01 The Building of Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Perhaps six hundred miles.”

  “How is Mrs. Cameron this morning?”

  “Ah, she’s fell waur o’ the wear.”

  “And her daughter?”

  “Fast asleep. Like your own bairn, poor we lamb!” She cast an accusing look at Adeline.

  “My brother looked after my baby very well last night,” said Adeline haughtily, for little Augusta had not been in her thoughts all night. “You say she is fast asleep? Is she with her ayay?”

  “Aye. She’s with what’s left of the ayah — for the woman is more dead than alive.” The stewardess stood balancing the tray against the reeling of the ship.

  “Merciful heaven,” cried Adeline, “what a miserable company we are!”

  She crossed the passage to the ayah’s cabin and looked in. In the pale sunlight nurse and infant looked equally fragile and remote. But they were sleeping peacefully. Adeline summoned the stewardess.

  “Take that basin away,” she said in a low but furious tone. “Make the place decent with as little noise as you can.”

  Adeline went to Mrs. Cameron’s cabin. All was neat there but the poor woman lay on her berth exhausted after her last bout of seasickness. The air was heavy with the scent of Eau de Cologne. It was as though someone had emptied a bottle in there. Mary was seated in front of the tiny dressing table gazing at herself in the glass with a fascinated look. She was unaware of the opening of the door but continued to give her large-eyed reflection stare for stare, while the ship heaved and a cupboard door flew open, then banged shut, with each roll. Adeline laughed.

  “Well, what do you think of yourself?” she asked.

  “Oh, Mrs. Whiteoak,” answered Mary. “I’m pretty — pretty! I have travelled right round the world and never found it out till now.”

  “Well,” said Adeline, “it is a queer time to have discovered it. But if it’s a comfort to you, I’m glad you think so.” Still gazing at her reflection the girl answered: —

  “Don’t you?”

  Adeline laughed again. “I’m in no state to judge but I shall take a good look at you later on. Can I do anything for your mother?”

  “She feels a little better, she says. She just wants to be quiet.”

  “Have you had any sleep?”

  “A little. I’m not tired.”

  “You’re a better traveller than I am. Have they brought you breakfast.”

  “Oh, yes. The stewardess is very kind. So is your brother. He’s so brave too.”

  “Well, I’m glad of that. I’m going now to see how the boys are getting on.”

  “May I come with you?”

  “No. Stay with your mother.”

  Adeline found Sholto recovering from his seasickness. He was sipping coffee and eating a hard biscuit but he was very pale. Conway was changing into dry clothes. Adeline noticed the milky whiteness of his skin and how his chest and neck were fuller than one would judge from his face.

  “Oh, Adeline,” exclaimed Sholto, “I wish I’d never come on this voyage! We shall quite likely go down. Oh, I do wish I were back in Ireland with Mamma and Papa and Timothy and all!”

  “Nonsense,” said Adeline, sitting down on the side of the berth. “In a few days you’ll be laughing at this. Here, eat your biscuit.”

  She took it from his hand and broke off a morsel of it and put it in his mouth. He relaxed and she fed him the rest of the biscuit in this way as though her were a baby.

  She turned to Conway. “Go and find Philip and tell him I want him. Just say I must see him and that it is important.”

  “What do you want him for?”

  She flashed a look of command at him. “Do as I say, Con.”

  “Very well. But he probably won’t come.” He tied his cravat with as much care as though he were about to make a call.

  “Oh, what a little fop you are!” she cried. “To think of you fiddling with your tie and soon we may all be at the bottom!”

  Sholto hurled himself back on the pillow.

  “You said everything was all right. You said we’d be laughing about this!” he sobbed.

  “Now you’ve done it!” exclaimed Conway. He opened the door and went into the passage but it was a struggle to close the door after him against the rolling of the ship. Adeline had to go and put her weight against it.

  She returned to Sholto. “You know I was only joking, “ she comforted him. “If I thought we were going to the bottom should I be looking so pleasant?”

  “You’re not looking pleasant! You’re looking queer and wild.”

  She laid her head beside his on the pillow.

  “I am looking queer,” she said, “because I suspect Con of making up to that little Cameron girl. That’s why I sent him away — so I could ask you. Sholto, tell me, has he been telling her she’s pretty? Has he been making up to her?”

  Sholto’s green eyes were bright. “Indeed he has! We are never alone but he is up to his tricks. ‘Oh, but you’re the pretty thing’ he says. ‘Oh, the lovely little neck on you!’ he says. ‘Oh, the long fair eyelashes! Come close and touch my cheek with them!’”

  “And did she?”

  “She did. And he laid his hand on her breast.”

  “And did she mind?”

  “Not she. She arched her neck like a filly you are stroking. And she made her eyes large at him like a filly. But she’s innocent and Conway is not. He could tell those boys at the English school a thing or two.”

  Adeline bent her brows in a sombre line. “I shall tell Mary’s mother,” she said, “to keep her away from that rascal.”

  “Well, if the ship is going down, Adeline, they might as well be enjoying themselves.”

  “The ship is not going down!”

  The door opened and Conway, clinging to it, looked in. He said: —

  “Philip has gone to your cabin. He’s as wet as a rat.”

  “Con — come in and shut tht door!” He did and stood pale and smiling before her.

  “Now,” she said, “no more hanky-panky with Mary Cameron! If I hear of it I shall tell Philip and he’ll give you a shaking to make your teeth rattle. Oh, you ought to be ashamed of yourself — making love to a child!”

  “What has that little twister been telling you?” he demanded, his cold eyes on his brother.

  Sholto began to shiver as fear produced a fresh wave of seasickness.

  “I did not need to hear it from him,” said Adeline. “She told me herself that she’d just discovered she was pretty and I’ve been watching you. Now, I say no more of it!”

  He tried to open the door and bow her out with a grand supercilious air but a sudden roll of the ship flung them staggering together. They clung so a moment and then she said, holding him close: —

  “You will be good, won’t you, Con, dear?”

  “Yes — I promise you.”

  He saw her out, then, bending over his brother, he gave him half a dozen thumps, each one harder than the one before. Miraculously those, instead of bringing his sickness back, seemed to do him good for in half an hour they were on deck together, watching the sailors raising what canvas they dared, and feeling new hope as the sun came out brightly and the foam-crowned waves harassed the ship less cruelly. When they saw Mary they looked the other way. She, on her part, seemed occupied by her own thoughts. Her mother kept her at her side. Mrs. Cameron’s intense spirit went out in a fierce strengthening of the ship so that, made inviolate by her spiritual aid, it might reach land and set Mary’s feet in safety there.

  Adeline found Philip standing in the middle of their cabin waiting for her. His clothes were wet and crumpled, his fair hair plastered in a fringe on his forehead. He looked so ridiculous that she would have laughed but she saw the frown on his face. He asked curtly: —

  “Why did you send for me?”

  “I was anxious about you.”

  “I’ve been standing here waiting for you.”

  “Only a few moments! I have been with Sholto. He’s sick.”

&nb
sp; “So is everyone. I brought up my own breakfast. What do you want of me?”

  “I want you to change into dry things.”

  He turned toward the door. “If that is all —”

  She caught his arm. “Philip, you are not to go! You’ll get your death!”

  “I should make a poor soldier if this would kill me.”

  “But what can you do?”

  “For one thing, I can put some courage and order into the steerage passengers. They are on the verge of panic. As for you, you might tidy up this cabin. It’s vile.”

  “What do you expect!” she cried. “I have a sick baby! I have an ayah who is half-dead! I have Mrs. Cameron to visit! I have my young brother to look after! I worry myself ill about you. The stewardess is useless except to gossip. The ship is leaking! And you ask me to tidy up the cabin!”

  In a fury she began to snatch up garments and to thrust them into boxes or on pegs.

  “I didn’t ask you to get in a temper,” he said.

  “Oh, no, I’m not to get in a temper! I’m to keep perfectly calm! And as neat as a pin!”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  Before she could answer, the parrot, which had been sitting muffled on the top of his swaying cage, uttered a scream of the purest excitement as he became conscious of Adeline’s agitation, and flew violently about the cabin. The disturbance caused by his wings was startling to nerves already tense. He came to rest on a brass bracket, turned himself over so that he hung head down and, in that posture, sent out a torrent of curses in Hindu: —

  “Haramzada!” he screamed. “Haramazada! Chore! Iflatoon! Iflatoon!”

  “I sometimes wish,” said Philip, “that we had never brought that bird.”

  “I dare say you do,” retorted Adeline. “I dare say you wish you had never brought me. Then you might have had your old shipwreck in the most perfect order! You might — ”

  Philip’s face relaxed, “Adeline,” he said, “you make any situation ridiculous. Come, my pet, don’t let us quarrel.” He put his arms about her and his lips to her hair. “Do find me a pair of gloves for I’ve blistered my palms at the pump.”

  She was instantly solicitous for him. First she kissed the blistered palms, then she bathed them, applied a soothing ointment, a bandage, and found a pair of loose gloves for him. So administered to he became quite meek and changed into his dry clothes and brushed his hair. All this while Boney regarded them quizzically, hanging for the greater part of the time head down.

  “Philip,” she asked as she coiled her hair, “is everything as simple as the Captain says? Are we in danger? Will the ship carry us safely to Newfoundland? He says he will stop there for repairs, doesn’t he?”

  “We can cope with the leak,” he answered gravely. “And if only this damned head wind would fall and a favourable wind spring up we should do very well.”

  They did keep the leak under control, the sun came out fitfully; a kind of order was created on the ship, the wind promised to fall. Regular shifts at the pumps were arranged and, when the time of changing came, the cry of “Spell ho!” rang out from Grigg’s enormous mouth. The Captain looked determinedly cheerful. The Alanna pushed on through the buffeting of the waves. She seemed running straight into the ruddy sunset. A sailor came bounding up to the Captain who was talking with Philip and Mr. Wilmott.

  “The cargo has shifted!” he said, out of breath.

  Philip went to where Adeline and her brothers had found shelter on the corner of the deck. The boys were tired and had stretched themselves in complete abandon on either side of her. Conway’s head lay against her shoulder, Sholto’s on her lap. Upon my word, thought Philip, they look no better than the emigrants. Adeline raised her eyes from the pages of Pendennis.

  His stern expression startled her.

  She sat upright. “What is it now?” she demanded.

  Conway woke and sprang to his feet. He looked dazed. He stammered: —

  “Why — Philip — why? Adeline — the deck! Look at the deck!”

  “Yes,” said Philip. “The ballast has shifted. She’s listing badly. The Captain says there’s nothing for it but to go back to Galway for repairs.”

  “Back to Galway for repairs!” repeated Adeline and Conway in one voice. Then he laughed. “What a joke on us!” He shook his brother by the shoulder. “Wake up, Sholto! You’re going to dear old Ireland again!”

  “How long will it take?” asked Adeline.

  “With this wind behind us we’ll do it in a few days.”

  “We must not let my mother know we are there. It would upset her so. She’d bound to come all the way to Galway to see us, and the good-byes to say all over again!”

  “I quite agree,” said Philip. He felt he could very well do without seeing his parents-in-law again.

  Sholto wore a strange look of joy.

  The next morning the wind had fallen enough to allow the first officer to be lowered over the side in the Captain’s cutter to examine the leak. The sea was a bright hard blue and the waves were crinkling under the wild west wind. His movements were watched with fascination by those on deck. He opened his mouth and shouted cryptic remarks to the Captain leaning over the side. He put out his hand and felt the injured part like a surgeon concentrating on an operation. Then he was hauled up again. Everyone crowded round him. He was loath to relieve their anxiety and only the presence of the cheerful Captain made him say: —

  “Ah, I dare say she’ll do. That is if there are no squalls. The leak will be four feet out of the water if the sea gets no worse. She may do — but we’ll hae to keep at the pumps.”

  The Alanna had turned back with the sound of thunder in her sails as she veered. Now, to the wind she had struggled against for so many days, she surrendered herself, let it drive her back toward Ireland and strained every inch of canvas to be there with the least loss of time. But the shifting of the ballast made her awkward. No one could forget the way she listed. It was as though all on board had suddenly become lame, leaning to one side when they walked.

  And there were the pumps always to be kept going, forcing out the briny water that stretched in monstrous fathoms waiting to force its way in again. Aching backs, hands blistered, then callused, monotonous hours that wove the day and night into one chain of weariness and boredom. Every now and again the boredom changing to apprehension at the sight of a ragged cloud that looked the possible mother of a squall. Of all those on board, Adeline was the most buoyant. In her handsome clothes, that were so unsuitable to the situation, she carried assurance and gaiety wherever she went. She would, for all Philip’s remonstrances, take her turn at the pumps. She learned sea chanteys from the sailors, though she never could keep on the tune.

  A strange intimacy sprang up among the passengers. They seemed to have known each other for years. Their faces, their gestures, their peculiarities, were etched on each other’s minds. Then, on the eighth day, the dim shape of Ireland became visible on the horizon.

  IV

  REPAIRS

  GALWAY BAY lay blue and tranquil, church bells were ringing as the bark, at a melancholy angle, moved slowly into the port. Then, for the first time in ten days, the pound of the pumps ceased. The eardrums of those on board were freed to take in the sound of the bells and the singing of birds.

  Adeline stood in the bow facing the light breeze that carried warm scents of the land. Her nostrils quivered and she gave a little laugh. Mr. Wilmott came up just in time to hear it.

  “You are fortunate to be able to laugh, Mrs. Whiteoak,” he said. “To me this is a most depressing return.”

  She looked at him over her shoulder, her white teeth gleaming between her parted lips.

  “Why,” she exclaimed, “aren’t you glad to smell the land again — and hear the bells?”

  “Not the Old Land,” he answered bitterly. “Not these bells. I never expected to be here again. I want the New World.”

  “Well, you’ll get it, if only you have patience. You might be at the
bottom of the sea. I’m thankful to be alive!”

  “You are different. You are young and full of hope.”

  “But you aren’t old! And you have told me of interesting plans you have. This is just a mood. It will pass.”

  He smiled too. “Of course it will. I certainly cannot feel downcast when I am near you.”

  The ayah stood near by with the baby in her harms, her pale-coloured robe fluttering about her emaciated figure. It was the first time she had been on deck since her bout of seasickness and she looked scarcely able to stand, let alone carry the child. But her heavy-lidded eyes shone with joy at the sight of the green land and little Augusta held out her hands toward the gulls that came circling about the ship.

  Philip strode down the deck.

  “I have the luggage ready!” he exclaimed. “I’m not leaving any of our valuables on board.”

  “The Captain says they will be safe.”

  “Humph! Anyhow, we shall need our things. This leak isn’t to be mended in a jiffy.”

  “Have you seen my brothers?” she asked. “Have they got their things together?”

  “Here is Sholto to answer for himself.” Philip eyed the boy sternly. He was laden with his belongings, gathered together in a promiscuous fashion. His pale face was alight with exhilaration.

  “I can scarcely wait,” he exclaimed in an exaggerated brogue, “to plant me feet on the ould sod! Praise be to God, I shall sleep in a dacent bed and put me teeth in some dacent food before long!”

  As he advanced he let fall one article after another on the deck but he appeared unconscious of this.

  “Where is Conway?” demanded Adeline.

  “I can’t make him stir. He’s still in bed. Mary Cameron is with him.”

  “Merciful heavens!” cried Adeline.

  Philip threw them both a warning look. Mr. Wilmott considerately moved away, out of hearing.

  “She is packing his things for him,” went on Sholto. “He says he is too tired and the silly girl believes him! She believes whatever he says and does everything he tells her.”

  “I shall attend to him,” said Adeline.

  With her eager step she went swiftly along the slanting deck. She hastened down the companionway and through the narrow passage where most of the cabins were separated from public view by only a curtain. The smell of this passage she felt she never would forget. All the smells of the ship below deck seemed concentrated here — the smell of stale cooking, the smell rising from the livestock, the smell of the lavatory! What discomfort she had endured! The sweet land breeze made it suddenly almost tangible — discomfort and fear.