The Sister's Tale, Beth Powning [important books to read TXT] 📗

by one of the philanthropic people or organizations. She mentions a lady whose name she may never have known. She…Flora…has been here in Canada for five years and has somehow fallen through the cracks, as it were. I suspect that Maria Rye is the philanthropist responsible. Have you heard of her?”

“Yes.” Josephine had seen pictures of Maria Rye in the newspaper. She was an Englishwoman. The children she brought to Canada were known as “Miss Rye’s girls.”

“She is a bit slipshod in tracking the children, especially those not taken to her distributing home in Niagara-on-the-Lake but dropped in Halifax or St. John.” A log crumbled. He prodded the fire into shape with the poker. “The short of Flora’s story is that she went to a farmer and his wife, who were both killed in a carriage accident.”

“I heard of that accident, on the Mine Hill. Terrible.”

“The girl has no one and so has ended up on the pauper rolls. Hence she is to be sold at auction.”

“She has no one? No friends of the couple who could take her in?”

“No. I tried…”

Harland broke off, leaning forward to peer out a patch of window where the frost ferns were dissolving.

“I begged him not to go out this morning. It is twenty degrees below, I told him.” Harland kept a weather station. Every morning, he raised a flag on the roof of his house so he could see the least twitch of breeze. “It is one and one-half a degree colder on this morning than it has been on any December twenty-third for nine years.”

Josephine craned to see out the window, touched by his concern. Snow rose as from the bristles of an invisible broom; drifted, iridescent in the morning sun. Beyond the expanse of snow-covered lawn, she could see Harland’s elderly father walking down the street, terrier at his heels, the tassels of a paisley shawl flirting with the tops of his boots. The dog scurried, eyes squinted against the cold—reluctant, obedient.

“There’s a reason we call my father The Commodore, you know. He will brook no interruption in his routine. Save for death, as he says.” He watched a moment longer. “Ah, well.” Harland sat back. “No, as far as I can tell, Flora is utterly alone. I managed to find a family to take the girl through Christmas. They will have her until the auction.”

Josephine brought to mind the customary image of a Home Child—“street Arabs,” they were called, assumed to be rough, ill-bred, untrustworthy.

“Why have you come to me, Mr. Fairweather?”

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Galloway, I cannot offer her to you as a servant. By dint of poverty, like any pauper, she has been made a ward of the province. I must beg you to come to the auction…”

She drew back.

“I have never—”

He raised a hand. “I understand. I beg you, nonetheless, to come to that rabble of hard-faced men and I will hear your bid, no matter how softly you may give it, and I will make sure that my gavel comes down for you. I fear for that child. She is…”

He played a few imaginary piano keys with two fingers, looking at the ceiling. A leaf dropped from an aspidistra with a leathery tap.

“You and I have daughters of our own. Flora is fifteen. Despite the evident hardship of her history, despite the lack of…all, you know, that we have given our own daughters…she is an exceptionally beautiful young person. And what those men will—”

“Ah,” Josephine interrupted. She brought the back of one hand to her mouth, closed her eyes and took a long breath. The ticking of the clock, the crackle of the fire—wind-brushed snow spun past the window.

“Yes, Mr. Fairweather. I can find work for her.”

“The auction will be held after Christmas,” he said. He relaxed back into the chair, crossed his legs. “At the train station. I am in your service, I am indeed. You lighten my heart with your kindness.”

“No, no. I have so much. A husband, a family. All of this.” She offered him her home on the palm of her hand. “It is the least I can do.”

The smell of baking gingerbread rose from the kitchen. A maid, carrying linens, came down the stairs, passed through the hall. The ornaments on the Christmas tree turned, borne on invisible currents of sweet-scented air.

—

She stood in the door watching as Mr. Fairweather walked down the drive between shoulder-high snowbanks thrown up by Mr. Dougan’s wooden shovel. Cold thinned her nostrils—like the crisp edges of Ellen’s butter cookies.

Lucy, seventeen, and Maud, fifteen, would soon be walking home from the Pleasant Valley Academy, the daughters of a sea captain, well fortified against the cold in their long wool coats, mittens and fur hats. George, attending the University of Mount Allison College in Sackville, was returning tomorrow on the train.

She watched Harland as he swung firmly down the hill in the direction The Commodore and his dog had been heading—towards home, dinner, family; and she was gripped by her husband’s absence and the dangers he risked. She tried to dismiss fear, although she could not—it remained, dark, dull, tarnishing happiness.

In the parlour, she resumed her seat before the fire. She took Simeon’s last letter from a pile on a marble tabletop and ran her hand over the paper with as much tenderness as if vellum were skin. She unfolded it, read for the fifth time:

My dear Josie,

I write from New York, where I am comfortably installed in The Grand Hotel while “Marianne” is being provisioned. Sailor is curled at my side.

Sailor. His beloved St. John’s water dog.

I have agreed to take six women—a mother and two daughters travelling with servants—to South Carolina. Mrs. Holdwell’s daughter is to be married in Charleston. I told her we would head southwards in the New Year, passing Cape Hatteras and keeping as far east as possible from the Outer Banks. I struggle to complete my crew. It is getting harder to find seasoned seamen than in Uncle N’s day. The first