A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [92]
“Eighty cents a bushel,” interjected young Caroline eagerly, “and bound to go higher and higher. The Americans have a great thirst for beer and other spirits. They simply can’t get enough barley.”
“I fear,” said Annabelle, who was once again wondering about Oran Gilderson’s business plans, “that reapers, ‘reaping early in among the bearded barley’ are more likely to reap profits than those who appear later in the day.” All of this, she thought, might very well be interpreted as the beginnings of the robbery of the lake.
Caroline looked confused.
“Tennyson,” said Annabelle.
“We shall become very rich, Aunt,” said Maurice. “You’ see.”
Now it was Maurice who became the focus of Annabelle and Marie’s ongoing inquiry into the bewildering nature of the male psyche. When they were once again alone together in the kitchen, the subject of Badger and what he had been thinking when he decided to marry this spoiled young woman was instantly raised. Although Annabelle had become aware early on that, because he was a son, not a husband or lover, Maurice’s character was one that should be discussed with great delicacy, this seemed not to matter in the present circumstances. Normally, when Marie praised the boy, it was best that one nod in agreement. When she complained about her son’s faults and weaknesses, it was best to disagree, the more vehemently the better. But now, when Marie angrily suggested that the catastrophe had occurred because Maurice was quite simply trying to improve his standing in life, was, in fact, like the girl or loathe her, marrying money, or “marrying up” as she put it, Annabelle agreed that, indeed, cold ambition had likely played a large part. “But, there is something else,” she said. “He seems stunned, entranced. I suspect he is actually in love with her.”
Marie looked horrified. “Sacré Dieu,” she said, crossing herself and turning toward the wall.
“And as for ambition,” Annabelle continued, “it will be Caroline’s ambition that will rule the day, not that of poor Maurice, her besotted husband.”
“He should run like a deer,” said Marie.
“Where would he run to? Back to the bank? I’ve heard a lot about this man Gilderson. He would likely have him shot. And, as I said before, Marie, Maurice is smitten. He’s a goner. From now on his life will be all bricks and barley.”
What neither woman said, but both knew, was that come early autumn just before the harvest of the last crop of barley, the entire peninsula would be transformed into various shades of yellow: the poplars, the maples, and the field after field after field of barley, bordered near the water by the paler yellow banner of the sand. Moving through this landscape they had likely felt surrounded by radiance at one time or another: golden September sun, golden apples in the orchards (which were becoming scarce now because of the spread of barley,) golden clouds of sunset coming earlier and earlier to the sky, glasses filled with the dark gold of whisky in the evenings, or the bright gold of beer in the late afternoon. Sometimes in August, before the harvest, the fields of barley would turn a peculiar shade of lavender at twilight, mysterious, unfathomable, the deep purple shadows of the maples that edged the fencelines like pools or clouds. The prosperity of the previous decade had been both directly and indirectly connected to the increasing production of this crop, a fact that would, in the future, cause the whole epoch to be referred to by citizens of the County as the Barley Days.
These Barley Days might just as well have been called the Brick Days, for central to the years when barley was making people rich was the building of larger and larger brick houses, houses much like the one that rose with alarming swiftness a quarter of a mile from the clapboard hotel. During the early stages of its construction, when the frame of the nuptial home was being erected, the noise of the carpenters’ hammers disturbed the guests, as later did the sound of poplars and birches crashing to the ground. By the time the bricklayers arrived the half-finished skeleton