02 Morning at Jalna (7 page)

“My dear puritan,” cried Adeline, “Cindy is an honest woman. She has a husband and three children in the South. All living with her mother.”

“She should be ashamed of herself for deserting them,” said the doctor.

“Ah, she’s so devoted to her mistress! ’Tis a wonderful thing to have such devotion.”

“What does she do to merit it?”

“If we only got what we merit, heaven help us,” said Adeline.

Lucy Sinclair cast a gentle, almost pleading look at the tutor. “My husband and I,” she said, “have drunk the cup of humiliation to its dregs. What has happened today is the last bitter drop, my husband says.”

Something puritanical in the tutor was repelled by this frankness. He hastened to say, “But it wasn’t his fault, dear lady, it wasn’t his fault.”

“Indeed it was not,” she agreed.

Madigan bent to pick a little pink blossom from a scant rosebush that grew near the porch.

“’Tis the last rose of summer,” she said in a poetic voice, but he was obliged to put his thumb in his mouth, for a thorn from the little rose had drawn blood.

She sniffed the blossom’s scent. “The last rose,” she murmured. “Oh, if you knew how I dread the winter in this climate. Is it very terrible?” She raised her large blue eyes to his face.

“Well,” he said judicially, “I have spent only one winter here and I must say I found it less disagreeable than the chill fogs of Ireland. For one thing, Captain Whiteoak sees to it that the house is kept warm. Fires in all the principal rooms.”

“If our plans are successful,” she said, in a burst of candour, “we may be able to return home sooner than we expect.”

“It will be happy for you,” he said, “but a sad day for me — when you leave.”

“It is very sweet of you to say that, Mr. Madigan. But I fear there will be nothing but sorrow in our return — if ever we can return.”

“As for your plans,” he said, burning with curiosity and a great desire to serve her, “I tremble for them, when I see strange men lurking about the grounds.”

Her candour overcame her discretion. She spoke low.

“You must not worry about those men. They are Southerners who come to see my husband on — important business. Oh, you must understand. They are here consulting him concerning our great project. You are on our side, I know.”

“Heart and soul, Mrs. Sinclair. But I must tell you this — there are other men lurking about. Yankee spies. They were here today enquiring for Mr. Busby’s place.”

She was shocked and dropped the rose from her trembling hand. Madigan picked it up and inhaled its late summer scent.

“If I knew a little of your plans I might better be able to put these spies off the trail.”

“What would my husband say?”

“He should know that I am a friend to be trusted.”

Lucy Sinclair’s cheeks were flaming. She could not restrain her pride in these daredevils from the South. In a rush of words she told him that more than a hundred of them, in civilian clothes, were in this part of the province, under orders from the President of the Confederacy to do as much damage as possible to the Yankees across the border.

“They’ll make raids,” she said. “They’ll set buildings afire. You, as an Irishman, will want to take part in all this, especially as you say you would like to help us.”

“Dear Mrs. Sinclair,” began Madigan, but he could not tell her of the feelings she roused in him. He put out a trembling hand and laid it on her shoulder. “I will do all I can,” he went on, “but really there’s little I can do, except to warn you of the danger.” The scent that came from her elegant clothes, so unsuitable to this northern country life, intoxicated him. She felt her power and gave him her consciously sweet smile. “From the moment I heard you sing,” she said, “I realized how different you are from the people here. Ireland must be a wonderfully romantic country.”

“It is that,” he said fervently, and for the moment forgot how glad he had been to get away from it.

A figure now came out of the house and walked determinedly towards them, the hump on his back evident.

“Good morning,” he said coldly to the tutor, and to his wife, “I should like a word with you in private, my dear.”

Madigan moved away with a frown. He felt insulted, yet helpless. He longed for a drink to make him forget his feeling of inferiority before that proud misshapen man.

Curtis Sinclair said angrily to his wife, “I will not have you flirting with Madigan. I should think you would have more sense. But, in spite of all our misfortunes, you appear as frivolous as ever.”

“How little you understand me, Curtis,” she cried. “Come with me to a more private place and I will tell you what my conversation with Mr. Madigan was about.”

He followed her round to the back of the house where there was a grassy space and about it clothes lines from which white linen sheets and large tablecloths moved wetly in the August breeze. In the vegetable garden the asparagus stalks had grown into a forest of feathery turgescence, low down in which the grasshoppers gathered and sang. Vegetable marrows lay in shapely ripeness. Tomatoes ripened and, because they were so prolific, some of them dropped overripe from the vine and lay on the ground split open for hens to peck.

Beyond the vegetable garden there was an open space before the apple orchard was revealed, the trees having their branches propped, in the case of the early apples, against breaking because of the heavy crops. In this open space there were a few plum and pear trees, their fruit showing purple and gold among the leaves.

“Is this private enough?” asked Curtis Sinclair. He gave his wife a cold look that did not invite confidence.

“How lovely it is here!” she exclaimed. “It’s hard to believe that winter is only a few months away. I dread it so.” She shivered in anticipation.

“You will not be here,” he said curtly. “What are you going to tell me about that Irishman?”

“Don’t belittle him,” she said. “He knows more than you think. He’s a most unusual man and a scholar.”

“I hope,” Curtis Sinclair spoke with calculated severity, “that you’re not making a fool of yourself by confiding in him. It would be dangerous.”

“Oh, no,” she said mildly. “On the contrary, he has been telling me something very disturbing. He says there are spies about.”

“How the devil should he know? He has been told that these men who come to see me are men escaping the draft … I believe you are carrying on a flirtation with him.”

She began to cry. “No, no — I have no admiration for him at all. When we do meet, the children are always present.”

“They weren’t present just now.”

“Oh, why are you so unkind? Everything is going well, isn’t it?”

He spoke more gently and laid his small elegantly formed hand on her arm. “Everything is going fairly well,” he said, “but I have much to irritate me. For instance, this escapade of Cindy’s.”

Now her tears were changed to laughter. “Having a baby an escapade! Oh, my dear, how funny you are!” She patted the hand on her arm. Her diamond rings glittered in the sunlight.

He was mollified. “Why did this Madigan think he saw spies?” he asked quietly.

“Strange men have come asking questions. He could tell they were Yankees.”

“What questions?”

“For one thing — the way to the Busbys’. Nicholas has gone with them to show the way.”

“They’re too late.” He gave a short laugh. “Everything is in order. Don’t let anything that happens surprise you. Not even my sudden going away.”

That really frightened her. “Oh, you can’t, you can’t,” she cried. “It would be horrible to think of you in danger.”

“I have as much right to be in danger as any man,” he said.

“I know,” she agreed quickly, fearing he would suspect she was thinking of his deformity, “but danger to other men means nothing to me.”

They turned back to the house. The cry of a newborn infant came to them, the voices of the Negro women chattering excitedly.

“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?” Ernest 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.”