Jalna: Books 1-4: The Building of Jalna / Morning at Jalna / Mary Wakefield / Young Renny (96 page)

Mary passed the two shops and the few houses of the tiny village. The road into it was guarded by two rows of the noblest oaks and pines in the province. Mary looked up into their massive branches and remembered Mrs. Whiteoak’s possessive pride in them. “One would think she owned the earth the way she looks and acts.”

There were the railway tracks to be crossed, the harsh cinders gritting beneath her feet, the high platform to be mounted. She was beginning to be in a panic for fear she would miss the train. The stationmaster looked out of the wicket through steel-rimmed spectacles. Mary asked for a ticked to Montreal.

“Was you goin’ today?”

“Yes. On this morning’s train. Is it late?”

“Late! It’s gone. Ten minutes ago. Didn’t you hear it whistle?”

“Oh — no, I didn’t hear the whistle.”

It must have passed through while she was talking to Doctor Ramsey. She was filled with dismay. She sat down on a seat in the waiting-room, the portmanteau at her feet. For a time she could not decide what to do. If only she had let the doctor drive her to the station, she would now be miles and miles away. I always seem to do the wrong thing, she thought. If there were nineteen right ways and one wrong, I should choose the wrong. From behind the wicket came the steady ticking of the telegraph.

She went out of the station, closing the door softly so that she might not be heard, recrossed the tracks and set out toward the lakeshore road. She remembered that it was only about six miles to Stead, the next village. She would go there, where there was a good hotel, take a room, and leave on the next train for Montreal. She would almost certainly be offered a lift on the way. But the road was unusually quiet. A great load of hay passed her, a wagon from which two timid calves looked out on her, a buggy whose seat was crowded by a fat married couple, and a man in a gig training a trotter for the Fall Fair trotting races. The speed of this vehicle almost took Mary’s breath away, it seemed dangerous on the open road.

Lake gulls drifted above the fields and back over the lake. It was grey green, roughening because a strong wind was rising. It blew the clouds in great battalions, bright and billowing against the blue, till one covered the sun and turned them to threatening purple. Mary was little more than a mile on her way when a shower came slanting down as though it chose her for its special object. Even the thick hemlock branches beneath which she took shelter were not
enough to keep her from getting wet. She looked disconsolately out at the road, stretching long before her. Already she felt tired out. Blisters were forming on her palms. The coil of her hair began to loosen, a hairpin slid under her collar and down her back. The damp earthy smell of the woods came out to meet the smell of the lake.

The shower passed. Once again Mary set out. She had got a pair of gloves from the portmanteau and now the carrying of it was less painful. But it grew heavier and heavier as she plodded on. Her long cloth skirt, wet from the rain, dragged at her knees. Now the sun was out again, the gulls leant in the wind or dropped to ride with assurance on the rowdy green waves.

Surely, surely, Stead was not far off. Mary stopped at a farmhouse by the road to ask how far. Still another mile she was told, and the farmer’s wife asked her if she would come in and have a cup of tea. A pan of buns had just been taken from the oven. The kitchen was hot and the air heavy with the delicious smell of the baking. Mary was glad to sit down by the table and drink a cup of tea and eat a bun, so hot that the butter melted on it. She realized she was faint for food. She had eaten nothing since the picnic with the children. The farmer’s wife seemed glad of her company. Her own mother had come from England. She told her mother’s name and the name of the village she had come from.

Mary had expected to feel refreshed, stronger to face the rest of the walk, but food and drink had made her sleepy. She felt as though the pith had gone out of her. She stumbled as she walked, with not a thought in her head, save to keep walking. Mechanically she stepped aside to let a wagon pass. She had not the wit now to hail the driver and ask him for a lift. The wagon rumbled on, the blond manes of the farm horses tossing in the wind. The driver was an old man, humped up on the seat. Old brute, thought Mary, he might have seen that I was ready to drop. Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She did not trouble to wipe them away. Her mind was again a blank.

She did not see the shining trap and well-groomed horse coming toward her down a side road till it was quite near. Then she wiped her face with her handkerchief and prepared to appeal to
the driver. There was no need. The horse was drawn up sharply by Mary’s side. She looked up into Muriel Craig’s round face, with its cool stare fixed on her.

“Why, Miss Wakefield,” cried Muriel Craig, “To think of meeting you, of all people, trudging along the road so far from home.”

Mary smiled coldly. “I am walking to Stead,” she said.

“Then you must let me give you a lift. I go right past there.”

Mary would have been glad of a lift from the devil himself. She heaved her portmanteau into the trap and clambered in after it. “Thank you,” she murmured.

In a moment the trap was bowling swiftly over the road to the rhythmic cadence of hoofs. Mary sank back into the comfortable seat and gave herself up to her relief.

“I’m glad,” said Muriel Craig, handling the reins with conscious elegance, “to see you with sensible shoes. You simply have to come to it in this country.”

“I brought these with me from England.”

“Did you really? Oh, I can tell that now when I look at them. English shoes are the very best.” She smiled at Mary in a way she never had before. Her smile seemed to embrace Mary in its friendliness.

“You must let me out when we come to Stead,” said Mary. “I can easily walk to the railway station.”

“What train are you taking?”

“The next one to Montreal.”

“Then you’re leaving Jalna?”

“Yes.”

“Just a holiday?”

“No. Permanently. I’m returning to England.”

Muriel Craig drew in the horse to a walk. She sat silent. Mary glanced sideways at the
retroussé
profile, uptilted beneath the down-tilted sailor hat.

Then Muriel Craig spoke. “I guess you’ve had words with someone at Jalna. I suspect it’s Mrs. Whiteoak. I hear she’s very difficult to get on with.”

Mary snatched at this interpretation of her leaving. “Yes, yes, she’s very difficult.”

“I believe she was so overbearing with the other governesses that they could not endure it.”

“I daresay.”

“Have you any position in view?”

“Not exactly. I think you’d better let me out here. I don’t want to take you out of your way.”

“Now, look here. I have something to propose. I do hope you’ll be interested.”

Mary began to understand what people found to like in Muriel Craig. Now that she had dropped her patronizing airs she appeared candid, pleasant, full of dependable common sense.

“This is what I have to propose. I have a friend in New York. Very well off — really rich. She has three tiny children. She would be perfectly delighted to get someone like you to teach them. She must have someone reliable. Then, any time you felt like returning to England, there you would be, right at a seaport. You’d have twice the salary you’d get in Montreal. Now, my dear, you’re not going to be so silly as to refuse. You couldn’t be. This is a heaven-sent opportunity. I’m going to take you straight home with me and you’re going to stay there while I write to my friend.” She put a hand over one of Mary’s and clasped it with comforting warmth. “This friend has been
so
good to me and I’m dying to do her a good turn. As for you — you’d love her and her sweet little children too.”

Mary was so exhausted by lack of sleep, by the long walk, carrying the portmanteau, that a friendly hand held out to her was irresistible. She felt a rush of contrition for her misjudgment of Miss Craig. Her lips trembled as she answered:

“It seems to be the perfect position for me and it’s so kind of you to offer to take me in but I think I should stay at an hotel.”

“Hotel! The very idea. As though I could tolerate such a thing. No, you’re coming straight home with me. There is that big house, with just my father and me in it and a poor little thing like you talking of going to an hotel.” She brought the whip down sharply
on the horse’s flank, clicked her tongue at him, and now they were speeding along the road at a pace that was almost alarming. It was as though Muriel Craig were afraid Mary might change her mind.

Mary was surprised to find Mr. Craig walking across the lawn leaning on his nurse’s arm. He was the sturdiest-looking invalid imaginable and a summer’s tan added to his look of health. He greeted Mary hospitably.

“You are very welcome, Miss Wakefield. Make yourself quite at home … I don’t understand about your being here. Have you left the Whiteoaks?”

His daughter answered for her. “Miss Wakefield is going back to England, Father.”

His particular illness had made him slow to understand. The nurse kept looking at him with a quizzical look, as though of perpetual encouragement.

“Well, well,” he said, “however it is, you look very tired, young lady. You should go and lie down. Get my nurse to make you an eggnog. She’s famous at eggnogs.”

At the earliest possible moment Muriel Craig led Mary upstairs and installed her in a large bedroom. She carried up the portmanteau herself as though it were nothing. She remained for some time giving Mary more alluring descriptions of her friend’s house, her children, her good-heartedness.

“Now,” she said at last, “you must have a good rest while I go and write to my friend. How thankful I am I found you, you poor little thing! You looked such a picture of distress, trailing along the road, lugging that heavy portmanteau.”

Impulsively she came and threw her arms about Mary and kissed her.

“Poor little thing indeed,” thought Mary, “I’m taller than she. But what vitality! She’s like a steam-roller.”

Mary herself longed for nothing but to throw herself down on the bed and let oblivion enfold her. But what a bed! It was covered by a heavy white counterpane, the ponderous pillows shielded by stiffly starched pillow shams with fluted frills. Mary gingerly lifted
one off and stood not knowing what to do with it. And how should she ever arrange the bed to look as it looked now? Oh, for that eggnog which Mr. Craig had advised! Her stomach was touching her backbone. For an idiotic moment she pictured herself as eating the pillow sham in her famine.

She was trembling from fatigue and hunger. She replaced the pillow sham and taking the folded satin quilt form the bed laid it on the floor. She opened a window, for the room was airless and threw herself on the floor, her head pillowed on the quilt. She had thought to fall instantly asleep but a painful throbbing swept through her nerves. She opened her eyes to their widest; a future black as night spread like a desert before them. Alone. Alone! She could not sleep. She was too tired for sleep. Never could she sleep again. The satin quilt, smelling of camphor, suffocated her. She flung it away and lay flat on the carpet. Large greenish medallions on a maroon ground swarmed about her. Like hideous hungry monsters crawling toward her. She pressed her hands to her eyes, shutting them out. That was better. A fresh cool wind made the curtains billow. It blew across her, bringing with it the moist earthy smell of autumn. Mary lay quiet now and presently she dropped into a deep dreamless sleep.

R
ENNY’S VOICE CAME
down to them from the top floor, clear and high, like someone blowing with all his might on a flute. Nicholas observed:

“What an insane song!”

“I heard Hodge singing it,” said Ernest.

“I often have wondered,” mused Sir Edwin, “why the repetition of meaningless words is fascinating.”

“Yes,” agreed Ernest, “in the songs of Shakespeare’s time it was the same. ‘With a hey nonny nonny,’ you know.”

These remarks were like little waves rippling about two glowering rocks. Adeline and Philip, their eyes on each other, said nothing.

Then Nicholas went to Philip and threw an arm about his shoulders. “Come now, old man,” he said, “take this affair sensibly. You’ll be glad later on. I’m sure you will.”

“I suppose you mean that I should sit twiddling my thumbs while the victim of this plot — the girl I love —”

“I know of no plot.”

“There was a plot. Mamma knows there was a plot.”

Adeline demanded, “Was it part of a plot that you should
follow the girl into the orchard — when you knew she was to marry another man next week — and make love to her?”

“That had nothing to do with the plot.”

“It has set all the neighbourhood talking.”

“What do I care for the neighbours? All I care about is to find Mary.”

“Philip, you didn’t trouble your head about Mary till you heard she was going to marry Clive.”

“She was here in my house — by my side. I loved her.”

Augusta put in, “I beg of you to think this over coolly, Philip.”

He turned away, then said over his shoulder, “All your talk is wasted, I can tell you that.”

The sound of wheels came from outside. Ernest, nearest the window, exclaimed, “It’s young Busby! Looking grim.”

Philip strode into the porch. Clive Busby was alighting from his buggy, tying the horse to the ring in the nose of the iron horse’s head by the steps. His face was extraordinarily pale and set.

The rest of the family followed Philip to the hall, with the exception of Sir Edwin who looked out between the curtains while nervously fondling his side-whiskers.

Clive came up the steps like the bearer of bad news.

“Good morning,” he said, in a controlled voice. “May I see Miss Wakefield?”

“She’s not here,” answered Adeline, her eyes holding his. “I had a talk with her she didn’t like and she’s left. I think you should follow her, Clive. The girl’s impulsive and rather foolish but she’ll be all right.”

“Not here!” he repeated, dazed. “Where is she?”