Life In The Backwoods Part 10

"But a gentleman might. Mr. Malcolm. I should be sorry to consider you in any other light."

"Ah, you are such a prude--so methodistical--you make no allowance for circ.u.mstances! Surely, in the woods we may dispense with the hypocritical, conventional forms of society, and speak and act as we please."

"So you seem to think; but you see the result."

"I have never been used to the society of ladies, and cannot fashion my words to please them; and I won't, that's more!" he muttered to himself, as he strode off to Moodie in the field. I wished from my very heart that he was once more on the deck of his piratical South American craft.

One night he insisted on going out in the canoe to spear muskinonge with Moodie. The evening turned out very chill and foggy, and, before twelve, they returned, with only one fish, and half frozen with cold. Malcolm had got twinges of rheumatism, and he fussed, and sulked, and swore, and quarrelled with every body and every thing, until Moodie, who was highly amused by his petulance, advised him to go to his bed, and pray for the happy restoration of his temper.

"Temper!" he cried, "I don't believe there's a good-tempered person in the world. It's all hypocrisy! I never had a good temper! My mother was an ill-tempered woman, and ruled my father, who was a confoundedly severe, domineering man. I was born in an ill temper. I was an ill-tempered child; I grew up an ill-tempered man. I feel worse than ill tempered now, and when I die it will be in an ill temper."

"Well," quoth I, "Moodie has made you a tumbler of hot punch, which may help to drive out the cold and the ill temper, and cure the rheumatism."

"Ay; your husband's a good fellow, and worth two of you, Mrs. Moodie.

He makes some allowance for the weakness of Human nature, and can excuse even my ill temper."

I did not choose to bandy words with him, and the next day the unfortunate creature was shaking with the ague. A more intractable, outrageous, _im_-patient I never had the ill fortune to nurse. During the cold fit, he did nothing but swear at the cold, and wished himself roasting; and during the fever, he swore at the heat, and wished that he was sitting, in no other garment than his shirt, on the north side of an iceberg. And when the fit at last left him, he got up, and ate such quant.i.ties of fat pork, and drank so much whiskey-punch, that you would have imagined he had just arrived from a long journey, and had not tasted food for a couple of days.

He would not believe that fishing in the cold night-air upon the water had made him ill, but raved that it was all my fault for having laid my baby down on his bed while it was shaking with the ague.

Yet, if there were the least tenderness mixed up in his iron nature, it was the affection he displayed for that young child. Dunbar was just twenty months old, with bright, dark eyes, dimpled cheeks, and soft, flowing, golden hair, which fell round his infant face in rich curls.

The merry, confiding little creature formed such a contrast to his own surly, unyielding temper, that, perhaps, that very circ.u.mstance made the bond of union between them. When in the house, the little boy was seldom out of his arms, and whatever were Malcolm's faults, he had none in the eyes of the child, who used to cling around his neck, and kiss his rough, unshaven cheeks with the greatest fondness.

"If I could afford it, Moodie," he said one day to my husband, "I should like to marry. I want some one upon whom I could vent my affections."

And wanting that some one in the form of woman, he contented himself with venting them upon the child.

As the spring advanced, and after Jacob left us, he seemed ashamed of sitting in the house doing nothing, and therefore undertook to make us a garden, or "to make garden," as the Canadians term preparing a few vegetables for the season. I procured the necessary seeds, and watched with no small surprise the industry with which our strange visitor commenced operations. He repaired the broken fence, dug the ground with the greatest care, and laid it out with a skill and neatness of which I had believed him perfectly incapable. In less than three weeks, the whole plot presented a very pleasing prospect, and he was really elated by his success.

"At any rate," said he, "we shall no longer be starved on bad flour and potatoes. We shall have peas, and beans, and beets, and carrots, and cabbage in abundance; besides the plot I have reserved for cuc.u.mbers and melons."

"Ah," thought I, "does he, indeed, mean to stay with us until the melons are ripe?" and my heart died within me, for he not only was a great additional expense, but he gave a great deal of additional trouble, and entirely robbed us of all privacy, as our very parlour was converted into a bedroom for his accommodation; besides that, a man of his singularly dirty habits made a very disagreeable inmate.

The only redeeming point in his character, in my eyes, was his love for Dunbar. I could not entirely hate a man who was so fondly attached to my child. To the two little girls he was very cross, and often chased them from him with blows. He had, too, an odious way of finding fault with every thing. I never could cook to please him; and he tried in the most malicious way to induce Moodie to join in his complaints. All his schemes to make strife between us, however, failed, and were generally visited upon himself. In no way did he ever seek to render me the least a.s.sistance. Shortly after Jacob left us, Mary Price was offered higher wages by a family at Peterborough, and for some time I was left with four little children, and without a servant. Moodie always milked the cows, because I never could overcome my fear of cattle; and though I had occasionally milked when there was no one else in the way, it was in fear and trembling.

Moodie had to go down to Peterborough; but before he went, he begged Malcolm to bring me what water and wood I required, and to stand by the cattle while I milked the cows, and he would himself be home before night. He started at six in the morning, and I got the pail to go and milk. Malcolm was lying upon his bed, reading.

"Mr. Malcolm, will you be so kind as to go with me to the fields for a few minutes while I milk?"

"Yes!" (then, with a sulky frown,)--"but I want to finish what I am reading."

"I will not detain you long."

"Oh, no! I suppose about an hour. You are a shocking bad milker."

"True; I never went near a cow until I came to this country; and I have never been able to overcome my fear of them."

"More shame for you! A farmer's wife, and afraid of a cow! Why, these little children would laugh at you."

I did not reply, nor would I ask him again. I walked slowly to the field, and my indignation made me forget my fear. I had just finished milking, and with a br.i.m.m.i.n.g pail was preparing to climb the fence and return to the house, when a very wild ox we had came running with headlong speed from the wood. All my fears were alive again in a moment.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the pail, and, instead of climbing the fence and getting to the house, I ran with all the speed I could command down the steep hill towards the lake sh.o.r.e, my feet caught in a root of the many stumps in the path, and I fell to the ground, my pail rolling many yards ahead of me. Every drop of my milk was spilt upon the gra.s.s. The ox pa.s.sed on. I gathered myself up and returned home. Malcolm was very fond of new milk, and he came to me at the door.

"Hi! hi!--Where's the milk?"

"No milk for the poor children to-day," said I, showing him the inside of the pail, with a sorrowful shake of the head, for it was no small loss to them and me.

"How the devil's that? So you were afraid to milk the cows. Come away, and I will keep off the buggaboos."

"I did milk them--no thanks to your kindness, Mr. Malcolm--but--"

"But what?"

"The ox frightened me, and I fell and spilt all the milk."

"Whew! Now don't go and tell your husband that it was all my fault; if you had had a little patience, I would have come when you asked me, but I don't choose to be dictated to, and I won't be made a slave by you or any one else."

"Then why do you stay, sir, where you consider yourself so treated?"

said I. "We are all obliged to work to obtain bread; we give you the best share--surely the return we ask for it is but small."

"You make me feel my obligations to you when you ask me to do any thing; if you left it to my better feelings we should get on better."

"Perhaps you are right. I will never ask you to do any thing for me in future."

"Oh, now, that's all mock humility. In spite of the tears in your eyes, you are as angry with me as ever; but don't go to make mischief between me and Moodie. If you'll say nothing about my refusing to go with you, I'll milk the cows for you myself to-night."

"And can you milk?" said I, with some curiosity.

"Milk! Yes; and if I were not so confoundedly low-spirited and ---- lazy, I could do a thousand other things too. But now, don't say a word about it to Moodie."

I made no promise; but my respect for him was not increased by his cowardly fear of reproof from Moodie, who treated him with a kindness and consideration which he did not deserve. The afternoon turned out very wet, and I was sorry that I should be troubled with his company all day in the house. I was making a shirt for Moodie from some cotton that had been sent me from home, and he placed himself by the side of the stove, just opposite, and continued to regard me for a long time with his usual sullen stare. I really felt half afraid of him.

"Don't you think me mad?" said he. "I have a brother deranged; he got a stroke of the sun in India, and lost his senses in consequence; but sometimes I think it runs in the family."

What answer could I give to this speech, but mere evasive commonplace?

"You won't say what you really think," he continued; "I know you hate me, and that makes me dislike you. Now what would you say if I told you I had committed a murder, and that it was the recollection of that circ.u.mstance that made me at times so restless and unhappy?"

I looked up in his face, not knowing what to believe.

"'Tis fact," said he, nodding his head; and I hoped that he would not go mad, like his brother, and kill me.

"Come, I'll tell you all about it; I know the world would laugh at me for calling such an act _murder_; and yet I have been such a miserable man ever since, that I _feel_ it was.

"There was a noted leader among the rebel Buenos-Ayreans, whom the government wanted much to get hold of. He was a fine, dashing, handsome fellow; I had often seen him, but we never came to close quarters. One night, I was lying wrapped up in my poncho at the bottom of my boat, which was rocking in the surf, waiting for two of my men, who were gone on sh.o.r.e. There came to the sh.o.r.e, this man and one of his people, and they stood so near the boat, which I suppose they thought empty, that I could distinctly hear their conversation. I suppose it was the devil who tempted me to put a bullet through that man's heart. He was an enemy to the flag under which I fought, but he was no enemy to me--I had no right to become his executioner; but still the desire to kill him, for the mere deviltry of the thing, came so strongly upon me that I no longer tried to resist it. I rose slowly upon my knees; the moon was shining very bright at the time, both he and his companion were too earnestly engaged to see me, and I deliberately shot him through the body. He fell with a heavy groan back into the water; but I caught the last look he threw up to the moonlight skies before his eyes glazed in death. Oh, that look!--so full of despair, of unutterable anguish; it haunts me yet--it will haunt me for ever. I would not have cared if I had killed him in strife--but in cold blood, and he so unsuspicious of his doom!

Yes, it was murder; I know by this constant tugging at my heart that it was murder. What do you say to it?"

"I should think as you do, Mr. Malcolm. It is a terrible thing to take away the life of a fellow-creature without the least provocation."

"Ah! I knew you would blame me; but he was an enemy after all; I had a right to kill him; I was hired by the government under whom I served to kill him: and who shall condemn me?"