Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [25]
The Moodies were overjoyed to see Catharine blossom in the glow of Thomas’s love. But Catharine’s mother and sister Agnes disapproved strongly of her suitor. Now that their mother rarely ventured beyond the kitchen gardens of Reydon Hall, the Strickland sisters all turned to Agnes for approval. Agnes, a take-charge kind of person, did not think much of Thomas. He was nine years older than Catharine, and had none of John Moodie’s joie de vivre to offset his shortcomings. He lacked the manly virtues of energy, courage and decisiveness that Catharine’s father, Thomas Strickland, had embodied. Furthermore, he was encumbered with debts, teenage children and a morose temperament.
Catharine’s docile temper aside, she had a will powerful enough to make up for her fiancé’s reticence. She was determined not to let her bossy older sister or anybody else sabotage this relationship. And besides, both Catharine and Thomas were infected by the Canada-mania that had captured the Moodies. Susanna and Catharine began to discuss the notion of leaving England together—waving goodbye to their own pinched circumstances and their husbands’ failing Scottish fortunes and venturing overseas to meet again with their brother Samuel. They helped each other collect the clothes they would need for a voyage across the ocean and a new life in the New World: flannel petticoats, sturdy boots, knitted stockings, warm cloaks.
Events moved quickly through 1832. In late February, after a long and painful labour, Susanna and John’s first baby was born. John doted on his “dab-chick,” as he called his daughter. She was christened Catherine Mary Josephine at St. Edmund’s Church, Southwold. A couple of months later, on May 13, Thomas and Catharine were married in Reydon’s squat little parish church, St. Margaret’s. Agnes and Jane Strickland acted as bridesmaids as Catharine floated up the aisle on John Moodie’s arm. Mrs. Strickland sat in the front pew, her teeth gritted with disapproval. At the altar rail, Thomas slipped onto Catharine’s finger the thin gold band that in the years ahead she would never remove even for a moment—neither when she was elbow-deep in laundry suds, nor when her hands were knotted and swollen with arthritis. In later years, Agnes recalled the Traills’ marriage as a most upsetting affair, from which her mother never really recovered. But Catharine insisted in a letter to James Bird that, “My dear husband is … all that a faithful heart can desire in a partner for life.”
By the end of the month, both the Traills and the Moodies had said their goodbyes at Reydon Hall. The Traills left first. On a long, curving Suffolk beach, Catharine and Susanna clung to each other, both wondering whether they would survive to meet again on another continent. Thomas finally persuaded his wife to join him in the rowboat, and they were carried out to The City of London, the little steamer that paddled up the east coast of England and southern Scotland each week, calling in at all the seaside towns between London and Leith, the little port close to Edinburgh. Out at sea, Catharine stood at the rail of the steamer. She slipped her hand into her husband’s, but she never took her eyes off the figure on the beach.