White Horses On The Bay

April 18, 1877 Twillingate, Newfoundland

"Hurry, Georgie, we'll be late. Father is waiting with the buggy in the yard. Come on, slowpoke!" Janet was always first to be ready for their concerts. She often had extra time to help Lucy, Rose, Eleanor and Susannah with the ribbons for their hair. Kate and Georgina never fussed much with their curls.

"Ooohhh! I'm so excited! What are we singing first? Oh, I do hope it's All Things Bright and Beautiful," Georgina said. It was her favourite. The Stirling girls' concerts were filled with songs they loved to sing. Their angelic voices could lift the spirits of the entire community like a noonday sun dissolving a winter fog.

"How do I look?" Rose fluffed up the front of her heavy dress and pulled the bow even tighter behind her waist. The girls giggled as they fought to see their reflections in the tall mirror at the end of the hallway. Seven of them began jostling for a glimpse of themselves in the narrow hall. "Look at us, we're quite a sight," Rose said.

"Girls, Girls! Get yourselves down here, pronto! Your father is waiting in the cold! Make sure you have your music with you. Georgina, do you have your solo piece? Rose, make sure Georgina has her solo piece. Where's the flute? Honestly, you children leave everything just lying about. The torment I endure is bound to be the end of me!" Ann Stirling gathered her girls' cloaks and handed them out as they bounded down the staircase and out the door. Little Peyton's tiny overcoat remained on the hall peg as it always had. Ann brushed her hand across its sleeve, his sweetness still fresh in her mind.

"The concert starts at 8pm sharp. Quickly now, we must get there before the audience so we can make sure you are all warmed up and in fine tune, ladies," Dr. Stirling instructed his brood of girls. He helped his wife up into the buggy, kissing the back of her gloved hand as she settled in her seat. The Stirling girls climbed up, one after the other and nestled themselves into their usual positions on the creaky seats draped with soft sealskins. They covered their laps with two heavy wool blankets, tucking the edges under their feet. It was a clear and bitterly cold night, cold enough to freeze their breath on every word.

St. Peter's Anglican Church would soon fill with nearly every member of the congregation and other townsfolk eager to hear the Stirling girls sing. The pews, barely able to accommodate the audience would force some to stand in the aisles and squeeze into the narthex just to enjoy an hour or two of their angelic voices. If the weather held out, and the wind stayed low, folks would come over in skiffs and dories from the surrounding coves, paddling through the ice flows in the bright moonlight. Music had a way of bringing people out of their homes and into each other's lives and when Georgina Stirling and her sisters sang, no one stayed home.

"Tuck your dress in, Lucy. It's going to get caught in the buggy wheel." Dr. Stirling checked one last time on his wife and daughters bundled in behind him and then cracked the leather whip as the team lurched forward in a cloud of frosty air, the horses' breath rising above them in one column of steam. A curb of dirty snow edged the rutted street. The cold April night rendered the roadbed hard and bumpy and the girls giggled at the strange staccato of their voices as they bounced around in the buggy's seats. Four of them faced backwards. The other three and their mother faced front.

"Don't be breathing in this cold damp air, young ladies. Save those vocal chords for your performance tonight." Dr. Stirling shouted. Their father glanced back at them as he cracked the whip again. The girls dutifully raised their fur muffs to their lips but continued to hum and giggle behind their father's back.

"Is that Venus, Mother?" Georgina spoke ignoring her father's orders. The brightest star on the horizon twinkled in the early night sky. "Isn't it just splendid out here tonight? There's not a wisp of wind," Georgina said, her breath lingering in the air in front her. She tried to wave it away to conceal her disobedience. Lights from homes across the bay reflected in the smooth black waters of Twillingate Harbour. Burnt Island in the distance blocked the view to the north, looming like a black hole that could swallow a ship sent slightly off course. A few icebergs glistened in the bay like giant dollops of whipped cream floating in a bowl of blackberry jam.

"Shh, Georgie. You heard what Father said. Hush up." Rose put her index finger to her lips.

"You hush up," whispered Lucy.

"We're not supposed to talk, girls," whispered Janet.

"SHSHSH!" Ann glared at her lively girls but in truth, the constant rumble of bickering and giggling was a welcome sound and she smiled to herself behind her glove. She pretended to join her husband in his efforts to discipline their unruly brood, but secretly she rejoiced in the energy and joy her girls easily showed.

Ann Stirling was very much aware of the sadness and fragility of life. Not a month went by in their coastal town without one child or another succumbing to an illness or accident. She felt a heavy darkness rising up inside her every time a mother came calling in quiet desperation at their clinic door. One look in another mother's eyes would trigger the memory of that warm summer evening, four years earlier.

The girls and their baby brother were in the yard while she and William tended to patients in the clinic. Ann remembered glancing out the windows every once in a while and smiling at the blessing of so many beautiful healthy children of their own. She had watched Kate and Janet playing with the neighbour's dog, a friendly Newfoundland lab, tossing two sticks at the same time over the fence, coaxing the dog to return just one, keeping score of whose stick he chose.

She could see Lucy, Eleanor and Susannah skipping rope on the smooth surface of the gravel road while Rose and Georgina sat on the porch swing watching little Peyton push his sailboat across the horses' water trough. Peyton wobbled around on his own amusing himself. Ann remembered thinking he was lucky to have his older sisters adore him the way they did. Now that he was walking, Peyton's newfound independence made minding him a little more difficult for the girls, though.

Rose and Georgina were playing one of their endless games of cats in the cradle making ever more complicated webs of string between them, challenging each other to keep the game going. It seemed only a moment or two had passed since they last looked up to check on Peyton at the trough. Charlie had been barking incessantly for more sticks to be thrown.

Georgina was the one who had noticed first. She raced from the porch down the steps to the fence where her little brother was face-down in the murky water of the slippery wooden trough, his toy sailboat floating beside him. Georgina had pulled Peyton's plump little body from the cold water that day, gently laying him down on the grass.

Three days later, Ann and William laid to rest, their infant son along side his grandfather, Dr. William Stirling Sr. in the cemetery next to St. Peter's Anglican Church. The small headstone bore his name, the dates of his short time on earth and the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 'Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels'.