Dr. Graham spent most of the afternoon observing Mama, talking to her as if she would respond. He sat on her left side, chatting easily of Avery, who lay playing with a silver spoon from the old apostle set. When Dr. Graham moved to Mama’s right side she ignored him; but when Avery fussed and Aurora picked him up and sat close to Dr. Graham, Mama’s eyes followed the baby.
‘There, you see! The child will be a help,’ the doctor said. ‘You must use whatever interests her strongly to reawaken her desire to use this damaged side.’
Aurora told him she had been placing Avery in Mama’s right arm from time to time, to force her to hold tight; the doctor commended her and asked if she saw any improvement in Mama’s speech.
‘No, but—I don’t know if this matters—she can sing.’
‘I heard her humming to the babe, yes.’
‘But she sings in words.’
That did surprise him. Aurora sang, ‘O, don’t deceive me …’ and Mama, without seeming to think at all, joined in: ‘O, never leave me, How could you use a poor maiden so?’—the words quite clear.
Dr. Graham’s attention was truly caught, then. ‘Has she any other songs? Does she appear to know the meaning of the words?’
‘Sometimes,’ Aurora said. ‘The phrases she uses when she sings seem to fit what is happening. I have heard snatches of other songs, but this is the only one she sings all the way through.’
‘You must keep note! This may smooth the path of her recovery.’
Dr. Graham made other recommendations: to maintain natural speech with Mama, including her in their conversations as if she could answer, and not to expect too speedy a progress. ‘Try not to correct her, or grow impatient; the connection from brain to tongue has been broken and must be relearned. It may never be fully restored, I’m sorry to say,’ he told Aurora. ‘But we will expect the best. This singing business—I must write to King and some others …’ He looked again at Mama. ‘Have you tried her with drawing?’
‘She does not like to hold the slate,’ Aurora said. ‘But she can form letters still, very slowly. One or two words, no more.’
‘Yes, that is usual—well, we shall see! I will keep her under my eye,’ he said.
Mama looked away from him and plucked with her left hand at her skirt until Aurora sat beside her, taking the fretful hand.
Dr. Graham came back across the fields for dinner that evening, bringing the schoolmaster, Lewis Ridgeway, with him. ‘He’s all alone,’ the doctor murmured to Elsie. ‘I knew you would not mind.’
While the men were smoking in the garden after dinner, Elsie whispered to Aurora and Mama that Ridgeway had had a disappointment in love. ‘His fiancée left at Christmas—she has taken a school in Weyburn. And nobody knows, my dears, whether she will come back at all—no one is certain why she left. I have heard it said that she was made unhappy.’
Mr. Ridgeway must be to blame if his fiancée skittered off, it seemed. Aurora listened to Mama singing under her breath: ‘Thus sang the poor maiden, her sorrows bewailing …’
‘Lewis can be a little daunting,’ Mabel said quietly. ‘But he is a good friend.’
Out of sympathy with ladies who talked secrets, Aurora played piano behind the gathering—Dr. Graham monopolizing Uncle Chum, with an occasional aside to Mabel; Elsie and Mama drowsing in their chairs.
Mr. Ridgeway seemed to attend to Dr. Graham’s conversation, but when Mabel brought in the tea tray he came to the piano as Aurora played the final quiet chords of a Field nocturne. He leaned down to say, ‘I can’t recall when I’ve enjoyed an evening more, Mrs. Mayhew. I like to listen to you.’
She looked up, one arm stretched in the lamplight to close the book. ‘I wish you could have heard my mother, before—She plays far better than I do.’
‘My musical understanding cannot reach to anything better than your playing.’
Made self-conscious, Aurora straightened the edges of the music.
‘Perhaps next term I could persuade you to play for my students?’
‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘If you would like me to. But perhaps my mother’s health will improve under Dr. Graham’s care, and you may yet hear her play.’
He nodded, allowing this as a serious possibility, then said, ‘I’m sorry to have missed the little boy this evening. He is very bonny.’
She smiled up at Mr. Ridgeway. She liked him, she decided, for his kindness to Mabel and his half-concealed unhappiness.
The Candy Habit
‘Pantages has taken