Two Knapsacks Part 14

Looking back towards the ascent, he perceived two bowed figures struggling up the hill under largish, and, apparently, not very light burdens.

"Wilks, my dear, we're young and vigorous, and down there are two poor old grannies laden like pack mules in this broiling sun. Let us leave our knapsacks here, and give them a hoist."

The schoolmaster willingly a.s.sented, and followed his friend, who flew down the hill at breakneck speed, in a rapid but more sober manner. The old couple looked up with some astonishment at a well-dressed city man tearing down the hill towards them like a schoolboy, but their astonishment turned to warmest grat.i.tude, that found vent in many thankful expressions, as the lawyer shouldered the old lady's big bundle, and, as, a minute later, the dominie relieved her partner of his. They naturally fell into pairs, the husband and Wilkinson leading, Coristine and the wife following after. In different ways the elderly pair told their twin burden-bearers the same story of their farm some distance below the western slope of the mountain, of their son at home and their two daughters out at service, and mentioned the fact that they had both been schoolteachers, but, as they said with apologetic humility, only on third-cla.s.s county certificates. Old Mr. Hill insisted on getting his load back when the top of the mountain was reached, and the pedestrians resumed their knapsacks and staves, but the lawyer utterly refused to surrender his bundle to the old lady's entreaties.

The sometime schoolteachers were intelligent, very well read in Cowper, Pollock, and Sir Walter Scott, as well as in the Bible, and withal possessed of a fair sense of humour. The old lady and Coristine were a perpetual feast to one another. "Sure!" said he, "it's bagmen the ignorant creatures have taken us for more than once, and it's a genuine one I am now, Mrs. Hill," at which the good woman laughed, and recited the Scotch ballad of the "Wee Wif.u.kie coming frae the fair," who fell asleep, when "by came a packman wi' a little pack," and relieved her of her purse and placks, and "clippit a' her gowden locks sae bonnie and sae lang." This she did in excellent taste, leaving out any objectionable expressions in the original. When she repeated the words of the Wif.u.kie at the end of each verse, "This is nae me," consequent on her discovery that curls and money were gone, the lawyer laughed heartily, causing the pair in front, who were discussing educational matters, to look round for the cause of the merriment. "I'm the man,"

shouted Coristine to them, "the packman wi' a little pack." Then Mr.

Hill knew what it was.

CHAPTER V.

Conversation with the Hills--Tobacco--Rural Hospitality--The Deipnosophist and Gastronomic Dilemma--Mr. Hill's Courtship--William Rufus rouses the Dominie's Ire--Sleep--The Real Rufus--Acts as Guide--Rawdon Discussed--The Sluggard Farmer--The Teamsters--The Wasps--A Difference of Opinion.

It was very pleasant for all four, the walk down the mountain road; and the pedestrians enjoyed the scenery all the more with intelligent guides to point out places of interest. The old schoolteacher, having questioned Wilkinson as to his avocation, looked upon him as a superior being, and gratified the little corner of good-natured vanity that lies in most teachers' hearts. Coristine told the wife that he trusted her daughters had good places, where they would receive the respect due to young women of such upbringing; and she replied:--

"O yes, sir, they are both in one family, the family of Squire Carruthers in Flanders. Tryphena is the eldest; she's twenty-five, and is cook and milker and helps with the washing. Tryphosa is only twenty, and attends to the other duties of the house. Mrs. Carruthers is not above helping in all the work herself, so that she knows how to treat her maids properly. Still, I am anxious about them."

"Nothing wrong with their health, I hope?" asked the lawyer.

"No, sir; in a bodily way they enjoy excellent health."

"Pardon me, Mrs. Hill," interrupted Coristine, "for saying that your perfectly correct expression calls up that of a friend of mine. Meeting an old college professor, very stiff and precise in manner and language, he had occasion to tell him that, as a student, he had enjoyed very poor health. 'I do not know about the enjoying of it, sir,' he answered, 'but I know your health was very poor.' Ha, ha! but I interrupted you."

"I was going to say, sir, that I have never been ambitious, save to keep a good name and live a humbly useful life, with food convenient for me, as Agur, the son of Jakeh, says in the Book of Proverbs, in which, I suppose, he included clothing and shelter, but I did hope my girls would look higher than the Pilgrims."

"You don't mean John Bunyan's Christian and Christiana, and Great Heart, and the rest of them?"

"Oh, no!" replied the old lady, laughing, "mine are living characters, quite unknown to the readers of books, Sylva.n.u.s and Timotheus, the sons of old Saul Pilgrim."

"Oh, that's their name, is it? The Crew never told me his surname, nor did Captain Thomas."

"You know Sylva.n.u.s' captain, then? But, has he many sailors besides Pilgrim?"

"No; that's why I call him The Crew. It's like a Scotch song, 'The Kitty of Loch Goil,' that goes:--

For a' oor haill ship's companie, Was twa laddy and a poy, prave poys

Sylva.n.u.s is The Crew, who goes on a cruise, like Crusoe. O, do forgive me, Mrs. Hill, for so forgetting myself; we have been so long away from ladies' society," which, considering the circ.u.mstances of the preceding day, was hardly an ingenuous statement.

"I am not so troubled about the elder Pilgrim and Tryphena," continued the old lady, "because Tryphena is getting up a little in years for the country; I believe they marry later in the city, Mr. Coristine?"

"O yes, always, very much, I'm sure," answered the lawyer, confusedly.

"Tryphena is getting up, and--well, she takes after her father in looks, but will make any man a good wife. Then the elder Pilgrim has good morals, and is affectionate, soft I should be disposed to call him; and he has regular employment all the year round, though often away from home. He has money saved and in the bank, and has a hundred-acre farm in the back country somewhere. He says, if Tryphena refuses him, he will continue to risk his life among the perils of the deep, by which the silly fellow means Lake Simcoe." Here the quondam schoolmistress broke into a pleasant laugh that had once been musical.

"And Miss Tryphosa, did I understand you to say you apprehend anything in her quarter from the Pilgrims?" enquired Coristine.

"Please say Tryphosa, sir; I do not think that young girls in service should be miss'd."

"But they are very much missed when they go away and get married; don't grudge me my little joke, Mrs. Hill."

"I would not grudge you anything so poor," she replied, shaking a forefinger at the blushing lawyer. "You are right in supposing I apprehend danger to Tryphosa from the younger Pilgrim. She is--well, something like what I was when I was young, and she is only a child yet, though well grown. Then, this younger Pilgrim has neither money nor farm; besides, I am told, that he has imbibed infidel notions, and has lately become the inmate of a disreputable country tavern. If you had a daughter, sir, would you not tremble to think of her linking her lot with so worthless a character?" Before the lawyer could reply, the old man called back: "Mother, I think you had better give the gentleman a rest; he must be tired of hearing your tongue go like a cow-bell in fly time." Coristine protested, but his companion declined to continue the conversation.

"The mistress is as proud of wagging that old tongue of hers," remarked the dominie's companion, "as if she had half the larnin' of the country, and she no more nor a third cla.s.s county certificut."

"Many excellent teachers have begun on them," remarked Wilkinson.

"But she begun and ended there; the next certificut she got was a marriage one, and, in a few years, she had a cla.s.s in her own house to tache and slipper."

"Your wife seems to be a very superior woman, Mr. Hill."

"That's where the shoe pinches me. Shuparior! it's that she thinks herself, and looks down on my book larnin' that's as good as her own.

But, I'll tell ye, sir, I've read Shakespeare and she hasn't, not a word."

"How is that?"

"Her folks were a sort of Lutherian Dutch they call Brethren. They're powerful strict, and think it a mortal sin to touch a card or read a play. My own folks were what they called black-mouthed Prosbytarians, from the north of Ireland, but aijewcation made me liberal-minded. It never had that effect on the mistress, although her own taycher was an old Scotch wife that spent her time tayching the childer Scott, and Pollok's 'Course of Time,' and old Scotch ballads like that Packman one she was reciting to your friend. Now, I larnt my boys and gyurls, when I was school tayching, some pieces of Shakespeare, and got them to declaim at the school exhibitions before the holidays. I minded some of them after I was married, and, one day when it was raining hard, I declaimed a lovely piece before Persis, that's the mistress' name, when the woman began to cry, and fell on her knees by the old settle, and prayed like a born praycher. She thought I had gone out of my mind; so, after that, I had to keep Shakespeare to myself. Sometimes I've seen Tryphosa take up the book and read a bit, but Rufus, that's the baby, is just like his mother--he'll neither play a card, nor read a play, nor smoke, nor tell lies. I dunno what to do with the boy at all, at all."

"But it is rather a good thing, or a series of good things, not to play cards, nor smoke, nor tell lies," remarked Wilkinson. "Perhaps the baby is too young to smoke or read Shakespeare."

"He's eighteen and a strapping big fellow at that, our baby Rufus. He can do two men's work in a day all the week through, and go to meetin'

and Sunday school on Sundays; but he's far behind in general larnin' and in spirit, not a bit like his father. Do I understand you object to smoking, sir?"

"Not a bit," replied his companion, "but my friend Coristine smokes a pipe, and, as smokers love congenial company, I had better get him to join you, and relieve him of his load." So saying, Wilkinson retired to the silent pair in the rear, took the old lady's bundle from the lawyer and sent him forward to smoke with the ancient schoolmaster. The latter waxed eloquent on the subject of tobackka, after the pipes were filled and fairly set agoing.

"There was a fanatic of a praycher came to our meetin' one Sunday morning last winter, and discoorsed on that which goeth out of a man. He threeped down our throats that it was tobackka, and that it was the root of bitterness, and the tares among the wheat, which was not rightly translated in our English Bible. He said using tobackka was the foundation of all sin, and that, if you counted up the letters in the Greek tobakko, because Greek has no _c_, the number would be 483, and, if you add 183 to that, it would make 666, the mark of the Beast; and, says he, any man that uses tobackka is a beast! It was a powerful sarmon, and everybody was looking at everybody else. When the meetin'

was over, I met Andrew Hislop, a Sesayder, and I said to him, 'Annerew!'

says I, 'what do you think of that blast? Must we give up the pipe or be Christians no more?' Says Andrew, 'Come along wi' me,' and I went to his house and he took down a book off a shelf in his settin' room. 'Look at this, Mr. Hill,' says he, 'you that have the book larnin', 'tis written by these G.o.dly Sesayders, Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, and is poetry.' I took the book and read the piece, and what do you think it was?"

"Charles Lamb's farewell to tobacco," said Coristine wildly:--

Brother of Bacchus, later born, The Old World were sure forlorn, Wanting thee.

'No, sir; it was a 'Gospel Sonnet on Tobackka and Pipes'; pipes, mind you, as well--all about this Indian weed, and the pipe which is so lily white. Oh, sir, it was most improvin'. And that fanatic of a praycher, not fit to blacken the Erskines' shoes, even if they were Sesayders! I went home and I says, 'Rufus, my son,' and he says, 'Yes, fayther!' Says I, 'Rufus, am I a Christian man, though frail and human, am I a Christian man or am I not?' Rufus says, 'You are a Christian, fayther.'

Then says I, 'What is the praycher, Rufus, my boy?' and Rufus, that uses tobackka in no shape nor form, says, 'He's a consayted, ignerant, bigitted bladderskite of a Pharisee!' Sir, I was proud of that boy!'

"That was very fine of your son to stand up for his father like that.

You can't say that your foes were those of your own household. In such cases, young people must do one of two things, despise their parents or despise the preacher; and, when the parents go to church, the children, unless they are young hypocrites, uniformly despise such preachers."

"Yes, and to think I had never told Rufus a word about the 'Gospel Sonnets of the Sesayders!' It's a great pleasure, sir, to an old man like me to smoke a pipe with a gentleman like yourself."

Coristine replied that it afforded him equal satisfaction, and they puffed away with occasional remarks on the surrounding scenery.

Meanwhile, Wilkinson was striving to draw out the somewhat offended mistress.