Читать книгу Lily Fairchild - Don Gutteridge - Страница 11

When Mrs. Templeton heard that Lily had never seen the Lake, she was shocked, and set about to remedy the situation. Lily politely refused her offer of a cruise on the Michiganor one of the other steamers now plying the water routes on a regular basis.

“You mean you wish to walk down there and just look at it?” she said, swivelling on the piano bench to face Lily.

“Yes, that’s all.”

“But, pet, why didn’t you do so when you lived at Bridie’s? The sand beach is no more than half-a-mile through the pinery back of your place.”

“Auntie was strict about that,” Lily said defensively. “She was always worried about the fishermen. Besides, she never liked me just traipsin’ off on my own. Could you blame her?”

“Not at all,” said Mrs. Templeton, closing the sheet music. “Goodness knows a number of the town girls have been accosted by the riff raff down there cutting brush for the railway. Fishermen, I hear tell, are even worse.” Her tone was less-than-serious.

“May I go, then?”

“Of course. Follow Front Street until it turns into the trail the Slocum people sometimes use to get down to the fishery. Just before it comes out at the swamp below the beach, veer right – you’ll see an Indian trail that’ll take you over the dunes to Canatara beach. Of course, you could also walk up the coast past the fisherman’s shanties, but I wouldn’t advise it.”

“I’ll go right now, if I may?”

“Well, all right. But I wastuning up here to start your dancing lessons,” she said. “We mustn’t wait too long. Never know when a big fancy-ball might be upcoming.”

Though it had been seven years since she had walked through thick brush, Lily felt at home on the fishery trail with the pines flaring overhead, the undergrowth spare, and shadowed, with shafts of brilliant light where the sun fitfully penetrated. This trail was worn and clear. Ten minutes or so into it, she heard the shouts of the men with their nets along the river bank sweeping for pickerel. Just ahead the woods brightened, so Lily, her instincts sharp, peered to the right and spotted the crossed-blaze – perhaps ten years or more in age – that signaled a Pottawatomie trail. She moved from mark to mark towards the sound of waves breaking in the near distance. Scanning the trunks at eye-level, she found herself abruptly in the full glare of early afternoon sun. The roaring of the waves was much louder, but when she looked ahead expecting to see the Lake, she saw only a series of sand-dunes about twelve feet in height.

Lily took off her shoes and stockings, dashed barefoot through the hot sand, fell scampering up the nearest dune, got up, her palms burning, her legs scything, until she stood on top and caught her first glimpse of the Freshwater Sea of the Hurons. What she saw initially was an uninterrupted blue stretching to the north and west so far that it became indistinguishable from the sky. The sun’s light and the heat were lost in a greater immensity: the vast, tense energy of water on the move – homeward. When Lily was able to pull her gaze from the vanishing point directly to the north-west, she saw and heard at last the reach of the wavelets on the shore. Their sound was the intermittent, quiescent breath of a hibernating bear. Below the brassy surface that lay so placidly before her, Lily could feel the pulse of a cobalt heart whose energies charged the secret and vital parts of the earth’s anatomy. There was here the sign of some pilgrimage whose spirit she shared.

Then, a girl again, she dashed across the crystalline beach and splashed and paddled and strutted and planted her footprints in the permeable sands. It was Indian summer: the air was warm and thin as new wine, the water icy, the sand purging. She did not want to leave.

When she did, she mounted the highest dune north from the trail and looked back towards the town-site. The houses of Port Sarnia were not yet visible. But she could see – where the Lake poured into the chasm of the St. Clair only half-a-mile across – the shanties where Slocum’s people kept their nets and cleaned their catch. Between the edge of the pinery and the River lay a quarter-mile of swamps full of disheveled cattails and yellowing milkweed. Could they ever build a railroad over that? To the far south-west Lily saw also the palisades of Fort Gratiot, the Stars and Stripes saluting self-importantly above it. Overhead, herring gulls whirled and rehearsed their mating dance.

Looking to retrace her route by the blazed trail, Lily noticed that to the north the sand-dunes were thicker, reaching far back into a low brush of runt alders and hawthorn. Something drew her that way, away from the marked trail. The dunes gradually subsided, giving way to a small, rolling field dotted with dwarf trees. The pinery enclosed it on three sides. Though there was nothing visible to the unpractised eye, Lily sensed immediately that she was in a burial ground. The Lake breeze did not penetrate this far but Lily felt the eddies and parabolas of moving, sentient beings occupying space. She stepped carefully ahead. The grave plots were barely discernible; obscured by knot-grass and hoarhound and sand-burs. Yet Lily could see that the ground had sunk almost imperceptibly, marking the modest dimensions of each site.

After a while, Lily spotted a new grave, its sand piled two inches above ground to accommodate the later natural sinking. Clusters of grass had been replanted to root and flourish and to camouflage in the coming spring. Winter would soon provide its own disguise.

You are here at last, Southener, Lily thought. You came under cover of dark and they laid you to rest among the other nameless wanderers and refugees, the outcasts and pariahs and survivors, the renegades and the prophets like you. I haven’t forgotten the jasper heart. Already it has brought me more luck that I ever hoped for. And I won’t forget your request. Somehow I’ll find the sacred place in these woods and return the magic to it. I’ll come here every time I can, and honour your grave. Surely here, with swamps and dunes all around, you’ll be safe.

She thought then of her mother’s headstone, alone in an unfrequented corner of some stranger’s field, the script of her name chipped out so crudely no one would recall whose soul sought refuge below it. I must go back there. I will.

“Lily, pet, you’re back at last,” an excited Mrs. Templeton greeted her.

“I hope you weren’t worried,” Lily said, embarrassed by the state of her attire.

“Heavens no, I just couldn’t wait to tell you. It’s all been settled. The new railway station will be ready in a week and the first train is coming in on the nineteenth. There’ll be a dinner and a ball.”

“Are we invited?” Lily said.

“Invited? We’re hosting it! And you’ve got exactly two weeks to learn how to dance!”

And in two weeks, the feat was accomplished. As Mrs. Templeton never tired of saying, “the girl’s a natural!” Natural or not, it took some practice to disentangle the intricacies of the quadrille, galop, valse, polka and inevitable lancers. While Mrs. Templeton played a suitable tune on the piano, Mayor Templeton would serve as Lily’s partner, then hop to one side and quickly demonstrate what the other couples of the quadrille would be up to – often forgetting where he was or two-stepping inadvertently into the galop. In the waltz, His Worship was superb, guiding Lily and his ample paunch around the parlour in mutual three-quarter delight. Lily could not help humming, though it was apparently a form of impoliteness.

“Let your feetfeel the music,” Mrs. Templeton said, pouncing on the keys.

“But she is, sweet, she is; her whole body is,” puffed the Mayor, sensing the triphammer pulse of the tune through Lily’s right hand and the small of her back, and marveling at the weightless power of her presence. She will do well, this one, he thought. Suddenly, he loved his wife more than ever.

A few minutes before the appointed hour, the crowd lining both sides of the cleared right-of-way that cradled the tracks heard the approaching sound of the first locomotive in Lambton.

A low thunder of iron-on-iron gained volume and pitch, scattering wildlife through the shuddering swamps and fernshaws. Trunk and bole and root quivered like tuning forks in its wake. Just before the track’s curve at the edge of town, the engine whistle shrieked steam to announce its imminent arrival. Two thousand waiting citizens responded as one: a raucous, antiphonal cheer went up, followed by a second when the first smoke was spotted above the bush, then the chuffing stack. A whoop of self-congratulatory joy rose when the entire juggernaut hove into full view and, at speeds only dreamt of, roared past their applause and braked towards a stop. The assembled dignitaries dropped all pretense of disinterest.

Before the station – an imposing, pseudo-gothic structure of stone, red brick and elm – #52 engine, bearing the name Prosperoin gold against a fern-green skin, skidded to a halt with a hiss and a screech that stunned the worshippers: a keening skirl of a cry like that of a disembowelled recruit at Culloden. The Great Western Railway had arrived.

The passenger coaches debouched onto the freshly planked platform several squads of V.I.P.’s, some genuine, many self-appointed. The forward platoon consisted of Sir Oliver Steele, vice-president of the Great Western, with Lady Marigold Steele, and the Mayor of London, trailed by four councilors and their wives. Behind them, with a scandalously blonde female anchored to his right arm, came a handsome figure soon identified as the notorious roué of London and Toronto, Stanley R. Dowling, known abroad as “Mad Cap.” Not only had he debauched a succession of willing virgins, but it was rumoured he had been drummed out of the militia. For reasons no respectable person could understand or commend, he had, from obscure origins, made his way up in the world and in a society whose standards were obviously rotting at the core. He was said to have been made a director of the Great Western and to have speculated recklessly on local railway ventures that left himrich and the townsbankrupt.

Lady Steele held Lily’s fascination as the official party slow-marched towards Mayor Templeton’s group, behind which the lady folk of the town were expectantly assembled. She was several decades younger than her be-knighted husband, with fresh-scrubbed skin and sloe eyes bearing a look of distant, wry amusement. Dowling, Lily noted, smiling publicly at his tow-haired escort, but cast sidelong glances at Lady Steele, who absorbed them, unreturned. It was clear that Dowling would be lord of any domain he chose to occupy: with his jet-black hair, brows and side-whiskers, eyes bitumous and smouldering; carriage regal and never without purpose. He was a man in his prime, with poise and presence. His dowry: the future.

As His Worship shook hands with the worthies from London and Toronto, the band struck up a martial air and the crowd, crushing in around the train and dignitaries, applauded wildly. If they had any doubts about the intrusion of railways into their lives, they did not express them on this occasion. As the formal introductions and exchange of greetings were taking place, Lily looked anxiously at the throng of faces about her. Finally, she spotted them. Chester grinned and waved excessively; Bridie, apparently, did not see her.

A dinner was served at six o’clock for the more than one hundred and fifty well-wishers and their guests ‒ all men. In 1858 and for some years to come, the wives and darlings of celebrities did not grace the tables of such public colloquies. Hence, the intelligence emanating from the event had to be derived from second-hand sources. Fortunately the ladies had access to a number of impeccable, though not coincident, accounts of what transpired. Since this was the largest dinner ever held in Port Sarnia, the only room big enough to accommodate the guests and their appetites was in the Orange Lodge near the St. Clair Inn. Thus it was that Mrs. Josephine Salter, whose kitchen was called upon to cater the meal, was able to store up enough gossip to feed her habit for a year; likewise, at a lower level, for Char Hazelberry whose own kitchen provided the tarts and trifle, and who luckily was required to bring along her best girls, Betsy and Winnie, to aid in the service thereof and in the dissemination of news thereafter.

No less than eighteen toasts were proposed and replied to, with claret for the elect and water for the saved. His Worship led the way with one to the Queen Herself, followed rapidly by those to the president of the Great Western, his board of directors, his English backers and the British Parliament. A toast was even offered to the president of the United States of America and responded to at length by the mayor of Port Huron, Michigan, whose country also had a stake in these enterprises. According to the report in The Observerhis American Worship emphasized that two things were held in common by both republicans and monarchists: a tradition of fair play and justice as well as an unshakeable belief in progress, a progress rendered visible and measurable by the march of iron through the untracked wastes of the continent. Indeed, he concluded, the password of both great nations was identical: onward. The applause was deafening. Lily heard it, sitting in her room with Bonnie and Mrs. Templeton fussing over her with pins and thread, and thinking only of Bridie there at the station in the midst of such commotion, staring at nothing.

The ball, held in the concourse of the new station, began at nine in the evening and through its twenty-two dances endured until almost three in the morning. The town band of Goderich, which had come down by steamer in the afternoon, provided a passable imitation of its betters at Osgoode in Toronto. The gentlemen of Port Sarnia – attired in the severe, black formality of the period – offered a striking contrast to the uninhibited extravagance of the wives and young ladies. All agreed that it was a heaven-blessed sight to see against the drab umbers of late autumn such butterfly hues as danced in the gowns of the weaker sex. The only exceptions, on the stronger side, were a handful of elder townsmen who had dusted off their faded militia uniforms from the time of the rebellion, and five young gentlemen from London, three of them in the scarlet-gold-and-white of the British regular and the other two in the blue tunics of the new militia unit just formed in Middlesex.

Mrs. Templeton, flush with excitement and her first sip of French champagne, taxied up to Lily and said, “It’s filled already, pet. They saw you in the promenade and near trampled me to death to sign up.” She was waving Lily’s dance-card which was already two-thirds filled with local worthies and beaux and, as she called them, “regrettable necessaries,” plus “several of the nicest catches from London.”

Lily, too, had been keeping a watch for desirable partners. She saw Lady Marigold in earnest conversation with Sir Oliver; nearby, Mad-Cap Dowling was chatting animatedly with one of the smooth-cheeked young soldiers, but managing all the same to cast little semaphores of affection towards the dark lady. She inclined her ringlets only slightly in his direction. It was during such an exchange that Lily noticed for the first time one of the two militiamen standing beside Dowling. Next to the regulars and to Dowling himself, the young corporal certainly seemed nondescript: he was of medium height, his hair a sandy tint the face beardless but for a thin moustache, fine-boned, housing two eyes that darted about like curious bluebirds avid for the high air. She could see him straining to fill out his tunic, to accommodate its projection of power, but there was an insecurity and a restlessness in the very way he stood with his weight on one foot and his hands fretting for a place to light. When he turned in her direction, Lily felt the intensity of his appraisal, and realized with a start that she had been staring at him far longer than propriety permitted. He gave her a polite across-the-room smile and rejoined the conversation at hand. No matter. The cause was already won. That strange sense of certainty, of seeing the thing before its shadow came back with a rush of blood to her cheeks and a swelling in her heart.

The band from Goderich had just struck up a quadrille.

“Here comes your first admirer,” said Mrs. Templeton. Gratefully Lily let herself be swept into the square by His Worship. Once the dancing actually began, Lily found herself completely absorbed by it. She couldn’t think of anything else when there was music in her, she could only feel, and mime that feeling with her feet and arms and the bow of her body. She galloped and polka-ed and waltzed and quadrilled. Her black-suited partners – so cordial, so deferential in their requests – became faceless instruments of her need to surrender to the discipline of the rhythm.

Between dances, however, when couples chatted, sipped, and nibbled sandwiches for solace, Lily felt anxious and drained. With only two dances left, the object of her desires had not appeared in the same set nor had he been among her partners. Delicately, she asked Mrs. Templeton if she knew the names of any of the military gentlemen from London. “Well, Mr. Carleton and Mr. James are both lieutenants in the fusiliers, she said, nodding a head in the direction of faces Lily did not recognize. “The others I don’t know.” That’s that, then, Lily thought, turning to her card to see “Mr. Marshall” next in the list.

She looked up in expectation of a “regrettable necessary,” when there he was, not a foot from her. “I believe I have the honour of this dance. My name is Tom Marshall. I’m from London.”

The penultimate dance was the fast-paced lancerswith eight couples challenging the military complexity of its steps. There was little opportunity to converse in the midst of such manoeuvres. Nonetheless, she felt Tom’s arms momentarily about her waist, her hand clasped in his, and confirmed her premonition of his vulnerability, his erratic energy, his need for safe harbour. She placed her face naked before his gaze, released a locked part of herself to him for scrutiny and care. He smiled at her when they were apart and possessed her with his grasp when they sashayed or twirled in linked curves. He wafted words to her and she nodded as if they were comprehensible.

When the lancers ended, he ferried her towards the table where the punch was wilting in the heat. Now they would talk and it would begin. He placed a crystal goblet in her hands. She drank thirstily.

“Lily, you’re the best dancer of the lot. Surely you can’t be from Port Sarnia,” he said with a twinkle.

She was about to reply when his eye was caught by a beckoning gesture to their left. “Damn,” he muttered to himself. “Would you please excuse me, Miss Ramsbottom; I’m wanted by my party. It’s been a pleasure meeting you. I hope we’ll meet again.”

She could only murmur thanks and watch him walk over to the Dowling group. Lady Marigold and her husband had joined them. When the music started for the last dance, a Strauss waltz, she saw His Nibs take the withered fingertips of the judge’s wife. Dowling put his arm about the waist of the dark lady and they strolled with utmost ease to the centre of the floor. So engrossed was Lily in this minor melodrama that she almost missed seeing Corporal Marshall offer his arm to Miss Platinum and, when the music began, clasp her pliant body to his own.

Lily was in a deep, daylight sleep following a night of restless dreams and near-dreams, when she was awakened by Mrs. Templeton gently shaking her shoulder. She blinked at the invading light. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“It’s your Auntie,” Mrs. Templeton said.

Lily saw Bridie hovering behind Mrs. Templeton, her face sombre.

“Are you all right, Auntie?”

“Yes, love. It’s your Uncle Chester.” Her voice was close to breaking. “His heart give out.”