Wishful Seeing

by Janet Kellough

  The silence stretched out between them.

  “Will you ever finish Mansfield Park?” she finally asked.

  “No. I don’t think I will now. I may never know how it ends.”

  “Happily for some, not so happily for others.”

  “You’d read it before?”

  “Several times,” she admitted. “It was still the perfect choice, and there’s a paragraph at the end that reminds me of you: When I hear of you next, it may be as a celebrated preacher in some great society of Methodists, or as a missionary into foreign parts.

  “No, I think maybe that part of my life is behind me.”

  She continued to look out across the lake, her eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun on the water, her face in perfect profile. He watched her sidelong, but closely, trying to etch the look of her into his memory.

  “Where are you going?”

  “For now, to Rochester. My husband has connections there. I expect that’s the easiest place to start looking for him.”

  “You still want to find him? After everything that’s happened?”

  “What would you have me do, Mr. Lewis?” She turned to fully look at him for the first time. “Whether I like it or not, my fortunes are tied to his. And he’s not a bad man. He loves his daughter.”

  Thaddeus suddenly remembered the satchel he had under his arm. Without a word, he handed it to her.

  He could tell that she knew what it contained. Her eyes were full of question as she took it from him.

  “It really is over for you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  As the steamer tied up at the dock, Digger barked furiously, running up and down with Caroline in pursuit. Ellen turned to watch them, a frown on her face.

  “I don’t know what to do about the dog. We can’t take him with us.”

  “I’ll keep him. Until you want him.”

  She nodded. “Goodbye, Mr. Lewis.”

  She intercepted Caroline, and after a huddled discussion the girl dropped to her knees in front of Digger. He licked her face and wagged his tail furiously. Then she grabbed the rope still dangling from his neck and walked him to where Thaddeus stood.

  “Will you take care of him?” she asked, her face streaked with tears.

  “Of course I will. And when you’re ready to take him back, you have only to ask.”

  She gave the dog one last lingering pat, then ran up the gangplank without looking back.

  Ashby walked up to stand by Thaddeus. Together they watched while the steamer pulled out into the harbour.

  “That all turned out rather well, didn’t it?” he remarked cheerfully.

  Martha said she found Ashby “exasperating,” and at that moment Thaddeus knew exactly what she meant. “Will they ever come back, do you think?”

  “I doubt it,” Ashby said. “Unless Donald Dafoe is indicted, George Howell is still technically wanted for murder. I gave Warren Garrett the agreement, by the way, so that may well happen. But then there would still be fraud and counterfeiting charges for Howell to answer to. No, if she finds him, they’ll stay in the States. It’s safer. And I don’t think there’s much of anything here for them now.”

  “What about the farm? That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

  “I should think so, because of the railway. Mrs. Howell asked me to arrange a sale. She promised to write from time to time to provide instructions.”

  “And you? Where do you go from here, Mr. Ashby?”

  “Back to Toronto. I’m leaving on the one o’clock steamer, actually.”

  “Oh. Martha was hoping you might come for dinner.”

  “Please thank her for me. I’ll be sorry to miss one of her meals. But business calls.” He began to walk back toward shore. Thaddeus fell into step beside him. Had Ashby at that moment suggested that they walk back to the Globe Hotel to settle in leather chairs and order up brandy and whiskey, Thaddeus would have gladly followed him.

  Fortunately, Ashby stopped at the foot of the pier and held out his hand. “Until we meet again,” he said. “You’ve been a wonderful partner. I couldn’t have hoped for better help with all this.”

  “So who actually fired the shot, do you figure? Dafoe? Plews? Another one of the Palmer clan?”

  Ashby laughed. “I keep telling you, Thaddeus, it doesn’t matter.”

  He could smell roast chicken as soon as he walked in the back door of the manse. Martha was just putting the top crust on a pie, a smear of flour across one cheek. She looked up and smiled at him, then frowned when she saw the dog.

  “Couldn’t you find them?” she asked.

  “I found them. They couldn’t take the dog. I said I’d keep him until they could.”

  “Where have they gone?”

  “Rochester. To look for Mr. Howell.”

  “Oh. I suppose we’ll manage, but Digger won’t be happy.” She crimped the edge of the pastry, then set it in the oven. “When is Mr. Ashby coming?”

  “He isn’t. He’s leaving for Toronto at one.”

  “Oh … well … we’ll have to have our own celebration then, I guess. Just you and me.” But Thaddeus could see that she was upset.

  It was a glum meal. Neither had much of an appetite, and neither of them seemed able to think of anything to say that wouldn’t open a floodgate of difficult conversation.

  “Pie?” Martha asked, after they had picked at the chicken.

  “Maybe later.”

  She cleared the dishes away. Then Thaddeus heard her go out the back door. He followed. She’d tied Digger to the fence and was sitting on the back stoop watching him. He sat down beside her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. She was crying a little.

  “Yes … No. I’m just being silly.” She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “I’m not even sure I like him. But I did think that he would at least come and say goodbye.”

  “He is, as you pointed out to me, a most exasperating man.”

  “Yes, he is.” She pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose. “There, I’m done.”

  “No, you’re not. But you will be.”

  He leaned back against the door and closed his eyes. The wind was chilly, a promise of the winter to come, but he could feel the heat of the afternoon sun on his face, and it soothed him.

  “What about you? Are you all right?”

  “No. But like you, I expect I will be someday.” Then a thought struck him. “Did you ever finish the book?”

  “Mansfield Park? Yes. It’s rather silly. Girls with nothing on their minds but finding a husband.”

  “But what else could they do? It’s been pointed out to me that women don’t have many choices.”

  She thought about this for a moment. “I don’t know. You’re right, of course; there isn’t much else for women to do. But I’d never turn anyone down because he doesn’t have enough money, like the girl in the book did. She decides she can’t marry him because he’s going to be a minister, you know.” She eyed him closely, watching for his reaction to this.

  “Really? That explains something someone said to me today.”

  He was grateful that she didn’t ask him to clarify. She really was very like her grandmother, he thought — she knew when to speak and when to let things lie. They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Thaddeus said, “I’m going to give up preaching. I have no right to do it anymore.”

  She didn’t argue the point with him. “What are you going to do instead?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll finish out my year here, only because the church would find it difficult to fill the position on short notice. But I won’t take another appointment.”

  “But where will you go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So where will I go?”


  He hadn’t taken Martha into account in his decision. “Back to Wellington, I suppose. You always have a home with your father.”

  “But I only just got the manse arranged the way I want it.” She jumped to her feet and went to pat Digger’s head.

  “What’s the matter? Do you like it here that much?”

  “Yes!” She shouted it at him. Digger looked at her and whined.

  “So what is it you want to do?”

  “I don’t know! Anything but go back home again. I want to see different places. Meet different people. Have an adventure.”

  “You just had an adventure,” he pointed out. “It left you crying on the back doorstep.”

  “Yes, it did. And it was the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me.” She began to pace up and down in front of him. He stayed silent until she was ready to speak.

  “If I go back to Wellington, all I’ll do is cook and clean and look after until I get married, and then I’ll cook and I’ll clean and I’ll look after until I’m an old lady and so worn out with scrubbing that there’s nothing left to do but lie down and die. And all the while I’d be wondering what I missed.”

  She stopped pacing and stood in front of him. “Do you see? I just want a chance to find out what the rest of the world looks like.”

  “You’d rather come with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I don’t know where I’ll end up.”

  “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Not knowing where you’re going to end up?”

  He had to admit that he liked having her around. She was the last of his girls. Over the years he’d lost his daughters, one by one. Then his wife. Martha was oddly like all of them. There were moments when he thought she was the spit and image of her mother. At other times she reminded him so much of Betsy that he would be taken aback. But the ghosts of the little ones — Grace and Ruth and Anna and Mary — they were there, too, and whispered to him in unexpected ways.

  He had promised Martha once, when she was very small, that he would never go far from her. He was sure she didn’t remember it, but the words came back to him now. Maybe it was time to keep his promise. Maybe he could begin to set himself right again if he did.

  He looked at her sternly. “I’d still want you to wash my socks.”

  “I’ll make them soft as a lamb’s fleece.”

  “And you’ve got to stop moving the furniture around. If I ever stumble home in the dark, I’ll break my neck.”

  “I can do that.”

  “All right.”

  She gave a little shriek and threw herself at him in an exuberant hug that nearly knocked him over.

  “Careful,” he said. “I’m old bones, you know,” but he was grateful to her. He had no idea what he was going to do with his life, but apparently he wasn’t going to be doing it alone.

  VI

  It wasn’t as bad as Thaddeus feared. The newspapers were full of details of the trial, along with the astounding revelation that George Howell was responsible for the counterfeit money that had circulated throughout the district. There was also a great deal of speculation about who was actually responsible for the Sherman murder, now that it had been decided that George Howell wasn’t.

  The Cobourg Star lauded Ashby as an up-and-coming star in the legal world and published his summation in its entirety. Little about the prosecutor’s allegations was printed. He had lost the case, after all, so why would anyone be interested in anything he had to say?

  Still, Thaddeus was aware of a new reserve among attendees at meetings. No one said anything, but he could tell that people were disappointed when they discovered that it was he who would be leading their prayers. He was seldom invited for dinner anywhere, other than by the Gordons. He began leaving most of the work to Small, who no longer came to the back door with pie or attempted to sit close to Martha, although Mrs. Small still gossiped over the back fence as fiercely as she ever did.

  Donald Dafoe was indicted for murder and brought to trial at the Spring Assizes and once again the Paul Sherman murder made headlines across the province. Thaddeus paid little attention to the case, but he was in no way surprised when he heard that the jury failed to convict. Palmers and Plews and Dafoes. That family always did look after one another. Thick as thieves.

  He spent most of his time thinking about the future. He had been a schoolteacher once, but that path seemed blocked now. Even village schools were demanding professional teachers now that the normal school in Toronto was training young people in the art of instruction. He wondered if Martha might like to be a teacher. Tuition was free, but if she were to go there, Thaddeus would need to establish a household, and an income, nearby. The school was close to where his son lived. Perhaps Luke’s employer, Dr. Christie, could be prevailed upon to put them up, but Thaddeus rejected this notion almost as soon as he thought of it. It was one thing to welcome a guest who only occasionally stayed the night, but another thing altogether to have two extra people parked at the breakfast table every morning, not to mention the addition of a yapping dog.

  The Methodist Episcopal Church was opening a new seminary in Belleville, but he knew better than to apply for a position. They would want highly qualified instructors. And even someone so lowly as a tutor would be expected to demonstrate the highest moral rectitude. There had been too much gossip. He would be dismissed out of hand.

  As summer neared, he began to despair. Perhaps he had been hasty in his rejection of another appointment. What if he traded on past favours and asked Bishop Smith for a new posting? A second chance? But the thought depressed him. He had no heart for it anymore.

  And then, just as his time on the Hope Circuit was drawing to an end, a letter arrived in the mail. It was typical — no salutation, no greetings, no catching up with personal news, just a bare-bones message and the almost indecipherable signature at the bottom:

  I have a case I can’t make head nor tail of. I need an investigator. Will pay. Can you come?

  Towns Ashby

  Yes, Thaddeus decided, he could.

  The Cobourg­–Peterborough Railway, December 29, 1854

  The town of Cobourg was in a great state of excitement as the town council, the directors of the railway, and fifty other prominent gentlemen crowded onto the benches that had been hastily installed on twelve flatbed cars. At ten thirty in the morning, pulled by two powerful locomotives, the Cobourg to Peterborough railway left the station at Cobourg Harbour and chugged northward at the unimaginable speed of fifteen miles per hour. A mere sixty minutes later the train successfully crossed the Rice Lake Bridge and reached Peterborough East, where it was greeted by local dignitaries. After three cheers for Cobourg and three for Peterborough, the passengers marched under a welcoming arch to the Town Hall, where a magnificent dinner awaited them. Toasts and congratulatory speeches flowed as freely as the champagne.

  The Member of the Legislative Assembly for Cobourg, the Honorable Ebenezer Perry, recalled that he had arrived in Cobourg in 1815, when it was still known as Hardscrabble.

  “And hard scrabbling it was,” he said, “but since then they have scrabbled up a harbour, plank roads, gravel roads, fine buildings, and now a railway.”

  But it was stagecoach proprietor William Weller who brought the house down.

  “I know why you have called upon me,” he said. “It is to hurt my feelings — for you know I get my living from running stages, and you are taking the bit out of my mouth as well as out of my horses’ mouths. You are comparing in your minds the present with the past, when you had to carry a rail instead of riding one, in order to help my coaches out of the mud. But after all, I find that I am rejoiced to see old things done away with and new things becoming Weller.”

  More speeches and songs followed, with festivities continuing through the night. The next day the excursionists found their way to the station for the return trip to Cobourg,
but not before railway director D’Arcy Boulton toasted their Peterborough friends with a parting glass of champagne. The celebration was but a taste of good times ahead, he said, and as the train chugged its way back home again, everyone’s heads were filled with dreams of coming good fortune.

  Three days later the Rice Lake Railway Bridge collapsed.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am indebted to a number of sources in the writing of this tale, most notably The Lazier Murder: Prince Edward County, 1884, by Robert J. Sharpe (Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, University of Toronto Press, 2011). Justice Sharpe brilliantly outlines the evolution of the Canadian legal system and clearly explains how different the rules of a criminal trial would have been in 1853. Further insight into the world of Canadian law was provided by A Class Apart? The Legal Profession in Upper Canada from Creation to Confederation, 1791–1867, a master’s thesis by Sarah Elizabeth Mary Hamill (Graduate Department of the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto).

  The rather daunting Reports of Cases Adjudged in The Court of Chancery of Upper Canada Commencing in December, 1850, Vol. 2, Part 4, by Alexander Grant (R. Carswell, Toronto, 1877) supplied the delicious details of a late lawsuit based on an early land survey, and further information was provided by Equitable Jurisdiction and the Court of Chancery in Upper Canada, by Elizabeth Brown (Osgoode Hall Law Journal 21.2 (1983): 275–314).

  The articles regarding the Cobourg–Peterborough Railway by Colin Caldwell reproduced on the Cobourg History website (www.cobourghistory.ca/histories) proved invaluable, as did Cobourg 1798–1948, 2nd edition, by Edwin C. Guillet, MA. (Goodfellow Printing Co. Ltd., Oshawa, Ontario, 1948); Early Cobourg by Percy L. Climo, printed in Cobourg in 1985; and the 1851 Cobourg Canada Directory at ancestry.com.