by Ann Birch
The woman brought hot water to Anna’s room, set the pitcher down with a thump, and left, muttering something about recipes. Anna removed her travel-stained clothing and washed herself in the basin. She had kept a new silk dress for the reunion with her husband, and she took it from her trunk. It was of two pieces, with a close-fitting bodice and a full, pleated skirt. The sleeves were narrow at the shoulders and wide at the wrists, and when she raised her arms, the sleeves fell back to show to advantage her white wrists and arms.
While she waited for Robert, she looked around the house. She found a rough pine table in an unused bedchamber and had the manservant put it in her room. At least she now had a desk of sorts. She unpacked some of her books and her drawing materials and spread them out on its surface.
The case clock in the drawing room struck eight, then eight thirty. The door opened. Anna moved into the hallway to greet her spouse. For a moment she stood, unable to speak, seeing afresh after three years’ separation his tall, elegant form, his curly hair and large brown eyes, the right one with a slight strabismus.
“My dear,” he said, extending his fingers so that they brushed her sleeve. “I am happy to see you looking so well.” He smiled.
“I am glad to see you in evident health and good spirits, too, Robert.” She raised her arms to embrace him, but he was already removing his coat with the help of Hawkins. There was a long pause. The servants hovered. “Go belowstairs,” Anna said to them, “and bring up our dinner.”
“I see you have already taken charge, Anna. I fear I am too tired at the end of the day to give instructions. Hawkins and his wife provide a dish of gruel and a decanter of wine.” Robert threw his coat onto a chair. “Let us move into the drawing room.”
He took the comfortable armchair for himself, and she perched opposite him in a straight-backed Windsor chair. He looked her over. “How strange it seems to have you with me again, Anna.”
“If I may borrow a phrase I overheard from one of the boat passengers today, ‘Where the deuce were you when I was freezing my balls off on that blasted wharf?’”
“I am sorry, my dear. I had hoped to be there. But at the last moment, His Majesty’s representative, Sir Francis Bond Head, requested my presence at Government House for coffee. I foresee an opportunity for advancement to Vice-Chancellor of the Province—if the winds are favourable. If one hopes for promotion, one cannot be too assiduous in attendance when the Governor summons. Such are the realities of life in this place.” He paused, his attention diverted by a newspaper beside his chair.
“But why did you not send someone to meet me? Why did you leave me to stand on that freezing wharf dependent on the kindness of a stranger?”
“Ah, that was an oversight for which I must beg your pardon. But apart from my dereliction of duty, I trust your voyage was satisfactory? Not too many impediments to your comfort?”
“I have been two months in transit. I shall spare you the details. Except to say that surely Franklin’s charting of the Arctic seaboard was scarcely more arduous than my trek across the Atlantic to this godforsaken town. But I survived, Robert. I thank you for asking.”
Her husband smiled. “Still the jokester, dear Anna. We must talk further at dinner.”
He picked up the newspaper that had engaged his interest and began reading. Anna counted slowly to ten in English, French, and German. Then she closed her eyes for a few moments, trying to shut out of her vision the strangling vines on the wallpaper and the snow collecting on the inner ledge of the ill-fitting window.
“Dinner, master.” Mrs. Hawkins set a platter of sausages and a dish of boiled potatoes on the buffet. “And I made a nice bread pudding for you, ma’am, in honour of your homecoming.”
“One of my favourite things. Thank you. That will be a treat.”
The woman smiled, her lined face transformed into prettiness. She went again belowstairs.
Robert forked sausages onto his plate. “Sir Francis asked me to extend a welcome to you. He said that he looks forward to meeting you at the soirées at Government House. Lady Head arrives in a few weeks.”
“One of the men I spoke to today on the boat from Niagara called His Lordship a nincompoop. Was he right?”
“I can have no opinions. And I must caution you, Anna. While you are here, I ask you to keep clear of any expression of contention.”
“While I am here? What do you mean, Robert? You see this as a temporary arrangement, do you?”
“Please do not pounce on a stray phrase. Of course, I want you to stay.”
“I know you need me to lend credence to your pretence to have a normal married life. That’s what you had in mind when you asked me to come across the sea. But I have nonetheless hoped for more. Some warmth of welcome. Some sympathetic discourse.” She laid down her fork and pushed her plate away.
“You are right, Anna. I want to rise from Attorney-General to Vice-Chancellor of the Province. You are an essential part of my plan. We must try to get on together. I shall do my best to be a good husband. But I doubt, my dear Anna, that you have come across the sea solely for altruistic reasons.”
“So let us lay down our cards. In the twelve years we have been married, we have lived apart for almost eight years, and during all that time, I have been reliant on my own resources as an author, but—”
“Ah yes. You want money.”
“The writing business is uncertain at best. I have been lucky with my books so far, but who knows how long the reading public will stay with me. So here it is, Robert. I shall need three hundred pounds a year to maintain myself and to provide for my parents and my unmarried sisters. My poor father has suffered a stroke.”
“Three hundred pounds!” Robert’s normal pallor disappeared under a pulsing wave of crimson.
“You will be able to afford it. I learned some facts before I left England. The salary of the Attorney-General is twelve hundred pounds a year including fees; the salary of the Vice-Chancellor is twelve hundred a year, not including fees. Your income will more than double. You’ll be a rich man. I ask for a mere three hundred.”
“Never. But as long as you stay with me, I shall give you an allowance suited to your status as Chancellor’s wife. Some of that may certainly be dispatched to your family. If you leave, you are on your own.”
Robert poured another glass of wine, then another and another. Anna spooned some of the bread pudding onto her plate. The rest of the meal passed in silence.
As they parted for the night, Robert stopped outside his bedchamber. “I promised you a pleasant little house, Anna. Alas, it is not ready. The carpenters and bricklayers took a month off for the hunting season. You can’t hurry the hoi polloi in this town.”
“Never mind. This place is just fine. The street is no doubt named after London’s best prison.”
“Would you like me to come to your bedchamber for a while?”
“Perhaps we are both too tired. Let us rest for tonight.”
In her bedchamber, Anna found that Mrs. Hawkins had left two flickering candles. By their light, she removed her dress. Her husband had not noticed her white arms and hands in the new gown. Perhaps he had once found her physically attractive, but that had been long ago.
She remembered his letters during their courtship. They had been delightful, full of warmth and passion. She had fallen in love with those fine words on that beautiful linen-fibre paper. But whenever they met in person, his conversation was strained and impersonal. She had broken off their engagement once, then changed her mind. If he had not been successful and well connected, would she have married him, knowing his cold, reserved demeanour?
Her friend Ottilie von Goethe had asked her once if their marriage had been consummated. Yes, it had been consummated. A grim word, but the right word. It suggested the completion of sexual congress without any of the joy or desire a married woman had a right to expect. In the early days, there had been caresses which had led to gropings and perfunctory encounters, but there had been no northern
lights, no shooting stars.
Once she had found on his desk a poem of fourteen lines written to him by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s son, Hartley. In length, it seemed to be a sonnet, but she remembered the unorthodox rhyming couplet which formed its beginning. And the even stranger content:
Thou art my dearest love. O Rob! Sans thee,
A vast and woeful wasteland my life would be.
“How dare you poke into my private correspondence?” Robert had said, coming into the room as she held the poem in her hand. She had put it aside hastily, but now, as she remembered it, she recognized a truth she had long tried to suppress.
She took from her portmanteau the pocket of otter fur that Ottilie had given her on a fine summer morning in Vienna, as they drank coffee in lodgings overlooking the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace. She held its softness against her cheek now, feeling its warmth and a hint of Ottilie’s scent.
“It’s so pleasant, so pretty,” she had said to her friend, “but what is it?”
“It’s a foot muff, my dear Anna. I understand there will be a frozen lake in that faraway place to which you seem determined to go. No doubt when you are there you will travel in a calèche all by yourself with only the horse to talk to. Keep your poor cold toes tucked inside the muff while you discuss oats and harness.”
Sitting down now at the pine table that must serve as a desk, she put her cold toes into the warm fur. Perhaps she could find release by recording her day’s disappointments in her journal. Better still, she would write a letter to Ottilie. She would begin, “Dearest Ottilie: Here in this forsaken outpost, by that frozen lake you warned me about in July, I long for your overflowing high spirits and joie de vivre.”
She took the inkwell from the top of the bureau and set it on the table. Then she saw that the ink had a thin layer of ice over it.
FOUR
In his bedchamber, Sam Jarvis dressed for dinner at Government House. Mary came in to help him attach the collar and cuffs to his dress shirt and to brush his top hat. “I am looking forward to this dinner,” she said. “It will save me from an evening with Mama and Eliza. They are stitching petticoats for the bazaar for the poor—utterly, utterly boring.”
“No doubt your sister would have some gossip. Has she met Mrs. Jameson?”
“Not yet. Some of the ladies intended to call today and leave their cards. Eliza has heard that she has written some popular books. And she carries a Spanish guitar and a stiletto wherever she goes. She also is apparently great friends with a man named... named... Go Thee, who wrote about the Devil.”
“I met her briefly on the wharf the other day and summoned a cab for her.”
“Oh, Sam, why didn’t you tell me? What does she look like?”
“Not as pretty as you, my dear.” Though, indeed, he did not especially like the immense sleeves of Mary’s dress which closed with a tight-fitting cuff. No doubt it was the current style, but it made her arms look grotesque.
“A new face will be welcome in this town,” Mary said. “If nothing else, the lady will furnish us with new sources of scandal, provided the stories that preceded her are true. Do you think she’ll be there tonight?
“Possibly, but do not suppose that the Governor’s affair will be any livelier than your sewing circle. Sir Francis will be sure to bore us again with his tales of exploits in Argentina. There are times when I wish that his horse had fallen over a cliff in the Andes and—”
“Sam, you must keep on the man’s good side. No arguments with him or anyone else, please. And put yourself forward for promotion if you have the chance to speak to him personally.” She reached up and patted his shoulder.
“You’re singing the same old refrain, Mary. I don’t need to be told what to do. I know that I’ve got to get a promotion. I’ve heard he’s looking for someone to ‘control the savages’—that’s what he calls them.”
“What an opportunity, dear Sam! Surely you can play up your friendship with Jacob Snake.”
“Not sure he wants someone who has an Indian friend. But I mean to do what I can. Otherwise, I may end up in debtors’ prison. And believe me, a four months’ lockup in 1817 was more than enough for one lifetime.”
“I’ve been thinking. We could discharge Miss Siddons. After all, twenty-five pounds would go a long way towards settling our debts with the butcher and the baker.” She attempted a laugh. “And the candlestick maker.”
“The girls must be educated. I don’t care what it costs. Do you want them to grow up like your sister, dependent on the goodwill of relatives? Accepting handouts in return for labour in the kitchen and the sickroom?”
“But the girls will marry, will they not? They need only to be educated to fill that capacity. My sister is a plain woman, but the girls are pretty. There will be men who—”
“We can sell them to. Is that what you want?”
“Is that why you married me? In return for my father letting you off on the murder charge?”
For a moment he could not speak. He could only feel the pulse in his head and his face growing redder and redder. “Murder, Mary? Is that what you think? Do you truly believe I murdered Ridout?”
She moved towards him then, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Oh, Sam, forgive me, forgive me. I say these things when we quarrel. Of course, I don’t mean them.”
He looked at his knuckles, white and clenched. He took a deep breath, sat down on the bench in front of the pier glass and spread his hands on his knees.
“Now, Mary, you will remember that the children are my responsibility as well as yours. Our sons are at a fine school. But there is very little education for girls in this town. That is why Miss Siddons is so necessary. Hang the expense.”
“But Eliza and I could teach them drawing and stitchery skills. I could ask her to—”
“Stitchery and drawing be damned. Let us be clear. I will not have the girls wasting their lives making hair bracelets and watercolour daubs of the peony patch. As for your sister, what could she teach them except the pleasures of laudanum and whiskey? I don’t blame her, mind you, she must do something to relieve the tedium of her life.”
Mary started to cry. ““Hair...hair...bracelets, Sam. You can be so cruel. Say what you want about Eliza. She has her faults, as do we all. But that remark about hair bracelets. Why do you bring up poor little Eddie? He’s part of every waking memory. I don’t need your sarcasm to make it worse.”
Their small son, Eddie, had died in 1828, only one year old, and Mary cut off all his beautiful red hair just before his burial. Then she had spent days making a bracelet from it. He could not bear to look at her when she wore it, and she had finally put the thing away somewhere.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
But what the hell. She’d had the nerve to mention his trial for murder. It had happened almost two decades ago. And he had been exonerated. How dare she suggest that he’d made some deal with her father, Chief Justice Powell?
“I’m sorry, Sam, so sorry.”
He reached for her hand. It was cold, though her small, delicate face was flushed. “Let us think of the advantages of well-educated daughters. Why just last week, Ellen treated me to a dissertation on our three political parties, the Radicals, the Tories, and the Wigs, as she called them.”
Mary wiped her face with her lace handkerchief. He watched as she struggled to smile. “Oh, Sam, do you think she will want to stay with the gentlemen for port and cigars when we have a supper party?”
“Undoubtedly. I expect they will be greatly enlightened by her views on the Wigs.”
He rose, leaned over her shoulders, and put his face against her cheek. “We shall say no more about discharging Miss Siddons.”
Mary took his new fur-lined greatcoat from the wardrobe and draped it over his shoulders. It was a fine piece of tailoring, and in it he felt like a millionaire, perhaps John Jacob Astor or one of those other New York men he read about in the American newspapers that arrived at his office downtown. “Clothes
make the man,” his mother had often said when she’d urged his father to spend more and more on outward trifles, and it was a proverb Sam found himself remembering too often these days when he looked at his tailor’s account.
He and Mary went out the front door onto the wide verandah and down to the phaeton which had drawn up to the steps. John, the coachman, whipped up the horses, and they slipped down the long gravel driveway past the lawns and gardens now covered in snow. Pretty they were as they gleamed in the moonlight, but lovelier by far in summer and fall.
Government House, located at King and Simcoe Streets, was a two-storey frame house in the Georgian style with shutters and an attractive portico. Not as handsome as his own house, though, Sam noted.
John pulled the horses to a halt. “Elmsley House, sir.”
“Government House, man. Why do you persist in calling it Elmsley House?”
The house had once belonged to Chief Justice Elmsley, who had also owned the farm and field north of the town where Sam had killed John Ridout. He still could not bear to hear the name.
The footman in the front hall took their coats, and they entered the drawing room. The new Lieutenant-Governor came forward to greet them. “Welcome, Jarvis, and welcome to your good wife.” He gave a nod in Mary’s direction and called to a hired waiter whom Sam recognized as a corporal from the garrison. “Have some rum punch.”
Sir Francis gestured towards two vacant chairs. As Sam went to sit down, he noticed the Governor standing on his tiptoes to look at himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece. What did the man find to admire? Certainly not the beaky nose or tiny figure. Perhaps it was his large head of luxurious curls? Any girl would be proud of them, Sam reflected, as he turned to talk to the Attorney-General, Robert Jameson, who perched on the beechwood settee beside Sam’s chair. Here was a man whom the mirror would declare “fairest of all”.