Aunt furnished. Aunt chose wallpapers, showing a fondness for flock papers in which a pattern stood out from the background in a substance rather like velvet. Aunt chose pictures, spending money in a way that astonished her brother, in the shops of art dealers in Montreal. Aunt selected the subject for the stained-glass window that did not really light the landing on the staircase; it was Landseer’s The Monarch of the Glen, a very choice thing. All of this choosing Aunt called “helping wherever she could, without interfering”.
Aunt’s desire not to interfere influenced the shape of the house, which had a substantial sun parlour attached to the north side that was rarely warmed by any sun. Above the sun parlour was a suite of rooms that was Aunt’s alone. She could go in there and shut the door, she said, and be totally out of the way in her little sitting-room—it was quite big, really—and her bedroom with the little prayer-alcove off it, and her bathroom where she could do things she had to do—by which she implied difficult attentions to her destroyed scalp. Hamish and Marie-Louise need never know she was in the house when they were entertaining, or wanted to be by themselves, as married folk very properly should do.
Busy as a bee, nodding and smiling sweetly, deferring to everybody, Aunt built the house and even chose its name; 26 Scott Street simply would not do, and Aunt proposed St. Kilda, as a lovely name, and a link with Barra. As neither Marie-Louise nor Hamish had any alternative, that was what appeared in the stained-glass fan-light over the front door.
Aunt’s mind, busy as it was, never strayed toward introspection or the making of significant connections. If it had done so she might have wondered why one of her evening prayers was so particularly dear to her—that which ran:
God, who ordainest the services of angels and men in a wonderful order, be pleased to grant our life on earth may be guarded by those who stand always ready to serve thee in heaven.… God, who in thy transcendent providence delightest to send thy holy angels to watch over us, grant our humble petition that we may be safe under their protection, and may rejoice in their companionship through all eternity.
Did Aunt think of herself as one of those divinely appointed guardians and servers? God forbid that she should be guilty of such pride! But beneath what the mind chooses to admit to itself lie convictions that shape our lives.
There had never been any suggestion that Aunt might go with the family on the great expedition to launch Mary-Jacobine upon the world. Aunt did not repine. She knew she was unsightly. Yes, yes, she insisted upon it, and when Marie-Louise or Mary-Jacobine or the Senator protested that it was not so, she would smile sweetly and say, Now dear, you don’t have to be kind. I know what I look like, and I have offered it up.
This business of “offering up” figured largely in Aunt’s religious life. After that terrible affair at Rideau Hall, she had offered up her attachment to Vergile Tisserant, as a sacrifice she hoped would be acceptable at the Heavenly Throne. Before Vergile there had been Joseph Crone, who had decided that he would rather be a Jesuit than Aunt’s husband, and she had offered him up, too. She offered up her ugliness, as an act of acceptance and humility. Oh, Aunt had plenty of gifts for God, and perhaps God was grateful, for He had given her quite a lot of power in her small sphere.
Letters from Marie-Louise and less often from Mary-Jacobine kept her aware of how things were going in England. Neither of the ladies had much gift for writing but—the mother in French, the daughter in English—they tried for as long as they could to keep Aunt informed. But a new kind of life, and new people, so far removed from anything Aunt had known, were not in their power to describe, and the letters grew fewer and briefer.
Aunt accepted this without complaint. She had much to do, maintaining St. Kilda in good order, and keeping the servants up to the mark. These were a Polish housemaid, Anna Lemenchick, who was so short as to be almost a dwarf, but broad beyond the ordinary, and a cook, Victoria Cameron, who was always on the verge of being dismissed because she had a fiery Highland temper and was apt, in the phrase Aunt used, to “kick right over the traces,” if she were crossed. Everything was against Victoria; to begin, she was a Protestant, and there were plenty of Catholic cooks to be had; as well as a temper she had a rough tongue in her head, and gave saucy answers; she was also astonishingly bow-legged, and could be heard all over the house, tramping around the kitchen like a great horse. With these disadvantages it was not surprising that nobody noticed that she had a beautiful dark face, like one of the Spanish Madonnas Aunt admired so whole-heartedly. But who ever heard of a beautiful cook? Victoria’s trump card was that she was by many lengths the best cook in Blairlogie, a natural genius, and the Senator would not hear of letting her go. These, with visits twice a week from Mrs. August, a Pole who did the rough cleaning, made up the indoor staff.
The outdoor staff was all embodied in a drunken detrimental called Old Billy, who cared for and drove the horses, shovelled snow, cut grass, exterminated the flowers, and was supposed to do heavy lifting and any odd jobs that turned up. But Old Billy was a devout Catholic and a noisy repenter of his misdeeds and frequent toots, so it was impossible to get rid of him, grave trial that he was.
It was Aunt who looked after young Mary-Tess when she was home on holiday from the convent. That was easy, for Mary-Tess was a cheerful girl, and skating and tobogganing were her great pleasures. Aunt had little pleasures of her own. There was her music; she played and sang. And there was a weekly visit from the Senator’s mother-in-law, old Madame Thibodeau, a stately lady far gone in fat, who spoke no English but enjoyed a gossip in French, in which Aunt was as fluent as her brother. Old Billy was sent with the barouche, or in winter with the elegant scarlet cutter, to haul her up the hill every Thursday at four, and haul her back again, substantially heavier because of the great tea she had eaten, at half past five. Each month there was a visit from Father Devlin and Father Beaudry, of St. Bonaventura’s; as a guarantee of total chastity, they visited the old maid together, and devoured huge meals in gloomy silence, occasionally punctuated by the more edifying bits of parish news. Irregular and unforeseeable were visits from Dr. J.A.—Dr. Joseph Ambrosius Jerome, the leading Catholic physician of Blairlogie, who kept an eye on Aunt because she was supposed to be frail.
He was by far her liveliest visitor. A little, spare, very dark, grinning man, saturnine in his appearance and alarming in his opinions, he was locally believed to have powers of healing verging on the miraculous. He “brought back” lumbermen who had chopped themselves in the foot with one of their terrible axes and were in danger of blood-poisoning. He sewed up Poles who had decided some obscure point of honour with knives. He saw people through double pneumonia with poultices and inhalations and sheer exercise of his healing power. He told women to have no more babies, and threatened their husbands with dreadful reprisals if this were not so. He blasted out the constipated and salved their angry haemorrhoids with ointments of opium. He could diagnose worms at a glance, and drag a tapeworm from its lair with horrible potions.
If not actually an atheist, the Doctor was known to have dark beliefs nobody wanted to explore. He was rumoured to know more theology than Father Devlin and Father Beaudry clapped together. He read books that were on the Index, some of them in German. But he was trusted, and nobody trusted him more than Aunt.
He understood her case, you see. He knew her nerves as nobody else knew them. He hinted darkly that to be a maiden lady at her age was not altogether a safe thing, and to her terrible embarrassment he sometimes demanded to squeeze her pallid little breasts, and peep up her most secret passage, assisted by a flashlight and a cold tube called a speculum. A man who has done that has a very special place in a virgin’s life. And he teased her. Teased her and taunted her and refused to take her at all seriously; if she had known anything intimate about herself, she would have realized that she loved him. As it was, she knew him as a close, terrifying friend, upon whom she placed the uttermost reliance. He was almost more than a priest—a priest with a strong whiff of the Devi
l about him.
It was to the Doctor that she first confided the news, contained in a letter that had come from Marie-Louise, that Mary-Jim was to be married! Yes, married to an Englishman, a Major Francis Cornish, very much a swell, it appeared. Well, wouldn’t you know that Mary-Jim wouldn’t be long without a husband. Such a lovely girl! And it looked as if they would be coming to Blairlogie to live. We shall have to polish up our manners for the English swell, won’t we? Whatever would he think of such an old auntie as herself—such a figure of fun!
“I dare say it won’t be long before he’ll want to know what’s under that cap,” said the Doctor. “What’ll you tell him, then, Mary-Ben? If he’s a soldier as you say, I suppose he’s seen worse things.” And the Doctor departed, laughing and scooping the remains of the cake-tray into his pocket. It was for some children in the Polish section, but he took care to make it look like greed.
At a later visit, Aunt was bursting with news. They’d been married! Somewhere in Switzerland, apparently. A place called Montreux. And they were going to stay there for a while, on a honeymoon, before coming home. Madame Thibodeau had been delighted; a honeymoon in a French-speaking land seemed somehow to mitigate the Major’s terrible Englishness.
The Senator and Marie-Louise returned to Blairlogie late in the autumn, and were less communicative than Aunt had expected. Very soon, of course, it had to come out—some of it, anyhow. Mary-Jacobine and the Major had been married by the English chaplain in Montreux, in the English Church. Now it’s no good taking it like that, Mary-Ben; the thing’s done, and we can’t change it. We can pray, of course, that he may see the light at last, though I don’t think he’s much of a man for changes. Now, put a good face on it, and stop weeping, because I’ll have to tell Father Devlin, and he’ll tell Father Beaudry, and only God knows what the town will make of it. Yes, I did all I could, and I might as well have saved my breath. I’ll have to tell Mary-Tess, too, what her sister’s done, and believe me I’ll make her understand that there’s to be no more of that sort of thing in this family. Oh, Mother of God, there’ll be Mother Mary-Basil to tell, and that won’t be an easy letter to write; you’ll have to help me. Hamish just takes it like a mule; there’s no getting anything out of him.
The regrettable baby was not brought into the conversation at this point, or later, till at last a telegram came: “My wife delivered of a boy last night. Regards, Cornish.” The telegram came sufficiently late in the year following to still the counting fingers, Aunt’s among them, with which Blairlogie greeted all first children.
Of course the town knew all about it, and supposed much that nobody had told. The local paper, The Clarion, had announced the wedding in a brief piece, without saying anything about the Protestant aspect of the marriage, but as the name of the officiating clergyman was the Rev. Canon White, it was not necessary. There was the spite of that Tory rag for you! They knew that everybody would understand at once. Thank God the proviso number four was still a secret, but how long would that last! Later The Clarion announced the good news of the birth of Francis Chegwidden Cornish, son of Major and Mrs. Francis Chegwidden Cornish; grandson of our popular Senator, the Hon. James Ignatius McRory and Mrs. McRory; and great-grandson of Madame Jean Telesphore Thibodeau. But these were bare bones; rumour supplied ample flesh. The Tory-Scots talked.
You’d have thought the girl could have found a Canadian now, wouldn’t you?—Oh, but nobody’d be good enough. The Senator has made a proper fool of that girl.—What foot d’you suppose he digs with?—Oh, sure to be an R.C. with all that raft of priests and nuns in the family and old Mary-Ben with her holy pictures all over the house (some of them right in the sitting-room, wouldn’t it give you the creeps!)—he couldn’t be anything but an R.C. Not that I ever heard of an Englishman that was.—Anglicans, so far as they’re anything. But somebody told me she met this fella at the Court.—Yes, and more than that, the King himself had a hand in the match—sort of hinted, you know, but that’s just like an order—Well, no doubt we’ll find out soon enough. Not that they’ll be telling me, a Tory through and through. Would you believe it, I’ve lived in Blairlogie for sixty-seven years, and generations before me, and a McRory has never so much as given me a good-day?—They smell the Protestant blood in you, that’s what it is.—Yes, the black drop, they call it.
But at last, more than a year later, Major and Mrs. Cornish and their infant son arrived in Blairlogie on the afternoon train from Ottawa. If ever the town looked well, it did so in autumn, when the maples were blazing, and close watchers said Mary-Jim wept a little as she stepped into the barouche in which Old Billy drove them to St. Kilda. The child was in her arms, in a long shawl. The Major, without hesitation, took the two seats facing forward for himself and his wife, leaving the seats with their backs to Old Billy for the Senator and Marie-Louise. Watchers did not fail to notice that. There was a mass of luggage on the station platform for Old Billy to pick up later—military trunks, metal boxes, and queer-shaped leather cases that might be guns.
When they retired that night, the Major had some questions to ask.
“Precisely who is the old party in the little cap?”
“I’ve told you times without number. She’s my aunt, my father’s sister, and she lives here. It’s her home.”
“Rum old soul, isn’t she? Wants to call me Frank. Well, no harm in that, I suppose. What did you say her name was?”
“Mary-Benedetta, but you’d better call her Mary-Ben. Everybody does.”
“You’re all Mary-Something, aren’t you? Jolly rum!”
“Family Catholic custom. And listen—you’re not the one to talk about caps.”
The Major was applying the special mixture, which smelled like walnuts, to his hair, before he put on the woollen cap that supposedly hugged the dressing to his head and delayed baldness, of which he had a dread.
“Eats a lot for a little ’un, doesn’t she?”
“I’ve never noticed. She has terrible indigestion. A martyr to gas.”
“I’m not surprised. Let’s hope she doesn’t go the way of Jesse Welch.”
“Who was he?”
“I only know his epitaph:
Here lies the body of Jesse Welch
Who died of holding back a belch:
The belch did in his pipes expand
And blew him to the Promised Land.”
“Ah, but Mary-Ben couldn’t belch to save her life. Too much a lady.”
“Well, it had better go somewhere, or—BANG!”
“Don’t be diskie, Frank. Come to bed.”
The Major now did what he always did last thing before going to bed. He removed his monocle, for the first time in the day, polished it carefully, and laid it in a little velvet box. Then he tied on a strap of pink netting which held his moustache in place overnight and enabled it to defy its natural instinct. He climbed into the high bed and took his wife in his arms.
“The sooner we build our own house, the better, wouldn’t you say, old girl?”
“My very thought,” said Mary-Jim, and kissed him. She regarded the moustache-strap as no detriment. It was a conjugal rather than a romantic kiss.
Contrary to probability, during the year past they had become fond of one another. But neither was fond of the child that lay silent in the crib at the foot of the bed.
There was no use delaying the matter, and the next day Dr. J. A. Jerome was asked to take a look at the baby. Dr. Jerome investigating a case was not the jokey, chattering man he was in social meetings, and he did a number of things without speaking. Clapped his hands near the baby’s ear, passed a lighted match before its eyes, poked it here and there and even pinched it, then pinched it again, to make sure he had heard its curious cry. He measured its scalp and probed the fontanelle with a long finger.
“The Swiss man was right,” he said at last. “Now we must see what we can do.”
To the Senator, upon whom he dropped in that night for a dram, he was more communicative.
“
They’ll never raise that one,” said he. “No point in sparing you, Hamish; the child’s an idjit, and the mercy is it won’t live long.”
THE CORNISHES lost no time in building their house on a piece of land that was visible from St. Kilda, being beyond the big house’s garden and across a road. It was not as large as the Senator’s mansion, but it was a large house all the same, and Blairlogie people joked that perhaps the Major intended to take boarders. What did two young people, with one child, want with a house the like of that? It was modern, too, in the manner that passed as modern at the time, and word got around that several of the rooms weren’t meant to have wallpaper, and were plastered in a gritty way that must be intended to take paint. There were a great many windows, too, as if it wasn’t hard enough to heat a house in that climate without having so much glass. It had steam-heating, expensive though it was, and so many bathrooms that the thing was a perfect scandal—bathrooms right off the bedrooms, and a washroom with a toilet in it on the ground floor, so that you couldn’t decently conceal where you were going when you went. Snoopers were not encouraged, though it was the local custom to visit any house during its building, just to see what was going on.
The scandal of the house, however, was minor compared to the scandal of seeing the Major and his wife walking to the Anglican church, most Sunday mornings. That was a slap in the eye for the McRorys, now wasn’t it? A mixed marriage! Just wait till the boy grows up a little. He’ll be an R.C. right enough. The Papists would never let him go.
But the boy was not seen. He was never taken out in his baby-carriage, and when Mary-Jim was asked about him directly, she said he was delicate and needed special care. Probably born with one glass eye, like his father, said the ribald. Maybe he was a cripple, said the people who failed to add that in Blairlogie there were more cripples than he. They would find out, in time.