Don Gutteridge - Vital Secrets

“So stupid … so stupid of me,” Thomas muttered while keeping his eyes on his food and tucking the injured left hand into the safety of his lap.

“If you need cash, then,” Marc said disingenuously, “perhaps you could spare a portion of the grain you’ve stored, provided it is in good condition.”

“I’m a miller’s daughter,” Winnifred said. “I do know how to store grain.” She turned towards Thomas. “What do you think, love, can we afford to sell some of what we’ve saved for feed and seed?”

Thomas put down his fork and peered ahead in thought. There was definitely a smile in the dark recesses of the eyes. “I figure about half,” he said, and brought the fork back up to his mouth.

“That’s what I thought as well.”

“We can do business, then?” Marc said, but his glance was more towards Beth than Winnifred.

“If the price is right,” Winnifred said lightly, but her relief at the prospect of generating some cash out of their failed harvest was clearly evident. “Thomas and I will take you out to the granary later this afternoon, and we’ll talk turkey. We’ll be expecting you back here for supper. I’ll send Charlene over to Papa’s place to invite them to join us as well.”

“Are you not worried about having a uniformed officer as your house-guest?” Marc said with a broad smile around the table, then realized, too late, the clumsiness of the quip.

Winnifred was the first to break the awkward silence. “You mustn’t believe all the rumours buzzing up and down the back concessions,” she said. “You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you wish to.” Then, glancing at Beth, she added, “Or need to.”

Sitting here in the welcoming warmth of this Upper Canadian farmhouse among people who had without doubt suffered both hardship and injustice, Marc could not bring himself to believe that these farmers would resort to armed resistance or open rebellion against the Crown. Their capacity and willingness to adapt to circumstance, with imagination and perseverance, was everywhere to be observed and marvelled at by newcomers like himself.

Under his present misgivings, then, a deep calm prevailed. He even felt ready to face Beth, alone and unprotected by sword or uniform.

Marc and Beth were together in the sitting-room. The potbellied stove glowed cordially in the corner, a pale winter light ebbed through the window in the south wall, and the two cushioned chairs faced one another at an amiable angle. A little while earlier Beth had led Aaron to her own bedroom for his requisite afternoon nap. There, Marc noted once again the small library of political and religious books left to her by her clergyman father, one of them open on her pillow. Thomas had gone out to work in the barn and Winnifred had accompanied him, Marc suspected, to make certain he kept the makeshift mitten on and had any help he might require to otherwise preserve his dignity. Charlene Huggan had been dispatched to the mill to invite the Hatches for supper and to fuss over her sister’s baby.

For a long while Marc and Beth sat quietly and sipped their tea, content for the moment to enjoy the presence of the other in the exact place where their eyes had first made contact, and where they had discovered the wordless covenant that quickens love and sweeps it beyond the reach of reason.

Beth put down her empty teacup with a resolute gesture, then leaned forward in her rocker and placed both hands on Marc’s knees. “I want to talk, and I’d like it very much if you’d just listen. I need to explain what’s in my heart, to you and to myself, and I won’t know whether I can find the right words till I hear myself saying them. Do you understand?”

Marc nodded, and gave her his full attention. She averted her gaze, however, as if looking directly at him might cause her to falter. Instead, she stared at the window and the drift of snowflakes now whispering there.

“One thing I know for sure, and so we don’t ever have to doubt it, is our love for each other. I used to think that was the hardest part. I was barely eighteen when Jesse came courtin’ the minister’s daughter. For the longest time I thought he was a nuisance I could do without-go ahead, you’re allowed to smile.”

Marc did.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to feel flattered or have my stomach go queasy whenever he came into a room. Then after a while we got to know one another a bit, and began to talk some, and I started to like him very much. But it was only when he turned up one day in the back pew of the Congregational church that I knew he loved me. He seemed to be saying he was willing to switch gods for me.”

The Lord of the Anglicans had lost more than Jesse Small-man lately, Marc thought.

“We went for a long walk, and I was held by a man for the first time, and we never looked back. I’m telling you all this, I think, because I want you to understand that I know what love is and what it asks us to do. You have the same look in your eye-you had it the first day you came here-that Jesse did, and I feel about you just like I did when Jess and I went for that Sunday stroll along the river flats. No, please don’t say anything, not yet.”

She stared longingly at the wisps of snow against the windowpane. Marc waited.

“First of all, let me say that I know what you did last June during the election, I know why you left the governor, and I know what you did for me and what it cost you not to betray a trust.”

Marc started to protest but Beth raised her hand. “I got it from the horse’s mouth.” She smiled wryly. “Your policeman friend liked his cup of tea and a good gossip with Aunt Catherine.”

“Constable Cobb.”

“He was your staunch defender and ally, and convinced Auntie to take up your cause-daily. She argued, and I came to believe, that you’d become as weary of politics and hypocrisy and broken promises as I had.”

“Then, if I’d come to you before-”

“Before January and Aaron’s illness? Maybe. At least I’d have had the chance to look into your eyes myself. But you’d have come, as you have now, wearing that uniform- please, let me finish or I’ll lose my nerve.”

No battle-nerves could be as agonizing as this, Marc thought.

“You know, I hope, it isn’t the uniform itself. I believe passionately in law and order and justice and equality. I’ve read bits of Paine and Rousseau and Locke and Burke. Jess and I worked for the Reform Party because we believed we could change things, get justice for the ordinary folk through politics and lawmaking. So, I wanted you to find the men responsible for my father-in-law’s death last January and bring them before the law. To me, a soldier is an arm of the law or ought to be, and so should be nothing to fear. But when the governor himself corrupts the parliament and bends the law to suit him and his rich friends and ignores direct orders from London-then the law becomes something to be feared, and so do those sworn to uphold it.”

Even though Marc was keenly aware of where this argument might lead and could feel a chill slowly seizing him, he could not help but marvel at the eloquence and clearheadedness of this tiny, beautiful woman. Little wonder, then, that she had been such a disruptive force in last spring’s election. Nor was the irony of the present situation lost on him: the very qualities he loved most might ultimately drive them apart.

“There’s lawlessness on both sides now. The secret meetings are no secret. I don’t know for sure but it’s a good guess that some of the treasonous talk is already more than that. You can’t imagine the terror I felt this winter, the endless nights as I sat beside Aaron coaxing him to breathe, praying like a sinner to any god who’d listen, and worrying myself sick that Winnifred-proud, loyal, law-abiding, churchgoing Winnifred-was miles away in some snowbound barn, cheering and clapping at some sermon of rage and desperation, and all them torches waving away no more than two feet from the nearest bale of hay.”