—
Over the next couple of weeks, Maud stayed completely silent in school, speaking to Mr. Mustard only when necessary. Will and Maud started sending notes, keeping their activity expertly hidden from the teacher, who begged her to break her silence. Her silence was her answer.
After that first day back at school, Mr. Mustard had not called on her, which was a blessing—and an incentive to continue. The silence was worth it if it meant he would stay away.
But it was getting harder and harder to keep it up. One day toward the end of January, Mr. Mustard asked Maud about Tennyson, and she simply couldn’t stay quiet. It was a grave error, because that evening, Mr. Mustard was back at Eglintoune Villa.
“Are you going to let me in, Miss Montgomery?” he asked, smiling as though nothing had transpired between them.
Maud wished that Mrs. Montgomery would at least make an appearance, but she had gone upstairs right after dinner, refusing to come down.
It was as though her father and stepmother wanted this tedious, pedantic man to court her. She wouldn’t put it past Mrs. Montgomery, but Father? No. Surely not. In the end, there was nothing Maud could do but let the man inside.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The prairie blizzards of January settled into the heart of winter and Maud no longer slept through the night; her mind spun with memories and lost dreams. Her headaches were back, more painful than before. Sometimes it was all she could do to get out of bed.
One night in late January Maud woke from a nightmare that left her feeling cold and abandoned. And then it all came back to her: what had happened earlier that evening, after coming home from visiting Will and Laura.
Father had called Maud as she was climbing the stairs and she sat down beside him on the burnt-yellow sofa in the parlor. He looked tired and old.
Maud tucked her shawl under her chin. “What’s wrong?”
He heaved an aching sigh. “I have something difficult to tell you.” He put his hands on hers. “I hate asking, but…in case…Katie…” He let go, cradling his head in his hands.
Maud placed her hand on Father’s shoulder. “What happened?”
Father rubbed his hair and gazed up at her. “I need you to tell Katie that Pussy ran away.”
“Did he?” Maud had seen the rascal this morning; he had been batting a mouse in the kitchen. “It is so cold out, he won’t last the night.”
His eyes reminded her of the frozen Saskatchewan River. Maud shivered. “What did you do?”
“I had to, Maudie. She was worried he would hurt the baby.”
What had Mrs. Montgomery made him do?
“I drowned him.”
Drowned him! Maud swallowed the tears coming up the back of her throat. Pussy had been a mean old thing but a good companion.
“The cat was taking too many fits,” he said.
Such things could be trained from a cat, if you knew how to deal with them. Clearly, Mrs. Montgomery wasn’t willing—and neither was Father.
“You understand, don’t you?” he said.
“Yes,” she mumbled and ran upstairs so quickly, she almost stepped on it.
At the foot of the Southview door was a dead mouse.
Her skin prickled and she held in a scream. Pussy must have left it for her sometime between this morning and…
Her chin trembled.
Like when her journal had been discovered by her grandparents, it was as if she were watching herself from above. Slowly, she pulled at the handkerchief tucked in her sleeve, and, swallowing bile, placed the dead mouse in the cloth, tying it tightly. In silence, she walked through to the back porch and buried it in the snow.
Now, an overwhelming sense of being lost crawled into her heart and stayed so long that she couldn’t breathe. She opened the window a tiny crack, allowing the frigid air to cut through her. She went to her bureau and took out her journal, pen, and ink.
Maud hadn’t been writing very much. The burst of energy she had months before had faded, and in its place was fatigue and a desire to sleep. There was the poem she’d written for Pensie, her journal, and letters to home, but Maud hadn’t allowed herself to revel in imagination.
Maud went over to the frosty window. In the dark morning she wrote about the frozen river, and how the ghostly poplar trees hugged it. She wrote out her spinning thoughts about Pussy and Mr. Mustard’s unwanted visits, about how everything felt so out of control.
Then she wrote about some of the good things. She remembered her first Bible Study earlier that week and wrote about that. Maud had been skeptical at first, worried that it would be much like Sunday School, that it would be more like being told what to believe than a time for discussion and reflection. Growing up in her grandparents’ home, she’d been discouraged from questioning. But she soon realized it was actually an opportunity for theological and intellectual discussion.
The new minister, Reverend Rochester, explored a different chapter or psalm each week, but he also encouraged his students to lead discussions. Maud’s turn was in two weeks. The idea both thrilled and terrified her. Grandma would say a girl of sixteen discussing theology was blasphemy.
Listening to the reverend, Maud had imagined the hand of God weaving and writing the world. When she wrote, she felt as though she was doing something similar, although she would never dream of falling prey to the hubris of comparing herself to Him. But creating a world of characters who spoke to her, sharing the stories she knew and loved, this was her calling. Most of the time, she didn’t feel she had control over anything but her words.
The Bible Study had closed with a hymn: “Lead, Kindly Light.” She had sung it before, of course, but that night it was as though she was hearing it for the first time. As so often happened when she reread her favorite books and poems, she discovered something new. “The night is dark, and I am far from home.” She was so far away from all she loved…and she’d had such plans before she came here: to be with Father and go to school, to perhaps have an education, to go to college. None of it was how she’d believed it would be. She could almost hear Grandma say, “It is all in the hands of Providence.”
Maud had stood between Will and Laura as they sang. Mrs. Rochester played the small pipe organ, her voice ringing above everyone else’s. There were moments in Maud’s life when she could feel the power of prayer, where word and song enveloped her soul. This had been one of them. When they all sang, “And with the morn those angel faces smile,” both Will and Laura turned to Maud and grinned. She returned the smile, and it was as if they were sharing a hidden truth. A knowing.