by Seán Haldane
‘At the same time he was egged on to visit the Indians by Aemilia, who seemed very curious about them. So he went and saw them. He reported that they were going to find him the appropriate herbs. He said they were very open about such matters, not hypocritical the way we whites are. He was very taken with them. He had not asked about the “berdache” yet, because the camp was mainly full of women and what looked like warriors. But he would.
‘There was another matter.’ Beaumont paused. ‘A different matter. Once McCrory had got to know me fairly well, he began to ask questions about our camp here, our dispositions, our arms, and so on. Of course I told him. There are no secrets in such matters. Then he would ask about our plans if an arbitrator ruled against the British claim. Would we stay on San Juan? Would we fight? Now, I ask you! Ridiculous! These Yankees of course have no principles, so they assume we don’t. I assured him that if an arbitrator ruled against us, which was highly likely in view of the envy other powers have of Great Britain, then of course we would pack our bags and leave.
‘He could not believe this. “Albion perfide!” and all that – not that he was educated enough to know the phrase, but he had the idea. We almost quarrelled about it. Then after that, from time to time, he would say, “What would you think if it turned out I’m an American agent, sent to this Colony to spy on the English?”’
‘I said so far as I could see there were already at least 3,000 American spies in Victoria, and the English had long since given up trying to hide anything from them. Besides which, there was nothing to hide. Even on the island here, Delacombe and Epstein know each other’s every intention. It’s a way of avoiding accidents. But McCrory would still tease me about it, and it began to rankle somewhat.
‘My account is almost at an end, Hobbes. On that dreadful day, McCrory arranged to meet me near Cormorant Point, after he would have visited the Indian Camp, at one o’clock. There is a small bay just West of Telegraph Cove where I sometimes tie up if I come over alone, and from there a path leads to the main road and then to Margaret Bay or Cormorant Point. We arranged to meet just below where the path met the road. The idea was that McCrory would be able to give me a batch of fresh herbs for my “condition”, which I would take for the next few days. Then on the Saturday evening I should try their effects on Grace at the Windsor Rooms, with whom McCrory had already, as he put it “discussed the case.” All very humiliating. Then he would ask the Tsimshian about this famous “berdache” idea of his, which I must say did not appeal to me.
‘I arrived at the place quite early. Not wanting to be seen talking to McCrory up on the main road, I waited a hundred yards or so down the path, near the stream, knowing he would look for me there. I remember I paced up and down, whistling through my teeth, and whittling on a stick. It’s a habit I have, being so restless, I know people laugh at it, but I can’t help it. I’ve wondered since what I was thinking about. The real answer is: nothing. I just waited. He was late. I waited. Then he arrived, coming rather cheerfully down the path, carrying a basket like a woman going to market.
‘”Well, how’s my spy today?” he said. Then seeing that didn’t go down well he said “I mean, I’ve been doing some spying on the Indians, just as you spy for me on San Juan.” I said “I say, old chap”, or some such meaningless thing. Then he sat down on a rock, and tapped on his basket. “Just the stuff for you in here,” he said. “Mind you I’m afraid I have to disappoint you about the berdache. Poor old George. These particular Indians don’t have ’em.”
‘Meanwhile I was going on whittling my stick, you might say mechanically.
‘“What you want”, he said, “is to get it up as straight as that stick. But whittling at yourself all day long won’t help you with a woman. You know what? Just now I was collecting these herbs in the forest with the prettiest squaw you ever might see. I said, does this herb make a man grow big? – talking fluent Chinook, of course. She blushed like a white girl but she said yes, it made a man big. What about this, I said. Is an Indian’s thing as big as this? You know what I did, George? I pulled out my organ and showed it to her! And her eyes went wide as little saucers, then she turned away. So I repeated my question: is an Indian’s thing as big as this? You know what the little trollop did? She turned and looked very carefully and said in Chinook, “siwash elip hyas, elip toketie”. Which means “The Indian is more big and more pretty!” Then she ran off, back to her camp. But I could see from her eyes that what she had said was a lie. “The point is, George, old boy” – he used to mock my way of speaking, at times – “if you take these herbs your organ will end up even more big and more pretty than this!” Whereupon he jumped up from where he had been sitting, unbuttoned, and pulled out his organ – in a state of erection, although in fact I suspect the squaw had been telling the truth because it was not very impressive, being rather thin and curved. “Touch it, George,” he said, “It’s excited at the mere thought of a pretty girl like that squaw. This is animal magnetism!”
‘So I threw my stick far off into the bushes, took one step forward, raised my knife, and drove it straight into his rotten, grinning face. He dodged his head out of the way and I hit him just below the neck, and pushed down hard. Then I tried to pull it out but it seemed to have got stuck against the collarbone. For a moment he struggled – spitted, so to say, on the knife. Then it came up and out. But he didn’t fall. He stood there, staggering, looking at me with a sort of dopey expression. So I changed the position of the handle in my hand and plunged it straight for his rotten heart from under the ribs. But I must have missed it, for now he started squealing like a pig but still would not fall down. I pulled out the knife and pushed him with the other hand. He stumbled and fell over a boulder in the stream. I went over and looked down at him.
‘I was calculating how best to finish the job. My only thought was “good riddance”. Then I realized it would be an easy thing to cut him up so it would look as if an Indian had done it – perhaps the medicine man he had been visiting. I knew medicine men sometimes tried to eat people alive by tearing at them with their teeth. What fun it would be, I thought, to leave this reptile cut up and bitten so that whoever found him should be sick! He was writhing and moaning but seemed incapable of moving off the boulder. So I put my knife handle between my teeth, like a savage. Then I reached down and tore his coat off and his waistcoat and shirt and flung them away. I pulled his trousers down to his boots. I took the knife in my hand again and slashed him across the belly a few times. Then I knelt down in the stream and seized him by the shoulders and bit him in the arm. That made him scream in a gurgling kind of way. I picked up my knife which I’d let fall in the water, and I looked at him in the eyes which were sort of dreamy. Then I surveyed my handiwork, as it were, the gashes on his body. His member, damn the thing, was stiff as if he were still thinking of that foul squaw. I looked back to his eyes, still dreamy as if he were going away. “Look at this!” I yelled. Surprised myself, really. I reached down and grabbed his organ in one hand and chopped it off with the knife. I held it up in front of his eyes. Then I stuffed it in his mouth. Like a gargoyle. But by this time I assumed he was dead. What a shame, I thought. He probably didn’t feel that last bit at all.
‘To complete the Indian impression and, I must say partly out of curiosity, I then attempted to scalp him. I held that horrid red hair of his in one hand and hacked around the edges against the skull. I could feel the scalp come loose a little but it would have taken an almighty tug or a lot more work with the knife to get it off. Besides, he already looked like the devil himself and I didn’t want to disturb the picture. So I gave up. Then I went away.
‘I don’t know how he could have stayed alive though. Do you mean, the Indian came and found him and he spoke?’
‘Apparently,’ I said. ‘Pulled the – thing – out of his mouth, and spoke. Then died.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job. Usually when you see an animal’s eyes go like that – a rabbit’s for example – it’s finished.�
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Beaumont was apparently unmoved by any of this. ‘All over for me anyway.’ He went on. ‘You see I knew – perhaps that was what was on my mind as I stood waiting for him, whittling the stick, although it was not in the form of words – I knew that all this rubbish would never work for me. McCrory either thought, or pretended to think, that he could change people. It’s not possible of course. That’s why we have to fight wars. He was “helping me” for a bit of money and to convince himself that he was a very important man – a “great healer”, or an intriguer or spy. But he was really a very miserable wretch. It was like a fairy tale he was making up as he went along. Like my loving the Somerville girls. First Aemilia; then when she wouldn’t have me, Cordelia; then when she wouldn’t have me, Letitia. It would have been the same with Letitia. I didn’t want them to have me. What would I have done with Letitia? She didn’t even attract me in that way. I should have continued, even after marriage, to visit the Windsor Rooms or similar haunts. But I was tired of that. I think it has been all over for me for a long time.’
Beaumont’s voice had grown so dry it was like that of a ghost. I got up and stood looking down at him. ‘Thank you.’ I held out my hand and Beaumont shook it firmly. ‘Good luck.’ I turned to go.
Beaumont called after me: ‘Just one thing, Hobbes. Give my love to the Somerville girls, all three of them, will you?’
‘Of course.’
The room door was locked from the outside, but I knocked on it and a guard standing there with a pistol in his belt let me out.
* * *
Dinner at Captain Delacombe’s was excellent, at a long table with silver candlesticks, cut glass decanter, and plates with the Marines’ crest and blue and gold rims. There were several bottles of first class claret. The main dish was a rack of lamb with tiny new potatoes, and currant jelly. Pemberton and I both had good appetites, but Delacombe picked at his meat in a state of gloom which gradually infected us so that by the time the Port was circulating with the inevitable Stilton, we sipped and nibbled in morose silence.
Delacombe seemed to be waiting for something. He had asked the servant to fling the window open and let some air in. It was pitch dark outside except for a dim glow from the barracks. There was a distant echoing thud. Delacombe raised his head mournfully. ‘Poor George,’ he said.
Pemberton said tentatively, ‘You mean you…’
‘They were all capital offences. The inevitable result would have been a firing squad, here at English Camp. Awful for morale. I sent him his clothes, with a pistol and one round in the coat jacket. Not strictly speaking wrong on my part, since I was waiting for his leg to get a little better before officially charging him.’
Delacombe waited silently. There was the sound of footsteps outside, then a knock at the door. One of the servants came in. ‘Sorry to bother you, Sir. Lieutenant Liddell must speak with you.’
‘Show him in then.’
This was the other Lieutenant, whom Delacombe had preferred not to have at dinner, and had detailed to the blockhouse. A small man, he marched in and saluted. ‘I’m afraid Mr Beaumont has shot himself through the head, Sir. He’s dead.’
‘Good old George,’ Delacombe said. ‘I knew he’d come through all right in the end.’
29
I parted from Pemberton at Cadborough Bay late the following morning, and rode over to Orchard Farm. I wanted Aemilia to know Wiladzap would be released that afternoon. She came out onto the porch as I was hitching my horse to the rail. She was wearing a simple grey dress. She waited with perfect poise as I climbed the steps, her face showing no emotion.
‘George Beaumont sent his love to you all,’ I said. ‘He’s dead. Shot himself. But he wrote a confession to the murder. The Commissioner will be able to release Wiladzap this afternoon. I thought I should let you know.’
‘How horrible about George! But…’ She smiled. ‘Thank you Chad. The rest is good news. I don’t know what Wiladzap will want to do, but I shall find out. Do you know?’ – She looked grandly around her – ‘I am mistress of this farm for a while. The Joneses are still here of course, and little William. But Mamma and the girls are gone.’
‘Where to?’
‘They’re in town for now, but this evening they all leave for San Francisco on a long holiday – with Mr Quattrini. Mamma and he were married yesterday afternoon, in the Catholic church, very quietly.’
I was not greatly surprised: sudden marriages were common in Victoria, and the law required no advance publication of banns. Nevertheless I said ‘My goodness!’
‘Yes. A surprise! But not really. My mother, you see, was almost exploding with panic that something awful would come to light about her and McCrory, especially if Wiladzap were released and George was charged with the murder: I told her you and Mr Pemberton had gone to San Juan to question him. I had to. I hope that was all right.’
‘As it turns out, yes.’ I realised that Aemilia must have used all the knowledge she had in some kind of decisive emotional battle with her overpowering mother, and I did not begrudge it to her.
‘It was perhaps a little immoral of her,’ Aemilia said. ‘I think she thought, “it’s now or never”. Mr Quattrini is such a very moralistic man. I think she told herself that if he found out any bad things about her after the marriage had been consummated, there would be some way of persuading him everything was all right. So now I assume it has been consummated, and no one will find out anything now, so all is well. I guessed it would be – from the look in your eye yesterday morning. And now you look unscathed.’
‘Physically yes. Though I feel as if I’ve aged.’
‘That has been a continuous process since I first saw you: a year a week, I should say.’ Aemilia was clearly in a happy mood from which nothing could dissuade her. ‘Anyway, I persuaded Mamma I should not go to San Francisco, since I must take care of the farm. In fact the Joneses can do that, if necessary. It’s all a polite fiction between Mamma and me, to avoid having to discus the possibility that I and little William might leave with Wiladzap. It is of course only a possibility. So I’m a free woman. I shall make up my own mind for the first time in my life.’
‘Good. But I don’t envy you the task. I dare say I can make up my own mind about Lukswaas, hoping that her mind accords with mine, but all I see ahead is difficulty and struggle.’
‘That’s life, Chad, and it’s shorter than you think.’ Aemilia’s brow clouded.
‘I suggest you come to the jail for three o’clock. We should have released Wiladzap by then.’
‘Good. Only don’t tell him. We shall do our own talking. I’m very frightened, but underneath I know it will be all right.’
We gave each other a peck on the cheek, like brother and sister.
* * *
As I rode down from Spring Ridge to the Pemberton’s house on Fort Street my nerve began to fail me. I was even, after all that had happened between me and Lukswaas, as frightened of her as Aemilia was of Wiladzap. And as Lukswaas was of me, no doubt. Did Wiladzap fear Aemilia too? How strange, that combination of love and fear. I could almost understand how poor Beaumont’s body, stiff with fright instead of soft with pleasure, had failed him where his desires and affections were most aroused, in a woman’s arms.
The servant who answered the door directed me around the house: ‘The Commissioner and Mrs Pemberton are out the back.’ I walked along a narrow gravel path to an extensive garden, with roses on trellises, in full bloom, and beds of carnations and pansies around a croquet lawn. A striped awning had been slung on poles from the back of the house over a paved terrace. Here in wicker chairs in front of small tables were sitting Pemberton and Mrs Pemberton and Lukswaas. As soon as she saw me, Lukswaas made a movement as if to get up, but Mrs Pemberton made a gesture that she should remain seated and said very distinctly, ‘No need to rise, my dear, you wait for him.’
Lukswaas sank back into her chair but her whole body was taut, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright. She was wearing a white mus
lin hooped dress with red ribbons, and a broad brimmed straw hat.
Very much aware of the Pembertons, but stubborn with pride in my relation to Lukswaas, I took her hand and at the same time bent down and kissed her on the cheek. She smelled not of herself but of a light flowery scent.
I reassured her in Chinook that Wiladzap would be released that afternoon. Aemilia would come to the jail and meet them.
Lukswaas said she had been told Wiladzap would be free. Her heart was happy for Aemilia.
I turned to Mrs Pemberton. ‘Thank you very much for looking after Lukswaas.’
‘No trouble at all, Mr Hobbes. I declare she is the most intelligent girl I’ve ever met. And not just in an imitative way either: she works things out for herself. I was very pleased to have her as my guest. I’ve given her some clothes which of course she can keep. But what will you do with her now?’ Mrs Pemberton looked at me with an expression of sharp inquiry. ‘Must she go back to her own people?’
‘She and I will have to discuss that. We have not had enough time. There’s a sort of understanding between us which … Let me speak frankly, Mrs Pemberton: I am absolutely devoted to her, I want to marry her, yet I’m appalled by the implications for her of such a step.’
‘And for you, my boy’. Pemberton interrupted.
‘People can be so very cruel,’ Mrs Pemberton cut in. ‘I fear for you both.’
‘Yes!’, said Pemberton. ‘I remember the filthy slanders Governor Douglas had to endure about his wife being half Indian and possibly – so it was whispered – “illegitimate”. As if these pioneer marriages needed benefit of law! No more than do the common law marriages of Scotland even to this day. Douglas and his wife have endured it all, and their daughters have married well. But the tendency in this Colony is toward increasing harshness. Even Governor Douglas did not have to deal with such as Amor de Cosmos and our American residents. The Americans cannot, as we British do, consider themselves and the Indians as common subjects to the Queen, God bless her!’ Pemberton paused, perhaps in a rush of sentiment, then resumed vigorously. ‘I hope the Canadians, who are also subjects of the Queen, will do better than the Americans – but not if Amor de Cosmos is an example! Consider Mr Begbie: some years ago he could count on some good feeling toward the Indians, but more and more, every effort he makes on their behalf – to have them recognized as landholders and eventually as citizens – is spurned. You’d be better off even in India where an Englishman can marry a Hindu girl and though it might not be a perfect match, at least their children are accepted. Here your children would be damned. You could keep a squaw in a shack by the Upper Harbour and no-one would blink an eye. But marry one! I would try and ensure that you could stay with the police, but I would fail! Better for both of you to go back to England, even, if you marry.’