Читать книгу Settlement - Ann Birch - Страница 14

SEVEN

Lead up to difficult subjects gradually, and make sure you have your husband’s full attention when you speak.” Mrs. Powell’s comments came to mind as Anna sat across from her husband at breakfast.

“If you are to advance yourself, Robert, we must entertain. And since there are few theatres, ditto for clubs, we must provide an occasion where people can meet and talk. Put yourself forward, and you will find promotion.”

He folded his paper and cast it aside. He poured himself a cup of coffee and one for her. He leaned towards her, his brown eyes intent on her face. “And what ideas do you have, Anna?”

“We will have a levee here on New Year’s Day and invite all the most influential gentlemen in the town—and their wives—to visit and partake of excellent food and drink. I am told that the levee is the most important occasion in the holiday season. It will be an opportunity to show yourself to advantage.”

“In this town, it is a ‘gentlemen only’ function.”

“No, no. We must ask the wives as well. There is a good deal of gossip over the Derby cakes and tea. So what better way to spread the word about our ‘happy marriage’?”

“Gentlemen only, Anna. We must not flout convention.” Robert looked at his surroundings. “But these rented rooms are hardly suitable. And Mrs. Hawkins is hardly capable of providing good—”

“Have you not noticed how your meals have improved since my arrival?” She pointed to the crumbs and smears on her husband’s plate. “You appear to enjoy Mrs. Hawkins’s marmalade on your biscuits.” She did not tell him that the woman had made it with eight pounds of imported Seville oranges and two cones of the most expensive sugar that the grocer offered. “Indeed,” she continued, “I find that Mrs. Hawkins has a fund of recipes that you, in your bachelor state, have never required. The servants are the least of our problems.”

“What, then, is needed?”

“Your carte blanche to have the principal rooms repapered, and some comfortable chairs purchased. For the walls, when they are ready, I can furnish some sketches I have made since my arrival. Mr. Tazewell will frame them for a small outlay and provide some pleasant lithographs of his own for additional decoration. It will all cost you a modest outlay, yes, but the results will be worth it.”

Her husband stared beyond her at the peeling wallpaper and the sparsely furnished room. His lips opened and closed, as if he were doing sums in his head.

“Order whatever is necessary.”

“Leave it to me. Meanwhile, I shall get the invitations out.”

“No invitations. The gentlemen of the town make the rounds of the best houses without formality.” He consulted his pocket watch and rose. “You are right, Anna. Any expenditure that will facilitate my appointment as Chancellor will be entirely worthwhile. I confess to the desire to leave my name in history books as the first Chancellor of Upper Canada.”

“Amen to that. You shall be bound up in a book of jurisprudence. I say this from my heart.”

“Have your little joke, my dear. But I take it as a compliment.” He paused as he put on his coat and top hat. “And I must tell you that you have evidently made a favourable impression on Sam Jarvis and his good wife. They have invited us for Christmas dinner. It may be diverting, though I hope we are not subjected to all those children. At any rate—with some reservations, mind you—I accepted.”

From the front window, Anna watched Robert stride across the street on his way to the courtroom. It had been a satisfactory breakfast hour.

She turned away from the window, laughing to herself. In the space of a mere three weeks in this outpost, she had become everything of which Mrs. Powell would approve. She would sit down now while the moment was fresh in her mind and write to Ottilie von Goethe. Her friend would be amused to hear of her metamorphosis into a, a—what would Ottilie call it?—eine biedere Hausfrau.

But the inkwell was not on the table in her bedchamber. She pulled the bell for Mrs. Hawkins. The woman was there in an instant, wearing a clean apron and a modest, grey-striped dress. “Ink, if you please.”

“Right away, ma’am. I be just this moment warming the inkwell on the hearth. I looked to it while you and the master was at breakfast. The ink was froze solid.”

“Well done, Mrs. Hawkins, thank you.”

“What is all this writing about, ma’am?”

Anna was beginning to enjoy the Canadian servant, if Mrs. Hawkins could be considered typical of the serving classes. In England, they did what they were told without question. Here, they spoke up.

“I’ve decided to write a book about Toronto. My title will be, I believe, Winter Studies in Upper Canada. ”

“Oh, ma’am, there be so much to write on that subject. It will be a heavy book.”

“So much? Really? I find very little so far to write about. But I do have an observation to make that I must set down as soon as you’ve warmed the ink. ‘One day of a Canadian winter is only distinguishable from another by the degrees of the thermometer’.”

Mrs. Hawkins put a finger to her chin in the manner of Anna’s London editor. “Perhaps it be clever, ma’am. I do not set myself to judge. But it also be what every newcomer says of this country.”

“Really?”

“You must get out and about, ma’am. Watch the savages catch their fish from holes on the ice. Go to the falls at Niagara. Have a ride in one of them fancy cutters and a race on the lake. There be nothing like falling into a soft snowbank. You won’t be getting that thrill in one of them fine places you come from.”

“I am going for a ride on the ice soon with Colonel Fitzgibbon. What do you think of that, Mrs. Hawkins?”

The woman clapped her hands.

“I hope not to be one of those stereotyped Englishwomen you speak of. I am making progress. Indeed, I have even got used to the smell of people.”

“Smell, ma’am?” Mrs. Hawkins’s fingers touched her chin again.

“I couldn’t figure it out at first. Now I know it’s from the layers of buffalo robes that everyone piles over themselves when they go out in their sleighs. There is also a ranker, wilder smell—especially from the officers at the garrison. The source of that one eluded me for a while. Now I have discovered it comes from the bearskins they prefer. But an assiduous washing down with lavender soap at the end of the day removes the stink, I’ve discovered.”

Mrs. Hawkins left the room without further comment and returned in a minute with the inkwell, which she set down on Anna’s table without asking as she usually did, “Anything else, ma’am?”

She did not close the door as she left—was it an intentional omission?—and Anna could hear her comment to her husband, “Just when I be getting to like her, she turns into Lady Snob.”