Roughing It in the Bush Part 13

During my stay at the hotel, I took a dress out of my trunk, and hung it up upon a peg in my chamber, in order to remove the creases it had received from close packing. Returning from a walk in the afternoon, I found a note upon my dressing table, inviting us to spend the evening with a clergyman's family in the village; and as it was nearly time to dress, I went to the peg to take down my gown.

Was it a dream?--the gown was gone. I re-opened the trunk, to see if I had replaced it; I searched every corner of the room, but all in vain; nowhere could I discover the thing I sought. What had become of it? The question was a delicate one, which I did not like to put to the young ladies of the truly respectable establishment; still, the loss was great, and at that moment very inconvenient. While I was deliberating on what course to pursue, Miss S--- entered the room.

"I guess you missed your dress," she said, with a smile.

"Do you know where it is?"

"Oh, sure. Miss L---, the dressmaker, came in just after you left.

She is a very particular friend of mine, and I showed her your dress. She admired it above all things, and borrowed it, to get the pattern for Miss R---'s wedding dress. She promised to return it to-morrow."

"Provoking! I wanted it to-night. Who ever heard of borrowing a person's dress without the leave of the owner? Truly, this is a free-and-easy country!"

One very severe winter night, a neighbour borrowed of me a blanket--it was one of my best--for the use of a stranger who was pa.s.sing the night at her house. I could not well refuse; but at that time, the world pressed me sore, and I could ill spare it. Two years elapsed, and I saw no more of my blanket; at length I sent a note to the lady, requesting it to be returned. I got a very short answer back, and the blanket, alas! worn threadbare; the borrower stating that she had sent the article, but really she did not know what to do without it, as she wanted it to cover the children's bed. She certainly forgot that I, too, had children, who wanted covering as well as her own. But I have said so much of the ill results of others' borrowing, that I will close this sketch by relating my own experience in this way.

After removing to the bush, many misfortunes befel us, which deprived us of our income, and reduced us to great poverty. In fact we were strangers, and the knowing ones took us in; and for many years we struggled with hardships which would have broken stouter hearts than ours, had not our trust been placed in the Almighty, who among all our troubles never wholly deserted us.

While my husband was absent on the frontier during the rebellion, my youngest boy fell very sick, and required my utmost care, both by night and day. To attend to him properly, a candle burning during the night was necessary. The last candle was burnt out; I had no money to buy another, and no fat from which I could make one. I hated borrowing; but, for the dear child's sake, I overcame my scruples, and succeeded in procuring a candle from a good neighbour, but with strict injunctions (for it was HER LAST), that I must return it if I did not require it during the night.

I went home quite grateful with my prize. It was a clear moonlight night--the dear boy was better, so I told old Jenny, my Irish servant, to go to bed, as I would lie down in my clothes by the child, and if he were worse I would get up and light the candle. It happened that a pane of gla.s.s was broken out of the window frame, and I had supplied its place by fitting in a shingle; my friend Emilia S--- had a large Tom-cat, who, when his mistress was absent, often paid me a predatory or borrowing visit; and Tom had a practice of pushing in this wooden pane, in order to pursue his lawless depredations. I had forgotten all this, and never dreaming that Tom would appropriate such light food, I left the candle lying in the middle of the table, just under the window.

Between sleeping and waking, I heard the pane gently pushed in.

The thought instantly struck me that it was Tom, and that, for lack of something better, he might steal my precious candle.

I sprang up from the bed, just in time to see him dart through the broken window, dragging the long white candle after him. I flew to the door, and pursued him half over the field, but all to no purpose. I can see him now, as I saw him then, scampering away for dear life, with his prize trailing behind him, gleaming like a silver tail in the bright light of the moon.

Ah! never did I feel more acutely the truth of the proverb, "Those that go a-borrowing go a-sorrowing," than I did that night. My poor boy awoke ill and feverish, and I had no light to a.s.sist him, or even to look into his sweet face, to see how far I dared hope that the light of day would find him better.

OH CANADA! THY GLOOMY WOODS

A song

Oh Canada! thy gloomy woods Will never cheer the heart; The murmur of thy mighty floods But cause fresh tears to start From those whose fondest wishes rest Beyond the distant main; Who, 'mid the forests of the West, Sigh for their homes again.

I, too, have felt the chilling blight Their shadows cast on me, My thought by day--my dream by night-- Was of my own country.

But independent souls will brave All hardships to be free; No more I weep to cross the wave, My native land to see.

But ever as a thought most bless'd, Her distant sh.o.r.es will rise, In all their spring-tide beauty dress'd.

To cheer my mental eyes.

And treasured in my inmost heart, The friends I left behind; But reason's voice, that bade us part, Now bids me be resign'd.

I see my children round me play, My husband's smiles approve; I dash regretful tears away, And lift my thoughts above: In humble grat.i.tude to bless The Almighty hand that spread Our table in the wilderness, And gave my infants bread.

CHAPTER VI

OLD SATAN AND TOM WILSON'S NOSE

"A nose, kind sir! Sure mother Nature, With all her freaks, ne'er formed this feature.

If such were mine, I'd try and trade it, And swear the G.o.ds had never made it."

After reducing the log cabin into some sort of order, we contrived, with the aid of a few boards, to make a bed-closet for poor Tom Wilson, who continued to shake every day with the pitiless ague.

There was no way of admitting light and air into this domicile, which opened into the general apartment, but through a square hole cut in one of the planks, just wide enough to admit a man's head through the aperture. Here we made Tom a comfortable bed on the floor, and did the best we could to nurse him through his sickness.

His long, thin face, emaciated with disease, and surrounded by huge black whiskers, and a beard of a week's growth, looked perfectly unearthly. He had only to stare at the baby to frighten her almost out of her wits.

"How fond that young one is of me," he would say; "she cries for joy at the sight of me."

Among his curiosities, and he had many, he held in great esteem a huge nose, made hollow to fit his face, which his father, a being almost as eccentric as himself, had carved out of boxwood. When he slipped this nose over his own (which was no beautiful cla.s.sical specimen of a nasal organ), it made a most perfect and hideous disguise. The mother who bore him never would have recognised her accomplished son.

Numberless were the tricks he played off with this nose. Once he walked through the streets of ---, with this proboscis attached to his face. "What a nose! Look at the man with the nose!" cried all the boys in the street. A party of Irish emigrants pa.s.sed at the moment. The men, with the courtesy natural to their nation, forbore to laugh in the gentleman's face; but after they had pa.s.sed, Tom looked back, and saw them bent half double in convulsions of mirth.

Tom made the party a low bow, gravely took off his nose, and put it in his pocket.

The day after this frolic, he had a very severe fit of the ague, and looked so ill that I really entertained fears for his life. The hot fit had just left him, and he lay upon his bed bedewed with a cold perspiration, in a state of complete exhaustion.

"Poor Tom," said I, "he has pa.s.sed a horrible day, but the worst is over, and I will make him a cup of coffee." While preparing it, Old Satan came in and began to talk to my husband. He happened to sit directly opposite the aperture which gave light and air to Tom's berth. This man was disgustingly ugly. He had lost one eye in a quarrel. It had been gouged out in the barbarous conflict, and the side of his face presented a succession of horrible scars inflicted by the teeth of his savage adversary. The nickname he had acquired through the country sufficiently testified to the respectability of his character, and dreadful tales were told of him in the neighbourhood, where he was alike feared and hated.

The rude fellow, with his accustomed insolence, began abusing the old country folks.

The English were great bullies, he said; they thought no one could fight but themselves; but the Yankees had whipped them, and would whip them again. He was not afear'd of them, he never was afear'd in his life.

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when a horrible apparition presented itself to his view. Slowly rising from his bed, and putting on the fict.i.tious nose, while he drew his white nightcap over his ghastly and livid brow, Tom thrust his face through the aperture, and uttered a diabolical cry; then sank down upon his unseen couch as noiselessly as he had arisen. The cry was like nothing human, and it was echoed by an involuntary scream from the lips of our maid-servant and myself.

"Good G.o.d! what's that?" cried Satan, falling back in his chair, and pointing to the vacant aperture. "Did you hear it? did you see it?

It beats the universe. I never saw a ghost or the devil before!"

Moodie, who had recognised the ghost, and greatly enjoyed the fun, pretended profound ignorance, and coolly insinuated that Old Satan had lost his senses. The man was bewildered; he stared at the vacant aperture, then at us in turn, as if he doubted the accuracy of his own vision. "'Tis tarnation odd," he said; "but the women heard it too."

"I heard a sound," I said, "a dreadful sound, but I saw no ghost."

"Sure an' 'twas himsel'," said my lowland Scotch girl, who now perceived the joke; "he was a-seeken' to gie us puir bodies a wee fricht."

"How long have you been subject to these sort of fits?" said I. "You had better speak to the doctor about them. Such fancies, if they are not attended to, often end in madness."

"Mad!" (very indignantly) "I guess I'm not mad, but as wide awake as you are. Did I not see it with my own eyes? And then the noise--I could not make such a tarnation outcry to save my life. But be it man or devil, I don't care, I'm not afear'd," doubling his fist very undecidedly at the hole. Again the ghastly head was protruded--the dreadful eyes rolled wildly in their hollow sockets, and a yell more appalling than the former rang through the room. The man sprang from his chair, which he overturned in his fright, and stood for an instant with his one-eyeball starting from his head, and glaring upon the spectre; his cheeks deadly pale; the cold perspiration streaming from his face; his lips dissevered, and his teeth chattering in his head.

"There--there--there. Look--look, it comes again!--the devil!--the devil!"

Here Tom, who still kept his eyes fixed upon his victim, gave a knowing wink, and thrust his tongue out of his mouth.

"He is coming!--he is coming!" cried the affrighted wretch; and clearing the open doorway with one leap, he fled across the field at full speed. The stream intercepted his path--he pa.s.sed it at a bound, plunged into the forest, and was out of sight.

"Ha, ha, ha!" chuckled poor Tom, sinking down exhausted on his bed.

"Oh that I had strength to follow up my advantage, I would lead Old Satan such a chase that he should think his namesake was in truth behind him."