Produced by Wendy Crockett, Juliet Sutherland, Charles
Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team from
images generously made available by the Canadian Institute
for Historical Microreproductions.
AN ALGONQUIN MAIDEN
A ROMANCE OF THE EARLY DAYS OF UPPER CANADA
BY
G. MERCER ADAM AND A. ETHELWYN WETHERALD
Entered according to Act of Parliament, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and eighty-six, by GRAEME MERCER ADAM and AGNES ETHELWYN
WETHERALD, in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture, Ottawa.
TO THE VETERAN PUBLISHER, John Lovell, Esq., OF MONTREAL, WHO HAS
SPENT A LONG AND BUSY LIFE IN THE VARIED SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY, THIS
MODEST EFFORT IN THE FIELD OF CANADIAN FICTION IS AFFECTIONATELY AND
ADMIRINGLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHORS.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
The Young Master of Pine Towers
CHAPTER II.
An Upper Canadian Household
CHAPTER III.
"When Summer Days were Fair"
CHAPTER IV.
Indian Annals and Legends
CHAPTER V.
The Algonquin Maiden
CHAPTER VI.
Catechisings
CHAPTER VII.
An Accident
CHAPTER VIII.
Convalescence
CHAPTER IX.
On the Way to the Capital
CHAPTER X.
York and the Maitlands
CHAPTER XI.
After "The Ball"
CHAPTER XII.
A Kiss and its Consequences
CHAPTER XIII.
Rival Attractions
CHAPTER XIV.
"Muddy Little York"
CHAPTER XV.
Politics at the Capital
CHAPTER XVI.
Love's Protestations
CHAPTER XVII.
A Picnic in the Woods
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Commodore Surrenders
CHAPTER XIX.
At Stamford Cottage
CHAPTER XX.
The Coming of Wanda
CHAPTER XXI.
The Passing of Wanda
CHAPTER XXII.
Love's Rewards
AN ALGONQUIN MAIDEN.
CHAPTER I.
THE YOUNG MASTER OF PINE TOWERS.
It was a May morning in 1825--spring-time of the year, late spring-time
of the century. It had rained the night before, and a warm pallor in
the eastern sky was the only indication that the sun was trying to
pierce the gray dome of nearly opaque watery fog, lying low upon that
part of the world now known as the city of Toronto, then the town of
Little York. This cluster of five or six hundred houses had taken up a
determined position at the edge of a forest then gloomily forbidding
in its aspect, interminable in extent, inexorable in its resistance to
the shy or to the sturdy approaches of the settler. Man _versus_
nature--the successive assaults of perishing humanity upon the almost
impregnable fortresses of the eternal forests--this was the struggle
of Canadian civilization, and its hard-won triumphs were bodied forth
in the scattered roofs of these cheap habitations. Seen now through
soft gradations of vapoury gloom, they took on a poetic significance,
as tenderly intangible as the romantic halo which the mist of years
loves to weave about the heads of departed pioneers, who, for the most
part, lived out their lives in plain, grim style, without any thought
of posing as "conquering heroes" in the eyes of succeeding generations.
From the portico of one of these dwellings, under a wind-swayed sign
which advertised it to be a place of rest and refreshment, stepped a
man of more than middle age, whose nervous gait and anxious face
betokened a mind ill at ease. He had the look and air of a highly
respectable old servitor,--one who had followed the family to whom he
was bound by ties of life-long service to a country of which he
strongly disapproved, not because it offered a poor field for his own
advancement, but because, to his mind, its crude society and narrow
opportunities ill became the distinction of the Old World family to
whose fortunes he was devoted. Time had softened these prejudices, but
had failed to melt them; and if they had a pardonable fashion of
congealing under the stress of the Canadian winter, they generally
showed signs of a thaw at the approach of spring. At the present
moment he had no thought, no eyes, for anything save a mist-enshrouded
speck far off across the waters of Lake Ontario. All the impatience
and longing of the week just past found vent through his eyes, as he
watched that pale, uncertain, scarcely visible mote on the horizon. As
he reached the shore the fog lifted a little, and a great sunbeam,
leaping from a cloud, illumined for a moment the smooth expanse of
water; but the new day was as yet chary of its gifts. It was very
still. The woods and waves alike were tranced in absolute calm. The
unlighted heavens brooded upon the silent limpid waters and the
breathless woods, while between them, with restless step, and heart as
gloomy as the morning, with secret, sore misgiving, paced the old
servant, his attention still riveted upon that distant speck. The
sight of land and home to the gaze of a long absent wanderer, wearied
with ocean, is not more dear than the first glimpse of the approaching
sail to watching eyes on shore.
Was it in truth the packet vessel for whose coming he had yearningly
waited, or the dark wing of a soaring bird, or did it exist only in
imagination? The tide of his impatience rose anew as the dim object
slowly resolved itself into the semblance of a sail, shrouded in the
pale, damp light of early morning. Unwilling to admit to his usually
grave unimpressible self the fact that he was restless and disturbed,
he reduced his pace to a dignified march, extended his chosen beat to
a wider margin of the sandy shore, and, parting the blighted branches
of a group of trees, that bore evidence of the effect of constant
exposure to lake winds, he affected to examine them critically. But
the hand that touched the withered leaves trembled, and his sight was
dimmed with something closely resembling the morning's mist. When he
again raised his eyes to that white-sailed vessel it looked to his
hopeless gaze absolutely becalmed. The slow moments dragged heavily
along. The mantle of fog was wholly lifted at last, and the lonely
watcher was enveloped in the soft beauty of the morning. A light cloud
hung motionless, as though spell-bound, above the mute and moveless
trees, while before him the dead blue slopes of heaven were unbroken
by a single flying bird, the wide waste of water unlighted, save by
that unfluttering sail.
And now, like a visible response to his silent but seemingly
resistless longing, a boat was rapidly pushed away from the larger
craft, and the swift flash and fall of the oars kept time to the
pulsing in the old man's breast. Again ensued that inglorious conflict
between self-respecting sobriety of demeanour and long suppressed
emotion, which ended only when the boat grated on the sand, and a
blonde stalwart youth leaped ashore. The old man fell upon his neck
with tears and murmured ejaculations of gratitude and welcome; but
young impatient hands pushed him not ungently aside, and a youthful
voice, high and intense from anxiety, urgently exclaimed:
"My mother! How is my mother?"
"She yet breathes, thank God. She has been longing for your coming as
a suffering saint longs for heaven. She must see you before she dies!"
The young man turned a little aside with down-bent head. His positive
blue eyes looked almost feverishly bright; and the lip, on which he
had unconsciously bitten hard, now released from pressure, quivered
perceptibly; but with the unwillingness or inability of youth to admit
the inevitableness of a great grief he burst forth with:
"Is that all you have to say to me?" And then, as his keen eye noticed
the tears still undried upon the cheeks of the old man, he sighed
heavily. "Can nothing be done? Is there no help? It doesn't seem
possible!" He ground his heel heavily into the sand. "Say something,
Tredway," he entreated, "anything with a gleam of hope in it."
Tredway shook his head. "The only hope that remains is that you will
reach home in time to receive her last words. This is the second time
that I have come down expecting to meet you."
The young fellow with his erect military air and noticeably handsome
face betrayed a remote consciousness that he was perhaps worth the
trouble of coming after twice. As they together hastened up from the
beach the younger of the two briefly narrated the cause of his
delay--a delay occasioned by stress of weather on the Atlantic, and
the state of the roads in the valley of the Mohawk, on the journey
from the seaboard. He had lost not an hour, the young man said, in
obeying the summons of his father, the Commodore, to quit England and
return to his Canadian home ere his much-loved mother passed from the
earth.
Eager to reach that home, which was on the shores of Lake Simcoe, the
young Cadet bade the old servitor hasten to get their horses ready
when they would instantly set forth. As they were about to mount, the
younger of the two was accosted by an old friend, now an attache of
Government House, who, learning of the arrival of the packet, and
expecting the young master of Pine Towers, had strolled down to the
landing-place to welcome the newcomer and ask him to partake of the
Governor's hospitality. The young man, however, begged his friend to
have him excused, and with dutiful messages of respect for the
Governor and his household, and a cordial adieu to his former
boon-companion, he rapidly set off for home, closely followed by his
attendant.
Coming up the old military road, cut out between York and Holland
Landing by His Majesty's corps of Queen's Rangers, under the _regime_
of Governor Simcoe, both horsemen fell into a brief silence, broken by
sorrowful inquiries from the younger man regarding the subject which
lay so close to the heart of each. "Dying!" he exclaimed in deep
sadness, and with the utter incapacity of young and ardent life to
conceive the reality of death. "And my own mother. It seems natural
enough for other mothers to die--but mine! Heaven help us! We never
know the meaning of grief until it comes to our own threshold."
The old steward viewed with a desolate stare the May landscape,
brightly lit with sunshine and bloom, and said wearily:
"But what can one expect in this wretched, half-civilized country? Now
in England--"
His voice lingered long upon that fondly loved word, and his young
master concluded the sentence with,
"There would be little hope, but in this 'brave new world,' where the
odour of the woods is a tonic, and the air brings healing and balm,
how can death exist? Ah, Tredway, this is a beautiful country!"
"To me there is but one beautiful country--that is England." Again
there was that lingering intonation.
Edward Macleod gave vent to a short melancholy laugh. The allurements
of an old civilization were over-ripe to his taste. Promise appealed
to his imagination; fulfilment was a dull fact. Along with the
unmistakable evidences of birth and breeding in his person, there was
in his fresh youth and buoyancy something joyously akin to the
vigorous young life about him.
"England," said Tredway, with his disapproving regard fixed upon the
wilderness around, "is a garden."
"And I take no delight in gardens," declared Edward. "I was never
intended for a garden statue. This long day's journey under the giant
trees of the wild, unconquered woods seems to gratify some savage
instinct of my nature. The old country is well adapted to keep alive
old customs, old notions, old traditions; but for me I am a Canadian,
my mind is wearied with over-much civilization. I hate the English
love of land for land's sake. That line of hills, swelling in massive
curves, and crowned, not with a tottering ruin, serving to hang some
legendary romance or faded rag of superstition upon, but with stately
trees--that is my idea of the beautiful."
He struck into a sharp gallop, his bright head above the dark blue
military cloak forming a picturesque feature in the woodland, and the
flying heels of his spirited horse seeming to add a rattling chorus of
applause to his patriotic sentiments. The old retainer ambled along in
his wake, but more slowly. His idea of the beautiful was not quite so
recklessly defiant. Presently, for he was still jaded from the effects
of his long journey on the previous day, he relaxed his attempt at
speed, and soon lost sight of his companion altogether. The vision of
waving cloak and flying steed vanished in the green aisles of the
forest.
Along the Oak Ridges--situate some thirty miles from York--which the
two horsemen now neared, a Huguenot settlement had been formed about
the close of the eighteenth century. The settlers were French officers
of the noblesse order, who, during the French Revolution, when the
royalist cause became desperate, emigrated to England, thence to
Canada, where, by the bounty of the Crown, they were given grants of
land in this portion of the Province of Upper Canada. Here many of
these _emigres_ had made clearings on the Ridges, and reared _chateaux_
for themselves and their households after the manner of their ancestral
homes in Languedoc and Brittany. Into the grounds of one of these
mansions had the younger horseman disappeared to pay his hurried
respects to the stately dame who was its owner, and who, with her fair
daughter, were intimate friends of the Macleod family.
Almost before the old man had time to wonder what mad freak had kept
his young master so long from the beaten road, he was at his side
again.
"I have been trying to get a glimpse of my little friend, Helene," he
said, in explanation of his absence, "but the DeBerczy mansion is as
empty as a church on Monday. They still go to Lake Simcoe in summer,
I suppose. But what does this early flight portend?"
"It was caused solely by the serious nature of your mother's illness.
Madame and Mademoiselle have been now five weeks at 'Bellevue.'"
The young man's face darkened, or rather lost the brightness that
habitually played upon it, like gleams of sunshine on a stream, which,
when disappearing, show the depth of the tide beneath.
"You would scarcely know the young lady now," continued Tredway. "The
difference between fifteen and eighteen is the difference between
childhood and womanhood."
"I suppose she has grown like a young forest tree, and holds her
graceful head almost as high."
"She is well grown, and very beautiful, but not bewitching like your
sister Rose."
"Ah! dear little Rose! But she, too, I doubt not, is a bud no longer.
It's odd how much easier it is for a girl to be a woman than for a boy
to become a man." There was something vaguely suggestive of regret in
the gesture with which young Macleod lightly brushed his short upper
lip, whose hirsute adornment was not, in its owner's estimation, all
that it ought to have been. "I was twenty-one last winter. Do I look
very young?" he inquired, with the natural anxiety of a man who has
recently escaped the ignominy of being in his teens.
"You look altogether too young," dryly returned the ancient servitor,
"to appreciate the worth of a country where old customs, old ideas,
and old traditions are respected."
"Then may youth always be mine!" exclaimed Edward, looking round him
with the glow in his heart, sure to be felt by the devout worshipper
of Nature in the large and beautiful presence of her whom he adores.
The region about him, esteemed the epitome of dreariness in winter,
held now in its depths a vast luxury of vegetation. The wild vines ran
knotted and twisted about the trunks and branches of multitudinous
trees, and the fallen logs were draped with moss, lichens, and
delicate ferns. Passing through this boundless wilderness, they seemed
to look into a succession of woodland chambers, thickly carpeted with
wild flowers, gorgeously festooned with creeping and parasitical
plants hanging from the branches, and secured in their leafy seclusion
by walls of abundant foliage. In one of these natural parlours they
paused for their mid-day repast--mid-day in the world without, but
here, where only vagrant gleams of the spring sun pierced the forest
solitudes, gloomy with spruce and pine, there was a sense of morning
in the air. This appearance was heightened by the delicate curtains of
cobweb, strung with shining pearls, which still might be seen after
the fog at early dawn. There was no sound except sometimes that of an
invisible bird, singing in the upper air, or when a partridge, roused
by approaching steps, started from the hollow, and rapidly whirring
away directly before them was again startled into flight when they
overtook it.
The road they followed cut straight through the forest, and, disdaining
to enclose the hills in graceful curves, attacked and surmounted them
in the direct fashion common to our forefathers, when they encountered
obstacles of any serious nature. The absence of human sight or voice
gave a strangeness to the sound of their own utterances, and there
were frequent lapses into that sad silence which fell upon them as
naturally as the gloom from the overshadowing boughs above. The old
attendant who viewed every member of the family whom he served and
loved just as the first man regarded the world at his first glimpse of
it--that is, as an extension of his own consciousness--was deeply
moved at the sight of his young master's sombre face. Edward's heart,
indeed, ached painfully. The perpetual repetition of this luxuriance
of young fresh life in the woods of May was a constant reminder of a
life that until lately had been as vigorously beautiful, and now
perhaps had passed away from this world forever.
Leaving their weary horses at Holland Landing, they took boat down the
river and bay, desiring to hasten their arrival at the family mansion,
nearly opposite to what is now the prettily situated town of Barrie.
Edward sat apart and gazed long and silently at the waving tree lines,
dark against a luminous, cool, gray sky, with its scattered but serene
group of clouds. All his desire for home and for her who was the
sunshine of it had resolved itself into a yearning that gnawed
momentarily at his heart. Instead of the fair sky and landscape and
silent waterways of his New World home, he saw or rather felt, the
hush of a dim chamber, whose wasted occupant had travelled far into
the valley of the shadow of death. His wet eyes, looking abroad upon
the outer world, were as the eyes of those who see not. The afternoon
sunshine paled and thinned, but beneath the chill of the spring day
there lay a warm hint of the untold tenderness of midsummer.
Unconsciously to himself the prophecy brought a feeling of comfort to
his heart, in its reminder of the glory of that summer to which his
mother might even now be passing--"the glory that was to be revealed."
It was early twilight when Edward Macleod reached his beautiful home
overlooking Kempenfeldt Bay. The broad, solid-built house, with its
commanding position, and spacious verandas, seemed just such a mansion
as an old naval officer, who was reduced to the insipid necessity of a
life on shore, would choose to dwell in. One might almost be tempted
to call it a fine piece of marine architecture, in some of its
fanciful reminders of an ocean vessel. Its solitariness, its pointed
turrets and gables, its proud position on what might be termed the
topmost wave of earth in that region, the flying flag at its summit,
and the ample white curtains that fluttered sail-like in the open
windows, all heightened the resemblance. From its portal down to the
bay, extended a noble avenue of hardwood trees--oak, walnut and
elm--never planted by the hand of man. Their gracious lives the
woodman had spared, and now, with their outstretched branches,
catching the faint evening breeze, they seemed to breathe a sad
benediction upon the returning youth, who walked hurriedly and
tremblingly beneath them.
As he stepped from their leafy shadow upon the sunset-gilded lawn, he
was startled by an apparition which seemed suddenly to take shape from
a sweet-scented thicket of lilacs now in profuse bloom at the rear of
the house. A dark, lissome creature, beautiful as a young princess,
but a princess in the disguise of a savage, darted past him. So sudden
was the appearance, and so swift the flight of this dusky Diana,
speeding through the blossoming shrubs of spring, that his mind
retained only a general impression of a face, perfect-featured and
olive-tinted, and a form robed in a brilliant and barbarous admixture
of scarlet, yellow, and very dark blue.
But the next moment every sensation and emotion gave way to
overwhelming and profound grief, for his sister Rose, hurrying to meet
him, threw herself into his arms with an abandon of sorrow that seemed
to leave no room for hope. The fatal question burned a moment on his
lips, then died away unuttered, leaving them pale as ashes, and a big
tear fell upon the bright head of the girl whom he now believed to be
with himself motherless. But in a moment his father took his hand in a
tense, strong grasp, and drew him quickly forward. "She yet breathes,"
he whispered, "but is unable to recognize any of us. Heaven grant she
may know you. For days past her moan has been, 'I cannot die until I
see my son, until I see my first-born.'"
His voice broke as they entered the chamber of death. The young man,
feeling strangely weak and blind, sat down beside the bed, for the
awful hush of this darkened room weighed heavily upon him. As in a
terrible dream he saw the sorrowing forms of his younger brother and
sister, crouching at his feet, poor Rose drooping in the doorway, his
father's trembling hands grasping a post of the high, old-fashioned
bedstead, and, on the other side of the bed a youthful stranger, whose
black dress and very black hair divinely framed a face and throat of
milky whiteness. These objects left but a weak impression upon his
dulled senses, for all his soul was going out in resistless longing
towards the fast-ebbing life that seemed to be slipping away from his
feeble grasp. He stroked the little bloodless hand, and kissed
repeatedly the wasted cheek, uttering at the same time low murmurs of
entreaty that she would look upon him once more before she died. All
in vain. Utterly still and unresponsive as death itself, she lay
before him. "Dear mother," he implored, "it is your son, your own
Edward that calls you. Can you not hear? Will you not come back to me
a single moment? Ah, I cannot let you go; I cannot, I cannot!" His
voice sank in a passionate murmur of grief. "You will look at me once,
will you not? Oh, mother, mother, mother!"
He had fallen to his knees, with his face on the pillow close to hers,
and his last words smote upon her ear like the inarticulate wail of an
infant whose life must perish along with the strong sustaining life of
her who gave it birth. The head turned ever so slightly, the eyelids
quivered faintly and lifted, and her eyes looked fully and tenderly
upon her son. Then, with a mighty effort, she raised one transparent
hand, and brought it feebly, flutteringly, higher and higher, until
it lay upon his cheek. A strange faint light of unearthly sweetness
played about her lips. It was a light as sweet and beautiful as
her own life had been, but now it paled and faded--brightened
again--flickered a moment--and then went out forever.
The sad sound of children weeping broke the silence of the
death-chamber. Edward still knelt, and Rose was bowed with grief; but
the old Commodore's courageous voice sounded as though wrung from the
depths of his sorely-stricken heart:
"The Lord gave, and the Lord--" his tongue failed him, but after a
momentary struggle he continued in shaking tones--"and the Lord taketh
away. _Blessed_--"
He could say no more.
Surely the blessing that, for choking sobs, could not find utterance
on earth, was heard in heaven, and abundantly returned upon the brave
and desolate spirit of him who strove to pronounce it.