The agent tossed his cigar into the river. His skinny face was like a bairn’s about to blubber.
“You promised me a meal, Craig. That was agreed upon.”
“So I did.”
Gleeful, Craig reached into his coat pocket. He could not believe he had almost forgotten. He pulled out two oat biscuits, dry as navy hardtack, and handed them to the peevish agent. The fool’s face looked as doughy as the biscuits. But before he could even protest, Craig suppressed a chuckle at the base of his throat and walked away, already wondering how little he could pay a lazy Irishman to get rid of a nigger.
VI
Anson had no way to reach Victoria unless he waited for a steamer to stop at Chilukthan or else rowed himself upriver to New Westminster to board a Victoria-bound vessel there. While he seriously considered the latter option, he knew his health would not allow it. He had to accept the unpleasant fact: he was stuck at Chilukthan.
But stuck did not have to mean purposeless. Anson was determined to be of some use while he waited for the steamer or Dare’s return. As long as Thomas Lansdowne’s wife remained inadequately attended, the family’s gifted daughter would suffer, perhaps would suffer all her life if a domestic tragedy destroyed her chance of realizing her talent. The very thought of such a desecration urged Anson over the fields with no break in his stride. Elizabeth had not given him a child, and the Lansdowne girl was no replacement for that loss, but if the years weighted a man’s spirit, they also made clear his responsibility to his own character. He had come to the Fraser River to help William Dare. Before he left, he would do what he could to help the girl too.
He found the Englishman a considerable distance from his house, beyond the woodlot. Emerging from the trees, Anson felt as if he dragged the forest’s intimate darkness with him, as if the trees themselves housed human aspirations.
Thomas Lansdowne was even more violently red in the face than usual as Anson came up. His horse, yoked to a massive stump, pulled so that its eyes were moon-wide, and the Englishman, on his knees in the wet earth, grunted as he heaved his body against the black, sodden, many-rooted weight, trying to dislodge it from the mucky ground. He did not appear to notice Anson’s approach. So Anson waited, staring across the flat, unvarying distance that hardly merited the name of “field.” This was no easily broken soil. It was, in fact, hardly soil at all. Obviously the Lansdownes, in their diking and stump removing, were engaged on the noble work of the future. Anson respected them for it, but the future could not, should not, come at the expense of the present. If a man laboured for the sake of his children, he ought not to be allowed to neglect the wife who carried his child. Simply put, that went against nature.
With a grunt that was almost a shout, the Englishman threw his body against the stump just as the horse gained its position on the slippery surface. The stump shifted, a foot, two feet. Then it lodged firmly in the mud again. Thomas Lansdowne did not curse, he did not shake his fist at the heavens or slump down on his knees in defeat. Instead, he said, “Good girl” and marched up to the horse and slapped its glistening flanks. Still he did not appear to notice that he was no longer alone. He wiped the sweat from his face with a bare, ruddy forearm and squinted at the sun.
Anson took in the greyly smoking pile of already-dislodged stumps a few rods away and the three other giant stumps rising like whaleback from the ground just beyond Lansdowne, and his respect for the man’s strength of purpose increased. It would be years before the plough would drag as smoothly through this earth as a whale fin through the ocean. No wonder Thomas Lansdowne worked such long days and looked so exhausted in the evenings. The farming, alone, would have defeated most men. But he was also heavily involved in the salmon business, which, Anson could already tell, was a risky venture replete with both expected and unexpected difficulties. On top of all that, the man’s wife was in no condition to help him.
“Is there something I can do for you, doctor?”
Surprised, Anson understood that he’d been staring at the Englishman without really seeing him. The voice, therefore, was like a handful of gravel tossed lightly in his face.
“Yes. Yes, there is.” Anson, thinking of the girl and the music she had played, gathered his resolve once more. He spoke directly, his eyes catching and holding the Englishman’s sun-reddened attention. “Your wife, sir. It’s my opinion as a medical man that she’s seriously ill and in need of considerable rest before the arrival of your child. I tell you this only because I realize that you have many responsibilities and demands and might not recognize certain symptoms of her condition that lead me to speak with you on the matter.”
“I see.” The Englishman again rubbed his forearm across his brow. Then he squared himself on the wet ground, his gumboots squelching softly. From downriver came the familiar, repetitive sound of the tin press punching out cans. It was like the throbbing of the sun or of the blood in the body, a common pulse mostly unnoticed but integral to all else. “Last night, doctor, you claimed that, in your opinion, men take too great an interest in the affairs of others. Isn’t that so?”
Anson conceded the fact with a scowl but was not cowed. He was, after all, a medical man sworn to take an active interest in the health of others. If they chose to disregard his opinion, that was certainly their prerogative.
“I did say that, yes. But in this case I am not seeking to know anything. I am simply advising you, out of concern and experience, that your wife’s in greater danger than you might realize.”
Thomas Lansdowne spat on the ground. His shadow lay like a burnt trench behind him. “Danger?” The word hung heavily in the air, and it seemed to Anson that they both stared at it, as if it was a bird one of them was about to flush. He waited.
At last, the Englishman made a guttural sound of dismissal and crossed his thick arms across his chest. “And what do you know of danger, exactly? The east’s a settled land. Many things that are commonplace here will appear dangerous to you, doctor. My wife is stronger than most men.”
Anson understood the insult but let it pass. He knew it was a delicate matter to discuss another man’s domestic affairs, and he and Thomas Lansdowne were not exactly on friendly terms to begin with. Even so, he had to quell the urge to scoff at the man’s arrogant assumptions. Farming along the Fraser River might be hard work, but it was hardly dangerous in the way that Bull Run and Antietam had been dangerous. In any case, Anson realized that the discussion was not about him. And when he remembered that the gruff, forceful farmer had, in the midst of all his other responsibilities, been responsible for the piano’s miraculous presence on the wharf, it was easier to remain calm. A man who would do that for his child clearly had more to him than the unyielding English coldness suggested. Before Anson could respond, in fact, Thomas Lansdowne spoke in a different tone, one verging on disbelief.
“Indeed, my wife is much recovered this morning. I left her in the company of your countryman. It appears his conversation has had an invigorating effect on her.”
“I’m happy to hear that,” Anson said and recalled that Ambrose Richardson had wanted to assess the cannery operations this morning. Surely he and Thomas Lansdowne had not done so at daybreak? But Anson felt the need to defend his medical reputation; he could not believe that the woman he’d seen in such distraction and distress the evening before could have recovered so quickly, no matter the excellence of the Virginian’s talk. “However, I would not think that your wife can be out of danger without a considerable amount of rest.”
“Ha!” The explosive laugh seemed to tear a scar in the sky, but it was only the sudden keening arc of a gull. “She’ll have rest enough with all the chatter going on.” Then, as if aware that he’d revealed more than was proper, he spat again and hitched his belt up with a firm yank. “We didn’t come here to rest, doctor. My wife no more than I. If you’ve not noticed, this is rough country. Rest, when it comes, will come after.”