02 Morning at Jalna Page 8

  “Damn Cindy,” he said. “Why didn’t she have her baby in one of the workmen’s cottages instead of in the house? It is humiliating to me that Mrs. Whiteoak should have played the part of a midwife to one of our slaves.”

  “She’s marvellous,” said his wife. “Nothing daunts her. She’s as proud of that piccaninny as if she had created it.”

  “Probably some Yankee soldier is its father.”

  “How can you say such a thing of Cindy! She’s devoted to her fat black husband.”

  “Lots of women had no scruples,” he said, then drew a deep sigh. “However, that’s neither here nor there. The affair on hand is what’s important. Lucy — I may be obliged to go away for a short while.”

  She put her hand to her heart. “Not into danger, I hope,” she breathed.

  “I think not. I have a hundred and fifty stout fellows assembled at the border. We hope and expect to make raids on the Yankees — burn property across the line. In Chicago we have many Confederate sympathizers. They will move on Camp Douglas. Five thousand Southern soldiers are held there. Once they are freed, the entire force will march to Springfield, Illinois, and release seven thousand Confederates. Good God, Lucy, it’s a stupendous undertaking. If it succeeds, we may save our country yet.” His eyes shone in his emotion.

  Lucy was trembling. She put out her hand against the trunk of a birch tree to steady herself. A fine misty rain was beginning to fall. A grey veil dimmed the August scene. The pigeons on the roof dissolved into the mist but their cooing was heard, as though the mist had been made manifest.

  “See that you say not a word of this, Lucy,” he said. “My life may depend on your caution.”

  “I would die rather than breathe a whisper of it, but — these spies. They fill me with terror.”

  “They are too late to stop us. Our plans are too well laid.”

  They turned smiling to meet Adeline Whiteoak who was coming out of the house with Nero, the Newfoundland dog, at her side. Her hand rested on his collar. He wore an expression of beaming self-confidence and benignity such as is seldom seen on the face of a human being.

  IX

  Counterplots

  Nicholas walked with the three Yankee strangers to the Busbys’ homestead. While the Whiteoaks, the Vaughans, and the Laceys had come from England to settle in Ontario, it was the grandfather of Elihu Busby who had been given a grant of land when, as a United Empire Loyalist, he had left his property in Pennsylvania after the American Revolution and brought his young family by oxcart to the wilds of this province. Life here had changed greatly in the past eighty years. Roads had been made which linked every village to the next. A railway linked the villages to the cities. Life was no longer the life of the pioneers. The fields were cultivated and the farmers were mildly prosperous.

  Elihu Busby had reared a large family. They were in some awe of him but considered no people their betters. They combined an ardent loyalty to the Queen with a look askance at English manners. They liked the Whiteoaks but were often affronted by what they felt were their lofty ways. They cherished an undying dislike of Americans and exaggerated the importance of the property they had left behind, two generations ago, in Pennsylvania. To their liberty-loving spirits the very thought of slavery was hateful and they were heart and soul with the North against the slave-owning South.

  Their comfortable farmhouse was four miles from Jalna. Nicholas led the way along that road, giving guarded answers to the questions with which the spies plied him. He was sure that they were spies and he felt himself to be in the midst of portentous doings.

  They found the Busby family gathered about the table enjoying a meal. The strangers were, with old-fashioned hospitality, invited to join them. They accepted, but Nicholas, who always was made welcome, said he was expected at home. Yet outside he lingered, hoping for he knew not what. His boyish imagination was fired by the conflict below the border. He longed for a part in some dangerous enterprise. All he could find to do was to collect little green apples fallen from a tree on the lawn and hurl them at the pointed gable of the house.

  Amelia Busby came to him then. “You mustn’t do that,” she said. “You might break a window. Then my father would have something to say to you.” But she gave Nicholas a friendly look and, in a moment, added, “I suppose Mr. Madigan has left you.”

  “What makes you suppose that?” he demanded.

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “He’s always dissatisfied, if that’s what you mean,” said the boy. “But he won’t leave. He is a fixture at Jalna till us young ones go away to school.”

  Amelia could not restrain herself from asking, “Does he ever speak of me?”

  Nicholas hedged by muttering, “I should have said we young ones. It would have been more grammatical.”

  “He is particular about your grammar, eh?”

  “Rigorous,” said Nicholas loftily.

  Amelia thought the boy insufferably conceited but she put up with him because she had to know about Madigan. So she repeated, “Does he ever speak of me?”

  “Never,” said Nicholas firmly. He hurled another green apple at the gable.

  “Listen,” said Amelia. “Will you please give him a message from me?”

  “Very well,” said Nicholas. “But make it short. I have a poor memory.”

  “Tell him,” she spoke slowly, her high colour mounting, “tell him I’m sorry if I have offended him.”

  Nicholas stared. In spite of himself he was interested.

  “I’d like you to tell me who are those strange men making themselves at home in your kitchen,” he asked.

  “I don’t quite know,” she said truthfully, “except that they are Yankees.”

  “The very name,” he said, “makes my blood boil.”

  “But surely you are not for slavery?”

  “These darkies like being slaves. Mr. Madigan says we all are slaves — to one habit or another.”

  “What a clever boy you are, Nicholas!”

  He was forced to agree with her. As he ran home he went over their conversation in his mind and thought he had acquitted himself well.

  He found Lucius Madigan in the summer house giving Ernest a lesson in geography from a globe of the world. “That little island is Ireland,” he was saying, and pointing with a bony forefinger.

  Ernest leant forward till his little nose almost touched the globe. “Why is Ireland so small?” he asked.

  “It’s due to oppression by the English,” said Madigan.

  “Our country is very large,” Ernest said proudly.

  “Its size is its affliction,” retorted Madigan. “It’s a great hollow frozen space.”

  “At the present moment,” said Nicholas, “I’m sweating like a horse.”

  “Before many years” — Madigan spoke sombrely — “this country will be taken by the Americans.”

  “We have the North Pole,” said Ernest. “The Americans can’t take that from us.”

  “Wait and see,” said Madigan.

  Nicholas broke in with, “You’ll never guess, sir, who I’ve been talking with, and about you too.”

  “Amelia Busby?” guessed Madigan.

  “Right! And what do you guess she said?”

  “That she loves me?” said the tutor with an assumed simper.

  “Not quite. But she’s sorry if she has hurt your feelings.”

  “No woman has the power to do that.”

  “Not even Mrs. Sinclair?” The boy’s smile was not quite a grin.

  “For that piece of impertinence,” said Madigan, “you will do fifty lines. Begin where you left off last time.”

  “May I give Gussie her present first?”

  “Her present?”

  “Surely you know it’s her birthday! I have a pet dove for her. It’s hard to be punished on a family birthday.”

  “I’ll let you off this time,” said Madigan, “but in future control your desire to be flippant.”

  “What is flippant?” Er
nest asked.

  “Pert,” said Madigan. “See that you guard against it.”

  “Pert, my eye,” exclaimed Ernest, and tore off after his brother.

  They found Augusta reclining in the shade of a little grove of white birches. She too was in white, to honour her birthday. Blissfully she fingered the gold locket that hung from a chain round her slender neck. She had not hoped to own anything so beautiful, not for years and years. But this morning her mamma had put it round her neck and her papa had lifted the mass of dark hair from her nape and had fastened the clasp. In one side of the locket there were plaited together two strands of hair — the fair hair of Philip, the auburn hair of Adeline, under glass.

  The boys looked on reverently while Augusta opened the locket and disclosed these mementoes. She said, “You can see that there is hair in only one side. In the other side I shall have hair from your two heads and from Baby Philip’s, plaited neatly together. Then my family will all be represented.”

  Ernest clapped his hands in delight. He lay down beside her so that he too might finger the locket. He looked so small lying there beside Gussie that her heart, suddenly susceptible to new emotions stirring in her, went out to him. She stroked his cheek and, turning her head, kissed him.

  Nicholas, looking on jealously, said, “I suppose you’re not interested in a present from me.”

  She perceived then that he held, tucked under his arm, a beautiful sleek dove whose head, above its pouting breast, kept turning from side to side.

  “For me?” Gussie cried in delight.

  Nicholas set the bird on her breast. It was not at all afraid and began to peck at the locket she wore.

  “It’s yours,” said Nicholas, “and I have made a dovecote for it.”

  Ernest, who had sat up, put out his hand to stroke the dove’s sleek plumage.

  “It will not fly away,” said Nicholas, “for there is a band on its leg and I have tied a ribbon to the band.” He put the end of the ribbon in his sister’s hand.

  The three were supremely happy in the glowing August afternoon. As they reclined on the warm grass Augusta drew Ernest’s head to her shoulder and stroked it. A kind of rapture surged up within her. Nicholas laid his head on her other shoulder. “Stroke me, too,” he said.

  Towards evening Lucius Madigan appeared in the room that served the children as a schoolroom. Augusta was memorizing a poem by chanting its lines over and over in a monotone. Nicholas was making a kite, while Ernest cut up strips of paper for its tail.

  The tutor wore an expression half-pleased, half-apologetic, as he said, “Well, it’s not my birthday but I have been given a present. Look.”

  There was no need to draw attention to his present, for it was a bulky sofa cushion of red and gold satin, with a tassel on each corner.

  “I may tell you,” Madigan said confidentially, “that I became so hot carrying it that I was tempted to leave it by the roadside.”

  The children stared in curiosity, while the dove walked daintily to the end of its tether.

  “How beautiful!” said Augusta.

  “I’ll wager I know who gave it you,” said Nicholas. “It was Amelia Busby.”

  Ernest jumped up. “Let me hold it, please,” he said. “I want to know how heavy it is.”

  With the cushion in his arms he exclaimed, “It’s quite light. I could carry it all that way and not be tired.” Then he promptly dropped it to the floor.

  As though exhausted Madigan sank down and laid his head on the cushion. “Now,” he said, “we can all rest together in peace.”

  “You’re a funny sort of teacher,” said Augusta.

  “I instruct you,” Madigan said, “by example. If you will watch me you will discover without effort what you should not do — should not be.”

  “We were happy here,” said Augusta, “till you came.” She spoke in wonder rather than displeasure.

  “It is my fate,” said Madigan, “to bring unhappiness.”

  “Then why,” asked Nicholas, “does Amelia Busby intend to marry you?”

  Madigan clutched his hair, as though distraught. “Don’t tell me,” he exclaimed, “that she intends to marry me!”

  “My mamma says” — Nicholas spoke didactically — “that when a woman begins to fuss over a man she means to marry him. Mamma says there’s no escape for him.”

  “You are wise beyond your years,” said the tutor. “Soon you will be instructing me, instead of I you.”

  Laughing he left them and carried the sofa cushion to his room on the top floor. Really he did not know what to do with it and his face sobered to a look of concern. There was no sofa in his room, so he laid it on a rather uncompromising cane-seated chair. Now he felt that the chair would be of no further use to him. He could not sit on that elegant cushion. He had a mind to carry it back to Amelia and tell her that there was no place in his life for such an article. He wished he had not shown it to the children. They would be certain to tell their mother. He had a mind to disappear that very night and leave the cushion behind him.

  The children did tell their mother of this present from Amelia. They told of it in a spirit of mischief, but Adeline regarded it seriously. She would have liked to see Madigan settled comfortably in life and feared that when he left Jalna he would drift aimlessly from one indifferent position to another. She admired Madigan’s learning. When speaking of him to outsiders, she exaggerated his scholarship to lofty intellectual attainment, but to the Sinclairs she called him “that good-for-nothing Irishman — God help him.” His admiration for Lucy Sinclair was too obvious.

  Adeline said, at the tea table, “I hear you’ve been given a handsome present by a young lady, Mr. Madigan.”

  “Ah, ’tis of no use to me,” he said.

  “Come now, don’t say that. There’s nothing more useful than a soft place to lay one’s head. Isn’t that so, Mr. Sinclair?”

  “I have forgotten how to relax,” he returned.

  Nicholas put in, “This cushion is of red and gold satin, with a tassel at each corner.”

  Nicholas pronounced it tossel.

  “Dear Mr. Madigan,” cried Adeline, “as soon as you have finished your tea, you must bring it down to show us. I’m dying to see it. Aren’t you, Lucy?”

  “There is nothing that interests me more than fine needlework,” she replied.

  “There is nothing that interests me less,” said Madigan.

  “Ah, what an unfeeling remark!” cried Adeline, pouring him another cup of tea. “Really, this Irishman is hopeless. He gives quite a wrong impression of himself. In reality he has a tender heart and the sensibility of an —”

  “Irish wolfhound,” interrupted Philip. “Another cup of tea, please.”

  Lucius Madigan subsided into silent laughter. He was suddenly in high good humour. He had that day been paid his quarterly salary. This usually was the occasion of a few days’ disappearance and a return to Jalna, pale, contrite and considerably lighter in pocket. But now instead his purse was untouched and he was the centre of romantic speculation. After tea he consented to bring down the cushion for inspection. All agreed that it was handsome. Philip put it on the sofa in the sitting-room and laid his blond head on it, to his daughter’s embarrassment, for she was concerned that her parents should keep their dignity. The baby, Philip, was brought in for his bedtime romp and was tossed up by his father till he screamed with delight and wet himself.

  Adeline drew Madigan into the hall and, standing impressively, with one hand on the newel-post, on the top of which a superb bunch of grapes was carved, she said, “Lucius, I have something important to say to you and I hope you’ll take it to heart.”

  It was the first time she had addressed him by his Christian name and it brought tears to his eyes. He thought of himself as a poor lonely Irishman sadly out of place in this virile pioneer country. He thought of his poor mother in County Cork and how he had not written a line to her in the last ten months.

  “I take everything you say to he
art, Mrs. Whiteoak.” There were tears in his voice.

  “Well, I say this,” she went on. “You cannot do better than by marrying Amelia Busby.”

  “But —” he exclaimed, in panic.

  “Listen. It is plain to see that she is badly smitten by you. She is a healthy young woman who will take every care of you. She is good-natured. She is wild to get married, which her sisters accomplished years ago.”

  “But I have no means. Nothing to marry on.”

  Adeline’s persuasive voice sank almost to a whisper. “Don’t let that worry you,” she said. “Amelia is a woman of means. Her bachelor uncle left her a fine farm which she has rented. He left her also a small house in the town. You could move right into it. Amelia is going on for thirty and panting to settle down with a mate. She adores you. That’s plain.”

  “But why — why?” stammered Madigan. “There is nothing about me to adore.”

  “You don’t know your own value,” said Adeline. “That’s the trouble with the Irish. We are too modest. The English are so quietly self-assured. The Scotch so conceited. Take my advice, Lucius, and ask Amelia for her hand. She’ll accept you, I’ll be bound.”

  Madigan clasped his hands in front of him, tried to speak, failed, tried again and brought out, “There is one great obstacle to my marriage with a girl like Miss Busby.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re already married.”

  “Thank God, no,” he said, “but I am a Catholic.”

  Adeline was astonished but not dismayed.

  “Strange,” she said, “that you did not tell me this at the first, but I suppose you feared that, if I knew, I would not engage you.”

  “That was my reason.” The tutor looked into her eyes with defiance. “It was not that I was ashamed of having been brought up a Catholic, but I was desperate for a situation and I knew this was a strongly Protestant community.”

  “Then,” she agreed sadly, “I’m afraid it’s all up with this marriage.”

  Madigan’s contrary nature asserted itself. “I don’t see why,” he said. “Religion of any sort means little to me. I have not been to confession in five years.”

  “Does your mother know this?” Adeline demanded.