Don Gutteridge - Bloody Relations

Marc had tried in vain to persuade her that this attitude was an inverted form of snobbishness and that if only she were to meet and get to know some of these women, she might change her mind. “I met most of them in my hat shop,” she’d reply, and no elaboration was deemed necessary. Marc also realized, but was too tactful to say, that Beth missed her brother and her neighbours, including the other Huggan sisters, from her days on the farm at Crawford’s Corners. All of them were now homesteading in the Iowa Territory, victims of the recent upheavals. She missed too the easygoing, unpretentious women of the Congregational church in Cobourg. As a compromise, but with scant conviction, they both now attended St. James on most Sundays.

So, improbably but happily, Beth and Marc found themselves speeding along King Street in the July gloaming, en route to the splendours of Spadina House. Once Beth made up her mind that something had to be done, she accepted it with grace and executed it with a will. If her husband required a pretty wife to decorate his arm and send the hearts of hopeful dancing partners aflutter, then so be it. She would smile and chatter as lightly as could be expected in such frivolous circumstances and dance the midnight down. After all, the cause was critical. And it was partly her own.

Constable Horatio Cobb was in a vile mood. And the fact that he had been put in such an uncharacteristic funk-being by his own admission a man of cherubic good cheer-had made him even more irritated at the world in general and at Constable Ewan Wilkie in particular. Wilkie had been inconsiderate enough to take to his bed on the one day in the year when every officer of the Crown, from pig warden to assistant sheriff, and every soldier and resuscitated militiaman had been pressed into service to protect and otherwise coddle the newly arrived earl of Durham. Cobb had spent the morning being elbowed and cursed by the citizens’ mob down at the Queen’s Wharf, frantic in their efforts to catch a glimpse of His Lordship’s haughty chin. Cobb’s capture of two pickpockets and a cutpurse had earned him a bruise on the left cheek and not a lick of thanks. After a mandated two-hour afternoon nap, the four regular constables and their chief were expected to return to their street patrols and remain there with utmost vigilance until the last carriage or ambulatory gentleman-drunks had found their way safely home from the governor’s gala at Spadina House. That is, unmolested by any thieves, rabble-rousers, or garlic-breathing gawkers who might be tempted to take advantage of the hubbub and inadvertence excited by the earl’s hospitality. As for Cobb and his fellow constables, it guaranteed them a long, foot-wearying night.

Cobb’s regular patrol was the southeast sector, below King and east of Bay as far as the city limits beyond Parliament Street to the Don River. It was an area he knew well, having superintended it for the three years he had been a member of the newly formed Toronto constabulary. It included his own home and half a dozen congenial watering holes that supplied him with a steady flow of useful information from a cadre of thirsty snitches, along with the odd meat pie avec flagon. He knew every alley and service lane where a miscreant might hide or contemplate ambush. If a window curtain were out of place or a shop door abnormally ajar, he would spot it in a wink and spring into fearsome action. This in spite of his unspring-like shape, which placed a bit too much rotundity just above the centre of gravity. Like his fellow patrolmen, he had learned to navigate in the dark or the shadowy near-dark-there were feeble candle-lamps only along King Street for a few blocks-preferring to deploy his keen sense of hearing rather than use the cumbersome lantern recommended by the chief. What did one do with it when the right hand reached for the trusty, wooden truncheon: hold it up to give the thug a clearer target?

But Cobb was not on Cobbian ground this evening, thanks to the perfidy of Wilkie. It was not that he had not covered for Wilkie before or that this area of town was totally unfamiliar. But given that the bigwigs’ ball was being held at Dr. Baldwin’s extravagance way out on the northwest edge of the city, Cobb’s own southeast patrol would have been as peaceful as a teetotaller’s picnic. So peaceful in fact that when Wilkie’s wife reported him sick at suppertime (he’d somehow managed to force down a roast-beef dinner before collapsing from the effort), Chief Sturges had reassigned Cobb to the stricken man’s area without a thought to the safety of the abandoned southeast sector.

It was now early evening. Two or three carriages had already passed him, heading west along Newgate Street, their occupants sitting sedately as if in their Sunday pews. How different, Cobb mused, would be their demeanor on the return trip, when the broughams, barouches, and democrats departing Spadina would be abulge with the whooping and dishevelled or quietly inebriated representatives of Upper Canada’s upper crust. At the corner of Newgate and Yonge, with the lingering acidities of Barnett’s tannery prickling his nose, Cobb turned and plodded dutifully past Hospital Street towards the northern border of his patrol along Lot Street. The summer night was beautiful, with a cool breeze to waft away the mosquitoes and the pungent scent of fresh grass and the invisible and nameless wildflowers that sprang up wherever they were not discouraged. So welcoming was the evening that Cobb was in danger of forfeiting his aggrieved state. And this in spite of his aching feet and the throb of his bruised cheek and Wilkie’s apostasy. Moreover, and to his unacknowledged disappointment, there had been not a single pub disturbance or domestic contretemps or attempted theft the entire time he had been tramping about the northwest sector, almost spoiling for a fight.

“Where in the world is this palace?” Beth said as she glanced left and right and observed only raw forest.

“We can’t be too far now,” Marc replied. The reins were slack in his right hand as the horse trotted at a leisurely pace along an ungravelled but well-worn path. “We’re starting to go uphill. No need to worry, there’s only one road in this part of the township.”

Certainly the grand house of the Baldwin family had been set well away from any encroachment by the rapidly expanding city. The southern portion of this pathway, above Lot Street, had already been named Spadina Avenue, but here, beyond the city limits, the wilderness loomed as a reminder of its general hegemony in a vast province where there were still only a few hundred thousand inhabitants.

“Ah, here we are!” Beth announced.

The road had not only begun to rise, it swung sharply northwest and then straightened out to become a gravelled approach to the edifice on the hill a quarter of a mile ahead. There was just enough light at the edges of the sky for Marc and Beth to discern the white ribbon of road and the fact that the woods had been cleared away thirty feet or so on either side, with vague smudges here and there indicating that more domestic and compliant trees had already been planted. By the time Marc had urged the horse and gig up to the impressive parabola where a dozen fancy carriages and several covered coaches were debouching their passengers, the air had darkened, and two or three intrepid stars had peeped out along the southwestern horizon. Still, enough of the solstice glow of mid-July remained to throw the silhouette of Spadina House into stark relief. The effect was sudden and imposing: massive turret, belvedere, balustrade, and chimney pot in a tumble of intimidating shadow against the diffident gloaming behind it. At least the verandah, illuminated by powerful lanterns of varied hue and several torches set on the lawn below, was beckoning: its graceful stairs, carpeted for the occasion, were strewn with cut blossoms whose perfume rose upon the little breeze that had arrived, it seemed, just to perform this amiable service. Two members of the Horse Guards, borrowed from the Fort George contingent, stood resplendent and watchful at either side of the entrance.