Don Gutteridge - Turncoat

“It was suggested a while ago, Mr. Edwards, that Sir John thought politics might be at issue here,” Child said. “Joshua Smallman was not directly involved in politics. That he voted Tory puts him in league with hundreds of others in the county, many of whom have been more vociferous and a lot less tolerant. Why was it not one of us lured out there in his stead?”

“Sir John does feel politics might be involved,” Marc said. “He told me he had good reason for thinking so, but, alas, he was not at liberty to give me chapter and verse.”

“What did he think you could discover here on your own, then?” Barnaby asked, not unkindly.

“I guess he thought we could help,” Hatch offered.

Marc paused, then plunged ahead. “I didn’t press Mrs. Smallman on the matter, but I understand that her father-in-law accompanied her to a number of Reform rallies following his return here.”

“Mrs. Smallman, I am sorry to say, having produced no children in three years of marriage, seemed unable to find anything else useful to occupy her time,” Child said. “She spouted the contemptible opinions of Willy Mackenzie in public places in the most unseemly manner.”

“And she is a Congregationalist to boot,” Barnaby added.

“Never set foot in St. Peter’s after the nuptials,” the squire huffed. “The poor devil of a husband would drop her off at that tumbledown hutch they call holy and then drive alone to his father’s church.”

“Well, I blame him in a way,” Durfee said, ignoring the glare of his fellow Georgians. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but Jesse Smallman was dabblin’ in dangerous waters near the end, if you ask me.”

“That was a year ago,” Hatch said. “As far as I can tell, Beth was involved in trying to get redress for the same grievances her husband and a thousand other farmers are pressing for-through the appropriate channels.”

Child turned to Marc, adjusted his girth into its most magisterial posture, and said, “You’ve no doubt heard all the nonsense about these so-called grievances: the Clergy Reserves, the Alien Act, the evil monopoly of the Bank of Upper Canada, the stubbornness of the Legislative Council and the Executive, who rightly refuse to yield to the demands of the mob. And so on.”

“I’m hoping to learn more about them as I go,” Marc said.

“Well, son, the first thing to remember is that ninety per cent of what you hear, on both sides, is hot air, bombast, and rabble-rousing rhetoric. As long as the levers of power and the will to rule remain safely entrenched, as they are now, we can tolerate a great deal of invective and vituperation. I’ve been here for thirty years and have an intimate knowledge of Northumberland County and the province as a whole. Most of the populace is British to the core, and now that Sir John has almost doubled the population with needy immigrants from the motherland, the brief threat of American outcasts overwhelming us has abated. We are confident also that the next election will see a Tory majority in the Assembly.”

“You’ll get a chance to hear some of the rant for yourself,” Durfee said.

“That’s right,” Hatch added. “Mackenzie and Peter Perry and all that gang will be in Cobourg for a Reform rally on Saturday afternoon.”

“We’re expectin’ fireworks,” Durfee said with a boyish grin.

“Only if the Orangemen arrive with them,” Hatch said.

Looking mischievously at Barnaby, Durfee said, “Fanatic monarchists of the likes of Ogle Gowan and his anti-Catholic Orange Lodge make Mackenzie’s lot look like schoolboy debaters.”

Barnaby snorted. “I let go of that monarchist nonsense years ago. It doesn’t sit well on a Scot’s stomach, even though they do claim to defend the Crown and the integrity of the Empire.” He paused and added, “I defended them in my own way.”

“These are men, I’ve been told, who will resort to violence to further their cause,” Marc said.

“Head-bashing in a donnybrook, tar-and-feathering a Papist or two,” Hatch said, “but not, I think, a cold-blooded assassination.”

“Quite so,” Child said. “Though that gang is quite capable of leaving a man to die in the snow-if it served their purpose.”

“What can you tell me about the Hunters’ Lodges?” Marc asked, shifting the subject slightly.

Again, the room went unnaturally quiet, and one by one the members of the Georgian Club scrutinized the young officer, as if they might have overlooked something critical.

Child answered for his associates. “They are a secret society, organized very recently in New York and Pennsylvania, whose members, we presume from the little hard evidence we possess, swear an oath that they will help overthrow the British government of Upper Canada and link up with resident dissidents, republicans, and annexationists, with a view to forming a new, liberated republic. Most of them appear to be malcontents from the Loco Foco Democrats of Buffalo, with a few Irish incendiaries tossed in for leavening.”

“I’m told that Mr. Mackenzie has for some years now promoted republican and annexationist doctrines in the Colonial Advocate, ” Marc said.

“Indeed he has,” Child said. “Yet he was elected the first mayor of your city, takes his seat in the Assembly, and continues to swear the oath of allegiance. His infamous and dastardly Seventh Report on Grievances, which, as you know, helped unseat your own Sir John, was legally enough drawn up and, though sent by an unorthodox and clandestine route to Lord Glenelg in London, was nonetheless a powerful indication that, outside of his blather and rant, Mackenzie is still willing to work within the very system that has nurtured and tolerated his kind of dissent-often to its own detriment.”

“And neither Joshua Smallman nor his daughter have been involved with Orangemen, Yankee extremists, or secret societies. Surely that is the point of all this speculation,” Barnaby added.

“Lookin’ back over the past months,” Durfee said, “the only thing I can truly say is that my boyhood chum attended a number of meetings and public rallies connected with the Grievances Report. And since everybody ’round here knew he was a loyalist and a Tory supporter at the polls, they realized he only went along to escort Beth. After all, she was a widow, she couldn’t very well run off to a public gathering by herself. Who else was there to go with her? Elijah? The crippled lad?”

“Surely Joshua’s duty was to persuade her not to debase her character by attending the kind of meetings God intended for men,” Child said.

“He could’ve tied her to a chair, I suppose,” Barnaby said.

“With a second rope for her tongue,” Durfee added, and laughed.

“You’re all forgetting,” Hatch said, “that Beth was carrying on the efforts that Jesse had made in regard to the Grievances before he got so depressed and … did what he did.”

“It is conceivable, then,” Barnaby said carefully, without looking at Durfee, “that in an attempt to understand his son and perhaps even to comprehend the reasons for his taking his own life, Joshua did begin to become enamoured of the Reform position.”

“Even so,” Child said, “and I’m not granting your premise for a moment, that is no cause for the man to be murdered. Turning your coat in political matters may lose you a friend or some custom, but not your life.”

“I have to agree, Your Honour.” Barnaby smiled.

Only Durfee did not laugh. The brandy-whetted scarlet of his cheeks had suddenly paled.

“Are you all right, James?” Barnaby asked.

“I’ve just had a frightenin’ thought,” Durfee said. “Suppose some people did think that Joshua’s goin’ to all them meetings and rallies was in earnest, whether it was or not. And suppose someone or other at the rallies got the notion into his head that Joshua was pretendin’ to be a convert-because of Jesse’s grievances and so on-but was actually an informer.”