The Counting-room.
Everyone knows the general appearance of a counting-room. There are one
or two peculiar features about such apartments that are quite
unmistakable and very characteristic; and the counting-room at Fort
Garry, although many hundred miles distant from other specimens of its
race, and, from the peculiar circumstances of its position, not
therefore likely to bear them much resemblance, possessed one or two
features of similarity, in the shape of two large desks and several
very tall stools, besides sundry ink-bottles, rulers, books, and sheets
of blotting-paper. But there were other implements there, savouring
strongly of the backwoods and savage life, which merit more particular
notice.
The room itself was small, and lighted by two little windows, which
opened into the courtyard. The entire apartment was made of wood. The
floor was of unpainted fir boards. The walls were of the same material,
painted blue from the floor upwards to about three feet, where the blue
was unceremoniously stopped short by a stripe of bright red, above
which the somewhat fanciful decorator had laid on a coat of pale
yellow; and the ceiling, by way of variety, was of a deep ochre. As the
occupants of Red River office were, however, addicted to the use of
tobacco and tallow candles, the original colour of the ceiling had
vanished entirely, and that of the walls had considerably changed.
There were three doors in the room (besides the door of entrance), each
opening into another apartment, where the three clerks were wont to
court the favour of Morpheus after the labours of the day. No carpets
graced the floors of any of these rooms, and with the exception of the
paint aforementioned, no ornament whatever broke the pleasing
uniformity of the scene. This was compensated, however, to some extent
by several scarlet sashes, bright-coloured shot-belts, and gay portions
of winter costume peculiar to the country, which depended from sundry
nails in the bedroom walls; and as the three doors always stood open,
these objects, together with one or two fowling-pieces and
canoe-paddles, formed quite a brilliant and highly suggestive
background to the otherwise sombre picture. A large open fireplace
stood in one corner of the room, devoid of a grate, and so constructed
that large logs of wood might be piled up on end to any extent. And
really the fires made in this manner, and in this individual fireplace,
were exquisite beyond description. A wood-fire is a particularly
cheerful thing. Those who have never seen one can form but a faint idea
of its splendour; especially on a sharp winter night in the arctic
regions, where the thermometer falls to forty degrees below zero,
without inducing the inhabitants to suppose that the world has reached
its conclusion. The billets are usually piled up on end, so that the
flames rise and twine round them with a fierce intensity that causes
them to crack and sputter cheerfully, sending innumerable sparks of
fire into the room, and throwing out a rich glow of brilliant light
that warms a man even to look at it, and renders candles quite
unnecessary.
The clerks who inhabited this counting-room were, like itself,
peculiar. There were three—corresponding to the bedrooms. The senior
was a tall, broad-shouldered, muscular man—a Scotchman—very
good-humoured, yet a man whose under lip met the upper with that
peculiar degree of precision that indicated the presence of other
qualities besides that of good-humour. He was book-keeper and
accountant, and managed the affairs intrusted to his care with the same
dogged perseverance with which he would have led an expedition of
discovery to the North Pole. He was thirty or thereabouts.
The second was a small man—also a Scotchman. It is curious to note how
numerous Scotchmen are in the wilds of North America. This specimen was
diminutive and sharp. Moreover, he played the flute—an accomplishment
of which he was so proud that he ordered out from England a flute of
ebony, so elaborately enriched with silver keys that one’s fingers
ached to behold it. This beautiful instrument, like most other
instruments of a delicate nature, found the climate too much for its
constitution, and, soon after the winter began, split from top to
bottom. Peter Mactavish, however, was a genius by nature, and a
mechanical genius by tendency; so that, instead of giving way to
despair, he laboriously bound the flute together with waxed thread,
which, although it could not restore it to its pristine elegance,
enabled him to play with great effect sundry doleful airs, whose
influence, when performed at night, usually sent his companions to
sleep, or, failing this, drove them to distraction.
The third inhabitant of the office was a ruddy, smooth-chinned youth of
about fourteen, who had left home seven months before, in the hope of
gratifying a desire to lead a wild life, which he had entertained ever
since he read “Jack the Giant Killer,” and found himself most
unexpectedly fastened, during the greater part of each day, to a stool.
His name was Harry Somerville, and a fine, cheerful little fellow he
was, full of spirits, and curiously addicted to poking and arranging
the fire at least every ten minutes—a propensity which tested the
forbearance of the senior clerk rather severely, and would have
surprised any one not aware of poor Harry’s incurable antipathy to the
desk, and the yearning desire with which he longed for physical action.
Harry was busily engaged with the refractory fire when Charley, as
stated at the conclusion of the last chapter, burst into the room.
“Hollo!” he exclaimed, suspending his operations for a moment, “what’s
up?”
“Nothing,” said Charley, “but father’s temper, that’s all. He gave me a
splendid description of his life in the woods, and then threw his pipe
at me because I admired it too much.”
“Ho!” exclaimed Harry, making a vigorous thrust at the fire, “then
you’ve no chance now.”
“No chance! what do you mean?”
“Only that we are to have a wolf-hunt in the plains to-morrow; and if
you’ve aggravated your father, he’ll be taking you home to-night,
that’s all.”
“Oh! no fear of that,” said Charley, with a look that seemed to imply
that there was very great fear of “that”—much more, in fact, than he
was willing to admit even to himself. “My dear old father never keeps
his anger long. I’m sure that he’ll be all right again in
half-an-hour.”
“Hope so, but doubt it I do,” said Harry, making another deadly poke at
the fire, and returning, with a deep sigh, to his stool.
“Would you like to go with us, Charley?” said the senior clerk, laying
down his pen and turning round on his chair (the senior clerk never sat
on a stool) with a benign smile.
“Oh, very, very much indeed,” cried Charley; “but even should father
agree to stay all night at the fort, I have no horse, and I’m sure he
would not let me have the mare after what I did to-day.”
“Do you think he’s not open to persuasion?” said the senior clerk.
“No, I’m sure he’s not.”
“Well, well, it don’t much signify; perhaps we can mount you.”
(Charley’s face brightened.) “Go,” he continued, addressing Harry
Somerville—“go, tell Tom Whyte I wish to speak to him.”
Harry sprang from his stool with a suddenness and vigour that might
have justified the belief that he had been fixed to it by means of a
powerful spring, which had been set free with a sharp recoil, and shot
him out at the door, for he disappeared in a trice. In a few minutes he
returned, followed by the groom Tom Whyte.
“Tom,” said the senior clerk, “do you think we could manage to mount
Charley to-morrow?”
“Why, sir, I don’t think as how we could. There ain’t an ’oss in the
stable except them wot’s required and them wot’s badly.”
“Couldn’t he have the brown pony?” suggested the senior clerk.
Tom Whyte was a cockney and an old soldier, and stood so bolt upright
that it seemed quite a marvel how the words ever managed to climb up
the steep ascent of his throat, and turn the corner so as to get out at
his mouth. Perhaps this was the cause of his speaking on all occasions
with great deliberation and slowness.
“Why, you see, sir,” he replied, “the brown pony’s got cut under the
fetlock of the right hind leg; and I ’ad ’im down to L’Esperance the
smith’s, sir, to look at ’im, sir; and he says to me, says he ‘That
don’t look well, that ’oss don’t,’—and he’s a knowing feller, sir, is
L’Esperance though he _is_ an ’alf-breed—”
“Never mind what he said, Tom,” interrupted the senior clerk; “is the
pony fit for use? that’s the question.”
“No, sir, ’e hain’t.”
“And the black mare, can he not have that?”
“No, sir; Mr. Grant is to ride ’er to-morrow.”
“That’s unfortunate,” said the senior clerk.—“I fear, Charley, that
you’ll need to ride behind Harry on his gray pony. It wouldn’t improve
his speed, to be sure, having two on his back; but then he’s so like a
pig in his movements at any rate, I don’t think it would spoil his pace
much.”
“Could he not try the new horse?” he continued, turning to the groom.
“The noo ’oss, sir! he might as well try to ride a mad buffalo bull,
sir. He’s quite a young colt, sir, only ’alf broke—kicks like a
windmill, sir, and’s got an ’ead like a steam-engine; ’e couldn’t ’old
’im in no’ow, sir. I ’ad ’im down to the smith ’tother day, sir, an’
says ’e to me, says ’e, ‘That’s a screamer, that is.’ ‘Yes,’ says I,
‘that his a fact.’ ‘Well,’ says ’e—”
“Hang the smith!” cried the senior clerk, losing all patience; “can’t
you answer me without so much talk? Is the horse too wild to ride?”
“Yes, sir, ’e is” said the groom, with a look of slightly offended
dignity, and drawing himself up—if we may use such an expression to one
who was always drawn up to such an extent that he seemed to be just
balanced on his heels, and required only a gentle push to lay him flat
on his back.
“Oh, I have it!” cried Peter Mactavish, who had been standing during
the conversation with his back to the fire, and a short pipe in his
mouth: “John Fowler, the miller, has just purchased a new pony. I’m
told it’s an old buffalo-runner, and I’m certain he would lend it to
Charley at once.”
“The very thing,” said the senior clerk.—“Run, Tom; give the miller my
compliments, and beg the loan of his horse for Charley Kennedy.—I think
he knows you, Charley?”
The dinner-bell rang as the groom departed, and the clerks prepared for
their mid-day meal.
The Senior clerk’s order to _“run”_ was a mere form of speech, intended
to indicate that haste was desirable. No man imagined for a moment that
Tom Whyte could, by any possibility, _run_. He hadn’t run since he was
dismissed from the army, twenty years before, for incurable
drunkenness; and most of Tom’s friend’s entertained the belief that if
he ever attempted to run he would crack all over, and go to pieces like
a disentombed Egyptian mummy. Tom therefore walked off to the row of
buildings inhabited by the men, where he sat down on a bench in front
of his bed, and proceeded leisurely to fill his pipe.
The room in which he sat was a fair specimen of the dwellings devoted
to the _employés_ of the Hudson’s Bay Company throughout the country.
It was large, and low in the roof, built entirely of wood, which was
unpainted; a matter, however, of no consequence, as, from long exposure
to dust and tobacco smoke, the floor, walls, and ceiling had become one
deep, uniform brown. The men’s beds were constructed after the fashion
of berths on board ship, being wooden boxes ranged in tiers round the
room. Several tables and benches were strewn miscellaneously about the
floor, in the centre of which stood a large double iron stove, with the
word _“Carron”_ stamped on it. This served at once for cooking and
warming the place. Numerous guns, axes, and canoe-paddles hung round
the walls or were piled in corners, and the rafters sustained a
miscellaneous mass of materials, the more conspicuous among which were
snow-shoes, dog-sledges, axe-handles, and nets.
Having filled and lighted his pipe, Tom Whyte thrust his hands into his
deerskin mittens, and sauntered off to perform his errand.