Читать книгу As a Watered Garden - Mary Esther Miller MacGregor - Страница 4

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The old Laird house stood on a hill, where its vine-covered stone face could look out over the valley, its log back to Georgian Bay. It was a landmark in the Laird settlement, and was known throughout the neighbourhood as the Old Home Place. Seated on the front door stone, its new owner could see for miles over rolling farm lands. Great-Grandfather Laird and his two brothers had made the first clearings in the forest along this valley, and their children’s children occupied nearly half the township of Wappitti that bordered Georgian Bay. Good, honest farm folk they were, every Laird woman a famous cook, every Laird man a staunch Liberal, no matter what the issue facing the country.

Islay’s eyes wandered down the valley to the little stone school house, set against its background of stately elms. Her mother had taught there, and along that white road leading out from the town of Carlisle, young Doctor Drummond used to come driving in his smart top buggy. The little Drummonds had been brought up in Carlisle, but the Old Place was their playground too. Memories of childhood holidays came over her with the scent of the lilacs and the vesper sparrow’s song. How had they grown away from it all, Islay wondered. How easy it had been! How hard to find the road back....

She had been back to the Old Place only once—that had been last autumn—when Mack Wallace had written her—a humble, regretful, sort of letter. It had come like a blow! After ten years’ silence he had been able to speak of reconciliation! Ten years of suffering. Ten years of hiding how you felt. That was pride, the thing that kept you going. Ten years! Ten years of anger burned inside her when she read. Like fire! She had chosen her words well, she thought, when she answered. Scorching words spreading like little flames across the page. Next day she was not so sure. She remembered the letter had sounded petulant. She was suddenly very tired. She had an unaccountable longing to see the Old Place again. Like turning back the present to run away from bitterness.

Her mother had done that. Deep within her was the thought that she had always known that she would do it too. Her mother must have been younger then than she was now! It was when the doctor had died. Died suddenly. Mother had come back with the two littlest children, back to the Old Place to ease her sorrow. Great-Aunt Christena had been frying pork and potatoes on that same old kitchen stove the day they came. Grammy was churning in the cool winter kitchen. What a tower of strength Grammy had been! She had sat with mother all afternoon, sometimes reading a comforting promise from her Bible. Grandpa had come in, ‘Old Gentleman Laird’, the neighbours called him, and he had said to mother, very gently, ‘Run away out to the well, poor lass, and pump yourself a drink. There’s strength in the water’. And mother had gone, along down the garden path to the well, gone slowly, holding by the hand a little boy. That had been Pete.

Even so, Islay in her bewilderment and suppressed self-loathing had had a feeling that if she could get out to the Old Home, she, too, might find direction. Grandfather’s well was become a symbol of healing and of strength.

It had been a golden, hazy, autumn day. She had found Great-Aunt Christena alone. ‘Grandfather’s youngest sister, who never married, who didn’t like noise or the children that made noise’, that is how they spoke of her, and that was how Islay had learned to think of her. She was over ninety now, but Islay had found her straight, strong, and proud, as she had been in the old days. Her clearest memory was of her mother, and that she had been the Lady Islay Fraser. She had seemed but moderately pleased to see Islay when she came. But she had shown her all the old photographs, had told again the story of the Lady Islay and the bear, how she had chased the bear up a tree, kept it there until her husband had come home and shot it. How she had then turned to and cooked bear steaks for her children’s supper. Islay had driven out that day, intending to return the same evening. But an early storm had come roaring up the bay. Great-Aunt Christena had actually urged her to stay the night. Had even seemed touched that she should have wanted to come. Islay had slept in the vast feather bed in the chilly spare bedroom. She had drunk again and again from grandfather’s well. She had gone back refreshed.

She had thought she would drive out to see the beautiful Old Home and the lonely old woman again. She would go quite often, she told herself. But the Old Home became like a good and precious memory. Something you kept inside you. She had not gone back. There had been so little time, so many immediate demands. She had remembered at Christmas, and had bought a flowered silk scarf and sent it, with a brief but well-meaning note. Early in the new year Great-Aunt Christena had died. Suddenly. She had not been ill. And she had died quite alone, in the night.

It had been bitterly cold the day Pete drove Islay out to the funeral, weaving through long, deep trenches of snow—white walls scooped out through drifts. She had meant well, she told herself, swallowing self-reproach. She had meant to go back again. She had got something from the Old Home, had taken something back. But she had left something ... something of herself that Great-Aunt Christena had sensed, if not acknowledged. She would have gone back, she told herself in justification. There had been a slender something, an undefined pact, a sympathy....

When Great-Aunt Christena’s will was read the family was astonished to learn that the Old Home Place—house, farm, all Christena’s worldly effects had been left to Islay Drummond. Islay had never thought of this. She had thought of Great-Aunt Christena lonely. She had never thought of her as dying. But the will had not surprised her. She had understood.

She rose now and made her way all around the house, trailing through rank, coarse grass. The old dog followed, trusting but watchful of this newcomer. The Old Home had never been constructed to any plan, Islay thought. It had evolved in response to a family’s requirements, and the history of the Lairds had been built into it.

This long woodshed and summer kitchen, with its sturdy log walls! This had been part of the original pioneer home—the building grandfather had put up for the Lady Islay when the first, temporary log shanty became too cramped for the steadily growing family. Grandfather’s eldest son (that had been her own grandfather) had added the next wing—a low, stone building that they always called the Old House. Very grand it must have looked when grandfather first built it, set up in front of the logs. Now it was dwarfed by the New House that Uncle Robert’s progressive family had induced him into building. The Old House was long, low, lying close to the earth, as though it had grown out of it. But the New House was like Uncle Robert’s family, flaunting and arrogant. Both were constructed of the beautiful Wappitti township stone—good solid blocks hewn out of the hills. ‘Hard heads’, they were called, and they held in their grey surfaces all the colour of the wild flowers of the Wappitti Valley.

Islay opened the door of the New House and went down the cool, bare hall. At the right, a door opened into a long, gloomy parlour. She and Pete had been allowed to enter this holy of holies but rarely, as children. It had been Great-Aunt Christena’s pride, and here it was, just as she had left it. A second generation had induced her to effect certain improvements. The taste of Uncle Robert’s wife and daughters was reflected in the red plush of the sofa, and in the carpet with its huge, very pink roses. Uncle Robert and his family had moved away to the States. A long way away, and they had become quite wealthy. Yet, Islay reflected, when you looked at the red plush and the monstrous welter of roses, all they were and stood for was here, fastened up to look at occasionally with fascinated awe.

The heavy chenille of the curtains, you called them drapes, she remembered, the pattern of the wall paper, the long picture of the Battle of Waterloo that had filled Islay and Pete with vague terror, these were unchanged. She shut the door on this room and continued down the oilcloth-covered hall. Her click-clacking heels started weird echoes sounding through silent spaces. She shivered as she opened the door at the end of the hall and stepped into the Old House.

She was in the large dining-room, used for a kitchen in winter. A shallow step and you found yourself in the inner room, a hushed, withdrawn place with a narrow veranda running along one side. This had been called the Ben. After grandfather’s death, grandmother had used to sit there alone knitting or reading her Bible, or often doing both of these things at once. ‘Grammy’s Ben’, little Pete had called the room, and Grammy’s Ben they had all come to calling it.

Here were grandmother’s treasures—the old spinning wheel that had belonged to the Lady Islay; the tall cupboard with the blue tea-set twinkling behind its glass doors; the old clock above the dresser, ticking time off as it had done twenty years ago. A sudden whirr! Islay started. It was striking out the hour now. Sharp, steady strokes! How was it that made you feel more alone. Cut off in time! Here was the hair wreath Great-Aunt Christena had fashioned, photographs in ornate frames made of Georgian Bay shells—family groups. Those would be Uncle Robert’s daughters, handsome in their long evening dresses; Uncle David in his pulpit robes, this picture had been the joy and pride of Grammy’s heart; here was grandfather shut up in a black walnut frame that held in his flowing beard; the Lady Islay, herself, smiled down out of a leather case, bordered with brocaded velvet. Here were great-uncles aplenty, stalwart men, keen of eye, shaggy of head as though they had just stepped in out of a high wind. Here was mother, in quaint long curls, sleek and tight, and great-aunts graceful in shaped bodices and billowing skirts. Here was everybody. Everybody but Bessie, Islay recollected. Bessie had been great-uncle Peter’s only daughter. Great-Aunt Christena had burned Bessie’s picture up. You never talked about Bessie. Never even said her name. Even when you were very small you knew not to do that.

Islay was glad to find herself outdoors again, wandering vaguely about the neglected garden. Those rooms had not been vacant. Space in there was filled, shaped to insubstantial forms receding into shadows where they lurked to watch you. Silence came alive to feeling, more poignant than speech, secret thoughts locked deep inside some heart.

Something moved softly behind her now. She turned to look. It was the old dog, following close, sniffing at her heels. He had accepted her as his mistress. Now he must get acquainted with her. Ginger was his name, called after the colour of his shaggy, faded coat. Islay looked at him, dubiously. He was Airdale shape and size. His eyes were a soft spaniel. With the children he had shown a nervous playfulness. Like a terrier. He was an epitome of dog, Islay thought, smilingly, and stooped and patted him.

Suddenly he stiffened. Barked sharply. Islay looked apprehensively down the long row of lombard poplars bordering the lane. What if the Mitchells had experienced tire trouble and Jen had decided to return with her riotous family! But Ginger was barking a welcome from the back of the house, and had run to meet the visitor half-way. He was a little, old man padding along the path that led from the next farm along through the pasture field. This would be old Watty Wiseman who worked for Steve, she remembered. He had his place, somewhere in the Laird connection, one of that wide outer ring of second cousins you never quite straightened out. Anyway he belonged to Steve’s branch of the family. He lived in a little house on the corner of Steve’s farm. When he wanted to work, he worked for Steve.

He lifted himself over the fence behind the vegetable garden and padded warily along the path. Small and wiry, he had a pair of blue eyes that looked sharply for flaws. They took in the ‘high-falutin’ ’ car drawn up in the orchard, and now rested bleakly on the ‘flighty get-up’ of this successor to Christena. Watty had this in common with the Laird connection. He thought very little of the surprising will Christena had made.

It was like letting the Old Home Place to an outsider. That was the first injustice. Mary’s stuck-up family always thought themselves above the rest of the clan. Might almost as well have left it to the Chicago Lairds, who were rich as Jews anyway, and hadn’t set a foot in Lairdale these twenty years. Watty’s grievance was impersonal. He had never harboured the slightest hope that old Teenie might leave him any of it. Far too mean for that! he reflected. Anyway she had hated him thoroughly like he hated her, though he had served her after his own fashion throughout many years. But to leave it to a woman! That was the heinous offence. Watty hated women in all capacities. But his hate was deepest when they stepped out of their appointed place. Watty, himself, was a bachelor. His love was deep for the land. A farm was something you cared for, something you watched, something you understood. What did a woman know about a farm! Hadn’t old Teenie almost brought the place to ruin in the years she tried to run it? And now it was passing from the incompetent hands of one woman to the totally inexperienced hands of another woman. Watty was a staunch follower of John Knox. He believed that the monstrous regiment of women spelled ruin.

Now he avoided having to meet her, making steadily for the barn. He paused at the pump for his customary drink. It was a sort of established rite with old Watty, Islay was to find. She was reminded that she needed fresh water. She stepped inside the kitchen, took the old blue pitcher from the shelf and followed him down the orchard path. Old Watty stood peering across the field of young green oats that bordered the orchard.

“Good evening,” she felt shy in spite of her thirty-five years, and her sense of innate superiority, common to all the Drummonds. Like a usurper. “You are Watty, aren’t you?” she held out her hand. She was smiling.

“Evenin’.” His handshake was brief and reluctant. He turned his back to her, pumped himself a second dipper of water and drank.

“Would you mind filling this?” she held out her pitcher. He looked at it ungraciously, then pumped it to overflowing.

“It’s a lovely evening, isn’t it!” Islay persisted.

Old Watty replaced the dipper on its rusty nail, turned, allowed his blue eyes to scan the cloudless sky. “Goin’ to be one o’ the worst storms you ever seen, inside twenty-four hours.” He spoke with satisfaction.

Islay looked incredulous.

“You’ll find the rain’ll likely come in through the roof of the Old Place. This whole place is awful run down, barns and everythin’. Your Aunt Teenie never got anythin’ fixed. Hated spendin’ money.” He looked at her fixedly. “Man, you favour Christena though. Awful like her when she was about your age, steppin’ on to forty.”

“How cold the water is,” said Islay, clasping the pitcher with both her hands. “Grandfather dug this well didn’t he?”

“He did that. Old Gentleman Laird, your grandpa. Hundred and fifty feet! It’s grand water. Kinda quenches your thirst better than that new well over at Steve’s.”

“Grandmother used to say it had something in it that cured sickness. Don’t you remember?”

Watty sat down on the pump platform and took off his straw hat. He was lost. The door of the past was opened to him.

“Mind that?” He looked at her accusingly. “I mind more about her than you ever knew. Yes, she always said it was drinkin’ from this well that kept them all so strong. But folks didn’t ail as much in them old days as they do now, since they got to thinkin’ up germs. Look at your Aunt Christena. And there wasn’t a man in the settlement as strong as your grandfather. And his brother Peter was jist such another. It was what Bessie done that killed your Uncle Peter and made your Aunt Christena hard.”

He was silent for a moment and Islay sat on the well platform beside him.

“And they used to say the well never went dry,” she prompted.

“Eh, man, and it niver did! No sir, not even in the big druth. Man that was the time! No rain for weeks! Up on the ridge, yonder, was burned as red as that there thing you’ve got round your neck. All the cricks was dried up and they usta bring the cattle down from as far as the Tenth, to water them in the bay. You could hear the poor beasts bawlin’ for miles on still nights like this. And every well on this line was bone dry except this one here. Folks came here from all over Wappitti township for water, and your Aunt Teenie usta say it ought to be stopped, or there wouldn’t be a drink o’ water for anybody. But your grandpa’d say, ‘Let them come,’ he’d say, ‘let them come. And when the well dries up we can all go to the bay together,’ he’d say. But man, it niver dried up, though it got awful low. They say it comes from springs away miles down in the earth. I mind the minister that was in Laird Valley church then preached a sermon on it. That was old Doctor Colin Campbell, he married your ma and pa shortly before he passed on. Yes, sir, he preached a sermon about this well never gettin’ dried up. Yes, Old Gentleman Laird was a grand man.”

Old Watty sighed nostalgically. Islay listened. A sense of having inherited something infinitely more precious than lands and houses stole over her; something that still lingered over the Old Home Place like the scent of lilacs and the comfort of the old well.

Wise Watty sprang to his feet, suddenly angry. “Man, them kids’ll never finish the chores if I don’t get back.” He had moved again into the present and carried with him a very present sense of disaster. “Here it’s the middle of the week and nothin’ done.”

Islay looked surprised. She knew it was only Tuesday, but she did not know that this attitude was chronic with old Watty. When he had taken on the self-imposed responsibility for both farms, he had also assumed a special sense of the flight of time and the irresponsibility of people about him.

“You’ve forgotten something,” she called after him, and picked up a basket he had left on the well platform. He half-turned, gestured weakly.

“Aw, it’s somethin’ Minnie would have me bring. A man’s always to be truckin’ somethin’ for weemin.” He snorted derisively.

She watched him making his way back along the path to the pasture fence. He loitered in the vegetable garden behind the house, looked witheringly at the rows of vegetables that Steve had planted for her.

“Ye’ll need to get at them cabbages and weed ’em,” he shouted. “And them radishes needs thinnin’. Man, they look awful bad.”

He was gone. Islay followed as far as the vegetable plot.

Was she responsible for weeds? She had hired Steve to work her farm and surely it included the garden. Early in the spring she had run down on a hurried tour of inspection, and had arranged everything, she thought. Not the vegetables for her table though. Certainly Steve had been very considerate about this, and his wife, Minnie, had made the whole house shining for her arrival. What would she do with all these vegetables? Long neat rows—standing at pale green attention. Regimented. Hers to command. Peas, with their delicate, coiled springs of tendrils; small fern-like carrots; coarse, dark little radish leaves that collected soil grains. Row upon row of small, sturdy plants, each holding high the withered walls of its little house. “Beans!” she cried delightedly. She remembered them. Nine rows! How appropriate! She smiled. Well, Steve couldn’t have known and intended it. Nothing is quite perfect, she reminded herself. Only Pete would have thought of that, and have told her he was an incurable romantic anyway. That he knew it was a little trite, but he couldn’t resist it! And they’d have laughed together.

She remembered about the basket and peeped inside it. Under a cool rhubarb leaf and a paper napkin was a loaf of home-made bread, incredibly light, a jar of fragrant jam, rich crimson, a pitcher of thick yellow cream and a half-dozen big brown eggs! What a welcome to a new tenant! This was Minnie, Steve’s wife. She was always doing something for other people. That was the roof of Steve’s barn she looked at above her orchard trees. The shouts of the children, the bark of a dog, the bawling of new calves and the bleat of little lambs floated across the fields; a pleasant sense of nearness. She hoped that they would all remain beyond her pasture field. She would go over and consult Steve and thank Minnie for her gift and for the shining cleanliness of the house. But she hoped she would not be expected to visit back and forth with any of her neighbours. She wanted to be alone. So she could find out if she could write. So she could forget her old life and start living another.

A sparrow chirped from the orchard fence. The bay shone with the burnished gold of the sun. She moved slowly up the path towards the house. All along the fence that bordered the orchard grew the garden flowers, now running wild, choked in long grass and weeds. They had been planted years ago by hands now far away or still, forever more. The history of the Laird family was written here as well as in the old house, she thought. Down at the far end of the path near the barn were clumps of money musk and ragged robin, survivals of the garden the Lady Islay had planted in the back woods. The yellow rose bush was something she had tended and loved too. Bessie had moved it to the corner of the summer kitchen, the better to see it.

That row of sunflowers and hollyhocks against the fence was grandmother’s and Great-Aunt Christena’s contribution, and now, each year they sowed themselves. Theirs too were the bleeding heart, with its graceful, waxy sprays; the showy red ‘piney’; fragrant clumps of ‘old man’ and patches of sweet william. These clumps of cloudy blue, now still and flag-like in the quiet air, were Bessie’s iris. Bessie had, in fact, planted and tended the entire garden in her day. Islay had a dim, childhood memory of a tall girl with shining hair and bright eyes stooping over the flower beds. There used to be a row of canterbury bells, swinging like delicate little cups on their green stalks, growing along the well path. You called them Bessie’s bells. That was before Bessie’s name was forbidden in the Laird family. That sprawling grey-green clump behind the house, that caught the yellow of the early sun in spring had been Bessie’s willows, too. Islay had a vivid recollection of her fear and wonder when her mother whispered to her and Pete, ‘Hush! They aren’t Bessie’s willows any more. Don’t say so!’

In line with the lilacs, fragrant syringa blossomed already, and other shrubs grew vigorously. Perhaps Aunt Louisa planted them. Islay forgave her the red plush and the pink carpet roses she had planted indoors, in that case.

Suddenly she felt the blue of the iris fading; the long June day was waning, shadows of the lombard poplars stretched long, across the field, a splinter of moon curved against the pale rose sky above Bessie’s willows. She hurried. In the dark of the house she put away the precious basket, made a light supper out of the remains of the picnic sandwiches. A twilight meal. Lighting a fire in the stove to make tea was too difficult. She drank the water from the old well. There was Ginger to feed. Then it was quite dark. A row of kerosene lamps were ranged on the old dresser in the winter kitchen but she was not sure she remembered how they lighted. Tonight she would use the flashlight. She went round the house to the door of Grammy’s Ben. Fire flies winked down in the orchard. Eerie lights streaked along the highway, cars that slipped past, silent and ghost-like. The old barn had become an unfamiliar, dark blot against the fading gold. She groped her way inside. Ginger was close at her heels.

Islay had chosen for herself the one bedroom in the Old House that was on the ground floor. It opened off Grammy’s Ben. It was bare and clean and had a real mattress on the old creaking spool bed. Opposite the doorway the narrow curved stair ascended to the floor above where were stored all the old feather beds, hooked mats and fancy quilts that were Great-Aunt Christena’s special pride. Great-Uncle Peter and grandfather had built that ladder-like stairs, built it straight up cutting the blackness above. Islay undressed quickly. The moon looked in through the orchard trees and laid its light in a pattern of lace on the curving steps. A silver stair. Like the ghostly stairs in De La Mare’s verse. She was the Traveller coming to the empty house. Was there anybody there? Were They listening? On the stairs. Bathed in misty light. The Lady Islay, stately and sad; grandmother; Old Gentleman Laird; her mother. All watching. Reproachful. Again the strange, insistent sound of the silence in the quiet.

She moved about thinking to shake off the spell. Moon madness! Should she lock the doors? Nobody locked their doors in Lairdale. They came with the moon, anyway. You couldn’t blot it out. Couldn’t keep Them out. They slipped in with the soft night air at the low window. She made Ginger a bed. He would rather be outside. But not tonight. She lay down on the old bed, stretching herself to full length. How could she have thought she could do it! Stay here. She lay still, silence pressing in upon her. Smothering her! Afraid to stir. Afraid of the intangible. The unheard. Outside seemed safer. How bright a country night could be. A silver night. Magic!

But the old house had come alive. So it could listen. Listen while They whispered to her. From where she lay she saw out the low doorway and up the ghostly staircase. There on the narrow steps, silent shapes, accusing ... They had been strong to endure these people ... ‘you are weak’, They jeered ... ‘filled with self-pity ... you are Hate and Resentment ... afraid of yourself ... of what you’ve grown into ...’ a strange rhythmic chant, swaying with the light night wind blown up ... swaying into sleep ... sleep that dreamed ... She was grown old and hard. Unforgiving. Exactly like Great-Aunt Christena.