“Oh, I expect all will be well.”
Dr. Ramsey turned a pair of cold bright eyes on him.
“Why?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It seldom is, I may tell you.”
Elihu Busby was the first on the ice. He glided smoothly across the river and would have been graceful but for an angularity in his posture due to his lack of one arm. Nero, who had arrived with the Whiteoaks, had never before seen a person on skates. The sight filled him with a kind of savage hilarity. He rushed, sliding and slipping as he went, after Mr. Busby. Adeline shrieked Nero’s name and Philip shouted it, but he sped on, woolly and inexorable. He leaped on Mr. Busby’s shoulders and in an instant they were prone together.
“I expect he has broken his only arm,” observed Dr. Ramsey grimly. He skated rapidly to Mr. Busby’s aid.
When Nero saw a newcomer on skates he sprang to attention, with feet planted wide apart, ready to deal with him as he dealt with Mr. Busby.
“Keep off, you brute!” shouted Dr. Ramsey.
But with a joyous bark Nero was on his chest. For an instant the doctor struck an extraordinary and grotesque figure which might have gained him fame as a fancy skater if he could have held it. But that was the last thing he desired to do. He was now in a kneeling posture, for he dared not rise to his feet. However his manner was far from supplicating and he swore and struck at Nero who circled about him in an abandon of barking.
Mr. Busby had not been at all hurt and, sitting on the ice, gave way to shouts of laughter.
Philip had on one skate but in his excitement could not fasten the clasp of the other. He kept on roaring “Nero!” which served only to stimulate Nero’s pleasure in having two men down.
“Capture that dog!” Wilmott ordered Tite.
“Boss, I dare not,” answered Tite.”
“I say, capture him!”
With stealthy grace the boy crept across the ice toward the Newfoundland. It was like a play to those on the shore. Now that the Busbys were sure that their husband and father was not injured, they could enjoy the scene to the full. Nero did not notice Tite till he had caught him by the collar. Then he bounded with the boy’s light figure clinging to him, he gamboled, dragging Tite after him while Mr. Busby continued to shake with laughter and Dr. Ramsey to curse.
Suddenly Patsy O’Flynn appeared, almost as broad as tall he was so bundled up against the cold, and stalked toward Nero. He took him by the collar and led him, with an air of swagger, from the river. There was a round of applause. Patsy exclaimed: —
“Sure, he’s like meself — a lamb, if yez know how to handle him!”
Now all were brave to hurry to the two roughly used gentlemen. Now everyone was laughing, even the doctor. Wilmott had engaged the old Scotsman, Jock, to make music for the skating. He tuned up his fiddle and to a lively reel the ring of blades on the smooth ice was heard. Kate Busby had her wish and soon was sailing about with Wilmott. Truth to tell, she was his support rather than he hers, so good a skater was she. His arm linked within that of the good-natured girl, Wilmott wondered what life with such a companion would be. What sort of man would he be today, he wondered, if he had had such a companion. Daisy and Robert Vaughan were the most graceful couple on the ice. He wore a belted jacket with fur collar, very tight trousers, and a fur cap of a rather long yellowish fur, beneath which his fair hair looked out as from a strange, prehistoric headdress. Daisy, in black skirt and scarlet jacket trimmed with gold braid, made the Busby girls feel shy and countrified, Mrs. Pink disapproving. She considered Daisy’s movements entirely too free of restraint. But Daisy was really longing to skate with Dr. Ramsey. He had been watching young Lacey steer Adeline about with a good deal of anxiety. Now he himself approached her. He said: —
“If you must endanger yourself in skating, Mrs. Whiteoak, I must ask you to skate with me. I am the strongest skater and most sure-footed here.”
Adeline laughed, though she surrendered herself to skate with him. “I’m glad you have told me,” she said. “At any rate, I hope I shall be easier to manage than Nero was.”
“You need not rub that in,” he returned.
As they left the pond and moved slowly up the river, he began to lecture her on the care she should take of herself. She drew sharply away from him. She exclaimed: —
“Very well. If you are going to be disagreeable to me I shall skate by myself.” She took a long stroke for which she had not the skill, and would have fallen had not Wilmott, now skating with Mrs. Pink, glided forward and caught her. She clung to him, laughing into his face.
“For heaven’s sake, take me away,” she implored, “Dr. Ramsey is a tyrant! Mrs. Pink, would you mind changing partners? Dr. Ramsey and I have had a falling-out.”
“I shall be quite glad to,” said Mrs. Pink. “Mr. Wilmott is too fast for me.”
“It’s the speed of the imbecile,” said the doctor, under his breath.
The poplar trees by the river’s edge now began to cast long, blue shadows across the ice. The snow, piled high at its verge, lay like ruins of some marble tower that had fallen in its first white splendor. The reddening sun lowered toward the pines. Tite and the farmer’s wife were carrying about hot broth and scones, baked on the bricks. On a table, covered by a cloth of red-and-white check, were a huge jug of coffee, cups and saucers, plates mounded with cinnamon drops and plum cake. Inside the house was a bowl of punch, to be served later.
Adeline hovered near the refreshments, anxious for Wilmott’s sake that all should go well. Indeed all had gone well. The innovation had been a success. The company wore an air of unaffected jollity. Most of them were gathered about the table where the cake and coffee were, but a few of the younger ones were still on the ice. One of these was young Guy Lacey who was taking lessons in figure skating from Daisy Vaughan and, with a sailor’s abandon, eating a slice of plum cake at the same time. Daisy could give him her wholehearted attention, for Dr. Ramsey had taken his leave. Not long before this the children’s nurse had appeared, having pushed the white sleigh brought from Quebec all the long way from Vaughanlands with Augusta and Nicholas in it. They had been greeted with delight and instantly supplied with cinnamon drops. Now the younger Busby boy was propelling them, with somewhat reckless speed, over the ice. Nero, escaped from Patsy O’Flynn, bounded joyfully at the side of the sleigh, now and again uttering a deep-throated bark.
As the punch was being drunk and pronounced excellent, Wilmott said to Adeline: —
“I think everything has gone off fairly well, don’t you?”
“Everything has been perfect,” she declared, looking at the snow through the redness in her glass. “I don’t know when I have had a better time. And look at Philip, as blithe as a schoolboy.”
He will catch his death of cold. He should not have taken off his cap in this temperature.”
Philip held his mink cap in his hand and his light brown hair stood up in moist waves. His expression was one of staunch assurance that the system under which he lived was perfect, and a serene belief that the future would hold nothing which Adeline and he could not cope with.
“Put on your cap,” she called out.
He pretended not to hear.
“Your cap!” she repeated. “You’ll take cold.”
“Tommyrot. I never take cold.”
Lydia Busby firmly possessed herself of his cap and standing on tiptoe placed it on his head, herself blushing furiously at her own temerity.
“Too far back!” cried Adeline. “It looks like a baby’s bonnet.”
Philip instantly assumed an expression of infantile innocence. Lydia, blushing still more, drew the cap forward on his brow.
“Horrible,” declared Wilmott. “He now resembles a dancing dervish with a mop of hair in his eyes.”
Philip quickly changed his expression to one of barbarous ferocity.
“Oh, Captain Whiteoak, how you frighten me!” exclaimed Lydia. She snatched the cap from his head.
&
nbsp; “Lydia,” called out her mother. “That’s enough.”
“Try again, Miss Lydia, try again!” urged Philip.
This time she placed it jauntily to one side.
“Will that do?” she asked.
Philip winked at her.
“Perfect!” cried Mrs. Pink. “Perfect.”
“Lydia,” called out Mrs. Busby. “That is enough.”
But now Adeline was looking toward the gate. Two men had alighted there from a hired cutter and were paying the driver. Her eyes widened. She stared, scarcely believing the evidence. Then, as the men approached, she turned to Wilmott.
“It’s Thomas D’Arcy,” she said, “and Michael Brent! Whatever are they doing here?”
Wilmott gave them a look of apprehension, almost panic. “I won’t see them!” he exclaimed. “Not after what has happened. Oh, Adeline, why did you tell them about me?”
She could not answer, for the Irishmen were upon them. She hastened forward. “Don’t say a word about James Wilmott’s wife,” she warned them, giving each a hand. “How well you both look! And what wonderful new hats. You bought them in New York, I’ll be bound.”
“We did indeed,” said D’Arcy. “You yourself are looking superb, if I may make bold to say so.”
“What luck,” said Brent, “that we should arrive in time for a skating party! We can skate too. Have you some skates to spare?”
“We have just come from Niagara Falls,” interrupted D’Arcy. “Superb in wintertime. Really superb. We heard the jolly noises when we arrived here and we said at once — ‘This is Jalna!’ You see, we remember the name. So we told the driver to put us down on the spot.”
They shook hands with Wilmott.
“You here too!” said Brent, with a roguish look. “What good fortune!”
“This is my own home,” Wilmott returned, rather stiffly. “You are very welcome.”
“Then it’s not Jalna! But our luggage has been put off at your gate! Never mind, we shall carry it to Jalna.”
D’Arcy said, out of the side of his mouth, to Wilmott — “We got rid of her for you. She’s off to Mexico. What a tartar! I don’t blame you. I’d have done the same myself.”
Wilmott, with a set face, stared straight ahead.
Philip now discovered the visitors. They were provided with refreshments and, after that, with Mr. Pink’s and Wilmott’s skates. Wilmott and Tite went to the gate where their luggage was and carried it into the house. Philip met them there and it was decided that Wilmott could give them his room for the night and himself sleep in Tite’s bed. Tite should sleep on the floor.
While they were talking Captain Lacey joined them. He declared that, if Wilmott could put the two Irishmen up for the night, they would be welcome in his house after that, for his son was leaving the next day to join his ship and it would be a good thing for himself and his wife to have such lively company to cheer them up.
XV
IN WILMOTT’S HOUSE
THE SKATING PARTY was over and the farmer’s wife had, more or less, tidied up after it. Fiddling Jock had finished the punch and gone back to his hut in the woods singing “Loch Lomond” at the top of his lungs. There was bright young moonlight. The wild things came out of their burrows and there were cries of terror as the stronger seized the weaker.
It was hot inside the house, for Wilmott had heaped up the logs. The two Irishmen, Philip, Adeline and Daisy, were gathered about the fire while the travellers poured out their adventures in the States. Adeline had tried to persuade Daisy to leave with the others but it had been impossible. Daisy was in a state of high exhilaration at being part of so unconventional a gathering. D’Arcy and Brent had racy tongues. It seemed that they had done everything there was to do in New York and Chicago. They were enthusiastic about life in America. Then the conversation turned to the voyage from Ireland on the Alanna, the stay in Quebec. There was so much to talk of yet, all the while, Wilmott and Adeline were thinking about Henrietta. Quite suddenly Daisy exclaimed: —
“Oh, to skate in the moonlight! I have always longed to do that above all things. May I go to the river all by myself, Mr. Wilmott? It would be so mysterious, so eerie, to skate in the moonlight.”
“Miss Daisy is bored by us, D’Arcy,” said Brent. “We talk too much about ourselves.”
“On the contrary,” said his friend, “she wishes to be alone to decide which of us she loves best.”
Philip passed a large white handkerchief across his forehead. “You keep your house counfoundedly hot, Wilmott. I believe I shall go skating with Miss Daisy to help her make a choice — if she’ll allow me.”
“Oh, heavenly!” cried Daisy. “I should adore that.”
Brent asked — “Can you feel mysterious and eerie skating with Captain Whiteoak?”
“We shall drift over the ice like disembodied spirits,” she returned.
Wilmott looked anxiously at Philip. “I’m afraid you are taking cold,” he said, and laid his fingers on Philip’s wrist as though he had been a doctor.
Philip looked down at their two hands and then, rather puzzled, into Wilmott’s eyes. Wilmott had a feeling of anger against the three who knew his secret. He felt that Philip was the only true and honourable one of all those in the room.
When the door had closed behind Daisy and Philip, there was silence for a space. One of the two candles on the table was sputtering. Its flame hung low and sickly. But the moonlight strengthened, throwing the outline of the windowpanes sharply on the bare floor. Wilmott got up and snuffed the candle which now burned steadily but very small.
The three from Ireland had brought some essence of their country into the room. It felt foreign to Wilmott, and himself a stranger. The others waited for him to say something.
“Among you,” he said, “you have placed me in a pretty position.”
“I — I don’t understand. What do you mean?” asked Brent, blankly.
“I am a man who first deserted his wife and daughter and then allowed them to be sent on a fool’s errand.”
“Why — ” said Brent, “we thought you’d be pleased.”
“After what Mrs. Whiteoak had told us,” put in D’Arcy — then he too stared blankly and stopped.
“It’s not what we’ve done,” said Adeline. “It’s the way we have done it.”
“I can look nothing but a scoundrel to anyone.” Wilmott spoke bitterly.
D’Arcy ran his hand through his hair. “Now look here,” he said. “I’m no bachelor. I’ve been separated from my wife for years. I know how you feel. Sometimes you think it may have been your fault.”
“You only had to meet Mrs. Wilmott,” said Brent, “to realize who is to blame in this case. I’d run around the globe to escape that woman.”
“She’s a terror,” added D’Arcy. “You can see that. It’s self — self — self with her and never stop talking.”
“No man could stand it,” Brent spoke in a soothing tone.
D’Arcy raised his voice. “With my wife it was a violent temper. She’d fly off the handle for next to nothing and throw things at me or at the servants.”
Wilmott sat hunched up. He drew back his lips and tapped his teeth with his fingernails.
“You don’t wish I had let Henrietta come here, do you, James?” asked Adeline.
“No.”
“You aren’t sorry I got her out of the country?”
“How can I be?”
“Then what is wrong?”
“Everything.”
“Don’t imagine we did not treat her in a gentlemanlike way,” said Brent. “We were most considerate.”
“It was a lark to you!” exclaimed Wilmott.
“It was no lark at all,” said Brent. “We took it very seriously. We were considerate but firm.”
“You sent her on a fool’s errand to a half-civilized country!”
“Mexico was civilized,” said D’Arcy, “long before this part of the country. And I think that the lady really wanted to see it.”
“The trouble with Wilmott is that he has too lively a conscience,” put in Brent.
“No, it’s not that,” said Wilmott, “but what I did was a thing that should be kept secret in a man’s own mind. When you bring it out in the light it looks much worse. It looks like a crime, which I suppose it really is.”
“I understand” — D’Arcy spoke patiently — “that you gave your wife practically all you have. You certainly aren’t living in luxury here. All you deny her is your presence.”
To this Brent added — “And to judge from all she said, you didn’t make her happy when you were with her.”
“No — far from it.”
Adeline’s eyes were large and gentle as they rested on Wilmott, but it was to the others she spoke.
“What this poor man needs is a drink. He is tired after his party and all. Is there nothing but that little drop of punch in the house?”
The three looked at Wilmott as though he were an invalid. He felt hypnotized. D’Arcy rose and tiptoed to the cupboard. His shadow on the wall was enormous. He brought out a bottle more than half full of rum. He held it at arm’s length and looked through it at the candle flame. They could hear Daisy laughing on the river.
“There are tumblers on the shelf,” said Wilmott, as though he were an invalid.
“Will you have a taste of spirits, Mrs. Whiteoak?” asked D’Arcy.
“No, no, thank you. I shall finish the punch.”
Wilmott took a drink and began to laugh. “It’s all rather funny,” he said. “It’s as though we were in the cabin of the Alanna again. Only that outside there is a sea of snow.”
“Thank God we are here and not there,” said Adeline.
There was silence except for the soft flapping of a flame against a log. Then Brent spoke. “Wherever I go I find life amusing. I may be sad for a little but I am soon amused again.”
“I am the same,” said Wilmott.
D’Arcy refilled his glass. “I am never greatly amused or greatly sad. I am critical, analytical, and philosophic.”
“I am the same,” said Adeline.
When the skaters came in, Nero bounded after them. He stood in the middle of the room and shook himself, sending out a snow shower. Then he laid the side of his face on the floor and pushed it rapidly first in one direction, then in another.
01 The Building of Jalna Page 23