Death in the Age of Steam (57 page)

Theresa did not follow his pointing arm. She was looking at the Grey Nuns' high wall and thinking of the lunatics' wing with its cold, stone cells and the narrow slits through which food was handed into them. What a different welcome awaited her from the one she had received from the good sisters four
weeks ago! She tried to feel nothing.

Henry was a pace or two ahead.

“Yes,” her companion continued, “and when in '49 the enemies of responsible government broke in with fiery brands to burn Parliament down, William Sheridan did not turn tail. He stayed to gather in his arms the records of debate. He got them to the street, where the Tory mob dashed them from his grasp to heap back on the blaze, and the building was destroyed as you can see, but it was a gallant deed he did, and the country owes him thanks. I'm truly sorry, madam, for your loss.”

“A mad deed, some would say,” Theresa rejoined. “A danger to himself.”

This hideously malapropos tribute from one of her gaolers would further have discomposed her had her attention not that moment been taken by a short, dapper figure who was accosting Henry at the convent gate.

“If Mrs. Crane were in the least need of legal advice, Jasper,” her husband loudly explained, “I should see that she got it.”

“I may as well look over the papers, in your own interest as well as hers.” Jasper met Theresa's eyes and inclined his head.

“Our interests,” said Crane, “are one—”

“All the more reason—”

“—and adequately protected,” Crane continued, “without your interference.”

“Who might this gentleman be?” asked the doctor.

“My late father's law partner,” Theresa promptly replied, “and my own legal representative. I should like Mr. Small to read the grounds on which I am to be deprived of liberty.”

“I must overrule you, Theresa.”

Crane began rapping forcefully at the slide in the wooden gate and pulled the bell rope for good measure. Bridge workers came and went from the taverns and coffee houses across the square, but here on the south side little traffic passed at this dark hour, and no one turned his head at the prolonged tattoo. Grateful as she was to Jasper (how ever had he known to come?), Theresa believed Henry would as usual have his way.

“Stay a bit,” said the doctor. “Our proceedings will bear scrutiny. I've the two forms right here and no objection to letting William Sheridan's partner see them.”

Before Henry could raise further objections, the portress opened the slide, and he was obliged to explain his errand. Small held the medical certificate under a street lamp, and Theresa read along. Then the slide snapped shut. The sister in charge of the lunatic wing was being sent for.

“Everything in order?” Crane swept the first document from Small's hands.

“It's full of distortions,” said Theresa. Her need to appear sane resulted in a pursed, bitter calm that still did not feel like her but soon might. “I've no wish, Henry, to see you punished.”

“In form, however, it's quite correct,” Jasper murmured at her side. “The sisters will have to accept it—but let's see the husband's signed order for the patient's reception. Does it mention what emergency prevents her being examined separately by
two
physicians?”

“Self-inflicted wounds.” The doctor tendered the document.

“Wounds or no wounds,” Henry snorted, “hiding cat-and-mouse from her husband has made the matter urgent enough. Stop to collect two opinions, and we'd have her running off again who knows where.”

From the direction of the steamer docks, a cab was bearing down on the foursome at breakneck speed. The hoofs' crescendo made everyone look. Theresa might have taken the opportunity to flee, except that the doctor had seized her right wrist to show Small her bandaged palm. Just before the cab arrived, a door opened in the Grey Nuns' gate. A robust sister in the order's Quakerish brown dress and black cape and bonnet gave permission to bring “the afflicted soul” in.

“After you, wife,” said Crane, condescending as before, sweeping her forward with his long arm.

Isaac Harris leaped from the box of the cab through clouds of dust raised by the braking wheels. An apparition.

Theresa shuddered. Isaac's long, handsome face burned with
purpose. His suddenness disconcerted her even as she admired it.

How many other pairs of eyes were turned upon this man landed like a meteor in their midst, she could not have said. Henry kept pressing her through the convent door.

“Don't go in, Theresa,” cried Harris in a firm, warning voice. “Henry Crane is not your husband.”

Not her husband. Later these words would amaze her, but the shock wasn't felt at once. So little was it felt that she imagined she must have had a presentiment from the moment she heard the nearing hoof-falls of the cabman's horse, or even from long, long before.

Other hands came now between her and Henry. She didn't see whose. She was still under the stars, in the open air. It bathed her brow in blessed coolness and tasted sweet in her lungs, and yet after so much buffeting, she mistrusted it and breathed with pain.

Henry was not her husband. His neglect of her from the day of their supposed wedding had already told her heart that this was so. He had a living wife when he made his vows to her in church. All through their years together, she had felt a shame without knowing what it was, and now she had a name for it.

Around her, everyone spoke at once. The nun and the doctor vented their astonishment, while Crane—now confidently, now indignantly—denied everything.

But she knew it was true. Perhaps it was this knowledge, however liberating, of three years concubinage, however innocent, that she had just now wished to run from. How could she acknowledge having been so duped?

How could she face Isaac, strong in his love, and truly most lovable? She could not even thank him. She hoped he would not expect her to fall into his arms.

Jasper was calling for the evidence of the bigamy. Isaac was producing it in a steady voice that somehow pierced the babble.

“A certified copy,” he said, “of Number 309 in the Marriage Register of Mackinac County, Michigan. It reads, ‘Henry M. Crane of Sault Ste. Marie, age 28 years, and Susan Iwatoke of
Mackinac, age 20 years, married 29 September 1849 in presence of . . .'”

Yes, yes, Theresa knew it must be so, but could not at this moment attend to the particulars. She felt assailed rather than freed. Around her, the assembly on the sidewalk was growing. Isaac's cab had not departed, and from the interior there alighted a second man, very young, and cassocked like a seminarian. He was a stranger to Theresa at a moment when strangers were little welcome.

Then, however, the seminarian turned and handed down from the selfsame cab a lady whose delicately chiselled features Theresa recognized as Marthe's.

Marthe had come in answer to her summons. Marthe, soul-saving companion of many rides and more
causeries
during the cold Henry years. Marthe, in whom Theresa had confided so imperfectly, and who had in her partially informed state given Theresa what help she could and what counsel of wifely submission her faith taught her she must. Marthe looked about her, her lovely countenance flustered with affectionate concern. Theresa reached towards her.

The womens' arms went round each other. They had not embraced much in the time before, but this was what Theresa wanted most in the world, this companionable shoulder on which to wake from the nightmare. Through Marthe's rich pelisse, she felt that shoulder tremble.

“
Je viens te consoler, ma pauvre Thérèse, et tiens—c'est moi qui pleure
. Pardon my tears.”

Theresa shook her head to show it did not matter. Words came with difficulty.
“Ton frère
?” she managed to say.

“My brother Armand,” Marthe rejoined, “and what a scholar! See how he devours those papers.”

“It is sworn here,” Armand exclaimed with the greatest possible interest, “that Susan Crane was alive on 1st January 1856.”

“This is beside the point,” Crane burst out. “Sister, will you take charge of this dangerous madwoman?”

A constable in a stovepipe hat bearing the number eight had
strolled up and was also inspecting Harris's documents.

“
Si monsieur n'est pas le mari, je ne le peux
,” said the nun, throwing up her hands.

“It would require a second medical certificate,” the doctor put in.

“What the good sister says,” offered Armand, “is that if you are not the husband—”

“I am most assuredly the husband!” Henry Crane's forehead bulged with indignation. “These scribbled pages are worthless forgeries, and this individual”—contemptuously indicating Harris—“a known mischief-maker whose sole motive is to usurp Mrs. Crane's affections.”

Theresa tightened her grip on Marthe's right arm, for she heard in Henry's voice the authority that directed great enterprises and always carried the day. Might others present not hear it too?

“But
is
this lady Mrs. Crane?” demanded Isaac, posted at her other side. “Both convent and physician will want to satisfy themselves on that point before proceeding.”

Would they? Theresa couldn't see where this was written, but something in her responded to the speaker, the disconcerting angel descended from the cloud. When she heard his voice, Isaac's voice, Henry's seemed less certain to prevail.

Henry pretended deafness. “Do your duty, Sister,” he commanded. “Constable, assist her.”

Constable 8, stiffly erect in his high-collared blue jacket, was perusing the medical certificate prior to intervening on either side and
sotto voce
was asking the doctor to explain that document to him.

“It may be as you say, Mr. Crane,” declared Theresa's examiner out loud. “It may well be.” He gave his black beard a vigorous tug. “But while the issue is in doubt I shall not be responsible for depriving William Sheridan's daughter of her freedom.” Removing the certificate from the policeman's hands, he tore it across. Without pause, he aligned the halves and again tore across, pocketing all four quarters. “I withdraw my finding.”

Exclamations of surprise or approval burst from several throats.

“Oh! Oh my—”

“What else could he do?”

“Jamais je n'ai vu de la sorte!”

“So much for the madwoman!”

“Very well then!” Henry flared out, glowering at all, but with especial fury directed towards what he had supposed a compliant medical man. “There's more than one lunatic here, and I leave you to your own lunatic devices.”

This last phrase struck Theresa as comical, though likely it was sheer relief that made her at that instant want to laugh. She exchanged glances with Harris and saw the temptation in his face too. She dared not give in. She dared not open her mouth for fear she would find herself screaming hysterically at her release.

“Excuse me, Henry.” Small did not smile. “The crime of bigamy carries a minimum sentence in Canada of two years' confinement. You had better come to the police station.”

The diverse gathering murmured assent. Crane looked around the circle at the lawyer Jasper Small, the detective Isaac Harris, and the postmaster general's daughter Marthe Laurendeau—at his own bigamous spouse Theresa Sheridan—at the seminarian, the Grey Nun, the doctor and the Montreal constable—at (who was this?) the yellow-eyed boy in the battered shako whom Crane had engaged a week since to watch the house on Craig Street.

Henry was outmanoeuvred. For now. But he could never have prospered in so turbulent an age without powers of resilience. Anger would currently avail him nothing. Anger accordingly drained from his pink face, which composed itself to his latest reversal, and even assumed an expression of sober helpfulness. Theresa had seen him thus with injured workers' families.

“I'm glad you're here, Mademoiselle Laurendeau,” he said, believing it. “With so kind and pious a friend to look after her, Theresa will come to no harm.”

Marthe nodded confusedly.

“My thanks,” he said. “Go with Marthe, my love, and believe me your friend too . . . Well, Jasper, the police station it is. That may be best. If I just stop by a telegraph office first to instruct my own barrister and solicitor—Mr. Lionel Leonard Matheson, as you know, never loses a case—we'll soon have this straightened out to everyone's satisfaction.”

Believe him her friend? Don't concern yourself with what I believe, Theresa was thinking. Would she ever believe anything again?

Isaac was at her side, his honest voice a balm to her ears, but what he was asking escaped her. Her hand, something about her hand. She could not speak yet or take her eyes from her un-husband.

“How badly,” Isaac was asking, “are you hurt?”

She did not know.

No victory dance shook the earth, not then nor weeks later. Unshaped to their wearers' heads, the laurel wreaths felt unnatural and precarious—to be snatched away by the autumn winds, or discarded as a mockery.

After bidding the Brays an appreciative farewell, Theresa accompanied Marthe to the Laurendeau estate forty miles up the St. Lawrence. The single-storey fieldstone manor house had been sheltering seigneurs since the seventeenth century. A roof of red tiles fell steeply past two tiers of dormers, then flared out over a long, hospitable verandah. The refuge denied Theresa as a runaway wife welcomed her at last.

Harris was welcome as a visitor. Through September, each visit saddened him more—and, when he had returned Banshee with lathered flanks to the ostler at the Vaudreuil coaching inn, he would drink an extra glass at dinner and sit up smoking long into the night. Theresa was painfully kind and uncommunicative. She said she felt numb inside.

In the wake of so many shocks, perhaps all she needed—besides country air and moderate exercise—was the passage of uneventful time. Harris would never have begrudged it but for Crane. Theresa unmarried was a competent witness to murder, and Harris encouraged her to lay an information.