Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny

by de la Roche, Mazo

  “Yes,” answered Robert, with a smile that had more of pain than happiness in it. “But my mother is feeling quite ill.”

  “I am sorry to hear that.” Wilmott’s face was alight with sympathy.

  “Faith,” exclaimed Adeline, “we all have been under a cloud! But now it’s lifted.” Her eyes smiled into Robert’s. “Now we must put all unhappy things out of our minds. We have a great deal to be thankful for.”

  “Listen to her!” said Philip. “She sounds like a preacher. She really is a bit of a devil but she has these pious spells. I am always afraid of what she may say at such times.”

  “You all know,” said Adeline, still smiling, “that Daisy and I quarreled. Shall I tell you what I did to her?”

  “No,” answered Philip. “No one wants to know. Here comes the chocolate. While we drink it, Robert must tell us more of what happened this morning.” He placed a small table and Mrs. Coveyduck beamingly set down a laden tray.

  An hour later Robert returned to Vaughanlands. Philip hastened with relief to his workmen. Adeline and Wilmott were left alone. He said, with a somewhat remote expression on his thin face: —

  “Now that this excitement is over perhaps you will be a little interested in my manuscript.”

  Her eyebrows flew up. “Is it possible, James, that you have been able to do any writing in this past week?”

  “I had a considerable amount written at the time of the bathing party. I had intended reading it to you the next day, then — this fantastic thing happened. Perhaps you are no longer interested.”

  “I am indeed. Please bring the manuscript tomorrow morning. I promise you we shall be quite undisturbed. I am pining to hear it read.”

  “If it bores you, you must stop me.”

  “Nothing you write could bore me.… James, do you think Tite will get the reward?”

  He flushed a little. “I imagine he will.”

  “Do you think he deserves it?”

  “Well, it is certain that he found Miss Vaughan.”

  “Do you feel anything mysterious in his finding her?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did Tite say when he came back?”

  “Simply that he had found her and wanted the reward.”

  “It has been a strange affair,” she said.

  “Very strange.”

  “I was terribly frightened, James.”

  “I know.”

  There was a silence, then she said: —

  “James, it’s a fine thing to live with a forest all about you, you writing a beautiful book and fishing in your river, Philip building a church and raising crops! As for me — ” she laid her hand on her heart — “here I am in the midst — as happy as a queen with my own roof over my head and my babies all about me!”

  Wilmott’s smile was curiously tender and grim.

  “You deserve to be,” he said.

  The next day he brought the manuscript and seated in the cool shade of the drawing-room he read aloud to her. While she listened, her gaze was intent on his face across which many expressions flitted, but through them all showed a certain battered wistfulness and an inviolate dignity. In repose, Wilmott looked singularly undefeated and even cold. As Adeline listened to the unfolding of the tale she recognized herself in the heroine and, for all his attempts at disguise, Wilmott as the hero. But this only increased her enjoyment. With her elbow on the arm of her chair and her chin in her palm she drank in every word and pronounced it a masterpiece. She could scarcely bear to wait for the ending. She begged him to waste no more time but to concentrate with all his might in completing the romance. It would be a great success. It would rival The Mysteries of Udolpho.

  When Wilmott returned home he found Tite cleaning a fine salmon for their evening meal. The bright scales flew from the sharpness of his knife like sparks from an anvil. His slim brown torso was bare but he wore an old straw hat. He looked up smiling. He held up the fish for Wilmott’s inspection.

  “Boss,” he said, “it is a fine fish.”

  “Yes, Tite, it’s a fine one, and especially as the fishing has been poor of late. That is a good knife you have.”

  Tite turned the knife over in his hand and gazed reflectively at it. “Boss, it is a present from my cousin on the Reserve.”

  “Your relations are very kind to you.”

  “Yes. My cousin is descended from a great chief. He is all Indian but I am part French.”

  “I know. Tite, do you feel yourself different from the pure Indians?”

  “Boss, if pure means good, I am as pure as they are.” He sat back on his bare heels and looked up at Wilmott. “But that Mees Daisy says I have an Indian mouth and French eyes. Do you think I have?”

  Wilmott exclaimed in sudden anger — “If you mention Miss Daisy’s name once more to me, Tite, I will throw you out, neck and crop!”

  “Very well, Boss. But I have something I want to show you.” He took off his hat and out of its crown brought a paper packet. He opened it and showed it to be made up of clean bank notes.

  “The reward!” ejaculated Wilmott. “Is it all there?”

  “Yes, Boss. But we had better take it into the house and count it.” He held the bank notes to his nose and sniffed them. “I like the smell of money, Boss, but it smells better when it has been about more.”

  “Mr. Vaughan should not have handed over such a sum to a boy like you. He should have given it to some responsible person to keep for you. But, of course, I shall do that.”

  “Mr. Vaughan said he would keep it for me but I said I wanted it all — right away. He seemed to want to get rid of me.”

  “Well, wash your hands and we’ll go in and count the notes.”

  Tite obediently laid the fish in a basket and washed his hands at the river’s edge. In the house Wilmott sat down by the table in the kitchen and counted the money.

  “One hundred pounds,” he declared. “It is a lot of money for you to have earned so easily, Tite.”

  “Boss, it was not so easy. I searched the bush for a long while before I found her You see, I do not say her name, Boss, as you told me not to. I wonder if my grandmother will still think she is a harlot when she hears of the good fortune she has brought me.”

  “We shall not discuss that.”

  Wilmott looked reflectively at Tite. What a change had taken place in the boy during this year of their close association. He could write a good clear hand. He could read any book Wilmott gave him and reading absorbed him completely. Every day his vocabulary was enlarged. He was studying history, geography, mathematics, and Latin. He was worthy of a good education, Wilmott thought. He said: —

  “Your future is now assured, Tite. This reward, added to what I can do for you, will put you through college. You may be able to enter a profession if you work hard. What do you thin you would like to be? Have you thought of it?”

  Tite drew up a chair and faced Wilmott across the table.

  “I want to be just what you are, Boss,” he said.

  Wilmott gave a bark of laughter. “That’s no ambition at all,” he said.

  “It is enough for me, Boss,” Tite returned. “Just to live here alone with you and fish in the river and grow a few things on the land and read books in the evening, is all I want.”

  Wilmott was touched. “It suits me, too,” he said, “better than any other life I can imagine. You’ve been a good boy, Tite, and I’m very fond of you.”

  “And I am very fond of you, also, Boss. Like mine, your eyelashes are long and your neck like bronze column. But I cannot say that your mouth —”

  “What did I tell you, Tite?” said Wilmott. “If you think you will please me by applying to me the foolish things that girl said of you, you are much mistaken.”

  “Of course I am, Boss. I am sure she is a harlot.”

  “Now,” said Wilmott, ignoring the last remark, “I am going to deposit this money in the bank for you, to be drawn on as needed. Do you agree?”

  “Oh, yes, Boss. Bu
t could we keep back a pound or two to buy us a few treats, such as candied fruit and bull’s-eyes?”

  “I shall buy those for you,” said Wilmott.

  “But I should like to buy them with my own money, Boss. You see, the wagest you pay me are not very high and I give something to my grandmother. Now I come to think of it, I give all my wages to my family.

  “Balderdash!” said Wilmott, but he flung him a pound note. “Take it,” he said testily, “and do what you like with it.”

  “Mille remerciments,” said Tite, smiling. “You see I can speak a little French, on occasion, Boss.”

  XXII

  THE CHURCH

  A WEEK LATER, Daisy Vaughan left her uncle’s house and returned to Montreal. It was understood that the nervous and physical strain she had been under had made a complete change necessary. The Whiteoaks did not see her before her departure but those who did declared that she looked not in the least ill or dejected. Indeed Kate Brent said that Daisy had never looked better or been more talkative. It had been as good as a play to hear her description of the days she had been lost in the forest. She had had encounters with wild animals which had been seen by no other in that vicinity for a generation. But she seemed willing to return to Montreal. She could no longer endure, she said, to remain in such a backwater.

  Colonel Vaughan accompanied his niece on the journey. Her visit had been an expensive one for him. Besides providing for her for a year, which included the buying of some quite expensive clothes, there had been considerable cost connected with the searching party, to say nothing of the large reward paid to Tite. Now there was the expense of the journey.

  After Daisy’s return to Montreal she corresponded regularly with Lydia Busby for some time. She wrote of the gaiety of that town, the soirées, the balls. She filled Lydia with a mad desire to do something of the sort. At last came the news of Daisy’s engagement to a South American artist who had been painting in the Laurentians; and finally invitations to her wedding. She and her husband were to leave at once for Paris where they would for some years make their home.

  But though these letters caused much disturbance in the breasts of the young Busbys, so that their father was put to it to keep them in order, they made little impression at Jalna. There, with the harvest to be garnered, the winter quarters for the growing number of livestock to be got ready, the house to be prepared for an impending visit from Adeline’s parents, the building of the church to be sufficiently completed for consecration and the christening of Ernest, little interest was left over for the doings of the outer world. Adeline and Philip consigned Daisy to the past.

  In truth, Philip could have very well done without this visit from his parents-in-law. He was somewhat tired of the three Courts who were still at Jalna. However it had been arranged that they were to return to Ireland with the older members of the family. Otherwise, Philip feared they might have remained throughout the winter, for they had already expressed a desire to indulge in skating and snow-shoeing.

  Philip’s face, in those days, expressed a serenity that might well have roused the envy of men of a later day. He was up almost at dawn. At night he was no more than healthily tired and was still so full of interest in all he had to do that he could scarcely bear to go to his bed. When he saw his heavy wagons, drawn by his ponderous farm horses, roll into the barn with their weight of barley, wheat or oats, his heart swelled with pride. It was not that he had much land under cultivation as yet but that what was cultivated had borne so well. Then there were his cattle, his pigs and his sheep, all flourishing and with good shelter and plenty of fodder for the coming winter. Above all, there was Adeline, the picture of glowing health and so happy in the new life! There were his children growing each day in strength and intelligence. Gussie already knew her letters, was learning to sew and could say by heart and without a mistake several poems suitable to her age. Nicholas, not yet two, might have passed for three, so upright, so full-chested, so stirring was he. His mop of curls now touched his shoulders and the combing out of their tangles caused him to fill the house with his cries of rage and pain. Ernest was an angel with his downy fair head, his forget-me-not blue eyes, and his smile that was even sweeter because it was toothless.

  Nero worshiped all three children with a dark, stubborn, masterful worship. He would endure all three sprawling on his back at once but, if Nicholas went too near the edge of the ravine, he would draw him back by his dress, for somewhere in Nero’s mind there remained a picture of Nicholas shooting downward to the river in the perambulator.

  One morning in September, when goldenrod and Michaelmas daisies blazed in bloom about the new church, Adeline and Philip were standing together inside its doors, admiring the effect of the long strip of crimson carpet that extended from where they stood, up the chancel steps to the altar. Every day they came to the church. They had followed each step in its progress. They had a peculiar sense of achievement in it quite different from their feeling about Jalna. Jalna had beauty and some elegance. But here was a plain building with shiny, varnished pews, grey plaster walls and no stained-glass windows to mellow its light. Yet here was to be their spiritual home. Here was the link between them and the unknown forces of creation. Here their children would be baptized, their children married. Here, when their time came, would be read their own burial service. But this last was so distant, so misty in the mysterious future, that the thought of it gave them no pain.

  The crimson carpet had put the final touch to the building, as a church. It was of excellent quality and had been expensive. But both felt that it was well worth the cost. The fact was, it made the church look holy. It was a glowing pathway from entrance to altar. When the foot touched it, calmness and peace stole upward into the soul. The money for it had been sent by Philip’s sister, Augusta. This evening Adeline would sit down at her writing bureau and tell them just how imposing it looked.

  The Dean had put his hand into his pocket and paid for the organ. It was not a pipe organ. No one would have expected that, but it was of a reliable make and guaranteed to have a sweet tone. It stood to one side of the chancel, the pulpit towering above it. Wilmott had agreed to be organist and was expected that very morning to try it. As for the pulpit, Adeline had paid for that. From the first she had wanted a substantial pulpit. “I don’t like to see the preacher popping up like a jack-in-the-box out of a little pulpit,” she had declared. “What he says will go down better if he mounts three steps to say it and is surrounded by massive carving. The same man who carved our newel post can do it and I’ll foot the bill.” There were a few who thought the pulpit was a little too ornate for the church but on the whole it was much admired.

  Adeline took Philip by the hand. “Let us go,” she said, “and sit in our own pew and see what it feels like.”

  She led him to the pew they had chosen, directly in front of the pulpit, and they seated themselves decorously but smilingly. The pulpit rose portentously before them, as though already overflowing with sabbatical wisdom.

  “Confess now,” said Adeline, “I could not have done better in the way of a pulpit.”

  “My one objection to it is that I am afraid Pink will feel himself so impressive in it that he will preach too long. He is already inclined that way.”

  “Then I shall go to sleep and snore.”

  They heard a step behind them and turning saw Wilmott coming down the aisle. He was carrying a large music book.

  “Here I am!” he said. “Have you waited long?”

  They had forgotten he was coming but agreed they had been waiting for some time.

  “I have been to the Rectory,” said Wilmott, “and Mrs. Pink has given me a hymnbook. I’m rather sorry I promised to play this organ. I don’t feel capable of playing church music properly. But I seem to be the only one willing to attempt it.”

  “Kate Brent could have,” said Adeline, “but she is now a Catholic. Anyhow I like to see a man at the organ.”

  “Play the Wedding March,” said Philip.
“Let’s hear something lively.”

  “I have not the music.” Wilmott seated himself at the organ, opened it and placed the hymnbook on the rack. He remarked — “I admire the red satin behind the fretwork. It’s a pretty organ.”

  “Yes,” agreed Philip. “My brother-in-law donated it and my sister the carpet.”

  “I know,” said Wilmott. “You are a generous family. Even if I had the money, the community would go churchless a long while before I should build one.”

  “That’s not stinginess, James,” said Adeline. “It’s prejudice.”

  “Yes. I’m not sure religion is good for people.”

  “What could take its place?” asked Philip. “I’ll wager you have nothing to offer.”

  “Life itself is good.”

  “Come now, Wilmott, be sensible. A man can’t live by material things alone.”

  “Then let him gaze at the stars.”

  “The stars aren’t comfortable on a stormy night. Religion is.”

  “You had better not let Mr. Pink hear you say such things,” put in Adeline, “or he’ll not allow you to play the organ.”

  “He has heard me on many occasions.”

  “And doesn’t mind?”

  “Not a whit. He is a bland, dyed-in-the-wool Christian and he is convinced that everyone will eventually come round to his way of thinking.

  “And so will you,” said Philip. “So will you.”

  “Perhaps.” Wilmott pressed the pedals, touched the keys. He began to play a new hymn that only recently had been translated from the Latin. But Philip and Adeline knew the first verse and sang it through.

  “O come, O come, Emmanuel

  And ransom captive Israel.

  That mourns in lonely exile here,

  Until the Son of God appear.

  Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

  Shall come to thee, O Israel,”

  Neither Philip nor Adeline considered how extraordinary were these words coming from the green heart of a Canadian woods. They sang them with gusto and at the end Philip exclaimed: —