A Good Man

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  There is nothing that can set Randolph off quicker than the suggestion he is not an exemplary father. He had begun to shout, and she had too, and ad brought Celeste to the top of the stairs in her nightgown where she stood in hysterics, screaming for them to stop, which sent Randolph bounding up the stairs two at a time, to wrap his sobbing daughter in his arms, happy to prove he was as considerate and sensitive a father as any young girl could wish for.

  That scene, if any more were needed, demonstrated her stepdaughter’s unsoundness. The acorn does not fall far from the oak, and as with her father, there is something hidden, unfathomable, unknowable about that girl. Ada cannot, for the life of her, decide whether Celeste is playing off Lieutenant Blanchard and Peregrine Hathaway against one another, or whether her behaviour simply testifies to a complete and utter absence of feeling for anyone but herself. Right now, she is off picnicking with the sincere, doting English boy who has been mailing her a blizzard of letters ever since they met at last New Year’s Ball at the military post. Celeste had insisted on reading these letters aloud to her and her replies to him. Was Celeste taking her into her confidence to prove she was loved, or was she seeking approval for the romance? Likely her motives are as unclear to the girl as they are to her.

  It’s Ada’s guess that Celeste’s new admirer, Lieutenant Blanchard, son of a prominent Philadelphia family recently posted to Fort Benton, is destined to win her hand, not the sweetly innocent and steadfastly devoted Peregrine Hathaway. As far as she can tell, it isn’t Blanchard’s wealth and social position that has turned the girl’s head. Nor can it be his looks that have captivated her. Lieutenant Blanchard is pear shaped and waddles like a duck. Ada believes Celeste is so smitten with him because he does not defer to her wishes. All her previous suitors fell all over themselves trying to please her, but Blanchard is an astoundingly self-important and self-satisfied young fellow who expects Celeste to second all his opinions and cater to his every whim, which includes preparing him custard to soothe his chronic dyspepsia.

  Is it possible that these two really love one another? It makes Ada feel mean spirited to ask the question. And it naturally leads to another. Has she ever really loved Randolph Tarr? At the time of her engagement she was sure she did, but perhaps she had deluded herself and made what her mother had always disparagingly referred to as a marriage of convenience.

  Four years ago she had found herself alone and penniless. The typhoid had carried her father off; two days after he succumbed, her mother lay dead of the same malady. Her brother had been in the grave for over a decade. The little family property that existed had to be disposed of for a pittance: a set of china, a family silver service. The Jessups did not own a house, but lived in a teacherage supplied by the school in which her father taught. She had had to vacate it to make way for the new schoolmaster, crate up her mother’s books, take the train to Chicago, and begin a search for a suitable position. When she had read Mr. John Harding’s advertisement for a governess in a newspaper, she had immediately applied. Helena, Montana, was a distant, unknown place, but Ada was what her father called a plunger, and she dove heedlessly into these waters. Her ideas of a governess’s duties were hazy and ill defined, derived from her reading of English novels. She was soon to learn that if her own notions of what should be expected of her were vague, her employers’ were even foggier. The Hardings did not read English novels. They disdained novels of any description whatsoever.

  Mr. Hardingd made a bundle in the Helena goldfields as a prospector, but unlike many others of his kind, he had held on to his wealth and steadily added to it. He bought up claims that others believed were played out, introducing innovations such as giant sluices and steam-driven ore crushers capable of squeezing out the last ounce of remaining gold from the stubborn stone. In time, these profits had given him the means to erect a mansion high above Last Chance Gulch and the hard-scrabble, smoky town that had given him his start. Ada soon learned that she was expected to make Mr. Harding’s daughters fit to inhabit the stately quarters he had built for them. It was clearly his view that if gold could be extracted from rock, surely the same could be done with his Martha and Jenny. That was what she was meant to do, to refine them, to teach them a bit of music, a smidgen of geography, a dab of French. Mr. Harding also stated that his girls must be taught to recite a little verse; he didn’t care what it was, as long as it was improving, edifying, and suitable for young women’s lips because it was his plan, sometime in the future, to send his daughters and their mother to Europe for a look-see, and he didn’t want Jenny and Martha sticking out like sore thumbs over there. Although it was left unsaid, he apparently judged his wife’s manners and education were irremediable – Europe would have to make do with Dolly Harding just as she was.

  Mr. Harding seemed to think that sprucing up his girls for the Grand Tour was the equivalent of making them presentable for church; all that was necessary was to give them a quick scrub behind the ears and remind them to clean their fingernails. However, Ada soon learned that beating the names of European capitals into an anvil would have been easier work than insinuating them into the heads of the young Harding ladies. As far as they were concerned, their father’s money lent them all the allure they would ever need.

  But the greatest obstacle to educating Martha and Jenny proved to be their mother. Mrs. Harding had married her tycoon when he was still merely a prospector, and she was sure everyone remembered her former occupation – Army laundress – and that all of Helena was maliciously gossiping about her and looking down their noses. She was especially suspicious of the hoity-toity governess. In Mrs. Harding’s mind, Ada, like the charwoman and the scullery maid, was a servant and she had better not forget it. She needed taking down a peg, and Dolly Harding was the woman to do it. From the beginning, Mrs. Harding took to calling Ada “Little Miss Grace and Diginity” to her face. Ada bore this for a month until one day her exasperation spilled over and she corrected the mistress of the house’s pronunciation in front of her daughters. “I think you mean to say,” she said, “that I am Little Miss Grace and Dignity.”

  Her parents had always encouraged her to stand up to injustice, to resist bullying, to exhibit independence of mind, and to defend her rights, but upon reflection she could see that humiliating a persecutor was not necessarily the same thing as demanding respect. She had only to think of how her own gentle father would have conducted himself in a similar situation to see the error of her ways.

  Her father had always spoken his mind. But he had done so out of principle, smiling away personal insults. It was his Quixotic idealism that had backed him down the teaching ladder. In the beginning, he had been a professor of Latin and Greek at a distinguished preparatory school in New England. There he had intervened on behalf of a boy who he felt was being persecuted by a small-minded, vindictive headmaster. When the headmaster persisted in making the boy’s life a living hell, her father had written to the boy’s parents criticizing the conduct of the headmaster and suggesting that they remove their son from the school. When it came to light what he had done, he was immediately sacked. After that, her father had passed through a series of increasingly less eminent schools where his gentle but stubborn resistance to arbitrary authority had led to a series of further dismissals, a steady descent arrested only when there was no place lower to fall, and he landed in a one-room school in an Ohio backwater, where the dreamy scholar spent his last years drumming the three Rs into farmers’ sons and daughters.

  Of course, Ada had always believed her mother’s causes, enthusiasms, and wilfulness had contributed to her father’s professional decline. His colleagues, the parents of his students had all found her mother a little more eccentric and idiosyncratic than was proper for a schoolteacher’s wife. Her abolitionism would have been perfectly acceptable in New England society if her espousal of it had been a little less fervent and wild-eyed. Some called her John Brown in a skirt. An ardent disciple of Mrs. Amelia Bloom, she had been a passionate advocate for ratio
nal and hygienic dress for females, marriage law reform, and votes for women. But people found her tiresome and annoying because she insisted on promoting her views at the most inappropriate times, at dinners and tea parties where it was understood that the conversation should be both amusing and decorous. Some tongue-waggers said that the only question upon which Mrs. Jessup’s views departed from Mrs. Bloom’s was the temperance issue. Mrs. Jessup liked her sherry; many were of the opinion she liked it far too much.

  Ada admits that the sherry sometimes got the better of her mother, who found their reduced circumstances difficult and wearying. But then she would brighten, pull herself together, and say to her children, “Poverty cannot affect the treasure we store up in our minds. That is incorruptible. We Jessups may be forced to live low, but let us always strive to think high.”

  This was training ill suited for life with the Hardings, who thought the worth of anyone was best measured by the balance in their bank book. Day by day, friction between Ada and the Harding females grew, and she found herself subject to obloquy, contempt, and petty harassment. For a year she had lived a dreadful life in that dreary, cold house, and her pride – fierce since childhood – had taken a pummelling. It had taken all her will to maintain her dignity, to carry herself as if she could withstand every slight, but in the privacy of her room, her courage ebbed away and left her sobbing in a pillow.

  When Dolly Harding demanded his husband discharge the governess, he flatly refused, but it wasn’t because he admired her teaching and her spirit. Whenever she crossed a room, Ada could feel his eyes flicking at her haunches. One afternoon, after his wife had made a particularly noisy complaint about Little Miss Grace and Diginity, he had summoned her to “sort things out.” While he admitted his wife could be difficult, he urged Ada to be a little more “accommodating to Mrs. Harding’s ways.” During the entire speech his eyes never strayed from her breasts.

  Three days later she made up her mind to go to Mr. Harding and negotiate her freedom from this insufferable bondage. The terms of her contract stated Miss Ada Jessup was to receive her salary yearly, on the anniversary of her first of employment. She said to Mr. Harding that clearly the present situation was unsatisfactory to all concerned. She proposed that if he were good enough to release her, she would accept a trifling sum, much less than the wages she had already earned. She would settle for travel expenses to get her back to Chicago.

  “A bargain is a bargain, my girl. If you have it in mind to leave, you will go with nothing” was Mr. Harding’s stark reply.

  Shortly after this, handsome, courtly, attentive Randolph Tarr had come to provide Mr. Harding with legal advice. And one thing had led to another.

  No more crying over spilled milk, Ada warns herself. Randolph’s razor lies in her lap. The house is quiet as a tomb, except for the feeble buzzing of an exhausted fly on the windowpane behind her.

  But Ada’s restless mind will not settle and wanders to Mr. Dunne. Why did he not object to Celeste’s leaving the house with Peregrine Hathaway today? After all, he was most insistent last night about not letting her out of his sight. Is she herself more delicate, more in need of guarding than flighty Celeste? Of course, the circumstances are different; Celeste is in the company of a young police constable. Or maybe Mr. Dunne was hesitant to provoke her because she flaunts her detestation of him to his face. Celeste cannot be prevailed upon to lift a finger for him; she will not even consent to carry a glass of water out to the porch for the poor fellow.

  It all falls on Ada’s shoulders to make him comfortable. Any small kindness she shows him is greeted with excessive gratefulness. If the guard dog had a tail, it would thump at the sight of her. If she happens to make a comment on the weather, he nods his head with excessive enthusiasm. A drink of water on a sweltering afternoon, a piece of bread and butter sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, a ham sandwich, a bowl of stew prompts him to rhapsodize about her goodness and thoughtfulness. When she invited him to take supper with them in the house the other evening rather than eat out on the porch, which he insists on doing, he refused the offer, but she is sure she saw his eyes moisten with appreciation. Ada finds these displays of emotion more than odd; she finds them embarrassingly disconcerting.

  And although Celeste’s aversion to Mr. Dunne cannot be justified, Ada has to admit it is difficult to like the man. It isn’t that his compliments and effusions are insincere – they’re too sincere, too extreme. His deference verges on the pathetic.

  Yet last night he had shoved his usual deference aside just as he had when he had forced that shooting lesson on her. Of course, by trying to set off from the saloon on her own she had broken one of Randolph’s cardinal rules. Go nowhere alone. Mr. Dunne was not going to permit that. And from his point of view, he was correct. After all, he had sworn to Randolph to protect her. With little mincing, shuffling steps he had backed her into the wall of Mr. Wetzel’s store. She had felt cornered in every conceivable way, pinned by those pale, unblinking eyes, half suffocated by the heat of the heavy body that stood mere inches away from her own. And the way his insistent murmuring had surrounded her, rustling like musty curtains in a draft, “Missus, I got to watch over you. Missus, you got to let me do my job. Missus, you got to listen to me. Missus, please.” In the end, what choice did she have but to succumb to his pleading? All those sibilts hissing in her ears, the stove-like warmth of his body had dizzyingly overcome her. And when Mr. Dunne had offered his arm, how could she refuse his awkward gallantry? Yet she had been reluctant to touch him, to touch even the cloth of his sleeve.

  Slowly, Ada turns her head to look out the window. There is Mr. Dunne. How can he bear to sit out there, hour after hour, staring at empty prairie and the ugly backside of an ugly town? Is it monumental patience or is his mind as empty as the howling wilderness that confronts him?

  Ada picks up her husband’s razor and resumes slitting the pages of her book, releasing George Eliot’s characters to keep her company, relieve this sense of smothering loneliness.

  Peregrine Hathaway has gone missing. When the boy didn’t show up for either breakfast or dinner, Case said to McMullen that maybe they should try to find him; perhaps it had slipped his mind that he and McMullen were to leave for Fort Walsh today.

  “I already told him four o’clock sharp. Let him mind to his own business. You worry about that boy too much” was all that Joe had to say.

  But Case does feel responsible for Hathaway. He got Walsh to agree to let the boy accompany him to Fort Benton, and he feels obliged to see that what he’s borrowed gets returned. He makes a quick tour of the town just on the off chance his young friend has decided to make a few purchases before he heads back to Fort Walsh. Finding no trace of him, Case returns to the Overland to get directions to the Tarr residence. The desk clerk tells him it can be found a half mile behind the town and adds, “A big white house. And not whitewashed, mind you, but oil-painted.”

  Case can see that oil-painted wonder now, a few hundred yards off at the end of the dusty buggy track down which he is tramping, a two-storey frame house with a long gallery porch running along its entire front. It is a little past one o’clock; the sun is directly overhead, doing its best to shrivel him and the stringy, yellowing weeds that line the trail. Everything is still except for a brace of hawks wheeling about in the pale sky, riding the scorching updrafts rising from the skillet-flat prairie.

  He feels irked by Hathaway’s irresponsibility, resentful that it will no doubt bring him into proximity with Dunne. He is resolved to make no mention of the time years ago when he first saw the scoundrel backing a man into the corner of a hotel lobby, hissing his contempt in his face. The memory of this, and hearing Walsh’s report of his meeting with the man, has told him all he needs to know about what he is. Surely a paid informer then, the lowest of parasites, and most likely a petty criminal to boot, as such types often are. A man beneath notice, and that’s how he intends to behave towards him, as if he were no more significant than a flyspeck.
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  And then there is the awkwardness of seeing Mrs. Tarr. Meeting that eccentric woman is not a cheering prospect. He best not make any mention of being present at the concert. What could one say about that? Compliment her or commiserate with her?

  As Case trudges on, drawing nearer to the house, he spots Dunne, a black heap on the porch. Trying to assume a confident air, he even attempts a nonchalant whistle, but the walk has parched his mouth so badly he gives it up as futile. When he comes within hailing distance, he tenses himself, expecting some dismissive salute, but Dunne doesn’t blink an eye or utter a sound. He simply fills a chair, legs spread wide, a shotgun resting across his bulging thighs. Only when Case’s boot strikes the bottom step does Dunne grind out three words.

  “He ain’t here.”

  Case refuses to respond, strides up the stairs, crosses the porch, and gives a crisp knock to the door.

  Dunne says, “You deaf? I just told you that young fellow you’re looking for ain’t here.”

  “Don’t presume to know my business, Mr. Dunne.”

  Ada is in the kitchen preparing a jug of iced tea, rinsing sawdust off one of the last shards of ice that have survived the summer in the icehouse, when she hears a rap on the front door. Thinking that Mr. Dunne must have finally found the courage to ask for something, she goes to the door, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. But what greets her is a stranger on her doorstep, a tall, lanky fellow in an oatmeal tweed suit, sombre eyes shadowed by a broad-brimmed straw hat.

  “Beg pardon for this intrusion,” the man says, looking nonplussed because she has caught him trying to rub the dust off one of his shoes on the back of a trouser leg. “If I may introduce myself – the name is Wesley Case, and I’ve come looking for Peregrine Hathaway. By any chance is he here?”

  Ada recognizes the visitor’s name because it frequently appears in Hathaway’s chatty letters to her stepdaughter. The young Englishman is always singing Case’s praises to Celeste, lauding him as the epitome of a scholar and gentleman, a mentor and dear friend. “Mr. Hathaway was here, but he and my stepdaughter have gone on a picnic,” she says.