CHAPTER I.

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CROWDED OUT!

And Other Sketches,

By Seranus

The Story of Monsieur, Madame, and the Pea-Green Parrot. The Bishop of

Saskabasquia. “As it was in the Beginning.” A Christmas Sketch. The

Idyl of the Island. The Story of Delle Josephine Boulanger. The Story of

Etienne Chezy d'Alencourt. “Descendez a l'ombre, ma jolie blonde.” The

Prisoner Dubois. How the Mr. Foxleys Came, Stayed, and Never Went Away.

The Gilded Hammock.

PREFACE.

I present these “Sketches” in all proper fear and humility, to my

Canadian public, hoping that the phases of colonial life they endeavor

to portray will be recognized as not altogether unfamiliar. Some of them

are true, others have been written through the medium of Fancy, which

can find and inhabit as large a field in Canada as elsewhere; for, to my

mind, there is no country, no town, no village, as there is no nation,

no class of society, nor individual existence, that has not its own deep

and peculiar significance, its own unique and personal characteristics

that distinguish it from the rest of the world.

SERANUS.

Crowded Out.

I am nobody. I am living in a London lodging-house. My room is up three

pair of stairs. I have come to London to sell or to part with in some

manner an opera, a comedy, a volume of verse, songs, sketches, stories.

I compose as well as write. I am ambitious. For the sake of another,

one other, I am ambitious. For myself it does not matter. If nobody will

discover me I must discover myself. I must demand recognition, I must

wrest attention, they are my due. I look from my window over the smoky

roofs of London. What will it do for me, this great cold city? It shall

hear me, it shall pause for a moment, for a day, for a year. I will make

it to listen to me, to look at me. I have left a continent behind,

I have crossed a great water; I have incurred dangers, trials of all

kinds; I have grown pale and thin with labor and the midnight oil; I

have starved, and watched the dawn break starving; I have prayed on

my stubborn knees for death and I have prayed on my stubborn knees for

life--all that I might reach London, London that has killed so many of

my brothers, London the cold, London the blind, London the cruel! I am

here at last. I am here to be tested, to be proved, to be worn proudly,

as a favorite and costly jewel is worn, or to be flung aside scornfully

or dropped stealthily to--the devil! And I love it so this great London!

I am ready to swear no one ever loved it so before! The smokier it is,

the dirtier, the dingier, the better. The oftener it rains the better.

The more whimsical it is, the more fickle, the more credulous, the more

self-sufficient, the more self-existent, the better. Nothing that it

can do, nothing that it can be, can change my love for it, great cruel

London!

But to be cruel to _me_, to be fickle to _me_, to be deaf to _me_, to be

blind to _me_! Would I change then? I might. As yet it does not know

me. I pass through its streets, touching here a bit of old black wall,

picking there an ivy leaf, and it knows me not. It is holy ground to me.

It is the mistress whose hand alone I as yet dare to kiss. Some day

I shall possess the whole, and I shall walk with the firm and buoyant

tread of the accepted, delighted lover. Only to-day I am nobody. I

am crowded out. Yet there are moments when the mere joy of being in

England, of being in London, satisfies me. I have seen the sunbeam

strike the glory along the green. I know it is an English sky above

me, all change, all mutability. No steady cloudless sphere of blue but

ever-varying glories of white piled cloud against the gray. Listen to

this. I saw a primrose--the first I had ever seen--in the hedge. They

said “Pick it.” But I did not. I, who had written there years ago,--

I never pulled a primrose, I,

But could I know that there may lie

E'en now some small or hidden seed,

Within, below, an English mead,

Waiting for sun and rain to make

A flower of it for my poor sake,

I then could wait till winds should tell,

For me there swayed or swung a bell,

Or reared a banner, peered a star,

Or curved a cup in woods afar.

I who had written that, I had found my first primrose and I could

not pluck it. I found it fair be sure. I find all England fair. The

shimmering mist and the tender rain, the red wallflower and the ivy

green, the singing birds and the shallow streams--all the country; the

blackened churches, the grass-grown churchyards, the hum of streets the

crowded omnibus, the gorgeous shops,--all the town. God! do I not love

it, my England? Yet not my England yet. Till she proclaim it herself,

I am not hers. I will make her mine. I will write as no man has ever

written about her, for very love of her. I look out to-night from

my narrow window and think how the moonlight falls on Tintern, on

Glastonbury, on Furness. How it falls on the primrose I would not pluck.

How it would like to fall on the tall blue-bells in the wood. I see the

lights of Oxford St. The omnibuses rattle by, the people are going to

see Irving, Wilson Barrett, Ellen Terry. What line, of mine, what bar,

what thought or phrase will turn the silence into song, the copper into

gold?--I come back from the window and sit at the square centre table.

It is rickety and uncomfortable, useless to write on. I kick it. I would

kick anything that came in my way to-night. I am savage. Outside, a

French piano is playing that infernal waltz. A fair subject for kicking

if you will. But, though I would I cannot. What a room! The fire-place

is filled with orange peel and brown paper, cigar stumps and matches.

One blind I pulled down this morning, the other is crooked. The lamp

glass is cracked, my work too. I dare not look at the wall paper nor

the pictures. The carpet I have kicked into holes. I can see it though

I can't feel it, it is so thin. My clothes are lying all about. The soot

of London begrimes every object in the room. I would buy a pot of musk

or a silken scarf if I dared, but how can I?

I must get my bread first and live for beauty after. Everything is

refused though, everything sent back or else dropped as it were into

some bottomless pit or gulf.

Here is my opera. This is my _magnum opus_, very dear, very clear,

very well preserved. For it is three years old. I scored it nearly

altogether, by _her_ side, Hortense, my dear love, my northern bird! You

could flush under my gaze, you could kindle at my touch, but you were

not for me, you were not for me!--My head droops down, I could go to

sleep. But I must not waste the time in sleep. I will write another

story. No; I had four returned to-day. Ah! Cruel London! To love you

so, only that I may be spurned and thrust aside, ignored, forgotten.

But to-morrow I will try again. I will take the opera to the theatres,

I will see the managers, I will even tell them about myself and about

Hortense--but it will be hard. They do not know me, they do not know

Hortense. They will laugh, they will say “You fool.” And I shall be

helpless, I shall let them say it. They will never listen to me, though

I play my most beautiful phrase, for I am nobody. And Hortense, the

child with the royal air, Hortense, with her imperial brow and her hair

rolled over its cushion, Hortense, the _Châtelaine_ of _Beau Séjour_,

the delicate, haughty, pale and impassioned daughter of a noble house,

that Hortense, my Hortense, is nobody!

Who in this great London will believe in me, who will care to know

about Hortense or about _Beau Séjour_? If they ask me, I shall say--oh!

proudly--not in Normandy nor in Alsace, but far away across a great

water dwells such a maiden in such a _château_. There by the side of

a northern river, ever rippling, ever sparkling in Summer, hard, hard

frozen in winter, stretches a vast estate. I remember its impenetrable

pinewood, its deep ravine; I see the _château_, long and white and

straggling, with the red tiled towers and the tall French windows; I

see the terrace where the hound must still sleep; I see the square side

tower with the black iron shutters; I see the very window where Hortense

has set her light; I see the floating cribs on the river, I hear the

boatmen singing--

Descendez â l'ombre,

Ma Jolie blonde.

And now I am dreaming surely! This is London, not _Beau Séjour_, and

Hortense is far away, and it is that cursed fellow in the street I hear!

The morrow comes on quickly. If I were to draw up that crooked blind

now I should see the first streaks of daylight. Who pinned those other

curtains together? That was well done, for I don't want to see the

daylight; and it comes in, you know, Hortense, when you think it is

shut out. Somebody calls it _fingers_, and that is just what it is, long

fingers of dawn, always pale, always gray and white, stealing in and

around my pillow for me. Never pink, never rosy, mind that; always faint

and shadowy and gray.

It was all caste. Caste in London, caste in _Le Bos Canada_, all

the same. Because she was a _St. Hilaire_. Her full name--_Hortense

Angelique De Repentigny de St. Hilaire_--how it grates on me afresh with

its aristocratic plentitude. She is well-born, certainly; better born

than most of these girls I have seen here in London, driving, walking,

riding in the Parks. They wear their hair over cushions too. Freckled

skins, high cheek-bones, square foreheads, spreading eyebrows--they

shouldn't wear it so. It suits Hortense--with her pale patrician outline

and her dark pencilled eyebrows, and her little black ribbon and amulet

around her neck. _O, Marie, priey pour nous qui avous recours a vous_!

Once I walked out to _Beau Séjour_. She did not expect me and I crept

through the leafy ravine to the pinewood, then on to the steps, and so

up to the terrace. Through the French window I could see her seated at

the long table opposite Father Couture. She lives alone with the good

Père. She is the last one of the noble line, and he guards her well and

guards her money too.

“I do remember that it vill be all for ze Church,” she has said to me.

And the priest has taught her all she knows, how to sew and embroider,

and cook and read, though he never lets her read anything but works on

religion. Religion, always religion! He has brought her up like a nun,

crushed the life out of her. Until I found her out, found my jewel

out. It is Tennyson who says that. But his “Maud” was freer to woo than

Hortense, freer to love and kiss and hold--my God! that night while I

watched them studying and bending over those cursed works on the

Martyrs and the Saints and the Mission houses--I saw him--him--that old

priest--take her in his arms and caress her, drink her breath, feast

on her eyes, her hair, her delicate skin, and I burst in like a young

madman and told Father Conture what I thought. Oh! I was mad! I should

have won her first. I should have worked quietly, cautiously, waiting,

waiting, biding my time. But I could never bide my time. And now she

hates me, Hortense hates me, though she so nearly learned to love me.

There where we used to listen to the magical river songs, we nearly

loved, did we not Hortense? But she was a _St. Hilaire_, and I--I was

nobody, and I had insulted _le bon Pere_. Yet if I can go back to her

rich, prosperous, independent--What if that happen? But I begin to fancy

it will never happen. My resolutions, where are they, what comes of

them? Nothing. I have tried everything except the opera. Everything else

has been rejected. For a week I have not gone to bed at all. I wait and

see those ghastly gray fingers smoothing my pillow. I am not wanted. I

am crowded out. My hands tremble and I cannot write. My eyes fail and I

cannot see. To the window!

* * * * *

The lights of Oxford St. once more; the glare and the rattle without,

the fever and the ruin, the nerves and the heart within. Poor nerves,

poor heart; it is food you want and wine and rest, and I cannot give

them to you.

* * * * *

Sing, Hortense, will you? Sit by my side, by our dear river St. Maurice,

the clear, the sparkling. See how the floating cribs sail by, each with

its gleaming lights! It is like Venice I suppose. Shall we see Venice

ever, Hortense, you and I? Sing now for me,

Descendez à l'ombre,

Ma Jolie blonde.

Only you are _petite brune_, there is nothing _blonde_ about you,

_mignonne_, my dear mademoiselle, I should say if I were with you of

course as I used to do. But surely I _am_ with you and those lights are

the floating cribs I see, and your voice it is that sings, and presently

the boatmen hear and they turn and move their hands and join in--Now all

together,

Descendez à l'ombre,

* * * * *

It was like you, Hortense, to come all this way. How did you manage it,

manage to cross that great water all alone? My poor girl did you grow

tired of _Le bon Père_ at last and of the Martyrs and the Saints and the

Jesuit Fathers? But you have got your amulet on still I hope. That is

right, for there is a chance--there is a chance of these things proving

blessings after all to good girls, and you were a good girl Hortense.

You will not mind my calling you Hortense, will you? When we are in _Le

Bas Canada_ again, in your own seignieury, it will be “Madamoiselle,” I

promise you. You say it is a strange pillow, Hortense? Books, my girl,

and manuscripts; hard but not so hard as London stones and London

hearts. Do you know I think I am dying, or else going mad? And no one

will listen even if I cry out. There is too much to listen to already in

England. Think of all the growing green, Hortense, if you can, where you

are, so far away from it all. Where you are it is cold and the snow is

still on the ground and only the little bloodroot is up in the woods.

Here where I am Hortense, where I am going to die, it is warm and green

full of color--oh! Such color! Before I came here, to London you know

London that is going to do so much for me, for us both, I had one

day--one day in the country. There I saw--No! They will not let me

tell you, I knew they would try to prevent me, those long gray fingers

stealing in, stealing in! But I _will_ tell you. Listen, Hortense,

please. I saw the hawthorne, pink and white, the laburnum--yellow--not

fire-color, I shall correct the Laureate there, Hortense, when I am

better, when I--publish!--It is dreadful to be alone in London. Don't

come, Hortense. Stay where you are, even if it is cold and gray and

there is no color. Keep your amulet round your neck, dear!--I count my

pulse beats. It is a bad thing to do. It is broad daylight now and the

fingers have gone. I can write again perhaps.--The pen--The

paper--The ink--God. Hortense! There is no ink left! And my heart--My

heart--Hortense!!!

Descendez à l'ombre,

Ma Jolie blonde.

Monsieur, Madame and the Pea-Green Parrot

CHAPTER I.

I am an Englishman by birth. Having however lived for fourteen years out

in America or rather in Canada, I am only half an Englishman. All the

love for the dear old land which I am now revisiting is still there,

deep in my heart, but from so long a residence in another country

certain differences arise of character, habit and thought, not to be

easily shaken off. I was in the Civil Service in Canada and did very

well until I meddled with literature. Discovering that I had a faculty

for verse and story-telling, I was ambitious and at the same time

foolish enough to work so hard at my new pursuit that I was compelled to

“cut” the service, in other words to resign. Some other Englishman got

my post and I found myself, rather unexpectedly, it is true, free to

write to my heart's content.

I got off a number of things, poems, sketches, etc., but my great work

turned out to be a comedy. I slaved at this all day and amused myself

by rehearsing it in my lodgings all night. I incurred the odium of the

landlady by coaxing the maid of all work to learn a part and act it with

me. Finally I resolved to take a great step. I would go down to New York

and get my comedy produced. That was exactly five years ago and though

the comedy was _not_ produced, I am still sanguine that it yet may be,

and perhaps not in New York after all, but in a much more important

creative centre.

I was at the time of my visit to New York perfectly unacquainted with

the ways of a metropolis, and it was fortunate for me that I possessed

one friend there who if not exactly a friend _at court_ as we say, was

in truth a much more useful person to me, as, having once been young

and inexperienced himself, he knew the ropes well and handled them

thoroughly to his own satisfaction and with an eye to my comfort and

safety.

In the matter of cheap dives, for instance, he was invaluable. Left to

myself I either drifted to the most expensive place, for a

meal short perhaps of Delmonicos, or else to a shabby and

altogether-to-be-repudiated den, where the meat would be rags as well

as the pudding. But under his guidance we invariably turned up in some

clean, bright, cheap and wholesome “oysterbar” or coffee room round the

corner or up a lane, and were as happy as kings over our _lager beer_.

One day De Kock came to me (he is a grand-nephew or something, I

believe, of the great Frenchman) and said, with his knowing air,

“You will please put on your best coat, your tall hat and a pair of

gloves, for we are going to _dine_ to-night.”

“Have we not dined once to-day!”

“Pish! Pshaw! You have had a soup, a mutton-chop, a triangle of pie, a

lager beer, but you have not dined. You are not starving, and yet you

have, from my present point of view, eaten nothing the whole of this

day. _Mon cher_, it is necessary that you should dine for once in your

life. _Allons_! We go to Giuseppe, Giuseppe Martinetti with the pale

wife and the pea-green parrot--_allons, allons_!” To Martinetti's

accordingly we went. I don't know what the dinner cost. It was dearer,

certainly, than it would have been in London, but it was quite as good.

We sat at a table formed for holding four at an open window, which,

filled with exotics, overlooked Union Square, lighted by hundreds of

incandescent lamps. The room contained about twenty of these small

tables, and was, I suppose, very much like other rooms of its kind to

_habitués_ of such places, but it was all new to me, and I stared and

wondered accordingly. The waiters seemed to be all foreigners, De Kock

addressing them in a mythical but magical language of his own. The

tables were all full, and the people at them were mostly foreigners as

well.

“The Leicester Square of New York,” remarked De Kock, as he helped me to

the delicious Chiante wine out of a basket-covered bottle into a dainty

glass. The soup was excellent, I remember. So was the macaroni, served

in the best Italian method. I wondered to see De Kock manipulate it in

finished style, winding yards of it around his fork, and swallowing it

duly without any apparent effort. I cut mine at that time, although

I have learned better now. I recollect the asparagus, too: served by

itself on a great flat dish, and shining pale and green through the

clear golden sauce that was poured over it. I was just finishing my

first luscious, liquid stalk, and indulging in anticipations of my

second, when the highest, the shrillest, the most piercing, and most

unearthly voice I ever heard, shouted out--

“_And for goodness sake don't say I told you_!”

It was electrifying, at least to me. I dropped my half eaten asparagus

stalk and fork at the same time, and looked up to see my companion

quietly going on as before. One or two others had stopped eating too,

but the majority appeared quite unruffled. I concluded that it was the

parrot to which my friend had referred.

“The last comic song,” said the imperturbable De Kock.

“But where is the beast!” I inquired. “It seemed to be over my head.”

“Oh! Not so near as that. But take my advice and don't call it a beast,

although it is a nuisance undoubtedly. Besides, its master is not very

far away from your elbow.”

“What of that?” said I, still injured, though in a lower tone.

“What of that? Ah! You shall see. Look now! This short, stout person

with the diamond pin and the expansive shirt front is Giuseppe. Ah, he

sees me! Good evening, Giuseppe!”

“Good evening, Monsieur, good evening, good evening! De friend not like

de _parrot_, eh?”

The man was smiling at me with his hands crossed behind him. An Italian

Jew I dubbed him immediately.

“On the contrary, he admires it very much,” said De Kock.

Following their eyes presently I saw the cage hanging from the centre

of the room, and in it a parrot as nearly pea-green in hue as it is

possible for a parrot to be.

“Tell my friend her name, Giuseppe,” said De Kock, beginning on some

more asparagus.

Giuseppe stood in his patronizing way--quite the _grand seigneur_--with

the light falling on his solitaire, making it so brilliant that it

fascinated and at the same time fatigued my eyes.

“The name of my parrot? Monsieur De Kock, he know that well. It is

Félicité--you catch--Fé-li-ci-té. It was the name of my wife.”

Then his wife was dead. De Kock must have made a mistake.

“It is an unusual name for a bird, is not it?” said I.

“Monsieur is right. Not often--not often--you meet with a bird that

name. My first wife--my _first_ wife, gentlemen, she was English. _You_

are English--ah. Yes. So was she. The English are like this.” Giuseppe

took a bottle out of the cruet-stand and set it on the table in front

of him. He went on, “When an Englishman an Englishwoman argue, they

say”--here he took the bottle up very slowly and gingerly and altered

his voice to a mincing and conventional tone--“Is it oil or is it

vinegare? Did you not say that it was vinegare? I thought that it was

oil Oh! Now I see that it is vinegare.”

“Bravo!” exclaimed De Kock. “And so you did not get on with the

Englishwoman then I suppose, Giuseppe, and took Madame the next time?”

We were both laughing heartily at the man's mimicry when once again the

parrot shrieked. “But for goodness sake don't say I told you!” Giuseppe

walked off to speak to it and my friend and I were left alone.

“Was Félcité the name of his first or second wife!” I asked.

“Of his second, of course. Didn't you hear him say the first was

an Englishwoman? The second is a tall, rather good-looking pale

Frenchwoman. You may see her to-night, and on the other hand you may

not, she doesn't often appear in here. I wish she did, I am rather fond

of her myself, which is more than her husband is. It's pretty well known

that Mr. and Mrs. Joseph do _not_ get on comfortably. In fact, he hates

her, or rather ignores her, while she doats upon him and is tremendously

jealous of the parrot.”

“What, that green thing?”

“Well, its a lovely parrot, you must know, and the moment it came into

his possession--he has had it about three years--he seemed to transfer

whatever affection he had for his wife to that creature, with a great

deal beside. Why, he hugs it, and kisses it, and mows over it--look at

him now!”

Sure, enough, there was Martinetti with the bird on his finger, kissing

it, and otherwise making a fool of himself. He finished by actually

putting it away inside his coat in a kind of breast pocket, I should

imagine.

“All this is good for business, perhaps,” I said.

“What, the parrot and so on? Oh, yes I daresay, that has something to do

with it. Still they are a queer couple. I come here mostly on account of

this Chiante wine; you can't get it so good in many places in New York,

and besides I confess Monsieur and his wife interest me somewhat.

And the people one see here are immensely funny. That is your English

expression, isn't it? There are three actresses over there at that table

with _amis intimes_; they are 'restin' now, and can cut about and dine

out as much as they please. There is a French dressmaker who lives on

the floor above and is to be found here every day. She is superbly built

and is hopelessly ugly, isn't she? There is young Lord Gurgoyle, an

Englishman like yourself, you see--what the devil is he staring at like

that?”

From behind a _portière_ which fell across the end of the room came a

woman, tall, pale, and with a peculiar air of distinction about her.

Perhaps it was her very unusual pallor which so distinguished her for

there was nothing absolutely fine or handsome about the countenance. It

was a weak face I thought, with an ugly red mark over the upper lip, and

had she not been so very pale and so exceptionally well-dressed I should

not have looked at her twice. She wore a gown of black silk, dead-black,

lustrous, and fitting her slender figure to perfection. It was cut

square and low in the front and fell away in long folds upon the floor

at the back. What an apparition she made in the midst of this noisy

crowd, smoking, chatting, swearing, laughing! Especially so when I

noticed that as she walked very slowly down between the tables, her lips

were moving nervously and her hands clutching at her beautiful dress. As

for her eyes, they were everywhere in an instant.

“'Tis Félicité. You are fortunate,” murmured De Kock. “And she is a

little worse than usual.”

“What is it?” I demanded. “Drink?” “Hush-sh-sh! _Mon cher_, you are

stupid. It is jealousy, jealousy, my friend, with perhaps an occasional

over-dose of chloral. Chloral is the favorite prescription now-a-days,

you must remember that. But jealousy will do, jealousy will do. It will

accomplish a great deal, will jealousy; will destroy more, mark that! I

hope she will be quiet to-night for your sake.”

“Is she violent?” I asked.

“Poor thing, yes. When she finds him now with that creature inside his

coat; she will wring her hands and denounce him and threaten to kill

it--I wonder she doesn't--then her husband will march her off behind

the curtain and he will make love to the parrot again.” Precisely what

happened. The lady soon found her husband, raised her hands tragically

and broke out into excited French that was liberally sprinkled with

oaths both English and French. The mania was asserting itself, the

propensity overcoming her. It was a sad and at the same time an amusing

scene, for one could not help smiling at Giuseppe's fat unconcern as he

kept his wife off at arms' length, while all the time the parrot inside

his coat was shrieking in muffled tones “And for goodness sake don't say

I told you!”

Finally Madame succumbed and was taken behind the curtain in a

dishevelled and hysterical condition which increased De Kock's pity for

her. We paid the waiter--or rather De Kock did--and left, not seeing

Giuseppe again to speak to, though he came in and removed the parrot,

cage and all.

It was a lovely night outside, and I suggested sitting for a time in

Union Square. Finding an unoccupied bench, we each made ourselves happy

with a good cigar and watched the exquisite shadows of the trees above

as thrown by the electric light on the pavement.

“Wonderful effect!” remarked my friends. “How did you enjoy your dinner?

That was a dinner, eh, and no mistake; rather have had it without the

'episode'? Oh! I don't know; you literary fellows must come in for that

sort of thing as well as the rest of the world; I should think it would

just suit you. Put them--the three of them--Monsieur, Madame and the

Pea-Green Parrot--into a book, or better still, on the stage. There's

your title ready for you too.”

I was just thinking of the same thing.

“They are undoubtedly originals, both of them--all three,” said I, “but

as far as I have seen them, there is hardly enough to go upon.”

“What do you mean by 'enough'?”

“I mean, for one thing, we do not understand the woman's mental and

moral condition sufficiently to make a study of her. You say it is

jealousy, and at the same time the use of chloral. That would have to be

understood more clearly. Then, one would like something to--”

“Go on,” said my friend. “To--”

“Happen,” said I, lighting a second cigar.

Just then a couple of boys ran across the square. One of them stumbled

over my feet, picked himself up quickly and ran on again. Two or three

people now came, all running. De Kock jumped up.

“Something is happening,” he said, “and with a vengeance too I fancy.

Hark!”

The people now came fast and furious through the square, increasing in

numbers every moment, but through the bustle and hurry and clatter of

tongues, we could hear a woman's voice screaming in evident distress.

Mingled with it was another sound which may have mystified the general

crowd, but which De Kock and I could easily place.

“It is the parrot!” I exclaimed, as we started to run.

“You have your wish, _mon cher_, is it not so? But take it not so fast;

we will be there in time. _Ciel_! What a row!”

The steps leading up to the restaurant were thronged with people,

including two or three policemen. The dining-room was ablaze with light,

and still full of visitors, most of whom, however, were moving about in

a state of agitation. The upper windows were also lighted and wide open.

The screaming suddenly ceased, but not the parrot.

“For goodness sake don't say I told you!” It went on, louder than ever,

over and over again.

“Damn the bird!” exclaimed De Kock. “Policeman excuse me, but I am

rather at home here. Let me go up, will you?”

“It looks bad, sir. I'd better keep behind.”

“Oh. It isn't murder or anything of that sort. I know them, pretty

couple, they are!”

The next moment we were in a kind of sitting room over the restaurant

proper. Madame Martinetti lay as if exhausted on a sofa while the highly

excited parrot sang and screamed and tore at its cage as if for life.

Giuseppe was nowhere visible. “Now then where's the other?” demanded the

policeman who had just entered behind us, “There's always two at

this business. Show him up, now.” But Madame at first would deign no

explanation. Presently on the entry of policeman No. 2 she admitted

there had been a quarrel. Yes, she had quarrelled with her dear

Giuseppe, (the officers grinned) and had driven him away. Yes, he had

gone--gone forever, he had said so, never to come back, never, never!

“And leave this fine business to you, eh? No fear of that. I guess Mr.

Martinetti'll turn up all right in the morning, however, let us make

a search, Joe.” But Giuseppe was not found; there were no traces of

a struggle, and the policemen having done all they could retired. My

friend and I, by what right I know not were the last to leave the room.

De Kock stood for some moments looking out of the window. I approached

the parrot who was still screaming.

“If throwing a cloth over your head would stop you, I'd do it, my

dear,” said I. To my surprise, it ceased its noise directly, and became

perfectly quiet. Madame Martinetti looked around with a contemptuous

smile.

“You have the secret as well,” said she. The bird turned to her and then

returned to me. I became quite interested in it. “Pretty Poll, pretty

bird; would you like a cracker?”

De Kock laughed softly at the window. “A cracker to such a bird as that!

Ask it another.” I actually, though with a timid air, opened the door of

the cage and invited Polly to perch on my finger. She came, looking

at me intensely all the while. I petted her little, which she took

resignedly and with a faint show of wonder, then in answer to De Kock's

summons put her back in the cage.

“I have the honour to wish madame a _bonsoir_,” said he, but the lady

was still sulky and vouchsafed no answer.

We were soon out in the street.

“Do you know,” said De Kock slowly, lighting a cigar and looking up at

the house, “Do you know, I thought something had happened.”

“And don't you now.”

“I am not sure,” answered my friend.

CHAPTER II.

We were pardonably curious to see the papers next morning. The affair

was dismissed in three lines, and although as De Kock swore, the case

was one for Gaboriau, it certainly was not our business to look into it

and in fact in a week's time I was back in Canada, and he up to his eyes

in commercial pursuits. The main point remained clear, however, that

Martinetti did _not_ come back, nor was he found, or traced or ever

heard of again. Somebody took the business out of hand, as they say,

and De Kock would occasionally write a P. S. to his letters like

this--“Dined at poor Martinetti's, Chiante as usual. Ever yours.” Or

it would be--“Drank to the production of your last new comedy at

Martinetti's.” Once he stated that shortly after that memorable night

Madame disappeared also, taking the parrot along. “I begin to think they

are a pair of deep ones and up to some big game” he wrote. For myself, I

never entirely forgot the circumstance, although it was but once vividly

recalled to my mind and that was in a theatre in Montreal. An American

company from one of the New York theatres was performing some farcical

comedy or other in which occurred the comic song, admirably sung and

acted by Miss Kate Castleton, “For goodness sake don't say I told you!”

The reminiscences forced upon me quite spoiled my enjoyment; I could

see that pale, nervous woman, hear her screams, and hear too the fearful

voice of the poor parrot. Where is it now, thought I? That same winter

I was much occupied in making studies of the different classes of people

among the French-Canadians. The latter turn up everywhere in Montreal,

and have a distinct “local color” about them which I was curious to

get and hope to preserve for use some future day. I went everywhere and

talked to everybody who might be of use to me; cabmen, porters, fruit

dealers and tobacconists. I found much to interest me in the various

Catholic institutions, and I was above all very fond of visiting the

large, ugly gray building with the air of a penitentiary about it called

the Grey Nunnery. Going through its corridors one day I took a wrong

turning and found I was among some at least quasi-private rooms. The

doors being open I saw that there were flowers, books, a warm rug on the

floor of one and a mirror on the wall of another. The third I ventured

to step inside of, for a really beautiful Madonna and child confronted

me at the door. The next moment I saw what I had not expected to see--a

parrot in a cage suspended from the window! I made quite sure that it

was not _the_ parrot before I went up to it. It was asleep and appeared

to be all over of a dull grey color, to match the Nuns, one might

have said. I stood for quite a little while regarding it. Suddenly it

stirred, shook itself, awoke and seeing me, immediately broke out into

frantic shrieks to the old refrain “And for goodness sake don't say I

told you.”

So it was the parrot after all! Of that I felt sure, despite the changed

color, not only because of the same words being repeated--two birds

might easily learn the same song, but because of the bird's manner. For

I felt certain that the thing knew me, recognized me, as we say of human

beings or of dogs and horses. I felt an extraordinary sensation coming

over me and sat down for a moment. I seemed literally to be in the

presence of something incomprehensible as I watched the poor excited

bird beating about and singing in that way. The words of the song became

painfully and awfully significant--“for goodness sake don't say I told

you!” They were an appeal to my pity, to my sense of honor, to my power

of secrecy, for I felt convinced that the bird had seen something--in

fact that, to use De Kock's convenient if ambiguous phrase, _something

had happened_! Then to think of its recognizing me too, after so long an

interval! What an extraordinary thing to do! But I remembered, and hope

I shall never forget, how exceeding small do the mills of the gods

grind for poor humanity. I would have examined the creature at once

more closely had not two of the nuns appeared with pious hands lifted in

horror at the noise. They knew me slightly but affected displeasure at

the present moment.

“Who owns this bird?” said I. It was still screaming.

“The good Sister Félicité. It is her room.”

“Can I see her?”

“Ah! _non_. She is ill, so very ill. She will not live long, _cette

pauvre soeur_!”

I reflected. “Will you give her this paper without fail when I have

written upon it what I wish?”

“_Mais oui, Monsieur_!”

In the presence of the two holy women standing with their hands devoutly

crossed, and of the parrot whom I silenced as well as I could, and in

truth I appeared to have some influence over the creature, I wrote

the following upon a leaf torn out of my scratch-book: “To the Soeur

Félicité. A gentleman who, if he has not made a great mistake, saw you

once when you were Mdme. Martinetti, asks you now if in what may be your

last moments, you have anything to tell, anything to declare, or anybody

to pardon. He would also ask--what _was done to the parrot_? He, with

his friend M. De Kock, were at your house in New York the night your

husband disappeared.”

“Give her that,” said I to the waiting sister, “and I will come to see

how she is to-morrow.”

That night, however, she died, and when I reached the nunnery next

day it was only to be told that she had read my note and with infinite

difficulty written an answer to it.

“I am sorry I should have perhaps hastened her end,” said I. “Before you

give it to me, will you permit me to see her?”

“_Mais oui, Monsieur_, if monsieur will come this way.”

Until I gazed upon the dead I did not feel quite sure of the identity

of this pious Sister of Charity. But I only needed to look once upon the

ghastly pallor, the ugly lip mark and the long slender figure on the bed

before me to recognize her who had once been Mdme. Martinetti.

“And now for the paper,” I said.

“It will be in the room that was hers, if monsieur will accompany.” We

walked along several corridors till we reached the room in which hung

the parrot, I quite expected it to fly at me again and try to get rid

of its miserable secret But no! It sat on its stick, perfectly quiet and

rational.

“I cannot find dat paper, it is very strange!” muttered the good sister,

turning everything over and over. A light wind playing about the room

had perhaps blown it into some corner. I assisted her in the search.

“It surely was in an envelope?” I said to the innocent woman.

“Yes monsieur, yes, and with a seal, for I got the _cire_--you call it

_wax_--myself and held it for her, _la bonne soeur_.”

“It is not always wise to leave such letters about,” I put in as meekly

as I could “Where was it you saw it last?”

“On dees little table, monsieur.”

Now, “dees little table” was between the two windows, and not far,

consequently from the parrot's cage. My eye travelled from the table to

the cage as a matter of necessity, and I saw that the bottom of it was

strewn with something white--like very, very tiny scraps of paper. “I

think you need not look any further,” said I. “Polly, you either are

very clever, or else you are a lunatic and a fool. Which is it?”

But I never found out The parrot had got the letter by some means or

other and so effectually torn, bitten and made away with it that nothing

remained of it for identification except the wax, which it did not touch

and left absolutely whole. The secret which had been the parrot's all

along belonged to the parrot still, and after having devoured it in

that fashion it became satisfied, and never--at least, as far as I

am aware--reverted morbidly to the comic refrain which has but one

significance for me.

I took the bird and kept it. I have it now with me. It has been examined

hundreds of times; for a long time I was anxious to know the secret of

its changed color, but I have never deciphered it. It is healthy, in

good condition, sweet-tempered and very fond of me. It does not talk

much, but its talk is innocent and rational. No morbid symptoms have

ever appeared in it since I took it from the nunnery in Montreal.

Its plumage is soft and thick, and perfectly, entirely gray. My own

impression is that it was naturally a gray parrot and had at that time

of my sojourn in New York, either been dyed or painted that peculiar

pea-green which so distinguished it then. I wrote to De Kock before

leaving for England and told him something of the story. I have seen the

last of Madame; in all probability I shall see the last of the Pea-Green

Parrot, and I cannot help wondering when I enter a café or ride on

an omnibus whether I shall ever run across Giuseppe Martinetti in the

flesh, or whether the last of him was seen in truth, five years ago.

The Bishop of Saskabasquia.

I have not a story, properly speaking, to tell about him. He, my Bishop,

is quite unconscious that I am writing about him, and would, I daresay,

be quite astonished if he knew that I could find anything that relates

to him to write about. But I will tell you just how I came to do so. I

went to see the “Private Secretary” some months ago. I had never been a

great admirer of clergymen as a sex (vide Frenchman's classification),

and I thoroughly enjoyed the capital performance of so clever a play.

Here, thought I, is a genuine and perfectly fair, though doubtless

exaggerated, portrait of the young and helpless curate. I quite lived on

that play. I used to go about, like many another delighted playgoer,

I expect, quoting the better bits in it, and they are many, and often

laughing to himself at its admirable caricature. However, to go on

with what I am going to tell you, about two months after I had seen the

“Private Secretary,” I had occasion to undertake a sea voyage. I had

to go out on business to Canada, and embarked one fine Thursday at

Liverpool. One of the first things you do on board an ocean steamer

is to find your allotted place at table, and the names, etc, of your

companions. I soon found mine, and discovered with a pang that I was six

seats from the Captain at the side, between a lady and her daughter

I had already met at the North-Western Hotel and did not like, and

opposite to the Bishop of Saskabasquia, his wife and sister and three

children. There was no help for it, I must endure the placid small talk,

the clerical platitudes, the intolerable intolerance born of a deathless

bigotry that would emanate from my _vis-a-vis_. What a fuss they made

over him, too! Only a Colonial Bishop after all, but when we were all

at the wharf, ready to get into the tender, we were kept waiting--we the

more insignificant portion of the passengers, mercantile and so on--till

“my lord” and his family, nine in number, were safely handed up, with

boys and bundles and baggage of every description.

The Bishop himself was a tall thin man, rather priestly in aspect and

careworn. Mrs. Saskabasquia as I called her all through the voyage and

the seven children--seven little Saskabasquians--and Miss Saskabasquia,

the aunt, were all merry enough it seemed though dressed in the most

unearthly costumes I had ever seen. Where they had been procured I could

not imagine, but they appeared to be made of different kinds of canvas,

flannel shirting, corduroy, knitted wool and blankets. Of course we all

mustered at the lunch table that first day, people always do, and affect

great brightness and hysterical intellectuality and large appetites. I

took my seat with a resigned air. There was not a single pretty girl on

board. There were plenty of children, but I did not care much for the

society of children. The lady and her daughter between whom I sat,

presumably to hand them the dishes, did not like me any better than

I liked them. They were Canadians, that was easy to discover by their

peculiarly flat pronunciation, a detestable accent I hold, the American

is preferable. They were connected with the Civil Service in some way

through “papa” who figured much in their conversation and I fancy the

mother rather disliked the idea of such close contact with a member of

the commercial world. So much for colonial snobbery. The lunch was good

however, excellent, and we did justice to it. The Bishop did not appear

nor any of his family until we had almost finished. Then he entered

with his wife and the two eldest boys. The only vacant seats were those

opposite me which they took. I wondered they had not placed him next

the Capt., but divined that the handsome brunette and the horsey

broker, Wyatt and his wife of Montreal, fabulously rich and popular, had

arranged some time before to sit next the Capt. My Bishop was perhaps

annoyed. But if so, he did not show it. He and his wife ate abundantly,

it was good to see them. I involuntarily smiled once when the Bishop

sent his plate back the second time for soup, and he caught me. To my

surprise, he laughed very heartily and said to me:

“I hope you do not think I am forgetting all the other good things to

come! I assure you we are very hungry, are we not, Mary?”

Mrs. Saskabasquia laughed in her turn, and I began to perceive what a

very pretty girl she must have been once, and her accent was the purest,

most beautiful English. We seemed to warm up generally around the table

as we watched the Bishop eat. The boys behaved beautifully and enjoyed

their meal as well. Presently we heard a baby crying. It was evidently

the youngest of the seven young Saskabasquians. The Bishop stopped

directly.

“Go on, go on with your dinner, my dear; I'll see to him, its only

James. Dropped his rattle and put his finger in his eye, I expect.”

He jumped up and went, I suppose, to the stateroom. Mrs. Saskabasquia

laughed softly, and when she spoke she rather addressed herself to me.

“My husband is very good, you know. And James is such a little monkey,

and so much better with him than with anyone else, so I just let him go,

but it does certainly look very selfish, doesn't it?”

“Not at all,” I responded gallantly. “I am sure you need the rest quite

as much as he does, particularly if the ba--if the little boy is very

young and you--that is--” I was not very clear as to what I was going to

say, but she took it up for me.

“Oh, James is the baby. He is just six months' old, you know.”

“That is very young to travel,” said I. I began to enjoy the charming

confidences of Mrs. Saskabasquia, in spite of myself.

“Oh, he was only _three_ months old when we left for England, quite a

young traveller as you say. But he is very good, and I have so many to

help me.”

Here the Bishop returned and sat down once more to his lunch. We had

some further conversation, in which I learned that he and his wife had

gone out to the North-West just twelve years ago for the first time.

All their children had been born there, and they were returning to work

again after a brief summer holiday in England. They told me all this

with the most delightful frankness, and I began to be grateful for my

place at table, as without free and congenial society at meal-time,

life on board an ocean steamer narrows down to something vastly

uncomfortable. It was a bright and beautiful afternoon on deck, and I

soon found myself walking energetically up and down with the Bishop.

I commenced by asking him some questions as to his work, place of

residence and so on, and once started he talked for a long time about

his northern home in the wilds of Canada.

“My wife and I had been only married two months when we went out,” said

he, with a smile at the remembrance. “We did not know what we were going

to.”

“Would you have gone had you known?” I enquired as we paused in our walk

to take in a view of the Mersey we were leaving behind.

“Yes, I think so. Yes, I am quite sure we would. I was an Oxford man,

country-bred; my father is still alive, and has a small living in Essex.

I was imbued with the idea of doing something in the colonies long after

I was comfortably settled in an English living myself, but I had always

fancied it would be Africa. However, just at the time of our marriage I

was offered this bishopric in Canada, and my wife was so anxious to go

that I easily fell in with the plan.”

“Anxious to go out there?” I said in much surprise.

“Ah! You don't know what a missionary in herself my wife is! Then, of

course, young people never think of the coming events--children and all

that you know. We found ourselves one morning at three o'clock, having

gone as far as there was any train to take us, waiting in a barn that

served as a station for the buckboard to take us on further to our

destination. Have you been in Canada yourself? No? Then you have

not seen a buckboard. It consists of two planks laid side by side,

lengthwise, over four antiquated wheels--usually the remains of a once

useful wagon. Upon this you sit as well as you can, and get driven and

jolted and bumped about to the appointed goal. I remember that morning

so well,” continued the Bishop. “It was very cold, being late in

November, and at that hour one feels it so much more--3 a.m., you

know. There was one man in charge of the barn; we called him the

station-master, though the title sat awkwardly enough upon him. He was a

surly fellow. I never met such another. Usually the people out there are

agreeable, if slow and stupid.”

“Slow, are they?” said I in surprise.

“Oh, frightfully slow. A Canadian laborer is the slowest person in

existence, I really believe. However, this man would not give us any

information, except to barely tell us that this buckboard was coming for

us shortly. It was pitch dark of course and the barn was lighted by one

oil lamp and warmed by a coal stove. The lamp would not burn well, so my

wife unstrapped her travelling bag and with a pair of tiny curved

nail scissors did her best, with the wick, the man remaining perfectly

unmoveable and taciturn all the while. At four o'clock our conveyance

arrived, and would you believe it--both the driver and the station

master allowed me to lift my own luggage into it as well as I could?

What it would not take I told the man in charge I would send for as soon

as possible. There was no sleighing yet, and that drive was the most

excruciating thing I ever endured over corduroy roads through wild and

dark forests, along interminable country roads of yellow clay mixed with

mud till finally we reached the house of the chief member of society in

my district where we were to stay until our own house was ready.”

“How long did that take you?” I was quite interested. This was unlike

the other clergymen's conversation I remembered.

“O, a matter of eight hours or so. We had the eggs and bacon--the _piece

de resistance_ in every Canadian farmhouse--at about half-past 12, for

which we were thankful and--hungry. But now you must excuse me for here

come two of the boys. Now, then, Alick, where's your mother? Isn't she

coming on deck with James? Run and fetch her and you, George, get one

of the chairs ready for her. And get the rugs at the same time Alick, do

you hear?”

I excused myself in turn and watched the family preparations with much

amusement. Mrs. Saskabasquia came up from her state room with a baby in

her arms, and a big fellow he was, followed by the other six and their

aunt. The Bishop placed chairs for the two ladies and walked up and down

the deck I should think the entire afternoon, first with two children

and then with two more and finally with the baby in his arms. This was a

funny sight but still not one to be ridiculed, far from it. Well, every

day showed my new friend in an improved light. Who was it took all the

children, not only his own but actually the entire troop on board up to

the bow and down to the stern in a laughing crowd to see this or that or

the other? Now a shoal of porpoises, now a distant sail or an iceberg,

now the beautiful phosphorescence or the red light of a passing

ship--the Bishop. Who divined the innate cliquism of life on board ship

and cunningly got together in intercourse the very people who wanted

to know each other, and even brought into good temper those unfortunate

souls who thought only of their own dignity and station in life? The

Bishop. Who organized the Grand Concert and Readings in the saloon,

writing the programmes himself, pinning them on the doors, discovering

the clever and encouraging the timid and reading from the “Cricket on

the Hearth,” and the “Wreck of the Grosvenor,” as I had never imagined

a divine could read? The Bishop again. Who might be seen in the mid-day

hours when the cabin passengers were asleep, quietly and without

ostentation reading or talking to the steerage, ay, and Mrs.

Saskabosquia too with her baby on her arm, going about amongst those

poor tired folk, many of them with their own babies, not too well

fed and not too well washed nor clothed? Still the Bishop, always the

Bishop. They appeared as if they could not rest without helping on

somebody or something, and yet there was in Mrs. Saskabasquia at least,

a delightful sense of calm which affected all who came near her. I used

often to sit down by her, she with the inevitable baby on her lap and

two or three of the others at her feet on rugs, and she would talk most

frankly and unaffectedly of their strange life in Canada. I learnt that

she was the daughter of a clergyman in Essex, and had, of course,

been brought up in a refined and charming country home like an English

gentlewoman. What she had had to do in the new world seemed like a

dream.

“What servants do I keep?” she said one day in answer to a question of

mine “Why, sometimes I am without any. Then Kathleen and I do the best

we can and the children they do the same and my husband takes what we

give him! Indeed, my house is a sort of dispensary you know. The most

extraordinary people come to me for the most extraordinary things.

Now for a bottle of medicine, now for some cast off clothing, now for

writing paper and old newspapers or a few tacks. So we have many wants

to relieve besides our own and really, that is good for us you know. One

Xmas dinner was an amusing one. Roast beef was out of the question, we

couldn't get any, and the old woman who usually brought us a turkey came

eight miles in the snow to bitterly lament the failure of her turkey

crop. The one she had intended for me had been killed and trussed and

then the rats which abound out there, got at it in the night and left

not a bone of it! So I got the poor old thing a warm cup of tea and

gave her some thick socks and sent her away relieved, resolved to spread

myself on the pudding. Do you remember Kathleen!”

And Miss Saskabasquia did and smiled at the remembrance.

“What was it like?”

“The pudding? Oh! It was the funniest pudding! George--no--Ethel, was

the baby then and very troublesome. Yes, you were my dear and cutting

teeth. I was far from strong and in the act of stirring the pudding was

taken quite ill and had to give it up. Kathleen was naturally forced to

attend to me and the three children, and only for Henry, we should have

had no Xmas dinner at all! He went to work with a will, stirred it well,

put it into the cloth and was just I believe dropping it into the water

when the string broke and the poor pudding tumbled into the water! Of

course it was useless, and my husband scarcely knew what to do with

himself. Fancy what he did do, though! He went to work and made another

out of what he could find without telling us. He'll tell you about it if

you ask him, how puzzled he was at first. There was some suet over,

only not minced, you know. So he took that just as it was in a lump and

buried it in bread-crumbs, luckily we had plenty of bread. Then he broke

in the eggs, but when he came to look for the fruit, that was all in

the pot of hot water, not a raisin left. He just ladled them out and put

them in the second time. I think that was delicious of him don't you?

But he forgot the flour and there was so little sugar seemingly in the

bag (he didn't know where my Xmas stores were kept) that he took fright

and wouldn't use it but broke up some maple sugar instead, then tied

it up and got it safely launched the second time. And it was not at all

bad, though _very_ shapeless and unlike a trim plum pudding, with the

holly at the top.”

And many another tale did she tell me of “Henry's” ceaseless activity,

and courage and patience. He had learnt three Indian dialects, the

_patois_ of the _habitant_, and the Gaelic of two Scotch settlements,

in order to converse freely with his people and understand their wants

properly. He could doctor the body as well as the soul, set a fractured

limb, bind a wound, apply ice for sunstroke and snow for chilblains. He

could harness a horse and milk a cow; paddle a canoe and shoot and fish

like an Indian, cook and garden and hew and build--indeed there seemed

nothing he could not do and had not done, and all this along with the

care of his office, as much a missionary one as any could be. Peril of

shipwreck and peril of fire, peril of frost and peril of heat, peril

of sickness, pain and death, peril of men, ignorant and wicked, of wild

beasts and wilder storms--all these he had braved with his wife and

little ones for the sake of his convictions added to a genuine love of

his fellow-man. I began to consider, and rightly I think, the unknown,

obscure Bishop of Saskabasquia one of the most interesting men of the

day.

Our journey, however, could not always last. Our pleasant chats, our

lively table-talk, Mrs. Saskabasquia's pretty womanly confidences and

her husband's deep-voiced readings from Dickens which he told me were

of the utmost moral value to his people, all came to an end. We all felt

sorry to part, yet greatly relieved at seeing the mighty cliff of Quebec

draw nearer and nearer with each succeeding hour. I had been quite ill

for the last two days like nearly all the other passengers. Coming

up the Gulf of St. Lawrence that is sometimes the case, and we were

a miserable party that Friday, hardly anyone on deck except the

irrepressible Bishop and his family and myself. I was wretched, sick and

cold and trembling in every limb, undoubted _mal de mer_ had fastened

upon me. We were standing close by the railing of the promenade deck

when a something swept by on the water. “Child overboard!” I sang out

as loudly as I could. Instantly the steerage was in a state of

commotion--the child was missed. There didn't appear to be a sailor

on the spot. The Bishop looked at me, and I looked at the Bishop. Like

lightning he tore off his coat. I put my hand on his arm.

“Dear sir, you will not do such a thing!”

“What is it, Henry?” cried his wife. “Somebody must.”

“I wish to God I could, sir!” In another moment he was over.

How he ever recovered from that awful plunge I don't know, but a

boat was immediately lowered for him and the child--he had it safe,

miraculously enough. How I cursed my weakness which prevented my going

in his place. But when I saw the two lives saved I was glad I had not

gone, for in my weak state I could not even have saved the child.

I am invited to a Christmas dinner, _whenever I like_, with the Bishop

of Saskabasquia, whom I count as perhaps the finest specimen of healthy

Christian manhood I have ever met, and although I can still laugh at

the fun of “The Private Secretary” I can say that even among her

clergy England can boast of heroes in these latter days as noble and

disinterested as in years gone by.

“As it was in the Beginning.”

A CHRISTMAS SKETCH.

CHAPTER I.

It is Christmas day in the morning. There is no doubt about it. The

shine of the sun, the frost on the trees, the voice of the birds, and

the unusual crow, and cackle and clatter and confusion outside the house

can leave no doubts upon the subject, to say nothing of the inside of

the house. Here it is Christmas day and no mistake. On what other day

is the larder so full?--Full is not expressive enough; crammed, rammed,

jammed full is more like the actual condition of things, so tightly

wedged are pheasants and partridges, grouse and quail, great roasts of

beef and haunches of venison, pork and pasty, mutton and fowl. On what

other day is the still-room so alluring, where cordials are at their

liveliest of brown and amber, and the white fingers of the lady of

the house gleam in and out of the piling of herbs and the stirring

of compounds--both innocent and inebriating? On what other day is the

kitchen so important? Why, the cook is actually thinner than she was the

yesterday! Christmas day in the morning is taking it out of her. “No

men cooks about me”, growls Sir Humphrey Desart, “we'll keep Sarah.”

So Sarah is kept, and though she be fat, aye, and getting on to three

score, yet her strength faileth not, as you may observe. Somewhat of a

martinet, yet kindly withal and leading the hubbub in the kitchen with

all the gusto of twenty years ago. My lady will descend presently to see

if all goes on properly, and Sarah must lose no time. Heavens, how

many eggs is she going to break? What are they all for? Will not the

resources of the farmyard fail her? This, then, explains all the crow

and cackle outside. Now what is she at? Lemons this time, and anon

giving a fine stimulus with her master-hand to the lumpy yellow contents

of a smooth yellow bowl. Ah! No lumps now; one turn and all resolved

into a perfect cadence. Anyone is an artist and a great one who can so

resolve a discordant measure. And now she is busy with the brandy!

Ah! Sarah, will no temptation accrue from the pouring of the warming

draught? “Out upon thee!” says Sarah. “Am I not already as warm over my

work as I want to be, and shall I not have my good glass of beer at my

dinner? Leave the quality upstairs their brandy,” says Sarah, “and let

me get to my work.”

Well, and the upshot of all this is, that, despite all one may affirm to

the contrary, the one grand essential, the peculiar and individualizing

attribute of Christmas is--the dinner. The parson may think of his

preaching (and if he ever does so, surely most of all on this day) and

the virtuous may think of the poor; the old may remember the young, and

the young be pardoned for only remembering each other, but the chief

thought, the most blissful remembrance is still--The Dinner.

If the parson preach a little better sermon than usual, it is because

his nine children have not been forgotten by Lady Bountiful, and are

actually going to have--A Dinner.

My Lady Bountiful in her turn may go to church, and appear devoutly

removed from the _mundus edibilis_, yet if you could look into her

reflections, you would perceive that she has but one thought--The

Dinner. Do you suppose, much as the youths from Oxford and their friend

the captain, from London, are devoted to mamma and her daughters, they

are not at the same time being eaten up, as it were, devoured, by the

intense wish for the hour to come when they may partake of--That Dinner!

Sir Humphrey has asked a particularly large party down this Christmas,

and seems to have forgotten nobody he ever knew. Not a poor relation but

has been remembered, and things are on a grander scale than usual. The

candles build famously, set in the chimney candelabra; the logs are

all of the biggest, and as for the Yule himself, he is a veritable

Brobdignag; the staircases drop flowers, and holly and mistletoe hang

all about. Everything shines, and gleams, and glows. There is to be

a boar's head, with, no lack of mustard and minstrelsy, and nothing

eatable or drinkable that pertains to Christmas will be wanting. Carols,

and waits, and contended tenants; merry chimes and clinking glasses;

twanging fiddles and the rush down the middle--nothing is spared and

nobody is forgotten. So the hour draws on, the guests pull through the

dreary day (for as I have said before, everything on Christmas day gives

place to the dinner), and at last the dinner becomes an absolute fact,

something to be apprehended, sat down to, and finally eaten. It _is_

eaten, and everyone has come into the long hall, at one end of which the

Yule burns. There is merry talk, and it is easier now for the captain

to devote himself to the girls, having left the dinner behind; there is

talk, too, of a little wonder at the gorgeousness of the dinner, for Sir

Humphrey has not been so gay for years, yes, just twenty years, when it

is evident that Sir Humphrey is going to make a speech. He stands alone

in front of the fire, and this is what he says. If you want to know

what he looks like, you may think of an old man who is a gentleman,

white-haired, noble and resolute, but with a sense of broken fortunes

and deferred hopes upon him.

“I have been young and now am old,” says Sir Humphrey, “and I have never

yet seen the house, known the family, or penetrated the life where

there did not exist some trouble or some secret. Therefore, if I refer

to-night to the skeleton in my own house,” he continues, with a slight

shudder, “I only do what perhaps each individual before me might also

do were there the like necessity. The necessity of such reference, in my

own case, does not make it less hard for me.” Here, Sir Humphrey pauses.

When he speaks again he is something straighter and firmer than before.

“But as at this season the Church and our good friend the parson would

teach us all to remember each other and to help those we can help, I am

about to speak. You have heard, all of you, how twenty years ago I sent

my two eldest sons out of the house. You have heard, all of you, that

they were foolish, and that I was hard, something about a girl and cut

off with a shilling, I suppose. Well, to-night you shall hear the true

story. I do not think even Lady Desart knows it. She was not their

mother, but, as you know, my adored and adoring second wife. I do not

know if many of you remember my boys. I can see Humphrey now--a man does

not easily forget his first-born, and Hugh was no less dear. My dear

friends, if I drove the lads from my house twenty years ago to-night, I

did it in obedience to the rules of my own conscience and with regard to

the laws of nature, which I should have put before my conscience, as

I have far greater respect for them. I did it, as we so often futilely

say, for the best. But how often, oh, my dear friends, how often since I

have thought that I may have made a terrible mistake.”

“They were, Hugh and Humphrey, both madly in love with the same girl.

She was no pauper, as you may have been led to believe, but the Lady

Barbara Hastings. Her name is familiar to you. She was beautiful and

talented, never married, and you may remember that about a month ago

she died at the house of friends in London. I knew her, fortunately or

unfortunately, however, moving in society as the adopted daughter of a

refined gentlewoman, to be the child of a lunatic mother and a father

who drank his life away in a Continental retreat. Knowing this I would

not for a moment consent even to the thought of either of my sons

marrying her, although I knew her to be all that was gracious in

womankind. I could not tell them the reason: the secret was hers, poor

girl, and I did not betray it. I said 'No,' and each knew what that

meant. So we separated, but the worst of it was, my friends, that each

lad thought I had refused my consent to save the other the pain of

seeing his brother happy; so that greater than their anger with me was

their jealousy of one another. With murder in their hearts they fled

to America, I believe, pursuing in self-torture that phantom of revenge

which we have all seen sometime or another, and whose hot breath we must

have felt.”

Sir Humphrey pauses oftener now.

“I tell you all this because I want you to see how possible it may be

for a man to think he is doing the very best, the only right thing, and

then for perhaps an infinitely worse one to crop up. I read not long ago

in a wild Western paper a story of two Englishmen who fought a lonely

duel on some slope of those great mountains out there, and I think I

have not slept since I read it. To have exiled my boys only that they

might kill one another in foreign lands and sleep so far away from our

English ground!”

Sir Humphrey's voice is failing now and his eyes grow moist A man, you

see, does not easily forget his first-born.

“I tell you all this,” he continues, “that it may help you to be kind

and to think twice. I only thought once, and perhaps the worst may have

come of it. Then I tell it to you, too, because I am an old man now, and

my voice is not as strong as it was, and I can't get out to church as

regularly as I used to do, and I want you all to help me to remember

these absent ones and with them any of your own. There is virtue in the

holding up of many hands and the lifting up of many hearts. Whether I

see them again or not, that does not matter; but for the assurance that

they have not harmed each other, let us pray Almighty God this night.”

Ah! Sir Humphrey, there are those who would give their life for yours,

but they cannot bring you that assurance to-night. Can you wait?

“I can wait,” says Sir Humphrey.

CHAPTER II.

It is Christmas day in the morning. At least, so Almanack says, and

Almanack ought to know, though he is given in those days to such ornate

and emblazoned titivation of himself outwardly, putting himself in

the hands of fair Mistress Kate Greenaway at the head of a mischievous

throng, that he causes one to seriously consider whether his old head

be turned or no. A scholar and statistician buried in heaps of flowers,

with a rope of daisies round his neck, and a belt of primroses round

his waist; a sunflower in his buttonhole, and a singing bird upon his

shoulder; and, worst of all, the picture of a pink-frocked, pink-faced

girl next his heart--can he be relied upon? But he persists in his

claim to be listened to, and we must take his word for it that this is

Christmas day in the morning, although it just looks like any other day.

On any other day the sun is just as bright, and the air just as keen. On

other days the snow is just as white, just as deep--two feet where the

constant tramping has levelled its crystalline beauty, ten, twelve,

fifteen there where a great soft cloud of drift reaches halfway up the

side of a small wooden house. On other days there is just as much blue

in the sky, in the smoke, in the shadows of the pines, and the shadows

of the icicles. On other days the house looks just as neat, just as

silent, just as poor. The clearing is small, the house is small, a

small terrier suns himself on a pile of wood, and the only large object

apparently in existence is the tall, broad-shouldered, well-proportioned

man who presently emerges from the wooden house. His ear has just caught

the sound of a bell. It is not a bad bell for Muskoka, and it has a

most curious effect on this white, cold silent world of snow and blue

shadows. The owner of the house, who is also the builder of it, stands

a few moments listening. There is only the twitter of the snowbirds to

listen to, then the bell; more snowbirds, and then the bell again.

“It has quite a churchy sound,” he remarks; “I never noticed how churchy

before, but it reminds me of some other bell. Ten years I have read

for them here, and I never noticed it before.” More twitter from the

snowbirds and the bell again. Time for church, although the functions

of the lay-reader will be this day laid aside, giving place to the more

exacting ones of the _rector chori_. This being Christmas day in the

morning, it devolves upon one clergyman to preach in four different

places, if not literally at once, at least on the same day.

“It isn't possible,” thinks the tall man swinging along at a tremendous

pace, “that this bell--there it is again, confound it; yet no, not

confound it--can resemble that other bell I used to know. No, quite

impossible. Is it likely that anything here,” and the thinker spreads

both long arms out to take in the entire landscape, “can resemble or

remotely suggest the Old Country, or, as people call it, home? Home?

Why this is home. That four-roomed and convenient, if not commodious,

mansion I have just quitted is my home. Talking of commodiousness, it's

quite large enough, too. I have no wife, no children, no partner, not

even a sleeping one, no one ever comes to see me. So I do not need a

drawing-room, a nursery, a guest chamber, or a smoking-room. I have no

books, therefore I need no library; I indulge in no chemical pursuits,

therefore I need no laboratory; my music-room is the forest in summer

and the chimney in winter, while my studio, according to the latest

aesthetic fad--I think that is the word--opens off the music-room.

“Now, if you take away art, science, literature, and society from

the daily life of a man, what do you leave? Simply the three radical

necessities of sleeping, eating, working. My work I do mostly in the

open air, so that, practically, I need but two rooms, one to cook in and

the other to sleep in. I have always felt convinced that to be happy I

only require two rooms, except on extra cold nights, when I find that

one suffices. That is when Tim and I lie near the kitchen fire to keep

warm. Home! Why of course it is home. Didn't I build the house myself?

What association is dearer than that? To come into a pile of half-ruined

towers, all gables and gargoyles, built somewhere about the fourteenth

century, and added to by every fool who liked, without the slightest

pretence to knowledge of architecture and civilization may be very

gratifying, but, strange as it may seem, I prefer the work of my

own hands. I am quite a Canadian, of course, though I once was an

Englishman. I array myself in strange raiment, thick and woollen, of

many colours; my linen is coarse and sometimes superseded by flannel;

I wear a cast-off fur cap on my head and moccasins on my feet. I have

grown a beard and a fierce moustache. I have made no money and won no

friends except the simple settlers around me here. And I shall grow old

and grey in your service, my Muskoka. I shall be forty-one on my next

birthday. Then will come fifty-one, another ten years and sixty-one.

All to be lived here? Yes, I have sworn it. Not Arcady, not Utopia,

only Muskoka, but very dear to me. There is the forest primeval! I

know everything in it from the Indian pipe--clammy white thing, but how

pretty!--to that great birch there with the bark peeling off in pieces a

yard wide. There is the lovely Shadow river. Masses of cardinal flowers

grow there in the summer, and when I take my boat up its dark waters I

feel that no human being has felt its beauty so before. I think, for a

small river it is the loveliest in the world. And as to my larder now,

why I am going to make my Christmas dinner off a piece or pork and ask

for nothing better! I shall have a glorious appetite, which is the main

point. The bell again!”

Yes, and the snow birds, too, flying round the porch of the little

church. It is a very small and plain edifice and not over warm, and

the officiating clergyman, who has just driven eighteen miles with

the prospect of eighteen back after service, hurries the proceedings

somewhat. There is a harmonium played by the tall man, and there is

a choir consisting of himself and a small boy. In place of the usual

Anglican hymns two carols are sung by the choir, which have the

quaintest effect in such a place, and which appear to interest and even

excite one of the congregation. This is a man of middle age, most richly

dressed with a certain foreign air about him and evidently in a very

delicate state of health. He is accompanied by a lady whose dress is

also a marvel of beauty and costliness though hardly of fitness. The

broad bands of gold which adorn her wrists and neck would alone procure

for her the entire attention of the congregation were she seated in

a more conspicuous place. As it is they are seated near the stove for

increased comfort. “Good King Wenceslas” sings the choir, the small boy

finding the long word very trying, and coming utterly to grief in the

last two verses, for his companion appears to have lost his place.

With the last verse of the carol comes the close of the service, the

straggling congregation disperse and the jolly clergyman drives off

again. Then an important thing happens, and happens very quietly.

So quietly that the richly dressed lady who is a bright, shallow and

unsentimental Californian does not mind it at all. “Humphrey!” says the

tall man, “Hugh!” says the other, and all is said. There is not much

sentiment in the meeting, how can there be? Their ways have gone too far

apart. The years--nearly twenty, since they parted in Los Angeles--have

brought gold and kith and kin to the one, with an enfeebled constitution

and an uncertain temper. To the other, they have brought the glory of

health for his manhood's crown, content and peace unutterable. To

learn to subdue the ground is to learn one great lesson. So the strange

meeting is soon over. The Christmas spell may not always last and the

brothers separate once more.

* * * * *

FINIS.

The bright little lady who is taking her husband for a winter's Canadian

tour gets restive in this silent snowy world. But before they part a

letter is written to a white-haired old gentleman' in England, who has

only a month to wait.

“Whether I see them again or not does not matter,” says Sir Humphrey,

“but for the assurance that they have not harmed each other, I thank

Almighty God this night!”

THE IDYL OF THE ISLAND.

* * * * *

Here lies mid-way between parallels 48 and 49 of latitude, and degrees

89 and 90 of longitude, in the northern hemisphere of the New

World, serenely anchored on an ever-rippling and excited surface, an

exquisitely lovely island. No tropical wonder of palm-treed stateliness,

or hot tangle of gaudy bird and glowing creeper, can compare with it;

no other northern isle, cool and green and refreshing to the eye

like itself, can surpass it. It is not a large island. It is about

half-a-mile long and quarter of a mile broad It is an irregular oval in

shape, and has two distinct and different sides. On the west side its

grey limestone rises to the height of twenty feet straight out of

the water. On the east side there occurs a gradual shelving of a

sumac-fringed shore, that mingles finally with the ever-rippling water.

For the waters in this northern country are never still. They are

perpetually bubbling up and boiling over; seething and fuming and

frothing and foaming and yet remaining so cool and clear that a quick

fancy would discover thousands of banished fountains under that agitated

and impatient surface. Both ends of the island are as much alike as its

sides are dissimilar. They taper off almost to a distinct bladepoint of

rock, in which a mere doll's flagstaff of a pine-tree grows; then

comes a small detached rock, with a small evergreen on it, then a still

smaller rock, with a tuft of grass, then a line of partially submerged

stones, and so out to the deep yet ever-bubbling water. This island

might seem, just the size for two, and there were two on it on a certain

July morning at five o'clock. One of these was a lady who lay at full

length and fast asleep upon a most unique couch. These northern islands

are in many places completely covered with a variety of yellowish-green

moss, varying from a couple of inches to a foot and a half in thickness;

and yielding to the pressure of the foot or the body as comfortably as a

feather bed, if not more so, being elastic in nature. A large square of

this had been cut up from some other part of the island and placed on

the already moss-grown and cushioned ground, serving as a mattress,

while two smaller pieces served as pillows. A sumac tree at the head

of the improvised couch gave the necessary shade to the face of the

sleeper, while a wild grapevine, after having run over and encircled

with its moist green every stone and stem on the island, fulfilled its

longing at length in a tumultuous possession of the sumac, making a

massive yet aerial patched green curtain or canopy to the fantastic bed,

and ending seemingly in two tiny transparent spirals curling up to the

sky.

If there were a fault in the structure it was that it was too clever,

too well thought out, too rectangular, too much in fact like a bed. But

it told certainly of a skillful pair of hands and of a beautiful

mind and the union of art with nature perfectly suited the

charms--contradictory yet consistent--of the occupant. For being

anything but a beautiful woman she was still far from a plain one, which

though no original mode of putting it does convey the actual impression

she made upon a gentleman in a small boat who rowing past this island

at the hour of five o'clock in the morning was so much struck with this

curious sight, quite visible from the water below, that he was rude

enough to stand up that he might see better. The lady was dressed in

some dark blue stuff that evidently covered her all over and fitted

tightly where it could be seen. A small linen collar, worn all night and

therefore shorn of its usual freshness was round her neck, and she was

tucked up from the waist under a Scotch woollen rug. Her hair, of a

peculiar red-brown, was allowed to hang about her and was lovely; her

mouth sad; her nose, rather too prominent; her complexion natural

and healthy, but marred by freckles and moles, not many of either but

undeniably scattered over the countenance. All told but her eyes which,

if they proved to match with her hair, would atone for these other

shortcomings. The gentleman sat down again and reflected.

“How still it is!” he said under his breath. “Absolutely not a thing

stirring. This is the time when the fish bite. I ought to be fishing I

suppose. Going to be warm by-and-bye.”

It was indeed almost absolutely silent. The sun climbed higher but the

lady slept on, and the gentleman gazed as if fascinated. The only sound

that broke the beautiful early morning silence was the occasional weird

laugh of the loon. It came twice and then a third time. The sleeper

stirred.

“If that thing out there cries again she will wake,” said the gentleman

to himself. “I must be off before that happens. But I _should_ like to

see her eyes. What a pretty picture it is!” Once more the loon gave its

maniacal laugh and the lady started, sat bolt upright and wide awake.

Her admirer had not time to retreat but he took his oars up and

confronted her manfully. It was an awkward moment. He apologized. The

lady listened very politely. Then she smiled.

“Most of the islands in this lake are owned by private people,” she

said, “who use them during the summer months for the purpose of camping

out upon them. I should advise you, if you row about much here, to

keep to the open water, unless you wish to be seriously handled by the

fathers and mothers of families.”

“Thank you very much,” returned the gentleman, standing up in his boat,

“I assure you I intended no rudeness, but I have never seen so charming

a summer couch before, and I was really fascinated by the--ah,--the

picture you made. May I ask what you mean by 'camping out'? Is it always

done in this fashion?”

The lady stared “Have _you_ never camped out?”

“Never in my life,” said the gentleman. “I am an Englishman, staying at

the hotel near the point for a day or two. I came out to see something

of the country.”

“Then you should at least have camped out for a week or so. That is

a genuine Canadian experience,” said the lady with a frankness which

completely restored the equanimity of the Englishman.

“But how do you live?” he went on in a puzzled manner that caused

the lady with the red-brown hair, still all hanging about her, much

amusement.

“O, capitally! Upon fish and eggs, and gooseberry tarts, and home-made

bread and French coffee. Just what you would get in town, and much

better than you get at the hotel.”

“O, that would be easy!” the gentleman groaned. “I eat my meals in a

pitch-dark room, in deadly fear and horror of the regiments of flies

that swarm in and settle on everything the minute one raises the green

paper blinds.”

The lady nodded. “I know. We tried it for two or three seasons, but we

could not endure it; the whole thing, whitewash and all, is so trying,

isn't it? So we bought this lovely island and bring our tent here and

live _so_ comfortably.” The gentleman did not reply at once. He was

thinking that it was his place to say “Good morning,” and go, although

he would much have liked to remain a little longer. He hazarded the

remark:

“Now, for instance, what are you going to breakfast on presently?”

The lady laughed lightly and shook her red brown hair.

“First of all I have to make a fire.”

“Oh!”

“But that is not so very difficult”

“How do you do it?”

“Would you like to know?”

“Very much indeed. I should like to see, if I may.”

The lady reflected a moment. “I suppose you may, but if you do, you

ought to help me, don't you think?” The gentleman much amused and

greatly interested.

“Ah but you see, it is you I want to see make it. I am very useless you

know at that sort of thing, still, if you will allow me, I will try my

best. Am I to come ashore?”

“Certainly, if you are to be of any use.”

The lady jumped lightly off the pretty couch of moss and wound her

plentiful hair round her head with one turn of her arm. Her dress was

creased but well-fitting, her figure not plump enough for beauty but

decidedly youthful. She watched her new friend moor his boat and ascend

with one or two strides of his long legs up the side of the cliff that

was not so steep. He took off his hat.

“I am at your service,” he said with a profound bow. The lady made him

another, during which all her long hair fell about her again, at which

they both laughed.

“What do we do first?” said he.

“O we find a lot of sticks and pieces of bark, mostly birch bark, and

anything else that will burn--you may have to fell a tree while you are

about it--and I'll show you how to place them properly between two walls

of stones, put a match to them and there is our fire. Will you come with

me?”

He assented of course, and they were soon busy in the interior of

the little wood that grew up towards the centre of the island. I must

digress here to say that the gentleman's name was Amherst. He was known

to the world in latter life as Admiral Amherst, and he was a great

friend of mine. When he related this story to me, he was very particular

in describing the island as I have done--indeed he carried a little

chart about with him of it which he had made from memory, and he told

me besides that he never forgot the peculiar beauty of that same little

tract of wood. The early hour, the delicious morning air, the great

moss-grown and brown decaying tree trunks, the white, clammy, ghostly,

flower or fungus of the Indian Pipe at his feet, the masses of ferns,

the elastic ground he trod upon, and the singular circumstance that he

was alone in this exquisite spot with a woman he had never seen until

five minutes previously, all combined to make an ineffaceable impression

upon his mind. The lady showed herself proficient in the art of building

a fire and attended by Amherst soon had a fine flame rising up from

between the fortifications evidently piled by stronger hands than her

own.

“What do we do now?” asked Amherst “I should suggest--a kettle.”

“Of course, that is the next step. If I give it to you, you might run

and fill it, eh?'

“Delighted!” and away went Amherst. When he returned the lady was not to

be seen. The place was shorn of its beauty, but he waited discreetly and

patiently, putting the kettle on to boil in the meanwhile.

“It's very singular,” said he, “how I come to be here. I wonder who

are with her in her party; no one else appears to be up or about. That

striped red and white thing is the tent, I see, over there. Ah! That's

where she has gone, and now she beckons me! Oh! I'll go, but I don't

want to meet the rest of them!”

But when he reached the tent, it was quite empty, save for rugs and

wraps, boxes, etc., and the lady was laughingly holding out a loaf of

bread in one hand and a paper package in the other.

“You will stay and breakfast with me?”

“What will you give me?” said Amherst, smiling.

“I can only give you eggs, boiled in the kettle, coffee and bread and

butter. The fish haven't come in yet.”

“What can be nicer than eggs--especially when boiled in the kettle, that

is, if you make the coffee first.”

“Certainly I do.”

“And it is really French coffee?”

“Really. Café des Gourmets, you know; we--I always use it--do not like

any other.”

Amherst was fast falling in love. He told me that at this point his

mind was quite made up that if it were possible he would remain in the

neighborhood a few days at least, in order to see more of this charming

girl. She seemed to him to be about twenty-six or seven, and so frank,

simple and graceful, one could not have resisted liking her. Her

hair and eyes were identical in colour and both were beautiful; her

expression was arch and some of her gestures almost childish, but a

certain dignity appeared at times and sat well upon her. Her hands were

destitute of any rings as Amherst soon discovered, and were fine and

small though brown. While she made the coffee, Amherst threw himself

down on the wonderful moss, the like of which he had never seen before

and looked out over the water. An unmistakeable constraint had taken the

place of the unaffected hilarity of the first ten minutes. A reaction

had set in. Amherst could of course only answer to me in telling this

for himself, but he divined at the time a change in his companion's

manner as well.

“I hope you like your eggs,” she said presently.

“They are very nice, indeed, thank you,” rejoined Amherst.

“And I have made your coffee as you like it?”

“Perfectly, thank you. But you--you are not eating anything! Why is

that?”

As he asked the question he turned quickly around, in order to rise that

he might help her with the ponderous kettle that she was about lifting

off the camp-fire, when a long strand of her hair again escaping from

its coil blew directly across his face. Amherst uttered a radiant “Oh!”,

and taking it to his lips forgot himself so far as to press kiss after

kiss upon it. The lady stood as if transfixed and did not move, even

when Amherst actually swept all her hair down over one arm and turning

her face to his, pressed one long long kiss on her forehead.

The moment he had done this his senses returned and he stepped back

in indignation with himself. But his companion was still apparently

transfixed. Amherst looked at her in dismay. She did not seem to see him

and had grown very pale. He touched her gently on the arm but she did

not show that she felt the touch. He retreated a few paces and stood

by himself, overcome with shame and contrition. What had he done? How

should he ever atone for such an unwarrantable action? Had it been the

outcome of any ordinary flirtation, he would have felt no such scruples,

but the encounter, though short, had been one of singular idyllic charm

until he had by his own rash act spoilt it. A few minutes passed thus in

self contemplation appeared like an eternity. He must speak.

“If you would allow me--”

But the lady put out her left hand in deprecation as it were and he

got no further. The silence was unendurable. Amherst took a step or two

forward and perceived great tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Oh!” he began desperately, “won't you allow me to say a word to tell

you how very, very sorry I am, how grieved I am and always shall be?

I never--I give you my word of honor--I never do those sort of things,

have never done such a thing before! But I can't tell what it was, the

place is so beautiful, and when all that lovely hair came sweeping past

my face, I could not help doing as I did, it was so electrical! Any man

would have done the same. I know that sounds like a miserable, cowardly

excuse, but it is true, perfectly true.” The lady seemed to struggle to

appear calm and with a great effort she turned her face towards Amherst.

“I know one man,” she said, in a voice choked with sobs, “who would not

have done it?”

Amherst started. “I am sorrier than ever, believe me. I might have known

you were engaged, or had a lover--one so Charming”--

“It is not that,” said the lady. “I am married.” She was still

struggling with her emotion.

Amherst recoiled. He was torn with conflicting thoughts. What if he had

been seen giving that involuntary salute? He might have ruined her peace

for ever. Who would believe in the truth of any possible explanation?

“I will leave you at once;” he said stiffly, “there is nothing more to

be said.”

“Oh! You will reproach me now!” said his companion, wiping her eyes as

the tears came afresh.

“I will try not to;” said Amherst, “but you could so easily have told

me; I do not think it was--quite--fair.” Yet he could not be altogether

angry with the partner of his thoughtlessness, nor could he be entirely

cold. Her beautiful eyes, her despairing attitude would haunt him he

knew for many a day. She had ceased weeping and stood quietly awaiting

his departure. Amherst felt all the force of a strong and novel passion

sweep along his frame as he looked at her. Was she happy, was she a

loved and loving wife? Somehow the conviction forced itself upon him

that she was not. Yet he could not ask her, it must remain her secret.

Amherst looked at his watch. It aroused her.

“What is the time?” she said lifting her head for the first time since

he had kissed her.

“Ten minutes past six,” Amherst replied.

“You must go,” she said, with an effort at self-control. “I shall have

much to do presently.”

He cast one look about and approached her.

“Will you forgive me”--he began in a tone of repression, then with

another mighty and involuntary movement he caught her hands and pressed

them to his breast. “My God,” he exclaimed, “how I should have loved

you!”

A moment after he flung her hands away and strode down the cliff,

unfastened his boat and rowed away in the direction of the hotel as

fast as he could. Rounding a sharp rock that hid what lay beyond it, he

nearly succeeded in overturning another boat like his own, in which sat

a gentleman of middle age, stout and pleasant and mild of countenance.

The bottom of the boat was full of fish. Amherst made an incoherent

apology, to which the gentleman answered with a good-natured laugh,

insisting that the fault was his own. He would have liked to enter into

conversation with Amherst, but my friend was only anxious to escape from

the place altogether and forget his recent adventure in the hurry of

departure from the hotel. Three days after he embarked at Quebec for

England, and never revisited Canada. But he never married and never

forgot the woman whom he always asserted he might have truly and

passionately loved. He was about twenty-eight when that happened and

perfectly heart-whole. Why--I used to say to him, why did you not learn

her name and that of her husband? Perhaps she is a widow now, perhaps

you made as great an impression upon her mind and affections as she did

upon yours.

But my friend Admiral Amherst, as the world knew him, was a strange,

irrational creature in many ways, and none of these ideas would he ever

entertain. That the comfortable gentleman in the boat was her husband he

never doubted; more it was impossible to divine. But the cool northern

isle, with its dark fringe of pines; its wonderful moss, its

fragrant and dewy ferns, its graceful sumacs, just putting on their

scarlet-lipped leaves, the morning stillness broken only by the

faint unearthly cry of the melancholy loon, the spar-dyked cliffs of

limestone, and the fantastic couch, with its too lovely occupant, never

faded from his memory and remained to the last as realities which indeed

they have become likewise to me, through the intensity with which they

were described to me.

The Story of Delle Josephine Boulanger

CHAPTER I.

Delle Josephine Boulanger, Miss Josephine Baker, Miss Josephine Baker,

Delle Josephine Boulanger. What a difference it makes, the language!

What a transformation! I thought this to myself as I stood on the

opposite side of the street looking at the sign. To be sure, it, was

only printed in French and sad little letters they were that composed

the name, but my mind quickly translated them into the more prosaic

English as I stood and gazed. Delle Josephine was a milliner and I had

been recommended to try and get a little room “_sous les toits_” that

she sometimes had to let, during my stay in the dismal Canadian village

with the grand and inappropriate name of _Bonheur du Roi_. Bonneroi, or

Bonneroy, it was usually called. Such a dismal place it seemed to be;

one long street of whitewashed or dirty wooden houses, two raw red brick

“stores,” and the inevitable Roman Catholic Church, Convent and offices,

still and orderly and gray, with the quiet priests walking about and

the occasional sound of the unmistakeable convent bell. I arrived on a

sleety winter's day early in December. Everything was gray, or colorless

or white; the people's faces were pinched and pale, the sky was a leaden

gray in hue, and I thought as I stood opposite to my future abode under

Delle Josephine's roof that the only bit of “local color” so far was to

be found in her window. I could distinctly see from where I stood the

most extraordinary _hat_ I had ever seen. I immediately crossed the road

to examine it. It was a triumph in lobster-color. In shape like a very

large Gainsborough, it was made of shirred scarlet satin with large bows

of satin ribbon of the same intense color and adorned with a bird of

paradise. I can see it now and can recall the images it suggested to my

mind at the time. These were of cardinals and kings, of sealing-wax and

wafers, of tropic noons and tangled marshes, of hell and judgment and

the conventional Zamiel. It looked fit to be worn by a Mrs. Zamiel, if

there be such a person. I looked so long and earnestly that I evidently

attracted the notice of the mistress of the shop, for I saw a hand push

back the faded red curtain that veiled the interior and a queer little

visage appeared regarding me with something I thought of distrust. Did

I look as if I might break the glass and run off with the hat? Perhaps I

did, so I entered the shop immediately and said in a reasoning tone,

“I am looking for rooms in the village, Mademoiselle, and hear you have

one to let. Can I see it now, if not too much trouble?”

“You come from Morréall?”

This I learnt was meant for Montreal.

“Yes,” I returned.

“You are by yourself, Monsieur, you are sure? No ladees, eh?”

“O dear! No” said I laughing. “I am making some studies--sketches--in

this locality and am entirely alone. Do you find ladies a trouble?”

“Oh, perhaps not always. But there was one Mees I had. I did not like

her, and so I said--we will have no more Mees, but again and always

Messieurs.” She was frank enough but not unpleasant in her manner. A

little bit of a woman, thin and shrivelled, with one shoulder slightly

higher than the other, black beads for eyes, and the ugliest mouthful

of teeth that I had ever seen on any one. Had it not been that her

expression was honest and good natured and her manner bright and

intelligent, I should have recoiled before the yellow tusks of

eye-teeth, and the blackened stumps and shrunken gums revealed to me

every time she spoke. She wore a print dress made neatly enough which

was very clean, and a black crape ruff round her sallow neck. The shop

was small but clean and at the back I saw, a kind of little sitting

room. Into this I went while she ran up-stairs to prepare the room for

my inspection. The carpet was the usual horribly ingenious affair of red

squares inside green octagons, and green squares inside red octagons,

varied by lengthwise stripes of bright purple. The walls were plain

white, covered with many prints in vivid colors of the Crucifixion, the

Annunciation and the Holy Family; also three pictures of three wonderful

white kittens which adorn so many nurseries and kitchens. There were

no ornaments, but there was a large looking glass framed in walnut, and

over it a dismal wreath of roses and their leaves done in human

gray hair. The glass was opposite the door and I saw Delle Josephine

descending to meet me just as I was turning away from this suggestive

“in memoriam.” A crooked little stairway brought me to a small landing,

and three more steps to my room. I may call it that, for I took it on

the spot It was large enough for my wants and seemed clean and when

the paper blinds, yellow, with a black landscape on them, were raised,

rather cheerful. We were opposite the chief “_epicerie_,” the only

_“marchandise sèches_” and a blacksmith, whose jolly red fire I could

sometimes catch a glimpse of.

Now, this is a really a true story of French Canadian life, or rather

let me say, a true story of one of my own French Canadian experiences,

and so I must confess that once installed in my little room _chez_ Delle

Josephine Boulanger, nothing whatever of any interest took place until

I had been there quite a week. I lived most regularly and monotonously;

rising at eight I partook of coffee made by my landlady, accompanied by

tinned fruit for which I formed a great taste. Then I went out, getting

my mid-day meal where I could, eggs and bacon at a farmhouse, or tough

steak at the hotel, and sometimes not getting anything at all until I

returned ravenously hungry to my lodging. On these occasions the little

Frenchwoman showed herself equal to the extent of cooking a chicken or

liver and bacon very creditably and then I would write and read in my

own room till eleven. I must not forget to say that I never failed to

look at the wonderful scarlet hat in the window every time I went out

or came in. Purchasers for it would be rare I thought; I half formed the

idea of buying it myself when I went away as a “Souvenir.”

One day I came home very tired. After walking about, vainly waiting for

a terrific snowstorm to pass over that I might go on with my work--the

frozen fall of Montmorenci, framed in the dark pines and somber rocks

that made such a back ground for its glittering thread of ice, I gave

it up, chilled in every limb, and began to consider whether I was not

a fool for pains. Although I started quite early in the afternoon on

my homeward walk, the snow, piled in great masses everywhere along the

route, impeded my progress to such an extent that it was nearly seven

o'clock and pitch-dark when I got into the village. Bonneroy was very

quiet. Shutters were up to every shop, nobody was out except a dog or

two and the snow kept falling, falling, still in as persistent a fashion

as if it had not been doing the same thing for six hours already. I

found the shop shut up and the door locked. I looked everywhere for a

bell or knocker of some description. There was neither, so I began to

thump as hard as I could with my feet against the door. In a minute or

two I heard Delle Josephine coming. Perhaps I had alarmed the poor soul.

She did look troubled on opening the door and admitted me hurriedly,

even suspiciously, I thought. The door of the little sitting-room was

closed, so fancying that perhaps she had a visitor I refrained from much

talking and asking her to cook me some eggs presently and bring them up,

I went to my room.

These cold days I had to keep a fire in the small open “Franklin” stove

going almost constantly. She had not forgotten to supply it with

coals during my absence, and lighting my two lamps I was soon fairly

comfortable. How it did snow! Lifting the blind I could actually look

down on an ever-increasing drift below my window and dimly wonder if

I should get out at all on the morrow. If not, I proposed to return to

Montreal at once. I should gain nothing by being confined in the house

at Bonneroy. Delle Josephine appeared with eggs and tea--green tea, alas

for that village shortcoming--there was no black tea to be found in it,

and I looked narrowly at her as she set it down, wondering if anything

was amiss with her. But she seemed all right again and I conjectured

that I had simply interrupted a _tête-a-tête_ with some visitor in the

sitting-room at the time of my return. When I had finished my tea I sat

back and watched my fire. Those little open “Franklin” stoves are almost

equal to a fireplace; they show a great deal of fire and you can

fancy your flame on an English hearth very easily--if you have any

imagination. As I sat there, it suddenly came home to me what a curious

life this was for me; living quite alone over a tiny village shop in _Le

Bos Canada_, with a queer little spinster like Delle Josephine. Snowed

up, with her too! To-morrow I would certainly have to go and shovel that

snow away from the front door and take down the shutters and discover

again to the world the contents of the one window, particularly that

frightful hat! I would--here I started it must be confessed almost out

of my seat, as turning my head suddenly I saw on a chair behind the door

the identical hat I was thinking about! I sat up and looked at it. It

must have been there all the time I was eating my tea. I still sat and

looked. I felt vaguely uncomfortable for a moment, then my common sense

asserted itself and told me that Delle Josephine must have been altering

it or something of that kind and had forgotten to take it away. I

wondered if she sat in my room when I was away. I had rather she did

not. Just as I was about to rise and look at it more closely, a tap came

at my door. I rose and admitted Delle Josephine. She took the tea-things

away in her usual placid manner, but came back the next moment as if

she had forgotten something, clearly the hat. With a slight deprecatory

laugh she removed it and went hurriedly down the stair. Whatever had she

been doing with it, I thought, and settled with a sigh of satisfaction

once more to my work, now that the nightmare in red, a kind of mute

scarlet “Raven,” was gone from my room. How very quiet it was. Not a

single sleigh passed, no sounds came from the houses opposite or from

next door, the whole world seemed smothered in the soft thick pillows

of snow quietly gathering upon it. After a while, however, I could

distinctly hear the sound of voices downstairs. Delle Josephine had a

visitor, undoubtedly. Was it a man or a woman? Not a large company I

gathered; it seemed like one person besides herself. I opened my door,

it sounded so comfortably in my lonely bachelor ear to catch in that

strange little house anything so cheerful as the murmur of voices. My

curiosity once aroused, did not stop here. I went outside the door, not

exactly to listen, but as one does sometimes in a lazy yet inquisitive

mood, when anything is going on at all unusual. This was an unusual

occurrence. If Delle Josephine had visitors often, I was not aware of

it. Never before had I noticed the slightest sound proceed from her

sitting-room after dusk. So I waited a bit listening. Yes there was

talking going on, but in French. As I did not understand her _patois_

very clearly, I thought there would be no harm in overhearing, and

further I thought I should like to have a peep at her and her companion.

I could see that the door was partly open. Taking off my slippers, I

ran softly down and found it wide enough open to admit of my seeing the

entire room and occupants in the looking-glass, that being opposite.

It was quite dark in the little hall and I should be unobserved. So I

crept--most rudely I am willing to say--into the furthest shadow of this

hall and looked straight before me.

I saw none but Delle Josephine herself. But she was a sight for

the gods. Seated on a kind of ottoman, directly in front of the

looking-glass, she was holding an animated conversation with _herself_,

wearing a large white antimacassar--one of those crocheted things all in

wheels--pinned under her chin and falling away at the back like a cloak,

and upon her head--the wonderful scarlet hat! I was amazed, startled,

dismayed. To see that shrivelled little old woman so travestying her

hideous charms, smiling at and bowing to herself, her yellow skin

forming a frightful contrast to the intense red of her immense hat

and her bright black eyes, was a pitiful and unique spectacle. I had

intended but to take a peep at the supposed visitor and then go back to

my room, but the present sight was one which fascinated me to such an

extent that I could only look and wonder. She spoke softly to herself in

French, appearing to be carrying on a conversation with her image in the

glass. The feathers of the bird of paradise swept her shoulder--the one

that was higher than the other--and mingled with the wheels of the white

antimacassar. I looked as long as I dared and then, fearing from her

movements that the strange scene would soon be over I went softly up

again to my room. But I thought about it all evening, all night in fact.

The natural inquiry was--was the poor girl a maniac? Even if only a

harmless one, it would be well to know. As I sat down again by my fire

I considered the matter in every light. It was a queer prospect. Outside

the snow still fell. Inside, the fire languished and the time wore on

till at half-past ten I really was compelled to call on my landlady for

more coal. I could hear the muttered French still going on, but I did

not know where the coal was and could not fetch it myself. I must break

in upon her rhapsodizing.

“Delle Boulanger!” I called from my open door. “Delle Boulanger!”

The talking stopped. In a few moments Delle Josephine appeared, calm and

smiling, _minus_ the hat and the antimacassar. “Coming, _monsieur_”

“I shall want some more coal,” said I, “It is getting colder, I think,

every minute!”

“_Mais oui, monsieur; il fait fret, il fait bien fret ce soir_, and

de snow--oh! It is _comme_--de old winter years ago, dat I remember,

_monsieur_, but not you. _Eh! bien_, the coal!”

I discovered nothing morbid about her manner; she was amiable and

respectful as usual, if a little more garrulous. The French will talk at

all times about anything, but our conversation always came to a sudden

stop the moment one of us relapsed into the mother tongue. As long as

a sort of common maccaronic was kept to we managed to understand one

another. After I made up my fire I sat up till long past twelve. I heard

no more talking downstairs but I could fancy her still arrayed in those

festive yet ghastly things, seated opposite her own reflection, intent

as a mummy and not unlike one restored in modern costume. Pulling

the blind aside before going to bed, I could see with awe the arching

snowdrifts outside my window. If it went on snowing, I should not be

able to open it on the morrow.

CHAPTER II

My prediction was verified in the morning. The snow had ceased falling,

but lay piled up against the lower half of my window. On the level there

appeared to be about three feet, while the drifts showed from six to

twenty feet I had never seen anything like it, and was for sometime lost

in admiration. Across the road the children of the _epider_ and the good

man himself were already busy trying to shovel some of it away from the

door. It seemed at first sight a hopeless task and I, looking down at

Delle Josephine's door, wondered how on earth we were ever to get out of

it when not a particle of it was to be seen. Not all that day did I get

out of the house, and but for the absorbing interest I suddenly found

centred in Delle Josephine I would have chafed terribly at being so shut

up. Trains, were blockaded of course, it was the great fall of '81, and

interrupted travel for half of a week. All that day I waited so to speak

for the evening. Snow-boys there were many; customers none. The

little Frenchwoman brought me some dinner at one o'clock, pork, tinned

tomatoes, and a cup of coffee. About five o'clock I strolled down into

the shop, it was lighted very meagrely with three oil lamps. Delle

Josephine was seated on a high chair behind the one counter at work on

some ribbon--white ribbon. She was quilling it, and looked up with some

astonishment as I walked up to her.

“Do you object to a visitor Miss Josephine?” said I with the most

amiable manner I could muster. Poor soul! I should have thought she

would have welcomed one.

“_Mais non Monsieur_ but I speak so little English.”

“And I so little French. But we can manage to understand each other a

little, I think. What do you say to the weather? When shall I be able to

go out?”

Delle Josephine laughed. She went on quilling the ribbon that looked so

white against her yellow hands.

“O _Monsieur_ could go out dis day if he like, but de snow ver bad, very

thick.”

“Do you ever go out, Miss Josephine?”

“_Non Monsieur_. I have not been out for what you call a valk--it will

be five years that I have not been.”

“But you go to church, I suppose?”

“_Mais oui Monsieur_, but that is so near. And the good _Père Le

Jeune_--he come to see me. He is all the frien Delle Josephine has, ah!

_oui Monsieur_.”

“Ah! Bonneroi isn't much of a place, is it? Have you ever been to Quebec

or Montreal?”

“Ah! _Quebec--oui_, I live there once, many years ago. I was taken when

I was ver young by _Madame de la Corne de la Colombière pour une bonne;

vous comprenez_?”

“Oh! _bonne_, yes, we use that word too. It means a nursemaid, eh! Were

there children in the family?”

Delle Josephine dropped her ribbon and threw up her hands.

“_Mon Dieu! les enfants! Mais oui, Monsieur_, they were nine children!

There was _Maamselle Louise_ and _Maamselle Angelique_ with the tempaire

of the _diable_ himself _oui Monsieur_, and François and Réné and

_l'petite Catherine_, and the rest I forget _Monsieur_. And dey live in

a fine _château_, with horse and carridge and everything as it would be

if they were in their own France. _Monsieur_ has been in France?”

Only in Paris, I told her; a spasmodic run across the Channel--Paris in

eight hours. Two days there then return--

“That does not give one much idea of France.”

“_Nou, non, Monsieur_. But there is no countree like France dey say dat

familee--and that is true, eh, _Monsieur_?”

“I am afraid I cannot agree with you, Delle Josephine,” said I. “To

me there is no country like England, but that may be because I am an

Englishman. Tell me how long did you live in Quebec with this family?”

“I was there ten year _Monsieur_. Then one day, I had a great

accidence--oh! a ver sad ting, ver sad!” The Frenchwoman laid down

the ribbon and went on. “A ver sad ting happen to me and the _bébé

Catherine_. We were out _l'ptite_ and me, for a valk, and we come to a

part of the town ver slant, ver hilly. _L'ptite Catherine_ was in her

carridge and I let go, and she go all down, _Monsieur_, and I too

over the hill--the cleef, you call it--but the _bébé_ was killed and I

_Monsieur_, I was alive, but like this!” showing her shoulder. “And what

did they do?”

“At the _château_? Ah, _figure-toi, monsieur_, the agony of dat _pauvre

dame_! I was sent away, she would not see me, and I left _Quêbec_ at

once. I was no more _bonne_, monsieur; Delle Josephine was enough dat.

I could make de hats and de bonnets for de ladees, so I come away out

to Bonneroi, and I haf made de hats and de bonnets for the ladees of

Bonneroi for twenty year.”

“Is it possible?” I said, much touched by the little story. “And the

ladies of Bonneroi, are they hard to please?”

Delle Josephine, who had spoken with the customary vim and gesture of

the French while--telling her tale, resumed her quilling and said, with

a shrug of one shoulder,

“They do not know much, and dat is true.” I laughed at the ironical

tone.

“And you--you provide the _modes_?”

“I haf been to Quêbec” she said quietly.

“Twenty years ago,” I thought, but had too much respect for the queer

little soul to say it aloud.

“I see amongst other things,” I went on, “a most--remarkable--a very

pretty, I should say--hat in your window. The red one, you know, with

the bird of paradise.”

Delle Josephine looked up quickly. “Dat is not for sale, _monsieur_.”

“No? Why, I had some idea of perhaps purchasing it for a friend of mine.

Did you make that hat yourself?”

She nodded with a sort of conscious pride. Yet it was not for sale! I

wondered why. The strange scene of the foregoing evening came into my

mind, and I began to understand this singular--case of monomania. It

must be that having lived so many years in almost solitary confinement,

one might say, her mind had slightly given away, and she found her

only excitement and relaxation in posing before the glass in that

extraordinary manner. I hardly knew whether it would be an act of

kindness to remove the hat; she talked quite rationally and cheerfully,

and remembering the innate vanity of the French as a nation, I

concluded to let the matter rest That night I heard no talking in the

sitting-room. I slept profoundly, and woke up later than usual We were

not dug out yet, though two snow-boys with their shovels were doing

their best to unearth us. I waited some time for Delle Josephine to

appear with the tray; but she too was late, evidently, for at ten

o'clock she had not come. I dressed and went down stairs. As I passed

the sitting-room I saw her tricked out as before in the hat and the

antimacassar seated on the ottoman in front of the looking-glass.

Heavens, she looked more frightful than ever! I made up my mind to speak

to her at, once, and see if I could not stop such hideous mummery. But

when I advanced I perceived that indeed I had come too late. The figure

on the ottoman was rigid in death. How it ever held itself up at all

I could never think, for I gave a loud cry, and rushing from the room

knocked against the open door and fell down senseless.

Outside, I suppose, the snow-boys shovelled away as hard as ever. When I

came to myself I did not need to look around; I knew in a flash where

I was, and remembered what had happened. I ran to the shop door and

hammered with all my might.

“Let me out!” I cried. “Open the door! open the door! for Heaven's

sake!” Then I ran upstairs, and did the same at my window. It seemed

years upon years of time till they were enabled to open the door and let

me out. I rushed out bareheaded, forgetful of the intense cold, thinking

first of all of the priest _Père Le Jeune_, so strong is habit, so

potent are traditions. I knew where he lived, up the first turning in a

small red brick house next the church of St. Jean Baptiste. I told him

the facts of the case as well as I could and he came back at once with

me. There was nothing to be done. Visitation of God or whatever the

cause of death Delle Josephine Boulanger was dead. The priest lifted his

hands in horror when he saw the ghostly hat. I asked him what he knew

about her, but he seemed ignorant of everything concerning the poor

thing, except the _aves_ she repeated and the number of times she came

to confession. But when we came to look over her personal effects in the

drawers and boxes of the shop, there could be no doubt but that she had

been thoroughly though harmlessly insane. We found I should think about

one hundred and fifty boxes: from tiny little ones of pasteboard to

large square ones of deal, full of rows and rows of white quilled

ribbon, similar to the piece I had seen her working at on that last

night of her life on earth. Some of the ribbon was yellow with age,

others fresher looking, but in each box was a folded bit of paper with

these words written inside,

_Pour l'ptite Catherine_.

“What money there was, _Père Le Jeune_ must have appropriated for I saw

nothing of any. After the dismal funeral, to which I went, I gathered my

effects together and went to the hotel. The first day I could proceed, I

returned to Montreal and have not visited Bonneroi since. The family

of _de la Corne de La Colombière_ still reside somewhere near Quebec, I

believe. The _château_ is called by the charming name of Port Joli, and

perhaps some day I may feel called upon to tell them of the strange fate

which befell their poor Josephine. Whether the melancholy accident which

partly bereft her of her reason was the result of carelessness I cannot

say but I shall be able, I think, to prove to them that she never forgot

the circumstance, and was to the day of her death occupied in making

ready for the little coffin and shroud of her '_p'tite Catherine_.' My

sketch of the frost bound Montmorenci was never finished, and indeed

my winter sketching fell through altogether after that unhappy visit

to Bonneroy. I was for weeks haunted by that terrible sight, half

ludicrous, half awful, and I have, now that I am married, a strong

dislike to scarlet in the gowns or head-gear of my wife and daughter.”

The Story of Etienne Chezy D'Alencourt

CHAPTER I.

As my friends know, I was born an Englishman, spending the first

twenty-four years of my life in England. On my twenty-fifth birthday I

set foot on the shore of the great North American Continent, destined

for a time to be my home. Two days afterwards I entered the office set

apart for me in the handsome Government Buildings at Ottawa, and began

my duties. A transfer had recently been effected between the Home

and Canadian Civil Service, and I had been chosen to fill the vacant

colonial post. Having no ties or obligations of any kind I had nothing

to lose by the transaction except the pleasure and advantage of living

in England, which, however, had ceased for one or two reasons to be dear

to me.

I did not, however, remain very long in the Service. I found it pleasant

work but monotonous, and receiving shortly after I went out a legacy

bequeathed by a widowed aunt I had almost forgotten, determined to leave

it and devote myself to study and travel. Like many Englishmen, I had

taken no trouble to ascertain the real points of interest about me. I

had been content with mastering and getting through my work, and with

mingling out of hours with the small but thoroughly charming set I had

found ready to welcome me on my arrival as the “new Englishman.” On the

whole, I was popular, though one great flaw--_i.e._--lack of high birth

and desirable home connections, weighed to an alarming extent with the

dowagers of the Capital.

I had, on leaving the Service, made up my mind to study the people of

the Dominion. The English Canadians were easily disposed of in this

way; most of them were Scotch, and the rest appeared to be Irish. I

then began on the Indian population. But this was not so easy. It seemed

impossible to find even a single Indian without going some distance.

At last I unearthed one descendant of the Red man who kept a small

tavern in the lower part of the town; a dirty frame tenement almost

entirely hidden by an immense sign hanging outside, having the figure,

heroic size of an Iroquois in full evening dress, feathers, bare legs

and tomahawk.

This place was known as “Tommy's.” But Tommy himself was only half

an Indian, and swore such bad swears in excellent English, that I was

forced to leave after a minute's inspection.

Then I began on the French-Canadians. There were plenty of them. In the

Buildings, on the streets, in the markets, in shops, they were all

over. Some of the most charming people I know were French-Canadians.

My landlady and her husband, quiet, sober devout people, were

French-Canadians.

What I wanted to find, though, was a genuine unadulterated

French-Canadian of the class known as the _habitans_. I could recollect

many dark-eyed, fierce-mustached men whom I had seen since my residence

in Canada, and whom I conjectured must have been _habitans_. Up the

Gatineau and down the St. Lawrence, it would be easy to find whom I

wanted, but I preferred to wait on in town. I had many a disappointment.

One day it would be a cabman, another day a clerk. Though they all

_looked_ French, they invariably turned out to be English or Scotch. My

notions of hair and skin and eyes were being all turned upside down;

my favorite predispositions annulled, my convictions changed to

fallacies--in short I was thoroughly bewildered. I could not find my

_habitant_. At the same time, when I did find him, he would have to know

how to speak some English, for I could only speak very little French.

I read it well of course, wrote it quite easily, but on essaying

conversation was always seized with that instinctive horror of making a

fool of myself, which besets most Englishmen when they would attempt a

foreign language. Besides, the _patois_ these people spoke was vastly

different from ordinary French, as taught in schools and colleges, and

what it might be like I had not in those days the faintest idea, not

having read Rabelais.

The worst _désillusionnement_ I suffered I will recount. One day I

noticed an elderly man clad in corduroy trousers, shabby brown velveteen

coat, conical straw hat and dirty blue shirt, lounging about a wharf I

sometimes frequented where, at one time, would lay from thirty to fifty

barges laden with lumber. Bargetown it might have been called; it was

a veritable floating colony of French and Swede, Irish and Scotch,

jabbering and smoking by day and lying quietly at night under the stars,

save for the occasional jig and scrape of the fiddle of some active

Milesian. Here, had I fully known it, was my chance for observation,

but I was ignorant at that time of the ways of these people and did not

venture among them. But the man in the velvet coat interested me. He

gesticulated the whole time most violently, waved his arms about and

made great use of his pipe, which he used to point with. I could not

hear what he was saying for his back was turned to me and the wind

carried all he said to the bargemen, as he wished it to do I suppose.

How splendidly that coat becomes him, thought I. The descendant of some

fine old French settler, how superbly he carries himself!

The conical becomes on him a cocked hat and in place of ragged fringe

and buttons hanging by a single string, I see the buckles and bows, the

sword and cane of a by-gone age!

I made up my mind to address him, when to my disgust he got into one of

the barges, which moved off slowly, transporting him, as I supposed, to

his northern home.

The next morning the bell of my front door attracted my attention by

ringing three or four times. Evidently my landlady was out. I sauntered

to the door and found my _habitant_ of the velveteen coat and duty blue

shirt!

Gracious heaven! I was overcome! By what occult power had he been driven

here to deliver himself into my hands? Before I could speak, he said:

“Av ye plaze, sorr, will yez be having any carrpets to bate? I'm taking

orders against the sphring claning, sorr.”

“Oh! are you?” said I. I began to feel very sorry for myself, very

sorry, indeed, at this supreme instant. “Do you live near here?” I

further inquired.

“Shure and I do, sorr. Jist beyant yez. I pass yez every day in the

week. Me number's 415”--He was about handing me a greasy bit of paper,

when I slammed the door in his face and retired to my own room to

meditate on the strange accent and peculiar calling of this descendant

of the “fine old French settler.”

My next choice, however, proved a fortunate one. I got into a street-car

one evening late in the month of March. It was the winter street-car, a

great dark caravan, with a long narrow bench down either side and a mass

of hay all along the middle, with a melancholy lamp at the conductor's

end. Although fairly light outside, it was quite dark inside the

caravan, so the conductor set about lighting the lamp. This is the way

he did it. Opening the door he put his head in, looked all around, shut

the door and stopped his horses. Then he opened the door again and put

his head in again, keeping the door open this time that we might inhale

the fresh March night air. I say we, because when I grew accustomed to

the dark, I saw there was another occupant of the car, a man seated on

the opposite seat a little way down. The conductor felt under the seat

for something which I suppose was the can which, taken presently by him

to the corner grocery before which we had stopped, came back replenished

with coal oil. After he had filled the lamp, he lit in succession three

matches, persistently holding them up so that they all went out one

after the other. He felt in his pockets but he had no more. Then he

asked me. I had none. Then he asked the other man. The other man laughed

and replied in French. I did not understand what he said but saw him

supply the conductor with a couple of matches. When the lamp was finally

lighted I looked more closely at him. He was a working man from his

attire: colored shirt, coat of a curious bronze colour much affected by

the Canadian labourer, old fur cap with ears, and moccasins. At his feet

stood a small tin pail with a cover. His face was pale and singularly

well-cut. His hair was black and very smooth and shiny; a very slight

moustache gave character to an otherwise effeminate countenance and his

eyes were blue, very light blue indeed and mild in their expression. We

smiled involuntarily as the conductor departed. The man was the first to

speak:

“De conductor not smoke, surely,” he said, showing me his pipe in one

hand. “I always have the matches.”

“So do I, as a general thing,”. I rejoined. “One never knows when a

match may be wanted in this country.” I spoke rather surlily, for I

had been getting dreadfully chilled while the conductor was opening and

shutting the door. The man bent forward eagerly, though without a trace

of rudeness in his manner.

“You do not live here, eh?”

“Oh! yes, I do now, but I was thinking of England when I spoke.”

“That is far away from here, surely.”

“Ah! yes,” I sighed. So did the man opposite me. We were silent then for

a few moments when he spoke again.

“There is a countree I should like to see and dat is France. I hear,

sir, I hear my mother talk of dat countree, and I tink--I should like to

go there. But that is far away from here, too far away, sure.”

My heart leapt up. Here, if ever, must be the man I was in search of.

“You are a French-Canadian, I suppose?”

“Yes, Sir, I am dat.”

“And where do you live?” said I.

“I work in de mill; de largess mill in the Chaudière. You know dat great

water, the fall under the bridge, dat we call the Chaudière.”

“I know it well,” said I, “but I have never gone properly over any of

the mills. I should like to go some day very much. Should I see you

anywhere if I went down?”

He stared, but gave me the name of his mill. It belonged to one of the

wealthiest lumber kings of the district. I resolved to go down the next

day.

“What is your name,” I asked. The man hesitated a minute before he

replied,

“Netty.”

“Netty!” I repeated “What a curious name! You have another name, I

expect. That must only be a nickname.”

“_Mais oui Monsieur_. My name is much longaire than dat. My whole name

is Etienne Guy Chèzy D'Alencourt, but no man call me dat, specially in

de mill. 'Netty'--dey all know 'Netty.'”

It was a long name, truly, and a high-sounding one,--but I preferred

thinking of him by it than by the meaningless soubriquet of “Netty.” At

the next corner he got out, touching his cap to me quite politely as he

passed.

I was in high spirits that evening, for I believed I had found my

_habitant_. I went down to the Chaudière the following day, and got

permission to go over Mr. ----'s mill I found it very interesting, but

my mind was not sufficiently centered on planks and logs and booms

to adequately appreciate them. I wanted “Netty.” After I had made the

complete round of the mill I came upon him hard at work in his place

turning off planks in unfailing order as they whizzed along. The noise

was deafening, of bolts and bars, and saws and chains, with the roar of

the great cascade outside. He saw me and recognized me on my approach,

but he could not speak for some time. It was most monotonous work,

I thought. No conversation allowed, not even possible; the truly

demoniacal noise, yet just outside on the other side of a small window,

the open country, the mighty waters of the ever-boiling “Kettle,” or

Chauldron, and the steep spray-washed cliff. Standing on my toes I

could, looking out of Netty's small window, discover all this. The

ice was still in the river, half the fall itself was frozen stiff, and

reared in gabled arches to the sky. I watched the two scenes alternately

until at 6 o'clock the wheels ran down, the belts slackened and the men

knocked off.

Netty walked out with me at my request, and learning that he had to

return in an hour I proposed we should have a meal together somewhere

and a talk at the same time. He must have been greatly astonished at

a complete stranger in another walk of life fastening upon him in this

manner, but he gave no hint of either surprise or fear, and maintained

the same mild demeanour I had noticed in him the day before.

It was darkening rapidly and I did not know where to go for a meal.

Netty told me he ought to go to St. Patrick St. I knew the locality and

did not think it necessary to go all that way, “unless anybody will be

waiting for you, expecting you.”

“Oh! not dat I live in a boarding house, my mother--she in the countree,

far from here.”

“Then, 'I said,' you can go where you like. Do you know any place near

here where we can get a cup of tea and some eggs? What will do for you,

I daresay, and I hardly want as much.”

But he knew of no reliable place and after walking about for a quarter

of an hour we finally went to the refreshment room at the station and

ordered beer and tea and sandwiches.

“I daresay you wonder at my bringing you out here with me. You'd get a

better meal perhaps at your boarding-house. But do you know I've taken

a fancy to you and, I want to see a little more of you and learn how you

live, if you will kindly tell me. I am interested in your people, the

French-Canadians.”

This sounds very clumsily put and so it did then, but I was obliged to

explain my actions in some way and what is better than the truth? Lies,

I have no doubt to some people, but I was compelled to be truthful

to this man who carried a gentle and open countenance with him. No

gentleman could have answered me more politely than he did now.

“Sir I am astonish--_oui un peu_, but if there is anyting I can tell

you, anyting I can show you I shall be ver glad. The mill--how do you

find dat, Sir?

“I like to watch you work very much, but the noise”--

Netty laughed, showing his radiant white teeth.

“_Mais oui_, de noise is bad, but one soon custom to dat. I am in

de mill for four year. I come from up in de north--from the Grand

Calumet--do you know there, Sir?”

“That is an island is it not? Yes, I know where it is, near Allumette,

but I have never been so far up on the Ottawa. And the Gatineau, that is

a river, is it not? What pretty names these French ones are! Gatineau!”

I repeated thinking. “That comes, I fancy having heard somewhere, from

Demoiselle Marie Josephe Gatineau Duplessis, wife of one of the first

French settlers. By the way your name is a curious one. Say it again.”

Netty very gravely repeated, “Etienne Guy Chézy D'Alencourt.”

“Was your father a native Canadian?”

“_Oui Monsieur_.”

“The name seems familiar to me,” I remarked. “I daresay if you cared

to look the matter up, you might find that your great grandfather was

something or other under the Intendant Bigot or Vaudreuil, or earlier

still under Maisonneuve the gallant founder of Montreal. Ah! how

everybody seems to have forgotten those old days. Even in Canada, you

see, there is something to look back upon.”

My companion seemed rather puzzled as I talked in this strain. Very

probably it was over his head. I found he could neither read nor write,

had been reared in the pine-clad and icy fastnesses of Grand Calumet

Island all alone by his mother--an old dame now about seventy. He

himself was about thirty he judged, though he was far from sure. He was

a good Catholic in intention, though very ignorant of all ritual. From

his youth he had been employed on the rafts and lumber-slides of the

Ottawa river until his four years' session at the mill, where he had

picked up the English he knew. He had made no friends he told me. The

more I conversed with him the more I was impressed with his simple and

polite manners, his innate good breeding, and his faith and confidence

in the importance of daily toil and all honest labour. He smoked a

little, drank a little, but never lost his head became obtrusively

familiar, noisy or inquisitive. I felt ashamed to think how deliberately

I had sought him out, to pry into the secrets and facts of his daily

life, but solaced myself into the assurance that it could not at least

bode him harm and it might possibly do him some service.

When we returned to the mill, I was astonished at the weirdness of the

scene. The entire premises were flooded with the electric light and the

men were working away, and the saws, belts and bars all in motion as if

it were the middle of the day. What a pandemonium of sound and colour

and motion it was! The strong resinous odor of the pine-wood mingled

with the fresh air blown in from the river, and I inhaled both eagerly.

It was almost powerful enough to affect the head, and I fancied I caught

myself reeling a little as I walked out on to the bridge, swaying just

the least bit as the torrent of angry water swept under it I had said

“_Bonsoir_” to my friend the Frenchman and was free to go home. But I

lingered long on the heaving bridge, though it was cold and starless,

and I got quite wet with the dashed-up spray.

Up the river gleamed the icy masses of the frozen fall, beyond that the

northern country of the northern waters stretched away up to the North

Pole with little, if any, human interruption.

Down the river on the three superb cliffs, rising high out of the water,

sparkled the many lights in the Gothic windows of the buildings. On

either side were the illuminated mills with their rushing logs and

their myriad busy hands piling, smoothing and sawing the monsters of the

forest helpless under the fetters of leather and steel.

CHAPTER II.

For the events which followed, I hold myself alone and altogether

responsible. Nearly every evening I spent at the Chaudière, either

watching my new friend at his work or lounging on the bridge, and always

finishing the day by walking home with him to his boarding house. Thus

I got to know him very well, and I soon discovered one thing that he

was far from strong. Even a life-long residence among the purifying and

strengthening airs of the keen fresh North had not protected him from

the insidious ravages of that dread complaint--consumption. I fancied

the hereditary taint must be on his father's side, for he always alluded

to his mother as being exceptionally healthy. On Sundays I accompanied

him to Church in the morning at the Basilica; in the afternoons we used

to walk all over the town in various directions. Of course, on all

these excursions, I did most of the talking. He was a good listener, and

readily improved in understanding and appreciation. Noticing that he

was particularly fond of any story connected with the life of the early

French in Canada, I read up all the works I could find on the subject,

going often to the Parliamentary Library for that purpose, and retailing

the more interesting and intelligible facts to him afterwards. Crusoe

did not watch over and educate Friday any more carefully than I my mild

and gentlemanly “Shantyman” in his blue shirt and canvas trowsers.

I grew at last, after three months' intimacy with him, quite to love

him, and I am sure my affection was reciprocated for he ever welcomed

me with a strong, clinging pressure of my hand and a smile which was a

brighter one than that which his face had worn when I met him first. A

strange friendship, but one which I felt to be so absorbing that I could

not have endured other friends. April passed, and May, and with the hot

weather Etienne, whose health gave way all at once, would have to return

for a short visit to the old mother all by herself on the island of

Grand Calumet.

I feared to let him go, he looked more delicate in my eyes every day,

but I knew it would be good for him in many ways. So a day came that saw

my friend D'Alencourt go back to his northern home. He would not ask me

to go and visit him, he had too much natural pride for that, but I made

up my mind to find him out, for all that. As may be supposed I was like

the traditional fish out of the traditional water for some time after

his departure.

I read and amused myself in any way that offered, but cared not to

experiment on any more French-Canadians.

In my reading I read for two, and made notes of anything I thought would

interest Etienne. One day I came across the same name as his own, borne

by a certain young soldier, a sprig of the French _noblesse_ who had

followed in the train of Bigot, the dissolute and rapacious Governor

of New France. I meditated long over this. The name was identical--Guy

Chézy D'Alencourt. In the case of my friend the mill-hand there was

simply the addition of Etienne, the first Christian name. Could he

possibly be the descendant of this daring and gallant officer, of whose

marriage and subsequent settling in Canada I could find no mention?

The thing seemed unlikely, yet perfectly possible. I had predicted it

myself. As if to fasten my thoughts even more securely on the absent

Etienne that very day arrived a letter from Grand Calumet. It was

addressed to me in a laboured but most distinct hand. I thought that

Etienne had commissioned the priest doubtless to write for him or some

other friend, but when I opened it I found to my great surprise that it

was from Etienne himself and in his own handwriting, the result he told

me of work at home in his Lower Town boarding-house.

I dropped the letter. He had taught himself to, write! This was the

first fruit of my intimacy with him, and I hardly knew whether I was

pleased or not. But I clearly saw that this night-work added to the

arduous toil and late hours imposed upon him by his place in the mill

had probably been the cause of undermining his bodily strength. The

letter itself ran:

“Dear Sir,--The frend of Etienne D'Alenconrt, he can write you--he

can send you a _lettre_ from the Grand Calumet, his island that

is green, Monsieur, and full of sweet berries. If you would come,

Mossier, you would find Etienne and his mother reddy to do all they

can. Still, Monsieur shall in this please alway himself, the friend

and benefactor of Etienne Chézy D'Alencourt.”

GRAND CALUMET ISLAND.

“It was at night, when Monsieur had gone home, that I learnt myself

to write and thank him for all teaching from the books beside.”

“E.”

Of course, I would accept the invitation. I decided to go in a week's

time and wrote to that effect. I wished to reprimand him for having

overtaxed his strength as I was sure he had done in sitting up teaching

himself how to write, but respect for the dear fellow's perseverance and

ability restrained me.

Only when I got him again, I said to myself, I would stop that. I took

with me a gun, fishing rods and tackle, a mosquito net, plenty of cigars

and a hamper of tinned meats, tea, coffee and biscuits.

My journey was nearly altogether by water and I enjoyed every inch of

the beautiful river. After I reached the landing stage, a place called

Lichfield, I had to wait an hour before proceeding in the direction

which I had found out it would be necessary to follow in order to find

Etienne and his mother.

I shall never forget the delight of that one hour passed in rambling

through the lonely green wood that covered the island down to the shore.

The ferns were young and freshly unfurled, the moss was everywhere,

green and close and soft like velvet and star-clustering, gray and

yellow. The surviving flowers were the large white blossoms of the

woodland lily, and the incoming _Linnæa_ began to show the faint pink of

its twin bells, afterwards to be so sweet and fragrant.

I thought of that passage in the letter which told of “the island that

was green and full of sweet berries.” Not a bad description for a person

whom the world must perforce term an illiterate man.

When my conveyance arrived, it proved to be a stage of antiquated type

and I suffered horribly during the journey of three hours. At the end

of that time, I was set down with my luggage at the gate of a small log

hut, with a little garden in front, bordered with beautiful pink and

green stones, the like of which I had never seen before. A snake fence

ran in front of this and on two sides, at the back was a thick wood.

Etienne was ready for me at which I rejoiced, fearing to make myself

known to the dame his mother.

Once more I felt that honest and affectionate hand grasp, once more I

met those clear and steady blue eyes, and I noted the flush of pride

which overspread his face when I told him that I had received his letter

and marvelled at it.

“Mossieu know so much and Etienne so ver little.” But when the flush had

died away, I was pained exceedingly to see the pallor of his cheeks and

the prominence of his high cheekbones. His walk was unsteady too, he

put his feet down, I noticed, as if they were light instead of solid

supports for his body, a sure sign of great physical weakness. My worst

fears were realized when I saw on the deal table in the front room,

furnished with home-made rugs drawn from woolen rags dyed all colors and

some plain deal furniture stained brown, a little pile of books. There

were two copy-books, two dictionaries, a small “Histoire de Canada” and

some illustrated magazines. I saw that he could read, too, pretty well,

for he presently drew my attention to a very old book indeed, that lay

on a shelf, a little Roman Catholic missal with tarnished gold clasps

and scarlet edges.

“Dat was belong to my fader,” he said, “for many a year; and it was from

his fader he get it.”

I looked at it eagerly all over. The fly-leaf bore no inscription, but

up in one corner, in faded red ink, was something that looked like a

monogram with a device underneath. I would have examined it at once but

that Etienne was anxious to read me a little of the Latin which he had

picked out with infinite patience, I should think. I promised to help

him a little occasionally, but told him that he was not looking well and

had better be content with ignorance in this lovely summer weather.

“When the winter comes and you are back at the mill, you can study as

much as you like.”

The old dame was sallow and sunken from a life of incessant hard work.

The climate itself, so changeable as well as inclement in these northern

wilds, is enough to pinch the face and freeze the blood, although at the

time of my visit it was hot, intensely hot for so early in the

summer. Moreover, the old dame was not given to talking. So taciturn a

Frenchwoman I never met elsewhere. They are usually characterized by a

vivacious loquacity which is the seal of their nationality. But this one

was silent in the extreme and had, as her son told me, never once held

a conversation with him on any subject whatever. Of his father he knew

literally only this fact--that he had been a “shantyman” in his time

too, and was killed by a strained rope striking him across the middle.

Etienne did not remember him. The time sped on. They made me as

comfortable as they could in the front or “best” room, but, when I

thought it would not offend them, I slept outside--“_couchant à la belle

etoile_” as Rousseau has it--and beautiful nights those were I spent

in this manner. We had plenty of fruit--wild strawberries and

raspberries--pork and beans and potatoes forming the staple articles of

diet. There was no cow, no horse, no dog belonging to the house. Fish

we could get ourselves in plenty, and eggs made their appearance in

a farmer's wagon about twice a week. Etienne and I spent entire days

out-of-doors, shooting, fishing, walking, reading. I tried to take his

mind off his books, but it was of no use. He had got so attached to

his studies and new pursuits in life that one day he startled me by

asserting that he did not intend to go back to the mill in future. I

remonstrated gently with him, reminding him that as yet his education

was very incomplete, that few situations of the kind he probably aspired

to would be open to him for some time to come, and that in the meantime

he must suffer from want of money, and thus be the cause of seeing his

mother suffer as well. But he startled me further in reply by stating

that he knew himself to be slowly dying of consumption and that he

would shortly be of little use to anyone. His wish was to leave Canada

altogether and die in--France! France, the country of his dreams, the

goal of his dying ambition, the land of the golden _fleur de lis_,

of the chivalrous soldiers, the holy women and the pious fathers who

colonized the land of his birth!

I remonstrated with him as I have said. I expostulated in every key; I

took his mother into my confidence as well as I could since she knew not

a word of English; I laughed at him, I wept over him, I endeavoured by

every argument in my power to make him change my mind, but--

I failed. Then when I understood how firmly his mind was set upon this

extraordinary idea, I made up my mind to accompany him, in fact, not to

leave him at all until he either grew wiser and stronger, or else died

the death he predicted for himself. I found that the old dame had quite

a store of money saved by her little by little every year from Etienne's

earnings, and from what she made by selling the rugs I mentioned. These

sold for a dollar and upwards according to the size. Putting some of my

own to this fund of hers, I calculated she had enough to go upon for at

least a year. Wants are few in that district. Then I turned my attention

to Etienne. He was growing worse; he would lie for hours reading or

attempting to read with great beads of perspiration mounting on his

brow. The heat was excessive and proved very bad for him. I judged he

would be better in town and after I had been on the island for about two

months, I begged him to return with me. I promised him that once there,

I would not leave him for a day, and would even consider the possibility

of taking him across the ocean. He still maintained his calm and perfect

manners and insisted upon paying his fare down the river which I let him

do, knowing that soon his stock of money would be exhausted and he would

then be at my mercy. No sign of cupidity was apparent in his demeanor,

yet I wondered how he ever thought to reach France unless I paid his

way. Like all consumptives, he had a trick of rallying now and then and

appearing better than he really was. This occurred on our arrival in

town. He took long walks with me again daily and seemed so much stronger

that I again dared to suggest the propriety of his returning to the

mill, but to no purpose. He drooped at the very thought, and I perceived

that his apparent recovery was but a delusion, I soon saw he was weaker

than ever. But whenever he was at all able, he persisted in reading what

he could understand and really his progress was a marvel to me. So it

came about that one evening, towards the close of September where we had

sometimes to light the lamp as early as half-past six, I returned to my

rooms about that hour of the day (we shared rooms together, so fond

had I grown of him, and I trust, he of me) to find him poring over the

little Catholic Missal.

“In this light? This will never do. And you could not light the lamp

yourself, my poor Etienne!”

When it was lighted, I saw indeed from his weak and excited appearance

that he was unable to do anything for himself. Lying on my sofa, he had

in one hand the scarlet-edged missal, and in the other the book I have

referred to, which contained a short sketch of Guy Chézy D'Alencourt the

handsome and reckless lieutenant of _La Nouvelle France_.

He could hardly speak but through his gasping I could gather that he

wished me to examine the words in the corner of fly-leaf I had once

noticed before and believed to be a monogram. I quieted him a little,

then bringing the lamp-light to bear upon the faded ink, I was able

to decipher the device, which comprised a crown, three _fleurs-de-lis_

under, and a lamb bearing a banner, with the letters I.H.S. upon it.

“The arms of Rouen!” I exclaimed “and above them, some initials, yes, a

monogram!”

My companion sat up in his excitement.

“Ah! dat is what I cannot make quite out! Tree letter--_oui, vite, cher

mosdieu, vite_!”

I had to look very closely indeed to decipher these, but with the aid of

a small lens I found them to be “G. C. D'A.”

There could be little doubt but that Etienne was the lineal descendant

of Guy Chézy D'Alencourt, native of Rouen, who came to Canada in the

same year as Bigot. I told him so and wondered what his thoughts could

be, for clasping my hands with as much force as he possessed--and that

is at times a wonderful force in the clasp of the dying--he said with a

great effort:

“If dat is so, _mossieu_, if dat is so, I have _O le bon Dieu_--I

have--_mossieu_, I have--O if dat is true”--

He fell back and I caught no more. The excitement proved too much for my

poor friend. When I spoke to him, he was unconscious and he never fully

recovered his senses. Alas! he lay in a few weeks, beneath the sod of

Grand Calumet Island, and France is ignorant of the fact that a true

aristocrat and simple-hearted gentleman existed in the humble person

of my friend the _habitant_, Etienne Guy Chézy D'Alencourt, _alias_

“Netty.”

Descendez a L'Ombre, ma Jolie Blonde.

The Honourable Bovyne Vaxine Vyrus refused to be vaccinated. Stoutly,

firmly and persistently refused to be vaccinated. Not even the

temptation of exposing to the admiring gaze of a medical man the superb

muscles and colossal proportions of an arm which had beaten Grace and

thrashed (literally) Villiers of the Guards, weighed with him.

“It's deuced cool!” he said, to his cousin Clarges, of Clarges St.

Mayfair, a fair, slight fellow, with a tiny yellow moustache. “Haven't

I been six times to India, and twice to Africa; that filthy Algiers, you

remember, and Turkey, and New Orleans, and Lisbon, and Naples? and

now, when I was done only eight years ago at home, here I am to be done

again, where, I am sure, it all looks clean enough and healthy! It makes

me ill, and I _won't_ be done; laid up for a week and lose all the fun I

came for!”

“Bovey, though you _are_ the strongest fellow in England, you're no less

a coward!”

Young Clarges looked up as he spoke, seriously: “_I_ shall be done!”

“You? Well, so I should expect from a baby like you, Arthur! You will

never grow up, never learn to think for yourself! Now let me alone on

the subject, and let us look up this country place we were told about!”

But Clarges was not easily silenced.

“Think of Lady Violet, Bovey! If anything were to happen to you out

here, and the children, Bovey,--Rex and Florence, you know!”

“Oh! cut it, now, Arthur; I tell you it's of no use!”

Young Clarges looked out across the river, and bit the tiny yellow

moustache. “Then I won't be done, either!” said he to himself. “It's

borne in upon me that one of us has got to get this accursed thing, and

if I can prevent it, it shan't be Bovey!” What a strange scene it was

beneath, around, above and opposite them! Beneath flowed the river,

solid with sawdust, the yellow accumulation of which sent up a strong

resinous smell that almost made them giddy; to the left the tumultuous

foam of the Chaudière cast a delicate veil of spray over the sharp

outlines of the bridge traced against a yellow sky; to the right, the

water stretched away in a dull gray expanse, bordered by grim pines and

flat sterile country. Around them the three mighty cliffs on which

the Capital is built, above them the cold gray of an autumnal sky, and

opposite them the long undulations of purplish brown hills that break

the monotony of the view, and beyond which stretch away to an untrodden

north the wastes and forests of an uncleared continent.

“Are we looking due north, now, Arthur, do you know?”

“I suppose so,” returned Clarges. He was astride a cannon and still

biting the tiny moustache. “Yes, by the direction of the sunset we must

be, I suppose. I say, if we are, you know, I should like to be able to

tell between what two trees--it would have to be between two of those

trees there--we should have to walk to get to the North Pole.”

The Hon. Bovyne looked around suddenly and laughed. He was fishing

apparently in his pockets for a paper or something of the kind, as he

had a number of letters in his hand, looking them over.

“What two trees? Where? Arthur, you _are_ a donkey. What are you talking

about?”

“I say,” returned Clarges, “that it is perfectly true that as we sit

here, facing due north, all we have to do is to walk straight over this

river--”

“On the sawdust?”

“Certainly, over those hills and between two of those trees in order

to get to the North Pole. Curious, isn't it? If you look awfully close,

real hard, you know, you can almost count their branches as they stand

up against the sky. Like little feathers--huff-f-f-f--one could almost

blow them away!”

The Honorable Bovyne laughed again. Clarges was a mystery to him, as

to many others. Half-witted he sometimes called him, though on other

occasions he stood in awe of his bright, candid, fearless nature, and

his truthful and reckless tongue.

“I say,” went on Clarges excitedly, shading his eyes with his hand.

“There are two trees out there in a straight line from this very cannon

that--that I should know again, Bovey! Do look where I point now like a

good fellow. Don't you see there, following the chimney of that big red

place, factory or other, right in a line with that at the very top of

the hill at its highest point, two trees that stand a little apart from

the others and have such funny branches--Oh! you must be able to see

them by those queer branches! One crooks out on one side just as the

other does on the other tree. That isn't very lucid, but you see what I

mean can't you? They make a sort of--of--lyre shape.”

The Hon. Bovyne shaded his eyes with his hand and looked out over the

river and distant hills. “I see a line of trees, feathery trees, you

aptly call them my dear Arthur, but I can't make out your particular

two. How is it possible, at such a distance, to see anything like a

_lyre_ of all things? Come along, I've found the address I wanted. It

reads most peculiarly. It seems there are still a great number of French

people around here, in fact, all over this Province which they sometimes

call Lower Canada. Do you remember much of your French?” I spoke a lot

in Algiers of course but I fancy it isn't much like this jargon. Our

destination is or appears to be, _c/o Veuve Peter Ross, Les Chats_,

pronounced _Lachatte_, so Simpson told me.

“Who told you about the place?” enquired young Clarges getting off the

cannon? “Simpson? What sort of a fellow is he?”

“Who? Simpson?” said his cousin in turn. “Um--not bad. Been out here too

long, though. Awfully quiet, goes in for steady work and takes hardly

any exercise. I wonder why it is the fellows here don't walk more! New

country and all that; I should have thought they would all go in for

country walks and shooting and sports of all kinds. They don't, you

know, from some reason or other. It can't be the fault of the country.”

“You forget the roads, Bovey, and the fences, and the interminable

distances and the immense rivers, and the long winter. I say, it looks

like snow to-night, doesn't it?”

“What do you know about snow!” rejoined the Hon. Bovyne. “Let us get

on, there's a good fellow--confound you! don't stare at those imaginary

trees any longer, but come along.”

Certainly young Clarges was possessed with the queerest fancy about

those trees. “I say, Bovey, they were funny, though, to strike me like

that, out of all the others! I am sure I should know them again. Perhaps

some day we'll take a fly and go out there--I wonder if there's an inn?

Does what's her name, your old Scotch lady, keep an inn, or is it a farm

we're going to?”

“Scotch? Why do you say Scotch? She's French, I tell you. Simpson says

she can't speak a word of English.”

“But 'Peter Ross' is Scotch, isn't it? At least you can't make it

French, however you twist it.”

“I'm not anxious to twist it. Don't you see, Arthur, she is evidently

a Frenchwoman who married a man called Peter Ross; she is the _veuve_,

widow, you know! of the lamented Scotchman. Now do you understand? But

it _is_ peculiar.”

“Very,” said Clarges. “When do we start?”

“There's a train to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, but I thought we

had better hire a trap, and a man to bring the trap back, and put all

our things, tents and so on, into it, and go out comfortably so as to

see the country.”

“All right!” said Clarges. “By Jove, what a splendid night it's going

to be, stars out already, Bovey! Don't you hope it'll be like this

tomorrow? Shall we camp out the first night and think of--of--Lady

Violet by our camp fire, and Rex and Florence--how they'd like to see

us, wouldn't they? And they can't, you know, they're three thousand

miles away, trying to make out each other's faces in the November fog,

eh! Bovey? I say, what shall we get to eat out there, at Lachatte, you

know, the country always makes me desperately hungry.”

“Oh! we shall do well enough. Simpson says she is a capital old woman,

lives entirely alone; will cook for us, wait on us, make us pancakes,

I expect, and give us plenty of that stuff we had this morning at the

hotel.”

“Sweet stuff?” asked Clarges. “_I_ know. Syrup, maple syrup, that'll

do.”

Simpson, the authority, thrice quoted by the elder of the two

Englishmen, appeared at dinner with them that evening. He was a

hard-working, stodgy son of person who had come out to the Canadian

Civil Service fifteen years, ago, lived much by himself until he took a

wife out of a Canadian village, a phlegmatic, stolid, unimaginative

sort of a girl, who was nevertheless a good wife and an excellent

housekeeper. Simpson sniffed at the dinner. It wasn't as good as his

own. He felt ill at ease in the presence of the two men, whose airy

talk and loud laughter struck him with a keen sense of its novelty. They

joked about everything. Clarges particularly was in high feather. The

wine, which came partly from the hotel and partly from the Hon. Bovyne's

hamper, flowed often and freely, and Simpson, who was a very moderate

fellow, wondered at the quantity his friends seemed to be able to

imbibe. “Without showing any traces of it, either,” he said to himself.

“All this vivacity is natural; I remember the type; in fact, I was

something like it myself ten or twelve years ago.”

After dinner, Clarges rushed up stairs and down again with a small

silk plush packet of photographs tied with ribbons. The men were in the

smoking room.

“I say, I want Simpson to see Lady Violet, Bovey.”

“All right, and the children too? You sentimental ass, Arthur!” Clarges

laughed. It was a funny laugh, a kind of inane ripple that nevertheless

tickled everybody who heard it. “But it's too smoky here. Come up stairs

to the drawing room. There's a jolly big drawing room with a piano, and

we can say what we want to, everyone stares here so!”

“I should think they would,” said Simpson quietly. “Why do you get

yourself up like that, simply because you're in Canada? A knitted

waistcoat, three sizes too large for you--”

“That's to admit of heavy underclothing,” said Clarges, not in the least

perturbed. “Knickerbockers,” continued Simpson, “that are certainly one

size too small; a cap that looks like a hangman's, and a coat that must

have come off Praed St.”

The Hon. Bovyne laughed long and loud. “Oh, Arthur, Arthur!” he said.

But young Clarges did not mind in the least. Indeed, had he but known

it, and be it remembered to his merit that he did not know it, he made

a fair and manly picture as he stood under the light of the chandelier.

His slim, well-knit figure was more prepossessing than the herculean

proportions of his cousin, “the strongest man in England;” his crisp

fair hair brushed boyishly up on one side and his well-trimmed moustache

of silky yellow, his keen gray eyes and delicate features, all went far

in point of attractiveness, especially when added to these mere physical

details, rang the infectious laugh, clear, hearty and youthful, and

spoke the natural, honest, unrestrained tongue.

In the drawing room Clarges established himself on a sofa between the

other two. “Now, Simpson,” he said, “you must excuse me calling you

Simpson so freely, by the way, but you know, Bovey always calls you

Simpson--you don't mind, do you? You bang away at my clothing all you

like, and in return I'll call you Simpson. Now I'm going to show

you Lady Violet. You know who she is, she is Bovey's wife, _and_ the

loveliest woman in England. Loveliest woman in England, look at that!”

Clarges held up very carefully, out at arm's length, a very fine

photograph of an undeniably beautiful woman. “Bovey's wife.” he

ejaculated again. “You never saw her, so you don't know what beauty

is, do you? But here's the next best thing, her photograph, and such a

photograph! Now, you be good, as we say to the children, and I'll show

you that again after all the others.” Next he showed him in a sort of

ecstasy, Bovey's children.

“Rex and Florence,” he said, in an awe-struck tone. Bovey laughed, so

did Simpson. So would anybody have done.

“What are you laughing at,” said young Clarges, solemnly. “Oh, at me!

that's all right, everybody laughs at me. I knew it couldn't be the

children. Now here's another lovely girl,” and then there was another

and still another, and then a group in hunting attire just after

the breakfast; then pretty interiors with dainty rooms and women

and children and dogs, a capital likeness of Fred Burnaby, Vyrus'

fellow-officer, autographs of Gordon and Wolseley, a garden party at

Clarges Mount, a water-party at Richmond, photograph's and sketches

taken in Algiers, Cairo, Damascus, Bombay and Edinburgh. Simpson sat

through all this slightly bored and confused. What had he to do with

this kind of life? Once he had had some gleams of it, it is true,

but that was years ago, before his modest little establishment was in

existence, presided over by the plain, but virtuous Matilda of his later

days.

“Well, now,” said he, preparing to take his leave, “is there anything

further you want to know about your plans, for I suppose I shall

scarcely see you again before you leave if you get off tomorrow morning

as you intend. One thing--of course you've been vaccinated?”

The Hon. Bovyne muttered, “bah!” Clarges began putting the photographs

away, all but Lady Violet.

“Then you haven't been done, eh?” said Simpson, interrogatively. “I

would if I were you. You can't tell where you're going or whom you'll

meet. Why, you can 'do' yourself if you object to a medical man fussing

around.”

“Can you?” said Clarges.

“I don't object,” said Bovey, loftily; “but I must say I think it is

making a ridiculous and most unnecessary fuss about the matter. Why,

there are half a dozen diseases as virulent as the small-pox stalking

about in every large town, and we don't take those! Why should we take

the small-pox when we don't take the cholera, or the--the--”

“Yes,” observed Simpson, in his quiet manner, “I thought you would stick

for want of details. The fact is, that you can inoculate for small-pox,

and you can't as yet, for cholera or leprosy, and so wise people accept

the fact, the revelation if you will, and get vaccinated. However, as

far as your immediate surroundings go, you're safe enough. Old Mrs. Ross

will do all she can for you, and it isn't far, only twenty two miles

from town after all. You'll be walking in in a day or two for another

tent or a barrel of whiskey. Nothing like whiskey, Canadian whiskey, out

in camp on cold nights.” Simpson got up.

“I wonder,” said he, suddenly, “how you escaped being done on the train.

You came up from Quebec _via_ St. Martin's Junction, didn't you?”

“Oh! your importunate Inspector did make an effort on my behalf, but I

was firm. Nearly had a lodging in the Police Station though, but I told

him who we were and swore to having marks the size of flat-irons on both

arms, so he let me go.”

“And you,” said Simpson, turning to Clarges. “Me! oh! I shall be done.

I say, couldn't I walk out with you now and see a doctor about it? I

believe I will, Bovey, if you can spare me. For look you, Simpson, I am

the plaything of his leisure hours, a kind of Yorick, you know, and he

might be dull.”

The Hon. Bovyne looked grave for a second, “I believe I _should_ be dull

without you, dear boy, though you are a crank. Let me see, how old are

you, Arthur?”

“Twenty-two,” answered Clarges. “Good heaven!” exclaimed the Hon.

Bovine, “and I am getting perilously near to forty. We'll change the

subject. I'm very sleepy. Don't expect to find me up when you come

in, Arthur; to-morrow night, remember, we may be sleeping on the cold

ground, I shall get all the rest I can to-night.” Clarges and the other

man took their leave.

“Once more, Bovey,” said the former, “won't you be done? Simpson, make

him! See here, look once more at Lady Violet, speak with _her_ lips,

look with _her_ eyes--the loveliest woman in England!”

“Go and get 'done,' as you call it, for heaven's sake, and let me

alone!” was all he got in reply.

But Clarges did not get done. He had an idea and this was his idea: To

walk to some doctor recommended by Simpson and procure an instrument

suitable for the purpose, and the necessary material, and to vaccinate

his cousin himself. The first part was easy enough. Simpson vaguely

wondering at his light-hearted talk, left him at a doctor's surgery

door, and Clarges, who could always get what he wanted from anybody in

any part of the world, soon persuaded the doctor to give him a “point”

and all necessary instructions.

“A small lancet is really a better thing,” said that gentleman, “but you

will manage all right, I daresay. We must really take every precaution

we can. Good evening.”

All this was easy; now arose the difficulty, how best to tackle Bovey.

“He's such a giant of a fellow,” thought Clarges. “But if he is only

asleep as he hinted he would be, there'll not be much difficulty.

What will he do when he finds it out in the morning, supposing I am

successful in operating upon him to-night? What a suggestive word! I am

quite the surgeon. But I'll do it--Arthur Clarges, see that you _do_ do

it, by all you hold dear and sacred in old England!”

On his return, however, to the hotel, he found that his cousin was

clearly wide-awake again.

“Hang it all!” he said to himself, “why isn't he asleep?” But the Hon.

Bovyne was not in the least sleepy. He rallied Arthur on his poor

arm but fortunately did not ask to look at it. He ordered up a sherry

cobbler apiece and brought out some of his rarest weeds. “I say, what do

you think of Simpson, Bovey?” said Clarges, suddenly.

“Think? why, that there's nothing in him to think about.”

“Did you know he was married?”

“No; is he?” Bovey was always laconic.

“Yes, and he has four children. Just think, four! Two boys and two

girls.”

“How interesting!” The two men smoked silently for a few minutes, then

Clarges said, “It must be a beautiful thing to be married, you know.”

“Well, I _ought_ to know,” returned his cousin.

Clarges put his cigar down and went on. “To have somebody that belongs

to you, and to know that you belong to somebody; that's marriage, and I

think it must be very beautiful. Of course, you belong to other people

too, just the same, and they belong to you, but not so much, not in the

same way. You don't go to church all in a tremble with your father and

your mother, or your sister or your brother. You don't wear a ring--a

beautiful, great broad band of gold, you know, always shining there

on your finger--or you don't put one on for anybody else save just the

person that belongs to you in that way, in the way of marriage, you

know. And to be able to think wherever you are, 'Well, there is that

person, anyway, thinking of me, waiting for me; the whole world doesn't

matter if that person is really there, anywhere, thinking of me, waiting

for me.' Now, you know, _I'll_ never feel that, never, in this world.

What good is there in me? I may be Arthur Clarges, of Clarges, of

course, but without money, that means nothing. I say, Bovey, it's rather

ghastly, but it's perfectly true. I haven't a single soul in the world

but you and Lady Violet to think of me at all, or for me to think of.”

“I don't suppose you have,” said the Hon. Bovyne, thoughtfully. “You are

a lone beggar, Arthur, but a cheery one nevertheless.”

“So you see,” Clarges went on, “If in accompanying you around the world

in search of new pleasures and exciting experiences, anything happens to

me, you know, Arthur Clarges, of Clarges, nobody need mind. There isn't

anybody to mind.”

“All this because Simpson has got four children! Well, I hope you'll

get married yet, Arthur, you queer fish, and have six, two more than

Simpson. I know what you are driving at, however. You think me a selfish

brute. You can't understand how I can leave Lady Vi., and the two kids,

and go off annually on tours of exploration and so forth. I tell you,

I am the better for it, and she is the better for it, and nobody is any

the worst for it, unless it be yourself. Men who have knocked about as

I have done, will continue to knock about as long as they live. In the

army, out of the army, all the same. Lady Vi. understands me, and I her,

and you forget, Arthur, that you are very--young.”

“Then may I never get any older,” said Charles, almost rudely.

Not long afterwards his cousin, slightly heavy with wine, went to bed.

Clarges, abnormally wakeful, tried to read _Bell's Life_ which lay

before him and waited until Bovey was fast asleep. They occupied the

same room, a large double-bedded one, which opened into a bathroom and

parlour _en suite_. When he was perfectly certain that his cousin was

sound asleep, so sound that “a good yelp from the county pack, and a

stirring chorus of 'John Peel' by forty in pink could not wake him,”

thought Clarges, the latter undertook his delicate task and accomplished

it. He did it quickly and skilfully with a tiny lancet he found in his

cousin's well-appointed travelling bag. Bovey never stirred. Clarges

next undertook to “do” himself. Then a strange thing happened. He

had gone to the glass and bared his left arm when a sudden faintness

overcame him. He tried to shake it off and sat down. Presently it left

him and he felt quite as usual. Then he made a second attempt. The same

thing occurred again. This time it was worse, and sight and strength

failing, he sank on his own bed, fainting. By a tremendous effort he

prevented entire unconsciousness from taking place and lay there half

dressed and tremulous.

“Well, I _am a fool_! I can't help it. I can't try any more to-night,

for I am as weak and sleepy--if I can get up and undress it's as much

as I am capable of. But Bovey's all right. There's Lady Violet”--turning

his eyes to the photograph he had stuck in the looking glass

frame--“she'd thank me if she knew.” Sweet Lady Vi--so good to all

around her--so good to me--dear Lady Vi, the loveliest woman in England!

When Clarges awoke he was chilled and dazed, couldn't remember where

he was and what he had done. When he did recollect, he rose quietly,

extinguished the gas and made the room as dark as possible, in hopes

that Bovey might outsleep himself in the morning. Then he went to bed

properly, putting as a final precaution, his watch an hour in advance.

It thus happened that by Clarges' watch it was a quarter past ten when

he awoke. He rose first and bullied his cousin to that extent that the

latter tumbled out of bed and flung on his clothes without indulging in

his usual bath. At eleven the trap was due and Bovey was all on fire,

bundled his things around recklessly and swore a little at Clarges for

keeping him up the night before. Clarges was nervous, but up to the

present time was master of the situation. At breakfast, Bovey discovered

the mistake, but attributed it to Clarges' carelessness in such matters

aggravated by a probable bad arm.

“Why I took your watch for an authority instead of my own, I don't

know,” said he. “But last night I thought you were the clearer of the

two, in fact, I don't recollect winding mine at all, and it seems now

that _you_ were the delinquent.”

“Yes, I must have been,” said Clarges, self-reproachfully.

At eleven the trap came, and by noon they were half-way to their

destination. The road winding higher and higher as it followed the

magnificent curves of the Gatineau was very beautiful, and revealed at

each turn a superb panorama of water, and wood and sky. For a long time

the Buildings were visible, towering over trees and valleys. Once the

sun came out and lit up the cold, gray scene.

“Pull up, Johnny,” said the Hon. Bovyne, “I want to see this. Why, its

immense, this is! Arthur, how's your arm?”

But Clarges was evidently struck with something. “I say, over there,

is where we were yesterday, Bovey, I can imagine I see the very spot,

cannon and all.”

“Just as then you imagined you saw a couple of trees here, eh? Now go

along, Johnny, and sit down, Arthur. It doesn't agree with you to be

vaccinated. I'm afraid you're too imaginative already my boy. By the

way, how _is_ your arm?”

“Its a novel situation,” thought Clarges. “_He's_ the one, not me. Its

_his_ arm, not mine. But my turn will come to-night; pretty soon he'll

find it out for himself.”

Arrived at the house of _Veuve_ Peter Ross, they found it clean and

inviting; warmed by a wood stove and carpeted with home-made rugs. The

old woman took a great interest in their arrival and belongings and

jabbered away incessantly, in French. Did they but request her to

“cherchez un autre blankette!” or fry an additional egg, up went her

hands, her eyes and her shoulders, and such a tirade of excited French

was visited upon them that they soon forebore asking her for anything

but went about helping themselves. At first they thought she was

angry when these outbreaks took place, but Bovey, who could partially

understand her, gathered that she was far from offended, but given over

to the national habit of delivering eloquent and theatrical monologues

on the slightest provocation. She had no lodgers at the present moment;

a Frenchman had left the day before, and the prospect was in every way

favorable, to the comfort of the two friends.

When the dusk fell, Bovey made a camp-fire.

“It's what we came for,” he said, “and we can't begin too early or have

enough of it, and I feel chilly, queer, quite unlike myself to-night.

It's a depressing country just about here.”

“It is,” said Clarges, anxious to keep his friend a little longer in the

dark. “We'll be all right when it's really night, you know, and the fire

blazes up. What a jolly tent and what glorious blankets? We ought to

go to bed early, for it was awfully late the last night There! now its

getting better. Hoop-la! more sticks Bovey! Throw them on, make it blaze

up. Here we are in the primeval forest at last, Bovey, pines and moss,

and shadows and sounds--What's that now? Is that on the river?”

For suddenly they heard the most wonderful strain coming from that

direction. The river was about three or four hundred yards away across

the road, in front of them, and upon a raft slowly passing by were a

couple of _habitans_ singing. What strain was this, so weird, so solemn,

so earnest, yet so pathetic, so sweet, so melodious!

“Descendez à l'ombre

Ma jolie blonde.”

Those were the words they caught, no more, but the tune eluded them.

“It's the queerest tune I ever heard!” ejaculated Clarges. He had a

smattering of music, and not a bad ear.

“Can't get it for the life of me. It's like--I tell you what it's

like Bovey, its got the same--you know--the same intervals--that's the

word--that the priests chant in! And then, just when you're thinking it

has, off it goes into something like opera bouffe or those French rounds

our nurse used to sing. But isn't it pretty? I say--where's Lady Violet

now, Bovey, eh? Don't you wish she could see us, see you there, quite

the pioneer, looking like Queen Elizabeth's giant porter in this queer

light? and how she would catch up that tune and bring it out on the

piano, and make ever so much more of it with her clever fingers, first

like a battle-cry, men marching and marching you know, and then put in a

wonderful chord that would make us all creep and sigh as she would glide

into the loveliest nocturne, you know--I say, what a nocturne we're

having, eh! Do you think it's any livelier now?”

“My boy,” said the Hon. Bovyne, solemnly, “You are right, it is a

nocturne and a wonderful one. I'm not given to expressing myself

poetically as you know, so I shall content myself with saying that

its immense, and now will you pass the whiskey? I certainly feel shaky

to-night, but I shall sleep out here all the same. What are you going to

do?”

“I prefer to try the house, I think,” answered Clarges, and so he did.

When he was going to bed, heartily grateful that his cousin was as yet

ignorant of his interference, he looked long and earnestly from his one

window in the roof at the scene outside before he attempted again the

process of self-vaccination. He could see the mighty flames of Bovey's

camp-fire, a first-class fire, well planned and well plied. He could see

the pale outline of the tent and the dark figure of his cousin wrapped

in rugs and blankets by the side of the fire. He could see the tall

pines and the little firs, the glistening line of river and the circles

of gleaming white stones that marked the garden beds in front. The

first snow of the year was just beginning to fall in tiny flakelets that

melted as soon as they touched the ground.

“When they're all covered with snow, it must be pretty,” thought

Clarges. “Like all the Christmas trees in the world put together! The

winter is beginning, the long cold, constant Canadian winter we have

heard so much about. Good-bye, dear Lady Violet, good-bye, dear old

England!” Clarges sat on the side of the bed with his arm ready. But

the faintness came again, this time with a sickening thrill of frightful

pain and apprehension, and he rolled over in a deathly swoon with his

own words ringing in his ears.

When the morning broke, it broke in bright sunshine and with an inch or

so of snow on the ground. The Hon. Bovyne, though feeling unaccountably

ill and irritable, was delighted.

“Still I fear we are too late in the season for much camping,” he said,

“I must see Arthur about it.”

He waited till ten, eleven, half-past eleven. No Arthur, not even the

old woman about. He wondered very much. He approached the house,

and finding nobody coming at his knock, opened the door and went in.

Something wrong. He knew that at once. The air was stifling, horrible,

with an unknown quantity in it, it seemed to him. He threw open

the front room door. _Veuve_ Peter Ross was in her bed, ill, and of

small-pox. He could tell her that, for certain. He rushed up-stairs and

found Clarges on his bed, raving, delirious.

What was it he heard?

“Bovey's all right! Bovey's all right?” This was all, repeated over and

over.

The Hon. Bovyne was neither a fool nor a coward. He tore off his coat

and looked at his arm, then he dragged his cousin out of the room, down

the stairs and out of the fatal house. Propping him up against a sturdy

pine and covering him with all available warm clothing, he sped like

wind to the nearest house. But neither the swift, keen self-reproaches

of Bovey, nor the skill of the best physician to be found in the town,

nor the pure, fresh pine-scented air, nor the yearning perchance of

a dead yet present mother could prevail. The young life went out in

delirium and in agony, but “thank God,” thought Bovey, “in complete

unconsciousness.”

When he set about removing his tent and other camping apparatus some

time later, he was suddenly struck with the appearance of the tree

against which poor Clarges had been propped. He looked again and

again. “I must be dreaming,” said the Hon. Bovyne. “That tree--oh!

its impossible--nevertheless, that tree has its counterpart in the one

opposite it, and both have extraordinary branches! They bend upward,

making a kind of--of--what was it Arthur saw in those imaginary trees of

his only--_yesterday_--my God--it is true--a kind of lyre shape! There

it is, and the more I look at it the clearer it grows, and to think he

has _died_ there--!! And beneath there he is buried, and the raftsmen

will pass within a few hundred yards of him where he lies, and will sing

the same strain that so fascinated him, but he will not hear it, and

learn it and bring it back for Lady Violet, the loveliest woman in

England! For he has gone down into the eternal shadow that no man ever

penetrates.”

The Prisoner Dubois.

Miss Cecilia Maxwell was the only child of Sir Robert Maxwell, K. C.

M. G., member of the Cabinet, chief orator of the Liberal party, and

understudy for the part of Premier, who, although a Scotchman by birth,

was a typical Canadian--free, unaffected, honest and sincere. His bushy

iron-gray hair, his keen gray eyes, his healthy florid color, and the

well-trimmed black moustache, which gave his face an unusually youthful

appearance for a man of his age, went with a fine stalwart physique and

a general bodily conformation apparently in keeping with the ideas of

early rising, cold ablutions and breakfasts of oatmeal porridge that the

ingenuous mind is apt to associate with Scotch descent and bringing-up.

His daughter was a very beautiful girl. Born in the shadow of the pines,

she had been educated successively in Edinburgh, Brussels and Munich,

had been presented at Court, been through two London seasons, spent half

of one winter in South America, another in Bermuda, had been ogled by

lords, worshipped by artists, and loved by everybody.

Once more in Canada, she took her place in the limited yet exacting

political circles of the Capital, of Toronto, and of distant Winnipeg.

Life was full of duties, and she shirked none, though on days when they

were put away earlier than usual she would fall to musing of the country

place down the river she had not seen for years, with the beautiful

woods, and the simple, contented French, and the evenings on the water.

“That great, lonely river,” she thought on one occasion, looking idly

out of her window. “What other river in the world is like it?--and the

tiny French villages with the red roofs and doors, and the sparkling

spires and the queer people. Delle Lisbeth, and _veuve_ Macleod, and

Pierre--poor Pierre. I have never forgotten Pierre, with his solemn eyes

and beautiful brown hair. And how he knew the flowers in the wood, and

what were those songs he used to sing?” And Cecilia sang a couple of

verses of:

“Un Canadian errant,

Banni de ses foyers.”

When Sir Robert entered later he found her listless and preoccupied.

“You mustn't look like that to-night,” he said. “Don't forget that this

is your first important dinner-party: three French members and their

wives, and La Colombière, the new Minister of Finance, to whom you must

be as charming as possible. This North-West business is quickening as

fast as it can. The Métis are really up, there's no doubt about it.”

“In rebellion?” asked Cecilia breathlessly. There was an added interest

in life directly to the imaginative girl.

“Ay,” said her father, “there's a rascal at the bottom of it we've been

after for a long time; but now, run away and look bright at dinner, like

a good girl.”

The small clique of Frenchmen and their wives could not but have been

charmed with their reception that evening. The dinner was good, and not

too heavy nor long, the wines excellent (for Sir Robert did not as yet

favor the “Scott” Act), and the suavity of his manner combined with the

appearance and grace of his daughter, in a delicate dress of primrose

and brown, with amber in her beautiful golden plaits and round her

whitest neck, left nothing to be desired. And yet on that very first

night in her capacity as hostess, Cecilia found she had to learn to play

a part, the part of woman, which all women who have just left off being

girls find so hard to play at first. For naturally the report of the

Métis revolt had spread. Sir Robert did a brave thing. He referred to it

directly they were seated, and then everybody felt at ease. Now it could

be talked about if anybody chose--and Cecilia did so choose.

“Who is this young Frenchman,” she asked of La Colombière, “that is

identified with this new rising? I have been away, and am ignorant of it

all.”

“His name is Dubois--Pierre Dubois,” returned La Colombière with

a gleaming smile. “He calls himself the representative of the

French-Canadian party. Bah! such men!” But Cecilia's heart had given a

mighty leap and then stopped, she almost thought, for ever.

“Pierre--Pierre Dubois?” she reiterated in her surprise. Her fan of

yellow feathers dropped from her lap, and her face showed extraordinary

interest for a moment.

“You know him M'lle.?” said La Colombière, returning her the fan. For

an instant she was the centre of attention. Then with a flutter of

the yellow feathers that subjugated the four impressionable Frenchmen

completely, she resumed her usual manner.

“I know the name, certainly. There was somebody of that name living at

Port Joli where we go in the Summer you know.”

“Oh!” said Laflamme carelessly, a little man with a bald head and a

diplomatist's white moustache, “Dubois is not a new offender. He has

been recognized as an agitator for three or four years. He has the

eyes of the ox and the wavy hair of the sculptor. He is to be

admired--_vraiment_--and has the gift of speech.”

When the dinner was over Cecilia played for them in the drawing-room.

Somehow or other, she wandered into the tender yet buoyant melody of the

_chanson_ she had hummed earlier in the day.

“Un Canadien errant,

Banni de ses foyers.”

“Hum-hum,” trolled little Laflamme. “So you know our songs? _Ca va

bien_!”

“That was taught me” said Cecilia, “once down the river at Port Joli.”

But she did not say who had taught her. Later on when the guests were

gone and Sir Robert was preparing to go back to the office, his daughter

said very quietly.

“Papa do you remember that young man at Port Joli who was staying with

the curé for his health, the one who was so kind and showed me so

many things, the woods, you know and the water, and who talked so

beautifully?”

“I remember the one you mean, I think, but not his name. Why, dear

child?”

“His name was Dubois,” returned Cecilia. “Pierre Dubois!”

“Dubois? Are you sure? That is very singular” said her father. “And he

talked beautifully you say? It must be _this_ one.”

“That is what I think” said Cecilia, seeing her father to the door.

Then ensued a period of hard work for Cecilia. She read the papers

assiduously, going up every day to the Parliamentary reading-rooms for

that purpose that she might lose no aspect of the affair. She followed

every detail of the rebellion, even possessing herself of many of her

father's papers bearing on the matter. Those details are well known; how

the whisper ran through our peaceful land, breathing of war and battle

and blood-shed; how our gallant men marched to the front in as superb a

faith and as perfect a manhood as ever troops have shown in this country

or the Old; how some fell by the way, and how others were reserved to be

clasped again to the bosoms of wife and mother and how some met with

the finest fate of all, or at least the most fitting fate for a true

soldier--death on the battle-field. For a month the country was in

a delirium. Then joy-bells rang, and bonfires blazed, and hands were

struck in other hands for very delight that the cause of all the

mischief, the rebel chief, the traitor Dubois was taken. Cecilia alone

sat in her room in horror.

“What will they do with the prisoner Dubois?” she said with a vehemence

that dismayed Sir Robert.

“The prisoner Dubois? Why, they will hang him of course. He has caused

too much blood to be shed not to have to give some of his own.” Cecilia

writhed as if in extreme pain. Her beauty, her grace, her youth all

seemed to leave her in a moment, and she stood faded and old before her

father.

“Oh, they will not do that! Imprison him or send him away--anything,

anything save that! See, they do not know him--poor Pierre, so kind, so

good--they do not know him as I knew him. Father, he could not hurt a

thing--he would step aside from the smallest living thing in the path

when we walked together that summer, and he helped everybody that wanted

help, there was nothing he could not do. And he loves his country--at

least he did so then. There is that song, _'O mon cher Canada_,' he used

to sing, and he told me of the future of his country, and how he had

prayed to be allowed to aid it and push it forward. And he does not hate

the English, only how can he help loving the French more when he is one

of them, and has good French blood in his veins--better than many of the

so-called English! And he was born to be a leader and to bring men away

from their home into battle and make war for them, and where in that

does he differ from other heroes we are taught to love and admire? If

you had ever heard him talk, and had seen the people all gathered round

him when he spoke of all these things--as for his church and the Virgin,

and the priests, it would be well if you and all of us thought as much

about our religion, and loved and revered it as he did his!”

Cecilia broke down into incoherent sobs. Sir Robert sat aghast at this

startling confession. No need to tell him that it was prompted by love.

“But what if he be insane, my dear?” he asked very quietly.

“Then it is still bad--it is worse,” said Cecilia. “Will hanging an

insane man bring back the others that are slain? Will it make foul fair

and clean still cleaner? Will it bring peace and friendliness, and right

feeling, or will it bring a fiercer fire and a sharper sword than our

country has yet seen--a hand-to-hand fight between rival races, a civil

war based on national distinction!”

“What would you do?” said her father, walking up and down the room.

“What can I or anybody do? It is common law and common justice; if he be

found guilty he must swing for it. Personal intercession--”

“Might save him!” said the girl.

“Must not be thought of!” said her father.

“You mean, _you_ may not think of it. But others may--_I_ may. I am a

woman, free and untrammelled by either party or personal considerations

of any kind. Father, let _me_ try!”

“Cecilia, it is madness to take such a thing upon yourself. How is it

possible? What are your plans?”

“I do not know. I have not thought. All is in a haze through which I see

that vision of the hangman and the rope Father, let me try!”

Sir Robert thought for a moment, then he said: “Very well, my dear, you

shall try, on one condition; that first of all you have an interview

with Dubois himself. In fact, for your purpose it is absolutely

necessary that you should see him, in order to identify him with the

other Dubois you used to know. After that interview, if you still

persist in your course, I promise--rash as it certainly seems--to help

you. Now hold yourself in readiness to start for the North-West at a

moment's notice. I have private information that tells me Dubois will be

hung and any intervention on your part or that of anybody else must be

set on foot immediately, do you see?”

A few days afterwards Cecilia, unveiled, and dressed in an

irreproachable walking costume of gray, was taken to the gloomy prison

outside the little northern town of ----, where the prisoner Dubois was

confined. There was a bit of tricolor in her hat and her cheeks were

very pale--As the beautiful daughter of Sir Robert Maxwell her way was

sufficiently paved with politeness as she presented her private order

to see the prisoner. Her heart was beating tumultuously and the

blood surged round her temples. The turnkey showed her into a small

whitewashed room, opposite the cell in which Dubois spent his time and

informed her that in compliance with strict orders he would have to be

present during the interview, to which Cecilia bent her head in assent;

she could not have spoken just then. “It is a strange thing that I am

doing,” she thought, “but I shall see Pierre--poor Pierre.” Approaching

footsteps were soon heard and the prisoner Dubois entered, escorted by

two warders. He started when he saw his visitor, and--stared.

“Mademoiselle,--” he said, evidently trying to recall her name and

failing.

“Cecile,” she said, eagerly, “Ma'amselle Cecile you always called

me, and I liked it so much better than Cecilia. I think I like it

still--Pierre--I--.”

The prisoner Dubois frowned.

“If Mdme. Dubois had ears through these walls, you had not called me

'Pierre.' But--” laying his hand on his heart and bowing low, “Pierre

himself is flattered--_oui, mademoiselle_--by your attention--_oui,

vraiment_--and he is rejoiced to know that his image is still cherished

in that heart so fair, so _Anglaise_, so pure, so good. _Belle-enfant,

Je n'ai pas oublié nos amours_!”

The three men in the room suppressed a smile. Dubois stood with his head

thrown back, his arms folded and his soft dark eyes fixed on Cecilia.

She was still standing, indeed there was no chair in the room, and her

eyes were fixed on him as his upon herself. It was Pierre, and yet not

her Pierre. Rather an exaggerated growth--of the man she had once known.

The same soft brown hair, only thicker and rougher, one drooping wave

looking tangled and unkempt--the dreamy eyes with the latent sneer

in them dreamier than ever and yet the sneer more visible, the

thin sensitive nose thinner, the satisfied mouth more satisfied and

conscious, the weak chin fatally weaker. And he was married, too! Mdme.

Dubois--that must be his wife! How strange it was! Cecilia's brain was

in a frightful state of doubt and fever and hesitation. It was necessary

for her to explain her presence there, however, for she could not but

resent the opening speech of the prisoner Dubois. She was growing very

tired of standing, moreover, but she would have died rather than have

demanded a chair. At length the turnkey observed her fatigue and sent

one of the warders for a chair.

“Fetch two,” interposed Dubois, with a flourish of his hand. “I myself

shall sit down.” When the man returned, bringing only one chair on the

plea that he could not find another, Cecilia, whose nerve was returning,

offered it to Dubois. He accepted it calmly and sat down upon it,

waiting to hear what she had to say. At this signal instance of arch

selfishness Cecilia felt her heart tighten and her temples grow cold as

if fillets of fire had been exchanged for ribbons of snow.

“Sir,” she began, “I am sorry to find you here.” Dubois smiled the smile

of a great man who listens with condescension to what an inferior has

to say. “I am glad you have not forgotten me, because all the time I

was away, and it has been a long time, I never--it is quite true--forgot

you--I mean (for Dubois smiled again) I never forgot that summer you

spent near us at Port Joli, and the things you talked about, about your

future. When I came home I found you had gone so much further than I

know you ever intended to, and have been the cause of so much trouble,

and the death of brave men, and I was very sorry.” Cecilia leant on the

bare table before her, and felt that every moment as it passed brought

with it a cooling of the once passionate feeling she had entertained for

the Dubois of her childhood. But if the lover were gone, there remained

the man, husband and father, maybe the leader, the orator, the martyr,

the dear human being.

“So I thought that if it were possible at all, some step should be

taken to--to prevent the law from taking its course--its final course

perhaps.” Cecilia felt her throat tighten as she spoke. “You have plenty

of friends--you must have--all the French will help and many, many

English, for it is no cause to die for, it is no cause at all! There

should never have been bloodshed on either side!”

Dubois uncrossed his long legs at last and said in his loftiest tone:

“_Chère enfant_, the French will not let me die. I--I myself--Pierre

Dubois--allowed to hang by the neck until I am dead! That will never

happen. _Voyez-vous donc chérie_, I am their King, their prophet, their

anointed, their fat priests acknowledge me, their women adore me!”

Cecilia shrunk together as she listened. She had sought and she had not

found, she had expected and it had been denied her. At this moment, the

turnkey signified that time was up. She felt her heart burning in an

agony of undefined grief and disappointment in which was also mingled

the relief of resignation. The prisoner Dubois bowed low with his hand

on his heart and then pressing her own hand lingeringly, gave her a

tenderly insinuating glance. As she turned away she heard him exchange

a laugh and a jest with one of the wardens, and her cheeks flamed with

indignant anger. “Were he a good or suffering man as I dreamed he was, I

would have bent low and kissed his hand; as it was, I am sorry I let him

take mine.”

She was calm when she reached her carriage in which sat her father

waiting. He divined at once that his plan had been successful. “You look

tired, my dear,” was all he said.

“Yes, I have been standing for some time,” Cecilia returned in a

peculiar voice.

“Could they not find you a chair in the establishment?”

“They found one,” she said grimly, “and that was appropriated by the

prisoner Dubois.”

“The prisoner Dubois!” thought Sir Robert. “It is well. We shall hear no

more of Pierre.”

Two days before Christmas the prisoner Dubois underwent the extreme

penalty of the law. Cecilia sat in her room all that day. She never

quite made up her mind as to whether Pierre had been a lunatic or

a fanatic, a martyr or a fiend, an inspired criminal or a perverted

enthusiast. Perhaps he was a mixture of all.

How the Mr. Foxleys Came, Stayed and Never Went Away.

CHAPTER I.

There flows in Western Canada, by which I mean a region east of the

Saskatchewan and west of the Thousand Islands, a singular and beautiful

stream. It is beautiful because it is narrow, undulating and shallow,

because it has graceful curves and rounded bends, because its banks are

willow-clad and its bed boulder-strewn, because it flows along between

happy farms and neat white villages, because at one spot, it boasts

a picturesque and ruined mill and a moss-covered bridge and

because--chiefly because--it is above all things--placid. The mind

familiar with our Canadian streams will easily understand then, that

if these be its attributes of beauty, they also attest to its claim

of singularity. For the Canadian river is seldom placid, but oftener

seething and steaming and foaming; or else deep and dark and dangerous

with many a mighty gorge and tumbling cascade, wide and lonely and

monotonous for the most part; pine hung down to the very edge, black

and lowering, or displaying waving wisps of dry gray foliage that only

resembles human hair. What a contrast, then, does this cherished river

I speak of, afford! No local Laureate has as yet written it up, though

picnic parties used to gather themselves together on its banks and in

its well-wooded shades, defiling everything they touched from bark to

beach, leaving bits of bread here, dead pie there, buttering the leaves,

peppering the grass, salting the stones, and scattering greasy crumpled

paper--PAPER--PAPER--everywhere. That is what picnic parties do all over

the world, and with such gusto all of them, even the Sunday-schools,

Dorcases, W. C. T. U's. and all the rest of them, that I really think it

must be intended as a serious part of the Picnicker's Ritual and forms

very likely a peace-offering or sacrifice of propitiation towards some

unknown God. I don't think the Druids left paper about underneath their

oaks. But presumably they left worse. Well, if as yet, this river I love

so well has not been immortalized in fiction, travels or verse, it has

however attracted the attention of several gifted members of the Royal

Academy--Royal Canadian of course, who have from time to time

invaded its peaceful shores and stuffing themselves into adjacent

if inconvenient farmhouses, sketched it in water and oil, in the

common-place pencil, and the more ambitious charcoal. The results are

charming and you may see them any day in the studios of our foremost

artists or in the picture dealers' windows or haply on the terra-cotta

tinted walls of our esteemed collectors, the retired grocers of

Montreal, or the aesthetic lawyers of a more western and more ambitious

city. Still though the sketches are charming both in conception and

execution, I, were I a Canadian artist, eager to secure Canadian

subjects for my pencil, would hardly choose this particular river as one

likely to give the most correct idea of Canadian scenery. No, I would

chose the St. Maurice or the Richelieu, the Lièvre or the Saguenay, the

Ottawa or portions of the St. Lawrence, with the grim Azoic rocks, the

turbulent rapids and the somber pines. What a superb river system it is!

Tell them off on your fingers and you'll have to go on borrowing from

them afterwards and then all over again. Think of all those rivers that

cluster in the French Canada and feed the mighty Gulf of St. Lawrence.

There are the Ottawa, the Gatineau, the Rideau, the Richelieu, the

Lièvre, the Matanne, the Metapedia, the Métis, the Saguenay. Those are

the ones we know. Then look at the Peribonka, the Maniconagan, all the

Ste. Anne's, all the Rouge or Red rivers, the Du Moine, the Coalonge,

the Vermilion, the St. Francis. Then, look at that cluster of great

Saxon named streams, the Churchill, the Nelson, the Severn, the English,

the Albany! Lastly, glance at the magnificent Saskatchewan with the

historic streams of Battle and Qu'Appelle Rivers! And now I have omitted

the Athabasca, the Peace, the Moose and the Assiniboine! There is no end

to them; they defy enumeration while they invite it.

Now, most of these Canadian rivers are Azoic in character; hence their

grim and formidable beauty. But my river has nothing the least Azoic

about it. It belongs to a more recent, a more comfortable, more placid,

more satisfying a formation. It is as idyllic a stream as any English

one that Tennyson noted in a contemplative ramble to work up later into

the “Brook.”

Crossing the moss-grown bridge I have alluded to, a gradual ascent

presents itself on the opposite side, of firm white road well

macadamized and leading through small neat low houses, each with a

little garden in front, to a church with a needle-like spire on the

top of the hill, and the parson's house adjoining. On a June day,

for example, it made a pleasant picture. Pastoral and prosperous the

landscape, contented the people on foot, in the fields, at the windows,

and most delightful of all--a certain Old World haze hanging over it.

This is what struck the Mr. Foxleys, driving out slowly from the town

one Saturday afternoon. George, the elder, pale with dark hair, lay back

in the phaeton with folded arms. Joseph, the younger, fair-haired

and freckled, sat up, driving. They had hardly exchanged a word since

entering the phaeton. For eight miles they had proceeded in almost

perfect silence. This did not mean that they were out of sorts, or not

on pleasant terms with one another. On the contrary, it proved that they

were the very best of friends, and never bored each other. I may as well

say at once that they were Englishmen, which was easy to gather from

their picturesque and unusual attire of neat gray small-clothes meeting

gray stockings at the knee, low white shoes, a striped blue and white

flannel shirt and canoe-shaped hats of gray, each bearing a snow-white

“puggree” with blue and gold fringed ends. Such was the outward adorning

of the Mr. Foxleys. Behind the phaeton ran a pretty brown retriever

answering to the name of “Bess,” and laid across the floor of the little

carriage were a couple of walking canes, a couple of fishing rods and

a gun case strapped together, while under the seat was a medium-sized

portmanteau, and a peculiar long box with a leather handle. The eight

miles having been traversed by them in silence, George, the elder, broke

it by remarking, as they slackened their pace, before advancing over the

bridge, “This is better.”

“Very much so. Rather. I should think so,” answered Joseph, the younger,

who had a slightly more lively manner than his brother, and very

laughing eyes. “It looks a little more like the--the Old Country.”

The elder brother made no reply. A kind of weary smile flitted across

his face instead.

“It's a little bit after--Devonshire, don't you think?” went on Joseph,

surveying the green meadows, the neat painted fences, the sleeping cows,

the rising uplands in the distance leaning lovingly next the sky,

the bridge, the distant church, and the placid narrow river with the

overhanging willows and the stony amber floor.

“A long way after,” said George, without unfolding his arms or looking

around him at all. He was gazing straight before him.

“But you don't half see the beauty of it,” said the younger brother,

stopping the horse and standing up in the phaeton, “especially after

that horrid eight miles of half-cleared ugly-stumpy stubble! This is

really beautiful, such soft lines you know and little corners--oh!

quite English!” Some of his enthusiasm reached the quieter brother, who

apparently roused himself and looked around as directed. A faint pink

came into his pale cheeks, a new gleam into the weary eyes, “Well, it is

_better_, as I said before--you'll remember, I noticed it first--but not

English.”

“Well, not English altogether of course, I know,” said Joseph gathering

up his reins, “but its a jolly spot enough whatever it is, and--I say,

look at that now, that oak, on the other side of the road, in front of

that little cottage, we'll be up with it now in a minute.”

“By Jove, what a splendid tree!” Now I do not in the least wonder at the

Mr. Foxleys stopping opposite this mighty oak to admire it, because I

myself am quite familiar with it and have seen it scores of times, and

must agree with them in pronouncing it one of the finest trees I have

ever seen anywhere. Of course it has no story attached to it that the

world knows, at least it never talked that I am aware of, never hid or

screened anybody of importance--or anything of that sort--so naturally

it has little or no interest about it. And yet, for that very reason,

it is so much easier to think of it as a tree, to consider it and admire

it, and learn to love and understand it just as a tree. So the Mr.

Foxleys thought, as they gazed at its monstrous trunk, its glorious

branches of deep, dark glossy green with here and there an upstart arm

of glowing bronze or a smaller shoot of younger yellow.

“It might have grown in the _Manor Park_!” said the younger brother

airily with a keen sense of pleasure in the suggestion.

“It might have grown in the _Manor Park_, as you say”, rejoined the

elder brother gravely.

Then they went on again, slowly up the hill, that they might the better

examine the church, the parsonage and the road beyond. What they wanted

now was an Inn. Presently they espied one, just on the other side of a

tiny bridge spanning a tinier brook. It was no upstart brick building of

flaring red with blind white windows and a door flush with the street,

a dirty stable at one side and a ragged kitchen garden at the other. But

low and white and irregular with a verandah running along in front, it

had red curtains that would draw over the lower halves of the windows

and hints of chintz at the upper portions; the door was open and

revealed a tall clock in the hall, a stand of flowers, and a cat asleep

in a large round chair; at one side a flight of steps led down to the

kitchen door at which a buxom maid in bare arms stood in a pink gown and

a pinker face, and at the other side was the boarded square that held

the pump--the village pump--around which were gathered five or six

bare-footed children, the hostler of the Inn, the village butcher,

tailor, and cobbler. A sign swung out from the verandah.

“The Ipswich Inn, by M. Cox,” said the younger Mr. Foxley. Then he

looked at his brother. His brother looked at him. They understood one

another at once, and Joseph pulled up in good style at the door. The

hostler, dressed in old corduroy and with a fiddle under his arm, sprang

forward to assist them. He dropped his H's. “Delightful,” cried Mr.

Joseph. So did the landlady, a cheery person of about fifty in a silk

apron. The brothers were so content that they remained all night, “to

look at the place.”

Next morning, endless surprises awaited and greeted them. They found

that the large room in front was a kind of drawing-room, in which

rose-leaves, china-bowls, old engravings, a shining mahogany book-case,

and a yellow-keyed piano atoned for the shortcomings of funeral

horsehair and home-made carpets. They thought it on the whole a charming

room, only to be eclipsed by the kitchen. For the kitchen, which was

underneath the ground floor and nearly the entire size of the house, was

therefore very spacious and comfortable, possessing three large

pantries and an out-house or summer kitchen; besides, moreover, it was

dark-raftered, ham-hung, with willow-pattern slates in a neat dresser,

and peacock feathers over the high mantel; with, in one corner--the

darkest--a covered well, into which I used to see myself the beautiful

golden pats of butter lowered twice a week in summer time. One window,

a small one, curtained with chintz and muslin drawn on a string, looked

out on a small terraced garden at the back leading to an orchard; the

other window, large and long, with twelve small panes and no curtains at

all, adjoined the door opening on the court or yard at the side of the

house. This yard was paved irregularly with grey stone slabs, between

which the grass had wedged itself, with an occasional root of the

persistent and omnipresent dandelion; it contained a cistern, a table

with flower-pots, a parrot in one cage, a monkey in another, garden

implements, rods, buckets, tins and tubs! A pleasant untidiness

prevailed in the midst of irreproachably clean and correct surroundings,

and the Mr. Foxleys having finished their breakfast up-stairs in the

public dining-room--a bare, almost ugly apartment, devoid of anything

in furniture or appointments to make it homelike, except a box of

mignonette set in the side-window, looked longingly out at the little

paved court-yard beneath. They had had the most delicious rasher of

ham, eggs _sans peur et sans reproche_, some new and mysterious kind of

breakfast cake, split and buttered while hot, and light and white inside

as it was golden and glazed outside, and three glasses of fresh milk

each! They had been waited on by the buxom girl in a blue gown this

time, against which her arms looked pinker than ever, and during the

meal the landlady of the inn had looked in, with her hands too floury

and her mind too full of coming loaves to do more than inquire generally

as to their comfort. Looking over the mignonette, Mr. Joseph Foxley

espied her presently talking to the parrot and tending the monkey. This

was more than the frivolous Mr. Joseph could stand. He took his brother

and made a tour of the house accordingly, discovering in turn as I

have said the drawing-room, the kitchen, the court-yard, the garden and

orchard and lastly the bar! _That_ proved the most comfortable, most

enticing room of all. More red curtains, at the windows and over one

door, an old-fashioned hearth paved with red brick and bearing even

in June a couple of enormous logs against the possible cold of a

rainy evening, two cases of stuffed birds, a buffalo's head over the

fireplace, colored prints of Love Lies Bleeding, Stocks and Bachelor's

Buttons, and over all, that odour of hot lemons and water, with

something spirituous beyond, that completely won the refractory heart

of the elder Mr. Foxley and caused him to drop down in a chair by the

hearth with an incoherent expression of wonder and relief that did not

escape his brother.

“How long shall we say, George,” he asked. “She will want to know,

because there are other men who come out here from town occasionally it

seems, and of course it's only fair to let her know about the room.

“What shall I say?” Mr. George Foxley crossed his long legs in evident

comfort and took in the entire room in a smiling gaze before he

answered. Outside it was beautifully quiet, in front of the house. From

the back there came the faintest sounds of crow and cackle and farm-yard

stir just audible, from the kitchen rose cheerful laughter, and merry

voices, the smell of baking, and a fainter odor of herbs. Milly, the

girl, in the blue gown, passed with a milk pail in either hand. She

looked in shyly. Mr. Joseph waved his hand gallantly then laughed. Then

Mr. George said, very slowly.

“Say? Oh, say that we will take the room--the one we have now, you

know--for the rest of the Summer.”

“That is, you will take it, and remain here, while I knock about in town

and come out on Saturdays or whenever I can,” said Joseph.

“Exactly,” said his brother.

That afternoon Mr. Joseph returned to town in the neat hired phaeton

leaving his brother in full possession of the charming and comfortable

Inn. In a couple of days he came back, this time in the stage that

passed through Ipswich three times a week, and bringing with him a

couple of English trunks and a stout portmanteau. Thus the Mr. Foxleys

entered upon life in earnest in this dear placid little village, not far

from the river described in the beginning of my story.