A Distant Shore (18 page)

“Mr. Wells, are you sure you are all right?”

Wells glanced at him sharply, eyes bright with suspicion. “Of course I am. Why should I not be?”

Ian tried to temper his words with a smile. “It is only you look a bit unwell.”

Wells’s lip curled in a sneer. “How now, Campbell? Are you actually attempting to dissuade me from performing the extraction at this late hour? Let me guess. You wish to perform the procedure yourself.”

“I would do so if needed,” Ian replied steadily. “The most important thing, Wells, is for the operation to succeed, no matter who performs it. Surely we are in agreement on that?”

“It will succeed,” Wells answered roughly. “I have done the same a hundred times before, which is more than I can say for you.”

Frustration bubbled inside Ian. “And yet you do not appear in a state that is conducive to—”

“I am fine, man,” Wells snapped. “Now leave it be. Mr. Warren is ascending the stage.”

With his spirits sinking like a stone inside him, Ian watched as the Chief of Surgery introduced Wells to the crowd of spectators, and their gossipy chatter died to a hushed and expectant silence. The patient, a gentleman of about forty years old, was brought onto the stage, smiling rather dubiously.

Wells began to climb the short flight of stairs to the stage, and stumbled. Ian’s heart caught in his throat, and he reached out to steady his colleague, one hand on the man’s sleeve.

“Please, Horace,” he whispered urgently. “Do not let pride stand in your way at this important hour. Permit me—”

Without looking at him, Wells jerked his arm away and ascended to the stage. Ian stepped back, concern and despair swamping him. Should he intervene? To do so now would create an inexcusable scene, and might be as damaging as total failure. Yet how he could allow the procedure to go forward, knowing the state Wells was in? He suddenly wished Caroline was here, even though women were not permitted in the operating theatre. He imagined her calm, smiling face, her steady advice, and longed fiercely for both. She would be able to find some way to keep Wells from performing the extraction—

Even as these thoughts raced through Ian’s mind the thing was done. Wells placed the glass globe of ether over the man’s face, and when his eyes fluttered he began to extract the tooth.

The ensuing scream of pain echoed through the entire theatre, and Wells was forced to step back as the man stumbled from the chair, one hand to his bleeding mouth.

“You said I wouldn’t feel a thing!” he exclaimed hoarsely, but Wells’s reply was lost amidst the eruption of howls, hoots, and jeers among all the spectators.

The experiment, Ian knew with a despairing certainty, had been a failure.

Chapter Nine

The weather was turning cold, the leaves long gone from the trees, when Maggie took the lessons at school by herself for the first time. Margaret remained at home with Charlotte, who had a fever that did not appear life-threatening but still kept the poor girl abed. Margaret had wanted to close the school, but Maggie insisted she could do it.

“I’ve seen you teach the older ones times enough,” she said, “and I’m almost seventeen.”

Margaret looked as if she wished to protest, and Maggie wondered if her aunt was thinking about her being alone with Seamus. Not that they would actually be alone; Henry’s man was always be positioned outside the school, and there were plenty of other pupils there besides. Yet Maggie knew, although her aunt had never said anything, that she was not entirely comfortable with Seamus Flanagan’s presence at the First School.

Ever since that first day, several months ago now, Seamus had always acted with grave politeness, studying with determined diligence, and Margaret had been forced to allow him to stay. He didn’t disrupt the classroom, as she had accused, and he worked hard. There was simply no reason for him not to attend, and yet Maggie could see that her aunt was still not pleased Seamus was there.

Maggie was pleased; she liked having someone close to her age at the school, and as Seamus hadn’t known how to read before he’d come, he’d joined her group of little ones learning their letters. He’d looked a little funny, his huge frame perched on one of the small stools, but he’d been able to laugh at himself and he’d learned the alphabet in a single day. When Maggie had mentioned this, Margaret had merely pressed her lips together and said nothing.

Only last week Seamus had read beautifully from Emerson’s
Second-Class Reader
. Maggie had been ebullient, but Margaret had remained silent, as she always seemed to when it came to Seamus. Maggie didn’t know if her aunt disliked Seamus, or if she simply found his presence unsettling, but the tension in the little classroom sometimes made her cringe, even though Seamus remained as calm and steady as always.

Now, alone in the classroom waiting for the first pupils to arrive, Maggie felt a flutter of nervousness. She’d spoken confidently to her aunt, but in truth she was uncertain if she could really teach all the lessons. She’d barely had much schooling herself. It was one thing to teach little ones to read, quite another to talk about history and science and math to pupils only four or five years younger than herself.

And then of course there was Seamus. For some contrary reason Maggie began to blush when he arrived, his smile turning into a frown as he registered her aunt’s absence.

“Where is Mrs. Moore?” he asked as the younger pupils settled themselves.

“Her young daughter is unwell,” Maggie explained. “It isn’t too dangerous, but she wished to be on hand.”

“Of course.” His expression lightened and his mouth quirked in a smile. “Are you our teacher then, Miss MacDougall?”

Maggie pretended to look officious, knowing she never could truly be so. “I am indeed, Mr. Flanagan. I hope you shall behave yourself today.”

His smile widened, his eyes glimmering with humor. “I shall be sure to be on my best behavior.”

“Good.” They remained there, smiling rather foolishly at one another, until one of the younger pupils cried out when her plait was pulled and Maggie hurried to set matters to right.

In fact, Seamus’s behavior was better than best. Several times during the day, when Maggie was in a muddle, whether it was over a math problem she wasn’t quite sure of the answer to, or a bit of rascally behavior by two young boys, Seamus dealt with the matter with an easy calm, and earned her deepest gratitude.

“It’s five thousand three hundred and six, isn’t it, Miss MacDougall?” he said quietly, and in relief Maggie realized where she’d been about to go wrong with the sum.

“You are quite right, Mr. Flanagan,” she said with a quick smile, and turned, blushing, back to the board.

He kept the stove in the center of the room filled with coal, and went twice to the shed in the back of the school to fill the scuttle. He comforted one of the small girls when she fell and scraped her knee, and washed the cut with his own clean handkerchief dipped in the pail of water kept by the door for drinking.

His presence, Maggie realized, was comforting to the younger pupils, steady and strong as he was. Aunt Margaret had been worried that Seamus Flanagan’s place in the classroom would provide a distraction, but it was quite the opposite. He kept the pupils calm and focused, and he made her feel safer and stronger too.

Even so by the end of the day Maggie was exhausted, and glad to see the last of the pupils trickle out the door. Seamus remained, looking far too big crammed into one of the desks meant for a much smaller child.

“You should have a proper chair,” Maggie said impulsively, and his eyes crinkled.

“It would be better for my knees, I suppose.”

She nodded, knowing she should look away yet unable to keep herself from staring at him. With his blue eyes and dark, curling hair he was, she thought, not for the first time, a very handsome man. And he was, as her aunt had pointed out, most definitely a man. Maggie was never more aware of that than now, when he walked slowly towards her, and she could see the height of him, the breadth of his wide shoulders.

“Miss MacDougall? I wonder I might ask you something?”

“Of course.” Maggie smiled in what she hoped was a friendly fashion, although her heart had begun to thud with hard, heavy beats at the thought of what Seamus might ask… even though she had no idea what it was, or could be. Even so anticipation curled inside of her, an excitement she could not name but certainly felt.

“My sister Aisling is but eleven,” Seamus explained quietly. “She’s had no schooling, but now that I’m going she wishes to learn. She couldn’t come every day, she has chores at home and Mam needs help with the little ones. But I wondered if she might come to the school when she can get away, and learn what she might?”

Maggie blinked, suppressed the little needling sense of disappointment she felt at the rather prosaic nature of Seamus’s request. Goodness, what had she been thinking he might ask! She felt herself begin to blush yet again. “Of course she is welcome whenever she is able. The First School does not turn away willing pupils.”

“I think your aunt wanted to turn me away right enough,” Seamus said without rancor, and Maggie managed a small smile.

“She had her reservations, I confess, but you have surely put them to rest.”

“Have I?”

“You have done so well here, Seamus.”

“That’s the first time you’ve called me by my Christian name.”

“Is it?” Maggie felt her cheeks heat even more. She was so unsettlingly conscious of Seamus’s presence, his closeness. His hands were large and capable as he held his cap, twisting it just as he had on the first day. His eyes seemed very blue as he looked at her, and Maggie forced herself not to look away.

“May I call you Maggie?” he asked.

“Yes, of course.” She was not used to such formality to begin with; things were different on PEI, and everyone called each other by their first names. “I’d be glad for you to do so.”

Seamus’s fingers tightened on his twisted cap. “I hope your aunt won’t mind.”

“Of course she won’t,” Maggie answered quickly, yet she could not suppress a flicker of doubt. Aunt Margaret had certainly not encouraged any familiarity with Seamus Flanagan. “I have an idea,” she said suddenly, knowing she was being impulsive and even reckless yet determined to prove Seamus’s—and her own—doubts about her aunt groundless. “Why don’t you and your sister come to tea one afternoon? At my aunt’s house?”

Seamus’s eyes widened in blatant disbelief. Then he shook his head, smiling wryly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Maggie.”

The sound of her name on his lips sent a thrill through her, and made her all the more insistent. “Why ever not? You know my aunt emigrated from Scotland, just as you did from Ireland.”

Seamus shrugged. “Wherever we came from doesn’t matter so much. It’s the difference in our stations now.”

“Even so,” Maggie said firmly. “I insist.”

His mouth quirked upwards again, making her heart skip a beat. “Do you now?”

“I do.”

“I suppose I could bring Aisling along one day,” he said after a moment. “She’d like to see a grand house sure enough. And if your aunt sends us both away with a flea in our ear, it’s no more than we deserve.”