I
When it was first noised around in Zenith that Mrs. Hugh Gilliland was going to stay in the East, and that the house was to be put up for sale, there were few who took the story seriously. But when an item appeared in the Argus, and a sign, bearing the familiar legend—“For Sale: Robt. Bonnick”—was stuck in the lawn facing High Street, there was gossip at once. The families in the town who might conceivably buy it were few. Bob Fleming had the number reduced to six, and would stand straddle-legged at the door of his implement establishment ticking them off on his fingers to anyone who would listen.
“I’ll bet four bits that whoever buys it will be somewhere in them there six that I’ve named,” he would declare oracularly, stowing his hands away again in his pockets.
The McCormicks were mentioned more frequently than anyone else, for it was well known that the lumber business had been good the last few years, and besides, Dora McCormick had often been heard to say that she hankered after just such a place—an oldish place, with shutters on the windows— even though it were only brick-veneered. It was the shutters—and the view, of course—that attracted Dora, for the house faced out of the town on the west slope of the hill, overlooking the “flats,” and on a clear day you could see the low ridge of the Riding Mountains from the verandah.
Harry would have preferred to build a new place, as soon as they could afford it—a good substantial frame house, something like Dennings’, but with the best lumber. For one thing it would be a good advertisement. It would show what could be done if you spent a little extra on really good stuff. And then their own place was pretty well falling to pieces. They had been trying to sell it rather than put the money into it that would be necessary to make it really liveable. The East End was no place to live now, in any case, since the roundhouse was built and railroad men had scattered cottages over the bit of prairie between the English church and the tracks. It was just a matter of deciding where to go. They had been looking at a good many lots, especially in the West End, for Dora insisted on that—she really couldn’t think of living anywhere else. She simply must have a bedroom facing west on the edge of the town, so that she could get up in the morning and see the mountains, the very first thing, while she was dressing. It seemed so silly to be living in a town with a view like that—like the view you got from the Gilliland house, for instance—and not be in a position to enjoy it. She was so anxious to get there—somewhere on the west slope—that she had reconciled herself to the idea of a frame house, provided it had shutters and was painted a dark greenish-grey, something like Ogletree’s, but even darker, if anything.
All this, of course, had been talked about, and when the “For Sale” sign went up a good many people thought of her and said: “Dora McCormick will get her wish now.”
The only question was whether Harry would move quickly enough. He was very deliberate, and had spent several months mulling over plans for the new house, holding off the purchase of a lot until he was certain just what he wanted to do. For once Dora had to admit that the delay was really a godsend. If they had gone ahead in the spring, which is what she had urged, they would have been tied up in the deal by now, and the Gilliland house would have been an impossibility. She could see that it was a blessing, after all, that Harry was slow to move; and had even said to Audrey—“you see what comes of looking before one leaps.”
But if he had been slow about building, it was a different thing to delay snapping up this. There were the Pratts to consider, if no one else. Everyone knew what Ailsa Pratt was like when she got an idea in her head. Harry must certainly look into the thing at once. And then, as to the “present place.” It must be sold, of course, but should it be fixed up a bit to sell? It would be silly to decorate, even though the dining-room and the two back bedrooms did look awful; but the roof would have to be fixed, at least.
“Suppose someone should come in to look at it when it was raining some day,” she exclaimed, in the tone she employed to make people realize how practical she could be when she chose. “And the back balcony. The floor-boards are all warped and sticking up. And the railing will have to be repaired, or renewed altogether, perhaps. It really isn’t safe. You couldn’t take anyone out there; and yet the view is quite nice, you know, from up there—looking toward the church—especially just now, when the gardens are so lovely. And then there’s the plumbing, of course. We really should have done something about it months ago. Don’t you think you’d better get Speers to come right away, dear?”
She talked Harry into feeling they could easily manage it, even though Mrs. Gilliland had put a higher price on the property than most people had expected, and Harry at once got an option on it, moving quickly for once under Dora’s urging. So that within a few days, leaving Audrey at home— for Speers was in the house working—Dora set out for a walk to the “new place,” as she called it already, carrying her purple parasol even a little more daintily than usual, her long well-kept fingers arched delicately on the slender handle.
It was a hot afternoon, but a shower in the morning had laid the sandy dust on the avenue running directly west from their old house to Dufferin Street, which curved with the contour of the hill just before it sloped down to the “flats.”
“We’ve bought the Gilliland place,” she said to Mrs. Denning, who was on her way down town in the dog-cart with the children. Mrs. Denning had seen her coming, walking with slow smooth step under the trees, and looking her best in the long plum-coloured dress. Pulling Tony in near the sidewalk to wait for her at the street-crossing, Mrs. Denning called out: “How ambitious you are, Dora, going walking on a day like this.”
Coming up to the trap with her dimples showing already a few paces off, Dora broke the news to Mrs. Denning. “We have the keys now, so I thought I’d go down and look it all over, my dear. There’ll be so much to be done, and I’m so anxious to get in. You know how I’ve always doted on the place.”
The Rev. Mr. Stone, who was coming out of the rectory as she passed, was delighted to hear of their luck, rubbing his hands over each other and smiling into the shadow under the parasol where her eyes, brilliantly violet in such a light—“dangerous eyes,” he sometimes thought—sparkled with anticipation as she spoke lightly, but possessively, of the new place.
And finally, as she came in sight of the highest gable of the house, rising above the trees that surrounded Langdon’s long bungalow, Mrs. Govey came bouncing along with a bulging satchel in one hand and a bouquet of flowers, wrapped in newspaper, held stiffly out in the other.
“I just know somebody is sick whenever I see you, Mrs. Govey,” Dora exclaimed, holding her sunshade so that the dear old lady could not get too close.
“It’s the little Munroe girl—you know?—the little fair-haired girl who was the snow-queen in the Christmas entertainment.”
And after listening to the recent history of the Munroe household, Dora managed to get in a word or two about the new house, extracting what pleasure she could from Mrs. Govey’s frequent ejaculations of “how splendid”—“how perfectly splendid.”
II
Through the gate she went at last and up the stone walk to the house, the shutters tightly closed and the whole place looking the least bit sinister, but that was simply because it had been unoccupied nearly a year, or perhaps because her last visit had been to old Mr. Gilliland’s funeral. Nevertheless she shivered a little as she swung the door inwards and stepped into the hall. The glare behind her made the rooms look dark and cavernous, the niggardly light filtering through the slats of the shutters adding to the feeling she had that it was all underground.
The staircase winding up in front of her led into deeper darkness, and there was a passage-way under the stairs to the back of the house, the door standing open and revealing a shadowy depth beyond that almost frightened her, although she knew it must be simply the way to the kitchen.
The hollow sound her heels made on the pine floor-boards as she advanced a step or two, bringing her opposite the parlour door, caused a little flutter in her breast. The grey marble of the fireplace, dim in the gloom, looked sepulchral, now that the big picture was gone from above it and the whole room denuded of the fine old furniture that once had made it all so dignified and comfortable.
There was a musty, rotting smell that distressed her, too, and she decided not to explore further until the shutters and windows had been opened and the place swept out. It could all be fixed up in no time, and once the sunlight and air were let in the whole character of the place would change. Apart from the location and the garden and the view, it would really just suit them. She knew how many bedrooms there were, and there were two rooms, at least, in the attic. It was really just ideal.
She went out, locked the door, and wandered down the garden, which sloped deeply over the brow of the hill to a rustic summer-house half-hidden in the trees and overgrown with creeper. Roses were in bloom and climbing nasturtiums, and along the high board fence hollyhocks in full colour. She would have pansies here, she thought, in a bed that had been scratched over by the neighbouring dogs; and there some asters, perhaps. Her mind was filled with plans as she strolled about, and finally, having reserved this deliberately to the last, she moved to the precise spot where the best view was to be obtained—she remembered it was close to a spreading rose-bush, for she had stood a long time there with Wilbur Malone at a garden party last summer, listening to him rhapsodizing about the view, comparing it with Ontario and saying it justified him in staying in the town—he, a poet, who knew Canada from end to end and loved every bit of it, but none better than the ridge on which he had been born, “a good many years ago now,” he had said, thinking how close it was to half a century, “and long before people came along to build a town here and foolishly call it Zenith.”
It was a clear day and the hills—for it was the “sheerest hyperbole,” as Wilbur had said, to speak of them as “mountains”—lay blue in the distance, with the bush surrounding Afton dark below them, and then the lighter green of the ridge as it curves around by Keshawa, with the chimneys of the Indian school just showing—glittering, sometimes, when the sun struck them at a certain time of day—and below the ridge the bush rising up from Hark Valley—the gleaming end of Shallow Lake projecting into the clearing—and then rolling farm land, yellow now with ripening wheat, or black in summer fallow, the fences slanting down to the “flats,” dotted with shacks here and there—and closer still the White Mud River—no more than a brook as it meanders through Zenith—almost completely hidden in the trees at the foot of the hill.
There was certainly no view to compare with it in Manitoba, Dora thought, watching a binder already at work in the fields this side of the valley, and feeling her bosom lift heavily with a slow-drawn breath of yearning toward the peaceful beauty of the scene.
Coming out of the garden and turning up High Street to go the other way home—through the town—she saw Mrs. Joe Banner standing at her gate, gossiping, Dora knew, with a neighbour. The neighbour went on before she could pass and Mrs. Banner, poking unruly strands of grey hair behind her ears, accosted her.
“They say you’ve bought the Gilliland house, Mrs. McCormick,” she said, wrinkling her nose in the glare as she looked up under Dora’s sunshade.
“Well, we have an option on it,” admitted Mrs. McCormick, civilly, pausing in the middle of a stride.
“I’m glad to see you people get it,” chirped Mrs. Banner, “for I was sayin’ to Joe only last night—‘I hope we don’t have them Pratts down here,” I said, “alongside us, you might say.”
Dora was looking beyond Mrs. Banner at the little church she had turned into a boarding house. It was screened, fortunately, from the Gilliland house, by an old grove of pines that had been planted when Dufferin Street was the drive into Procter’s farm. Without the slender, arched windows the building would pass as a high-roofed one-storey cottage, with lean-to additions on one side and at the back, for the tiny bell-tower had blown down years before the Banners moved in, and there was now a decidedly domestic air about the place—chickens strutting in the garden on one side, behind rusted netting, and on the other a fine crop of potatoes as far as the fence.
Dora scarcely listened to Mrs. Banner’s grudge at the Pratts, breaking in as soon as she could with a comment on the Gilliland house that was meant to end the conversation; but the old lady, leaning over the gate to hinder her passing on the narrow sidewalk, exclaimed in a confidential tone: “Joe aint been doin’ much contractin’ lately—his back’s so bad—but when he does he never goes nowhere else for his lumber—that’s honest. ‘I never deals with anybody but Harry McCormick,’ he says, ‘when it comes to lumber. He’s the whitest man in the business,’ he says, ‘between here and Brandon.’ So we’ll be mighty proud to have you livin’ around the corner from us, you might say.”
The afternoon had been curiously disappointing, Dora felt, as she went on, ascending High Street hill and passing the shops. It was the house, of course, looking so gloomy with the shutters closed in the middle of the day. And then she wished it were not so close to High Street. However, there was the Presbyterian parsonage on the corner, and Mrs. Banner wouldn’t always be at her gate when she passed to come into the town.
Unless they were able to get a good payment on their own house it would not be so easy to finance, for it was only these last four years that the business had prospered, and there had been many debts to pay off. But Harry could manage it, somehow, she felt sure, unless something quite unforeseen happened. The children were healthy, thank goodness, and now that Freddie was getting along so well in Fawcett Parker’s office it looked as though they could settle comfortably into middle age—there was no use blinking it—she had passed her fortieth birthday.
What was Audrey doing in front of the house, looking up and down the street, she wondered anxiously as she turned the corner?
And there was Harry joining her. What was he doing home? Something must be wrong. They were waving to her and Audrey was coming at a run. It couldn’t be a fire surely. Speers was there, and surely he could have handled a little blaze if it had started. But what would start it?
“Mr. Speers!” Audrey cried to her, running up and seizing her arm and clinging to it while she recovered her breath.
“What has happened, darling?” Dora demanded, impatiently.
There were boys coming out now from the side of their house, and she noticed that there were heads out of windows on both sides of the street.
“What about Mr. Speers?”
“Oh, mother!” the girl sobbed, trying to check her tears. “Mr. Speers went out on the balcony—and the railing gave way. He fell over—and—oh, mother!”
“Has he hurt himself badly?”
“His head was all twisted underneath him—oh!—and the doctor said— his neck—his neck’s broken.”
“Oh, Audrey! Surely—surely not.”
“Yes, mother, they’ve taken ——”
But by this time Harry had reached them. With agonized eyes she peered into his face. “Surely he isn’t dead, Harry?”
He took her other arm and held it tightly. “Yes,” he said.
“My! My, my!” Dora sighed. “But how, Harry? How could he—falling that little distance?”
“The railing gave way—he fell backwards and landed—never mind. I mean, never mind asking. But he’s dead.”
They went into the house and she sank, half-swooning, into a deep chair.
III
Harry looked very dismal when he came home from the funeral a few days later. “How old he looks,” Dora thought as she watched him through the window coming up the walk. He was treading slowly, scratching the side of his face, a sure sign, she knew, that he was getting something into words in his mind so that he could start at the beginning of it as soon as he got into the house.
The funeral had been especially tragic. It was known already that Speers had no insurance, his savings amounted to nothing at all, and the widow, left with her four children, was living in a rented house.
Dora’s finely-chiselled nostrils drew up quickly in a long, agonized breath as she listened to the woman’s plight. “It’s just terrible, Harry,” she murmured through bent knuckles pressed tightly against her mouth. “I’m glad you’re on the council, dear,” she added, a moment later, swinging her feet off the chesterfield and sitting up. “You will be able to see that they’re looked after properly.”
“Yes,” Harry said, opening his mouth very wide and rubbing the hollow in his cheek. “Yes. That’s true.”
It was clear that he hadn’t thought of it. “I was wondering ——” he began, absentmindedly, but got no further.
“What were you wondering, dear?”
“Well, I thought … I was thinking coming home … it’s a deuced sad mess, you know … I was wondering if, perhaps, we should do something. I don’t know. The thing happened here—and—well, you know how you feel. She was there, you know—and the youngsters. Pretty sad, Dora. Pretty terrible.”
Dora looked at him carefully, at the top of his greying head and his shoulders, for he had bent forward, bringing out his thoughts painfully, his eyes fixed on the floor.
“Do you think it would be wise?” asked Dora, sagely.
“What do you mean—wise?”
“Wouldn’t it look as though we felt some responsibility for the accident—felt liable in some way. And wouldn’t that, perhaps, encourage the woman to—I don’t know what sort of woman she is, of course—but mightn’t it suggest——?”
Harry lifted his head and looked over her shoulder through the window. “She’ll have a lawyer who’ll suggest that to her quick enough—if you can recover damages—I don’t know whether you can—for an accident of this sort.”
“Oh, it can’t be possible, Harry. It isn’t even as though he had been working when it happened. He had no business to be out there, if it comes to that. He was really just killing time—gazing around. It was his own time— not ours—when it happened.”
“But it was on our property.”
Dora folded her arms behind her and leaned back against them. “But, really, Harry, don’t think I’m hard about it—I’m just trying to think of how it will look to a judge. The man really had no business to be out there. You couldn’t call it trespassing, of course, but—you see what I mean—I can’t see how we can be held responsible.”
“Perhaps not. Although ——” He brought his heels together, and then his toes. “The railing being defective ——”
“Surely that’s our business, dear.” Dora suddenly sat up very straight. “Our own household knew it wasn’t safe. If there had been any necessity for him to go out there we would have warned him—even Audrey would have warned him, if she’d known.”
“I understand all that,” Harry admitted. “But—for one thing—the door was open—wide open. Audrey says so.”
“Certainly. It was a hot day, you remember. Surely we can have some ventilation.”
“Oh yes.”
“What amount had you in mind?” Dora asked abruptly, but he was still a long way from deciding on that. He had simply been wondering. If it had happened at another time—last year, say—they would have felt freer. He wouldn’t have hesitated. But with this obligation on their home—the Gilliland property—they would be badly tied up. Dora agreed, emphatically, her thoughts reaching eagerly into the immediate future—to the occupancy of the new house. She insisted that the plight of the Speers was a matter for the council. “A thoroughly logical case for town relief,” she declared. “Much more deserving than a good many who get it.”
But the council, when it met a few days later, was in a mood to grant only temporary relief, for a lawyer had already advised Mrs. Speers that she could claim compensation from the McCormicks. The law was quite clear. A suit, indeed, had been entered, and the council postponed any further consideration of the case until it could come to court. The suit was for fifteen thousand dollars.
When she heard of it, Dora hardened her eyes, and refused to listen to Harry’s suggestion that he should see Mrs. Speers and try to settle the thing out of court for a reasonable sum.
“My dear,” she exclaimed, eyeing him coldly, “if you did you would immediately convey the impression that we feel responsible, and I must insist, dear, that we do not feel responsible. Everybody knows that we are greatly distressed—and if the action couldn’t be misconstrued we would have done something—we discussed it—right after the funeral. But now— we must fight it—even if it is distasteful. We must bring a lawyer in from Winnipeg, if necessary. I don’t blame the poor woman. Some lawyer has put her up to it—Gower, I suppose—it sounds just like him. Goodness! Fifteen thousand dollars! Why, it’s ridiculous! It would break us.”
“Very nearly,” admitted Harry, ruefully.
“It would put us back five years—at the very least.”
“Yes. Just about.”
IV
Dora simply could not believe her ears. She came out of the court-room in a daze, gripping Harry’s arm for support, but holding herself erect and looking past the faces that crowded the steps with the saddened, sympathetic expression that she had managed to maintain throughout the trial.
Ten thousand dollars! It was simply incredible. They might just as well have given judgment for the fifteen. It couldn’t be paid. It would mean mortgaging everything all over again. It would be like those three years running when the crops were bad.
She looked at Harry and found she could hardly see his pale face, set in a grim expression—was it a sort of smile?—could he suddenly be cynical, after all these years?—but she could not see him clearly—there was a film over her eyes. He was looking straight ahead.
“Can you believe it, Harry?” she bent near him to whisper.
He did not flutter an eyelid, but a tiny muscle jumped in a quick tremor along his jaw.
Somebody spoke to her, but it was like a voice heard in a dream, and she moved along at Harry’s side, as though floating.
Neither of them spoke again until they reached home. She had thought to ask him if it would be possible to appeal, but she could see herself it was useless. The law was perfectly clear—precedent after precedent had been read out.
She stopped in the hall, waited for him to close the door, and stood facing him, eyeing him, pouring her bitterness at him, standing there together, silent, in the house she had come to hate.
He dropped his eyes and would have moved past her into the parlour, but she put both hands to her hat, feeling for the heads of the hat-pins, and her bent elbows barred the way.
“Well—well,” he spoke at last, for her whole manner demanded it. “It’s no use. I haven’t hoped for anything else. Foss told me weeks ago it was useless.” He fidgeted with his tie and tightened it with a jerk. “There it is.”
She smiled cruelly at him and brought her hands down with the hat in them, her fingers gripping the brim like talons. He went past her into the parlour and kicked a stool nearer the fireplace. “What the devil!” he said, under his breath.
She came in, swinging the hat as though it were a sharp disc that could cut things in two. Dropping into a chair she looked hard at the cuffs of his trousers.
“The option,” she said, suddenly, flicking a knife-like glance across his face.
“It expired yesterday,” he barked at her from a dry throat.
V
It was fall before she could bring herself to go past the place. She had been along High Street, shopping, and coming out of Blair’s she looked that way, down the hill. The pine grove was just visible over the roof of the livery barn. She thought she would walk around that way home. It was cool. She would look at the place again, now that she had given it up and put it out of her mind.
Walking briskly past the store-fronts, her purse wedged under her elbow, she sent her glance travelling ahead.
“How unlucky,” she said to herself, for when she had passed the stable, there was Mrs. Banner coming towards her with her daughter, Ethel, the two of them dressed in their best things, their heads held high on their way across town to a Methodist tea.
“Well, well, Mrs. McCormick,” the old lady said, as they came alongside. “Aint it funny you should come along, and me thinking about you so hard only an hour ago.”
Dora gave a quick, surprised acknowledgement that Mrs. Banner was there.
“Well, come to think of it, it was more than an hour since the first load come,” she heard indistinctly, for a wagon was rattling past in the ruts. “You knew, I s’pose.”
What on earth was the woman talking about, Dora thought, looking at the cheap brooch aslant on Mrs. Banner’s bosom.
A hand, suddenly, released from Ethel’s arm, was flung back in the direction of the house around the corner. “Didn’t you know it was sold?”
Dora shook her head gravely.
“You didn’t!” Mrs. Banner almost shouted. “You didn’t know it was— d’you mean to say, Mrs. McCormick, you don’t know who bought it?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Gracious, Mrs. McCormick,” the woman exclaimed, her eyes swerving into their corners at her daughter, while her mouth remained open in amazement.
Dora could only look dumbly at her.
“Mrs. Speers!” The words made a hissing sound in the air between them.
“Mrs. Speers!” Dora heard herself echoing.
“An’ you didn’t know! Why, she’s movin’ in. She’s settin’ up in opposition to us, just around the corner. She’s bought it to run as a boarding house. There you are, look. There’s another van comin’, now, Ethel. Why, she’s cleaned out old Middleton of all the second-hand furniture he’s got. Gracious! An’ you didn’t know.”
“No,” said Dora, moving forward again a step, and looking sympathetically back. “But it’s hardly surprising, is it? I hope it won’t affect your—your business, Mrs. Banner.”
Turning the corner she saw the van drawn up at the gate. Two men were unloading beds. She couldn’t bring herself to look closely until she had passed by on the opposite side. Slowly she cast an oblique glance over her shoulder, and saw immediately a wooden sign fastened under one of the shuttered windows—it had been hidden by the van before—which read: “The Gilliland House—Board and Rooms.”
She dragged her glance away, thinking of the garden, the sloping hill, the distant view—thinking of the men who would soon be lodging there—men from the sash-and-door factory and the railroads—men in overalls—men!
It was still incredible. It was more incredible than ever.
Her eyes closed tightly, and she said to herself, almost aloud, drawing her lips back from her teeth: “The Gilliland House!”