The Halifax Connection (46 page)

She read to Madame Louise as usual, and listened for a while as the old woman played the piano. Madame seemed melancholy today, and tired. Sylvie wondered if it was fog and memories of shipwreck, or if it was her rheumatism, and the grippe she had had for weeks that would not go away. At one point she stopped playing and kneaded her fingers as though they hurt.

“Do not get old, Sylvie Bowen,” she said. “It’s very bothersome.”

“I’ve never heard it could be prevented, Madame.”

Madame laughed. “I fear you have the right of it, alas. Pour us some more tea, would you please? Now tell me, have you gone down to Tobin’s and read the memorial to Mr. Lincoln?”

“Yes, Madame.”

The old woman nodded. “Tobin has stirred up a tempest in this town, God bless him. ‘We see no acceptable outcome to this war except the restoration of the Union and the destruction of slavery. All real lovers of liberty and of humanity support you in your struggle.’ Brave words, Sylvie, and it’s high time someone stood on his feet and spoke them in public. We let the other side do all the talking for much too long.”

“Harry Dobbs says Tobin will have his nose bloodied for it.”

“By whom?” Madame scoffed. “Harry Dobbs? John Tobin has powerful friends, as many as Al MacNab does, and maybe more.”

On reflection, Sylvie thought this might well be true. The Irish activist was a member of the Nova Scotia assembly, wealthy and respected. Among the scores of signatures on his memorial were many names as distinguished as his own. His nose was probably altogether safe.

“What do you think will happen in Saint John?” Sylvie asked. “At the hearing? Will they send those pirates to the States, do you think?”

“Extradite them? I don’t know. There are always loopholes in the law, if men want to find one, and probably they will. I expect there’s a great deal of talk about it at the Den?”

“They hardly talk about anything else. Some of the Rebels are so angry at us, you’d scarcely believe it. Yesterday one of them called us a nation of snakes. He didn’t know I were just outside, scrubbing the hallway. It’s peculiar, ain’t it? At the start of the war England were doing all sorts of things she shouldn’t have, for the South, things that weren’t neutral at all. Now we’re having second thoughts about it—not doing things for the Yankees, just saying maybe we shouldn’t be doing them for the Rebels, and already they’re calling us backstabbers and betrayers. They were building rams in Liverpool, for heaven’s sake—
rams!
—and the government won’t let the Rebels have them now, and so we’re a nation of snakes.”

“He who is not with me is against me.”

“I suppose so.” Sylvie cupped her tea in both hands. It was hot, and purely delicious. It was such a luxury, she thought, to have real tea, fresh, instead of the used leaves that were sold off from the kitchens of the rich, which was all they could ever afford in England. At the Den, the cook sold theirs. Sylvie wondered who finally used them, if they went to the poorhouse, perhaps, and filled the cup of Dinah Reeve.

Madame’s voice broke her dark speculations. She would be going out soon, she said. Would Sylvie like to choose a book for herself and then Jonathan could drive her home?

“Thank you, Madame, I’d love to have a book. But there’s no need to trouble Jonathan. I can walk back.”

“Not in this fog. It’s nigh as dangerous as the dead of night. Some ruffian could snatch you off the street and no one be the wiser.”

“People are out, Madame. I saw them.”

“No doubt, lass, down by the shops and hotels. Not here. It’s out of the question. Jonathan will take you.”

To Sylvie, this felt like an excess of caution. To Madame, no doubt, it was a matter of being responsible. Either way, it left Sylvie to tell a lie or a truth when she wished to do neither.

There was no point in the lie. She would never be able to sustain
it. More importantly, she did not want to. Louise Mallette had always been good to her; it would be shabby to pay her back with lies.

“I am being met, Madame.”

The woman went absolutely still. Even her lips scarcely moved when she spoke. “Met?”

“Yes. By a friend. I’ll be perfectly safe.”

“A
gentleman?”

Sylvie wanted very much to look at her hands, or at the window, or the fine furniture. She did not. “Yes, Madame.”

“And does this gentleman have a name?”

“He is Erryn Shaw.”

“As I thought.”

“Please, Madame, I knew you’d disapprove, which is why I never spoke of it. But he’s never been anything but good to me! He’s been a true friend, and I have so few!”

“Yes. That’s precisely the trouble, that we have so few friends. Loneliness is the bane of every woman’s soul. I trust God understands it as well as I do. Come, Sylvie Bowen, don’t look at me as though I were the hangman. I disapprove indeed. I think you are a great fool. But my father railed at me and locked me in my room, and all he did was make me headstrong. So …” She made as if to smile, but she did not manage it. She looked wearier and more melancholy than before, as though the world had suddenly and bitterly disappointed her. Again.

“So I’ll say only this. It is very rare for a man of Mr. Shaw’s background to marry a woman of yours—not absolutely unheard of, but very rare indeed. Do not judge by the Danners. Mr. Danner was only a shopkeeper’s son with four years of schooling when he married Miss Susan. The gap between them was tiny compared to yours. I hope you are not using it for a measure.”

“I am not, Madame.”

“No. Perhaps not.” She sighed faintly. “Well, go fetch yourself a book, lass. And Sylvie?” She got to her feet, slowly, majestically.
“I’ve always thought well of you, since the first day I met you. You have a future here, a simple one, but decent and secure; you can live the rest of your life at peace with man and God. I should be very sorry to see you throw that away.” She paused and added softly, “I helped at the City Mission for years, you know. I’ve seen the alternatives.”

“I understand, Madame.”

“No.” The old woman shook her head. “No, lass, you don’t. No one ever does, until it’s much too late.”

“W
ELL, MY HEART
,” Erryn said, “it’s too foggy to walk, too early to sup, and too cold to sit under a tree. Shall we go and have tea?”

She said tea would be lovely, and smiled at him as their carriage rumbled gently into the fog. He seemed in the best of spirits, and he looked well at last. The ashen pallor was gone from his face and the brightness back in his eyes. “You’re all better,” she said.

“Oh, much,” he agreed, “except for a nasty scar and some very bad memories. And what of you, Sylvie? A week is such a long time not to see you. Are you well?”

A week is such a long time not to see you.
Sweet words, she thought, but ever so slightly hollow. In the six weeks since he had been back, he could have come to the Den a time or two, to visit. He knew the maids were not permitted to go out except on their half day, but they could have a bit of company of an evening if
their work was done. He had never come, not even once. Unwillingly, she thought of Madame’s words, not as a moral or a practical warning, but as a reminder of her social place.
The gap between the Danners is tiny compared to yours …

And he seemed inclined to keep it so. In Montreal they had spoken sometimes of themselves, of things they feared or valued in the world. Now, increasingly, he spoke of things that touched him only distantly or not at all: his life at Eton, or people he had known in England, or funny, silly stories to make her laugh. He encouraged her appetite for knowledge; he would explain the workings of a man-o’-war or the habits of a snowshoe hare, or anything else in the practical world she might be curious about. But she knew little of how he spent his time when he was not with her. If he had close friends here, she had no idea who they were. She had asked him once about his mate who kept the spiders, and he only shrugged. “Oh, we’re not mates anymore, haven’t been for years.”

He was sealing his life away from her, treating their time together more and more as play—as an escape, she supposed, from the world where he really belonged, a world where she had no place.

All of this was perfectly predictable; she had expected nothing else. Yet sometimes, when they held each other, she believed that she was precious to him in spite of it; a diversion, perhaps, but one he wanted very much.

It could not all be acting, could it?

Most times when they went for supper, he took her to Corey’s, a plain little eatery on Hollis Street, where the food was delicious, plentiful, and cheap, and where he always had a table set aside for them in a quiet wedge at the back. But Corey’s was not open for afternoon tea, so they went to Compain’s fine hotel. It was as lush
and elegant as she remembered it, the chandeliers already lit against the fog, and all the silver glistening.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“A
little,” she admitted. She knew if she said yes, he would think her starving and order everything in the place. They settled on bits of lamb in pastry puffs, and something called paté that she had never tasted before but that Erryn said was wonderfully good; with a small carafe of wine, and sweets. The tea came in a great china pot. He was just lifting it to pour when the voice of a woman caught them both unawares—a young woman, dressed to the very nines, with rich chestnut hair falling to her shoulders. She swept toward their table like a princess, accompanied by a young couple as elegant as herself. Sylvie had seen her only once before, briefly, through a dining-room doorway, but she recognized her at once: Isabel Grace Orton.

“Why, Mr. Shaw. What a marvellous surprise.”

Erryn put the teapot back on its pad and rose smoothly to his feet.

“Miss Isabel, good afternoon. How nice to see you. You look perfectly divine, but then you always do.”

Well, she did, Sylvie thought, and no one could deny it. Isabel Orton had the peach-perfect face artists dreamt of, flawless, symmetrical, winsome with youth, and yet proud, the face of a lady with a place in the world. Sylvie could well understand why she was pursued by half the young bloods in town.

Erryn was gracious and at ease, as most always, and yet Sylvie sensed he would have preferred to avoid this encounter. He introduced the two women, and then Isabel introduced her companions, a brother and sister, two of her cousins visiting from Saint John.

“Welcome to Halifax,” Erryn said. “I trust you’re enjoying our fine city—what you can see of it, that is?”

“Oh, very much,” the young man said. “How could I not? We’re being treated like royalty. Everyone feels sorry for us and invites us to everything.”

The two men chatted briefly. Miss Isabel offered a few appropriate pleasantries, but her eyes scavenged everything of Sylvie she could see: the plain rubber boots and rough woollen dress; the cloak no servant girl could possibly afford; the scars that even loose hair could not hide entirely in daylight. She would have heard, if only in passing, about Susan Danner’s new chambermaid, the one with the dreadful face.

“I fear we must be off,” she said, “or we’ll keep our host waiting. Mr. Shaw, how nice to see you again. Papa spoke of you just this morning. I must tell him I saw you.”

The young man held out his hand. “It was a pleasure, Mr. Shaw. Perhaps we’ll see you at the club on Sunday?”

“Perhaps.”

“I’ll look forward to it. Miss Bowen, good afternoon.”

Isabel seemed to float rather than walk, weaving among the tables and out into the foyer and away. Yet she floated quickly, almost hurrying her companions, as if she could not wait to tell them.
You won’t
believe
who that creature is, sitting there with Mr. Shaw!

“I didn’t know you knew the Ortons,” Sylvie said noncommittally.

“It’s a theatre connection, mostly. In a garrison town, the officer corps are among the theatre’s best patrons—and some of its best amateur performers too. They always put on a production of some sort every winter. In fact they’re doing another one this year, even though we have no theatre. They’re using the Masonic Hall. The Ortons are very much part of that circle. So yes, I know them all.”