Grandmother liked to work. It sustained her in some way. She washed the sheets on Tuesdays and on Wednesdays polished her silver. Thursdays were for dusting and Fridays she stayed in the kitchen, baking pies and cakes. For more than sixty years, she had kept this orderly housekeeping ritual. As a result the Priory was spotless, the pantry full and life so busy that Grandmother had never had to face for an instant the meaninglessness that had opened a month ago like a chasm beneath my feet.
Grandmother’s white head bobbed in the sun. The June snowfall had begun. Bits of fluff floated lazily in an azure sky. Cows were lowing in the fields and a fly caught between the two panes of my window buzzed in short, sporadic bursts. It was summer, a season I usually adored in St. Andrews East because it meant a break from studies and the freedom to ramble for hours in the woods. But this year was not like the others. There was nothing to look forward to once summer ended.
In two days I was supposed to graduate. There were only nine girls in my class at McGill and every one of them would climb to the stage in Redpath Hall to receive a diploma. Every one of them except for me. I had told Grandmother I would not go. A long discussion had ensued during which Grandmother had urged me to change my mind. The irony was rich — the old woman who had once been so against my setting foot inside McGill was now practically ordering me to go. After Dr. Osborne’s visit she let it drop.
I closed my eyes, letting the sun paint glowing red swirls on my eyelids. What did the future hold? Laure would marry Huntley Stewart and set up house in Montreal. Grandmother would eventually die. What would become of me, the ugly one with a useless degree, no marriage prospects and brains enough for three?
Friends had stepped in after the debacle with the medical faculty. In early May a letter had come from Miss Symmers suggesting I apply to normal school. Once I had a teaching certificate my former high school could offer me work. Felicity Hingston was doing this. She had already paid her normal school fees.
I kicked off my greasy sheets. One of the girls from my McGill class was planning to study medicine at Kingston. For me, however, this was not an option. Grandmother simply did not have the funds to set up a second household. Bishop’s College, the only other English university with a campus in Montreal, had a small medical school that took in Jews and others restricted from McGill. Unfortunately their doors were still barred to women. The dean there had made noisy pronouncements against female doctors at the height of my McGill campaign.
I could, I supposed, find work as a governess. The thought filled me with such despair that I flopped over to face the window again, hugging my belly. The sun was warm against my skin. Grandmother was still outside, only now she was walking across the grass to the house for some reason, leaving the laundry half hung. She was calling Laure’s name so she would come too. I watched with growing curiosity, then forgot all about this odd scene as soon as they were out of sight. When a knock sounded on the bedroom door I had fallen back asleep. I thought it was Grandmother coming for my sheets, but the head that poked through the doorway was brown, not white, and it sported a familiar derby hat.
“Miss Skerry!” I cried, forgetting for an instant all my sorrows. It had been four years since I had last seen her. When I started McGill she had left Grandmother’s employ and moved to Ontario. At first we had corresponded regularly, but soon my life at the university had become so busy that our letters tapered off. The last I had heard she was in Ottawa working for the family of a judge.
“Agnes,” she said, removing her hat and peering myopically. “I came as soon as I heard you were ill.”
My smile fell. God only knew what I looked like after a month of confinement. The smell must be pretty bad too. I tried to smile again but it cannot have been all that convincing.
Without a word Miss Skerry set to work straightening my bedding. She hoisted me to a sitting position and plumped the pillows, then gathered up hankies and writing paper lying on the floor.
I watched. I had once possessed energy like this — dumb animal energy that might have gone mindlessly on and on until infirmity or death put an end to it. Watching Miss Skerry flitting about restoring order was exhausting. All that effort — the bending and reaching, the straightening and sorting — how futile it seemed to me now. Order and purpose were lies, I had decided. People were rushing to go nowhere. Couldn’t Miss Skerry, with her sharp eyes and sharper mind, see it?
“Don’t you ever give up?”
The governess paused, holding a tray of untouched toast and tea. To my surprise she laughed. “I did once,” she said. “And in my case that was all it took. Once and I learned.”
“When was that?” I asked, shocked and more than a little curious.
“Right after my father died.”
“You were in mourning,” I said. “That does not count. People have a right to come undone after a parent’s death.”
Miss Skerry eyed me thoughtfully. “Yes, but it was not just the death. All of a sudden I had no place. I couldn’t imagine what shape my life would take.”
My breath stopped then, as if my lungs had ceased to function. “And then what happened?” I was like a child begging for a bedtime story.
“And then I came to St. Andrews East.”
“To the Priory?” I asked, sitting upright. “To us? You mean to say that your father had just died? I had no idea it had been so recent.”
“It wasn’t something I wished to talk about at the time,” she said, carrying the tray to the landing outside my room and thereby managing to hide her face.
“You did not seem sad,” I said, thinking back to the wry young woman who had helped me dissect the squirrel. Few people could have matched Miss Skerry in that moment for energy or imagination.
“St. Andrews East was a blessing, Agnes. It was the best thing that could have happened to me.”
I started. How could she use the word blessing to describe this bleak, little town? Was an isolated barn in winter and the charge of a couple of orphans all it took to make this woman happy? “Laure and I were your first pupils?” I asked.
Miss Skerry blushed. “That’s right, although I never admitted it to your grandma. I did not want her to know how inexperienced I was. I had lived in my father’s home until then, you see. I had never dreamed that I might become a governess. I was forced into it, much like Jane Eyre.”
“But it turned out to be a blessing?” The question was spurred by personal concerns, although I did not think Miss Skerry could have guessed.
My former governess laughed again. “Your grandmother accepted me into her home and heart, Agnes. She gave me an allowance for books. There was your microscope in her barn and you and I were given free rein to ramble in the woods almost daily.” Miss Skerry’s eyes were shining. “My father had been sick such a long time. I think I had forgotten how to live.”
“So you like being a governess?” I asked hopefully.
Miss Skerry shot me a glance. “That’s putting it a little strongly, Agnes. St. Andrews East was, I think, a high point.” She turned then and stood very still, looking out the window at the yard filled with undulating laundry. “It is a life,” she said slowly. “There are pleasures there if you care to seek them out.”
I sighed. I could not imagine putting myself at the mercy of others, tending to their children, eating at their tables and sleeping in their spare beds in a room beside the kitchen. Pity was what I felt for Miss Skerry — pure, unadulterated pity.
Miss Skerry turned toward me, her mouth curling in a cryptic and not entirely generous smile. “Don’t worry about me, Agnes White. There are worse ways to make a living than wiping the bottom of another woman’s child.”
I fixed my eyes on the bedpost, cheeks flushing with shame. It was as if she could read minds.
“You yourself would make a splendid governess. I can just picture you hunting for squirrels and insisting your charges analyze the entrails. Their mothers would kick up a fuss but you would probably win them over. Your McGill diploma wo
uld place you in high demand. Apropos,” she said, fixing me with taunting, owlish eyes. “Your grandmother tells me you have a graduation coming up.”
I nodded.
“And you have elected not to go.”
I closed my eyes. The mere thought of McGill made me sick.
“Go, Agnes. You owe it to yourself. Show you are not beaten.”
“But I am beaten. That is exactly what I am.”
The governess looked at me almost fiercely. “You underestimate yourself.”
“You overestimate me.”
Miss Skerry removed her glasses and rubbed them thoughtfully. “You are wrong, Agnes White. I think I see you quite clearly.” She replaced them on her nose.
I began to cry. The governess did not reach to comfort me. Instead she actually smiled and started talking about her new station. She had just moved back to Montreal and she said how good it was to be back in Quebec.
I listened with half an ear. My tears had stopped but my nose was plugged and the skin around my eyes felt inflamed. I resented Miss Skerry, who was blathering on about her most recent charges two girls, just like me and Laure, only both of them were budding scientists. She had been offered this governessship at least in part because of her knowledge of natural history. The girls’ father had purchased a second-hand microscope for their schoolroom. “It is an enlightened family,” observed Miss Skerry. “Their father is a well-known Montreal doctor.”
I stopped rubbing my eyes.
“He knows of you, of course. Thought you were a regular little harridan until I set him straight.” She patted my leg through the bedcovers, laughing as if she had told a joke. “I had to swear on my life you were the sweetest, most even-tempered girl.”
“What is his name?”
The governess paused, leaning over my bed. “Campbell.”
I took her arm, forgetting my fatigue and tripping over my words in my rush to speak. “You can’t possibly mean the dean of medicine at Bishop’s University?”
Miss Skerry cocked her head. “Oh, can’t I?”
I threw back my sheets and leaped out of bed. “Do you mean to tell me that you work for the dean of Bishop’s Medical School?”
“That is what I have been trying to say for a while now, yes.” Miss Skerry broke into a laugh. “Dr. Campbell knows I am here today, by the way. He asked that I deliver this.”
She handed me a small cream envelope. Inside was a note hand-printed by Dr. F. Wayland Campbell on stationery embossed with the school’s name. Bishop’s College, it said, would be pleased to offer me a place in the medical faculty for the autumn term of 1890.
“But he hates the idea of women doctors,” I said. “He said so in the papers.”
“Perhaps,” said the governess, “but Dr. Campbell is no fool. It will be a boon to Bishop’s right now to show itself more liberal than McGill. They are rivals, are they not?”
I suddenly became aware that I was wearing only a shift and ran to the closet for my dressing gown, banging out questions about Dean Campbell and how the offer had come about.
Miss Skerry stood rather stiffly, regarding me with her funny, close-lipped smile. The Cheshire Cat again. After a long silence she finally spoke. “Well!”
“Well what?” I asked, twitching with impatience for answers to all the questions I had.
“Is it possible, Dr. White, that we have managed a cure?”
II
ARS MEDICA
The rarity of cardiac defects, the obscurity of their
etiology and symptoms, together with the fact that the
cases are often of serious clinical import, make the subject
of congenital cardiac disease of the highest interest.
— MAUDE ABBOTT, “CONGENITAL CARDIAC DISEASE”
9
SEPTEMBER 1898
As I stepped into Mansfield Street light stung my eyes. The office I’d rented on the top floor of this downtown brownstone was so small and dark my pupils were in a constant state of contraction. The rent was low precisely because I hadn’t insisted on a window. As long as I stayed inside I did not notice, but when I stepped out the extent of my deprivation became painfully clear.
My cloak, bought three years back for travels in Europe, was too heavy for the day. Yesterday, when clouds had scudded across the skyline like stampeding herds and the temperature had plummeted, I had been happy enough to have it. But today was different, soft and cajoling, full of promises it could not keep. On days like this in a Montreal autumn you could be lulled into thinking the fine weather would last forever.
The clerks were out on their lunch breaks in shirt sleeves and suspenders. A man passed me whistling and I quickened my pace to keep up with him, tapping his beat with my heels on the board sidewalk. He probably had an errand to run or was getting lunch before heading off to a meeting. The same was not true of me. No one would care if I wandered off for the rest of the day, or for the rest of the year for that matter. I had no appointments, no obligations that afternoon. The day stretched before me like an empty page.
This past spring I had returned from studies in Europe brimming with energy. The Continent had been good to me. Universities there were more progressive than in North America and they had welcomed me as they would any other young doctor out to polish her skills and knowledge. In Europe people took female competence for granted. In Zurich where I had resided the first year, the university had been admitting women to its medical faculty for over a decade. I studied obstetrics with Dr. Wyder, rising to the rank of his Unterassistentin at the Schanz-Gebar Klinik for women. I also worked in a pathology lab and attended lectures by Dr. Forel, a specialist in hypnosis who made his living treating the disorders of Swiss minds.
After Zurich I travelled to Vienna, the acknowledged centre of medical science, where I studied pathology with Albrecht and internal medicine with Ortner — men whose work I had read about but whom I had never dreamed I would eventually meet. My skills with the microscope had been remarked upon quickly, and before I knew it I was the star foreign student, valued above the men. Paying positions had helped to defray my travel costs.
I missed speaking German, I thought, slowing my pace so the whistling man was soon far ahead. And I missed the company of men. Most of all I missed the work, the sense of having something to which my mind could turn each day other than my own petty concerns and self.
At Sherbrooke Street the whistler turned west. I could barely hear him anymore. He had been whistling a simplified version of “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” which Laure played for us Christmases in St. Andrews East. It had been a while since Laure had touched a piano. She was not doing well. During the three years of my absence her letters had been cheery enough. They had been short, but Laure had always preferred music over words. It was not until I returned that my younger sister’s state was revealed.
Right after her marriage to Huntley she had become pregnant, which had pleased everyone initially. But in her sixth month she had lost the baby. I knew what a miscarriage that late in gestation meant. It was a birth — the same pain, the same breathing and pushing, but at the end of all the labour and sweat, death instead of life. Laure told me I would have had a niece. She had seen the baby, a perfect creature, pretty as a doll, except for the grey skin.
Since then Laure had been in a steady decline. There were still good times occasionally. These were the days on which Laure must have written me, but Huntley had since confessed to entire weeks when his wife would not stir from their bed. And other weeks when she grew so agitated that he barely knew her. He began spending evenings at his club. Some nights, I learned, he slept there.
Grandmother said I shouldn’t worry. Marriage could be tricky, especially in the initial years. Grandmother was sure that Laure and Huntley would find their way. I was not so optimistic. I was anxious about my sister, who was delicate as our mother had been. I also worried about Grandmother, living alone out at the Priory. The house was badly in need of repair.
No soo
ner had my ship docked in Montreal than did I call on Laure. She was too sick for company that day, and again the next. It was a week before I could see her.
I vowed to restore the Priory, which had been shamefully neglected, but scraping together the necessary funds turned out to be a daunting challenge — more difficult than raising the money McGill had required. Since I had hung out my shingle exactly three patients had come to my Mansfield Street office. The first was the woman who cleaned my office building, with whom I had bartered services. The second was faithful Felicity Hingston. And the third was Laure, who needed a cure of the soul, not the body.
I cut across Sherbrooke Street, dodging a streetcar, and reached the front gates of McGill. Huntley Stewart had been right about streetcars. They were now electric, although this did not make them any less dangerous than the former horse-drawn ones. With cars now taking to the roads, as well as electric trams, the horses were more skittish. Crossing Sherbrooke Street had never been so difficult.
The campus was like a small paradise in the middle of this vehicular traffic. What twists my life had taken since I had last walked through these grounds. I was a doctor now, no thanks to anyone in this place. The faculty of medicine at McGill continued to bar its lectures to women. It was a mean, small-minded institution, and yet I loved it against all reason. When I walked through its front gates my father’s face came into my mind and I felt the pull of longing.
On the field in front of the Arts Building a group of men were tossing a football. I had not learned the rules of this game. It seemed to me the men lunged at each other with extreme violence and then suddenly, inexplicably, stopped. They took their play so seriously. One moment they seemed ready to kill, the next they were hugging men they had minutes before flattened in the mud.
My shoes made a shushing noise in the leaves. Up ahead a man was raking, but the leaves were falling so fast it seemed hardly to make a difference. I felt old. The students must be what age? Sixteen? Seventeen? Children with their hopes and dreams intact and untarnished before them.
The Heart Specialist Page 9
