by Cecily Ross
Another of Sam’s logging bees is set for next week, this time at the Caddys’. I’m certain I will be unable to attend. A relief. I sometimes think the drunkenness that prevails at these events is inversely proportionate to the work that gets done.
AUGUST 17, 1834
Our girl, Mary, is leaving. Her father has recently come out from Ireland and, with more wisdom than is generally exercised by his fellow countrymen, has purchased cleared acreage in Cavan Township. He now runs a thriving dairy operation, and his daughter is needed on the farm. Certainly, I cannot blame her for going. A far better life awaits her there than here in the bush, where, truth be told, in our present circumstances, I do not know how I could even continue to pay her.
Her departure could not have come at a more desperate time, and I am ashamed to admit I begged her not to go. I feel certain my labours will begin any day now, and then how will I care for little Addie, whose fever continues to rage? Moodie manages to leave his bed for a few tortured hours each day, but he will be of no help to me, as he is sorely needed in the one field we have cleared to sow our wheat. We have hired a man and his oxen team to finish the drag, and the work must be completed this week.
John Monaghan has been stricken too. Indeed, all the men in the shanty are down with it, and work in the clearings for miles around has all but ceased. How little Katie and I have been spared, I do not know—only that, at barely two and a half, the child is too young to care for herself when my time comes.
I have had no word from Westove, though Kate knows my time is near and must have heard of Mary’s departure. Her silence is a revelation.
AUGUST 19, 1834
I have managed to procure a nurse to attend me in my confinement, a Mrs. Pine, wife of the local farrier, and then only on payment of shocking wages. A few spasms this morning, more like cramps than true labour. By noon, they had subsided. When I told my husband, he barely responded, only asked if he should fetch Mrs. Pine. “Not yet,” I said.
So many are taken sick in these parts that there is scarcely anyone left to care for the ill. Mrs. Caddy, my brother Sam, and three of his little ones are all down with fever, and Moodie drags himself from his bed to the clearing like a ghost, listless and vacant. My sister? Well, I have ceased to hope.
I pray constantly for our dear little Addie. Her fever has broken, but still she is as weak as a minnow, her breath like the whisper of the sea on a still day, her skin the colour of sand. If she recovers, it is in no small part thanks to her older sister’s tender and constant care. Today, Katie carried a bucket of water herself from the lake and sits bathing Addie’s hot little body by the hour. As I watch them, I am filled with anguish for the times that little virago’s iron will tried me so sorely that I fled this cabin lest I do her harm. What I wouldn’t give now for a flash of those angry brown eyes.
AUGUST 26, 1834
On the night of August 20, after ten hours of agony, I gave birth to our first son, John Alexander Dunbar. Once again, I thought I might die, but more than that, I feared little Addie would perish without ever meeting her new brother. All through the ordeal, she lay pale as marble at the foot of my bed, scarcely breathing, while Katie tried bravely to console us both. Mrs. Pine, though not exactly a ministering angel, proved a competent midwife. (The baby is healthier than any of us.) But I’m sure she had more than she bargained for, since Moodie was too sick to assist in any way. No sooner had she wrapped little Dunbar and placed him at my breast than she too commenced shaking and vomiting. By the time her husband arrived to carry her home, she was burning up with fever.
Lieutenant Shairp, hearing of my dire situation, sent his maidservant over for a few hours yesterday to tend to the children so that I might have some rest. The girl returns today. (I shall never think ill of the man again.) Moodie is often delirious with fever, and during his brief periods of lucidity, too weak to do anything. I have thus been obliged to leave my bed sooner than is prudent, or we should all perish from neglect.
This morning, one of the labourers came by to inquire after Mr. Moodie. Recognizing our distress immediately, he placed a cup of cold water by his master’s bedside and, without encouragement, made tea for me and a bit of toast for the girls. His name is Jacob and he claims to be a passable cook. Then he offered to milk the cows and churn a bit of butter. “There’ll be little to do til this affliction passes and the men are fit to work, ma’am. Might as well keep out of trouble.”
Sometimes I cannot decide if we are more blessed than cursed. Addie is markedly improved today, and the heat, at last, has lifted. Fall is in the air.
To think, a son.
NOVEMBER 11, 1834
A new girl, Elizabeth (Lizzie), has joined our household, but only because her own family (nine siblings) cannot feed her over the winter. She is just twelve and unsuited to many domestic duties; I am obliged to do most of the cooking myself, but she has a good heart and loves the babies. It is astonishing (and more than a little pathetic) to realize how much satisfaction can be derived from pulling a perfectly turned loaf from the oven.
A parcel today from Agnes. Silk stockings. I held them up to the shaft of tired sunlight coming through the window and wept. “Worn only once at court,” she wrote. She couldn’t know that I spent the afternoon sorting through my trousseau, selecting items I might be able to sell. I plan to keep for my own use only those garments that a farmer’s wife must have or are too threadbare to interest anyone. There is just one article that I have not the heart to part with. In a moment of nostalgia, I unpacked my wedding gown. There, in the rough dimness of our bedroom, I undressed and pulled the delicate thing, all lace and innocence, over my shoulders. It hung on me like a shroud, and shivering under the weight of it, I carefully refolded the memory and put it away.
Moodie sold Ebony this week. I know it breaks his heart to part with his beautiful gelding, but I could not wring an ounce of sympathy from the rag that is my heart. Not when we have barely enough flour to last until Christmas. And no money to pay the miller. Our debts are mounting with every passing week. At least Moodie has conceded that our prospects for self-sufficiency this year are dim, although he still asserts there is every chance next year’s harvest will make up for the past summer’s drought and we will be on our feet again. I know he is trying to boost my spirits, but it is having the opposite effect.
I spoke to Sam about our situation, and he conceded that in his opinion, neither of his brothers-in-law is suited to this life. As much as I know this to be true, it was still hard to hear. “Your husband, Susie, would make a better salesman than a farmer. Why, I believe he could sell salt water to a ship’s captain, but uncleared bush when the price of wheat is less than the cost of producing it?” He shrugged. “Even Moodie is not up to that.”
“But you encouraged him,” I protested. “You persuaded him all that land would be a good investment.”
He raised his palms, a gesture of defence. “The markets everywhere are in decline, Susanna. No one could have foreseen it. No one can escape it. It is not all Moodie’s fault. Two short years ago, it seemed the flood of new settlers would never cease. Now where are the roads and canals we were promised? Times are changing.”
I asked him why, despite all this, he has done so well. He put a strong arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “My debts are paid, Susanna. I am already established. I can ride this out.”
But I know it is more than that. Sam came here as a boy. This land made him resilient. It defines him and he is of it. Moodie and I left so much behind in England, more than we have found here. This land has been our undoing.
I tried then, standing with Sam in my stripped-for-winter garden, to describe to him my own perpetual uneasiness, the sense of dislocation I cannot shake. I told him of my fear of the dark, of the wild animals lurking there. At night, if I venture outdoors, I can feel their eyes, as hard and bright as amber glinting among the trees, waiting to claim me. And Sam, pragmatic and literal as he is, was at first bewildered by my stuttering att
empt to articulate the strangeness, the blindness I feel here, but at last he seemed to understand.
“After time, Susie, you get used to them; they become you and even help to show you the way. You think too much. Stop fighting and just let them in.”
Moodie and I talk all the time of leaving the bush. My husband’s latest obsession is Texas, after he read an advertisement in The Albion encouraging emigration there. Since we have no money, he intends to respond with a proposal to write a book for the Texas Land Company in exchange for our passage and land on which to settle. I am so exhausted by his schemes that I cannot respond. At times, I think, Anywhere but here. But Texas! Snakes and bison and bloodthirsty Indians.
No, somehow we must sell this farm and settle closer to Toronto or Kingston. But who besides us would want this collection of rude huts and fallen trees? We are only here ourselves because the land was free. And even if we did sell, without his military pension or any other source of income, how would we live? There was a time when the idea of leaving my sister again would have been untenable, but I cannot forget her negligence of me when Addie seemed close to death and my labour began and I had no one to turn to. Her allegiance is to her husband at all costs, to a man broken in body and spirit.
Out of necessity, Kate and I have resumed a cordial relationship. The bitterness between our husbands persists but without much vehemence. As in our own household, the ague has robbed the Traills of much of their vitality. (Not that my brother-in-law could ever be described as “vital.”) Indeed, I was shocked at his appearance on my last visit. His eyes when he looked up as I entered were shadowy caverns in his long, sallow face. He nodded, though with little interest, then resumed poking at the fire with a blackened stick. Kate bubbled on as usual, but she seemed wan and distracted nonetheless. They have both lost weight. It occurs to me that she is like a babbling brook and he a stagnant pond. What a strange marriage. I wish that Kate and I were better able to console one another. But the older I get, the more I realize that there are fundamental differences in the way we view the world, and it is a chasm we will never likely bridge.
Our feud may be over, but things have changed between us.
MAY 27, 1835 (MELSETTER II)
It has been nearly a year, and at the sight of her, the hole in my heart closed over like a cauterized wound. I could not help it; I dropped my hoe and ran to where Lieutenant Shairp was helping Emilia dismount. I threw myself at her like a wild thing. She squealed with delight, and without a word, I buried my face in her neck so she would not see my tears. Her husband watched us with a benevolent smile, as though we were little children roughhousing. But she caught his eye, and I could feel her reining herself in, dampening down the big balloon of her personality.
“I said I would be back to welcome little Dunbar,” she said, “and here I am, nearly a year late. Let me see him.” We held hands and walked around to the shaded side of the cabin, where my little son slept in a basket under the eaves. Emilia bent down to admire him and, straightening, told me that she had missed me, missed the sheltering trees and the shining lake.
They are happy now. I could see that. And what a handsome couple they make, so young, so much promise. After a winter of separation and negotiation, Emilia and her lieutenant have come to some kind of reconciliation. I am happy for them. And for myself, overjoyed to have her back. I have been lonely, I know it now. Too busy, too hungry, too tired to acknowledge the emptiness that is always there. Of course, I have Kate and Hannah Caddy and the others, but all this last winter, we have not been the comfort to one another we used to be. It has been too difficult. We are all of us worn out, and that is not something to share. Somehow, sharing only makes it harder.
Good as they are, my sister, my neighbours, they are not Emilia Shairp. She has returned, bringing summer with her. And if I am not mistaken, the promise of her first child.
JULY 11, 1835
So long has my existence been restricted to this small cabin surrounded by the eternal forests, so thoroughly have I been subsumed by the unending toil and incessant demands of my children, that I am numb in body and in spirit. All the long winter past and through the interminable spring, Moodie and I have been like strangers, condemned to these close quarters yet unable to confront the resentments that have been fermenting between us like sour wine. Since Dunbar’s birth, I have rebuffed my husband’s advances, not just because I fear the burden of another child will break something in me, but also because whatever ember of desire for him remained is now as cold as stone. And though I miss what used to burn between us, the bridge I would have to cross to meet him again has fallen into such disrepair that I cannot bring myself to set foot upon it.
Last night, it was he who took the first step. As we lay in bed, me with my back to him, waiting for sleep to release me, he placed a hand on my shoulder and, feeling me stiffen, pulled back as he always does.
“Susanna,” he whispered, “look at me. Please.” I turned to face him, though the darkness was so total, I could see nothing, only feel his breath, sweetish and warm, on my face. He reached for my two hands and drew them to his lips. “No,” he said, feeling me flinch. “It’s all right.” And then in a whisper charged with boyish excitement, he said, “I have an idea. You know how we have often talked of making an expedition to Stony Lake?”
I nodded in the darkness.
“Let’s go. Next week. The planting is finished and I can spare the time. We can take the girls with us as far as Young’s Point and leave them with the miller and his daughters while we paddle on through Clear Lake to Stony. We’ll leave Dunnie with Lizzie and John Monaghan.”
I pulled back at this.
“Shhh,” he said. “Just for the day. He will be fine.”
It was a peace offering, an attempt to bridge troubled waters. And though I am reluctant to leave my little one, Moodie is right: he is nearly weaned and will survive without me for a day. I nodded my assent, and then I let him gather me into his arms and hold me like a baby until I fell asleep.
JULY 17, 1835
Stony Lake’s magnificent and mystical beauty is the stuff of legend in these parts, but few white settlers have ever laid eyes on its mighty waters and verdant shores. To the Chippewa, it is a place of magical significance, and they have long spread tales of the wild beasts and poisonous snakes that lurk amid its islands and steep cliffs, in an effort, says my brother Sam, to discourage the likes of us from defiling a wild and tranquil spot with our insatiable need to slash and burn all of God’s handiwork. I admit that when I look out my doorway at the desolation of this clearing—the charred stumps like angry dwarves invading this once sylvan place, the roughly ploughed furrows where moss and wildflowers used to flourish—I can understand how the Indians must view our drive toward “civilization.”
We left before dawn, launching the canoe under a starry sky, accompanied only by the ghostly call of a loon fishing for its breakfast. With Kate and Addie sitting quietly in the bottom of the craft, trailing their fingers over the side, we paddled out into open water, moving silently toward the first light. At last, the sun blazed through the dark forest, and Moodie raised a sail to catch a fresh morning breeze that sent us skimming over the water until we reached the head of Lake Katchewanooka. Here, nearer the shore, the wind dropped, and so we paddled on past rocky islands thick with low tangles of blueberry bushes. I made a mental note to return with Emilia and the girls in a week or so, when they would be at their peak. Moodie pointed out a grove of giant red cedar on the northern side of the lake, an impenetrable thicket of green and black said to be thousands of years old. The shoreline was a profusion of tiger lilies and cardinal flowers, and in the clear, pebbly shallows under the canoe, we could make out a bounty of black bass suspended like flightless birds in the transparent waters. How I would have liked to stop and throw a line into the lake, but there was no time to linger, our plan being to reach Young’s Point before noon and rest there in the heat of the day before continuing on to Stony Lake.
> After negotiating a set of gentle rapids, we paddled up the river until we reached the opening to Clear Lake, a deep, rocky channel with twelve- to fifteen-foot limestone walls supporting the roots of giant oak trees whose leafy green branches reaching out to one another across the chasm created a natural and awe-inspiring tunnel. At the end of the nearly mile-long channel, the waters tumbled and foamed over a thirty-foot drop down to the lake below. Fifty yards from the brink of these falls, fighting the current lest we be swept away, we drew our canoe up on the rocks and secured it to a tree, and Moodie helped us onto the shore. We had travelled a distance of about three miles from our Melsetter home.
“At your service, milady,” he said, bowing deeply from the waist before taking my hand and leading me and the children up a flight of stone stairs cut into the rocky path that climbed to the mill. The miller, Mr. Young, a Catholic who emigrated to Canada from the south of Ireland, lost his wife several years ago. But he seemed well looked after by his two daughters, Betty and Norah, and his sons, Matt and Pat. We had sent word ahead, and the Youngs were eagerly awaiting our arrival. After the usual introductions, the eldest son, Matt, offered to show us around the property while the others got on with preparations for the midday meal. We toured the mill itself, idle now due to the rain-delayed harvest, and then Matt led us to the edge of a rocky promontory overlooking the shining waters of Clear Lake. Out of an inborn dislike of high places, I stayed back from the precipice. The panorama of sky and water was magnificent, but at that moment, I was more taken with the figure of my husband standing before me on that rock, his face turned up to the cloudless sky. And I realized that I had not looked at him with clear eyes for a very long time, this stocky, bearded, slightly balding other, and yet the object of my eternal love. How close we have been and yet how far apart.