The first months of married life passed so swiftly and breezily that Una knew she must be happy. When one was miserable, time crawled. Una had spent nearly five years in such a stifling, unhappy existence. But now that she was happy – the happiest she had been since before the war – each day flew by with an alacrity that startled her.
She loved to wake early in her beloved little room. It was a dear place – it was easy to dream in such a room – with pretty frilled muslin curtains in the windows and an eyelet quilt on the bed. She was so grateful for it and for everything that she spent a few minutes every morning kneeling before her window as the sun came up over the horizon. Una tossed her old alarm-clock out the window. She no longer needed it. She woke easily and with no prompting as soon as the sun's first rays touched her sleeping face. And woke with a smile!
Shirley was fond of giving her pretty, befrilled and beribboned dresses – party dresses of silks and crepes. Una had a deep red dress in a shade called 'heart of rose' and a yellow dress that was sunshine in cloth form. She had an emerald green silk for 'going out' – not that they ever went anywhere. Why would they, when they had such a lovely place to be? She loved to look at these gowns hanging in her wardrobe with sachets of sweet woodruff between them. But her favorite dresses were the no-nonsense ginghams and plaids that she put on to do her housework.
There was always something to be done at Red Apple Farm. Shirley was away all day in the fields and Una spent her solitary time polishing the dear silver candlesticks on the mantle – baking bread as light and fluffy as a cloud – concocting all sorts of wonderful delicacies out of the apples that grew in their own orchard. The first day that she set an apple crunch pie on the supper table was a wonderful one. And Shirley agreed that it was so good it even surpassed Susan's!
Una did not mind being left alone for so much of the day. She did not feel alone. The house seemed full of spirits of happy days gone by – perhaps of days to come? Once she thought she heard the happy patter of feet in the hallway and a child's laugh. It did not frighten her as it once would have, though it made the hair on her neck stand up, and a strange shiver of longing went through her.
She sang as she washed the dishes – pretty yellow plates, like sunshine, with rings of apple blossoms on them. They had been a wedding-present from Nan and Jerry. She used lavender and beeswax to polish the old, well-loved furniture. At times she talked to the house. "How lovely you are!" she told it, and the air around her seemed to get lighter in response.
Gog and Magog kept watch over her as she worked. Mrs. Blythe had given them to her – "to make your house a home," she'd said. Una had accepted them lovingly and appreciatively although it was so ridiculous – Red Apple Farm did not need anything to be a home. It couldn't be anything else.
When the old brass clock that marked the changing of the tides rang out five times Shirley would come home. Una had dinner waiting for him. How lovely it was to set dinner on the table in your own dining room! To set lighted candles in the windows and change into the pretty yellow dress. And then after dinner, to go for a ramble on your own land!
Una and Shirley went over every bit of their property together on those twilight evenings and came to know each nook and dell like a friend. They found a cold, crystal spring bubbling up in their spruce grove. The water tasted as fresh and sweet as nectar and ambrosia. They went down to the shore and discovered a little hidden cove in the rocks – just the right size for making a driftwood camp-fire and roasting mussels. Shirley gave Una a night 'off' every now and again and made her supper over a little campfire. He dug for clams and roasted potatoes, and apples for dessert. It was magical to have dinner that way, with the whisper of the sea on the rocks nearby and the old Four Winds light illuminating every thing in regular flashes. It reminded Una of their old Rainbow Valley feasts.
When the weather got cooler and they had been over the fields enough to know each by heart, they would sit out on the broad front porch and just be quiet together. Each one thought their own thoughts and did not feel the need to share every one of them. That is the mark of true friendship. Una thought sometimes that she would like to kiss Shirley on those nights when they sat out together in such a way. He never tried to kiss her and she was a little disappointed. But she contented herself with laying her head on Shirley's shoulder.
And if Walter ever came, unbidden, into Una's mind, she was able for the first time in her life to dismiss him. She did not even feel guilty over it. Surely Walter, dear Walter, would have wanted her to be happy? And she was.
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September became October and the crimson of the maples began to mellow into brown. Una thought some of the magic of the year went out when the maples began to lose their fiery leaves. But this year she was too busy preparing a magnificent Thanksgiving feast to notice. They had all their families over to share in the meal with them and it was a golden topaz of an evening. Una was a good-enough cook to rival old, gone-but-beloved Susan and she had such a knack for setting a table! She made candle-holders out of apples and gourds and turned off all the electric lights so that the house would glow. And Una's pies –
"That apple pie is how I like it," said Jerry, and earned himself a look from his wife and a hearty laugh from everyone else. As for Una – she was anointed with the chrism of a true cook that night.
Then it was Hallowe'en and the color and splendor of the maples was replaced with an eerie, goblin-style of magic. Shirley brought up armloads of pumpkins from their very own patch and Una carved jack-o-lanterns for the first time. Once could not have had jack-o-lanterns in the windows of a manse, of course. But this year every window of Red Apple Farm was alight with weird, glowing faces. Una made candied apples and shivered when she noticed that the tips of the spruces looked like pointed witches' hats against the low red moon.
November came – everything was grey and brown and flat. The sea moaned eerily and a frost killed all the pretty, late-blooming things in the garden. Una had always hated November and its ugliness, but this year she did not mind it, for the dreariness outside only heightened the loveliness of her home. What a lovely, warm, cosy, snug home! She kept a driftwood fire going and all the lost color of the year was embodied in the dancing flames. All the afghans she had painstakingly crocheted through her girlhood found a useful place on the sofas at Red Apple. Una loved making up an old-fashioned 'gin jar' for Shirley to take to bed with him so that he was toasty warm. She didn't have to make one for herself. She had a little striped cat to curl up with and that was far cosier than a hundred gin jars. The cat had been a barn cat but decided it would rather be a house cat. Una and Shirley deferred to it, and called it 'The Gray Cat' or 'Grimalkin' with much respect.
The first snow came in December and blanketed the fields with white. Long icicles hung from the eaves all the way to the ground. The only spot of color in the world was the magnificent purple sunsets and the deep green of the spruces against the white. The apple trees shivered under a casing of ice. There was ice down along the shore, with the waves groaning underneath. Wind howled and shrieked and blew a great drift over their little cove. It reminded Una of the stone before the tomb. Shirley had gotten his harvest safely in weeks before and so he and Una spent their days reading to each other before the fire or snow-shoeing through the spruce grove. Shirley bought Una a pair of ice-skates for her birthday and they sometimes tramped to the Glen Pond to skate there. Othertimes they skated by starlight on the Spring Pool while the spruces kept watch.
With all this petting and happiness, Una grew nicely plump. For the first time she had meat on her bones and dimples at her elbows. The purple shadows under her eyes all but disappeared and a faint pink stained her cheeks. She was happy – oh, she was happy! – and Shirley was the best friend a girl could ask for. It sometimes came as a shock to Una that they were really married, and she was Shirley's wife!
And almost before they knew it, it was Christmas.