litany of failures. I can’t even succeed at this.” She picked up the letter Justine had written her and slipped it into the book she was reading.
I glanced at the book’s title. “Montaigne’s Essays,” I said. “Searching for insights?”
“That’s precisely what I’m doing. Lucy asked me to choose some readings that would sum up her mother’s life.”
“Another task,” I said. “The Blackwell sisters must have decided you’re too useful to alienate.”
“That possibility has occurred to me as well,” Hilda said. “But their motives don’t interest me a whit. I’ve undertaken this assignment for Justine. I just wish I were making a better job of it. How can anyone sum up a life, if she’s not certain what that life truly added up to?”
“You’re no closer to understanding what Justine’s state of mind was in the last year of her life?” I asked.
Hilda frowned. “It’s as if I’m hearing about two separate and distinct human beings. Justine’s legal colleagues speak of her with pity and anger. The people at Culhane House talk about her as if she were a saint.” Hilda shook her head in a gesture of disbelief. “Joanne, I know that human beings contain multitudes, but as a rule one can reconcile the disparities.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down opposite her. “What was Justine like when you knew her first, Hilda?”
“Bright, independent, ambitious.” Hilda smiled. “I don’t mind admitting that I saw a great deal of myself in her. She was, as my beloved L.M. Montgomery’s Anne would have said, ‘a kindred spirit.’ ”
“Then I would have liked her,” I said.
Hilda took the compliment coolly. “Yes, you would have liked her. There was no reason not to. We met in 1946. I’d just bought my house on Temperance Street. It was a chaotic time, Joanne; the universities were jam-packed with returned soldiers. It was wonderful, but it was madness: students sitting atop radiators, on window-ledges, in the aisles, and still spilling out into the halls. Of course, housing was at a premium. That September, I decided that by offering room and board to a woman student, I could do a good deed and expedite the process of paying off my mortgage. I put a notice on the bulletin board in the administration building at the university. Within an hour, Justine, or Maisie, as she was known then, was standing on my doorstep.”
“Justine changed her name?” I asked.
“Justine changed both her names,” Hilda said. “She was born Maisie Wilson. Blackwell is her married name; Justine was her nom de guerre. The choice was a wise one. By the time I met her, it was plain that she saw her destiny as going far beyond that of a Saskatchewan farmgirl. For the future she had in mind, Justine was a much more suitable name than Maisie.
“I expect you can tell from the photographs in the paper that Justine was attractive, but in 1946 she was ravishing, no other word for it. Her hair was white blonde, and she wore it in a pageboy, as young women did in those days; it was immensely flattering. Her skin was flawless, and her eyes were the same colour as Lucy’s. Since the advent of contact lenses, I’ve seen a number of young women with those aquamarine eyes, but the shade of Justine’s was God-given. She had the same generous mouth Lucy has, and the same dazzling smile. When she asked me about the room, my first thought was that my house would be overrun with eager young men, so I asked her straight out how serious she was about her studies. She assured me there would be no late-night visitors, because her only goal in life was to graduate at the top of her class in law school.”
“I take it she realized her goal.”
“She did indeed. Top of her class. But she worked hard for it: left the house at seven sharp every morning; took one hour off for supper at five; then back to the library till it closed. It was a monastic life for such a handsome young woman.”
Hilda seemed about to let the subject drop, but I wanted to hear more. “You did like her, though,” I said.
Hilda seemed perplexed. “I’m not sure ‘like’ is the word I would use. I respected her. Justine knew what she wanted, and she went after it.”
“Dedicated and persistent,” I said. “She does sound like you.”
Hilda laughed. “Justine made me look lackadaisical. There was an incident the first year she lived