02 Morning at Jalna (4 page)

V

A Call on Wilmott

The following morning Adeline set out on foot, accompanied by Nero, to call on James Wilmott, an Englishman who had come to Canada on the same ship as the Whiteoaks. He had bought a piece of land with a log house beside the winding river. He had made himself very comfortable in a primitive way. At the edge of the river a flat-bottomed boat was moored. On the little landing stage lay his fishing tackle. There was whispering among the rushes.

Usually Adeline, when she went to visit her neighbours, rode her favourite horse — but this was a secret call. She followed the grass path to the door and knocked. As she waited she felt the sense of mystery always associated with Wilmott. In the first place he had been so reticent concerning his past life. She had looked on him as a bachelor till, some time after he was settled in his new home, she had discovered, and he had confessed to her, that he had secretly left England to escape from a detested wife. He had impoverished himself to provide for her and her child.

When the wife had discovered his whereabouts and followed him, it had been Adeline Whiteoak who had put her off the scent.

Adeline could not think of that interview, almost twelve years ago, without a mischievous chuckle. Meeting the former Mrs. Wilmott, it had been easy to understand why her husband had fled from her.

Since that time Wilmott had lived in conscious happiness with his servant, companion, protégé, and pupil, a young partly French half-breed Indian called Tite. It was he who now opened the door to Adeline. In the years he had lived with Wilmott he had grown from a bronzed stripling to a muscular but still slender young man. He had that year passed his first examination in the study of law. Wilmott was proud of him, regarding him almost in the light of a son.

“Good morning to you, Tite,” said Adeline. “Is Mr. Wilmott at home?”

“He is almost always at home,” Tite said, with a dignified inclination of the head. “I will tell him you are here. He is at the moment sewing buttons on his best pants.” Tite glided from the room and, in a few moments, Wilmott entered. Tite did not return.

“I’m sorry I have kept you waiting, Adeline.” Wilmott spoke formally, as was his habit, but his deep-set grey eyes looked so intently into hers that she coloured a little. “It is not often that you come to see me,” he added, and placed a chair for her.

She did not sit down but stood facing him.

“I come on an important mission,” she said.

He was used to her exaggerations and waited composedly for her to go on. “Yes?” He spoke warily.

“Oh, don’t be alarmed,” she broke out. “I’m not asking you to
do
anything. I want only to have your sympathy in what Philip and I are undertaking.”

“Philip and you?” he repeated surprised.

“Philip and I pull very well together,” she declared, “when we are of one mind … But first tell me where do your sympathies lie in this Civil War of the Americans?”

“You know that I hate slavery.”

“So do our guests from the South. But they inherited great plantations and hundreds of slaves. Those blacks were dependent on them. They were content and happy with their masters, but now the Yankee soldiers have invaded the South, pillaging, burning. Oh, ’twould break your heart to hear of the miseries those villains have brought into that happy country. Of course, you remember how your wife went through New England lecturing and stirring up hate for the South. And it was none of her business, was it?”

Wilmott did not want to be reminded of that woman. He retorted, “Surely this war is no business of ours.”

Yet when Adeline poured out the plans of Curtis Sinclair, she moved him, as she knew she could. The very fact that his one-time wife had been active in stirring up hatred for the South was enough to rouse his sympathy for that troubled land.

As he hesitated, she caught his hand in hers, exclaiming, “Ah, James, how splendid you are!”

“But I have promised nothing,” he warned. “And I hope you are not letting yourself be inveigled into some reckless act.”

“Philip and I have no part in all this but to see nothing, say nothing. Nothing more than to lend shelter for meetings.”

“Meetings?” He withdrew his hand and looked her sternly in the eyes.

“Now that I have won you over,” she said, “you are to come to Jalna tonight and hear the details. You are going to enjoy this, James.”

His voice trembled a little as he said, “You know, Adeline, that I will do anything for you.” Yet he still held his look of sternness, for he lived a rather isolated life and, once his austere features lent themselves to any expression of mood, they were reluctant to change.

When Adeline was gone, the half-breed entered. He had been eavesdropping and had heard every word, but his face showed nothing of this. He said: “I was hoping you’d tell me to make a cup of tea for the lady, Boss.”

“You know very well, Tite,” said Wilmott, “that I am not in the habit of entertaining ladies.”

“But Mrs. Whiteoak is a great tea-drinker, Boss.”

“That is nothing to us,” Wilmott said curtly.

“I know that very well, Boss. But I thought she might like a cup of tea for the sake of her nerves. It must be strange to her to have slaves in the house.”

“That is nothing to us,” repeated Wilmott.

A silence followed, then Tite, with a sidelong look, asked, “Have you seen the slaves, Boss?”

“I have not. How many are there?”

“Three, Boss.”

“Well!” Wilmott ejaculated. “Well — that seems rather a lot. Are they men or women?”

“One man and two women, Boss.”

“Have you spoken with them?”

“I am always friendly with strangers, Boss. I have talked with them. The older woman is fat; for one thing she is heavy with child.”

“Tck!” exclaimed Wilmott.

“Yes indeed, Boss.”

“Is the man her husband?”

“No, Boss. She left her husband and three children in the South because she is so devoted to her mistress — just as I would leave my wife and my children, if I had them, to go with you.”

“I should advise you,” said Wilmott, “not to question these Negroes. Better keep away from them, Tite.”

“I am a friendly man, Boss.” The half-breed showed his white teeth in a smile. “Also I have no class-consciousness. I myself am of mixed blood. I am scarcely white. Yet a young white lady once told me that I had a mouth like a pomegranate flower. Do you think that was meant as a compliment, Boss?”

“Don’t remind me of that affair, Tite,” Wilmott said sternly.

“That was years ago, and I am of a more noble character now. You have heard of the noble red man, Boss?”

“I am glad to hear of your nobility,” said Wilmott, wondering whether education had been good for Tite.

“The young woman slave” — Tite spoke in a judicial tone — “is a mulatto — the shade of café au lait. You see, I know a little French. She is a very pretty girl, Boss.”

“I want you to keep strictly away from that young woman.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Tite with dignity. “Still, she is very pretty and her name is Annabelle. Her face is sensitive — a quality you don’t find very often in women.”

“Keep away from her,” repeated Wilmott, “or you may get into trouble.”

“Trouble with whom, sir?”

“Probably with the Negro man.”

“Oh, no, Boss. Annabelle is miles above him. He is an ignorant fellow who knows not how to read or write, though he can do arithmetic in his head.”

“How do you come by all this information, Tite?”

“I keep my eyes and ears open. That is what makes life interesting.”

Tite drifted away. He fished in a shady pool of the stream which abounded in fish. He cleaned and cooked fish for the evening meal. He washed up. When dusk fell he took the narrow path to Jalna by which Adeline had come that morning.

The sounds and smells of night were stealing out, at first as though timidly, then taking possession of the darkness. The scent of virgin soil, of cedar, of pine, of the balm of Gilead tree, weighed sweetly on the night air. The twittering of small birds, the confidential croaking of frogs, the newly awakened chorus of the locusts, joined in the dismissal of day and the welcoming of night.

The half-breed did not consciously give himself to these pleasures. He absorbed them through his very pores — the soles of his feet, the skin of his dark face. Plainly this night walk was not aimless, for he turned abruptly from the path that led to Jalna, descended another path that would have been difficult to find, had he been less sensitive to the feel of the earth and the change in the air, as he followed the path down into the ravine. Down there a stream was moving swiftly, unseen but clearly heard in its nocturnal singing. It was spanned by a rustic bridge and walking across it was a large white owl whose hearing, even more acute than Tite’s, detected the coming of the young man. It rose, with a heavy flutter of wings, into the shelter of a massive tree.

Tite gave a little laugh and, raising an imaginary bow, sent an imaginary arrow into the owl’s white breast. As though in wonder, it uttered a loud “whoo-whoo.” Tite now went and stood on the bridge listening. He had not long to wait. A dark figure stole out from the undergrowth. The young mulatto girl joined him silently on the bridge.

He took her hand and they stood so linked for a moment. Then he said, “You did well, Annabelle, not to keep me waiting. I am an impatient fellow and would have searched till I found you — and then —”

“What then?” she breathed.

“I can’t tell you. I do things on impulse. Sometimes good. Sometimes bad.”

In her soft voice Annabelle said: “Ah reckon you’se good, Tite.”

“Why?” he laughed.

“You’s so educated.”

“That doesn’t matter. We’re happy together. As for my education — what chance has an Indian got? Any more than a Negro.”

“Ah’m part white. My grandfather was a white man. My grandmother was just his slave. But she was pretty.”

“And so are you, Belle — pretty as a picture.”

She moved closer to him. He could smell her warm dark flesh and cheap perfume.

“Tite,” she whispered, “do you love de Lawd?”

He was startled but he asked, “Do you want me to love Him, Belle?”

“Ah certainly does. Ah’m religious. All us three — Jerry, Cindy, and me — enjoy a good meetin’. Next to a weddin’ or a funeral.”

Tite, after a moment’s hesitation, said, in a voice that thrilled the emotional girl, “I too am religious.”

“You ain’t a Catholic, are you?”

“What made you think I might be?”

“Well, you said you was part French.”

“What denomination do you belong to, Belle?”

“Ah’m a sort of Baptist. But I enjoy any sort of revival meetin’.”

“So do I,” Tite said fervently.

The girl said, in her soft thick accents, “There’s over thirty of us coloured folk in these parts. There’s a preacher among us. Cap’n Whiteoak, he’s lent us a nice clean hayloft for meetin’s. We’re havin’ one on Sunday. We’ll sing and pray for the South, ’cause we want to go home again. Will you come to the meetin’, Tite?”

“I’ll be delighted,” said Tite, imitating Wilmott’s manner. He put his arm about the girl. Dusky cheek to cheek, they listened to the singing of the stream.

“Does religion mean more to you than love?” he asked, running his hand through her curls, for her hair was not woolly.

“Way more,” she murmured.

He felt a little rebuffed. “Why?” he asked. “Surely a pretty girl longs for love.”

“Ah likes the love of a man,” came the answer, “but Ah clings to the love of de Lawd.”

“So do I,” said Tite fervently.

The following morning he raised his eyes from the fish he was scaling and announced to Wilmott, “I’ve got religion, Boss.” His serious tone was scarcely matched by the expression of his eyes, for two fish-scales clung to his long lashes.

Wilmott looked down at him doubtfully. “What has brought that about?” he asked.

Tite winked the fish-scales from his eyelashes.

“I’ve felt the need of it for a long time, Boss,” he said. “And when I was wandering solitary in the darkness, it struck me like a blinding light.”

“I hope it will be good for you,” Wilmott said without conviction.

“I’m sure it will, Boss. A man cannot live by fish alone.”

“You had better go and tell this to Mr. Pink, the rector,” said Wilmott.

“Can’t you advise me, Boss?”

“I don’t consider myself competent for that. Better go to the rector.”

“But, Boss, I’ve never been baptized or confirmed. He’d likely want to do both to me.”

“Do as you please,” said Wilmott, and left him.

In spite of Wilmott’s guardianship, Tite was accustomed to do as he pleased. Now it was his pleasure to seek out Mr. Pink, the rector of the small church that had been built by the Whiteoaks. It was but one of two country churches in Mr. Pink’s spiritual care. Here, beside it, was the rectory, almost as large as the church. Mr. Pink was sitting in the porch enjoying his mid-morning pipe. At the half-breed’s approach he gave him a friendly nod and said: