by Ruth Glover
Anne and Tierney were impressed by this piece of information.
“Tell us,” Anne asked, “aboot wages. What may one expect to receive in the way of pay?”
“First of all, let me mention that a maximum work day of ten hours is set. I know you will be impressed by this, considering the longer hours women work in your factories, and at jobs that have no appeal for them. Here, you will be putting your womanly skills to work and need not fear that you are unqualified. A minimum wage of fifteen dollars a month is offered, and an overtime rate of fifteen cents per hour is also set. Clear enough?” Ishbel Mountjoy looked carefully around the circle of women before she continued.
“Let me read a typical contract form, in part: ‘I shall have every Sunday evening free after half-past six, unless a different arrangement has been agreed upon. I shall be addressed as ‘Miss’ and be referred to as ‘housekeeper.’”
And now it was the turn of the raggle-taggle group of women to look impressed, and they looked at each other and nodded solemnly before turning their attention back to Mrs. Mountjoy and the continued reading of the contract.
“‘I shall have the use of a suitable room one evening a week in which I may entertain guests until ten o’clock . . . comfortable lodgings shall be provided for me by my employer . . . I shall be privileged to enter the house by the front door . . .’”
“But what if a place is unacceptable, not what it was represented to be?” a hesitant listener asked. “After all, you can’t really know until you get to a place whether you want to stay and work there.”
Confirming nods could be seen all around the group, which had now swelled to a dozen women, with a few males listening disgustedly for a few seconds and moving on, shaking their heads and tapping their foreheads.
“Either party may terminate the arrangement, the contract, at any time simply by giving two weeks’ notice. As you see, everything to make for a satisfactory situation is being cared for. This is very important—a point that has helped many to make the decision to sign up. You’ll be interested to know that hundreds are responding, here and in other European countries, and we shall continue to spread the word until every need is met, on both sides of the ocean. Not only the men needing wives and the households needing domestic help, but the girls and women needing desperately to have a choice about their future.
“Let me ask you, seriously, ladies: Do you have a future, as things are now? If not, you may view this opening as God’s hand of guidance for your life.”
Ishbel Mountjoy was invoking powerful forces here. But it seemed to have the desired effect. Women took deep breaths and seemed relieved of some worrisome uncertainty—whether or not the Almighty would look with favor upon such a project.
“Transportation . . . travel—” The fact that it was such a huge undertaking, and at such a distance, put an edge of fear into the voice of the inquirer who had probably never been farther from home than the distance from Scottish croft to Aberdeen streets.
“All cared for by the Society. All one has to do is sign up, arrange to meet me here at a designated time, and the rest follows automatically. Now, any more questions?” Mrs. Mountjoy was all business . . . pleasant business. It seemed she believed in her Society and its objectives.
“What about the weather?” The questioner seemed to have settled the weightier problems and now honed in on secondary problems.
All heads lifted from their pamphlet reading, and all eyes waited for the answer. Everyone had heard stories of the prairies, the blizzards, the dust storms, the mosquitoes! If you knew anyone who knew anyone who knew anyone who had contact with an emigrant in the territories, you knew about these legendary problems faced by pioneers in the West.
A light laugh issued from the otherwise businesslike, rather stern mouth of Ishbel Mountjoy. “You see me before you. I’ve lived through all seasons there and have survived in rather fine fashion, wouldn’t you say?”
The doubt on several faces may have persuaded Ishbel Mountjoy to bridle a bit and add, “Your own highland weather would cause many a delicate female to cringe, and we’re not expecting women of delicate sensibilities to respond to the challenge of the Canadian West. This is for the woman with the heart of an adventurer. The woman of courage, strength, determination, and even humor. For every woman who quits, a thousand stand ready to take her place. And her man.”
Again that reference to marriage. And it may have had the desired effect, for several women brightened. Well, marriage was the least of Tierney’s thoughts! In fact, she had determined, when Robbie Dunbar sailed away, that she would never consider marriage again.
But a pioneer, a woman of adventure! As a lone star braves the night’s overwhelming darkness and endures, so Tierney responded to the challenge of the tremendous odds presented by the speaker. Was challenged and, in her heart, cried out a silent but vigorous “Aye!”
Glancing at Anne to see what her reaction might be to all of this, it was to see Anne’s lips parted slightly; she was breathing quickly as though having run through a troop, her color was high as though she had walked through a gale, and in Anne’s eyes something flickered that Tierney recognized as a glimmer of that same star that had risen on her own dark horizon.
Anne’s eyes were the exalted eyes of one who explores untraversed regions to mark out a new route—a true pioneer, a dedicated adventurer.
Were Tierney’s eyes any less expressive? Surely Anne saw her own commitment mirrored there as the girls looked searchingly at one another. If what Ishbel Mountjoy had set out to do was instill in her hearers a sense of well-being, power, and importance, of being in charge of their own future, she had wonderfully succeeded where Tierney Caulder and Anne Fraser were concerned.
“Be on this spot at noon three days from now,” Ishbel Mountjoy said, striking while the iron was hot, “with whatever you wish to take with you—no more than two bags each, please. Now, who wants to be first to sign up?”
All right, girls—time to ascend.”
Tierney and Anne looked at each other, stifling grins. Through the gloom of the ship’s hold where they were quartered, amid the scuffle and scurry of preparing to go up on deck, in spite of the heavy odor of too many bodies in one space—the girls found occasion to laugh. Ascend, indeed!
No matter the moment’s disarray, no matter the occasion’s emergency, no matter the situation’s aggravation, Ishbel Mountjoy kept her poise, kept her standards. Her good English schooling and training never forsook her. Canadian she may have become, but English she would remain until the day she died. Where Ishbel Mountjoy went, there went a little bit of England. And there went propriety.
“I can imagine,” Tierney had said one time to Anne, shaking her head in unbelief at the woman’s magnificent aplomb in the face of some emergency, “the ship goin’ doon and the billows risin’ over our heads, and Mrs. Mountjoy strictly insistin’, ‘One at a time, girls, one at a time.’”
Ishbel Mountjoy was the perfect choice to represent the British Women’s Emigration Society. Not only could she give a lucid explanation about why a move to Canada was advantageous, painting an attractive picture of all it had to offer the downtrodden, abused, discouraged, and neglected females of the British Isles, but her very appearance and demeanor spoke of solid Victorian virtues. Wherever the name of the good queen was invoked, there went morality, excellence of character, modesty, decency. And there went Ishbel Mountjoy.
The group Mrs. Mountjoy had managed to assemble—with the help of others who had spread themselves over England, Ireland, and Scotland—was a motley crew, about forty-five females in all; there were farm girls, slum girls, impoverished girls of a slightly better “class”; girls from families with too many children to provide for them properly; girls whose parents had died, leaving them no alternative but to seek refuge with reluctant relatives.
There were those among them who could not rightly be called “girls,” being more advanced in years, though still single—for one reason or another marriag
e had passed them by. There were several widows who had been left with no means of support, women weary of serving as scullery maids or laundresses in the homes of the favored and titled. But all, regardless of age, were in good health (or represented themselves as such, desperately fearing being turned back because of some illness or disease), and were, in normal times, full of life and the sense of adventure. It couldn’t help but spill over from time to time.
But after several days at sea with the ship wallowing in the grip of a storm, even the healthiest among them appeared peaked, pale, and wan. Some suffered the miseries of severe seasickness, and with facilities for personal grooming limited, were in considerable disarray of body, not to mention mind and spirit.
There were some three hundred females quartered in a space that would have been overcrowded with one-third that number. And yet they considered themselves favored; men, they understood, were in a hold below where farm animals had been kept previously, and the air, what there was of it, was noxious. For eating purposes, they understood, there was a large table in the middle of the hold, but so wretched was the food, the men from the kitchen dare not come in lest they be mobbed, even killed. Standing at the door, they literally threw chunks of meat to the sweating, swaying, cursing pack of men; they tossed in potatoes, cooked in their jackets, deposited cans of water at the door, and fled.
“Good catchers and tall fellers get most of the grub,” one poor, thin young man had conveyed to Anne when a lull in the storm had allowed groups of emigrants to “ascend” for air and exercise.
Eventually a delegation of men had insisted on seeing the captain. “We’ll take over the ship and turn her back to Liverpool,” they threatened, “if things don’t improve.”
Word seeped into the women’s compartments that the captain, recognizing the problem and the desperation, had chosen fifty men, given them free passage, and put them to work preparing decent meals, feeding the starving horde, and cleaning the toilets. Even the women benefited from the improved menu.
Today, feeling better, and the weather being conducive, the women and girls had bathed themselves, in a limited fashion, washed hair for the first time since leaving land, and were looking forward to going up on deck to dry it.
With Mrs. Mountjoy’s businesslike order, “Assemble for ascending,” the girls jockeyed for position at the foot of the ladder. A pained glance from the eye of their leader reminded them of their manners, and with a sigh they obeyed the injunction of their morning devotions, led by Ishbel herself: “In honor preferring one another.”
As the girls were preferring one another, stepping aside as graciously as they could to allow for a peaceable lineup, awaiting the command to “ascend,” Tierney’s thoughts flew to Binkiebrae and home. Her heart was still raw from the painful separation from family and loved ones, her thoughts were still full of the memories of that wrenching leave-taking and the probability of never seeing James again.
“Maybe,” she had offered between tears and sobs, “you’ll come oot to Canada after a while, James. Could it be, d’ye think?”
“Na, na, sister, never think on’t. I’m fer Scotland. And Phrenia, she’d never agree t’ leave her folk. See, it’s like a game of dominoes—one after the other, leavin’. Someone has tae stop it, or Binkiebrae will be a ghostly place. Na, na, it’s guid-bye fer all time, I’m thinkin’. Onless ye coom back, and I dinna think ye’re aboot to.” And James’s eyes, too, puddled with tears, tears of which he was not ashamed.
According to Anne, her farewells had been more subdued. Angry at first, flatly refusing permission for her to go, her father had found himself helpless in the face of Anne’s adamant preparations, short of locking her up. And how would that end? With her continuing with her plans when she was eventually loosed, with nothing gained in the end by him and his demands.
“Go then!” he had finally agreed wearily. “But what I’ll tell the master I dinna ken.” It seemed to be Paul Fraser’s chief concern.
“Tell him he dinna own me. Tell him,” she added recklessly, “he dinna own any of the Frasers.” Paul had growled and shifted uncomfortably, obviously dreading the reaction of the MacDermotts.
Anne’s brothers, Pauly and Sam, when they saw her determination, confessed they would miss their only sister, wishing they were bold enough to go with her.
“Ye’d have to be a lass,” she had told them. “This plan isna for laddies. Find yersel’ somebody that’ll pay yer way, and ye can work it off. A sort of indenture, I guess, tho’ not sae long or binding. The debt could be paid off sooner, and ye’d be free to make yer own way, get your own place. Think on’t!”
The brothers promised, with true longing, to “think on’t,” and gave their sister a hug and kiss, something they had not done in all their lives, to her memory, until this moment. It meant something to Anne; she found herself, at times, thinking “on’t” and rejoicing over the separation more than regretting it. It had been a sweeter moment than any she could recall since the death of her mother, and it did much to wipe out the years of her brothers’ carelessness and unconcern.
The actual moment of their leaving Binkiebrae had been marked by the turnout of most of the small hamlet, embracing, waving, with a few tears making their unaccustomed way down the craggy, wind-worn faces of friends and neighbors. Robbie Dunbar’s family had told her, with regret, “We dinna know whaur Robbie be, Tierney. We havna had time to hear from ’im.” And it was true; there had been, as yet, no communication from the absent sons; it was too soon.
Tierney and Anne turned from the warm show of affection to climb aboard the cart. Looking over the heads of the assembled group they could see a lone horse and haughty rider—Lucian MacDermott.
Before touching heels to his mount and whirling away, Lucian’s malevolent gaze met the startled eyes of Anne. His lips curled in a sneer, his slitted eyes glittered, and he touched his hand to his forehead in a mocking salute. Anne shivered, her gaze caught in his, like that of a snared bird. His presence—towering and menacing—was more threatening than words could have been. Anne’s last impression of Binkiebrae was of impending doom.
“Quick, settle doon, and we’ll be on our way,” Tierney ordered under her breath. “An’ forget him; he can’t reach you or touch you, ever again.”
With more than a hint of hysteria Anne dragged her eyes from Lucian’s hypnotic gaze. At the last his sneer changed to something resembling a smile—a mocking, twisted smile, a smile of . . . what? Disdain? Superiority? Promise? Surely not a promise. And a promise of what? In a day’s time she would be forever beyond the long arm of the MacDermott clan. Wouldn’t she?
Tierney and Anne prepared to settle themselves among turnips, not as odorous as the onions of the earlier trip when they had met Ishbel Mountjoy and established their future, but equally dirty. Carefully spreading sacks, they protected their best and finest clothes against starting the journey in a state that would call forth correction or condemnation from the leader of the group. Mrs. Ishbel Mountjoy was to meet them at the designated place and take charge of them from then on; they planned to meet her in satisfactory condition.
What a whirl of activity it had turned out to be! For girls who had never been farther from home than Aberdeen, the world opened amazingly to new faces, new experiences, new speech. Their own speech began to show change almost immediately.
“Girls,” Mrs. Mountjoy had said, looking around the circle of faces in her charge and having listened to the distinctive rolling burr that marked their manner of talking, “it’ll be to your advantage to make an effort to drop the colloquialisms—the regional dialect expressions—from your talk and to discontinue rolling your r’s. It makes it difficult, at times, to understand you. I’m sure, knowing the problem, you’ll work on it.”
And the Scotswomen, astonished that their manner of speech was strange in any fashion or hard to understand, made an attempt to speak more like Mrs. Mountjoy, herself the epitome of all things acceptable, the judge of all things unacceptable.
Upon reaching the ship, they were joined by a group of girls recruited from London, Liverpool, and other cities, and they saw, for the first time, Pearly Gates of the vivid little face, thin figure, and disreputable clothing. If these were the child’s best garments, Tierney and Anne had thought, noting her particularly, how dreadful had been the rags she left behind. No wonder she was taking off for greener pastures—England obviously had not been kind to Pearly Gates.
Aboard the Lake Manitoba, making up their beds, Tierney had found herself next to the girl, a mere waif of the streets, she supposed, and had introduced herself.
“I’m Tierney Caulder, from Binkiebrae, near Aberdeen,” she said, and added, “seems we’re to be bunk mates. That’s my friend, Anne Fraser, up there above me, makin’ up that bunk for hersel’. She’s also from Binkiebrae.”
“I’m from Lunnon,” the wisp of a girl had said, holding out a small, clawlike hand, “and me name’s Pearly Gates.”
Only Tierney’s kind heart kept her from repeating the name and exclaiming in amused tones, “Pearly Gates!”
“Laugh if y’ want ter,” Pearly had sighed, as though reading her thoughts. “Most people does. I have a bruvver named Garden; he gets as much fun poked at him as me, though he looks sharp at people when they do it, and dares ’em to laugh at ’im. Gets in lots of fights, me bruvver Garden. Me muvver’s got a new babby comin’ any day now, and me favver says he’s goin’ ter call it Heavenly, no matter if it’s a boy or a girl. I guess I should be grateful he dint name me lych-gate.”
“I guess so! Pearly—it’s really verra . . . nice. Your favver . . . father must have a rare sense of humor.”
“Oh, he’s a real card, me favver is. Especially when he’s in his cups.”
“Is he in his . . . cups often?”
“Often, and always when a new babby is born.”
