"You seem determined to disgrace yourself. You must know that the Vaughans aren’t used to such talk".
She wound a lock of her red hair on her finger. "They will be used to it before I leave", she said.
"You may have to leave sooner than you are prepared for, if you go on like this".
"I am prepared for anything!" she answered hotly.
"Where would you plan to go from here", he returned, "with the roof not yet on our house?"
"I could stay with Mr. Wilmott". She gave him a roguish look.
He laughed. "I believe Wilmott could manage you".
"You little know him", she returned.
"That’s a funny remark", he said.
"Why?"
"It sounds as though you had a peculiar knowledge of him".
"I’m a better judge of character than you".
"You only jump at conclusions, Adeline. You have taken a dislike to this Daisy Vaughan for no reason whatever. For my part, I think she is an interesting creature".
"Of course you do! Just because she made eyes at you".
Philip looked not ill-pleased. "I didn’t see her make eyes", he said.
"Oh, Philip, what a liar you are!" she exclaimed.
Nicholas leaned from his father’s arms to embrace her. Their heads were close together. David Vaughan returned with the sherry. "I hope the ladies won’t remain too long upstairs", he said. "What a nice family group! I think Nicholas has come on well since his dresses were shortened. He appears freer in his movements".
"He gets into more mischief", said Philip.
Nicholas took his mother’s finger into his mouth and bit on it. She suffered the pain because his new tooth must come through.
XI. The Roof
It was wonderful to see the roof begin to spread above the walls. It was music to hear the tap-tap of the carpenters’ hammers as they made secure the shingles, one overlapping the other. The shingles were new and clean and sweet-smelling. Up the slopes of the gables they climbed, and down they crowded to the eaves. Above all rose the five tall chimneys never yet darkened by smoke, awaiting the first fire. Now the house had a meaning, a promise. It rose against the brilliant autumn foliage as something new and tough-fibred to be reckoned with in the landscape. The house was windowless, doorless, in some places floorless, the partitions were incomplete, but, with the roof bending above it, it spoke for the first time. Adeline and Philip would stand, with linked fingers, gazing up at it in admiration. For generations their families had lived in old houses, heavy with traditions of their forebears. Jalna was hers and Philip’s and theirs only.
Robert had gone off to his university. It had been as he had foretold. Daisy had interfered sadly with his enjoyment of his last days at home. Her thin supple figure edged itself into every crevice of companionship. She had something to say on every subject and though she tried, almost too assiduously, to make what she said agreeable, a jarring note, an edged word often crept in. Adeline declared there was malice in everything she said and did. Philip persisted that she was an interesting creature and went out of his way to be pleasant to her, to make up for Adeline’s coolness, he said, but Adeline said it was because Daisy flattered him. If she had been a fragile little thing Adeline could better have endured her, but she was lithe and strong and she imitated everything that Adeline did. If Adeline walked swiftly across the temporary bridge of logs that spanned the stream, Daisy ran across it. She screamed in fright as she ran but she did run. If Adeline penetrated the woods to gather the great glossy blackberries, Daisy pressed just ahead snatching at the best ones. Adeline had a horror of snakes but Daisy showed a morbid liking for them. She would pick up a small one by its tail, to the admiration of the workmen. When they carried home the pretty red vines of the poison ivy, it was Adeline who suffered for it. Daisy was immune.
A large barn was being erected at some distance from the house. Later on Philip would have stables built but at present the under part of the barn was to serve as shelter for horses and cattle.
Adeline and Daisy strolled over to inspect it one afternoon in the Indian summer. The framework of the barn stood as a lofty skeleton against the background of dark-green spruces, balsams and pines, with here and there a group of maples like a conflagration of colour. Piles of lumber lay about, filling the air with the sweet smell of their resin. Great chips and wedges of pine were scattered on the ground, showing a pinkness almost equal to that colour in the sea-shell. Slabs of bark were scattered too, and strands of moss and crushed fern leaves. But hardly did anything die here before a fresh growth pushed up to take its place, or erase its memory, if there had been eyes to notice it. Birds were migrating and now a cloud of swallows had settled on the framework of the barn to rest. It was Sunday and no workmen were about. There was a primeval stillness that was broken only by the myriad twitterings from the swallows’ throats. They sat on the scaffolding not in hundreds but in thousands. They perched wing to wing, as close as they could sit. Their forked tails made a fringe beneath their perch. They changed the skeleton edifice from the colour of freshly hewn wood to bands of darkness. Only a few darted overhead as guides and watchers. When these saw the two young women draw near they made some word or sign, for a slight stir took place among the swallows but they showed no real alarm. There they were, guardians of land and fruit and flower, benign toward man, capable to hold down any insect pest that ever rose, powerful to protect every kind of crop and harvest. Insects were their food. All these thousands of sharp beaks, bright eyes and swift wings, were alive for the destruction of insects.
Adeline snatched up a wedge of pine and threw it up among the birds. Daisy’s predatory laugh rang out and she also began to throw chips at them. The birds bent their heads, looking down in surprise. Then they rose from every scaffold, scantling and smallest perch. They rose in a body, forming themselves into a whirling cloud, making the sound of wind among the trees with their wings. They flew in all directions yet remained within their own system, and that moved southward.
"Don’t go, don’t go!" cried Adeline. She turned in anger to Daisy. "You should not have frightened them! ’Twill bring bad luck to the barn. They had made it their resting-place and now they are going".
"You threw first, Mrs. Whiteoak".
"I only tossed a wee stick among them to see if they would notice it".
"But you went on throwing. You didn’t stop. You were quite violent".
"It was because you excited me. You should remember that I was a girl among a horde of brothers who were always ready to let fly a stick. But you-you were an only child-a little girl alone. You should be gentle".
"I am gentle, Mrs. Whiteoak".
"You were not then! You were showing all your teeth and laughing as you threw the sticks".
"Not one bird was struck".
"But they’re going! They’ll never come back! Look at them".
The swallows had risen high in the air. They looked no more than specks sinking and rising. They were like a floating sediment in the translucent bowl of the sky.
"It is natural for them to go to the South", said Daisy. "I wish I were!"
Adeline raised her arched brows. "Then you aren’t contented here?" she asked.
"What is there here for me?" asked Daisy.
"What do you want?" asked Adeline, surprised.
"Experience. I’m not just a young girl".
"But you have been about a good deal, haven’t you?"
"Always at other people’s beck and call. You don’t know what it is to be poor, Mrs. Whiteoak".
Adeline gave an ironic laugh. "Oh, no-I don’t know what it is to be poor! Let me tell you, I never had two sovereigns to rub together till my great-aunt died and left me her money".