Vital Secrets

by Don Gutteridge

  “You are very observant, Lieutenant. In fact, the hairbrushes, hand-mirror, and the candlesticks were especially made for my parents as a wedding gift, a matched set. Or so my father told me when I was old enough to understand. They are all that I have left of them—or England—and I bring them with me everywhere.”

  “Aren’t you afraid they’ll be stolen?” Rick asked.

  “Not with Jeremiah nearby, I’m not. And as he’s been complaining of a toothache all day, I expect he’ll be more vigilant than usual at his post tonight.”

  “And we’ve got policemen patrolling our streets,” Rick said, as if he himself were native-born and a major contributor to local improvements.

  As they were getting up to leave, Mrs. Thedford said, “I hope you all plan to come to the farce tonight, as guests of the company. And, of course, you’re welcome to join us in the hotel for supper.”

  “Thank you. I wouldn’t miss either for the world,” Jenkin said with a brief bow.

  “I’ll be here every night this week,” Rick said with an artful glance at Tessa, who had sat through the polite chatter without saying a word, though she and Mrs. Thedford had exchanged cryptic looks, and the latter had given Rick what could only be described as critical scrutiny.

  Tessa beamed him a conspiratorial smile, then turned to determine its effect upon Mrs. Thedford. But that lady’s gaze rested on Marc.

  “And how about you, Mr. Edwards?”

  “I must decline, ma’am. I am engaged to dine with my fiancée’s aunt this evening.”

  “Ah, I understand.” Mrs. Thedford’s eyebrows rose in interest. “But you’ll come later in the week, to the Shakespeare, perhaps?”

  “Yes, I will,” he said, and realized with a start that he meant it.

  Rick accompanied Marc back through the gloomy theatre to the front doors. “Isn’t Tessa just the most darling thing you’ve ever set eyes upon?” he asked imploringly.

  “You’ve got quite a girl there, Rick,” Marc replied, and left it at that.

  CATHERINE ROBERTS WAS BETH’S AUNT, HER mother’s sister, who had grown up with the McCrae family in Pennsylvania. After Beth’s mother died, her grieving father had taken his children to a new Congregational ministry in Cobourg. Aunt Catherine married and went to live in New England, where her affection for things English had taken root. So much so that when she herself was widowed just two years ago, she had readily accepted Beth’s offer to come to this British colony and invest jointly in their millinery shop on fashionable King Street. Ever since his engagement to Beth had been announced (“proclaimed” would be a more accurate description), Marc had arranged to have supper with Aunt Catherine on the second Monday of each month.

  “Right on time, Marc.” She smiled as she led him through the shop towards the stairs that would take them to her apartment above. “It must be the military in you.”

  “Or the lawyer,” Marc said. He loved to watch the soft gray eyes light up in their bemused way behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. Like Beth, she was a diminutive woman with an Irish complexion and sunny disposition. Without ostentation, she always dressed and carried herself with a spare dignity that impressed her wealthy customers and helped to account for the success of the enterprise—that, plus her Yankee business acumen.

  “What’s going on in the back room?” Marc asked at the sound of strange voices.

  “I’ve had to hire a pair of extra girls,” she said, “to handle the dress-making side of the shop. It’s doing very well for us, and the girls do like to talk while they’re sewing.”

  “That’s not a girl’s voice.”

  “Oh, that’s George. He’s just come in the back door. He’s been away every time you’ve come for supper—not deliberately, you understand.”

  “I find you incapable of subterfuge.”

  “George, stop teasing my girls and come in here for a minute!”

  As the giggling died down behind him, there emerged from the door to the workroom a man of twenty-five or so, of medium build, with a baby-faced handsomeness that would appeal to a certain breed of undiscriminating young woman. His dark eyes were still dancing with the charm he had just loosed on the seamstresses. But when he spied Marc, he stopped in his tracks, and glowered at him with undisguised disdain.

  “George Revere, wipe that frown off your face and shake hands with Lieutenant Marc Edwards.” There was an edge of authority in Aunt Catherine’s voice that Marc had not heard before.

  George Revere glanced at his aunt—slyly? fearfully?—and dredged up a smile. “Pleased ta meet ya,” he said with a noticeable New York accent. His handshake was limp.

  “George, as you know, has come up from the States to help me here until Beth comes back. After which he hopes to be in business for himself.”

  “Sorry, Auntie, but I gotta meet someone in a few minutes.”

  Aunt Catherine gave him a knowing nod, then added, “But not before you take that costume on up to the Regency Theatre and pick up the others we’ve promised to mend.”

  George Revere muttered something rebellious under his breath, wheeled, and ran out the back way.

  “Thank God he’s not a blood nephew,” his aunt said.

  BY SIX-THIRTY THEY HAD FINISHED SUPPER, and while one of the girls from the shop came upstairs to clear away the dishes, Marc and Aunt Catherine repaired to the sitting-room, where a low fire was keeping the early-evening chill at bay. Usually, they sat comfortably here for several hours, conversing when they felt like it, sipping a sherry or not, reading or reading aloud, whatever the mood of one or the other dictated.

  “George is a good lad at heart,” Aunt Catherine said suddenly. “But I’m afraid he has it in for anybody in a British uniform.”

  “Oh?”

  “His maternal grandparents had their plantation and home burned to the ground by the English army in the War of Independence. And, like a good republican, he’s taken up the resentment with the zeal of a convert.”

  “What’s he doing up here, then?”

  “Ah—he only hates the English when they’re in tunics.” She smiled wryly. “And I think he feels that Upper Canadians will soon come to their senses, throw off their shackles, and join the Union.”

  Aunt Catherine was fiddling with something in the pocket of her apron, and when she caught Marc noticing it, she stopped abruptly. “But he’s got a head for business, and if he settles down and proves himself, Beth and I plan to buy into a haberdashery down the street on his behalf.”

  “What is that you’re toying with?” Marc asked, more amused than irritated.

  Aunt Catherine looked suddenly solemn. “I went to the post office at noon and saw a letter there for you from Beth.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, let’s open it and read the good news together.”

  “I—I wasn’t sure it would be good news and so, very selfishly, I decided to wait till we’d finished our supper.”

  Marc smiled assurance, and took the letter from her trembling hand. He began reading it aloud, editing only those parts obviously intended for his eyes only. As was her custom, Beth wrote her weekly missive in installments as things happened around her or came into her mind. Hence the first two pages were detailed accounts of the harvest (healthy yields, ruinous prices), Aaron’s improving health, Winnifred’s brave front in respect to the baby’s being overdue, Thomas’s occasional stints on annual road-duty, the fancies and foibles of the unmarried Huggan girls, and so on. At the top of page three came the news they were both hoping for: Winnifred was delivered of a baby girl, mother and child having come through their mutual ordeal in fine shape.

  “Wonderful!” Aunt Catherine cried. “And that means all the plans we made for the wedding are actually going to happen! It’s hard to believe.”

  Marc seconded that.

  “Is there more?”

  “Yes. The babe’s been named Mary, and Beth says, ‘When Winn told me that she and Thomas had called the girl Mary, after his late mother, I burst into tears, and q
uite alarmed Thomas. Then, without thinking, I told them about the story you related to me last March in Cobourg about the Aunt Mary who died before you were born and whose sudden death so upset your uncle Jabez that he could never speak about her in public or private again. I hope you don’t mind me telling that bit of family history, for I consider it part of our history now. Anyways, the Ladies Aid of the church are now moving straight ahead on the details of the ceremony a week from next Sunday. I expect you and Auntie will be getting more than one letter a week from now until that wondrous day. All my love, Beth.’”

  “Well, such news as this calls for a celebratory drink,” Marc said, reaching for the sherry. Included among the “good news” was the fact that Thomas Goodall was too busy with the harvest, road-duty, and a new babe to be involved with Mackenzie’s rabble-rousers. “What do you say?”

  “Oh my, Marc, I forgot to tell you, but I’ve been anticipating this letter so much it slipped my mind.”

  “Not bad news?”

  “No, no. Quite the opposite. As part payment for mending their costumes, the theatre people have promised me two box seats for tonight’s play. It’s a French farce of some sort, so it ought to be mildly diverting.”

  Marc grinned. “It’ll take a lot to divert my thoughts tonight, but let’s give the theatre folk a chance to try.”

  SEVEN

  Marc took Aunt Catherine’s arm and they strolled eastward along King Street in the cool twilight of the Indian summer that the city had enjoyed for several weeks: warm and dry in the day and frosty and dry during the lengthening nights. As a result, streets and roads were amazingly passable, and conditions for the fall harvest were the best in recent memory.

  The play was to start at eight-thirty, so they stretched their fifteen-minute walk to Colborne and West Market Streets to half an hour, pausing to enjoy the window displays of the many shops along King. At Church Street they admired the way the white stone of the courthouse and the jail seemed to have absorbed the last of the sun’s light and were now radiating it back into the semi-dark. Reluctantly, they turned south to Colborne, and swung east again towards West Market, a short block away. They were greeted by a scene that was anything but pastoral.

  “Well, I didn’t expect this!” Aunt Catherine said.

  Neither had Marc. Ogden Frank had pulled out all the stops for the four-day run of the Bowery Touring Company, the first professional troupe to grace his Regency Theatre. He had set bright candle-lanterns on stanchions all along the boardwalk in front of the building. Into their pools of light spilled a dozen carriages and their stamping, fretful teams. The rutted but dry streets had tempted the more prosperous citizens to drive to the Regency in style, though the reception was nowhere near as orderly as they might have wished. Frank had evidently hired a number of stable boys to act as grooms, footmen, and greeters—a few even wore some sort of ill-fitting crimson livery—but the lads, eager enough, were occasioning more confusion than courtesy. A team of matched grays and their vehicle was being hauled towards the stable yard with one outraged gentleman still in it, while his bonneted lady stood in befuddlement under the canopy of the false balcony. Another extravagantly attired chatelaine had her brand-new, imported boot stepped on by an anxious greeter, and in jerking away in pain, she managed to put the other boot into a puddle of fresh horse-dung. Farther down at the corner, a lead-horse had taken offense at the strange hand on its bridle and bolted, the vacant carriage clattering behind like a rudderless skiff. The sidewalks on both sides of Colborne were now jammed with couples and parties jostling and otherwise enjoying the drama on the street.

  Aunt Catherine laughed out loud. “It’s like a dance at the Grange run by the inmates of Bedlam!”

  Ogden Frank himself was oblivious to these minor lapses of organization, for he stood proudly in front of the oaken double-doors, accoutred in the military uniform his father had worn at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane. He exclaimed his welcomes so effusively that no one except his wife had any idea what he was sputtering at them. Madge Frank stood just behind him and took tickets from those few people she didn’t know and tried her best to smile on those she did. The three Frank children were acting as ushers inside, guiding patrons to their boxes or pointing others to the gallery above or the benches in the pit.

  Marc boosted Aunt Catherine up the final step and into their box at the back-left of the main room. He held out a chair for her, then sat down beside her. There were two other chairs in the box, but no-one else came to join them.

  “Milady Surprised,” Aunt Catherine read from the hastily printed program. “A Farce in Two Acts. I think we’d better brace ourselves.”

  Marc was looking at the transformed theatre around him. Candles, which had been lit in candelabra along the walls, threw a wash of pale light over the hundred or so people who were now filling the available seats. The stage area itself was brightly lit from above by three chandeliers and from below by six Argand lamps that served as footlights. Several flats had been erected at the rear of the stage to give the illusion of a windowed interior, and the most prominent feature of the various domestic props within it was a gigantic bed—Jeremiah’s handiwork, no doubt.

  “I see what you mean,” Marc said.

  To the left of the stage, near the curtained door, the enterprising Franks had set up a bar, behind which was temptingly displayed a tapped keg of ale. The interval should prove lively, Marc thought, even if the play doesn’t.

  “Oh, there’re your friends, I think,” Aunt Catherine said.

  In a box on the wall opposite but right next to the stage itself sat Owen Jenkin and Rick Hilliard among several other officers from the garrison. Rick was leaning on the railing, the better to stare into Tessa’s eyes during the performance. Jenkin waved at Marc and smiled. In the other two boxes across from him, Marc noticed many familiar faces from among the members of the Family Compact, along with two ardent Reformers, Robert Baldwin and Francis Hincks. Those in the pit and the gallery at the back looked to be a cross-section of tradesmen, small businessmen, and local farmers out on the town.

  “My God, I don’t believe what I’m seeing!”

  “What is it, Marc?”

  “Over there, in the front row of the gallery. It’s Constable Cobb.”

  “Why, so it is,” Aunt Catherine said cheerfully, and waved a hanky until she got Cobb’s attention. In turn he waved and smiled, as did the woman seated beside him.

  “And he’s brought Dora. How nice.”

  “You’ve met his wife?”

  “Oh, yes. Horatio brought her along one day last August, for a new hat. She’s a very interesting woman.”

  Constable Cobb had been a significant and courageous partner in the investigation Marc had led into the death of a privy councillor, during which the policeman had had occasion to visit the millinery shop and, thereafter, to stop in on his patrol regularly for tea and gossip. Since then, Marc had bumped into Cobb on the street from time to time, and always spent a few minutes reminiscing about their joint adventure. But the rough-edged constable’s appearance in the audience of a French farce surprised him. Was he here on some sort of official business? Nothing more could be said about the matter, however, because the players had now arrived onstage to an enthusiastic welcome from the drama-starved citizens of Toronto and York County.

  Mrs. Thedford had assured them earlier that what they would see this evening would not in any way reflect the fractious goings-on of the afternoon rehearsal. And she was right. These were professionals through and through. Tessa’s French maid, in black satin and crocheted cap-and-apron, was sprightly, and her staccato dialogue and double-takes delivered with a speed and confidence that belied her youth and inexperience. Even the Yankee twang and dropped g’s had vanished. And, as Mrs. Thedford had insisted, it was Dorothea Clarkson who did have to carry the play as the paramour of the philandering husband in the piece. As such, she was plopped in and under and behind the big, adulterous bed at stage-centre, in addition to being stuffe
d into a trunk and made immobile behind an arras, all the while emitting a series of aborted shrieks, cries of surprise, and wails of uncorrectable regret set amongst sympathy-gaining appeals to the capricious gods of love. She gave no sign of illness or fatigue and, in fact, her energy seemed to feed on the laughter she drew in raucous waves from every corner of the theatre.

  Merriwether played the ageing, and alas married, roué with stolid good humour, while Mrs. Thedford shone as the outraged wife, even though her scenes were few in Act One. Clarence Beasley played the hapless bumpkin from the country in hopeless pursuit of Mistress Thea with much body-wit and mugging of face, qualities that Marc would not have inferred from the young man’s somewhat wooden attempts at Shakespeare. Here the dreadful nasalities from south of the border were deliberately deployed to great comic effect. Finally, if Dawson Armstrong had unearthed another bottle of whiskey, it did nothing to diminish his polished performance as the innkeeper who is the ostensible friend and co-conspirator of the cheating spouse but at the same time lusts after his chum’s wife when he isn’t ogling the maid.

  The first act ended with a burst of applause and approbation that was sustained for a full minute. In the midst of which it occurred to Marc that here in this simple chamber was represented a cross-section of Upper Canadian society, including the staunchest members of both the Tory and Reform parties, and they had just joined together, spontaneously, in a kind of communal laughter in which social boundaries and political divisions had been magically dissolved. It was hard to believe that at this moment treasonous rallies might actually be taking place within a mile of where they were sitting.

  “You can bring me up a glass of wine if they have any,” Aunt Catherine said to Marc as he started down the ladder from their box. “I don’t fancy risking those steps again.”