WITH THE SMOKERS.
Joseph Naylor found himself a notoriety for that day, as much as the
heroine who had saved his life. It was notoriety, however, with a
difference, as compared with hers--less incense-like and intoxicating,
though perhaps more tonic.
The Hebrew prophetess makes it the culmination of Sisera's overthrow
that he, a warrior, should have been done to death by a woman; and
even for the non-combatant there is something ungrateful to manly
pride in owing life to a member of the weaker sex. The debt is too
heavy to be repaid; and it is conventionally settled that obligation
between the sexes should lie the other way. It could scarcely be
agreeable to his self-love to feel himself pointed out among his
fellows as the man who had gone in swimming that morning, and who
would have drowned himself, if a brave young lady had not gone to his
rescue and fished him out.
Mrs Carraway surveyed him through her glasses in the interval between
her omelet and the robin-on-toast which constituted her breakfast. The
sight of a should-have-been drowned gentleman communicated a marine
flavour to the little bird, suggestive of oyster-sauce with boiled
turkey,--a dish which was not on the bill of fare, and therefore the
more delicious. She sent her colonel, after breakfast, to make friends
with the interesting creature, and get exact particulars of how it had
occurred, at first hand,--rather to the botheration of that tranquil
warrior, who, since he had made his home in the Colonies, had for the
most part practised an affable silence. If natives who approached him
were to his liking, he accepted their advances, and graciously
permitted himself to be courted; if they were not, he kept stolidly
oblivious of their existence, no matter how pressing their overtures
of friendship might be.
It is by no means a bad way of getting easily through life, provided
you can persuade people that you are worth courting. That is the
difficulty. People worth knowing can generally find better sport than
cultivating your Worship; but even if they do attempt it, the game
will grow monotonous ere long, on the one side as well as the other.
One can fancy that Royalty itself must yawn behind a fan at times, in
weariness of uninterrupted adulation.
It was a bore to so reserved a gentleman as Colonel Carraway to
break through his own ice; however, he lighted a cigar and strolled
away to the gallery facing the north, and always shady, where inmates
addicted to tobacco were wont to smoke. Naylor had arrived there
before him, and stood the centre of a group in which Judge Petty and
Vice-Chancellor Chickenpip vied with each other in displaying their
forensic gift of unwearied question-asking--a talent which they made
it manifest had not grown rusty from disuse since their elevation to
the bench.
"I never experienced the sensation of drowning," the Judge was
observing. "Being unable to swim, I never was in danger of it."
"And yet," said the Vice-Chancellor, with a shrug at the little
paradox, and eyeing the perpetrator with condescending superiority
through his spectacles, as the self-constituted wit is apt to do when
his neighbour attempts a sally, "we teach our boys to swim in order to
prepare them against such dangers."
"And they rashly tempt them in consequence, and so, not unfrequently,
get drowned. For myself, I have all my life had a cat's antipathy to
water--always excepting, of course, my morning tub."
"So your lordship's detractors of the blue-ribbon sect have sometimes
insinuated," chuckled the other, delighted to be disagreeable by
way of jest, however threadbare in form the jest might be. The
Vice-Chancellor owed his reputation for smartness to his talent for
ill-nature. The dullest can appreciate malice, while wit which is
merely sportive requires a sense of humour to understand it.
The Judge was familiar with the idiosyncrasy of his learned brother.
"What need one expect from a pig but a grunt!" was his inward
exclamation; but he was wise enough not to give it utterance. He
merely moved nearer to Naylor, thereby half turning his back upon the
other.
"I have always felt curious," he said, "to know what drowning, or,
indeed, dying in any form, could be like--without personal experiment,
that is. How did it feel, Mr Naylor? What were your sensations?"
"It did not get the length of drowning with me this time. I was a deal
too busy struggling for my life, I can tell you, to take much heed of
sensations. When at last I got my nose above water, and felt the young
lady's fingers twisted in my hair, she was behaving in such splendid
style that I could think of nothing but her efforts to help me. If she
had not kept cool, you know, instead of drawing me up she would have
been drawn down herself; and, crippled and sinking as I was, I could
have done nothing to save her. My mind was completely absorbed in
watching her efforts, admiring her nerve, and wondering if she would
really succeed in keeping afloat. As for saving me, I did not think it
possible; for, all the time, that racking cramp kept dragging my leg
together, in spite of my straining efforts to stretch it, and drawing
me to the bottom like tons of lead. Those cramps are hideous things;
and then, after she and Mr Sefton had taken me in tow, and the anxiety
for her safety grew less absorbing, the drowning man's instinct of
clutching came upon me, and it was all I could do to keep still, and
let myself be saved. You are perfectly right, Judge, to keep clear of
the possibility of such an experience; but still, this experience was
quite different from the feeling of drowning--the helpless struggling
and sinking down and away, the yielding of what sustains you on every
side, till the idea of up and down is lost in dizziness, while the
held-in breath seems bursting you asunder. You bear it for hardly a
minute, but that minute lasts an age; and then--and then--no one can
describe what follows. You are confused, and benumbed, and melting
into nothing. I have gone through it.
"A ship I sailed in, when I was a young man, was run down one foggy
night off the coast of Cuba. It was my watch on deck, and that is how
I am here to tell the tale. The look-out gave no warning till we were
close under the bow of a Spanish man-of-war bearing straight down on
us. I shouted to port the helm. It was too late. The Spaniard was into
us with a crash. He stove in our quarter, and sent us to the bottom. I
was knocked down by the falling rigging, and found myself in the
water, entangled among cordage, and drowning as I have described. I
know nothing more--nothing till I found myself coming to, on board
that foreign ship. The deathly sickness! The longing to sink back into
unconsciousness! The dim dull misery and tingling in every limb! as
the stagnant blood began once more to circulate. I hope you will never
know them. It is bad to drown, but it is far, far worse to be brought
to. It was days before I was myself again; but I had plenty of time to
recruit. The ship was bound for the Philippines, and it was not till
she reached Manilla that I was set ashore."
"Ah! then you have travelled, sir," said the Vice-Chancellor,
scrutinising him with the condescension of a superior person
recognising an interesting trait in an ordinary mortal. "Yet you have
had time to make your fortune at home, and now you are embarking in
politics, I hear. You deserve credit for the comprehensiveness of your
energy, and will no doubt bring unusual information to bear on public
affairs; but politics is as stormy a sea, and one more difficult to
navigate than the one you know. It would be a pity, after weathering
so many dangers, to make shipwreck there. We want good men in
Parliament, but we want them on the right side."
"Is that the side of the patriots, Chancellor?--the men who went into
office to save the country, and who made their own fortunes instead?
The tide has turned, and left them high and dry on the bank, or in the
offices they appointed themselves to fill."
It was a young man who spoke--fair-haired and broad-shouldered, with a
complexion burnt to the colour of bricks by the exposure of outdoor
life. His clothes were not new, but they fitted him, and there was
that look of rest and balance in his limbs which leisure and exercise
alone can give,--so different from the smug constraint with which life
in chambers and offices stamps the man of affairs.
The Vice-Chancellor turned with the haughty stare of a schoolmaster on
the urchin who has spoken out of turn. Colonel Carraway looked
disgusted at the bad taste which could drag politics into social
intercourse; and politics flavoured with personality as well, to judge
by the thrill in the speaker's voice. Senator Deane rolled his cigar
round to the other cheek, and--never mind, it is a dirty habit.
"Those Canadians," he observed to his neighbour, "get as hot over
their politics as we do. 'What can there be to quarrel about in
_their_ small concerns?' say you? The same as in our big
affairs--place and plunder, you may be sure. That's about all."
Joseph Naylor turned round to see who it was whose remark had brought
the Chickenpip oration to a halt. "What! Walter Blount! You here!
Where have you dropped from? The very last man I expected to see. And
yet no one but you would have let his political zeal break out on so
slight provocation. That comes of not being a native. You take the
fever of politics the hotter for being new to it."
"But _you_ are contesting our Riding just now."
"The more need to let alone for the present moment, so as to come
fresh to the conflict. Party bickerings grow stale to the mind if one
is always harping on them. Time enough to let out when I get back
there. This is the seaside. But what brings _you_ here?" resting his
eyes admiringly on the other's sturdy limbs. "I see no sign of the
relaxed system which is said to need bracing sea-air."
The young man did not change colour. The dusky vermilion of his
sunburnt skin was incapable of a heightened tint; but he looked
confused under the twinkling laughter of the other's eye. "I shall be
selling out this Fall, so I thought I might run down here to the sea
before moving West."
"West? Are you dreaming of making a fortune on the prairies?--turning
farmer in earnest. Have you killed all the bears in your present
neighbourhood, and exterminated the deer?"
"There will be neither bear nor deer within twenty miles before two
years are over. The new railway runs right across my farm, and the
speculators are prospecting all over the neighbourhood. I am offered a
good price for my land. I shall sell, and go West somewhere, where
settlers are fewer and game more abundant. No! prairie farming would
not suit me. Even an improved farm in a good part of Ontario would be
better than that; but I prefer the woods."
The circle round Naylor had now broken into groups occupied with their
own talk, leaving him free to pursue his private gossip with his
friend. He settled himself on a bench, buried his hands in his
pockets, pushed out his feet in front, and blew a mighty cloud of
smoke from his German pipe. "I declare I'm tired, Walter, with so much
talking this morning. Now for a good old smoke! Where's your pipe?"
Walter sat down beside him and filled his pipe slowly and absently, as
if his thoughts were on other things. Then he cleared his voice,
lighted the pipe, and with as much off-handness as he could assume
observed between the whiffs--
"Your family are with you, Mr Naylor?"
"My family is always with me. I carry the whole of it under my hat,"
he answered, looking his questioner straight in the eye, with a
twinkle which plainly said, "Speak out if you have anything to say. I
do not intend to help you."
The young man coughed. The smoke of his pipe had lost its way, and
seemed trying for an outlet down his throat. "Mrs Naylor and her
daughters are here, I understand?" he said at last.
"Yes."
There was a lengthened silence. "Yes" is not an answer to which the
next observation can readily be attached. The questioner removed his
pipe, and began nervously to examine what could be making it draw so
badly; while the other watched him in silent amusement, tempered with
a touch of good-natured pity.
"I wonder," Blount said at last, digging the charge carefully out of
his pipe, and so making it unnecessary to raise his eyes to the
other's face,--"I wonder what they will say to see me here?"
"Difficult to imagine," came the answer from the thickest of a bank of
smoke.
"I fear I am not a favourite with Mrs Naylor."
"She told you not to call any more, I believe? That was pretty plain."
"Was it not too bad of her? What can she have against me? She has
known me ever since I came to the country, and she used to be like a
mother to me."
"That was imprudent. Now she sees it, I suppose. A mother of girls may
become mother-in-_law_ to some young fellow one day, and Mrs Naylor
may feel that she ought to reserve herself for that. When girls leave
school, you see, circumstances alter."
"I am sure I showed no unwillingness to take her for _my_
mother-in-law."
"That was the trouble. She could have taken you for a son--a full son,
understand--and you might have been brother to the girls, if that
would have pleased you. But it didn't."
"How could it? Would it have satisfied you--to take a nice girl to
picnics, and hold her shawl while another fellow danced with her?"
"Put it that way, and it does seem hard. But what is a mother to do?
Her daughters' prospects ought to be her chief care."
"Do you think it is right to be mercenary, then? Is money to stand for
everything? Is the fellow to count for nothing?"
"By no means! A good fellow it _must_ be--a nice fellow and a
gentleman if possible, or the girl's life is spoiled. No amount of
money could make her happy with a ruffian or a cad. But you must
remember that Mrs Naylor's girls are young yet, and I cannot blame her
for wishing to look about before fixing their position for life."
"It is hard to be passed over merely for being the first comer. And
they may happen on worse subjects as well as better."
"Quite true. There is a proverb about a girl who was so particular
about the stick she went to cut, that she came to the end of the wood
before she could make up her mind, and then she had to content herself
with a crooked one, or go without. However, proverbial philosophy goes
for nothing, you know; people like to try for themselves. Still, there
is excuse for a mother wishing not to bury her accomplished daughter
in the backwoods, as wife to a wild huntsman. One can understand that
it would be pleasant for you, after being out all day with your gun
and your dog, to find your dinner laid, and a pretty young wife beside
a cosy fire waiting for you; but you cannot call it unreasonable if
the lady's friends wish to secure her a less solitary home. When you
are out, what will she have to amuse her but needle and thread? the
chickens and the cows? You would not like to think of her sitting in
the kitchen talking to the help; and yet you know they will be the
only human creatures she will have to speak to when you are away."
"I told you I was selling out. She can choose her home anywhere
between Gaspé and Vancouver."
"You would not like to live in a town, and a girl must have been bred
on a farm to live happily on one afterwards."
"You leave the husband out of the calculation. Do you think she could
be happy even in London or New York with a fellow she did not care
for?"
"That is true; but she need not marry unless she cares."
"While even in the bush, if she liked the fellow, and he was fond of
her, I think they might both be completely happy."
"I am with you there, my lad. Not a doubt of it,"--and he buried his
hands deeper in his pockets, and bent his head forward to look at his
boots, drawing a deep breath, and smoking harder than ever.
"Then why--Do you not think, Mr Naylor, you could bring your
sister-in-law to see it in that light? You have always been a friend
to me, since the first day I met you."
"Always your friend. Be sure of it. But I doubt my influence with Mrs
Naylor; and, if I had any, I doubt if I ought to interfere. Girls
cannot know their own minds till they have seen something of the
world. They may mistake a passing fancy for real regard; and if they
have married in the meantime, there are two lives spoiled, instead of
one just a little scorched--and that only for the moment, perhaps," he
added, after a pause. Then pulling himself together,--"But what makes
you talk like this to a crusty old bachelor? You cannot expect
sympathy in your love-affairs from one who has resisted the illusions
of sentiment as successfully as I have, surely?"
"I don't know. People are not bachelors and old maids for being harder
than their neighbours, I suspect. I often fancy it is the other way.
But at least you are not against my trying, are you? You will not do
anything to make my chances less than they are already?"
"No, Blount; I'll do nothing against you. I could almost wish the girl
took a fancy to you, for I believe you are real; and if she does, I
will do nothing to dissuade her. Money and position are not
everything, by any means."