"Why, here is a clear P.W. on the saw!" cried Daisy.
Wilmott got out of the boat and tied it to the landing-stage. He bent his head beside Philip’s.
"Let’s see", he said. Then he added, "I’ll be hanged if your initials aren’t on the hammer!"
"That’s the way with half-breeds", said Philip easily. "Keep the tools. I have finished with them. You’re quite welcome".
"Oh, no", returned Wilmott. "I shall return them when we have finished the work. I couldn’t think of keeping them".
"As you like".
"Oh, what an enchanting little house!" cried Daisy. "Will you show it me?"
As they went in at Wilmott’s invitation they saw Tite rapidly picking up things from here and there and carrying them into the kitchen. Before he disappeared he gave Adeline his gentle smile in which there was a touch of sadness.
Daisy was delighted with the place, which Wilmott had indeed made homelike if in rather an austere fashion. She exclaimed at everything but especially at the oddity of encountering so many books in a log house.
"I love reading", she said. "I wonder if you would lend me a book to read? Have you that new one of Bulwer Lytton’s?"
"I’m afraid not", said Wilmott. "But if you can find anything to please you, do take it".
"Will you help me choose?" she asked Philip. "I should like something you can recommend".
"I’m no great reader", he answered, "but I’ll do what I can".
She and Philip went to the bookshelves. Adeline turned to Wilmott.
"Are you still happy here?" she asked.
"I’m serenely and consciously happy every hour of the day and, I could almost add, of the night. This life just suits me. I could live a hundred years of it without complaint. I lack only one thing".
"And what is that?"
"More frequent glimpses of you. Of course, I have no right to say it but just seeing you, talking to you, gives an added zest to everything I do".
Daisy had taken up an exercise-book and was examining it.
"I am teaching my young Tite to read and write", explained Wilmott. "He is very intelligent".
"What lovely pot-hooks!" exclaimed Daisy. "Look, Captain Whiteoak, what lovely pot-hooks!"
"You must teach him to read my initials, Wilmott", said Philip.
"Wilmott!" repeated Daisy. "Why, I thought your friend’s name was Wilton!"
"No-Wilmott".
"Now here is a coincidence", she cried. "Before I left Montreal I met a Mrs. Wilmott. Let me see, where did I meet her? Oh, yes, it was at a soirée given by the wife of a Montreal banker. This Mrs. Wilmott-I remarked the name because it is not a common one-this Mrs. Wilmott struck me as quite unusual. She seemed a woman with a purpose. She is out here from England-I think to meet her husband".
Wilmott had taken Tite’s copy-book into his hands. He bent his gaze on it in an absent-minded way. Adeline came and looked over his shoulder. She said, in an undertone:
"I shall come over tomorrow morning-soon after breakfast".
"Names are amusing", Philip was saying. "I knew another Vaughan in the Army in India. He was no relation to your uncle, Miss Daisy, but he had the same name. He even looked like him. Did you ever notice that people who look alike have similar voices?"
"Tomorrow morning", whispered Adeline, into the copy-book, "and-don’t worry".
XII. Henrietta
Anxious as Adeline was, she drew in the reins and slackened the pace of the quiet bay horse so that she might look up the drive that led to Jalna. There was no gate as yet. The drive was no more than a rough track. Piles of lumber, heaps of brick and sand disfigured the ground before the house, but there stood the house with its roof firmly on, its five chimneys staunch and tall, waiting for her and Philip! There was a sagacious look about it, as though it were conscious that it had no drab destiny but was to be the home of two people who were beloved by each other and who loved life. The builder promised that in early spring they should move in.
Adeline could scarcely endure the waiting for that day. She had now been five months at Vaughanlands. No people could have put themselves about with a better grace than the Vaughans. Still, two grown-ups, two children and their nurse, were a large addition to the work of the house. Domestic help was cheap enough but untrained and ignorant. All her life Adeline had been waited on. Work got done somehow and never had she troubled her head as to how. In the past months she had often seen Mrs. Vaughan tired out. Yet, when she tried to help her, she did everything wrong and experienced dreadful boredom into the bargain. It took all the nurse’s time to care for the children and to wash and iron their little clothes. She saw to it that it took all her time. Adeline at last appealed to Patsy O’Flynn.
"For the love of God, Patsy-Joe, take hold and help with the housework! For if you can’t make yourself useful I shall have to send you back to Ireland".
"Me make mesilf useful!" he cried, affronted. "If I haven’t, I’d like to know who has! How would your honour have got here, with the babies and the goat and the dog and all, if it hadn’t been for me! ’Tis yersilf has many a time said so and now you throw me uselessness in me teeth and expect me to swallow it!"
"Very well, Patsy-Joe", Adeline said sadly. "I’ll clean the silver and wash the glass and make the beds myself, if you are to talk like that".
"Well, I’ll do what I can", he grumbled, "but ’tis the most small, inconvanient house I iver was in, and the servants the worst".
He did turn in and help with the work and might have been heard saying to the housemaid, "Mind yer manners, ye ill-taught wench. Curtsy and say, ’Please, yer honour,’ whin ye spake to the misthress, or I’ll be the death of ye". The buxom girl took it in good part. Wherever Patsy-Joe went he was a favourite.
The horse’s hooves moved quietly in the deep dust of the road. In spite of early autumn rains the land lay dry as tinder. Even the heavy dews at night could do no more than moisten the parched lips of the plants. But colour was bright on every side. With careless flamboyance the trees ran the bold scale from bronze to fiery red. The fields showed the hot blue of chicory and yellow stubble, the fence corners the crimson sumachs. The purple clusters of elderberries looked ready to drip from the trees in their over-ripeness. Ten thousand crickets filled the lazy air with their metallic music. How much, thought Adeline, they could do with two single notes! One note was grave and one was gay, and with the two they could do anything.
She had slept little last night. It was only by strong curbing of herself that she had remained in bed. She had felt that by springing up and pacing the floor she might find some means of saving Wilmott from discovery by his wife. The aghast look in his eyes had frightened her. What if he were gone when she arrived at his house? He had looked capable of anything at the moment when Daisy had told of the meeting with that woman. But Daisy and Philip had seemed to notice nothing. Wilmott was not a man you would suspect. Not that he seemed without mystery but he appeared to carry it in his heart and not as a physical covering. You wouldn’t think of him as hiding from a woman, thought Adeline. But hiding he was and must be protected. Her love for Philip never wavered but the small, unbridled something in her that would stray loved Wilmott also, with a bold protective love.
His bit of river was as smooth as a blue glass plate and the rushes along its verge, even in their dryness, were too still for whispering. The little new landing-stage shone out clean and white. His fishing tackle lay on it and the flat-bottomed boat was moored beside it. Everything was so still that Adeline had a sense of foreboding as she knocked at the door. There was no answer but she saw the window-blind move and had a glimpse of Tite’s thin dark hand.