James Wilmott came to the house every day. Philip supplied him with the London papers which came regularly. They talked politics by the hour, disagreeing just enough to make the discussions stimulating. If they grew a little heated, Wilmott invariably made his departure, as though he could not trust himself to quarrel.
"He’s a gloomy dog!" Philip would exclaim. "And I sometimes wonder why I like him about, but I do".
"You like him because he has brains", returned Adeline. "He has a very good mind. I wonder that he hasn’t done more with his life".
"He tells me he is hard up. He can’t go on living here. He is going to take up land and farm".
"Heaven help him!"
"It’s what I should like to do".
"Aren’t you happy here, Philip?"
"Yes, but it is more Frenchified than I had expected and there is so much in the way of parties and gossip that we might almost as well have stayed in India. There’s something in me that isn’t satisfied". He thrust his hands into his pockets and strode up and down the room.
"Still, you have a very good time with the officers in the Fort. You have had some splendid fishing. You are going duck shooting and deer shooting in the autumn".
Philip frowned and pushed out his lips.
"Deer shooting!" he exclaimed. "Shooting deer! For a man who has chased the stag on horseback! It’s barbarous!"
"Then don’t do it".
He glared at her. "Well, I’ve got to do something, haven’t I? A chap can’t sit twiddling his thumbs all day".
Adeline suspended her needle and glared back at him. She was making a petticoat for the coming baby. It was of fine white flannel with a design of grapes and their leaves embroidered above its scalloped hem. She was an accomplished needlewoman and nothing in the way of ornament was too much trouble for her. Indeed a simple garment did not seem to her worth the making and it was a blessing her eyes were strong, for she bent over the finest stitching by the hour in candlelight. Now she suspended her needle and remarked:
"The trouble with you is you’re too well. If you were miserable and ill, as I am, you would be glad to sit still".
"You are not miserable and ill", he returned, "or you wouldn’t be, if you did not lace yourself so disgracefully".
"Then you’d like to take me out looking like a bale of hay?"
"I’ll wager your mother never laced so, when she was in the family way".
"She did! No one ever knew when she was going to have a baby".
"No wonder she buried four!"
Adeline hurled the infant’s petticoat to the floor and sprang up. She looked magnificent.
At that moment Marie ushered Wilmott into the room. He threw Adeline an admiring look, took her hand, bent over it and kissed it.
"Upon my word", exclaimed Philip, "you are getting Frenchified!"
"The fashion becomes this room and becomes Mrs. Whiteoak", Wilmott returned, without embarrassment.
"It’s namby-pamby", answered Philip.
"Namby-pamby!" repeated Wilmott, flushing.
"Yes", said Philip sulkily.
Wilmott gave a short laugh. He looked at Adeline.
"I like it", she declared. "Manners can’t be too elegant for me".
"Each country has its own", said Philip. "I am satisfied to leave it at that".
"It is much pleasanter", she said, "to have your hand kissed than to be given a handshake that presses your rings into your fingers till you feel like screaming, as Mr. Brent does".
She picked up her sewing and again seated herself. Wilmott took a stiff-backed chair in a corner. Philip opened the red shutters and put up the window. He looked into the street. The milk-cart, drawn by a donkey, appeared. The brass can flashed in the hot sunshine. Six nuns passed close to the window, their black robes billowing, their grave faces as though carved from wax.
Philip went for his duck shooting and returned in high spirits. The sport had been excellent, the weather perfect. The St. Lawrence, now of a hyacinth blue, swept between its gorgeous banks that were tapestried in brilliant hues by the sharp night frosts of October. Adeline felt extraordinarily well as compared with the period before Augusta’s birth. She walked, she drove, she went to parties and gave parties. The friendship between her and Wilmott strengthened. He had a fine baritone voice and could accompany himself on the piano. Sometimes they sang together and, with him for support, Adeline managed to keep the tune. They would sing the songs she loved, from The Bohemian Girl. She would lean against the piano, looking down into his face while they sang "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls" or "Then you’ll remember me", and wonder what his past had been. He was always reticent concerning it. He often spoke of the necessity of his finding congenial work but made no move to do so. He left the lodgings he had taken and moved to still cheaper ones. Philip and Adeline had a suspicion that his meals were all too slight, yet he preserved his almost disdainful attitude toward food at their abundant board. He talked of purchasing land.
The sudden sharp cold, the squalls of snow that came in November, were a surprise. If November were like this, what would winter be! Philip bought Adeline a handsome sealskin sacque, richly shaded from golden brown to darkest, and of a rare fineness. A great muff accompanied it and, at the French milliner’s, she had a little toque made of the same fur. Philip declared he had never seen her handsomer. Against the background of the sealskin, the colour of her hair and eyes was brightly accented, the scarlet of her lips declared.
For himself, Philip ordered to be made a great-coat lined with mink, and with a collar of mink. A wedge-shaped cap of the same fur was worn at a jaunty angle on his fair head. Adeline could not behold him, thus clothed, without delighted laughter.
"Philip, you do look sweet!" she would exclaim and kiss him on both cheeks in the French manner she had acquired.
They both were proud of Gussie’s appearance. She stepped forth firmly in fur-trimmed boots of diminutive size, a white lamb coat and muff and a bonnet of royal-blue velvet. Marie then would place her in a snow-white sleigh with upward-sweeping runners and push her triumphantly along the steep and slippery streets. They chattered in French when Marie paused to rest.
Wilmott provided himself with no adequate protection against the cold. He must save his capital, he declared. He said he never felt the cold, though he looked half frozen when he appeared at the Whiteoaks’ door, and always went straight to the fire. Sometimes he would bring a newspaper printed in Ontario and read aloud advertisements of land for sale in that province, or accounts of its social and political life.
Philip had engaged the best English doctor in town for Adeline’s confinement, but wilfully, it seemed to him, she was confined a fortnight before the expected time. The doctor had driven in his sleigh to a village twenty miles down the river to attend another accouchement when Adeline’s pains came on. She was sitting with Philip in the drawing-room playing a game of backgammon. It was late afternoon, the curtains were drawn and a fire blazed on the hearth. Boney, on his perch, was conducting a low-toned conversation with himself in Hindu. His breast was pouted, his neck sunk into his shoulders, he kept opening and closing one claw on the perch like sensitive fingers. Adeline gave a cry and put her hand to her side.