Swamp Angel (12 page)

The small jubilation which Mrs. Severance felt at the sight of the envelope then departed. In its place came a pang at what she was now about to do. She despised sentiment so much that, as she wrapped the Angel first in one layer of paper and then in another in order that the Angel should not be jolted this way or that in the shoe box on its journey up the Fraser River Canyon, she firmly repressed the grief that she felt rising like a storm at sea. Her grief involved the whole of her seventy-eight years gone, and Philip, and the very form and substance of the Swamp Angel, and not just this moment in time. She wanted to weep as she wrapped the Angel and closed the lid over the shoe box, but she was aware that tears do not become the old. However old a woman may be, or plain, or – as they say – washed out, something that is not exactly pride (although akin to it) but the accumulation of experiences and the knowledge that tears are not seemly in the old discourages the luxury of weeping. So Mrs. Severance did not dramatize the action of
tying up the revolver in the shoe box although it was – to tell the truth – the only dramatic action of her life since the year before Philip’s death. The little dramas that she had played, sitting there in her chair, for years enough, now, had not sprung from any inner need but from the interested occupation of her amused intelligence. The play that she might play this afternoon, on the simple stage which she would set, differed, and was of importance, for it concerned Hilda’s happiness.

“Maggie,” she wrote on a scrap of paper, “throw the Angel into the deepest part of your lake. I adjure and love and trust you my darling Maggie. Yours N. S.” Then she tore up the note and wrote “Maggie, keep the Angel safe for me. When I die, throw it into the deepest part of your lake, N. S.” She thought, as her fingers folded the note, lifted the lid again and laid the paper in the box, I shan’t vex Hilda so much, with the Angel gone.

As she tied and cut the string, she refused to look upon this act as her deeply significant closing act which, however, it was.

She struck the bell at her side.

“Mrs. Spink,” she said, “will you put on your hat and coat and post this box at the main post office. Don’t post the letter. Take it, if you please, to the address on the envelope and ask for Mr. Albert Cousins …”

“Oh is that the young man who …”

“… and,” continued Mrs. Severance, “ask Mr. Cousins if there is an answer. He will tell you what time he is coming to see me this afternoon. When you come back, will you get out the old whiskey decanter and two of those good glasses, wash them, and fill the decanter, and put them on the little tray …”

“Well then …!” said Mrs. Spink. “And what
are you
going
to do, Mrs. Severing, if you need me like, while I’m away!”

“I won’t need you,” said Mrs. Severance, in a cloud of smoke. “I shan’t try to move, I promise you.”

She did not look at the shoe box as Mrs. Spink went with sprightly step out of the room, taking the box and the letter. After all, the box contained her life and she could not look. Her endeared symbol was gone and she would not touch it any more. I have nothing now but the reality, she thought stoically and fairly cheerfully and at this moment it doesn’t seem much. I am really too old in living. She recognized for a bright revealing instant that came, and then passed, that life and the evening were closing in. Very well. The fall was a straw in a wind that had shaken her. The Swamp Angel would be safe. So perhaps would Hilda, and happy. The difference, of course, was that the Angel would be unquestionably safe; while Hilda, being only a human being, would never in life be truly safe. This she thought, and more, as, squinting a little, she lighted a fresh cigarette from her stub.

B
y the time that two months had gone past, Maggie’s union with Three Loon Lake was like a happy marriage (were we married last week, or have we always lived together as one?).

The work, divided, fell into its place, and Maggie took easily the essential parts of ordering, providing, planning, cooking – more than that. Sometimes Mrs. Gunnarsen thought that the food was monotonous, but, with that thought, she knew that Maggie suited her meals expertly and without waste to long-distance ordering. She knew that she, Vera Gunnarsen, could not feed twelve to twenty or more people – day in, day out – cheaply and well, and with good humor. Most fishermen stayed only a few days. Many came for the day. Only a few stayed for a week or more, and there was no montony for them. Vera tried, a little grudgingly, to be fair; you could not have it both ways; big menus meant big losses. Henry Corder and the grapevine spread the lodge’s reputation, and sometimes some old sleeping bags were brought into use, and still the Gunnarsens had to turn fishermen away. The lake was there, the fish were there, the food was there, but they had not
enough cabins and boats. The future reopened before Haldar Gunnarsen. He began to plan expansion in the next spring. Vera his wife, who had hugged hopes of failure and a retreat back to Kamloops, saw unwillingly that Three Loon Lake was in process of re-establishing itself with the help of Maggie. In order to expand still further three things were necessary – youth with physical strength, better transportation, and some capital. If Haldar had been able to find these three things together in Kamloops, he would have done so. But he could not. Maggie gave and left with him a suggestion.

On one of the rare evenings when Haldar, Vera and Maggie had a chance to talk to each other, Maggie told the Gunnarsens about Joey Quong.

“I only saw the boy twice,” she said, “and I can only tell you that I liked him at once … perhaps the circumstances … I don’t know … but I had such a feeling of confidence that …” she laughed a little, “I actually spoke to him of some day going into a kind of partnership … this kind of thing was what I was looking for and I thought he would be good to work with. Of course the boy didn’t know what I had in mind and he was taken by surprise. He didn’t say yes, and he didn’t say no. He’s young, active, and nice, and he drives well. I liked his father …”

“Would you want a Chinese?” asked Vera, whose look had become dark. (“Partnership” – Maggie Lloyd was talking pretty big, wasn’t she, Vera thought resentfully.) “And why not?” said Haldar irritably.

“After I got here,” continued Maggie, “I heard … and I’d never heard before … about the young Chinaman who has that fine fishing place up the North Thompson … of course, I know, he was born and brought up in the country. But he began the place from scratch – it took lots of imagination and
courage – but he did it, and now he and his sister run it and it’s a whale of a success. I can’t see …” and she spoke diffidently, because who owned Three Loon Lake? She or the Gunnarsens? “… I can’t see what difference
race
can make … if you like a person … and I can’t think I’d like any other boy better than I liked that Joey, so quickly. If you want me to, I’ll write to him and if he wants to come up, he can, and look at it … the season’s getting on. If you don’t, I won’t. But you said, didn’t you, Haldar, that you couldn’t get anyone who wanted to come … and that you really liked. I’m not pressing it, but I
do
think you’d like Joey.
If
he’d come! They’re very dutiful, and even if Joey liked it, he wouldn’t come if his father said no …”

There was a long silence. Dark had come down over the lake. Haldar sat in his big chair, Vera beside him, and Maggie sat on the veranda edge, her legs dangling. There, thought Maggie, I’ve said my say – if they pass this up, they’re passing up a chance, and she could see two pictures. One was a picture of Three Loon Lake lodge, expanding, running smoothly as it well might, with Joey’s strength and activity and – perhaps – adaptability, his car, and a stake in the place. The other picture was of the lodge continuing with difficulty and under pressure, until Alan was old enough to supply strength, but no capital, and Alan was a child. Perhaps he would not want to stay with the lodge. No one could say. Oh well, she would be in Kamloops this winter. She already had secured a job there. And perhaps she could find someone for Haldar instead of Joey.

“Write him,” said Haldar.

“All right, I will. D’you think,” said Maggie, “that it would be a sound idea,
if he
wants to come up, for him to take a run up the North Thompson first and see how things are done in these parts? I don’t suppose he’s ever given a
thought to this kind of thing.”

“Okay, Maggie, I leave it to you,” said Haldar. Through the night came the familiar sound of a car in the forest. Maggie got to her feet. Lamps burned in all the cabins. Here was someone else who, arriving so late, could not be turned away. Work resumed.

During the weeks there had been a curious reversal in feeling. Maggie had gone on her way serenely. The thought of Edward Vardoe and of the past years seldom disturbed her. The image of Edward Vardoe receded as an image from another life and place – which of course it was. If she had stopped to think – and she had not stopped, she was far too busy – she would have noted that the sharp and cruel visitation that had come to her on the banks of the Similkameen river, then so near in time and space to Edward Vardoe, had not come to her again. It could never come to her again with the same poignance. She had not told the Gunnarsens anything of her life. She had not concealed it, but she had not told it. Vera had wondered. “I wonder why …” she had said to her husband. And then “I don’t see why …” And another time “I think it’s pretty funny …” and then “When a woman makes a mystery …”

Haldar said, “Who makes a mystery?”

“Well,” said his wife, daring a little, “this Maggie Lloyd.”

“What d’you mean
‘this
Maggie Lloyd’?”

“You know what I mean! You’d be the first to say. I just mean it seems pretty funny when a person doesn’t tell the people she works for anything about herself. Not that
I
mind.”

“Well, for pete’s sake,” said Haldar, looking at his wife with the harsh difference in his look which she had not seen since the days of their continuous bickering. “‘Works
for
us’! For what we pay her I can’t see why she works at all except she
likes it. I thought you liked her!”

“Oh sure I like her!”

“Well then what the heck.” Haldar was angry with his wife in the unpredictable way of a small gale at sea which will, perhaps, die down, or will, perhaps, swell to a storm. He had forgotten his early defenses against Maggie.

“Oh nothing. Can’t a person ask a question?”

As this kind of conversation is very dull, Haldar hobbled away and began to trim the lamps outside the kitchen door.

Because Vera Gunnarsen was not intelligent, she could not arm herself against the unexpected and the unwelcome. She could not say to herself At all events, this is better than when … or we are lucky now, and once we were unlucky. She had not the support of simple philosophy. When the little sliver of jealousy ran into her flesh, she did not pull it out. Her flesh festered pleasantly round the sliver. She indulged in the pleasure of the pain of her small growing jealousy. Since jealousy is a luxury which soon becomes a necessity to those who have felt its sharp enthralling pain, Vera became unhappy again. She had for some time, now, been that poor Vera Gunnarsen, and habit is strong. There was easy harmony between her husband and Maggie Lloyd. She looked for something more, and there was nothing more. Alan was fonder of Mrs. Lloyd than Vera liked. Maggie had succeeded everywhere where she, Vera, seemed to have failed. Maggie seemed unaware of it. All this was not easy to bear.

Alan, in the kitchen one afternoon, said to Mrs. Lloyd, “Well, go on …” His bright eyes watched her.

“Then, of course, he saw that they were Grillians, so he went to the other side of the tree and watched,” said Maggie, and took the applesauce cake out of the oven.

“What d’you mean Grillians?” said Alan.
“A large kind of tadpole. I can explain better sometime if we can draw it. Scrape the bowl, I want to wash it.”

“You going out on the lake, Mrs. Lloyd?” asked Alan with the mixing spoon half in his mouth.

Maggie did not answer. She straightened up, her face flushed by the heat of the stove and the day, and began counting on her fingers, and over again. Ten quarts of bottled tomatoes stood there, five bottles of tomato chutney, eight loaves of fresh bread, the applesauce cake; two big bean crocks were in the oven. Pies tomorrow. It was all simple fare, and good. Outside in the lean-to, another crate of Kamloops field tomatoes waited to be made into juice and ketchup. “What did you say?” she asked.

“I said Are you going on the lake?” said Alan, taking the bowl to the sink.

“I’d
like
to go,” said Maggie. She stooped to put more wood on the stove and damp it down. “We’re ready for that party coming before supper and I haven’t had a minute to speak to your father and mother. Next thing someone else’ll come rolling in and I won’t get a chance, and we’ve a lot to settle before you all go down. So we’ll see about the lake.”

“Okay. Okay – okay – okay.”

“Alan,” she said, teasing, and smiling at him, “is that the only word you know?”

“Okay. I mean Yes, okay,” he went down to the lake and fiddled about in the boats.

Maggie saw the Gunnarsens coming from their cabin, Vera slightly in front, Haldar hobbling behind. She went to meet them. They stood in the open sunlight, with the tall tree shadows falling toward them. The scent of pine trees, extracted by the sun, was not now observed by the three who stood talking, because familiarity had quenched it for them. Yet it was there.

“Do you think,” said Maggie, addressing both husband and wife, “that it would be a good idea if I stayed on for a week or so after you go down by taxi. I’d take things easy. If the weather stayed good I’d take my time, and I might get a bit of fishing. But if the weather broke, I’d hurry and do things up right away and come in the old car before the road turns to gumbo – and bring the perishables.”

“Wouldn’t be scared alone?” asked Haldar, hesitating.

“Me? No. Why’d I be scared?”

Just about running the place, that’s what. Just about running it, thought Vera, standing silent.