Suddenly the door flew open and a man breezed into the room. Margaret’s face froze, while Jean’s jaw dropped open.
He grinned at the girls, sat next to the fire on a sofa, and crossed his legs. “Mother, I’ve just had the strangest experience. I was questioned by the police as to whether I am a German spy. It appears some children thought I was making a map of the Thames River for the Germans to use. It took some doing, but I managed to convince the police I really was an art student sketching the beautiful river in its winter glory and was home on a visit from school to see my lovely mother.”
He picked up a sandwich and poured himself a cup of tea. “They will probably call around later to confirm you really are my relation. Now, who are these charming ladies?”
Margaret dared not look at Jean.
“Just two girls. You need not bother with them.”
“But I have the feeling we’ve met before, though I can’t recall where.” The man put his head to one side and studied them.
Margaret swallowed hard. “I’m Margaret Brown and I live in the cottage behind the house, and this is my friend, Jean Thurlowe.” She hoped he wouldn’t tell his mother who’d called the police! Studying his friendly brown eyes and the generous smile lighting his thin face, she thought not.
“I’m pleased to meet both of you. I’m Allan Ferguson and I go to school in Montreal where I study art, though perhaps I should really think of being a spy instead of an artist, as I seem to suit the role better.”
Mrs. Ferguson got to her feet and walked to the window. “Perhaps if you were in uniform they would not have taken you for a spy.” She pulled back the curtain. “Your mother’s putting out laundry again. Seems that all she does is wash. But I guess with a pack of children that’s the way it is. It appears you will also soon have an addition. A bad time for that.”
“Mama says it’s never a bad time to have a baby,” Margaret told her indignantly, feeling colour flood her face. Mrs. Ferguson should not be commenting on her family, especially Mama being in the family way, with such familiarity and certainly not in front of Allan. No one talked about the baby and Mama seldom went out these days unless well wrapped in a coat and shawl that covered the swelling of her stomach.
“Well, she’ll wear out her washing machine.” Mrs. Ferguson said.
“We don’t have a washing machine,” Margaret told her, wondering if it’d be polite to take another sandwich. They’d been so small, one wasn’t very satisfactory. “We had one in Saskatchewan but couldn’t bring it with us so Dad sold it. We use a scrubbing board.”
“A scrubbing board!” Allan exclaimed. He joined his mother at the window.
Margaret took the opportunity to sneak a sandwich and, copying Jean, crammed the whole thing into her mouth. She saw Jean slip a couple more into the pocket of her skirt. Horrified, she realized they’d cleaned off the plate. Mama told her to never clear the plate when out in company.
“Those boys run around all day shouting and giving me a headache. I should never have rented the cottage out,” Mrs. Ferguson complained. She stood at the window a moment longer.
She whirled around, eyed the empty plate, then the two girls. “Go home now. I’m tired.”
Allan smiled sympathetically at the girls, then nodded his head for them to go.
Jean helped Margaret gather up her material. Mrs. Ferguson leaned her head on the back of the chair and closed her eyes. She did look tired, Margaret thought. Her face was pale, but the lips drawn down at the corners spoke more of disappointment than exhaustion. Mrs. Ferguson, Margaret decided, was disappointed by life.
As they quietly let themselves out of the room, the woman’s eyes flew open. “I’ll expect you Saturday afternoon. We’ll go see Mrs. McClung.”
Chapter 11
Margaret had often passed the Masonic Temple Hall, but she had never before gone into the imposing building. Following Mrs. Ferguson’s black-clad figure between two large columns, she went through the double doors into the main hall. Allan accompanied them, despite his mother’s continual comments that she could not begin to fathom why he’d bother to come hear a suffragette.
“I’m interested in what women think. After all, they make up half the world’s population,” Allan told her.
Margaret had one awful moment when a woman at the entrance asked for a ten-cent admission, but Mrs. Ferguson calmly pulled out her change purse and paid everyone’s fee.
Squeezed between Jean and the large bulk of a strange woman, Margaret felt slightly faint from the stifling heat and the rising smell of wet wool, people’s bodies, and the fumes of the coal furnace. It was largely a female audience that afternoon—Mrs. McClung had spoke at a special lecture for men the previous night. Voices rose in a deafening din, and Margaret craned her neck to see around the wildly bobbing feather in the hat of a woman in front of her. Suddenly the voices stilled as a woman took the stage.
“I am pleased to present to you Mrs. Nellie McClung, authoress and lecturer. Mrs. McClung’s talk this afternoon will be touching on the war, temperance, and the vote for women. Her address is entitled: Should Women Think?”
Margaret moved to the edge of her chair and watched as a second woman walked to the podium, smiled out at the audience, and cleared her throat.
“‘No woman, idiot, lunatic, or criminal shall vote’—from the Election Act of the Dominion of Canada. All that stands in the way of the realization of the effort to secure legislation to provide all women with votes is prejudice. And believe me, when it comes to length of life, prejudice has any old yellow cat beaten every way.”
Margaret glanced over at Mrs. Ferguson’s disapproving face. This wouldn’t suit her at all. Allan, she noticed, made swift, sure moments with a pencil on a sketch pad on his lap. His head swivelled from Mrs. McClung to the white paper, then back again.
“Woman was looked upon as a delicate thing to be nurtured and protected in the home. If she showed any intelligence, she was pronounced a witch and they burned her. Some men seem to think that if a woman is permitted to acquire education, she may some day not get home in time to have her husband’s dinner ready. And what is more terrible than that?”
Polite laughter swept through the audience.
“When is she going to speak about temperance?” Mrs. Ferguson whispered loudly to Allan.
“And what do women think of the war?” Mrs. McClung continued. “I have watched a good many boys go away to war, but I’ve never heard a woman cheer when they went.”
Margaret remembered the men crowding around Edward, shaking his hand and slapping his back, and her mother standing very still, watching the wagon that carried Edward away from them.
“Since the war broke out,” Mrs. McClung continued, “women have done a great deal of knitting. Some have seen nothing in it but a ‘fad.’ It is more than that. It is the desire to help, to care for, to minister; it is the same spirit that inspires our nurses to go out . . .” Margaret glanced at Jean and saw the girl’s face light up. “. . . and bind up the wounded and care for the dying. Men make wounds and women bind them up.” She paused a moment. “So the women, with their hearts filled with love and sorrow, sit in their homes and knit.”
Into the quiet room a sob broke from a woman’s throat, quickly muffled. Mrs. Ferguson, Margaret saw, sat upright, body and face rigid, gloved hand tightly grasping her umbrella handle, as if she might break into pieces if she it let go. Margaret suddenly wished she were home, working on her quilt and not hearing that war hurt people so much. Her stomach began to feel queasy. The war would be over before Edward went, she kept repeating to herself, but the assurance wasn’t working. Mrs. Ferguson had lost her son.
The room reeled about her as Mrs. McClung told the audience that every time she saw a soldier drunk she felt like apologizing because they had exposed him to temptation on his weak side and that she was working on a temperance campaign. Mrs. Ferguson nodded her head in satisfied agreement.
The woman in front of Margaret suddenly threw
a fur stole over her shoulder and the head of a dead fox flopped across her back, lifeless eyes peering at Margaret. Black dots crowded her sight, as she stared at the head in horror.
“Come outside. The fresh air will help.”
Allan’s face swam in front of Margaret as he helped her from her seat. They threaded their way through the people standing at the back of the hall and into the cold outdoors. Margaret took deep breaths and felt her head clear.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I made you miss the rest of Mrs. McClung’s talk.”
“I don’t think she has much left to say,” Allan assured her.
“It was just so hot in there and she was talking about the war and the soldiers . . . and then that fox . . .” Margaret shuddered.
Allan leaned back against one of the columns. “Your brother Edward enlisted, Mother says.”
Margaret nodded miserably. “I didn’t like Mrs. McClung talking about the wounded and dying.”
Allan said nothing for a long moment, then spoke haltingly. “I want to say he’ll be fine, but that wouldn’t be true because there is no guarantee he will be fine. My brother, Blair, is not coming back. And if Edward comes back alive, should this war ever end, he probably will not be fine even then. He’ll be different from the Edward you knew.”
“He already is,” Margaret told him tearfully. “As soon as I saw him in his uniform I knew he was different. I don’t let Mama or Dad see, but I check the casualty lists in the newspaper; the shocked, wounded, seriously ill . . .” She paused. “. . . then the killed, to see if his name is there. I don’t want to, but I can’t help looking.”
“There’s not quite the feverish patriotism in Montreal that you see here. A lot of people there are not in favour of the war,” Allan told her. “At the beginning everyone was running to join up, thinking it’d be over soon—a few months and they all wanted their chance to go to war to join in the glory. Maybe have a break from their everyday lives. Now we know it has turned into an ugly man-eating war, yet people here can’t understand why I’m not rushing to join up. They think I should still do my duty. While I don’t agree with Mrs. McClung on all her views, she is right about women and war. When I waited for my train in Montreal I watched a regiment pull out. The women stood silently on the platform. The men waved wildly and talked boisterously, but the women . . . It hurt me to watch them.”
From inside the Masonic Temple Hall, a man began to sing. Allan turned bleak eyes on Margaret. “The truth is I don’t want to die and if I go overseas, I probably shall. It’s not because I’m scared of death, but there’s so much I want to see and do with my life, so much beauty in the world, that I don’t want to throw it away on a stupid war.” He suddenly smiled. “I imagine I’m boring you dreadfully.”
Margaret shook her head. Everything he said was so different from what they were usually told. “At church, the minister said that we had to stop the German horror and that every able-bodied man should go and every woman should encourage their husbands, brothers, sons, and fiancées to go despite the hardship of having them leave. He said they had to make the final sacrifice if necessary. And Mr. Riley—he’s the principal at my school—he said when King and Country call, every boy and girl, man and woman, has to do their part to help win the war. That’s why we thought you were a spy. He told us to watch for them, what they looked like. Don’t you want to help win the war?”
Allan thought a moment. “Yes. The war is an abomination and the Germans have to be stopped. I never told Mother, but during a stopover in Toronto I got off the train to stretch my legs and a woman dumped white flour on me.”
“Why?” Margaret asked.
“It’s a sign I’m a coward. They see a young man out of uniform and they think him a coward.” He stared off into the distance, looking miserable. “And perhaps I am. Am I a coward, Margaret Brown, for wanting my life?”
He didn’t wait for her reply. “Mother says she wants me to join up like Blair did.” He winced slightly when he said his brother’s name, but his voice remained mild. “Blair was always her favourite. He was easy to understand, whereas I confused and angered her. Imagine wanting to spend your life immersed in colour and form and shape. Actually, you, Margaret, might understand how I feel. I saw your sewing spread out on the table at Mother’s. You have an eye for contrast and colour.”
The best lessons in colour, Grandgirl, are in the land around you, blue prairie sky, golden fields, green pastureland. See how God coloured his world and follow his example.
How would she feel if she were going to war, knowing she might not see Saskatchewan again? Edward had been excited to be leaving, but she would miss home. She tore her mind from the prairie to listen to Allan.
“Mother says she wants me to join up, yet I think another part of her is desperately hoping I don’t. People speak of the war as being overseas, but it is here at home too. So much pain and sorrow for those left behind.”
People trickled from the hall, then the flow increased as the lecture ended.
“Don’t mind Mother,” Allan said hurriedly, beneath the noise of the crowd. “She’s grieving in the worst way for Blair and trying hard to keep a stiff upper lip, which has the effect of making her tongue extra sharp. You and Jean are good for her. Promise me you won’t desert her. She’ll need you all the more now.”
Startled, Margaret watched him greet his mother. Why would Mrs. Ferguson need Jean and her?
“Now I,” Allan said grandly, “will treat you ladies to the chicken salad tea at Smallman and Ingram’s Department Store.”
Mrs. Ferguson opened her mouth to protest, but Allan jumped in. “Now Mother, it is only fifteen cents a person, a very reasonable price, and I do have a bit of money. Believe it or not I have managed to sell some of my scribblings.”
He herded them downtown and into the large department store. She should have been delighted, Margaret knew, with wrought-iron chairs, the bright lights and warmth, the Christmas tinsel and greenery, and the delicate china teacups. Evie would give anything to be in her place, but she couldn’t feel happy. Her head ached with thoughts that churned ceaselessly: Edward, the casualty lists, white flour, and Mrs. Ferguson needing her. Life had never been chaotic like this before. On the farm most days melted comfortably into the next, marred occasionally by a storm or crop loss, but they soon settled back into their placid pattern. A wave of homesickness passed over Margaret, plunging her into a despondency.
Feeling slightly ill from the chicken, she opened the door to the cottage and instantly felt the wrongness in the air. It meant a storm, but whether brewing or over, she didn’t know. George sat glumly in the corner with Taylor and Timothy, while Evie pushed a warm cup of milk into Mrs. Brown’s hands. Tears streamed down her mother’s face. Her father held a letter in his hand, though he didn’t look at it. Margaret quietly unwound the scarf from her neck and hung her coat carefully on the hook.
“I’d hoped he would be home for Christmas to visit,” Margaret’s mother said tearfully. “You think they’d let him see his family before he left.”
“I imagine they wanted to get the troops moved before winter sets in,” Mr. Brown told her. “It’s not worth making yourself sick over, Olivia. He had to go. I don’t know how we’ll afford it, but we’ll try to make a Christmas parcel for him. Bit late sending it, but still he’ll know we were thinking of him.”
“But I saw the newspaper report of the losses at Dardenelles. He’ll be going over there soon,” she sobbed.
“Drink up the milk, Mama,” Evie said, soothingly.
Mrs. Brown caught sight of Margaret standing by the door. “Edward’s gone to England,” she cried. She held out her arms and Margaret flung herself into them.
Chapter 12
“And I got a fur muff. A grown-up woman’s muff,” Pauline emphasized. She picked up a brown fur bundle and stroked it gently. “Also some piano books—”
“Though Mother cancelled our lessons . . .” Mary interrupted.
“Just for
a couple weeks.” Pauline glared at her sister. “Mother thought with Dad having a holiday, we should have one too. But I will continue practising on my own so I don’t fall behind.” She popped a peppermint candy into her mouth and sucked noisily. “Now let me see, what else did I get . . .”
Margaret slipped out of her cousins’ bedroom. Let Evie sit politely and listen to the list of Christmas gifts. Her sister was always spouting off about being ladylike and mannerly, but if it meant listening to Pauline’s boasting, well, she’d rather be rude. She’d go out and play with George and the twins in the snow. As she made her way to the stairs, she realized that even Pauline’s bragging couldn’t ruin her Christmas day. She still carried a glow inside her.
They’d had their own lovely Christmas morning, made all the nicer by the unexpected gifts she’d been able to give. Mrs. Ferguson had surprised Jean and her with fifty cents each, two days before Christmas.
“Payment for your companion services,” she’d muttered, though she’d held on to the coins for a long moment before she dropped them in the girls’ hands. “Like she hadn’t said a proper goodbye to them,” Jean had later told Margaret. “I think she wished she hadn’t done it, but she can’t take them back now.”
Then as they were leaving, Allan had slid another fifty cents into each of their pockets with a cheery “Happy Christmas.”
She had immediately run down to the department store where Uncle Harold worked. Just in luck, he’d said. On December 23, the toys in the basement were always put on sale at bargain prices. He had helped her select gifts: two metal trucks, one blue, one red, for Timothy and Taylor; a slide for Evie’s hair; a bag of black jawbreakers for George; and two stamps, one for a letter she’d write to Edward as his Christmas gift and another for Catherine. She had wanted to buy a blue wool dress for Mama that she saw in the women’s department, but it was too expensive, so she bought a pearl-grey silk scarf instead, though it took half her money. Uncle Harold suggested pipe cleaners for Dad, but Margaret had to tell him that Dad no longer smoked his pipe, tobacco being too dear. Finally she’d settled on a linen handkerchief that she’d secretly embroidered with the initials M. B. Uncle Harold had asked for her money and told her she was a good shopper as it came out to exactly one dollar.
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