Voyageurs

by Margaret Elphinstone

  ‘Did she . . .’ I hesitated. ‘Did she ever talk about marriage . . . I mean about our Society's testimony on marriage?’

  ‘Thee means, had she any notion of marrying out of the Society back then?’ Clemency suddenly stopped being serious and grinned at me, in a way that I would have thought, if I hadn't known her for a modest maid, to be entirely mischievous. ‘Maybe thee would be shocked, Friend, to know how maids talk among themselves about such matters. I wouldn't be the one to tell thee!’

  I was left with much food for thought. Clemency had known Rachel, as only a woman can know another of her sex. They had shared this hearth, this table. They had slept at night in Clemency's bedloft. Rachel had stayed in this very house, at a time – barely two years ago – when it was filled by a whole family of Armitages, now gone. Clemency's bedloft was separated from the kitchen only by a thin partition and a curtain for a door. Sometimes she wept bitterly in the night, and though the sobs were always stifled I could not help but hear. (It was the same with Thomas and Sarah, but with them it wasn't weeping that I heard). Long hours at night I lay on my pallet by the banked-up fire and thought of how Clemency must feel: what it would be like if I were alone at Highside, while all my family lay in the graveyard at Mosedale.3

  Thomas and Sarah used to go to bed soon after dusk fell – they were but recently wed, after all – and Clemency and I would talk until long after the tallow dip was burnt out and Clemency had to lay aside her work. We sat at the hearth, and the fire brought out its own colours twice over as it shone on Clemency's hair. In the morning she would come down her ladder all neatly dressed, her curls stowed away under her cap, but there was no mirror in the place, and by evening the cap was all awry, and her wild hair would be standing out all over her head again, like a cloud of flame. One evening late in Twelfth Month we talked about my aunt Judith.

  ‘When I was a little lad I mind Judith coming back from her first travels,’ I told her. ‘She'd been to Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. I remember reciting the names to myself like a chant inside my head. Years later I saw an atlas in Thomas Wilkinson's house, and he showed me the map of the Counties of England. We hadn't any maps at home. I minded about not knowing clearly where places were, but I'd never seen a map. I didn't know until Thomas Wilkinson showed me his atlas what it was I'd been wanting.

  ‘Judith went all the way to London, I remember, to get a Travelling Minute from the Morning Meeting, to go among Friends in Scotland. We heard that folk there were much tendered by her testimony. I don't think she made any impression on Rachel, though, till she came back from Ireland in ‘04. That's when aunt Judith came and ministered about the plight of the poor peasantry in Ireland, who – what did she say? It was all written down in the Minute – I mind it now – “lived worse than our English pigs, and in place of an equal society and true religion were enthralled to the stinking corpse of a tyrannous dispensation.” Anyway, Rachel's heart was stirred and she wept aloud in Meeting for Worship. I heard her sniffing from right across the room. I was amazed; my sister wasn't the weeping sort.’

  ‘Maybe it's easier for me than for thee to guess what was happening to her. Oh, I don't mean I have more sensibility; I mean thee isn't like a girl in any way.’

  ‘I hope not!’

  ‘I'm sure thee does. Did Rachel and thee talk about it afterwards?’

  I tried to find words for Clemency; she was a good listener. Under her questioning I could remember it all very clearly.

  ‘The point is,’ Rachel had said to me after that memorable Meeting, ‘that Judith knows the Light within exists for everybody. They don't have to know the Bible. They don't have to have heard of Jesus Christ. It makes it fair, doesn't thee understand? It's not fair if thee can only find the truth from the scriptures. What if thee is a poor peasant in Ireland who never learned to read and only has the chance to believe what a hireling priest says to thee? Or what if thee's an Indian savage on the other side of the world? It's no good saying a poor heathen who can't know any better can never enter into Christ's Kingdom. The Kingdom is a real place even if thee hasn't heard of it.’

  ‘I never said anyone couldn't enter anything.’ I was annoyed. We were sitting on the sill of the hayloft, the sun full in our faces. I was trying to whittle four wooden rings inside each other, so they would hang together in a chain. I'd made a few with two links, but four was much harder and it wasn't going right. I wished Rachel would leave this kind of talk alone. It was all right as a murmuring background to the real business of life, like hearing the beck flowing past the house, always telling the state of the ground and the weather without me really having to listen to it. But I didn't want to be thrown into the current and have to swim. Moreover, I thought Rachel was showing a typically womanish lack of logic. ‘But if the True Light is there to light every man who comes into the world anyway, why bother with all this travelling? Thee can find God's Light within, without being told, whether thee be a wild Indian or a statesman in Mungrisdale. So why can't thee just be left in peace, wherever thee is, without aunt Judith coming to rant at thee?’

  She wanted to argue with me, but I jumped down from the hayloft, knowing she wouldn't follow because it was too high for her. To tell the truth, it jarred my bones when I did it, but it gave me back my three years’ advantage over her as bandying words could not. I wandered away along the track, kicking stones as I went. I'd never paid much heed to Rachel, but I was used to her. Then suddenly, about two years previously, she had shot up almost as tall as I was, and once her face was on a level with mine she seemed to dispute everything I said. If I tried to argue she would cast up her eyes as if she thought me stupid, and that made me mad. Yet she wouldn't leave me alone. The day she said she'd tell our mother that my cousin John Bristo had taken me to a wrestling match I slapped her face, and she grat. My father spoke to me seriously, saying I was nearly a man grown, and that it ill behoved me to lay violent hands on any, but least of all a young maid, and she my own sister. I couldn't explain to him how her words maddened me, buzzing round my head like midges at milking time. After that things had quietened down. I grew taller than Rachel again, being almost six foot before my eighteenth birthday. I began to be less canaptious with her too, until aunt Judith came back the next time.

  I had no words to tell all this to Clemency, but I did say that since Rachel had taken on Judith's enthusiasm, I'd found her much more irritating. ‘But then,’ I said, ‘I never felt the least call to minister. I've never stood up in Meeting, and I don't reckon to either. Rachel's different: the very next First Day after Judith left us in ‘04, my sister began in ministry. She said the same thing as she'd said to me that day in the hayloft: that the Light within is the gift of all, wherever and whoever they may be, whether they know our Lord Jesus Christ or not. And that makes every man a brother in Christ, whether he be a naked savage in the wilderness or in thrall to a hireling priesthood in a benighted neighbour land. She didn't speak for long, but Friends were much moved by her testimony, even in Mosedale.‘4

  ‘And was thee moved?’

  ‘No.’ That was true, so far as it went. Rachel was never a Friend in Meeting to me. She was just my sister. She had a concern to travel even before Judith came back from Ireland the second time – that would have been in the winter of ‘07 – and asked Rachel, young as she was, to be her companion in America. But – I said to Clemency, ‘Thee may think me very wrong in this’ – I knew too much about Rachel to be convinced. I knew she'd never been content in all her life. She always had to be doing, always wanted something different, which she could not find at home and we could not give. Of course she wanted to get away. In the Society she had her opportunity, because in the ministry travel and adventure is a possibility, even for a young country maid.

  Clemency read me more shrewdly than I expected. ‘Thee's not impressed by women travelling in the ministry, is thee, Mark?’ she said.

  ‘I'm sure that many are called to do great work abroad, men and women
both,’ I knew I sounded stiffer than I meant, and I didn't like myself.

  ‘But thee finds it hard to believe of thy own sister, perhaps? Can I tell thee how it was with me, when I was companion to Judith Scott?’

  ‘I wish thee would.’

  I must have sounded more friendly, for Clemency smiled on me. She laid down her work – for the tallow dip was just beginning to gutter – and came to sit facing me, her hands loosely clasped on the table in front of her.

  ‘I knew I could not replace thy sister in Judith's heart . . .’

  I interrupted her. ‘Did thee talk to Rachel? Did thee know her mind, before she and Judith went westward?’

  ‘I will tell thee all I can, from the time they first came among us.’ Clemency paused, collecting her thoughts. ‘They came to Upper Canada from our Friends in Philadelphia Meeting. I grew up under the care of that Meeting – I was born in Catawissa, on the Susquehanna River – so Rachel had met my relations and Friends from our old Meeting. Judith and Rachel arrived here late one afternoon near the end of Tenth Month – this would have been in ‘08, I suppose. They came first to uncle Amos's workshop. He was drawing the plans for the new Meeting House. Judith was excited when she saw that. She and Rachel stayed with us – we'd just finished building this house – until the spring. They were there when we dug the first trench for the Meeting House. Nearly everyone came to Meeting that day. Then Judith and Rachel set off north along Yonge Street. When Judith came back the new Meeting House was built.

  ‘When they arrived I wanted to hear everything about my family back in Catawissa. I wish – don't thee tell Thomas this, or anyone else either – I wish uncle Amos had never persuaded us to leave. It fair broke my father's heart clearing the forest here. It had to be done so fast. A farmer doesn't get his title unless he's got five acres ready for cultivation within a year, and built a cabin at least sixteen by twenty feet – that's the byre now – and made a road thirty-three feet wide the whole length of the lot. Friends manage it better than most, because the whole Meeting helps, but even so . . .

  ‘The thing was there was no land for us in Pennsylvania. It was my grandfather's farm, and there were five brothers . . . Also, my mother had been arrested for speaking against slavery in the market place. Bad things happened to us. One night someone put out the eyes of our draught horse. Thomas found him sightless and bleeding the next morning. Uncle Amos had a letter from Timothy Rogers, who founded this Meeting. Timothy said we should make a new land that would flow with milk and honey in the northern wilderness. It seemed to us that the hand of the Lord was in that letter, guiding us into a new land, a place where we might find peace.

  ‘I was sixteen, Mark. I'd lived all my life on the bank of the Susquehanna. At home, when I lay in bed at night I used to hear the river. Thomas and I knew all the boats. We had our cousins to play with, and the other children in Meeting. In Upper Canada we seem to be such a little part of the world, such a small peculiar people. Back in Pennsylvania it was not a strange, out-of-the-way matter to be a Friend. Indeed, to us, those who were not Friends were the ones outside the world – our world. It's only since I came here that I wonder if this is all there is, or will be.

  ‘We came by wagon to Niagara. Then we were nearly shipwrecked on the lake, and after we reached York we had to wait for the summer drought to get another wagon up Yonge Street with our chattels. While we were in York it still seemed to be an adventure, and even when we were building our first cabin here in Yonge Street, the younger ones seemed able to make a play out of it. But I was the eldest girl; I had to help my mother, and it seemed to take all the hours there were just to keep food on the table and clothes on our backs, let alone having to howk out the felled trees and make fences before we could plant. We just got turnips in round the stumps that first year. Thanks to the good Lord we had Friends to help us through. Thee'd never think it now, to see our fields so trig: thee wouldn't begin to realise the labour that went into them. And all for naught. I know Thomas has told thee what happened: how my father died of the typhus two years ago. Rachel had left us again by then. We all caught it, and my two sisters died as well, and after that my mother had it too. I think she really died of grief. When Judith came back, she was not the only one who nursed a broken heart.’

  Clemency stopped speaking, and buried her face in her folded arms. I knew not what to do. When my sister was a certain age she was given to bouts of noisy weeping, which has inoculated my sympathies against that kind of feck for all time. Clemency did not weep aloud, but her shoulders shook, and I heard a stifled sob. I was moved to stand up and lay my hand gently upon her shoulder. Her hair had escaped its bands as usual; a thick red curl lay on her shoulder just by my hand. It flashed irrelevantly across my mind that I'd stopped noticing the pockmarks. I knew not if she felt my touch, but presently she sat up and fiercely rubbed her eyes.

  ‘I'm sorry, Friend. It was not so long ago, thee must understand.’

  ‘I understand. Perhaps thee doesn't want to talk any more?’

  She shook her head decisively. ‘It eases me to talk. But I think it's hard on thee. Thee's not obliged to hear it.’

  ‘No, it's not hard. Go on telling, if thee wishes.’

  ‘Very well, I do wish.’ She searched for a handkerchief, then wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘Well then, Mark, I was like to hate my uncle Amos – which is wicked, I know, for what use is it to kick against the pricks – that he had ever brought us out of our own country and into the howling wilderness of Upper Canada. Judith was distraught too, that ever she had brought thy sister Rachel away from the fair English ground where her lot was cast, and into a temptation that Judith felt she ought to have foreseen – though how she could have done so I know not. That's how it was that Judith and I were one another's comfort here – in this house – for all that grievous winter.

  ‘Last spring she asked me if I'd go with her to the United States. This place was filled with horrors. I was desperate to get away. I felt I'd be going home. Thomas was about to marry Sarah. There was no one left here to miss me. Thee says thee suspects the motives of women who travel in the Ministry. I ask thee if anything we do on this earth is done in utter pureness of heart? God leads us to his purpose sometimes whether we will or no.’

  ‘So when Judith asked thee to be her companion, thee was able to go back to thy home in Philadelphia?’

  ‘Ah, but when I got there I found it wasn't my home any more. Besides, we didn't stay long in Catawissa. We were always on the move, carrying our ministry from Meeting to Meeting. But back in the United States I found myself angry because the Friends seemed not to understand what it was like for us in Upper Canada. They said there would be war, and that as I was an American I'd better not go back. I said to them, “what have wars to do with us?” but the question that was really in my mind was, where did I belong? I never thought I wished to be in Yonge Street, but my parents and my sisters are buried in the graveyard here. I was a child when I came, for all I was sixteen years old. It was breaking in our lot here that made me grow up; that, and the deaths in this house. This place and I know each other pretty well by now.

  ‘But it was Judith I was to tell thee about. We travelled together through Pennsylvania, down into Virginia and the Carolinas. Thee's prejudiced against women travelling, and naturally thee grieves for thy sister. But if thee were a woman, and had aught to say, would thee not wish thy Society to listen to thee? Would thee not be glad that thee could speak what lay on thy heart? Thy sister Rachel was a strength to many. The worst thing that can happen to a woman in this world, I think, is not to be born a Friend.

  ‘I'm concerned for Judith though. Amos told thee how she met another travelling Friend in the Carolinas, and was called to work with her among the Indians. But I was much troubled by the heat, and so we parted. I came home, staying with Friends along the way. I only got back a fortnight before thee came thyself. All through my journey Friends were saying that war was on the way, and trying to dissuade me f
rom crossing the border. It only made me more anxious to get home while I could. I don't know what Judith will do.’

  ‘Stay in the United States until the war is over, I suppose.’ I found I did not care very much where Judith was. Clemency's words had struck a chill to my heart, for had not Rachel been lost in American territory? These borders were nothing to me, and the wars over them less than nothing, but a frontier at war might, I supposed, be a significant obstacle. There must be ways round. If Cumberland were at war with Westmorland, I would find fifty ways through, however great the army, and in the great wilderness of North America there must be even more possibilities, once I'd had a chance to survey the territory.

  1 Nor was it always what Mosedale elders wished to hear, fifteen minutes into Meeting for Worship every single week, though it didn't trouble me. I believe from sundry remarks my father let fall to my mother, that Daniel Priestman was several times eldered for his repetitions, but to no avail. A kinder man there could not be. He died in ‘14. I was home in time to attend the Meeting for his funeral.

  2 My mother always bought linen already made up from Keswick, and my wife now does the same. We sell nearly all our wool at market – it would be a labour beyond all the wise virgins together to spin it all at home – though my wife keeps back what is needful for ourselves. She would take the best, and I would keep only the worst, and she it is that prevails. I have ever a good woollen coat to my back, and my sons the same.

  3 Of course, my parents do now lie there, but though it was great sorrow at the time, they died in the fullness of years, both having achieved their threescore years and ten plus several years withal, for we Greenhows – and Bristos too – are a tough stock. My great great aunt Agnes Bristo was a hundred and two when she died at Mosedale in my third year, and by no means dwining till the day she died. She never missed Meeting for Worship: she lived less than a quarter of a mile from the Meeting House, and seemingly she often used to tell the children the story of the building of it, which was done when she was a lass fourteen years old. They say she liked to dandle me upon her knee, and indeed I have the faintest recollection of an ancient, dried-up woman who sat rocking, rocking in her chair by the hearth, and of a rag rug at her feet. In my infant mind she had something to do with the Old Testament, but that I cannot now explain. My memory may not be the exact truth. Sometimes we seem to remember what others choose that we should — my mother much desired that I should remember Aunt Agnes, and so I did – but memory itself is a fickle, unreliable will o’ the wisp of a creature (not that I place any credence in the phantoms of idle superstition) and can in no way be relied upon as the instrument of Reason or Veracity.