Lily Fairchild. Don Gutteridge

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СКАЧАТЬ concluding it was time to find out once and for all who this God was, answered, “Yes.”

      It was agreed that Lily Ramsbottom’s religious education would begin a week Sunday with an interview with the Reverend McHarg himself at the Manse. He would determine the status of the girl’s ‘natural’ inclinations to religious sentiment, after which she would be placed exclusively in the hands of Mrs. McHarg for special tutoring before being released to the general influence of Sunday School and Service.

      On the day of the interview, Chester took Lily by horse and cart to the door of the imposing red-brick Manse. He held her hand, squeezed it, and tried to say something encouraging, but couldn’t. Lily watched the rig move west down George Street and stop in front of the Anglican Church whose spire glinted above the horizon. Uncle Chester got out and, a bit like a thief entering a shop, went in.

      “Come in, come in, my child!” boomed the Reverend Clarion McHarg, swivelling in his desk chair and waving the deaf housekeeper away.

      Lily obeyed. The woman had taken her shawl somewhere. She peered around the dimly-lit room embroidered with walnut and cherrywood and leather-skinned tomes of impressive dimension.

      “Sit,” said the Reverend, pointing to a padded, armless chair across from the littered secretary. “My, don’t we look pretty, today,” he added, finishing up a sentence and blotting it. Adjusted now to the poor light, Lily saw that his features were all crags and cliffs, with spiky eyebrows that bunched like a pair of singed caterpillars. Despite the eager teeth of his smile, his eyes burned. “You’re the…young lady from the township my wife was telling me about?”

      “Yes, your reverence.” Chester had instructed her in the appropriate form of address.

      “I ain’t been baptized,” Lily ventured.

      “Haven’tbeen,” he said automatically.

      “Yes, sir. My aunt says I haven’t had a proper upbringin’.”

      “Do you know what being baptized in the Lord means?”

      “No, sir.”

      “Well, then, let’s find out, shall we, how much you doknow.” The caterpillars arched expectantly. “God will be pleased, I’m sure, to have you join His congregation of the Saved.”

      “Yes,” Lily said. “I come here to find out about him. I do have questions.”

      “Such as?”

      “Can I talk to him?”

      The good Reverend smiled as if charmed by the naiveté of such a remark. “You may prayto Him.”

      “How do I do that?” Lily wanted to hear it from the source.

      My word, the ignorance of some of these country folks was appalling! “You get down on your knees, close your eyes, and tell God about your sins and ask Him to offer you strength and succor.”

      “What sins?”

      The Reverend stared at Lily as if trying to catch her out at some trick. “You don’t know?”

      “No, sir.”

      “Well, I can see that Mrs. McHarg has some tough cloth to cut here.”

      “Can I speak to God, like this, like we are?” Lily said.

      “Of course not,” he snapped. “The Lord will answer your prayers if and when He decides.”

      “When he does answer, will it be in English?”

      “Are you being blasphemous, child?”

      “What’s blasphemous, sir?”

      “God speaks to each man in his own tongue; He hears, sees and knows everything.”

      “Uncle Chester says that according to his Bible, God talks in Hebrew.”

      “Damnation to Uncle Chester! Excuse me, child. You see why we must all pray.”

      Lily didn’t. She straightened up, charily. McHarg did the same. “Would God, if I prayed to him real hard, talk to me in Pottawatomie?”

      The caterpillars jumped in agitation. “Who put you up to this? That heathen aunt of yours?” He had both of her shoulders in his grip.

      “No, sir. I just thought if your god can talk in every tongue, then he could if he wants talk to me in Pottawatomie. Or Chippewa or Attawan –”

      “Cease this sacrilege! Now!”

      Lily quaked before Reverend McHarg’s temper. His hands had slipped down so that they were squeezing her exposed forearms. Suddenly he let go of her as if she were contagious. He sat down again, gathering the frayed ends of his composure. Lily didn’t move. He seemed surprised, even discomfited, by the fact that she had fled his study. He felt her presence– the Lord’s anteroom, as it were – as something indefinably threatening and darkly tempting.

      “Mrs. Beecroft will show you out,” he said at last. When she reached the study door, though, he shouted desperately. “Whatever becomes of you, Miss, just remember this: God is not a Pottawatomie!”

      As best she could, Lily told Bridie what had trespassed at the Manse. Bridie listened with interest, not once interrupting.

      “God’s not there,” Lily said. “I know it.”

      Bridie’s face clouded. “I don’t deny it. But if you turn away from all the churchin’ these folk ’round here can’t do without, they’ll never ever forgive you. You’ll have to pay for that rebel streak all your life.”

      “But you –”

      “Yes, I did it, I know. As far as I’m concerned, the god they pray to was invented by landlords and greengrocers. An’ now that I look at you, I see somethin’ in your face, somethin’ from that mad father of yours or the wild bush you was let roam in –.” She didn’t finish, as if she’d already said too much. Then: “Well, don’t just stand there with your legs in a knot, get that frumpery off, we got corn to shuck!”

      When they were again working side by side, Lily said, “Will you teach me how to read?”

      “Yes, honey, real soon. That’s a solemn promise.” And she tore at the stubborn shocks in a frenzy.

      Contrary to her own declarations, Bridie was off to cook at the camp yet again. As many of the workers brought their families into the area and moved to more permanent quarters, Bridie’s business followed them. Already she was plotting the use of the new acres cleared, cut and sold by Cam before he left, not even taking his last week’s pay. Orders were left with her subordinates: Lily was to bake two dozen pumpkin pies for a special Thanksgiving celebration at the camp, courtesy of the soon-to-be-announced candidate for mayor of the newly incorporated town: Maurice Templeton, Esquire. “I’m trustin’ you to do as I’ve showed you; somethin’ big could come outta this,” Bridie said. Second, Chester was to give the north coop a thorough scrubbing and white-washing as several hens had recently died from some mysterious cause.

      Lily was delighted, but Chester’s СКАЧАТЬ