Cedar Creek: From the Shanty to the Settlement. A Tale of Canadian Life

BELOW ZERO

Indian summer was succeeded by the 'temps boucaneux,' when hoarfrost drooped noiselessly on the night its silver powder on all the dazzling colouring, presenting nature robed in a delicate white guise each morning, which the sun appropriated to himself as soon as he could get above the vapours. Now were the vast waters of Canada passing from a fluid to a solid form, giving out caloric in quantities, accompanied by these thin mists. Towards the close of November navigation ceases on the Ottawa; the beginning of December sees the mighty river frozen over. Yet it lies in the latitude of Bordeaux! All honour to the benevolent Gulf Stream which warms France and England comfortably.

When Linda's fingers were particularly cold, she would puzzle Robert and her father with questions as to why this should be so. Mr. Holt once told her that the prevailing wind came from the north-west across a vast expanse of frozen continent and frozen ocean. Also that James's Bay, the southern tongue of Hudson's, was apt to get choked with masses of ice drifted in from the arctic seas, and which, being without a way of escape, just jammed together and radiated cold in company on the surrounding lands.

This explanation was given and received within earshot of a splendid fire on one of those tremendous January mornings when the temperature is perhaps twenty-five degrees below zero, when the very smoke cannot disperse in the frozen atmosphere, and the breath of man and beast returns upon them in snowy particles. Nobody cares to be out of doors, for the air cuts like a knife, and one's garments stiffen like sheet-iron. Linda stands at the window of the little parlour—well she understands now why the hearth was made almost as wide as one side of the room—and looks out on the white world, and on the coppery sun struggling to enlighten the icy heavens, and on that strange phenomenon, the ver glas, gleaming from every tree.

'Now, Mr. Holt, as you have been good enough to attempt an explanation of the cold, perhaps you could tell me the cause of the ver glas? What makes that thin incrustation of ice over the trunk and every twig which has been attracting my admiration these three days? It was as if each tree was dressed in a tight-fitting suit of crystal when the sun succeeded in shining a little yesterday.'

'I imagine that the cause was the slight thaw on Monday, and the freezing of the moisture that then covered the bark and branches into a coat of ice. So I only attempt explanations, Miss Linda.'

'Oh, but it is not your fault if they are unsatisfactory, as I own that of the north-west winds and James's Bay was to me; it is the fault of science. I'm afraid you'll not answer another question which I have, since I am so ungrateful as not to accept everything you say with becoming reverence.'

'Name your question.'

'Why is every fourth day milder than the others? Why may we reckon with almost certainty on a degree of soft weather to-morrow?'

'Those are the tertian intervals, and nobody understands them.'

'Concise and candid, if it doesn't make me wiser; but I'm compensated for that in finding something of which you are equally ignorant with myself, Mr. Holt.'

Remarks of a more superficial character were extorted by the severity of the weather from the inmates of the kitchen.

'Arrah, Miss Libby asthore, wor ye able to sleep one wink last night wid the crakling of the threes? I niver heerd'—

'Sartin sure I was,' replied the rubicund damsel, as she moved briskly about her work. She had a peculiarity of wearing very short skirts, lest they should impede her progress; but once that Andy ventured a complimentary joke on her ankles, he met with such scathing scorn that he kept aloof from the subject in future, though often sorely tempted.

'Nothen ever kep me waking,' asseverated the Yankee girl with perfect truth. 'Now, young man, jest git out o' my way; warm yar hands in yar hair, if you've a mind teu—it's red enough, I guess.'

'Throth an' I wish I could take your advice, Miss; or if you'd give me a few sparks of yer own hot timper, I needn't ever come up to the hearth at all at all.'

'Thar, go 'long with you for a consaited sot-up chap, an' bring in a couple of armfuls of wood,' said the lady. 'I reckon you'd best take care of your hair settin' fire to the logs, Mister Handy,' she added with a chuckle.

Linda entered the kitchen on some household business, and Mr. Callaghan was too respectful to retort in her presence. But this is a specimen of the odd sort of sparring which Arthur chose to consider courtship, and to rally both parties about.

''Deed then I hope 'tisn't the likes of a crooked stick of her kind I'd be afther bringin' home at long last,' Andy would say, wielding his axe with redoubled vigour.

'I guess I ain't agoin' jest to be sich a soft un as to take the care of him for nothen',' the lady would say, flouncing about her kitchen and laying ineffable emphasis on the last word. Whence it would appear that the feud was irreconcilable.

Next day was bright, and the mercury had climbed nearer to zero; so the sleigh was had out—Mr. Holt's sleigh, which had brought him from Mapleton to Cedar Creek, and was very much at everybody's service while he remained. Linda dressed in her warmest attire, and prepared for a run to the 'Corner' with her father. The sleigh was but a 'cutter' for carrying two, and had handsome robes of its equipment, a pair for each seat; one of wolf-skins garnished with a row of tails at the bottom and lined with scarlet; another a bear-skin, in which the beast's grim countenance had been preserved, and his claws affixed as a fringe. When Linda was comfortably wrapped up, Mr. Holt produced a third robe to throw over all.

'What a curious texture! a platted material and yet fur!' she said, looking at it.

''Tis of Indian manufacture, and I believe is made of rabbit skins cut in strips, twisted and netted together so as to keep the hair outside on both surfaces. You have a lovely day for your trip; I hope you will enjoy it.'

Did she not? A large set-off against the severity of a Canadian winter should be the ecstatic pleasures of sleighing. Those who have not tasted it know not the highest bliss of movement. Gliding smoothly and rapidly over the solid snow to the tinkling music of bells, the motion alone has something in it most exhilarating, to say nothing of the accompaniments of the ride, the clear bracing air, the beauty of the frost-bound forests all around. Linda was determined that her friend Edith should have her share of the enjoyment this brilliant day: so, stopping the 'steel-shod sleigh' at Daisy Burn, she persuaded Miss Armytage to don her cloak and muffetees and warm hood, and take her place beside Mr. Wynn for the rest of the way to the 'Corner' and back.

Edith had been in the midst of ironing her father's and brother's linen, while Jay read aloud. As soon as she was gone, despite the protestations of the little girl, Linda took the smoothing iron herself, and continued the work merrily. While thus engaged, and Jay getting through her history lesson still, a scratching was heard at the outside door of the kitchen.

'That's Ponto; what can have brought him home? he went with Reginald to chop at the edge of the clearing.'

The dog was no sooner admitted than he jumped on them both, pulled their gowns, ran back whining, and repeated these movements many times.

'He wants us to go with him, Jay—don't you think so?'

CHAPTER XXXVII

A CUT, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

What could be the matter? Ponto, at all events, seemed to think it of much importance, for he never ceased to pull their skirts and whine an entreaty, and go through the pantomime of running off in a great hurry—never farther than the threshold—until he saw the girls put on their cloaks and hoods. Gravely he sat on his tail, looking at them with patient eyes, and, when the door was opened, sprang off madly towards the pond.

'Could Reginald have sent him for anything? Something might have happened to Reginald. Ponto never came home in that way before. Could a tree have fallen on Reginald?' and Jay's small hand shivered in Linda's at the thought. They hurried after the dog, over the spotless surface of snow, into the charred forest, where now every trunk and bough of ebony seemed set in silver. Thither Reginald had gone to chop at noon, in a little fit of industry. They were guided to the spot by the sad whinings of faithful Ponto, who could not comprehend why his master was lying on the ground, half against a tree, and what meant that large crimson stain deepening in the pure snow.

A desperate axe-cut in his foot—this was the matter. Linda almost turned sick at the sight; but Jay, compressing her white lips very firmly, to shut in a scream, kneeled down by her brother.

He had succeeded, with infinite effort, in drawing off his long leather boot, through which the axe had penetrated, and had been trying to bind his neckcloth tightly above the ankle. Jay helped him with all her little strength.

'Give me a stick,' said he hoarsely—'a strong stick;' Linda flew to find one. 'Something to make a tourniquet;' and, not readily seeing any wood to answer the want, she used his axe, stained as it was, to chop a branch from the single tree he had felled. She had never tried her strength of arm in this way before; but now the axe felt quite light, from her excitement. Before the stick could be ready, in her unpractised fingers, Jay cried out, 'Oh, Linda, he is dying! he has fainted!'

Still, she had common sense to know that the first necessity was to stop the bleeding; so, quieting the little sister by a word or two, she inserted the stick in the bandage above the ankle, and turned it more than once, so as to tighten the ligament materially. Looking at the pallid features, another thought struck her.

'Let us heap up snow round the wounded foot and leg; I'm sure the cold must be good for it;' and, with the axe for their only shovel, the two girls gathered a pile of frozen snow, as a cushion and covering to the limb—'Oh, if Edith were here! if Edith were here!' being Jay's suppressed cry.

'Where is the labourer whom I saw working on the farm?'

'Gone away; discharged last week. Papa said he couldn't afford to pay him any longer. That's why Reginald went out to chop to-day. Oh, Linda, I wish somebody came. He is lying so white and still: are you sure he is not dead?'

His head was on the little sister's lap, and Linda chafed the temples with snow. Would the sleigh-bells ever be heard? She longed for help of some sort. As to surgery, there was not a practitioner within thirty miles. What could be done with such a bad hurt as this without a surgeon?

A universal slight shudder, and a tremor of the eyelids, showed that consciousness was returning to the wounded man. Almost at the same instant Ponto raised his head, and ran off through the trees, whining. A man's footsteps were presently heard coming rapidly over the crisp snow. It was Mr. Holt: and a mountain load of responsibility and dread was lifted from Linda's mind at the sight of him. This was not the first time that she had felt in his presence the soothing sense of confidence and restfulness.

He could not help praising them a little for what they had done with the primitive tourniquet and the styptic agency of the snow. Beyond tightening the bandage by an additional twist or two of the inserted stick, he could do nothing more for the patient till he was removed to the house; but he began collateral help by cutting poles for a litter, and sent Jay and Linda for straps of basswood bark to fasten them together. When the sleigh at last came up the avenue, Mr. Wynn the elder helped him to carry young Armytage home, wherein Sam Holt's great physical strength carefully bore two-thirds of the dead weight.

It seemed that he had been chopping up that fir for firewood, perhaps without giving much thought to his work, when the axe, newly sharpened before he came out, caught in a crooked branch, which diverted almost the whole force of the blow on his own foot. Well was it that Mr. Holt, in his erratic education, had chosen to pry into the mysteries of surgery for one session, and knew something of the art of putting together severed flesh and bone; although many a dreadful axe wound is cured in the backwoods by settlers who never heard of a diploma, but nevertheless heal with herbs and bandages, which would excite the scornful mirth of a clinical student.

Thus began a long season of illness and weakness for the young man, so recently in the rudest health and strength. It was very new to his impetuous spirit, and very irksome, to lie all day in the house, not daring to move the injured limb, and under the shadow of Zack Bunting's cheerful prediction, that he guessed the young fellar might be a matter o' six or eight months a-lyin' thar, afore such a big cut healed, ef he warn't lamed for life.

Reginald chafed and grumbled and sulked for many a day; but the fact could not be gainsaid; those divided veins and tendons and nerves must take long to unite again; Mr. Holt found him one morning in such an unquiet mood.

'Armytage,' said he, after the usual attentions to the wound, 'I suppose you consider this axe-cut a great misfortune?'

'"Misfortune!"' and he rose on his elbow in one of the fifty positions he was wont, for very restlessness, to assume. 'Misfortune! I should think I do: nothing much worse could have happened. Look at the farm, without a hand on it, going to rack and ruin'—

Rather a highly coloured picture; and Reginald seemed to forget that, while his limbs were whole, he had devoted them almost entirely to amusement. Mr. Holt heard him out patiently.

'I should not be surprised if it proved one of the best events of your life,' he observed; 'that is, if you will allow it to fulfil the object for which it was sent.'

'Oh, that's your doctrine of a particular providence,' said the other peevishly, lying back again.

'Yes; my doctrine of a particular providence, taught in every leaf of the Bible. Now, Armytage, look back calmly over your past life, and forward, whither you were drifting, and see if the very kindest thing that could be done for you by an all-wise and all-loving God was not to bring you up suddenly, and lay you aside, and force you to think. Beware of trying to frustrate His purpose.'

Mr. Holt went away immediately on saying that, for he had no desire to amuse Reginald with an unprofitable controversy which might ensue, but rather to lodge the one truth in his mind, if possible. Young Armytage thought him queer and methodistical; but he could not push out of his memory that short conversation. Twenty times he resolved to think of something else, and twenty times the dismissed idea came round again, and the calm forcible words visited him, 'Beware of trying to frustrate God's purpose.'

At last he called to his sister Edith, who was busy at some housework in the kitchen, across a little passage.

'Come here; I want to ask you a question. Do you think that I am crippled as a punishment for my misdeeds, idleness, etcetera?'

'Indeed, I do not,' she answered with surprise. 'What put such a thought into your head?'

'Holt said something like it. He thinks this axe-cut of mine is discipline—perhaps like the breaking-in which a wild colt requires; and as you and he are of the same opinion in religious matters, I was curious to know if you held this dogma also.'

She looked down for a moment. 'Not quite as you have represented it,' she said. 'But I do think that when the Lord sends peculiar outward circumstances, He intends them to awake the soul from indifference, and bring it to see the intense reality of invisible things. Oh, Reginald,' she added, with a sudden impulse of earnestness, 'I wish you felt that your soul is the most precious thing on earth.'

He was moved more than he would have cared to confess, by those tearful eyes and clasped hands; he knew that she went away to pray for him, while about her daily business. More serious thoughts than he had ever experienced were his that afternoon: Jay could not avoid remarking—in private—on his unusual quietude. Next morning he found a Bible beside his bed, laid there by Edith, he had no doubt; but for a long time she could not discover whether he ever looked into it.

When Mr. Holt left the country, he gave Robert Wynn charge of the patient mentally as well as corporeally. He knew that Robert's own piety would grow more robust for giving a helping hand to another.

Somehow, the Yankee storekeeper was very often hanging about Daisy Burn that winter. Captain Armytage and he were great friends. That gallant officer was, in Zack's parlance, 'the Colonel,' which brevet-rank I suppose was flattering, as it was never seriously disclaimed. He was king of his company in the tavern bar at the 'Corner;' and few days passed on which he did not enjoy that bad eminence, while compounding 'brandy-smash,' 'rum-salad,' 'whisky-skin,' or some other of the various synonyms under which the demon of drink ruins people in Canada.

But where did the captain find cash for this? The fact is, he never paid in ready money; for that was unknown to his pockets, and very rare in the district. He paid in sundry equivalents of produce; and a nice little mortgage might be effected on his nice little farm of Daisy Burn if needs be. Zack held his greedy grasping fingers over it; for the family were obliged to go a good deal in debt for sundry necessities. Slave and scrape as Miss Armytage might, she had no way of raising money for such things as tea and coffee. Once she attempted to make dandelion roots, roasted and ground, do duty for the latter; but it was stigmatized as a failure, except by loving little Jay. Then wages must be paid to the Irish labourer, whose services to chop wood, etc., were now absolutely necessary. Meat was another item of expense. A large store of potatoes was almost the sole provision upon which the household could reckon with certainty; mismanagement and neglect had produced the usual result of short crops in the foregoing season, and their wheat went chiefly to the store in barter.

'An' ef Zack ain't shavin' the capting, I guess I'm a Dutchman,' remarked a neighbouring settler to Robert. 'I reckon a matter of two year'll shave him out o' Daisy Burn, clear and clean.'

But its owner had some brilliant scheme in the future for lifting him free of every embarrassment. Rainbow tints illuminated all prospective pages of Captain Armytage's life.

'Edith, my dear,' he would say, if that young lady deprecated any fresh expenditure, or ventured an advice concerning the farm,—'Edith, my dear, the main fault of your character is an extraordinary want of the sanguine element, for the excess of which I have always been so remarkable. You know I compare it to the life-buoy, which has held me up above the most tempestuous waves of the sea of existence, eh! But you, my poor dear girl, have got a sad way of looking at things—a gloomy temperament, I should call it perhaps, eh? which is totally opposite to my nature. Now, as to this beast, which Mr. Bunting will let me have for twenty-eight dollars, a note of hand at three months, he is kind enough to say, will do as well as cash. And then, Reginald, my boy, we need drink café noir no longer, but can have the proper café au lait every morning.'

'I don't know who is to milk the cow, sir,' said his son, rather bluntly. 'Edith is overwhelmed with work already.'

'Ah, poor dear! she is very indefatigable.' He looked at her patronizingly, while he wiped his well-kept moustache in a handkerchief which she had washed. 'Indeed, Edith, I have sometimes thought that such continual exertion as yours is unnecessary. You should think of us all, and spare yourself, my child.'

'I do, papa,' she answered: whether that she thought of them all, or that she spared herself, she did not explain. Her brother knew which it was.

'That is right, my child. It grieves me to see you condescending to menial offices, unsuitable to your rank and position.'

She did not ask—as a less gentle nature would have asked—who else was to be the menial, if not she?

'That is the worst of a bush life. If I had known how difficult it is to retain one's sphere as a gentleman, I think I should not have exposed myself to the alternative of pecuniary loss or debasing toil. Perhaps it would be well to walk down to the "Corner" now, and conclude that bargain with our good friend the storekeeper, eh? Is there anything I can do for either of you, eh? Don't hesitate to command me,' he added blandly. 'What! you want nothing? A very fortunate pair—very fortunate, indeed, eh?' And Captain Armytage kissed hands out of the room.

'Edith,' said her brother, after a pause of some minutes, 'my father will be ruined by his confidence in that man. Bunting can twine him round his finger. I am ashamed of it.'

She shook her head sadly. But there was no help for the fact that their father was in the toils already; unless, indeed, the debt could be paid off, and the acquaintanceship severed. Hopeless! for the tendencies of a life cannot be remodelled in a day, except by the power of divine grace.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES

Sleighing was good that year, till the middle of March. Before the season was past, Captain Argent paid a flying visit on his way to the hunting grounds, as usual, and on his return found something so pleasant in the household at Cedar Creek, that he remained many days.

They were all old acquaintances, to be sure, and had many subjects of interest in common. Mr. Wynn the elder, who, perhaps, was imbued with a little of the true Briton's reverence for aristocracy, was pleased to entertain his former neighbour, Lord Scutcheon's son, especially when that young officer himself was endowed with such a frank, genial bearing as rendered him almost a universal favourite.

Had there ever been more than mere pleasant acquaintanceship between him and Miss Wynn? Rightly or wrongly, Sam Holt fancied it the case. He heard many allusions to former times and incidents, not knowing that as children they had been playmates. The gallant captain's present admiration was pretty plain; and the young lady was amused by it after the manner of her sex. Being very downright himself, Mr. Holt had no idea how much admiration is required to fill the measure of a proposal of marriage in a red-coat's resolve, or how much harmless coquetry lies dormant in the sweetest woman.

The precipitate gentleman leaped to sundry conclusions, gathered himself and his fur robes into his cutter, and left on the third day of Captain Argent's visit. In her secret heart, I imagine that Linda knew why.

But an engrossing affair to her at this period was the concealment from their visitor of the decidedly active part she took in household duties. Innocent Captain Argent was unaware that the faultless hot bread at breakfast was wrought by her hands; that the omelets and ragoûts at dinner owned her as cook; that the neatness of the little parlour was attributable to her as its sole housemaid. The mighty maiden called Liberia had enough to do in other departments, outdoor as well as indoor, besides being rather a ponderous person for a limited space.

And so, when Captain Argent one morning pushed open the parlour door long before he ought to have left his apartment, he beheld a figure with short petticoats, wrapt in a grey blouse, and having a hood of the same closely covering her hair, dusting away at the chairs and tables and shelves, with right goodwill.

'Now, Georgie, you know that you can't sit here till I have quite finished,' said the figure, without turning its head. 'Like a good boy, ask Libby to come and build up the fire: ask gently, remember, or she'll not mind you.'

The noiseless manner of closing the door caused her first to doubt the identity of the person spoken to, and a very vivid crimson dyed her cheeks, when, Liberia coming in, her blacksmith arms laden with logs, she threw them down with resounding clatter, and said, 'Wal, ef that ain't the nicest, soft speakin'est gentleman I ever see! He asked me as perlite for the wood, as he couldn't be perliter ef I war Queen Victory herself.'

'How fortunate that I didn't turn round my head!' thought Linda, her first confusion over; 'for of all horridly unbecoming things, showing no hair about one's face is the worst.'