Act of Injustice

by Argyle, Ray

  The Globe’s main door was of heavy timber and brass and it swung open as Leonard was about to enter. Three young men tumbled out and he managed to catch a hurriedly thrown remark as the reporters rushed past. “The chief will want everything we can get.” Soon, he might be doing the same. Inside, he found a young man wearing a celluloid collar and a black coat. He was behind a counter, peering at a book similar to a hotel register. When Leonard asked for Mr. James he jerked his thumb in the direction of the stairway. “Up the stairs, second floor, first door on your right. Sign the visitors’ register first.”

  Leonard stood outside Mr. James’s room, taking in the sounds and smells of the newspaper office. He could hear the dull rumble of a printing press in the cellar. He detected tobacco smoke and other substances beyond his ability to identify: a combination of stale food, sweat, and grime. He nervously knocked on a door slightly ajar, being careful not to force it open. “Come,” a voice from within sounded.

  “Mr. James, it’s Leonard Babington. I didn‘t get an answer to my letter so I thought I should come and see you.”

  The face that looked up from the desk bore thick mutton-chop whiskers, a deeply veined nose and tired eyes set behind the thickest glasses Leonard had ever seen. Elbow garters held his shirtsleeves in place and an eyeshade covered his brow. Melvin James appeared to squint to better see his visitor, then rose from his chair and held out his hand.

  “Ah, Babington, of course, glad to meet you, delighted you could come in. Sorry I never got to answer your letter. Too dashed busy. Didn’t have a thing to offer you. But what a marvel you’re here today! We’ve just lost a fellow. Not Catholic are you? Ah, of course not. When can you start?”

  Leonard tried to conceal his surprise. His amazement mounted as James ran on about his plans for coming issues, and what good use he could make of Leonard. At the top of his list was the Toronto Industrial Exhibition, a grand new annual fair that would open in a few weeks.

  “It’ll show us for what we are – a great city of industry and humanity, God-fearing, British, loyal to the Queen. Most of all, a metropolis of high morals, good family values. Babington, you’re just the man to handle it for the Weekly Globe. Fresh eyes for a fresh new day.”

  Thrilled to have fallen into such an exciting job, Leonard spent nearly every waking hour tramping the new exhibition grounds east of Fort York. The ravine that once contained Garrison Creek had been filled in to make way for the great event. The fill-in was the answer to Toronto’s ravenous appetite for fresh land within handy reach.

  Leonard was at the magnificent Crystal Palace when men and women of high society arrived for the official opening of the Toronto Industrial Exhibition. The Governor General, Lord Lorne and his wife Princess Louise, said to be the favourite daughter of Queen Victoria, came from Ottawa. Leonard watched the Princess inspect all manner of crafts from engraved glass to inlaid woodwork, and took careful note for his readers of her purchases. Remembering his mother’s tears when he left, he paid the unearthly sum of four dollars and fifty cents to buy her an engraved hand mirror. He thought briefly of getting something for Rosannah, but decided against it.

  For Leonard, the exhibition was a carnival filled with new sights and sounds. He made innumerable visits to the food tent to enjoy the free meals for journalists. He knew that most of the Weekly Globe’s country readers would never see the fair and he did his best to describe it for them.

  Leonard also felt compelled to warn visitors against the seamier side of the great city. One night, he visited a number of establishments that were strung out house after house along York Street, above King Street. It was his intention to determine what went on in each house, and to leave without becoming involved. He stopped at three places and found them untidy and uninviting and the women in them unappealing. The fourth door he opened took him into a small parlor with a settee and two chairs. A bell rested on a table and a sign invited visitors to ring for service. It tinkled gently as he shook it.

  A tall woman with striking red hair and a low-cut gown emerged from a darkened hallway. “Good evening, dearie, have you come to see someone?”

  “Oh, I’m just looking around,” Leonard answered, unwilling to commit himself.

  “I’m sure you’ll like what we have here,” she said. With that, the woman turned and called out, “Mabel and Hortense, come and see this beautiful young man!”

  Leonard thought the two girls were the prettiest he had ever set eyes on. Mabel was short, with dark hair and a saucy smile. She wore a revealing blouse. Hortense was bigger and heavier. She had painted her lips a bright red and had applied rouge to her breasts. The effect was to make them even more alluring under her transparent chemise. She took Leonard’s hand and led him to a bedroom at the back of the house where both girls kissed him and promised he could do anything he wanted. This was not what Leonard had intended, but he found himself unable to spurn their enticement. Three dollars changed hands and when he left, twenty minutes later, he had no desire to visit any of the other houses on York Street.

  Leonard counted ten brothels and eight unlicensed groggeries that sold, he wrote, “maddening liquor to the depraved classes.” It was one of the most disreputable streets that ever existed in any city and country folk should stay away, he warned. Inevitably, business boomed after his article was published. Long after the Exhibition, Leonard was so busy he seldom had a day – even a Sunday – to relax in the big house in Parkdale where he’d taken room and board with Mrs. Metcalfe. The publisher of the Globe, George Brown, sent him a congratulatory note. Instead of going home for Christmas he decided to stay and write for the special holiday edition. Little did Leonard realize his article, “A Boyhood Christmas in Vandeleur,” would become something of a classic for the paper’s readers.

  Leonard enjoyed stopping for an idle sip of beer at the Queen’s Hotel, a noted hostelry not far from the Globe offices. It was here that he met George Bennett, a garrulous printing pressman who singled out Leonard for attention. One day, when Melvin James saw Leonard accept a beer from Bennett, his editor drew him aside. “Be careful of this fellow, he’s not a stable sort.” Leonard avoided Bennett for as long as he could but one day he found himself caught at the door of the men’s washroom. Bennett smelled of drink and swayed unsteadily. He supported himself with one hand on the hallway wall.

  “Five years and they’re letting me go,” Bennett complained. “Can’t a fellow miss a day now and then?” He doubled over, coughing, and wiped drool from his mouth as he straightened up.

  Leonard considered what he might say. He couldn’t just ignore the man.

  “Go and ask Mr. Brown if he’ll reinstate you.” Leonard thought it unlikely the man would follow his advice or if he did, that it would do him much good.

  A few days after speaking with Bennett, Leonard arrived home earlier than usual. He took tea with Mrs. Metcalfe and went out to buy the six o’clock edition of the Evening Telegram. He’d gotten into the habit of checking the four-page sheet for local gossip that the Globe usually chose to ignore.

  The newsie was still at the corner of Queen Street and Ossington Avenue when Leonard arrived. “Terrible crime,” he shouted, “Mr. Brown shot.” Leonard was aghast when he read of the dreadful occurrence at the Globe:

  We stop the press to record one of the most dastardly and daring acts of violence and attempted murder ever perpetrated in this city. This afternoon, about 4:10 o’clock, an ex-employee of the Globe, named George Bennett, entered the Globe office and met the Hon. George Brown and shot him with a revolver. Mr. Brown is at the present writing lying in the Globe office with physicians attending him.

  There must be some mistake, Leonard thought. He had to get to the Globe and find out what’s happened. He ran four blocks along Queen Street before he could hail a hansom.

  Leonard found a crowd milling around the Globe entrance. He barged into the lobby where two of the paper’s editors, Bill Henderson and Allan Thomson, were surrounded by a gaggle of reporters from the
other papers.

  “I was sitting upstairs above Mr. Brown’s room when I heard a pistol shot and a voice call ‘Murder’ and ‘Help,’” Henderson said. He raced downstairs to find Mr. Brown lying on the floor. Thompson took over the story. He’d heard Bennett demand that Mr. Brown take him back, or give him a letter of reference. Mr. Brown said he couldn’t do that. Then he heard Bennett say, “Babington sent me,” and there was a shot.

  “I saw Mr. Brown lunge at Bennett. He grabbed his revolver. He was holding it in both hands and he said, ‘Don’t harm him, I’ve got the pistol.’ It was then I saw a bullet hole in Mr. Brown’s trousers. He’d been shot in the leg. I took hold of the prisoner while Henderson rushed outside and got a policeman.”

  Leonard was stunned to hear his name mentioned. He felt a hand on his arm. It was Melvin James.

  “The police will want to talk to you, but you’d better get out of here for now,” James told him. “Go home and wait for someone to call for you.”

  Leonard lay awake most of the night. The next morning he read in the Globe that Mr. Brown had been taken home and was resting from “a severe flesh wound.” That afternoon, Inspector Bonnycastle of the Toronto Police presented himself at Mrs. Metcalfe’s door. When he asked for Leonard, she scurried upstairs to get him.

  “Ah, Mr. Babington, just a few questions for you,” the Inspector said. “How well do you know this Bennett?”

  “I hardly know him. Just ran into him at the Queen’s. When he told me he’d been fired, I suggested he ask Mr. Brown for another chance. I had no idea he had a gun.”

  Inspector Bonnycastle made a note of Leonard’s answer.

  “What you say comes off well enough, but they’re unhappy with you at the newspaper. Let me give you some fatherly advice. Be more careful in the future. We’ll let you know if we need you.” With that, he left.

  Later that day, a note arrived from Mr. James. Leonard was to stay home until further notice. Two weeks dragged by while he waited to be called back to work. Bennett had been arrested for attempted murder and Leonard followed the case carefully in the papers. On a cheerful spring day he heard the disastrous news. Mr. Brown had died. Infection and fever had squeezed the last ounce of strength from him.

  Early the next morning, Leonard’s trembling hands opened an envelope handed him by Mrs. Metcalfe. Inside was a single sheet bearing a one-sentence message from Mr. James. “In light of the unhappy circumstances attending your employment at the Globe, it is necessary you consider your position terminated.”

  Leonard read the three lines of careful handwriting several times. Then he crushed the paper in his fist. He wanted to send an angry reply, a note that would shame and embarrass the editor for such an unjust decision. The idea burned in his brain all that day and night. He awoke the next morning with a headache and a nervous tingling all over his body.

  Leonard managed to get some tea and toast into his stomach, and then sat down to write a letter to Melvin James. Seething with resentment, he wrote that what the Globe had done to him was unfair and that he should be given his job back. “You’ve trapped me in a nightmare not of my own making. I have given you no cause for the action you’ve taken.” He delivered the letter that afternoon, leaving it with Robert, who handled the reception desk.

  When Leonard returned to the Globe the next day, Robert did his best to ignore him. When he finally turned to Leonard, it was to tell him the editor was too busy to see him. “But here’s something I was told to give you.” He handed over an envelope. It was Leonard’s last pay packet. In it, he found three crisp new, four-dollar bills. Were these bits of paper to represent his last contact with the Globe? No, Leonard decided. He brushed past Robert and vaulted up the steps to the second floor. The door to Melvin James’s office was closed. Leonard knocked once and pushed his way into the room.

  The sight that greeted Leonard shocked him almost as much as the letter that had brought him here. A girl he recognized as Loretta, a barmaid from the saloon across the street, was on the editor’s lap and he had his hands inside her blouse. She quickly disentangled herself and fled through the open door. “What in damn hell are you doing here, Babington? You’re a son of a bitch for bursting in on me like this. I told you, you’re fired!”

  By now, the blood had drained from James’s face, leaving him white with anger. Leonard had been ready to grab hold of him and make him see reason. Instead, he started to laugh. “So, Mr. High and Mighty, is this how you keep Toronto fit for decent families – screwing around with any young woman you can lure in here? I’m surprised I didn’t find you planking her.” The anger had gone out of Leonard’s head, replaced by disgust at what he’d seen. “You’re just a hypocrite – you were a hypocrite when you fired me just like you’re a hypocrite with that girl on your lap.”

  “I had good reason to dismiss you, Babington, and you know it. We can’t keep someone who’s connected with that braggart Bennett ...”

  “I wasn’t connected with Bennett, I was just stupid enough to try to be kind to him …”

  James interrupted Leonard. “… and someone with a Catholic name, like yours.”

  “But I’m not Catholic,” Leonard protested.

  “You’re seen to be Catholic, it’s the same thing.”

  “I wouldn’t work here if you paid me a hundred dollars a week,” Leonard said. He didn’t think of himself as idealistic, but he wanted nothing more of this hypocrisy. He bolted from the room.

  The next day, sleepless and exhausted after weeks of worry and strain, Leonard realized there was nothing he could have done to change what happened. With the shame of his firing, he’d never get a job at another paper. He had just enough money for his last week’s board and a train ticket home. Once there, he knew, he’d have to deal again with his father’s weird ideas and the bitter memory of how he’d lost Rosannah. He thought he’d escaped all that. Perhaps his father was right after all. One never knew when ill fortune might strike, or what bizarre fate could descend on a man, undeserved and unannounced.

  Chapter 12

  ON THE BOATS

  August 20, 1881

  Leonard Babington encountered his friend Tom Winship on his second day back in Vandeleur. Tom was saddling his chestnut horse Dart – the name was for the blaze on its face – outside the harness outfitter on the Beaver Valley Road. Leonard expected his boyhood chum to ask about his time in Toronto and why he had come home. Instead, he posed a more painful question.

  “Have you seen Rosannah?” Tom asked. “Did you know she’s had a baby?”

  Tom was the only person Leonard had confided in during his love affair with Rosannah. His question brought back memories Leonard had pushed from his mind. At first, he felt a surge of jealously at the thought she’d taken another lover. Then the idea struck him: could the child be his?

  “A baby? When did this happen?”

  “A few months ago,” Tom said. “A girl. She’s out there at the Leppard place. I’ve no idea who the father could be.” Tom delicately avoided any suggestion of Leonard’s possible paternity.

  That night, Leonard thought about the last time he and Rosannah had made love. It was May now, and if the baby was a few months old that meant he could be the father. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that he had to see her. If the child was his, he’d make sure Rosannah got the help she needed to give his daughter a decent life.

  The sight of the Leppard place reminded Leonard of the poverty in which Rosnanah would have to raise her child. The vegetable garden showed neglect and scraps of old lumber and a broken wagon axle blocked the path to the back door. A dog roused itself from its place in the shade and began to bark. When he knocked, Molly Leppard answered the door.

  “Leonard, where have you come from? We heard you were in Toronto.”

  “I’m back now, and I’d like to see Rosannah. I’m told you’ve an addition to the family.”

  When Leonard looked past Molly he saw Rosannah nursing a baby.

&nbs
p; “I’m busy right now,” she called to Leonard. “Can you wait outside?”

  Leonard and Molly chatted at the door. When Rosannah appeared, she handed the baby to her mother. Leonard caught a quick glance of a fair-headed infant with a pug nose and a firm mouth. It was making the sucking sounds of a nursing baby. Molly took it inside.

  “How are you, Rosannah? That’s a pretty baby you’ve got.”

  “I’m all right, Leonard. It’s nice to see you, but I’ve got my hands full right now.”

  “That’s why I’ve come,” Leonard said. “Rosannah, can you tell me if the baby’s mine?”

  She replied with the twisted, nervous smile that he remembered from their first days together. It usually meant she was trying to avoid an answer. Or perhaps preparing to face up to the truth. Things would be so much better if they were honest with each other.

  “I really don’t want to say, Leonard. I’m looking after the baby just fine. I don’t need any help.”

  At least she’s not denying I’m the father, Leonard thought.

  He heard Molly call from inside the house. “Rosannah, please come in. Lenora’s acting colicky.”

  Leonard locked his eyes on hers. He saw a look of alarm spread over her face. That proved it. There could be only one reason for the baby to have that name.

  “I think I know who the father is,” he told Rosannah. “You’d better tell me the truth.”

  “Leonard, what’s truth got to do with it? You’ll be unhappy no matter what answer I give you. Unhappy if I say it’s yours, unhappy if I say it’s not.”

  “If it’s mine, I’ll help look after it.”

  “You know what my mother would say. She loves the baby, but maybe she wouldn’t if she thought its father was a Protestant. It’s better without your help, Leonard. You get me all mixed up with your fancy ideas. I don’t want to see you back here, ever.”