Death in the Age of Steam (51 page)

“I'll wait because you ask it,” she said coolly and distinctly. “Please don't try to explain.”

Harris hated to avail himself of such deference—a most inauspicious substitute for mutual sympathy—and hoped that this was the last time he would ever have to do so.

“Theresa,” he murmured, “I'm sorry . . .” It was too late, though, to continue privately now that they had spoken aloud.

“So, my dear,” said their host, “has he given you reasons for procrastination?”

“I find I need more time to compose my thoughts,” Theresa replied, “that is if I may stay here another fortnight or so.”

“Let us say three weeks. Now perhaps Mr. Harris will accompany us to Evensong.”

“With pleasure.” To Theresa he whispered, “Thank you.”

Christ Church Cathedral on Notre Dame Street was a neoclassical temple over whose altar imposingly stretched a painted Last Supper—after da Vinci, Harris supposed. The subject, together perhaps with the time of day, led him into far from pleasant speculations. During the Lord's Prayer, he stole a glance across at Theresa, seated between the Brays' young daughter and son.

“. . . deliver us from Evil.”

Lips moving soundlessly, head gracefully inclined, she would have afforded the greatest artist a model of saintly devotion, except that her eyes—instead of bending heavenwards or resting serenely closed—were clenched shut. In leaving Montreal, Harris wondered, to what fate would he be abandoning her?

The children clung affectionately to her on the short walk back to Craig Street, but ran ahead as soon as their father had the door open. Theresa squeezed Harris's arm.

“When Henry comes knocking,” she said, “I hate to think you'll be a thousand miles away.”

“Come with me,” he suddenly urged, braver at the mere thought of her beside him on those northern shores. “We'll succeed better every way.”

Already, though, she was following Charlotte Bray inside. While it still lacked an hour until sunset, in the front hall a lamp was being lit. Theresa turned in its glow.

“Forget I spoke, Isaac. I know no harm will touch me under this roof.”

Harris did not forget, even when five days later a gale on Lake Huron was doing its utmost to pitch all food from his stomach and every thought from his head.

Theresa picked a child's pair of breeches from the mending basket beside her. When that was empty, there was in the Brays' basement another hamper of clothes donated by more affluent Anglicans and needing repairs before distribution to those in want.

“Should I patch this pocket or just shorten it?” she wondered aloud.

There was no one to hear. Philander was on his way to McGill to distinguish between three Greek words for “love,” Charlotte and the two chicks on theirs to the market to choose between pyramids of rosy apples. And the surviving child of Charlotte's first marriage no longer shared the Montreal house. Now that he was sixteen, Theresa had been told, he had gone to learn civil engineering with his father in Hartford. Well, it was weather to be going somewhere. The sun shone for the first time in days, falling through the shutters to trace on the worn carpet a fiery grill.

The parlour otherwise felt drowsy. Theresa had opened the casements but dared not unlock the shutters, for the low windows gave directly onto the sidewalk. To keep alert, she instead moved to a straight-backed chair.

She would get more items done, clothe more people, if she just stitched across here above the hole.

“So my terrier thinks the poor don't need deep pockets,” she heard her father chuckle. “Why not sew them shut altogether?”

She wanted to answer that there was other work she was better at. She shared much with the Brays, including more and more a healing sense of family, but their small household could never employ her fully.

“And that one Talent which is death to hide,

Lodg'd with me
useless
 . . .”

Not blind like Milton, she would not pity herself overmuch, though she could not help thinking with envy of Sister Saint-Jacques in the Grey Nuns' pharmacy. Theresa craved employment as never before. Her inaction she felt had killed Sibyl. She simply couldn't believe what Mr. Bray preached, that faith alone would justify her before God. Or perhaps she hoped by good works to demonstrate the strength of her faith—to prove it to others and to herself. Besides, even if God doesn't need man's work, God's creatures do.

From an end of sailcloth, she irritably cut a patch strong enough to hold several dozen gold coins.

The pharmacy was closed to her, for the Grey Nuns thought she belonged with Henry. She must wait. To make her yoke bearable, she tried telling herself that Isaac would be back soon. He had been gone nine days already.

She did not truly wish to be a pharmacist—much less a physician, which was why she did not find herself pining for the Female Medical College in Boston. What healed the sick, she thought, was not appearing briefly at a hundred bedsides, but rather sustained personal attendance at one or two. Admit it freely: to physic she owed her life. But no less beneficial than quinine had been the tender nursing she had received from Isaac and the nuns. What good were the most ingenious medicines absent such simple restoratives as clean linen, warm blankets, appropriate nourishment, a kind word and a reassuring touch? Indeed, not a few sufferers would with less risk forego the former than the latter.

Theresa's thoughts and hands stopped dead. Listen!

Out of the more or less regular beat of hoofs along Craig Street, the sound of a horse slowing distinguished itself, as if the driver were seeking a particular house. The shadow of a carriage stopped outside the Brays' closed shutters. Through their louvers, Theresa smelled the dust from its wheels. She held her breath.

She heard the latch of the carriage door disengage, boots cross
the plank sidewalk to the house door, and then six-quick-knocks-in-a-block. She had teased her suitor once for sounding so eager and insistent. Most gentlemen found a double knock sufficient. Crane's touch never changed.

From it, through walls and air, Theresa's flesh shrank with a will of its own. Insistence is just his habit, she told herself consolingly. He doesn't care. This was the first time she had heard from him since his telegram of 22nd August. The promised letter had not appeared.

The six knocks came again, louder and slower. The Brays' maid-servant worked for them afternoons only, so Theresa was quite alone. She had no reason to panic, though. Henry would not try to break in, certainly not in daylight and with no direct evidence she was here. She had only to wait quietly. She had only to avoid capsizing the sewing table or dropping her scissors, which felt perversely slippery in her grip.

Henry left without knocking a third time.

Next day she received his letter announcing his arrival in Montreal, expressing conventional concern for her welfare, and asking when he might call. With Philander's concurrence, she sent no answer. She had been going out only to attend services at Christ Church. Now she stayed in altogether.

On Thursday, 4th September, while the family was at dinner, she again recognized Crane's knock. She urged Philander to ignore it. He said that his own vocation made this impossible, but that she was to take the children and lock herself in a bedroom.

“Shall I still have my pudding?” the boy shrewdly demanded.

Assured that he would, and the livelier he stepped the sooner, he raced his sister upstairs, where Theresa had little trouble interesting the two of them in a picture book. She read to them of Moses in the bulrushes. Above her own somewhat mechanical voice, she picked out by snatches those of the two equally imperious men on the doorstep below, the baron of steam and the shepherd of souls.

“I told him you would not see him,” Philander reported to her later. “I declined to give reasons. When he threatened to
speak to my bishop as well as to the commissioner of police, I said he might do whatever his conscience prompted, short of trespassing further on my family's peace.”

“Such a big man!” Charlotte added with emphasis. “Perhaps he would try to push past Philander and come inside, if he had not seen me behind in the hall. I stood behind with in my hands a musket.”

“Calm yourself, my dear,” Bray enjoined. “You forget your English when you allow occurrences to excite you.”

Theresa wished he would not say “my dear” in that peculiarly flinty tone that had nothing endearing about it. Charlotte's excitement was natural, her taking up a weapon extraordinary. Theresa put her arms around the stalwart woman, who misconstrued this expression of gratitude as one of fear for Henry.

“I would not shoot your Mr. Crane,” Charlotte hastened to say, enfolding her guest in turn. “I showed the gun only to keep him from foolishness. When he is reasonable, he will leave you alone, I am sure.”

These words made Theresa flinch back from the embrace, for they reminded her under what a grave misapprehension she had left her hosts and to what risks she was exposing them. She had thought for her own safety to tell as few people as possible what she had witnessed from under Sibyl's bed. To the Brays she had accused Henry of unfaithfulness only. For that crime alone, they were prepared to drive him off at gunpoint, but Charlotte plainly thought Henry no worse than her own inconstant first husband.

“My first husband is a reformed man,” Charlotte had recently said, with a touch of pride, as if by divorcing him she had set his reform in motion.

How easily she referred to him! With how little animosity or resentment! She even entrusted to him the education of their son. Surely she and Philander had a right to know that in Henry they faced something much more dangerous.

Theresa told them now. Philander sniffed and said this was where fornication led. Charlotte coloured, bit her tongue, and finally scolded Theresa for not speaking sooner.

“You're right!” Theresa blurted out. “I've betrayed everyone my life has touched, and now you two, you four.” Bray's scowl steadied her. “I don't mean to,” she said more softly. “I try to even the scales, and every time I tilt them more askew. Send me away before I bring you more misfortune. I'll go tonight.”

“We will not hear of it!” Charlotte exclaimed, truly alarmed. “Sweet heaven, now we understand what griefs and shocks you have had to suffer. Would we expose you to new ones?”

Philander concurred, advising Theresa against vain self-reproach. The Brays' protection would without question continue, though some different arrangements would have to be made. From now on, either the servant or Charlotte would be in the house at all times. No stranger's knock would be answered unless by Philander. The children would be sent away.

“No, please don't divide your family,” Theresa entreated. “I'll go to Boston now.”

“Madam,” said Philander, “you are in no state to say what you should do. Be wise enough to accept guidance.”

“Wait until your Mr. Harris returns.” Charlotte's eyes were still red, but her characteristic good-humour began to reassert itself. “Just another week or so. The change of scene will do my babies no harm, and the days will fly by fast enough, you'll see.”

The days flew like snails. The very seconds crawled. Once the boy had been parcelled off to one vicarage and the girl to another, Theresa was left with even less occupation. She mended clothes, dried fruit, pickled and preserved. As a great favour, Philander let her catalogue his library, which contained nothing more scientific than Browne's two-century-old
Religio Medici
.

She wrote to Marthe, without ill-will. Having enlisted her parents' help in lodging Theresa with the Grey Nuns, Marthe would have been helpless to prevent their publishing this address when they judged fit. Theresa, moreover, had never revealed to the Laurendeaus the principal argument for silence. Her lonely confinement on Craig Street made her all the more conciliating.

“Dear Marthe,” she urged, “dragoon one of your brothers
into escorting you down the St. Lawrence from your
belle seigneurie
and bring me all the country news, or any news.”

Astonishingly, Henry did not return. Where was he? What was he doing? Perhaps he had gone back to Toronto. Days passed. He sent neither message nor representative. No legal papers were served, and no alteration in Philander gave grounds to suspect that Bishop Fulford had censured the priest's conduct. The continuous suspense hung further clogs upon the clock.

Theresa began having suffocation nightmares. Because of its associations, she slept without a pillow. Now she removed stuffing from her mattress till she was lying on little more than a double sheet over the supporting ropes. Nothing soft must come near her nose or mouth.

To avoid thinking of Henry, she thought of Isaac, with whom she would have liked to find fault. He was too fond of her, for one thing. Furthermore, he was neglecting her.

It distressed her not to know what he was doing. As the week wore on, however, it became clearer that the bare fact of his absence was what distressed her most. She began to catch herself in daydreams. Her imagination elaborated recent memories of his hand in hers, his cheek close to her own.

His long face had become sharper over the years, less boyish, though his mouth had kept a contour of youthful sweetness, neither bitter on the one hand nor complacent on the other. Since they had ridden together, she reflected, Isaac Harris had known some worldly success. Unlike worldly men, he had remained trim and lithe. If he had, at least since embroiling himself in her affairs, become less fastidious about his appearance, still his appearance had not suffered. And through his eyes, through the pores almost of his skin, shone unmistakable new purpose. This time he would approach as close as she would permit.

How close was that?

Needle and thread could not shut out temptation. To tame her fancy, Theresa threw herself into the most physically taxing chores, practically depriving the serving girl of occupation.