Perdita (12 page)

Cape Prius—1897

July 20

I have so wanted to stay near the cottage—to be near Auntie Alis and Mother, and Tad and Uncle Gil. I am anxious if away from them, and I do not know why. Perhaps it was the terrible storm and its
devastation.

Allan is here almost every day, and Mr. Thompson visits us, too. But he stays and stays and won't leave. Finally, Auntie became quite exasperated and tied an apron around his waist and had him kneading dough. I don't think he minded at all, although I certainly did not care to see him thus employed. So I had him come upstairs and read to Mother; he has a fine sensibility for poetry, and she seemed quite pleased to have his company. Poor Mother. She must be lonely at times, though I do try to be with her as much as I possibly
can.

Mr. Thompson seems a little dazed and says that Dr. McTavish is in a very bad way indeed. Allan confirms this and informs us that George is with him frequently and that they have had long talks and that George is urging him to continue with his book. But Dr. McTavish won't go near his library, and the nets have been
neglected.

Allan says that he saw Dr. McTavish weeping, and I told him to hush and never to tell anyone of it. I told him that sometimes one sees things—a moment of weakness in another person perhaps—but that these must be kept a secret and not used against him. That such a secret is a sacred trust and that it would be unmanly to betray these
confidences.

He asked me if I thought Miss Ferguson would agree, and I looked at him in surprise, wondering at his
question.

“She is very clever,” Allan continued, and he looked at me a little slyly, as if trying to read my features for some
reaction.

“She talks to George all the time about art—oh, for hours,” he added, noting no doubt my involuntary frown. “She is very knowledgeable about
it.”

“She says her father can help George,” he added. “He is a patron or some such thing and takes her to Europe with him and buys all kinds of expensive things—all the new art, she says. She wants her father to arrange for a show of George's work. She says that he is a great
artist.”

“What does George say to this?” I asked, in spite of
myself.

“Oh, he listens,” said Allan. “George is really quite ambitious. He's had a rough go of it with some of the critics. They go after him because he doesn't—you know—paint pictures like they're supposed to be. The realish sort. His colors are always so muddled in a way. Hey, do you like his pictures?” he asked me suddenly, looking up from where he was sprawled on the
grass.

I flushed. I thought of all George's canvases floating in the Basin and the portrait that I had jeopardized through my
clumsiness.

“Yes,” I said, hesitating a little, and then thinking of the grove of trees. “Some of them are quite
beautiful.”

“Have you seen his picture of Miss Ferguson?” he asked. “She adores it and says he could be a famous portrait painter if he really wanted to. She said he could meet other famous artists—if he wanted—if he went to New
York—”

“I suppose they get along rather well?” I interrupted him in what I intended to be an unconcerned tone, though I was burning with
curiosity.

“Oh, smashingly!” said Allan, and got up, brushing off his
trousers.

And now I am cross and cannot sleep. I should not let Allan speak to me so and encourage such gossip! It is not my affair, and I should exert myself to pay more attention to our
studies.

Which we have sorely neglected, I might add, since the
storm.

July 25

Captain Howarth has been back several times to talk with Tad, and it seems that there is discussion of a foghorn being installed. Father and Uncle Gilbert would have to man it. For my part, I do not like to have Captain Howarth around us, though of course I am polite and would not wish him to think me
discourteous.

It seems there has been quite a fuss in the papers about the
Mary
Jane,
and indeed we have read some of these reports. There are strong opinions expressed against the government for its inattention to the light stations, and Mr. Ferguson—Effie's husband—has been quoted at length about how there must be support for shipping on the Great
Lakes.

Effie's baby has taken ill, and Dr. Clowes was out to the Lodge, though it is nothing serious. But none of us are to visit until the coast is clear: Effie has such ideas about
contagion!

July 28

Today I went to see Dr. McTavish, and I am very glad that I did. He seems to have aged so and is thin and terribly wretched. I had tea with him, and he seemed glad of my company, and I promised to come back if it would suit him. He nodded so vigorously that I felt ashamed that I had not gone before. Mr. Thompson looked quite pleased and hovered near us as we sipped our tea, and Dr. McTavish even growled at him a bit in his old way, and this seemed to give Mr. Thompson great
pleasure.

Perhaps it was perverse of me, but I saw Dr. McTavish so lonely and desolate—and indeed my heart gave all its sympathy to him—that I could not but feel grateful that we were, just there, in that moment, together and alive. That I could look out at the Bay—so glorious and sparkling, though but three weeks ago it had been a fiend—and that I would go home to Tad and Auntie and Uncle Gilbert, and we would sit down to dinner. And then I would take Mother her tray and help her to eat her supper and then read to her while Dewi rested at her feet and Agnes purred in her lap. I felt so grateful, and I wanted to walk under the trees and see the stars come out. I felt such a quiet joy that the storm had passed, and I think my mood must have communicated itself to Dr. McTavish somehow, for he brightened and he took my hand and said that my visit had done him a world of
good.

I met George coming in as I was leaving, and I think I must have smiled my gratitude at him, and he could not but help return
it.

We talked a little, and he said something about Effie's sterilizing spoons and I laughed—it was the first time since the
Mary
Jane
went down that I think I have laughed, and it came out of me as a song might, its notes filling the room and spilling out through the
windows.

“You at least are full of sunshine today,” George
remarked.

And then somehow I had to explain, lest he think me heartless and
uncaring.

“Oh, George,” I said. “It is
so
very terrible. My heart breaks for the families who have lost their dear ones. But I am glad somehow that we were spared. It seems a miracle that none of the men from Cape Prius were drowned. Don't you think we should be glad to be alive. Is it wrong to feel so? Would the dead really begrudge me my thankfulness for the lives of my father and Uncle Gil and Dr. McTavish?” I might have added George's name, but I dared
not.

I don't know what possessed me. Tonight as I sit here, it strikes me as such a strange thing for me to say to
him.

And then Dr. McTavish came in, and he looked at me in the most penetrating fashion, peering at me over the top of his glasses. I felt that he had heard my words, and I
blushed.

“Yes, you are quite right,” he said. And then he walked over to his library and Mr. Thompson was there looking at me strangely, too!

George watched the doctor go, and he tapped his finger against my cheek lightly. “You're a strange girl,” he said. “What looks to be stumbles are, in fact, the steps of an impenetrable
design!”

“Like your brushstrokes?” I shot back at him, but there was no rancor in it. It was true. The magic of his brushstrokes appears to be in the accident of his placing them on the canvas—seemingly careless—and yet I know that it takes great
skill.

He looked at me thoughtfully and then walked to the front porch, beckoning me to join him. I could feel Mr. Thompson's eyes following us out of the
room.

George has asked me if I would come each day and help Dr. McTavish order his papers and encourage him (without seeming to) to return to his work. I am delighted by this suggestion! Allan and I can hardly resume our studies after such unsettling events, and it will do us both good to assist him. We will go back to our old custom of setting out the nets, and Dr. McTavish can discourse to us on his beloved
birds.

I have not seen Miss Ferguson for days and did not detect her presence anywhere about the
Lodge.

August 1

Captain Howarth has been here again. Indeed my misgivings about his visits have proved to have some
foundation.

There is no mistake that he is a handsome man, in a dark, brooding sort of way. I suppose there are some who would find him comely, but I have never been at my ease with him; his eyes burn into one so! He is tall and so straight in his uniform that I must tilt my head back to look up at him, and then his eyes seem to blaze right through me. I have made it a point of honor not to look away, but it has been a sore test at
times.

Today he came late in the afternoon, and I was at the back of the cottage, taking the sheets from the line and folding them, for it was washing day, and though Auntie usually does this task, she had been called away to some other undertaking. George and Allan had come by and were talking with Tad about the fog house, and Allan was quite animated about it all. I could hear him on the front porch discussing where it should be built, and Tad patiently explaining that the government men would determine
that.

Captain Howarth did not approach the house from the front yard, but must have taken the side path so as not to be seen by Tad. He addressed me with a pleasant enough “Good afternoon, Miss Brice,” and I returned his greeting but kept on with my task, indicating with a nod that he could proceed to the cottage where the men
were.

He did not move but kept a watch over me, uttering not a word. The minutes passed, and I labored away silently. By and by, I grew uneasy with his strange deportment, and I felt his eyes upon my body, intently watching, or so it seemed to me, the movement of my arms as I reached to the sheets and took them down. I began to feel a great discomfort, as if he had intruded upon me as I was bathing and I stood in front of him naked and exposed. Finally I could stand it no longer. I drew in my breath sharply and moved behind one of the sheets, my face aflame. He had not said a word, but neither did he back away or look contrite that I had discovered him engaged in an inspection so unbecoming to his station. I felt that I could have slapped his face, so indignant was
I!

He seemed to read my thoughts. But then, he had the audacity to grin at me! A slow and deliberate grin that gave his expression an evil cast. I recoiled, for his meaning did not escape me, and though I was outraged by his boldness, I grew increasingly uneasy under his unmistakably salacious gaze. It was then that I looked over to see that Tad and George had come down from the porch and were watching him—George with his hands clenched at his sides and my father with his eyes an angry
black.

Tad said little at supper, but he did mention as he left to fetch the wood for Auntie that he did not think that we would be bothered by visits from Captain Howarth anymore. Auntie Alis looked at me questioningly, but I stared at my plate until she had finished with
hers.

I do hope that Captain Howarth stays away, for I think that, between them, Tad and Uncle Gil would kill him if he were to bring harm to any of
us!

August 7

I am so chilled tonight! I have wrapped myself in a warm quilt and am sitting close to the stove downstairs. Mother was quite agitated by my absence, and Auntie Alis is angry with me for staying out in the fog, but I have not yet told her of what detained
me.

This evening, after supper, I took Flore over to the old cemetery. Since the
Mary
Jane
went down, I have ever had the image of those graves in my mind, and I thought I might place some flowers next to each one and tidy them a little so that they are not neglected. And I have been remiss in tending to little Luke's grave and did not like that Auntie A. should think me callous and indifferent to her grief. It still sits with her through all these years, and though Auntie is quite stoic and people will say she is hard, I believe her heart bleeds yet for this loss—her only
child.

Twilight was just descending when I arrived, and there was no one else about the cemetery. It is a very old one, and few of the families bury their dead there anymore. It is but a small expanse of grass on a windy knoll that overlooks the Bay. At night, any spirits who might linger there surely have the clearest view of the light station and its ever-revolving orb. We buried Mrs. McTavish in a quiet corner, just as Dr. McTavish wished. Seven of the passengers from the
Mary
Jane
are also here; these were the bodies too far decomposed to be sent back home. Theirs are the newest graves, and they looked to me somehow still uneasy and restive, as if the earth, turned over and dug out, is reluctant to receive these new and so violently acquired remains. I swept the debris from Luke's grave and then smoothed the turf upon the graves of the two children from the
Mary
Jane
.

It was very quiet and still in the cemetery. Indeed, at times I am drawn to its air of soft melancholia. There is a very old grave—a child's grave that is recessed deep in a corner. No other graves are near it, and the headstone is weathered white, so that it looks almost like a bone protruding from the earth. Its isolation from the others gives it quite a forlorn aspect. For reasons I cannot explain, I am drawn to this little tomb, and I like to sit and place my hand on the turf and hum a lullaby to it, as if the child might hear me and take comfort. The stone has only a
P
carved into it, and the date below is so worn that it is no longer legible. I have taken to calling the child Perdita because she is buried all alone and with none of her family nearby. I sense that the child must have been a girl, and though I know she must be with the angels in heaven, queer sensations come over me near her grave, and I begin to believe that it is a little lost creature and that it would be forgotten if even my infrequent attentions ceased. It is my fancy, I
suppose!