Wild Rose (11 page)

“I didn’t mean to offend,” he said, humble now, but she could see what was in his eyes.

“Leave me now,” she said, “before I return to the Mountie.” Although she doubted the Mountie would lift a finger to help her, and indeed, hadn’t a touch of amused contempt entered Campion’s face at this threat? She was a mere woman, and a penniless one at that. She was trembling again, but this time it was with a billowing anger that threatened to engulf her, that should she unleash it, would burn this very town to the ground. “Go,” she told him, in a low voice. “
Vite!
Before I scream.” He flushed a deep red.

“Now wait a minute,” he told her, and would have said more, but her countenance appeared to stop him. He gave her a slight bow, as if their conversation had ended, and walked away.

Her mind churning with disgust and fear, she moved her bag to the other hand and began to hurry toward Mrs. Emery’s house.
She marched for a moment, Charles catching her skirt and beginning to cry so that she had to stop to pick him up again.

Lâche!
Coward, she told herself.
Idiote!
If you make a mistake, you correct it. You do not let it lie and ruin your life.
Le bon Dieu
– she was even beginning to think in English. How could she correct this life-ending mistake? But wait! What
was
her mistake? she asked herself, putting down her son again, taking his hand and slowing to his speed. That I didn’t see how weak and selfish Pierre really was before I married him? That I did not know the law? That I didn’t keep some cash for myself when I had the opportunity? Yes, to that, and she cursed herself again for believing in Pierre’s love and in their mutual desire, never seeing how things between them had changed. Their precious moments together as they came to know each other, the kisses they shared in her grandmother’s garden – all came back to her. Would she never have that again?

But she had arrived at the Emery house, seeing how shabby it had become, although it had been only two or three years since the rancher had died and Mrs. Emery had bought it. She was thinking how best to approach the woman as she climbed the few steps onto the open verandah, set Charles down, and knocked nervously on the big front door with its oval bevelled glass that spoke of a house built for better things. In a moment she heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall, and the door swung open to reveal a short, stout woman well into her sixties whose inquisitive gaze from behind round spectacles caused Sophie to unexpectedly flinch, even as she remembered hearing somewhere this woman’s own name was Charlotte, and surely a Charlotte couldn’t be anything but kind?

“Mrs. Hippolyte, ain’t it?” “Yes, I am Madame – Mrs.– Sophie Hippolyte,” Sophie replied. The other opened the door wider, silently inviting Sophie to enter. The hall was redolent of cooking food, and something that she found unpleasant underlying that, the lingering odour of a hundred meals before this one, and it was untidy with boots and coats, although seeming clean enough. Many a settler who had no friends or family in town spent the night here, although she and Pierre never had. This was the first time she had seen the house’s interior.

“Don’t mind the mess,” Mrs. Emery said, noting Sophie’s quick glance down the hall. “I have my hands full just keeping the meals on time.” She gave a wry snort. “You looking for a room for the night?” Without waiting for a reply she said, “Come into the parlour,” and stood to one side indicating the room on Sophie’s left, which Sophie entered, Charles following closely, clinging shyly to her skirt and making it hard for her to walk. The parlour was also clean despite the shabbiness of the furnishings, the rug underfoot threadbare.

“Yes,” Sophie answered. “I am looking for a room for myself and my son.”

“Sit, sit,” Mrs. Emery said, and Sophie sat, grateful to be in an environment that did not feel so masculine and bare as the lawyer’s and the Mountie’s offices had been, and with a woman older than her mother, were she still alive, would be. Charles plunked himself down on the rug, gazing around at all the new wonders, and Sophie handed him the small mirror she had taken from her bag so he would be occupied. He began at once to study it with care, turning it this way and that to make it flash, talking to himself all the while. Soon he would be crying for food, and terror struck Sophie again so that she forced herself to look down at Charles so that Mrs. Emery wouldn’t read her face.

“A pretty boy,” Mrs. Emery said, smiling at him in a cursory way. Sophie saw at once that this was a woman who was done with children, and wondered how many she had given birth to and raised. How many had died. And where the living ones were now. “I keep an empty room for just this kind of thing. I could rent it out to a bachelor, but you know them bachelors, not so steady a lot of them, and a nuisance.” Sophie smiled. “I rent it out most nights,” Mrs. Emery added, nodding. “So it does me no damage – in a business way, I mean. Except for that Mrs. – what did she call herself – Mrs. Smith. I know a doxy when I see one. She wouldn’t be staying here.” She smiled angrily at Sophie, and went on, “Between them blessed drunken bachelors and the doxies looking for a place of business –” Sophie decided to ignore this.

“I am temporarily without funds,” she began.

Now Mrs. Emery started, and would have spoken, but Sophie went on quickly. “I wish to work for our room and board for perhaps one week or two, maybe longer, until my family sends me my remittance from Québec.” Mrs. Emery observed her carefully, her eyes bright. “This is a big house. You must have at least a half–dozen boarders. I see you keep the place very clean and I know from my own life that that is very difficult, especially if you have no help.”

“You’re right about that,” Mrs. Emery agreed warily. “Dawn to dusk and no stopping. And try to find a woman to work.
There’s so few of ’em to start with, I no sooner find one and train her and some bachelor carries her off, be her stupid or ugly –
it don’t seem to matter. As long as they can work.” She nodded to Sophie’s unspoken question. “If they pay me extra, I do their laundry too.” She gazed down at her hands, knuckles enlarged, fingers swollen, the skin roughened and red. For an instant, the spirit seemed to go out of her, as if the sight of her own hands said such things to her as she could not bear to know. “Mr. Emery and I come from Ontario,” she remarked, her mood shifting. “The land rush was just getting started out here on the prairies. Free land! We thought we’d found heaven.” She sighed heavily. “Maybe we would have, too, but Mr. Emery, he had a bad heart and we didn’t know it. Or else it was just plain hard work did it. He didn’t make it through our first winter. He was the first one in the new cemetery. You might say we started it.” She thrust her hands up under her glasses, to wipe her eyes with their backs, not even bothering to search for a handkerchief, nor did her expression change even though for an instant her tears had run freely. She straightened her spectacles as Sophie watched her with a combination of pity and puzzlement. “So I took everything we had left in our savings and I bought this house for a song,” she continued, as if there had been no interruption.

Sophie said, “You didn’t wish to –” she hesitated, “– go back home?”

“Mr. Emery and I had four children,” she said. “The oldest, Jerome, he decided to stay back east. Didn’t even come with us. But my youngest died when we first got here. Elizabeth. She’s buried out in the grass on the farm. My only girl. Never did get her moved to the cemetery.”

“I am so sorry,” Sophie said.

“The next-oldest boy, Henry, he took on the farm. Milton, he went south, to California. Looking to get rich, I reckon he was. Hasn’t been back.” As she added the last she turned her head and gazed at the closed door that led into the long, cluttered hall, blinked once or twice, and turned back to Sophie.

“Such a large house,” Sophie remarked, to divert Mrs. Emery from her litany of loss.

“A rancher named Quinn built it – before there was a town here. I expect you know that. He passed away sudden, his widow she wanted to go back east. She sold the deeded land easy, wasn’t much, his cows just grazed out free, lots of land and nobody put their name to it, but the house went for a bargain. Furniture and all. She was in a hurry. Hated it out here. When I saw that Henry and his new wife didn’t want me on the farm, I bought this place – Henry, he wanted me to go back to
Ontario, but I dug my heels in. Couldn’t leave my sweet girl all alone out there.” She spread out her hands as if to say, what could I do? “Land belongs to men, I reckon,” she said, not looking at Sophie.

Just then, from above their heads, came the creaking of floorboards. Sophie had been dimly aware for some moments of heavy, slow footsteps overhead. Mrs. Emery gazed upward. “That one don’t work no more,” she said. “Sam Wetherell, you heard of him?” Without waiting for an answer, Mrs. Emery said that he was an American, had ridden with American cavalry and fought in the Indian wars there, that he had gone to the California gold rush in 1859, and when they’d opened the land there for homesteading, he had filed. Then something had happened, she didn’t know what, and he had come north and started a ranch somewhere far to the west of Bone Pile. She didn’t know what had brought him to her boarding house to live out his last days. She appeared to have a sort of grudging respect for him mixed with a certain indignation that she made no attempt to hide.

In her pain, Sophie waited, as patient as Job, then realized that this chatter had been to give Mrs. Emery time to think about her answer to Sophie’s proposal. If the answer would be no – she caught her breath, tried to cover this with a throat-clearing – and waited.

“All right,” Mrs. Emery said. “I need help, you’re right, and you’re right, too, it ain’t easy work, and it don’t end. Days are long. You’ll get tired. But then, you been on a homestead for a while now. I reckon you know how to work.” Sophie nodded, not able to speak in her relief. Just then loud footsteps, this time on the wooden floor of the porch on the other side of the parlour wall, could be heard, then the thump of something heavy being set down, followed by the boots marching off the porch. The parlour windows were thickly curtained, but suddenly Sophie knew who it was.

“I believe it is the gentleman who brought me to town bringing me my things,” she said carefully. The barrel of dishes.

Mrs. Emery said, slowly, “Your neighbour?”

“No,” Sophie said, “The new owner of our farm. Mr. Campion?” Holding herself steady, her voice calm. She saw Mrs. Emery look away when she had indicated what had happened to her, and she just as suddenly was sure that Mrs. Emery already knew about it.

“Oh, Campion,” Mrs. Emery responded, as if it were only to be expected. “I hear he’s buying up anything he can get his hands on. You didn’t know? When he’s not buying and selling horses and cows, he’s buying land. Thinks there’s going to be a rush once they build us a branch line down here, figures he’ll get rich, I guess.” Sophie said nothing, thinking, so he will sell everything on our place as fast as he can. So he
was
making me an – she hesitated, trying to find the word – immoral proposal. Pretending he was helping me. She kept her eyes down and waited until her anger slowly ebbed away, leaving behind disgust that prickled at her cheeks and forehead.

She forced herself to say, “My husband –” She hesitated. “My husband – went away. Without me. I don’t know when he will return –” Mrs. Emery interrupted, giving a slight wave with one hand as if to say, don’t bother telling me, it isn’t news to me.

“Heard that old Mr. Jean Tremblay went after them.” Again, she looked away while imparting this information. So he had gone with that Marguerite as she had thought at once, although hoping against hope that she was wrong. Marguerite who was perhaps seventeen. And not only Mrs. Emery had known this, everyone in the village would know it. And now they would also know that he had sold the farm out from under her. That he had spurned her wholly, had so scorned her as to leave her destitute.

For a moment she thought that this was more than she would be able to bear, that every step she took from now on would be monitored and whispered about, everyone waiting to see if she would go back home or if she would – fall – would move in with any man who would have her and her child so as not to starve. This was worse than the judging eyes, the censure, of the village she’d come from. Mrs. Emery continued, either oblivious to Sophie’s state, or thinking it better to ignore it.

“I saw him ride back into town this morning. Guess they made it across the border.” She looked hard at Sophie who sat rigid, clinging to fistfuls of skirt that she didn’t know she had gathered in her hands. Mrs. Emery shifted her gaze to the wall behind Sophie’s head. “Could be old Jean realized that was one less mouth to feed. Or –” she paused, while Sophie, suddenly feeling the cloth in her hands, opened them, began smoothing the fabric with her palms, again and again. Still looking at the wall, her tone hard and low now, Mrs. Emery said, “I know you feel shamed. How do you think I felt when Henry chased me off my own place? Oh, he was all for helping me, but what he done was he chased me to wherever he could get me to go.” Sophie wanted only that she stop saying these terrible things out loud, her own shame was so complete. The woman sighed. “To tell the truth, I been halfway expecting you.”

Charles, as if suddenly growing tired of all this palaver, pulled himself upright, and reached for his mother, with a loud wail, then began to sob in earnest. Sophie could feel Mrs. Emery’s irritation at the racket. She began to rummage in her bag, extracted the last bit of bread and gave it to Charles who pressed it against his lips at once, as if to make sure it really was food, and then pushing it into his mouth.