A Sudden Sun (16 page)

L
ILY STEPPED OUT of the flustered heat of Temperance Hall into the cool of a September night. Behind her, Abby exited arm in arm with Martha Withycombe. Martha’s mother, newly elected secretary of the WCTU, had given a stirring talk about the Rescue Home for girls in trouble that the Salvation Army had just opened with support from the WCTU. There was to be a fundraising drive for the home, and the ladies had been sent forth to embroider pillowcases for the inevitable sale of work.

“I’ve been working on the dearest little set of needlepoint cushions,” Martha said, “intended for my hope chest, of course, but after Mother’s speech tonight I’m moved to donate them. It can’t be right, can it, that I have so much and others so little? And I do have so much—two dozen pillowcases and a dozen sheet sets, four tablecloths and five complete sets of linen napkins….”

“Not monogrammed yet, of course,” said Abby.

“Well, of course not.”

“Perhaps you might pick some nice initial, embroider it, and then look for the man to match the letter?” Abby suggested.

A moment’s silence from Martha, then she laughed. “Oh Abigail, you’re shocking. Isn’t she just dreadful, Lily?”

Lily laughed, letting her laughter mingle with that of the other two girls. Martha had been keeping company for two years with Edward Miller—a fine catch, any girl would have to admit, heir to a button-factory fortune. But Edward had gone off to England for a year and before he’d been away three months, word came back that he was engaged to an English girl. Martha’s hope chest continued to grow, though hope was wearing thin.

Now Abby unhooked her arm from Martha’s arm and took Lily’s instead. “Come along, your poor mother will be distracted if you’re not home,” she said, barely hiding her giggles. She swept Lily off to the waiting carriage. Lily hoped neither Martha nor any of the ladies coming out of the hall noticed a tall, lanky figure detach itself from the shadow of the building and walk a few paces behind the girls.

By the side of her family’s brougham Abby squeezed Lily’s hands. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, now, will you? My good reputation rests in your hands.”

“I’ll be back at your house by ten, I promise.”

“Make it eleven. My good name isn’t
that
precious,” said Abby. And under cover of darkness, she climbed into the carriage as Lily slipped her arm through David Reid’s arm.

A little rush of danger flooded Lily’s veins, as it always did when she went off alone with David. She knew she was safe with him, if she was willing to stretch her definition of safety a little farther than she had been accustomed to do.

By now they had something of a routine to their courtship—if courtship it could be called. Their brief encounters in public—if Lily, for example, attended an event that David was covering for the newspaper—were always distant and proper. If they spoke at all they called each other “Mr. Reid” and “Miss Hunt.” No one would be able
to report to Lily’s father that they had seen David Reid being familiar with her. As far as Papa was concerned, Lily was being courted by Reverend Obadiah Collins, whose letters arrived from Greenspond with dull regularity.

David tucked his hand over hers as they set off along Duckworth Street, heading west, away from Abby’s house where Lily was spending the night. The Upper Path, as many older people still called it, looked less like a path and more like a proper street in the last year; it had been widened and straightened after the fire. They turned down Prescott to Water Street, past the ruins of the Market House. Merchants’ premises stood with their fronts facing the street and their backs to the harbour, where every merchant had a wharf for ships to load and unload goods. The familiar street looked different after dark. The life-sized horse in the window of Ring’s Saddlery and the Indian in Cash’s Tobacco Shop, taken inside for the night, stood silent sentinels over the dark street. Once the shops were closed, respectable young girls like Lily weren’t seen downtown. The saloons drew rough men and loose women from every corner of the town and harbour. The same people from the same streets where Lily sometimes went with other WCTU ladies, bringing food and clothing to the destitute. At night the poor inspired fear rather than godly pity.

She had never really seen places like these, rum-shops whose doors spilled smoky yellow light and fragments of songs and curses, before she and David had begun taking their night-time walks. Lily had been terrified the first time she walked past a string of Water Street saloons after dark. “What do you think, that people will take you for a woman of easy virtue?” he had laughed. “I promise you, nobody who knows you will see you and think, ‘What is Lily Hunt doing in such a place?’”

“If anyone did see me, they’d be quiet about it,” Lily pointed out. “All Papa’s friends are temperance men. If they were down here themselves, they’d never want anyone to know it.”

“They won’t be down here,” David assured her. “If a good temperance man sneaks a drink he does it in secret, from a bottle in his well-locked cupboard. These places are for fishermen and dockworkers and factory men, not for the likes of your father and his cronies.”

By now Lily had learned that the anonymity of these dirty streets was a better cover than a shady, tree-lined lane by Rennie’s River—though she and David had walked there, too, on summer evenings. She truly was no one here, only David’s shadow. She had seen men brawling in the street outside a saloon; she had seen ladies of the night too, though those poor women were far less glamorous than such names implied.
Fallen women
, she thought. That was a better word for it, fallen from the pedestal of pure womanhood down onto these filthy streets.

And where am I?
Lily wondered, as David pulled her into the alleyway between two shops for another kiss.
I am a falling woman
. Not fallen—but not on that pedestal either.

“Does it trouble you?” he said. Had she spoken her thoughts aloud?

“Does what trouble me?”

“Lying, sneaking around. You don’t seem the kind to relish it.”

“Not like Abby, you mean,” Lily said, and they both laughed.

Next to having a clandestine love affair of her own, the best thing that could possibly have happened to Abigail Hayward was for a friend of hers to have one. Lily had agonized for a week after her first secret meeting with David, wondering whether to confide in Abby. It was one thing to bear the burden of guilt, of dishonesty, herself, quite another to foist it upon her friend. But Abby had been delighted. She entered into the conspiracy with even more enthusiasm than Lily herself. True, she didn’t have the thrill of receiving stolen kisses, but then Abby had no burden of guilt to carry either. Abby wouldn’t know guilt if Jesus Himself appeared in her room and told her she was
disobeying His holy law. Whereas Lily, even in the midst of her happiness, carried guilt with her constantly. But she noticed that over these last weeks that guilt, though never disappearing, had shrunk a little. She had carried it at first like a heavy sack on her back, then like a bundle in her arms. By now it was more like an unusually large locket around her neck: something she was aware of but able to ignore.

“What story is Abigail telling for you tonight?” David asked.

“A true story—that I am spending the night at her house. Only she’s told her parents that I went home to pack a bag before coming over, and that Evans will drive me over. Whereas I told Mama I would go to Abby’s house directly after the WCTU meeting.”

“Clever indeed. As long as your mother doesn’t compare notes with Abby’s mother, I suppose.”

“She won’t.” Lily’s descent into falling womanhood had been greatly aided by the call for a general election in November. The demand for printed material—handbills and such for political candidates—had kept her father’s shop unusually busy. He worked most evenings since the election call, and it was usually her mother who received the news that Lily was going to stay at Abby’s house, or go to a meeting with Abby, or go out with Abby to dinner at a friend’s house. Abby’s role was to tell blithe lies while Lily went for long evening rambles with David Reid.

“It’s a bit foolish, though, isn’t it?” David said.

“What is?”

“This. You and me. Sneaking about like children playing hooky from school.”

“Well, but we have to, or Papa would—I don’t know what he’d do. Send me away, perhaps. Off to Harbour Grace with Mother’s family.”

“Yes, of course, but what I mean is—d’you ever ask why?”

“Why what?”

“Why it should be your father’s say, and not yours, who you keep company with?”

“Well, because—because. He’s my father. I’m his daughter.”

“And that’s the way it’s been since time immemorial? You’re his property, to care for and dispose of as he sees fit.” David’s fingers tightened a little around Lily’s hand; he sounded as if he were angry.

“Not property, no! Papa wouldn’t understand about—well, about us—but he has my best interests at heart. I mean, it’s not as if he would force me to marry someone I didn’t want to, or anything like that.”

“But he might stop you from marrying someone you did want to?”

“I don’t—I don’t know.” The mention of marriage seemed to make the whole discussion weightier and more dangerous. Lily looked away, not wanting to meet David’s eyes. “Anyway, I’m not marrying anyone. Not now—”

“Not even the good Reverend Collins?”

“Of course not!”

“He’d like that, though. Your father, I mean.”

“Probably, yes. Of course he would.”

“But why should he have a say in it at all? Why should he control who you talk to, where you go, who—who kisses you?” David leaned forward and illustrated the word “kisses” appropriately, though they were right out on the street.

The kiss ended; they turned up Williams Lane. It would soon be time to head back towards Abby’s house. Lily was still thinking about David’s question. “All the same, a father is responsible for his daughter, isn’t he?”

“Responsible for treating her like a child? You’re twenty years old, Lily. Why aren’t you responsible for yourself?”

Lily was spared the necessity of answering what seemed an unanswerable question by the loud entry of two drunkards into the
narrow lane, which boasted a saloon on each corner.

“Come on now, what do we got here?” one of them bellowed. “Oh, sweet’earts, sorry sweet’earts!”

The sweetheart drunkard seemed friendly enough, inclined to do nothing more than call out a greeting, but his companion called “Das a mighty sweet piece you got dere, buddy. Wanna give us a bit?”

She moved instinctively closer to David’s embrace but he was turning already toward the intruder. The muscles in his arms tensed: his whole body was becoming a different machine.

“Now b’y, you just go on your way and leave us be,” David called. “I don’t want no trouble and neither do you.”

“Don’ want no trouble? Don’ wannit?” slurred the man, swaying down the lane towards them. He was not so very close yet, maybe thirty or forty feet away, but David had moved to place himself between Lily and the drunkards. “I’ll tell ya what she wants!” the man bawled. “She wants a real man, and I’ll show ya, I’ll show ya, buddy…”

“Come on, Jim b’y, get outa here, let’s get outa here,” his companion urged as David took a step toward them. Lily looked over her shoulder. She could run for the other end of the alleyway and get out of there before the men got close. But what would she be running into? Who knew how many other drunkards might be up on Duckworth Street at this hour of the night?

David took another step towards the men.

“There’s two of us and only one of you! Lemme at her now and I won’ give you no more trouble. Das what you wants, right, no trouble? And I knows what she wants…”

“Clear off!” shouted David, in a voice she’d never heard from him before. Surely he must have fought, growing up—boys did, especially boys of the lower sort, but probably all boys to some extent. He seemed taller and broader as he walked slowly toward the men, and though she was still trembling she felt sure he could defend
her honour—if there were only one drunken opponent. But against two?

Only it wasn’t two, because the other man was already in retreat, shouting, “Come on, Jim, come on home out of it! You don’t want a fight with the likes of him, he’ll have you up before a magistrate! Leave him alone with the girl—come on Jim, come on!”

Whether it was David’s steady, unhurried approach or the mention of the magistrate, something slowed Jim’s steps. “Ah, go on, b’y, yer makin’ much out of nudding!” he shouted at David, backing up a step or two. “I was only foolin’—you knows dat, right, only foolin’ around wit’ ya!”

David said nothing, only stood his ground, his hands still fists. The drunkard backed up further, further, and finally turned around. “Devil take ya, I never meant nudding by it!” he shouted. “You can go to hell, you and yer little whore too!”

He was out of the alley before he flung the insult, and David lurched forward as if to follow him, though until he heard that filthy word he’d seemed content to stand his ground and watch the man walk away. Lily grabbed for his arm, felt the hard cords of muscle tensed there. “Leave it, David. He’s gone now.”

He turned. “But he said—”

“I know what he said but it’s only words, isn’t it? A man like that doesn’t know anything else to say about a girl.”