The old house stood forty or fifty feet back from the roadway, on the north side, overlooking the waters of the bay. The lot was divided from the street by a low picket fence, and admission to the enclosure was gained by means of a small gate. In those remote times there were few buildings intervening between Duchess street and the water front, and those few were not very pretentious; so that when the atmosphere was free from fog you could trace from the windows of the upper story the entire hithermost shore of the peninsula which has since become The Island. The structure itself, like most buildings then erected in York, was of frame. It was of considerable dimensions for those days, and must have contained at least eight or nine rooms. It was two stories high, and had a good deal of painted fret-work about the windows of the upper story. A stately elm stood immediately in the rear, and its wide-spreading branches overshadowed the greater part of the back yard and outbuildings. And that is all I have been able to learn about the exterior aspect of the place.
II.—INSIDE THE HOUSE.
A small porch-door, about half way down the western side, furnished the ordinary mode of entrance to and exit from the house. This door opened into an apartment which served the double purpose of sitting-room and dining-room, and which was connected by an inner door with the kitchen and back premises. There was, however, a rather wide-mouthed front entrance, approached by a short flight of wooden steps, and opening into a fair-sized hall. To the right of the hall, as you entered, a door opened into what served as a drawing-room, which was seldom used, as the occupants of the house were not given to receiving much fashionable company. To the left of the hall, another door opened into the dining-room already mentioned. A stairway facing the front entrance, conducted you to the upper story, which consisted of several bed-rooms and a large apartment in front. This latter must have been by long odds the pleasantest room in the house. It was of comfortable dimensions, well lighted, and cheerful as to its outlook. Two front windows commanded a prospect of the bay and the peninsula, while a third window on the eastern side overlooked the valley of the Don, which was by no means the stagnant pool which it was destined to become in later years. The only entrance to this chamber was a door placed directly to the right hand at the head of the stairway, which stairway, it may be mentioned, consisted of exactly seventeen steps. A small bedroom in the rear was accessible only by a separate door at the back of the upper hallway, and was thus not directly connected with the larger apartment.
I am not informed as to the precise number and features of the other rooms in the upper story, except that is they were bedrooms; nor is any further information respecting them essential to a full comprehension of the narrative. Why I have been so precise as to what may at first appear trivial details will hereafter appear.
III.—THE TENANTS OF THE HOUSE.
As already mentioned, the house was probably built by Surveyor-General Ridout;—but it does not appear that either he or any member of his family ever resided there. The earliest occupant of whom I have been able to find any trace was Thomas Mercer Jones—the gentleman, I presume, who was afterwards connected with the Canada Land Company. Whether he was the first tenant I am unable to say, but a gentleman bearing that name dwelt there during the latter part of the year 1816, and appears to have been a well-known citizen of Little York. In 1819 the tenant was a person named McKechnie, as to whom I have been unable to glean any information whatever beyond the bare fact that he was a pewholder in St. James's church. He appears to have given place to one of the numerous members of the Powell family.
But the occupant with whom this narrative is more immediately concerned was a certain ex-military man named Bywater, who woke up the echoes of York society for a few brief months, between sixty and seventy years ago, and who, after passing a lurid interval of his misspent life in this community, solved the great problem of human existence by falling down stairs and breaking his neck. Captain Stephen Bywater was a mauvais sujet of the most pronounced stamp. He came of a good family in one of the Midland Counties of England; entered the army at an early age, and was present on a certain memorable Sunday at Waterloo, on which occasion he is said to have borne himself gallantly and well. But he appears to have had a deep vein of ingrained vice in his composition, which perpetually impelled him to crooked paths. Various ugly stories were current about him, for all of which there was doubtless more or less foundation. It was said that he had been caught cheating at play, and that he was an adept in all the rascalities of the turf. The deplorable event which led to the resignation of his commission made considerable noise at the time of its occurrence. A young brother officer whom he had swindled out of large sums of money, was forced by him into a duel, which was fought on the French coast, in the presence of two seconds and a military surgeon. There seems to have been no doubt that the villainous captain fired too soon. At any rate, the youth who had been inveigled into staking his life on the issue was left dead on the field, while the aggressor rode off unscathed, followed by the execrations of his own second. A rigid enquiry was instituted, but the principal witnesses were not forthcoming, and the murderer—for as such he was commonly regarded—escaped the punishment which everybody considered he had justly merited. The severance of his connection with the army was a foregone conclusion, and he was formally expelled from his club. He was socially sent to Coventry, and his native land soon became for him a most undesirable place of abode. Then he crossed the Atlantic and made his way to Upper Canada, where, after a while, he turned up at York, and became the tenant of the house on Duchess street.
At the time of his arrival in this country, which must have been some time in 1822, or perhaps early in 1823, Captain Bywater was apparently about forty years of age. He was a bachelor and possessed of some means. For a very brief period he contrived to make his way into the select society of the Provincial capital; but it soon became known that he was the aristocratic desperado who had so ruthlessly shot down young Remy Errington on the sands near Boulogne, and who had the reputation of being one of the most unmitigated scamps who ever wore uniform. York society in those days could swallow a good deal in a man of good birth and competent fortune, but it could not swallow even a well-to-do bachelor of good family and marriageable age who had been forced to resign his commission, and had been expelled from a not too straight-laced London club, by a unanimous vote of the committee. Captain Bywater was dropped with a suddenness and severity which he could not fail to understand. He received no more invitations from mothers with marriageable daughters, and when he presented himself at their doors informally and forbidden he found nobody at home. Ladies ceased to recognise him on the street, and gentlemen received his bows with a response so frigid that he readily comprehended the state of affairs. He perceived that his day of grace was past, and accepted his fate with a supercilious shrug of his broad shoulders.
But the Captain was a gregarious animal, to whom solitude was insupportable. Society of some sort was a necessity of his existence, and as the company of ladies and gentlemen, was no longer open to him, he sought consolation among persons of a lower grade in the social scale. He began to frequent bar-rooms and other places of public resort, and as he was free with his money he had no difficulty in finding companions of a certain sort who were ready and willing enough to drink at his expense, and to listen to the braggadocio tales of the doughty deeds achieved by him during his campaign in the Peninsula. In a few weeks he found himself the acknowledged head and front of a little coterie which assembled nightly at the George Inn, on King street. This, however, did not last long, as the late potations and ribald carousings of the company disturbed the entire neighborhood, and attracted attention to the place. The landlord received a stern admonition to keep earlier hours and less uproarious guests. When Boniface sought to carry this admonition into effect Captain Bywater mounted his high horse, and adjourned to his own place, taking his five or six boon companions with him. From that time forward the house on Duchess street was the regular place of meeting.