Cedar Creek Part 26

exclaimed the irate captain, with considerable warmth of colouring.

'Bring me something, sirrah, to take away the odious taste--anything you like.'

Mr. Bunting obeyed with alacrity. Arthur left father and son over their pipes and gla.s.ses, and went outside to join Miss Armytage and Jay, who had declined various overtures to enter the store, and were the cynosure of all eyes in the 'Corner' as they walked to and fro on the stumpless strip of ground in the place--a fair child and a pale girl. Presently forth came the captain.

'Edith, my dear,' he said blandly, 'I may be detained here for half an hour; I find that mine host, Mr. Bunting, has a very exact knowledge of the locality to which we are going. I think you both might be going on with the waggon; your brother will follow in a minute or so when his smoke is finished, he says. Driver, you may go forward; _au revoir_, Edith.'

He kissed the tips of his fingers to his daughter gallantly, and pa.s.sed into the bar again with a jaunty air.

'If you will allow me to accompany you,' said Arthur, seeing that she hesitated, 'you will do me a kindness, for I have rather a large pack to carry going home; I can rest it on the waggon; and Daisy Burn is more than half-way to Cedar Creek.'

'Did I not tell you we would find out Arthur and Robert?' said the child Jay, with an ecstatic clasp of her fingers upon young Wynn's. 'You said you were afraid we should have no friends in the woods, but I knew that G.o.d would not let us be so forsaken as that.'

And the three walked on into the long vista of the concession line.

CHAPTER XXIX.

ONE DAY IN JULY.

A summer more glorious than our settlers could have imagined, followed on the steps of the tardy spring. What serene skies--what brilliant sunshine--what tropical wealth of verdure! At every pore the rich earth burst forth into fruit and flower. Two months after the gra.s.s had been sunk deep beneath the snow, sheets of strawberries were spread in the woods, an extemporized feast.

One might think that the cottage at Cedar Creek had also bloomed under the fair weather; for when July--hottest of Canadian months--came, the dingy wooden walls had a.s.sumed a dazzling white, with a roof so grey that the shingles might have been veritable slates. Resemblance to the lime-washed houses of home was Robert's fancy; which, in Zack Bunting's mind, was a perverted taste, as he recommended a brilliant green groundwork, picked out with yellow, such canary-bird costume being favourite in Yankee villages.

The few feet of garden railed off in front are filled with bushes of the fragrant Canadian wild-rose; yellow violets, lobelias, and tiger-lilies, transplanted thither from the forest glades, appear to flourish. The brothers had resolved that Linda should not miss her flower-beds and their gentle care even in bush-life.

For the rest, the clearing looks wild enough, notwithstanding all civilising endeavours. That mighty wall of trees has not been pushed back far, and the _debris_ of the human a.s.sault, lying on the soil in vast wooden lengths, seems ponderous even to discouragement. Robert has been viewing it all through stranger eyes for the last week, since he heard the joyful news that they for whom he has worked have landed at Montreal; he has been putting finishing touches wherever he could, yet how unfinished it is!

To-day Andy alone is in possession; for his young masters have gone to meet the expected waggon as far as Peter Logan's--nay, to Greenock if necessary. He has abundance of occupation for the interval; first, to hill up a patch of Indian corn with the hoe, drawing the earth into little mounds five or six inches high round each stalk; and after that, sundry miscellaneous duties, among which milking the cow stands prominent. She is enjoying herself below in the beaver meadow, while the superior animal, Andy, toils hard among the stumps, and talks to himself, as wont.

'Why, thin, I wondher what th' ould masther 'ull say to our clearin', an' how he'll take to the life, at all, at all; he that niver did a hand's turn yet in the way of business, only 'musin' himself wid papers an' books as any gintleman ought; how he'll stand seein' Masther Robert hoein' and choppin' like a labourin' man? More be token, it's little o'

that thim pair down at Daisy Burn does. I b'lieve they 'spect things to grow ov thimselves 'athout any cultivatin'. An' to see that poor young lady hillin' the corn herself--I felt as I'd like to bate both the captin an' his fine idle son--so I would, while I could stand over 'em.'

He executed an aerial flourish with his hoe, and the minute after, found practical occupation for it in chasing two or three great swine who were poking at the fence, as if they longed for the sweet young cornstalks within. Whence the reader may perceive that Mr. Wynn had become proprietor of certain items of live stock, including sundry fowls, which were apt to keep all parties in exhilarating exercise by their aggressions on the garden.

'Musha, but 'tis very hot intirely,' soliloquized Andy, returning from the aggravated stern-chase of the swine, and lifting his gra.s.s hat to fan his flushed face. 'The sun don't know how to obsarve a madium at all in this counthry, as our poor ould Irish sun does. We're aither freezin'

or fryin' the year round.' Hereupon, as reminded by the last-named experience, he threw down his hoe, and went to settle the smouldering fires in the fallow, where one or two isolated heaps of brush were slowly consuming, while their bluish smoke curled up lazily in the still air. 'It's quare to think of how lonesome I am this minnit,' continued he, as he blackened himself in ministering to the heaps. 'Sorra livin'

sowl to spake to nearer than the captin's, barrin' the cow, an' the pigs, an' thim savidges down at the swamp.'

Here he made an infuriate swing backwards of a bush, fortunately in his hand; but it was against no Indian foe; on the contrary, his own shoulders received the blow, and another to make sure; whereby an individual enemy was pasted to the spot where its proboscis had pierced shirt and skin, and half-a-dozen others saved themselves by flight--being the dreaded black flies of Canada.

'Why, thin, ye murtherin' villins, will ye follow me into the smoke itself?' said Andy, whirling his bush in the air to disperse their squadrons. 'I thought ye wor satisfied wid most atin' us last week, an'

blindin' the young gintlemin, an' lavin' lumps on their faces as big as hazel nuts. Betune yerselves an' the miss kitties, it's hard for a man to do a sthroke of work, wid huntin' ye. Ay, ye may well moo, ye crathur below in the meadow, that has only horns an' a tail to fight 'em. An'

sure, may be 'tain't the cow at all that's roarin', only one of them big frogs that bellows out of the swamp, for all the world as if they was bullocks.'

To settle the question, he walked away down to the beaver meadow, now an expanse of the most delicious level green, and found that the cow had protected herself against all winged adversaries by standing in the creek up to her throat in the cool water, where she chewed the cud tranquilly, and contemplated with an impa.s.sive countenance the construction of a canoe at a little distance by two red men and their squaws. Andy paused and looked on likewise.

One woman was stripping a large white birch of its bark with a sharp knife; she sc.r.a.ped away the internal coating as a tanner would sc.r.a.pe leather, and laid the pieces before the other squaw, whose business was to st.i.tch them together with bast. The men meanwhile prepared a sausage-shaped framework of very thin cedar ribs, tying every point of junction with firm knots; for the aforesaid bast is to the Indian what glue and nails are to the civilised workman.

'Throth, only for the birch threes I dunno what they'd do; for out of it's skin they make houses, an' boats, an' pots to bile vittles, an'

candles to burn, an' ornaments like what Mr. Robert has above.' A pause, as he watched the bark turned over the ribs, and wedge-shaped pieces cut out to prevent awkward foldings near the gunwale--all carried on in solemn silence. 'Well, there's no manner of doubt but savages are great intirely at houldin' their tongues; sure, may be it's no wondher, an'

their langidge the quare sort it is, that they don't want to spake to each other but as little as they can help.'

Here the nearest Indian raised his head, and appeared to listen to a distant sound; a low word or two attracted the attention of the others, who also listened, and exchanged a few sentences, with a glance at Andy, whose curiosity was roused; and he asked, chiefly by signs, what it was all about.

'Oxen--waggon,' was the reply; 'me hear driver. White man no have long ears.'

Andy fled with precipitation to his neglected duties, while the red men laughed their low quiet laugh, knowing that the waggon they heard could not reach Cedar Creek in less than an hour.

But at last it came. At last Linda, pressing eagerly forward upon Robert's arm, had caught a first glimpse of their cottage home, and exclaimed, 'O Bob, how pretty! Why, you told me it was a rough sort of a place; how very pretty!'

'Well, you can't deny that the _place_ is rough,' said he, after a pause of much satisfaction; 'look at the log-heaps--as tangled as a lady's work-basket.'

'Never mind the log-heaps; the house is neat enough for a picture; and the view! what a lovely placid lake! what islands! what grand woods!'

Linda's speech was nothing but interjections of admiration for the next half-hour; she _would_ be charmed with every handiwork of the dear brothers who had wrought so hard for them. And how were these repaid for that past toil, by the sweet mother's smile as she entered the neat little parlour, and was established in the rocking-chair which Arthur had manufactured and cushioned with exceeding pains! The other furniture was rather scholastic, it is true, being a series of stools and a table, set upon rushen matting of Indian make; the beams overhead were unceiled, and the hearth necessarily devoid of a grate. But the chimney s.p.a.ce--huge in proportion to the room--was filled with fragrant and graceful forest boughs; and through the open cas.e.m.e.nt window (Arthur had fitted the single sash on hinges, doorwise) looked in stray sprays of roses, breathing perfume. Mrs. Wynn was well satisfied with her exile at that moment, when she saw the loving faces of her sons about her again, in the home of their own raising.

A most joyful reunion! yet of that gladness which is near akin to tears.

Robert would not give anybody a minute to think, or to grow sad. His father and George must walk with him all round the clearing and down to the beaver meadow. His acres of spring-burned fallow, his embryo garden, his creek and its waterfalls, must be shown off as separate articles of the exhibition.

'Bob, what are these?' The old gentleman stopped before an expanse of blackened stumps, among which a mult.i.tude of molehills diversified the soil.

'Potatoes, sir. That's the Canadian way of raising them on new land--in hills of five thousand to the acre. You see ridges would be out of the question, or any even system of culture, on account of the stumps and roots.'

'I suppose so,' said Mr. Wynn drily; 'such ground must certainly require a peculiar method of working. I daresay you find it inc.u.mbent on you to forget all your Irish agriculture.'

'Well, I had a good deal to unlearn,' answered Robert. 'I hoped to have had our logging-bee before your arrival, and then the farm would have looked tidier; but I could not manage it.'

'Do you mean to say the trees stood as thick here as they do there? If so, you have done wonders already,' said his father. 'My poor boys, it was killing work.'

'Not at all, sir,' contradicted Robert right cheerily; 'I enjoyed it after the first few weeks, as soon as I began to see my way. We've been quite happy this winter in the woods, though bush-life was so new and strange.'

'It seems to me simply to mean a permanent descent into the ranks of the labouring cla.s.ses, without any of the luxuries of civilisation such as an English artisan would enjoy,' said the old gentleman.

'Except the luxury of paying neither rent nor taxes,' rejoined Robert promptly.

'You seem to have been carpenter, house-painter, wood-cutter, ploughman'--

'No, sir; there isn't a plough on the premises, and I shouldn't know what to do with it if there were.'

'Had you no a.s.sistance in all this?'

'Oh yes; invaluable help in Jacques Dubois, a lively little French Canadian from the "Corner," whose indomitable _esprit_ was worth more than the stronger physique of a heavy Anglo-Saxon. But come, sir, I hear the dinner bell.'

Which was the rattling of a stick on an invalided kettle, commonly used by Andy to summon his masters home. To impress the new arrivals with a sense of their resources, a feast, comprising every accessible delicacy, had been prepared. Speckled trout from the lake, broiled in the hot wood ashes, Indian fashion; wild-fowl of various species, and wild fruits, cooked and _au naturel_, were the components.

'I hardly thought that you would have found time for strawberry cultivation,' observed Mr. Wynn the elder.