Two Knapsacks Part 4

As they tramped along, the botanist found some specimens: two lilies, the orange and the Turk's cap; the willow herb, the showy ladies'

slipper, and three kinds of milkweed. He opened his knapsack, took out the strap press, and carefully bestowed his floral treasures between sheets of unglazed printers' paper. Wilkinson took a friendly interest in these proceedings, and insisted on being furnished with the botanical names of all the specimens.

"That willow-herb, now, _Epilobium angustifolium_, is called fire-weed,"

said the botanist, "and is an awful nuisance on burnt ground. There was a Scotchman out here once, about this time of the year, and he thought it was such a pretty pink flower that he would take some home with him.

So, when the downy-winged seeds came, he gathered a lot, and, when he got back to Scotland, planted them. Lord! the whole country about Perth got full of the stuff, till the farmers cursed him for introducing the American Saugh."

"The American what?" demanded Wilkinson.

"Saugh; it's an old Scotch word for willow, and comes from the French _saule_, I suppose."

"I am not sorry for them," said Wilkinson; "they say that pest, the Canada thistle, came from the Old Country."

"Yes, that's true; and so did Pusley, which Warner compares with original sin; and a host of other plants. Why, on part of the Hamilton mountain you won't find a single native plant. It is perfectly covered, from top to bottom, with dusty, unwholesome-looking weeds from Europe and the Southern States. But we paid them back."

"How was that?"

"You know, a good many years ago, sailing vessels began to go from the Toronto harbour across the Atlantic to British ports. There's a little water-plant that grows in Ashbridge's Bay, called the Anacharis, and this little weed got on to the bottom of the ocean vessels. Salt water didn't kill it, but it lived till the ships got to the Severn, and there it fell off and took root, and blocked up the ca.n.a.ls with a solid ma.s.s of subaqueous vegetation that made the English ca.n.a.l men dredge night and day to get rid of it. I tell you we've got some pretty hardy things out here in Canada."

"Do you not think," asked Wilkinson, "that our talk is getting too like that of Charles and his learned father in Gosse's 'Canadian Naturalist'?"

"All right, my boy, I'll oppress you no longer with a tender father's scientific lore, but, with your favourite poet, say:--

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

"That is because of their a.s.sociations, a merely relative reason," said the dominie.

"It isn't though, at least not altogether. Listen, now, to what Tennyson says, or to something like what he says:--

Little flower in the crannied wall, Peeping out of the crannies, I hold you, root and all, in my hand; Little flower, if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what G.o.d and man is.

There's no a.s.sociation nor relation in that; the flower brings you at once face to face with infinite life. Do you know what these strawberries brought to me?"

"A pleasant feast I should say."

"No, they made me think how much better it would have been if I had had somebody to gather them for; I don't say a woman, because that's tabooed between us, but say a child, a little boy or girl. There's no a.s.sociation or relation there at all; the strawberries called up love, which is better than a pleasant feast."

"According to Wordsworth, the flower in the crannied wall and the strawberry teach the same lesson, for does he not say:--

That life is love and immortality.

Life, I repeat, is energy of love, Divine or human, exercised in pain, In strife and tribulation, and ordained, If so approved and sanctified, to pa.s.s Through shades and silent rest, to endless joy?

At any rate, that is what he puts into his Parson's lips.

"Farquhar, my boy, I think we'd better stop, for I'm weakening fast.

It's sentimental the flowers and the fruit are making me. I mind, when I was a little fellow in the old sod, my mother gathering wild flowers from the hedges and putting them all round the ribbon of my straw hat. I can't pay her the debt of that mark of love the same way, but I feel I should pay it to somebody. You never told me about your mother."

"No, because she is dead and gone long ago, and my father married again, and brought a vixen, with two trollops of girls, to take the place of an angel. These three women turned my stomach at all the s.e.x. Look, there's a pretty woman for you!"

They had reached a clearing in the bush, consisting of a corn patch and a potato field, in which a woman, with a man's hat on her head and a pair of top-boots upon her nether extremities, looking a veritable guy, was sprinkling the potato plants with well-diluted Paris green. The shanty pertaining to the clearing was some little distance from the road, and, hoping to get a drink of water there, Coristine prepared to jump the rail fence and make his way towards it. The woman, seeing what he was about, called: 'Hi, Jack, Jack!' and immediately a big mongrel bull-dog came tearing towards the travellers, barking as he ran.

"Come back, Corry, for heaven's sake, or he'll bite you!" cried Wilkinson.

"Never a fear," answered the lately sentimental botanist; "barking dogs don't bite as a rule." So he jumped the fence in earnest, and said soothingly, as if he were an old friend: "Hullo, Jack, good dog!"

whereupon the perfidious Jack grovelled at his feet and then jumped up for a caress. But the woman came striding along, picking up a grubbing hoe by the way to take the place of the treacherous defender of the house.

"Hi, git out o' that, quick as yer legs'll take yer; git out now! we don't want no seeds, ner fruit trees, ner sewin' machines, ner fambly Bibles. My man's jist down in the next patch, an' if yer don't git, I'll set him on yer."

"Madam," said Coristine, lifting his hat, "permit me to explain--"

"Go 'long, I tell yer; that's the way they all begin, with yer madam an'

explainin'; I'll explain this hoe on yer if yer take another step."

"We are not agents, nor tramps, nor tract distributors, nor collectors for missions," cried Coristine, as soon as he had a chance to speak. "My friend, here, is a gentleman engaged in education, and I am a lawyer, and all we want is a gla.s.s of water."

"A liyer, eh?" said the Amazon, in a very much reduced tone; "Why didn't yer say so at wonst, an' not have me settin' that good for nuthin' brute on yer? I never see liyers with a pack on their backs afore. Ef yer wants a drink, why don't yer both come on to the house?"

Wilkinson, at this not too cordial invitation, vaulted over the fence beside his companion, and they walked housewards, the woman striding on ahead, and the dog sniffing at Wilkinson's heels in the rear. A rather pretty red-haired girl of about fifteen was washing dishes, evidently in preparation for the mid-day meal. Her the woman addressed as Anna Maria, and ordered her to go and get a pail of fresh water for the gentlemen. But Wilkinson, who felt he must do something to restore his credit, offered to get the water if Anna Maria would show him the well or pump that contained it. The girl gave him a tin pail, and he accompanied her to the back of the house, where the well and a bucket with a rope were. In vain he tried to sink that bucket; it would not sink. At last the girl took it out of his hands, turned the bucket upside down, and, letting it fall with a vicious splash, brought it up full of deliciously cool water, which she transferred to the pail.

"You are very clever to do that the first time," remarked the schoolmaster, wishing to be polite to the girl, who looked quite pleasant and comely, in spite of her bare feet and arms.

"There ain't no cleverness about it," she replied, with a harsh nasal accent; "any fool most could do as much." Wilkinson carried the tin pail to the shanty disillusioned, took his drink out of a cup that seemed clean enough, joined his friend in thanking mother and daughter for their hospitality, and retired to the road.

"Do you find your respect for the fair s.e.x rising?" he asked Coristine, cynically.

"The mother's an awful old harridan--"

"Yes, and when the daughter is her age she will be a harridan, too, the gentle rustic beauties have gone out of date, like the old poets. The schoolmaster is much needed here to teach young women not to compare gentlemen even if they are pedestrianizing, to 'any fool most.'"

"Oh, Wilks, is that where you're hit? I thought you and she were long enough over that water business for a case of Jacob and Rachel at the well, ha, ha!"

"Come, cease this folly, Coristine, and let us get along."

Sentiment had received a rude shock. It met with a second when Coristine remarked "I'm hungry." Still, he kept on for another mile or so, when the travellers sighted a little brook of clear water rippling over stones. A short distance to the left of the road it was shaded by trees and tall bushes, not too close together, but presenting, here and there, little patches of gra.s.s and the leaves of woodland flowers.

Selecting one of these patches, they unstrapped their knapsacks, and extracted from them a sufficiency of biscuits and cheese for luncheon.

Then one of the packs, as they had irreverently been called, was turned over to make a table. The biscuits and cheese were moistened with small portions from the contents of the flasks, diluted with the cool water of the brook. The meal ended, Wilkinson took to nibbling ginger snaps and reading Wordsworth. The day was hot, so that a pa.s.sing cloud which came over the face of the sun was grateful, but it was grateful to beast as well as to man, for immediately a swarm of mosquitoes and other flies came forth to do battle with the reposing pedestrians. Coristine's pipe kept them from attacking him in force, but Wilkinson got all the more in consequence. He struck savagely at them with Wordsworth, anathematized them in choice but not profane language, and, at last, rose to his feet, switching his pocket handkerchief fiercely about his head. Coristine picked up the deserted Wordsworth, and laughed till the smoke of his pipe choked him and the tears came into his eyes.

"I see no cause for levity in the sufferings of a fellow creature," said the schoolmaster, curtly.

"Wilks, my darling boy, it's not you I'm laughing at; it's that old omadhaun of a Wordsworth. Hark to this, now:--

He said, ''Tis now the hour of deepest noon.

At this still season of repose and peace, This hour, when all things which are not at rest Are cheerful; while this mult.i.tude of flies Is filling all the air with melody; Why should a tear be in an old man's eye?'

O Wilks, but this beats c.o.c.k-fighting; 'Why should a tear be in an old man's eye?' Sorra a bit do I know, barring it's the mult.i.tude of flies.

O Wordy, Wordy, bard of Rydal Mount, it's sick with laughing you'll be making me. All things not at rest are cheerful. Dad, if he means the flies, they're cheerful enough, but if it's my dear friend, Farquhar Wilkinson, it's a mistake the old gentleman is making. See, this is more like it, at the very beginning of 'The Excursion':--