02 Morning at Jalna (25 page)

“Oh, what a fright this little wretch gave me!” Adeline began to shake him but Gussie begged her to desist. “It was my fault, Mamma. Please don’t punish him. Ernest said that only to protect me.”

“I should think,” said Adeline, “you would be proud of such an adventure. The Sinclairs would be flattered to think you had set out to visit them.”

“No — no. It was so — silly,” said Gussie. “Please don’t tell!”

“Were there ever such children? It’s enough to wreck my nerves the things they do!”

Ernest asked, in his gentle voice, “Shall I run up to the deck and tell that Gussie is safe?”

As he was about to pass through the door, Philip entered. Adeline began eagerly, rather incoherently, to talk. Her voice followed Ernest as he ran lightly along the passage. Life had become intensely interesting to him. When he found the Sinclairs still occupying their deck chairs, and Nicholas and the youngest Whiteoak nowhere in sight, he perched on the foot of Lucy’s chair, and said, “Gussie might have fallen overboard but I rescued her. She wanted to visit you in Charleston but the lake was rough. So I rescued both her and Nicholas. Please don’t tell anybody. I don’t want a reward. Gussie’s crying because she’s afraid I’ll tell. I don’t really want to be a hero. I just enjoy rescuing my family.”

“How did you rescue Gussie?” asked Lucy Sinclair.

“I jumped overboard,” he said complacently. “It’s a good thing I swim so well. That is twice I have rescued her. But please don’t tell.”

The Sinclairs, amused and puzzled, promised.

Philip and Adeline now returned. She exclaimed, “That young daughter of mine has
such
a temperament! She’s a thorough young flibbertigibbet. I really can’t follow her moods.” She sank down on her chair.

Lucy Sinclair said, “I think you have a most fascinating family, Mrs. Whiteoak. My husband and I admire them excessively.”

“Ah, they’re a lively lot,” sighed Adeline. “Nicholas is like my family. Ernest and the baby are Whiteoaks. But Gussie, she’s like nobody except her own queer self.”

At this moment, Gussie, alone in her cabin, again locked the door, opened her portmanteau, and took from it a spyglass. This had been a present from young Blanchflower, just before her sailing. She had told him of the loss of her own, told him without shyness, without a shadow of hinting; and he had told her that, on leaving England, his uncle had presented him with one which lay unused, neglected, and all but forgotten, on a shelf in his clothes cupboard. Would she accept it, he asked, as a goodbye present, a small token of the regard he had for her? She accepted it with modesty but hid it from her family with determination. It was her most treasured possession.

Now she took it out of her portmanteau, and after dusting it with an enormous silk handkerchief that rightly belonged to her father and smelt of his cigars, she went to the open porthole and peered through it.

There came a loud knocking on the door. It was Nicholas, who called out: “Gussie — come! See the last of Canada. Mrs. Sinclair begs you to come.”

“I don’t think I care to.”

“Papa orders you to come! And, look here, the Sinclairs have been told nothing. Come along, do.”

Without further hesitation Gussie, now in a mood of daring, followed Nicholas up the stairs to the deck, carrying the spyglass. The sea was a little rough. The coast rose, rocky and dim. Wild and dim were the gulls flying from coast to sea and back again.

“It’s getting rough,” said Curtis Sinclair and came and stood at Gussie’s side.

“I envy you,” he said, in his Southern accent.

She could scarcely believe her ears.

“But — why?” she asked, her low sweet voice scarcely audible.

“Because,” he smiled, “you are on your way to England for the first time and you own a spyglass.”

She offered the spyglass to him but he refused. “No, Miss Gussie, I had rather watch you looking through it. May I say that I admire the picture you make?” He moved away a short distance, then stood looking back.

Gussie’s hair was blown from off her face by the strong fresh wind. She held the spyglass to her eyes, gazing, as it were, into her future, and not at the receding coast. For the remainder of the voyage she was dreamy, aloof.

Adeline and Philip were happy to be again in the company of the Sinclairs. They discovered that they were going to the same hotel in London. The Sinclairs were lively and appeared to be in affluent circumstances.

“Upon my word,” Adeline remarked to Philip, “I shall jump for joy when we reach London and I am able to engage a proper nurse for the baby — he’s wearing me out.”

“He’s grown into a little boy,” said Philip, “and no baby. The Sinclairs greatly admire him.”

“Philip” — Adeline spoke seriously — “where do you suppose all their money comes from? I thought they were ruined when the South was defeated.”

“It’s cotton” — his eyes shone — “Sinclair’s father sent cotton to Manchester. Now Sinclair is coming over to make further arrangements. He advises me to invest in cotton.”

“I should love to visit France with them,” said she, “but the children cramp all our movements. I had thought Gussie would take part charge of Baby — but no — she moons about with that silly spyglass.”

“I shall make some arrangement to please you,” said Philip. “I promise you that.”

She threw her arms about him and gave him three kisses. After the third she said, “The children would be quite happy with my parents in Ireland. Did I tell you that they are coming to meet us? I had a letter from my mother.”

“You didn’t tell me,” he exclaimed.

“I forgot.”

He made the best of it. “That will be nice.” He reflected that this would be better than having a visit from them at Jalna. He added firmly, “Please don’t tell your father that I expect to make a good deal of money from cotton.”

“Indeed, I will not, for he would be sure to want to borrow from you.”

It was a smooth and sunny voyage. When the ship docked at Liverpool, there were Adeline’s parents to meet them. They would journey with them and the Sinclairs to London on the following day.

Adeline was proud of her parents, proud of the impression they made on the Sinclairs. Indeed they looked little changed since she had last seen them.

The six grown-ups and four children took possession of a large sitting room in the Adelphi Hotel. Lucy Sinclair remarked to Renny Court, Adeline’s father, “It is easy to see how dear Mrs. Whiteoak came by her handsome eyes and — her hair.”

“The eyes aren’t bad,” said Renny Court, “but the hair — well, I suppose it’s an affliction for a woman.”

“I admire it excessively,” she returned. “Your daughter is the most strikingly handsome woman I know. Her children are lovely. I envy her them.”

“My wife and I are taking the children to Ireland,” said Renny Court, “for a long visit.”

“What fun!” exclaimed Lucy Sinclair.

THE END

Copyright © The Estate of Mazo de la Roche and Dundurn Press Limited, 2011

First published in Canada by Macmillan Company of Canada in 1960.

This 2011 edition of
Morning at Jalna
is published in a new trade paperback format.

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Design: Emma Dolan and Jesse Hooper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

De la Roche, Mazo, 1879-1961

Morning at Jalna / Mazo de la Roche.

Issued also in print formats.

Electronic monograph in EPUB format.

ISBN 978-1-55488-916-7

I. Title.

PS8507.E43M67 2011a C813'.52 C2011-901925-6

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