by Ann Birch
“Mrs. Alma and I have a mutually satisfactory agreement. I have agreed to give her two of my sketches. You see, she has some new household acquisitions that she is especially proud of—a commode chair in the bedchamber and a Franklin stove in the drawing room. I made sketches of both rooms when I was there last night, and I shall finish them within the week and send them to her.”
He drew her close to him and kissed her hand. “My dear friend, how glad I am that I found you here on that snowy day not so long ago.”
“Let us meet soon. I intend to strike out for the northern wilderness when summer comes. Do you think—would it be possible—-for me to follow you to Manitoulin Island for the Indian ceremonies?”
Mrs. Hawkins was almost upon them. “With all my heart, I would welcome you.”
Sam’s carriage swung north to King St. and began the drive east towards Hazelburn. He held the drawing in his hand, absorbed in the delicate, finely drawn details. It was so nicely framed, too, ready to hang, perhaps in the dining room, though he would have to give it to his mother if she wanted it badly enough. What a first-rate time he’d had with Anna, and what a wonderful gift. And now, perhaps, he could repay her by putting himself to a task he’d avoided too long.
“Mr. Jarvis, Mr. Jarvis!” He glanced up to see Mrs. Widmer waving at him from the board sidewalk. He motioned to the coachman to stop.
She rushed from the sidewalk and placed herself so close to the wheels that moving forward was impossible.“Dear Mr. Jarvis, my horse is lame today, and I have had to walk. Would you be a lovely man and drive me home?”
“With pleasure, ma’am,” Sam said. “I have some business to attend to, so I shall get down now, and John will drive you wherever you wish.” As he said this, he hopped down and hoisted the lady up into his vacant seat. “John, I shall walk home when I finish my business. You are to put yourself entirely at Mrs. Widmer’s service. Good day, ma’am.” He bowed and made his way into the street. He waited till the carriage had moved off, then went into Job Crimshaw’s store.
The jangling bell brought Crimshaw to the front of the shop. “Mr. Jarvis, sir, a pleasure to see you! Let me show you some bottles of Bristol’s finest, just arrived, sir.” Without waiting for an answer, the merchant snapped his fingers, and a lad in a striped apron took a bottle of cream sherry from a shelf and placed it on the counter in front of Sam.
“Very nice,” Sam said as he looked at the rich blue of the bottle. In a flash, Crimshaw had removed the cork and filled a sherry glass to the brim.
“The best, sir, for my best customer. Now, tell me what you think.”
It was a golden brown. Sam took a sip, another, and another. “Excellent.” Crimshaw refilled his glass.
“My man will deliver it this very day, sir. How many bottles shall I put you down for?” Another snap of the fingers, and the lad produced the account book. Crimshaw flipped it open to a well-thumbed page. “Fifteen, sir? Twenty?”
“Make it ten.” Sam took another sip. “Actually I came here on another matter entirely.”
“Indeed, sir? What can I get for you? Perhaps some Madeira? Cuban cigars?”
“The Indians.”
“Indians, sir?” Crimshaw’s face settled into a half smile. The lad in the apron bowed and disappeared to the back of the store.
“Indians. That’s what I said.” Sam paused. Set down the glass with a thud. “You have no doubt heard of my promotion to Chief Superintendent of Indian Affairs. In that role I have come here today to...” Damn it, what were the words he wanted...“To talk to you about...about your unfair dealings with the natives.”
“Unfair dealings, sir?” A bead of sweat appeared on Crimshaw’s forehead, but the smile remained in place.
“I’ll come to the point. You give cheap liquor to the Indians and take from them furs, fish, venison and maple sugar. You get them so drunk they can’t do a thing about your robbery of their goods.”
“Robbery, you say? Fair trade, I’d say. Though maybe a Chief Superintendent don’t know nothing about fair trade, not being a businessman. So let me put it this way. The savages give me what I want, and I give them what they want. Fair trade...sir.”
While he spoke, Crimshaw moved his dirty, misshapen forefinger slowly down the page of the account book until it rested on a figure at the bottom. From where he stood, Sam could not see the exact amount. He didn’t need to, he knew only too well the three-digit total.
“The way I see it,” Crimshaw continued, “is like this. Trade with the savages is more like fair trade than my dealings with some nobs I could mention.” He tapped his finger on the account book. His voice grew louder. “I give nobs what they want, and they don’t give me nothing in return. But then, as I say, some nobs don’t know nothing about fair trade.”
Sam laid down ten notes on the counter. “Put that on my account and shut up about fair trade. You have as much notion of the phrase as...as...” No words came to him.
Crimshaw’s smile returned as he scooped up the notes. “No offence taken, sir, and none given, I trust?” He sidled after Sam as he moved towards the front door, holding it open for him to pass through. “And shall I send along the new sherry today, sir?”
“Go to hell,” Sam said under his breath as he went out into the street. He took some comfort from this remark, though he could not summon the courage to cancel the order. Where was he to get his sherry and cigars if he had a final break with the swine? Well, at least he’d made his point about the Indians. He felt better that he’d gone that far at least.
He was eager now to get back to the fresh smell of his pinewoods. Perhaps the hazelnut trees would be showing more green, and there would be trout in the burn now that the ice had melted.
As he turned into the path leading to Hazelburn, he stopped on the little bridge of logs that he had built one summer over the stream at the foot of his lot. The water was clear, and in the shallows he could see minnows darting about and occasional flashes of silver as the larger fish swam over the pebbles. Once he’d given Mary the news—or some of it, anyway—he’d get into his old coat and breeches and see if he could catch some speckled trout for breakfast. There would be no time to arrange a fishing excursion on Lake Simcoe with Jacob before the trip to Manitoulin.
He’d be saddled with Sir Francis on the journey north, of course. He imagined the endless hours of self-congratulatory remarks which the Governor would make, while he and Jacob and the voyageurs would be forced into silence. No songs, no jokes. And just enough fishing allowed to provide the Gov with fresh catch to put upon the Derby china he’d probably bring along with him. But Anna would be there at the end of the journey. And in that great northern landscape far from Toronto’s gossips, what might happen?
He heard voices from the front of the house that made him smile. Quickly he broke off some hanging catkins and stuck them under his top hat. They came down to his shoulders and curled outwards, so that he looked, he hoped, like some ancient god of the forest. A few minutes more, and Charlie and Caroline came scampering down the path with Miss Siddons following. He got behind one of the hazelnut trunks. When they were a few feet away, he leapt out. “Buh, buh,” he cried, “who is here in my forest? Two small children for my fricassee, I wager.”
The children shrieked. “A monster! Save us, Miss Siddons!”
The governess raised her parasol and took aim, as if she had the enemy in her sights.
“It’s only Papa,” Charlie said. “Oh, Papa, you scared us! You look like a monster with those things hanging out of your hat!”
“How brave you are, Miss Siddons,” Sam said. “It’s not often a monster confronts such a formidable foe in the depths of a hazelnut forest.”
Laughing, the four of them scrambled up the steps of Hazelburn. Mary was seated on an oak bench on the porch. “Oh, Sam, do remove those ridiculous catkins from your head.” He took off his top hat and threw the branches over the porch railing into the tulip bed below. As he did so, he had a fleeting memory of Anna�
��s laughter as he played toreador.
Mary rose and took his hand. “Let’s go into the drawing room. I’ll pour you a sherry, and we’ll have tea.” She turned to Miss Siddons. “Surely your time could be better spent in teaching Caroline her alphabet. I can send the maid with the children if they want to play in the shrubbery.”
“This very afternoon, Mrs. Jarvis, Caroline learned to spell and write her name, and Charlie does an excellent capital ‘C’. So with those accomplishments behind us, I allowed my scholars a break from their studies.”
“And Miss Siddons deserves our gratitude for her courage in saving the children from the Monster of Hazelburn Woods,” Sam said. “She must be praised.” Charlie and Caroline giggled, and Mary shrugged and headed for the front door.
“Not sherry,” Sam said to her in the drawing room, as he put his hand over hers on the decanter. “I’ll have beer. Got to wean myself from the sherry.”
Cook answered Mary’s summons, bringing the beer from the servants’ quarters belowstairs. Sam settled into a comfortable armchair. Mary sat on the sofa in front of the window. She wore a deep crimson bodice and skirt that looked well with the pink flowers on the upholstery that framed her.
“Dear Sam, just in time, as I hoped you’d be. Cook has a new recipe for scones seasoned with oregano. You must try one with this liver pâté.” She put a dollop onto the scone and passed it to him. “And now, tell me about the Indians. I want to hear everything.”
“Colonel Fitzgibbon was a great help—”
“I want to hear about you, Sam, not your friend.”
“They liked my speech. I was generous in my praise of their military prowess. I told them the Beaver Dams victory would have been impossible without their help. Yes, I laid it on with a trowel. They like a bit of humour, so I called their Yankee opponent ‘General Jackass’, and that got a laugh. And when I wound up with my invitation to the summer ceremonies on Manitoulin Island, they applauded loudly.”
“Oh, Sam, I’m glad you did so well.” She reached for a plate on the table. “Now have a lemon square, and tell me about Mrs. Jameson.”
“Mrs. Jameson?”
“Yes, Mrs. Widmer came by yesterday afternoon on her horse. She said she watched the boat go out of the harbour yesterday and saw her standing against the railing with a guitar and a portmanteau. At first I wondered why she was aboard. But I expect she was doing some research for her book?”
“Yes, I think she got lots of material. She was with the Colonel and me at the ceremony and went with us afterwards to Mrs. Secord’s house for tea.”
“Probably got an earful from that one. I hope Anna doesn’t write her up as a sterling example of Canadian femininity. Tell me, does she make notes while people are talking? Or does she scribble it all down later?”
“The latter, I expect.” Then he showed her the drawing Anna had given him.
She smiled as she studied it. “You were such a pretty little boy, Sam. Can you see how much Charlie resembles you? It’s so pleasant to have this. I’ll thank Anna—we are now on first-name basis, as you may have noticed—when next I see her. Mrs. Widmer seems disappointed that I like the lady. You know, I think her real purpose in dropping by yesterday was to stir up trouble. She wanted me to think there was something going on between you and Anna. She is such a little troublemaker, and of course, her one aim in life is to alienate you and me and have a go at you herself.”
“On that score, my dear, you need have no worries.” And he told her how he’d got rid of the woman when she pressed him for a ride home. But he decided to say nothing about his visit to Job Crimshaw.
TWENTY-FOUR
In Anna’s first weeks in Toronto, she had grown accustomed to Robert’s solitary evening walks—rain, sleet or snowstorm— “for his constitution,” so he said. Probably, she realized now, his “constitutional” had ended in Markland’s office in the Parliament Buildings.
But in those days, at any rate, she had been free to work on her journal and translations without interruption. Now, since his comment about “servants’ tittle-tattle”, he stayed home every evening, perhaps in an effort to quell any rumours. Certainly, if Mrs. Hawkins were to meet her spy at the Parliament Buildings, she would have nothing to talk about except her employers’ seeming marital harmony.
On the night of her return from Niagara, Anna was in her usual place at the pianoforte. She had just finished Donna Anna’s aria from Don Giovanni, ‘Or sai chi l’onore’—and a demanding piece of singing it was—when Robert cleared his throat. She looked up from her sheet music, surprised to hear anything but the crackling of his newspapers and the clink of his wineglass on the table.
“Did you play that one on your guitar for Sam Jarvis?”
“Is there some innuendo in your remark, Robert? What is it all about? I played some Spanish music for Mr. Jarvis, Colonel Fitzgibbon and one hundred other passengers on the steamer. But no doubt your informant told you that the Colonel accompanied Mr. Jarvis?”
“My informant, as you call him, was Campbell, our guide to Niagara. He saw you going aboard the steamer with your luggage and said to me that he hoped you would find the landscape more appealing in springtime. If one can judge by your response, however, it appears that I have struck a nerve. Have you something you need to get off your bosom?”
“I am certain that Mrs. Hawkins told you about my need to research. You must surely understand that I cannot write a book on Upper Canada without getting beyond Toronto. In fact, Robert, I may as well tell you now that in the interests of further research, I intend to strike out this summer for the western and northern reaches of Upper Canada.”
“And who is to accompany you on this wilderness journey? Sam Jarvis?”
“I feel insulted to have such a question addressed to me.”
“It’s just vulgar curiosity, my dear.”
“I shall travel alone for most of my journey. I may meet Mr. Jarvis on Manitoulin Island. It is one of my several destinations. I don’t want to miss the Indian ceremonies in August. Mr. Jarvis will be there, of course.”
“I have another informant who told me what she saw on the wharf today.”
“It’s all beginning to sound like one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s bad mysteries. Who was this spy, may I ask?”
“Mrs. Widmer. I tipped my hat to her as I was coming from my office. ‘Sir,’ said she, ‘your good wife this very day was on the wharf near the soap factory where I went to strike a fair bargain for my potash. With my own eyes, I saw Mr. Jarvis kiss the lady’s hand.’ She then came up so close to me that I could smell the onions on her breath and added, ‘Look to the lady, as they say.’ She seemed angry, no doubt because from what I’ve observed, she has designs on Jarvis herself. But speak up, Anna. Explain yourself.”
“He kissed my hand because he was surprised and happy that Mrs. Alma had given me the little picture she had of him as a child. You remember that I pointed it out to you in the bedchamber? And they offered me their kind hospitality on this trip, too, though why it is necessary to explain all this, I do not know.”
“You are a loose cannon, Anna. At times, I fear the damage you may cause to my reputation by your waywardness.”
Anna moved to the mantel and took down an invitation that Mrs. Hawkins had placed there earlier in the day. “We are invited to a ball at Government House, the occasion being to introduce Lady Head to society. I shall be happy to accompany you, Robert, and I promise to be the Chancellor’s Lady par excellence. No waywardness, no stray cannonballs. And afterwards, you must give me an independent income of three hundred pounds a year and set me free.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Well then, Robert, I must think about what to do. I have a good deal on my mind. I have held it all back in deference to your exalted position in this community. I have given you, in the eyes of the world at least, a respectable married life. I do not hold myself accountable for Mrs. Widmer’s perverted views. I have put this new house in order and, to the best of m
y ability, promoted your happiness. But enough is enough. I know one thing. You cannot take an oak sapling, and prune it, and twist it into an ornament for the jardinière in your drawing room. Better to let it grow as it will—under the free air of heaven!”
“Hmm. Quite the metaphor. Now tell me, is there a threat implied in all this, Anna?”
“I counter with a question of my own. Will you set me free?”
“I make no promises.”
“Then I too make no promises.”
Next morning being bright and sunny, Anna walked along King Street, heading for Rowsell’s to buy material for the vice-regal ball. As she passed Crimshaw’s establishment, she heard a tap at the window. Looking in, she saw Mary Jarvis waving at her, motioning to her to come in.
“My dear Anna, are you shopping for the same reason I am?” Mary said as she stood in front of a broad table on which rolls of cloth were spread out.
“Quite a crowd, is it not? I suppose we all have but one purpose.” Anna gestured at the women flitting among the reticules, vinaigrettes, lace mittens and dance cards on offer.
“So exciting, a vice-regal ball. I do not know Lady Head well. I have met her at St. James, of course, and at our charity bazaar for the Relief of Poor Women in Childbirth, but this is her first big social occasion. It will give us an opportunity to...”
“See how she handles herself?”
Mary laughed. Then she unfurled the edge of a roll of pretty pink silk. “Do you like this?” she asked, pulling enough of it loose so that Anna could see the colour against her complexion.
“It suits you perfectly.”
“My dear husband told me, ‘Buy what you want.’ Bless him. And there’s a fine French dressmaker newly come to town. She has a small house on Market Street and charges ‘a pretty penny’, as Sam would say. But she has the latest patterns, and I’ve already picked out the one I want. It won’t show my ankles, alas, since the French woman tells me that hemlines have dropped in Paris. Oh, Anna, I’m babbling, but it’s all so exciting.” She turned to Crimshaw, who stood nearby, an obsequious smile revealing a mouth of crooked teeth. “I’ll take ten yards of this.” She moved to the counter, where the merchant laid down the roll for cutting.