by Argyle, Ray
Justice Armour began to stuff files into a travel bag. He frowned, flicked his eyelids, and looked directly at Leonard.
“Twelve of the most intelligent men in Grey County made the correct decision,” he said. “I have no doubt Teets was guilty. You should not question the outcome of a judicial process.”
Leonard wondered whether Judge Armour knew of the articles he’d written in the Chronicle. There was no reason to think he would have seen them.
“But surely mistakes are sometimes made,” Leonard countered.
The judge rolled his tongue in his mouth as he pondered the point.
“All the more reason not to challenge an outcome. The public must have confidence in the justice system. Otherwise there’s no law and order. Start undermining the courts and the whole apparatus of justice falls apart. Public order is built on a trusting public. Trusting citizens don’t question figures of authority.
“Anyway, it’s getting late and I must say good night. I’ll walk you to your hotel. Come again and I’ll have you out to Calcutt House.”
Leonard thanked Judge Armour and said goodnight as they reached the steps of the Lake Ontario Arms. He’d chosen the hotel because it looked cheap and his money was running low. Its ground floor was filled with a reception room, a combination saloon and dining room, and a dry goods store that sold men’s clothing, harnesses, and bolts of wool and linen. He took supper at the common table in the dining room. Two people were seated there – an aged, bearded man and a younger woman. Leonard judged her to be about thirty years old. He assumed they were together, perhaps father and daughter.
The old man ate untidily, dropping scraps of food onto the table and the floor as gravy collected on his beard. His conversation was limited to muttered comments about the weather and the state of the hotel’s food, both of which he considered unsatisfactory. He wiped up the last of his supper with a crust of bread, belched, and got up and left.
Leonard looked at the woman. “Your father is a man of few words,” he said.
“Oh, he’s not my father. I’ve not seen him before.”
Leonard had no previous experience of women travelling alone. He noticed she wore a wedding ring.
“Were you on the train, Mrs....?”
“It’s Mrs. Birch and I’ve come in from my husband’s farm on Rice Lake,” she said. “I’ll be going to Toronto tomorrow.”
Leonard introduced himself and spoke of his stay in Ottawa. He told her he was on his way to Toronto and that they might travel on the same train. When the barmaid brought Leonard a second glass of ale he invited the woman to accept a glass.
“Perhaps just one,” she said. “I never drink.”
They talked for an hour. Mrs. Birch took a second glass of ale. Leonard never found out her first name but he learned a lot about the rigours of harvesting wild rice and surviving springtime floods. He saw she was a bit tipsy when she stood and he offered to escort her to her room. It was across the hall from his.
“I can see you are a gentleman,” she said, standing at her door. She offered a hand and Leonard shook it.
“Good night,” she said, and disappeared into the room.
Leonard was about to get into bed when he heard a tap on his door. It was Mrs. Birch.
“I am sorry to bother you Mr. Babington, but I am having trouble with the lock on my trunk. Could you assist me?”
The trunk was a tin object painted blue, two feet wide and three feet long, with brass strapping and an impressive brass lock. The key he was handed refused to fit.
“Gracious, silly me, it’s the wrong key,” the woman said. “Here, try this.”
The new key easily opened the trunk.
“Oh, I’m feeling dizzy,” Mrs. Birch said. She leaned on Leonard’s shoulder. “I just need to get off my feet for a bit.”
Mrs. Birch sank to the bed, pulling Leonard with her. He felt her hot breath on his ear. It was followed by a tongue that explored his ear lobe before traveling to his mouth. He could taste the scent of lavender and beer in her kiss. Leonard let himself fit into the curves of her body. He unbuttoned his pants, drew her hand to him, and put from his mind all thought of why he was on this trip.
After, he fell asleep in her arms. He awoke hours later, feeling panic in the darkened room. The overnight train from Montreal would be in Cobourg at six o’clock. He had to get to the station. He dressed quickly and silently, crossed to his room for his things, and went downstairs.
In the lobby, Leonard saw a large, swarthy man awaken a sleeping clerk behind the counter.
“Where is she, where’s Mrs. Birch?” he demanded. “My wife’s run away from me and I’ve tried every place in Cobourg. She must be here.”
“Upstairs, first room on the right,” the terrified clerk replied.
The man looked at Leonard, his eyes filled with anger. He brushed past him and leapt up the stairs two steps at a time, cursing as he went. Leonard left the Lake Ontario Arms quickly, convinced he had escaped a fatal beating, or at least a serious bruising. He stepped aboard the last coach of the train as it gathered speed for the run into Toronto.
Chapter 26
A MEETING AT ST. ANDREW’S
November 18, 1885
Dampness hung in the morning air when Leonard Babington left the train at Union Station in Toronto. He was glad he’d brought his overcoat. As he slung it about his shoulders he thought of the task he had set for himself. St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church was only a few blocks away. He intended to see the Rev. Daniel Macdonnell; Leonard had never understood why his testimony at Cook’s trial had been so brief. There must have been much more he could have said about how Cook and Rosannah had turned up at his church, asking to be married.
Leonard found the Rev. Macdonnell in the manse. He’d just finished breakfast and his wife was still clearing away the morning’s dishes when Leonard was admitted into a small sitting room. A bouquet of flowers sat in a vase on a stand beside a small chesterfield. When the Rev. Macdonnell came into the sitting room, Leonard was struck by the heavy eyebrows and sad eyes that dominated his face. The pain of troubled parishioners was plainly evident in his bearing.
Rev. Macdonnell dropped his napkin on the table and called to his wife to bring Leonard a cup of coffee.
“Strange case, that one,” he said, when Leonard raised the matter of Cook Teets’s trial. “I didn’t stay for the whole thing. They just wanted me to confirm I’d married them. Wasn’t on the stand more than three minutes. I could have told the jury a whole lot more.”
“What could you have told the jurors?”
“That Rosannah and Cook gave every appearance of being a devoted couple. Anyone could have seen that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have married them, just in off the street, without any notice. My brother gained the same impression. ‘Those two are mated for life,’ he said.”
“It would seem they were,” Leonard replied.
“Still, we must accept God’s will in all things,” the Rev. Macdonnell added. “Everything has a purpose even if we don’t understand it.”
The conversation turned to other reasons for Leonard’s visit to Toronto, as if he had any other purpose than to inquire into the minister’s impressions of the couple for whom he had conducted a hurried marriage ceremony. Leonard felt the old sadness coming back. What he was hearing today convinced him more than ever that Rosannah had not died at her husband’s hands. Cook Teets had not deserved to hang. Perhaps a few moments alone in the church will help settle my mind, Leonard thought. Thanking the minister for his time, he moved into the church and took a seat near the chancel. He looked up at the stained glass windows that filtered light onto the altar, bowed his head, and closed his eyes. He did not pray, but he wished fervently for the survival of the souls of Rosannah and Cook in a happier place than they had found on earth.
When he rose to leave Leonard saw a figure standing near the front door of the church. As Leonard drew close, he realized it was that of a man, scarcely more than a youth, drawing
in a sketchbook. Leonard watched him sketch uninterruptedly, creating lines and slashes. The pews, aisles and glass windows of the nave came alive on the page as Leonard watched.
“It looks even more real in your picture,” Leonard said. “Where did you learn to draw like that?”
The young man held his charcoal pencil in the air. “I was taught to etch engravings but I prefer to draw,” he said. “Mr. Robertson wants me to draw every church in Toronto.”
“Then you’ve a job ahead of you.”
The young man laughed. “And who are you?” he asked.
Leonard gave his name. He learned that Owen Staples was nineteen years old and that he had been given a commission by John Ross Robertson, the proprietor of the Evening Telegram. He was to do a picture of a different church every week: St. Paul’s, the Church of Holy Trinity, Jarvis Street Baptist, even the Jewish synagogue, Holy Blossom. After being printed in the paper, his drawings were to be put in a book that Mr. Robertson planned to call Landmarks of Toronto.
“It’ll keep me going for years,” Owen said.
Owen’s eyes sparkled as he spoke. Leonard remembered the enthusiasm he had felt during his first days at the Globe. The youth before him reminded Leonard of himself. In truth, they looked not alike; Owen’s higher forehead and leaner face was set off by a straggly mustache that held promise of better days ahead.
“So you’re a newspaperman,” Leonard said. “So am I.” He told Owen Staples of the Vandeleur Chronicle and said he’d just come from Ottawa.
“I’ve just started at the Evening Telegram,” Owen said, “but I’ve already had one good assignment. I went up to Manitoulin Island for the Indians’ feast for the dead. What a time! The Indians build a huge bonfire – just like Hell, the Catholic missionaries say – and they fire off their guns all night to protect the departed. The priests let them do it – they call it ‘shooting the devil.’ I was able to make some really good pictures.”
Owen’s story about the Indians set Leonard to telling of his days with the old Indian of the Beaver Valley, Wahbudick. The two traded tales for most of an hour before Owen suddenly announced, “I’m hungry.” He invited Leonard to dinner at his boarding house on Ann Street. “Mrs. Coles won’t mind.”
When they arrived at Owen’s boarding house, Leonard thought he might have been dropped into some make-believe fairyland set amid a grimy neighbourhood of foundries, tanneries, harness makers and rendering plants. The house was altogether too neat and clean. Its white clapboard siding, recently painted, gleamed in the midday light. In front of the bungalow was a well-tended garden of flowers and vegetables. A wooden fence protected the property. The house wouldn’t be so white in a few months, Leonard told himself. The coal smoke that drifted north from the factories below Gerrard Street would see to that.
Leonard ate every morsel of the meal put before him – potatoes, sausage, and turnips, followed by bread pudding and tea. He exchanged stories with Owen and the two Evening Telegram reporters who had come in while they were eating. Tom White had hilarious tales of bankers he’d caught carrying on with lady tellers – women were now being hired for such jobs – and Tim Healey told of drunken escapades involving men of the city council. Leonard chimed in with an account of the Cook Teets trial. He had found an audience that was keen to hear his story of heartbreak and injustice.
“It’s a sad tale, but we’re all having a gay time,” Mrs. Coles said, “I’ve never seen the like of it. Mr. Babington. If we had you living here there’d never be a dull moment.”
“Yes, why don’t you move in?” Owen said.
A sense of foreboding darkened Leonard’s eyes as he heard these encouraging words. He’d not told his new friends of his disastrous experience at the Globe. They might not be so welcoming once they knew of that episode. Besides, he had responsibilities back in Vandeleur. And to Rosannah and Cook. Who would keep the Chronicle going if he stayed in Toronto? There would be crops to think about come spring, and he had to make arrangements for the upkeep of Vandeleur Hall. Too many things were cluttering up his head.
“I’m sure Mrs. Coles can put you up for the night,” Owen said. “Come out with me when I go sketching tomorrow. Maybe we’ll run into Mr. Robertson.”
The next morning, Owen led Leonard down Church Street to the docks below The Esplanade. “I need a break from drawing churches,” he said. “There’s still a few ships in the harbour and I want to sketch them before things close down for the winter.”
Owen’s skill with his stick of charcoal fascinated Leonard. He learned the young artist had been born in England and had grown up in Hamilton, where his father had been head groundskeeper to Lady MacNab, the mistress of Dundurn Castle. But something ominous had occurred when Owen was ten. His father had suddenly moved the family to Toronto. Fired or quit, Owen never knew. When word came that Grandfather Staples had died in England, Owen’s father returned to the Old Country, only to die there a year later. His mother struggled to raise eight children, partly on the proceeds of a kindergarten she ran from their cottage on Berkeley Street. There was never enough money, and Owen contributed his earnings from delivering papers and his work as an office boy for a police magistrate. A lawyer who took a liking to Owen arranged for him to go to art school at night. That got him a job in an engraving plant. It was there he had met John Ross Robertson, the proprietor of the Evening Telegram.
“I like drawing for the newspaper,” Owen said, “but what I really want to do is paint, I mean real painting, and for that I need training. I’ve saved almost enough money for art school. There’s an Academy of Fine Art, in Philadelphia. I sent them my portfolio and they said they would take me. I’ll need a leave of absence. Mr. Robertson is going to let me know when he can spare me.”
Owen was one of those fortunate young men, Leonard reflected, who were given breaks by successful men in the conviction they might make something of themselves. He saw many similarities between himself and Owen, even though Leonard was older, had grown up in the country, and had enjoyed an easier boyhood. The fact they were both English in a city that was filling up with Scots immigrants and Irish Protestants – Toronto was becoming known as the “Belfast of North America” – drew the two more closely together.
By noon, Owen had sketched a freighter at anchor and drawn a picture of workmen unloading sacks of sugar. He and Leonard sat at the edge of the dock and shared a sandwich. Leonard’s appetite vanshed in the stench of sewage and the acrid smell of factory smoke. He preferred to talk rather than eat.
“I was at the Globe when George Brown was shot,” Leonard announced.
For the first time since he had shared that secret with his boyhood friend Tom Winship, Leonard found himself talking about the shooting of George Brown. Although he barely knew Owen, he was comfortable in the presence of the younger man. He described how he had won a reporter’s job, the exciting assignments he’d been given, and how he’d been blamed for encouraging the man who had fired the fatal bullet at Mr. Brown.
“If it wasn’t your fault, you’ve nothing to be ashamed of,” Owen told him. “But I can understand how something like that could give you a black mark with the Toronto papers. That’s why you’re up there in the Queen’s Bush, publishing that little sheet.”
“It’s where I’m from,” Leonard said. He felt he had to defend his “little sheet.”
“Besides, there’s this big story I’m working on.” He told Owen more of his own history – his friendship with Rosannah Leppard and his guilt over stories he’d written about Cook Teets before his trial.
Owen folded up the cloth sack that had held their lunch. Leonard looked out over the harbour, pointing to a departing vessel that was racing to beat the incoming ice before reaching its winter port of Kingston. Leonard thought about how Owen’s father, rather than staying in Toronto to look after his children, had chased some illusion back in England.
Owen turned to face Leonard. “You’re like a ship going from port to port, never knowing where you’ll e
nd up. I think you’d best forget about where you’ve been, and drop anchor for awhile.”
Chapter 27
AT THE EVENING TELEGRAM
November 19, 1885
Leonard Babington and Owen Staples made their way past a tangle of warehouses, sheds and grain elevators. A spider’s web of railway tracks lay between them and Union Station. Its three domed towers rose like sentinels while trains shunted nosily, their wheels squealing against the rails. Steam belched from locomotives, signalmen waved flags, and high-pitched whistles warned of oncoming traffic. The two waited for the crossing to clear, then turned to walk up Bay Street. They picked their way through an intersection paved with cedar blocks rotted from years of rain, frosts, and thaws. “We’re making them pave the streets with asphalt,” Owen said proudly. “We sent reporters out with picks and they brought back sacks of rotted blocks. Mr. Robertson put them on display in our lobby. There was so much fuss the council voted money for asphalt paving.”
At the corner of King Street, Owen led the way into a two-storey building that was the home of the Evening Telegram. It looked to Leonard like nothing more than a large farmhouse. Its peaked roof and whitewashed walls were set off by a small balcony on the upper floor used, according to Owen, for political speeches on election nights. Owen stopped to talk to one of the girls who sat behind a counter taking small ads from the public. The ads filled the front page every day. For a penny a line, people could list their wants – rooms for rent, furniture for sale, domestic help wanted. Thousands did so, giving the Telegram the largest circulation of the city’s five daily newspapers.
“Mr. Robertson wants his paper to be a local sheet,” Owen said. “He says that if Montreal burned down, the Telegram wouldn’t bother to report it. We’re all about Toronto: politics, crime, church news – and of course my drawings.” He didn’t mention that the paper also specialized in serial novels and Christian sermons, and short, pithy editorials in support of Canada’s imperial connection to Britain.