02 Morning at Jalna

by Mazo de La Roche

  “Do you like to get away from the war?”

  “Yaas, suh, it’s good to get away from the war,” answered the man.

  Ernest had followed his brother. Now clinging to his arm he asked, in a small voice, “Did you like being a slave?”

  “Yaas, suh, it was fine.”

  “But you’re free, now that you’re in Canada, aren’t you?” persisted Nicholas.

  “I haven’t thought about it,” said the Negro.

  “What is your name?” asked Ernest.

  “Jerry Cram.”

  Augusta called sternly to her brothers, “Boys! You were told not to ask questions. You’ll get into trouble with Mamma. Do leave off and come for a walk.”

  The two boys came reluctantly. They saw the pretty young mulatto housemaid come out of the side door and linger near the Negro.

  “She’s not supposed to talk to him,” said Augusta.

  “How can she help it when she’s in the same house with him?” Nicholas eyed the pair with curiosity.

  “Is that flirting?” asked little Ernest.

  “Wherever did you hear such talk, Ernest?” She took her small brother by the hand and led him firmly away.

  Nicholas said, “I asked Mrs. Sinclair’s lady’s maid.”

  “What is a lady’s maid?” interrupted Ernest.

  “Little silly! A lady’s maid dresses a lady, brushes her hair, sews on her buttons. This Annabelle gives Mrs. Sinclair’s hair one hundred strokes with the brush every night. Have you noticed how her hair glistens? That’s the brushing.”

  “Our mamma’s hair is red,” said Ernest. “She says she is glad none of us got it from her. Why, I wonder.”

  “It’s considered a blemish,” said Augusta.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but I suppose black or brown or golden are better.”

  “Gussie, I heard someone say to Mamma, ‘Your beautiful hair, Mrs. Whiteoak.’”

  “Who said that?”

  “I think it was Mr. Wilmott.”

  “What did Mamma say?” asked Nicholas.

  “She said — ‘You old silly.’”

  “That’s just her way,” said Nicholas. “She didn’t mean it.”

  “Do you think she liked it?” asked Augusta, shocked.

  “Certainly. Women love compliments. When you’re grown up you’ll love them.”

  “Indeed I shan’t.” She looked offended.

  Two manly figures now emerged from the woods that bordered the very paths of the estate, giving it an air of primeval seclusion and grandeur. These were the figures of Elihu Busby, the neighbour in whose house the three children had been visiting. He had been born in Canada and was excessively patriotic, and proud of the fact. Compared with him his neighbours were newcomers and he expected them to look to him for guidance in the affairs of the country. One of his sons was fighting with the army of the North in the American Civil War and of this he was proud. He looked on slavery as an abomination.

  The other manly figure was that of David Vaughan, another neighbour.

  “I hear,” said Busby, “that you have visitors.”

  “Yes,” said Augusta. “They have come for a visit because we are peaceful here.”

  “Do come and meet them, Uncle David,” put in Ernest, tugging at David Vaughan’s sleeve. He was not related to the Whiteoaks but the young ones always addressed him so. “They are nice, Uncle David.”

  But David Vaughan and Elihu Busby showed no inclination to meet the Southerners.

  “You will see little of us while they are in your house,” said Busby. “You know what is our opinion of slavery.”

  Nicholas’s eyes sparkled with mischief. He said:

  “I guess they’ll be staying a long while because they’ve brought three slaves with them.”

  At the word slaves the two men drew back in consternation.

  “Slaves,” repeated Busby. “Here? At Jalna?”

  “Yes. And there is one of them now. That fat woman hanging clothes on the line.”

  The woman, middle-aged and very black, was at some little distance from them and appeared to be unaware that she was watched.

  “Poor creature!” exclaimed Busby on a deep note. “What a fate!”

  “The slaves could leave if they wanted,” said Augusta. “But they appear to enjoy their servitude.”

  At this moment the negress let out a jolly peal of laughter, and called to someone in the basement kitchen.

  “That’s Cindy,” said little Ernest. “She can make a lovely cake — called angel food. I shall ask her to make one tomorrow.” And he darted off.

  Augusta and Nicholas also continued their walk. With them out of earshot, Elihu Busby asked: “Is that negress married?”

  “How should I know?” said Vaughan.

  “Well — if she’s not, she ought to be. It’s disgraceful to have her in the house with those children. They’re remarkably observant. They see everything. Especially that boy, Nicholas.”

  “He wouldn’t be his mother’s son if he weren’t remarkable,” said David Vaughan.

  Elihu Busby gave him a sharp look, then said, “What I cannot understand is why Mrs. Whiteoak could bear to make friends with these slave owners and invite them to visit Jalna and bring slaves with them, in a time when their country is at civil war. I’m shocked that Captain Whiteoak should countenance it.”

  “They will soon know our opinion concerning it all,” said David Vaughan. “For me, I will not enter their house while those people are under its roof.” His sensitive lips quivered in his emotion.

  The front door of the house opened and the figure of a woman appeared in the porch, on the white-painted pillars of which a lusty young Virginia creeper was already spreading its greenness. Adeline Whiteoak descended and came with a light step to where the two men stood.

  “An admirable walk,” said Busby, out of the side of his mouth. “She’s graceful as a doe.”

  Vaughan made no reply. His deep-set eyes met hers in sombre accusation. She saw but refused to recognize it. She said:

  “How glad I am you two have appeared! I was longing for this. You must come straight in and meet our guests from South Carolina. You’ll find them perfectly delightful.”

  “I refuse to meet any slave owners,” Busby said violently. “You must know that I am heart and soul with the North.”

  “I also,” said Vaughan, in a low, tense voice.

  “Ah, but you’ll change your minds completely when you meet them. They are full of charm. And their voices! So soft and sweet.”

  “I’d as soon touch a cobra as shake hands with a slave owner,” said Elihu Busby.

  “Then you won’t come in?” she asked, as though deeply surprised.

  “You know that my son Wellington is fighting on the side of the North? These people are his enemies. We may get word at any hour that he’s been killed.”

  David Vaughan asked — “Mrs. Whiteoak, have you read Uncle Tom’s Cabin?”

  “I have and I’m disgusted with Mrs. Stowe. She took particular cases and wrote of them as though they were universal. Mrs. Sinclair has never heard of such a brutal master as Legree.”

  “Why,” pursued Busby, with contempt, “did these Sinclairs bring slaves with them?”

  “Because the slaves begged to be brought. They worship the very ground their master and mistress walk on. Ah, ’tis beautiful to see them. These Southerners are the real aristocrats. They are waited on hand and foot. When I consider the rough haphazard service I get, I feel really sorry for myself.”

  “Mrs. Whiteoak,” said Elihu Busby, “would you like to be waited on by slaves?”

  “I should indeed.”

  “Then I’m thoroughly ashamed for you,” broke in David Vaughan, greatly moved.

  Elihu Busby began to laugh. “Don’t believe her, David,” he said. “She doesn’t mean a word of it. She’s just showing off.”

  “She is showing a side of her I had rather not see.” Vaughan waved a dra
matic arm in the direction of the three slaves gathered together in admiration around the baby, Philip. “Do these slave owners realize that they are now in a free country? That those miserable blacks can walk out at any moment and leave them to wait on themselves?”

  The Sinclairs accompanied by their host now appeared on the porch. Adeline, with a triumphant smile, moved across the well-kept lawn to join them. Over her shoulder she threw a goodbye to the two neighbours.

  “What a lovely walk that woman has!” repeated Busby.

  She knew that they were gazing after her. She could feel it in her prideful bones. The long flounced skirt of her puce taffeta dress swept the grass. She bent to smell a tea rose that grew by the porch, before she mounted the steps.

  Curtis Sinclair carried in his hand the latest copy of the New York Tribune. The news it brought was the basis for long military discussions between him and Philip Whiteoak.

  Now the Carolinian had been telling of the route by which his party had arrived in Canada. They had taken ship at Charleston, passed through the blockade on a stormy night, and then made for Bermuda. “There we were able,” he said, “to exchange our Confederate dollars for pounds sterling.”

  “And at a loss to us, you may be sure,” chimed in his wife.

  Curtis Sinclair went on, “There we managed to catch an English passenger ship which brought us safely to Montreal.”

  “What adventures!” Adeline fairly danced up the steps to the porch. “Adventure is the savour of life.”

  The Busbys and the Whiteoaks were naturally much affected as were all people in that part of the province bordering on the States. But these two families were aware, more than most, of an underground group of agents of the Confederacy sent into Canada with the object of making raids across the border and destroying Yankee shipping on the Great Lakes.

  While Elihu Busby was so passionately on the side of the North, Philip Whiteoak had sympathy with the South, stimulated by the Sinclairs, though, as events progressed, he began to realize the hopelessness of their cause. As a soldier he understood the import of these events, and their meaning to Canada, much more clearly than did Elihu Busby.

  III

  The Tutor

  Lucius Madigan was an Irishman who had come out to Canada to better himself, but he was fond of saying that he was worse off in this new country than he had been in the Old Land. He had come as tutor to the young Whiteoaks six months before. Twice during those months he had been absent on drinking bouts, but on his return he was so humble and looked so ill that he was forgiven. He was a graduate of Dublin University. He had travelled in Europe and both Philip and Adeline had great respect for his learning. In any case his time at Jalna would not be much longer, for the children were to go to boarding schools in England.

  Madigan was naturally a contrary man. It was almost physically painful to him to agree with anyone on any subject. Yet he was always gentle with the children. He fascinated them by his contradictor opinions. He begged them to forgive him his faults because they were the only three in the world whose opinions he valued. Once Nicholas, when repeating, as his own, some iconoclastic opinion he had heard from the tutor, was given a sound cuff by his father.

  Madigan was immensely attracted by Lucy Sinclair. She was an exotic type, new to him; her slow elegant movements with her hands fascinated him. He was a man who must have a female to put on a pedestal and worship, but if she disappointed him, his worship turned to scorn. A while ago it had been Amelia Busby — she preferred her second name to Abigail, her first — whom he had worshipped, but in some way she had offended him. Now her buxom figure, her loudly expressed views, were repellent to him. She had not valued him highly, because of his habit of drinking too much, but he was far cleverer than her brothers and she was both ashamed and sorry she had lost him.

  In Lucy Sinclair he had found the perfect object for worship. If Curtis Sinclair was aware of this, he made no sign. Outwardly he was as tranquil, as charming as a Southern gentleman should be. “Ah, what a manner that man has!” Adeline exclaimed to Philip. He demanded:

  “What’s the matter with my manner?”

  “It’s the manner,” she returned cryptically, “of a cavalry officer.”

  At the beginning of the American Civil War, Lucius Madigan was in concord with the North, that is to say, as nearly in concord as was possible for his nature to be. When he heard that Irishmen were in the Northern Army he said fervently, “Ah, those lads would fight for freedom!”

  But when he saw the abhorrence in which Elihu Busby held the South his opinion changed. He thoroughly disliked Elihu Busby. Everything connected with Lucy Sinclair must be admired, or at the least defended, by him. Busby had an almost worshipping admiration for Lincoln. Lucius Madigan ridiculed him. “He is the type,” he said, “who sits with his cronies in the little room behind the grocery shop, whittles a stick, and tells dirty stories.”

  He said this to the three young Whiteoaks when he met them that same afternoon in the woods. His last words made Augusta turn away her face, and he glimpsed the colour deepening on her cheek.

  “My dear,” he said contritely, “forgive my slip of the tongue. I should not have said that in front of you.”

  Nicholas winked at his sister, which made her embarrassment even more acute.

  “Would you please repeat that, Mr. Madigan?” said little Ernest. “I didn’t hear clearly.”

  The tutor ignored this remark and began to talk poetically of the beauty of the trees. Among their branches darted yellow finches, elegant little bluebirds and black and gold orioles. There was a clearing in the forest, carpeted with flowers. Augusta and Ernest began at once to pick them.

  Nicholas said to Lucius Madigan, “If I were grown I shouldn’t mind going to that war. The trouble is I shouldn’t know which side to fight on. Our friends are all for the North, but our mother and father and you are for the South.”

  “I’m against all wars,” said Madigan. “Life in Ireland was bad enough. I didn’t come to this country to get embroiled in a cause that means nothing to me.”

  “But you have principles, haven’t you?”

  “Devil a one,” said Madigan. “I had them once but they were swept away when I saw the peasants starving in Ireland.”

  Ernest came running to them, his hands full of flowers. “Mr. Madigan,” he said, “wouldn’t you like to free the slaves?”

  “They’re a spoilt lot,” said Madigan. “If they were earning a living in Canada, they’d find out what it is to work.”

  “But still they’re slaves,” said Nicholas.

  “Not since Lincoln’s proclamation. They could leave in a body if they wanted, but they know when they are well off.”

  The Southerners and their black slaves fascinated the children. They could talk of nothing else. The boys sought to draw out the Negroes on the subject, but they would give no opinion. Their black faces were a mask. Augusta was herself too reserved to desire to probe the feelings of others.

  Before the three reached the house they met their father and Mr. Sinclair. Philip was displaying, with a good deal of pride, the orchard he had planted after coming to Jalna. “I had saplings sent from England and already they have borne good crops for young trees. Such Cox’s Pippins! I never have tasted any better flavoured.”

  “Pippins, eh?” said Sinclair. “I should like to taste a pippin.”

  “I have some good Canadian apples too. The little snow apples are really a treat. Red skin, white flesh, tender as a pear, with fine red veins. They’ll not be ready till the late autumn, but you shall soon have an Early Transparent. Their sauce is excellent with roast duck — smooth as ointment. We know no such thing as blight; as for insect pests — the birds keep them down.” Philip Whiteoak went on to talk with gusto of his various crops.

  “How many labourers have you on the land?” asked Curtis Sinclair.

  “Six. Good workers, all of them.”

  “I have more than a hundred in the cotton fields, but it n
eeds all of them to do the work of half that number of white men. And there are their large families to clothe and feed.”

  “Good Lord! I never could afford that.”

  “It’s all right if you sell your cotton, but the Yankees are spoiling that business with their blockade. They’re the people who have made money and still are making it. They sold the slaves to us in the first place.” He spoke with restrained bitterness.

  “Yes, I know,” said Philip, though he knew very little about it.

  They walked on in silence for a space, then Curtis Sinclair said, “Captain Whiteoak, I think your sympathies are with the Confederacy.”

  “They are indeed.”

  “The Yankees have ruined my country. My father has large estates. Over seven hundred Negroes. A few of them have drifted away but the great majority remain. To be clothed and fed. All ages — old people — young children.” He hesitated, then raised his fine eyes to his host’s fresh-coloured face. He said, “Captain Whiteoak, I have certain plans in mind. I am committed to an enterprise which, we hope, will put a stop to the activities of the Yankees on the Great Lakes.”

  Philip opened his eyes wide. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” he said.

  “It’s quite true and I will tell you more about it later. What I wish to know now is whether you would object to some of the men who are engaged in this enterprise coming here to discuss matters with me. It would be less conspicuous than meeting in a hotel. If you have any objection to my using your hospitality in this way, say the word and my wife and I will depart.”

  “I’ll be glad to have you meet your friends here.” Philip spoke cautiously; he did not quite understand the possible complications of such a scheme.

  “They are scarcely to be called friends,” said Curtis Sinclair. “They don’t want to see our country swallowed up by the Yankees.”

  Philip wondered what all this was about, but he was of a sanguine nature and being himself so secure he would have liked to see his friends in security. The two strolling men were now overtaken by the children and their tutor. Ernest was gnawing, with his white teeth, at a hard green apple. This Philip at once snatched from him and gave him a hearty whack on the behind.