Wild, Wild Heart/Chapter 11

Throughout her interview with Mr. Ford, the gray-haired kindly solicitor to whom Holmes had sent her, Ann had managed to preserve what Ford would have called a “stiff upper lip.”

They discussed the case, and the steps she must take to defend the action. Then she rose to go. Her face was very white, and to Ford she suddenly appeared an extraordinarily pathetic little figure.

“It’s a damned shame,” he said, all at once losing his matter-of-fact, professional manner, and becoming entirely human. “Why, you’re only a kid. I wonder what I’d have felt like, if this had happened to my daughter Rhoda when she was your age.”

Ann’s “stiff upper lip” abruptly crumpled, and she burst into tears. And they were not quiet, ladylike and undisfiguring tears. She covered her twisted face with her handkerchief, and walked to the window so that the man behind her could not see the havoc he had wrought. She was sobbing like a child, and she was bitterly ashamed of the exhibition she was making of herself. Except for those few tears she had dropped on to the page of Vera’s letter, she had not cried until this moment. Well, she was making up for it now!

​Ford, a trifle appalled at the result of his warmly-expressed sympathy, stood gazing at her heaving shoulders, and listening to the queerly touching little noises she was making.

“I’m very sorry,” she managed to gasp out at last. “I didn’t mean to cry—I don’t know why I’m making such a fool of myself. I’d have been all right if you hadn’t spoken so...so kindly. And now I...I can’t stop.”

“Well, don’t,” said Ford. “Have it out. Forget I’m here.”

She still stood at the window with her back turned to him, sobbing, but struggling for self-control.

“Do you know,” he went on, “I often think that nature’s been kinder to women than to men in this respect. There have been many moments in my life when I’ve wished that tears would come to me. They’re an outlet, and a relief. You cry on as long as you like. No one will come into this room, and you’re not disturbing me. I shan’t take any more notice of you than if you were the office boy asking for a day off to go to his grandmother’s funeral.”

And so Ann cried on for a few moments—her eyes getting redder and her pretty face more swollen. But gradually the sobbing ceased.

“What about a cup of tea? I could get one in half a minute—or a whisky and soda?”

Ann shook her head, smiling—a little, pathetic twisted smile—as she turned towards him.

“I’m all right now. Quite all right—really I am. You see, I’ve just started a little hat shop here, and all this...this talk may ruin my business. And if I lose my capital, I can’t get a job again as governess—no one would have me after...after this.”

​“Don’t you believe your business will suffer. You’ll get a good advertisement out of the gossip—if there is any.”

But though he spoke with great confidence, he was not really quite convinced that he was speaking the truth.

“Besides, who is likely to know about it except ourselves, until the case comes on? And I don’t believe that Mrs. Holmes will ever bring it into Court.”

“Every one seems to know about it already,” returned Ann. “Some one in Mr. Miller’s office has spread the news.”

“I’d soon fire a clerk of mine who talked outside the office,” said Ford, grimly.

In his heart he was cursing Vera, and resolving that he’d leave no stone unturned to help this poor persecuted child. But he had learnt that it was wiser not to give expression to his sympathy; so he continued to talk quite unemotionally about impersonal matters, while Ann wiped her eyes, and dabbed at her nose with her sodden handkerchief.

“I’ll get Mary to call and see her,” he was thinking. “Mary’ll know what to do better than I can. And if Mary can’t stop tongues wagging in Wairiri then no one can.” He had unlimited, and not misplaced, confidence in the wisdom of his wife.

At last Ann felt that she was presentable enough to appear in public, and saying good-by to the lawyer, she walked back to her own block of buildings, where Mrs. Hill sat in the hat shop waiting for her return.

The day passed without a single customer entering the showroom. Was this the beginning of the end, Ann wondered? Had the rumored scandal already ​destroyed her chances of success in business? Or was it merely the not altogether unexpected slackness after the rush of buyers for the race meetings? Time alone would prove that. At any rate, she would not anticipate defeat, and so she and Mrs. Hill worked hard all the afternoon, and ignored the dearth of purchasers.

Her assistant had heard nothing of the impending divorce case, of that Ann felt convinced. And it was a relief to her to know that there was one friend at least who could still eye her without suspicion. “Friend” was a word she had grown accustomed to using now in thinking of Mrs. Hill, her loyal and hard-working co-adjutor. And she wondered, with a little sinking at her heart, if Mrs. Hill would remain so attached to her, and to her interests, if once the seeds of distrust as to her employer’s character were sown in her honest heart. Frailty in members of their own sex seemed to be the unforgivable sin in most women’s eyes. But perhaps Mrs. Hill might give her the benefit of the doubt. After all Mr. Ford hadn’t believed the story. But then he’d known Dick Holmes for years, and wouldn’t be likely to listen to any discreditable rumor concerning him. That made a difference.

Well, Ann could only hope for the best. Surely every one wouldn’t take the same view as Mrs. Pratt! Rodney, she knew, did not doubt the truth of what she had told him, but he was insanely jealous, and resented the mere fact of Holmes’s affectionate regard for her. How could that bitter jealousy exist in his heart when he was still so determined not to ask her to be his wife? That was a problem she could not solve. It was part and parcel of the young drover’s ​stubborn self-willed character, and she must accept it as such. However, it was all of no consequence now. Her connection with Marsh, such as it had been, was at an end. They would not meet again, except by chance, and then only as mere acquaintances. And she would not allow her thoughts to turn again in his direction. Of that she was resolved.

It was after eleven o’clock, the next morning, when a middle-aged woman came into the shop. This was the first customer Ann had seen for two days, and she rose from the chair where she had been sitting working, and came forward. Today, being Saturday, Mrs. Hill was not in attendance, and Ann was quite alone.

“Can I show you anything?” she asked.

“I’m afraid all your pretty hats are rather too young, and gay for me,” returned the newcomer, looking round, “and I’m so old-fashioned that I’m not even shingled. No one seems to make hats for old women, nowadays.”

“But no women are old nowadays.”

The customer laughed. She had a very charming laugh. Quite as young and gay as any of the hats, thought Ann.

“Well, I’m fifty-eight. I don’t want to wear the same sort of hat as my granddaughter.”

“Why not, if it suits you?”

“It wouldn’t.”

“Well, try this one on, and see.”

She produced a plain black hat which, though neat and smart, might be worn by a girl, or a woman of more advanced age. The customer eyed it doubtfully.

​“It might do. It’s certainly better than the one my daughter persuaded me to buy a week or two ago in Auckland. She said I looked sixteen in it. I thought I looked an old fool.”

Ann laughed.

“You couldn’t look that, whatever you put on. But I shouldn’t like you to go out of my shop wearing something that didn’t suit you.”

“Why not, if I pay for it?”

“It’s a bad advertisement for me. I’ve only had one failure of that sort. It was my first sale!”

“What happened?”

Ann told the story of the old Maori woman, and her new customer laughed again. As they continued to chat while trying on various hats, Ann wondered who she was. She apparently knew most of Ann’s clients very well, but she had not been at the Turf Club Race Meeting, and had never been into the shop before. At last a hat was decided upon which Ann and the purchaser decided was both suitable and becoming. Then she told Ann her name.

“I’m Mrs. Ford,” she said. “I wanted to meet you because my husband spoke to me about you last night.”

She did not tell Ann what had actually transpired between them. Ford had said:

“Go and see the poor child for yourself. Look at her honest eyes, and tell me if you think she’s the sort of girl who’s likely to be guilty of a sordid intrigue of this sort. I’ll take my oath she isn’t, but you’ve often told me your judgment’s better than mine with regard to women.”

“Of course it is. You’re no exception to the rule, my dear old stupid. Every man says good-by to his ​critical faculty the moment he looks into a young and pretty face and meets a pair of sweet appealing eyes.”

“You’re basing that remark on an event that happened nearly forty years ago, I suppose.”

“Well, at least you’re admitting that I was pretty, and had sweet appealing eyes in those days.”

And after that they had both laughed, and Mrs. Ford had agreed to call and inspect Ann.

Now she went on aloud:

“Where are you living?”

Ann pointed to the door at the back of the show-room.

“I have a room there.”

“Come to us for the week-end, will you? We’re alone—my husband and I at present. My grand-daughter has been down from the country for the races, but she went home yesterday. And next week Rhoda—my daughter—is bringing her two youngest boys down to see the dentist. Come and spend tonight and tomorrow night with us, will you? If it isn’t too dull for you with two old people.”

“I’m not accustomed to anything very gay.”

“Oh, I heard that you made a great success at the races. One hears everything very quickly in Wairiri, you know. We haven’t anything else to do but to endeavor to secure servants and garden, and chat about our neighbors. Will you come?”

“I’d love to,” said Ann, conscious of a little lump in her throat.

“Very well, that’s settled, then. Do you keep the shop open on Saturday afternoon?”

“Yes. Thursday is early closing day.”

“Very well, I’ll call for you in the car about five-thirty. Will that be all right?”

​“Quite,” said Ann. She paused for a moment to be quite sure that her voice was steady. “I’m not going to try and thank you, Mrs. Ford, but I’m far more grateful to you than you’ll ever realize because I know the...the kindness that has prompted your invitation.”

“No kindness at all, my dear,” returned Mrs. Ford in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. “I shouldn’t ask you if I didn’t want you. Do you play bridge?”

“Yes,” answered Ann.

“Fond of it? Would you like a game tonight?”

“Very much indeed, if you would.”

“Oh, I’m always ready for a game. We’re not really top-notchers, my husband and I, but we both play a fair game, and only sixpence a hundred. Hope you’re not too brilliant.”

Ann shook her head.

“I’m only moderately good.”

“I’ll secure a fourth, and I’ll collect the hat when I collect you. Good-by.”

With a swift smile she nodded, and was gone.

The fourth for bridge—Robin Ashby—was a plain young clerk from Ford’s office. But he was amusing and good-humored, and evidently a great favorite with his host and hostess. He came on to dinner from the tennis courts, where he had been playing a match, and was still in his flannels.

“I ought to have gone back to change,” he remarked, eyeing Ann in her white frock.

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Ford. “I don’t want my cook to give notice because the dinner’s kept waiting. I’ve ​been without any one in the kitchen for a month, and I hate doing the cooking.”

“I only had time to get a shower at the club—the last set lasted so long.”

“Well, you’re clean, at any rate,” remarked Mrs. Ford, cheerfully. “Come along—let’s have dinner and then attack the serious work of the evening.”

The Fords’ house was neither very large nor very elaborately furnished. It was comfortable and homelike—a somewhat old-fashioned two-storied wooden building surrounded by a big garden and wide paddocks. But to Ann it appeared to be something of a patadise on earth. Here, at least, was peace and goodwill! And though the house might lay no claim to being either picturesque or artistic, it had a certain shabby dignity—the atmosphere of a home where happiness has been shared—that was attractive and restful. The garden was beautiful—shady trees, big rose-beds, masses of pink and blue and mauve hydrangea, tall lemon bushes with yellow fruit shining among the glossy green leaves, and wide herbaceous borders in which high blue delphiniums and sweet peas backed the lower growing ranks of white, and purple, and pink, and yellow flowers.

On the veranda, after dinner, they sat in deck-chairs to have their coffee—smoking, to keep the mosquitoes at bay—and afterwards adjourned to the drawing-room for bridge.

It was a quiet, but very happy week-end for Ann, and it gave her courage to face the coming week of struggle and disappointment. For she was quite convinced now that her business would peter out, and she would be left without resources at the end of six months. But she resolved to adopt as her motto “Suf​ficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” and not to worry about the future more than she could help.

For the first three days of the following week no one entered her shop. On the fourth—which was early closing day—she was sitting alone—still working, for she had refused as yet to give up hope—when Mrs. Ford’s car stopped in the street outside, and in walked Mrs. Ford herself, her daughter Rhoda, and Rhoda’s two sons.

“This is my daughter, Mrs. Hemingway,” said Mrs. Ford, “and these are the twins, Peter and Paul, and if you can tell t’other from which after they’ve got thoroughly mixed, you’ll be cleverer than I am.”

The little boys, who were seven years old, took off their caps and gravely shook hands; and then proceeded to make a tour of the room, examining the hats with great interest.

“Buy this one, Mum,” said Peter (or it might have been Paul).

“No, this,” interjected his twin, “This one’s got lovely chrysantherums on it.”

“Those aren’t chrysantherums.”

“Yes, they are.”

“No, they aren’t, They’re bits of pink rag tied in a bunch.”

“Well, they’re meant to be chrysantherums.”

A lively argument ensued. But neither Mrs. Ford nor Mrs. Hemingway paid the least attention to the boys. They also were busy examining the hats. Mrs. Hemingway, it appeared, wanted two, and Ann ​seemed to have the very two she wanted. Before they all left the shop Mrs. Ford turned to Ann.

“We’re taking the boys over to our shack on the Puawa beach, to bathe, this afternoon. What about joining us? You’ll be free, won’t you, if your room is closed?”

“I’ve arranged to call for Biddy and Jo at Mrs. Marley’s.”

“Bring them along teo. Rhoda’s driving us in her Buick. We’ll all pack in quite easily. And we’re taking tea, and will have it at the shack.”

“Do come,” said Mrs. Hemingway, “if it wouldn’t bore you.”

She was a very pleasant-faced woman in her late thirties. She had a daughter of eighteen, Ann knew. Rhoda had evidently followed her mother’s example, and married early.

Ann assured them that she certainly wouldn’t be bored, and that she would love to join them; and it was arranged that they should pick up the little girls at Mrs. Marley’s, and then call for Ann at the shop shortly after two o’clock.

She had seen Biddy and Jo at various times since the day they had traveled down from Tirau, and had once or twice taken them to a teashop in the main street, and over to the bathing-sheds on the town beach, less than a mile away, for a swim. But she had been so rushed with work that she had been able to spare them very little time. Now, she looked forward to spending the whole afternoon with them, and with these new friends.

Puawa beach was some distance from Wairiri. It was beyond a big hill and long promontory, which jutted out from the mouth of the river on the opposite ​side to the town. You crossed the bridge, and took the road leading to “The Coast”—the road which Ann had traversed in the service car when she first set out for Tirau; and again when she drove with Holmes on that terrible journey down from the station, nearly six weeks previously.

The hills, now yellow and sun-dried, were all around them as the car left the town behind; and beyond the wire fences that bordered the road horses and cattle grazed contentedly in the hot sunshine, or stood under the shade of the willows, switching at the flies with their tails. There were a few small wooden houses to be seen; but as the car drew farther away from Wairiri the houses became fewer and farther between. Larks sang overhead, a warm wind swayed the briars and the white flowered manuka on the hillside, and the dust lay thick on the roadway. It rose in a cloud at some distance ahead, where a big flock of sheep were moving slowly towards the freezing works on the bank of the river, under the lea of the hill.

In a few moments the car was amongst the sheep, and had slowed down. Dogs were barking to clear a passage-way for them—two mounted men were whistling. And then Ann looked up suddenly, to see Rodney Marsh riding close beside her. He stared at her for a moment, then lifted his hat, looked away, and called to his dogs. After a little delay the car was clear of the sheep, and Ann was thankful that neither Biddy nor Jo had noticed that Rodney was with the mob.

Mrs. Ford had noticed him, however.

“Did you see that handsome young drover?” she asked her daughter. “He’s a new client of Dad’s. He won quite a big sum of money at the Turf Club ​Races, painted the town red that night, and next day pulled off a marvelous deal in cattle. He’s made quite a good thing out of it. Apparently he’s going in for stock dealing as well as droving. Dad says he’d make a fine stock-buyer if he wasn’t quite so wild. He’s got any amount of ability. Dad likes him.”

“He’s very good looking,” said Mrs. Hemingway; and dismissing the drover from the conversation began to talk about her new car.

They reached the two-roomed shack—one of a row of small summer cottages facing the long sweep of the ocean beach—and undressing within the house, ran down the slope of the white, grass-tufted sandhills to the foaming line of breakers on the beach. They all bathed. Mrs. Ford, apparently forgetting that she had described herself as an old woman, plunged into the surf, and battled with the tumbling waves with quite as keen an enjoyment as Ann or her daughter, or any of the children.

And after they were out and dressed once more, they sat in the cretonne-covered chairs in the front room of the shack—whose wide doors opened to the panorama of blue sea, green hills, and racing surf—and ate an enormous meal of cakes and sandwiches, and drank large cups of steaming tea. Ann couldn’t help enjoying the day, but she wished she had not seen Rodney. Or was she glad that she had seen him? That she knew he was not far away? Impatiently she dismissed that question. True to her resolve, she had been doing her best not to think of him—to call up another train of thought directly she found the memory of his face, his voice returning. But today she couldn’t help seeing the picture of him stretched out on the fern of the hillside, listening to her as she read ​“Daisy,” while the little girls played on the beach below them, and the gulls wheeled and cried above the line of surf that fringed the lovely bay.

She remembered his clear brown eyes looking up at her as she read that—and something in his look—something intent and yet startled. Had he realized in that moment that it was possible that she might wield some power over him? Well, it wasn’t a very great power she had wielded, she reflected with a little bitterness. His wild, wild heart might have flown a little way down towards her hand, but it had soon regained its liberty.

Jo, moving suddenly, sent her mug of tea splashing across the table. It slopped over into the plate of cakes, and the little paper cases sailed about in it. The children shrieked with delight.

“Little boats they are, sailing in the sea. And the sea’s tea!”

Mrs. Ford and Rhoda laughed, and Ann mopped up the spilt tea, and set both the table, and her mind, in order.

At the end of that week Ann found that her sales to Mrs. Ford and her daughter were the only ones recorded in her books. Two or three women had drifted in at various times, but they were unknown to Ann, and they purchased nothing. Did this mean that ​her enterprise was doomed? Ann very much feared that it did, but she would not accept defeat so easily. With the help of Mrs. Hill she increased her stock once more and filled her windows with the prettiest of her models. As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, she thought. And if she were doomed to go under, she wouldn’t tamely sink by slow degrees, but would go down gallantly with her flags flying, and with a grand and final splash.

She had heard no further word of the case, and knew nothing of Vera’s intentions. She had taken all the steps which James Ford had advised, and now could only await developments.

Rhoda Hemingway had gone back to her husband at the shcep-station fifty miles inland, but Stephanie, her eldest daughter, was in town staying with Mrs. Ford. She, also, bought two hats when her grand-mother—who paid the bill—brought her into Ann’s shop to introduce her. But Ann couldn’t live entirely on the purchases made by the Ford family; and as the second week dragged on with only one other customer, Ann began to think seriously of closing the shop altogether. But she had paid the rent for the first three months in advance, and she herself must live somewhere—she couldn’t leave the district now that this action was pending, and she might as well die gamely. So she continued to manufacture pretty hats, and put them in the window, in spite of the fact that no one appeared to want them. On Thursday Mrs. Ford had asked her to go up to afternoon tea with them. Stephanie would call for her in the car.

“Put on your prettiest hat and frock, my dear. In spite of my age, I haven’t lost my love of finery.”

Ann thought that this was rather a strange request, ​but after her shop was closed, she made her toilet with extra care; chose gloves, shoes, and parasol to match her frock; and then looking at herself in the glass, exclaimed in some dismay, “I am dressed up. I might be going to the races, or a garden party!” And to her greater dismay, on her arrival with Stephanie in the car, she found that she was going to a party.

“This is one of Granny’s jokes,” said pretty Stephanie, smiling at her. “The party is for me, and for you—you’ll see it in the ‘Social Notes’ of tomorrow’s paper—and you’ll find everything you’re wearing chronicled, and chronicled wrong.”

It was too late to escape, Ann realized. And it would be a poor return for all Mrs. Ford’s kindness to treat her so rudely. The only thing to do was to face it bravely. So with her head held high, and a flush that made her look younger and sweeter than ever, Ann walked up the veranda steps. Only one or two guests had arrived as yet. These were the intrepid spirits who always anticipated the hour specified for an “afternoon tea” in Wairiri. “So horrid to be late,” they said; and so they got to the house very often while the flurried hostess was putting the last touches to the heavily-laden tea-table in the dining-room, or—in the absence of a cook—taking the last batch of cakes out of the oven. Mrs. Ford introduced Ann to these early birds.

“I’m giving this little party for Stephanie and Miss Merrill, you know. I want her to meet all our friends in Wairiri. It’s so lonely for a girl here if she doesn’t know every one. And Miss Merrill has been so enterprising, and has such sweet things in her hat shop. Haven’t you been to see them? Oh, but you must go. This I’ve got on is one of her models, and Stephanie’s ​too. Isn’t that a sweet one? So becoming and so simple.”

This sort of thing went on most of the afternoon. A fair percentage of the eighty or ninety women present Ann had already met on the racecourse or had seen in her shop. They all belonged to the same set—the wives and daughters of the sheep-farmers, the lawyers, the doctors, and the bank managers. Ann was practically the only “trade” representative at the party. They took part in competitions, for which there were prizes, wandered round the garden, indulged in what the paper next day described as “social chat,” and ate an extraordinary large tea.

Ann discovered that at least one of these functions took place every week in Wairiri; and that all the same women attended each and every one. She wondered how the supply of “social chat” held out; and then suddenly with a deepening flush she remembered that she herself had probably supplied a good deal of it for the last one, and was supplying more for this. But the fact that Mrs. Ford was giving the entertainment in her honor, and throwing her thus so conspicuously in the company of her granddaughter, was, she realized, the quickest and most efficacious way of taking the worst of the sting out of the scandal. There must be something to be said for her if Mary Ford made so much fuss of her. Mary wasn’t a fool, or easily taken in.

Ann knew before the afternoon was over that Mrs. Ford had, at least partially, accomplished her object. Even if the case now came into Court, Ann would have a few partisans who would not believe ill of her. They were for the most part very warm-hearted, and very kind, these people; but they were inclined to be ​rigid in their views. They did not look with favor upon girls who got mixed up in divorce cases. Still, they were now prepared to follow the lead Mary Ford had given them, and to reserve judgment until they heard further evidence. The trouble was, that a small section was inclined to hail her as a martyr, and instead of slighting her, to make a fuss of her. And all Ann wanted—except in her hat shop—was to be left alone. She was not happy at present, and she had no aptitude for “social chat.” She had enjoyed the weekend she had spent with the Fords; the picnic at the shack; and she hoped that she would see more of them in future, for they were genuinely good friends. But to accept invitations from comparative strangers was altogether a different matter.

However, she could always plead pressure of business. And during the days that followed she was able truthfully to do this. Her little showroom was now never without customers. She was compelled to employ another hand as well as Mrs. Hill, and all three worked “overtime” in the evenings as well as during the day.

Business was “booming.” Before Ann’s new goods arrived from London she had cabled for more and had included in her order smart and inexpensive frocks. Whatever happened in the future, she was now convinced her business would not fail.