01 The Building of Jalna by Mazo de La Roche

Author:Mazo de La Roche
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: FIC000000, FIC004000
ISBN: 9781550028782
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2009-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

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 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, and 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 workingmen. When they carried home the pretty red vines of the poison ivy, it was Adeline who suffered for it. Daisy was immune.

A spacious barn was being erected at some distance from the house. Later on Philip would have stables built but at present the underpart of the barn was to serve as shelter for horses and cattle. Adeline and Daisy strolled over to inspect it one afternoon in 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.

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