Two Knapsacks Part 27

"You should have taken advice from the junior member of Tylor, Woodruff and White," replied the lawyer, with a peculiar smile; "but the Grinstun man has bagged your estate."

"Oh, do not say that, Mr Coristine. Tell me, what shall I do? And who is the man you mean?"

"The man I mean is the one that met you when you came here to dinner. He is going to quarry in your farm for grindstones, and make his fortune.

But, as he wants yourself into the bargain, I imagine he can't get the land without you, so that somebody must have paid the taxes."

"Then it is the little wretch Marjorie told me of, the cruel creature who kicked a poor dog?"

"The very same; he is the Grinstun man. I've got a poem on him I'll read you some day."

"That will be delightful; I am very fond of good poetry."

"Wilks says it isn't good poetry; but any man that grovels over Wordsworth, with a tear in the old man's eye, is a poor judge."

"I admire Wordsworth, Mr. Coristine, and am afraid that you are not in earnest about poetry. To me it is like life, a very serious thing. But, tell me, do you think the land is safe?"

"Oh yes; I wrote to one of the salaried juniors, giving him instructions to look after it, just as soon as I heard what Grinstuns had his eye on."

"Mr. Coristine! How shall I ever thank you for your kindness, you, of all men, who profess to treat us workers for our living as positive nonent.i.ties?"

"By forgetting the past, Miss Du Plessis, and allowing me the honour of your acquaintance in future. By the-bye, as you admire Wordsworth, and good poetry, and airnest, serious men, I'll just go and send Wilks to you. I have a word for Miss Carmichael. Is she constructed on the same poetic principles as yourself?"

"Go away then, _farceur_! No; Marjorie is inclined to frivolity."

With a wave of her fan, she dismissed the lawyer, who began to think lady stenographers and typewriters a cla.s.s worthy of platonic attention.

"Short hand!" he muttered to himself; "hers is rather a long one and pretty, and she is a favourable type of her kind, but I'm afraid a pun would make her faint, when Wilks would certainly call me out and shoot me dead with his revolver."

"Wilks, my boy," said Coristine aloud, when he reached the stiff chair in which the dominie sat erect, facing Miss Carmichael on a lounge at safe distance; "Miss Du Plessis would like to hear you discuss Wordsworth and other Sunday poets. She doesn't seem to care about hearing my composition on the Grinstun man."

The dominie eagerly but properly arose, answering: "Miss Du Plessis does too much honour to my humble poetic judgment, and, in regard to your doggrel, shows her rare good sense." He then walked across the room to the object of his laudation, and, taking Coristine's vacated chair, remarked that few poets preach a sermon so simply and beautifully as the author of "The Excursion." Would Miss Du Plessis allow him to bring down his pocket volume of the Rydal bard? Miss Du Plessis would be charmed; so the schoolmaster withdrew, and soon reappeared with the book all unconsciously open at "She was a phantom of delight." With guilty eyes, he closed it, and, turning over the pages, stopped at the fifth book of "The Excursion," announcing its subject, "The Pastor." It was now the lady's turn to be uncomfortable, with the suggestion of Mr. Perrowne.

The lawyer, whose back had been turned to the poetic pair, looked unutterable things at Miss Carmichael, who, not knowing to what extreme of the ludicrous her companion might lead her, suggested a visit to the garden, if Mr. Coristine did not think it too warm. "It's the very thing for me," answered the lawyer, as they arose together and proceeded to the French windows opening upon the verandah; "it's like 'Come into the garden, Maud.'" They were outside by this time, and Miss Carmichael, lifting a warning finger, said: "Mr. Coristine, I am a school teacher, and am going to take you in hand as a naughty boy; you know that is not for Sunday, don't you now?"

"If it was only another name that begins with the same letter," replied the incorrigible Irishman, "I'd say the line would be good for any day of the week in fine weather; but I'm more than willing to go to school again."

"Sometimes," said the schoolteacher quietly, "sometimes the word 'garden' makes me sad. Papa had a great deal of trouble. He lost all his children but me, and almost all his property, and he had quarrelled with his relations in Scotland, or they had quarrelled with him; so that he was, in spite of his public life, a lonely, afflicted man. When he was dying, he repeated part of a hymn, and the refrain was 'The Garden of Gethsemane.'"

"Ah, Miss Carmichael, dear, forgive me, the stupid, blundering idiot that I am, to go and vex your tender heart with my silly nonsense. I'm ashamed, and could cry to think of it."

"I will forgive you, Mr. Coristine," she replied, recovering from her serious fit, and looking at the victim in a way that blended amus.e.m.e.nt with imperiousness: "I will forgive you this once, if you promise future good behaviour."

An impulse came over the lawyer to shake Miss Carmichael's hand, but she made him no shadow of an excuse for so doing. It was plain that the mutual confidences of the girls, which embraced, using the word in a mere logical sense, their year long distant acquaintance with the transformed pedestrians had given maturity to the closer and more pleasant acquaintance of the day. Little Marjorie's appropriation of the lawyer as her Eugene added another ripening element to its growth; so that the two garden explorers felt none of the stiffness and uncertainty of a first introduction. What Miss Carmichael's thoughts were she only could tell, but she knew that the impetuous and affectionate Coristine required the merest trifle of encouragement to change the steady decorous tide of advancing knowledge and respect into an abruptly awkward cataract, threatening the rupture of pleasant relations or the loss of self-respect. She would have preferred talking with Wilkinson, as a check upon the fervour of his friend, but, although she laughed at the dominie's culpable ignorance of her city existence, in her secret soul it piqued her not a little. No; she would rather take refuge with the clergy, Mr. Errol or Mr. Perrowne.

Many roses were still in bloom, but, spite of many hints, Coristine's b.u.t.ton hole remained empty. He admired the pinks, the carnations, the large-eyed pansies, "like Shakespeare's winking Mary-buds," he said, but all in vain, save a civil answer. The Day-lilies and the sweet-scented pure white and j.a.pan lilies, the early Phloxes, the Honeysuckles against the arbours, and many other floral beauties he stopped to inspect, and wondered if Mrs. Carruthers would mind his gathering a few, although the house was full of flowers. His companion did not satisfy his wonder, only answering that she thought flowers looked so much better growing.

Then he pulled himself together, and answered naturally, joking on the tall Scarlet Lychnis, now almost a garden flower of the past, which boys call scarlet likeness and scarlet lightning, and ran on into accounts of botanical rambles, descriptions of curious plants, with here a little bit of reverent natural theology, and there an appropriate sc.r.a.p from some flower loving poet, or a query as to where the worshippers of Wordsworth had got, if they had left "The Excursion" for the smaller pieces on the Daisy, and the Celandine, the Broom, the Thorn and the Yew. In thus talking he gained his end without knowing it, for, instead of a mere routine lawyer and impulsive Irishman, Miss Carmichael found in her companion an intelligent, thoughtful, and cultured acquaintance, whose society she thoroughly enjoyed. Occasionally an unconscious and half-timid lifting of her long eye-lashes towards his animated, handsome face thrilled the botanist with a new, if fleeting, sensation of delight. As they pa.s.sed through a gate into a hillside meadow, at the foot of which ran a silvery brook, they were made aware of voices in song. The voices were two, one a sweet but somewhat drawly female soprano, the other, a raucous, loud, overmastering shout, that almost drowned the utterance of its companion. The masculine one furnished the words to the promenaders, and these were:--

Shayll we gaythurr at thee rivverr Whayerr bright angel feet have traw-odd?

"Do you know who these are?" asked Miss Carmichael.

"If I thought he knew as much tune," replied Coristine, "I should say he was The Crew."

"Oh, tell me, please, who is The Crew?" Thereupon the lawyer launched out into a description of his travels, so comical a one that his fair companion laughed until the tears stood in her eyes, and she accused him of making her break the Sabbath. "No," she said at last; "that is not Sylva.n.u.s, but it is his brother Timotheus with Tryphosa. They are sitting in a ferny hollow under these birches down the hill, with a hymn-book between them, and as grave as if they were in church. Do you not think, Mr. Coristine, that that is a very nice and proper way for young people to improve their acquaintance?"

"Very much so, Miss Carmichael. May I go in and get a hymn book? I can run like a deer, and won't take a minute over it. One will be enough, won't it?"

The lady laughed a little pleasant laugh, and replied: "I think not, sir. We are not servants, at least in the same sense, and the piano and organ are at our disposal when we wish to exercise our musical powers."

"Snubbed again," muttered Coristine to himself; then aloud: "I wish I were Timotheus."

"If you prefer Tryphosa's company to mine, sir, you are at liberty to go; but I think your champion of Peskiwanchow would object to such rivalry."

"Oh, I didn't mean with Tryphosa."

"You do not know what you mean, nor anybody else. Let us return to the house."

As they sauntered back, the lawyer suddenly cried out: "What a forgetful blockhead I am. I have had ever so many business questions to put to you, and have forgotten all about them."

"Had you not better leave business till to-morrow, Mr. Coristine?" asked the lady, gravely, almost severely.

"Your father's name was James Douglas Carmichael, was it not?" asked Coristine, ignoring this quietus.

"Yes," she answered.

"He came to Canada in 1848, and was, for a time, in military service at Kingston, before he completed his medical studies. Am I right?"

"How do you happen to know these things? My father was singularly reticent about his past life; but you are right."

The lawyer opened his pocket-book and took out a newspaper cutting, which he handed to his companion. "I found that at Barrie," he said, "and trust I have not taken too great a liberty in const.i.tuting myself your solicitor, and opening correspondence with Mr. MacSmaill, W.S., regarding your interests."

"It was very kind of you," she answered; "do you think it will bring us any money, Mr. Coristine?"

"Yes; it must bring some, as it is directed to heirs. How much, depends upon the wealth of your father's family."

"They were very wealthy. Papa told mamma to write home to them, but she would not. She is too independent for that."

"Will you sanction my action, and allow me to work this case up? Your mother cannot be an heir, you know, save in a roundabout way; so that you, being of age, are sole authority in the matter."

"How do you know I am of age?"

"I don't; but thought that, perhaps, you might be, seeing you are so mature and circ.u.mspect in your ways."

"Thank you for the doubtful compliment. I am of age, however."

"Then will you authorize me to proceed?"

"With all my heart."

"Do you know it makes me very sorry to become your solicitor?"