Desperate Acts

Chapter Twelve

TWELVE

The Legislature was set to open on the first Monday in November, and Brodie's trial on the following Thursday. Marc made sure he spent at least one hour a day with Brodie at Harlem Place, not because he had anything yet to tell him about the plan for his defense, but because he wanted to keep the lad from falling into a depression. Marc encouraged Brodie to talk about the man they had both admired, Doubtful Dick Dougherty, and Brodie responded enthusiastically. He reminisced quite happily about Dick's famous and infamous trials - what he knew of them as he watched and listened in the sanctuary of his boyhood home and what he learned later by secretly reading the old New York newspapers stored in a nearby room. Diana Ramsay, of course, wanted to visit him as well, but Brodie, fearing for her reputation, forbade her to come. Instead, the lovers corresponded by letter, twice daily.

When not cheering up his client or playing with Maggie at Briar Cottage, Marc spent his time in the service of the Durhamites. Robert Baldwin's stratagem of winning over the moderate conservatives in the Assembly by feeding Governor Thomson the arguments he would need to do the actual persuading was working better than anyone had anticipated. As opening day approached, it looked as if there would be fewer than a dozen dedicated Tories left to vote against the union in the form desired by the Governor and the Whig administration back in London. However, the hardliners were expected to mount an indirect challenge by offering amendments that would in fact gut the main bill itself. Hence, Robert, his father, Marc, Francis Hincks and other Reformers continued to meet quietly with individual MLAs as they arrived in town in a concerted effort to keep the temporary coalition shored up. Having the Reform party itself keep a low profile while Governor Thomson did the arm-twisting and blandishing was paying huge dividends so far. Still, the entire enterprise was as fragile as a house of cards.

***

The rehearsal on Saturday evening began right on schedule. As promised, the director called on stage only those involved in the particular scene to be worked on. The blocking and the delivery of lines (script in-hand, still) was patiently monitored by Sir P., with interruptions that he presumed to be warranted and judicious, though they were not always accepted in that spirit. As Cobb's first scene was forty or fifty minutes away, he asked if he might begin painting the flats. So, while the Crenshaws, as Demetrius and Hermia, continued to flounder and squabble, on stage and off, and fray the sweet temper of their director, Cobb was supplied with bottles of paint and brushes by Mullins the gardener from a stock located, Cobb assumed, in the summer kitchen some distance away. As Mullins communicated exclusively in grunts, punctuated by the occasional monosyllable, Cobb was not quite sure where that room was, but he did understand that, from now on, he was on his own. Which suited him just fine.

Donning a plasterer's smock that dropped to his knees, he set the flats up against the inner wall near the curtained-off wing to the right of the stage, in which Sir P. had had Mullins place four comfortable chairs upon which the actors "on call," as it were, could sit and converse quietly. As Sir P. had boasted to Cobb, his talented lady had sketched several backdrop scenes to suggest various parts of the magical forest: mostly bushy trees, dark starlit skies, a cloud-besieged moon, a brown boulder or two, and one flowering shrub. He began with the sky, of which there was plenty. As he daubed slowly away at this task, he was able, off and on over the course of the next hour, to eavesdrop on a number of nearby conversations.

Thus:

Clemmy: I still can't understand why Sir P. would ask a common peeler to Oakwood Manor. He might as well've asked the gardener!

Dutton: I think there's a lot more to Cobb than meets the eye.

Clemmy: He looks perfectly stupid to me. Cyrus an' me didn't join this silly play-business to concert with the likes of him. My husband's daddy was a war hero, you know.