Duelling in a New World Read online

  In the lower hall of the tavern, he hands Susannah’s fricasseed chicken and her pumpkin pie to a serving man and proceeds upstairs to the ballroom. Fiddlers from the garrison have already tuned up, and tonight there’s a caller for the growing fad called “square dancing.” He sees the Smalls and the Elmsleys and two other couples swinging about to a brisk beat. Not a sign anywhere of the Glengarry Fencible!

  That officer, who from behind the oak tree overheard his conversation with Mrs. Small, challenged him to a duel two weeks ago. He has Elmsley to thank for coming to his aid on that one. He met White and the officer in a room at the court house, and after a spate of Latin which included his calling the lieutenant “pavo absolutus,” Elmsley ordered the “total turkey” to keep the peace for twelve months and post bonds totalling five hundred pounds. Though he hates feeling indebted to Elmsley, he recognizes the man’s wisdom in that thwarted affair.

  Now White heads straight for the bar reminding himself he must not get tipsy tonight. But a few drinks will put him in a frame of mind to carry out the scheme that he has planned carefully with malice aforethought. A cup of rum punch in hand, he searches the crowd to find the person he wants. Ah, there he is.

  “Smith, may I join you here against the wall?”

  “By all means, White. Since my wife died, I find these events difficult. It’s always good to have a friend to talk to. And you yourself must feel lonely without your wife.”

  The man is giving him an opportunity to talk about his and Marianne’s split, but White has no intention of giving out this information to the town’s most notorious gossip. “Let us drink and forget our problems,” he says, reaching for another glass of punch from the server who is making the rounds with a tray. He takes a glass for Smith as well.

  Their position could not be more perfect. Directly in front of them is the square dance group that contains the Smalls and the Elmsleys.

  As the dance ends, Mrs. Small takes Mrs. Elmsley’s arm, and steers her directly in front of him and Smith. Though Mrs. Elmsley is modestly dressed in a deep blue gown with a fichu at the neck, the Small woman wears the same pale yellow muslin dress she wore for her night of thwarted hanky panky. It has a low-cut neckline and as she catches White’s eye, she tugs up her gown just far enough to display those ankles of hers.

  “Quite a vision,” Smith says, pulling out the diamond-rimmed quizzing glass that he always keeps on a gold chain on his waistcoat. He puts it up to his eye and stares at the women who have just passed, concentrating, it seems, on the hussy’s bare white shoulders. “I wonder if all the things I hear about the Small woman could be true?”

  White has been waiting for this opening. “Absolutely. She is a whore,” he says in a low voice. “I had her as my own mistress when we lived in Niagara. I gave her up because I feared for my health.”

  “Your health?” Smith says, leaning towards White, his face flushed and his eyes avid.

  “Yes. The frequency of her amours with Mr. Tickell and the officers at Fort Niagara worried me. What is more, I had it on the best authority that . . .” Here White pauses strategically and takes another sip of his drink.

  “You had it on the best authority that . . . ?” Smith prompts.

  “That she was, while in England, the mistress of Lord Berkeley of Berkeley Castle. He was a good friend of Small, I understand, and he asked Small to . . .”

  Here White makes a show of searching for his snuff box. He takes it from the pocket of his tailcoat and opens the lid.

  “Come, come, man, out with it.” Smith is in a fidget of excitement now.

  “You must promise to keep what I tell you to yourself,” White says, trying to show reluctance to say more. He inhales the snuff and sneezes.

  “I swear. Not a word will pass my lips.”

  Not bloody likely. Everyone in this place knows about your loose tongue. God bless you for that!

  White has thought long and hard about the next tidbit. Whether it’s fact or fiction, he knows not, not does he care. “Lord Berkeley asked Small to take the woman off his hands. He was thoroughly sick of her, from what I hear. For this he paid his friend a substantial sum—enough to establish him in this new world—and he booked them an early passage to Niagara.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! But remember your promise to me. You must repeat none of this.”

  Soon after this exchange, Smith excuses himself, “to find a loo,” he says. But White laughs to himself when he sees the man walk directly over to Chief Justice Elmsley and whisper at length in his ear.

  By night’s end, Elmsley is sure to tell his wife. The friendship of the two women will be forever split asunder. And the whore will find herself a social pariah without a person in this little world to speak to.

  His mission accomplished, White does not wait to have a slice of Susannah’s good pie. He takes another drink and downs it as he leaves the ballroom. It has been a successful evening. He doesn’t even mind the headache that has come on from snorting the snuff in that box he borrowed from Peter Russell.

  He heads for home, savouring the small comfort that comes from knowing that he has vindicated his wife.

  Silly as she is, she has deserved a better husband than I have been.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  January 1, 1800

  It is mid-afternoon. With Charles and William out on the ice no doubt yelling “Hoicks, hoicks!” and Susannah’s little girls having their nap, John White decides to take advantage of the solitude and force himself to face an unpleasant task. At his desk in the withdrawing room, he pulls a stack of bills from a compartment and leafs through them. Berczy’s bill of forty-four pounds for “fixes” around the house and Mrs. Page’s cabin can be put aside until the man comes back from England. But look at the rest of them: Abner Miles, shopkeeper, forty-eight pounds; the German tailor, one hundred and fifty-five pounds; the garrison tally, fifty-one pounds; Dr. William Warren Baldwin, ten pounds; the schoolmaster William Cooper, ninety pounds—

  He throws the lot on the floor. It’s hopeless.

  What is he to do? As Attorney-General, a position to which he once aspired, he now has no influence. He remembers how he helped the Gov draft the slave bill; how he made the circuits with his friend Osgoode; how he set up the Law Society of Upper Canada and laid out the governing rules for the certification of lawyers.

  But Peter Hunter, the infamous Governor Poobah, wants no help from him. And Elmsley runs the whole show in the courts of the province. There are rumours that Elmsley may go to Lower Canada soon, but White knows now that there is no hope for his own advancement to Chief Justice. All that’s left to him of any import is the drafting of the land grants, and that brings only the daily squabbles, accusations, and insults from Jarvis.

  The special friends he has in this small world—Peter and Eliza Russell—seem almost as despairing as he is. He can do nothing to help them, nor can they offer him respite.

  He has heard nothing from Marianne or Ellen. What would they have to say to him anyway, if they could bring themselves to put quill to paper? They hate him. He did write one letter to Ellen and then threw it into the hearth. It’s hopeless to try to explain the inexplicable.

  There can be no future with Susannah. If they could ever marry—the most unlikely of events—how could he take on the expenses of her two little girls?

  “Moping melancholy” is the phrase that pops into his mind now to describe his woes. Looking back on his time in Upper Canada, he can trace a slope downwards into despair. Did he not once complain to William Osgoode of his unhappiness? Did he not even use that term “moping melancholy”? He seems to remember that his friend laughed at the phrase and tried to cheer him by encouraging him to think his efforts would be rewarded with promotion to Chief Justice. But that hope—indeed, all his hopes—are gone, gone, gone. “Moping melancholy,” yes, a pretentious phrase perhaps, but one that exactly sums up his present state in the pit of the inferno.

  He pours the rest of the sherry fro
m the decanter into his glass. His head pounds, and the blood from his nose trickles down onto his upper lip. He wipes it away with a napkin that lies beside the decanter.

  There is a frenzy of knocking on his front door. Mrs. Page is in the kitchen making supper. As he listens to her footsteps moving towards the door, he tries to scoop up the bills from the floor and throw them behind the sofa.

  “Where is he?” he hears a male voice say.

  Oh, oh.

  John Small bursts into the withdrawing room. “A word with you, sir,” he says, coming so close to White’s chair that he has no room to stand. A tall man, Small looms over him, one of his hands extended in a fist.

  “You are upset, Small. Please sit down.”

  “Ah, sir, those words tell me a good deal. You know why I have come today.”

  “I have no idea. But let us converse like reasonable gentlemen. I cannot talk to you while you are standing over me. Please, sit.” White gestures to a chair.

  Small sits down, then scrapes the chair across the floor so that it faces White’s. They are so close now their knees are almost touching.

  Susannah hovers in the doorway of the withdrawing room, obviously wondering what she should do. She twists her hands into her apron.

  “Please leave us to talk, Mrs. Page, but in a few minutes you might bring us some wine.”

  “No wine for me, woman. I want simply to have a few minutes alone with your master.”

  Susannah leaves. White takes a deep breath and waits.

  “Well?”

  “You have said things to that bastard Smith about my wife.”

  “I may have. What are you implying?”

  “He has been very liberal in certain scurrilous communications to the Elmsleys. They have passed on this communication to others, particularly to the Powells. Now the whole town is talking about my wife.”

  Small bobs his head from side to side as he says this, and the wig he wears slips to one side. He tears it off with one hand and places it on his knee. He runs his other hand through his mess of black hair. He is wearing a frock coat with silver buttons, one that seems too grand for his lowly station as Clerk of the Executive Council. But White notes the stains down the front of his waistcoat as if he had risen suddenly from his dinner table and upset a glass of grog over himself.

  “What are you staring at, White? Does it give you pleasure to see me in this state?”

  “I stare merely because I have no idea why you have come here today and why, having done so, you are telling me about your wife.”

  “I demand that you publicly deny the venomous gossip that Smith has spread.”

  “How can I deny it when I have no idea what exactly he said? Why do you not talk with him? He, according to you, is the man who has spread the gossip.”

  “The bastard has flown the coop, and no one knows when he will come home to roost. But does it matter? You are the one who started the rumours. He spoke directly to Elmsley and repeated, word by word, phrase by phrase, what you told him at the goddamn subscription ball. Out with it, White.” Small raises his fist and whacks it down on the arm of the chair. “What did you say?”

  “It is possible that he may have said more or less than I told him. If you will kindly repeat the exact tale which he communicated to the Chief Justice, then I will know whether there is anything to deny or not.”

  Oh, I relish these words.

  Small stands up. He trembles from head to foot. Tears run down his cheeks, and his face becomes so purple that for a moment White worries that he will drop into an apoplectic fit.

  “Sir, you are insolent. I will stay no longer in your accursed presence. Mr friend Alexander Macdonnell will call on you tomorrow morning.”

  He claps his wig back on his head, searches into the pocket of his frock coat and extracts his gloves.

  He throws one of them down on the floor in front of White’s chair. Then he runs from the room knocking into Susannah who has just come through the doorway carrying a tray. The bottle of wine smashes onto the floor spattering blood-red stains on the stray bills that he did not manage to hide. The front door opens, then smashes shut.

  Susannah sees the glove. She screams.

  “Hush, my dear,” he says, “please, please . . .”

  “You know what that glove means, John?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you cannot . . . you must not . . .”

  “Accept the challenge? I do not know what to do. Leave me, please.”

  She stoops down and tries to pick up the shards of glass with her fingers, putting the broken bits onto the tray. He bends over her and pulls her to her feet. “Leave it all for now, Susannah. I must be alone. Please.”

  She does as she is told. As she closes the withdrawing-room door behind her, he drops onto the sofa and shuts his eyes, trying to block out the horror of the afternoon.

  He hears the patter of the boys’ feet in the hallway and Susannah’s shushing of them. The moments pass. What to do?

  He remembers the character Edgar in King Lear, a production he once saw in Haymarket before he married Marianne. What was it that Edgar said? Something so pertinent to his present situation . . . Now he remembers, not the exact words probably, but something like this: “We are reconciled to death by the changes and chances of this mortal life which make us hate it.”

  He looks at the jagged neck of the wine bottle lying beside the sofa. He picks it up, brings it towards the pulsing blue vein of his left wrist. It would be easy, so easy to end this mortal life . . .

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  January 2, 1800

  White is still on the sofa in the withdrawing room. He has moved only once or twice in the night to find a chamberpot and to get a bottle of sherry from the kitchen cupboard. It is now mid-morning, a snowy, frosty day from what he has observed through the window behind the sofa. Susannah has been in to clean up the mess of spilled wine and broken glass. She spoke to him, but he lay with his eyes shut, pretending not to hear. Now that she has gone back to the hearth, he raises himself just enough to grasp the sherry bottle from the Pembroke table by the sofa. He splashes some of it into his glass, drinks it in one swallow, and prays for oblivion.

  But he is unable to shut out the basic question that plagues him. What is he to say to Macdonnell when he comes with Small’s formal challenge to a duel? He remembers how often in the past he has condemned duels: in newspapers, at dinners and parties in Niagara and York, and in the court houses of Upper Canada while Osgoode, not heeding a word, imposed token fines on murderers.

  He has himself been able to avoid two challenges: one from William Jarvis in Niagara—thanks to Russell—and the other more recently from the Glengarry Fencible.

  A gentle knock on the withdrawing-room door: “John, John, I must speak with you, please.”

  “Come in, Susannah.”

  She wears a starched dimity cotton dress in a becoming pale blue shade and a clean, ironed apron. She has pulled her blonde hair back into a neat braid, but strands of curls have slipped over her ears.

  “You are a vision in the midst of the squalor of this room,” he says, suddenly aware of his uncombed locks and unwashed face and the stink of wine from the carpet by the sofa.

  She appears to read his mind. “I must take this mat and hang it on the line. I shall throw some snow on it and give it a good whacking with the broom. And you, John, will you not come into your bedchamber where I have put some hot water into a pitcher for you to wash yourself? It is near ten o’clock.”

  “Got to get myself in hand, you’re right. Macdonnell is coming soon. Perhaps he is already on his way. But if he comes while I am still indisposed, pray take the message and deliver it to me.” He swings his legs off the sofa and tries to stand up.

  Susannah gives him a tug and gets him upright. She tilts her chin and looks into his eyes. “I will take no message, nor will I deliver one.” Her voice is fierce. He has never heard her speak this way before.

  “Well then . . .
what am I to do if the man comes knocking while I am still—”

  “I hope you will not accept the challenge, John. But if you do, I must have no part of it. I will not contaminate myself with the unspeakable horror of duels . . .” As her voice trails into silence, she raises her fist as if she would strike him.

  “Whoa, Susannah, what is this all about?”

  “I told you once that my husband died of a gunshot wound . . .”

  “In a duel, is that what you are telling me?”

  “Yes, in Kingston. When my man was appointed Clerk of the Legislative Council, a captain in the 25th Regiment of Foot wanted his position, and my husband was angry. He lost his temper and challenged —”

  “My God, I know this story. Your husband was Peter Clark. His opponent was David Sutherland who killed him, and I—”

  “You made a brave defence, sir. But Chief Justice Osgoode let the murderer go free with a fine. I remember the amount to this day. Thirteen shillings and fourpence. My husband’s life was valued at thirteen shillings and fourpence, think of that, thirteen shillings and—”

  White pulls her to him and puts his arms around her. “You were in the courtroom, my dear?”

  “Yes, I heard it all. I suffered it all.” She is sobbing now. He feels her tears wet against his cheek.

  But her name is Susannah Page. Her husband’s surname was Clark. What . . .?

  He says nothing aloud, simply holds her tight and hopes that she feels some comfort from the close embrace.

  Finally she says, “You must have wondered how I came into service. My little girls were born almost nine months after my husband’s murder. I changed my name back to Page, my maiden name, got on a packet boat with my babes and settled here. Made a fresh start, I did, though times were hard until I found you, sir . . .” More sobs.