Wild Rose (27 page)

“He’s that sick? We could send somebody to get the doctor over to Garden City, I suppose,” Mrs. Emery said. “But I better see him first. Is there any of that soup left?”

They hurried through the cleaning after the last meal of the day, even leaving a little to be done the next morning in order to get to Adamson’s house before he fell asleep for the night. Sophie put Charles to bed, and exhausted as he always was by evening from the strenuousness of his days surrounded by, as he had never been in his short life, so many people, he fell asleep at once. She judged it safe to leave him alone for the short time they would be at the bachelor’s house, but she warned one of the young boarders, Harold Olds, (she had called him Mr. Olds and he hadn’t corrected her), whose room was across the hall,
that she was doing this, and making him promise to come run
ning for her should he hear Charles cry out. She gave a brief thought to what she would give him to play with tomorrow while she worked beside him, but put this aside for later.

They set out, Mrs. Emery carrying a loaf of bread wrapped in a cloth, while Sophie stepped carefully, holding a bowl of hot soup with a plate set over it to keep it from collecting insects or spilling over its sides as they traversed the short, but rough distance between the two houses. It was early evening, the mosquitoes descending in clouds and flies buzzing about attracted by the smells of the food they were carrying. A few people puttered about in their yards up the street, and a team and wagon creaked and jolted its way toward the livery barn, its driver waving perfunctorily to them. Somewhere, nearby, a night hawk could be heard whooping as it dipped through the dusky air catching insects, and back in the coulee an owl called softly, over and over again, until a dog barked and was silenced in French: Monsieur Tremblay, then.

Adamson answered their knock, blinking as if he’d been wakened or hadn’t been out since Sophie had stopped by a couple of hours earlier, and despite the fact that the harsh light of the day was softening.

“Imagine not telling anybody you’re sick,” Mrs. Emery scolded, pushing past him so that he had no choice but to go back inside, with Sophie following him. “Now you sit right down here. We brought you some hot soup.” He had begun coughing, and she paused to listen to the noise. “The heat will loosen up that chest of yours –” She fussed about him in a way that had about it the quality of a well-known role that she fell into at once with a certain eagerness, coming to life in a way that surprised Sophie.

As Mrs. Emery fussed Sophie occupied herself tidying the room, not speaking as Adamson ate his soup and bread. Observing him more closely now, in his own environment, she had begun to see that he was less ill than she’d thought, although, worrisomely, his cough was in his chest, the sound tight and hard. So nervous was she, she barely saw the room she was trying to tidy, listening so as not to miss a word of the conversation he was having with Mrs. Emery.

“We never brought water,” Mrs. Emery exclaimed.

Sophie said, “I’ll go and get a pitcher of it. It will give me a chance to check on Charles, too,” thinking but not saying so, that she was worried about fire. The stove in the kitchen was out, she had put it out herself, in this heat nobody would have a fireplace or a parlour stove blazing away, and there was no thunderstorm to send down lightning to set the grass alight. But people would light lamps, there was no stopping that.

Back at the house, she hurried upstairs to find that Charles hadn’t so much as turned his head on the pillow since he’d fallen asleep. In the kitchen she pumped a pitcher of cold water and set out with it for Adamson’s house. Halfway there, she met Mrs. Emery returning. Surprised, she asked, “Is he all right?”

“He don’t need a doctor, I reckon,” Mrs. Emery said, “There’s no fever tonight. But I thought we should maybe get him in some food – he’s got to eat to get back his strength. I’ll get one of my boys (referring to her young boarders) to bring over a pail of water for morning. And he can empty Adamson’s slops too, won’t hurt him none.” She hurried on. Sophie hesitated, but then, she had the pitcher of water that Adamson needed – the village would assume, she supposed, that he was too ill for there to be any misbehaviour between them.

He was in his bedroom when she knocked briskly and opened the door, not waiting for his reply.

“Here is your water,” she called to him cheerily. She went to his cupboard where she took down a glass and filled it, then carried it into the other room, where she set it and the pitcher down on the chair by the bed. He lay fully clothed on his narrow bed – what had she expected?

“Thanks very much,” he said, pulling himself to a sitting position and reaching for the glass. “I was plenty thirsty.”

“I hope you’ll be well soon,” she said, retreating a careful distance.

“Couple more days and I’ll be right as rain.” He repeated, “I can’t thank you and Mrs. Emery enough.”

“It’s nothing, you’d do as much for us if we were sick. I’ll come
back tomorrow and get your sheets. Tomorrow is wash day.”

He slumped back against his pillows, sounding, that quickly, exhausted. She came forward to fill his glass again, and as she did so, allowed herself a quick glance into his face. In the dim light she was unsure of his expression, although she knew he was looking at her, neither of them smiling, but something passed between them, she could feel it, strong enough to disturb her so that she turned quickly and left, murmuring an
“au revoir,”
the only other sound her rapid footsteps and the rustling of her skirt. Then she was outside, shutting the doors carefully behind her. She had to restrain herself from running through the fading light back to Mrs. Emery’s.

That night, in the stuffy darkness of her bedroom, Charles lying motionless beside her, she woke with a start.
That brooch that Madame Hippolyte gave me that I sold to Monsieur Archibald was not gold. I’m sure it isn’t.
Which could only mean that the money he had given her for it was a gift given out of kindness. For a long time she lay awake thinking of this, first hot with humiliation, followed by a resolve to return the money to him for a fairer price, and then, slowly accepting that she couldn’t afford to reject whatever kindness might come her way. How rich he must be – yet he helped Pierre sell our farm to Campion. Perhaps the twenty dollars was what Pierre and Campion had paid him for the exchange of the deed, and now his conscience wouldn’t let him keep it. She no longer knew what she should think, and it surprised her that assessing blame and defining what was right and what was not in this situation should be so difficult. Then she remembered the spark that had passed between herself and Harry Adamson, but pushed it away as a fluke or her own mistaken apprehension.

Each evening for the next week after the day’s work was done, Sophie and Mrs. Emerson strolled the short distance to Adamson’s shack, bringing him a hot meal, fresh sheets and towels, and any other item they thought that might make his sickroom more pleasant. On the third day when they entered his kitchen, a small bouquet of pansies glowed in a glass jar in the centre of the table, and a plate carefully wrapped in a clean cloth sat beside it.

“Mrs. Archibald and the preacher’s wife, Mrs. Oswald, came by this afternoon,” he explained. “Said they’d heard I was sick, didn’t know I already had nurses.” He grinned briefly at them.

Mrs. Emery said, “Pooh, they knew, everybody knows we come every day. Saw a chance to get inside your house.” She was clearly annoyed that her bounty was considered insufficient by
the town’s first lady. Adamson raised a hand to hide a grin, ending
by rubbing his forehead. Sophie peeked under the cloth.

“Cookies,” she said. “They look good.”

“Have one,” he said, “I’ll never be able to eat them all. The mice will get them.” Sophie took one, then passed the plate to Mrs. Emery who refused as if insulted at the very suggestion, then held it out to Adamson, who took one, but set it down without eating it.

On the sixth evening when they arrived, they found him sitting outside his door on his broken-backed chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He took the plate of food from them and would have risen to carry it inside to eat later, so as not to eat in front of them, but both of them insisted that he stay where he was, Sophie going inside and returning with cutlery and a glass of water. She went back and brought a chair for Mrs. Emery to sit on, and leaned against the unpainted wood of the outer wall while they chatted, and he ate, apologetically at first, and then heartily, a fact which both women noted with satisfaction.

“What year was it you come?” Mrs. Emery asked him, frowning, as if she’d been doing mental calculations that weren’t working out.

“Two years ago,” he told her. “I haven’t accomplished much,” he said, mildly rueful.

“You need yourself a wife,” she answered. “Them with wives gets settled faster.”

“When did you get here, Mrs. Hippolyte?” he asked.

“Eighteen eighty-four. I will never forget that trip south from the train in Swift Current. It was so rough, and we were never quite sure we were going in the right direction. Our wagon loaded down – I mean
loaded
with provisions and equipment…” She waved her hand and both Mrs. Emery and Adamson laughed in agreement. “It took forever. And then the plowing! Nothing would do but Pierre would start at once. The very next morning after we arrived. We didn’t even have a house to live in.” She said this as if Pierre were back on the homestead waiting for her. She lowered her head in embarrassment, and yet, pleased, that she had managed to sound normal.

“Most of ’em do,” Mrs. Emery said, dreamily, doubtless remembering the day she and her husband had first reached their land.

“It marks your place as your own – your own land at last,” Harry told them, and both women glanced curiously at him, as if they hadn’t thought of it that way before.

After a while Mrs. Emery said, “I reckon you’ll be fine in a day or two,” rising clumsily, as if the weight of her own body had become too much for her. She said to Sophie. “My bed is calling me, but you stay on if you want, bring back the dishes to wash.
I’ll make sure Charlie is all right.” Sophie said nothing, and Harry gave his plate his full attention. Mrs. Emery strolled off, as if she were too tired to walk faster. Harry and Sophie watched her until the corner of Adamson’s house blocked their view.

“Don’t know how I’m going to manage with nobody bringing me my supper each day,” Adamson said.

“How did you manage before?” she asked, halfway between tartness and teasing.

“Bachelor grub is not the same thing,” he told her. “It’d be nice to have a dining room in town so a fella could buy a good meal once in a while, but, I reckon we’re too small for that.”

“I should go back,” Sophie said. “When you’re finished – I’ll take your plate with me.”

“Got to get back to my crop,” he remarked, looking off into the distance. “Haven’t had a drop of rain, it should be fine. Not much anyway.” He didn’t speak, finishing up the last of his potatoes and gravy. “Who is taking your crop?” He asked this tentatively.

“It’s not my crop,” she said. “It’s Mr. Campion’s problem.”

“He bought the crop too?”

Sophie, not trusting herself to speak, merely nodded.

“He’s probably sold the whole thing by now,” he remarked.

Sophie straightened, reaching abruptly for his empty plate to take it from him.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean –”

“It’s all right,” she said. “What’s done is done. I am…all right.” As she touched the plate her hand grazed his, and she drew back as if she’d been burned. He laughed uncertainly, coughed a little, raised the plate shoulder high not looking at her so that she could take it from him.

She walked back to the boarding house too quickly, stumbled in a rut, nearly fell, but managed to hold onto the dishes. She looked back over her shoulder, embarrassed, but Adamson’s house had blocked her from his view. She noticed for the first time how the setting sun had retreated further from the west toward the south, that dusk was drawing on earlier and earlier. The last rays of the day were spreading like water out across the prairie far beyond the boarding house, a rose colour, beginning to deepen to purple back along the faces of the hills, and the evening stillness had descended, as if they were caught, all of them, in this little moment of paradise, the ramshackle town, the shoddy buildings, the poorest of the poor in their shabby clothing and their fences, wagons, buggies all rattling themselves to pieces on the prairie. So tiny, all of it, in the midst of this wild splendour. Had she time to think she might have wondered if they might be better in settled places, rather than despoiling yet another Eden. But her fingers still tingled where they had touched Harry’s, and she scolded herself for that smaller, more natural foolishness, even while an irrepressible part of her remained pleased, so that she had to stop herself from smiling. She knew full well that in the eyes of her church she was married to Pierre forever, could not take another husband until Pierre died. Another husband! Had she really thought that? Pictures poured through her mind at this: The profound pleasures of the marital bed, then Pierre’s raging at her, as if coming West had been her idea alone and she had dragged him all the way; the always endless, often cruel work of the homestead, and now, its futility – to have it all given to Campion, and she left without a cent or a bed of her own on which to lay her head. But if she let herself think about this, she would be ill.