Wild Rose (49 page)

“No, no,” he said, pushing the proffered coins away with his palm. “This is a gift. Tomorrow, if the weather clears, Carmody is bringing a load of wood for us down from the hills. He couldn’t get it out for the snowbanks, and anyway, all the trails were impassable. As soon as he can he’ll be bringing loads down and I’ve told him you’ll be wanting some. Of course, you will pay him,” he added, looking down.

“I am so grateful to you,” she told him, full of relief. She had made arrangements herself in the fall for a regular supply of wood from Carmody, but when it didn’t come and didn’t come, had begun to suspect he was satisfying his male customers first, that she was far down his list. “And of course, I run a business, however small, and must pay my own way as everyone else in business does.” She said this smartly, echoing what Campion had said to her weeks ago.

“Mrs. Archibald would have sent baking but she said it would be like carrying coals to Newcastle.” They laughed together, Sophie finally understanding that the saying must mean that there is a lot of coal in that English city. He was sitting across from her at her table now and she was surprised at how pleasurable it was to have so good looking a man near her, one whose attention was all on her, even if it was entirely proper.

“She is very kind,” Sophie told him, although she didn’t for a second believe this, thinking instead that Mrs. Archibald was selfish and proud. Or else simply alien, not comprehensible to someone like herself: a Québecoise, a Catholic, a woman who couldn’t keep her husband.

Charles, who had been playing on Harry’s couch with his now smudged and torn paper men and their horses, climbed down, went to the chair between Archibald and Sophie’s and with the Archibald’s help, got up onto it, and sat, gazing directly into Archibald’s face as if wondering once again if perhaps this was
papa
. Archibald let his large hand rest lightly on Charles’s head for just a second, then turned back to Sophie, clearing his throat gently. She saw at once that he had come for some reason that had nothing to do with wood, that the wood was an afterthought. She was at once frightened, and a small, quick pulse had begun to flutter in the base of her throat and she touched it with her fingertips to quiet it.

“Have you heard anything from your husband?” He was careful not to look at her as he asked this. She shook her head, no, not speaking, her eyes fixed on his face. He went on. “We – Mrs. Archibald and I – were in Garden City for a few days last week. Would have gone on to Calgary but the rail line was so blocked with snow it’ll be spring before they dig it out.”

“Yes?”

“Now Candace – Mrs. Archibald – thought I should tell you that we saw –” another long hesitation, “Monsieur Hippolyte there.”

“Who?” her voice coming out too high, pitiful-sounding so that it was her turn to clear her throat. She started to smile, then stopped.

“Your husband.”

“What…”
What was he doing there?
would have been her question, but she felt it was a foolish one. “So close?” She had imagined him south in St. Paul, or maybe in Fort Benton, or on his way to Montréal, never only a day’s ride from where she sat with their son.

“I think he was looking for work,” Archibald told her, adopting a light, conversational tone. “We saw him first go into a hotel, but then, a half hour later when we were walking back to the stables he was walking there too, going fast, as if on business.” Again, she didn’t speak, her eyes still fixed on his face. “He was alone,” Archibald told her, gently. “He didn’t see us. At least, I don’t think he did.” She wondered what had happened to his quest for an annulment, if he had given it up, or was waiting until spring after all.

Sophie turned her body away from him, reaching out to lift Charles off the chair he was bouncing on, pulling him to sit on her lap where she held him tightly, the child acquiescing, letting his head rest against her shoulder, humming softly to himself. No matter what, he was a happy child; he would always know he was loved.

“I suppose she will soon give birth,” she said, dully, then realizing to whom she was speaking, gasping, and pressing her lips together.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice still gentle, but turning his face away, flushing. Of course, everyone would know too, that Marguerite was pregnant. She shuddered.

“I must go now,” Archibald said. He rose at once, and not having taken off his coat, went straight to the door and put his hand on the latch. “I am sorry to bring you this news.” Now he was business-like and the certainty that Candace had sent him filled Sophie with shame and revulsion. Candace would demand to know how Sophie had looked, what she had said at the news. No, she told herself: Wasn’t Candace a woman too?

“I wish they had stayed away,” she admitted to him, still holding Charles tightly to her. “But thank you for telling me.” She saw only that she was not through with Pierre, that she would never be through with him. “I am so grateful to you for the firewood. Thank you so much for thinking of me” blinking back tears.

“It’s only an armful of wood,” he muttered, smiling. Sobering, gazing into her face briefly and then looking away, he said, “I can help you with a divorce if…” Sophie drew in her breath quickly, too confused for a moment to reply. “I know you are a Roman Catholic,” he said, pausing as if he had more to say, then deciding against it.

As Archibald opened the door, two farmers were about to mount the two steps in search of a hot meal, and such were her circumstances that she had to greet them with a smile, welcome them, comment on their courage to be out in such cold, and hurry to get their food ready.

~

Over and over again she went through the memories
of her years with Pierre, twisting in shame in her bed at her own declarations to him of eternal love. She remembered again and again the morning he had left her, she barely paying attention, having no idea she would not see him again. She puzzled over his betrayal, wondering how he could want a mere seventeen-year-old, no matter how pretty, over her and their child, wondering why, what was it exactly, that would make him give up what he had for so uncertain a future with someone he barely knew. Why? Unless… She gasped aloud, half sitting up, then falling back, her realization draining her of even the strength to pound her pillow, her body hurting as if she were wracked with rheumatism, the pain passing as rapidly as it had come. He had left because Marguerite had told him she was pregnant. Maybe he was even reluctant to go, but weighing the alternatives – two families to feed, maybe the Mounties getting involved at his making a young, unmarried girl pregnant, Marguerite’s family certainly… Would that explain why she had thought he had been angry when he left that morning? Angry at having to make the choice? Or had he been as enchanted with Marguerite as he had once been with her? How hard it was to think the latter was probably true. She saw now, when it was far too late, that Pierre didn’t have the nature of one who stuck with things.

He would have got her pregnant in spring, she thought. By August he would know, August was when they had run away. How could he have had relations with a girl Sophie hardly noticed? How could that happen? Because he chose for it to happen that way, she thought. More than once he was in town when I wasn’t with him. Once I stayed for two days with Séraphine Beausoleil rather than wait in town with him. I gave him the opportunity to see her. I did. Maybe they had gone out onto the prairie as she had done with Harry. But was marriage only for keeping watch on each other? Wasn’t it made of trust, besides love?

On one of her evening visits to Mrs. Emery, Sophie herself came into the parlour carrying Charlotte’s silver-plated, elaborately engraved ‘company’ tray, not even having to ask whether to use it or not, or where to find it, with two cups of coffee, the cream pitcher and the sugar bowl on it, and a cookie for Charles.

“I don’t think I could have heaved myself up to get that there if my life depended on it,” Charlotte told her.

Once seated, the coffee dispensed, Sophie asked, “Charlotte, are you well?” There was nothing to see outwardly of illness, other than how much she had aged this winter, and how pale her skin, and then, a wince that periodically came and went from her features suggested fleeting, but unignorable pain.

“I can’t work no more,” her friend said, then clamped her lips together, her eyes on the wall at the foot of the sofa, not on Sophie.

“What?” Sophie faltered.
I can’t work no more?
This was a death sentence. The West, as far as Sophie had seen, and she thought now how long and bitter her learning had been though she was not many years past twenty, was only about work. Those who could not work were thrown on the scrap heap of Western society. It was true in the towns, for all she knew in the cities too, and as she knew all too well, out on the land. The fate of those who couldn’t work anymore was to lie abed, scorned and forsaken, until they died, that was the fate of those who could not or would not work. Or if a woman, to lie abed as Adelaide Smith, the prostitute did. Or to have no bed on which to lie, to beg in the streets. To wander into that frozen land, like any heathen Eskimo, and be found in the spring. To ride south, or north, chasing gold or work, poorer each passing day. To end like Sam Wetherell, in a single room in a boarding house, your mind fixed on the glorious past.

“What is it?” she asked, reaching tentatively to cover Charlotte’s hand that lay loose by her side on the sofa. Charlotte didn’t pull her hand away, nor did she move it to grasp Sophie’s, but let it lie, under Sophie’s, inert.

“I got…something, neuralgia, sciatica, the rheumatism, I don’t know. All I know is I can’t work no more. It hurts me too much and if I force it, it hurts me more. I get tirer-der and tirer-der ’till I don’t never feel good no more.”

“The doctor?” Sophie asked, leaning toward Mrs. Emery as if her hearing had gone bad.

“Potions and lotions and grease and pills. Hah! Nothing helps. I need to just lie down and die.” Sophie was astonished, and drew back just a little. Was self-pity the other side of the extreme toughness that was the way of the people she had met out here? She stopped herself, ashamed. “I need to sell my place. Now,” spoken angrily. “You want to buy it? You got to get outta his place soon, before Harry gets back, where you gonna go? I’ll make you a deal so you can pay me by bits. I’d want to stay on and live here.” She had finally looked at Sophie as she said this last and for the first time, her eyes behind those small frameless circles of thick glass were large and watery, her bottom lip trembling for a scintilla of a second before drawing tight again. “You could turn it into a hotel, make more money that way…”

“More work!” Sophie interrupted, then wished she had kept silent. “But, Charlotte, until the railway comes I couldn’t even keep the rooms full, unless your men stay on. There’s nothing to say the railway will come, either. I’ve heard people say that it will pass us by, we’re too far off the main line.” She had stopped looking at Charlotte, turned her head away, saying. “And if I take it, I will be trapped here as you have been.” She had softened her voice to say this last so that it came out gentle, wavering toward ruefulness.

Charlotte sighed. “So I was,” she admitted. “But,” querulous now, “my only girl was buried out there,” that toss of the head again to indicate the enemy, “and to tell the truth, I had no place else to go. So I stayed. And stayed. And now I am old and can’t work no more.”

“Surely you could find another buyer?” Outside a team and wagon went by at a trot, they could tell it was a wagon by the noise it made, the wood creaking, iron ringing with the cold. Surely, Sophie thought idly, it is too cold for horses?

“Who?” Mrs. Emery asked, belligerent again. “Who that would pay me and keep to a bargain? There’s nobody.” What she said was true. Again Charlotte looked away from Sophie, the bleakness in her eyes, that trembling mouth, stirring such pity in her, yet how could she agree to accept Mrs. Emery’s burden when she had her own to carry?

“Campion came by,” Charlotte said.

“He would.” This exchange coming fast so that the phrases were on top of each other.

“He said he’d buy. Give me a good price.”

Sophie opened her mouth but could think of nothing to say. Outside, the wagon was gone by up to the livery barn. Somebody taking advantage of a clear day to head out to his land maybe, to make sure everything was all right, that no matter what, the land was still there.

“Well, you know Campion. First, he ain’t gonna give me a good price, although he will say he is and try to get me to believe it. And second, do you know what he would use my house for?” She swung her head rapidly to face Sophie, who simply stared, before what the boarding house would become came to her, now that the other had been burned to the ground. They sat in silence together, drinking their coffee.

Charlotte said, after a while, “If nobody else comes along I might not have a choice.” Sophie met her eyes, then looked away, nodding reluctantly.

A moment later she stood, dressed Charlie in his snowsuit and then herself in her winter gear, and with muted and short good-byes, went back to her own house.

She had thought, as Mrs. Emery talked, that she had to find a place to go to, and soon, or she would wind up staying in Harry’s tiny house with him and her reputation would be ruined. Unless Harry married her, and here he hadn’t even written to her all winter. Clearly marriage wasn’t on his mind. If he did propose, would she accept him? At this thought a fine perspiration popped out at her hairline. Marry so as to live? Wasn’t that the very thing she would not do? And in any case, having forgotten this herself, and was amazed and baffled that all her past in her Catholic village, all her years at the convent, all those rosaries said and Masses attended had brought her to the moment when she could not even remember a basic teaching: that she was married to Pierre forever, that only death could release her from her vows. Or the annulment Mrs. Tremblay had said Pierre was after.