Don Gutteridge - Turncoat

In his suffering and bewilderment at Marianne’s loss, Marc had plunged back into his work, happy now that lawyering was so hateful to him. And for the first time he had given in to the teasing of his fellow clerks, as young as he but infinitely more worldly, and followed them to the theatre and the fleshpots of London. Only once. The one good aspect of that night, ironically, had been his delight with the play itself, and his subsequent participation in amateur theatricals. His friends later accused him of moral priggery, but his abhorrence of the brothel and the offstage licentiousness of accommodating actresses was a physical revulsion, inexplicable but as uncontrollable as a reflex. There had been no woman in his life since.

Marc started across the untrodden snowscape of the Clergy Reserve towards Beth, who had halted at the edge of her property to wait for him.

It wasn’t that there had been no opportunities for romance at balls in the neighbourhood, or later at the Royal Military School. At the suggestion of his “uncle” Frederick, Marc had willingly been sent to the school to “mend his heart and seek the only commendable career for a young man of spirit.” Even in Toronto, since his arrival last May, there had been possibilities. So far, Marc had danced, flirted, dallied, and generally enjoyed the company of women, but that was all. He had refused to join the subalterns on their periodic expeditions to the stews and gambling dens of Toronto that catered exclusively to the needs of officers robbed of combat by the prolonged post-Napoleonic peace. Despite his apparent prudery, Marc retained the respect of his mates, even their affection.

“Good morning, Ensign Edwards,” Beth said as he puffed up the path towards her. “I see you decided to take the military route.”

“Did Joshua have any sort of contact, friendly or otherwise, with any of the extremists out there in Buffaloville?”

They had walked, without predetermination, into the woods on the Crown land above the Smallman farm, savouring the air, enjoying the challenge of ploughing their way through the pure drifts.

“None that I know of,” Beth said. “Apart from his evenings with that Georgian crew and our trips into town for supplies, and the half dozen rallies we went to over the summer and fall, Father went nowhere. It took every one of us to keep the farm afloat, even with the mortgage lifted. The drought was severe. Everybody suffered to some degree.”

“You can remember no altercations at any of the rallies?”

“None. Besides, Azel Stebbins was about the only one of those people to come to the meetings. After the business with the Alien Act was over and they got back their rights, most of them lost interest. They had farms to run. Like us.”

“But you kept attending,” Marc said gently.

“I had my own reasons.”

“I suppose Jesse knew more of these people than his father did,” Marc said, then he took her mittened hand briefly to guide her over a windfall.

“Yes. They worked together off and on through the election year of thirty-four. And Jesse did some carpentry for a couple of them-corncribs, I think. He was a wonder with his hands.”

“And your efforts helped to get Reformers like Dutton and Perry elected in this end of the province, to establish a Reform majority in the Assembly, and even get the alien question settled in your favour …”

“But?”

“But even with your majority and Mr. Mackenzie’s manoeuvring to get the Seventh Report on Grievances across the Atlantic, even then you were no closer to winning your claim against the injustices of the Clergy Reserve allotments.”

Beth stopped so she could read his expression. “So you think our claims may be just, do you?”

“All one needs to do is take a morning constitutional to see that.”

“You should’ve brought Sir John along.”

“It’s easy now for me to understand how angry and frustrated your husband must have been last year. To have achieved a majority in the House and have so little to show for the effort, and risk.”

“And a governor standing on the dock at Toronto ushering in penniless outcasts from the Auld Sod, sure to be grateful voters in the next election.”

“From Jesse’s perspective, it must have seemed like ‘now or never.’ In two years’ time the entire government might have been Tory.”

“With ample means of avenging themselves on so-called traitors and mischief-makers.”

A new thought occurred to Marc, and he said, “His father must have learned these things, just as I am beginning to, soon after he arrived here. And Tory though he was, he must surely have built up some feelings of resentment over what happened to his son.”

“He was very fond of Jess,” Beth said, looking straight ahead.

With mixed emotions, Marc pressed on. “Might he not have drawn the conclusion-as he attended the Reform rallies-that it was all that radical and inflammatory talk that had pushed Jesse to the edge? And could such resentment have resulted in some harboured enmity on Joshua’s part towards one or more of the extremists, which, unknown to you, led him to accuse or challenge or even threaten that person or persons?”

Beth seemed to be giving the notion due consideration. After a while, she said, “I reckon it more likely he came to understand exactly why his son did what he did.”

“I don’t follow,” Marc said.

Beth took his arm. “Then it’s time I explained.”

They stood side by side in the barn. The sun bored through the unchinked log walls and spilled at their feet. From the hayloft at one end of the single, spacious room a square crossbeam ran to the far side. In the shadows, a pair of pigeons cooed amiably. Behind them and under the loft, cows chewed at the clover hay thrown to them earlier by Elijah, their literate caretaker.

“I found him hanging there. Just after noon. I wondered why he hadn’t come in for his meal. Thank God I didn’t send Aaron after him. Jess knew Aaron and I were spendin’ the morning with Mary Huggan’s family. So nothing would disturb him.”

“I don’t need to know-” Marc said, wondering whether his touching her would be welcomed or resented.

“I think you do. That milking stool was tipped over. He’d used it to stand on, then kicked it halfway across the barn. He’d even made a kind of rope-manacle for his hands and somehow tied them behind his back.”

“Behind his back?”

“He wanted nothing to tempt him from his purpose.”

They stood staring up at the scar on the beam where the noose had rubbed it-one of them imagining, the other reliving.

“You see, I misled you a little last time when I said Jesse wasn’t tempted by the radical solutions being whispered throughout the district. In truth, he’d become desperate and depressed.”

Marc spoke only because the silence continued longer than he could bear. “Do you know if he actually had contact with any seditionists?”

“He may have. If he did, he didn’t tell me. There seemed to be a lot of things he couldn’t tell me … near the end.”

“I’m thinking that he may have learned something that his father might have subsequently come across, something incriminating-”

“But that’s what I’m tryin’ to show you,” she said. “Jess was unlike his father in many ways, but there was one thing they had in common. They believed in the law and the rights it gives us and the duties it demands in return. In any other time and place, my Jesse would’ve been as conservative as his father. I believe he stared sedition in the face, he may even have let it whisper treason in his ear, and when he realized the rule of law was about to fail him, he had only two choices left.”

“To break it-”

“-or take himself out of its reach,” she said, suddenly weeping.