Читать книгу Settlement - Ann Birch - Страница 18

ELEVEN

On New Year’s Day, Anna and Robert stood at the entrance to their drawing room and waited for the door knocker to sound. Robert pulled out his gold pocket watch several times, while Anna tried not to look at herself in the wide mirror which she had installed over the mantel.

Because Mrs. Hawkins did not know how to dress hair, Anna had fussed with curl papers to produce the ringlets that now clustered on her forehead. She would not have bothered with this silliness in Europe, but here in Toronto she wanted to achieve an utterly feminine look to persuade the gentlemen at the levee that she was the perfect little woman.

Robert, she was pleased to note, looked every inch the Attorney-General-soon-to-be-Chancellor, or so they both hoped. With his black morning coat and black cravat, he had donned a new pair of fine striped trousers and leather shoes with laces instead of buckles.

“You look well, Anna,” Robert said, studying their images in the glass. “Not pretty, in the conventional sense of the word, but well enough. Your red dress might have been an unfortunate choice with your red hair, but happily it sets off your complexion to advantage.”

“Qualified praise indeed, Robert, but I thank you. And how pleasant it would be if you could say something at least as commendatory about the house.”

“An improvement, my dear, and well worth the considerable expenditure. But why are those ugly black buckets at the front door? I noticed them there before, but now that you’ve put down that new carpet, they stand out like pustules on a pretty face.”

“They’re fire buckets. Mrs. Hawkins said they can’t be removed. It’s the law, since there are no fire brigades in this place.”

“But what on earth are they for?”

“When the church bells sound the knell for a fire, we take these buckets and run to the lake. Everyone must volunteer in these situations, apparently. Have you not heard this before, Robert?”

“Perhaps, but I doubt the magistrates can enforce participation. At any rate, I leave these things to the servants.”

Anna had rented livery for Hawkins, and he seemed pleased with the effect. She’d heard him say to his wife earlier in the day, “We’ve moved up the ladder since the missus arrived.” Now he stood by the front door, ready to take the visitors’ coats and usher them up to the head of the stairs where she and Robert waited.

By noon, the door-knocker sounded like the drumming of a drunken Scotsman the evening after the parade. It was a strictly male affair, the idea being that the men of the town spent the day paying their respects to the ladies. By two o’clock, some forty gentlemen had come and gone. These were all young men in hordes—or was it herds?—of nine or ten at a time. They came in, bowed, sat down in the drawing room for two minutes, got up, bowed again, and left without saying a word or taking a bite of food. Most of them Anna had not seen before, and her husband made little attempt to introduce any of them to her.

He seemed much more interested in the seven or eight older men who arrived after the herds and who actually paid a visit of some duration. They were talking together now in the drawing room. She had been so happy to see Mr. Jarvis among them. He could keep a conversation going, something that her husband found difficult.

From the hallway, she watched Mr. Jarvis now talking easily to Archdeacon Strachan and Chief Justice John Beverley Robinson, who, she had discovered at the Governor’s party, liked to lay down the law when he spoke. In addition she noticed Dr. Widmer— without his wife, fortunate for Mr. Jarvis, no doubt—and several members of the militia and the Legislative Council, and the lawyer, Henry Boulton. Colonel Fitzgibbon was also in the group, and if she could get a private word with him, she would set a date for their sleigh ride on the lake.

As she came into the drawing room, Robert and the others rose. She took a seat in one of the smart walnut chairs she had purchased, facing the drawing room door so that she could greet any latecomer who came into the upper hallway. To her right was Colonel Fitzgibbon, and on her left, the Archdeacon.

“I understand you are a friend of Mr. Tazewell,” the Archdeacon said to Anna.

“I have benefited from his help with some of my etchings. And he has supplied some wonderful pictures for my walls.” She gestured to one she particularly liked, a scene of a family having a picnic on a grassy knoll which overlooked the Falls at Niagara.

“He has been of inestimable help with our educational system. Before he came to Toronto, we had no Greek grammars for our youth, because there were no printers here with fonts of Greek type. He had an ingenious solution to the problem. He printed a grammar by making lithographs of pages from an existing text.”

Lawyer Boulton yawned and tapped his foot. Robert got up and refilled the man’s glass from the decanter.

“You have a fine educational system for your sons,” Anna said, as she looked about the room, “but I have always found it sad that both here and in England, there is very little education for girls.”

Robert’s well-shaped eyebrows contracted. The other men looked at their drinks and said nothing.

“And what do you think, sir?” she said, turning to Chief Justice Robinson. “Do you not often wish that the women of Toronto had pursuits other than child-rearing and household management?”

“I have four daughters, madam,” he said, his nose wrinkling ever so little, as if he had just caught a whiff of an unemptied chamberpot. “I wish nothing more for them than that they should find suitable husbands and devote themselves to the care of their partners and their children. That is woman’s lot, and I see no benefit in their having a knowledge of Greek, an ability to do algebra or a view of history. It does not signify what women think: they are not called upon to act or judge outside the purlieu of their household.”

“Well put indeed, Robinson,” Robert said, as several of the men in the room nodded their agreement. He gestured towards the dining room. “Anna, perhaps the gentlemen are ready for the fine meal you have ready.”

“In a moment. First I must respond to the Chief Justice.” She turned and leaned towards him. “You are entirely right, sir. Women in this town have no need of Greek, algebra, or history because... because it is in every man’s interest to keep his wife and daughters ignorant. For when the horse and ass begin to think and argue, adieu to riding and driving.”

There was a long pause while the gentlemen took this in. Then the Archdeacon and Colonel Fitzgibbon laughed. But the Chief Justice’s face grew red, and her husband’s redder.