“You might indeed,” he returned tranquilly. “I don’t know the first thing about the average woman. You are the only woman I pretend to understand, but then you make yourself so clear.”
“Certainly,” put in Nicholas, “Miss Craig makes her intention clear. She is tooth and claw after Philip and, in my opinion, he wants to be hooked.”
“Speaking of being hooked,” said Ernest, “here are his fish. He’s gone off without a second thought for them. I think I had better carry them down to the kitchen.” He picked up the basket from where it stood on the rustic table. He hesitated a moment and then said, “I have an investment in mind which I am positive will recoup the losses I have had — not only cancel them but make me a great deal more. The thing is that I shall be on the spot to watch the fluctuations of the stocks. If I had been there this summer things would be very different with me now.” He went to the house gently swinging the basket of fish in his hand.
“D’ye think he may do what he says?” Adeline asked, her eyes following Ernest.
“I shouldn’t be surprised. He has a decided flair for speculation, but don’t you ever be persuaded, Mamma, to invest anything on his advice.”
“Trust me to hang on to what I have!” she exclaimed. “It’s little enough, God knows, but ’twill keep me in my old age.”
She watched Nicholas light a fresh cigarette and put out her shapely hand for one. However, she surreptitiously took the light he gave her and looked almost fearfully toward the house as she inhaled.
“That hussy, Miss Wakefield, smokes,” she said. “I wouldn’t have Nettle see me do it, not for anything.”
The trap bowled brightly along the tree-lined road, the cob moving in accord with the pleasant pressure he felt on the reins. Philip and Muriel Craig made a handsome pair, she very upright, her sailor hat tilted forward, he wearing a checked coat and yellow gloves. He twiddled the whip, admiring the scarlet ribbon on its handle.
“I can’t tell you,” she said, “how nice it is just to sit here, with my hands in my lap and watch someone else drive — particularly when they handle the reins as you do.”
“This cob,” he said, “is gentle enough, but he needs more exercise. I’m afraid you’re a bit nervous, Miss Craig.”
“I am — I am! And I’m so ashamed. I don’t think I should be half so nervous on horseback. It’s the thought of this high trap overturning that makes me tremble. My father promises to buy me a saddle horse if I’ll learn to ride it. But who will teach me? There are so few who ride excepting your family.”
“I’ll gladly teach you.”
She clapped her hands. “Oh, how lovely that will be! Are you sure it won’t bore you?”
“Come now, Miss Craig, can you imagine my being bored in your company?”
“I wish I couldn’t” she said humbly, “but I’m afraid I can imagine anything. I’m far too imaginative.”
Philip looked into her round, matter-of-fact eyes and doubted it. A couple of generations ago, he decided, she would have been pretending to swoon.
“Oh,” she cried, “there is Miss Wakefield on the road ahead of us! Do you think we could squeeze her into the seat with us? She walks as though she were so tired.”
“It would be a close fit,” he returned, his eyes searchingly on Mary’s back. “Besides, she’s going only as far as the Pinks’. Do you really think she seems tired?”
“Perhaps it’s just her shoes. I always feel that shoes should be chosen for the wear they’re to have. What I mean is, on rough country roads it’s better to have brogues like I wear.”
They had overtaken Mary. Philip drew in the horse. She looked up at them defensively. Miss Craig leaned toward her with a solicitous air.
“We think you look so tired, Miss Wakefield. We’d love to give you a lift but there’s scarcely room for three on the seat. So I’m going to propose that Mr. Whiteoak shall drive you to the Pinks’ while I trudge manfully along the road in my big brogues. Your shoes are so dainty, they’re better suited to city pavements, aren’t they?”
“Thank you. I’m not at all tired.”
“Oh, yes, you are! You can’t fool us. We know, by the way you walk. Do let me out, Mr. Whiteoak.”
“If anyone is to get out it will be me.” He put the reins into her hands. Their hands touched and she gave him a small, intimate smile, as though they spoke in a language no one else could understand.
Mary included him in the icy look she gave Miss Craig.
“I want to walk,” she said. “My shoes may be all wrong but they feel quite comfortable to me. Good morning.” She turned away.
“Now we’ve offended you!” cried Miss Craig. “Please, please don’t be offended, Miss Wakefield! It breaks my heart if I think I’ve offended anyone. You mustn’t misunderstand me. I think your shoes are quite the prettiest I’ve ever seen. I only meant — I’d love to walk and let Mr. Whiteoak drive you to the Pinks.”
Mary gave her a look of speechless anger and literally strode down the road. Little whorls of dust circled about her skirts.
Miss Craig returned the reins to Philip. She drooped, almost on his shoulders, and he saw that her eyes were swimming in tears.
“Why,” he exclaimed, in astonishment, “surely you’re not crying!”
“Oh, I’m such a silly,” she sobbed.
“You are indeed.” His eyes were puzzled and kind. “I don’t know what it all was about.”
“She hates me and I can’t bear to be hated.”
“Now that’s sheer nonsense.”
“You saw the look on her face.”
He could not deny that he had.
“But you mustn’t cry,” he said, and patted her hand.
His sympathy was more than she could bear. Now her head was indeed on his shoulder, her sailor hat tilted precariously over one ear. He flapped the reins on the cob’s back and they jogged past Mary in this position.
Philip had never been more uncomfortable. With Miss Craig’s head so unexpectedly on his shoulder — “just as though I were a hired man taking my girl for a buggy ride,” he thought — with Mary’s eyes boring a hole in his back, he thought yearningly of the tranquil hours he had spent with his fishing rod.
He shifted his shoulder a little and she sat upright and straightened her hat. Her face was flushed and smiling now. He had never seen her look so pretty. She was leaning forward to smile at a figure that was just emerging from the shadow of a clump of cedars.
“Did you see?” she laughed. “Young Mr. Busby? He’s waiting for Miss Wakefield. No wonder she was annoyed with me for offering her a lift. She didn’t want to miss him.”
“He’s probably not waiting for her.”
“Oh, certainly he is. I felt something in the air. And now I’m so glad because I know she wasn’t really angry at me but only at my interference with her plans. I’m so glad, because I think she’s a dear thing, and always so unhappy-looking.” Her voice took on a new intimacy. “Just glance over your shoulder and see this meeting. It will be fun to see them get together, in spite of our efforts to divide them.”
“Indeed I shall do nothing of the sort.” He flicked the cob with the whip, and stared sulkily between its ears. After a moment he asked, “Well, did they meet!”
“You know I’m peeping! But I just can’t help myself. It’s so fascinating to get a glimpse of a romantic love affair at close quarters. The rich young rancher and the poor governess! Now — they have met! And what a meeting! Did I say her feet were tired? I take it all back. She fairly ran to him and he’s taken both her hands. Oh, it’s divine! Why will you drive so fast, Mr. Whiteoak? Don’t you think it’s good for me to see two happy people?”
Mary had watched the passing of the trap, the attitudes of its occupants with astonishment. She was so astonished to see Muriel Craig’s head against Philip’s shoulder, her sailor hat pushed rakishly to one side that, for a moment, she felt no other emotion.
“Good heavens!” she said out loud. “Is that the way
things are with them! He’ll be kissing her next — out on the open road!” Her voice shook and was strangled in her throat by a surge of jealousy. She could only say, “Oh, Philip, how could you? Philip…” The beloved name became a knife to stab her breast. Jealousy made her feet uncertain. She scarcely could keep on the road. She had a mind to throw herself into the dusty ditch, to tear at the nettles and thistles with her bare hands. She had not imagined jealousy could be so devastating as this. Her feelings on the night of the dance when he had ignored her were as nothing compared to the vehemence of what she now suffered.
What could have passed between them to make that stiff-starched creature droop to his shoulder like a flower in the heat of the sun? And her hat! Mary’s sensitive lip curled at the thought of Muriel Craig’s hat! The fool, the stupid creature! And he, the flirt, the heartless flirt, treating her, Mary — alone in a strange country, so terribly alone — with calculated cruelty!
Her eyes, though they were wide open, were unaware of Clive Busby coming toward her. She would have passed oblivious of him but he hastened to meet her with his hands outstretched. He took hers into them and his grasp was sharp on her fingers. She looked into his face, scarcely seeing him.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “why, Mary, your hands are ice cold! And out in the sun — on a day like this!”
Over his shoulder she saw the trap disappear round a bend in the road.
“I have been sitting most of the day teaching, “she said. “My circulation is poor. But I’m quite all right.” She gently withdrew her hands and walked on.
He fell into step at her side.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he persisted. “You’re very pale.”
“I’m perfectly well.”
“Mary, you didn’t turn pale because you saw me coming?”
“I didn’t see you.”
“You know what day it is?”
“No. What day?”
“Mary… you’re tormenting me!”
Then she remembered.
“The week is up,” she said. “I remember now.”
His voice trembled in his hurt. “Does it mean so little to you then? Oh, Mary…” She saw the rich colour flood to his face.
She spoke in a breathless staccato way. “I’ve been thinking so much — my mind is confused. I’d forgotten the exact day. But you mustn’t be fond of me, Clive. You mustn’t.”
“As though I can help it! You might as well say to Niagara, ‘Restrain yourself.’ Mary, I’ve lived years in this past week and all of them with you — out on the prairies. All of them with you.”
She turned her eyes away from him. “Haven’t you thought of the reverse?”
“No! I wouldn’t let myself. I made up my mind to have this week of hope even if — no, I never let myself think of — I couldn’t.” He was not able to speak coherently but tried with his appealing eyes to draw hers back to him.
Is all this so important, she thought, does it matter what I do — whether I marry him or not? Does it matter what becomes of me? But I do mind being alone. It is comforting to have him walking along the road beside me — to know if I put out my hand I can touch him. When she spoke her mouth felt dry and her lips stiff. The poison of jealousy had run through her, like fire in prairie grass.
“Clive,” she said, “you wouldn’t want to marry a woman who —”
“Loves someone else!” he broke in, his voice suddenly harsh. “That’s what you’re trying to say. I know you love someone else and I think I know who it is. Mary, is it Philip Whiteoak you love? Are you trying to tell me you love Philip Whiteoak?”
She looked at him aghast, as though a stranger had stopped her on the road and talked to her of the secrets of her heart. What colour she had ebbed from her face. She walked faster, the fresh breeze blowing the thin stuff of her dress against her taut body.
“You have no right, “she said. “If I did love him it would be my secret, but I don’t love him. I hate him.”
“So that’s it,” he said slowly. His legs seemed to grow heavy beneath him and he fell behind her. “That’s what the trouble is.”
She stopped now and waited for him. He looked young and pathetic. She felt a maternal pity for him.
“Clive,” she said, her eyes clear and candid, “I wish it had been you. I’d have loved to love you.”
“The point is,” he answered fiercely, “that it satisfies you better to hate him than to love me.”
“You have no idea how unhappy I am.”
His hand touched hers for an instant.
“I wish I could do something about it,” he said. “But I can’t do anything, can I? This is the funniest rejection I’ve ever heard of a fellow getting. To be told that the girl he adores would love to love him. Gosh, it makes a fellow’s head swim!”
“It’s true.”
“But my case is hopeless, eh?”
“You wouldn’t want a wife who didn’t love you.”
“You’ve said that before!”
“Clive, I’d rather make you happy than anyone I know.”
“Rather than him! Come now, Mary.”
“He’s happy,” she returned bitterly. “Happy as a man need be.”
“Now I look at it this way. Philip Whiteoak is rich. He’s generous and kind, so they say. But I say he thinks only of himself. He’ll never trouble to understand any woman. He’ll just go on in his happy-go-lucky way, not noticing if his wife’s happy or not. Now this may be a mean thing to say but I’ve been told that he didn’t make his first wife very happy.”
She turned to him passionately. “Why should you explain Mr. Whiteoak to me? He’s nothing to me. Nothing. If I said I hated him I spoke foolishly. I take these violent dislikes. The truth is I dislike the whole family. So much indeed that I feel I must leave and find a new post. There’s something in that house I can’t endure.”
“Mary, is all this true?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re really going to leave Jalna?”
“Yes.”
“Then come to me, Mary darling. I’ll love you so dearly you won’t be able to help loving me back. Do say yes.”
Looking into his face she felt that she could learn to love him. Her feeling for him was almost love. Surely a deeper kindness was in her than many a woman brought to her marriage. He would take her to a new free life, far from this place, from these people whom she never wanted to set eyes on again. Oh, she was so lonely! Loneliness cried out in her. And here was a man who loved her truly and unselfishly. She might go through life and never meet such another. His love, his nearness overpowered her. She could not speak but she stretched out her hand to clasp his.
XIV
CONGRATULATIONS
SHE SLEPT MORE peacefully than she had for many nights. She gave herself up to sleep as a wave-tossed boat sinks into the soft sand of the shore. Her sleep was deep and she dreamed her favourite dreams, the childish dreams she did not want to be woken from. There was the one in which she was back in school and had won all the best prizes, and the other students and visitors looked at her in astonishment and admiration because she never did win prizes, being always too much confused by the examination papers. Then there was the one in which she, at will, rose from a crowded street and floated above the heads of the people who stopped whatever they were doing, to gaze up at her. Sometimes she would perch on a gable and wave down at them, sometimes hide behind a chimney-pot. Always she ended on the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, while traffic, buses, carts, drays, carriages, horses of all sorts, flower-sellers, porters, beggars, gentlemen in top-hats, stood spellbound. Yet all through her dreams was the suspicion that people were laughing at her.
Not through all the night did she dream of Philip Whiteoak or Clive Busby or even dream that she was quite grown up.
Very early she was awakened by the clangour of the turkey gobbler’s voice on the lawn beneath her window. Never before had he brought his family there at such an hour. Now he put forth all the power in hi
s breast to rouse the world, to defy if for the sake of those in his train.
Mary got up, wrapped a blanket about her and went to the window. She wanted to look out on this new day, with this new feeling in her heart, and discover what it was like. She saw the turkey-cock, his head on one side, staring at the east where the light was clearest above the tree tops.
But all colours were quiet excepting the wattles of the cock, which were bright red. He shook his head and tossed them, eyeing his seven wives, his many sons and daughters. The air was so cool and fresh it felt like frost. The sun now began to appear above the blackness of the trees. The vast sky filled with light. It was a mackerel sky and like the scales of a fish the countless small clouds took on brightness. The bed of geraniums rivaled the turkey-cock’s wattles.
Now he dropped his burnished wings with a metallic sound and moved slowly in a circle. The tassel-like appendage above his beak, his wattles, grew fiery red. The tips of his wings scored the dew-grey grass. He eyed the circle about him with potential fury. His eldest son shook his plumage, half dropped his wings but drew them up again. The hen turkeys uttered little wavering cries.
Mary drank in the pure air, scented with pine. She huddled the blanket about her, feeling herself safe inside it, as the kernel of a nut inside the shell. She lived only in the upper part of her mind, keeping one chamber of it locked away. In that chamber was the figure of Philip Whiteoak. The walls would narrow on it, day by day, till at last it was obliterated.
The sunlight, with a little warmth in it, now fell full on her face and her hair. It gave her strength, as sunlight always did. She began to make her plans for the day. She would seek out Mrs. Whiteoak and tell her she wished to leave. She knew how gladly that news would be received. She would beg to be allowed to leave as soon as possible. Clive would come and tell Philip how eager he was for an early marriage. He could not remain much longer in the East. He wanted to take Mary back with him as his wife.
Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny Page 79