EXEUNT OMNES.
Now, in the year 1857, came a retributive justice upon Zack Bunting, in
the shape of a complete collapse of all his gains and their produce. He
had placed them in a New York bank which paid enormous interest--thirty
per cent., people said; and when that figure of returns is offered, wise
men shake their heads at the security of the principal. Nevertheless,
all went rightly till the commercial panic of the period above mentioned,
when Zack's possessions were reduced to their primitive nonentity, and
the old proverb abundantly illustrated, 'Ill got, ill gone.'
'Libby,' quoth Andy one afternoon, soon subsequently to the above
occurrence, 'they say that precious limb of an uncle of yours isn't
goin' to come back here at all at all. I'm tould Mrs. Zack an' Ged is
packing up, to be off to some wild place intirely.'
He waited, gazing at her energetic movements in washing the dinner
plates (for the luxury of ware had supplanted tin before now at Cedar
Creek), to see what effect the news would produce. None. Miss Liberia
merely uttered 'Wal!'
'Won't you be very lonesome in the world all by yourself, Libby,
asthore?' he rejoined, casting a melting tenderness into voice and
manner; 'without a relation that ever was?'
'Not a bit, I guess,' was the curt reply.
'Och,' groaned the lover, 'av there ever was in the whole 'varsal world
a woman so hard to manage! She hasn't no more feelin's than one of them
chaneys, or she wouldn't be lookin' at me these four years a-pinin' away
visibly before her eyes. My new shute o' clothes had to be took in
twice, I'm got so thin; but little you cares.' Then, after a pause,
'Libby, mavourneen, you'd be a grand hand at managin' a little store;
now the one at the "Corner" 'll be shut. 'Spose we tried it togedder,
eh, mabouchal?'
Without hesitation, without change of countenance, without displacing
one of her plates, the Yankee damsel answered, 'I guess 'twould be a
spry thing, rayther; we'd keep house considerable well. And now that's
settled, you can't be comin' arter me a tormentin' me no more; and the
sooner we sot up the fixin's the better, I reckon.'
Thus calmly and sensibly did the massive maiden Liberia prepare to glide
from single into wedded life; and though she has never been able quite
to restrain the humorous freaks of her husband, she has succeeded in
transforming the pauper labourer Andy Callaghan into an independent
shopkeeper and farmer.
Not long after the happy accomplishment of this last alliance the
post-office was transferred from the decaying knot of cabins at the
'Corner' to the rising settlement of Cedar Creek. Andy's new store had a
letter-box fixed in its window, and his wife added to her multifarious
occupations that of postmistress.
'Anything for me this evening, Mrs. Callaghan?' asked the silver-headed
squire, in his stately way, coming up to the counter.
'I guess thar's the newspaper,' answered Liberia, pushing it across,
while the other hand held a yard measure upon some calico, whence she
was serving a customer. A new face Mr. Wynn saw in a moment: probably
one of the fresh emigrants who sometimes halted at the Creek proceeding
up country.
Mrs. Callaghan looked doubtfully at the piece of English silver produced
by the woman, and turned it round between her finger and thumb. 'I say,
squire, stop a minute: what sort o' money's this?'
'A crown-piece sterling; you'll give six shillings and a penny currency
for it,' answered Mr. Wynn.
'Now I guess that's what I don't understand,' said Liberia. 'Why ain't
five shillin's the same everywhar?'
That Mr. Wynn could not answer. He had been indulging some thoughts of a
pamphlet on currency reformation, and went out of the store revolving
them again.
For it is to be noted that the squire felt somewhat like Lycurgus, or
Codrus, or some of those old law-givers and state-founders in this new
settlement of the Creek. He knew himself for the greatest authority
therein, the one whose word bore greatest weight, the referee and
arbitrator in all eases. Plenty of interests had sprung up in his life
such as he could not have dreamed of nine years before, when rooted at
Dunore. His thoughts of the latter had changed since he learned that a
railway had cut the lawn across and altered the avenue and entrance
gate, and the new owner had constructed a piece of ornamental water
where the trout-stream used to run; likewise built a wing to the mansion
in the Tudor style, with a turret at the end. Which items of news, by
completely changing the aspect of the dear old home, as they remembered
Dunore, had done much towards curing the troublesome yearning after it.
Now the squire walked through the broad sloping street of pretty and
clean detached cottages (white, with bright green shutters outside),
fronting fields whence the forest had been pushed back considerably.
Orchards of young trees bloomed about them; the sawmill was noisily
eating its way through planks on the edge of the stream; groups of
'sugar-bush' maples stood about; over all the declining sun, hastening
to immerse itself in the measureless woods westward. 'Pleasant places,'
said Mr. Wynn to himself, quoting old words; 'my lot has fallen in
pleasant places.'
Sitting in the summer parlour of the butternut's shade, he read his
newspaper--a weekly Greenock print, the advertisement side half-filled
with quack medicines, after the manner of such journals in Canada.
Presently an entry in the 'Deaths' arrested his attention.
'Died, at his house in Montreal, on the 11th inst., Captain Reginald
Armytage, late of H.M.'s 115th foot. Friends at a distance will please
accept this intimation.'
Robert sprang to his feet. 'Let me see it, father.'
Now was the twentieth day of the month. 'I wonder she has not written
to some of us--to Linda even,' said he, returning the paper. Then going
over beside his mother, he whispered, 'I shall go to her, mother.'
'Poor Edith! But what could you do, my son?'
'Mother'--after a pause--'shall I not bring you another daughter to fill
Linda's empty place?'
Mrs. Wynn had long before this been trusted with the story of Robert's
affection. Her gentleness won every secret of her son's heart.
What could she say now but bless him through her tears?
And so he went next day. He found the mean house in the obscure street
where Edith had for years toiled, and not unhappily. Duty never brings
unmixed pain in its performance.
The schoolroom was full of the subdued hum of children's voices; the
mistress stood at her desk, deep mourning on her figure and in her face.
It was only the twelfth day since her bereavement; but she was glad of
the return of regular work, though the white features and frail hands
hardly seemed equal to much as yet. Presently the German girl who was
her servant opened the door, and Miss Armytage went to hear her message.
'Von gentleman's in parlour;' which suggested to Edith a careful father
of fresh pupils. She gave her deputy, Jay, a few charges, and went to
the visitor, who had thought her an interminable time in coming. He,
blooming, strong, fresh from his healthy farm life in the backwoods, saw
with compassion how wan and worn she looked. Nursing at night during her
father's illness, and school-keeping in the day, might be blamed for
this. Would she come to Cedar Creek and be restored?
'Yes,' she answered, with perfect frankness, but not until the current
six months of schooling had elapsed. At the end of June she would be
free; and then, if Mrs. Wynn asked her and Jay--
The other, the old question, was on Robert's lips at the instant. And to
this also she said 'Yes.'
* * * * *
Now for the prospects of the settlement which we have traced from
its first shanty to its first street. Its magnates looked forward
confidently to its development as a town--nay, perchance as a city of
ten thousand inhabitants, when it purposes to assume a new name, as
risen from nonage. Future maps may exhibit it as Wynnsboro', in honour
of the founder. A station on the line of rail to connect the Ottawa with
Lake Huron is to stand beside that concession line (now a level plank
road) where Robert Wynn halted eleven years ago, axe in hand, and gazed
in dismay on the impenetrable bush.
THE END.
MORRISON AND GIBB, EDINBURGH,
PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE.
Transcriber's Note
The following changes were made to the text:
In Chapter III, "fell" was changed to "felt" in the sentence
"Who has not _felt_ this beside Lodore, or Foyers, or Torc?"
In Chapter XVII, "hall" was changed to "hail" in the sentence
"He turned round at the _hail_."