Don Gutteridge - Bloody Relations

Marc’s gig had barely come to a halt before the bridle was grasped by a liveried postilion, who gave Marc a reassuring smile as he helped Beth step down.

“We’re the only ones driving our own wagon,” Beth said, deliberately loud.

“And I plumb fergot to bring the oats,” Marc replied with a straight face.

A formidable receiving line awaited Marc and Beth in the cavernous entrance hall. Marc had coached Beth in the protocol of a formal ball, but it was the curtsy that had seemed to give her the most difficulty. Even Charlene had picked it up almost instantly, then proceeded to tease her mistress until she teetered or tottered in a fit of self-mocking laughter. Marc advanced the opinion that Beth, otherwise agile and quick, was simply temperamentally predisposed to fail at such a deferential gesture of obeisance-an opinion that earned him a glare but produced results. “Anybody can fake humbleness,” Beth said after a hyperbolic dip. “And we’ll see plenty of examples at Spadina House.”

Their preparation for the dancing had been a lot more pleasant. Beth was a natural dancer and had participated in many a reel and country jig. Whether the more sedate minuet or quadrille could constrain her tendency to kick up her heels (and her skirt) was still a moot question when their rehearsals ended late in the afternoon. Moreover, the ball gown, supplied and made over by Mrs. Halpenny, had not been finally fitted until after supper, and so had not been permitted a trial run on the dancer herself.

At the head of the receiving line, a sturdy-looking gentleman with a serious expression that refused to cooperate with his smile greeted them. “I am Charles Buller, Lord Durham’s secretary, and this is my daughter, Emily.”

Marc introduced Beth and then himself, watched Beth curtsy like an angel, and let himself be passed along according to the time-honoured ritual. Luckily the line was moving briskly. Almost all of the town’s elite had been invited, Tory and Reformer alike, and the guests were now pressing forward, up the front steps, fashionably late. Still, Marc was able to form a first impression of men whose names were legend in English Whig circles and who were now standing in Dr. William Baldwin’s vestibule. Charles Buller, of course, was much more than a secretary: he was a known confidant and adviser to the earl. Thomas Turton, who gave Marc a polite nod before making a lingering appraisal of Mrs. Edwards, was in charge of the earl’s legal affairs, but it was widely rumoured that he had been one of the copyists of the Great Reform Bill of 1832, sequestered in Lord Durham’s home for the two months it had taken the earl and his three cabinet colleagues to frame those historic changes in the electoral structure of British government.

Both Marc and Beth had tried not to stare too rudely at the penultimate personage in the line, but it was difficult not to, as he was the most notorious of Lord Durham’s cronies. Edward Gibbon Wakefield did not look in the least Byronic, despite the fact that, as a callow youth, he had abducted an heiress and carried her off (whether the girl was willing or otherwise had not been finally decided by the court of public opinion), before being tracked down and imprisoned for his romantic excesses. Wakefield’s slim build, wispy blond hair, and tiny bespectacled eyes made him look more like a bank clerk than a Don Juan. At the present moment, as Marc well knew, Wakefield was the most knowledgeable Englishman in regard to colonial affairs. Whatever his amorous proclivities, his advice to Lord Durham during this critical period of assessment would be material and persuasive.

Suddenly they were in the presence of Lord and Lady Durham, their hosts for the evening. (The Baldwins, as Reform leaders, had graciously declined to join the receiving line in order that no political bias be perceived in what was, after all, the Durhams’ gala.) Lady Durham was simply dressed, polite without condescension, and smiled genuinely, but she was unable to dispel the aura of legitimate gentry characteristic of her every gesture. Beside her, John George Lambton, the earl of Durham-Radical Jack-stood tall and imposing. Even at forty-six and after a life of constant travel and mental exertion as a landlord, mine owner, ambassador, and government minister, he was darkly handsome, with curly brown hair, thoughtful eyes alight with intelligence, and a Roman nose and sensuous lips that had set many a feminine breast aflutter. He took Beth’s gloved hand and kissed it, then turned his penetrating gaze upon Marc.

“I trust your war wound is healing nicely, Lieutenant,” he said, and was already leaning towards Magistrate Thorpe and his wife when Marc halted momentarily in surprise at the remark and its evident solicitude.

“Wakefield didn’t give you a second glance,” Marc said as he and Beth approached the ballroom and the valets who were waiting to pounce on top hat and stole. “I don’t know whether to be relieved or aggrieved.”

“The night’s still young,” Beth teased, looking around expectantly.

The ballroom before them was rapidly filling with the patricians of the city and their wives, daughters, and distant cousins from the townships. It was the largest domestic space Beth had ever seen, though Marc refrained from commenting that it was modest compared with its counterparts back home. Nonetheless, it was impressive and certainly worthy of the demi-royal personages who graced it this evening as host and hostess. Along the eastern wall, a bank of tall, elegant windows reflected the dazzle of a dozen gigantic candelabras. Opposite, a mezzanine held the twenty-piece orchestra-Toronto’s finest bolstered by half a dozen players accompanying the earl-which had just struck up a lively lancers. Through several arches below it lay the cloakrooms, powder rooms, a smoker, a billiard parlour, and a lounge set up for whist or piquet.

The dancing began rather formally, for despite the short notice many of the guests had had time and foresight to secure dance cards and initiate the delicate process of filling them with names. As no program had been printed, a name opposite a number had to suffice. However, it was not long before the informality of local custom and its regrettable levelling effects began to hold sway. Brazen young Canadians barged into the protective ring of family circles to forcibly carry off the prettiest, mildly protesting member. Gentlemen of girth and standing permitted themselves to be seduced out of their dignity by giggling ingénues and an intoxicating beat. Beth and Marc waited for the minuet, easing into the pleasures of an evening that promised to be lively and prolonged. After all, it was July, the winter had been divisive and stressful, and now a sort of saviour had arrived in their midst, an Apollo come down from Olympus to restore calm and reason. When the orchestra was persuaded to strike up a Virginia reel, the room shook with the stamp of feet and the mêlée of sets being improvised or reconstituted. Dance cards were tossed aside when a caller, who materialized as if on cue, boomed out the steps and courtesies of the quintessential North American dance.

Marc lost Beth in one of the scrums of partner switching. Sweating and thirsty, he made for the refreshment table, where he found a goblet of icy champagne and his good friend Owen Jenkin. They chatted briefly about the ceremonial arrival of Lord Durham that morning and agreed that His Lordship had no doubt calculated every gesture in the show of pomp and authority which they and five thousand others had witnessed. Any Englishman who could influence the czar of Russia as no one had before him, or leave the governor of New York awestruck in Fort Niagara, was a man who had greatness in his bones.

“We must do everything we can to make his stay here purposeful and productive,” Marc said.