Before anyone realized it, an hour had passed. Jesse was the first to rise.
“We didn’t mean t’ take all yer time, an’ we still got plenty t’ do today,” she said.
“My time!” said Logan. “Time’s all I’ve got!”
She laughed. “The soft life’s gettin’ t’ ye already?”
“I’d sooner be out on your deck in a rainstorm than caged up in here,” Logan replied.
A serious look passed over Jesse’s face, one Logan had not seen her wear previously. “The Lord spared ye once, my frien’,” she said, “an’ it’s no wise t’ be temptin’ the likes o’ Him afore ye figure oot what He saved ye fer.”
Logan’s unresponsive stare apparently urged her to explain further.
“When we’re oot on the water an’ a squall breaks oot, sometimes a clap o’ thunder’ll break an’ I’ll swear we’re all goners. Or sometimes a flash o’ lightnin’ll break almost from a clear sky. Weel, sometimes somethin’ happens like that in life, too. Somethin’ terrible will fall wi’oot warnin’. An’ from that time on, everythin’ is changed. Life can no more be what it was afore. Like when my Charlie an’ my boy was lost. An’ the result depen’s on hoo ye respon’ t’ the invadin’ storm o’ trouble. What do ye do after the echo o’ the thunder has died away? Is yer life better than it was . . . or worse? Do ye let Him use the bolt o’ lightnin’ t’ open yer eyes, or do ye keep them shut?”
“I’m afraid I don’t really understand what you’re talking about, Jesse,” said Logan in an apologetic tone.
“Weel, I’ll see if I canna be a mite more plain-spoken, lad,” she replied. After a short pause, she resumed. “I dinna believe in accidents. Everythin’ is t’ a purpose. Jist like yer comin’ here, an’ like yer accident on the boat, an’ maybe like yer accident here, too, fer all I ken. Dinna ye see, lad? The Lord’s tryin’ t’ get yer attention. ’Tis the bolt o’ lightnin’ in yer own life. He’s tryin’ t’ wake ye up. An’ that’s what I said in the beginnin’, that ye’d be wise t’ figure oot what He’s tryin’ t’ save ye fer afore He runs oot o’ patience an’ leaves ye t’ yer own devices.”
Logan was silent, trying to ponder her words, but in truth they barely reached past the surface of his mind.
“We almost forgot,” put in Buckie in a lighter tone; “we got presents.”
“Presents! It’s not my birthday, Buckie!” laughed Logan.
“’Twas Jesse’s idea, but we all agreed ’twas a good one,” replied the first mate, stuffing his hand into his pocket and withdrawing three cigars. “We thought ye might like a fine smoke,” he added, laying them on the bed.
Logan picked one up and sniffed it lingeringly. “Ah,” he said, “that is a good cigar!”
“I brought ye somethin’,” said Jimmy, “but I left it wi’ the cook. We smoked some o’ the catch ye helped wi’.”
“I hardly helped!”
“Ye was there, an’ that’s enough,” said Jesse, and Logan could tell she meant it sincerely. Then she proceeded to take a small package from her pocket. “The lads thought ye might be able t’ fin’ some use fer these.”
It was a deck of cards. Logan slipped them out of the box and fanned them out expertly; his fingers obviously had more than a passing acquaintance with the game. Suddenly he broke into an uproarious laugh. Each card bore a picture of a fish on its back.
He looked up at Jesse and noted a definite twinkle in each eye.
All at once he felt very odd. He bit his lip and looked hastily down, pretending to examine the cards more closely. He didn’t know what this feeling inside him was, nor what he should say. When at last he did speak, his voice felt hollow. He couldn’t say what he felt without saying too much.
“Thanks. You are all . . . you’re good friends,” was all he said, but when he ventured a glance at Jesse, he knew she understood.
Telling him to visit them at the boat again sometime, even though he was now an important man and working for the estate, they left, and again Logan found himself alone.
He lay quietly on the bed, feeling very strange—not a little deceptive, certainly ill at ease, and at the same time, very heavy. He fingered the deck of cards and sniffed at another cigar. Suddenly he knew what felt heavy—it was his blasted left foot, sound and whole as it was.
“So what was I supposed to do?” he half yelled to himself, throwing back the blankets and jumping out of bed.
Pacing back and forth over the Persian carpet, he continued to argue with himself. “They’d understand! They’d do the same in my shoes if they had the chance. These are big stakes! Friends or no friends, I’ve come too far to start getting wishy-washy now!”
Then, as if resolving his temporary ambivalence, he grabbed up one of the cigars, bit off the end, which he spat out on the floor, lit it, and puffed dramatically. It wasn’t that great a cigar, anyway. It certainly wasn’t as if they had spent their last penny on it. He puffed again and tried to blow the smoke into a ring. But despite all his efforts, that was one trick Skittles had not been able to teach him.
Poor old Skittles . . .
Why did things have to change? Why couldn’t he be back in London where he belonged, among people he belonged with? Everything had been simple enough there. He had known what he wanted and how to get it. There were no deeper questions of life back there—at least, not many. Now here was Jesse trying to talk to him about thunderbolts from heaven, and some ancient poet yapping about foolish men who didn’t want to be free! It was all such nonsense!
Suddenly he heard a noise outside the door.
Like a naughty child, he leaped back under the covers, his heart racing. The cigar had lost all its flavor. Never before had he felt so much like a common sneak.
25
The Greenhouse
Leaving Logan with his friends, Allison returned downstairs in a none-too-pleasant frame of mind. It was disgraceful how they were all treating the man—giving him the best guestroom, waiting on him hand and foot, allowing his coarse and smelly friends the run of the house.
Yet all those things had not irritated her half as much as her mother asking her to show the visitors up to Macintyre’s room. They had servants for such tasks!
Her mother and father both knew what sort of person he was; Allison had made a point of telling exactly how she had found him in town the other day when they had mentioned they were going to hire him. If she had tried to befriend such a person, they would have objected strenuously.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she was carrying a taut, sour expression on her face, which Joanna could hardly have missed. The perceptive mother had a vague idea of the cause, for she had seen the protest in her daughter’s eyes the moment she had been asked to escort Logan’s guests upstairs. Joanna often doubted whether or not she was approaching her daughter’s problems wisely, thrusting her into situations that would challenge and expose her arrogant attitude for what it was. She’d hoped that when Allison saw herself in her true light, it would have a much greater impact than a mother’s preaching. Joanna told herself over and over to exercise patience and to stand faithful in prayer for her daughter—those would be her greatest weapons against this thing that was eating away at Allison. But sometimes it was so hard to keep from saying what sprang to her mind.
“Mother!” said Allison in a remonstrative tone, as a master rebuking a servant. “How could you? It’s hardly suitable for a member of the family to be showing a mere employee his guests! How do you expect to maintain order around here? And such guests!”
The arrogant tone of her daughter’s words taxed Joanna’s resolve to the limit. Perhaps what she needs is a good hard spanking! Joanna thought to herself. But instead she took a breath, then answered calmly, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You wouldn’t, Mother,” replied Allison. “Sometimes you just let them walk all over you!”
“Do I . . . ?”
Allison nodded, looking as though she were expecting a verbal attack from her mo
ther on another flank. But then Joanna went on in the same controlled voice. “I’m on my way out to the greenhouse.” With the words, Allison noticed for the first time the basket her mother was carrying. “Dorey said there were some lovely rhododendrons ready to pick. Would you care to join me?”
Allison hesitated.
There seemed no threat in the invitation. Still it was a little odd. Why hadn’t her mother given her the usual sermon on treating everyone as equals? She and her mother used to take walks over the grounds all the time. Why had they stopped, she wondered? She was about to make some excuse for refusing when suddenly she found herself saying, “Yes.”
It was not a day particularly conducive to a morning stroll. A steady wind had arisen and was now blowing in from the north, filled with portents of another rainstorm. It whipped Allison’s hair in her face, and she pulled her sweater snugly about her. It would have been impossible to talk as they walked without yelling in one another’s ears.
The moment they stepped into the greenhouse, they seemed to enter another realm altogether. The glass walls immediately cut off the roar of the wind and they were surrounded by a still, quiet, humid warmth.
Joanna smiled as she looked about.
“I remember the first time I came into this place,” she said reflectively. “Your father and I had sneaked onto the grounds through a breach in the hedge. I was trembling when we came through this door, and with good reason, for I was a common trespasser—an unwelcome interloper.”
“I’ve heard the story many times, Mother.”
“Yes . . . I suppose you have.” Joanna took down a pair of shears from a hook on the wall. “I guess I’m telling you now because I hoped it would help you understand why I feel as I do toward the folk around here.”
“Because you were one of them once?”
“Yes. I was an outsider too. A commoner. I have never stopped being ‘one of them,’ as you put it.” She walked to several rhododendron bushes laden with large deep red blossoms. “I suppose it’s my own background that made me realize there wasn’t anything magical about being a Duncan. And when I began to learn about some family history, I learned there wasn’t even anything very desirable about it.”
“Mother! How can you say such a thing?”
“There’s nothing special about us, dear, except in God’s eyes—where every one of His children is infinitely special.” Joanna clipped one of the blooms and laid it in her basket. “Several hundred years ago a man by the name of Ramsay happened to save a king’s life, and the king gave him some land and a title for his reward. It could have happened to anyone.”
“But it didn’t.”
“Andrew Ramsay, then, was special. He was a courageous man who placed another’s life above his own. That was special and he deserved what he got. But the rest . . . in a sense, they belonged no more to that reward than I belonged in the greenhouse that day.”
“We’ve earned our place by faithfully administering the estate,” argued Allison.
“You know,” said Joanna, attempting a new train of thought, “your brother wants to go to America; he may decide to live there permanently. Nat has no interest in being a country squire—I think he’d much rather be a fisherman. Thus, the mantle of Stonewycke will no doubt fall to you, Allison.”
Allison had never heard her mother talk like this. It was a little sobering, even frightening. Allison did not like fear, and she responded by trying to protect herself with a hard, cool shell. For the moment she said nothing.
“I agree with you in one sense,” Joanna continued. “We do have a unique responsibility to the community. They look to us for a kind of stability and leadership, which is a good thing when wisely used. But it is not because of who we are, or even what we are, but rather because of what Stonewycke is, what it represents in the minds of the people and in the history of this community, what it has always stood for. Allison, we have been placed here as servants to the folk around us. To serve—that is the highest calling of all.”
“I knew you would find a way to twist it around to that,” retorted Allison angrily. “No one expects servanthood from us, least of all the people in Port Strathy. They like to flaunt their resident nobility, just like all common people do. I think it embarrasses them the way this family sometimes behaves, acting as if we were not better than they.”
“And you do think we’re better?”
“Maybe better was an unwise word. But yes, we’re supposed to be set apart, higher in society. It’s for their good too, don’t you see? They need us to be above them.”
“And you think we should lord it over them because of our position?”
“Do you know what the real problem is, Mother?” asked Allison, ignoring her mother’s question.
Joanna simply raised her eyebrows inquisitively, knowing her daughter’s answer was going to come no matter what she said.
“I think you’re afraid of what your position really means, afraid you won’t be able to measure up to real nobility.” Joanna stared, too stunned by her daughter’s reasoning to respond. “I think you’re hiding behind all this servant rhetoric!” Allison added in one final outburst.
Joanna closed her eyes and let the shears slip from her hand. “Oh, Allison . . .” she breathed, the pain evident in her voice. “I . . . I can see we can’t talk about this,” she tried to go on, then stopped. Her lip trembled as she tried to hold back the tears, for she knew they would not draw Allison’s sympathy, and might even induce her contempt.
Joanna could not utter another word. She was hurt, disappointed, even a little angry in a quiet sort of way, and afraid of what, at that point, she might say—what terrible things might lash out at her own daughter.
She turned, and still clutching the basket of Dorey’s lovely flowers, hurried out of the greenhouse.
Allison watched, but her own fancied indignation on the side of truth shielded her from feeling her mother’s poignant and heart-wrenching emotion. She hadn’t noticed the soft shuffling sound behind her, and had no idea someone had entered the greenhouse by the back door while she had made her cruel speech to her mother.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” came a soft, aged voice.
Startled at the sound, she jerked herself around, glaring at whoever had the gall to frighten her so. It was Dorey.
“Oh, Grandpa,” she said, quickly rearranging her features into a look of deference, for he was one of her elders whose opinion she still respected. “You frightened me.”
“You frightened me, dear,” he replied in a calm tone, sounding not at all like one who had been frightened in anything like a normal manner.
“Me?”
Appearing to ignore her questioning tone, Dorey hobbled slowly over to the place where Joanna had dropped the shears. He inched his frame gingerly down and picked them up. “They’ll rust if they lay there and chance to get wet,” he said quietly. He laid them carefully on a worktable.
“Were . . .” Allison began hesitatingly, “were you here the whole time?”
“I haven’t yet fallen into the habit of common eavesdropping.”
“I’m sorry, Grandpa. That’s not what I meant.”
“When I came in, you and your mother were too intent on one another to notice me. I was rather at a disadvantage, and at the moment I tried to make my presence known, your mother walked out.”
“She’s impossible to talk to,” said Allison with a defensive edge to her voice.
“A common malady between mothers and daughters, I expect,” said the old man.
“I’m afraid she didn’t understand me.”
“I think she understands you only too well,” replied Dorey, his brow furrowed with a rebuke his soft-spoken voice did not carry. “As I also understood you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. She really didn’t want to ask the question, but somehow it almost seemed expected, and she could not help herself.
He came toward her and took her hands into his—gnarled old hands, coarse with the
ir work in the soil and trembling slightly with age. But his grasp was firm and warm, filled with a love he knew his great-granddaughter was unwilling to acknowledge openly.
“I heard something in your voice,” he said, his voice forever soft, as a man who gave little credit to his own wisdom. “I see it now in your eyes, and it does frighten me, my dear, dear Ali.” He was the only one she permitted to call her by that name. “As much as we would like to, we cannot forget that his blood flows through your veins. But I saw it so clearly in your eyes just now. They were his eyes . . . I could never forget them.”
“Whose, Grandpa?” Allison’s voice trembled a bit now too. Her great-grandfather was as lucid a man as there ever was, but she knew he had suffered greatly and had had some mental disorder many years ago; and every now and then, not often, he said something that reminded her of that fact.
“James Duncan’s,” he replied tightly. The name would always be difficult for him to say.
“He was rather a scoundrel, wasn’t he?”
“He was your great-great-grandfather,” was Dorey’s only reply. He brought her hands to his wrinkled lips and kissed them softly.
“Mother didn’t get any pink rhodies,” Allison said with a forced tightness in her voice. She blithely released herself from Dorey’s grasp, picked up the shears, and flitted about the flowers like a butterfly.
Dorey shook his head sadly. “Will you apologize to your mother?” he asked.
“I don’t see why,” said Allison, frantically clipping blossoms.
“You hurt her terribly.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“We never mean to hurt those we love,” he said as he let out a weary sigh. “But it happens only too often. You mustn’t let such things fester between you.”
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