by Cecily Ross
At the word “rogue,” Kate exclaimed softly, “Oh my!” (She knows perfectly well his reputation, I thought.) Still, this latest development was news to us all.
“But what will become of Louisa and the children? How many? Is it six or seven?” I asked.
“One is tempted to believe they will be better off without the likes of Captain Lloyd,” said Mrs. Caddy. “The oldest boy is grown enough to manage the farm. Still, it will be a long winter, sure enough.”
Mrs. Hague added the welcome news that Mrs. Lloyd has the aid of a strong and loyal servant. “Jenny Buchanan may be illiterate and rough in manner, but she has been with the Lloyds for many years. Those children are as dear to her as if they were her own. And I am told the girl has endured much in her efforts to protect the family during her master’s frequent tirades.”
“Well,” said Kate, “I had no idea. To think there is such ignominy in the world. I’m sure we should all be most grateful to have married the good and virtuous men the Lord has seen fit to bless us with. I think whisky is the devil’s own elixir.”
This proved to be too much for Emilia, who gathered up her sonnets and, bidding us a terse good afternoon, fled out the door and into the woods. I would have gone after her, but my bulk and the gauntlet of chairs and tables between me and the exit prevented me. In any case, the party was over. Mrs. Caddy summoned her brood, and she and Mrs. Hague took their leave without comment. Mary Reid slipped away as quietly as she had come, the earlier conviviality of our gathering having burst like a soap bubble. While I began clearing the table, Kate brought my girls and little James inside.
“I do believe dear Emilia was not herself,” she began.
I was incredulous. “Not herself. I should think not. How could you be so insensitive?”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re perfectly aware of Lieutenant Shairp’s drunkenness, and of Emilia’s trials, of her struggle to keep her household intact . . .”
“Don’t be silly. Of course I’ve heard the talk, but I consider it nonsense. I do not believe it. I have always found Mr. Shairp to be a perfect gentleman. Quick to anger, yes, but Emilia has never said a word about him drinking. Not one word.” She plucked a feather from her basket of trinkets and pressed it into her palm. “In any case, it’s none of our business.”
And then it all came tumbling out. “Of course it is. Whose business is it if not ours?” I said. “Unpleasantness does not simply disappear if you ignore it. What is wrong with you? You with your head bobbing above the dark clouds like a red rubber ball. You with your endless panaceas, your penchant for silver linings. Your effusions of goodwill and onwards and upwards . . .” I bent down to pick up Addie, who was pulling at my apron, her “Muhmuhmuh” about to escalate into something more urgent.
“She wants a drink, Mama. I think she’s thirsty,” advised her big sister.
“Do you seriously not understand the trouble we are in here?” I went on. “Are the trees so straight and tall that you cannot see they constitute a forest? A dark, inimical forest that literally and figuratively will soon prove our undoing?”
Addie was crying now. I peeled her off my hip and put her on the hard dirt floor. Katie, ever the peacemaker, produced a half-empty cup of tea and offered her little sister a sip. I was not finished.
“Look,” I said, pointing to the empty chair by the fire, the chair usually occupied by Thomas Traill. “Look at your own husband. Good and virtuous? Oh yes, indeed. A good man, but a man broken in spirit, dragging himself day after day into the wretched undergrowth. Do you really imagine his efforts, all our efforts, will produce an Eden on earth?”
My sister, aghast at first by my outburst, had rearranged her pretty features into an expression of patient forbearance. “Susanna, I really think you must calm yourself. In your condition—”
“Catharine, our money is nearly gone. Spent by your good man, and mine, oh yes, by my good and virtuous husband, squandered on worthless steamboat stocks and pointless brutish field work and acres and acres of swampland and bush that no one will ever buy. We have been had. Can’t you see that? As miserable as he is, at least Mr. Traill knows it, at least he is not such a fool as his doe-eyed, ‘it will all work out if we just persevere’ little wife!”
And then she slapped me across the face.
The blow was like cold water on a flame. I stepped back, holding my cheek, the fire gone out of me. I could see by Kate’s expression that she too grasped the ugliness of what we have become.
“Susanna . . .” There were tears in her eyes.
“What is wrong with us? Why are we fighting this way?”
And then she told me. “I lost the baby. The day you came about the bake kettle, that morning . . .”
“Baby? You mean you were . . . I would never have . . . You didn’t tell me.”
“I’m sorry. How were you to know? It was very early. These things happen. I thought it would be nothing.” Her face crumpled. She was trying hard to smile anyway. She shook her head as if to clear away the sadness. “I can’t seem to . . .” She gulped for air. “When”—her eyes were wide and liquid—“when will it stop?”
There was nothing to be done. Nothing more to say. We held each other for a while. Kate wiped away her tears with her best apron, and I helped clear the table before taking the girls and setting out for home. Little more than a month until I give birth. Will it break my sister’s heart?
JULY 21, 1834
We are alive. Today, a day like any other, our little log home sits on the edge of a blackened clearing like a lighthouse watching over a smouldering sea. Meagre sentries of smoke trickle upwards like the devil’s own will-o’-the-wisps. Greasy puddles, like miniature tar pits, pock the exhausted earth all around. The air is acrid with the smell of wet ashes, and every breath paints our nostrils and lungs with sour brushstrokes. But we are alive.
It is enough to make one believe in miracles.
Yesterday: An airless afternoon. A yellow-and-grey sky that pressed down upon us with the same promise of rain that has tantalized this arid wilderness all summer. A smothering heat, oppressive and deadening, sucking the life out of everything, making my head throb and my limbs and belly as heavy as lead. I took to my bed to rest. Katie and Addie lay sleeping on the parlour floor, their hot little bodies like sponges soaking up what relief they could from the cool earth. I didn’t smell the smoke and quite likely would have slept through my own death by asphyxiation if one of the labourers had not shattered the stillness, kicking in the front door and throwing himself under the table, where he crouched, his arms folded over his head while he emitted a staccato of high-pitched whimpers. As soon as I opened them, my eyes began to sting, and the boy’s garbled warning was unnecessary. I could see for myself, as I ripped open the door, that a holocaust of flames was rising up all around us, a wall of fire, as though the earth had split open and hell had soared up from its depths. The noise was like the thunder of a train, a furious roar punctuated by sharp cracking sounds. And the heat turned the air into a livid living thing. I could see no break in the onslaught. The swamp below us was a glowing tangle spewing thick black smoke into the sky. The fallow lining the three sides of the clearing spat long licks of flame, and sporadic explosions leapt to the treetops, fuelled by a fierce wind that had arisen as we slept. And though the heat was immense, somehow my babies continued to sleep through the inferno.
I grabbed a quilt from my bed and ran outside, thinking I would soak it with water from the cattle trough and throw it over the little girls, as futile as that sounds, only to find the trough as dry as a bone and the cows nowhere in sight. The well has been dry since a week, and there was not a drop of water in the cabin. And now the blessed lake was cut off completely by a lurid panorama of flame. I retreated back inside to avoid the arrows of fire landing all around me. I knew it was only a matter of time before one of them ignited the cedar roof and burned us all alive, but right then, the little house wa
s like an ark in the storm. Mary and I kneeled on the floor, encircling the children with our bodies, praying fiercely to an Almighty whom I was certain had abandoned us once and for all. The wind climbed in a billowing crescendo of flame and the skies grew as dark as night from smoke, yes, but also from the coiled ferocity of the storm, unnoticed in our terror, which we had been praying for so anxiously these many weeks. And with a tremendous crash of thunder, the heavens parted over Satan’s dominion and poured forth a deluge that continued for the rest of the day and into the night. We are alive.
Now, surveying the aftermath of the terrible conflagration that left this house and all of us in it miraculously unharmed, I cannot help but think that the good Lord would not have intervened only to let us perish from starvation and disease in the long winter to come. Emilia and her husband, seeing the smoke, ran all the way here through the pouring rain and, expecting to find nothing but charred skeletons, broke down and wept with relief. Not a word from Kate.
JULY 23, 1834
My husband’s joy at returning from Toronto to find his family alive and well amid the charred and blackened detritus of our near immolation has made me realize how grateful I am. Life, even life in this godforsaken backwater, is infinitely better than the alternative. It has taken a near disaster to convince me of this, and I take it as a message from God that I must persevere in the face of whatever the future holds.
Moodie held us all to his breast until I thought we might suffocate in his embrace. And there, within the circle of his arms, I was reminded of the strength of his love, and I was overcome with shame at my recent remonstrances.
The cholera is rampant in Toronto. Thank the Lord that Moodie and Mr. Traill were spared.
“A good profit could be made providing planks to build coffins,” my husband joked when I chastised him for putting himself in harm’s way. “Och, dear girl, we were never in danger. It’s a disease of the lower classes, as anyone can tell. The squalor is what brings it on. And even when aid is at hand, the poor wretches still won’t lift a finger to save themselves.” He went on to describe public officials patrolling the city streets, passing out lime and whitewash, and ordering householders to disinfect their houses and privies and cellars in an effort to stop the spread of the disease. “But it serves little purpose,” he said. “They pile their dead in shanties and set them on fire, then move elsewhere, taking the sickness with them. They say a thousand people are dead this summer already and no end in sight.”
Moodie was more interested in the roiling political goings-on. “That odious little wretch Mackenzie has been elected mayor of Toronto. What we’re in for now, God only knows.”
The antics of the Scottish firebrand William Lyon Mackenzie have been keeping us entertained since we arrived in Canada, but I have never seen him in action. His scurrilous newspaper The Colonial Advocate has served us well as kindle for the parlour stove, the only proper use for the vehicle of such virulent attacks on the Lieutenant-Governor and his executive council. We have learned, however, to keep our establishment sympathies to ourselves. Our illiterate Yankee and Irish neighbours are most enamoured of “Little Mac’s” tirades, which have been known to dangerously inflame the settlers’ republican rancour and their utter rejection of all the traditions we hold dear. The lower classes harbour an innate antagonism toward stability and the rule of law. Not wanting to be burned in our beds by some unruly mob, we keep our own counsel.
Moodie, who seems wholly invigorated by his journey to Toronto, lit his pipe and continued, while Katie straddled his knee and gazed at her father with adoring eyes.
“Yes, indeed,” he said, “it appears the Reformers have a stranglehold on the city. And if Mackenzie prevails, he could regain his seat in the House despite the Tories’ best efforts to have him expelled. His ragged and rowdy constituents seem to have no end of affection for the little baboon.”
For the first time in many weeks, I felt we were a family again. My husband’s recovery from the ague seems complete, and this short respite from his backwoods labours has lightened his mood. Even the recent conflagration can be counted a blessing in disguise, since it has expedited our clearing efforts, and the ash left behind will help to nourish the thin soil.
He was silent on the subject that most interested me, however. “And the shares, Moodie? The Cobourg shares. What of them?” Part of his business in Toronto was to meet with the principals and attempt to sell his part-ownership, at a loss if necessary.
“Ah,” he said, taking Katie’s little hands and placing them over his eyes in a game of peek-a-boo. “There are no takers at present. But,” he said, giving her his sweetest smile, “I was able to use them to secure a loan that will buy us a new plough. The old one will not last until fall.”
AUGUST 12, 1834
Moodie is down with the ague again. He seemed better when he awoke this morning, the fever broken, and he announced his complete recovery, dressed and joined the other men in the clearing. Two hours later, he returned, shaking and sweating, to his bed. Addie too was listless and clammy this morning, refusing to touch her porridge and whining even more strenuously than usual.
By afternoon, she was sleeping sweetly, and so I left them both in the care of Mary and walked to Westove. I had not seen my sister in weeks, not even in the aftermath of the fire. Her prolonged silence was uncharacteristic and, I admit, more than a little hurtful. If not for the daunting prospect of a walk in the woods in my condition in this heat, I would have gone to her long ago. But today, blessed with a light breeze blowing off the lake, I felt lighter in both body and spirit, and oddly restless. (This can only mean one thing.)
I found Kate behind the cabin, at the edge of the clearing, picking raspberries. Baby James, walking since I last saw him, staggered across the uneven ground to meet me. I could hear the thwack, thwack of axes coming from the bush but saw no sign of Mr. Traill. My sister was polite but reserved, and we exchanged stiff pleasantries until finally I asked her if anything was the matter.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“Mr. Traill has been appointed justice of the peace for Douro.”
“Why, Kate, I had no idea. That’s wonderful.” Which of course it was. How often had my sister and I entertained fantasies of our husbands procuring some kind of government sinecure that would alleviate our almost complete dependence on subsistence agriculture? My happiness at the news was genuine, though, if I am truthful, accompanied by a small stab of envy.
“Moodie will be delighted. As soon as he is well enough, we must—”
“Mr. Moodie knows of the appointment. He hasn’t told you? Well, I’m not surprised. You did not know, then, that one of the purposes of his recent visit to Toronto was to petition the Solicitor-General for the position of land registrar. When Mr. Hagerman informed him the position was already filled and offered him justice of the peace instead, your husband declined the lesser offer, saying it was beneath him to be performing marriages and collecting fines in the wilderness.”
“But I don’t understand. How, then, did Mr. Traill get the job?”
“He returned to Mr. Hagerman’s office the following day and offered his services. And when your husband learned of this, he had a mysterious change of heart and accused Mr. Traill of usurping his jurisdiction. Those were his very words: ‘usurping my jurisdiction.’ Whereupon, Mr. Moodie once again presented himself to the Solicitor-General with the intention of reclaiming the position for himself and ousting Mr. Traill. To his credit, Mr. Hagerman refused to even see him.”
I was stunned. Moodie had said nothing. More than that, I was humiliated that my sister should know of my ignorance of the whole affair.
“They have quarrelled dreadfully,” she continued, “and Mr. Traill has asked that I respect his wishes and break off relations with you.”
“Kate, you can’t be serious.”
“I think,” she said a little more gently, “we must give this time to blow over. I’m sorry,
Susanna.”
I am loath to admit it, but her account of the matter is consistent with my husband’s character. He is nothing if not ambitious, and it would explain his utter silence on the matter. Did he imagine I would not find out? Nevertheless, I found myself wanting to defend Moodie to Kate, though not being in full possession of the facts, I didn’t dare.
“Very well,” was all I said. “Have it your way.”
I am more hurt than resentful. But why do Kate’s meagre successes feel like acid on my own thin skin? The more we need one another, the more we are like curs haggling over scraps of meat. Our misfortunes have acted as a wedge, not the common ground we once shared. I am losing her and I don’t know how to stop it.
AUGUST 16, 1834
Addie is ill with the same fever that continues to afflict Moodie and, according to John Monaghan, has brought down Mr. Traill as well. My poor little child, burning up and weak from vomiting, lies listless and pale in her cradle. Moodie has abandoned all thought of returning to work; it is all he can do to lift a cup to his parched lips, and so I have not raised the matter of my last conversation with Kate.
Emilia came by with a blueberry pie, which will serve as supper for Katie and me. It is too hot to light the stove. My friend stayed and helped me carry buckets of water up from the lake, the well being dangerously low again. Tomorrow, she goes to Peterborough to care for her mother, who has fallen ill. It is difficult to know if Lieutenant Shairp is in any way the cause of this latest visit to her parents, but I could not bring myself to ask.
“I promise to return before the week is out,” she said, and pressed my hand to her cheek. “Oh, Susanna. I am so afraid for you. How will you manage?” Then she feigned a cheerfulness neither of us was feeling: “I would not miss the arrival of little Dunbar for anything. Tell him to wait until I get back.”