by Kate Hewitt
Ellen nodded, suppressing the twinge of disappointment and even hurt she felt at her relatives’ absence. She seemed destined to be unmet at stations. “I know the way,” she said. “I think I’ll walk to the store. Uncle Hamish can retrieve my valise later.”
“Walk? But...”
“I’ll be fine,” Ellen said firmly, and set off towards Seaton’s main street. There was a light breeze, and fleecy clouds scudded across a pale blue sky. The trees were farther along here than on the island, she noted, and she smiled at the cherry blossoms just beginning to open, committing them to memory to draw later.
As Ellen entered the town proper, several people narrowed their eyes in speculative curiosity, but no one called out a greeting.
They don’t recognize me, Ellen realized in surprise. I must have grown. I must have changed more than I thought.
She felt changed—taller, prouder, more certain of who she was, even if the rest of this town had no idea. Straightening, her shoulders back, she looked forward to showing them.
Seaton’s General Store looked the same, barrels of pickles and nails and bins of fresh vegetables lining the wide front porch.
A few people were in the store, browsing the aisles or chatting at the high marble counter with Uncle Hamish. He glanced her way and his mouth dropped open.
“Ellen?”
“Hello, Uncle Hamish.”
“But you’ve... we didn’t...” He tugged at his collar, his smile genuine if a bit awkward. “Welcome home, Ellen.”
“Thank you.”
Aunt Ruth came bustling out of the storeroom, also stopping short when she saw Ellen. For a second Ellen thought she was going to come forward and hug her, or perhaps just tell her to straighten her dress or brush her hair. The walk from the station had undone her efforts on the train. Then the moment passed and Ruth folded her arms, nodding in acceptance.
“So, you’re back.”
“I did write,” Ellen said quietly. “You sent the train tickets yourself.” She tried not to sound reproachful, but it was hard. Would it have inconvenienced them so much, she wondered, to meet her at the station?
“Trains aren’t reliable,” Aunt Ruth dismissed. “I wondered if Rose would manage to get you on the train at all, after all that nonsense about needing you with the syruping. You’ve never syruped in your life.”
Ellen inclined her head in acceptance, but her silence seemed to unnerve Ruth. She frowned.
“What’s that dress you’re wearing?”
“It’s one of Aunt Rose’s. I grew out of the navy muslin before Christmas.”
The few people in the store were still staring, and Aunt Ruth seemed to notice the minor spectacle they were creating, for she lifted her chin and walked over to Ellen. For a second her lips seemed almost to tremble, as if she were holding back some deeper emotion, but then her expression ironed out and she placed one cool hand against Ellen’s cheek, the closest, Ellen supposed, she’d come to showing some affection.
“Come back to the house. You must be hungry. No one ever gets a proper meal when traveling.”
Obediently Ellen followed her aunt back to the house. Everything seemed just the same, and she had the curious feeling that while her own life had grown and changed, Seaton and all of its residents had remained exactly as they had been the day she left last September, as if they’d been frozen in time.
She stood by the kitchen table while Ruth moved around, fixing a thick slice of bread richly slathered in butter, some leftover ham and a good wedge of cheese on a plate.
She pushed it in front of Ellen on the table, who set to it with a surprising hunger.
“You liked Amherst Island, then?” Aunt Ruth said after a moment.
Ellen looked up curiously. She swallowed her lump of cheese and bread and said cautiously, “Yes...”
“Rose wouldn’t have wanted to keep you if you were miserable, would she?” Ruth plucked at a loose thread on her perfectly starched apron. “You were a credit to us, I suppose.”
“I hope so.”
“They’re a ragamuffin sort of family anyway. Not a penny to their name, and lacking in common sense, as well. I remember Dyle from Rose’s wedding.”
“Have you not seen him since then?”
Ruth’s expression hardened. “I doubt he’s changed.”
“No one seems to change around here,” Ellen replied, and although her tone was mild there was a certain sharpness to her words. “I’ve been gone eight months and everyone seems exactly the same.”
“Which is as it should be,” Ruth returned. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to go back to school? Finish the year?”
Despite the surprise that rippled through her, Ellen forced herself to meet Ruth’s gaze directly. She’d thought long and hard about her schooling on the train, for she remembered her aunt’s assumption that she would not finish school, since she’d no need to.
Ellen knew she wanted to finish school. She didn’t particularly care to endure Mr. Phillips’ barely concealed contempt, but she wanted to know things. Do things. Perhaps be a teacher one day, or even something else. Professions were slowly opening to women, although perhaps not in places like Seaton. But if she didn’t even get her Year Eight certificate then she’d be good for nothing but sweeping the store.
“Do you need me in the store?” she asked, keeping her tone neutral, and Ruth looked at her in suspicion.
“We can always use help.”
“I would like to finish through next year, if I may,” Ellen continued. “And get my Year Eight Certificate.” She took a breath, staring down at her place. “And perhaps even go to high school.”
Ruth’s mouth dropped open before pinching closed once more. “High school! Whatever for?”
“One day I’ll need to make my way in this world. An education would help.”
Ruth looked like she wanted to argue, but after a moment she just shrugged. “We’ll see about that. High school is expensive.”
This last sentiment was heavy with emphasis, and Ellen went cold. “Isn’t my father...?” She trailed off, suddenly filled with uncertainty. She’d always assumed her father would send money from the railway, money to keep her from being dependent on charity. Surely he would give her that much. Yet now she wondered if he was sending anything at all. Was that why Ruth had been so eager to send her to Amherst Island, because she was expensive to keep?
Ruth gave a cold little smile. “Ah, your father. You hadn’t asked about him. A letter came for you, around Christmastime.”
She rifled in the dresser, and then handed Ellen a creased envelope.
She saw it had already been opened, despite it being addressed to her, and she bit her lip. A letter from Da. She wanted to read it in private, but clearly Ruth wouldn’t have that. She waited, arms folded, so Ellen had no choice but to read it right there.
Dear Ellen, I’ve arrived in Santa Fe and am at work laying the rails straight down to Mexico. It’s not my usual work, but I’ve come to like it and nothing beats sleeping under the stars of a night. They say it’ll take another six months to reach the border. Keep well. Da.
Ellen read the letter through twice before laying it on the table. It had been so short, so uninformative, the letter of a stranger or at best an acquaintance. There had been no word of returning home, no apology for skipping out without a goodbye, no words of love or encouragement or kindness. She hadn’t expected any of that, Ellen realized, and the thought made her sad. She’d given up on her da and she hadn’t fully realized it until this moment. She looked up at her aunt.
“He seems well.”
Aunt Ruth stared at her for a moment, and Ellen saw a softening of her features. “I sent you to Rose because I could tell you were miserable here,” she said abruptly. “I thought the other children might be good for you.”
Ellen could only stare, her wits too scattered to form a reply, and Aunt Ruth swooped down to take her plate, her face averted. “Now, you need to wash your face—there’s coal dust smu
dged on your cheek. You look like a navvy! And I suppose we’ll have to see about fetching your valise from the station. You left it there for us to fetch, I presume?”
Ellen blinked. This was the Aunt Ruth she knew. For a moment, she’d seemed like someone else entirely.
FIVE
Returning to Seaton had at least two surprises for Ellen. One was that she was thankfully moved from Mr. Phillips’ class to Miss Evans’. Mr. Phillips had her tested, and he grudgingly admitted that she could probably scrape by in the older class. Ellen took her seat among the pupils her own age with a grateful little sigh.
The other surprise was Louisa Hopper. Louisa had moved to Seaton with her family just a few weeks before Ellen returned. Her father had transferred from Rutland to run the Vermont National Bank branch in Seaton, and such a position came with a fair amount of prestige. The Hoppers awed even the snobbiest of Seaton, with their fancy clothes, gleaming motorcar, and the large, gracious home Mr. Hopper had built on the corner of Maple and Water Streets.
Louisa could have been friends with any girl in Seaton, and all of them attempted to garner her attention, giving her little gifts of hair ribbons or humbugs, and yet, for a reason Ellen could not fathom, she picked her to be her best friend.
“You’re the only one who isn’t toadying to me,” she confided, linking arms with an astonished Ellen one May morning in the schoolyard. She bent her head with its glossy, coppery curls towards Ellen’s. “I think I’ll have you for my best friend.”
“I didn’t realize you chose friends like that,” Ellen replied a bit tartly, and Louisa wrinkled her nose.
“Oh, do you mean I should ask you first? You don’t mind, do you?”
“I suppose not,” Ellen said, for Louisa was fairly pulling her along as they walked the perimeter of the schoolyard, heads still bent together. Besides, she didn’t have any other friends in Seaton, so she might as well have Louisa.
“Good! Now why weren’t you here when I arrived? Have you been somewhere exciting? Have you had scarlet fever?”
“No,” Ellen said with a laugh at Louisa’s deliberately melodramatic tone. “But my cousins did. I’ve been in Ontario, on Amherst Island all winter, helping them.”
“Amherst Island!” Louisa breathed, and Ellen thought she could very well be on stage, with the way she dramatized every syllable. “It sounds wonderful, like a jewel. A jewel on the sea. Tell me all about it, do.”
So Ellen did, describing the lake and the little town, and of course all the people, from Captain Jonah to Miss Gardiner to funny little Ruthie, with her snapping eyes and head of black curls. For some reason she couldn’t fathom she didn’t mention Jed or Lucas. Yet describing everyone else made her feel homesick, longing for Amherst Island with a strength and desperation that caused a lump to form in her throat and she had to blink back sudden tears as Louisa pulled her forward for another turn around the schoolyard.
“What a funny place,” Louisa sighed when Ellen had lapsed into silence. “It sounds magical. You’ll take me there one day, won’t you?” She turned wide green eyes appealingly towards Ellen, who blinked in surprise at her new friend’s forward question.
“I don’t even know if I’m going back myself.”
“But why not? It sounds much more interesting than stuffy old Seaton.”
“It is, in its own way,” Ellen said quietly. Suddenly she didn’t want to talk of the island anymore, or of all the people she missed. “However,” she added, her tone final, “Seaton is where I live.” Even if the island felt far more welcoming. She belonged here, by Ruth and Hamish’s decision, and so here she would stay.
It was inevitable, once Louisa and Ellen’s friendship was established, that Aunt Ruth would take a hand in matters. The fact that she approved of Ellen’s friendship with Seaton’s newest prominent member of society was shown with a supercilious sniff one morning at breakfast, and her aunt’s curt announcement that she’d invited the Hoppers to tea that afternoon.
“Tea?” Ellen looked up from her oatmeal. For a brief moment she pictured the old, dented kettle in the flat at Springburn, the strong black tea Da liked in one of the chipped enamel mugs, and felt a sharp pang of homesickness for that old, familiar life, stifling as it had been. These flashes of longing for the past were rare, yet they still assailed her with a sharp and unexpected pain. Ellen wondered if they would ever stop. Did you ever stop missing your mother or father, or longing for their return?
“Yes, tea,” Aunt Ruth replied. “Earl Grey, scones, and lemon tart. I’ll make some cucumber sandwiches as well.”
Ellen nodded in understanding. A fancy tea, then, to impress the Hoppers. The lemon tart had come from the Pyle farm only yesterday, and Ruth had laid it on the pantry shelf, her forbidding expression daring anyone to cut into its pristine surface without permission.
“I’m sure that will be lovely,” Ellen said in the cool, polite voice she found she instinctively reserved for her aunt. “May I help?”
“You can lay the table,” Ruth replied, “and keep your pinafore clean! Louisa might have chosen you for a friend, but I don’t know what her mother or father think on the matter.”
This barb seemed most unjust, as Ellen had been careful to be both polite and mild-mannered in the weeks since she’d been home. In truth half her mind—and her whole heart—was back on the island, so she felt as if she were only half-listening, half-existing in this place. Yet now she wondered if it really mattered how she acted; she suspected that for Aunt Ruth, as well as many others in Seaton, the stink and coal dust of Springburn hadn’t washed off her completely, nor ever would, even though she’d been in America for almost a year.
“I will do my best, Aunt Ruth,” Ellen said as meekly as she could, and was somewhat gratified to see Uncle Hamish wink at her.
Louisa was delighted to be invited for tea, and as the days passed Ellen realized she was not quite as delighted herself. At first, she’d been bemused and perhaps even a little pleased by Louisa’s attention. She’d been a solitary presence in Seaton’s schoolyard for so long that it made a pleasant change to have someone to eat lunch with, and a bench mate in the classroom.
It didn’t take long, however, for Ellen to realize that Louisa seemed to have only one true friend, and that was herself. Ellen she merely saw as a prop, or perhaps a mirror, to reflect her own beauty and wit.
That wit, Ellen found too soon, could also be unkind. A week after Louisa had decided to be Ellen’s best friend, her eye turned to the unlucky Hope Cardle. Hope hadn’t changed much during Ellen’s time away; her face was still scrubbed pink, her hair kept in two stiff, yellow plaits, and the choice of color for her dresses unfortunate.
Worse still, she was habitually clumsy, and even the gentle Miss Evans had trouble keeping hold of her patience when Hope tripped on someone’s bench or dropped her slate in the middle of lessons.
They were out in the schoolyard one afternoon after lunch, and Louisa was, as had become usual, holding court among the girls of Miss Evans’ class. Ellen stood to her side, bemused and silent. Tentatively Hope joined the group; she’d been kept inside cleaning the blackboards. Louisa’s gaze flicked to her and Ellen had a sudden wave of foreboding as her new friend’s eyes brightened with obvious malice.
“Just look at the state of your pinafore, Hope Cardle!” Louisa clucked, and several girls followed suit. Ellen glanced at Hope; there was a long chalk streak down the front of her already dirty pinafore. “You look worse than a skivvy,” Louisa continued with a malicious satisfaction. “We might as well use you as an eraser, since you attract all the dirt!” Leaning forward, Louisa picked at one stiff plait as if she meant to use it as a scrub brush.
Hope’s already pink face had turned scarlet, and tears of mortification brightened her eyes as the rest of the girls giggled, albeit some of them uneasily.
“Don’t, Louisa,” Ellen said in a low voice. She knew too well what it felt like to be in Hope’s place. “It’s not her fault her pinafore’s dirty.
I dare say any of us would look the same if we’d been cleaning the blackboard.”
Louisa turned, and Ellen steeled herself to be the new target of teasing, but after a moment she only smiled and tossed her head.
“The only reason Hope was cleaning blackboards is because she broke all of Miss Evans’ chalk! I wonder, is there a dish left in your house, Hope? Or have you broken them all?”
“Louisa...” Ellen tried again, and was cut off.
“And you, Ellen Copley, shut your mouth,” she hissed. “I thought you were my friend.”
Ellen opened her mouth, but nothing came out for Louisa had already flounced away.
Ellen thought and even hoped that might be the end of her association with Louisa. She thought she preferred her own company to that of the spoiled girl’s, but Louisa, it seemed, had other ideas, and was cloyingly sweet to her that afternoon, insisting on braiding Ellen’s hair with her best silk ribbon. Yet even Louisa’s kindness made her uneasy.
The day Louisa was to come to tea she kept up a steady stream of questions and observations throughout lunch in the schoolyard, so much so that Ellen was not able to get a word in edgewise.
“Seaton is so much smaller and drearier than Rutland,” Louisa said as they washed their lunch pails in the creek that flowed behind the schoolhouse. “I aim to ask your aunt if I can go with you to your lovely little island this summer.”
“What!” Ellen sat back on her heels, her hands red and numb from the creek water. “But I don’t know if I’m going back myself!”
“Well, I said I wanted to go, and your aunt said maybe she could see a way for us to go together.”
Ellen’s mind was a jumble of confused thoughts. Delight at the thought of returning to Amherst Island so soon, and deep foreboding that Louisa Hopper might be going with her. “Louisa,” she began carefully. “I don’t know if you’d want to come to Amherst Island for the whole summer.”
“Why not?” Louisa tossed her head of burnished curls, her green eyes glinting with a cool challenge that Ellen had come to dread. “I’m bored here and I’d like to see all the funny characters on this island of yours.”