A Sudden Sun (23 page)

“Excuse us while we take a little stroll,” the Reverend said to the ladies, and led Lily to a bench at the bottom of the garden. Why, Lily wondered, was it acceptable to go for a walk with a young man but not for a bicycle ride?

“What a pleasant spot,” Mr. Collins said. “So civilized.”

“Unlike Greenspond, you mean?”

“Well now, I truly believe God has called me to work on our remote little isle, for the time being, anyway. From Greenland’s icy mountains to Greenspond, Bonavista Bay, eh Lily? All the way my Saviour leads me.”

Lily wondered if he would be able to string together an entire conversation using only hymn titles. “Anywhere with Jesus you can safely go, I suppose,” she said.

He chuckled, a dry sound like the wind passing through a heap of autumn leaves. “But I will admit,” he said, “that it is a pleasure to get into town, to drink from the well of civilization, as it were. There’s such need, Lily my dear, you would not believe, among the fishermen and their families—well, you know a little of it, for I’ve described it in my letters.”

She had not read his letters with much attention. She knew that she ought to care about the plight of the poor fishing families in the outports as much as she did about those in the slums of St. John’s, but when the concern came attached to the unctuous person of Reverend Collins it was difficult to take it to heart.

“But for that very reason there’s little out there in the way of intelligent conversation or, well, the gentler influence. My parsonage, like my life, wants the woman’s touch, if you get my meaning.”

Belatedly, horribly, Lily did get his meaning. If her thoughts had not been so consumed with David’s letter, their planned meeting at Catherine’s house and the trouble of how to arrange it, she surely would have seen that this meeting, too, was carefully arranged. When had her mother had the energy to pay a call? Why were she and Reverend Collins needed to drive Mother to Sadie’s house? Because Mother was the perfect chaperone who would understand the need to leave them alone in the lovely garden.

He was taking her hand in his. “I hope you don’t mind—I know I’m taking liberties, but our correspondence these long winter months has given me reason to hope—”

Yes, she had written dutiful letters in reply to his. Papa expected it, and it had seemed harmless enough. Surely, she had thought, he would not propose by letter. And sure enough, he had made a trip into town just to do it.

“…so I’ve dared to hope that you might, perhaps, consent to share my life and my ministry. I’ve prayed about this, Lily, and of course I’ve spoken to your father first, set your mind to rest about that. He and your mother would be sad to see you leave town, but they both believe you would be a wonderful partner in ministry. Will you make me a very happy man and agree to be Mrs. Obadiah Collins?”

She had never found the name Obadiah particularly funny before but suddenly, intoned so solemnly by its owner while he spoke of being “a very ’appy man,” it stood out as the funniest thing in what was, in some ways, a rather funny speech. Funny, that is, if it were being said on stage, by the pompous clergyman character in a farce. Less funny if it was your real life, and the man was actually sitting beside you on a bench—thank goodness he hadn’t knelt!—holding your hand in his large sweaty one.

She looked up at the verandah. Mother and Cousin Sadie were both bundled in shawls, fanning themselves vigorously. They glanced down into the garden just as Lily looked up. They knew. Mother must have told Sadie the plan. The plan everyone had known but Lily.

In the distance, a church clock struck three. Was David waiting for her at Catherine’s house?

“Reverend Collins, this is—it’s such a shock. I can’t—I mean, I haven’t thought at all…forgive me.”

“No, no, forgive me. I ought to have given a bit more warning,
but—it’s so rare that I get into town, and I didn’t wish to leave such an important question to a letter. Of course you may have time to think—I assure you I didn’t assume we would announce our engagement this very day.” It was clear from his face and tone that he had assumed exactly that. He still had not let go of her hand.

Lily’s stomach clenched; she thought she might throw up. “I want to go home—I’m sorry—this has all been such a surprise,” she said. She hoped that he would continue to attribute her reaction to maidenly modesty rather than aversion. But he would have to know the truth sometime. Why not now? It was too final, to tell him a definite no and then face Papa’s disapproval.

“Of course, of course, my dear. Only tell me that you’ll hold the question in your heart and won’t leave me without hope. Can I ask that of you?”

“Oh, I don’t know—I’m terribly confused. Please don’t—I really don’t want to think about marriage at all. I don’t feel ready. I don’t—can you please drive me home?”

Mother was more than ready to leave; the visit, short as it was, had already tired her out. She hesitated, though, searching first Lily’s face and then the Reverend’s, as if waiting for a happy announcement that did not come.

As they drove past the post office on Water Street a clock somewhere struck four. An hour. All that had happened in only an hour.

“Mother?”

Eleanor opened her eyes to look at Lily.

“I’m going to ask Mr. Collins to let me off, to walk home. I’m very—I have a great deal to think about. I need some time to clear my head, and a walk would do me good.”

“My dear, I couldn’t possibly.” It was the Reverend who answered, turning back to look at her. “This far from your house—unattended…”

“Mother, please? I need an hour to myself, and it’s such a fine day, I’d like to walk.”

“Mrs. Hunt, I insist—surely it’s not safe for Lily to walk so far on her own?”

“She’s a strong girl, and it’s broad daylight,” Eleanor said. “Just stay to Water Street, Lily, don’t go off on any side streets.”

When the carriage was out of sight Lily immediately began climbing the steep side-streets towards Cuddihy’s Lane. She wondered how long David would wait for her. It wasn’t a long walk: she arrived at quarter past four.

“I didn’t think you were coming,” he said. “Did you walk? Is anyone expecting you?”

Lily shook her head and sank down on the settee. David sat beside her.

“He asked me to marry him,” she said.

“The minister? The one your father wants you to marry?”

“I told him I wasn’t ready, that I needed time to think. Why would I need time to think?”

“But—you didn’t say yes. You’re not coming here to tell me you’re engaged to be married.”

“No! Anyway, it was you who had something to tell me,” she reminded him.

So he told her. He tried to look sad and solemn as he talked about going away from her, but he couldn’t hide the light in his eyes or the grin that occasionally broke through as he told her about it.

“New York, Lily—think about it! All the things I’m interested in, the things I want to learn about and write about—it’s all possible there! Ideas you’d be blacklisted for even mentioning in St. John’s. Why, in New York there’d be a whole newspaper just for that one thing. Socialism, communism, anarchy even. Votes for women, equality for the races, real change for the poor. If those things are going to start anywhere, it’ll be there. And I can be there, in the
middle of it, learning about it all, writing about it.”

He looked like someone had struck a match and set him on fire, as excited about going to New York as Abby had been, although the worlds into which they were about to plunge couldn’t have been more different. He talked about writing for a socialist paper and sleeping on a couch in his friend’s brother’s apartment, and all she could think was,
He is leaving me. Everyone is leaving me. The only person who wants to stay by my side is Obadiah Collins.

“You want me to be happy for you,” she said.

“Oh, Lily darling. I want more than for you to be happy for me. I want you with me. Could that happen? Would you leave all this—your home, your life here?”

“For—what? Sleeping on your friend’s brother’s daybed?”

“Well, if you were with me I’d find something a bit better than a daybed, of course.” A little line creased the middle of his forehead. She saw that as soon as he broadened his dream to include her it became muddled, less clear and beautiful to him. He wanted her, yes, but he also wanted to be a young man alone, the brave journalist going off to adventure in the big city. He had not pictured a wife, an apartment of his own, bills to pay.

And…a wife? Did he even mean marriage? Reverend Collins had proposed to her, but David had not. Was he suggesting she come to New York and live in sin with him?

“You haven’t given it much thought, have you?” she said gently. “Me coming with you, I mean. You never really thought I’d say yes.”

He raised his hands, a gesture of surrender. “It’s true. I didn’t dare to hope. But would you do it? Run away with me, get married down there somewhere? You’d be far away from your family, and I know they’d never approve.”

“They wouldn’t approve even if I stayed in St. John’s and married you in Cochrane Street Church,” Lily said. “If we ran away
together, they’d cut me off forever.”

“Is it too high a price to pay?”

“I don’t know. Are you asking me?”

He was silent then too. “I love you, Lily,” he said, “but I don’t know how to make sense out of you and me. I can’t ever be the kind of man you want to marry. I can’t live that life. And I can’t ask you to live the life I want.”

She was crying without transition, without sobs or tightness in her throat, just tears running down her face all at once. He took her in his arms, pressed her cheeks against the rough cloth of his suit jacket. “Ah, there girl, come on now. I wish it could be different. I swear to God I do.”

“Do you?”

“I do. But you know what you want—a good churchgoer, a man who’s taken the pledge, a good provider.”

“And why couldn’t—couldn’t that be you?”

He heaved a great sigh, like all the burdens of the world were on his shoulders. He was pulling the pins out of her hair, running his fingers through it, kissing her hair. All that instead of answering. Such a simple question.

“Would it be so hard—so awful, to live that life?” She ought to have a better way to put her case than this. When Alida refused to marry James until he took the temperance pledge she had made stirring speeches to convince him. All Lily could do was beg. Beg him to be a different man from the one he was.

“Lily. I don’t believe any of it, you know I don’t. I don’t believe in God at all, certainly not the one who made the world in six days and expects me to show up on Sunday and listen to a sermon. I don’t believe having the odd drop to drink is any great sin. I want what you want—a better world—but I don’t think we’re agreed on the way to go about it. And maybe that shouldn’t matter when you’re in love, but it does.”

“When are you going?”

“I’ve booked passage for the fourteenth.”

“Of this month? The fourteenth of July.” Barely a week away. She looked at the clock on the mantel, an ornate little thing in a gold filigree frame. By now Reverend Collins had dropped her mother off and was no doubt driving back along Water Street looking for her. She had burned the bridge behind her this time: whatever time she got back there would be tears, lies, threats, and punishment.

“Do you have to go?” he asked, seeing her look at the clock.

“No. I have to stay.”

He moved in to kiss her again but she stood up, reaching for his hand. “Can we go in the back? Would it be all right to be in—in Catherine’s bedroom?” She tried to sound calm and certain but her voice trembled on the word “bedroom.”

“Are you sure?”

“We might not see each other again,” she said. “I’m sure.” David was right; he would never be the man she could marry—didn’t even want to be that man. And as for Lily herself, what would, what could happen to her? She couldn’t leave home and family, go live in a boarding house in New York, walk the alien streets while David learned and wrote and argued about socialism. She was twenty years old and had never had a marriage proposal and now she had turned down two in one day.

Afterwards, they did something they had never done: rested in each other’s arms, lying so quiet they might almost have slept. “Come away with me, Lily. Run away with me to New York,” he said in a voice as soft as a sigh, as she lay curled under the crook of his arm.

She wondered what he’d do if she said yes. It would change his dream, certainly. Shatter it, perhaps. But he was a man of honour. Not a man who went on and on about his honour, making sure you knew it, like Obadiah Collins would do. But having asked, if she said yes he would take her with him, marry her in front of a justice of
the peace. She couldn’t even think about that life, but then, she couldn’t think of this life, either, without him in it.

Lily didn’t even think this time of counting off the days. She thought only of the days until he went away; she didn’t remember that her monthly visitor was due in a fortnight. She didn’t know that she would be counting the days again, waiting and waiting, as his steamer sailed off to New York. She didn’t know that in Catherine’s clean sheets they had conceived their child. If she had stopped to think about it, she might have guessed. But she didn’t think.