education and no one in all this country has an education to match it. I wish I had your chance.”
“We don’t want to be educated,” persisted Nicholas. “We want to be free.”
“And to have strange adventures,” added Augusta.
“In the English schools,” said Nicholas, “we’d be looked on as barbarians. We’d be bullied. Even our little brother would be bullied.”
“Take my advice” — Tite’s narrow eyes rested speculatively on the two faces so eagerly turned to him — “get all the book-learning you can. It is something solid to hang on to. You can listen to the talk of other folks — the way they chatter — and all the while you reflect on how much more you know than they know. Reflection is a very nice pastime, miss” — he addressed Augusta in particular — “there is no better way of spending your time. Your face, miss, shows that you were made for reflection.”
“And adventure,” said Augusta.
“And adventure,” added Tite. “But look, the wind has veered. We must come about.”
For a time they were occupied with the sail. Nicholas was especially good at manipulating them. After a time they were becalmed, and as they lounged in the small boat Augusta was moved to tell Tite of her plan. It was the first Nicholas had heard of it. Nevertheless he listened without turning a hair. Indeed an observer looking on might have thought he had concocted the whole scheme, so self-possessed was he.
When Augusta and Nicholas returned home after the sail they entered the side door, which was usual, tiptoed past their mother’s room, from which came the sound of her voice telling a story to little Philip to keep him quiet while she coaxed the tangles out of his sunny hair. She interrupted her story to say, “This hair of yours, my little one, is like pure gold.”
Philip had lately reached the stage of feeling himself to be an individual, one with feelings different from those of his family or of anyone else in the world. Now he said, “No.”
“You silly little creature!” cried Adeline. “How can you know what colour your hair is? I tell you it’s pure gold and you’re the image of your papa who is the only man hereabout worth looking at.”
“No,” said Philip.
“Sit still,” cried Adeline, “or you’ll get smacked!”
“No,” said Philip.
“Are you going to obey?”
“No.”
Now there came the sound of a smart slap. Philip was set on his feet and at once ran loudly crying into the hall. When he saw Augusta and Nicholas trying to escape up the stairs his crying changed to laughter and he sturdily joined them, taking a hand of each.
“Gussie — Nicky,” he said ingratiatingly.
“Shall we let him come?” asked Nicholas.
Augusta nodded, and clinging to their hands he climbed the stairs. They could hear Adeline calling, “Philip — Philip — come here and let Mamma put a clean dress on you!”
“No,” said Philip.
They discovered Ernest on the second flight of stairs. He was playing his secret game. This was played with a few discarded chessmen, some scraps of paper, and coloured stones. He would write directions for the chessmen, move them from one step to another, at the same time making remarks such as — “Live long, O King” — or “Now is my Solitary Fate” or “Call the Wolves to their Tea.” Augusta and Nicholas had a respect for this game. Never had they tried to understand it but they realized the comfort it had been to Ernest while he was ill. He gave them a wary look, as they guided little Philip past him, up the stairs, taking care not to disturb his solitary pleasure.
It was not long before he joined them in Augusta’s room. Even they noticed how pale was his face and that he wore a red flannel bandage round his throat, from which came a pleasant odour of eucalyptus ointment.
Ernest said, “I heard talk when I was on the stairs.”
“What about?” asked Nicholas.
“You should have been occupied with your game,” said Augusta.
“I can play it and listen too,” he said.
“What did you hear?” Nicholas asked peremptorily.
Ernest looked knowing. “Something about running away,” he said, balancing on his toes.
Little Philip too looked knowing. “Me wun away,” he said.
“Now everybody knows,” exclaimed Nicholas crossly.
Ernest said, “If you run away I’ll go too.” He made a heroic stand. “I’ll run to the ends of the earth with you.”
Nicholas asked, “What do you know about running away?”
“I know that Mr. Madigan advised us to.”
Augusta looked deeply thoughtful. She said, “I think we had better tell Ernest. He can keep a secret, as we know by his secret play. Also he will be useful for carrying supplies and to manage the boat.”
Nicholas was still unconvinced. “Ernest’s too little,” he said.
Baby Philip pushed out his chest. “Me’s big,” he said.
Adeline’s voice came up from below, calling Philip.
Augusta, weary she did not know why, had laid her pale cheek on the table and closed her eyes. Now her eyes flew open, she rose and picked up Philip. “You must go to Mamma,” she said and carried him down the stairs. He liked the way Augusta cradled him in her arms. The face she bent over him appeared to him for the first time as a comforting face. He ceased to try to be a boy and resigned himself for the moment to babyhood. A flood of tenderness passed from him, through her arms and into all her veins. Her heart beat heavily and she paused halfway down the stairs wondering if she could go on.
Again came Adeline’s voice calling to Philip.
“I’m bringing him, Mamma,” Augusta called back. She handed him over. Adeline said, “This is the most disobedient child I’ve had. By the time he’s seven he’ll need a man to control him.” Philip put both arms round her neck and planted a moist kiss on her mouth.
Slowly Augusta mounted the stairs.
She found Ernest making a list of the things they would need to take on the journey. “Just look at him,” exclaimed Nicholas. “We’ve only just given him permission to come with us, and already he’s taken the thing into his own hands.”
“I’m good at making lists,” said Ernest. “Look.” He displayed a sheet of foolscap, on which two items were clearly written. Augusta read:
Eucalyptus
Rhubarb Powder
She demanded, “What are these for?”
Ernest answered, “You know I never leave home without eucalyptus….” He hesitated, the
n went on, “The rhubarb powder is for you … in case … you are bilious.”
Augusta firmly crossed out that item. She said, “We shall need a blanket and a waterproof sheet —”
Ernest put in, “My compass and a notebook for the ship’s log —”
“A lantern,” said Nicholas, “and plenty of grub.”
Ernest wrote, then clapped his hands. “What fun it is!” he laughed.
“It’s a serious business,” said Augusta. She insisted that their “homework” should be done, but every spare moment was given to the list and to plans for the journey. Augusta’s plan was to cross the lake, take a train on the American side. They would sell the boat to the Americans and so obtain money for their railway fare.
“Where shall we get money to pay Tite for the boat?” asked Nicholas. Augusta was the leader, there was no question about that. “And we’re not sure that he will sell it, are we?”
“Tite will sell anything,” she answered. “We’ll pay him for the boat with the presents the Sinclairs gave us. My ring and your watch, Nicholas.”
While these sacrifices were being contemplated Ernest occupied himself by rubbing ointment on his throat. He hummed a little tune. He had nothing but imagination and courage to contribute to the expenses of the long journey. It was he who proposed taking Augusta’s dove with them. He said, “We could release him like Noah did the dove and he would fly home and bring a message from us to say we had run away and were well and happy.”
Nicholas felt this to be a good idea, but Augusta needed some persuading. Secretly she hoped that if the dove fared well on the voyage, she might take him all the way. Yet, if she had to send him adrift, as from an ark, she knew he would find his way back and once there Mrs. Coveyduck would care for him. Twice the dove had escaped and returned safely to Jalna.
That night she could not sleep for the plans, the fancies beating on her brain. Next morning the sweetest spring wind she ever had encountered rattled the shutters of her room, tossed the branches, tossed her hair, brought a wild pigeon to her window to say cooing love-words to her dove.
The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche Page 57