The yellow firelight glided across the brass rosette-like heads of the fire-dogs. They seemed to wink knowingly at every flicker. Now and again the two hounds in the barn snarled as an infrequent foot came slouching along the wet road, for it was always raining and blowing. Rain, mist, and wind! These were the elements which watched over the slow, reluctant growth of Pamela’s love for big Jethro.
Sometimes he read a paragraph from the paper to Gainah—about local doings or people. Sometimes he would ask her advice—about a sale of underwood or the fate of a cow. Sometimes he and Pamela would be left alone for a moment, and then they were both shy. Neither of them forgot that this was a time of probation. Who knew? When the rain and wind and mist of next autumn came they might be man and wife.
Autumn grew to winter. She was happy—with a hushed dull happiness that she wished would last forever. No anxieties, no fierce, tearing burst of emotion, gay or sad. She was happy; satisfied with the mild amusements of the simple family connections. They no longer irritated her—these placid, narrow women—slow and heavy, but very useful and harmless. She laughed at Mrs. Clutton’s extravagances, but did not indorse them. She had become very intimate with the dark, sarcastic woman whose husband was abroad.
She had her little excitements—skating parties, small dances, occasionally the visit of a dramatic company to Liddleshorn. In this way winter went. The last snow melted into a puddle; the first flowers of March came. She was delighted with the dazzling white of the arabis. Gainah called it snow-on-the-mountains; but Annie Jayne, who brought her baby round in the mail-cart on sunny mornings, said that “dear mother” had always called it March-pride.
She ran out frequently to look at the thin green spears which begun to bristle in the borders: these were her bulbs. She spent long hours in her new greenhouse, giving Daborn orders. He was retained exclusively for the garden now, at her wish. There wasn’t a weed to be seen, and every bed was raked and cleaned.
As the sun strengthened in the sky Gainah grew more silent than ever. Spring was here, summer on the way, and she had nothing to do. Pamela had taken the keys. The maids went to her for orders. She paid them their wages and gave them each an evening out during the week—an indulgence which until her coming had never been dreamt of.
Nothing to do! Not wanted! In her idle hours Gainah wandered over the rambling house alone, going from room to room, touching things without meaning, taking up and putting down; mumbling vaguely to herself. One morning she put on her shabby cloth cap—an old one of Jethro’s—and went into the garden. It was raining—a soft, warm rain, with the sun behind it.
“Good growing weather,” she said to herself with satisfaction—and then remembered that the garden had been taken from her.
Winter storms had made the borders draggled in spite of Daborn’s labor and Pamela’s enthusiasm. Gainah felt, in a fumbling, wordless way, that this garden was like the devastation of her own life. She carried a little fork; force of habit had made her get it from the tool-shed. Now and then, again from habit, she bent her stiff back to dig out a weed; but there were no weeds.
The stalks of the Michaelmas daisies had been left—by Pamela’s orders, so that the frost might not get down to the roots. Gainah viewed the stiff clumps of brown wood with injury; her rule had been to cut down everything in November. She remembered that she had promised a bit of white daisy to Chalcraft’s “missus” in exchange for a deep purple one with a golden eye—her generosity took the form of barter.