Lewis was told that the older Caddick brother, Benjamin, peddled these artistic wares along the front, in the settled areas. But in an attempt to broaden the market, the brothers had apparently commissioned Simms to take some of their stock as well. The younger boy, Willett, went out occasionally, but according to Varney he hadn’t the personality of his brother and more often stayed at home to work in their father’s tannery.
“Old man Caddick is quite put out at all their nonsense,” Mrs. Varney said. “He’d much prefer it if they just stayed at home and helped him with the business. But you know young men. If there’s an excuse to go gallivanting, they’ll seize it and off they’ll go. I must say, they’re quite nice young men and seem quite steady in spite of all the painting. I expect you’ll see them at meetings. They come quite often. You’ll find that around here the young people seem to like the Methodist meetings best.”
As soon as his wife paused for a breath, Mr. Varney jumped in. “Aye, there are good Methodist families here you can rely on. There are a lot of newcomers in the area, as well. Of course, one can never be sure how they lean, but I would expect a few of them to swing our way. They may still call the place Sodom, but we’re doing our best to change that.”
At that moment, the shop door opened, and two older women came in, shortly followed by a younger woman with a small boy in tow. Separate class meetings were held for women and men, with the women’s most often held during the day, and the men’s in the evenings, after their day’s labour was done. Simms rose and nodded to Lewis. “Good to see you, sir. I’ll get out of your way now.”
“Will you be coming to the men’s meeting tonight?” Lewis asked.
Simms smiled. “Sorry, Preacher. I’m heading north from here.”
Mrs. Varney disappeared into what Lewis assumed was the kitchen to get extra chairs as more women arrived. They all settled down with expectant looks.
“We’re so pleased to have a minister from the Methodist Episcopals again,” one of them said. “The Wesleyans never made us feel welcome.”
The women all seemed quite sincere in their beliefs and joined in the spirit of the gathering enthusiastically. Lewis made an effort to speak to each of them individually, although he was certain that it would take him some time to remember all their names.
Afterward, he took his supper with the Varneys, and the welcome he received at the afternoon meeting was repeated at the evening one. In spite of the strange beginning to his visit, he was well satisfied with his reception in the village of Demorestville, and looked forward to returning.
The Varneys offered him a bed for the night, but he declined. His plan had him scheduled for another meeting in the morning and he was anxious to meet his contact on the Big Island, which lay across a marshy stretch to the north. Besides, he found Mrs. Varney’s gossipy tongue quite wearisome.
As he rode out of the village, he noticed that some wag had installed a sign at the bottom of the hill pointing to a lane that led along the millpond. Gommorah Road the sign said. He made a mental note to check whether or not they had spelled it correctly.
II
It took Lewis a week to cover the northern part of his circuit, and when he returned home, Betsy was low again. He had hoped that the move might help her — a different place, a milder climate. But she had found the disruption of moving their household effects exhausting. She had kept going as long as she could, with all the washing of crockery and packing and unpacking of goods to do, but when he returned, she was once again lying on the kitchen bed, the makings of an evening meal only half-prepared on the table. The stove was nearly out and the child crying. He got the fire going and set the kettle on, then settled young Martha down with a crust of bread.
“I brought some chamomile,” he said. “Can I make you some tea?” Chamomile was one of the few things that gave Betsy any relief. That and the laudanum that was far too expensive to use unless the need was dire.
“Fever,” was what the doctor said, and it was true enough that fever had felled her. But Lewis knew that far more was weighing on his wife. Sarah’s death had dragged them both down. You would have thought that they would be used to losing children by now — they had lost so many.
But the others had been so young when fever, or accident, or just plain difficulty in living had taken them away — Sarah had survived where all his other daughters had perished. She had been a young woman with a daughter of her own. God could choose to take you at any time, he knew that full well, but it was the manner of Sarah’s death that had so disrupted them — lying there on her bed with those strange marks on her neck, the swell of another babe rounding the cloth that covered her.
Sarah had been a sweet seventeen-year-old with a laughing, teasing manner that made the most sombre of people brighten. She had always made friends easily — something that was an advantage for a circuit rider’s daughter, since they moved so often.The only surviving girl in a family of younger boys, she had ruled them with a combination of charm and intelligent wit. Sarah had only to speak a word to her brothers and they would do her bidding. All too often her magic worked on Lewis as well. He supposed that he had spoiled her. Betsy often accused him of it, but for him she was the embodiment of all his other daughters who had perished before her.
As a young woman she had had many admirers. Any number of young men would have wed her gladly — good, solid young men with excellent prospects. But they had all drifted away soon after Sarah first laid eyes on Francis Renwell. It was clear that she wanted no one else.
Lewis had been uneasy about the match from the first; though Renwell could match Sarah’s spirit, and they made a handsome pair, there was something about the man that he didn’t like. Betsy claimed that he wouldn’t have liked anyone his daughter picked, and that he’d better get over it, because she was going to marry regardless. But Renwell, in his opinion, was unsteady, perhaps even feckless, and was given to sudden enthusiasms and unconsidered outbursts of opinion.
He had tried to keep these thoughts unuttered, since doing anything else would only subject him to jokes from his daughter and scathing looks from his wife. He just wanted his daughter to be happy, to be safe, to be cared for. And it appeared at first that Renwell was willing and able to do just that. The young couple took up a farm near the lower end of Rice Lake and together they sowed and chopped and reaped and built.
They rejoiced at the safe delivery of their first child, Martha, but whether it was the arrival of the baby, or just a general boredom with the hard lot of a farmer, soon after that Renwell began to pay less attention to his work and his family. He started frequenting the many taverns that were within a day’s riding distance. Sarah did not confide this information to Lewis, but rather to her mother, who wisely kept her counsel. It was only afterward that he found out, but by then it was too late.
When Sarah had written to tell them that she was expecting another child, Lewis had asked for a posting nearby, close enough that Betsy could be a help when the babe arrived. It was not new life that claimed their attention, however, but an unexpected death. It was to them that the task fell of preparing the body and arranging the burial after they had found Sarah in the cabin, Martha screaming in her cradle, her father nowhere to be found. Lewis was convinced that there had been argument, an altercation, and that Renwell had killed her and fled into the night. The doctor could find no evidence of foul play, and in his opinion Sarah had died of “natural causes” — just what those causes might have been, he couldn’t say.
Renwell had disappeared that night and not a whisper had been heard of him since. What had transpired between them that would have caused him to choke the life out of his beautiful wife, Lewis’s only daughter? For who else could it have been but Francis Renwell? If Lewis had not been a man of God, he would have cursed the name.
Betsy was stirring, trying to rise. “Tea?” he asked again. “It won’t take long.”
He always tried to adopt a cheerful tone when Betsy was down. It struck a false note,
he knew, but he wasn’t sure what else to do, and at least then one of them sounded cheerful. Sometimes she didn’t answer him at all when he made these simple inquiries, but this time she leaned up on one elbow, groaning as her weight shifted onto inflamed joints.
“I’ll get it.”
“No, no, I’m fine. You stay where you are. I’m on my way again tomorrow and you’ll have to get your own tea then.”
It would take him four weeks to ride the entire circuit, he figured — four weeks of meetings, of preaching, of calling on the sick and dying, and welcoming the newborn. Four weeks when Betsy would be more or less on her own, for he would seldom be close enough to return home at day’s end. He must speak to the boys again and urge them to help their mother more while he was gone. The problem was, he thought, that some days she was fine, and you wouldn’t know anything had ever been the matter, but then that was the intermittent nature of the fever that plagued her. The boys, in the way of the young, assumed that one good day was equivalent to full recovery, and forgot that their mother had been deathly ill and still needed looking after.
“There were some men here looking for you,” Betsy said as she hobbled over to the stool beside the stove.
“What did they want?”
“All the veterans are being called out to patrol the borders in case Mackenzie attacks with the Americans. You’re to go to Kingston and report.”
“What, all us old men? That’s ridiculous.”
“They said there are armies massed all along the border. You’re not going, are you?”
“No. I’m an ordained minister now. They can’t make me fight again.”
“The men were quite nasty. They seemed to think you should have gone already.” She looked a little frightened, but whether it was the thought of Americans attacking or just the notion that he might be in danger, he wasn’t sure. It certainly wasn’t the thought of being left alone. She’d be left alone whether he reported to Kingston or not, and after all these years as the wife of a saddlebag preacher, she was surely used to it.
“They can think what they like. I’ll ride to Kingston and get a deferment, but not until I’ve made at least one complete round of the circuit. I’ve only just been appointed here. All the good Methodist Society members would think it most remiss if I left them on their own so soon.”
She nodded, mollified, and turned her attention to Martha, who had gummed down her crust of bread and was fussing again.
Poor little motherless mite, he thought.
III
Everywhere he went, people were talking about the firing of The Caroline, the prospect that the Americans would shortly be invading, and the viciousness with which anyone associated with the rebellion was being persecuted. Any man who had openly expressed support for the Reformers was being arrested. Even those who had commented for Reform in the most innocuous way were being relieved of any sort of government post and denied even the smallest amount of government business. As far as Governor Arthur was concerned, the mildest of criticism was proof of treason, and he was bringing the full force of government authority to bear against it.
“The British could scarcely have picked a worse man to settle the colony down,” one farmer said to him, and privately Lewis had to agree, although he was careful to keep this opinion to himself. Arthur had previously served as lieutenant-governor of the penal colony in Van Diemen’s Land, and it was said that he had hanged nearly everyone there. Now he seemed determined to send as many Upper Canadians as he could to that dreadful place.
“They say there are strange unnatural animals everywhere and the natives will eat you if they can catch you,” the man went on, “and even if you manage to dodge all that, you’re starved or worked to death and the governor can swoop in and decide to hang you at the drop of a hat.”
The farmer seemed to think that there was little to choose between being hanged and being transported across the oceans, for life in the strange far-off land was, by all accounts, brutal, with little hope of survival and none of return. It was no wonder most people had closed their mouths and shuttered their windows, and Lewis advised the farmer to do the same.
He was on the road to the village of Milford when he caught up with a brightly coloured peddler’s wagon, the deep reds and bright blues advertising its purpose even to those who could not read its sign. When he drew even with it, he realized the driver was Isaac Simms, the peddler he had met at Varney’s store, for Simms & Sons was painted in black lettering on the side of the cab.
He was surprised to see Simms here. Generally peddlers were creatures of the clearings, riding as far and as often and as alone as any itinerant preacher. They made their way from settlement to settlement and from cabin to cabin selling an assortment of useful items that were hard to come by in the remote areas: needles, pins, awls, pots and pans. They also carried more discretionary wares that the luxury-starved settlers could never resist on those few occasions when they had extra pennies in their fists: yard goods, crockery, and seed for flower gardens. The women bought these last items when they could, for it was the women who bore the brunt of any deficiencies on the farm, and as far as the men were concerned, the need for new stock or a tool always took precedence over extravagances such as dresses and decoration. The bulk of a peddler’s business was done on back stoops or in dooryards.
“The trails are too soft right now,” Simms grumbled as they jogged along. “That warm spell we had last week has made them a boggy mess. I’ll have to wait for either a hard frost or a rainless week before I head north again, though truth to tell, I sometimes wonder why I bother. Nobody has any money, or even much to barter with.”
Simms had apparently established a round in the more settled areas as a hedge against those times when the forest trails were impassable, topping up storekeepers’ stocks with the small items they ran out of over the winter.
“If the ground would freeze solid I could put the sled runners on the wagon and get into the backcountry, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen for a while.” With runners he could skim over the mud holes and fallen brush that so often blocked the way at other times of the year. “Sometimes I leave the wagon and most of the goods at one of the shops, and take a pack and horse into the further reaches, but right now I can’t get there even on horseback. Looks like I’m stuck at the front in the meantime.”
If the ruts on the road to Milford were any indication, Simms would be at the front for some time to come, for even here on a travelled route, the going was hard, and frequently Lewis was forced to ride along the shoulder in order to avoid the large mud puddles that had collected in the middle. It made for a very disjointed conversation, but the peddler appeared not to notice, and continued talking even when Lewis had wandered away.
“So, are you the Simms or the son?” Lewis asked him, as he rejoined the wagon after the fifth detour.
“Both. I inherited the business. My father had a half-baked idea of establishing some sort of commercial empire someday. He wanted to be man of means, to be one of the important men in the colony, but it appears he was a little over-optimistic, since all he ever really had was a peddler’s cart and a little stock.” Simms shook his head. “He kept us all well enough, I guess, but he certainly never grew rich. When he died, all that was left was his cart and the responsibility for the upkeep of an aging mother and three unmarried sisters, none of whom show any prospect of finding a husband in the near future. Never mind. With all the new lands being opened up for settlement, maybe business will pick up. I tell you something, though, just between you and me and the doorpost. A lot of the merchants are in trouble. Everybody’s been running on credit and now they’re being squeezed by their suppliers, and those bastards, pardon my language, Parson, want cash to settle up.”
Few finished goods were produced locally. Instead they came from other places, shipped down the St. Lawrence River, the trade controlled by Montreal businessmen who added a substantial surcharge to anything they sent and refused to fairly sha
re the monies generated by customs and duties at the port of entry. Upper Canadian goods, timber and wheat for the most part, were shipped back, but nearly everything within the colony itself ran on a barter basis. Cash was hard to come by at the best of times, but according to Simms, now credit was being choked off as well.
“It’s the States,” Simms said. “They were determined to build as many roads and canals as they could, and they issued too many bonds and notes. The people who invested have discovered there’s nothing backing them up. Fortunes have been lost, a lot of them in Britain, and now they’re scared skinny and pinching pennies.”
“So people are being squeezed all the way along the line, top to bottom?”
Simms nodded. “Yes, that’s the crux of the matter, all right — including yours truly. If I could get the girls off my hands it would help a lot.” He sighed. “You don’t happen to know of anyone who’s looking for a wife, do you? Mind you, none of the three knows how to do anything except sing a little and do fancy needlework, so don’t be offering up anyone who’s looking for cooking or cleaning or anything useful.”
“What you need is a half-pay officer or someone with a government appointment, then. Their wives are mostly ornamental, or so I’m told. Not the circle I travel in, I’m afraid.”
The colony was awash in ex-British officers who had been granted huge swaths of land in lieu of their pensions — acreages that would have made them rich had they been in settled England. Upon arrival they had been astounded to discover that there was no servant class in Canada and that they were expected to hew their own wood and carry their own water. They were not, as a rule, very successful as settlers.
“Unfortunately,” said Simms, “only one of my sisters could be described as decorative in any way. Mother would love it if she landed some Britisher of the gentleman class, but they all seem to arrive with families in tow, and besides, they’ll have nothing to do with the likes of us, no matter how hard mother tries to pretend that she’s one of them. Apparently it’s a disgrace to work at earning a living.”
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