Читать книгу Settlement - Ann Birch - Страница 11

FOUR

In his bedchamber, Sam Jarvis dressed for dinner at Government House. Mary came in to help him attach the collar and cuffs to his dress shirt and to brush his top hat. “I am looking forward to this dinner,” she said. “It will save me from an evening with Mama and Eliza. They are stitching petticoats for the bazaar for the poor—utterly, utterly boring.”

“No doubt your sister would have some gossip. Has she met Mrs. Jameson?”

“Not yet. Some of the ladies intended to call today and leave their cards. Eliza has heard that she has written some popular books. And she carries a Spanish guitar and a stiletto wherever she goes. She also is apparently great friends with a man named... named... Go Thee, who wrote about the Devil.”

“I met her briefly on the wharf the other day and summoned a cab for her.”

“Oh, Sam, why didn’t you tell me? What does she look like?”

“Not as pretty as you, my dear.” Though, indeed, he did not especially like the immense sleeves of Mary’s dress which closed with a tight-fitting cuff. No doubt it was the current style, but it made her arms look grotesque.

“A new face will be welcome in this town,” Mary said. “If nothing else, the lady will furnish us with new sources of scandal, provided the stories that preceded her are true. Do you think she’ll be there tonight?

“Possibly, but do not suppose that the Governor’s affair will be any livelier than your sewing circle. Sir Francis will be sure to bore us again with his tales of exploits in Argentina. There are times when I wish that his horse had fallen over a cliff in the Andes and—”

“Sam, you must keep on the man’s good side. No arguments with him or anyone else, please. And put yourself forward for promotion if you have the chance to speak to him personally.” She reached up and patted his shoulder.

“You’re singing the same old refrain, Mary. I don’t need to be told what to do. I know that I’ve got to get a promotion. I’ve heard he’s looking for someone to ‘control the savages’—that’s what he calls them.”

“What an opportunity, dear Sam! Surely you can play up your friendship with Jacob Snake.”

“Not sure he wants someone who has an Indian friend. But I mean to do what I can. Otherwise, I may end up in debtors’ prison. And believe me, a four months’ lockup in 1817 was more than enough for one lifetime.”

“I’ve been thinking. We could discharge Miss Siddons. After all, twenty-five pounds would go a long way towards settling our debts with the butcher and the baker.” She attempted a laugh. “And the candlestick maker.”

“The girls must be educated. I don’t care what it costs. Do you want them to grow up like your sister, dependent on the goodwill of relatives? Accepting handouts in return for labour in the kitchen and the sickroom?”

“But the girls will marry, will they not? They need only to be educated to fill that capacity. My sister is a plain woman, but the girls are pretty. There will be men who—”

“We can sell them to. Is that what you want?”

“Is that why you married me? In return for my father letting you off on the murder charge?”

For a moment he could not speak. He could only feel the pulse in his head and his face growing redder and redder. “Murder, Mary? Is that what you think? Do you truly believe I murdered Ridout?”

She moved towards him then, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Oh, Sam, forgive me, forgive me. I say these things when we quarrel. Of course, I don’t mean them.”

He looked at his knuckles, white and clenched. He took a deep breath, sat down on the bench in front of the pier glass and spread his hands on his knees.

“Now, Mary, you will remember that the children are my responsibility as well as yours. Our sons are at a fine school. But there is very little education for girls in this town. That is why Miss Siddons is so necessary. Hang the expense.”

“But Eliza and I could teach them drawing and stitchery skills. I could ask her to—”

“Stitchery and drawing be damned. Let us be clear. I will not have the girls wasting their lives making hair bracelets and watercolour daubs of the peony patch. As for your sister, what could she teach them except the pleasures of laudanum and whiskey? I don’t blame her, mind you, she must do something to relieve the tedium of her life.”

Mary started to cry. ““Hair...hair...bracelets, Sam. You can be so cruel. Say what you want about Eliza. She has her faults, as do we all. But that remark about hair bracelets. Why do you bring up poor little Eddie? He’s part of every waking memory. I don’t need your sarcasm to make it worse.”

Their small son, Eddie, had died in 1828, only one year old, and Mary cut off all his beautiful red hair just before his burial. Then she had spent days making a bracelet from it. He could not bear to look at her when she wore it, and she had finally put the thing away somewhere.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

But what the hell. She’d had the nerve to mention his trial for murder. It had happened almost two decades ago. And he had been exonerated. How dare she suggest that he’d made some deal with her father, Chief Justice Powell?

“I’m sorry, Sam, so sorry.”

He reached for her hand. It was cold, though her small, delicate face was flushed. “Let us think of the advantages of well-educated daughters. Why just last week, Ellen treated me to a dissertation on our three political parties, the Radicals, the Tories, and the Wigs, as she called them.”

Mary wiped her face with her lace handkerchief. He watched as she struggled to smile. “Oh, Sam, do you think she will want to stay with the gentlemen for port and cigars when we have a supper party?”

“Undoubtedly. I expect they will be greatly enlightened by her views on the Wigs.”

He rose, leaned over her shoulders, and put his face against her cheek. “We shall say no more about discharging Miss Siddons.”

Mary took his new fur-lined greatcoat from the wardrobe and draped it over his shoulders. It was a fine piece of tailoring, and in it he felt like a millionaire, perhaps John Jacob Astor or one of those other New York men he read about in the American newspapers that arrived at his office downtown. “Clothes make the man,” his mother had often said when she’d urged his father to spend more and more on outward trifles, and it was a proverb Sam found himself remembering too often these days when he looked at his tailor’s account.

He and Mary went out the front door onto the wide verandah and down to the phaeton which had drawn up to the steps. John, the coachman, whipped up the horses, and they slipped down the long gravel driveway past the lawns and gardens now covered in snow. Pretty they were as they gleamed in the moonlight, but lovelier by far in summer and fall.

Government House, located at King and Simcoe Streets, was a two-storey frame house in the Georgian style with shutters and an attractive portico. Not as handsome as his own house, though, Sam noted.

John pulled the horses to a halt. “Elmsley House, sir.”

“Government House, man. Why do you persist in calling it Elmsley House?”

The house had once belonged to Chief Justice Elmsley, who had also owned the farm and field north of the town where Sam had killed John Ridout. He still could not bear to hear the name.

The footman in the front hall took their coats, and they entered the drawing room. The new Lieutenant-Governor came forward to greet them. “Welcome, Jarvis, and welcome to your good wife.” He gave a nod in Mary’s direction and called to a hired waiter whom Sam recognized as a corporal from the garrison. “Have some rum punch.”

Sir Francis gestured towards two vacant chairs. As Sam went to sit down, he noticed the Governor standing on his tiptoes to look at himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece. What did the man find to admire? Certainly not the beaky nose or tiny figure. Perhaps it was his large head of luxurious curls? Any girl would be proud of them, Sam reflected, as he turned to talk to the Attorney-General, Robert Jameson, who perched on the beechwood settee beside Sam’s chair. Here was a man whom the mirror would declare “fairest of all”.

“And how does Mrs. Jameson like her new abode?” Sam asked.

“She is used to the comforts of large drawing rooms in London, Paris, and Vienna. I fear there will be a period of adjustment. But why don’t you ask the lady herself?” He called to his wife, who had taken a chair near the fireplace. “Anna, come here. This gentleman would like to meet you.” Jameson stumbled to his feet to give his seat to his wife. In the process he set his punch glass on the Pembroke table, spilling some of its contents over the polished surface. The hovering waiter moved in to mop up the puddle with the napkin he had over his arm. “Better get some barley water into me,” Jameson said, as he suppressed a hiccough and walked off.

“I have met Mr. Jarvis before. And this is Mrs. Jarvis? I am happy to meet you.” As the lady stretched out her arm to greet them, Sam noticed how her dress sleeve was moulded to her slender arm and ended in a wide cuff that fell back to display a delicate wrist with a pretty pink topaz bracelet. She sat down on one side of him in the chair her husband had vacated, while Mary sat on the other.

Before Sam could say more, the room fell silent as Sir Francis raised his voice and launched into one of the familiar anecdotes about his career as a mining supervisor in South America. “...and as I may have told you before...”

“Yes indeed, many times,” Sam whispered into Mary’s ear. She gave him a dig in the ribs with her elbow, but from the corner of his eye, he noticed Mrs. Jameson’s smile.

“The natives there called me—”

“Galloping Head!” This epithet was shouted by Sir Francis’s son, the schoolboy Henry Head, who had somehow escaped from his studies and come unannounced into the drawing room. “Tell them about your wild ride from Buenos Aires, Papa!”

“And now shall we have twenty minutes of the inevitable?” Mrs. Jameson whispered, leaning towards Sam so that he could smell her lavender fragrance. He took another cup of rum punch from the waiter’s tray.

Sir Francis’s story went on and on, and the men were tipsy by the time the dinner gong sounded. Jameson weaved about as he made his way to the dining room, and Sam had to steady himself on the chair backs as he looked at the card which indicated his place at table.

It was a good spread: squash and apple soup, a fine roast turkey stuffed with oysters, a huge cured ham, roast potatoes, carrots, a cut-glass crystal bowl of peaches and pears in a heavy syrup, and excellent berry pie. Sam was glad of the food. He felt his head clearing as he ate. He had to stay sober if he were to make a favourable impression on Sir Francis. When was he to have his opportunity? So far the talk at the table had been of the state of the roads along the St. Lawrence River.

Henry Boulton, the man who had been Sam’s second in the duel, monopolized the conversation, as he always did. He had three topics: roads, politics and the price of wine. This night his theme seemed to be “My Late Visit to the Eastern Townships”. He waved his knife about as he complained of one of the bridges: “The planks were so loose, so rotten, and so crazy, that every moment I thought that my expensive new carriage and spirited thoroughbreds would fall through.”

“It would have been a great loss if you had fallen with them.” Sam hoped he’d made the remark in a neutral tone that no one at the table could take issue with. But Mary pressed her foot into his ankle.

The women remained silent for most of the meal. Then, over the berry pie, Mrs. Jameson spoke up. “As a newcomer to the town, I must ask your advice on what to read. There seem to be a great many newspapers, though from what I understand, there are very few books. But one must read something. I have perused the Toronto Patriot and cannot say that I enjoy its content. What do you think of the Constitution? Much livelier, if I can judge from the two copies I’ve read.”

There were groans about the table. Henry Boulton gave a loud belch and covered his mouth with his napkin. The ladies brought out their fans, and Mrs. John Beverley Robinson, wife of the Chief Justice, inhaled the vapours from her vinaigrette.

“I fear I have said something amiss,” Mrs. Jameson said, though she did not look at all contrite.

“Dear lady,” the Chief Justice replied, “you have been here only two days. You cannot know that the editor of this paper, William Lyon Mackenzie by name, is a viper and a demon. In the vile pages of his rag, he has abused everyone in this town, even my dear departed mother.”

“In the brief weeks I have held this post, Mackenzie has even seen fit to print the foulest rumours about me, His Majesty’s represenative,” the Governor said. “Believe this, I intend to do whatever is in my power to scotch the viper. And I will depend on each and every one of you, loyal servants of the Crown, to support my cause.”

“Hear! Hear!” The gentlemen beat their fists upon the table, and the ladies, at a signal from Mrs. Robinson, rose to take their tea in the drawing room.

Mrs. Jameson hovered in the archway, looking back at the dining table. “Perhaps I might stay for a few minutes to hear the discussion about this man? I know so little about the politics of the town.”

“By all means, Mrs. Jameson,” Sir Francis said. “Instead of ‘Shall we join the ladies?’ we now have a lady asking, ‘Shall I join the gents?’ Most unusual, but I say, ‘Welcome, dear lady’.” He pulled out a chair for her.

The manservant removed the cloth, leaving the mahogany surface bare. He passed cigars, and the gentlemen settled to their glasses of port, bowls of walnuts and wedges of Stilton cheese. As an afterthought, the man found a stick of barley sugar in one of the drawers in a small table and gave it to Mrs. Jameson.

Boulton slumped down into his chair, while Jameson’s glassy stare seemed locked with the protruberant eyes of King William, who looked down from his portrait above the sideboard.

In the brief lull that followed, Robinson spoke. “Has your lordship heard of Jarvis’s attack on the reptile?”

“I have heard something, to be sure. But I would most willingly hear it all again from your own lips, Jarvis.” Sir Francis pushed back his chair and stuck his tiny feet and short legs straight out in front of him.

Sam had expected to work in a word or two about the Indians, but the conversation had gone off on a tangent. Well, so be it. Wasn’t there a line somewhere for this moment? Ah yes, he had it. “The readiness is all.”

“It was almost ten years ago, sir, and the Colonial Advocate had printed the vilest slander against Governor Maitland—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Jarvis. The Colonial Advocate?”

Sam looked across the table at Mrs. Jameson. “That was the name of Mackenzie’s former paper, ma’am.” He turned his attention back to Sir Francis. “He didn’t stop with Governor Maitland. He attacked all the people whom the Governor appointed to the Legislative Council. ‘Obsequious, cringing, worshippers of power’ was what he called them. Indeed, sir, he implied that it was patronage, not merit, that prompted these appointments. In doing so, he struck at the very manhood of our society.”

“There wasn’t a decent household in this town that went uncontaminated by his pestilence,” Robinson said. Sam remembered Mackenzie’s snide revelation that Robinson’s mother had once kept a common ale-house.

“Continue, Jarvis,” Sir Francis said. “I am eager to hear it all.”

“Well, sir, in early June, 1826, I found myself the leader of a band of angry men heading towards Mackenzie’s print shop. We knew that he was away in Lewiston—getting an extension on his debts, no doubt—and that his foreman had left early for his daily binge at Simpson’s Hotel. We armed ourselves with clubs and sticks and pieces of cordwood, and we were united in a single purpose—”

“To destroy the demon’s presses!” This from Henry Boulton.

Fists thumped on the table.

“We smashed open the office door, pulled down the press, then went for the cabinets. We emptied the type cases and strewed them in the yard and garden. We kicked to bits a frame filled with type, ready no doubt for the printing of another piece of slander. We twisted and tossed aside the thin brass strips that held together the pieces of lead. Some of my friends even carried three or four of the type cases across the road and flung them into the bay.”

“Admirable, my dear Jarvis,” Sir Francis said.

“That day we were gods.” Sam smiled, remembering the exhilaration of the moment. Mrs. Jameson’s blue eyes locked with his. She did not smile.

“But this superhuman effort did not quell the rogue?” Sir Francis asked.

“He launched a civil suit which did not go well for me.”

“I’m not surprised,” the lady said.

What was that supposed to mean?

Sam continued. “The jury was a passel of low-born farmers and one Irish shopkeeper who sympathized with the scoundrel. They had the gall to tout the virtues of unrestrained freedom of speech.”

“But who was in the judge’s seat?” Sir Francis said. “Surely he could have spoken to the jury on your behalf?”

“I had the affliction of William Campbell, unfortunately the only member of the upper class whom Mackenzie had not slandered in his paper.”

“And?” Sir Francis pulled in his feet and sat upright in his chair.

“They brought in a verdict in Mackenzie’s favour, awarding him a settlement of six hundred and twenty-five pounds.”

Sir Francis sucked in his breath. “I cannot believe it.”

“Yes, it is true. And with this ridiculous boost to his coffers, he was able to pay off his debts, buy a new press and type cases, and put himself back in business.”

“The bastard!” Boulton shouted, knocking over his wineglass at the same time. “Whoops,” he added, “apologies to the lady.”

John Beverley Robinson spoke. “I must tell you, Sir Francis, that Jarvis had to mortgage a parcel of land to help pay the fine.” He stood up, placed a hand on the edge of the table to steady himself. “May I propose a toast, sir?”

“By all means, Robinson.”

“Then let us drink to Sam Jarvis for his heroic leadership in the attempt to quell Mackenzie and his press.” There was a clinking of glasses and a chorus of “To Sam” and “To Jarvis.” People always listened to Robinson. As Chief Justice, he got respect.

“And do I have the word of everyone here?” the Governor asked. “We will stay united in our resolve to oppose the scoundrel?”

The men staggered to their feet. “Down with Mackenzie!”

Boulton fell backwards, upsetting his chair.

“I shall join the ladies now,” Mrs. Jameson said, rising. “This has been most edifying. I thank you for including me.”

Her departure precipitated a flurry of activity. Jameson and Boulton went straight for the pisspot behind the screen. The butler set fresh decanters of port on the table. Sam drank his fill, confident that he had acquitted himself well.

At the end of the evening, as he and Mary took their leave at the front door, the Governor moved in close to him and said, “That was an impressive act you told me about this evening. I play fair, Jarvis. Merit must be rewarded.” He shook Sam’s hand and, taking the fur-lined coat from the footman, helped him into it.

“I do believe, my dearest husband, that you are on the Governor’s roster for promotions,” Mary said as they climbed into the phaeton. She took his hand and snuggled close to him.

Sam looked up at the stars in the quiet, clear night sky, and reviewed all the details he had not included in his heroic story, a story he had told so often that it had become more fiction than fact. He had not destroyed Mackenzie’s print shop out of any exalted sense of righting a wrong. He didn’t give a damn about Robinson’s mother. Or that Mackenzie had called Lady Sarah Maitland, the former governor’s wife, a “titled strumpet”.

No. The inciting words had been those applied to him. “A murderer,” Mackenzie had written. And said of his father-in-law, Chief Justice Powell, that his hands had “caressed a murderer”. Everyone had read those words. He had heard them spat at him oustide taverns in King Street.

He wanted to forget that Mackenzie’s small son had come downstairs from his grandmother’s room above the shop to try to stop the destruction. That one of the plunderers had struck the boy. That the child had stood there, helplessly listening to their curses against his father. That throughout the ransacking of the print shop, they could hear the boy’s sobs and the screams of the old woman upstairs. He hated to think of that part of it. He had not dared to tell Mary everything.

And the financial loss he suffered had not been quite as large as Robinson had implied, for Sir Peregrine Maitland had authorized the collection of money to help defray the huge fine. And Maitland had even rewarded him with the title of Deputy Secretary of Upper Canada, a useless position, true, but one that brought in a steady income. He remembered, too, that Mackenzie in the pages of his rag had called this sinecure “newly invented”.

He realized that his wife had said something to him. “Sorry, my dear.” He turned to her.

“I asked your opinion of Mrs. Jameson.”

“Courageous, I thought. It’s probably the first time in the history of the town that a woman has sat with the gentlemen over port and cigars.”

“Oh, Sam, surely she did not smoke—”

“No, but she took in the whole scene and stored it away in that head of hers. I wish you could have seen those blue eyes studying everyone around that table. There’s bound to be a chapter about this evening in one of her books.”

“Imagine bringing up the subject of newspapers at a dinner table. So unfeminine, I thought. But let’s forget about her. Let’s think about our future.”