“Was she ill?” asked Harris.
“No, indeed. Not that I could see, at least, but she felt for those that suffer. We discussed the institutions Toronto is having to build to cope with its prosperity. The casualties of prosperity, that is. You know the places I mean. The new General Hospital, the Roman Catholic House of Providence, the Lunatic Asylum—”
“There you are, Kate,” an elderly lady called from the doorway. “Our carriage is out front, but I couldn’t leave without . . .”
While Mrs. MacFarlane was saying good night to the early leavers, Harris waited to see if there would be an opportunity to resume the interview. Under the circumstances, it was difficult to show even polite interest in other topics. He pretended to inspect the oil paintings that lined the reception room.
“Are you an admirer of Mr. Paul Kane?” Kate MacFarlane was again beside him, pointing out features of an eighteen-by-thirty-inch canvas he had taken in only as tepees and canoes. A Lake Huron encampment, she said. Such and such reclining figure could of course be traced to classical models, but no one who had lived on the upper lakes ever questioned the scene’s essential truth.
Crane had lived there once. Harris asked if she could think of anything that might have drawn Theresa in that direction.
“No. Nor in any other. I’m baffled.” She glanced around in case she were needed elsewhere. “Look, Mr. Harris, I do approve of your trying to find her. Private initiative is the only way anything gets done, but Mr. MacFarlane has just this instant been called away on business, and we still have guests. Why not come back tomorrow? Give me till then and I’ll see if I can’t think of something useful to tell you.”
“I’m sorry,” said Harris, “but so much time has passed already. By tomorrow she may have spent six nights in the open.”
Kate MacFarlane glared at him. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“No, of course not,” he quickly assented. He didn’t want to risk losing his one supporter. “What I’m thinking,” he added, “is that if I start at dawn and ride in the right direction, perhaps I can make sure it’s not seven.”
“Briefly then.”
“What was her favourite ride?”
“The only one I have heard her mention particularly was the Rouge Valley, but then her husband thought it was too far and forbade her to ride there alone. I suppose that’s why it didn’t occur to me before. Now—if you want more of my company, Mr. Harris, you’ll have to come and meet some young men who have been to New York to hear Signor Verdi’s latest opera.”
Harris left. On the walk home, it started to rain. He tucked Elsie’s sketch book inside his tail coat and quickened his pace.
Three quarters of an hour later, Theresa’s face traced onto tissue paper stared up from the writing surface of the secretary desk in Harris’s drawing room. The likeness was crude, but still—he felt—more helpful than a description on its own.
He tried to compare this face to the one he remembered. Did she look older because three years had passed or because of some particular experience? Or was it because to a child artist every adult looks old? He couldn’t even decide if her face had narrowed or filled out until he realized she had simply changed the style of dressing her hair. While it had been puffed at the crown to either side of the centre part, it now lay flat on top and fell smoothly to where it turned under in a loose roll secured at the nape. That rich, reddish brown roll of hair mere pencil lines had no hope of capturing. It must look glorious, thought Harris.
He turned off the gas and found his way to bed by the glow of the street lamps below his windows. Having already removed his wet clothes, he had only to slip out of a light dressing gown. Stretched on his back with the sheet thrown off, he listened to the rain drumming on the plank sidewalks and to the passage of a couple of pedestrians. Well-spaced, heavy treads accompanied by quick and light. Through the moist air rose the clear tone of a woman’s laugh. The double set of footfalls ceased sounding in the mud of Bay Street, then resumed on the far sidewalk and faded away to the west. Harris rolled onto his side and felt, as he had not allowed himself to feel for years, the weight of his loneliness.
Always he had contrived to be busy with work, or with superficial social engagements and exhausting recreations—long rides, billiards, card parties, curling and ice boating in winter, sailing and swimming in summer, hunting in fall. Or, if all else failed, voracious reading with the lights turned up full. He had managed never to lie down till he was too tired to remember. Too tired to miss her.
In the darkened room, he rolled over several times more, dozed, and fell more or less asleep.
He was awake again by dawn but far from certain in which direction to ride. No horsewoman herself, Kate MacFarlane said she had never accompanied Theresa to the Rouge Valley and didn’t know which part of it she favoured. The Rouge River rose some twenty miles north of town, but didn’t begin to carve out anything Harris believed could be called a valley till it had passed Markham. He decided, without much conviction, to start there and follow the stream south to the lake. This had not been a haunt of Theresa’s when Harris had known her. The whole area did seem too remote for a spot of Sunday afternoon exercise, and for a refuge not remote enough.
Pond-sized puddles sprawled over the ungraded dirt streets, but were no longer growing—the rain having tapered off to something between a drizzle and a mist. Harris let it settle on the shoulders of his fustian hunting jacket as he strode towards the livery stable. The oilskin cape he had brought was too hot to wear in anything less than a downpour.
He was presently trotting up Yonge Street, which was surfaced with crushed stone on the Macadam system and cambered to shed the water. North of Yorkville, progress was slower because he had not yet made inquiries at the numerous inns and taverns. Nor, of course, had anyone else.
Harris now had the tracing to show, though he began to doubt its utility when a market gardener at Gallows Hill said he definitely knew the subject—a Negress in her sixties, was she not? Then a Thornhill ostler thought he had seen the lady a week ago. She had been dressed in bright green and riding north, but not on a black palfrey with one white hind foot. Harris turned east and galloped on.
On joining the river, he began asking at mills, which at first were nearly as frequent as the inns on Yonge Street. Sawmills predominated, though the white pine had mostly been logged out. Forward-looking owners were also having their wheels grind corn or card wool. Shrubs and trees of no commercial value still lined the riverbanks, but this was far from wilderness. One surmised that Crane’s opposition to Theresa’s visits was based on the lengthy absences they entailed rather than on anything sinister or threatening about the valley.
Towards eleven a.m., Harris reached a place in the fourth concession of Scarboro Township where the stream flowed east, sharply south, then sharply west again. Over this peninsula, the homey smell of damp sawdust lay thick as porridge. Picking his way between piles of fresh lumber, he dismounted at the open end of a long frame shed. Inside, the rising and falling blade was tearing through a log so clamorously that—rather than speak—he simply touched the elbow of the older of the two men at the machinery and with an interrogative hoist of his eyebrows gestured to the doorway.
The bearded miller nodded and followed agreeably enough, but once outside responded to every question with a noncommittal grunt. An unproductive morning had its disheartening cap.
But wait—what if the man could not hear, if his saw had ruined his ears? Harris unfolded the portrait.
“Mrs. Crane,” said the miller with surprising force. “She used to ride here often. In the concession road and down the valley or up the valley and out the concession.”
“Last Sunday?” Harris bellowed.
“She had