Wishful Seeing (6 page)

He sat down and reached for the newspapers that Martha had left on the table. He had seen only one or two papers in the days he had been away, and then he had not been able to do anything more than glance at them. It would have been rude to do otherwise in someone else's home; he was expected to make polite conversation, to comment on the fineness of the meal, and to lead the family in prayer, not sit with his nose stuck in their reading material. Now he looked forward to a steaming cup of tea and a bite to eat, all consumed while devouring the latest news and the commentary on it. It was a luxury to take the papers, but one that he was reluctant to forego.

The
Cobourg Star
had only a brief article on the matter of the Plews lawsuit, stating only the barest of the details. Thaddeus wondered what the Sully neighbourhood was making of the whole affair. George Howell was not a particularly popular figure to begin with, apparently, and his seemingly unscrupulous land deal seemed to have uncovered a tangled web of questions, none of which had been answered by the newspaper. It didn't seem to matter, as far as the town fathers were concerned. Thaddeus discovered in a second article that they were prepared to pour another forty thousand pounds of municipal money into the railway project, and in a third, that they had unveiled plans to build a substantial town hall to reflect the glory that would soon be Cobourg's. This seemed rash to Thaddeus. Better to wait and see whether the bridge fell down and the lines heaved first.

Bemused, he turned to the next page, which featured the international news. Trouble was brewing on the Crimean Peninsula, and it looked as though France and England were prepared to go to war with Russia in a complicated dispute that somehow involved the rights of Christians in Jerusalem. Although this was something that Thaddeus was all in favour of, his understanding was that the city was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and he couldn't quite follow the article well enough to discover how so many other countries had become embroiled in the dispute. The Crimea was nowhere near Jerusalem. Or at least he didn't think it was. Just another of Britain's imperial squabbles, he decided, and unlikely to affect Canada. He leafed through the paper looking for reading that was a little less taxing, but he had exhausted the intellectual offerings of
The Star.
The rest of the paper was filled with social news and advertisements.

He reached for the
Toronto Globe.
Tucked beneath it was a small volume.
Uncle Tom's Cabin or Life Among the Lowly
, he read. It was a popular novel, he knew, a tale that exposed the evils of slavery.

“Is this yours?” he asked.

Martha glanced at the book. “Oh, that's where it went. Yes, it's mine now, I suppose. One of the guests left it at the hotel, but we couldn't ever figure out who it belonged to, so father gave it to me.”

“Have you read it?”

“About five times. Whenever I get tired of the papers and don't have anything new to read, I go back to my old favourites.”

Thaddeus was surprised. “You read the newspapers?”

“Yes, of course. They're here anyway. You needn't bother reading them yourself. Just ask me what you want to know and I'll tell you all about it.” She set his tea in front of him.

“Can you explain the situation in the Crimea?”

“Nobody can explain the situation in the Crimea. There is no explanation.”

“That was my conclusion as well.”

She laughed and returned to cooking their makeshift meal.

He was impressed by her, but he tried not to let it show as he once again buried his nose in the day's news.

 

Thaddeus was surprised by the little twinge of disappointment he felt when he failed to see Ellen Howell in Sully the following week. There was no reason why he should, he told himself. She was not a Methodist. She had been at the camp meeting with her husband, who evidently had business to conduct there. Like many others, she had attended The Great Baptism Debate, he was sure, for the entertainment of it, nothing more. Old Mrs. Gordon said that the Howell farm was south of Sully, but even if she lived in the village itself, he couldn't expect to see her flitting about on the very day he happened to be there. And more to the point, why had he been hoping to see her at all? Yes, of course, there was a concern about her circumstances, but no more so than any number of other people, some of whom were actual members of his congregation. He would address the question of the bruised arm if he could, but it wasn't really an overwhelming concern. He didn't know why he kept thinking about it.

This was his first visit to Sully since the debate at Cold Springs, and he was pleased to see that here the effect of his triumph had not yet worn off. The meeting was full, but Thaddeus estimated that approximately half of the new faces attended out of curiosity, and he was sure that when they found it less exciting than the debate they would wander away again. A handful of the new attendees, however, seemed genuinely interested in joining the church on a permanent basis, and he hoped that he could safely deliver them into the arms of full membership. He made a point of greeting each person warmly. Honestly, he thought, he had enough sinners and backsliders to keep him more than busy. He needn't go looking for trouble with the Howells when he had so much work right in front of him.

Still, after the meeting was completed and he made his way to the Gordons for his dinner, he resolved to ask about the bruise if the opportunity should arise.

It was a long time coming. The table talk over dinner was all about Jack Plews and the railway. According to Old Mrs. Gordon, half of her neighbours were annoyed with Plews for instigating the lawsuit and the other half with George Howell for sharp practice in the first place.

“Everyone's afraid the dispute may delay the completion of the line,” she said. “They can see all the money flying away.”

“Surely it won't come to that?” Thaddeus said.

“Oh no, I expect the railway company will just make good on the difference in price,” Leland Gordon said. “But they'll do it with investor money. In the end, it's the shareholders who will pay.”

“In the end it's always the people who pay,” Old Mrs. Gordon pointed out, and Thaddeus could think of no argument to counter this, but he was distressed that even here, in this remote village, all anyone could think of was how rich they were about to become.

“I was at a meeting in Port Britain last week,” Thaddeus said. “There was an old, old man there who claimed that Plews couldn't have had title to the land in the first place. He said there was some problem that prevented his uncle from buying it years ago. Of course, the old fellow couldn't remember which uncle it was, so nobody took his story very seriously.”

“I don't see how that could be,” Leland said. “Plews had been on the property for five or six years, and it had always been farmed before that. If there's a problem, wouldn't it have turned up before this?”

“I'm not so sure it hasn't,” Mrs. Gordon said. “There were some disputes here a few years ago.” She began to chuckle. “Well, maybe not so few. I forget how old I am sometimes. But I remember my father talking about one of them.” Her face creased into a thousand wrinkles while she tried to recall the details. “It might have been Margaret Dafoe's family.” She turned to her son. “You remember Margaret. She married a Palmer.”

Gordon shrugged a little. What was so clear in his mother's memory had never registered with him.
It's the way of old age, I guess,
Thaddeus thought.
I must tell Martha to ignore me if I start talking about people she's never heard of.

“Any road,” Old Mrs. Gordon went on, “it must have been sorted out somehow, because I don't remember hearing anything more about it.”

“I don't understand how you could get a mortgage on a piece of property you don't own,” Thaddeus said. “There would be nothing to secure the loan.”

“I expect you can if you get it from D'Arcy Boulton,” Mr. Gordon said darkly. “Let's not forget who most likely engineered the whole purchase in the first place.”

The talk turned then to the excellent turnout at the local meeting, and how Thaddeus's fine showing during the debate had engendered so much interest in the church. It wasn't until he was about to leave that he ventured to introduce the topic that remained uppermost in his mind.

“I have something to ask you. It's a bit of a delicate subject, and I don't know if I'm speaking out of turn.”

“Oh, Mr. Lewis, I doubt you could ever speak out of turn,” Mrs. Gordon said. “Go ahead. Ask away.”

“It's about Major Howell's wife. I noticed a very nasty bruise on her arm the other day.”

Mrs. Gordon seemed to grasp what he was asking right away. The women always did. “And you're wondering how it happened?”

“She claimed that a cow kicked her, but it didn't look like it to me. It looked like the sort of bruise that would be left by someone wrenching her arm. Violently.”

“And you're asking who might have done that?” Leland said. He thought for a moment before he shook his head. “I haven't seen any other marks, but it's not like I see her every day or anything. I go there only when there's work to do on their fields. Even then, I wouldn't see her unless she asked me to split some wood or do some other chore for her.”

“You probably wouldn't see anything anyway,” Mrs. Gordon said. “In my experience, women try to hide those kinds of bruises. They don't want anyone to know.”

“And that's the problem,” Thaddeus said. “I'm by no means certain, and unless it happens frequently, it's very difficult to come up with enough evidence to make an accusation. And sometimes bringing it up only makes matters worse.”

Leland looked dubious. “I don't like Major Howell, but he doesn't strike me as the type. Too much of a gentleman — in his own estimation if in no one else's.”

“Sometimes those who profess to be gentlemen are the worst offenders,” Thaddeus said. “In any event, I thought I'd just mention my concerns, and perhaps you could keep a little closer eye on things, when you're there. Even so, I'm not sure what I could do. They aren't members of our church, after all, but perhaps I could ask their own minister to intervene if there's a problem.”

“That would be the Anglican man, Reverend Barris, if it comes to that,” Mrs. Gordon said. “That's where people like the Howells go.”

“Should we be concerned about the girl, as well?” Thaddeus asked. In his experience, violence in a family was seldom limited to one member. Most often, everyone felt the brunt of it.

“Now, that I really couldn't imagine,” Leland said. “The girl follows her father around like a puppy. She seldom seems to notice anyone else. I doubt she's ever said more than two words to me. Only occasionally do you see her with her mother, and when you do it's clear she doesn't want to be there. The Major seems to be the only human being she can be bothered with. She wouldn't be like that if he was beating her, would she?”

Thaddeus wasn't so sure. These cases were so complicated. Sometimes the victims were the staunchest defenders of the abusers. “Well,” he said finally, “I'd appreciate it if you could keep your eyes open. And let me know if you see anything.”

As he rode away from the Gordon farm, he puzzled over what possessed men to use their fists on their wives, and why there were so seldom any repercussions as a result of it. Except in cases of extreme injury, the law took the view that a husband was within his rights to raise his hand against anyone in his family, but why it should countenance even that was beyond his understanding. The Church declared that the Lord had given men dominion over women, but to protect them, not abuse them. He couldn't imagine any circumstance that would ever have inclined him to strike his wife, and he had never disciplined his children with more than a word. He had scarcely disciplined them at all, truth be told. He was never at home to do it. He had left it all to Betsy.

If the Gordons were correct in their assessment, it seemed unlikely that George Howell was a brute who beat his wife. But why would Ellen Howell manufacture such a flimsy story about the bruise on her arm unless she was attempting to hide its true origin? It was his duty to interfere if he thought she was in danger, but in all honesty he couldn't say that was the case. He had made his inquiry, and done what he could. Now he needed to put the woman firmly out of his mind so he could concentrate on the extra meetings he had scheduled in the wake of the debate. These had resulted in a far more hectic schedule than he had bargained for.

There was little enough time to spare before his next appointment, but Thaddeus couldn't resist stopping for a few minutes at the shore of Rice Lake to watch the crew working on the bridge. Nor was he the only one who was curious. Several small boats full of sightseers bobbed in the water close to the construction barges. And farther out, Thaddeus could see the steamship chugging its way across the lake to the Sully dock. Passengers hung precariously over the port side, craning their necks in order to gain a better view of the work in progress.

Massive logs marched in a line toward Tic Island, the jumping-off point for the long stretch of bridge that would cross open water, and another huge timber was being pulled out of the lake and slowly inched to a vertical position as he watched. As soon as it was in place, the steam pile driver pounded it in, bark flying with every blow. The noise made at each hammer stroke shattered the lakeshore's serenity and drowned out any sound made by the wind or the water.

Hundreds of these wooden stilts would be needed to form a framework for the trestles, and as substantial as the timbers were, Thaddeus failed to see how they would ever hold up something as heavy as a locomotive, or how they could ever resist the heave and pull of ice and current. Not to mention the inherent dangers of human failure, which had been amply demonstrated just a few months previously when forty-eight people had been killed in Connecticut.

The newspapers had been full of the details of the accident. A train travelling at the reckless rate of fifty miles an hour had plunged into Norwalk Harbor from a swing bridge opened to allow the passage of a ship. The driver of the locomotive ignored the signal to stop and noticed the open stretch of water only a few hundred feet before he reached it. He activated the brakes and slammed the train into reverse, but it was not enough to stop the forward momentum of the train. The engine flew across the gap and slammed into the opposite abutment, then sank in twelve feet of water, the cars behind it falling down, one after the other, to crush the ones before them in turn, until, finally, one of them broke in two, leaving the front half hanging over the near abutment while the rear half remained on the track. The loss of life had been terrible, and many questions were being asked about the qualifications of the drivers, the adequacy of the signalling system, and the safety of rail travel in general.

There was a comparable section of swing bridge included in the design for this project. A similar accident could happen just as easily here, but no one ever seemed to mention this. Thaddeus was fairly certain that no one would ever be able to coax him aboard the train that would cross this bridge, no matter how big the timbers were.

Enough gawking
, he finally said to himself.
You're no better than the idlers on the lake.
He kicked his horse into a sedate trot, a gait that should get him to his meeting on time but that was still slow enough that he could drink in the lovely view along the shore. Rice Lake was dotted with islands — Tic Island across from Sully, where the rail line would run; a little farther from shore, Spook Island; to the west, Sugar, Sheep, and Black Islands; and in the distance, Cow Island and the bluff of land where long-forgotten tribes had buried their dead under mounds of earth. It was almost a shame, he thought, to spoil so pretty a scene with piles and trestles.

He had not travelled far along the lakeside trail when he noticed a skiff heading toward the shore. It would reach land west of the village, he judged. He would have assumed that it was one of the spectators tired of watching, or a fisherman who had caught enough for one day, and not thought anything further about it, except for a flash of blue that caught his eye. Blue made him think of Ellen Howell. He attempted once again to shove any thought of her aside. Just because he saw someone dressed in blue didn't mean that it had anything to do with the Howell woman. This was obviously someone else, someone who had a dock or a landing farther down the shore and who had merely been out for a ride on the lake on a spectacularly lovely September afternoon.

Still, he took careful note when he passed the section of shore where he was sure the boat must have landed, but he could see nothing through the trees and bushes that clustered along the bank.