What’s Bred in the Bone tct-2 Page 3

  The Scots were Presbyterian, and as this was Canada at the turn of the century their religious belief and their political loyalty were the important conditioning factors in their lives. These Presbyterians might have had some trouble in formulating the doctrine of predestination or foreordination which lay deep in their belief, but they had no practical difficulty in knowing who was of the elect, and who belonged to a creation with a less certain future in Eternity.

  The French and the Poles were Roman Catholics, and they too knew precisely where they stood in relation to God, and were by no means displeased with their situation. There were a few Irish, also Catholics, and some odds and ends of other racial strains—mongrels of one sort and another—who had mean churches suited to their eccentricities, dwindling toward a vacant-store temple that changed hands from one rampaging evangelist to another, in whose windows hung gaudy banners displaying the Beasts of the Apocalypse, in horrendous detail. There were no Jews, blacks, or other incalculable elements.

  The town could have been represented as a wedding-cake, with the Poles as the large foundation layer, bearing the heaviest weight; the French, the middle layer, were smaller but central; the Scots were the topmost, smallest, most richly ornamented layer of all.

  No town is simple in every respect. People who liked perfection and tidiness of structure were puzzled by the quirk of fate which decreed that the Senator, by far the richest and most influential man in Blairlogie, cut right across accepted ideas: though a Scot, he was an R.C., and though rich he was a Liberal, and his wife was French.

  The Senator was the person to begin with, for he was Francis Chegwidden Cornish’s grandfather, and the origin of the wealth that supported Francis’s life until he gained a mysterious fortune of his own.

  The Senator was the Honourable James Ignatius McRory, born on the Isle of Barra in the Hebrides in 1855, who had been brought to Canada in 1857 by parents who were, like so many of their kind, starving in their beautiful homeland. They never succeeded in getting the ache of starvation and bitter poverty out of their bones, though they did better in the New World than they could have done at home. But their son James—called Hamish by them, because that was his name in the Gaelic they customarily spoke between themselves—hated starvation and resolved as a child to put poverty well behind him, and did so. Necessity sent him early to work in the forests which were a part of the wealth of Canada, and ambition and daring, combined with an inborn long-headedness (to say nothing of his skill with his fists, and his feet when fists were not enough), made him a forest boss very young, and a contractor for lumber companies shortly after, and the owner of a lumber company of his own before he was thirty, by which time he was already a rich man.

  A common enough story, but, like everything else connected with Hamish, not without its individual touches. He did not marry into a lumbering family, to advance himself, but made a love-match with Marie-Louise Thibodeau when he was twenty-seven and she was twenty, and he never desired any other woman afterward. Nor did the life in the camps make him hard and remorseless; he treated his men fairly when he was an employer, and when he came to have money he gave generously to charity and to the Liberal Party.

  Indeed, the Liberal Party was, after Marie-Louise and one other, the great love of his life. He never stood for Parliament, but he supported and financed men who did so; in so far as there was a party machine in Blairlogie, where he settled as soon as he no longer had to live near the forests, Hamish McRory was the brains behind the machine; thus nobody was surprised when Sir Wilfrid Laurier appointed him to the Senate when he was not yet forty-five, making him the youngest man, and demonstrably one of the ablest, in the Upper House.

  A Canadian senator was, in those days, appointed for life, and some senators were known to give up all political effort once they felt their feet on the red carpet of the Upper Chamber. But Hamish had no intention of relaxing his party zeal because of his new honour, and as a senator he was more Sir Wilfrid’s man in an important area of the Ottawa Valley than ever before.

  When are we going to get to my man? said the Daimon Maimas, who was eager to make his contribution to the story.

  –In due season, said the Lesser Zadkiel. Francis must he seen against his background, and if we are not to start at the very beginning of all things, we must not neglect the Senator. That’s the biographical way.

  –I see, you want to do it on the nature and nurture principle, said Maimas, and the Senator is both.

  –Nature and nurture are inextricable; only scientists and psychologists could think otherwise, and we know all about them, don’t we?

  –We should. We’ve watched them since they were tribal wizards, yelping around the campfire. Go on. But I’m waiting for my chance.

  –Be patient, Maimas. Time is for those who exist within its yoke. We are not time-bound, you and I.

  –I know, but I like to talk.

  Apart from Marie-Louise, and of a different order, the Senator’s deep love was his elder daughter, Mary-Jacobine. Why so named? Because Marie-Louise had hoped for a son, and Jacobine was a fancy derivation from Jacobus, which is James, which is also Hamish. It suggested also a devotion to the Stuart cause, and called up that sad prince James II and his even sadder son, Bonnie Prince Charlie. The name was suggested with implacable modesty by the Senator’s sister, Miss Mary-Benedetta McRory, who lived with him and his wife. Miss McRory, known always as Mary-Ben, was a formidable spirit concealed in a little, wincing spinster. It was her romantic notion that her forebears, as Highland Scots, must necessarily have been supporters of the Stuarts, and none of the books she read on that subject suggested that James II and his son, as well as being handsome and romantic, were a couple of pig-headed losers. So Mary-Jacobine it was, affectionately shortened to Mary-Jim.

  There was a second daughter, Mary-Teresa—Mary-Tess inevitably—but Mary-Jim was first by birth and first in her father’s heart, and she lived the life of a small-town princess, without too much harm to her character. She was taught at home by a governess of unimpeachable Catholicism and gentility, and by Miss McRory; when she was old enough she went to a first-rate convent school in Montreal, the Superior of which was yet another McRory, Mother Mary-Basil. The McRorys were strong for education; Aunt Mary-Ben had gone to the same convent school as the one over which Mother Mary-Basil now ruled. Education and gentility must go hand in hand with money, and even the Senator, whose schooling had been brief, read consistently and well all his life.

  The McRorys had offered their full due to the church, for as well as Mother Mary-Basil there was an uncle, Michael McRory, a certainty for a bishopric, probably in the West, as soon as some veteran vacated a likely see. The other men of the family had not done so well; the whereabouts of Alphonsus were unknown since last he had been heard of in San Francisco, Lewis was a drunk, somewhere in the Northern Territories, and Paul had died, in no distinguished way, in the Boer War. It was in the Senator’s daughters that the future of the family resided, and Mary-Jim could not help knowing it.

  If she thought about the matter at all, it caused her no misgiving, for she was clever at school, possessed some measure of charm, and, because she was prettier than most girls, was thought of—by herself as well as by the rest of the family—as a beauty. Oh, it is a fine thing to be a beauty!

  The Senator had great plans for Mary-Jim. Not for her the life of Blairlogie. She must marry well, and marry a Catholic, so she must know a wider circle of suitable young men than Blairlogie could ever afford. Money makes the mill turn. With his money behind her, Mary-Jim could certainly marry not merely well, but brilliantly.

  On January 22,1901, when Mary-Jim was sixteen, Queen Victoria died, and King Edward VII ascended the throne. This pleasure-loving prince made no secret of his intention to change the social structure of the Court, decreeing that in future young ladies of good family should be presented to their Sovereign not at subdued afternoon receptions, as in his mother’s day, but at evening Courts, which were in effect balls, a
nd that the doors of the Court should open to people who were not of the old, assured aristocracy, but who had some “go” in them, as His Majesty phrased it. Even the daughters of magnates from the Dominions, if possessed of sufficient “go”, might aspire to this honour.

  The Senator had made his fortune by seizing opportunities while lesser people failed to see what was before their eyes. Mary-Jim should be presented at Court. Gently, methodically, and implacably, the Senator set to work.

  In the beginning, luck was with him. The King-Emperor’s Coronation had to wait until a year of mourning for the Old Queen had been observed; a royal illness intervened, so there were no Courts until the royal household moved into Buckingham Palace in the spring of 1903, and initiated a splendid season of Court Balls. Mary-Jim was presented then, but it was a close thing, and it took the Senator all the time at his disposal to manage it.

  He began, logically, by writing to the secretary of the Governor-General of Canada, Lord Minto, asking for advice and, if possible, help. The answer, when it came, said that the matter was a delicate one, and the secretary would put it before His Excellency when a propitious moment turned up. The moment must have been elusive, and several weeks later the Senator wrote again. It had not been possible to put the matter before His Excellency, who was understandably much involved in the ceremonies preceding and following the Coronation. By this time it was August. The secretary suggested that the matter was not one of great urgency, as the young lady was still of an age to wait. The Senator began to wonder if Government House was still shy of the McRorys, remembering that awkward affair of more than twenty years ago. He also came to understand the nature of courtiers in some degree. He decided to go elsewhere. He asked for a few minutes of the Prime Minister’s time, on a personal matter.

  Sir Wilfrid Laurier was always ready to make time to see Hamish McRory, and when he heard that the personal matter was a request that he should politely speed up affairs at Government House, he was all smiles. The two men spoke together in French, for the Senator had always spoken in Canada’s other tongue with his wife. The two men were staunch Catholics, and, without putting too much stress on it, felt themselves other than the very English group at Government House, and were determined not to be slighted. Sir Wilfrid, like many men who have no children, dearly loved a family, and was warmed by a father’s desire to launch his daughter into the world with every advantage.

  “Be sure that I shall do my very best, my dear old friend,” said he, and his leave-taking of Hamish was in his most gracious style.

  It was less than a week later that Hamish received a message that he should call again on Sir Wilfrid. The great man’s advice was brief.

  “I don’t think we shall get far with His Excellency,” said he. “You should write to our representative in London, and tell him what you want. I shall write also; I shall write today. If the presentation can be managed, it will certainly be done.”

  It was done, but not quickly or easily.

  The representative in London was the resoundingly titled Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, but the Senator’s letter began “Dear Donald”, because they knew each other well through the Bank of Montreal, of which the Baron, as plain Donald Smith, was president. He was well aware of Hamish McRory through the freemasonry of the rich, which overrides even politics. A letter from the Baron came as soon as a mail-boat could carry it; the thing would be done, and his wife would be pleased to present Mary-Jim at Court. But he warned that it would take time and diplomacy, and possibly even a little arm-twisting, for the desire to appear at Court was by no means confined to the McRorys.

  Reports followed over several months. Things were going well; the Baron had dropped a word to a Secretary. Things were hanging fire: the Baron hoped to meet the Secretary at his club, and would jog his memory. Things were rather clouded, for the Secretary said there were people with prior claims, and the list of debutantes must not be too long. A stroke of luck: a New Zealand magnate had choked to death on a fishbone and his daughter had reluctantly been forced into mourning. The thing was virtually assured, but it would be premature to make any moves until official invitations had been received; meanwhile Lady Strathcona was doing some backstairs haggling, for which, as the daughter of a former Hudson’s Bay official, she had an inherited aptitude.

  At last, in December of 1902, the impressive cards arrived, and the Senator, who had bottled the matter up inside himself for more than a year, was able to reveal his triumph to Marie-Louise and Mary-Jim. Their response was not entirely what he had foreseen. Marie-Louise was in an immediate fuss about clothes, and Mary-Jim thought it nice, but did not seem greatly impressed. Neither understood the immensity of his triumph.

  As letters began to arrive from Lady Strathcona, they learned better. The matter of clothes was carefully explained, and as these included garments not only for the Court Ball, but for the London Season it initiated, mother and daughter should lose no time in getting to London and into the dressmakers’ salons. A suitable place to live would have to be found, and already the rentable houses in appropriate parts of London were being snapped up. What jewels had Marie-Louise? Mary-Jacobine must undergo a rigorous training in Court etiquette, and Lady Strathcona had booked her into a class being conducted by a decayed Countess who would, for a substantial fee, explain these rites. The curtsy was all-important. There must be no toppling.

  Lord Strathcona was even more direct. Bring a large cheque-book and get here in time to have some knee-breeches made, were his principal pieces of advice to the Senator.

  The McRorys did as they were bid, and set out for London early in January with a mass of luggage, including two of those huge trunks with rounded lids that used to be called Noah’s Arks.

  It had been impossible to get them a London house of the right kind, and a house outside the West End was unthinkable, so Lord Strathcona had booked them into the best suite at the Cecil Hotel, in the Strand. If the Court were grander than the Cecil, the McRorys wondered if they would be worthy of it. At the time the hotel outfitted its male staff with three liveries: sleeve-waistcoats and white stocks for morning, blue liveries with brass buttons and white ties for afternoon, and in the evening the full grandeur of plush breeches, plum-coloured coats with cut-steel buttons, and powdered wigs. It was sumptuous in a manner undreamed of in Blairlogie, where a housemaid marked the pinnacle of domestic service; but the McRorys, being naturally thrivers and intelligent, determined not to play the farcical role of colonial cousins any more than they could help, and behaved themselves unassumingly, until they got the hang of things.

  The sessions with the decayed Countess presented some difficulty at the beginning, for she showed a tendency to behave as if Mary-Jim’s inelegant Canadian speech gave her pain. Snotty old bitch, thought Mary-Jim, who was a convent girl and knew how to deal with tedious instructresses. “Would you prefer that I speak in French, Your Grace?” she asked, and continued for some time, very rapidly, in that language, which the decayed Countess spoke slowly and indifferently. The decayed Countess understood that she had a Tartar in the McRory child, and mended her ways. When she had recovered herself she dropped a remark about the difficulty of understanding a patois, but nobody was deceived.

  At last, in May of 1903, the great night came. Marie-Louise, still a pretty woman, was resplendent in pale-blue chiffon and cloth of silver, embroidered with stripes of brilliants, the swathed bodice (over a repressive new corset) fastened with diamonds, which had been hired from a discreet jeweller, who did a large trade in such rentals. Mary-Jim was modestly done up in tulle and mousseline-de-soie. The Senator wore his accustomed tailcoat and white waistcoat above, and his unaccustomed corded-silk knee-breeches and double black-silk stockings below. They were photographed in the drawing-room of their suite at four o’clock in the afternoon, in their grandeur; the ladies had been put to rights by the hairdresser between one and half past two, and had then been forced to bathe with the uttermost care, so as not to wet or tumble their careful h
ead-arrangements. An expert maid from the hotel had encased them in their splendid gowns. After the photographer had gone they ate a light meal in their suite, and then had nothing to do but sit and fret inwardly until half past nine, when the carriage arrived to take them to the Palace. They could have walked there in fifteen minutes, but with the crush of people going to Court, it took a full three-quarters of an hour to make the journey, during which they were inspected, at every stop, by crowds who had gathered to have a look at the toffs.

  They had been fretting because they were sure they would know no one at Court—how could they? They would hang dejectedly around the walls, pretending that they were solitary from choice. In their panicky moments they were sure they would bump into things, break ornaments, spill food. The Lord Chamberlain would strike the floor with his wand, crying, “Throw those colonial rubes out!” But that was not the way the King-Emperor entertained.

  As soon as they had arrived, and given up their cloaks, a smiling aide swooped upon them, saying, “Ah, there you are, Senator! Madame! Mademoiselle! The High Commissioner and Lady Strathcona are upstairs; I’ll take you to them at once. Awful crush, isn’t it”—and much more genial, meaningless, but reassuring chatter until they were safe under the wing of the Strathconas, and Mary-Jim had been hived off into a group, not too obviously defined, of the girls who were to be presented.

  There were thrones on a dais at the end of the room but—what, no trumpets? No, just a quiet entry—or as quiet as a royal entry can ever be—of a very stout, shortish man in uniform and a blaze of orders, and a lady of great beauty, wearing enough jewels, thought the Senator, to finance a railway. Ladies curtsied; gentlemen bowed. The King and Queen were seated.