Grist Page 2

  Dear Mr. MacLaughlin,

  It was lovely to receive your recent letter with the exquisite little drawing of your house. I can see you are kept extremely busy with your affairs. How difficult it must be to run your saw and millstones and to plant fields besides, not to mention making progress on your proposed new mill as well. I can only say that if your new mill is half as lovely as your drawings (as I am sure it shall be) it will be a magnificent structure indeed. Each new advancement or acquisition in relation to its construction must heighten your anticipation.

  I confess I was astonished to hear of your bread-making talents. I hope I will not be telling tales out of school to say you far out-perform your brother in this realm, as I believe he would be hard pressed to bake a potato in a campfire.

  In response to your question, I can tell you I am a member of your brother’s congregation and so am in a position to vouch for his abilities. However I am told you have never heard him preach. I suggest you might manage your affairs in town in such a way that you can remedy the situation. I am sure you would be proud to see how he represents your family from the pulpit. Your reverend brother and Alice provide me with convenient and serviceable accommodation here. It is a joy to have the little ones about. Young Robbie proudly escorts me to school each day. He is such a bright little boy and quick with his studies. Your darling niece, young Jessie, made us laugh this morning with her serious little face. She has been absorbed lately with a new litter of kittens she discovered in the stable. She is very concerned for their welfare. At her porridge this morning she was determined to learn what preparations were being made for the kittens’ educations and begged me to take them to school with me so they could learn their lessons.

  As you so kindly expressed an interest in my family I can tell you that I was raised the oldest of two children. My father, God rest his soul, farmed near Clifdon until poor health forced him into town. He was taken soon afterwards and we will miss him always. It was a happy home although, as with many, not without hardship. I taught two years in a country school by Clifdon and then five years up the shore before I was able to secure this excellent position here in DesBarres. Over the years I was fortunate to be able to provide at least some meagre aid to my family in this way. My father’s illness put a great strain on my mother and she outlived him by only a couple of years. I am glad to say that with my brother’s help I was able to keep her with me through her final days. My brother has chosen a life at sea and is now a bosun on a merchant vessel. I am startled to find myself in my sixth year here in DesBarres, settled in snugly, as you know, in your brother’s household. As you asked so fearlessly, I shall respond with equal courage and reveal that my age is thirty years.

  Now you must tell me how you came to be milling so far from your native home, which I know from your brother was on the island of Cape Breton. I have heard nothing of your early adventures, or your more recent ones for that matter, except that all DesBarres enjoys your fine oatmeal.

  As I still have lessons to prepare for tomorrow I must leave this letter now. Everyone, even little Jessie and Robbie, sends best wishes I am sure.

  Sincerely, Miss Penelope McCabe

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK AS I TIDIED THE SCHOOLHOUSE AFTER THE children had left for the day, I looked up to see Ewan MacLaughlin standing in the doorway.

  “Mr. MacLaughlin!”

  He nodded and removed his hat.

  “Won’t you come in out of the cold?”

  He edged past the threshold, and although I waited for him to state his business, he said nothing.

  “Good afternoon,” I managed finally, although the greeting seemed awkwardly out of place by this time. “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”

  “I’ve come calling, I suppose.”

  I could not think what he meant. I cast about for an idea of how to converse with this ill-at-ease man standing in the middle of my empty classroom. “Do you have any prominent memories of your own schooldays, Mr. MacLaughlin?” I ventured.

  “The Lancasters and the Yorks.”

  “What do you remember of them?”

  He then delivered a short, factual speech on the topic. Perhaps this start built his confidence, as it appeared to loosen him somewhat. We spoke just over half an hour but it seemed to me a dizzying amount of ground was covered. The conversation was as exhilarating as it was difficult. He asked blunt questions but meaningful ones. Do you believe God has a purpose predestined for each of us? Which are our greatest duties on earth? What strengthens a child? What weakens a child? Which are the most commendable branches of study? The man seemed unable or unwilling to skim through the usual social banter. Well, what chance did he have to practise the niceties of polite conversation, living alone as he did? And wasn’t it better to address matters of substance than engage in parlour chatter at any rate?

  Finally he said, “If you like me well enough you ought to call me Ewan.”

  When he turned abruptly to leave I was taken by surprise and said he could not leave without his supper, surely. And at this time of day should he not spend the night at the manse and set off fresh in the morning? He would not hear of staying and claimed he had only stopped in briefly after completing business in town.

  During supper that evening, as we exchanged tales of our days, it dawned on me that Ewan had not visited the manse at all. No one mentioned him stopping in for his dinner earlier in the day: not the Reverend, Alice, the children or the serving girl. I opened my mouth to relate the visit and unorthodox conversation but turned back, something inside me reluctant to share.

  The predominant feature of Ewan’s next letter was an intricate rendering of a cook stove. I could see him at a table with his ink well, his lamp and my letter by his side, struggling over his composition.

  Dear Miss McCabe,

  I took up milling here after I was no longer needed in Cape Breton. My father’s mill passed to my oldest brother so I came to the mainland with my trade. The land I now own I bought with my own labour. I had no house for a wife before now so this is why I am yet single. This drawing is of the new stove I bought for the wife who will get this house. I paid a full $35 for it as it is the most modern to be had and a good design. It was shipped up from Amherst. I have used it a little myself to try it out and I figure it does all right. When I come in to Corrigans’ with my next load of meal I will buy you a present.

  Yours truly, Mr. Ewan MacLaughlin

  I sat on the edge of my bed reading and rereading the letter and biting my fist to stifle my laughter. Only a couple of days earlier I had discovered at school a secret love note, lovingly crafted then carelessly left to wander astray (for such is the way with children). Eleven-year-old Eddie Joudrey intended, and then forgot, to pour out his heart to his ten-year-old sweetheart: I want for you to mary me some day. I will by you a present becaus I have lots of money what I got stakin wood. I mean I got FIVE cints and all for spending. PS This is a seacret note.

  I could imagine Ewan screwing up his courage to ask some local fellow what to put in a second letter to a lady now that he had exhausted all he had to say in his first. There was no mistaking his intent now. Or was there? I would go over what I knew and where my assumptions might be leading me astray.

  THE NEXT SUNDAY AFTERNOON EWAN ARRIVED TO CALL. He had made the journey of some thirty miles that morning and he meant to pass only a few hours in town then return home that evening. He had no other business, of course, it being the Sabbath. When I expressed my incredulity he looked confused and a little hurt.

  “I’ve come courting,” he said, as though this diminished the distance. Or the Sabbath. “I’ve come to take you walking.” Speechless, what could I do but fetch my coat and hurry out after him? After my beau. The thought of the word made me smile, so incongruous with Ewan’s sober demeanour. Courting!

  Ewan fumbled in his pocket then and pulled out a copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Last Poems. I had admired the slim, leather-bound volume at Corrigans’ but could not justify the
extravagance for myself. The thoughtfulness, the insight of the gesture moved me deeply. I was as much out of my depth as he was. Courting. “But what brings you so far afield?” I asked. “There must be many deserving young ladies closer to home who’d be anxious to have a handsome miller.” I felt exposed, vulnerable and afraid.

  “Those girls are young and skittish, running here and there. Lazing about, off to Scotch River to gossip every chance they get. Who knows what nonsense they have in their heads. A woman has her business at home. A woman must have sense.”

  He looked at me with a steady eye and I had to turn away. He did not want the young and pretty. He wanted me. What more did I need to know? For all my supposed sensible level-headedness it was this vanity that sealed my fate.

  He delivered me home again and had to be begged to take a bowl of soup before he set off back up the mountain, all the way in the winter dark and cold.

  THERE IS LITTLE MORE TO SAY. Ewan came by once more. On a fine March day, with the sun’s heat promising spring and the wind no more than a wisp, we walked out beyond the church where the foot traffic was sparse. Ewan opened his coat to the warmth. Out of town we strayed off the path and stepped into the woods for some shelter from the world. Up into the woods. The wonder of it, this lair of temptation, this home to ruin and sin and here was I, the schoolteacher, alone with a man. To think I, of all people, could find myself so near scandal! I trembled there between two worlds. Ewan and I stood close together, trying on each other’s breath. He set his hand upon my shoulder—a large and meaty workingman’s hand. The skin rough and dark from years of dressing millstones. His mettle. He touched my neck. Then, as carefully as one would stroke the down of a chick, he touched his thumb to my cheek. He undid the buttons on my coat and rested his hand on my waist. Then he lifted his hand to my breast, held it. I was wearing my best winter dress. It had ruffles down the bodice. I remember this, the ruffles between the warmth of his hand and my breast. Both hands then, breasts, waist, abdomen, hips. He took the measure of me and I seemed to hover above myself, watching him pass his eyes and hands ever so slowly down my body, waiting for him to snicker or turn away, a great horse of a girl. But he did not. I felt I had left the pull of the earth, as though in mid leap, and could put no name to this feeling of both terror and giddiness. His mouth covered mine and his body pressed against me. My arms were around him although I did not remember placing them there. The whole of a man, flesh and bone, all of him—this was the other world.

  When we stood apart again, he looked off into the trees. “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord,” he said, earnest.

  “Yes.”

  And so it was agreed.

  I thought that I would complete my teaching year but Ewan grew insistent that we must marry right away. God had guided me to him, he said. He had prayed and God had answered his prayers. I must settle into my new home in time to plant my garden. I must see spring in my new home. The banns should be published in his brother’s church right away. By next winter I would bear his first son. I laughed lightheadedly at his sudden ardour, the way he expressed his hopes in sentences of such certainty. I pleaded that I needed some time to prepare. I needed a proper dress at least. And I would need to outfit my kitchen and pantry. Ewan was to send me an inventory of what he had and I was to choose any supplies I would need for my household from Corrigans’ General Store. He would arrange with Corrigan for payment. The first week of May was our compromise, a Thursday as was customary.

  WITH EWAN’S COMMITMENT, THE WORLD SEEMED TO ALTER; ITS axis bent a few degrees perhaps. Everything seemed fresh, seemed to reflect light in a different way. I felt a new poignancy in the men and women I met each day. The depths of all they felt, and had felt, glimmered around them now. Even the relationships between people and animals, people and inanimate objects, seemed to take on extra meaning. When I walked among the townsfolk carrying the knowledge of my engagement, I felt myself among them in a way I never had before.

  When I entered the store searching for lamp wicks, Henry Corrigan turned his warm eyes on me and came out from behind the counter as he often did to greet his customers. Unlike his father, who saw the store only as a way to make a living, Henry loved the business. For him each customer carried with them needs that ran much deeper than their shopping lists indicated. Mrs. Reid came to the store for flour and a spool of white thread but what she needed was reassurance that people’s pity had not diminished her in some real, inescapable way since the death of her husband. Jerry Tupper wanted a skein of rope but needed to know there remained a possibility of adventure beyond his life. William Holmes wanted nails but also assurance that his children would love him despite his many weaknesses. With Henry at their elbow, customers often found themselves standing in front of some piece of merchandise they had not realized they had been yearning for. Indeed by the time Henry had finished his greeting we had come to rest at a set of handsome but serviceable kitchen cutlery. Beside the cutlery sat a beautiful crystal saltcellar. Henry picked up a spoon and polished it with the corner of his handkerchief. For all the intricacies of Reverend MacLaughlin’s work it occurred to me for the first time that Henry Corrigan, with his quiet discretion, probably knew more secrets than any clergyman.

  Every item in the store now held the question of its usefulness to me personally. The lamps, the washboards, the flatirons, clocks, brooms, hinges, sleigh bells, rope, axe handles had become potential parts of my household. And if not my household, then that of someone else who felt deeply, who had begun their lives in love and optimism with a new partner. I looked over the new bolts of material on the counter, gauging their strength and their delicacy between my fingers. There were several pretty cotton prints. I must write to ask Ewan about the number and placement of windows in the house. Such a lovely deep blue raw silk. More practically, a strong hearty tweed for a going-away suit perhaps. I passed my eye over the small selection of books that Henry Corrigan kept and noted, of course, the copy of Last Poems that was missing. I realized the gift did not represent Ewan’s powers of imagination nearly so much as it did Henry’s acumen. I smiled thinking of poor Ewan’s torments in seeking help over the problem of a gift for a lady and I loved him all the more for his determination and perseverance.

  I did not see Ewan again over the four weeks of our engagement. But I was so busy I hardly noticed his absence during the days. And at night I had my new situation to contemplate. I was to be a wife. I conjured him beside me, creating a man from all I did not know.

  We were married in the Presbyterian chapel at four o’clock in the afternoon on the first Thursday in May. The year was 1875. Reverend MacLaughlin performed the rite and Alice served us a nice wedding supper. I had made the cake myself. Ewan had packed the wagon before the service and as he was anxious to get on the road we did not tarry long. He would not hear of spending the night. The evening was clear and cold. We set off down Main Street then turned inland setting our backs to the strait. The wagonload was heavy and the road mostly uphill but the horses were steady. As we made our way a canopy of stars emerged to adorn the night. Beside me, strong and silent, my new husband held the reins.

  This is the story of how you were loved. All that came before, all you saw and heard, all you lost and lived without, this will be the truth to carry you, Granddaughter. Your brothers can walk into a world built for men. They will become men with wives to make them kings of their homes and to carry their pain and produce their joys. Truth would only slow them down. But you, my granddaughter, this is yours—the story that made you.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  I AWOKE ALONE, DISORIENTED, WITH THE MORNING SUN BRIGHT on the bare, freshly painted walls around me. The tweed of my travelling outfit draped over the foot of the bed dispelled my confusion. I was a married woman in my new home. Beside me the quilt lay wilted on the mattress. I slid my hands across to the empty space where my husband had slept, seeking the lingering heat of his body, but it had dissip
ated.

  “Ewan?” My voice sounded hollow in the emptiness of the room. Yes, I remembered. The bit of lace I had sewn at the neckline of my new nightdress felt so delicate beneath my fingertips. I slid my hand down from my neckline to my breast. I remembered the weight of his body. I touched the vague heaviness he had left between my legs. I was married.

  “Ewan?”

  I climbed out of bed and dressed quickly in the cool of the morning. My husband’s wedding suit sprawled on the chair and I gathered it up in my arms. The wardrobe by the window was simple but elegant. Like everything around me, it was new and freshly painted and as I ran my fingers along its edge I wondered if Ewan had built it himself. When I opened the door I was surprised to find it completely empty except for a row of wooden hangers. I hung up Ewan’s suit and my travelling clothes side by side, smoothing them with my palms. By the wardrobe there was a washstand, complete with water in the pitcher, and a bar of soap. Besides his chair, Ewan had a simple table with a single candle and a bible on it. My side of the room was less sparsely appointed. My dressing table had four delicate drawers, a charming little stool, and a looking glass. Ewan had brought in my trunk. I had no memory of him carrying it in from the wagon; perhaps he had wrestled it up the stairs this morning? It looked a great awkward load for one man. Through the large east-facing window I could see the sun had been up for an hour or so. Ewan must have grown tired of waiting for me to wake and had simply gone off to work. I looked out across the yard and the laneway to a small barn that may once have been a rude house. I moved to the smaller dormer window, which faced the road and offered a panorama of trees, dipping into a ravine then rising up the hillside beyond. Both windows needed curtains, and the furniture could use a runner or a doily or two.