Harriet closed her eyes briefly. Tears threatened, making her throat ache.
“I’ll go downstairs. The children will be wanting their supper.” Margaret left with a soft click of the door. Harriet pressed her hands to her eyes, willing the tears, the tide of emotion, to recede.
“Daughter?”
Harriet dropped her hands. Her father’s eyes were open, though hazed with pain. “We’ve gone for the doctor. Don’t tire yourself, Father. You’ll be all right.” She reached for his hand. “I’m sorry for what I said.”
David turned his head away from her. “It’s I who should be sorry,” he said in a low voice.
“It doesn’t matter...” Harriet began, even though it was far from the truth. Her father’s decision mattered too much.
“Aye, but it does.” David’s face was still to the wall. “I’m not speaking of your beau, Harriet, much as you might care for him. There’s something else. There’s the farm.”
The bleak despair in his words chilled her and she squeezed his hand. “We don't need to talk about farm matters now, Father. Let us get you well first.”
David turned to her, the sudden, angry light in his eyes taking her by surprise. “There’s no time for that. If we don't do something quickly, the farm will be lost, daughter, and all you know with it.” The light faded from his eyes and he was left looking strangely vulnerable, a broken old man. “God only knows what can be done.” His trembling fingers grasped hers, his gaze pleading for understanding. “I'm afraid I might've lost it all.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Dearest Harriet. I know too well that you, my dear girl, will be longing to hear from me, as I long for word from you. This is not a rebuke, but an entreaty for you to break your long silence...
Allan lowered his quill and watched the flames dancing in the hearth. It was late, and everyone was abed except for him. He'd taken these snatched moments to compose a letter to Harriet, but now that he'd a chance to put ink to paper, he didn't know what to write.
Why hadn't she written? The last ship from Tobermory had arrived in November, and it was now nearly Christmas. Allan had feared that Harriet's letter might've been lost, but deep inside he knew that wasn't true. There had been letters from Ann Rankin, as well as from Margaret and Ian. His own brother and sister, who lodged with Harriet at Achlic Farm! How could a letter from Harriet have been lost?
The more worrying question, he knew, was how could she have not written?
Margaret had mentioned Harriet, and concerns over the Campbell farm. Apparently Harriet’s father was not well, and she was working all the harder. There had been an implied rebuke in Margaret’s letter: Dear Harriet has little time for frivolity of any kind, with the work placed upon her. She would do to have her spirits lifted.
Well, he knew that! He’d hoped another letter from him would cheer her, comfort her. Assure her of his own faithfulness. Yet perhaps that was not what she wanted... perhaps this silence was her way of grasping the freedom he’d given her with both hands, and finding her spirit lifted somewhere else... by someone else.
The fire crackled and a few sparks scattered across the stone hearth, quickly turning to ash. Had Harriet's love burned out as quickly? Had she taking the freedom Allan had honourably given her to find another? If so, Allan knew she'd every right to act thus.
Yet surely she should tell him, then! Allan wondered what to do. He couldn’t bear to remind her of her own freedom, when he felt it so sorely himself. The only recourse left to him was to assure her of his own constancy.
He continued to write, dutifully telling her of their travails. What would she make of life here, the crude cabins, the piercing cold, the endless snow? Yesterday the blizzard had been so ferocious that Andrew Dunmore had tied a rope around his son's waist when he went outside to get the firewood, in case he became lost in the blinding whiteness. It had been known to happen before.
Allan shivered as a draught of icy air chilled him, and the howling wind outside rattled the waxed cloth covering the windows.
I trust that with God's will and my industry I shall soon be able to come and offer you a hand and heart which is wholly devoted to you.
He could state it no plainer than that, surely. Doubt crept into his mind as he wondered if he was indeed playing Harriet false. They'd been in Prince Edward Island for five months and had not even finished building their own cabin. Its foundations were covered with snow, useless till the spring thaw.
Even worse, Allan could see no way to be the man of property and standing David Campbell wished for his daughter. His father barked orders, and he took them from him like a lackey. Even with the snow deep and little work to be done, Allan felt the pressure of his father’s heel. He was beginning to wonder if it would ever change.
And if it didn’t? He would never be able to return for Harriet. Was he just in hoping she would wait? Her best years would be stolen from her, wasted on dreams turned to dust.
Allan turned back to his parchment.
I beg you to keep up your spirits for if I deviate one part from what I have said, may God pour down his vengeance on me tenfold. May God bless and comfort you in the sincerest wish of your heart. Your ever, ever faithful lover until death, Allan.
He sprinkled sand on the paper and put the writing materials away. He wouldn't be able to send the letter till spring, when sea travel was possible again. Yet he felt better for writing it, as if Harriet were that much closer to him now.
The next morning the family awoke to a fresh fall of snow. The drifts came halfway up the windows, and it would be difficult to do much of anything in that kind of depth.
Over the winter the MacDougalls had made themselves useful to the Dunmore family by helping with the maintenance work around the homestead as well as accompanying the Dunmore men out on the trap lines. Now, however, the snow would be too deep to venture out and there would be little to keep them occupied. The debt they owed the Dunmores would be painfully obvious.
Sandy and Allan stood on the porch now cleared of snow, and looked out at the deep drifts, the small footprints of a rabbit crisscrossing the untouched whiteness.
They would not be able to walk to the clearing and check on the foundations of their cabin. Allan knew his father tried to walk there daily, to make sure all was well. He’d brush the snow from the half-built walls, pace the generous proportions of the rooms with his feet, smile and close his eyes as if he were imagining what it would one day look like.
“One day,” he’d sometimes say to Allan, his voice ringing out through the frosty clearning, “I’ll have the finest farm on Prince Edward Island, with my family reunited, and my sons by my side.” Allan didn’t answer his father then, because he didn’t trust himself to say anything civil. His father clung to his own dream, but he wasn’t allowing Allan to have his.
This morning Betty joined Allan and Sandy on the porch. It was early morning, and the world was still and silent save the crackle of the trees branches cased in ice.
"I've never seen such snow,” she said with a shake of her head. "There’s a beauty to it, I suppose." She shivered and drew her shawl tighter around her thin shoulders. "I've stirred the fire up. There were quite a few embers this time."
Last week they'd let the fire die to ashes and had to run to a neighbour's for a live coal. Like much else, there were no matches on the island, and no shops to buy them in even if there were.
Sandy grunted in response, still staring hard at the pearly sheen of ice on top of the drifts. “There’ll be no walking in that.”
“The cabin will survive,” Betty replied with a faint smile, but Sandy only looked even more grim.
“Aye, it will. It will.” He turned away from both of them, shoulders hunched. “I’m tired of this. Living in someone else's cottage--we've nothing to call our own!"
"We do," Betty said firmly. "We've a holding of hundreds of acres, and the start to a bonnie cabin. It's time we need, that's all. You must remember that. This spring, with your sons working beside you, the cabin will be built in no time at all."
Sandy nodded slowly. "I came to this land to be beholden to no man. That was my promise to myself."
"Perhaps there is a higher purpose than that,” Betty countered softly. "To love and serve one another... and tend the earth God gave us."
"Don't preach to me, woman," Sandy said, suddenly irritable. "I'll take it on a Sunday, but not from you!" He strode away to get ready for the day.
“Mother--” Allan began, starting forward, but Betty held up one hand to stop him.
“He’s afraid, Allan, that’s all. He doesn’t mean anything by it.” She smiled sadly. “Trust me on this.”
Allan nodded tersely, for he didn’t like seeing his father speak to his mother in such a sharp tone. In truth, he’d never seen it before and it made him uneasy.
That night the MacDougalls and Dunmores gathered round the hearth as the wind blew and howled outside. Agnes Dunmore and Betty worked on the large pile of mending and darning that needed to be done, while Neville Dunmore oiled a trap and Sandy, Allan and Archie watched, learning, as they'd never trapped before they'd come here.
"Come spring, there'll be a sight more to do here than now," Nevil remarked conversationally. "Although I expect once your cabin is built, these young two will go their own ways."
Tension crackled in the air. Sandy glanced up sharply, his mouth thinned in disapproval. "I don't follow your meaning."
Neville raised his eyebrows. "No more than what I said. My own sons have gone to find their own adventure, come what may. One in Pictou, one in Upper Canada. Oh, they may come back here, but it's perhaps my own foolish dream. They want their own place, same as I did. That’s what we all came for, isn’t it?”
Archie lounged in his chair, a faint smile on his face. Allan felt the now-familiar burning of ambition that had so often been quenched.
Sandy’s expression hardened, and when he spoke, his voice was cool. “It’s no foolish dream of mine. My own sons will labour by me, that I can be assured of. Our holding will be worked by all of us."
"Is that so?" Neville glanced thoughtfully at Allan and Archie. Allan could feel himself flushing. His father made it sound as if they all shared an equal weight of responsibility, but he knew the truth of it, and from the shrewd look on Neville Dunmore’s face, he did as well.
Neville, however, seemed to have more sense than to prod a hornet’s nest, for he merely smiled and said, "you're a fortunate man, then, Sandy MacDougall."
Archie snorted, muffled by his hand and set the legs of his chair abruptly on the floor.
Sitting by the warm fire, the comforts of home around him, Allan had never felt so suffocated... as trapped as one of the beavers they’d caught only yesterday, helpless and dying in the snow.
His father wouldn’t change. Archie had known all along. Why had he remained so stubbornly blind? As long as Sandy lived, Allan and Archie both would be no better than lackeys to do his bidding.
And David Campbell would not allow Harriet to marry him. Allan felt hollow, as if the earlier rage and ambition had leached out of him.
Campbell had seen the truth of it, he realised. He didn’t want Harriet under Sandy’s thumb as neatly as her husband would be. He wanted more for his daughter, and so did Allan.
He rose suddenly, almost knocking his chair over and causing the quiet little group to look up in wary bewilderment.
"I'm going out."
"Allan, no!" Betty protested. "What can you be thinking of? It's nearly dusk and icy out there, you wouldn't last a minute."
"I just need a breath of fresh air. I've been inside for days... I'll just go for a minute."
Before any more protests could be made, Allan strode to the door, yanking on his coat and boots. He didn't look back as he opened the door and walked out.
The sun was setting, sinking into the snow and turning the horizon molten. Allan began to walk, sinking nearly up to his thighs and not caring.
What could he do? If he returned to Harriet once the farm was established, she’d most likely still marry him, even if it meant flying in the face of her father’s wishes.
Could he ask that of her? He wanted more for his own life than to be ruled by his father, and he wanted more for Harriet as well.
Allan hunched his shoulders against the wind. The only solution would be to strike out on his own, away from the MacDougall holding, perhaps even away from Prince Edward Island. He knew he didn’t have the resources to do that yet... and who knew when he would... if he could ever do it.
For it would surely break Sandy MacDougall’s will, if not his heart.
The chill December winds caused Margaret to shiver and draw her shawl tighter around her. Tobermory harbour was flat and grey, seeming as hard and cold as stone. The street was awash with slushy puddles, and an icy rain was beginning to needle her face.
It was not a good day to have gone to town, but Margaret could bear the narrow confines of Achlic Farm for only so long. She tried to help Harriet as much as she could, especially now that David Campbell was confined to a sick bed. Yet once in awhile she escaped from the rigors of farm life, usually with one of Rupert’s books hidden in her basket.
Rupert usually came home from his lessons simply relieved to have them finished, and while Margaret did her best to smile and seem cheerful, inside she burned with resentment.
She would have changed places with Rupert in a heartbeat. To sit and learn and
think
all day... to discuss ideas and
know
things... it sounded like heaven to Margaret, even if Rupert viewed it in quite the opposite way. The fact that her father had denied her the same access as Rupert made bitterness spike inside her.
She’d asked, when the arrangements were first being made, for her father to consider her being tutored as well. He’d looked completely shocked.
“How can you even think such a thing! It’s unnatural.”