Читать книгу Laurier in Love - Roy MacSkimming - Страница 11
ОглавлениеÉmilie Lavergne moves swiftly about her room at the Russell House. It’s a small confined space, and she covers it in a few strides. One more time she rearranges the showy white peonies, slightly past their prime, in the blue china vase. She approaches the open window as if expecting something new to materialize on the dust-streaked glass, something besides the dreadful heat, the endless overhead wires, the grinding streetcars of Sparks Street. She turns back to the double bed. The dowdy rose counterpane, shiny from the bottoms of prior occupants, distresses her: her sensibility demands finer things.
This dingy room is where Joseph has stayed since first being elected to Parliament. It’s less than half the size of Wilfrid’s sunny suite on the next floor down, and it simply won’t do. Joseph’s boiled white shirts and black suits hang in the narrow armoire like empty husks. There’s scarcely any space left for dresses or hat boxes or shoes. It depresses Émilie to think how long they’ll have to survive in this cell before they can afford a home of their own in Ottawa.
Never mind. She resolves to set the future aside, to dwell on the happy present. Wilfrid will be here at any moment. He wouldn’t be specific about the time, saying only it would be after the luncheon following his first meeting with his new cabinet. Meanwhile Joseph is spending the day across the river in Hull, putting his time to good use, sounding out legal acquaintances about his prospects for the bench.
Waiting for Wilfrid: the phrase sums up Émilie’s existence. How agonizing it’s always been to bring him to a new place, whether to bed or a belief in God. . . . Although it’s two years old, she’s chosen to wear the summer gown he likes so much, white peau de soie with short flounced sleeves and bare arms, several long strings of pearls draped loosely over the bodice. The neck square and deep, but not too—just enough to show off her shoulders. No earrings, since it’s still early afternoon. An antique silver bracelet on her left wrist.
She swings past the armoire’s oval mirror and doesn’t entirely like what she sees. She can accept the deepening furrows under her eyes but not the slight droop under her chin, nor the matronly thickness beginning to envelop her middle. The dress clings gracefully until it reaches her waist, where it loses its way. It was absurd of the Parisian designer to add that extraneous thin strip of fabric encircling her hips. She’ll have to have the gown remodelled as soon as she can find a stylish dressmaker in Ottawa. If such a thing exists.
“This dull, detested place,” Wilfrid once called the city, in letters composed just down the stairs and along the corridor: “this commonplace, vulgar hotel.” But, he also wrote, “you have the happy faculty of bringing sunshine wherever you go, of inspiring the flow of mind and soul, so the atmosphere of this awful place will be much improved by your arrival.”
And now she’s here.
In fact, Émilie finds the Russell rather charming in its old-fashioned way. She admires English style, if not the English themselves. It was so like Wilfrid to despise and denigrate his surroundings when he was feeling lonely or disappointed or depressed. It was the same for her, at home in Arthabaska. For years they exchanged two, three letters a week across the abyss, he here, she there—Joseph too off in the capital, the children away at school in Quebec City—and only Zoë, of all people, to keep her company. Wilfrid’s letters, always so tender and thoughtful and solicitous, written in his fluent though stilted English so that Arthabaska’s nosy postmistress couldn’t read them, were all that kept her sane: even if he did make her jealous with his stories of women he’d met. Those days of mutual exile seemed to last forever.
Now all that has changed. With Wilfrid in power at last, and Joseph a member of his government, Émilie is determined to make Ottawa her home. Noticing an unfamiliar metallic taste in her mouth, she decides approvingly it must be the taste of Ottawa, caused perhaps by the drinking water, or the sulphurous air drifting up from the lumber mills that line both banks of the river beyond Parliament Hill. This city is their field of action. She’ll advance upon it, embrace it, occupy it, populate it with her being and ideas and energy. Ottawa, with all its deficiencies, is where she and Wilfrid are fated to pursue their destiny—whatever form it may take.
For longer than she cares to remember, the obstacles to their being together have been insuperable. It’s dizzying to see them swept away overnight. In his letters Wilfrid repeatedly referred to the “chains” of his political work, coiling ever more tightly about him as his career came into the ascendant. He portrayed himself as a Samson who could regain his strength only if he broke away from his duties long enough to spend a few precious hours in her presence. Soon they’ll be in each other’s presence almost daily. The irony is breathtaking: the chains that kept them apart so long have finally brought them together.
What other bonds might they snap? Not that she dares expect the ultimate union, but without question she can imagine it: can visualize it in vivid detail, taste its promise, its rightness. Men and women have done more outrageous things in history.
Can such things happen in Ottawa? She needs to understand this city better, has to learn how society here thinks, how it will receive the closeness of her friendship with the Prime Minister. The English, after all. But she and Wilfrid have never been secretive about that closeness, and they can’t start now. Years ago they agreed not to dissemble or deceive, but to be as open as possible: open before family, neighbours, friends, above all before Zoë and Joseph. They’ve always behaved like people with nothing to hide. And they’ve been accepted as such, at least in friendly quarters, in spite of gossiping enemies. Of course, that was in Quebec City and sleepy, out-of-the-way Arthabaska, both tolerant places where Wilfrid is the favourite son and can do no wrong. . . .
Immersed in these thoughts, she almost misses the discreet but persistent knocking at her door.
She flings it open to Wilfrid standing in the corridor, courtly and perfect. He’s wearing a pearl-grey summer suit and top hat, in one hand an extravagant bouquet of red roses, in the other a large parcel wrapped in plain brown paper.
“May I present these inadequate tokens?” He slips the parcel under one arm, removes his hat, offers the roses with a bow.
Émilie smiles broadly, completely forgetting her anxiety about exposing her irregular teeth. Seeing Wilfrid bow to her, however satirically, thrills her to the core.
At these moments of reunion, her doubts and misgivings dissolve in a flood of exquisite relief. She embraces him and takes the bouquet, drinking in its heady scent. He leaves his hat and parcel on the hall table beside the calling cards.
Leading him by the hand into the room, she removes the peonies from the china vase to make way for their more aristocratic cousins. She lays the peonies wetly to rest on top of yesterday’s L’Électeur, the Quebec City newspaper loyal to Laurier and the Liberal Party.
“I trust Joseph won’t mind,” he says, his voice low.
“Of course not. He loves roses.”
“I don’t mean that. What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Waiting for you.”
He smiles secretively. “Speak to me about the children. Tell me about your splendid little man and delightful girl. How are they?”
They sit facing each other on the uncomfortable blue settee, knees touching. The long sculpted slope above his upper lip is moist from the heat. She fingers a silky loop of his hair curling over the back of his high starched collar.
“As usual, the children are your first concern,” she says with a mock pout, filled with simultaneous pride and regret. “Well, Gabrielle is over her summer cold. The last thing she told me when I left home was to give you her love.”
“I hope she’s enjoying her freedom from the convent.”
“She’s writing poetry again. Your praise encouraged her.”
Wilfrid smiles boyishly. Glad she can give him pleasure this way, Émilie notices the hair at his temples is a little greyer than she remembers it: dusted with ash.
“I love to hear Gabrielle is writing verses. It shows what a lively imagination she has. It doesn’t even matter whether they’re good or bad as long as her mind is active.”
“She’s already eighteen. The marriageable age.”
“You didn’t marry at eighteen.”
“True. I was waiting for the right man.” She laughs, a little too loudly.
Wilfrid remains serious. “But Bielle mustn’t rush. With all her gifts, she must wait until the right man comes along.”
“The Sisters wanted her to consider a novitiate.”
“Good Lord!”
She pats the back of his hand. “Don’t worry, she wasn’t interested. But Bielle received an excellent education at Jésus-Marie, thanks to you. We couldn’t have managed without your help.”
“Helping her has always given me joy.”
“I know, my dear, I know. And now that stage in her life is over, and she must think about her future. For the moment she’s fine at home. But if Joseph and I can buy a house in Ottawa, Bielle’s marriage prospects will be greatly improved. She could—”
“Yes, and I would see much more of her. That would be delightful. Now what about Armand? He’ll be returning to Quebec City before long.”
“Armand is in good spirits, as always.”
“Such a clever boy. I must show you his latest letter to me. It’s filled with wonderful invective against the Tories: ‘May you blow up Tupper, may you impale Foster,’ and other provocations. He has a precocious interest in politics for a sixteen-year-old. Oh yes: ‘And to destroy all that cannaille, you won’t need bombs, only your famous eloquence.’”
“Really!” Émilie shakes her head in amused despair. “I don’t know what to do with that boy.”
“He must make you very proud. But he does have a tendency toward indolence. I wish you’d get him to exercise more. I know about indolence, I’m inclined that way myself. I’ve always been a lazy dog.”
“Armand returns to the Séminaire in two weeks. I’m going to miss him.”
“They’ll be after him to join the priesthood too.”
“He does have bouts of religious feeling, you know.”
“What idealistic young man doesn’t? It’s natural at his age.” Wilfrid rises from the settee, begins pacing. “I’m sure you don’t want him to be a priest either, but it worries me there’s even a possibility.” He turns to face her. “The other day I went to hear the famous Father Plessis. He’s a truly great sacred orator, his mind dwells in the loftiest spheres. But since I was sitting in the front row, I could observe his scrofulous shaved head and unclean robes, and it became obvious to me that far from refining a man, the priesthood does the very opposite. I thought of Armand’s beautiful mind, and when I pictured him wearing those robes my heart rebelled. Far better to make him a man of the world who knows how to fight and love and do some good for his country than see him disappear into a life of empty piety.”
Émilie winces at Wilfrid’s impiety. “I’m sure he’ll be pursuing the law. Like you and Joseph.”
“At Laval, I suppose?”
She nods.
Wilfrid sighs in frustration. “Sometimes Armand’s contempt for the English amuses me, but—”
“He’s young, Wilfrid. Give him time.”
“I know—he’s in a rebellious phase. But if he’d cultivate his English, he could take law at McGill and he’d be far better off. The priests at the Séminaire put the most ridiculous notions into his head. They want to erect a little French-only stockade on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Well, it’s 1896, and that’s no longer possible!”
Émilie sits, waiting for the rest.
“Armand needs to understand: if he spoke English as fluently as French, it would advance his prospects immeasurably. Not only that, such a passionate French Canadian needs English if he’s going to achieve anything for his people. I do wish you’d exercise your influence over him, my dear. It’s still not too late.”
Émilie wills herself to stay calm. She has her own anxieties about Armand, her own nagging fears, fragile hopes for his future. “Of course, of course, I agree with you. I’ll do my best to persuade him. But you know as well as I, he’s headstrong. It would do him a world of good to see you again, to hear all this from you in person. You know how he looks up to you.”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
“How can you doubt it?”
In her agitation Émilie abandons the settee for the roses, rearranging them absentmindedly. Wilfrid goes and sits in her place, staring moodily off to the side. This isn’t the way she imagined their reunion. And all because he insists on dwelling on the children. “Please, Wilfrid, let’s discuss something else.”
He looks up sharply. “What could be more important than the young man?”
“Well, if you want more influence over him, he needs to see you more often! If Joseph and I were to move our household to Ottawa, Armand could be here every school holiday, every Christmas, all summer long—”
“Here we are again. Am I to arrange this too?”
“There’s one thing you could arrange, and it wouldn’t be so difficult.”
“My dear Émilie, as knowledgeable as you are about the world, you greatly exaggerate my powers—”
“The bench.”
He smiles in a way she doesn’t especially like. “You want me to appoint my law partner to the Supreme Court.”
“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. Although I’m sure in time Joseph would make an excellent candidate.”
“And I’m sure you realize I must tend to some other matters first.”
“No doubt. But the sooner Joseph can earn something more than his pitiful parliamentary salary, the sooner we can move to Ottawa.” She forges ahead, trying to ignore his impatient frown. “Once there was a time when you wanted that, Wilfrid, you wanted me near you more than anything. In your letters—”
“Yes, and I want it still. Clearly this hotel room is too small for both of you.” He smiles again, but warmly.
She looks closely at him, verifying his sincerity. Unable to help herself, she returns to the settee, reaching for him with both arms. Wilfrid pulls her to him, and for a moment she treasures the rasp of his cheek against hers, the beloved friction. His hand brushes her bare throat and drops languorously to her left breast. She stares at the contrast between the pale flesh of his fingers and the pale sheen of the silk. She feels shocked: not by the intimacy, which she craves, but because it’s been so long.
He pulls his hand away. “I’ll speak to some people about a judgeship,” he says, startled. “You need to be here. I need you to be here.”
She feels the entire surface of her skin flush under his gaze. “So you haven’t forgotten the distant violin?”
“Never.”
For an instant she sees a familiar gleam of desire creep over his features: the outer form of his longing for her, his love made visible. But the suggestion fades, and she wonders if she only glimpsed a memory. Banishing her doubts, she raises his hand in both of hers, presses it between moist palms, presses it to her heart.
They remain seated, drinking the iced lemonade Émilie ordered up for three o’clock. She asks Wilfrid about his cabinet meeting. Evidently Tarte and Cartwright are already crossing swords, full of mutual mistrust. Only Fielding and Mowat are behaving like statesmen. She tells Wilfrid he’ll have to be the statesman. He replies that his election victory seems to have inspired everyone but him: he keeps feeling a surprising, irreducible sadness. He doesn’t understand it, but he’s heard of this happening to other politicians, discovering in victory more bitterness than joy.
She finds his ambivalence disappointing. Although she wants to pursue the matter, she can see he’s wilting, exhausted from the heat. She feels tired herself, enervated from the excitement of being alone together after so long. Hoping a change of scene will revive them, she suggests a walk down in the streets.
“You know I adore strolling with you. But things are different now. I can’t simply walk outside anytime I wish.”
“Really? The company you keep must be restricted?”
“No, no, I just have to be prudent. My movements are watched far more closely now. You have no idea how the gossips scrutinize me. Every gesture, every expression is examined for political portents.”
“You never cared about the gossips before. We used to have such lovely walks in Ottawa. Remember that pretty courtyard? It was so enchanting.”
“This town positively dines on gossip. And with a new government coming in, everyone’s nervous. There’s great anxiety, a fear of losing prestige and position and privilege and all that. Not everyone wishes us well.”
“What of it? You were elected by the people, not the gossips.”
“Still, I can’t present our enemies with a weapon to use against me. It’s too early in the game.”
Émilie shrinks from him against the end of the settee, feeling the oak armrest digging into her spine. “I’ve never thought of myself as a weapon.” He smiles to disarm her, but she won’t be put off. “Does this mean we can no longer be seen together?”
“There will be other ways. Other occasions. Just not strolling along Elgin Street à deux on a sleepy summer afternoon. People expect me to be hard at work on matters of state! This isn’t Arthabaska, my dear.”
Émilie feels her spirits sinking, but Wilfrid rouses himself, leaning confidingly toward her. “I’ve been rereading your letters. I do that from time to time. They’re absolute gems, you know. I’ve always thought you should take up writing, you have such a flair for it. You have the sparkling mind and charming style of a Madame de Staël, a Madame de Sévigné—and your perceptions of people are just as acute.”
“Stop it, Wilfrid.”
He grins. “You always say that. You call me a flatterer and say you have no literary gifts, but you know I’m right. No need for false modesty. Your writing is like your conversation, gliding in delightful arabesques—”
“Enough!”
“If you allowed your pen free rein, there would be no limit to what you could do.”
She can’t help but smile at his extravagance. She shakes her head but lets him continue.
“I used to think if you took up writing, it would compensate for your loneliness. It would fill up your solitude and make it more appealing. But now I see grander possibilities. Here in the capital, you could actually be our Madame de Staël! Why not? Invite the famous to your salon, provoke them with audacious conversation, then write wickedly about them in the magazines. Why not see what you can do with your pen? Even Lady Macdonald wrote for the magazines in London and New York.”
“Am I to be your Lady Macdonald?” The thought is out before she can suppress it.
Wilfrid hesitates. “Perhaps the wrong analogy, but you see my point—Ottawa needs you. My goodness, Canada needs you. . . .”
He settles back, and they regard each other with a flash of the old humour and avidity. At last they’re rediscovering their special rapport and intimacy, their unique ability to poke fun without malice, to take unbounded pleasure in each other.
Wilfrid rises and goes to the hall table, returning with the parcel. He resumes his seat beside her. “I thought I’d bring these to you.”
“My goodness. What are they?”
“Letters.” He places the parcel between her hands, and she feels the weight of it, heavy as stone.
“My letters? All of them?”
“From all down the years. That’s why I’ve been rereading them. I wanted to revisit you through your words, savour all their nuances—”
“Before getting rid of them.”
“Before returning them to you for safekeeping. What you do with them, my dear, is your prerogative. You wrote them.”
Émilie feels bewildered, frightened, unspeakably wounded. “Is that what you want? An auto-da-fé?”
“In any case,” Wilfrid says patiently, as if what he’s doing, as if the sacred trust he’s in the process of betraying, is perfectly reasonable, “the letters are safer in your hands.”
“Safer from what?”
“From prying eyes. I’ve had reason for some time to think my correspondence is being tampered with. Some letters I was waiting for didn’t arrive. I don’t want to take any further chances.”
Émilie tries to think, to understand this. What is he saying, exactly? That her letters have been read by others? That she must no longer write to him? She struggles to absorb the fact that he’s abandoning incalculable years of their lives. Every one of those pages is stained with her tears, her heart’s blood, but all she can think to say is, “What do you want me to do with them?”
“Safeguard them, my dear. For both our sakes. And read them. You’ll discover what a superb author you are.”
“I didn’t write them for publication.”
“No, you wrote them for me, but also yourself. They’ll reacquaint you with the woman you were.”
“And who have you been?”
“You have my letters.”
“They claim you want to be with me.”
“They were—and are—correct.”
“If that were true,” she cries miserably, “you wouldn’t be returning mine! You’d keep them, you’d cherish them. They won’t curl up and die like, like these roses you’ve brought!” She feels an urge to pull his roses from the vase and dash them to the floor, deterred only by fear of tearing her fingers on the thorns.
“My dear,” Wilfrid begins—
“What about ‘My dearest, ever dearer’? What about St. Anne’s Hill? What about the distant violin? What has happened, Wilfrid?”
She glances left and right, anywhere, as long as it’s away from him. She wants to flee the room but has nowhere to go. Without warning she feels his hands hot on her skin, his fingers clamped on her bare upper arms. He brings his face up close to hers, a frantic anxiety playing about his eyes. “Please, Émilie, don’t misunderstand me. Don’t be unjust!”
“What you’re doing is the most unjust thing I can imagine!” She wants to pull free of him but knows it will only send him into a panic. She allows him to continue holding onto her, even though it’s beginning to hurt.
“I know how this must seem to you,” he pleads, “how it must look, but believe me, I’d shout my love from the rooftops if I could. Try to understand: a Prime Minister’s papers, even his private ones, are no longer his own. They become public property. Do we want the eyes of strangers prying into our most personal moments? Better to safeguard our privacy by putting it in your hands. That’s all I ask, my dearest: take care of these precious letters of yours. And let me come and reread them now and then.”
He’s so desperate, so sincere, his request so reasonable. Slowly he releases his grip on her arms and subsides against the settee, waiting for her to concede.
She stares at the flesh of her arms, still showing the marks of his fingertips. She waits for the trembling to stop. “So you haven’t given up on us?” she asks dully.
“Not in the least.”
“St. Anne’s Hill could still be ours?”
“If only you knew how much I want it.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“I hate to see you distressed and sad. But I understand—all this waiting is painful.”
“It’s intolerable.”
“You’ve had reason to doubt and distrust me in the past, but now, never. No matter how often I read them, those passages in St. Anne’s Hill still bring our dream alive. It haunts me more than ever—especially in these labours I’m taking on.”
“Yes. Labours that will keep you chained for years to come.” She laughs ruefully, in spite of herself. “We’ll be old and toothless by the time we reach St. Anne’s Hill.”
She feels calmer, her anger drained, released into the ocean of their mutual need for reassurance.
Impulsively he reaches for her hand, caressing her palm with his fingertips. “When people see us tottering along the sidewalk, they’ll say, ‘Just look at those two, what a delightful old couple. And so in love!’”
Wilfrid enfolds her in a farewell embrace ending in a kiss on the mouth, then leaves to collect Zoë. They’re going to a garden party to which Émilie isn’t invited.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she drains an entire glass of lemonade. Her throat is parched, strained with unshed tears. She feels numb. Not quite there. The silence has a sinister quality.
The parcel full of her letters sits bulging, unopened, on the settee, a gift she never wanted. It repels her. She’ll have to secrete it somewhere in the room, in her luggage perhaps. Joseph is returning soon. She must change into a more everyday dress.
Her hands haven’t stopped shaking, faint tremors running up her wrists. Something has happened, something acknowledged, yet unacknowledged. Its meaning still isn’t fully clear to her. What is clear is that the rest of her life remains to be lived: only not in the way she imagined.
In her mind she’s kept alive the image of a country lane winding mysteriously into some gentle forest of the future, beckoning to her. All she had to do was follow that path. Now she sees it obstructed, barred by an ugly brick wall. Wilfrid put the wall there. He has the power to make her future possible or impossible, and she hates him for it: no one has a right to such power! Surely he’s the most self-centred, capricious, unprincipled man alive, capable of fabricating the most treacherous illusions, communicating the most convoluted double meanings, which only he can interpret. She sees miserably that this is also one of the reasons why she loves him.
Is this how the end comes? Not the end: not yet. Émilie applies her mind to the problem. To know the truth of her position, she need only recall his words, written in his own hand. Having pored endlessly over his letters for clues to his real feelings and intentions, she knows them by heart:
“When you read the chapter ‘St. Anne’s Hill,’ you will understand that when I read it, my heart grows full of images indulged in, never realized….”
“Put the book aside. Keep it in readiness so that I may point out to you what has struck me about it, what would be my dream, what picture now haunts me. I would fondly dream of the repose of St. Anne’s Hill, after the toils in which I am engaged… .”
“The wish you express, how often I have expressed it to myself! Yes, my dear, I will not forget it, even if I have to carry it with me to the spheres beyond….”
“How gladly I would give my position to someone else, if someone else would take it. Unfortunately I feel the coils tighter every day around me. How I wish I could take you to the beach and rest there for hours. I would see you again as childishly happy as I once saw you in the little square here. But this is not and cannot be my lot… .”
“Time itself would be nothing if it brought our share of the blessings that are due to us, that are within sight, yet unattainable… .”
Unattainable. He wrote the word himself, plain as day. For a long time she glossed over it, willfully overlooked it. But now she remembers it with appalling clarity.
What, then, is attainable?
When she first knew him in Arthabaska, Wilfrid was just a young country lawyer. He still had to learn which piece of silverware to pick up at her dinner parties, the proper way to eat an orange at table. She taught him all the etiquette that a gentleman of the world needs to know. She taught him how to eat, how to discriminate among wines, how to dress fashionably and with taste, how to conduct himself among the English elite with whom he must mingle to succeed in Ottawa. Along with elegance in dress and manner, she inspired him with her love of things English, nurtured by her days in London. Now, having arrived at the pinnacle, is he casting her aside because he no longer needs her?
Her immediate answer is no. Although his need for her tutelage is over, his need for her inspiration and ideas and vibrant conversation remains as pressing as ever. Wilfrid can talk to her in ways and on subjects that he can’t talk to Zoë, or anyone else. When he’s alone with his Émilie, he can be himself, without censure, without reproach. His spirit needs oxygen to breathe and soar and aspire to its limitless possibilities: she provides that oxygen. His mission requires help in steering a course through the perilous shoals of politics, especially among the English, above all among the Aberdeens and their household: she can provide him with that too. And his manhood demands the completion of a family. None of this can Zoë give him. In all these roles, the piano teacher is constitutionally, completely, hopelessly inadequate. Useless.
Now that she’s in Ottawa, Émilie will find new ways to make herself indispensable to him. And in the process she’ll grow closer to him: closer in ways they’ve never known before. She’ll share his power.
She breathes deeply, rises from the edge of the bed, seats herself with dignity at the escritoire. She takes hotel stationery from the drawer and dips the hotel pen into the little inkwell and begins writing to him, her custom down through the years, her bridge across the abyss.
After two sentences she slowly puts the pen down. Finally she weeps.
