Death in the Age of Steam (39 page)

In the keeper of my father's house, I should have been reassured to see good spirits and a spruce demeanour. Sibyl showed neither. While she kept his villa clean enough, her skin looked grey and waxy, as if personally she never scrubbed. She had a slovenly slouch. Her perpetual mud-brown dresses she wore loose, sacrificing smartness and convenience to her comfort. And still her mouth took a grudging twist. In her fourth decade, she seemed to want it known she had lived through a long succession of unrewarding years. Papa paid her well, gave her a full day off each week, seldom criticized. You would never have thought it to see her. By the time she entered his employ, I suppose her discontented mien was set.

You will think me harsh, Isaac, possibly jealous. It was true that this woman occupied the place for which I should have bartered my own chilly hearth in an instant. I tried to think better of her and succeeded pretty well until Papa's last illness.

The legislative session that ended 1st July left him exhausted. I expect you know as much as I about the political tug of war that has been going on. Your friend William Sheridan had fought his proudest battles as a reformer, but George Brown's party of radical reform was sounding increasingly anti-Catholic, while progressive conservative John A. Macdonald spoke more appealingly of making friends with the French. Both sides wooed Papa fiercely. At the same time, he was undertaking a case or a cause of some kind which seemed to shake him to his foundations, and yet which he did not feel he could ease his
spirit by telling me about.

He enjoyed robust health generally, as you'll recall. In recent years, however, he had suffered recurrent bouts of debilitating abdominal pain, diagnosed as iliac passion or inflammation of the intestines. They chose this moment of nervous strain to flare up once more.

Over the next days, I spent less and less time at Henry's, more and more at Papa's, till I was in effect living there. Then Sibyl was the jealous one. “You go on home, Mrs. Crane,” she would say. “I can do everything here.” This although she knew nothing of nursing. Used to free rein, she apparently considered herself mistress of Front Street and resented dilution, however temporary or exceptional, of her authority.

Unluckily, her brother's devastating news arrived this same week. He had committed another assault and was in a month's time to hang for it. I offered Sibyl leave and her steamer ticket. She said she preferred to wait till her master was out of danger, as we all believed he soon would be, but I should have insisted. She became positively obstructive in the kitchen. Accidents happened.

On Friday, 11th July, I went down early to light a fire after sitting up all night with Papa. He could not sleep for stomach aches. His temperature had risen above 100, and I feared peritonitis might have set in. Dr. Hillyard had left him morphine. He would not take it. He didn't complain, but kept rolling that enormous, white-thatched head of his as if to avoid meeting the eye of some impudent lobbyist or favour-seeker. Pain had dug deeper the furrows that ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth. The skin seemed to have lost its resiliency.

Isaac, I cannot tell you what I felt. I have not the skill, the time, or a steady enough hand. That night I believed Papa and I were coming as close to a goodbye as we ever would, and I was right, even though he got better.

He asked me to read him his favourite verses by Thomas Moore. I have always read badly, too fast and without
enough expression. It didn't matter. More often he recited from memory:

“Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,

The Rapids are near and the daylight's past.”

And from the
Irish Melodies
:

“The heart that has truly loved never forgets,

But as truly loves on to the close . . .”

At ten to four, he stopped tossing and reciting. When I let the lamplight fall on his face, his eyes under his great white brows were purposeful, though weary. He said the pain was subsiding and, in answer to my question, that he thought, yes, he might sleep, but he would like to shave first, as he expected Jasper that morning with documents pertaining to their new case. I said I should scrape his face gladly if he were still awake by the time I had heated the water.

On bare feet, I slipped down to the kitchen. Sibyl's room adjoined it, but I didn't hear her stirring, and it was too early to wake her. My guard was down, as you can imagine. After what had seemed a death watch, I felt blessed release plus the fatigue that anxiety had kept me from admitting. I went straight to the stove. As I raised the top to see if a fire had been laid, I glimpsed a flicker of flame at my elbow, just under the sleeve of my light summer nightgown.

“That's my job, Mrs. Crane,” said Sibyl, reaching forward and dropping the lighted match into the stove.

I jumped back with I don't recall what exclamation. As soon as I had ascertained that I wasn't on fire, I gave Sibyl the day off and insisted she leave the house before breakfast, which I made myself. I intended once Papa had rested to ask him to dismiss her altogether.

Towards noon, a knock at the front door awakened him. It was not Jasper, whom he had been expecting, but Henry, who was usually too busy to appear during the day or for that matter the evening either.

Henry and his father-in-law were not bosom friends. Having married freely, I never complained of my choice, but
if my marriage had been conspicuously happier, I suppose Papa would have found it easier to warm to Henry. He sincerely admired Henry's initiative. Both were self-made men, albeit with a difference characteristic of their generations. Papa required a competency. Henry has always hungered for a fortune. Papa believed good government would as a matter of fact be good for business. Henry thinks the sole measure of whether a government is or is not good is whether it advances business interests.

Perhaps the two could never have been close. In argument, Henry kept making the practical mistake of invoking profits rather than ideals. You observed justly, Isaac, when years ago you said that Parliament itself was Papa's El Dorado, its civilizing rituals his streets of gold. A man's right to elect his legislators or stand himself for election, the legislators' right to topple a ministry in which they lack confidence—these were his spoils of office.

William Sheridan and his gang fought the constitutional battles of the age. Henry Crane's attitude is: now that that's settled, let's get rich.

He was cordial with Papa but never seemed to succeed in interesting him in his schemes and rarely called unless he had a scheme in which he wished to interest him. This Friday, I asked Henry to keep his visit short.

I went to get him after fifteen or twenty minutes, and the two of us spoke for a moment in the upstairs hall. He looked grave but calm, and tall and pink as ever. I caught a whiff of the sandalwood soap I had once liked so well on him. He never smells of liquor or tobacco.

“Your father seems out of the rough water,” he began stiffly.

I assented, hoping he would go now.

“It has been a trying time,” he rushed on. “Very hard on you. On the housekeeper as well.”

“Has she told you this?” I asked. It typified relations between us that my feelings meant no more to him than Sibyl's.

Henry shrugged. “Better leave the cooking to her.”

“On the contrary,” I said, “Sibyl has shown she's not to be trusted with fire. I'll fill her place.”

“Papa tells me he's not dissatisfied with her. As for you, you are too little at home, our home, as it is.”

You can guess how I resented this appropriation of my father against me. In aversion rather than submission, I dropped my eyes. From where I stood squeezed between Henry and the topmost stair, the freshly waxed banister spiralled down in a long, graceful oval. Its normally pleasing curve dizzied me. Mastering my tongue, I suggested we pursue our talk below, farther from the sickroom. Henry said he had not time. Business would not stand still. His last words to me before shutting the front door on any chance of rebuttal were an injunction to compose my differences with Sibyl.

Jasper arrived mid-afternoon. As I came down to answer his knock, I was astonished to see Sibyl had already let him in and was busy brushing his bowler hat. He was late, he knew. He had just come from successfully defending an illiterate nine-year-old girl against the enforcement of an indenture. He thought, rightly, his senior partner would be pleased. I sent him up to wait for Papa to waken while I had words with the unsheddable housekeeper. What did she mean by returning so soon?

She professed anxiety for her master. As soon as ever he was on his feet, she would gladly leave for Kingston. Meanwhile, idle hours were torment to her. What with “the Honourable” indisposed and her brother under sentence, she had passed a weary night of it and risen in a fog. She professed herself contrite for her carelessness at the stove. Henceforth, she would submit to my orders. I made her no promises, but neither did I throw her out the door, and presently she served Jasper and me tea in the parlour.

He found me in more distress than Papa's condition seemed to warrant. I hesitated to explain.

I have known Jasper since girlhood, of course. Our fathers
did business before he thought of a legal career. He was my first dance partner. He used to tell people whom he didn't think it would shock that our courtship never went farther because his limbs would not fit over a horse and mine would not fit under a card table. The truth is he's so easy and pleasant with everyone that I could never imagine him forming any restrictive attachment.

This afternoon he had papers for Papa he wished he could tell me about. Toronto's social order might be shaken, but the implications reached beyond that, much. I thought such excitement best deferred till Papa was stronger. Jasper fidgeted and remarked on my agitation. He had sworn secrecy. I didn't press him. Nonetheless, he insisted on advising me, as an old playmate, to see less in future of the MacFarlanes. He could not say more.

To change the subject, I complained of the hot sun beating in and made some adjustment to the curtains.

He had said enough to make me quite lonely. I had fallen away from all the girls I had gone to school with. They had married well or supposed I had. My friends would be few indeed without Kate MacFarlane and her daughter Elsie. In whom could I confide regarding the mad-seeming housekeeper? Jasper? Confidences plainly weren't safe with him.

I thought then to ask him about you, Isaac, hoping his indiscretion this time might work in my favour. It did, in the end. I could not approach you directly when you had made such a point of keeping away. You certainly owed me nothing. What I was hoping was that, if you had stopped thinking about what might have been, I should be able to stop too, and together we could solve the riddle of Sibyl's behaviour.

A moment later I glimpsed around the door jamb a twitch of brown worsted in the hall. The mirror didn't need polishing, the pictures straightening, the clock winding. I rushed straight out to see what reason other than eavesdropping Sibyl could have for being there. Jasper doubtless thought me mad.

Sibyl had “meant no disrespect” by loitering in the hall. On the contrary, she said. She had not wanted to anger me, either by interrupting my conversation with Jasper, or by failing to consult me regarding Papa's supper menu. Did I not think a suet pudding would lift his spirits?

I rejected the suggestion firmly. Intestines which barely twelve hours earlier had been so excruciatingly inflamed would rebel afresh, perhaps fatally, at such a greasy mass. A glass of buttermilk was the most that should be thought of. Buttermilk, yes, missus. How fortunate, said Sibyl, she had come upstairs to ask my wishes before proceeding!

Again that night I sat up with Papa. He slept well and, not having been to bed for several days, I dozed from time to time myself. On the morning of the “Glorious Twelfth”, I brought him from his own garden a bouquet not of orange lilies but of white English daisies and made as unalarming a case as possible for helping the housekeeper to another situation. He had often employed charitable cases before, but never, I pointed out, in such a position of trust.

“I'm sure you have your reasons, my dear terrier,” he said, “but her brother's last trial seems to have been such a rushed business, and the sentence too harsh for a simple assault. I should hate to lose sight of Sibyl until I've done what I can in the way of appeal. Brother love runs strong in their family, too strong, I'm afraid.”

I asked what he meant.

“Did you not hear why their parents couldn't marry?” he said. “Not to put too fine a point on it, their uncle was their father, their mother their aunt.”

This news made Sibyl more pitiable in my eyes: guiltless, she must bear not only the shame of illegitimacy but the more intimate taint of inbreeding. Justice herself must weep. Pity, however, was beside the point I was urging. Let the poor woman be treated with exemplary kindness, let her be lodged with every comfort in the American Hotel, so long as she was removed from the possibility of doing harm in
this house. Not as a punishment, but as a precaution.

Papa nonetheless hesitated at this anxious time to add to her burdens by any show of want of confidence. The matter remained unresolved when Dr. Hillyard arrived.

Some think Christopher Hillyard should have retired from the practice of medicine years ago. In fact, he did and went to live abroad, but he pined for his city and his profession and last April returned to both. (That he also lost his savings in a railway stock swindle is a rumour he won't confirm.) Dr. H. attended my birth and my mother's death. As a family friend, he is supposed to be above censure, but I should frankly have wished a different physician for Papa this summer.

I do not share Jasper's objections to the porriginous eruptions on the doctor's scalp. These are not communicable. What I do regret is the doctor's refusal to speak to me in anything but platitudes. The practitioner's traditional reticence towards the laity has in his case been reinforced by prejudice against any female who interests herself in indelicate subjects, especially one he recalls and still thinks of as an infant.