Two Knapsacks Part 3

They landed, and, much against The Crew's will, he was compelled to receive a dollar from each of his pa.s.sengers.

"I'll see you again," he said, as he rowed back for the captain. "I'll see you again up in Grey, along of the old man and the gals, mark my word if I don't."

"Glad to see you, Sylvy, old fresh (he was going to say 'old salt,' but corrected himself in time), glad to see you anywhere," bawled the lawyer, "but we've made a vow to dispense with female society in our travels. Ta, ta!"

CHAPTER II.

Barrie--Next of Kin--Nightmare--On the Road--Strawberries and Botany--Poetry and Sentiment--The Virago--Luncheon and Wordsworth--Waterplants, Leeches and Verse--Cutting Sticks--Rain, Muggins and Rawdon.

The travellers carried their knapsacks in their hands by the straps, to the nearest hotel, where, after brief delay, a special supper was set for them. Having discussed the frugal meal, they repaired to the combined reading and smoking room, separate from the roughish crowd at the bar. Wilkinson glanced over a Toronto paper, while his companion, professing an interest in local news, picked up an organ of the town and read it through, advertis.e.m.e.nts and all, in which painstaking effort he was helped by his pipe. Suddenly he grasped the paper, and, holding it away from his face, exclaimed, "Is it possible that they are the same?"

"Who, who?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Wilkinson; "do not tell me that the captain was mistaken, that they are really here."

"Do you know old Carmichael's initials, the doctor's, that was member for Vaughan?" his friend asked, paying no attention to the schoolmaster's question.

"James D.," replied that authority; "I remember, because I once made the boys get up the members' names along with their const.i.tuencies, so as to give the latter a living interest."

"Now, listen to this: 'Next of kin; information wanted concerning the whereabouts of James Douglas Carmichael, or his heirs at law. He left the University of Edinburgh, where he was in attendance on the Faculty of Medicine, in the spring of 1848, being at the time twenty-one years of age. The only trace of his farther life is a fragment of a letter written by him to a friend two years later, when he was serving as a soldier in the military station of Barrief, Upper Canada. Reward offered for the same by P.R. MacSmaill, W.S., 19 Clavers Row, Edinburgh.' If James Douglas Carmichael, ex-medical student, wasn't the member and the father of that girl of yours, I'm a Dutchman."

"Mr. Coristine, I insist, sir, before another word pa.s.ses between us, that you withdraw and apologize for the deeply offensive expression, which must surely have escaped your lips unperceived, 'that girl of yours.'"

"Oh, there, now, I'm always putting my foot in it. I meant the girl you are interested in--no, it isn't that other--the girl that's interested in you--oh, wirra wisha! it's not that at all--it's the girl the captain was joking you about."

"A joke from a comparatively illiterate man like the captain of the schooner, to whom we were under travelling obligations, and a joke from my equal, a scholar and a gentleman, are two distinct things. I wish the expression, 'that girl of yours,' absolutely and forever withdrawn."

"Well, well, I consent to withdraw it absolutely and apologize for saying it, but that 'forever' clause goes against my legal judgment. If the late Dr. Carmichael's heiress comes in for a fortune, we might repent that 'forever.'"

"What has that to do with me, sir, fortune or no fortune? Your insinuations are even more insulting than your open charges of infidelity to our solemn compact."

It was Coristine's turn to be angry. He rose from the table at which he had been sitting, with the paper still in his hand, and said: "You make mountains out of molehills, Wilkinson. I've made you a fair and full apology, and shall do no more, if you sulk your head off." So saying, he stalked out of the room, and Wilkinson was too much angered to try to stop him.

The lawyer asked the landlord if he would spare him the newspaper for an hour and supply him with pen and ink and a few sheets of paper. Then he took his lamp and retired to his room. "Poor old Farquhar," he soliloquized, as he arranged his writing materials; "he'll feel mighty bad at being left all alone, but it's good for his health, and business is business. Let me see, now. Barrie was never a military station, besides the letter had Barrief on it, a name that doesn't exist. But the letter was torn there, or the corner worn away in a man's pocket. By the powers, it's Barriefield at Kingston, and there's the military station for you. I'll write our correspondent there, and I'll set one of the juniors to work up Dr. Carmichael's record in Vaughan County, and I'll notify MacSmaill, W.S., that I am on the track, and--shall I write the girl, there's the rub?" The three letters were written with great care and circ.u.mspection, but not the fourth. When carefully sealed, directed and stamped, he carried them to the post-office and personally deposited them in the slit for drop-letters. Returning to the hotel, he restored the newspaper to the table of the reading-room, minus the clipped advertis.e.m.e.nt to the next of kin, which he stowed away in his pocketbook. This late work filled the lawyer with a satisfaction that crowned the pleasures of the day, and he longed to communicate some of it to his friend, but that gentleman, the landlord said, had retired for the night, looking a bit put out--he hoped supper had been to his liking. Coristine said the supper was good. "What was the number of Mr.

Wilkinson's room?"

Mine host replied that it was No. 32, the next to his own. Before retiring, Coristine looked at the fanlight over the door of No. 32; it was dark. Nevertheless he knocked, but failed to evoke a response.

"Farquhar, my dear," he whispered in an audible tone, but still there was no answer. So he heaved a sigh, and, returning to his apartment, read a few words out of his pocket prayer-book, and went to bed. There he had an awful dream, of the old captain leading Wilkinson by the collar and tail of his coat up to the altar, where Miss Carmichael stood, resplendent in pearls and diamonds, betokening untold wealth; of an attempt at rescue by himself and The Crew, which was nipped in the bud by the advent of the veteran, his daughter and Miss Jewplesshy. The daughter laid violent hands upon The Crew and waltzed him out of the church door, while the veteran took Coristine's palsied arm and placed that of his young mistress upon it, ordering them, with military words of command, to accompany the victims, as bridesmaid and groomsman. When the dreamer recovered sufficiently to look the officiating clergyman full in the face, he saw that this personage was no other than Frank, the news-agent, whereupon he laughed immediately and awoke.

"Corry, Corry, my dear fellow, are you able to get up, or shall I break the door in?" were the words that greeted his ear on awaking.

"The omadhaun!" he said to himself under the bedclothes; "it would be a good thing to serve him with the sauce of silence, as he did me last night." But better counsels prevailed in his warm Irish heart, and he arose to unlock the door, when suddenly it flew open, and Wilkinson, with nothing but a pair of trousers added to his night attire, fell backwards into his arms. It was broad daylight as each looked into the other's face for explanations.

"But you're strong, Wilks!" said the lawyer with admiration.

"Corry, when I heard you groan that way, I was sure you were in a fit."

"Oh, it was nothing," replied his friend, who found it hard to keep from laughing, "only a bad nightmare."

"What were you dreaming about to bring it on?"

Now, this was just what Coristine dared not tell, for the truth would bring up all last night's misunderstanding. So he made up a story of Wilkinson's teaching The Crew navigation and the use of the globes, when the captain interfered and threatened to kick master and pupil overboard. Then he, Coristine, interposed, and the captain fell upon him. "And you know, Wilks, he's a heavy man."

"Well, I am heartily glad it is no worse. Get a wash and get your clothes on, and come down to breakfast, like a good boy, for I hear the bell ringing."

Over their coffee and toast, eggs and sausages, the two were as kind and attentive to one another's wants, as if no dispute had ever marred their friendship. The dominie got out his sketch map of a route and opened it between them. "We shall start straight for the bush road into the north, if that suits you," he said, "and travel by easy stages towards Collingwood, where we shall again behold one of our inland seas. But, as it may be sometime before we reach a house of entertainment, it may be as well to fill the odd corners of our knapsacks with provisions for the way."

"I say amen to that idea," replied the lawyer, and the travellers arose, paid their bill, including the price of the door-lock, seized their knapsacks by the straps and sallied forth. They laid in a small stock of captain's biscuits, a piece of good cheese, and some gingersnaps for Wilkinson's sweet tooth; they also had their flask refilled, and Coristine invested in some pipe-lights. Then they sallied forth, not into the north as Wilkinson had said, it being a phrase he was fond of, but, at first, in a westerly, and, on the whole, in a north-westerly direction.

When the last house on the outskirts was left behind them, they helped each other on with their knapsacks, and felt like real pedestrians. The bush enclosed them on either side of the sandy road, so that they had shade whenever they wanted it. Occasionally a wayfarer would pa.s.s them with a curt "good morning," or a team would rattle by, its driver bestowing a similar salutation. The surface of the country was flat, but this did not hinder Wilkinson reciting:--

Mount slowly, sun! and may our journey lie Awhile within the shadow of this hill, This friendly hill, a shelter from thy beams!

"That reminds me," said Coristine, "of a fellow we had in the office once, whose name was Hill. He was a black-faced, solemn-looking genius, and the look of him would sink the spirits of a skylark down to zero.

'What's come over you?' said Woodruff to me one fine afternoon, when I was feeling a bit bilious. 'Oh,' said I, 'I've been within the shadow of this Hill,' and he laughed till he was black in the face."

"Corry, if I were not ashamed of making a pun, or, as we say in academic circles, being guilty of antanaclasis, I would say that you are in-corri-gible."

Coristine laughed, and then remarked seriously, "Here am I, with a strap-press full of printing paper in my knapsack, and paying no attention to science at all. We must begin to take life in airnest now, Wilks, my boy, and keep our eyes skinned for specimens. Sorry I am I didn't call and pay my respects to my botanical friend at the Barrie High School. He could have given us a pointer or two about the flowers that grow round here."

"Flowers are scarce in July," said the schoolmaster, "they seem to take a rest in the hot weather. The spring is their best time. Of course you know that song about the flowers in spring?"

"Never heard it in my life; sing it to us, Farquhar, like a darlin'."

Now, the dominie was not given to singing, but thus adjured, and the road being clear, he sang in a very fair voice:--

We are the flowers, The fair young flowers That come with the voice of Spring, Tra la la, la la la, la la, Tra la, tra la a a a.

Coristine revelled in the chorus, which, at the "a a a," went up to the extreme higher compa.s.s of the human voice and beyond it. He made his friend repeat the performance, called him a daisy, and tra la la'd to his heart's content. Then he sat down on a gra.s.sy bank by the wayside and laughed loud and long. "Oh, it's a nice pair of fair young flowers we are, coming with the voice of spring; but we're not hayseeds, anyway." When the lawyer turned himself round to rise, Wilkinson asked seriously, "Did you hurt yourself then, Corry?"

"Never a bit, except that I'm weak with the laughing; and for why?"

"Because there is some red on your trousers, and I thought it might be blood--that you had sat down on some sharp thing."

"It'll be strawberry blite, I'll wager, _Blitum capitatum_, and a fine thing it is. Mrs. Marsh, that keeps our boarding house, has a garden where it grows wild in among the peas. She wanted some colouring for the icing of a cake, and hadn't a bit of cochineal or anything of the kind in the house. She was telling me her trouble, for it was a holiday and the shops were shut, and she's always that friendly with me; when, says I, 'There is no trouble about that.' So I went to the garden and got two lovely stalks of _Blitum capitatum_. 'Is it poison?' said she. 'Poison!'

said I; 'and it belonging to the _Chenopodiaceae_, the order that owns beets and spinach, and all the rest of them. Trust a botanist, ma'am,' I said. It made the sweetest pink icing you ever saw, and Mrs. Marsh is for ever deeply grateful, and rears that _Blitum_ with fond and anxious care."

"I would like to see that plant," said Wilkinson. So they retraced their steps to the bank, over which Coristine leaned tenderly, picking something which he put into his mouth. "Come on, Wilks," he cried; "it isn't blite, but something better. It's wild strawberries themselves, and lashings of them. Sure any fool might have known them by the leaves, even if he was a herald, the worst fool of all, and only knew them from a duke's coronet."

For a time there was silence, for the berries were numerous, and, although small, sweet and of delicate flavour.

"Corry, they are luscious; this is Arcadia and Elysium."

"Foine, Wilks, foine," mumbled the lawyer, with his mouth full of berries.

"This folly of mine, sitting down on the blessings of Providence--turning my back upon them, so to speak," he remarked, after the first hunger was over, "reminds me of a man who took the gold medal in natural science. He had got his botany off by rote, so, when he was travelling between Toronto and Hamilton, a friend that was sitting beside him said, 'Johnson, what's in that field out there?' Johnson looked a bit put out, but said boldly, 'It's turnips.' There was an old farmer in the seat behind him, and he spoke up and said, 'Turmuts!' said he, 'them's hoats--ha, ha, ha!'"