02 Morning at Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  Tite turned towards him with dignity.

  “Were you speaking to me, mister?”

  “I was.” The man got up from the log and came to the river bank. He said, “Can you tell me if there’s a man named Sinclair living hereabouts?”

  “He was visiting friends here,” said Tite. “He may be gone, for all I know.”

  “He’s a slave owner” — the man spoke with scorn. “He brought some slaves with him. Do you young folks happen to be two of them?”

  “We might be,” said Tite.

  “Waal, you’re free now. Do you know that?”

  “Thanks for telling us,” said Tite.

  Annabelle was shaking with silent laughter. “What’s the joke?” asked the man.

  “This young fellah ain’t a slave,” she said. “He’s an Injun.”

  The man grinned. “I ain’t never seen an Injun and a mulatto sparkin’ before.”

  “You’ve a lot to learn,” said Tite.

  Annabelle spoke boldly, “Ah guess you’re a Yankee,” she said.

  “I certainly am,” said the man, “and so’s my friend here. We’re refugees from the North. We don’t want to fight. We don’t want to be drafted into the army. There’s lots like us comin’ into Canada. We thought Mr. Sinclair might help us to find work.”

  “Then you’re not agin the South?” Annabelle looked searchingly into the man’s face.

  “Do I want to fight my brothers?” he demanded. “No, I’m all for peace and prosperity.”

  The other man now came forward. “Can you tell us,” he asked, “where Mr. Sinclair lives? We don’t want to pester him but just to ask his advice.”

  “He’s stayin’ at a place called Jalna.” Annabelle spoke with pride. “It’s the finest place hereabout but not as fine as our plantations.”

  “Which direction does it lie in?” asked the man, as though unconcernedly.

  She told him and the two men left, with a gruff thank you.

  “You should not have told them, Belle,” said Tite. “I don’t like the looks of them.”

  “But they’re not fighters,” she cried. “Jus’ poor refugees from the var.”

  “They look like murderers,” said Tite.

  He brought the boat to the shore, tied it to a fallen tree and scrambled out. “I must see where they go,” he said. “You wait here, Belle.”

  “Be careful,” she called after him; a rich proprietary feeling for him thrilled her being, causing her to watch his lithe figure with the benign concern of a dark angel, as he disappeared into the bush. Waterfowl, knowing little of fear, swam close to her. A blue heron stole colour from the sky as he flashed overhead. She could see his legs tucked under him, as though he never would consent to use them again but would fly on and on to the end of the world. Oh, that she and Tite could live all their lives on this river bank, loving each other, serving the Lord! A tiny house, of only one room, built of logs, would be enough. The thought of the coming winter, the snowdrifts, no longer frightened her. She would feel safe, with Tite always at her side. He had not yet spoken of marriage but he would. She was sure he would. She did not look ahead to the time when he would pass his final examinations, become a lawyer. She could not believe in such a possibility. It was quite beyond her. Always she pictured him as the agile half-breed, with French blood in his veins. No Negro could be so clever, so ready-tongued.

  Now he came loping back to her.

  “They’re gone,” he said, “but not in the direction of Jalna. By jingo, I believe they’re Yankee spies.”

  “Ah’d be afraid if you wasn’t here,” said Annabelle.

  “What about God? Won’t he look after you?”

  “He’s got dis war on his hands. He won’t have time for a poor girl like me.”

  Tite gave her a tender look. “Don’t worry, Annabelle. I’ll look after you.” He scrambled into the boat.

  “For how long?” she asked yearningly.

  “For as long as you want me.”

  She drew a deep breath of joy. “Ah loves you, Tite,” she said, and again trailed her hand blissfully in the river as the boat moved gently up stream.

  The bank was blue with gentians and Michaelmas daisies. Goldenrod grew so tall that it was a secret place. Annabelle needed no persuasion to go with Tite into that flowery fastness. They sank to the grass and he put a coaxing arm about her waist. She laid her head on his shoulder, proud indeed that her hair was not woolly. Her languorous eyes were raised to his rounded brown neck.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. His sinewy hand pressed her ribs.

  A child’s voice broke in on them. “I see you!” called out Ernest. He and the two elder children came crashing through the undergrowth.

  “Having a picnic?” demanded Nicholas.

  “Not yet,” said Tite.

  Nicholas looked accusingly at Annabelle. “You’re needed at home,” he said. “Cindy has just had a baby.”

  Annabelle sprang to her feet. “And me not thar to help!” she cried. “Oh, my goodness! Show me the path, chillen, and Ah’ll run all the way. Was thar a doctor? Was thar a midwife?”

  “There was only my mother,” said Nicholas. “Our servants were too badly frightened.” His handsome boy’s face was flushed by excitement.

  “Was you sent to fetch me?”

  “No, I was told to take Ernest out of the way. He doesn’t understand such things.”

  “Understand — my eye,” said Ernest. He was so excited that he walked in a circle.

  “Do you know the shortcut to Jalna?” Tite asked of Nicholas.

  “I do. Come along, Annabelle. Let’s see how fast you can run.” He led the way, the mulatto running lightly after him.

  “This baby,” called Tite, “is born into a free country. What colour is it?”

  “Black as the ace of spades,” said Nicholas.

  “I shall follow with Ernest,” said Augusta. Her pale face was even paler than usual, though she had been running. She took Ernest firmly by the hand. The moist earth was soft beneath their feet. Slender larch trees and leafy undergrowth pressed close on the path, across which a mottled snake glided, pausing just long enough to spit out its yellow venom at them.

  “If Nicholas were here,” said Ernest, “he would kill it.”

  “We are supposed,” said Augusta, “to love all God’s creatures.”

  “Gussie, do you love Cindy’s baby?”

  “I daresay I shall.”

  “How did Nicholas know it was black?”

  “Perhaps Mamma told him.”

  “Tell me, Gussie, how does a baby get born? Does it take a long while or does it come fast — whoosh, like that?” He made a violent gesture with his right arm.

  Augusta held firmly to his left hand. She said, “You should try to keep your mind off such things till you are older.”

  “As old as you?”

  “Much older. You must make the effort.”

  “I try to be brave,” said Ernest, looking fearfully into the moist August undergrowth.

  “You may not succeed in being brave but there is nothing to prevent your being good.”

  “Are we rewarded if we’re good?”

  “It is promised to us.”

  “Is Cindy being good or bad?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Then you don’t know if the baby is a reward or a punishment?”

  “How can I tell what sort of life she has led?” They had now reached the open parkland that lay about Jalna. Augusta freed Ernest’s hand and he darted ahead. Annabelle was nowhere in sight, but Nicholas and Lucius Madigan came to meet them.

  The tutor said, “I suppose you have heard of the new arrival?”

  “How black is the ace of spades?” asked Ernest.

  “I am colour blind,” said Madigan.

  “Is that why you wear that bright green cravat?” asked Ernest.

  Madigan fingered the cravat as though lovingly. “I wear this,” he said, “in memory of dear old Irelan
d. Thank God, she’s only a memory.”

  “Mr. Madigan,” said Ernest, “can you tell me how long it takes to be born?”

  Augusta fled.

  “My parents,” said Madigan, “had been married ten years when I came on the scene. So you may say it took me ten years to be born. But things move faster nowadays.”

  Nicholas was watching with curiosity the approach of three men along the drive, on either side of which Captain Whiteoak had planted young hemlocks and spruces that were flourishing and growing tall.

  One of the men called out, “Is this where a gentleman named Elihu Busby lives?”

  “No,” answered Nicholas, “but I’ll show you the direction.”

  “Why do you want to see him?” asked Ernest, always on the watch for information.

  “We’d like to buy land and settle here,” said the man.

  Nicholas went with them to the gate and pointed out the way.

  “Liars,” said Madigan looking after the men. “They’re spies.”

  Ernest was jubilant. “Just like the stories in the books,” he said, and ran down the driveway after the men.

  Lucius Madigan saw Mrs. Sinclair descending the steps from the porch. Her slow graceful movements filled him with a longing to serve her. However, she turned her face away from him. She was afraid he might mention the humiliating incident of the recent birth. Humiliating it had been to her because she had fled in panic to the latticed summer house hidden among trees. It had only been built that spring and was the haunt of bluebirds who made their nests and reared their young in it.

  It was stout-hearted Adeline who had delivered the baby, had held it up by the feet and smacked it on the back till it had let out a yell. When young Doctor Ramsay arrived too late, she had met him with a derisive laugh. “I’m going to hire myself out as a midwife,” she declared. “I can bring young ’uns into the world faster than you can. This one took only ten minutes.”

  The doctor looked the baby over.

  “I’m glad to see that it’s black. Does Cindy know who is the father?”

  “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.