He did not wink, yet Edney felt, behind his words, a promise that he would not fail either her or May. And, strangely, when he had left the parlour, the child’s hovering spirit seemed to depart as well. Edney almost cried out, she almost rose to plead with the slightest trembling of the sunlight that signalled May’s flight, but Thomas had stepped in front of her, his body’s motion like the swinging of a barn door on darkness. Now it would come, she thought, now his confusion would demand answers. What child? Our daughter. What arrangements? To speak with her again, to know her again. Edney waited, her breath held. Just then, the new child moved inside her, as if a stone had been dropped into the parlour’s sunlit stillness.
“I had hoped that you were discussing the cannery with him. You know how important it is that we secure his investment.”
The ripples of the stone’s fall did not leave her body. Edney closed her eyes as the ripples returned deeper into her. Quietly, she said, “We weren’t discussing business.”
He settled his weight onto the ottoman beside her and took both her hands in one of his, which was as warm as a clench of the sun. “Mother, listen to me. We are in difficulties. I have told you of the debt. You must not dwell on what can never be again. We must live. This man, he is… he is our salvation. If he comes in with me, and if the season is even half as good as most predict, our future is secure. I’ll be able to compete with Dare and anyone else. You must do what you can to convince him.”
Edney could not even find the will to nod. Her whole body went numb; ice lodged in her joints as she struggled to remember her duty to the dark and pleading man beside her. The child moved again. The clock ticked. The sunlight was bereft of presence. God, she saw clearly, was in her daughter, and her daughter was gone. If she could not bring her back, God, too, was absent forever. A surge of will lifted Edney’s eyes to his.
“Soon it will be a year, Thomas. I cannot think of business so close to the time.”
“A year?” He blinked at her, his face rough and raw as split cedar, his wet lips parted.
Edney could hardly bear the sight of him. The mud smell rising off his thick arms could have been his daughter’s own grave-dirt and he would not have noticed.
His blinking stopped. He held his eyelids closed and slowly leaned his head back until his face was raised to the ceiling. Then, as if some force lowered his head on a string, he met Edney’s gaze.
“You think I do not grieve for her? You think I have forgotten?” He pushed his thick thumb slowly up his brow. “Our first child? You think I do not miss her every…”
Edney could not bring herself to pity him. If he missed May as she did, then how could he possibly care so much for business? Some feelings destroyed the world; they were meant to destroy it. And only a long, careful humility before the awe of the destruction and a proper attendance on the gap a child’s death left in the spirit could hope to save a family. The American gentleman understood. It had been fifteen years for him. Thomas would not adjust for even one turn of the calendar. No, Edney could not pity him. She could hardly look at him; he seemed so much smaller and weaker than his material form. All she wanted was to be alone in the parlour with May’s spirit.
Coldly and clearly, she said, “I’ll discuss with Mr. Richardson what is most important to us.”
Her husband’s relief was horrible. He slumped back against the ottoman and almost gasped, “Thank you, Mother.”
Edney heard his heartbeat pounding, saw it break the parlour’s sunlight into pieces. But it would not break her heart the same way. She almost smiled at the thought of the woman from Victoria, gifted in the byways between life and death, crossing the waters. At last the long suffering would be altered. At last she could mother the life she had not mothered well enough on earth. Then perhaps she could work on the future again. Not before.
VIII
Unable to read or sleep, the taste of opium in the air as palpable on his tongue as spit, Anson once again found himself on the wharf outside the Lansdowne house. He stood, his back to the China House and its long, soothing pipes, and listened to the plaintive crying of a seal pup. One of the Indians, so the boy Edward had told him, had caught the pup and was keeping it for a pet. Tied for days to a post near the Indian’s driftwood lean-to, eventually the seal would be tame enough to swim with the Indian children. That seemed innocent enough, almost cozily domestic, yet the seal’s cry, remarkably akin to a human baby’s, was disturbing. Anson moved on.
For several minutes he stood in the side yard of the Lansdowne house, trying to convince himself to return to bed. But the smoke on the air from an Indian’s fire further whet his old longing for opium and he began to walk downriver toward the China House.
The sound that stopped him came as less of a surprise than previously. He listened. It was the girl again. She had not taken his advice. When Anson had come upon her in the middle of the day while she was meant to be at her chores, she had been so rapt in her piano playing that interference seemed more than cruel; it was like turning off the sun. But for her sake he had urged her to be patient. If her father or uncle knew of her passion for the piano—he had not used the word to the child, though he had thought it—they might send the instrument back to Victoria. Ah, but the girl could no more resist the lure of the music than Anson could quell the past. Why not let her run the risk? It maddened him that the Lansdowne brothers had managed only to move the piano from the wharf to the nearby barn. He understood, of course, that they were busy men, but they clearly had no idea of how to treat a piano. Either that, or they simply didn’t care. Anson had thought that his heated exchange with Thomas Lansdowne out in the field would have resulted in the piano’s removal to the man’s house, not just to the nearest barn. Yes, it was maddening. But then, what of the Lansdownes did not madden him?
He walked to the barn and slid in through the thin gap in the doors. Straw chaff and dust on the planks and in the air almost made him cough. For a few seconds, as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw only some worn tack—harnesses, bridles, saddles—hanging like strips of beef on a wall near the stable. Then he saw the girl. As before, she had not bothered to find a crate or anything else to sit on. In the fractured light falling through the beams, she stood, wreathed in the stench of manure, and played with unsophisticated energy the lovely Chopin music she had no business, but every right, to play.
Anson swallowed hard. More moving to him than her talent was the purity of her will. She must play. It wasn’t a question of rules and authority. It almost brought him to tears how little she seemed to be aware of her own vulnerability. But when she played, even he could recognize that, in some mysterious way, she was inviolate.
The wind shifted the thin starlight a little. Anson turned and coughed deep in his chest. Up from the river came the high-pitched cry of the seal pup, followed by another sound, not so high but just as tortured. Anson realized that it must be the pup’s mother swimming along the bank. Sadly, he turned back just in time to see the child collapse, one hand dragging across the keys before her body hit the ground.
“Louisa!”
He rushed forward and lifted her in his arms. She was sweating profusely, on fire, trembling. He staggered into the darkness and moved as rapidly as possible over the soft ground, the whole time thinking, What’s wrong with her, how can I stop it, how can I help her?
He laboured up the half-dozen steps and across the veranda, then banged the front door of the house open with his foot and shouted as he carried the girl into the parlour and laid her on the ottoman. From above him came quick footsteps that pattered along the ceiling and down the staircase.