“Well, Doctor, I hear you’re working wonders on the islands. People say you can cure anything from a toothache to smallpox. Next thing you know, someone will say you can raise the dead.”

As sometimes happens, everyone had stopped talking and her words fell into the resulting vacuum. We all looked at Dr. Dexter. A series of expressions passed over his face – fear (I’m sure I saw fear), anger, determination, and a kind of willed stillness. He grew pale, then flushed.

“I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, Miss McGregor,” he said, “but I can assure you that any cures I have effected were accomplished in conventional ways – surgery, drugs and time. Above all, time. So often, people ascribe to the workings of time and the healing powers of their own bodies a miraculous power. As for the dead, I leave them in peace.” He got up and went to the window, and stood looking north to where the waters of the Gulf of Georgia sparkled in the summer sun.

Lucy shrugged. “Whatever you say. I’m just passing along what I’ve heard. And from more than one person,” she added, but he did not turn around or speak. I glanced toward Andre, and saw him watching Dr. Dexter with a worried look on his face. Then he turned to the rest of us and made a smile, speaking in his French-accented voice that took me back to my Montreal childhood.

“Alex, I almost forgot – the model of the sailboat I was making at Christmas. It is finished now, if you want to see. In the workshop.” Alex jumped up and followed him out of the house. I stood up too. “We should be going soon. You’ll want to have your lunch, and we’d better get back over the crossing before it’s too late.”

As I left the house with Lucy, I could hear Peter McGregor asking Dr. Dexter something about his boat. His voice when he replied sounded almost normal. The awkward moment, it seemed, had passed.

We made the crossing just in time. Already there were a few places where the water was more than ankle deep on Alex. Dr. Dexter helped him over these spots and offered me his hand once or twice, to steady my landings. His grip was cool and firm, and his arm stronger than I expected.

I had decided we should have our picnic lunch on the headland that formed the northern extremity of Bellefleur Island. We spread the tablecloth on the thin grass, already turning brown, that clung to the rock.

“It’s good to see Andre so content," Dr. Dexter remarked, as we laid out the food. "The job seems to agree with him.”

“The job or the company,” I said. “He and Miss McGregor seem to have developed a rapport.”

“Do you think so?” Those grey eyes widened with surprise, but was it real or artificial? “That’s an interesting notion.”

Behind us the ground sloped upward and, several hundred yards away, one great old fir towered above the surrounding trees. Its top had been broken off in a storm long before, and among its upper branches was an eagle’s nest – a great untidy mass of sticks about the size of a large bed. Generations of the great birds had hatched and reared their young here. At the foot of the tree was the detritus of years –feathers, droppings and neat pellets of digested bones, fur and hair. During the nesting season it was a firm rule of Captain Bellgarde’s that no one should go too close to the nest, or cause disturbance to the birds in any way. It wasn’t necessary therefore, for me to caution Alex not to shout or throw stones.

We were seriously occupied in demolishing the sandwiches Mrs. Dudson had provided, when we were rewarded by the sight of one of the eagles bringing a fish to the nest. It was quite a large fish, and its arrival caused a great deal of rejoicing among the recipients. “There are three chicks this year,” I said. “It must take a lot of fish to keep them happy.”

“They’re having lunch too,” said Alex. “Raw fish. Ugh. I’d rather have another sandwich, Mum, if there is one.”

We ended the meal with currant buns and apples. Dr. Dexter, I noticed, carefully cut his apple into quarters, using a knife he took from one of his pockets and extracting the core from each piece. Instead of putting the knife away when he was finished, he held it up by the blade and said, “See that branch sticking up from the log over there?” He pointed to a drift log some twenty feet away, with a thick stub of a branch pointing skyward. Not waiting for a reply, he made a quick movement of his wrist and let the knife fly. It sparkled through the sunlit air and buried itself in the branch he had indicated, with a faint but audible ‘thock.’

Alex looked at him with undisguised admiration. “Wizard!” he said. “Can you do that every time, or was that a fluke?”

“Well, let’s see,” said Dr. Dexter. “If you run and fetch the knife, I’ll try it again.”

He made several more throws, always hitting the mark. I noticed that he threw with his left hand; until now, I hadn’t realized that he was left-handed. Of course, Alex demanded to be taught the trick, and I left them to it while I cleared away the remains of the picnic. Although occupied with repacking the basket, I couldn’t help overhearing snatches of their conversation.

“Is this a special knife, Dr. Dexter?”

“It balances well and the weight is distributed so that when it’s thrown it reliably falls point first. But that’s all that’s special about it.”

“Do you throw it very often?”

“Only for fun sometimes, like today. Mostly I use it for apples and string and so on. Or to sharpen pencils.”

“Oh. Have you ever used it to cut someone open?”

“No, unless you count an emergency tracheotomy I had to do on a sailor once. He was choking on a piece of banana that had gone down the wrong way.”

“What’s a tracheotomy?”

“That’s when you cut someone’s throat. Carefully, of course, to remove an obstruction in the windpipe.”

“Wizard! Does blood spurt all over?”

“Only if you do it wrong. That was good. You’re getting there. Try it again. Use your wrist like I showed you. That’s very good.”

I remembered how I had once cautioned Dr. Dexter not to believe everything Alex said. Now I wondered whether I should extend a similar warning to my son about some of the doctor’s statements. Also, I would have to make it perfectly clear to him that no knives were to be thrown in the house, or at any living being.

“I can do it!” said Alex, as the two of them came back from where they had been practicing. “I can hit a log at ten feet, and get it to stick in every time. Well, almost every. There’s a trick to it. Mum, I can show you too, if you like.”

“Thank you, Alex, but I don’t think I need to learn knife-throwing at my age. I’m not likely to become a pirate or join a circus.”

“But Dr. Dexter isn’t a pirate or in a circus, and he’s really good at it,” said Alex, who never wanted to let go of a subject for purely diplomatic reasons.

“I must say it isn’t a skill I find absolutely essential,” said the doctor, who, as I knew by now, could be very diplomatic indeed when it suited him. “But it’s entertaining at times.”

 

Reluctant to do anything strenuous so soon after lunch, Dr. Dexter and I decided to have a rest before starting for home. He stretched out on the grass, while I propped my back against a sun-warmed rock and closed my eyes.

“This is good,” I heard him say, after a little while. “I haven’t had a day like this for so long I’d forgotten what it’s like. Thank you, Mrs. Bellgarde, for suggesting it.” A short silence followed, broken only by the crying of a gull overhead. Then he said,

“It is gratifying to find that one’s sacrifice has borne fruit, is it not?”

It took me a moment to engage my mind with this question, lulled nearly to sleep as I was by the sun, the small breeze and the faint sound of waves lapping against the shore. He may have been speaking for a while, and I had not heard.

I opened my eyes and looked first to see where Alex was – there, a little way down the beach, busy with a long stick.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Dexter, I was nodding off. I think I mustn’t have heard your question properly.”

Instead of repeating it, he said, “It's obvious to me that you’re a devoted mother. And I think your devotion has been rewarded. Your son appears to be a happy child.”

“Yes, I think he is. But why did you mention sacrifice just now?”

“I was being presumptuous. I meant merely that your choosing to live here, with all the attendant restrictions, must have been a sacrifice of sorts.”

“But that surely depends on one’s likes and dislikes. For a hermit to live in the midst of the social whirl would be a sacrifice. And we're not exactly cut off, here on Bellefleur. Sometimes I think the whole world makes its way to our door.”

“True.” He threw me one of his lightning-quick glances before returning to his contemplation of the sky. “But I'm guessing you didn't know that when you made your choice to stay here.”

“No, but the choice wasn't an irrevocable one. At any time I could have changed my mind, gone to Victoria or back to Montreal, or anywhere.” As I spoke, I was taken back to the bleak time after Richard’s death. I hadn't seen a wealth of choices before me then. But had it really been a sacrifice? “I don’t see my life as a sacrifice, Dr. Dexter.”

He did not reply. I almost thought he had fallen asleep, except his eyes were open. Then he spoke again, as though to the sky.

“There was a woman once,” he said, “who had an unhappy marriage. Her husband no longer found her desirable, or even useful. She left him, which was perhaps not altogether surprising, but she also left her eight-year-old son. She ran away, seeking something for herself – freedom, happiness, excitement, love. I do not know if she found any of those things. I think her life wasn't a happy one, and I know it ended in a way most people would consider sad and shameful. Her son never understood how she could have loved him and done as she did. Sometimes I think it was her desertion of him that led to his death. But at other times I have other explanations. Mrs. Bellgarde, can you think of any reason you would go away from Bellefleur and leave Alex behind?”

I managed to speak, even though I felt as though there was an obstruction in my throat.

“I can’t imagine one. Perhaps if I was in great danger, but it would have to be a danger that did not threaten him too… No, I can’t imagine a situation like that. This woman, was she someone you knew?”

“Yes,” he replied, as though from a great distance. “But not well enough…”

“Dr. Dexter,” I said. “Francis. That is a very sad story. I'm sorry.”

“There's no need for that,” he said, sitting up. He got to his feet and walked to the edge of the water, where he stood looking out to sea. I got up too and went to find Alex, who by now was quite a long way off. When I had managed to close a little of the distance between us, I called out to get his attention. “Come back, Alex, it’s time to go home!” After a few minutes of calling and waving, he came running up.

“Must we go? I was going to show Dr. Dexter the Pirate’s Cave and that bay where you can find the best rocks. You know, the black ones with the white stars in them.”

“Some other time, perhaps. We told your grandfather we’d be back in time for tea. And it’s a long walk.”

By this time, Dr. Dexter had joined us, carrying the picnic basket. I was relieved to see that he looked his usual self. As we climbed the steep hill from the crossing place, I could not help thinking about the story he had told. He had used no names. It had been a recitation as unembellished as a case history, but I didn't doubt that it was his own. So that was the tragedy I had sensed in his background – his wife had left him and their son, and the son had died soon afterward, of some cause that could be attributed to her departure. An illness or accident which might not have happened had the child’s mother been present? He must blame himself, I thought, as well as his errant spouse. It must have been something of a scandal, too, as well as a personal misfortune. I wondered what his wife’s ‘sad and shameful’ end had been. Had she run away with another man, and died in some sordid way? Perhaps she had been murdered…

I realized that I had fallen behind, that Alex and Dr. Dexter were out of sight around a bend in the road, and almost out of hearing. Feeling unaccountably weary, I paused for a rest where a mossy path diverged from the road.

It had been months since I had followed it, but the moss preserved the marks of the many times my feet had trodden this way. For all I knew, I wasn't the only one. Alex and his friends, the Captain’s men, any of them could have used the path. But I did not know that, nor did anyone else know that I came here. The spring was one of my few secrets, and for me it was the very heart of Bellefleur Island.

I had first come upon it soon after Richard’s death. Through a mist of tears I saw something golden in the moss, a little way from the road. Curious in spite of myself, I went toward it, only to find a group of mushrooms. We had had a spell of warm rainy weather, and mushrooms had sprung up all over the island. But that was the first time I’d seen this kind. I admired their glowing, golden-yellow perfection, marvelled at the way they had sprung complete from the earth.

Beyond them, the ground fell into a hollow, with rocks bulging from its far side among clumps of sword ferns. A gleam of water beneath the wide-spreading skirts of a cedar tree attracted my attention. I went toward it, bending my steps around a huge fallen trunk half-buried in the earth, with several different kinds of mosses growing on it like a blanket. Ridges of bark and other extrusions on its surface made it look, in the dim green light, like two human bodies locked in an embrace that would end only when the substance of which they were made was reduced to fragments by time. A dead thing, yet on it lived mosses and ferns, huckleberry bushes, even a young fir tree.

The hollow was deeper than it looked. It took several visits before I found the stones beneath the moss that held me without shifting. At the bottom was a small pool of clear water, which reflected the surrounding green of trees and ferns. The stones, furred with moss and the lacy maidenhair ferns, appeared to have been placed with careful deliberation, another example of nature's careless perfection.

The pool itself was only a foot or two across. Sand grains danced in its depths, proclaiming it a spring – living water, not a stagnant puddle of old rain. A tiny stream trickled through the rocks, meandering eastward down the slope to find its way to the beach below, where it made a mysterious dripping in the grotto that Alex called the Pirate’s Cave.

I leaned over the pool, delighted by its hidden perfection. My face looked back at me, its normal colour changed to a watery green. A water creature, a nymph who was also a twin of myself.

“Do you care that Richard is dead?” I asked her. Her lips moved, smiling; a look in her eyes spoke of secrets. She whispered words I could not understand. Suddenly afraid, I pulled away, scrambled up the side of the hollow, and made my way back to the road.

I had visited the spring regularly since then, in all weathers and seasons. Nearby I found flowers that grew nowhere else on the island – lady’s slipper orchids, rein-orchids, queen’s cups and pink fawn lilies. I had not experienced again the eeriness of my first visit, which I ascribed to my grief-stricken state at the time.

Not wanting to see the place violated, I had not spoken of it to anyone. The last thing I wanted was that it should be turned into a source of water for cattle or crops, disturbed by excavations and pipes, with men’s boots tearing the mosses and destroying the mystery.

 

My steps slowed even more while I was lost in these memories, and I had fallen far behind my two companions. For all I knew they were nearly home, and soon would realize I wasn’t close behind. I snapped out of my reveries and began to run, but didn’t get very far before I saw Alex running toward me.

“Where were you, Mum?” he cried. I could tell he was more frightened than annoyed, and felt a rush of guilty love.

“I’m all right,” I said. “I got to daydreaming and forgot to keep going. I’m sorry.”

By this time, Dr. Dexter had joined us. “You must be tired,” he said. “It’s for me to apologize, Mrs. Bellgarde. I should have realized.”

“Well, I’m here now,” I said, trying to sound brisk and cheerful. “And we’re not even late.”

“But we could have been,” said Alex, reproachfully, taking a firm hold of my hand.

The Captain was waiting for us in the drawing room, a little impatient but trying not to show it, because, after all, we weren’t really late. Despite Dr. Dexter’s reassurances that he was in better health than might be expected for a man with his heart condition, I thought he was being more careful with himself, managing his strength as carefully as he managed his lands and livestock.

“So, how was the picnic?” he asked. “Did you get over to the lighthouse? You look tired, Maggie,” he added. “Sit down here by me and don’t fuss. Mrs. D. and Betty have everything in hand.”

“Granddad, we had a rippingly good time,” said Alex. “Lucy’s going to show me how to row better. Then we’ll have a race, rowing around the island. And Andre finished that model sailboat he’s been working on; it’s a beauty. And we saw the eagle bring a fish to the nest. And Dr. Dexter showed me how to throw a knife, like pirates do, really—“

He ran out of breath, and his grandfather asked, “Throw a knife? At whom? Where did you learn that, Doctor?”

“In medical school, actually,” said Dr. Dexter. “It was the fashionable thing for us students to do in our idle moments.”

Captain B. gave a laugh. “That’s a good one,” he said. “Well, Alex, you’ll have to show me how it works. But outside, and after tea.”

Betty arrived just then with the tea, followed by Mrs. Dudson and two platters of provender. I busied myself with pouring out. Plates were handed around, and we fell to as greedily as though the picnic had been a week ago, instead of a few hours.

“So, Doctor,” said the Captain, “did Maggie teach you all about the flora of our island? Latin names and all, I have no doubt.”

“She’s a very good botanist,” said Dr. Dexter, smiling. “And yes, Latin names too. I have been dutifully memorizing them all day. Arbutus menziesii, Symphoricarpos albus, Rosa nutkana. How am I doing, Mrs. Bellgarde?”

“Splendidly,” I said. “I must admit, I sometimes hesitate to say the Latin out loud. So often, there’s someone eager to jump in and correct one’s pronunciation. ‘No, my dear, the accent should fall on the first syllable.’ That sort of thing.”

“Oh, I don’t bother myself about those niceties. But then, I have no pretensions to being a Latinist. I… had a friend once, who was a student of the classics. He didn’t usually trouble to correct my mispronunciations, though, except for the most atrocious ones. But I would see him wince from time to time.”

“A fellow physician, was he, this friend?” said the Captain, holding out his cup for more tea.

“No, a librarian, actually, at Mis – at Harvard College. Captain Bellgarde, I can quite understand your determination to retain ownership of the Barnacle. It’s a glorious spot – like the prow of a ship to the rest of the island.”

The Captain beamed. “You’ve got it exactly right. I thank you for reminding me of that, because it looks like the whole wretched business is starting up again. Oh yes, Maggie,” he said, in response to my inquiring look. “I had a letter last week. Six paragraphs of inflated verbiage that boiled down to this – the Dominion Government is laying claim to the Barnacle (only they called it Hodges Rock), because it's the site of an aid to navigation and associated structures. So I’ll be going into town soon to recruit lawyers for a new fight.”

Alex, having devoured a number of sandwiches, two rock buns and a butter tart, and bored with grown-up talk, excused himself and went off to find some of his friends. They would be immersed in their boys’ doings until dusk.

“If Tuesday suits you, Captain, you may come with me,” said Dr. Dexter. “I’m taking Ariel, just for the day. I’ve scheduled a couple of operations, but should be able to get away for home by late afternoon.”

“Thank you, I believe I’ll take advantage of your offer. Nowadays I find home away from home to be unsatisfactory. Much better to be here with you all.”

He sighed and once again I thought, He’s getting old. It’s too bad he has to start this struggle over the lighthouse all over again. But then, perhaps that’s one of the things that keeps him going.

The three of us lingered over the remains of the meal. At Captain B.’s insistence, Dr. Dexter and I agreed to a glass of sherry, although I feared it would make me sleepier than I already was. But I knew how much he valued this peaceful time of lazy conversation. “The hour of civilized living,” he called it.

He picked up the newspaper and read out bits he found interesting, or thought we would. “Premier Oliver is ill again. Pity. He’s the only politician that understands farming. Of course, he's a farmer himself. I certainly hope he gets better.”

A few minutes later he found another item of interest. “Listen to this – the Aquarian Foundation is moving to De Courcy Island. You know – that lunatic that calls himself Brother Twelve. It seems he’s attracted enough rich women to his outfit that he can buy the island outright. What is it about the fellow, I wonder? Do you have any idea, Margaret?”

“None. From what I’ve seen of him there’s nothing about the man that would induce me to go racing up to De Courcy, money in hand. I suppose it must be charisma, whatever that is.”

“Charisma. Hmph. That’s only a fancy name for sweet talk and lies. Mark my words, those ladies will regret throwing in their lot with the fellow. And throwing away their cash too!”

Dr. Dexter had never heard of the mysterious Brother Twelve and his Aquarians. Captain B. gave him a colourful account, not omitting his personal speculations as to the true motives of the Foundation’s leader.

“Money and sex, pure and simple,” he concluded. “That’s what most crimes seem to boil down to, after all.”

“Many, perhaps,” said Dr. Dexter, “but surely not all. I’d like to think that human nature is more complex than that.”

The Captain snorted. “We’re talking about criminals here, Dexter. The criminal mind isn’t all that complex, to my way of thinking. Hm, here’s a shocker – some fellow in Vancouver’s been convicted for killing his pal in a fight, and sentenced to death. ‘Acts of gross indecency,’ it says here. Oh, and it was a ‘crime of passion.’ It seems he killed the other fellow in a fit of jealousy. Now what the devil is that – ‘gross indecency’? Why don’t they just say it plainly – he caught the other guy with his girlfriend, or whatever it was. But really – sentenced to death, just because of a fight. That seems heavy to me.”

“Excuse me, Captain Bellgarde,” said Dr. Dexter, “from my understanding of the term ‘gross indecency’ as it’s used in law, there would have been no female involved in this crime of passion. The wrong sex, if you understand me.”

The Captain gave him a hard look. “Buggery, eh? Something like that Oscar Wilde fellow in the last century, you mean? Forgive my language, Maggie,” he added. He had gone a little pink.

“I suppose it must be something like that, yes,” said Dr. Dexter.

“Well, it takes all kinds to make a world, I suppose, but you have to wonder what the purpose of that kind might be. The stock’s getting weak. The best ones were killed in the War, I guess, and now all these degenerates are turning up. Well, maybe execution isn’t such a bad idea – best to weed out the abnormal types. What do you think, Dexter? As a medical man?”

“As a medical man, I have no opinion. My business is with physical illness.”

“Ah, so you think this is a mental abnormality?”

Dr. Dexter shrugged. “Some are of that opinion. I don’t know that it can be called an illness of any sort, mental or physical. I see this as a failure of society to define what is acceptable in private, and so no business of the state.”

“You are a liberal, Doctor.”

“I suppose I am, in some ways. Does that trouble you, Captain?”

“I look at what a man does, not what he believes.”

“And has that attitude always done well by you? Does it make a difference if a wrongdoer is a friend of yours, or… some Chinaman, for example?”

“Well, it’s easier to make an accurate judgment about someone you know. With foreigners, you just can’t tell. Their minds don’t work the same way.”

I soon lost the thread, not from ignorance or lack of interest, but through sheer weariness. Watching the two of them trade arguments, I wondered once more about Francis Dexter. How far did his liberal ideas extend? How great was the separation for him, between beliefs and actions?

 

Whether it was the sherry or the unaccustomed exercise I had taken that day, the night brought me a vivid dream, so vivid that I awoke, startled to find myself in my own bedroom. Having reassured myself that all was as it should be, I thought about the dream, trying to fix it in my memory and analyze it.

It was not a nightmare, not like the terrible vision of Richard as a living corpse from years before. But this dream, too, was one of moonlight.

I was walking in a wood. Bright moonlight falling through the trees made a chiaroscuro pattern around me, but I was able to find my way by following a little stream. There it was, now darkly sinuous, now gleaming silver. I had to find the source, for the sake of the child.

He held my hand as we glided over rocks and undergrowth, fallen logs and mossy hummocks. It was as though we had left our bodies behind, and had only to make the motions of walking, for our feet never touched the ground. No twigs snapped in the silvered darkness, nothing hindered our steps. The ground rose gently before us, but no extra effort was needed to climb the slope.

Here was the thickest part of the wood. Far ahead I could see a glimmer of moonlight falling through an opening in the trees, reflected in the little pool.

“Come along, Alex,” I said. “It’s not far now.”

“My name isn’t Alex, Mother. Why do you call me that? Why didn’t you take me with you, when you went away?”

It wasn’t my son’s voice, but a stranger's. Such a cold little voice, and so lonely. Surely he was younger than Alex’s eleven years? I turned and looked at him, but could see only a vague outline in the darkness. His hand in mine was small and cold. “Come along,” I said again.

Time passed, or perhaps no time passed, and we were in the moonlit hollow. Rocks and ferns were made of silver. The spring was a moon mirror, lying at our feet. “Here it is,” I said. “Look, this is the place.” I drew him toward me and knelt at the edge of the pool. Now the moonlight illuminated him fully, and I saw that it was not Alex – this was a boy not yet ten years old, slight and delicate, his hair pale silver in the moonlight. He seemed made of silver, even his eyes were the colour of the moonlit water. They regarded me with a resigned sorrow that nearly broke my heart. “Here,” I said again. “Look.”

I bent over the water, and the child beside me did the same. There in the moon mirror I saw our faces together – our silver hair, our silver eyes. Of course this was my son. How could I have thought otherwise? I put my arm around him, held him close to me. “I’m with you now,” I said. “Mio caro bambino, my love will always be with you.”

 

*******

 

From the Diary

June 30, 1927

 

I have before me a handful of pebbles under the light as I write this. Some are the colour of bruised flesh, others dark green or black, or mixtures of colours impossible to describe, veined like the finest capillaries. Each was torn from its matrix, millennia ago, and rolled by endless seas, thrown against others, rounded and polished to a degree I find astonishing. When I first studied them, here in the lamplight, I thought: here is perfection without design, proof that the world works upon things and incidentally brings them to goodness, without an artificer’s hand.

But is it really so? Perhaps with these pebbles, yes, but that is only my subjective observation, without proof. And it is rather pathetic, is it not, that I should be reduced to looking at a handful of rocks for reassurance?

Here is the ultimate irony, even to one who is a connoisseur of ironies – that I, who once was a hairsbreadth away from divining the secret of life and death, should, by my own choice have thrown away that secret; that the act of entering the mystery myself so altered my abilities that I can no longer find it again.

Of course, if I let myself, I could perhaps become a kind of medical conjuror, curing people on a stage before an admiring crowd. A ‘medicine show,’ indeed! Except that I can’t count on it. It happens only occasionally, and I know neither the day nor the hour. So what use is it to me?

Francis Dexter, you may be content to live among these farmers and fishermen and lumberjacks, patching them up when they shoot themselves or each other, or slice themselves open with axes, or break their limbs in their struggles to break the land. You may find satisfaction in whelping their brats and helping them through their final gasps. How many gall bladders and appendixes will you remove, before you get bored? How many times will you happily accept fish or sacks of potatoes in payment, or assurances that you will be prayed for? That’s a good one, isn’t it? ‘We’ll remember you in our family prayers, Doctor.’ Do you really value that? And you conduct them even to Death’s door, and send them through it with assurances that all will be well and all things will be exceedingly well, even when you, of all the creatures of earth, should know otherwise. If you enjoy hypocrisy so much, why not become a complete hypocrite, get yourself ordained and exercise a false authority in the spiritual world as well as the physical?

Now you have turned yourself into this landowner’s servant – you live in his guesthouse, take tea at his table when it suits him to include you, act as a tutor to his grandson. And you even – oh, I laughed at this! – make pastry for a woman of privilege who could not be bothered to arrange her affairs better. Will you end by being her pet, Francis? You nearly spilled your guts to her today, didn’t you? – nearly told her the beginning of your sad story. Don’t you realize that once you start to blab, there will be no end to it? Next thing you know, she’ll own you, just like Milburn did. But if you talk too much you’ll kill the goose that lays the eggs. Of course, she's a widow, and probably so starved for it by now that she won’t realize she’s getting an inferior product. Why not? If the pastry cook and country sawbones can manage to make himself into the lady’s consort and guardian of the estate, he’ll be doing well.

At least you’ve had the sense to keep this diary safely locked up. It would be most unwise to let Mrs. B. or the good Captain get their hands on it.

Oh, where does all this come from? Why this bitterness in my heart, this absolute conviction that I have thrown away all that is good and left myself only the dregs? What was the worst error, the gravest loss – the formula, or my dearest friend (without whom I would not be writing this in the first place?)

Here is that pain again – like a fire that torments but does not consume. At least I am used to it. If only it would burn up the bitterness, the weariness, the hatred. Or kill me, even. But it doesn’t seem to matter whether I punish the body or not – the pain still rages when it will. Well, let it rage then.

Alex is right – the black pebbles with the white stars are the most beautiful. They are made of the hardest substance and are the brightest, but must be subjected to the longest ordeal to achieve their perfection. How much of themselves must they lose, to the lathe of the world?

If pebbles are all I have, they will have to do.

 

Chapter 13

 

As the Captain had foreseen, some shift in the bureaucracy of the Department of Marine provoked a new claim by the Government and new efforts to defend his ownership of the lighthouse. This struggle took the same form as previous ones had – letters, visits by officials, bureaucrats and politicians, in Victoria or on Bellefleur. Once, after an especially large delegation had spent several days with us, the Captain became angry.

“It gets my goat that on top of wasting my time, these fellows should expect me to put them up and feed them, while they get set to bleed me white,” he grumbled. “I’m almost certain that when they see a spell of good weather ahead, they say to each other, ‘What about that Bellefleur business? We need to meet with Bellgarde again to discuss a few points.’ And so they arrive – five of them this time, the gall of it! – and impose on us. I’ve a mind to send the Minister of Marine a bill for board and lodging!”

But at least this business seemed to renew the old man's energies, even while I worried that it might endanger his health. Francis reassured me on this point. "Everyone needs a purpose in life. Don't worry about Captain Bellgarde, Margaret. I'm watching over him."

 

Although in many ways Francis was as familiar to me as a member of my own family, I really did not know him well, even after nearly three years. I still knew nothing about his childhood, his family, or exactly what had brought him to the west coast.

What did I know? He was from New England, most likely from Boston. He never seemed to be particularly concerned about money, which suggested that he was not dependent on his practice for his livelihood. Many of his patients paid him late, or in goods rather than cash, or not at all. In fact, I suspected that he subsidized the practice, rather than deriving an income from it.

Almost none of his mail was of a personal nature. Banks, medical and scientific journals and other physicians seemed to be his only correspondents. Occasionally he would vanish for a few days, or as long as a week, telling us only that he was off to Vancouver or Seattle and had made arrangements with a colleague to cover any emergencies in his absence. But he would never tell us anything more about these trips.

He would play golf or chess with the Captain to jolly him out of his old man’s gloomy moods. “He lets me win, I’m sure of it,” said the Captain of the chess games, “but I beat him at golf fair and square.” Sometimes he joined us in social gatherings – card parties, luncheons or seven-course dinners for twenty. He introduced us to Il Trionfo, a card game he said was of Italian origin, a fiendish form of whist whose shifting trumps and complex hierarchies of the court cards seemed quite Machiavellian.

I noticed that he often gravitated toward spirited ladies of independent means – merry widows and their ilk. I can still see him, relating some anecdote to three or four ladies, his evening dress an elegant contrast to their colourful dresses. At the conclusion, they would all throw back their heads and laugh heartily. He was a fairly good dancer too, and would dutifully seek me out at the conclusion of a party for a turn around the floor. “Another success, Mrs. B.,” he would say, with the inevitable small twist of irony. “Let me assure you, your table is the envy of the islands, and your drawing room has earned an undying fame.”

So I knew he was convivial, or at least that he could assume and wear conviviality as easily as he did his dinner jacket. But underneath? Who among us could say unequivocally, “He is my friend”?

I recalled what my sisters said during a visit to the island. “He doesn’t look like a country doctor,” my older sister declared. “You’d better be careful, Margaret. All sorts of strange people come to places like this.”

My younger sister, while acknowledging that Francis was an attractive man, thought there was something peculiar about him. Both of them teased me that my insistence on staying at Bellefleur was due to the presence of such an eligible bachelor.

 

As a doctor, he became known for his attentiveness to the dying, even when there was nothing much he could do, and especially when the dying person might otherwise die alone. I knew of several occasions when he risked his life in bad weather to be with a patient who was dying. Once or twice he brought patients to his house on Bellefleur so they could die in more comfortable surroundings than the shacks or boats that were their homes.

I asked him about this once, perhaps unwisely making an observation to the effect that individuals who were beyond medical help did not need his presence, when there were plenty of others who did. He gave me a brief, wintry stare and said,

“And have you experienced death, Margaret?”

“Obviously not,” I replied. “But I might remind you that I have been affected by death.”

“I’m quite aware of that. But a little thought must show you that it's not the same thing. No matter how many people around you might have died, there is only one death that you can experience directly, and that is your own.” He fell silent then, for a few moments, evidently studying the winter-bare silhouette of the oak tree outside the window. He turned back to me and said, “In a way, I’ve been a student of death. Every physician has that opportunity, but not all of us use it. I have seen many people struggle with death, and their struggles have touched me deeply. If I can send them on their journey with a little comfort, I believe my time well spent.”

“Do you pray for them? Or with them?”

“No, I do not,” he said, and turned the conversation to other topics.

Nevertheless, I wondered how a man who professed to be a pagan could offer to the dying a comfort that seemed to be of the sort usually given by clergymen. In the winter of 1928, a friend of Captain Bellgarde’s, one of the original pioneers on Bambrick Island, died of pneumonia. Dr. Dexter had been with him at the end, his widow told me at the funeral.

“It was such a comfort for Tom, to have him there,” she said. “At first I wasn’t sure. The doctor is such an energetic man, and I’ve heard people say that he’s an atheist. I know I’ve never seen him in church. But Tom wanted him there, instead of the minister. Which was just as well, the way it was blowing that night. Minister wouldn’t have made it. But Dr. Dexter came.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Just stayed there with Tom. Talked to him. I knew Tom was afraid to die. ‘It’s the dying part I can’t fathom, Mary,’ he’d say to me. ‘What comes after, well, that’s God’s business. But the trip from here to there, that’s the part I don’t like to think about. No one seems to know anything about it, either.’ I think perhaps he asked Dr. Dexter. I’m not sure what he told Tom, but it seemed to help him. And you know, it’s funny, but he stayed with him a while after he was dead. He sat there, holding Tom’s hand, and looking off into space. It was strange, and after a while I started to feel a little scared. I couldn’t think what had come over him. So I said, ‘Doctor, excuse me, but I think he’s dead now.’ And it was like he woke up from a dream. He seemed… out of himself, somehow. But a few minutes later, he was all right.”

 

One of the lawyers who acted on the Captain’s behalf was a man from Victoria, Rupert Winfield. Of necessity, he made regular trips to Bellefleur, sometimes staying with us for two or three days. The Captain found his company congenial, as did I also.

Rupert was a widower, several years older than I, with three children, two of whom were “fairly well launched,” as he put it. His youngest daughter still lived at home, but was engaged to be married.

He was a solid-looking man, substantial but not fat, with dark hair receding from his forehead, steady dark eyes and a luxuriant moustache. I liked his seriousness, even when I found it a little amusing. On one occasion, after we had attended a performance of The Mikado in Victoria, he proceeded to analyze the characters and plot, their symbolism and social significance, without a trace of irony. I don’t think he realized that I was not always laughing with him. But I respected his sincerity, and was happy that Captain B. had such a staunch ally.

 

April of 1929 was the beginning of the glorious summers that characterized the 1930s. We were having a spell of summer-like weather at least a month early. Strolling through the garden with the Captain, I was thinking that some of the roses seemed to be getting ready to bloom, when a sailboat came into sight at the entrance to our bay. “What a beautiful boat,” I said. “And whoever is sailing her is doing quite well in this little breeze.”

“There’s more wind out there,” said the Captain. “Anyway, they’re coming in.”

By the time we got to the dock, the boat’s sails were furled, and the lone occupant of the vessel was laying out the anchor chain in a practiced way. Minutes later he jumped into a small, neat dinghy and rowed toward us. A few more minutes and I recognized him. Julian Vernon had come back.

He was a young artist, an Englishman who had first come to Victoria some six or seven years before. In some ways, he fitted the pattern of a ‘remittance man,’ hinting at some sort of trouble at home which had driven him abroad – the ever-popular geographic cure. His name had been Vernon-Hart originally, but he had dropped the hyphenated element soon after his arrival. He was moderately successful, in an unambitious way, being content to sell just enough pictures to finance his summer trips in the Flying Star, and to provide him with ‘digs’ and a studio for the winter. He had been away from our part of the world for more than three years, since the autumn of 1925, when he had gone off to Hawaii and the South Seas.

I thought of him whenever I saw the pictures he had painted for us. In the drawing-room was a large watercolour of the house and orchard, the gardens and meadows. Julian had taken some liberties with the scene, including an ethereal Mt. Baker as part of the background, even though in reality the mountain is hidden from that angle by the high part of Bellefleur.

“It’s a magical mountain, though, isn’t it?” he’d said when I remarked on the inaccuracy. “The Indians say it comes and goes as it pleases. So maybe one day it chose to move over a bit.” I had to admit that his rendition of the scene made it clear that the mountain was a world apart from the jewel-like vividness of Bellefleur – a heavenly paradise, perhaps, floating above the earthly one.

In the library was a serious oil portrait of Captain B. Julian had shown him in his study, with a window behind him, through which was visible an oak tree and a green field of grazing sheep, with a merchant ship on the horizon.

“It’s a good likeness, I suppose,” said the Captain, when he first saw it. “I like the sheep, and the ship too. I guess you put that in because of my shipping interests. But it wasn’t sailing ships for me, boy. I’m not that old! It was steamships in my day, you know that.”

“But not then,” was Julian’s response.

“What? In the ‘80s? Steam was the only thing then!”

“Not in the 17^th century, though,” said Julian. “That’s the era I think suits you best, Captain B. You’re like one of those Dutch or Flemish merchant princes.”

Looking more closely at the picture I could see that Julian had added touches reminiscent of that time. The Captain, though, was not impressed by such symbolic subtleties. “You got my phiz right, young fellow,” he said. “But all that other stuff is wasted on me.”

These two pictures, as well as a couple of scenes of the garden, executed in a more conventional style, had been commissioned by the Captain, who had taken a liking to “young Vernon,” and wanted to help him get established. I think he was a little disappointed, however, when Julian had failed to show the sort of ambition he expected in a young man of considerable talent. Shortly after Julian left for Hawaii, he said, “Well, I like his pictures, most of ‘em. But you can’t eat ‘em or smoke ‘em, so a fellow soon has enough. He’ll have to find more customers than me, once we’ve run out of walls for his stuff here. I wish him well, though. Maybe he’ll strike it lucky down there in the South Seas, like that Gauguin fellow.”

I neglected to point out that Gauguin hadn’t exactly ‘struck it lucky,’ in the conventional sense. But I agreed that a certain amount of luck appeared to be required for one to make a success of the artistic life. In my office was a small picture in pastels that Julian had given me in exchange for several weeks of hospitality just before his departure. He had depicted me as a medieval chatelaine, in a dark red gown and white headdress, a large bunch of keys at my waist. The room in which I stood was recognizable as the kitchen, though devoid of modern conveniences. He had added touches such as a pot of calendulas on the windowsill, copper saucepans, bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling and a plucked fowl lying on the table beside me. It was a picture full of colour, detail and humour, and I had always prized it.

I was happy to have Julian back with us again, and looking so well, radiating health and vigour. His skin was tanned from his years in the tropics, and his brown hair, rather longer than it should have been by Victoria standards, was tousled by the wind. His green eyes shone as he embraced me and clasped the Captain’s hand.

“I’ve been back a week,” he said, in answer to our questions. “Just long enough to get the Star cleaned up and provisioned. I got her out of my friend Phil Ramsay’s clutches just in time. Another year and she would have been a weed-encrusted hulk. I couldn’t wait to get sailing again, and Bellefleur was the obvious destination. Lord, I’ve missed all of you.”

Of course we asked him to stay with us for a while and tell us about his travels and plans for the future. He accepted, although I could see that he was eager to resume his wanderings in the Flying Star. She was a beautiful boat, thirty-two feet, cutter-rigged, with a raked transom and sweetly curved sheerline. Julian had bought her shortly after he arrived in Victoria, and until he had gone away had been meticulous in his upkeep of her paint and brass, rigging and sails. I could well understand how happy he was to have liberated her from the uncaring hands of Phil Ramsay.

That first evening, Francis Dexter joined us for supper, at Captain B.’s invitation. “Just ‘phone Dexter and see if he wants to come. He’ll probably find Vernon’s yarns interesting.”

Francis was quite self-sufficient, and it was not unusual for many days to pass in which we saw him only fleetingly, so I wasn’t sure I would find him at home. But he was there.

“Dexter here,” he said in the laconic way he used on the telephone.

“Francis, it’s Margaret Bellgarde. Are you free for supper tonight? There’s someone the Captain would like you to meet.”

“Captain Bellgarde wants me to meet this person, you say? But not you?” I could hear amusement lurking behind his prickly tone.

“Well, of course I do. I put it badly. It’s Julian Vernon, an artist friend of ours. He’s just gotten back from a few years in the tropics. He painted that picture of the house you’ve seen in the drawing room.”

“Ah, that picture. The one that takes such liberties with the local geography. And I wondered who that sailboat in the bay belongs to. Well, as it turns out I’m free tonight, so I’d be happy to join you.”

He turned up bearing a couple of bottles. “This is a liquor of unknown provenance and no doubt high caliber. I think the Captain will appreciate it. The price of setting a broken ankle. And here is a fine vintage from the south shore of Appleby Island, given to me on the occasion of the birth of another son to the Hamilton clan. The sixth, I believe. In his joy, Hamilton senior gave me a bottle for each one, but I confess I’ve kept the other five for my own use.”

I put the bottles on a nearby table and turned to Julian, who had gotten up from his armchair. He had obviously made efforts to spruce himself up for the occasion, wearing a rather baggy suit which proclaimed at once its age and respectable origin. He had tamed his unruly hair, but retained a look of the returned wanderer. In contrast, Francis was the picture of the polished professional man. Three years on one of the smaller of the Islands of the Gulf had not succeeded in removing his veneer of urbanity.

“Francis, I’d like you to meet Julian Vernon. Julian, this is Dr. Francis Dexter, our resident physician.”

As they shook hands, I observed the mutual speculation to be expected when two such different individuals meet.

“So you've been living on Bellefleur for the last three years?” said Julian. “Lucky old you. I’ve been away too long, I think.”

“But in the South Seas, I understand,” said Francis. “A paradise, some would say.”

“Yes, but… Well, it was wonderful, of course. That’s why I stayed so long, I suppose. But this coast is where my heart lives.”

Captain Bellgarde came in and we proceeded to the dining room. During the meal, Julian regaled us with his traveler’s tales, and described the pictures he had painted in Hawaii and the other tropical islands.

“There seems to be a demand for them here,” he said. “I’ve left a bunch of them with a friend in the city to sell for me. I suppose I should have stayed there longer, gotten myself invited to the right gatherings so I could promote my work. That would no doubt have brought more sales. But all I wanted was to get the Flying Star back, and take her to the islands. So here I am.”

He leaned back in his chair, smiling, a glass of wine in his hand. I like to remember him like that – the warm lamplight falling on his hair, his brown face, the glowing red of the wine. A small silence fell among us.

“You’re fond of sailing, Mr. Vernon?” asked Francis.

“Fond is an understatement,” said Julian. “I'd rather sail than do anything else. Well, almost anything.” He laughed. “Are you a sailor, Dr. Dexter?”

The Captain snorted. “Vernon, you’re talking to the speed demon of the islands. A sailboat would be wasted on the Doc. He’s a devotee of the motor. Bob Todd ministers to the engine of the Ariel as sincerely as the doctor here does to his patients.”

Francis smiled. “I admit my ignorance of sailboats, Mr. Vernon, although I admire those who sail them. But you must understand that there are times when I must get somewhere with all speed, regardless of wind and tide.”

“Of course. I agree that in your line of work a motorboat makes sense. But for escape, a sailboat is the only thing.”

“Escape? From what?”

I thought Francis immediately regretted asking this question, but Julian’s reply stopped my wondering further about it.

“From the world,” he said. “In a figurative sense, of course. It's one of the few ways to be free in the world while carrying with you all the necessities of life. When a place loses its charm, you simply weigh anchor and sail away, until you find another place you like.”

“Like Toad of Toad Hall, Julian,” I said. “In his caravan phase, that is, not the motor car one. Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that’s always changing!”

“Well, all right,” said Julian, laughing. “But in that case, Dr. Dexter here must be like the motorized Toad, the ‘terror of the highway.’ Only in this case, the highway is Haro Strait.”

We all laughed then, but had to stop in order to explain Toad of Toad Hall to Francis, who had never read The Wind in the Willows. “It was Alex’s favourite book for ages,” I said. “I had to read a bit to him every night for months and months. I practically learned it by heart.”

“We're being unkind to Dr. Dexter, perhaps, Margaret,” said Julian. “After all, he isn't prone to smashes, from what you’ve told me. And he doesn’t look like Toad in the least,” he added, his head tilted to one side while he contemplated the lack of such a resemblance.

“Thank you, Mr. Vernon,” said Francis, taking it all with good grace.

“Seriously, though,” said Julian, “suppose you come for a sail with me tomorrow? It should be a perfect day for it.” He turned to the Captain. “I know you don’t care for sailing, Sir, but what about you, Margaret?”

“I’d love to go,” I replied, “but as it turns out, I have the W.I. coming for luncheon. The social event of the season, you would think, from all the flurry about it. So I can’t go this time. But Francis, you should go, if you can. It’ll give you a different perspective altogether.”

“It turns out that I have a free day tomorrow, or nearly. I had intended to go out to Gulliver to check on a patient, but it’s not an urgent matter.”

“Perfect!” said Julian. “Gulliver and back is a nice day’s sail. You can do your duty, Doctor, with a clear conscience, and experience the glories of sail, too.”

They set off immediately after breakfast. I envied them a little, as the Captain and I watched from the dock. Richard had kept a small sailboat at Bellefleur, and in our first summer together we had often taken her out on long days that I recalled now as unattainable pleasures, like those of childhood, forever gone. The sails filled and the Flying Star gathered speed as she stood out of Millie Bay and into the channel.

“Be damned if I know how Vernon can sail her off the anchor like that,” said the Captain, recalling me to the present. “But then, there are sailors who sail, and sailors who steam, and I’m the steam type, always was.”

The boat was rounding the point by the golf course, sails spread wide to catch the northwesterly breeze. I wondered briefly what Francis was thinking, and whether he would find it tiresome to yield to the vagaries of wind and tide. Perhaps he would prefer to be at the wheel of his Ariel instead, focussed on the destination rather than the journey. “I’d better see how Mrs. Dudson and Betty are getting on with the baking,” I said, and we went back to the house.

The sailors returned at dusk, wearing a look of windblown, weary contentment I remembered from my own sailing experiences. Julian was full of anecdotes about the day. “We wouldn’t have been late, except we had to beat, that last part. The wind backed to westerly and picked up, so it was a bit of a struggle. But we’d made it to Gulliver in record time, and Francis's patient was fine, so that was all right. I must say, though, I was surprised that you’d bother with rustics like that fellow.”

“Well, he’d broken his arm, you see, and thought rightly that it would be better to get it set properly than let it heal crooked. People know where to find me by now, and that my fees are reasonable, so… It was old Porter, Margaret,” he added. “You know, one of those bachelors who rents his acre from Armitage, on the east side of Gulliver.”

“I think I know who you mean, although I haven’t met him,” I said. “And how are the Armitages?”

“George is right as rain, as far as I could tell. And Mrs. Armitage is expecting again, which must confirm that impression.”

We settled down to more gossip while I got together a supper for them, consisting of soup accompanied by leftovers from the luncheon – croquettes, cress sandwiches and thin slices of boiled gammon, along with most of a jellied salad the ladies had failed to appreciate.

“The ladies of the Women’s Institute were fortunate,” remarked Francis, “if this is anything by which to judge.”

“My compliments to Mrs. Dudson,” concurred Julian, helping himself to the last of the salad. “And to you, Margaret, for remembering us starving sailors.”

Later, Captain Bellgarde joined us in the drawing-room for a drink and a visit before bedtime. Julian and Francis had taken up a discussion apparently started earlier in the day, about whether the artist should strive for an external aesthetic ideal, or create his own reality. Francis, as I recall, espoused the former idea, Julian the latter. Or it might have been the other way around. I half-listened, and watched the two of them. It was hard to believe that they had met only the day before. Already they seemed to have a shared history, jokes and phrases whose significance was known to them alone. Perhaps this was the beginning of a friendship.

Julian and I were the last to go upstairs. Francis had gone back to his own house, and Captain B. retired at his usual ten o’clock. The two of us lingered before the dying fire, talking contentedly of nothing in particular.

“A fire on the hearth is such a novelty for me, after those years in the tropics,” said Julian, stretched full length on the hearth rug, a cushion under his head.

“And how did Francis like sailing?” I asked, after a moment in which the only sound was the hot whisper of embers shifting. “He seemed a bit subdued, I thought, so I didn’t want to ask him. Not everyone takes to it, I know.”

Julian smiled at the ceiling. “Oh, I think he liked it well enough, once he stopped comparing it to being out in that speedboat of his. He’d never realized how beautiful the islands look from the water, he said. I suppose because they usually go by in a blur. But the best part – ” he laughed, “was when we had to sail close-hauled. We weren’t over very much – twenty degrees, maybe. Well, maybe more like twenty-five or thirty, a couple of times. I could tell he thought we were about to capsize, or worse. Until then I hadn’t quite believed what he’d said – a New England Yankee who’d never sailed? But that look in the eyes is unmistakable. I explained it all to him – you know, about the keel and ballast counteracting the pressure of the wind on the sails, and how the whole thing moves forward as a result. While I was bringing her into the bay and dealing with the sails, he made some diagrams for himself, complete with mathematical equations. When he showed them to me, I said of course, that’s exactly how it works. No matter that it was all Greek to me. But it made him happy. We’re going out again in a couple of days, so he’s not put off by the experience, at any rate.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “He never takes much of a holiday, you know. Just a week here and there. And maybe it will help him deal with his own tragedies.”

“Tragedies?” said Julian, looking up at me.

“Well, the death of his wife and son. Or her disappearance. I’m not sure of the facts. He never speaks of it. But I think that’s why he came west, three or four years ago.”

Julian looked at me speculatively before he replied, and when he did it was with a question. “He told you he’s a widower, did he?”

“Well, not exactly. I sort of… deduced it from things he’s said. I don’t want to seem vulgarly curious.”

“Hmm. Well, it’s hard to tell about people, isn’t it? I think I’d better go up now, or I’ll fall asleep right here. Good night, Margaret.”

 

Not only did they go sailing again a few days later, it became commonplace for them to do so. Francis, it seemed, was quite taken with the sport. That summer, as Julian revisited his old haunts among the islands, he often stopped at Bellefleur. When one of his visits coincided with days when the doctor was able to leave his patients, more often than not he and Julian would take off together, if only out into the Gulf and back again. “You don’t need a destination,” as Julian put it. “Sailing is enough.” I accompanied them a few times, and on one particularly beautiful day Captain B. came as well. By that time it was clear that Francis was no longer a mere passenger, but was becoming something of a sailor himself.

“Oh yes, he’s made excellent progress,” said Julian, when I commented on this. “Soon he’ll be an able seaman, and then we can go on a real voyage.”

At the time, I assumed this was some joke between them, but at the end of July, Francis told us that he had arranged for another doctor to look after his patients for several weeks, while he and Julian took the Flying Star northward. “Julian wants to get back to the north end of Vancouver Island again. And of course, I’ve never been there, so it should be interesting.”

He hadn’t had any holidays to speak of, since he’d come to Bellefleur, more than three years before. There were no serious cases among his patients, he assured us, and Captain Bellgarde’s health was stable. The locum, a young doctor named Howarth, was entirely trustworthy. One morning a week later, the Flying Star weighed anchor and sailed away to the north.

Did time slow a little that August, or did it only seem so? Perhaps it was because Alex was also away. He’d been invited to spend a few weeks with a school friend in Victoria. The friend’s parents had a home on the Gorge complete with the obligatory rowboats and canoes, and the boys could explore that inland waterway to their hearts’ content. I was glad that Alex had found friends and interests away from home. I told myself that was normal and good. He was thirteen, after all, and would soon be looking to farther horizons. This brief separation would be good practice for me. Still, it made the island a little quieter than I liked.

The monotony was broken by visitors, of course, one of whom was Rupert Winfield. He spent several days with us, in part to review the state of negotiations about the lighthouse, but also to escape the urban scene. He remarked on this as he and I walked in the garden one evening.

“I hadn’t realized just how beautiful it is here,” he said. “I knew, of course, but I suppose I had not allowed myself to feel it before.” He looked at me seriously. “Do you ever contemplate leaving Bellefleur Island, Mrs. Bellgarde?”

“Sometimes. In winter, when it’s been raining for weeks, or when we get days of cold northeasterlies. If I can, at those times I go to visit my friend Sally in Victoria, for a week or so. But I never seriously think of leaving for good, no. Why do you ask?”

“No particular reason.” He looked a little uncomfortable. “It’s just that things change, and sometimes we find ourselves contemplating things we might not have, only a short time before. But forgive me if my question seemed presumptuous. It’s just that I’m concerned about you sometimes, Mrs. Bellgarde.”

“Thank you, Mr. Winfield, but I’m perfectly all right here.”

 

About a week after Julian and Francis left, Captain B. had one of his bad spells. He was short of breath, he said, and felt weak as a baby. The hot weather didn’t help his mood, making the necessary confinement to his bed seem like a punishment. Dr. Howarth reassured him that the episode would pass, and would pass more quickly if he gave in to it and rested without struggling. Before he left, he gave me some instructions for care of the patient.

“He should be better in a few days, but it’s important that he not fret himself. I’ll stop in and see him again tomorrow afternoon.”

Accordingly, I made every effort to make sure that the Captain had everything he needed, that his pillows were adjusted to the correct angle for comfort, a pitcher of water and a glass on his bedside table, a selection of reading material and his spectacles ready to hand. What he really wanted, however, was that I read to him. I had to tell him that this was impossible until I finished some urgent correspondence and prepared the pay packets for the farm workers. “I’ll be free later in the afternoon, though,” I said, thinking that free or not, I would have to make time to sit with him.

“All right, Maggie, and would you bring that issue of the Atlantic Monthly – you know, the one with the story about using tame dolphins in naval operations. I lent it to Dexter before I’d read it myself, and haven’t seen it since.”

“I’ll look for it,” I promised, knowing that a suggestion that some other magazine might be equally interesting would not improve his mood.

By mid-afternoon, it was hot and still, unusual weather for Bellefleur. I stopped to take a breath and realized that I had not yet looked for the magazine. A thorough search of the library, the Captain's study and my office yielded a good many other magazines, but not that one. I was about to give up and try to interest him in some other topic, when I remembered just how petulant he could be when he was feeling unwell. Small irritations became acute, especially those which suggested that someone might be taking advantage of his generosity. It was odd, I thought, how that generosity sometimes seemed to be in conflict with a selfish small boy who lived inside him.

The magazine, I concluded, must be in the Doctor’s House. In the flurry of departure on a lengthy holiday, Francis must have forgotten to return it.

The grass was yellow with drought, and even the indomitable wild rose bushes looked a little dispirited. Insects hummed and leapt around me on the path to the north side of the bay. On the verandah of the Doctor's House, a single chair stood in the spot from which one could see a long way south, as far as the distant Olympic Mountains. The cat Augustus was nowhere in sight. Francis had asked Betty to provide the animal with food in his absence. Augustus quickly realized that he had to come to the kitchen door for meals, but he spent most of his time in solitary feline pursuits.

I unlocked the door, reflecting that locked doors were unusual on Bellefleur. But of course this was not only Francis's house, but his office as well, with powerful drugs on the premises. Locking up was a necessary precaution.

Inside, the house felt abandoned and airless. I left the front door open and opened the back door and the windows. If I was going to trespass, I could at least tell myself that I was doing a good deed and airing the house.

The largest room was a combination of parlour, dining room and library. There were neat piles of journals and magazines on the desk by the window. But they were all medical publications – The Journal of Modern Surgery, The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine. No Atlantic Monthly.

I began to look around, feeling guilty and curious at the same time. This was where Francis Dexter lived his private life, and if anyone could be called a man who valued his privacy, it was he. I had no more business prying into his things than he would have to rifle through my office, for example, or my bedroom.

His bedroom was the smaller of the two. It too, was monastically neat – a narrow iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe that was almost too large for the room, but was necessary, I reflected, given Francis's predilection for clothes. Here hung his suits and shirts, in their array of sober shades – navy, grey, black, white, various browns. It was strange how these inanimate objects reminded me so vividly of their absent owner. I ran my hand over the wools, linens and silks, and brought the sleeve of a jacket to my face. The faint scent of astringent lavender brought his presence to me so strongly that I stepped back with a guilty start and closed the wardrobe door with a decisive click.

The door of the other bedroom was closed. Opening it, I found a room that reminded me of the chemistry lab at my school. Here were racks of test tubes, shelves bearing beakers, flasks of various shapes, a balance for weighing things, a spirit lamp. I wondered what Francis did in here. Chemistry as an amusement? Beneath a shelf of glass vessels containing variously coloured liquids and powders was a row of books. Analysis of Natural Substances, Materia Medica, Compendium of Botanical Drugs and Poisons. In one corner was a large wooden box. Inside was a jumble of vials, jars and packets. On the underside of the lid was a name, K.G. Herring. It told me nothing. I closed the lid and stood in the middle of the room, feeling uneasy without knowing why. One thing was certain – Captain B.’s magazine wasn’t here.

It wasn’t in the kitchen either, of course. So it had to be in the main room, if anywhere. I began to scan the bookshelves systematically. Francis's reading interests were wide-ranging. History, travelers’ tales, music criticism, biography, philosophy and popular fiction jostled each other on the shelves. Here and there a familiar name or title leaped out at me. The Collected Stories of E.A. Poe. I was pleasantly surprised, since I had an inexplicable fondness for the writings of this odd American. They transported one like nothing else to another and stranger world. Out of nostalgia, I took the book off the shelf. It was a nice edition, leather-bound and gilded, and much read. There must have once been a bookplate on the inside of the front cover, but someone had removed it, marring the marbled paper in the process. The only indication of ownership that remained was a set of initials scrawled on the flyleaf – R.E.M. Or maybe H.R.W. Or maybe something else.

I flipped through the book, seeing familiar words in an unfamiliar layout. Here were the Dupin stories – “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” “The Purloined Letter.” In the middle of that last one three photographs had been inserted. I nearly shut the book, shying away from the guilt of being a Nosy Nelly, but my curiosity won out in the end. Sitting down in a nearby armchair, I examined them carefully.

The first was a portrait of a man in uniform. Of Francis Dexter in uniform. It had to date from the Great War, which would mean it had been taken about twelve years before. I could see that despite his undisputed good looks, he had aged considerably since then. This showed a more confident man, almost arrogantly so, with a look of ironic challenge in his eyes that I did not much like.

It took me a few moments to realize that the uniform he wore was a Canadian one. There could be no mistake. I had looked at Richard’s picture too many times not to recognize the insignia on cap and lapels, and small details such as the design of the pocket flaps and the placement of buttons. But how could this be? Francis Dexter was an American, and so must have belonged to the medical service of the American army. So what was he doing in a Canadian uniform? I turned the picture over. On the reverse was only a date, 1915. Well, that explained it in a way – the United States had not entered the War until two years later. But why had he lied about this? Or had he? Thinking back over our conversations on the topic of the War, I could not remember him actually saying that he had served with the Americans. I had merely assumed that this was the case, and he had not told me otherwise. I remembered his odd reluctance to mix with people with military backgrounds. All my old unease about him came flooding back, along with an old maxim: "Look not in a keyhole, lest ye be vexed." Now I had acquired fresh doubts about which I could not ask him without admitting that I had pried into his possessions while he was away.

Impatient both with myself and with the object of my curiosity, I flipped to the other two photographs. One showed two men, the other a woman. Might this be the unknown Mrs. Dexter? I studied the image closely. No, I decided, this could not possibly be a Boston physician’s wife, no matter how prosperous or well-connected. This was surely a woman of the stage. Her hair was arranged in elaborate ringlets, her face made up, skillfully, but quite obviously. She wore a heavy necklace of gold and precious stones. Diamonds and rubies, perhaps, or emeralds. She wore jeweled earrings as well, and a velvet gown, cut low to show a long slender neck and alluring décolletage. There was a message written on the photograph itself – Milles baisers à mon sauveur, and a scribbled signature I could not decipher. A date, too: Mars, 1923.

Who was this person, I wondered, and why did Francis have her photograph? Had she given it to him personally? What did the inscription mean? I wished I had remembered more of the French I had learned in school. Milles, that was a thousand, or thousands, wasn’t it? But I did not know baisers or sauveur. I tried again to read the signature, but failed. The longer I looked at the beautiful face the more familiar it seemed, but I could not put a name to it. Perhaps it was only a false familiarity, engendered by a type, and not someone I recognized at all.

The last photograph was smaller and showed two men and a car. I knew very little about motor-cars, but this one looked expensive and powerful. The photograph did not seem to have been carefully posed. It was more like a casual ‘snapshot.’ The man who leaned against the car and looked directly at the camera was unmistakably Francis. The other, a taller, rather gangly individual, whose untidy dark hair reminded me of Julian’s, looked only at Francis. He wore spectacles, so it was difficult to see his expression. I could not guess the nature of the occasion, but it seemed as though Francis was the real subject of the photograph, and the second man an onlooker who just happened to be there. Behind them was a house and a leafless tree, but I could not see anything in the scene that might tell me more. On the back of the photograph was written "Arkham, Feb. 1923."

Arkham. Sometimes, in unguarded moments, Francis nearly let slip this place name when he spoke of his past. “My house in Ark – Boston,” or, “In my days in Ark – in Boston…” After one of these slips, he would pose some question or make a provocative statement to turn the conversation to other channels.

I put the photographs back where I had found them and returned the book to its place on the shelf. If Francis had intended to conceal these things among the pages of a story about concealment in a place so obvious that it would be overlooked, he had not succeeded. But had they told me anything that might have made them worth concealing? That Francis Dexter had been a Medical Officer in the Canadian Army, as early as 1915. That he had some connection to a beautiful French actress. That some event of importance to him, and to the actress as well, had occurred in 1923.

As I turned away from the bookcase, my mind a whirl of speculation, my glance fell on a small table beside the armchair I had been using. On it, in plain view, was the issue of the Atlantic Monthly I had been seeking. If I hadn’t been so diverted by things that weren’t my business, I would have seen it immediately. I picked it up and left the Doctor’s House, closing the windows and locking the doors carefully behind me.

 

The travelers returned early in September, much to Alex’s delight, for he had been afraid he would have gone back to school before they came back. They looked like a couple of civilized pirates, but only as a result of some recent work with soap, scissors and combs, I suspected. Both had grown beards, and were burned brown by the sun.

“Sir Francis Drake, I presume?” was the first thing that came to mind as I met Francis on the dock.

“I do feel as though I’ve circumnavigated the earth since we left Bellefleur,” he said, smiling. “You can’t imagine… Or maybe you can. Have you ever been to the northern shores of Vancouver Island, Margaret?”

“No I haven’t. Although I’ve heard a good deal about other people’s journeys. You and Julian will have to tell us everything. Now, will it be baths first, or tea? There’s lots of hot water. We fired up the boiler as soon as your sails appeared.”

When we gathered for tea some time later, Francis looked his usual self, except for a certain unevenness of skin colour showing that he had just shaved off his beard. Julian, on the other hand, had kept his. “We would have been back sooner,” he said, “except that Francis here insisted on putting in to every logging camp and Indian village to see if anyone needed doctoring. And of course, someone always did. But if it was a busman’s holiday for him, it was his own doing.”

“Indians?” said Captain B. “Are you trying to take over the missionaries’ business, Dexter? I thought you said you’re a pagan.” He was up and about again after another week in bed, but he was still crotchety.

Francis perhaps did not realize this. He looked down at his hands for a moment, and threw the Captain one of his ice-flick glances before he replied.

“I wasn’t proselytizing, Captain, merely using a talent I have, that was useful to them. Let me assure you, if you’re ever in one of those villages, and in trouble, and the only people who can help you are those Indians, they would probably do everything they could for you. That seems to be their way, and the way of others who have chosen to live in those remote regions. I was only following the spirit of the place. And Julian, you got some of your best pictures in those camps and villages, so you needn’t complain.”

“Oh, I’m not complaining, believe me!” Julian threw up his hands. “I only wanted to explain why we were away longer than we intended to be.”

Shortly after supper, the two of them went back to the boat to sort out their gear. Looking out of an upstairs window at bedtime, I saw lights in the Doctor’s House. They were keeping it up late, I thought. You would think that after a month in close quarters they would be glad of a respite from each other’s company. Or perhaps Julian had already returned to the Flying Star, and Francis was settling back into his house. I wondered fleetingly if he would realize that I had investigated the place.

In the morning, Julian sailed away south, and the rest of us went back to our ordinary lives.

 

That autumn, I wrote a letter to the Department of War in Ottawa, identifying myself as a distant cousin of one Francis Dexter (what was his middle name, anyway? I supposed he might not have one, if he had never been christened), who had served in the Canadian Army Medical Corps during the Great War. I said that he was an American from Boston, and that I was attempting to trace his present whereabouts, for “urgent family reasons.”

What was I hoping to learn? I suppose I wanted to find a history for him, from a source other than himself. I wanted an external agency to verify the facts that the photograph had suggested. And if I got this verification, what then? Well, that would depend on the answer. But why go to all this trouble? Why not just tell Francis what I had found and ask him to explain it? It had been somewhat presumptuous of me to look at his belongings when he was away, but my initial reason (the magazine) was an innocent one. And surely looking at someone’s books was not such a great offence? Yes, I could have done this, but I did not want to.

The reply from Ottawa, when it came, was brief. Addressing me as Madame Bellgarde, the letter said: There is no record of any person by the name of Francis Dexter having served in the Canadian Army Medical Corps at any time in the European War of 1914-1918. Well, that was that.

But what about the photograph? It was unmistakably an image of the man I knew as Francis Dexter. Or was it? Perhaps it was not him at all, but a brother of his. A twin brother? He had never spoken of his family, so that was entirely possible, if improbable.

Other, more sinister, possibilities suggested themselves. Perhaps he had had some reason to impersonate a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Perhaps he had joined the C.A.M.C. under a false name, or perhaps he wasn’t Francis Dexter at all, but someone else. This led to another question – why would a man change his name? Was there something worse in his past than a dead child and a wife who had betrayed him? And how did that affect us, in 1929, on Bellefleur Island?

 

That autumn, even the Captain began to notice that Rupert Winfield came to Bellefleur more often than business demanded. “What, Winfield again?” he’d exclaim, when I would go to his study to announce yet another arrival. “What the deuce does he have to say that we haven’t thrashed out on the telephone?”

Soon though, Rupert stopped pretending that his main purpose was business. It became quite obvious that he was courting me.

He wasn’t the first to pay me attentions since I was widowed. At first I had no appetite for such things and let my prospective suitors know it as soon as I realized what their intentions were. Most of my women friends were aghast when I told them. With the shortage of ‘good men’ that followed the Great War, they thought my attitude was irresponsible, if not downright mad. “You’ll have only yourself to blame for your lonely old age, Margaret,” seemed to be the consensus. I refrained from pointing out that, more often than not, husbands predeceased their wives, so remarriage on my part would be no guarantee of companionship in old age. I also did not bother to argue that there are many ways to be lonely, and that solitude does always not equal loneliness. At most, I would declare mildly that by discouraging my suitors I was doing a favour to those single women and widows who were eager to be courted.

Why was I so reluctant? In a way, it was because I still felt married to Richard. I lived in the house in which he had grown up. His father-in-law and his son were my family. Richard himself was absent, but while I remained on Bellefleur it was unthinkable that another man should take his place with me.

I had been so young and inexperienced when I met him and allowed him to sweep me into marriage, that I had no other standard of comparison. He had been my only lover, and still was, in a ghostly way. When I thought of such things (which was increasingly less, as the years passed), it was about him, our honeymoon nights and the months in our little house in James Bay. I could not think of physical love in a disembodied way, and for me its embodiment was Richard.

So what was it that drew me to Rupert Winfield, or at least kept me from eluding his courtly attentions? In part it was his steadiness, his graceful competence in dealing with the public world. Captain B. had aged greatly in the past few years, and Alex would, in the nature of things, leave Bellefleur some day. There were days – not many, fortunately – when I felt the wind of the future blow chill on the back of my neck. At those times the thought of Rupert was a source of warmth and comfort.

But while I did not discourage him, I did not show myself to be overly eager. For there was another element to consider: if I married Rupert, I would have to leave Bellefleur. He was by no means a farmer, nor did he want to take on the role of the country gentleman. Rupert’s professional and social roots were buried deep in the soil of Victoria. He was part of an old established firm, his family one of the first to have settled in the place he called home. His friends were men of the city, fellow lawyers, politicians and businessmen. His wife would be expected to take part in an active social life and help to maintain his standing among his peers. I was fairly certain I could manage this, but did I want to? What price would I have to pay for a place in the social elite of the capital city, the balls, the gowns, the concerts and teas?

If I left, I would lose something forever. Not only a home that had become dearly familiar, not only the garden, the orchard, the springtime explosion of flowers and the sight of the magical mountain. A bond would be broken, an invisible thread that linked me with my dead husband, with my son, and with an unknown boy who looked at me with eyes of silver and called me Mother.

There was another mystery that had taken a greater hold on me than I realized. An enigma lived among us on Bellefleur, and I did not want to leave before I had fathomed it. It, or him?

 

Chapter 14

 

To mark the passing of 1929, and to bring in 1930 “with a bang,” Captain Bellgarde gave a grand ball. That was his term – a Grand Ball – but on our small island, it was quite a different thing from its urban counterpart, even when ‘urban’ means a rather small provincial capital.

The Captain’s primary motive was to dispel the gloom that had followed the fall of the stock market in New York City that autumn. People were too pessimistic, he said. If everyone pulled a long face and went about prophesying disaster, disaster would surely follow. So he decided to open his house to friends and neighbours from the islands and beyond, and pour out his substance in order to house, feed and entertain them. “It’ll be like an Indian potlatch,” he said. “I can’t think of anything more optimistic than that, and if people see optimism in action, maybe they’ll get optimistic themselves.”

Guests began arriving in the middle of the afternoon, before the early darkness made travel difficult. It was a perfect night – clear and calm, cold and frosty. If anything, spirits were raised by the bracing weather. Voices echoed cheerfully as people anchored their vessels and rowed to the dock. A veritable fleet of dinghies was hauled up on the floats and the beach. John and Bob Todd were busy for hours, ferrying guests from the nearer islands.

The Captain was in his element, his plump face glowing pink above his immaculate shirt front as he greeted his guests in the hall. I was a little worried lest he overdo it, but a whispered conversation with Francis reassured me. “He’ll be all right, Margaret. I gave him a thorough going over just the other day. He’s rising to the occasion, as you know. And anyway, I’ll be right here, along with half a dozen of my colleagues.”

This was true. The guest list included doctors from Sidney, Victoria, Salt Spring Island and elsewhere. It also included Julian Vernon. He had sailed the Flying Star to Sidney for a major refit. Francis offered to put him up in the Doctor’s House.

“After all,” he said, “we managed to stand each other’s company for much longer and in considerably tighter quarters last summer.” The two of them exchanged a look and burst out laughing.

The musicians for the dance were talented locals, stiffened with a few stragglers from city bands who for some reason found themselves unemployed on the night of nights. The fashions worn were perhaps not worthy of note in the city newspapers, although they were noted in considerable detail in the Island News. Both the banquet and the midnight collation were plentiful and excellently prepared, and wine and spirits flowed freely. To say we had a full house was an understatement. Every guest room was in use, including those in the attic, and one of the bunkhouses had been prepared for the unattached men.

Francis, elegant in evening dress, danced with all the ladies who were available to be danced with, and Julian was as merry and mischievous as a happy child. Between dances, he executed rapid sketches of guests, often before they realized it, which he gave to them as mementos of the occasion. They had the immediacy of snapshots, but with Julian’s clever touches.

Even now I look at his sketch of Francis and me engaged in conversation. I wore a gown of dark green velvet, cut high in front and rather low in back, and gold ear-drops like fat little pears, a parting gift from Richard. Behind us is the piano and a suggestion of a couple of musicians. Francis is holding a glass and leaning toward me as though confiding something. I wish I could remember what it was.

I do remember dancing with him, a foxtrot that I hoped would go on and on, when Rupert loomed up with a determined smile. “Excuse me, Dr. Dexter,” he said. “Mrs. Bellgarde?” He held out his hands, and to my disappointment, Francis yielded me up to him after the briefest of hesitations, with a fleeting smile and a curt bow in Rupert’s direction. A short time later, the foxtrot gave way to a waltz and I saw Francis whirl by, in his arms a dark-haired, petite woman. They were smiling at each other and appeared to be enjoying themselves immensely.

When the entire company joined hands at midnight to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ I found myself between Francis and Julian. The Captain was on the far side of the vivacious brunette who held Francis's right hand, He had introduced her to me as Nancy Austin, a newcomer to Victoria from San Francisco. She taught music, she said – piano and voice. Francis had danced with her more than once. As we all swayed together in time with the old song, I wondered if the New Year would see an engagement on Bellefleur, and perhaps a wedding or two. Rupert had ended up nearly opposite me in the circle, and I tried to smile at him, but I felt suddenly tired. Perhaps it was only the prospect of returning the household to normalcy in the next few days. Julian must have detected this sagging of my spirits, for he squeezed my hand and smiled. The pure innocent joy of that smile was hard to resist. I smiled back, and resumed singing with more verve.

Soon after midnight, the Captain retired and the festivities became louder. While the musicians were taking a break I heard singing from the other side of the room – Francis and Julian in spontaneous two-part harmony. The tune sounded familiar but out of place. Why would they be singing “The Star-Spangled Banner”? But no – surely the words were wrong? I wasn’t familiar with the American national anthem, but I did not think it made any mention of Venus and Bacchus.

Encountering Francis a short time later, I asked him what they had been singing. “Ah, Margaret,” he said, laughing, “that was Anacreon’s song in praise of drink and good fellowship. I taught it to Julian when we were sailing last summer, and it burst out of us in response to your hospitality.” His face was flushed and the expression in his eyes a little glassy. I had never seen him in such a state, and was a little shocked.

Considerably later, guests began to go to their rooms, in various stages of exhaustion and inebriation. I was kept busy for a while, conducting people to the correct sleeping quarters. A few hardy souls spent the night aboard their boats. Others made for home, since the night was calm and starlit.

Francis and Julian left together, in the wake of a large party to be ferried home by the hardy John Todd. A committed teetotaller, he was not even a little tipsy and prudently had a sleep after the midnight festivities. Francis and Julian, on the other hand, were not at all sober. I watched their progress from the threshold, catching my breath and wondering how long it would be before I too would be able to seek my bed. They lurched a little as they went down the walk, bumping against one another and laughing. Julian threw an arm around his friend’s shoulders, and they began to sing again as they made their way toward the Doctor’s House, where a lamp burned in the porch to guide them home.

Closing the door, I turned back into the hall, wondering where Nancy Austin had gone, since I could not remember showing her to a bedroom. Then I remembered that I had to make sure the kitchen was ready for breakfast preparations for the inevitable early risers, not very long from now. The Grand Ball was over.

 

Despite the optimism of what became known as Bellgarde’s Potlatch Ball, troubles came to Bellefleur in the next several years, as they did to many. Not that we had a great deal to complain about. What did it matter if Captain Bellgarde had lost some money? We still had the land, which produced enough food to live on, with a surplus to sell, or, if prices didn’t warrant it, to give away. Bad times for us meant fewer luxuries, but many people around us were in want of the necessities.

Bellefleur was always a stopping-place for travelers by water, but in the 1930s we saw an astonishing variety of watercraft, some barely seaworthy, sailed by the enterprising, the hopeful, the desperate. There were old boats pressed back into service, new boats made from salvaged materials, even rafts equipped with makeshift sails. The most peculiar vessel was a kind of coracle made from half of a large barrel, paddled by a hearty fellow who told us that he didn’t need fuel, only food. He was going to the Oyster River, he said, where gold had been found. I was touched by his optimism and determination, even though I had serious doubts about his strange craft. It was a long way to the Oyster River, over a hundred miles. I gave him a couple of slabs of bacon, some cheese, a jar of honey and several loaves of bread to take with him, after he had absorbed as much lunch as he could hold. I watched him from the dock as he paddled out of the bay, giving me a cheerful wave as he rounded the point. We never did hear whether he reached his destination.

We all had to tighten our belts a little. The Captain scrapped some building projects and decided not to buy more cattle. He’d been intending to start a breeding program, crossing Jerseys with Scottish Highland cattle, in order to develop a breed that combined the productivity of the former with the hardiness of the latter. This project would have to wait as well.

Captain B. was once again enmeshed with officials of the Department of Marine and Fisheries, in the matter of the Barnacle and its lighthouse. It had matured and ripened into a bureaucratic conundrum of major proportions. One reason for this, it seemed to me, was that there were far too many people and agencies involved. The Marine Agent, various engineers, members of the Lighthouse Governance Board, the local Member of Parliament (a rather pompous fellow, dubbed by Julian ‘our swollen member’), and a cadre of lawyers representing various interests. Even the Minister of Marine and Fisheries made an appearance once, when he happened to be on the west coast.

The main issue under discussion were the ownership of the Barnacle, otherwise known as Hodges Rock, the hiring of lightkeepers and access via the safe anchorage and road provided by Bellefleur.

I heard much of this from the Captain himself, of course, but many of the details and the more subtle points of law were explained to me by Rupert. Whenever he was on the island, he sought me out, and we usually ended up discussing the negotiations. I felt most comfortable with him when the subject of our conversation was his professional preoccupation, rather than matters of a personal nature.

Alex, at fourteen, expressed interest in medicine as a career. In order to test this vocation, he suggested that in the summer months he could assist Francis in his office or accompany him on some of his professional calls. Captain B. and I thought this was a sensible approach, and Francis concurred. “An excellent idea,” he said. “It should give him a good picture of what’s involved. He may as well find out sooner rather than later if the work suits him.”

Alex returned from these sessions tired but full of excitement. “You know what the best thing is, Mum?” he said over breakfast, after he and Francis had been out all the previous day and part of the night, attending to an injured man on Horseshoe Island. “He really helps people, right away, no question about it. You have someone who’s scared they’re going to die or in a lot of pain, but when Dr. Dexter's done with them, they know they’ll be all right. Either the pain is less, or they don’t find it as hard to bear. If I could do that as well as he does, it would be a great thing.”

“How do you think he does it?” I asked. I was curious to hear my son’s assessment of the doctor’s abilities. As far as I knew, he had heard nothing of the odd rumours about dramatic and inexplicable cures.

“Just by showing everyone that he knows what he’s doing,” said Alex. “That’s a lot of it, anyway. It saves people from worrying. He gives everyone something to do, to get them out of the way. Then he tells the sick person what he’s going to do to them and what they can expect to feel. If it’s going to hurt, he says so. Then he just goes and does it – drains the abscess, or puts in the sutures, or puts the dislocated shoulder back in place. Sometimes they yell while he’s doing it, but when it’s done, they’re usually all right.”

 

In town that spring to visit my friend Sally, I accompanied her to an exhibition of paintings purporting to be avant-garde, a rare thing in our rather conservative city. I wasn’t surprised to see pictures by Julian Vernon, but they were neither the imaginative, symbolic works like his portraits of Captain Bellgarde and myself, nor the fanciful depiction of Bellefleur that hung in the drawing-room. Instead they were utterly conventional landscapes and seascapes, with a few staid-looking portraits thrown in.

Was I mistaken, or did he look a little embarrassed as he came over to greet me? “Ah, Margaret!” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you here. But I am glad to see you.” This was so obviously an afterthought that I could not help smiling. He looked different from the Julian of Bellefleur summers, the carefree adventurer of the Flying Star. He was wearing a good suit that looked new, and his hair had been recently cut and looked almost tidy. But the mischievous spark in his eye was missing.

“I’m always happy to see your work,” I said. “But Julian, you didn’t tell me you were experimenting with a different style.”

“This isn’t experimenting, and you know it, Margaret,” he said. “I painted this stuff to sell. People mostly don’t want to see my real work, but those who do find their way to me somehow. I painted these for… people like those.” He made a little gesture, taking in the well-dressed individuals who moved slowly around the exhibits, or gathered in groups to chat. “They like the idea of the ‘avant-garde,’ but what they really want is decor.”

I didn’t know what to say. “I suppose that’s a… practical thing to do. Do you find the results satisfactory?”

“In a way. I’ll probably sell most of this lot, then off to the wilds to paint what I like. But it can be a little… wearing. Excuse me, Margaret.”

An earnest-looking young couple hovered nearby. Judging by their clothing, they had a brand new house to furnish, and had found ‘just the thing for the drawing-room.’ I moved away, leaving Julian to speak with them. Quite a few of his pictures bore discreet little cards with the word ‘Sold.’

Turning around, I found Francis behind me. “Hello, Margaret,” he said. “Julian was a bit worried that no one would come. Or that people would take one look at his pictures and move on. So I offered to be a kind of decoy. But he seems to be doing quite well, doesn’t he?”

“Yes indeed,” I said. “I didn’t realize how prolific he is.”

“Oh, in the winter he works at it night and day. It's his bread and butter, after all, and now that he has a decent studio and apartment, he can be more productive.”

“I didn’t know that he'd found a new studio. And an apartment too. He must be doing very well. I’m glad for him.” As far as I knew, Julian had always worked in a corner of a warehouse which included some sort of spartan living quarters. Occasionally he’d spoken vaguely of being a ‘resident guest’ of various friends and acquaintances in the city.

“Well, actually it’s a sort of joint venture between us,” said Francis. “When I started doing more surgeries here in town, I decided to rent a flat, and it made sense to find something that would suit Julian too, so the place would have a permanent occupant. I made him an offer and he agreed. So now when I come down for a few days or a week, I don’t have to stay in a hotel. In the meantime, Julian has a place in which to live and paint – the top floor of a house, not far from the hospital. There’s a good-sized room with the right sort of light for his studio, so it suits us both quite well.”

“You did mention some time ago that you were looking into renting a flat, but I didn’t realize you’d actually done it. Or that Julian is your tenant.”

“No? Well, you must come and visit us some day. In fact, come tonight. I'm giving a little party for Julian and some of the other artists.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Francis. I’ll be meeting Rupert – Rupert Winfield, you know – for dinner, so…”

“Come afterward, and by all means bring Mr. Winfield. It’s nothing very formal – drinks and cheese straws, that sort of thing. It’ll go on as long as the drink holds out, or until disorder sets in. Here, I’ll make a note of the address for you.”

As Sally and I were leaving the exhibition, I noticed Julian in a corner, talking to a rather dumpy little woman, middle-aged and undistinguished, except for the vehemence of her arm gestures and the vigorous nods of her head. Julian was listening attentively, and I thought he looked as sheepish as when I’d seen him earlier. “Who's that woman over there?" I asked Sally. She laughed. “Oh, she's an odd duck; keeps a boarding house or some such, but I gather she used to paint pictures when she was younger.”

The next time Julian was on Bellefleur, I asked him about the woman. “I rented a room from her one winter when I had some cash to spare,” he said. “If you wanted to see her about something you went to her studio. It’s stuffed full of her pictures. I’d just look and look, once I’d convinced her I wasn’t a critic or a snob, that is. I don’t think she gets much time for painting now, what with being a landlady. So when she started lecturing me back there about painting pap, I told her, ‘Miss Carr, you’ve got to sell that house so you can concentrate on painting.’ And she said to me, ‘Mr. Vernon, you’d best stop wasting paint on this kind of thing and get back to your real work.’ I guess that’s what she came to the exhibit to see.

“There’s so much I want to do!” he said, leaning toward me. “I want to get at the essences of things – the things behind things, you know. I’ve made so many starts, but they’re as fragile as frost-pictures on windows.” He sighed. “When I go back to them after painting pretty pictures to sell, they’re just dead marks on paper.”

He fell into silence, and Captain B. came into the room just then, sparing me the need to respond.

Why was Julian so concerned to make a financial success of his painting? He had never shown that sort of ambition before. Might it be due to Francis's influence? I knew nothing of the business arrangement between them, but surely it would involve some sort of remuneration on Julian’s part for his share of the flat. I did not think that Francis would be particularly concerned about the monetary aspects as such, but perhaps he was trying to instil a greater sense of responsibility in his younger friend.

Friends they certainly remained, despite the differences between them, of occupation, attitude and age. Julian was about thirty and Francis at least ten years older. Julian’s devil-may-care outlook perhaps lightened a little the seriousness I often saw in Francis. On the other hand, Francis was perhaps able to advise the younger man about some of the exigencies of life, as, for example, when Julian was briefly engaged to be married in the spring of 1931.

I saw a notice of the engagement in the newspaper, but nothing further transpired. When I ventured to ask him about it, Julian said only that it had been broken off, but not why. Francis said, rather cryptically, that there had been a ‘misunderstanding.’ Since the young lady in question was a stranger to the city, a visitor from the eastern United States, I was able to find out next to nothing from friends and acquaintances. Shortly afterward, Julian and Francis left on yet another of their summer journeys in the Flying Star.

The Captain, Alex and I said our goodbyes to them one evening. Their plan was to spend the night aboard the boat and make an early start on the flood tide early the next morning. Alex was subdued as we returned to the house. He had wanted badly to be included on the trip, but no one else was in favour of this. I thought that a whole month was too long, especially as my younger sister and her children were to come for a visit during that time. Captain B. supported my view. Furthermore, neither Julian nor Francis was eager to be responsible for a fifteen-year-old, however competent he was around boats, however friendly they were with him otherwise. Their reluctance was just the thing, as far as I was concerned, and I had put my foot down hard only the previous night, when Alex made his final plea. He waved them on their way with good grace, but no doubt some resentment remained.

Perhaps because of this, I did not sleep well that night. I lay in bed, wondering if I was overly protective of my son, a smothering mother. I did not want him to grow up a resentful ‘widow’s son.’ I had welcomed his grandfather’s influence on Alex’s upbringing, and was happy that he had been able to form friendships with Francis and Julian. But I could not expect either of them to play the role of father. I thought again of Rupert. If I married him, he would become Alex’s stepfather. But the boy was fifteen. Perhaps it was too late for him to accept a stranger in this role. Perhaps resentment, of Rupert, of myself, would be inevitable. It seemed that whatever I did, there was a risk of unpleasantness or worse, of some damage that would not show itself until it was too late.

These things were still on my mind when I awoke from a troubled sleep at dawn. The residue of a frantic dream lingered in my memory, adding its own note of agitation. It had been one of those dreams in which one scrambles about, trying to find essential items of clothing in a jumbled room, when it is urgent that one be on time for some important event.

To shake off the disturbance of both the dream and the night thoughts which had preceded it, I decided to get up and go for a walk. Skirting the inland side of the golf course, I followed the farm road along the shore to a deep, narrow bay that was one of my oases of peace. Its steep sides framed a view of shining water that could have been eternal Ocean, and not our sheltered sea. There, I hoped to think myself into a better frame of mind before I went back to the house to face the day.

The world was filled with the magical freshness of early morning. The sun had only just risen and a thin mist lay on the surface of the water. Birds sang loudly. The grass retained its spring greenness, and a perfume of roses lingered from the last blooms of Rosa nutkana.

Emerging from the narrow path through the ubiquitous snowberry and rose bushes, I saw that I did not have the bay to myself after all. The Flying Star lay above her own reflection on the unrippled water. No one was up and about. So much for early starts, I thought.

I hesitated at the place where the path gave way to the rocks. Should I continue? Should I hail the boat? I decided not to. Julian and Francis knew their business, and all farewells had been said the night before. I would just have to find another place for my meditations. A little farther along the road was another small bay – not as magical as this one, but it would have to do.

A sound broke the stillness and a head emerged from the companionway. Julian climbed out into the cockpit and stretched. He did not see me, which was just as well, because he was stark naked. Going to the stern, he urinated into the water. “Glorious day, Franco,” he said. “I’m for a bathe. Coming?”

Francis emerged, a towel over his shoulder. “I heard you just now, polluting the water, you villain. Do you really expect me to bathe in that?”

“Why not? Remember the rule? Piss off the stern, bathe off the bow.” Striding swiftly along the deck, he dove into the water. Francis followed him, laughing. I caught only a glimpse of his body, glowing faintly golden in the early light, before he bobbed up next to Julian.

The waters of the Gulf are cold, even in summer. Swims, as a rule, are brief and bracing. A few minutes later they were back on the boat, Julian reaching down, laughing, to haul his friend aboard. “About time we got going,” he said, rubbing himself dry. “Tide’s just turning. Let’s get on with it, Franco.” He snapped the towel playfully at Francis's buttocks, then tossed it to him.

“Coffee first,” said Francis. “It should be just about ready. We can have breakfast underway, though.” He slung the towel around his shoulders and vanished into the cabin, followed by Julian.

It was time for me to go too. I shouldn’t have stayed as long as I had. But if I’d made a move to leave before, I would have called attention to myself, to everyone’s embarrassment. I turned and retraced my steps to the house.

Later, I found myself taking out this memory and examining it, more than once. Oh Margaret, I told myself, here you are, a sexually-frustrated, middle-aged woman. You watch two men swimming naked and take the memory to bed with you.

Well, why not? Why should I deny the existence of my desires? They come and go like summer storms, barely rippling the surface of my life. For fifteen years I have given my life to my son and his grandfather. Perhaps now it's time to take something for myself, before it’s too late. I am thirty-six years old. What can I realistically expect, living as I do, on this island?

Don’t let Rupert get away, said the part of me that had taken exception to my thinking about the swimmers. Do your damnedest to marry him.

Except that it wasn’t of Rupert that I thought when one of those fleeting storms overtook me. It had been the idealized image of my husband that I had conjured up when I pleasured myself, alone in my bedroom. But now? Of course it’s Richard, I protested, who else? His blond hair falling forward, tousled by his exertions and my hands. The feel of his strong body on mine, the heat of his skin as we close in the eternal embrace.

Oh, but is it really Richard? I don’t think so, Margaret. Those strong, cool hands, with their slender, clever fingers, are not Richard’s. Nor is that face his, with its moonlit eyes.

 

That autumn, I was in town for a week to make sure that Alex was settled in school. Rupert Winfield telephoned me at the home of the friends with whom I was staying, and formally invited me to dinner. Dressing for the occasion, I decided it would not be the countrified widow of Bellefleur Island he would see that night, but Mrs. Richard Bellgarde, nee Blakely, of Westmount. I wore a dinner dress of emerald green silk and all the appropriate accoutrements, including a rather nice hat I had bought on a whim the day before. In the mirror of Rupert’s face, I could see that my ensemble was a success.

Over dinner, we conversed about the weather, books, and art. Julian Vernon’s name came up, as he was having something of a success at the time. Rupert had bought two of his pictures from a recent exhibition, now that the artist appeared to be coming up in the world. “He’s a real artiste, though, isn’t he?” Rupert remarked over dessert.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, smiling. It sounded odd to hear Rupert say artiste in that self-conscious way.

“Well, you know, a bohemian. I hear he’s mixed up with a rather fast set here in town. Wild parties and whatnot.”

“I don’t know, Rupert,” I said. “Julian is a good friend of Francis Dexter’s. You know, our doctor on Bellefleur.”

“Yes, I know who you mean.” A frown creased his brow. “I’ve heard some things about him, too. That he’s not unknown in those bohemian circles. Well, take that party you persuaded me to attend last spring. There were some strange goings-on after I left, weren’t there?”

“Oh Rupert! The only thing even a little strange was that woman doing card readings – Tarot cards. Sort of like fortune telling, just a parlour game. If you had stayed, you’d have seen for yourself.” That party had been the cause of one of our rare arguments. Rupert had taken umbrage at the tone of the gathering, or perhaps something someone had said to him, and had decided to leave soon after he arrived. I was not inclined to go, and said as much. He had insisted that I telephone him when I was ready to leave, so he could come and escort me back to Sally Armstrong’s home where I was staying. I thought that an absurd waste of his time and took a taxi instead, but the next day we reconciled over lunch.

“Well, but that’s one of the signs, isn’t it?” he said now. “Dabbling in the occult, I mean. I’ve heard talk of drugs too. Opium and cocaine. I can understand it, perhaps, in these artistic types, but that a physician should – ”

“The occult? Drugs? I can hardly believe it of Julian, and never of Francis. He has absolutely no use for irrational notions like fortune telling. And as for drugs, he’s a perfect fanatic for good health. He hardly ever drinks.” Then I remembered Francis and Julian at the Potlatch Ball, when both of them were certainly inebriated. Turning my attention to dessert, I hoped Rupert had forgotten that.

“Maybe when he’s on Bellefleur he doesn’t. But the night of that blessed party he was certainly tight. I wouldn’t be surprised if the good doctor isn’t a little more adventurous when he’s not at home.”

I was surprised at the venom in his voice. “I count both Julian Vernon and Francis Dexter among my friends,” I said. “And I find the notion that they're in any sense bohemian to be quite absurd.” But across my mind there flitted a sudden bright image – two naked bodies in the early sunlight. Would Rupert consider that evidence of bohemian tendencies? I tried to picture my earnest dinner companion leaping with naked abandon off the bow of the Flying Star, and nearly started to laugh.

Rupert shrugged. “Well, it’s only rumours. But one shouldn’t ignore them altogether.”

After a few minutes, during which we talked with determination of a recent novel we had both enjoyed, he took my hand and said,

“Margaret, you must agree that we have a great deal in common, you and I. Although we’ve both experienced misfortune in our lives, I think our friendship is an example of the opposite, of good fortune. Will you marry me?”

He looked so sincere, middle-aged and boyish at the same time, that I had to struggle a little to refuse him. For a moment I was tempted to say yes, just to see happiness transform his serious face. But I could not.

“Rupert,” I said, “I’m immensely flattered. But I can’t say yes. Not now.”

“Why not now?” He hadn’t yet lost that look of softness, of openness. “You must know that I begrudge every day, every minute that I spend apart from you.”

“I can’t leave Bellefleur while Captain B. needs me,” I said. “I don’t think his health will improve. He makes a valiant effort, but I can see how much more it costs him, every year. He needs me there, Rupert. And Alex too – ”

“Alex is at school most of the year. He’ll be finished in a couple of years and go on to university. Back East, from what you’ve told me.” A small note of irritation crept into his voice. “And Captain Bellgarde has his own resident physician, does he not? The wonderful Francis Dexter. Surely none of them would begrudge your happiness. And you’d be here in Victoria, for Heaven’s sake, not in Timbuctoo.”

“Please, Rupert,” I said, “give me a chance. Yes, you’re probably right. I don’t think Alex would object to our marriage. And Captain B., I’m sure, would give us his blessing. It’s not them. Don’t you understand? It’s me. I have to… disengage myself from them before I can leave Bellefleur. That will take some time. I’ll tell you what,” I squeezed his hand and attempted to inject some brightness into my voice. “Give me a year. What’s today? October tenth. All right, ask me again on October tenth, 1932. In the meantime, I’ll try to pry myself loose, I promise.”

“All right, Margaret.” He looked resigned. “But I hope that you’ll manage to pry yourself loose a little sooner than a year from now. And that you figure out exactly what it is that you have to disentangle yourself from.”

Was it guilt that made the coffee taste bitter? I could not tell Rupert the truth – “If I had never met Francis Dexter, I would probably have accepted your proposal. You’re a good, kind, steady man and I should be happy at the prospect of being your wife. But I have met Francis and now I’m foolish as a giddy girl.”

 

Chapter 15

 

1932 began and ended with troubles, minor ones at first, although we did not think so at the time. The winter was colder and wetter than usual, and some of the Captain’s sheep developed a persistent ailment that needed careful management. Sick animals had to be removed from the herd and dispatched if too far gone or kept separate from the others if not, to be treated with medicine and a special diet. Although the Captain employed competent men to do these things, he insisted on visiting the afflicted animals himself, and inspecting the still healthy herds for signs of the disease.

He was also increasingly worried about money. One day he told me he was selling his cattle. That was a shock, because he had always been exceedingly proud of his pedigreed Jerseys, and had intended to develop a new breed using his Jersey stock. “We’ll call them Bellefleur Beauties, eh Maggie?” he had joked. He had shelved those plans a year or two before, but now he was giving up altogether.

He must have seen the distress on my face, for he said, “I know, Maggie. You must think I’m giving up. Well, I suppose I am. You know damned well it’s been all I could do to keep up with things, these past few years. I’d be fooling myself if I thought I was going to get better. Dexter says I’m doing well, but I know that what he means is I’m doing well considering my condition. So there’s no point in starting up a new project now. There’s a fellow on the Peninsula that’s keen to do something like it, though, so I’ll gladly sell him the herd and wish him luck. I have a feeling now is the time. Like my old ticker, I don’t think the times are about to improve.”

It was a black day for Bellefleur when the Jerseys were herded onto a barge for the trip to their new home. I knew the Captain’s reasons were sound, and that from a financial viewpoint the sale was a good thing, but I could see that it was a defeat for him, nevertheless. The next day he was running a fever, and Francis insisted that he spend some days in bed.

Captain B. was ill on and off all winter and into the spring. As a consequence, I had more to do than usual, what with arranging for his comfort, and handling more of the business of the farm besides. In order to spare the Captain as much as possible I met with bankers and made some decisions on my own, seeking his approval only as the final step.

 

In March we had a spell of dead white skies without rain, a strong north wind for hours on end, with a dizzying brightness in the air and an unaccustomed harshness on the skin. I had been working harder than usual for weeks, and that morning I knew I was in for a migraine. Even before I got out of bed I felt strange, as though my senses were partially disconnected from my brain and the world was slightly out of focus. Glancing over a newspaper at breakfast, I realized that several words had disappeared, as though a small, glowing hole had appeared in the page. I looked up, blinked, shook my head. The view of the orchard seemed intact, but when I turned back to the paper, there was that glowing void again. Even the headlines were impossible to read. I raised my eyes again, thinking that if I did not try to read I might be all right, but then I saw that part of the wallpaper pattern had disappeared.

I was no stranger to migraine headaches. They had plagued me since I was thirteen or so. By now I knew the only thing to do was immediately to cancel all activities and retreat to my bedroom while the thing ran its course.

I gave Mrs. Dudson and Betty their instructions for the day and stopped in at the Captain’s study on my way upstairs. Fortunately, he was feeling a little better than he had been in weeks. “Headache, Maggie?” he said, sympathetically. “I think Dexter’s here today. Should I give him a call and ask him to come over?”

I assured him that there was nothing any doctor could do for migraine. Those I had consulted agreed on this point, to a man. A few had muttered something about palliatives, but in the end, they said, one simply had to suffer and hope for the best. Thus I had never bothered to mention my migraines to Francis.

By the time I got to my bedroom, the small glowing spot in my left field of vision had grown to a large, jagged hole, encrusted on its margins with pulsating zig-zag lines, like a kaleidoscope pattern designed by a fiend. Betty, bless her, had already closed the curtains and left a bowl of cold water and some cloths on the bedside table. I got into my nightdress and climbed into bed. Lying still with closed eyes helped a little, but did not eliminate the visual phenomenon, which only changed its polarity, like a photographic negative. The pulsating circle with its maddening zig-zags continued to thrive in the darkness behind my eyelids. This lasted for about half an hour, the circle becoming an arc and growing in size, until what I saw was the opposite of the first signs – an indistinct field of vision surrounded by a blinding glow, studded with pulsating zig-zags, forming an arc that seemed to extend from below my chin to the middle of my forehead, like a broken halo.

Even as the glow faded, leaving me enervated, the pain emerged, flickering like lightning behind my forehead. Within an hour it was fully developed, throbbing and pulsating like the lights that had preceded it. With my senses disordered, certain that my body had ceased to function, I could not sleep or even relax. Like a skilled torturer who brings his victim to the brink of unconsciousness but does not allow escape into the safety of oblivion, the headache kept me awake on the rack of my bed.

I entertained strange notions, like fever-dreams. A ball of red-hot iron rolled around inside my skull, and only by moving it carefully from place to place could I escape its destructive power. A small shift in the position of my head, or the application of a fresh compress, brought relief, but within seconds the pain found me again and re-established itself full force.

The pain raged like a demon through the afternoon. More than once I must have moaned aloud, or cried out in desperate wretchedness. There were moments when, if I had been offered a swift and certain means of death, I would have been inclined to take it.

I had a vague impression that people came and went several times. Betty, no doubt, and possibly Mrs. Dudson. The Captain must have looked in as well. At one point I realized that a whispered conference was being held nearby. “Better call him,” someone said, the voice so distorted by the fog of pain that I could not put a name to it. “… should be home by now,” said another voice, echoing strangely. “I’ll go and telephone.”

It was growing dusk when he came. The door of my room opened, letting in a faint glow of light. I heard Mrs. Dudson say, “I could light a lamp for you, Sir, if you need one,” and Francis Dexter’s quiet voice replying, “No thank you. Light of any sort will only hurt her. This will do.”

The door closed. I heard his quiet footfalls on the carpet, the faint rustle of his clothing as he bent over me.

“Poor Margaret,” he said in that same low voice. “It’s very bad, isn’t it? You know there isn’t much I can do, but if it’s not better soon, I’ll give you something to help you sleep.”

His presence, and those words, “…something to help you sleep,” had a calming effect on my tortured body. The pain did not lessen, but for a moment I felt that the torturer had loosened the rack, and rested.

My jangled senses were preternaturally sharp. I smelled the astringent cleanness of the soap he used, and a hint of lavender. I heard his quiet breathing. Then he laid his hand on my forehead.

It was cool, his hand, and for a second or two that coolness filled my senses. I saw silver, I thought water, I heard a single clear bell-note in the depths of my mind. Then his breathing seemed to catch a little, and I felt something tug and break in my head, just where the great nerves of the spinal cord enter the brain. The sensation that followed was like the blessed relief when a boat struggling in tumultuous waves enters the quiet waters of a sheltered cove. The pain was gone.

I opened my eyes. In the dimness I could see his face bending over mine, unsmiling, his eyes full of concern beneath their shadowing lashes. “Francis,” I said, “it’s gone!”

“Sssh, Margaret. Don’t fret yourself. That only makes it worse. What’s gone?”

“The pain! My headache! It’s gone like it never was!” I struggled to sit up. “You made it go away. How did you do that?” His hand lay on the counterpane beside me, and I took it in my own. “You put your hand on my forehead, and the pain just vanished! It’s true then, what people say about you.”

He pulled his hand away and his face became closed, eyes narrowing, lips set in a hard line. Gone was the look of softness, of compassion. He stepped back from my bedside. “Well, Margaret, and what do they say?”

“That you can do… miracles. Like this one. It’s absolutely true.”

“You must have some very irresponsible people among your friends,” he said, coldly. “With overly active imaginations. I’m glad you feel better, Mrs. Bellgarde, but next time, please spare me this charade. I’m too busy to engage in trivial amusements.”

“But Francis! How can you say that? Are you accusing me of play-acting? You know damned well that I had a terrible headache. A migraine. And now it’s gone. Those are facts. You can’t deny them.”

“Spontaneous remission of pain is also a fact. If some psychosomatic effect of my presence helped to bring it about in your case, I’m happy for you.” He was a little calmer. “But please, Margaret, no talk of miracles. I’ve had enough of that. I’m a doctor, not some faith-healing quack. You and Captain Bellgarde have always taken an interest in my career, to everyone’s benefit. Don’t jeopardize that now, with wild talk about miracles. I’m very glad you feel better. Good night.”

Lying back against my pillows, I luxuriated in the absence of pain and the feeling of wholeness. The transition had been so sudden that I could hardly believe it. One moment I was completely disordered, impaled and writhing beneath the pain, the next moment I was completely well. There was no room for doubt – the miracle had happened when he put his hand on my forehead.

Why did he deny the phenomenon? He had refused to discuss it, had explained it as a natural event. But if he had this talent, why not use it to its fullest potential? What was its fullest potential? Did he know? I was elated and at the same time a little disturbed. Had he ever spoken of it with anyone? Perhaps he was afraid of it.

That was the last time I had a migraine headache. The cure, whatever its cause, was more than temporary.

 

The laundry room at Bellefleur was large and excellently appointed. Richard had told me that his mother insisted on this, as a requisite of civilized living. In addition to this splendid facility, with its copper boiler, deep sinks and modern washing-machine, we had a gem of a laundress. Mrs. Yamata was the wife of one of the Captain’s gardeners, who supervised the planting and pruning of trees and shrubs in the garden and orchard. He and his wife had come from Japan some years before and were happy on Bellefleur. The sight of Mt. Baker reminded them of Mt. Fuji, they said, and like the rest of us, they found the climate congenial. The Captain recognized their valuable skills and paid them well.

Mrs. Yamata was a small woman, quick-moving and neat-handed. Her family in Japan was in the textile business, and she was a true appreciator of the subtleties and nuances of cloth. She dealt with everything calmly and efficiently, from working the washing-machine and mangle to wielding the variety of irons that reposed on the shelf above the range. On a chilly March day that felt like a return to winter, the steamy warmth of the laundry was a distinct pleasure.

Mrs. Yamata was ironing a batch of Dr. Dexter’s shirts. I watched her small hands working with the dampened cloth, smoothing it and applying the iron to set the smoothness. It was odd, I thought, how a person’s clothing retained something of his personality. Looking at the empty garments that hung in a neat row from the overhead rack, I thought of their owner. These cuffs had clasped his wrists, these pearly buttons had fastened over his heart. I remembered the coolness of his hand on my forehead, the pain dissolving away…

“Mrs. Yamata,” I said, “what do you think of Dr. Dexter?”

“Oh, he is very nice man,” she said. “Very nice clothes. You can see, here. Best cloth. These Egyptian cotton, very nice. Silk ones too.” She gestured at the hanging shirts. “Not like silk in Japan, but very good.”

“But as a person? Why do you think he is a nice man?”

She giggled a little, something that meant she was uncomfortable. “He very nice. Very polite.” She paused, then her eyes brightened. “And he very good doctor, too.”

“Oh? Why do you say that?”

“I burn myself once. Here, in laundry. I make mistake with iron – put down on my fingers. Very bad hurt. Doctor, he come next day to pick up clothes and see my bandage. ‘Let me look,’ he say. So I let him look. And you know, Mrs. Bellgarde, he make the hurt to go away.”

“How did he do that?”

A small frown creased her forehead. “I don’t know. He take my hand and hold it, and hurt is gone. My fingers like new. I say, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ But Doctor, he not happy, I could see. He not say much and go away. He forgot clothes, too. I had to send Joe to take them later.”

“I see… Thank you, Mrs. Yamata.” I went back to my office, shivering after the damp heat of the laundry. “He make the hurt to go away.” I could not deceive myself about this. The same thing had happened to me. And I could not elude the thought that followed: What else can he do? Then I remembered stories of people with miraculous healing powers, but these individuals almost always turned out to be charlatans or madmen. Francis was neither, as far as I knew, but then I did not know him all that well, did I?

 

The next time I was in Victoria, I went to the Public Library. It was the only place I could think of where I might find answers to my questions. Only one question, really: Who was Francis Dexter?

As the launch churned through the waters of the strait, I marshalled the few facts I knew about his past: Boston, Arkham, medicine, the War, a significant event in the year 1923. I had tried to track him down through his war service, but that got me nowhere. So I would look for something that happened in Boston in 1923.

The librarian I spoke to was helpful. “You’re lucky that we have the Boston Post here. Lately we’ve had to discard some back runs of foreign newspapers, but that one was spared. And there’s the New York Times, of course. Either of those should have what you want, if it was a newsworthy event.” I had told her that I was trying to find information about a person whose photograph I had, but whose name I did not know. She appeared to be someone of importance in the theatre, perhaps, and I had reason to believe that she lived in Boston. The date March 1923 was written on the photograph. No, I had not brought it with me, but I would recognize the face if I saw it.

The librarian showed me to a small room where I could work. Soon after, a page brought in a book cart laden with large bound volumes of the Boston Post. The covers were of a curious blackish-green cloth, worn smooth where hands had gripped them over the years. The name of the newspaper, the volume numbers and the library’s number were stamped on the spines in faint gold lettering. They were so heavy that looking at them made me feel tired, but I found a volume marked March and began.

The search was at once interesting and discouraging. It was intriguing to see the fresh news of nine years before, frozen and preserved in this way, but the sheer volume of it wearied me. Names, faces, names, places. It was as though a crowd was clamouring at me while I passed through it aboard a swiftly moving train. The worst of it was that I saw nothing of what I sought, and was finished with March. Now what?

Then I realized that there was more than one volume for each month. Of course, how stupid of me. There was another book. I opened it and began my search anew.

This time, I found her almost immediately, on an inside page, but a long article, illustrated with a picture that was surely the same as the one Francis had hidden inside Poe’s The Purloined Letter. Except that this one lacked the inscription ‘a thousand kisses for my saviour.’ (I had asked Julian for a translation, making up a lie about seeing the phrase in a novel).

‘Desanges Triumph,’ said the headline. In smaller type below was: ‘Met diva back on stage after miracle surgery.’ The bare facts were as follows: Eleonora Desanges, a French soprano and a star of the Metropolitan Opera, had been badly injured in an attack with a knife, in September, 1922. Her throat and face were slashed and it was feared that she would never sing again. A consultant surgeon was called in, a specialist by the name of Herbert West, from Arkham, a small city near Boston. In a series of operations he had restored the singer’s voice and her beauty. The story had been written on the occasion of her triumphant return to the stage, in the role of Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello.

I read the story through twice, then once more. Nowhere was Francis Dexter mentioned. Herbert West was the only physician named. “A thousand kisses for my saviour.” Well, that made sense, I supposed, but why would Francis have that photograph? Was he a fan of Mlle. Desanges, and had somehow obtained it from Herbert West? A sudden thought struck me. Perhaps Francis was Herbert West, who had found it necessary to change his name. That explained my failure to find any trace of his military service. Why would a man change his name? None of the reasons I could think of were happy ones.

I remembered what he had told me, that his career had been interrupted by the death of someone close to him in 1923. I had assumed it was the death of his wife. But perhaps not. Perhaps their marriage was already broken by then, by something else. That death in 1923 – might it have been Desanges’? Why would Francis have kept her photograph all these years, if not from some strong feeling for her?

Excited, I returned to the helpful librarian and asked her if there was a way to find obituaries or newspaper stories about people by name. Of course, she told me. There was a wonderful index to the New York Times, which could be consulted in just that way.

She showed me to a shelf of thick, dark green books. I found the one for 1923 and looked first under Dexter. There was a Franklin and a Frederick, but no Francis. Certainly no Mrs. Francis Dexter. Disappointed, I turned to Desanges. I found several references to the singer and carefully noted down the particulars. Then, finally, West, Herbert F. Obit., July 26 ’23. So Francis Dexter could not be Herbert West, I concluded, feeling an odd mixture of relief and disappointment.

Back I went to the newspaper area. When the relevant volumes had been brought to my cubbyhole, I carefully looked up all the references. Mlle. Desanges had certainly not died in 1923. There were two stories about her post-surgical successes, and a third describing her wedding to an American financier. Nearing the end of my rope, I turned to the obituary.

West, Herbert Francis. Died suddenly, July 25, 1923. Born Boston, Nov. 7, 1886. B.Sc. & M.D. Miskatonic University, Arkham. General practice, Arkham, Mass., 1913-14. Canadian Army Medical Corps, 1914-18. Surgical specialist, Arkham, 1919-23. Survived by his brothers, Hiram Jr. and Jeremy West.

A very dry recitation. The late Dr. West had passed through the world, it seemed, without touching anyone very deeply. No spouse, no children, no sentiments such as ‘Mourned by his many friends,’ or ‘Remembered fondly by colleagues and patients.’ And yet, it was possible that West’s death had affected Francis Dexter so strongly that he gave up his own successful Boston practice and took to a life of wandering until he fetched up on the west coast of Canada, nearly three years later.

They must have been friends and colleagues who had done military service together. Perhaps they had been childhood friends. A series of increasingly wild conjectures flashed through my mind. Might the death of Herbert West been in some way related to the shameful end of the late Mrs. Dexter? Had there been a love triangle, ending in a crime passionel? I realized that I was fantasizing. I needed more facts before I could be sure about anything.

Tracking down the page who had helped me twice already, I asked for more of the Boston Post, specifically, the volume for late July, 1923. Confidently, I turned to July 25 and scanned the pages, looking for a scandal, a crime, a police report. There was nothing. Nothing on July 26, either. Disappointed, I looked further, at the 27^th. This time I found a very short story, tucked in near the classified advertisements.

Arkham Physician Dies Suddenly. The people of Arkham were shocked Wednesday morning to hear of the sudden death of a well-known physician of their town. Dr. Herbert West was found dead in his home by a friend. The cause of death was determined to be a brain aneurysm. Dr. West was well known as a surgeon and specialist in physical reconstruction. In 1922 he gained international fame by rehabilitating the face, voice and career of opera singer Eleonora Desanges. Dr. West was a professor at Miskatonic University Medical School…

And so on. There was no hint of any scandal, no suspicion of foul play. But – "…was found dead by a friend." Surely that friend must have been Francis Dexter. Would a natural death like this one, even though unexpected, even when the victim was a close friend, so unhinge one who was himself a physician? Perhaps, I thought, if he had just experienced other disasters. It might have been the proverbial last straw.

I was full of thoughts on the way home, and twice had to ask John Todd’s pardon for lapses of attention. At first I thought I had discovered a great deal. And so I had, about Eleonora Desanges and Herbert West, neither of whom I had ever heard of before. But when it came to Francis Dexter, I was as much in the dark as ever.

As we entered Millie Bay and I saw the house lights shining out over the water, it occurred to me suddenly that this was not the first time I had seen the name Herbert West. I had seen it in one of Richard’s letters. He had told me to remember the name for some reason. So there was a connection between my husband and Herbert West, and I had inferred a friendship between West and Francis Dexter. But what of it? By the time I had hung up my coat and hat I decided that the only thing I had gained by my research was more unanswerable questions.

 

When I reconstruct that unhappy year in memory, two scenes come to my mind.

First, an afternoon in mid-spring. Captain B., Francis, Julian and I are walking to the Lookout after tea. A day of sudden rain showers has given way to sun and high-piling clouds to eastward, with a glorious rainbow flung over Mt. Baker. Raindrops sparkle on twigs and grasses and the wildflowers are like another rainbow lying shattered around our feet.

No one speaks as we stand and gaze. The rainbow glows in a way I have never seen before. The scene is so beautiful it seems to call for action, some deed that will match its splendour.

"If one could pass through that gate," Julian says, "surely one would be in a country of perfection. There, everything would be… " His voice trails off into silence.

“And you would, of course, recognize that perfection for what it is, would you?” I cannot tell if Francis is being gently ironic, or ironically gentle.

“I know perfection when I see it,” says Julian, still staring at the rainbow.

Francis shrugs and throws me a glance that seems to say, “What can you expect when he’s in one of these moods?” He turns to the Captain and begins to say something. I realize this is not the first time I’ve noticed tension between Francis and Julian, as though they have a running argument in progress.

Julian turns and walks back toward the orchard without speaking, looking down at his feet as though each step is a deliberate act.

 

Then an evening in late July. I am on my way to pick blackberries. They are ripe early this year, because of the warm, sunny weather, and I intend to gather as many as I can before the drought shrivels them.

Passing the dock, I meet Francis, out for a stroll. “You’re on a mission,” he says, nodding at the pails I carry.

“Blackberrying,” I reply. “Would you like to help?” To my surprise, he takes a pail and falls into step beside me.

“So what enterprise do you have in mind that requires buckets of blackberries, Margaret?” he asks. “Preserves of some sort, or an orgy of pie-making, or wine, perhaps?”