Down Jasper Lane (Amherst Island Trilogy Book 1)

by Kate Hewitt

  “Louisa Hopper.” Louisa looked taken aback by Captain Jonah’s craggy face and toothless grin, and despite the churning anxiety at how Louisa would take to the island, Ellen had to suppress a smile. Louisa had a look on her face that said she’d wished she’d lent credence to the things Ellen had warned her about.

  The spray from the lake stung Ellen’s face and the blue-green waters fairly shimmered in the sunlight. She could barely keep from laughing aloud for joy, for she couldn’t believe she was finally here, on her way to the island, over a year since she’d last seen its shores. And soon she’d see all the McCaffertys again, and Lucas and Jed and all her friends from school as well. Ellen leaned forward in the boat, as if she could will it to travel faster.

  Captain Jonah chatted for a few minutes about island affairs—the money raised for a new library, the scandal caused by Mr. McGuiness’ hiring of two boys to fetch a horse from Kingston, only to have them let the animal loose in the city streets for a prank.

  “Was the poor creature hurt?” Ellen asked, and Captain Jonah spat neatly into the foaming water.

  “Scairt, more like. The wretched beast won’t ever be the same now, and Mr. McGuiness wants his money back from those boys, but he ain’t getting it from the scalawags, and that’s a fact.”

  Louisa’s eyebrows rose to her hairline at the Captain’s colorful language, but Ellen just grinned. It was good to be back.

  This time when Ellen came off the ferry, a wagon hitched to two horses was waiting in front of the station, and Dyle stood by it, a wide grin on his face, his dark eyes snapping with life and excitement. He looked, Ellen saw with relief and joy, just the same. Everything, from Stella’s neat wooden buildings to the old weathered barns and the rolling hills in the distance, looked exactly the same. Ellen could have cried with both joy and relief.

  “Ellen, my girl!” Dyle called, and held out his arms. Ellen ran straight into them.

  “It’s so good to see you,” she said, breathing in the scent of hay and pipe tobacco that was completely her uncle’s and yet reminded her, just a little bit, of her own father. “It’s so good to be back.”

  “It’s good to have you back,” Dyle replied as he hugged her tightly. “You need to keep us all on the straight and narrow, remember!” He turned kindly eyes to Louisa. Now, this must be your friend Miss Hopper.”

  Louisa nodded stiffly, and taking pity on her, Ellen pulled her forward. “Louisa, this is my Uncle Dyle.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Louisa said in a scratchy whisper, her face pale and her manner horribly stiff. Ellen tensed, but Dyle, taking the measure of her in one knowing gaze, smiled easily.

  “And you, Miss Louisa, if I may be so bold as to call you that! Climb in the wagon, girls, and I’ll get your valises. Rose has made us all a fine slap-up meal.”

  Dyle regaled them with news of all the McCaffertys and the Lymans all the way home. “Ruthie’s shot up a foot this year, Ellen, she’s quite the little madam. Peter can’t wait to go to Glebe, he’s practicing for his exams already and he’s only eleven. Lucas will go up to Glebe in the fall, of course.”

  “And Jed’s been at Glebe this whole year?” Ellen said. Dyle didn’t say anything for a moment, and Ellen saw his eyes were narrowed against the lowering sun, his mouth a considering line. “Isn’t he at Glebe, Uncle Dyle?”

  “Well, now he has been,” Dyle answered, twitching the reins. “But the fact is Maeve Lyman’s taken another poorly turn, and Jed’s come home to help with things.” He paused, glancing at Ellen with a somber look, especially coming from him. “Truth is, people say this’ll be the last turn she’ll ever take. Spring came more than a month ago now and she hasn’t got up from her bed the way she used to when the weather turned for the better.”

  “Poor Mrs. Lyman,” Ellen murmured. She remembered taking that pie to the Lymans, and seeing Jed and Lucas’ mother lying in her bed, her face pale and waxy, the smell of the sickroom all around her. She’d read a psalm, and Mrs. Lyman had smiled. “I’ll pay her a visit,” Ellen said now, and Dyle smiled.

  “That’d be nice of you, Ellen. I remember she took to you while you were here. And now you haven’t asked about Patch!”

  “Caro’s written me all about her,” Ellen said with a laugh. “She’s three times the size she was, or so Caro says. How is she doing, Uncle Dyle?”

  “Patch?” Louisa said uncertainly, and from her wary expression Ellen knew Louisa was wondering if this was yet another strange islander.

  “Patch is Ellen’s dog,” Dyle explained. “A lovely little thing, black as coal, with a white patch over her eye. She looks like a pirate.”

  “I can’t wait to see her!” Ellen exclaimed. She’d missed her little dog, along with everything else.

  Louisa shot Ellen a curious look. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

  “I expect there are plenty of things you don’t know about Ellen,” Dyle said in his same affable tone, yet Ellen thought she detected a thread of possessive steel under her uncle’s friendliness, and it made her glad. She had a feeling Dyle had taken the full measure of Louisa in those first few minutes, and the anxiety that had knotted in her stomach eased a little.

  The farmhouse was awash with the last of the sun’s rays as they drove up Jasper Lane with its arch of oak trees, the leaves golden in the fading sunlight, the soft summer twilight beginning to settle on the rolling meadow.

  Rose had opened the door before Dyle had even stopped the wagon, fiddling impatiently with her apron strings as she hurried to greet Ellen, the children tumbling like puppies behind her.

  “Ellen, oh Ellen! It’s so wonderful to have you back, child!”

  “It’s wonderful to be back,” Ellen replied, enveloped in Rose’s warm hug, her cheek pressed against hers. She was laughing even as tears stung her eyes, and she just managed to pull away to introduce Louisa to Rose and the children.

  “But of course!” Rose brushed a stray wisp of hair from her eyes, smiling as easily as Dyle had. “We’re so pleased to have you here for the summer. Any friend of Ellen’s is a friend of ours.”

  Louisa was looking very pale and pinched; her dress of rose silk embroidered with silk French knots in darker pink seemed ridiculously fancy and inappropriate in the farmhouse’s yard of pecked dirt and patchy grass.

  With a pang of conscience Ellen realized how the journey must have tired her, and how out of place and homesick she must feel.

  “Louisa’s been ill all winter, Aunt Rose,” she said. “I’m sure she’s quite worn out.”

  “Oh, but I’m so sorry!” Rose exclaimed. “Ellen, why don’t you show Louisa her room? The back bedroom with the yellow curtains.”

  Ellen took Louisa up the front stairs with their tarnished brass runner and worn carpet, down a long, narrow hallway to a bedroom at the end. The McCafferty farmhouse was large and rambling, and had no end of funny little nooks and rooms, including the small bedroom by the top of the backstairs that seemed almost an afterthought.

  “This is one of my favorite rooms,” Ellen confided. “It gets so much sunshine.”

  Whistling, Dyle came in with Louisa’s valise and deposited it at the end of the bed.

  Ellen drew the curtains and glanced around at the simple furnishings. There was an iron bedstead, a dresser with a washstand and a plain enamel pitcher and bowl, a cheerful rag rug on the floor and a few hooks for dresses, and that was all. Rose had put a jar of daisies on the dresser, but despite this welcoming touch the room still seemed rather barren. Ellen was used to it—her room back in Seaton was nearly as sparse—but she remembered Louisa’s bedchamber with its canopy bed and sumptuous furnishings, and thought it must all seem rather hard.

  “Will this be all right?” she asked, gently, for Louisa’s face was still pinched tight and she hadn’t spoken. Ellen almost—almost—felt a pang of sympathy for her.

  “You meant what you said, didn’t you?” Louisa said after a moment. She removed her straw boater with its trailing silk ribbons and
put it carefully by the washstand. “It’s very different here.”

  “Yes.”

  Louisa nodded slowly, as if deciding or perhaps just accepting something in her own mind. “I’m very tired, as you said. I think I just might go to bed.”

  “Shall I bring you up some dinner on a tray?”

  Louisa paused, and then shook her head. “No... no. I haven’t any appetite. Give my regards to everyone. I’m sorry not to say hello properly. I will tomorrow.”

  “Of course.” Impulsively Ellen squeezed Louisa’s shoulder lightly on her way out. “You'll get used to it, Louisa,” she said, but the other girl did not reply. This might feel like home to her, but Ellen could see the rooms, their furnishings shabby yet filled with noise and laughter, were strange indeed to Louisa.

  Back in the farmhouse kitchen, Ellen was passed from person to person like a parcel as they examined her and exclaimed in surprised delight how much she’d grown.

  “You must be a foot taller!” Dyle stated and Rose chimed in, smiling,

  “We’ll have to cut down some more dresses for you—although I don’t know how much cutting down we’ll have to do!”

  “I think she looks exactly the same,” Ruthie announced in a loud voice, and Ellen smiled in return.

  “I feel the same,” she confided to the not-so-little girl. “I feel exactly the same when I’m here.”

  Over dinner Ellen caught up on all the island news.

  “The Lymans have had a hard winter,” Rose said as she served the summer’s first strawberry and rhubarb pie, generously doused with fresh cream.

  “You mean Mrs. Lyman?” Ellen asked, swallowing her bite of pie.

  Rose exchanged a quick look with her husband. “Yes, that too, of course, but the pond between our properties flooded from all the rain we had over the spring. The land runs downhill from here to there, and a good five acres was covered in water. Some of his best crops.”

  Ellen’s eyed widened in shocked dismay. “But that’s terrible!”

  “So it is,” Dyle agreed. “But the Lymans have a bit put by. They can survive one poor harvest, and now that Jed is back for good they’ll be all right.”

  “But you’re right, Ellen, poor Maeve Lyman hasn’t been well, either,” Rose said. “She’s always been poorly, as you know, but because of the wet her cough took a turn for the worse, and over Easter we all thought... well...” Rose’s expression clouded and she shook her head. “But she pulled through, although she’s completely bedridden now, and no one knows...”

  “The Lymans have had their fair share of trouble this year, sure enough,” Dyle said somberly, and Ellen felt a sudden twinge of alarm. Why had Lucas never mentioned anything in his letters? They’d always been cheerful, full of news and humor, and yet his mother had been bedridden for most of the year! Jed hadn’t written her of course, yet Ellen still wondered what he’d experienced this last year and how he felt about leaving high school. Was he relieved, or had he come to enjoy going to Glebe? She didn’t know whether she dared ask him.

  “I’ll visit Mrs. Lyman as soon as I can,” she said, and Rose nodded in approval.

  “I’m sure it would do a world of good. Maeve doesn’t see many people these days, although I always come over of a Monday to help with the washing and baking. But still, you’d be a breath of fresh air to her, Ellen.”

  Ellen wasn’t sure about that, but dutifully she took the lantern from its hook by the back door and walked over that very evening. Rose protested she needn’t go that night, but Ellen said she was happy to. Truthfully, she didn’t want to have to take Louisa with her the next day. She didn’t think Louisa would do well in another’s sickroom, and besides, she wasn’t ready to share the Lymans with Louisa, though she knew she would have to soon enough.

  It was peaceful to make her way through the copse of trees that separated the Lymans’ property from the McCaffertys’, and the shadows were soft and welcoming. A large, luminous moon had risen in the sky and cast a pearly glow over the pond that had flooded the previous autumn and left several fields now verdant and fallow, if without the hoped-for crops.

  As she broke through the trees, Ellen saw the welcoming yellow light of the farmhouse kitchen, and a dog, Stripes, Jed’s puppy from last year’s litter, set to barking as she crossed the barnyard.

  The back door opened, and someone peered through the darkness before calling in delight, “Ellen!”

  “Hello, Lucas.” Ellen had just set the lantern on the porch steps when Lucas swept her up into a warm embrace. As her arms closed around him automatically, Ellen was surprised again to feel how his thin, boyish frame had filled out; a year ago Lucas had been a scrawny thirteen year old boy, and now he felt almost like a man. It was most disconcerting.

  “It’s so good to see you,” he said, releasing her and stepping back so they could both examine each other in the yellow light cast by the lantern. Ellen smiled, seeing how familiar Lucas’ hazel eyes and floppy brown hair were, squinting slightly as he always did because he needed spectacles yet never remembered to wear them. “Come into the kitchen. We’ve just finished supper, but there’s cherry pie left over. Mrs. Hepple is keeping us supplied with all manner of pie.”

  “As long as she remembers to take them out of the oven,” Ellen said, recalling her introduction to the cheerful chaos of the McCafferty household, and the absent Mrs. Hepple, nearly two years ago now.

  “It’s true she can be a bit forgetful,” Lucas allowed, and led her inside.

  Within a few minutes they were both seated at the wide table of scrubbed pine, and he’d fetched the pie from the pantry himself and cut two generous slices.

  “Jed’s out in the barn, seeing to the animals,” he said after a moment, and startled, Ellen realized with a guilty flash that she’d been looking around for someone... and it had been Jed.

  “Where’s your da?” she asked, and Lucas shrugged.

  “In the barn too, most like. I was seeing to Ma.”

  “I was sorry to hear she’d taken poorly, Lucas,” Ellen said soberly. “It’s a hard thing.”

  Lucas nodded, his eyes shadowing to a darker, deeper brown. “It is. We didn’t think she’d last the spring.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me in your letters?” Ellen asked. “It must have weighed on your mind, yet you just wrote to me about poetry and plants and the like.” She shook her head, not understanding why he’d keep such a thing from her.

  “It did,” Lucas replied, and there was an understanding glint in his eyes as he added quietly, “but I didn’t want it weighing on yours. I know you’ve borne that burden once already, Ellen.”

  Surprised and touched by his perception, Ellen didn’t speak for a moment. “I may have,” she finally said, “but it doesn’t mean I can’t bear it again, at least in some small way. I know how difficult it is, Lucas. I’m sorry for all of you, and your mother most particularly.”

  “I know you are.” Lucas sighed and pushed his pie around on his plate. “It was hard without Jed here,” he said after a moment. “Harder than I expected. I knew he always did a lot of work, but...” He trailed off, yet Ellen could all too easily fill it in. She’d seen how the Lyman household was set up; Jed worked and Lucas studied, with some bitterness on both sides. With Jed gone, Lucas would have been expected to take up the slack, and Ellen knew he couldn’t have been used to it.

  “Tell me about your plant specimens,” she said. “Have you collected every variety on the island yet, do you think?”

  “It’s difficult to tell. Now that everything has been in bud it’s easier to note the changes. Pa ordered me a big book all the way from Toronto—it’s got illustrated plates of just about every plant or tree you can imagine, and in color too.” He smiled, caught up in his own enthusiasm. “I’m hoping to study biology at Queen’s, you know, in Kingston.”

  “And in the fall you’ll go to Glebe?” Ellen asked, and heard the wistful note in her own voice.

  “Yes, I hope so.” He paused, and Ell
en knew he was thinking about his mother, and the uncertainty of their entire household as long as she was ill. “And what about you, Ellen? Your aunt mentioned you might stay beyond the summer.” Now the wistful note could be heard in Lucas’ voice, and for some reason it made Ellen blush.

  “It’s hard to say...” she began, when the creak of the back door and the heavy tread of booted feet cut her off. She turned, and felt her heart give a funny sort of somersault before beating extra hard at the sight of Jed’s tousled hair and weary expression.

  His expression cleared—blanked, really—for a moment as he caught sight of Ellen, and then he smiled with his usual touch of mockery.

  “Ellen Copley, is that your second piece of pie?”

  Ellen glanced down at her plate that had only a few crumbs. Somehow, in talking to Lucas, she’d managed to eat the large portion he’d laid out for her. “How do you know that?” she demanded, and Jed’s smile grew into a full-fledged grin.

  “I saw Dyle this afternoon and he mentioned there was pie for dinner tonight.”

  “Well,” Ellen said defensively, “you can’t have too much pie.”

  “No,” Jed agreed, “I reckon you can’t.”

  They all fell silent, yet it was a strangely expectant hush that made Ellen’s heart beat all the more. She couldn’t quite tear her expression from Jed, who watched her with that faint, mocking smile on his face, lighting his eyes. He looked the same, and yet different too, taller and broader and more like a man. He would be seventeen come winter.

  After a long moment, when she finally did drag her gaze away, she saw Lucas looking at her in a speculative way that made her want to fidget. She stood up instead.

  “I ought to go pay my respects to your ma,” she said, and with the room still strangely expectant and silent, she hurried out to the relative safety upstairs.

  NINE

  It took Louisa a while to ‘find her feet’ as Dyle said, learning everyone’s names (Ruthie and Sarah kept switching names, trying to confuse her) and getting used to island ways.