“‘The Torn Soul,’” he read.
“Another bitter morning.
The full moon sees me to my classes
With a smudge of blue across his face
As though he has been tending my fire.
I go where they send me to learn
Prudent lines of language,
The science of machines and
The vagaries of politics and wars,
When all I really want to think about is the moon.
But there is always the night.”
“Is that it, then?” Angel broke the silence to ask.
“Yes. What do you think?”
“Well, it’s bit short, isn’t it?”
“The length has nothing to do with it,” Ralph said defensively. “It’s the meaning—”
“It doesn’t rhyme,” Lord Mountjoy rumbled.
“I know it doesn’t rhyme. I do know how to make a rhyme. But there is a difference between rhymes and poetry.”
“I like it,” Evan vowed. “I’m not quite sure why I like it. Maybe because it does not rhyme. Too much of the singsong is distracting from the meaning for me. Now that I think of it, I’m quite sure that’s why poetry usually makes me nod off.”
“You mean, like when you say, ‘Nothing, Father’?” Lord Mountjoy asked.
Evan glanced at his father in amused surprise.
“The moon is always a woman,” Terry said a little blearily, but with great conviction.
“It needn’t be,” Ralph maintained.
“In every poem I have ever read, the moon is feminine.”
“He’s got you there, Ralph,” Lord Mountjoy said with satisfaction.
“Let me see,” said Judith, taking the sheet and reading it over. “You know, Ralph, I like it already, but perhaps it works even better with the moon as a woman.”
Ralph thought through the poem in his mind and finally took the paper and made a note with a stub of pencil he pulled from his pocket. “I think you’re right. It does read better.”
“Aha, so we are right,” Lord Mountjoy said.
“An intelligent man is always open to good ideas, no matter who they may come from,” Ralph said. Terry smiled crookedly, and Lord Mountjoy looked at Ralph a little suspiciously.
“Why a woman?” Angel asked. “Why would the moon always be a woman?”
“Tradition,” said Ralph. “It was the smudge of dirt that threw me. One does not think of a woman with a smudge of dirt on her face, but I suppose she might have if she were tending a fire.”
“That’s no answer,” Angel complained.
“It has to do with the changeableness of woman,” stated Lady Mountjoy. “They are well-known for their inconstancy, whereas men are so reliable,” she added without looking up from her work.
Evan chuckled in spite of himself. “Poetry and satire in the same evening,” he said. “My cup runneth over.”
Lady Mountjoy’s mouth softened, not into anything approaching a smile, but at least she did not glare at him.
“I don’t understand,” Angel protested.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” Ralph declared.
“You know so much just because you have been to school. Why does it cut off like that? What do you mean by ‘There is always the night’?”
“I mean I may be at someone else’s beck and call to study and learn what they please in the daytime, but at night I can dream or write whatever I please, that they can’t kill the romance in me.”
“You see,” said Judith helpfully, “the moon is a metaphor, for dreams, romance, whatever you will.”
“A what?”
Ralph turned back to Angel. “It means it stands in place of just saying those things—”
“It would be much simpler all around if you did just say those things without all the bother. I don’t like your poem at all,” Angel said defiantly.
“Well, I do,” said Lord Mountjoy. “It tells me more about Ralph than I have found out all the times I have talked to him. Now if we could just get it to rhyme,” he mused.
“Thank you ever so much for the help. If you don’t mind, I shall go upstairs and work on it some more.” Ralph bolted from the room before he was likely to be subjected to Lord Mountjoy trying to impose a rhyming scheme on him, and Evan caught Judith grinning at the same thought.
“You were going to tell me about your canal, sir,” Evan said, to distract his father.
“My what? Oh, yes, yes, the canal. Terry, bring one of those candles over to the desk. I have my plans right here.”
As the clock chimed ten, the ladies rose and put away their work. It struck Evan that they led a very dull life here. He could not remember exactly what life had been like at Meremont before, but his Gram had always served tea in the evening, and they had had three meals a day instead of two. He knew that this present situation was not from any paucity of food, but due rather to the scarcity of help. Witness how Bose had been pressed into service in the kitchen in his spare hours. Of course, that might be voluntary, for nothing would put him closer to Joan than helping out at the house rather than lounging about the stable.
Once Evan looked at the map and realized how much land his father had bought up, he could see why they might be beggared. There had to be close to a thousand acres. That brought the size of the contiguous holdings of Meremont to nearly two thousand acres, if one counted the barrens. He stared at his father, trying to divine if the man had become unhinged. Several things suggested this: the will, for one; now this talk of the canal. Lord Mountjoy glanced up at him for approval of the route he had mapped out.
“What’s this bit of land here?” Evan asked. “You haven’t inked it in yet.”
“We haven’t got it yet. Fifteen acres of worthless riverbank. It belongs to Lady Sylvia Vane. With any luck we shall get it for free.”
“How so?”
“We shall if Terry does not drink himself to death before he has her promise of marriage.”
“I suppose I am good for something,” Terry said.
“Such a sacrifice for a bit of land,” Evan said with a smile. “Is she worth it?”
“She’s beautiful,” Terry said.
“Do you love her?”
“I don’t love anyone else. I may as well marry Sylvia.”
“I hope you show her a little more ardor than that,” his father said critically, and Terry smiled crookedly.
“I hope you have not got another aging spinster with an odd plot of land you need. I would not be willing to make such a sacrifice.”
“All that I require of you is that you build the canal. How many men will it take, do you think?”
“Hundreds, unless you want it to take years.”
“We