Crowded Out! and Other Sketches Part 10

"You forget the roads, Bovey, and the fences, and the interminable distances and the immense rivers, and the long winter. I say, it looks like snow to-night, doesn't it?"

"What do you know about snow!" rejoined the Hon. Bovyne. "Let us get on, there's a good fellow--confound you! don't stare at those imaginary trees any longer, but come along."

Certainly young Clarges was possessed with the queerest fancy about those trees. "I say, Bovey, they were funny, though, to strike me like that, out of all the others! I am sure I should know them again. Perhaps some day we'll take a fly and go out there--I wonder if there's an inn?

Does what's her name, your old Scotch lady, keep an inn, or is it a farm we're going to?"

"Scotch? Why do you say Scotch? She's French, I tell you. Simpson says she can't speak a word of English."

"But 'Peter Ross' is Scotch, isn't it? At least you can't make it French, however you twist it."

"I'm not anxious to twist it. Don't you see, Arthur, she is evidently a Frenchwoman who married a man called Peter Ross; she is the _veuve_, widow, you know! of the lamented Scotchman. Now do you understand? But it _is_ peculiar."

"Very," said Clarges. "When do we start?"

"There's a train to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, but I thought we had better hire a trap, and a man to bring the trap back, and put all our things, tents and so on, into it, and go out comfortably so as to see the country."

"All right!" said Clarges. "By Jove, what a splendid night it's going to be, stars out already, Bovey! Don't you hope it'll be like this tomorrow? Shall we camp out the first night and think of--of--Lady Violet by our camp fire, and Rex and Florence--how they'd like to see us, wouldn't they? And they can't, you know, they're three thousand miles away, trying to make out each other's faces in the November fog, eh! Bovey? I say, what shall we get to eat out there, at Lachatte, you know, the country always makes me desperately hungry."

"Oh! we shall do well enough. Simpson says she is a capital old woman, lives entirely alone; will cook for us, wait on us, make us pancakes, I expect, and give us plenty of that stuff we had this morning at the hotel."

"Sweet stuff?" asked Clarges. "_I_ know. Syrup, maple syrup, that'll do."

Simpson, the authority, thrice quoted by the elder of the two Englishmen, appeared at dinner with them that evening. He was a hard-working, stodgy son of person who had come out to the Canadian Civil Service fifteen years, ago, lived much by himself until he took a wife out of a Canadian village, a phlegmatic, stolid, unimaginative sort of a girl, who was nevertheless a good wife and an excellent housekeeper. Simpson sniffed at the dinner. It wasn't as good as his own. He felt ill at ease in the presence of the two men, whose airy talk and loud laughter struck him with a keen sense of its novelty. They joked about everything. Clarges particularly was in high feather. The wine, which came partly from the hotel and partly from the Hon. Bovyne's hamper, flowed often and freely, and Simpson, who was a very moderate fellow, wondered at the quant.i.ty his friends seemed to be able to imbibe. "Without showing any traces of it, either," he said to himself.

"All this vivacity is natural; I remember the type; in fact, I was something like it myself ten or twelve years ago."

After dinner, Clarges rushed up stairs and down again with a small silk plush packet of photographs tied with ribbons. The men were in the smoking room.

"I say, I want Simpson to see Lady Violet, Bovey."

"All right, and the children too? You sentimental a.s.s, Arthur!" Clarges laughed. It was a funny laugh, a kind of inane ripple that nevertheless tickled everybody who heard it. "But it's too smoky here. Come up stairs to the drawing room. There's a jolly big drawing room with a piano, and we can say what we want to, everyone stares here so!"

"I should think they would," said Simpson quietly. "Why do you get yourself up like that, simply because you're in Canada? A knitted waistcoat, three sizes too large for you--"

"That's to admit of heavy underclothing," said Clarges, not in the least perturbed. "Knickerbockers," continued Simpson, "that are certainly one size too small; a cap that looks like a hangman's, and a coat that must have come off Praed St."

The Hon. Bovyne laughed long and loud. "Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" he said.

But young Clarges did not mind in the least. Indeed, had he but known it, and be it remembered to his merit that he did not know it, he made a fair and manly picture as he stood under the light of the chandelier.

His slim, well-knit figure was more prepossessing than the herculean proportions of his cousin, "the strongest man in England;" his crisp fair hair brushed boyishly up on one side and his well-trimmed moustache of silky yellow, his keen gray eyes and delicate features, all went far in point of attractiveness, especially when added to these mere physical details, rang the infectious laugh, clear, hearty and youthful, and spoke the natural, honest, unrestrained tongue.

In the drawing room Clarges established himself on a sofa between the other two. "Now, Simpson," he said, "you must excuse me calling you Simpson so freely, by the way, but you know, Bovey always calls you Simpson--you don't mind, do you? You bang away at my clothing all you like, and in return I'll call you Simpson. Now I'm going to show you Lady Violet. You know who she is, she is Bovey's wife, _and_ the loveliest woman in England. Loveliest woman in England, look at that!"

Clarges held up very carefully, out at arm's length, a very fine photograph of an undeniably beautiful woman. "Bovey's wife." he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed again. "You never saw her, so you don't know what beauty is, do you? But here's the next best thing, her photograph, and such a photograph! Now, you be good, as we say to the children, and I'll show you that again after all the others." Next he showed him in a sort of ecstasy, Bovey's children.

"Rex and Florence," he said, in an awe-struck tone. Bovey laughed, so did Simpson. So would anybody have done.

"What are you laughing at," said young Clarges, solemnly. "Oh, at me!

that's all right, everybody laughs at me. I knew it couldn't be the children. Now here's another lovely girl," and then there was another and still another, and then a group in hunting attire just after the breakfast; then pretty interiors with dainty rooms and women and children and dogs, a capital likeness of Fred Burnaby, Vyrus'

fellow-officer, autographs of Gordon and Wolseley, a garden party at Clarges Mount, a water-party at Richmond, photograph's and sketches taken in Algiers, Cairo, Damascus, Bombay and Edinburgh. Simpson sat through all this slightly bored and confused. What had he to do with this kind of life? Once he had had some gleams of it, it is true, but that was years ago, before his modest little establishment was in existence, presided over by the plain, but virtuous Matilda of his later days.

"Well, now," said he, preparing to take his leave, "is there anything further you want to know about your plans, for I suppose I shall scarcely see you again before you leave if you get off tomorrow morning as you intend. One thing--of course you've been vaccinated?"

The Hon. Bovyne muttered, "bah!" Clarges began putting the photographs away, all but Lady Violet.

"Then you haven't been done, eh?" said Simpson, interrogatively. "I would if I were you. You can't tell where you're going or whom you'll meet. Why, you can 'do' yourself if you object to a medical man fussing around."

"Can you?" said Clarges.

"I don't object," said Bovey, loftily; "but I must say I think it is making a ridiculous and most unnecessary fuss about the matter. Why, there are half a dozen diseases as virulent as the small-pox stalking about in every large town, and we don't take those! Why should we take the small-pox when we don't take the cholera, or the--the--"

"Yes," observed Simpson, in his quiet manner, "I thought you would stick for want of details. The fact is, that you can inoculate for small-pox, and you can't as yet, for cholera or leprosy, and so wise people accept the fact, the revelation if you will, and get vaccinated. However, as far as your immediate surroundings go, you're safe enough. Old Mrs. Ross will do all she can for you, and it isn't far, only twenty two miles from town after all. You'll be walking in in a day or two for another tent or a barrel of whiskey. Nothing like whiskey, Canadian whiskey, out in camp on cold nights." Simpson got up.

"I wonder," said he, suddenly, "how you escaped being done on the train.

You came up from Quebec _via_ St. Martin's Junction, didn't you?"

"Oh! your importunate Inspector did make an effort on my behalf, but I was firm. Nearly had a lodging in the Police Station though, but I told him who we were and swore to having marks the size of flat-irons on both arms, so he let me go."

"And you," said Simpson, turning to Clarges. "Me! oh! I shall be done.

I say, couldn't I walk out with you now and see a doctor about it? I believe I will, Bovey, if you can spare me. For look you, Simpson, I am the plaything of his leisure hours, a kind of Yorick, you know, and he might be dull."

The Hon. Bovyne looked grave for a second, "I believe I _should_ be dull without you, dear boy, though you are a crank. Let me see, how old are you, Arthur?"

"Twenty-two," answered Clarges. "Good heaven!" exclaimed the Hon.

Bovine, "and I am getting perilously near to forty. We'll change the subject. I'm very sleepy. Don't expect to find me up when you come in, Arthur; to-morrow night, remember, we may be sleeping on the cold ground, I shall get all the rest I can to-night." Clarges and the other man took their leave.

"Once more, Bovey," said the former, "won't you be done? Simpson, make him! See here, look once more at Lady Violet, speak with _her_ lips, look with _her_ eyes--the loveliest woman in England!"

"Go and get 'done,' as you call it, for heaven's sake, and let me alone!" was all he got in reply.

But Clarges did not get done. He had an idea and this was his idea: To walk to some doctor recommended by Simpson and procure an instrument suitable for the purpose, and the necessary material, and to vaccinate his cousin himself. The first part was easy enough. Simpson vaguely wondering at his light-hearted talk, left him at a doctor's surgery door, and Clarges, who could always get what he wanted from anybody in any part of the world, soon persuaded the doctor to give him a "point"

and all necessary instructions.

"A small lancet is really a better thing," said that gentleman, "but you will manage all right, I daresay. We must really take every precaution we can. Good evening."

All this was easy; now arose the difficulty, how best to tackle Bovey.

"He's such a giant of a fellow," thought Clarges. "But if he is only asleep as he hinted he would be, there'll not be much difficulty.

What will he do when he finds it out in the morning, supposing I am successful in operating upon him to-night? What a suggestive word! I am quite the surgeon. But I'll do it--Arthur Clarges, see that you _do_ do it, by all you hold dear and sacred in old England!"

On his return, however, to the hotel, he found that his cousin was clearly wide-awake again.

"Hang it all!" he said to himself, "why isn't he asleep?" But the Hon.

Bovyne was not in the least sleepy. He rallied Arthur on his poor arm but fortunately did not ask to look at it. He ordered up a sherry cobbler apiece and brought out some of his rarest weeds. "I say, what do you think of Simpson, Bovey?" said Clarges, suddenly.

"Think? why, that there's nothing in him to think about."

"Did you know he was married?"

"No; is he?" Bovey was always laconic.