“Mama!” George’s shriek had her
hurrying outside again. “Papa got us a puppy!”
In his arm, squirming to get free, was a little,
black silky-eared puppy. George had a worshipful look on his face,
and Allan strode behind him, grinning widely.
“He’ll be good for the sheep.” He
caught Harriet up in a hug, kissing her soundly. “You’re a sight
for sore eyes.”
“As are you,” Harriet returned. “It’s near twilight
and I was getting worried.”
“I thought of stopping by at the Reids,” Allan told
her. “I didn’t want to paddle in the darkness, but I knew I’d worry
you if I didn’t get home by nightfall.”
“As long as you’re safe,” Harriet murmured, and he
kissed her again.
“Papa bought two geese!” Maggie said as she came
hurrying up from the river landing. “They’re hissing and spitting
like mad!” She threw her arms around her father with exuberant
affection. “And he got me a hair ribbon!”
The silky length of scarlet was duly admired, and
George, in a familiar game, tackled his father to find the bag of
barley sugar he always bought when he went to market.
Night was falling fast, a dark, icy cloak, and
Harriet ushered her family inside for supper.
“Can the puppy come inside as well?” George begged.
“I’ve named him Patches.”
“He hasn’t got any patches,” Maggie said
indignantly, and George stuck out his lower lip in mutinous
denial.
“Very well, he can come in,” Harriet relented, “but
only for tonight.” As the puppy scampered joyfully by her heels,
she’d a feeling he would be curled by the fire for more than the
one night.
Anna soon awoke, and Allan bounced her on his knee
as Harriet served up the meal.
“Didn’t you get Mama anything?” Maggie asked as they
ate fried pork and griddle cakes.
Allan chuckled. “Took you awhile to notice that,” he
told his daughter, and Maggie grinned.
“You always get something special for Mama.”
Harriet shook her head. “There’s no need...”
“Now, now.” Allan held a finger to
his lips to laughingly shush her. “What about your egg money?” It
was custom for the money they received from selling eggs to be
spent at Harriet’s discretion.
“Don’t trick me with that nonsense, Allan
MacDougall. The hens haven’t laid eggs all winter!”
Allan’s eyes twinkled with
mischief. “Well, let’s just say they had...”
With a teasing smile, he withdrew a length of green
calico from one of the crates.
“Oh, isn’t it beautiful!” Maggie cried.
George shrugged in disdain. “It’s just cloth.”
“There’s enough for new dresses for both my girls,”
Allan said, and Maggie clapped her hands in delight.
“You shouldn’t have,” Harriet said
in reproof, but her eyes were warm with love and she couldn’t
resist smoothing one hand over the material. “Thank you,
Allan.”
After the children were in bed, it was Harriet and
Allan’s custom to share a cup of coffee by the fire. Normally it
was bitter stuff made from chicory or dandelion, but after a trip
to town they were able to enjoy some of the precious ground
beans.
“I stopped by Mother and Father’s,”
Allan said quietly. Even though their farm was adjacent to the
older MacDougalls, in winter they barely saw them at all, due to
the heavy snows and fierce storms.
“Are they well?” Harriet asked, and Allan nodded
thoughtfully.
“Mother looks as if she’s gained
some of her strength back. Father insisted she rest most of the
winter, thankfully.”
“And Rupert?” Rupert was Allan’s
younger brother. He’d been living at Mingarry Farm since he
travelled over with Harriet ten years ago.
“A bit restless, I’d say,” Allan said slowly.
“It is that time of year. A boy like Rupert can
hardly stand to be cooped up indoors for months on end!”
“He’s twenty-three years old, hardly a boy.”
“Too true,” Harriet agreed. “The
time does slip by, doesn’t it?”
“It does, although it’s going
slowly for Rupert, I warrant. He won’t stay at Mingarry forever, I
shouldn’t think.”
“But your father needs him!”
Harriet protested, shocked. “Why, you know how he relies on him.
Even after he hired on a man, there was too much to do. And he’s
getting older...” she trailed off, thinking of Sandy, proud and
white haired, with affection.
“He is.” Allan gazed into the fire.
“But he can’t tie Rupert to the land, no more than he could tie
me.”
“But you came back,” Harriet reminded him softly.
“This land is in your heart, Allan. Why sometimes I think the very
soil is a part of you!”
“Aye, it is. But perhaps it’s not so for
Rupert.”
Harriet was silent. Admittedly Rupert was different
than Allan. Allan had always been quiet, a thinker. Rupert was more
impulsive, full of energy that could never quite be suppressed...
or perhaps, satisfied.
“What would he do?” Harriet asked after a long
moment when the only sound was the crackling of the fire. “Leave
the island, as you did? Become a fur trader?”
Allan shrugged and stretched his
legs. “He’ll have to discover that for himself. But the fur trade
has moved farther and farther away... even in just the last ten
years the game’s become terribly scarce. And I don’t know if that
sort of solitary life is for Rupert. Truth be told, it wasn’t for
me after the first few months. If I hadn’t found you...”
Allan smiled at his wife with deep affection. He
also remembered well the moment in a broken down shack on the
prairies near Red River, when Harriet had gazed at him down the
barrel of a shotgun. With his bushy beard and fur cap, she hadn’t
recognised him, even though he'd seen her, trembling with
determination and fear, in joyous disbelief. Then he'd wrestled the
shotgun from her, and pulled her into an embrace neither of them
had ever forgotten.
“Perhaps you could invite Rupert to stay with us for
a spell, once the planting’s over,” Harriet suggested. “A change of
scene, however small, might do him good, and I know he enjoys the
children.”
“A fine idea,” Allan agreed. “Perhaps it will help
sort out what he wants to do with his life. It’s not easy, making
that sort of decision.”
“I hope, for your father’s sake, he stays on at
Mingarry. But for his own sake...” Harriet sighed. “Why must it be
so difficult to discover what makes us happy?”
“For some, it isn’t. And I’m
grateful every day that I’ve found my happiness.” Gently Allan
touched Harriet’s cheek before blowing out the lantern.
Smiling, Harriet slipped her hand
in his. Yes, she’d found her happiness, and she dearly hoped the
same for Rupert. What more joy could there be than this, for
anyone?
“Thank you kindly, Mr.
Campbell.”
Ian smiled as the young man nodded
his thanks before leaving the examination room, the paper cone of
stomach powder clutched in his hand.
In this case, the man’s stomach ailment was easily
cured. It was nothing more than a mild digestive complaint, and the
cases Ian normally saw were so much more severe... and
hopeless.
People stumbled into the clinic when it was their
last hope, their last chance. They gazed at Ian with wide,
despairing eyes, for it was often too late to do anything, or else
what needed to be done was impossible.
How many times had he advised rest and wholesome
food, only to be stared at incredulously? No one could afford to
miss a day of work, for they’d be sacked, and despite the growing
economy, jobs were precious.
The Irish had started their steady trickle into the
city, and they were lined up at the mill and factory gates, ready
to take any person’s job for lower wages.
As for wholesome food... in a city, you took what
you could get, often rotten vegetables off the back of the wagon,
pottage that was more water than potato or meat.
Ian leaned back in his chair and sighed, running a
hand through his unruly auburn hair. He’d been working at the
Massachusetts General Hospital for nearly eight years, ever since
he’d finished Harvard Medical School. The hospital was newly
established, meant to be for those too sick and too poor to afford
private care in their homes.
Too often, however, it was simply a place to
die.
“Are you finished your clinic,
Campbell?” Another doctor and friend, David Blackburn, stuck his
head in the doorway. “I’m off as well, if you care to join me in a
pint of ale at the Plough and Stars?”
Ian shook his head regretfully. “I’m expected for
dinner at the Moores,” he said.
“Ah,” Blackburn said with a knowing wink. “Society
beckons.”
Ian grimaced even as he
acknowledged the hit. The Moores were part of Boston’s elite, a
segment of society he’d become familiar with, even if at heart he
was ever a stranger to it. His relation to them had begun when he'd
signed on
The Allegiance
as ship's boy. That, Ian acknowledged, had been a
dreadful episode in his life, for the hard ways of the sailors and
ship's boys had made him miserable.
He'd signed on when he ran away from his family,
from his shame. Ian could not keep a scowl from stealing over his
features at the thought of his enemy, his nemesis. Sir James
Riddell, a wealthy landowner and a liar and a cheat, who'd waited
for Ian in the street, as brazen as a pedlar, and swindled him out
of his fortune, his farm, and his pride.
Ian only hoped he would meet Riddell again one day,
and that time they would face each other eye to eye. That time, he
thought grimly, he would get Achlic back for himself, for his
sisters, and for his father who'd died last year, never having set
eyes on his son again.
Taking his hat and top coat, Ian left his cramped
quarters at the hospital.
Dusk was falling as he walked the
short distance to the Moores’ residence on Beacon Street, cutting
across the Boston Common, enjoying as always the quiet peacefulness
of the meadowland. There was talk, he knew, of creating a public
garden here, although only recently the city had banned cattle
grazing on the fine green meadows.
Ian smiled to himself. Boston, like
all of America, was a strapping adolescent, its body growing and
changing all too quickly as it learned to accommodate those
changes.
Perhaps that was why he loved America, he thought,
so different from his homeland of Scotland, the tiny island of
Mull, where he had spent his childhood. Mull had been narrow,
restrictive. A man there was born into his trade, and he rarely
left it.
America, however, was a place where
a man could choose what he wanted to do, to be. The country
expanded to allow everyone freedom and comfort, if they were
prepared to work hard for it. And Ian was.
Arabella Moore met Ian in the foyer of her gracious
home, after the butler had taken his top coat and hat.
It had been his fortune, Ian knew,
when signing onto
The
Allegiance
, that the ship's master, Henry
Moore, had taken him under his wing. He'd relieved Ian of his
ship's boy duties and made him mate to the surgeon. At the side of
a man who had been reduced to ship's surgeon because of his shaky
hands, Ian had found his calling... medicine.
When Henry discovered Ian's relationship to his
betrothed, Margaret MacDougall, he'd considered him as good as a
brother. The Moores had sheltered him then, treated him like
family, and they still did. Ian was grateful for their friendship
and patronage, even if at times he wondered if it possessed hidden
strings.
“Ian, my dear," Arabella said,
"it’s so lovely to see you. Isobel is in the music room--she has a
piece she’s been hoping to play for you. A Mozart.” Arabella’s
smile was sweetly expectant, and Ian felt a twinge of unease. It
wasn’t the first time he’d felt such a twinge when Isobel was
mentioned. He cast it aside, however, for the moment. He enjoyed
the Moores’ company too much to worry about possible expectations.
There would be time for that later.
He moved into the music room, a dark-paneled room
with a piano in one corner. Isobel was seated at the instrument, in
a modest white dress, her dark hair dressed up with a cluster of
curls at each temple.
She turned to Ian with a radiant smile, stretching
her hand out to clasp his.
“Ian! It’s so lovely to see you.”
“As always, dear Isobel.” Ian had known Isobel for
over ten years, since he started boarding with the Moores. Her
thoughtful words had helped him in many respects to put the past
behind him and begin anew at the medical school.
Since that time, he’d come to depend on her calming
presence, her listening ear. There was something innately
comforting about Isobel’s unobtrusiveness, her lack of demand, and
Ian knew it was selfish of him to expect her to revolve around his
own world. The fact that Isobel seemed to content to do so was no
balm, especially as of late he’d begun to wonder what she hoped to
have happen out of their simple friendship.
Now, however, she smiled sweetly, and began to play.
Ian stood by the instrument, allowing the music to wash over
him.
“You look so tired.”
Ian looked down, startled, and saw Isobel smiling up
at him with gentle uncertainty, her hands resting lightly on the
keys. The music, he realized, had stopped.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” he said with an apologetic
grimace. “It’s been a long day, and my mind wandered, lulled as it
was by your soothing music.”
Isobel smiled wryly. “You have a
way with words, Ian Campbell. I know I’m not that
talented.”