The Halifax Connection (16 page)

“Oh, quite! And you?”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I thought Madame might be cross, for my getting all drenched, but she only smiled, and said if she could see better, she’d’ve been there with me.”

“And Madame is?”

“Madame Louise. I work for one of her relatives in the boarding house. Madame wanted to go see her sister, and her own lady’s maid were begging to be left behind because her son were sick. So she asked Miss Susan for one of her girls, and I were the newest and could be easiest spared. It’s been grand. If Fran’d been with me, it would’ve been the best four weeks of my life. Madame’s an odd sort, really. I’ve never met anyone like her. She’s got piles of money, but she don’t top it over people, if you know what I mean. She can be so kind, so un … unpretentious, she seems like ordinary folks. And then some little thing will happen and she’ll turn
frightfully
proper.”

She wondered what Madame would think of Erryn Shaw. Probably she would approve of him, since he was acting every inch the gentleman. But she would not approve of Sylvie’s meeting him this way, not in the least. Decent young women, even those of the servant class, did not strike up acquaintances with strange men in public places. Of course, Sylvie knew perfectly well that decent young women did it all the time—perhaps Madame Louise as well, a long time ago. How else had the sheltered daughter of the richest man in town come to marry a seaman?

They had reached the boardwalk. Ahead was the Bonsecours Docks, where a paddlewheeler lay at anchor: the steamboat for Quebec, Erryn told her, travelling always by night so the businessmen who scurried back and forth need never lose a day of work. Beyond, along the waterfront proper, great ships lay in a curving row, snuggled by the jetties like weary beasts settling in for the night. The wharves were still abustle: men and horses, wheelbarrows and wagons, and once a long caravan of swiftly rolling barrels, with bent workmen slapping them along, their shirts sweaty and their hair in their eyes. With infinite tact Erryn Shaw tucked his arm around hers, and so they strolled past the harbour and up the long slope to rue de la Commune. She pointed to a church spire rising over a cluster of shops and markets—the Chapel of
Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours, or the sailors’ church, as it was called by most ordinary people.

“That’s where Madame is,” she told him. “She’s doing a novena of Masses there.”

“She’s from a seafaring family, then?” Erryn asked.

“Her family? Heavens, no. They’re merchants, the lot of them—and a great proper clan of rich Presbyterians to boot, except for the one who ran off and married a French-Canadian Papist from some Boston merchant brig. M’appen they’d’ve got over it, since the ship went down with all hands just two years later. But she turned Catholic herself when she married him, so now she got kin who still won’t talk to her except at weddings and funerals, when they got no choice. I don’t see the sense of it, their being so snotty. She’s a good woman.”

“People get frightfully snotty over religion. I don’t see the sense of it either.”

The sun was very low when they came to the church. The last trickle of departing worshippers had thinned down to nothing. Madame would have said her rosary by now, and a few other prayers as well. She was a patient woman, especially in church; she did not think a few extra Our Fathers ever hurt anyone. But by now her patience might well be running out.

Which was a pity, Sylvie thought. She would have liked more time with Erryn Shaw. She dug her thin scarf out of her pocket and wrapped it around her head.

“It were kind of you to walk with me, Mr. Shaw. I know it weren’t the best idea, going down there by myself. But I didn’t have no choice.”

“Wasn’t there anyone to come with you?”

“Only Madame, and she wouldn’t. She said it were too dangerous.”

Sylvie caught the irony of this only after she had spoken it. Her companion inclined his head faintly; she wondered if he did it to hide a smile.

“I’ve enjoyed your company so much, Miss Bowen. I’d be honoured if you’d join me for tea sometime soon? Or perhaps you’d enjoy the concert in Viger Park? The Royal Artillery band plays there every Wednesday night, very fine music, and fireworks, and vendors with all sorts of things to eat, and wonderful ices. I’d be delighted to take you. Would you come?”

“Oh …” How splendid that would be! Hours and hours to spend together, with lights, and sweets, and music. She adored music. She had stopped on the street just the other day, staring at a poster for the concerts, thinking,
Oh, if only we could go!

She dropped her eyes quickly. It would never do. She would have to explain him to Madame, and ask her permission; God knew what might come of that. Besides, he probably only offered out of courtesy.

“You’re very kind, but Madame expects me to stay with her.”

“Surely not every minute?”

“Pretty much, except when she’s in church. I’m not a Catholic, you see. She’d think it a great sin to go to someone else’s services herself, so she don’t make me come. But she’s nearly blind, so”—Sylvie made a small, apologetic gesture—“I have to help her.”

“Perhaps she’d enjoy an afternoon tea or a concert herself. I’d be happy to escort you both.”

“She’s doing a novena.” He looked puzzled, and she went on: “Penance, fasting, that sort of thing. It’s for her husband. She does it every October, ever since his ship went down thirty-seven years ago.”

“That’s admirable loyalty.”

“Yes,” Sylvie agreed, though she knew the woman’s actions were rooted in something far more complicated than loyalty. Louise Mallette’s brief, reckless marriage had not been a happy one.

They had reached the steps of the church. There was no help for it now; she had to go. She dropped a small curtsy. “Thank you, Mr. Shaw. It were real nice meeting you. Goodbye.”

“How many days are left in the novena?”

“What?”

“Novenas go for nine days, don’t they? How many are left?”

“Five, after today.”

“Always here, at the sailors’ church? The afternoon Mass?”

“Yes—”

“Then I’ll be back. I promise.” He bowed gracefully, as if he were at a fancy dress ball, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. “Good day, Miss Bowen, and thank
you.
You’ve brightened my whole day.”

It was the loveliest thing any man had ever said to her. She walked astonished into the chapel, carrying the words in her thoughts as she would have carried loose diamonds in her hands. All evening she carried them, riding in the carriage with Madame, eating supper with her, sitting in their lonely hotel room and reading aloud from
The Imitation of Christ
—a very fine book, admittedly, but not the sort of book she could keep her mind on tonight. She stumbled over words she had read without difficulty many times before, until Madame grew tired of it and said they should go to bed.

She lay awake for a long time. She wondered if Madame slept or only brooded. She wondered about Erryn Shaw’s life, who he really was, and where he came from. He had offered nothing personal about himself, and she had been far too polite to ask. He was obviously well bred, a man with means and some standing in the world. Surely he had a choice of women for companions, pretty merchants’ daughters who would happily go for tea or to the concert in Viger Park. And yet he had asked
her.

She lingered over every detail of the afternoon, every word he spoke, the pleasure she felt when he touched her, such fierce pleasure, out of all proportion to the occasion. And even though she knew he was probably just being kind—liking her a little bit, perhaps, but mostly just being kind, doing a gentleman’s duty by a poor lass without friends—even while she knew this in her
sensible mind, in another part of herself she revelled in his interest, believed in it, imagined there would be more. Something more, a walk through the streets, maybe tea while Madame was at church. A tiny gift, perhaps, some trifle she would keep forever, and show to old friends when she was old:
A gentleman gave me this once, a long time ago … a very fine gentleman he were, too, so very sweet. He could say things to make a beggar girl think she were a queen.

All the good sense in the world could not stop her from thinking thus, or from finding the next day intolerably slow, breakfast, forenoon, lunch, mid-afternoon, every part of it dragging worse than the last, and the sun stuck rigid in the sky like a dog on the end of a chain. Never had she been so happy to hear the summons of a church bell. It rang and rang as they rode through the cobblestone streets. She had five days, five long Masses, five meditations on death and Resurrection, five slowly counted rosaries, oh, a feast of time, if he came as he had promised.

But he did not come. There was no sign of his tall bony figure anywhere near the church when they arrived. She helped Madame from the carriage, walked her to her pew, and sped back into the afternoon sun. Then she waited, watching the slow trickle of worshippers—not many, for it was a working day, just a few aged women, a few cripples, a few sailors on liberty. When a coach and four came tearing up, her heart bounded with hope. Of course he would come in a carriage; he was a gentleman, after all. But it was only the priest, sweating and weary, with his stole still draped around his shoulders—rushing back, she supposed, from some poor devil’s deathbed.

The sun sped away now, heartless. Rue St-Paul was noisy as a beehive, with a great coming and going of hacks, and wagons, and people on foot.
I’ll be back
, he had said,
I promise.
The church bell rang for Communion; could it possibly be so late already? She walked back and forth, back and forth, watching the traffic. Still he did not come. People began drifting out of the church, just a few at first, hurrying, then the great body of them, then a few
again, and finally no one. Madame was a humble shadow among the pews, entirely alone.

As I will be in my turn …
This fact of course she knew, and had known for years. So she did not cry, except a tiny bit, too little for Madame to notice. She spoke cheerfully at supper, and took her mistress for a quiet evening walk. But she could not read aloud, not from these holy books with all their talk of love—God’s love or any other kind—all of it just a great pack of bleeding lies. Madame asked her what the matter was and she lied. She said she had seen something very sad on the street, a crippled child being beaten, and Madame was kind as always and told her she did not have to read.

But late, very late, when the moon was a hanging sickle in the west, she went to the window and pulled the curtain open and watched it drifting there, with its dirty scarred face. They said it was made of rocks—she had read it in a magazine—just a small, earth-like thing made out of rocks, with no water and nothing left alive.

You didn’t really think he’d come, Sylvie Bowen? Surely you didn’t?

But she had. That was the sorry truth of it; she had.

I
N THE WEST END
of Montreal, between its commercial heart along St. James Street and the lonely ribbon of Côte-des-Neiges Road, lay a long swath of scattered, magnificent estates. These were the homes of the city’s richest and most powerful men, Molsons, McTavishes, Ogilvies, and Dows, among others, their spectacular mansions surrounded by acres of gardens, designed to be works of art as well as marks of pride. Except for Hugh Allan’s Ravenscrag, rising in solitary splendour from the wooded slopes of Mount Royal, none was more spectacular than Edmund Morrison’s Tilbury Hall. In truth, Erryn doubted there was much to surpass it anywhere in North America, even among the moguls of New York.

For Morrison had built himself a Gothic castle with flamboyant gables and high, medieval turrets, an immense thing, yet fashioned
with so light a touch that, when snow was falling or when a bit of fog drifted up from the river, it appeared to an approaching visitor like something out of fairyland, magical and shimmering with lights. How Morrison fastened upon so poetic a construction Erryn could not imagine, for the man was one of the toughest, most unsentimental empire builders he had ever met.

Nonetheless, his party on Saturday afternoon was, as Jackson Follett had promised, fabulous. The tables were laden with a king’s feast, and Erryn took full advantage; he could rarely afford to eat so well. A fine chamber orchestra played in the garden, among the elms by the Montmorency wall. The women wore the finest Paris silks; their laughter sparkled like their wine; their wrists were drenched in filigree. The men were the elite of Montreal—merchant princes and sons of the great colonial families, diplomats from abroad, officers from the British garrison … Oh, yes, it was all very splendid and very familiar.