The Stranger

Peter returns at the beginning of 1862. He says goodbye to Maggie and the McKays.

         Chapter Three          

                 The Stranger

 

In the reeking heat of an August night, Peter lay in his tent trying to sleep. He had placed a wet towel on his forehead in an attempt to cool himself. Washington sweltered in a heat that he had never known before. As he lay on his soaked cot he tried not to think of the day to come. For the past month Peter had given thanks to General Beauregard for his victory at Bull Run. In smashing the union army he had also scuttled Mrs. Traynor’s dinner party. Peter had hoped that the party would be abandoned but by the end of the summer social life in Washington had resumed. The rebel army in Washington had retired to Virginia. The capital lay safe behind its entrenchments. On the twenty-seventh of August Doctor Charles Traynor, the regiment’s chief surgeon and his immediate superior, handed Peter an engraved invitation.

“Not a large affair as these things goes,” the doctor said. “Nine people including you. You will be the sole bachelor. Four married couples; Doctor McKenzie, the fifth New York, his wife Ruth, Doctor Tyler of the Seventh Pennsylvania, his wife Agnes, myself of course and Mrs. Traynor and one non-physician, a Major John Reynolds of the Seventh New York. An engineer, he’s from Elmira New York. His wife Janet Also...” Traynor paused.

“Sir?”

“Mrs. Traynor has invited our niece Melanie. Charming girl.”

Peter winched. “I’m sure that she is, sir.”

“Be ready by seven. And Doctor. .. ”

“Sir?”

“You are supposed to be a gentleman. Remember that.”

“Yes sir.”

“We’ll share a coach. Wouldn’t want you to get lost.”

Peter considered various means of bowing out of the invitation. Going up to the man and telling him that social gatherings sickened him would be the most honest approach.  It would also offend the man. Besides, the first lesson in life that Peter had been taught was that his own feelings did not matter. Neither did he dislike the man enough to wish to hurt him. Desertion? Getting shot seemed a bit drastic just to avoid a dinner invitation. Pleading a death in the family might have worked except that Peter had claimed that he had no family. He had tried to point out that it might not be wise for both physicians to be away from the regiment, but Traynor had already secured an assistant physician to serve for that night. Pleading illness grounded upon the knowledge that Traynor would know if he were shamming. No, he would have to accept his medicine with some show of grace. After all it would only be one evening.                                                             Doctor Traynor had rented a white, clapboard two-story house on a quiet street in the northern part of the city. “At least it faces the right direction,” the Doctor would joke. Like most northerners he disliked the capital.  “We’re fighting a war against secessionitis in a city that reeks of it.” Peter shrugged and said nothing.

Mrs. Traynor met them at the door. She reminded Peter of Maureen. They shared the same height and figure but more than that the same irritating determination to be polite. Having kissed her husband, an act Peter considered unseemly in public she insisted upon shaking Peter’s hand. Peter complied dropping it away from hers as soon as he could.

“What do you think of Washington, doctor.”

“I prefer a cooler climate, ma’am.”

“I understand that you’re a Canadian?”

“By adoption. I was Austrian by birth.”

“How interesting. Come in and meet our guests. They’re in the drawing room. Melanie is quite an accomplished pianist.”

They had clustered there on chairs and a sofa listening to a young brown-haired woman playing Schubert. Peter hovered at the door. Then he saw her. Janet. She sat beside a balding spectacled man, an officer in the uniform of the army engineers. One part of his mind heard Mrs. Traynor announcing his name to her guests. But his eyes remained with Janet.  She turned.

The cook, Sally Jones, a freed black woman said nothing when the young officer dashed into her kitchen. Sally had learned one thing from a very early age. There was no understanding of white folks. You just put up with them the best way you could.  She watched him as he hurried out the back door. He cursed as he fumbled with the latch of the gate and disappeared running down the street.

      ***        

Snow, frozen into a thick crust, had covered the letters on the sign.   Peter stopped to pry loose a protruding clump.  He thumped away at it with his gloved hands until it fell off.  Three letters appeared Sti.  He could have cleared more, but evening was deepening and he had other things to do.  The house had changed in the two years since he had last seen it.  Once holding light and life, it was now as dark as the trees that rose behind it.  As he looked at its white stillness standing against a leaden sky he remembered those who had called it home, lives swept away by time as so much discarded refuse.  Beyond the house rose the hill.  Perched on it was another, larger house, in which life still dwelt. He should go up and let them know that he was home. Knowing that he was there, they would wish to see him. His arrival would not long remain a secret.  They were his family, as much of a family as he could ever hope to have.  That house on the hill he could never call his home. This small building abandoned to the cold, huddled beside the lake, this was his. 

He carried the key to it in his pocket, given to him by Jessup that last night before the assault against Fredericksburg. With the key had come the truth written by the light of a campfire and read long after the noise of the battle had faded.  Having read the letter he crumpled it and threw into the fire.  He had then wandered off towards the quiet of the picket lines.  As the northern lights glittered above, he had leaned against an oak tree and wept.

Into the dead stove, he placed wood and paper.  After the fire began to warm the room he slumped into a chair and remembered.  He had last seen Jessup sitting among his men, stitching a small rectangle of white cloth to his tunic.  On the cloth, he had written his name. Tomorrow they would attempt to storm the heights.  The name would tell those who lived who the body had once been.  As Peter stood beside the fire warming his hands, Jessup finished his sewing.  

From out of a worn haversack, Peter pulled out a small blue square of wool.  Inside its protective depths were two black notebooks.  The books he had found on Jessup the frozen night when he and a small party of stretcher bearers had found him beneath other dead strewn below the silent heights of Fredericksburg.   As he sat in the chair beside the stove, he flipped through the pages.  For the year and a half that he had followed the Army of the Potomac north and south, Jessup had sketched the soldiers and officers that he had lived with. The last picture showed a young private sewing his name on his tunic.  Jessup had done the same.  That was how they had known him, the face too stained by mud and blood to be to be immediately recognizable.  Peter and the men in his party had brought him back to the camp.  Peter had then applied for leave, the first time since joining the army.  He wanted, he told Chief Surgeon Traynor, to take his friend home.

He unlocked the bedroom door that had served as a storage room.  Jessup’s two young sons, Thomas and Richard had once slept there, an age before.  Now the room was lifeless.  Stripped of beds, the floor was covered by cloth-covered paintings stacked against the wall, unseen, unwanted. 

“Uncle Peter.”

Jean had tried not to look too reluctant when told by her mother to invite her uncle to dinner. She had been outside making a snowman with her younger brother Alex when Mister Campbell had arrived in his sleigh.  She liked Mister Campbell.  He would often bring sweets or little tin whistles and toys made at his forge.   Uncle Peter never brought toys.  He never played.  Then he had left, almost two years ago, sending neither letter nor telegraph.  The only news that her mother and father had received of him had been sent by Mister Jessup.  She knew that Uncle Peter was an important man, a doctor and captain in the American army.

Jean would have been more impressed if he had enlisted with the Confederates.  Generals Lee and Jackson were so romantic.  Everyone knew that the South would win.  Even Prime Minister Gladstone had said so.  Papa had said that the Union defeat at Fredericksburg had proven that the south could not be beaten.  In the spring General Lee would defeat the Yankees and end the war.  Papa did not approve of slavery. He said that it was wrong, but she knew that General Lee accepted only the very nicest form of slavery, with no evil Simon Legree and all the black people happy because they had kind masters. The war would end, he told her and her brothers, and Uncle Peter would come home to live.

Jean conceded that she should be glad that her uncle would come home.  It would be wicked to think anything else, yet she could feel no enthusiasm, no affection for that silent, brown-eyed fragment of her past.

Mama had expected Uncle Peter to come for dinner.  When he had not appeared, she had stood on the porch, staring down towards the town.  A light gleaming from the deserted Jessup home had caused her to conclude that Uncle Peter must be there. Maureen had sent Jean running down through the snowdrifts to see if he was there.

“Uncle Peter?”  She thumped on the front door.  In between thumps, she jumped up and down to keep her feet warm and to get a view, through the door window, of the interior.  She was about to give the door another thump when it opened.

“What do you want, child?”

Jean looked up at the gaunt, bearded man.  Beneath the beard, her memory told her, was her uncle.  She glanced furtively at this left wrist.  The familiar scar was there, caused by an accident when he was very young, Mama had told her.

“It’s me, Uncle. Jean.”

“Jean?”  The man nodded.  He granted her a tentative smile “You’ve grown.” Then the frown returned. “What do you want?”

“If you please, uncle, Mama is keeping supper for you.”

“Is she? That is very kind of her.  I’ll be along shortly.”

He closed the door.  Jean, who had hoped at least to step inside to warm her feet, shrugged and ran back up the hill.

At seven o’clock Peter left the house.  He did not turn up the path towards Kilmarnock Hill.  Instead he stepped onto the frozen lake, and strode towards the town.

***        

Maggie Ferguson groaned as she heard her father comment for the eleventh time that day that John A. MacDonald and his Tories would be the ruin of the country. It was a most respectful groan.  She would not offend Papa by telling him that John A. Macdonald was far more amusing than stuffy George Brown. Instead, she used a tactic that left Zedekiah helpless.   “Oh papa, politics is so boring.  Do talk about something else please.”

Zedekiah lapsed into a tolerant silence and concentrated on his paper. His own fault, he told himself. Explaining politics to women was like teaching a dog to write, pointless at the best of times.  To please his daughter and wife he scanned the paper for something more suitable to a feminine mind.

Maggie loved her father but she did find him very trying.  During the two years since Peter had enlisted in the Union army she had missed the times when they had discussed books, art and science.  In his presence she could cease acting as the immature child that her father doted on.  Peter had shared the common masculine assumption that the female was inferior, but at least he had listened to her.  She wished she knew what it was that she had done to offend him.  For two years she had waited for a letter from him, not for the letter of a lover, but for that of a friend.  Every day she had looked up as her father had brought home the mail. The letter never came. Letters from Mister Jessup came; telling her that Peter and he were well, that Peter was working hard and doing much good work.   Mister Jessup explained that he had no time to write now, but soon.

The man, Maggie decided, was too polite to tell her what was evident to everyone.  Peter had lost any interest that he had once had in her.  Both mama and papa told her to look elsewhere.  A youthful infatuation had to give way to adulthood. At twenty-two, it was time, Zedekiah told her, to think of her future.  After two years of waiting, Maggie had accepted that that Peter must have found someone more interesting.   Then the letter had arrived. The message was brief to the point of terseness.  Peter regretted to say that their friend Sergeant Paul Jessup had died in the assault upon Fredericksburg.  Peter was bringing the body home for internment beside Patricia and his two sons in Kingston.  He would travel on to Kilmarnock in the second week of January and requested the honour of a brief audience.  He remained her most obedient servant.

Zedekiah had received the request with some reluctance.  Years before he had discounted the possibility of a match between the two.  As his own investments had prospered, the economic necessity of a union with Kilmarnock Hill had declined.  True, MacTavish was a physician and an officer, both of considerable social significance, but he remained a devout Catholic and far worse, he had renounced his landholdings.   Such irresponsibility indicated poor matrimonial material. If the man intended to ask for his daughter’s hand, Zedekiah, backed by Elizabeth and his sons, would resolve to brave Maggie’s pouting and turn him down.

Maggie had heard of Peter’s arrival.  Everyone in Kilmarnock knew that MacTavish was home.  Yet very few had seen him since he had arrived.   He had stepped down from the stage and had walked through the town, nodding at a few acquaintances but saying nothing.  Those who had expected him to speak of the war or of where he had been for two years were left disappointed.  He was last seen walking across the lake towards Mister Jessup’s house.

Maggie told herself to be reasonable. He had to see about Mister Jessup’s affairs. The McKays were his family.  He would want to spend the day with them.  Later, once he was settled, in the evening or tomorrow, he would call on her.  Peter would ask her to marry him. That was certain.  Papa and Mama would complain about his religion, but what did it matter if people loved one another?  Mister Campbell had married Anna Cleary in a Catholic Church. His family had accepted the marriage.  Papa and Mama, once they knew how good a man Peter was, would accept him.  She must, she told herself not look too excited when he came to call.

She was flipping idly through the third chapter of Middlemarch when the doorbell chimed.  The maid, Margaret, announced that Doctor MacTavish was at the door, wishing to speak with Miss Maggie.  As Zedekiah frowned and Elizabeth busied herself with her needlework, Maggie announced that she would receive Doctor MacTavish in the parlour.

He looked so tired, she thought.  She liked the chin beard.  It reminded her of President Lincoln and Mister Magee, but she could see in the eyes a tired sadness that, even though she blushed to think of it, made her long to place her hands on his.  He must have taken the death of Mister Jessup very hard.  Then, of course there was the war.  Perhaps if they married here, he would bring her back with him. That would make it easier for him. Besides how much longer could the war go on?

“Miss Ferguson.”

Peter stood at the doorway, water from the melting snow dripping onto the carpet.  His two hands held his brown top hat behind his back.

“I am very glad to see you Peter.  It’s been too long.”

Peter nodded.  “Yes. I apologize for not writing.  I am afraid I’m not much for writing.”

“I understand.  Would you like to sit? I’ll have some tea and cakes brought if you wish?”

“No.  Thank you.  I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind?”

“Of course not.”  He was so nervous.  Standing must make it easier for him to consider what he had to say.   Would he fall on his knees and beg for her hand as Maggie had read in the books?  He might.  Best not to make it any more uncomfortable for him then necessary.

“I wish to tell you that I value the relationship that we had in the past. If I have been remiss, for which I apologize, it has not been out of any . . . lack of respect for you.”

Maggie remained serious but inwardly she smiled. It was as good as watching a

play.

“I have given the nature of our friendship a great deal of thought, especially during the days since Mister Jessup . . . since Paul . . Because I value our friendship, because of my respect for you, any  . . . "His voice faltered and then firmed.  “. . . Deepening of that friendship requires absolute truth between us.  Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Of course.” Trust in a marriage was a necessity.

Peter turned and looked up at Zedekiah’s portrait. Better to look at Zedekiah then at her, he thought.

“The night before the assault . . . you see, he knew, they all knew that it would fail. You only had to look  . . . he came to me and gave me a letter.  He asked me to read it if anything should happen to him. He told me that a man shouldn’t die carrying a lie.”

“Peter.”  Puzzled, Maggie wondered what this had to do with them.

“In the letter he told me why he had come to Kilmarnock all those years ago.  You don’t remember much about that summer do you?”

“The summer that Doctor MacTavish died?”

“Yes.”

“I was very young.”

“So was I.  He was right, wasn’t he?”

“Who?”

“Paul.  A man shouldn’t have to die carrying a lie.  Neither should he live that way.”  

Maggie surmised that Peter was building up towards explaining his feelings towards her.  From his tone and his declining to look at her, she was beginning to believe that he was no longer interested in her.  Maggie stiffened, resolved to remain composed. “Truthfulness is important, yes.”

“I have always had the deepest respect for you . . . Maggie”, he said still looking up at Zedekiah     “I have always regarded you as a . . . dear friend.  I . . . What Paul told me and my respect for you compels me to.  . . I want to keep nothing between us.  No lies.  No evasions.”

“I understand.”

“What do you know of me, of my past?”

Maggie repeated the story told and retold by the McKays. “You came from Germany.  Your parents died of ship fever.  Doctor MacTavish adopted you.   Your surname was  . . .  Mueller, wasn’t it?”

“No.  Alex gave me that name. As for coming from Germany, well I suppose that’s true in a way, but I am not German.  I am, at least, was Czech from Moravia. My mother’s name was Benes.  My father, at least he claimed to be my father, was a pig keeper named Krivanek, Milos Krivanek.  You see, my mother was a prostitute.  I never knew my natural father.  When I was eight, my mother, brother and sister died from the typhus. I was sent to live with Milos. When I was nine a man bought me, a man named Radek.  Die Eule, the people called him, the owl.  He was the general overseer for the Baron Von Kraunitz who owned the estate on which I lived.  I was to be Herr Radek’s gift to the baron.”

“Gift?”

“The baron, Frederick, was a man with . . . You see, it was my job to keep him happy and to spy on him for Herr Radek.”

Peter tried not to feel the perspiration building under his collar, the dryness coating his lips.  She must know the truth.  Only then would she know what he was.

“Herr Radek was transferring the baron’s money to London, without the baron’s knowledge.  He intended to persuade Frederick to move to London and from there to America. Therefore, if I could do my job well enough, I too could go to America.  Once there I wouldn’t be Josef the pig anymore.”

“The….?”

  “Therefore, I did what I could, what I had to do to keep Frederick happy.  Every night as Fredrick touched me, I would tell myself, America.  Every time he entered me, America.  Every time he put it in my mouth, America. Every time I tasted him, America. Every time he held me and whispered to me that I would always be his pet, the only word that I could hear was America.”

“And so I came to America.  My America was a room with bars and Frederick’s bed.  Then he decided to go to Canada, and I begged him to take me.  I let him use me anyway he wished because once away from that house, I might, just might be able to get away.  And I did.  When he was in Kingston I got the room key when he was asleep and I ran.  For days I ran until I was too sick and too tired to run any more.  I found a barn and went into it.  I couldn’t ask the people.  They might know what I had done.  They might send me back.  Safer among the animals, I thought.  Then a man, Mister McDermott, came with a gun.  He thought that I was an animal.”  Peter remembered the girl on the street in Montreal. “Maybe he was right.”

“When I was with Alex, for the first time in years I had met someone I didn’t have to be afraid of anymore.  But the fear of the others was still there.  So I couldn’t tell him. I loved that old man but I couldn’t tell him.  If he knew, I thought that he wouldn’t want me. But he did know and he wanted me anyway.  I could have told him everything, about . . .  and he would still have . . .  wanted me.  Paul was like that.  He knew but he didn’t care, only he never told me. He had to wait until after.  As I traveled with his body north I kept asking myself, why not, why not just this once, end the lies but whom could I end with?  Only with the one person who mattered enough to me to . . .”

He turned away from Zedekiah to look at Maggie.  The chair in which she had been seated was empty.  Peter was alone in the room. He stared at the empty seat.  Then He put on his hat and pulled on his gloves and overcoat. As he stepped out of the room the flustered Zedekiah demanded to know what he had said to upset his daughter and send her running up the stairs.  Without a word, Peter left the house.

***                        

Mary had placed Peter’s supper in the oven.  George glanced at his watch, which now showed nine-fifteen.  Maureen pulled out a snag in her knitting. The children were now asleep.  The only sound in the room was the soft ticking of the mantel clock.

“Perhaps he’s gone over to Maggie’s,” George said.

“He knew that we were keeping supper for him,” said Maureen, not looking up.

“Young people have a poor sense of timekeeping especially when they haven’t seen one another in a long time,” George murmured with the tolerant air of a man in his mid- thirties who had put his youth behind him.

Maureen placed her right hand on her husband’s back.  “You sound like an old man.”

“I suppose I do,” George smiled. “Have to start checking for grey hairs soon.”

Maureen smiled but underlying the smile was a deeper apprehension.  At thirty-three George looked closer to forty.   If Peter had kept his word instead of running off to join the Union army the workload on George would have been eased.  George had never complained but that did not change the truth.  To disappear for two years and then to send only the briefest of messages, and now he had failing to show the slightest interest in coming. Maureen had promised herself and George not to speak of it but she could not keep from thinking of it. At least the winter was a quieter time for him. He could sleep through the night without being awakened before dawn by a caller.  Even after all these years, Maureen could keep her throat from tightening when a late night caller came.

Peter was her brother, whom she had sworn to defend and to care for but his sudden departure from Montreal, his disinclination to write, and his snubbing of their house since his arrival had strained her patience.  From the hallway came the sound of the front door opening.   Footsteps approached, heavy booted steps, a man’s steps. The drawing room door opened.  There he stood, tall thin, bearded, an older version of Maureen’s memory.  Yet the eyes had changed little from the child that Maureen had once held.  George stood up to take him by his hand.  Peter did not step forward to take George’s hand.  Instead he hovered by the door.

“I’m going away tomorrow, back to the states.  I will leave you the keys to Still Waters.  If you could look after the house for me?  I don’t really know when I’ll be back.  When the war is over, I suppose.”

“Two years away and that’s all you have to say,” asked Maureen. “Are you so uncivilized that you can’t even greet us?”

“At least stay for the night,” said George.

Peter shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Are they treating you alright?”  George asked.

“Well enough.”

“Have you eaten?” Maureen asked.

“I’m not hungry.  I have a few provisions at Still Waters.  I’ll cook myself something later.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Maureen. She was about to step outside to call for Mary to serve Peter his supper, when she found her way blocked by Peter’s right arm.

“I can’t stay,” he said.

“What do you mean you can’t stay?  Away for two years and you can’t stay one night. Not even to eat? Have you given no thought at all to how much we’ve worried?”

“That’s why you sent Jessup after me is it?”

“What?”

“He told me that last night at Fredericksburg that you had sent him after me.”

“And if we did, what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.  Did he tell you why I left Montreal?”

“To join the union army, to begin a new life.  I didn’t agree with that.  I still think your life is here, but I can understand that.  But why not tell us?”

“That’s not why I left.  I saw Maggie.  I told her the truth about myself.”

“You . . . why?”

“Why not?  Why do I have to keep lying to everyone?  I left Montreal because I couldn’t live with the lies anymore.  I left Montreal because I hurt a girl.  She was a streetwalker.  She came up to me and offered herself for five dollars.  All I could see was what they had done to me. The strange thing was, I didn’t even know that she was there.  When I let her go, I just ran.  To New York, I ran, all the way seeing only the past, a past I can’t speak of.”

“Peter, you know why.”

“I went to end the lies.  I went to find Radek.”

“You . . . ”

“I wanted to face him, if he were alive, to make him admit what he had done to me, but he wasn’t there was he?  They locked me up.  While in the cell I met a policeman. He told me that Radek had been dead for years, that he had disappeared eleven years before, just about the same time that you and Ian and Judge Strachan went to New York.  I had one more lie to add to the list that you gave me.  So what did you do in New York?”

“We did what we had to do to protect you and Alex’s name,” said George.  “Do you blame us for that.”

“No.  I’m too tired to blame.  But you could have told me.”

“We hoped that with time  . . . ”

“It would what, disappear?  The worst wasn’t remembering Radek, or Frederick or what they had done.  The worst was never being able to be Josef, that little boy that you decided should never have a life.  After Malvern Hill, I was in a convalescent tent. A young Ohio boy had his left foot amputated.  He was feverish and in that tent among those men, I was the only one who knew what he was saying.  Maminka. It was Czech.  He was speaking of his mother.  I sat beside him and spoke to him until he slept.  I told him that my name was Josef Benes, my mother, Maria. I told him of my brother, Janos and of my sister Holena, little things, the games we would play, stories we would tell.  After he had fallen asleep, I sat beside him.  For the first time in years, I was at peace.  I was me.”

“And Alex?”

“Alex is my father.  He will always be my father.  But I had a mother.  I had a family. I can’t pretend that they just didn’t exist.  Maybe my mother was just a w***e, nothing more but she loved me and if she committed a sin, what sins were my brother and sister guilty of that they deserve to be thrust into oblivion?  I will not live a life without them.  Not anymore.  If I can’t live it here, then I’ll find a place where I can.”

“And Maggie?”

“She left the room before I could finish.   At least I don’t have to lie to her anymore.”

“Peter . . .” Maureen placed a hand on his arm.  “I am sorry.”

“Don’t be.  It’s better for her. Don’t worry.  She won’t tell anyone.  I know her well enough for that.”

“Peter . . . Stay,” said Maureen.  “We can talk.”

“No.  If I stay, tomorrow, you’ll have to talk to the children. Tell them more lies.  Tell other people more lies.  No more lies in this house, Maureen, remember?  No more.”

He turned and left.

          ***

The night shone with that bright clarity that only the nights of deep winter held when the stars seemed so close one could reach up and pick them.  The lights danced as they had danced that night in front of Fredericksburg.  The Confederates had said that God himself had set the sky alight in honour of the Confederate victory.   Peter closed the curtain.  He should eat something he told himself, but the time was late and he would leave at dawn.  In a week’s time he would be back where he belonged, at the regimental hospital.  Strange.  When he had left Montreal, he had dreaded the thought of placing his hand on human flesh.  Now he longed for it. Anything would be better then the empty stillness of this night.  He looked at the paintings covered by canvas.  They were his, left to him by Jessup. What would he do with them?  Most of them he had never seen.  The portrait of Alex still hung in his old bedroom in Kilmarnock Hill.  He would have to send for that, but not now. The others he had no use for.

The paintings he would leave behind with the rest of the house.   They would gather dust and mould, decaying with the passing years, as would his life.  Peter picked up the painting closest to him and pulled away the cloth.  It was an unfinished landscape, a painting of Lake Lomond, one of many attempts by Jessup to catch the changing colours of the lake.  Peter knew that he held a strip of canvas covered with blobs of vermilion, blue and browns, mere, indistinct shadows; colours running into one another with no clear boundaries.  Why could an impeccable draftsman as Jessup had been, never learn to be precise with his colours?

He asked him about that the first day upon seeing him in Washington. They sat in his tent, as evening settled over the camp and Jessup explained to him his theory on colours.

"They don't truly exist, you know.  They're simply particles of lights. What exists is our ability to perceive them. So there are no definite boundaries with colour. As light changes, colours change something like the way people see one another."

Peter was about to put the painting back when a thought occurred to him.  He placed it against the wall beside the lantern and walked away from it.  At a few feet, by the glow of the light the painting seemed transformed.  The colours took shapes.  Trees, the shore, buildings and the bridge took solid form, and in front of them lay the lake in the shimmering green of summer. The painting had failed to portray an accurate description of Kilmarnock because Jessup had been attempting something else, that which Peter had sensed in Jessup’s portrait of Alex.  He had sought to find the community’s soul.  That huddle of brown buildings dwarfed by hills and trees, draped by a grey sky and fronted by cold, green water showed loneliness, courage, and a fierce determination to survive.  He did not understand entirely what he was seeing but he knew that amidst dust and mice droppings he had found a wondrous beauty.  The beauty still crowded his thoughts when he fell asleep beside the stove.

As the grey light touched the sky Peter rose. Shivering in the frozen air he dressed.  Without bothering to make breakfast he left the house. The snow beneath his boots crunched as he marched over the lake. About halfway he stopped to look back at Still Waters and at Kilmarnock Hill. They would still be asleep he thought. Better that way.

The Royal Arms would not open for another hour. Peter stamped his feet against the wooden walk and told himself not to think of Maggie or of the McKays.

He saw the year stretching ahead of him. The hell in Virginia would go on for another summer the union stumbling from defeat to defeat. He would continue to do what he could amidst the blood and stink. Then, some day, the war done, he would leave as he was now leaving Kilmarnock, unheralded, alone. Better that way.  The only man that he knew in the army that he had called a friend had died at Fredericksburg. Doctor Traynor was a colleague, nothing more. After the fiasco at Mrs. Traynor’s party the doctor had abandoned any attempts to draw closer to him. That Peter thought was the only good thing to come out of the dinner. Just once had he come close to opening to someone, to that young lad from Moravia.

Private Josef Cermak was seventeen. He had been in the country for six months before enlisting to show that he was an American. Peter nursed him and when he could spent his free time talking with him. Eight days later Cermak was transferred to Washington. Peter promised to write but never did. What would be the point he asked himself. The man did not need him anymore. Sooner or later he would have known what Doctor MacTavish was. 

Smoke curled out of the chimney above Campbell’s forge. Tom Campbell, mug of tea in hand, stepped outside; He walked over to Peter still waiting for the morning coach.  He handed him the mug.  “Going back are you?”

Peter thanked him and sipped the brown brew allowing it to seep into him. “Yes. Going back.”

“I hear its bad in Virginia.”

“Yes. It’s bad.”

“Come in and warm yourself.”

“No. Thank you, Mister Campbell”

“Be another hour before the Royal Arms opens.”

“Yes. I know.”

Then he saw her. She stood on the other side of the street, a red woollen coat with a collar of red fox fur.  He buried his face in the mug.

Campbell tipped his cap.

Maggie smiled politely her eyes remaining with Peter. “Would you excuse us, Mister Campbell?”

“Surely.”

Peter handed him the mug. “Perhaps I will take advantage of your offer, Mister Campbell.”

Campbell smiled. “Well, both of you are welcome.”

They sat on a bench absorbing the heat from the forge. Campbell slipped away leaving them alone.

Peter looked down at the earthen floor,

Maggie whispered. “You must be very angry with me, Peter.”

“Why? Why should I be angry with you? You only did what anyone else would have done.”

“You handed me your life and I dropped it.”

“I had no right to burden you with it. I'm sorry if I hurt you.  I apologize.”

Maggie spun away. “You can be such an idiot.  I didn't come for an apology. I came to say that I'm sorry.”

“I don't need your pity.”

Maggie rose, her hands balled against her sides. “Will you listen to me? I want to apologize. Is it that too difficult for you to understand?”

Puzzled, Peter stammered, “but there's no reason.”

“Yes there is. What you told me made me ill. Not very ladylike I suppose. I had to get out of that room. But later, after I had recovered myself I wondered why you would have told me such terrible things.   All through the night I wondered.  Why did you tell me that? Was it to hurt me? No. You just wanted to tell me the truth, a truth that did not have to be told. I would never have known.  So why did you tell me?  Then I knew. You couldn't bear building a life for us upon lies. Rather than do that you risked losing me.  How could someone do that to a woman unless he loved her?”

“Maggie . . .”

“If I just let you leave, I may never find anyone who could love me as much. I had to tell you that before you left.”

“Maggie . . . there will be others.”

“I don't know any others. I do know you.”

“You don't know me at all. In Montreal I hurt a woman. I didn't mean to but I did. I don't want to hurt you.”

“You will if you walk out of my life.”

“I will if I stay in it.”

“You do love me, don't you Peter?”

“I've always…”  Pity. That would explain it. Alex had loved him. He had accepted that, even grown to understand it, but Maggie was not Alex. “It was never you that I could not trust.” Sheltered, immature, anxious to assuage a sense of guilt, Maggie had misunderstood what she had felt.  What did she know about anything?

“A creature in pain will lash out. In lashing out someone may be hurt. There is that risk, yes, but even the worst pain heals given time. ”

"Time? How much time, Maggie? The deeper the wound, the longer it takes to heal. I can't ask you to wait for some hypothetical point of time in the future. What if it never comes? You will waste your life waiting for something that may never come." 

"I don't believe that. You are a good man That I know.”

She knew nothing. How could he tell her that? “Maggie I told you what . . .”

“And I have told you what I believe.”

“Maggie .. . ”

She placed her fingers on his lips and kissed his brow. “I have to go. Father will be wondering where I am. Promise me that you'll write. Every week.” She pressed a small brown paper package into his right hand. 

“The mail can be somewhat irregular,” he murmured.

“Promise me.”

“I ...  promise.”

George McKay waited for him at the Royal Arms. He handed him a cloth parcel. “Maureen thought you might be hungry on the way.  She couldn't come. Busy with the children.  When you finish down there you know you have a job waiting for you here if you want it.”

“I'll let you know.”  As he shook hands he thought of mentioning Maggie but decided against it. Perhaps her fit of pity for him would pass.  It would be better for her if it did. Yes he would write. Her interest would fade after a letter or two.  Only when he was in the coach did he open the small gift that she had given him.  The cloth parted to reveal a small gold locket. Inside was her portrait in miniature and a carefully folded piece of paper.  On it she had inscribed in small neat letters one word. “Always.”