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 dramatic 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
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