My winter things, my red flannel petticoat and my heavy dress, my wool stockings and my flannel nightdress, as well as two cotton for summer, and my summer working dress and clogs and two caps and an apron, and my other shift, were tied in a bundle with my mother's shawl and carried on top of the coach. It was well strapped down but I was anxious about it the entire journey, as I was worried that it would fall off and be lost in the road, and I kept looking behind.
Never look behind you, said the dealer in farm implements. Why not, said I. I knew you were not supposed to talk with strange men, but it was hard to avoid as we were crammed in so close together. Because the past is the past, he said, and regret is vain, let bygones be bygones. You know what became of Lot's wife, he went on. Turned to a pillar of salt she was, a waste of a good woman, not that they aren't all the better for a touch of salt, and he laughed. I was not sure what he meant but suspected it was nothing good, and thought I would not talk with him any further.
The mosquitoes were very bad, especially in the marshy places and at the edges of the forests, because although some of the land next the road had been cleared, there were still big stands of trees, and very tall and dark. The air in the forest had a different smell to it; it was cool and damp, and smelled of moss and of earth and old leaves. I did not trust the forest, as it was full of wild animals such as bears and wolves; and I remembered Nancy's story about the bear.
The dealer in farm implements said, Would you be afraid to go into the forest, Miss, and I said No I would not be afraid, but I would not go in there unless I had to. And he said Just as well, young women should not go into the forest by themselves, you never know what may happen to them; there was one found recently with her clothes torn off and her head at some distance from her body, and I said, Oh, was it the bears, and he said, The bears or the Red Indians, you know these woods are full of them, they could swoop out at any minute and have your bonnet off you in a trice and then your scalp, you know they like to cut off ladies' hair, they can sell it for a good price in the States. And then he said, I expect you have a good head of hair on you, underneath your cap; and all this time he was pressing up against me in a way I was finding offensive.
I knew he was lying, if not about the bears, then surely about the Indians, and he was only trying to horrify me. So I said, quite pert, I'd trust my head to the Red Indians sooner than I'd trust it to you, and he laughed; but I was in earnest. I'd seen Red Indians in Toronto, as they would sometimes go there to collect their treaty money; and others would come to the back door at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson's with baskets to sell, and fish. They kept their faces still and you could not tell what they were thinking, but they went away when told to. Still I was glad when we would come out of the forest again, and see the fences and houses and the washing hanging out, and smell the smoke from the cooking fires, and the trees being burnt for their ashes.
After a time we passed the remains of a building, just the foundations all blackened, and the dealer pointed it out, and told me it was the celebrated Montgomery's Tavern, which was where Mackenzie and his band of ragtags held their seditious meetings, and set out to march down Yonge Street, during the Rebellion. A man was shot in front of it, going to warn the Government troops, and it was burnt down afterwards. They hanged some of those traitors but not enough, said the dealer, and that cowardly rascal Mackenzie should be dragged back from the States, which was where he ran off to, leaving his friends to swing at the rope's end for him. The dealer had a flask in his pocket and by this time a strong dose of bottle courage, as I could tell by the smell of his breath, and when they are in that state it is just as well not to provoke them; and so I said nothing.
We reached Richmond Hill in the late afternoon. It did not look like much of a town; it was more like a village, with the houses strung out in a line along Yonge Street. I descended at the coaching inn there, which was the place agreed on with Nancy, and the coachman lifted my bundle down for me. The dealer in farm implements got down too, and asked where I was staying, and I said what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. At that he took hold of my arm, and said I must come into the inn with him, and have a drink or two of whisky for old times' sake, as we had become so well acquainted in the coach; and I tried to pull my arm away, but he would not let go, and was becoming familiar, and was trying to encircle my waist; and several idle men were cheering him on. I looked around for Nancy, but she was nowhere to be seen. What a bad impression it would make, I thought, to be found struggling with a drunken man at an inn.
The door to the inn was standing open, and out of it at that moment came Jeremiah the peddler, with his pack on his back and his long walking-stick in his hand. I was very glad to see him, and called out his name; and he looked over in a puzzled way, and then hurried over.
Why, it is Grace Marks, he said. I did not expect to see you here.
Nor I you, I said, and I smiled; but was somewhat flustered because of the dealer in farm implements, who was still hanging on to my arm.
Is this man a friend of yours? said Jeremiah.
No he is not, I said.
The lady does not desire your company, said Jeremiah, in his pretend voice of an elegant gentleman; and the dealer in farm implements said I was no lady, and added some things which were not compliments, and also some hard words about Jeremiah's mother.
Jeremiah took his stick, and brought it down on the man's arm, and he let go of me; and then Jeremiah pushed him, and he staggered backwards against the wall of the inn, and sat down in a pat of horse dung; at which the others now jeered at him, as that sort will always jeer at those who are getting the worst of it.
Do you have a situation in the neighbourhood? asked Jeremiah, when I'd thanked him. I said I did, and he said he would come round and see what he could sell me; and just then a third man came up. Would your name be Grace Marks? he said, or something of the sort; I cannot remember his exact words. I said it was, and he said he was Mr. Thomas Kinnear, my new employer, and he'd come to fetch me. He had a light wagon with one horse - I found out later that his name was Charley, for Charley Horse; he was a bay gelding and very handsome, with such a beautiful mane and tail and large brown eyes, and I loved him dearly at first sight.
Mr. Kinnear had the ostler put my bundle in the back of the wagon - there were some packages in it already - and he said, Well you have not been in town five minutes and you have managed to attract two gentleman admirers; and I said they were not, and he said, Not gentlemen, or not admirers? And I was confused, and did not know what he wanted me to say.
Then he said, Up you go, Grace, and I said, Oh do you mean me to sit at the front, and he said, Well we can hardly have you in the back like a piece of luggage, and he handed me up to sit beside him. I was quite embarrassed, as I was not used to sitting beside a gentleman like him, and especially one who was my employer, but he didn't seem to give it a second thought, and got up on the other side and clicked to the horse, and there we were, driving up Yonge Street just as if I was a fine lady, and I thought that any of those looking out of their windows at us would have had something to gossip about. But as I later found, Mr. Kinnear was never a man to pay any attention to gossip, as he didn't care a pin what other people said about him. He had his own money and was not running for political office, and could afford to ignore such things.
What did Mr. Kinnear look like? asks Dr. Jordan.
He had a gentlemanly bearing, Sir, I say, and a moustache.
Is that all? says Dr. Jordan. You did not observe him very particularly!
I did not wish to gape at him, I say, and once in the wagon of course I did not look at him. I would have needed to turn my whole head, because of my bonnet. I suppose you have never worn a bonnet, have you Sir?
No I have not, says Dr. Jordan. He is smiling with his lopsided smile. I expect it is confining, he says.
It is that, Sir, I say. I did see his gloves though, on his hands holding the reins, pale-yellow gloves they were, soft leather and so well made they fit wi
th scarcely a wrinkle, you'd think they were his own skin. I was all the more sorry that I did not have any gloves myself, and kept my hands tucked well in under the folds of my shawl.
I suppose you are very tired, Grace, he said, and I said Yes Sir, and he said, The weather is very warm, and I said Yes Sir, and so we went along, and to tell you the truth it was harder than riding in the bumping coach beside the farm implements dealer; I can't say why, as Mr. Kinnear was much more kind. But Richmond Hill was not a very big place and we were soon through it. He lived past the edge of the village, more than a mile to the north of it.
At last we were going past his orchard and up his driveway, which was curved and about a hundred yards long, and ran between two lines of maple trees of medium size. There was the house at the end of the drive, with a verandah along the front of it and white pillars, a big house but not as big as Mrs. Alderman Parkinson's.
From the back of the house came the sound of chopping. There was a boy sitting on the fence - he was perhaps fourteen years old - and when we drove up he jumped down and came to hold the horse; he had red hair, raggedly cut, and the freckles to go with it. Mr. Kinnear said to him, Hello Jamie here is Grace Marks come all the way from Toronto, I found her at the inn, and the boy looked up at me and grinned, as if he thought there was something funny about me; but he was only shy and awkward.
There were flowers planted in front of the verandah, white peonies and pink roses, and a gracefully dressed lady with a triple flounce was cutting them; she had a flat basket over her arm to put them in. When she heard our wheels and the horse's hooves on the gravel, she straightened up and shaded her eyes with her hand, and I saw she was wearing gloves; and then I recognized that this woman was Nancy Montgomery. She was wearing a bonnet the same pale colour as her dress, it was as if she'd put on her best clothes to go out front and cut the flowers. She waved a hand daintily in my direction, but she made no move to come over to me; and something squeezed tight about my heart.
Getting up into the wagon was one thing but getting down was another, because Mr. Kinnear did not help me down, he swung out by himself and hurried up the walk towards the front of the house and bent his head down towards Nancy's bonnet, leaving me to sit in the wagon like a sack of potatoes, or else scramble down unaided, which is what I did. A man had come out from the back; he was holding an axe, so it must have been him doing the chopping. He had a thick-woven jacket over one shoulder and his shirt had the sleeves rolled up and was open at the neck with a red bandanna tied around, and he had loose trousers tucked into his boot-tops. He was dark-haired and slender and not very tall, and did not appear to be more than one-and-twenty. He said nothing, but stared at me, suspicious and frowning a little, almost as if I was an enemy of his; yet he did not seem to be looking at me at all, but at someone else right behind me.
The boy Jamie said to him, This is Grace Marks, but he still didn't say anything; and then Nancy called, McDermott, take the horse in, won't you, and Grace's things, take them to her room and you can show her where it is. At that he flushed up as if in anger, and jerked his head curtly for me to come with him.
I stood there for an instant with the late sunlight in my eyes, looking at Nancy and Mr. Kinnear beside the peonies; they were surrounded by a golden haze, as if gold dust had fallen down out of the sky all over them, and I heard her laughing. I was hot and tired and hungry, and covered with dust from the road, and she had not given me one word of greeting.
Then I followed the horse and wagon towards the back of the house. The boy Jamie walked along beside me, and he said shyly, Is it big, Toronto, is it very grand, I have never been there, but I only said Grand enough. I could not find it in me to answer him about Toronto, because right then I was bitterly sorry I had ever left it.
When I close my eyes I can remember every detail of that house as clear as a picture - the verandah with the flowers, the windows and the white pillars, in the bright sunlight - and I could walk every room of it blindfolded, though at that moment I had no particular feeling about it and only wanted a drink of water. It is strange to reflect that of all the people in that house, I was the only one of them left alive in six months' time.
Except for Jamie Walsh, of course; but he was not living there.
24.
McDermott showed me to the room that was to be mine, which was off the winter kitchen. He was not very civil about it, all he said was You're to sleep in here. While I was untying my bundle Nancy came in, and now she was all smiles. She said I am very glad to see you Grace, I am glad you have come. She sat me down at the table in the winter kitchen, which was cooler than the summer kitchen as the stove was not lit, and she showed me where I could wash my face and hands at the sink, and then she gave me a glass of small beer and some cold beef from the larder, and said You must be tired after your journey, it is very fatiguing, and sat with me while I ate, as gracious as could be.
She had on a very handsome pair of earrings, which I could tell were real gold, and I wondered how she could afford them, on the salary of a housekeeper.
After I'd finished refreshing myself she showed me over the house and outbuildings. The summer kitchen was entirely separate from the main house, so as not to heat it up, a sensible arrangement which ought to be adopted by all. Each of the kitchens had a flagged floor and a good-sized iron stove with a flat apron in the front for keeping things warm, which was the latest model then; and each kitchen had its own sink with a pipe running out to the cesspool, and its own scullery and larder. The pump for the water was in the courtyard between the two kitchens; I was pleased it was not an open well, as such wells are more dangerous, things can fall down into them and they often harbour rats.
Behind the summer kitchen was the stable, adjoining the carriage house, where the wagon was kept. There was enough room in the carriage house for two carriages but Mr. Kinnear had only the one light wagon, I suppose a real carriage would have been useless on those roads. In the stable there were four stalls, but Mr. Kinnear kept only one cow and two horses, Charley Horse and a colt who was to be a riding horse when grown. The harness room was off the winter kitchen, which was unusual, and also inconvenient.
There was a loft room over the stable, and that was where McDermott slept. Nancy told me he'd been there only a week or so, and although he was prompt enough when Mr. Kinnear was giving the orders he appeared to have a grudge against her, and was impertinent; and I said that possibly his grudge was against the world, because he had been short with me as well. Nancy said as far as she was concerned he could mend his ways or be off out of it, because there was lots more where he came from, as out-of-work soldiers were to be had for the asking.
I have always liked the smell of a stable. I patted the colt's nose and said Good day to Charley, and I greeted the cow as well because it would be my job to milk her and I hoped we would start off on good terms. McDermott was setting out straw for the animals; he did not speak to us much more than a grunt, and he gave Nancy a scowling look and I could see there was no love lost, and when we were going out of the stable Nancy said, He is more surly than ever, well he can suit himself and welcome, it's a smile or the open road for him, or more likely the bottom of a ditch, and then she laughed; and I hoped he had not overheard it.
After that we saw the henhouse and the henyard, which had a woven willow fence around it to keep the chickens in, although it was not much good at keeping the foxes and the weasels out, and the raccoons too, which were known to be great stealers of eggs; and the kitchen garden, which was well planted but needed hoeing; and quite far back along a path was the privy.
Mr. Kinnear had a good deal of land, a pasture field which was kept for the cow and horses, and a little orchard down by Yonge Street, and several other fields which were worked or in the midst of being cleared of trees. It was Jamie Walsh's father who looked after that, said Nancy; they had a cottage on the grounds about a quarter of a mile away. From where we were standing we could just see the rooftop and chimney sticking up above
the trees. Jamie himself was a bright and promising boy, who ran errands for Mr. Kinnear; and he could play the flute; or he called it a flute, but it was more like a fife. Nancy said he would come over some evening and play for us, as he liked to do it, and she did enjoy a little music herself, and was learning to play the piano. That surprised me, as it was not the usual thing for a housekeeper. But I said nothing.
In the courtyard between the two kitchens there were three lines strung up for the washing. There was no separate laundry room, but the things for the washing, the coppers and the washtub and scrubbing board, were at present in the summer kitchen beside the stove, all good quality; and I was pleased to see they did not make their own soap but used bought soap, which is far easier on the hands.
They did not keep a pig and I was just as glad, for pigs are too clever for their own good, and fond of escaping from their pens, as well as having a smell that is not at all agreeable. There were two cats which lived in the stable, to keep down the mice and rats, but no dog, Mr. Kinnear's old dog Fancy having died. Nancy said she would feel easier with a dog about the place to bark at strangers, and Mr. Kinnear was looking for a good dog to go hunting with him; he was not a great sportsman in that way but liked to shoot a duck or two in the autumn, or else a wild goose, which were very numerous although too stringy for her taste.