Crowded Out! and Other Sketches Part 11

"Yes, and he has four children. Just think, four! Two boys and two girls."

"How interesting!" The two men smoked silently for a few minutes, then Clarges said, "It must be a beautiful thing to be married, you know."

"Well, I _ought_ to know," returned his cousin.

Clarges put his cigar down and went on. "To have somebody that belongs to you, and to know that you belong to somebody; that's marriage, and I think it must be very beautiful. Of course, you belong to other people too, just the same, and they belong to you, but not so much, not in the same way. You don't go to church all in a tremble with your father and your mother, or your sister or your brother. You don't wear a ring--a beautiful, great broad band of gold, you know, always s.h.i.+ning there on your finger--or you don't put one on for anybody else save just the person that belongs to you in that way, in the way of marriage, you know. And to be able to think wherever you are, 'Well, there is that person, anyway, thinking of me, waiting for me; the whole world doesn't matter if that person is really there, anywhere, thinking of me, waiting for me.' Now, you know, _I'll_ never feel that, never, in this world.

What good is there in me? I may be Arthur Clarges, of Clarges, of course, but without money, that means nothing. I say, Bovey, it's rather ghastly, but it's perfectly true. I haven't a single soul in the world but you and Lady Violet to think of me at all, or for me to think of."

"I don't suppose you have," said the Hon. Bovyne, thoughtfully. "You are a lone beggar, Arthur, but a cheery one nevertheless."

"So you see," Clarges went on, "If in accompanying you around the world in search of new pleasures and exciting experiences, anything happens to me, you know, Arthur Clarges, of Clarges, n.o.body need mind. There isn't anybody to mind."

"All this because Simpson has got four children! Well, I hope you'll get married yet, Arthur, you queer fish, and have six, two more than Simpson. I know what you are driving at, however. You think me a selfish brute. You can't understand how I can leave Lady Vi., and the two kids, and go off annually on tours of exploration and so forth. I tell you, I am the better for it, and she is the better for it, and n.o.body is any the worst for it, unless it be yourself. Men who have knocked about as I have done, will continue to knock about as long as they live. In the army, out of the army, all the same. Lady Vi. understands me, and I her, and you forget, Arthur, that you are very--young."

"Then may I never get any older," said Charles, almost rudely.

Not long afterwards his cousin, slightly heavy with wine, went to bed.

Clarges, abnormally wakeful, tried to read _Bell's Life_ which lay before him and waited until Bovey was fast asleep. They occupied the same room, a large double-bedded one, which opened into a bathroom and parlour _en suite_. When he was perfectly certain that his cousin was sound asleep, so sound that "a good yelp from the county pack, and a stirring chorus of 'John Peel' by forty in pink could not wake him,"

thought Clarges, the latter undertook his delicate task and accomplished it. He did it quickly and skilfully with a tiny lancet he found in his cousin's well-appointed travelling bag. Bovey never stirred. Clarges next undertook to "do" himself. Then a strange thing happened. He had gone to the gla.s.s and bared his left arm when a sudden faintness overcame him. He tried to shake it off and sat down. Presently it left him and he felt quite as usual. Then he made a second attempt. The same thing occurred again. This time it was worse, and sight and strength failing, he sank on his own bed, fainting. By a tremendous effort he prevented entire unconsciousness from taking place and lay there half dressed and tremulous.

"Well, I _am a fool_! I can't help it. I can't try any more to-night, for I am as weak and sleepy--if I can get up and undress it's as much as I am capable of. But Bovey's all right. There's Lady Violet"--turning his eyes to the photograph he had stuck in the looking gla.s.s frame--"she'd thank me if she knew." Sweet Lady Vi--so good to all around her--so good to me--dear Lady Vi, the loveliest woman in England!

When Clarges awoke he was chilled and dazed, couldn't remember where he was and what he had done. When he did recollect, he rose quietly, extinguished the gas and made the room as dark as possible, in hopes that Bovey might outsleep himself in the morning. Then he went to bed properly, putting as a final precaution, his watch an hour in advance.

It thus happened that by Clarges' watch it was a quarter past ten when he awoke. He rose first and bullied his cousin to that extent that the latter tumbled out of bed and flung on his clothes without indulging in his usual bath. At eleven the trap was due and Bovey was all on fire, bundled his things around recklessly and swore a little at Clarges for keeping him up the night before. Clarges was nervous, but up to the present time was master of the situation. At breakfast, Bovey discovered the mistake, but attributed it to Clarges' carelessness in such matters aggravated by a probable bad arm.

"Why I took your watch for an authority instead of my own, I don't know," said he. "But last night I thought you were the clearer of the two, in fact, I don't recollect winding mine at all, and it seems now that _you_ were the delinquent."

"Yes, I must have been," said Clarges, self-reproachfully.

At eleven the trap came, and by noon they were half-way to their destination. The road winding higher and higher as it followed the magnificent curves of the Gatineau was very beautiful, and revealed at each turn a superb panorama of water, and wood and sky. For a long time the Buildings were visible, towering over trees and valleys. Once the sun came out and lit up the cold, gray scene.

"Pull up, Johnny," said the Hon. Bovyne, "I want to see this. Why, its immense, this is! Arthur, how's your arm?"

But Clarges was evidently struck with something. "I say, over there, is where we were yesterday, Bovey, I can imagine I see the very spot, cannon and all."

"Just as then you imagined you saw a couple of trees here, eh? Now go along, Johnny, and sit down, Arthur. It doesn't agree with you to be vaccinated. I'm afraid you're too imaginative already my boy. By the way, how _is_ your arm?"

"Its a novel situation," thought Clarges. "_He's_ the one, not me. Its _his_ arm, not mine. But my turn will come to-night; pretty soon he'll find it out for himself."

Arrived at the house of _Veuve_ Peter Ross, they found it clean and inviting; warmed by a wood stove and carpeted with home-made rugs. The old woman took a great interest in their arrival and belongings and jabbered away incessantly, in French. Did they but request her to "cherchez un autre blankette!" or fry an additional egg, up went her hands, her eyes and her shoulders, and such a tirade of excited French was visited upon them that they soon forebore asking her for anything but went about helping themselves. At first they thought she was angry when these outbreaks took place, but Bovey, who could partially understand her, gathered that she was far from offended, but given over to the national habit of delivering eloquent and theatrical monologues on the slightest provocation. She had no lodgers at the present moment; a Frenchman had left the day before, and the prospect was in every way favorable, to the comfort of the two friends.

When the dusk fell, Bovey made a camp-fire.

"It's what we came for," he said, "and we can't begin too early or have enough of it, and I feel chilly, queer, quite unlike myself to-night.

It's a depressing country just about here."

"It is," said Clarges, anxious to keep his friend a little longer in the dark. "We'll be all right when it's really night, you know, and the fire blazes up. What a jolly tent and what glorious blankets? We ought to go to bed early, for it was awfully late the last night There! now its getting better. Hoop-la! more sticks Bovey! Throw them on, make it blaze up. Here we are in the primeval forest at last, Bovey, pines and moss, and shadows and sounds--What's that now? Is that on the river?"

For suddenly they heard the most wonderful strain coming from that direction. The river was about three or four hundred yards away across the road, in front of them, and upon a raft slowly pa.s.sing by were a couple of _habitans_ singing. What strain was this, so weird, so solemn, so earnest, yet so pathetic, so sweet, so melodious!

"Descendez a l'ombre Ma jolie blonde."

Those were the words they caught, no more, but the tune eluded them.

"It's the queerest tune I ever heard!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Clarges. He had a smattering of music, and not a bad ear.

"Can't get it for the life of me. It's like--I tell you what it's like Bovey, its got the same--you know--the same intervals--that's the word--that the priests chant in! And then, just when you're thinking it has, off it goes into something like opera bouffe or those French rounds our nurse used to sing. But isn't it pretty? I say--where's Lady Violet now, Bovey, eh? Don't you wish she could see us, see you there, quite the pioneer, looking like Queen Elizabeth's giant porter in this queer light? and how she would catch up that tune and bring it out on the piano, and make ever so much more of it with her clever fingers, first like a battle-cry, men marching and marching you know, and then put in a wonderful chord that would make us all creep and sigh as she would glide into the loveliest nocturne, you know--I say, what a nocturne we're having, eh! Do you think it's any livelier now?"

"My boy," said the Hon. Bovyne, solemnly, "You are right, it is a nocturne and a wonderful one. I'm not given to expressing myself poetically as you know, so I shall content myself with saying that its immense, and now will you pa.s.s the whiskey? I certainly feel shaky to-night, but I shall sleep out here all the same. What are you going to do?"

"I prefer to try the house, I think," answered Clarges, and so he did.

When he was going to bed, heartily grateful that his cousin was as yet ignorant of his interference, he looked long and earnestly from his one window in the roof at the scene outside before he attempted again the process of self-vaccination. He could see the mighty flames of Bovey's camp-fire, a first-cla.s.s fire, well planned and well plied. He could see the pale outline of the tent and the dark figure of his cousin wrapped in rugs and blankets by the side of the fire. He could see the tall pines and the little firs, the glistening line of river and the circles of gleaming white stones that marked the garden beds in front. The first snow of the year was just beginning to fall in tiny flakelets that melted as soon as they touched the ground.

"When they're all covered with snow, it must be pretty," thought Clarges. "Like all the Christmas trees in the world put together! The winter is beginning, the long cold, constant Canadian winter we have heard so much about. Good-bye, dear Lady Violet, good-bye, dear old England!" Clarges sat on the side of the bed with his arm ready. But the faintness came again, this time with a sickening thrill of frightful pain and apprehension, and he rolled over in a deathly swoon with his own words ringing in his ears.

When the morning broke, it broke in bright suns.h.i.+ne and with an inch or so of snow on the ground. The Hon. Bovyne, though feeling unaccountably ill and irritable, was delighted.

"Still I fear we are too late in the season for much camping," he said, "I must see Arthur about it."

He waited till ten, eleven, half-past eleven. No Arthur, not even the old woman about. He wondered very much. He approached the house, and finding n.o.body coming at his knock, opened the door and went in.

Something wrong. He knew that at once. The air was stifling, horrible, with an unknown quant.i.ty in it, it seemed to him. He threw open the front room door. _Veuve_ Peter Ross was in her bed, ill, and of small-pox. He could tell her that, for certain. He rushed up-stairs and found Clarges on his bed, raving, delirious.

What was it he heard?

"Bovey's all right! Bovey's all right?" This was all, repeated over and over.

The Hon. Bovyne was neither a fool nor a coward. He tore off his coat and looked at his arm, then he dragged his cousin out of the room, down the stairs and out of the fatal house. Propping him up against a st.u.r.dy pine and covering him with all available warm clothing, he sped like wind to the nearest house. But neither the swift, keen self-reproaches of Bovey, nor the skill of the best physician to be found in the town, nor the pure, fresh pine-scented air, nor the yearning perchance of a dead yet present mother could prevail. The young life went out in delirium and in agony, but "thank G.o.d," thought Bovey, "in complete unconsciousness."

When he set about removing his tent and other camping apparatus some time later, he was suddenly struck with the appearance of the tree against which poor Clarges had been propped. He looked again and again. "I must be dreaming," said the Hon. Bovyne. "That tree--oh!

its impossible--nevertheless, that tree has its counterpart in the one opposite it, and both have extraordinary branches! They bend upward, making a kind of--of--what was it Arthur saw in those imaginary trees of his only--_yesterday_--my G.o.d--it is true--a kind of lyre shape! There it is, and the more I look at it the clearer it grows, and to think he has _died_ there--!! And beneath there he is buried, and the raftsmen will pa.s.s within a few hundred yards of him where he lies, and will sing the same strain that so fascinated him, but he will not hear it, and learn it and bring it back for Lady Violet, the loveliest woman in England! For he has gone down into the eternal shadow that no man ever penetrates."

The Prisoner Dubois.

Miss Cecilia Maxwell was the only child of Sir Robert Maxwell, K. C.

M. G., member of the Cabinet, chief orator of the Liberal party, and understudy for the part of Premier, who, although a Scotchman by birth, was a typical Canadian--free, unaffected, honest and sincere. His bushy iron-gray hair, his keen gray eyes, his healthy florid color, and the well-trimmed black moustache, which gave his face an unusually youthful appearance for a man of his age, went with a fine stalwart physique and a general bodily conformation apparently in keeping with the ideas of early rising, cold ablutions and breakfasts of oatmeal porridge that the ingenuous mind is apt to a.s.sociate with Scotch descent and bringing-up.

His daughter was a very beautiful girl. Born in the shadow of the pines, she had been educated successively in Edinburgh, Brussels and Munich, had been presented at Court, been through two London seasons, spent half of one winter in South America, another in Bermuda, had been ogled by lords, wors.h.i.+pped by artists, and loved by everybody.

Once more in Canada, she took her place in the limited yet exacting political circles of the Capital, of Toronto, and of distant Winnipeg.

Life was full of duties, and she s.h.i.+rked none, though on days when they were put away earlier than usual she would fall to musing of the country place down the river she had not seen for years, with the beautiful woods, and the simple, contented French, and the evenings on the water.

"That great, lonely river," she thought on one occasion, looking idly out of her window. "What other river in the world is like it?--and the tiny French villages with the red roofs and doors, and the sparkling spires and the queer people. Delle Lisbeth, and _veuve_ Macleod, and Pierre--poor Pierre. I have never forgotten Pierre, with his solemn eyes and beautiful brown hair. And how he knew the flowers in the wood, and what were those songs he used to sing?" And Cecilia sang a couple of verses of: