Crowded Out! and Other Sketches Part 13

"Yes, I have been standing for some time," Cecilia returned in a peculiar voice.

"Could they not find you a chair in the establishment?"

"They found one," she said grimly, "and that was appropriated by the prisoner Dubois."

"The prisoner Dubois!" thought Sir Robert. "It is well. We shall hear no more of Pierre."

Two days before Christmas the prisoner Dubois underwent the extreme penalty of the law. Cecilia sat in her room all that day. She never quite made up her mind as to whether Pierre had been a lunatic or a fanatic, a martyr or a fiend, an inspired criminal or a perverted enthusiast. Perhaps he was a mixture of all.

How the Mr. Foxleys Came, Stayed and Never Went Away.

CHAPTER I.

There flows in Western Canada, by which I mean a region east of the Saskatchewan and west of the Thousand Islands, a singular and beautiful stream. It is beautiful because it is narrow, undulating and shallow, because it has graceful curves and rounded bends, because its banks are willow-clad and its bed boulder-strewn, because it flows along between happy farms and neat white villages, because at one spot, it boasts a picturesque and ruined mill and a moss-covered bridge and because--chiefly because--it is above all things--placid. The mind familiar with our Canadian streams will easily understand then, that if these be its attributes of beauty, they also attest to its claim of singularity. For the Canadian river is seldom placid, but oftener seething and steaming and foaming; or else deep and dark and dangerous with many a mighty gorge and tumbling cascade, wide and lonely and monotonous for the most part; pine hung down to the very edge, black and lowering, or displaying waving wisps of dry gray foliage that only resembles human hair. What a contrast, then, does this cherished river I speak of, afford! No local Laureate has as yet written it up, though picnic parties used to gather themselves together on its banks and in its well-wooded shades, defiling everything they touched from bark to beach, leaving bits of bread here, dead pie there, b.u.t.tering the leaves, peppering the gra.s.s, salting the stones, and scattering greasy crumpled paper--PAPER--PAPER--everywhere. That is what picnic parties do all over the world, and with such gusto all of them, even the Sunday-schools, Dorcases, W. C. T. U's. and all the rest of them, that I really think it must be intended as a serious part of the Picnicker's Ritual and forms very likely a peace-offering or sacrifice of propitiation towards some unknown G.o.d. I don't think the Druids left paper about underneath their oaks. But presumably they left worse. Well, if as yet, this river I love so well has not been immortalized in fiction, travels or verse, it has however attracted the attention of several gifted members of the Royal Academy--Royal Canadian of course, who have from time to time invaded its peaceful sh.o.r.es and stuffing themselves into adjacent if inconvenient farmhouses, sketched it in water and oil, in the common-place pencil, and the more ambitious charcoal. The results are charming and you may see them any day in the studios of our foremost artists or in the picture dealers' windows or haply on the terra-cotta tinted walls of our esteemed collectors, the retired grocers of Montreal, or the aesthetic lawyers of a more western and more ambitious city. Still though the sketches are charming both in conception and execution, I, were I a Canadian artist, eager to secure Canadian subjects for my pencil, would hardly choose this particular river as one likely to give the most correct idea of Canadian scenery. No, I would chose the St. Maurice or the Richelieu, the Lievre or the Saguenay, the Ottawa or portions of the St. Lawrence, with the grim Azoic rocks, the turbulent rapids and the somber pines. What a superb river system it is!

Tell them off on your fingers and you'll have to go on borrowing from them afterwards and then all over again. Think of all those rivers that cl.u.s.ter in the French Canada and feed the mighty Gulf of St. Lawrence.

There are the Ottawa, the Gatineau, the Rideau, the Richelieu, the Lievre, the Matanne, the Metapedia, the Metis, the Saguenay. Those are the ones we know. Then look at the Peribonka, the Maniconagan, all the Ste. Anne's, all the Rouge or Red rivers, the Du Moine, the Coalonge, the Vermilion, the St. Francis. Then, look at that cl.u.s.ter of great Saxon named streams, the Churchill, the Nelson, the Severn, the English, the Albany! Lastly, glance at the magnificent Saskatchewan with the historic streams of Battle and Qu'Appelle Rivers! And now I have omitted the Athabasca, the Peace, the Moose and the a.s.siniboine! There is no end to them; they defy enumeration while they invite it.

Now, most of these Canadian rivers are Azoic in character; hence their grim and formidable beauty. But my river has nothing the least Azoic about it. It belongs to a more recent, a more comfortable, more placid, more satisfying a formation. It is as idyllic a stream as any English one that Tennyson noted in a contemplative ramble to work up later into the "Brook."

Crossing the moss-grown bridge I have alluded to, a gradual ascent presents itself on the opposite side, of firm white road well macadamized and leading through small neat low houses, each with a little garden in front, to a church with a needle-like spire on the top of the hill, and the parson's house adjoining. On a June day, for example, it made a pleasant picture. Pastoral and prosperous the landscape, contented the people on foot, in the fields, at the windows, and most delightful of all--a certain Old World haze hanging over it.

This is what struck the Mr. Foxleys, driving out slowly from the town one Sat.u.r.day afternoon. George, the elder, pale with dark hair, lay back in the phaeton with folded arms. Joseph, the younger, fair-haired and freckled, sat up, driving. They had hardly exchanged a word since entering the phaeton. For eight miles they had proceeded in almost perfect silence. This did not mean that they were out of sorts, or not on pleasant terms with one another. On the contrary, it proved that they were the very best of friends, and never bored each other. I may as well say at once that they were Englishmen, which was easy to gather from their picturesque and unusual attire of neat gray small-clothes meeting gray stockings at the knee, low white shoes, a striped blue and white flannel shirt and canoe-shaped hats of gray, each bearing a snow-white "puggree" with blue and gold fringed ends. Such was the outward adorning of the Mr. Foxleys. Behind the phaeton ran a pretty brown retriever answering to the name of "Bess," and laid across the floor of the little carriage were a couple of walking canes, a couple of fishing rods and a gun case strapped together, while under the seat was a medium-sized portmanteau, and a peculiar long box with a leather handle. The eight miles having been traversed by them in silence, George, the elder, broke it by remarking, as they slackened their pace, before advancing over the bridge, "This is better."

"Very much so. Rather. I should think so," answered Joseph, the younger, who had a slightly more lively manner than his brother, and very laughing eyes. "It looks a little more like the--the Old Country."

The elder brother made no reply. A kind of weary smile flitted across his face instead.

"It's a little bit after--Devonshire, don't you think?" went on Joseph, surveying the green meadows, the neat painted fences, the sleeping cows, the rising uplands in the distance leaning lovingly next the sky, the bridge, the distant church, and the placid narrow river with the overhanging willows and the stony amber floor.

"A long way after," said George, without unfolding his arms or looking around him at all. He was gazing straight before him.

"But you don't half see the beauty of it," said the younger brother, stopping the horse and standing up in the phaeton, "especially after that horrid eight miles of half-cleared ugly-stumpy stubble! This is really beautiful, such soft lines you know and little corners--oh!

quite English!" Some of his enthusiasm reached the quieter brother, who apparently roused himself and looked around as directed. A faint pink came into his pale cheeks, a new gleam into the weary eyes, "Well, it is _better_, as I said before--you'll remember, I noticed it first--but not English."

"Well, not English altogether of course, I know," said Joseph gathering up his reins, "but its a jolly spot enough whatever it is, and--I say, look at that now, that oak, on the other side of the road, in front of that little cottage, we'll be up with it now in a minute."

"By Jove, what a splendid tree!" Now I do not in the least wonder at the Mr. Foxleys stopping opposite this mighty oak to admire it, because I myself am quite familiar with it and have seen it scores of times, and must agree with them in p.r.o.nouncing it one of the finest trees I have ever seen anywhere. Of course it has no story attached to it that the world knows, at least it never talked that I am aware of, never hid or screened anybody of importance--or anything of that sort--so naturally it has little or no interest about it. And yet, for that very reason, it is so much easier to think of it as a tree, to consider it and admire it, and learn to love and understand it just as a tree. So the Mr.

Foxleys thought, as they gazed at its monstrous trunk, its glorious branches of deep, dark glossy green with here and there an upstart arm of glowing bronze or a smaller shoot of younger yellow.

"It might have grown in the _Manor Park_!" said the younger brother airily with a keen sense of pleasure in the suggestion.

"It might have grown in the _Manor Park_, as you say", rejoined the elder brother gravely.

Then they went on again, slowly up the hill, that they might the better examine the church, the parsonage and the road beyond. What they wanted now was an Inn. Presently they espied one, just on the other side of a tiny bridge spanning a tinier brook. It was no upstart brick building of flaring red with blind white windows and a door flush with the street, a dirty stable at one side and a ragged kitchen garden at the other. But low and white and irregular with a verandah running along in front, it had red curtains that would draw over the lower halves of the windows and hints of chintz at the upper portions; the door was open and revealed a tall clock in the hall, a stand of flowers, and a cat asleep in a large round chair; at one side a flight of steps led down to the kitchen door at which a buxom maid in bare arms stood in a pink gown and a pinker face, and at the other side was the boarded square that held the pump--the village pump--around which were gathered five or six bare-footed children, the hostler of the Inn, the village butcher, tailor, and cobbler. A sign swung out from the verandah.

"The Ipswich Inn, by M. c.o.x," said the younger Mr. Foxley. Then he looked at his brother. His brother looked at him. They understood one another at once, and Joseph pulled up in good style at the door. The hostler, dressed in old corduroy and with a fiddle under his arm, sprang forward to a.s.sist them. He dropped his H's. "Delightful," cried Mr.

Joseph. So did the landlady, a cheery person of about fifty in a silk ap.r.o.n. The brothers were so content that they remained all night, "to look at the place."

Next morning, endless surprises awaited and greeted them. They found that the large room in front was a kind of drawing-room, in which rose-leaves, china-bowls, old engravings, a shining mahogany book-case, and a yellow-keyed piano atoned for the shortcomings of funeral horsehair and home-made carpets. They thought it on the whole a charming room, only to be eclipsed by the kitchen. For the kitchen, which was underneath the ground floor and nearly the entire size of the house, was therefore very s.p.a.cious and comfortable, possessing three large pantries and an out-house or summer kitchen; besides, moreover, it was dark-raftered, ham-hung, with willow-pattern slates in a neat dresser, and peac.o.c.k feathers over the high mantel; with, in one corner--the darkest--a covered well, into which I used to see myself the beautiful golden pats of b.u.t.ter lowered twice a week in summer time. One window, a small one, curtained with chintz and muslin drawn on a string, looked out on a small terraced garden at the back leading to an orchard; the other window, large and long, with twelve small panes and no curtains at all, adjoined the door opening on the court or yard at the side of the house. This yard was paved irregularly with grey stone slabs, between which the gra.s.s had wedged itself, with an occasional root of the persistent and omnipresent dandelion; it contained a cistern, a table with flower-pots, a parrot in one cage, a monkey in another, garden implements, rods, buckets, tins and tubs! A pleasant untidiness prevailed in the midst of irreproachably clean and correct surroundings, and the Mr. Foxleys having finished their breakfast up-stairs in the public dining-room--a bare, almost ugly apartment, devoid of anything in furniture or appointments to make it homelike, except a box of mignonette set in the side-window, looked longingly out at the little paved court-yard beneath. They had had the most delicious rasher of ham, eggs _sans peur et sans reproche_, some new and mysterious kind of breakfast cake, split and b.u.t.tered while hot, and light and white inside as it was golden and glazed outside, and three gla.s.ses of fresh milk each! They had been waited on by the buxom girl in a blue gown this time, against which her arms looked pinker than ever, and during the meal the landlady of the inn had looked in, with her hands too floury and her mind too full of coming loaves to do more than inquire generally as to their comfort. Looking over the mignonette, Mr. Joseph Foxley espied her presently talking to the parrot and tending the monkey. This was more than the frivolous Mr. Joseph could stand. He took his brother and made a tour of the house accordingly, discovering in turn as I have said the drawing-room, the kitchen, the court-yard, the garden and orchard and lastly the bar! _That_ proved the most comfortable, most enticing room of all. More red curtains, at the windows and over one door, an old-fashioned hearth paved with red brick and bearing even in June a couple of enormous logs against the possible cold of a rainy evening, two cases of stuffed birds, a buffalo's head over the fireplace, colored prints of Love Lies Bleeding, Stocks and Bachelor's b.u.t.tons, and over all, that odour of hot lemons and water, with something spirituous beyond, that completely won the refractory heart of the elder Mr. Foxley and caused him to drop down in a chair by the hearth with an incoherent expression of wonder and relief that did not escape his brother.

"How long shall we say, George," he asked. "She will want to know, because there are other men who come out here from town occasionally it seems, and of course it's only fair to let her know about the room.

"What shall I say?" Mr. George Foxley crossed his long legs in evident comfort and took in the entire room in a smiling gaze before he answered. Outside it was beautifully quiet, in front of the house. From the back there came the faintest sounds of crow and cackle and farm-yard stir just audible, from the kitchen rose cheerful laughter, and merry voices, the smell of baking, and a fainter odor of herbs. Milly, the girl, in the blue gown, pa.s.sed with a milk pail in either hand. She looked in shyly. Mr. Joseph waved his hand gallantly then laughed. Then Mr. George said, very slowly.

"Say? Oh, say that we will take the room--the one we have now, you know--for the rest of the Summer."

"That is, you will take it, and remain here, while I knock about in town and come out on Sat.u.r.days or whenever I can," said Joseph.

"Exactly," said his brother.

That afternoon Mr. Joseph returned to town in the neat hired phaeton leaving his brother in full possession of the charming and comfortable Inn. In a couple of days he came back, this time in the stage that pa.s.sed through Ipswich three times a week, and bringing with him a couple of English trunks and a stout portmanteau. Thus the Mr. Foxleys entered upon life in earnest in this dear placid little village, not far from the river described in the beginning of my story.

CHAPTER II.

The Mr. Foxleys, after a week's sojourn or so at the Ipswich Inn, made a mutual discovery. This was, that not only were the landlady of the Inn, her son and the ostler all of English origin and descent, but that the entire village appeared to be populated by people of English extraction.

The butcher was a Englishman, the blacksmith was a c.o.c.kney answering to the name of 'Enry Ide, the cobbler was from South Devon somewhere, and the parson was an undergraduate of Oxford. The farmers were mostly Scotch, and the village store-keeper was David Macpherson. The driver of the stage was an Irishman, and the s.e.xton of the pretty church on the hill was an odd product of that odd corner of the world known as the Isle of Man. Certainly the two brothers found and made themselves at home. Milly perhaps was the only native Canadian that came in their way.

It was a thoroughly British settlement, and it is a noteworthy fact that the only well-to-do man in the place was an American. It was he who lived in the square, red brick house with white blinds always pulled down, even in soft welcome spring days, and with plaster casts of lions and deer couchant on futile little wooden pedestals in the garden. It was he who owned the new and prosperous mill which had superseded the worn-out one lower down the stream, the old mill that the artists loved, and that reminded the Mr. Foxley's of home. It was he who owned the only family carriage in the neighborhood, other people had "buggies." It was his daughter who had been sent to New York for her education--who now appeared in church on Sundays, in muslin costumes garnished with a greater number of yards of ribbons in myriads of bows and ends than the village store had ever possessed at one time in its life. It was he who once or twice a year walked as far as the Inn and sitting down stiffly in the stiff dining room would hold a short conversation with the landlady on village matters and subjects in general. On these occasions the good woman was secretly amused and not a little bored. She knew gentlemen when she saw them and he was not one--that is, he was not one according to her knowledge of types. The aristocracy of money was as yet a phase unknown to her simple English mind accustomed to move in traditional and accepted groves. So not much interchange of civilities took place between the mill and the Inn. Not for Mr. Simon P. Rattray did the oleanders blossom in the big green tubs and the wall-flowers and mignonette in the windows. Not for him did the Jessamine climb and the one hawthorn tree at the back gate leading to the orchard yield its sweet white May, not for him did the tall clock strike and the parrot talk. Talk!! Why, the only time the creature was ever known to be quiet was when Mr. Simon P. Rattray made his portentous visits twice or three times a year. And as for the hidden sweetness of the drawing-room or the comforts of the kitchen or the fascinations of the bar, Mr. Simon P.

Rattray knew nothing whatever about them. He was a total abstainer you see, and the blue ribbon appeared in his b.u.t.tonhole on certain important ceremonial days and even on Sundays, and he was known to be interested in the fortunes of a cold, dismal little place built of plaster and presided over by a male Methodist just outside the village limits, known as a "Temperance Hotel." It will be easily gathered that the advent of the Mr. Foxleys did not affect the fortunes of such a person as Mr. Simon P. Rattray, nor was their subsequent career as residents in Ipswich affected in any way by his existence, prejudices or peculiarities. But to the remaining portions of the village, their arrival proved full of interest The landlady took them to her heart at once. They were _gentlemen_, she said, and that was enough for her. Her son, a heavy lout, unlike his mother, accepted them as he did everything and everybody by remaining outwardly profoundly unconscious of their existence; the hostler adored them, especially Mr. Joseph; when the latter was there, which he was every Sat.u.r.day till Monday, he would stroll over the stable with Squires--that was the hostler's name--joking incessantly, and treating the latter to an occasional cigar. Urbane Mr. Joseph would joke with anybody, Mr. George was more severe and had according to the landlady, the most perfect and distinguished manners.

"What they call _hawtoor_ in the Family Herald," she told Milly, "only I never see it gone too far with." Milly of course was in love with them both.

In time, the entire village succ.u.mbed to the charms of the Mr. Foxleys.

The parson called, accompanied by his eldest daughter who was the organist of the choir and chief promoter of the Sunday-school. They found the objects of their social consideration seated outside the kitchen in the little paved yard that had rapidly grown dear. When the brothers appeared upstairs in the drawing-room into which rose-scented and chintz-hung apartment the reverend Mr. and Miss had been shown in appreciation of their station, Mr. Joseph had tuned his laughing eye to a decorum as new as it was unnatural. It was a hot day in August and Mr.

George was so excessively languid and long and speechless that but for his brother conversation would have been an impossibility. But he and the parson soon discovered mutual friends at home, a cousin in the Engineers, and a friendly coach at the University.

"Charles James Foxley? Oh! I knew him well, very well" said the Rev. Mr.

Higgs, referring to the latter. "It is a somewhat--ah--unusual name.

The only other time I remember meeting with the name was once--let me see--it was a meet, I think, at Foxley Manor, in Derbyshire it was, and a very beautiful place."

"In Nottinghamshire," said Mr. Joseph smiling. "Yes, that is--or was--our home. My father still resides there."

"Indeed?" said Mr. ----. "Is it possible! And you have come out here?

Really, it is most interesting, most fortunate that you should have chosen our little village, should have pitched your tent so to speak--ah! quite so."

"My brother likes the country," said Mr. Joseph.