Roughing It In The Bush Page 16

  Poor John bore no malice in his heart, not he; for, in spite of all the ill-natured things he had to endure from Uncle Joe and his family, he never attempted to return evil for evil. In proof of this, he was one day chopping firewood in the bush, at some distance from Joe, who was engaged in the same employment with another man. A tree in falling caught upon another, which, although a very large maple, was hollow, and very much decayed, and liable to be blown down by the least shock of the wind. The tree hung directly over the path that Uncle Joe was obliged to traverse daily with his team. He looked up, and perceived, from the situation it occupied, that it was necessary for his own safety to cut it down; but he lacked courage to undertake so hazardous a job, which might be attended, if the supporting tree gave way during the operation, with very serious consequences. In a careless tone, he called to his companion to cut down the tree.

  “Do it yourself, H——,” said the axe man with a grin. “My wife and children want their man as much as your Hannah wants you.”

  “I’ll not put axe to it,” quoth Joe. Then, making signs to his comrade to hold his tongue, he shouted to Monaghan, “Hollo, boy! you’re wanted here to cut down this tree. Don’t you see that your master’s cattle might be killed if they should happen to pass under it, and it should fall upon them.”

  “Thrue for you, Masther Joe; but your own cattle would have the first chance. Why should I risk my life and limbs, by cutting down the tree, when it was yerself that threw it so awkwardly over the other?”

  “Oh, but you are a boy, and have no wife and children to depend upon you for bread,” said Joe, gravely. “We are both family men. Don’t you see that ’tis your duty to cut down the tree?”

  The lad swung the axe to and fro in his hand, eyeing Joe and the tree alternately; but the natural kind-heartedness of the creature, and his reckless courage, overcame all idea of self-preservation, and raising aloft his slender but muscular arm, he cried out, “If it’s a life that must be sacrificed, why not mine as well as another? Here goes! and the Lord have mercy on my sinful sowl!”

  The tree fell, and, contrary to their expectations, without any injury to John. The knowing Yankee burst into a loud laugh. “Well, if you aren’t a tarnation soft fool, I never saw one.”

  “What do you mane?” exclaimed John, his dark eyes flashing fire. “If ’tis to insult me for doing that which neither of you dared to do, you had better not thry that same. You have just seen the strength of my spirit. You had better not thry again the strength of my arm, or, may be, you and the tree would chance to share the same fate;” and, shouldering his axe, the boy strode down the hill, to get scolded by me for his foolhardiness.

  The first week in March, all the people were busy making maple sugar. “Did you ever taste any maple sugar, ma’arm?” asked Monaghan, as he sat feeding Katie one evening by the fire.

  “No, John.”

  “Well, then, you’ve a thrate to come; and it’s myself that will make Miss Katie, the darlint, as illigant lump of that same.”

  Early in the morning John was up, hard at work, making troughs for the sap. By noon he had completed a dozen, which he showed me with great pride of heart. I felt a little curious about this far-famed maple sugar, and asked a thousand questions about the use to which the troughs were to be applied; how the trees were to be tapped, the sugar made, and if it were really good when made?

  To all my queries, John responded, “Och! ’tis illigant. It bates all the sugar that ever was made in Jamaky. But you’ll see before to-morrow night.”

  Moodie was away at P——, and the prospect of the maple sugar relieved the dulness occasioned by his absence. I reckoned on showing him a piece of sugar of our own making when he came home, and never dreamt of the possibility of disappointment.

  John tapped his trees after the most approved fashion, and set his troughs to catch the sap; but Miss Amanda and Master Ammon upset them as fast as they filled, and spilt all the sap. With great difficulty, Monaghan saved the contents of one large iron pot. This he brought in about nightfall, and made up a roaring fire, in order to boil it down into sugar. Hour after hour passed away, and the sugar-maker looked as hot and black as the stoker in a steam-boat. Many times I peeped into the large pot, but the sap never seemed to diminish.

  “This is a tedious piece of business,” thought I, but seeing the lad so anxious, I said nothing. About twelve o’clock, he asked me, very mysteriously, for a piece of pork to hang over the sugar.

  “Pork!” said I, looking into the pot, which was half full of a very black-looking liquid; “what do you want with pork?”

  “Shure, an’ ’tis to keep the sugar from burning.”

  “But, John, I see no sugar!”

  “Och, but ’tis all sugar, only ’tis molasses jist now. See how it sticks to the ladle. Aha! but Miss Katie will have the fine lumps of sugar when she awakes in the morning.”

  I grew so tired and sleepy that I left John to finish his job, went to bed and soon forgot all about the maple sugar. At breakfast I observed a small plate upon the table, placed in a very conspicuous manner on the tea-tray, the bottom covered with a hard, black substance, which very much resembled pitch. “What is that dirty-looking stuff, John?”

  “Shure an ’tis the maple sugar.”

  “Can people eat that?”

  “By dad, an’ they can; only thry it, ma’arm.”

  “Why, ’tis so hard, I cannot cut it.”

  With some difficulty, and not without cutting his finger, John broke a piece off, and stuffed it into the baby’s mouth. The poor child made a horrible face, and rejected it as if it had been poison. For my own part, I never tasted anything more nauseous. It tasted like a compound of pork grease and tobacco juice. “Well, Monaghan, if this be maple sugar, I never wish to taste any again.”

  “Och, bad luck to it!” said the lad, flinging it away, plate and all. “It would have been first-rate but for the dirthy pot, and the blackguard cinders, and its burning to the bottom of the pot. That owld hag, Mrs. H——, bewitched it with her evil eye.”

  “She is not so clever as you think, John,” said I, laughing. “You have forgotten how to make the sugar since you left D——; but let us forget the maple sugar, and think of something else. Had you not better get old Mrs. H—— to mend that jacket for you; it is too ragged.”

  “Ay, dad! an’ it’s mysel’ is the illigant tailor. Wasn’t I brought up to the thrade in the Foundling Hospital?”

  “And why did you quit it?”

  “Because it’s a low, mane thrade for a jintleman’s son.”

  “But, John, who told you that you were a gentleman’s son?”

  “Och! but I’m shure of it, thin. All my propensities are gintale. I love horses, and dogs, and fine clothes, and money. Och! that I was but a jintleman! I’d show them what life is intirely, and I’d challenge Masther William, and have my revenge out of him for the blows he gave me.”

  “You had better mend your trousers,” said I, giving him a tailor’s needle, a pair of scissors, and some strong thread.

  “Shure, an’ I’ll do that same in a brace of shakes,” and sitting down upon a ricketty three-legged stool of his own manufacturing, he commenced his tailoring by tearing off a piece of his trousers to patch the elbows of his jacket. And this trifling act, simple as it may appear, was a perfect type of the boy’s general conduct, and marked his progress through life. The present for him was everything; he had no future. While he supplied stuff from the trousers to repair the fractures in the jacket, he never reflected that both would be required on the morrow. Poor John! in his brief and reckless career, how often have I recalled that foolish act of his. It now appears to me that his whole life was spent in tearing his trousers to repair his jacket.

  In the evening John asked me for a piece of soap.

  “What do you want with soap, John?”

  “To wash my shirt, ma’arm. Shure an’ I’m a baste to be seen, as black as the pots. Sorra a shirt have I but the one, an’ it has
stuck on my back so long that I can thole it no longer.”

  I looked at the wrists and collar of the condemned garment, which was all of it that John allowed to be visible. They were much in need of soap and water.

  “Well, John, I will leave you the soap; but can you wash?”

  “Och, shure, an’ I can thry. If I soap it enough, and rub long enough, the shirt must come clane at last.”

  I thought the matter rather doubtful; but when I went to bed I left what he required, and soon saw through the chinks in the boards a roaring fire, and heard John whistling over the tub. He whistled and rubbed, and washed and scrubbed, but as there seemed no end to the job, and he was as long washing this one garment as Bell would have been performing the same operation on fifty, I laughed to myself, and thought of my own abortive attempts in that way, and went fast asleep. In the morning John came to his breakfast, with his jacket-buttoned up to his throat.

  “Could you not dry your shirt by the fire, John? You will get cold wanting it.”

  “Aha, by dad! it’s dhry enough now. The divil has made tinder of it long afore this.”

  “Why, what has happened to it? I heard you washing all night.”

  “Washing! Faith, an’ I did scrub it till my hands were all ruined intirely, and thin I took the brush to it; but sorra a bit of the dirth could I get out of it. The more I rubbed the blacker it got, until I had used up all the soap, and the perspiration was pouring off me like rain. ‘You dirthy owld bit of a blackguard of a rag,’ says I, in an exthremity of rage, ‘you’re not fit for the back of a dacent lad an’ a jintleman. The divil may take ye to cover one of his imps;’ an’ wid that I sthirred up the fire, and sent it plump into the middle of the blaze.”

  “And what will you do for a shirt?”

  “Faith, do as many a betther man has done afore me, go widout.”

  I looked up two old shirts of my husband’s, which John received with an ecstacy of delight. He retired instantly to the stable, but soon returned, with as much of the linen breast of the garment displayed as his waistcoat would allow. No peacock was ever prouder of his tail than the wild Irish lad was of the old shirt.

  John had been treated very much like a spoiled child, and, like most spoiled children, he was rather fond of having his own way. Moodie had set him to do something which was rather contrary to his own inclinations; he did not object to the task in words, for he was rarely saucy to his employers, but he left the following stave upon the table, written in pencil upon a scrap of paper torn from the back of an old letter:—

  A man alive, an ox may drive

  Unto a springing well;

  To make him drink, as he may think,

  No man can him compel.

  “John Monaghan”

  The Emigrant’s Bride.

  A Canadian Ballad.

  The waves that girt my native isle,

  The parting sunbeams tinged with red;

  And far to seaward, many a mile,

  A line of dazzling glory shed.

  But, ah! upon that glowing track,

  No glance my aching eyeballs threw;

  As I my little bark steer’d back

  To bid my love a last adieu.

  Upon the shores of that lone bay,

  With folded arms the maiden stood;

  And watch’d the white sails wing their way

  Across the gently heaving flood.

  The summer breeze her raven hair

  Swept lightly from her snowy brow;

  And there she stood, as pale and fair

  As the white foam that kiss’d my prow.

  My throbbing heart with grief swell’d high,

  A heavy tale was mine to tell;

  For once I shunn’d the beauteous eye,

  Whose glance on mine so fondly fell.

  My hopeless message soon was sped,

  My father’s voice my suit denied;

  And I had promised not to wed,

  Against his wish, my island bride.

  She did not weep, though her pale face

  The trace of recent sorrow wore;

  But, with a melancholy grace,

  She waved my shallop from the shore.

  She did not weep; but, oh! that smile

  Was sadder than the briny tear

  That trembled on my cheek the while

  I bade adieu to one so dear.

  She did not speak—no accents fell

  From lips that breathed the balm of May;

  In broken words I strove to tell

  All that my broken heart would say.

  She did not speak—but to my eyes

  She raised the deep light of her own.

  As breaks the sun through cloudy skies,

  My spirit caught a brighter tone.

  “Dear girl!” I cried, “we ne’er can part,

  My angry father’s wrath I’ll brave;

  He shall not tear thee from my heart.

  Fly, fly with me across the wave!”

  My hand convulsively she press’d,

  Her tears were mingling fast with mine;

  And, sinking trembling on my breast,

  She murmur’d out, “For ever thine!”

  NINE

  PHOEBE H——, AND

  OUR SECOND MOVING

  “She died in early womanhood,

  Sweet scion of a stem so rude;

  A child of Nature, free from art,

  With candid brow and open heart;

  The flowers she loved now gently wave

  Above her low and nameless grave.”

  It was during the month of March that Uncle Joe’s eldest daughter, Phoebe, a very handsome girl, and the best of the family, fell sick. I went over to see her. The poor girl was very depressed, and stood but a slight chance for her life, being under the medical treatment of three or four old women, who all recommended different treatment and administered different nostrums. Seeing that the poor girl was dangerously ill, I took her mother aside, and begged her to lose no time in procuring proper medical advice. Mrs. Joe listened to me very sullenly, and said there was no danger; that Phoebe had caught a violent cold by going hot from the wash-tub to fetch a pail of water from the spring; that the neighbours knew the nature of her complaint, and would soon cure her.

  The invalid turned upon me her fine dark eyes, in which the light of fever painfully burned, and motioned me to come near her. I sat down by her, and took her burning hand in mine.

  “I am dying, Mrs. Moodie, but they won’t believe me. I wish you would talk to mother to send for the doctor.”

  “I will. Is there anything I can do for you?—anything I can make for you, that you would like to take?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t eat. But I want to ask you one thing, which I wish very much to know.” She grasped my hand tightly between her own. Her eyes looked darker, and her feverish cheek paled. “What becomes of people when they die?”

  “Good heavens!” I exclaimed involuntarily, “can you be ignorant of a future state?”

  “What is a future state?”

  I endeavoured, as well as I was able, to explain to her the nature of the soul, its endless duration, and responsibility to God for the actions done in the flesh; its natural depravity and need of a Saviour; urging her, in the gentlest manner, to lose no time in obtaining forgiveness of her sins, through the atoning blood of Christ.

  The poor girl looked at me with surprise and horror. These things were all new to her. She sat like one in a dream; yet the truth seemed to flash upon her at once.

  “How can I speak to God, who never knew Him? How can I ask Him to forgive me?”

  “You must pray to Him.”

  “Pray! I don’t know how to pray. I never said a prayer in my life. Mother; can you teach me how to pray?”

  “Nonsense!” said Mrs. Joe, hurrying forward. “Why should you trouble yourself about such things? Mrs. Moodie, I desire you not to put such thoughts into my daughter’s head. We don’t want to know anything about Jesus Chr
ist here.”

  “Oh, mother, don’t speak so to the lady! Do, Mrs. Moodie, tell me more about God and my soul. I never knew until now that I had a soul.”

  Deeply compassionating the ignorance of the poor girl, in spite of the menaces of the heathen mother—for she was no better, but rather worse, seeing that the heathen worships in ignorance a false God, while this woman lived without acknowledging a God at all, and therefore considered herself free from all moral restraint—I bid Phoebe goodby, and promised to bring my bible, and read to her the next day.

  The gratitude manifested by this sick girl was such a contrast to the rudeness and brutality of the rest of the family, that I soon felt a powerful interest in her fate.

  The mother did not actually forbid me the house, because she saw that my visits raised the drooping spirits of her child, whom she fiercely loved, and, to save her life, would cheerfully have sacrificed her own. But she never failed to make all the noise she could to disturb my reading and conversation with Phoebe. She could not be persuaded that her daughter was really in any danger, until the doctor told her that her case was hopeless; then the grief of the mother burst forth, and she gave way to the most frantic and impious complainings.

  The rigour of the winter began to abate. The beams of the sun during the day were warm and penetrating, and a soft wind blew from the south. I watched, from day to day, the snow disappearing from the earth, with indescribable pleasure, and at length it wholly vanished; not even a solitary patch lingered under the shade of the forest trees; but Uncle Joe gave no sign of removing his family.

  “Does he mean to stay all the summer?” thought I. “Perhaps he never intends going at all. I will ask him, the next time he comes to borrow whiskey.”

  In the afternoon he walked in to light his pipe, and, with some anxiety, I made the inquiry.

  “Well, I guess we can’t be moving afore the end of May. My missus expects to be confined the fore part of the month, and I shan’t move till she be quite smart agin.”

  “You are not using us well, in keeping us out of the house so long.”

  “Oh, I don’t care a curse about any of you. It is my house as long as I choose to remain in it, and you may put up with it the best way you can;” and, humming a Yankee tune, he departed.