Don Gutteridge - Vital Secrets

“I think we’ve had this conversation before,” he said.

They had turned onto the path that wound between the barn and outbuildings towards the back-shed of the split-log cabin ahead. Marc stopped and quickly placed one hand on each of Beth’s shoulders. He held her gaze for several long seconds. She made no attempt to look away. He saw what it was he had to know: her feeling for him had not diminished, in spite of everything that had happened over the past fourteen months.

“We’ve spoken about everything except the thing we really need to speak about,” Beth said softly, her eyes misting over. “I haven’t been avoiding it. After lunch, when it settles down inside, we’ll sit by the south window like we did last year and have a long cup of tea.”

He leaned over and brushed his lips across her cool forehead.

She pulled back, reluctantly he thought, and said, “Now, let’s go and say hello to Aaron.”

Marc remembered Aaron McCrae with vivid painfulness: a tall, gangling sixteen-year-old with one lame leg that he dragged behind him and slurred, stammering speech. But he was no simpleton to be patronized or mocked by his fellows, though Marc had little doubt they had done so more than once. He had his sister’s blue eyes that, like hers, saw much more than they conveyed. In fact, it had been Aaron’s observation and reliable memory that had helped solve the mysterious death of Joshua Smallman last winter. But Marc wondered what might have been wrought upon that misaligned frame by typhoid fever and eight weeks of agonizingly slow recuperation.

Aaron spotted Beth and the uniformed gentleman at her side, and put down his axe. A quarter-cord of hardwood lay scattered about him. A big grin spread across his face as he recognized Marc.

“H-h-h-ello, Mr. Edwards.”

“Hello, Aaron. I’m so happy to see you are recovered, and back helping run the farm.” Marc made a point of admiring the lad’s handiwork.

“Lieutenant Edwards has come for a visit,” Beth said. “He’s going to stay for dinner.”

“G-g-good.”

Marc, too, was pleased to hear this, then remembered that “dinner” was sometimes the local term for luncheon, to which meal he had already been invited.

“Just finish up that log, Aaron, and then come inside. We don’t want you overdoing it, do we?”

Aaron frowned, then smiled his agreement. Marc was astonished to see that Aaron had grown another two or three inches, bringing him close to Marc’s six feet. Moreover, he had “filled out,” as they said here in the colony, putting on muscle around bones that had thickened and toughened. His pale face and a telltale hollowness around the eyes hinted at the earlier ravages of the fever, and underneath the loose sweater and denim work pants that new bulk would likely be a bit flaccid and toneless, but the big-knuckled, bare hands and masculine jut of the chin intimated that he was soon to be a full-fledged, powerful man.

“I’ll see you inside, then,” Marc said.

Aaron grinned again, and gave his sister a curious look before turning back to his work.

At the shed door, Marc stopped for a moment to watch the operation at hand. Aaron gripped the axe with both hands, raised it over his shoulder, braced himself as best he could on the lame leg, then drove the axe downward, using his strong leg for leverage and balance. For a second it appeared as if he must topple, given the angle at which his body was tilted laterally, but at the point of impact everything straightened itself-axe and axeman-so that the plane of the blow ended flush with the propped log. The wood split with a ruptured cry, followed instantly by the lad’s grunt of triumph.

“He’s learned to adapt,” Beth said as she opened the back door. “Now let’s go in to lunch.”

Like so many of those around him, Marc thought.

THE MID-DAY MEAL WAS OF THE pioneer farm variety-roast venison, potatoes, turnip, fresh bread, slices of cold ham, and several pots of hot tea-cooked by Winnifred and Beth, and served by young Charlene, yet another of the innumerable Huggan clan, before she herself joined them. Quaintly referred to as the “hired girl,” Charlene received no pay. (“But I’m keeping track of wages owed,” Beth had said, “and I’ll settle up with her some day when she may really need the money.”)

Arriving late to the table, Thomas Goodall seemed startled to see Marc, then greeted him abruptly. Marc noticed the large leather mitt on his left hand and offered commiserations. Thomas merely nodded in acknowledgement and carefully removed the mitt to reveal a hand bandaged from fingertips to wrist and immobilized by a pair of splints.

“So they’ve made you quartermaster again,” Winnifred said to Marc with a smile, deflecting his gaze as she passed him the bowl of steaming mashed potatoes.

“To be honest, ma’am, I was asked along by Major Jenkin more or less to keep him company between the capital and Cobourg.”

“And he lost track of you somewhere near Crawford’s Corners?”

“He suggested that I had some business to transact in this vicinity.”

“Whatever those transactions might be, I’m sure we wish you every success.” And here she glanced across at Beth in time to catch the full bloom of her blush.

Beth recovered quickly enough to say, “The lieutenant has come to reconnoitre hogs for hungry soldiers, I believe.”

Marc laughed, as he was meant to. He was delighted with the banter and quite pleased to be the butt of it. He had been afraid that the travails of the past months and Winnifred’s flirtation with Mackenzie’s cohorts might have soured her quick wit and frank appraisal of the world-qualities he had both admired and been wary of on his visit here last year. But there had been changes. Marriage and impending motherhood had apparently softened the edges of her cynicism and, if her father’s account were accurate, had cooled her anger at the injustices meted out to her and her kind.

“I am authorized to issue contracts for grain and hogs on behalf of the quartermaster,” Marc said in a more serious vein. “It occurred to me that I might be able to help you out in that regard.”

“We decided last fall that it was better to hang on to what we have rather than sell it at a loss. Since then the price of grain’s gone lower and paper money of any colour is shrinking.”

“The army is offering a price well above market value-with the blessing of the lieutenant-governor.”

That remark brought a moment of meditative silence, during which the only sounds were the click of forks and scraping of knives.

“P-p-please, pass the-”

Thomas Goodall, anticipating Aaron’s request, slid the bowl of turnips over to the lad with his good hand. The other he kept out of sight below the table. Aaron nodded a mute thank-you, but in spooning out a second helping, he tipped the bowl over. Beside him, Thomas instinctively reached out to right the bowl with the nearest hand-the swaddled one-then jerked it back in pain.

“Are you all right?” Winnifred asked anxiously. The danger of sepsis was ever present in such circumstances, and Thomas’s reflexive wince was cause for alarm.

Thomas nodded and tried to smile. But smiling was no more natural to his craggy, ploughman’s face than talking was. He looked up at Winnifred with an expression she alone read as reassuring. “Won’t be shootin’ no more deer fer a while.”

Winnifred beamed. “This one’ll last us till spring,” she said to Marc. “Thomas bagged it in January.”

“I’m not so sure you should be trying to work at all until Dr. Barnaby is ready to remove the stitches,” Beth said. “Outside of splitting wood for the stoves, there’s really not much in the barn that can’t wait awhile or be done by Winn and me.”