Tim Bowling - The Tinsmith

“No, no,” Anson hurried to reassure him, realizing that each of his sudden departures from the house was a potential death knell. “I have come out only for a rest. Louisa is…”

“Unchanged.” The panic had gone from the Englishman’s voice, but the one word fell heavily.

“Not exactly, no,” Anson said. “The disease is progressing. I have no doubts now that it is typhoid.”

The Englishman’s shoulders slumped. His dark eyes took on the querying quickness of a child’s. But it was not to Anson that the questions were directed. To whom, then? God? Conscience?

“It would be best to keep people from her room,” Anson continued. “Be sure to keep her brother clear.”

“I have sent him away. To a neighbour up the slough. With my wife tending to Louisa and the cannery in full operation, I could not leave the boy on his own. And Edney will not leave, of course.” He sighed, pushed a blunt, slime-wet hand through his hair. “Edward has been insistent. He blames himself, you see.”

Anson nodded. It was not the boy’s fault, of course. No one could have kept the girl from the piano, but Anson was weary of explaining that to her father.

“It is very warm, doctor. Shall we move to the shade?” He held one arm out, indicating that Anson should proceed to the side of the nearest cannery building.

The coolness was indeed a relief, but Thomas Lansdowne seemed no more comfortable. Indeed, the tension of his business and domestic responsibilities had begun to take a noticeable toll; he had lost weight and there were dark rings beneath his eyes.

“I don’t wish you to think,” he began softly, “that my absence from her bedside is a choice I’m free to make. This work I’m doing here is for her, for all of them. And she’s in God’s hands.”

The shade and the contrite tone of the man’s voice gave Anson the uneasy sense that he was hearing a confession in a church. But a sudden violent keening of gull cry destroyed the impression.

“You have been too many hours in the room as it is. You can do little for her now and you will only damage your own health. You are wise to tend to your business affairs. When the crisis comes, I’ll find you.”

Some of the sweat had pooled in the hollows under Thomas Lansdowne’s eyes and glistened in his scale-flecked beard. He might have just finished weeping. But Anson knew that such a man would never cry; when his grief became great enough, the blood inside him would burst. Anson could almost smell its heat, almost believe that this was what sent the gulls into a renewed frenzy. Yet the Englishman seemed weaker now too, not quite the force he’d been only days before when Anson had come upon him in the field removing stumps. It was becoming easier to pity him. But, as if he recoiled from pity as though it were a form of violence, Thomas Lansdowne changed his manner abruptly.

“It wouldn’t be so difficult, doctor, if my business affairs were not continually threatened. Your friend, Dare, is back on the river.” The Englishman’s tone had become cold, his eyes took on their more characteristic probing quality.

Surprised by the sudden aggression, Anson merely replied that he had heard as much.

Thomas Lansdowne did not relent. “Louisa’s illness is not the sole reason I have sent Edward away.”

Anson had no interest in this subject and took a step toward the sunlight. “I am well aware of your disagreement with my friend. I would have thought, under the circumstances, that you would have set it aside.”

Thomas Lansdowne scowled so fiercely that he almost bared his teeth. “How can I? It’s as great a threat to my children’s future as any plague! Don’t you understand? I work not for myself, I work for them. And because I work for them, I have a responsibility, a moral responsibility, a responsibility to God that binds my hands in any fight. What does he have? What does he work for? Nothing but his own will to succeed at any cost. You claim he is a friend of yours. Well, what drives your friend, doctor, to work against everything that we’re trying to build here? Why doesn’t he co-operate with us? He has no family, he attends no service, he associates with no one. It’s easy enough, then, to compete without scruples, easy enough, then, to ruin another man.”

Halfway into the sunlight, Anson felt that his body had split into the grave-dark past and the dawn-bright future. He balanced uneasily there, as the Englishman continued his tirade.

“And since I cannot explain to myself how any man of decent upbringing can conduct himself in such a manner—nay, sir, don’t interrupt! You have not been witness to his actions!—I can only conclude that the information lately received is true.”

“Information? Sir, if you have charges against Dare, it does you no honour to hint at them. Be frank if you would prove yourself the pillar of morality that you claim to be.”

The scowl eased into a hard line, but the eyes somehow found a reservoir of brightness. “I make no such claim. I am the Lord’s servant, one of multitudes. A Christian, not a heathen.”

“A heathen? If you mean…”

“We know Dare for what he is. We know he’s a negro.”

Anson did not fall back in any way, but shock must have registered on his face, for Thomas Lansdowne hurried to defend his words.

“It’s no use denying it. We have it on good authority from an American who has lived among the race since boyhood. He assures us that there are negroes so fair-skinned that they can easily pass for white.”

But Anson no longer took in the Englishman’s words. Now he understood Dare’s difficulties, now he appreciated the urgency of the summons; everything that Dare had made of himself since the war, all the struggles, many of which Anson could only imagine, were threatened by the revelation of his blood.

“Good authority?” Anson said. “You must be desperate indeed to take the word of someone who is no friend to Dare if you’re so willing to believe such a slander.”

A puzzled look crossed Thomas Lansdowne’s face. He blinked several times and said, “Of course, doctor, I realize that this information might be a surprise to you. Dare has no doubt been long accustomed to hiding the truth from everyone he meets.”

Anson stepped into the full sunlight, then turned. “Truth? What truth? The only truth I respect is a man’s character, and there’s nothing you can tell me about Dare to make me change my opinion of him. You call yourself a servant of the Lord, but you would stoop to believing base rumours about a business rival simply in order to remove him. I suggest you spend more time reflecting on your own character.”

“You swear he’s a white man, then?” Thomas Lansdowne also stepped into the sun. His shirt had lightened as the sweat dried. The sun deepened the redness of his beard. “On the bible, you would swear this?”

Anson almost laughed at the man’s naive faith that his bible meant as much to others as it did to him. But the laugh died in his throat when he considered what he had to do, or not do, now. He closed his eyes and saw, in a flash, Dare staggering across a battlefield with a wounded soldier on his back. What little difference it made then, or now, how much of his blood derived from the negro race. A man was his actions and his courage—surely the war had been waged and won on such a principle, or else the dead were truly husks of a rotted harvest. And so, when Anson opened his eyes again, he not only swore to the truth of his friend’s white blood, but he had also made up his mind to leave for Crescent Slough. The child would not reach a crisis for at least a few days; there was time to answer Dare’s summons.

Thomas Lansdowne slowly extended his hand. “I would not doubt the word of a man who has been attending my daughter in her illness. My apologies for the error. The American was convincing.”