My Brave and Gallant Gentleman Part 21

Canned milk, canned beef, canned beans, canned salmon, canned crabs, canned well-nigh-everything; bottled fruits, bottled pickles, bottled jams and jellies, everything bottled that was not canned; bags of sugar, flour, meal, potatoes, oats and chicken feed; hardware galore, axes, hammers, wedges, peevies, cant hoops, picks, shovels, nails, paints, brooms, brushes and a thousand other commodities and contrivances the like of which I never saw before and hope never to see again.

Never, in all my humble existence, did I feel so clerky as I did then.

I checked the beastly stuff off as well as I could, taking the Vancouver wholesalers' word for the names of half the things, for I was quite sure they knew better than I did about them.

With the a.s.sistance of Jake, as "hander-up," I set the goods in a semblance of order on the shelves and about the store.

We worked and slaved as if it were the last day and our eternal happiness depended on our finishing the job before the last trump sounded its blast of dissolution.

By the last stroke of twelve, midnight, we had the front veranda swept clean of straw, paper and excelsior, and all empty boxes cleared away; just in time to welcome the advent of my first Sabbath day in the Canadian West.

Throughout our arduous afternoon and evening, what a surprise old Jake was to me! Well I knew that he was hard and tough from years of strenuous battling with the northern elements; but that he, at his age and with his record for hard drinking, should be able to keep up the sustained effort against a young man in his prime and that he should do so cheerfully and without a word of complaint,--save an occasional grunt when the steel bands around some of the boxes proved recalcitrant, and an explosive, picturesque oath when the end of a large case dropped over on his toes,--was, to me, little short of marvellous.

Already, I was beginning to think that Mr. K. B. Horsfal had erred in regard to his man and that it was Jake Meaghan who was twenty-four carat gold.

If any man ever did deserve two breakfast cups brimful of whisky, neat, before turning in, it was old, walrus-moustached, weather-battered, baby-eyed, sour-dough Jake, in the small, early hours of that Sabbath morning.

I slept that night like a dead thing, and the sun was high in the heavens before I opened my eyes and became conscious again of my surroundings.

I looked over at the clock. Fifteen minutes past ten! I threw my legs over the side of the bed, ashamed of my sluggardliness.

Then I remembered,--it was Sunday morning.

Oh! glorious remembering! Sunday,---with nothing to do but attend to my own bodily comforts.

I pulled my legs back into the bed in order to start the day correctly.

I lay and stretched myself, then, very leisurely,--always remembering that it was the Sabbath,--I put one foot out and then the other, until, at last, I stood on the floor, really and truly up and awake.

Jake had been around. I could see traces of him in the yard, though he was nowhere visible in the flesh.

After I had breakfasted and made my bed (I know little Maisie Brant, who used to make my bed away back over in the old home--little Maisie who had wept at my departure, would have laughed till she wept again, had she seen my woful endeavours to straighten out my sheets and smooth my pillow. But then, she was not there to see and laugh and--I was quite satisfied with my handiwork and satisfied that I would be able to sleep soundly in the bed when the night should come again)--I hunted the shelves for a book.

Stevenson, Poe, Scott, Hugo, Wells, Barrie, Dumas, Twain, Emerson, Byron, Longfellow, Burns,--which should it be?

Back along the line I went, and chose--oh, well!--an old favourite I had read many times before.

I hunted out a hammock and slung it comfortably from the posts on the front veranda, where I could lie and smoke and read; also where I could look away across the Bay and rest my eyes on the quiet scene when they should grow weary.

Late in the afternoon, when I was beginning to grow tired of my indolence, I heard the thud, thud of a gasoline launch as it came up the Bay. It pa.s.sed between Rita's Isle and the wharf, and held on, turning in to Jake Meaghan's cove.

I wondered who the visitor could be, then I went back to my reading.

Not long after, a shadow fell across my book and I jumped up.

"Pray, don't let me disturb you, my son," said a soft, well-modulated, masculine voice. "Stay where you are. Enjoy your well-earned rest."

A little, frail-looking, pale-faced, elderly gentleman was at my elbow.

He smiled at me with the smile of an angel, and my heart went out to him at once, so much so that I could have hugged him in my arms.

"My name is William Auld," he continued. "I am the medical missionary.

What is yours, my son?"

He held out his hand to me.

"George Bremner," I replied, gripping his. "Let me bring you a chair."

I went inside, and when I returned he was turning over the leaves of my book.

"So you are a book lover?" he mused. "Well, I would to G.o.d more men were book lovers, for then the world would be a better place to live in, or rather, the men in it would be better to live among.

"Victor Hugo,--'Les Miserables'!--" he went on. "To my mind, the greatest of all novelists and the greatest of all novels."

He laid the book aside, and sought my confidences, not as a preacher, not as a pedagog, but as a friend; making no effort to probe my past, seeking no secrets; but all anxiety for my welfare; keen to know my ambitions, my aspirations, my pastimes and my habits of living; open and frank in telling me of himself. He was a man's man, with the experience of men that one gets only by years of close contact.

"For twenty years it has been G.o.d's will to allow me to travel up and down this beloved coast and minister to those who need me."

"You must like the work, sir," I ventured.

"Like it!--oh! yes, yes,---I would not exchange my post for the City Temple of London, England."

"But such toil must be arduous, Mr. Auld, for you are not a young man and you do not look altogether a robust one."

He paused in meditation. "It is arduous, sometimes;--to-day I have talked to the men at eight camps and I have visited fourteen families at different points on my journey. But, if I were to stop, who would look after my beloved people in the ranches all up the coast; who would care for my easily-led, simple-hearted brethren in the logging camps, every one of whom knows me, confides in me and looks forward to my coming; not one of whom but would part with his coat for me, not one who would harm a hair of my head. I shall not stop, Mr. Bremner,--I have no desire to stop, not till G.o.d calls me.

"I see you have been making changes even in your short time here," he said, pointing to the store.

"Yes! I think Jake and I did fairly well yesterday," I answered, not a little proudly.

"Splendidly, my boy! And, do you know,--your coming here means a great deal. It is the commencement of a new departure, for your store is going to prove a great boon to the settlers. They have been talking about it and looking forward to it ever since it was first mooted.

"But it will not be altogether smooth sailing for you, for you must keep a close rein on your credit."

It struck me, as he spoke, that he was the very man I was desirous of meeting regarding what I considered would prove my stumbling block.

"Can you spare me half an hour, sir, and have tea with me?" I asked.

"Yes! gladly, for my day's service is over,--all but one call, and a cup of tea is always refreshing."

I showed him inside and set him in my cosiest chair. While I busied with the table things,--washing some dishes as a usual preliminary,--I approached the subject.

"Mr. Auld,--I wished to ask your advice, for I am sure you can a.s.sist me. My employer, Mr. Horsfal, has given me a free hand regarding credit to the settlers. I know none of them and I am afraid that, without guidance, I may offend some or land the business in trouble with others. Will you help me, sir?"

"Why--of course, I'll help."

He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and commenced to write, talking to me as he did so.

"You know, if times are at all good, you can trust the average man who owns the ranch he lives on to pay his grocery bills sooner or later.

Still, if I were you, I wouldn't let any of them get into debt more than sixty or seventy dollars, for they do not require to, and, once they get in arrears, they have difficulty in getting out.