“Impatience is not a virtue. It’s to be discouraged.”
“Yes, well, I ask only that the discouragement isn’t severe. I wouldn’t wish to be responsible for having the child punished for what is as natural to her as the song is in a bird.”
“How I discipline my children is not your business.” But Thomas Lansdowne had more wonderment than severity in his tone now. Anson knew that the revelation about Louisa had unsettled him.
“Of course it’s not, nor is your wife’s health. I ask only that you consider both matters carefully. You are, after all, a fortunate man.”
Anson paused, embarrassed to find his voice breaking, his eyes watering. He composed himself and continued.
“I have no family myself. Perhaps if you think me overly concerned with the welfare of yours, you might take that fact into account.”
But Thomas Lansdowne appeared to be listening to the far-off sound coming from the direction of the river. It would have been almost an act of violence to disturb his silence. Anson felt he had done enough, in any case.
“Good day,” he said and took a few steps backward before turning his back on the sky-searching fathom of the Englishman’s gaze and returning to his own solitude and unprofound meditations of the day’s slow light.
VII
Sunlight rarely penetrated the parlour, or perhaps Edney had simply not noticed it doing so for many months. As she poured a fresh cup of tea for the American guest, the sunlight appeared to flow from her hand as well and descend to the bunched bottoms of the velvet drapes. Had she even parted them since May’s illness? Edney could hardly believe the room contained a window that looked out on something as ordinary as this world.
As she placed the teapot on the table, her eyes remained on the sunlit glass—if she held the gaze long enough, surely May would appear, fresh as the last spring of her health. For the child had not vanished in the days succeeding the dinner at Henry and Mary’s; she hovered so close, just a whisper away. It must happen any time, the contact.
Mr. Richardson, sitting serenely on the ottoman beside her, his long legs crossed at the ankles, shared the opinion. No, not Mr. Richardson—Ambrose. Edney tried to remember his admonition that she address him so, but despite the pleasure of his conversation and sympathy she found it difficult. He was not a member of the family, nor even of the settlement. Yet he hardly seemed a stranger either. Hour by hour, in fact, Edney began to know a greater ease in his presence.
“It is,” he went on, lowering his teacup, “the one matter over which I disagreed with many of my countrymen, then and now. I took the view of our president, Jefferson Davis, who, upon hearing of the boy’s death, sent a note of condolence to the White House. This was in the second year of the war, mind. He did not have to do it. Lincoln was the sworn enemy of all we cherished, but even so, his profound grief touched me deeply. And this was before Sharpsburg, before my own devastating loss.”
His voice flowed easily as the light, despite the pain behind the words. Edney felt the warmth of the teacup in her hand diminish: the coolness, like any change, no matter how small, signalled an arrival. Her breathing came easy. She thought of the late American president with a small sense of shame: Lincoln’s murder, though tragic, had been very remote to her. She’d been a young mother then, with May and the baby Edward taking most of her attention. In truth, Edney could not remember hearing of Lincoln’s grief over the death of his son. She must have, of course, but her great joy at the time would not have been dampened by a distant misery, no matter how famous.
“We heard the rumours,” Ambrose Richardson said. “Many scoffed at the idea that the great man would participate in a seance, especially during wartime, but I understood perfectly. Perhaps, in some way, my sympathy for our enemy’s leader was a kind of prophetic vision of my own future. I have thought of this often. Lincoln’s grief, had I but known it at the time, was a gift from God; it helped to prepare the ground for my own tears.”
He sighed and raised the cup to his lips. Lowering it again, he looked at Edney with watery eyes.
“They say he returned to the crypt on three separate occasions, wanting one last look at the boy. The embalming had been remarkable. They say the child looked to be only asleep. That man destroyed the hopes of my country, yet I cannot, before God, deny that I would embrace him in compassion for his lonely returns to that crypt. What I wouldn’t give, even now, for one last look upon my own dear boy’s face.”
He put the cup down and pulled a handkerchief from his vest. Dabbing his eyes, he said quietly, “I did try, I tried even to the point of risking my own life.” His voice caught, but he continued. “I couldn’t get to him. He lay in contested ground after the battle. When I could finally search the field, there was no sign of… I… even now it pains me to think of the poor boys whose bodies I turned over to see their faces, always in great hope, only to have my hopes dashed.”
His hand trembled as he tried to place the handkerchief neatly in his breast pocket. Finally, he gave up and let the handkerchief hang limp from his hand.
“Shovelled into a mass grave by negroes who probably treated him like a slab of fouled meat. That was my boy’s fate. I walked that battlefield for hours, blind with tears, and came to feel that I was searching for the child he had been. I thought if I listened for a baby’s cry, it would lead me to his body. It is most strange…” He glanced at his left sleeve and sighed. “It is most strange how time and sense are altered by death. For years, I consoled myself with the fancy that my arm had somehow joined my child in his unmarked grave, that it was whole and well and cradled the head of that little boy.” He broke off. His head dropped to his chest.
A part of Edney wanted to reach out and touch him, as if, by doing so, she could comfort the child he had lost. But his openness froze her; it was almost a sin to respond to something that she had wanted so desperately since May’s death.
Finally the American raised his head and spoke again.
“I would ask you to forgive me, but I know it would be an impertinence. Your feelings are fresh. I cannot claim as much of mine from such a world as this, but I know that I can from you.”
For a moment, Edney feared that he was about to reach out and take her hand. But he merely leaned closer.
“I’ve given much thought to your grieving. I’ve asked myself repeatedly how I can help you to come back to God’s fold. Believe me, I, too, have known the sin of anger, I, too, have doubted His mercy. But He knows this, He expects it. And I believe with all my heart that He has given us the means to return to Him. He has, in His great mercy, provided a way for us to love this life again before we are reunited in Glory with our own lost lambs. Ah, but lost only to us, only briefly, because of our own weakness. Madam, if you will permit me, I can arrange for you to reach her, to go beyond the veil. In Victoria, I know of the gentle services of a lady well versed in these matters. And I am certain that, at my request, she would be willing to come here and help you to find some of the peace that I’ve known.”
Edney drew back. His eyes seemed to have taken all the sunlight into them, and his moustache quivered as his lips moved. What he had said hardly reached her; she was still thinking of her undiminished desire to see May’s face one last time. But this mention of a lady in Victoria—what could this mean?
“Please, don’t be alarmed. Perhaps I move too swiftly. But it is only out of my sincere desire to bring you comfort. I often wish, indeed, that someone had led me to this special and most providential of balms much sooner, though perhaps I would have been too angry yet in my grief at the time.”