The Heart Specialist

by Claire Holden Rothman

  “It is not your eyes,” I told her. “I think I have lost weight.”

  Grandmother had recently celebrated her eightieth birthday and had quite suddenly turned old. Laure and I were still accustomizing ourselves to the change in her, but strangely, as her body stiffened and withered, her spirit grew suppler. This past year she had shown me more love than I could ever have imagined possible. Of course it helped that I had been successful, and that women like Mrs. Drummond and Lady Dunston were now backing my cause. What would happen, I could not help wondering, when Grandmother learned I had failed?

  Laure, who had been busy scanning the room, turned to examine my waistline.

  “Huntley Stewart is here,” I announced.

  She blushed and looked away.

  “He is with The Herald now,” I continued. “You did not tell me.”

  “You dislike him.” Laure’s eyes once more began to roam.

  “He was out on the porch having a fag.”

  “Agnes,” said Grandmother in a warning tone. She disapproved of slang, but the warning went further than that. She was aware of my opinions of Huntley Stewart and thought them disloyal.

  As if on cue Huntley and Andrew Morely poked their heads into the room. The maid followed remonstrating, but Mrs. Drummond rushed over and dismissed her, ushering the men in herself. I was dumbfounded. The rule at our meetings was to exclude reporters. What was publicized had been tightly controlled.

  Huntley turned toward me and Laure and waved. Then he executed a theatrical bow for my sister’s benefit, closing his eyes and making circles with his fingers in front of his bent forehead like a courtier.

  He was creating quite a stir. All eyes, including my own, were on him when a clinking sound made us start. It was Mrs. Drummond tapping her teacup with a spoon.

  “Attention,” she called. I had grown fond of Mrs. Drummond. She was a hard-working soul with a great deal of common sense, but her voice went reedy when she made speeches and a British accent suddenly installed itself. “Attention,” she said again. “Everyone must come to order.”

  My stomach turned. Mrs. Drummond was smiling as though the world were a happy place. Soon she would ask me to speak and I would be forced to admit my failure and disappoint at least half of the women on the island of Montreal. Felicity Hingston was standing behind Mrs. Drummond, looking strangely unconcerned. I tried to catch her eye but she would not look at me.

  “We are gathered here in honour of an exceptional young lady,” said Mrs. Drummond. Light applause rippled through the room. “She has set her sights high, and special though she is, she would not have been able to reach her goal alone.” Murmurs could be heard along with modest laughter.

  “Strength is found in numbers, ladies, in solidarity.” The room erupted in delighted applause. Mrs. Drummond had to wave her hands like a conductor to quiet the crowd. “Without the help of every single one of you, whether you were part of the organizing committee, circulated to solicit funds, wrote letters or simply badgered your husbands until they signed a cheque, the dream of this young woman could not have come to fruition.”

  I looked over at the men. Andrew Morely was scribbling in a pad, but it was Huntley Stewart who worried me. He was leaning against the wall, examining his fingernails, as if nothing Mrs. Drummond said would be considered newsworthy. His hands were idle at the moment, but I hated to imagine how they would spring to action when he learned the outcome of my most recent discussion with the dean.

  “Over the past three weeks,” Mrs. Drummond continued, “we have worked extremely hard. Agnes White, especially, has had to contend with exams and a heavy load of meetings, solicitations and correspondence. She has given interviews to journalists” — here she made a gesture toward the male visitors — “and lived with what they printed, whether it was hurtful or flattering.

  “And it has paid off,” she concluded, her voice dropping an octave. “As of this morning a sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars has been collected. This is an astonishing show of support from the Montreal community in three short weeks. It is a credit to Agnes White and a sign that the women and men of this city are primed for change.”

  Applause erupted again, but I could not join in. I did not understand why Mrs. Drummond was so jubilant. She knew the sum was insufficient and that I had been forced to ask for an extension to find the remaining money.

  Mrs. Drummond continued in the same animated tone. “We need another one hundred thousand dollars to meet the demand set by McGill.” It was madness. Impossible. Especially since no extension would be granted.

  “This is a tall order. One that even this committee, with its enthusiasm and commitment, must consider daunting. Fortunately, there are others in the wings waiting to help.” She paused dramatically, looking around the room to make sure all eyes were watching.

  “I have news, ladies. While Agnes was visiting the dean of medicine this morning, I dropped in on the solicitors of Lord Strathcona, whose name in Montreal is synonymous with women’s education. Lord Strathcona is presently in London. He returns to Canada next month, but in the interim he is following our campaign closely via correspondence with me and others who support the cause. The McGill Donaldas are his spiritual daughters, as you know.” Mrs. Drummond paused again, this time to withdraw an envelope from her purse. “Lord Strathcona wishes to extend his generosity to aspiring female doctors.”

  Mrs. Drummond accepted an ivory-handled letter opener from her maid and slit the top of the envelope. Then she turned to me. “You will do the honours, Agnes dear?”

  I had to look at the cheque twice, counting all the zeros to make sure I was not dreaming. There were five. “One hundred thousand dollars,” I read aloud.

  In the seconds of silence that followed I raised my head. Directly in front of me, still leaning against the wall was Huntley Stewart, jaw sprung wide open. Beside him was Andrew Morely, but his face was concealed by the black box of a camera.

  In the next moment a flash exploded, blinding me. People began chanting my name. Felicity was beside me now, hugging me, hopping up and down. Grandmother put her hand on me, and even Laure squeezed me and said my name. I stood in the middle of this swaying, boisterous mass, speechless with surprise.

  7

  MAY 1, 1890

  The doorbell rang just as Laure was jabbing the last pins into my hair. “Oh no,” she said, snatching the small hand mirror from me and peering into it. “He’s here!”

  Laure’s face was, as usual, just fine. Her hair too. The previous night she had spent two hours tying it up in rags, and this morning a mass of rich, honey-coloured ringlets spilled out from under her stylish hat.

  “You look perfect,” said Grandmother, moving toward the door. “Shall I bring him in? Is Agnes done?”

  I reached a hand up to feel my hair and the bonnet lent to me by Laure. I certainly hoped I was done, but there was no way to tell because Laure had the mirror and was now running with it in rings around the kitchen. “Oh jeez,” she kept saying, staring at her curls. “Oh jeezlumbud!”

  The front door opened and we heard Huntley Stewart’s brusque hello. Grandmother laughed then, girlishly, and there was a pause as Huntley removed his galoshes. He was here to take Laure and Grandmother to meet his mother. It was an occasion as important to our family as my meeting would be at McGill. Neither Laure nor I had slept much the previous night. All morning we had been edgy, even though we both believed our meetings would be successful.

  “Mister Stewart is here,” Grandmother sang out, leading Huntley into the kitchen.

  He stopped in the doorway, repeating his French-courtier bow from the day before. When he straightened his eyes were fixed on my sister. “You are as lovely as a spring day.”

  I bit the insides of my cheeks. Had he not noticed it was pouring outside? Spring days were not all the same, but Laure was blushing as if the simile were a wonderful compliment.

  Huntley then looked at me. “I brought you these, Agnes,” he said, ho
lding out a soggy bag. “They got wet but I figured you would want to take a look.”

  Laure and Grandmother crowded in as I spread the newspapers out on the table. There were three of them and my face shone from the front page of each one. The photograph was the same, taken the previous day at Mrs. Drummond’s party.

  “Three pictures!” Grandmother exclaimed.

  “She’s front-page news on every single paper,” said Huntley, “although our headline is the best.”

  “‘McGill’s quarter-million-dollar girl,’” I read aloud.

  Huntley beamed with pride. “Thought it up myself.”

  I smiled back. As nicknames went, it was tolerable. He had always had a knack for one-liners. His writing, I had to admit as I skimmed the piece under his byline, was not bad.

  “I hear you’re meeting Laidlaw today,” Huntley said when I looked up.

  “At noon,” said Grandmother. “The same hour as your mother’s invitation.”

  Huntley grinned. “I am off work today, or I might have ended up accompanying the elder sister instead of the younger.” He gazed at Laure, who lowered her eyes demurely.

  I waved as though it didn’t matter. “You’ve already written the scoop, Huntley. The rest is denouement.” I lifted up The Herald, pretending to read Huntley’s article, but really looking at my grainy face. I was not pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but unlike in my school photograph my face here was not displeasing. I liked my eyes, which looked alert even through my glasses.

  We talked for a few more minutes. Huntley surprised me by offering to drive me to McGill in his trap before returning for Laure and Grandmother, but I refused even though rain was now pummelling the kitchen window.

  “Your hair will frizz,” said Laure.

  “It will frizz whether I take a trap or a tram,” I replied. “There’s no saving me either way.”

  Huntley laughed and, to my surprise, I found myself laughing too. I could imagine for the first time a life that might include him if he and Laure married. I had been worrying about this possibility ever since he started courting her.

  “Speaking of trams,” said Huntley, “did you hear they are going electric?”

  “Electric?” said Grandmother. “Whatever will they dream up next?”

  “I’m writing a piece on it,” said Huntley shamelessly. “I’ve been talking with the engineers down at the Montreal Street Railway. Right now they have a thousand horses. In five years not one will be left.”

  “But what will pull the trams?” Grandmother asked.

  “Wires,” said Huntley. “In the air above the tracks, conducting electrical currents.”

  Laure was looking at him doe-eyed, as if he had invented the plan himself.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Grandmother.

  “You said the same thing about privy pits,” I broke in, realizing only once the sentence was out of my mouth that perhaps it wasn’t the ideal subject to discuss in mixed company.

  Grandmother glared at me.

  “Well it’s true,” I said defensively. “You didn’t believe in toilets that flushed for the longest time. Now almost everyone has one.”

  Laure made frantic little movements with her fingers to shush me while Huntley smirked at his boots. “Well,” he said finally, pulling out his watch. “Tempus fugit. We must be off.”

  Grandmother and Laure collected their coats and umbrellas, bade me good luck and good bye, and allowed Huntley to herd them out the door. I took a minute to sit and appreciate the silence in the flat. It was rare for me to have the place entirely to myself, and I found myself thinking of my parents and trying to feel their blessing on this important day, but the rain distracted me, hammering rhythmically at the window. I could not hold them in my mind.

  The rain was coming down in sheets by the time I made it outside. I could barely see the contours of the Catholic seminary across the way. I was beginning to regret refusing my future brother-inlaw’s offer of a lift. By the time I reached campus I would be as wet as a drowned rat. All the work of my sister and grandmother would be undone.

  A strong wind blew from the north. I held my umbrella tight, pulling it close and turning it so the wind would push me along the sidewalk to the tram stop. Beside me the gutter threatened to overflow. My shoes were already several shades darker and making squishy sounds. The hem of my skirt slapped my shins.

  If this were a scene in a novel, I thought, the storm would be significant. In books by the Brontë sisters, for instance, storms were always a bad omen. Thunder clapped above me and I laughed out loud. It was as if a mocking god were listening to my thoughts. I threw back my shoulders. The dean of medicine himself had given me a figure, which I had met thanks to the generosity of Lord Strathcona and a good many other prominent Montrealers. The weather today was irrelevant, except insofar as it was ruining my shoes.

  I stood at the tram stop getting wetter and wetter until at last I heard the sound of hooves clattering in the distance. The lower third of my skirt was soaked through. My fingers, still clutching the hook of my umbrella, were waterlogged inside my gloves. My chignon was still in place, but straggles of hair were plastered to my cheeks and forehead. I was certainly no dandy, no matter what the men sang.

  The tram stopped in front of me and I climbed aboard. There was only one other passenger, sitting far back in the car, but I didn’t catch more than a glimpse of him before my glasses fogged up. He was likely from the suburb of Westmount. Older, more established families generally lived downtown in the Square Mile, but this was changing as Montreal grew more crowded and costly. Our flat was just outside the Square Mile, whose western border was Côte des Neiges Road. The rents were cheaper here, but we could still boast a downtown address.

  I turned to look at my travelling companion. He was quite a dandy, in a light grey suit with wide lapels and a handkerchief poking out of his front pocket. His boots had spats. His face was partly hidden by a hat, but I could see that his skin was dark. And he had a moustache.

  I was now staring quite openly. He was reading what appeared to be a textbook, which he had propped against the seat in front of him so he would not have to bend his neck. Suddenly he snapped the book shut and raised his eyes as if he had felt me watching. I blushed hard and turned to the front.

  It was folly. I had done this too many times before to let myself believe it was really him. Part of me realized he could not be my father. The age was wrong. Honoré Bourret would be fifty-one this year and the man behind me was obviously much younger.

  At Mountain Street there were problems with the tracks and we had to stop. I pretended to watch the driver, who went outside to poke around in the rain, but really I was trying to control my sadness. There was too much at stake that day for me to engage in flights of nostalgia. I was deep in thought, trying to cheer myself up when I realized someone was standing over me.

  The man from the back of the tram was so close I could touch him. “I have just realized who you are,” he said when I looked up.

  I couldn’t find my voice to answer.

  “You’re Agnes White, are you not?”

  I stared. He was not my father, that much was certain, but so many of the details matched it was unsettling. He was stylish, as my father had been. He had swarthy skin and a moustache.

  “You think me impertinent,” the man said, laughing. “My apologies, Miss White. But you’re a celebrity now. You will have to get used to strangers accosting you on trams.”

  I tried to smile.

  “So it is you. I knew it. You’re prettier than I thought you would be,” he said. “Prettier than those photographs in the papers.” He winked and grinned, and all of a sudden the face before me knocked loose a memory of a much younger man, dark-haired and dark-skinned with the same walrus moustache as my father, bending over me and grinning years ago.

  I peered at him more closely.

  “You’re also a lot less voluble than the newspapers suggest,” said the man.

 
I was still staring as openly and boldly as a child. He had been one of the students at our home. I was certain of it.

  His tone grew suddenly serious. “Listen. You don’t know me, but I am hoping you will trust me enough to listen to some advice. You have to take it on faith that I’ve given the matter thought and that I really am saying this in your best interests. I know that you are on your way to the medical faculty.”

  I was so taken aback I just stared at him, but what came next was even more unnerving.

  “Turn around, Miss White. Forget this plan. It’s ill-conceived and will only end in hurt and sorrow.”

  There was no malice in his face. He seemed honestly to think that he was helping me, but what business was it of his? What sort of a person would come up to a young woman on a public tram and address her in this way? If he was the person I suspected him of being he was a doctor, and I knew them to be a conservative bunch, at least in Montreal, with little faith in women. Was his so-called advice really just contempt? I was angry now, on the verge of giving a piece of advice right back, when he nodded, ending our conversation.

  I could have stopped him I suppose, but the encounter had been so rattling and strange I sat wordlessly as he left the tram. Water streamed down the greasy windowpane, distorting him. He waved his umbrella at a passing cab, and as it drew up beside him he looked blurry, like a memory slipping in and out of focus. Before I knew it he was gone.

  When I finally made it to the medical building on McGill’s campus I was in a state. The tram man had upset me more than I liked to admit, and then crossing campus my umbrella had blown inside out in the wind. I walked the last quarter mile totally exposed.

  “You poor thing,” said the dean’s secretary, who recognized me from previous visits. She relieved me of the mangled mass of rods and cloth that had provided such poor protection and put it in her trash can. She was a heavy-set woman, and the flesh of her arms jiggled whenever she moved. She led me down some stairs into the basement. Apparently there was no powder room for women on the main floor, only a men’s lavatory. In the autumn, with five of us joining the faculty, this would have to change. The room to which she led me was no bigger than a broom closet, but it did contain a sink and mirror. For once I actually wished that Laure were with me to do something with the strands poking out rebelliously all over my scalp.