Laurier in Love. Roy MacSkimming
names she doesn’t know, and Mr. Murphy from McGill, the boyish president of the Federation of Young Liberal Clubs, self-consciously sporting a bowler hat.
The men cluster in groups around the big chairs, some sitting, some standing in the aisle, leaning down to hear and be heard above the clatter of the train. A few sip iced Tom Collinses brought by the Negro porter. They argue and swap gossip, coughing and spluttering through their cigar smoke, laughing uninhibitedly at their own jokes.
Zoë watches them spring comically to their feet as Wilfrid approaches up the patterned carpet. His gait is languid, adapted from long practice to the swaying of trains. With his height, he has to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the brass light fixtures suspended from the panelled ceiling. The last to rise in obeisance are Tarte and Cartwright: the one who attended school with him, the other who coveted his position. Of this group, only they, Zoë knows, can be certain of seats in the new cabinet.
The cabinet isn’t big enough to contain all Wilfrid’s key supporters from every province. This dilemma is costing him sleep now that the recounts are complete, his victory official, and Prime Minister Tupper finally, reluctantly, agreeing to resign. Meanwhile Wilfrid makes political small talk with those lucky or shrewd enough to have joined his victorious band preparing to take the capital.
Zoë picks up the newspaper Wilfrid was reading. It’s the Toronto Globe, devoutly Liberal. The front-page cartoon portrays the ghost of Sir John A. Macdonald in his Windsor uniform and ceremonial sword—the same uniform, she recalls, that the late Prime Minister wore in his coffin—patting a poorly drawn Wilfrid on the back. Macdonald is grinning eerily and saying, “No man could more worthily fill the great office I vacated.”
She finds it chilling.
She turns the page to an article reporting on the rebellion in Crete, where the people are throwing off centuries of Turkish rule, then sets the paper aside. She stares out the window. The landscape rushes by. Somewhere in that dense featureless bush, occasionally interrupted by small farms, is the Quebec–Ontario border. They might have crossed it already. She closes her eyes and lets her thoughts dwell on the morning just past.
They awakened in Montreal, in the familiar, pleasantly scented guest room of Wilfrid’s oldest and dearest friend, Laurent-Olivier David. They breakfasted well, surrounded by friends and supporters who dropped by to extend their congratulations. Everyone was in a celebratory mood after the official announcement of victory the day before.
Two messages arrived at the breakfast table in rapid succession. A telegram came from Lord Aberdeen, calling Wilfrid to Rideau Hall to be sworn in. And the Mayor of Montreal, having learned the Lauriers were passing through the city, sent a note saying two Royal Navy warships, HMS Intrepid and HMS Tartar, were docked in the harbour. A reception for the British officers was planned for noon, and the Mayor, apologizing for the short notice, would be deeply honoured by the Lauriers’ presence.
Wilfrid had been so looking forward to talking with Laurent-Olivier David in his friend’s library, one of his greatest pleasures, but knew where his duty lay. As he told the breakfast assembly, it was important to get off on the right foot. David telephoned for a carriage to take them to City Hall.
Driving to the reception, Zoë watched their former neighbourhood pass by, outwardly unchanged. In those stone houses of old Montreal she’d once supported herself, although barely, as a piano teacher. They drove quite near the Gauthiers’ home on rue St-Louis. She and Wilfrid, then a law student at McGill, had met and boarded and fallen in love there.
The courtship was long and initially inconclusive: the strangest wooing she’d ever known. At first Wilfrid watched her from afar, shyly joining the Gauthier family singsongs around the piano, casting hungry glances at her as she played. Eventually, since Dr. Gauthier’s sitting room was constantly full of visitors talking politics, they ventured outside to find time alone. On warm bright evenings he’d take her arm to promenade past the shops on Notre-Dame, or linger under the Lombardy poplars on the Champ de Mars when a regimental band was playing. He invited her to attend his McGill convocation, and she sat in Molson Hall beside his proud father and stepmother visiting from St-Lin and listened to him deliver the valedictory address. Speaking in French, he told the largely uncomprehending audience that Canada’s racial struggles were over: “There is now no other family than the human family, whatever the language they speak, or the altar at which they kneel.” She felt herself easily the luckiest girl in Montreal. She’d never heard the name Émilie Lavergne.
And they talked, always talked. She’d never forget the feverish, exciting rhythms of his conversation back then, his ecstatic engagement with everything he saw and heard and read, the insistent pressure of his hand on her upper arm. They grew frighteningly close. She believed they’d go on like that forever. Yet he never once asked for her hand in marriage. When he abruptly moved away to practise law in distant Arthabaska, she was devastated. His departure drained the light out of her life.
Wilfrid’s reason for leaving Montreal was the same reason he hadn’t proposed: he’d been coughing blood. One wintry afternoon he’d collapsed across his desk at his law office, bright red liquid erupting from his throat, ruining sheaves of legal documents. He was convinced he’d inherited the family curse. His mother, Marcelle, had died of consumption when he was seven, followed by his sister Malvina. “I fear I am carrying in my lungs,” he wrote Zoë from Arthabaska, “a germ of death that no power in the world can dislodge.” He refused to subject her to a marriage cut short by mortal illness, leaving her in poverty, perhaps with children to raise alone. His doctor had advised him to get out of smoke-filled Montreal as fast as he could. He was following doctor’s orders.
Yet Zoë didn’t care if he had consumption, at least not for her own sake: she’d marry him all the same, embrace wholeheartedly whatever time they had, however long or short. But it didn’t matter how she felt. He was gone.
From Arthabaska he continued writing impassioned letters proclaiming his love, but he was no longer present in her day-to-day life, and he didn’t invite her to come join him. Unlike Wilfrid, Zoë couldn’t live on emotions existing solely on paper, however beautifully expressed. Eventually she accepted a marriage proposal from Pierre Valois, a medical student, a good man, devoted to her. Still she cried herself to sleep every night over Wilfrid. She felt hopeless. Until Dr. Gauthier intervened.
Dr. Gauthier wasn’t only their landlord, he was a stern and affectionate father to them both, given to a brusque, old-fashioned imperiousness. He sent Wilfrid a telegram summoning him to Montreal “on a matter of urgent importance.” Arriving on the overnight train from Arthabaska, Wilfrid went straight to Dr. Gauthier’s consulting room, where he was ordered to strip off all his clothes. At the end of a lengthy examination, Dr. Gauthier matter-of-factly informed him he wasn’t suffering from consumption at all: his ailment was chronic bronchitis. It was a troublesome condition, requiring careful management, but it certainly wouldn’t kill him. In fact, Dr. Gauthier observed tartly, he’d probably outlive Zoë, the way she was carrying on lately. Her misery and tears were making the whole household miserable. And now, wasn’t it time he acted like a man?
Dr. Gauthier sent for Zoë, leaving her alone with Wilfrid in the consulting room. With bewildered relief they fell into each other’s arms. They were married that night, since Wilfrid had an important case to argue in court the next morning in Arthabaska. . . .
She was about to indulge in the maelstrom of emotion surrounding their instant wedding, but they’d arrived at City Hall. Madame Laurier descended the carriage on her husband’s arm, to be ushered inside and cheered by the overdressed crowd at the Mayor’s reception.
The guest of honour was a British vice-admiral named Erskine. Heavily bearded, with an astounding quantity of gold braid on his chest, he was accompanied by several officers in ceremonial uniform, all visibly deferring to him. The Royal Navy men stood together with the Mayor, punch glasses in hand, preparing to repel boarders. As Wilfrid and Zoë proceeded through the throng, accepting congratulations from all sides, shaking hands with old colleagues, it became obvious to Erskine that his distinguished presence was being upstaged. All eyes were on Wilfrid: his magnificent forehead, his thick, wavy chestnut hair silvering at the temples.