Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush Page 21

  “The poor creature turned away, and I left her, for who could say a word of comfort to such grief? it was a matter solely between her own conscience and God.”

  Having heard this terrible narrative, I was very anxious to behold this unhappy victim of remorse. She passed me on the stairs as I proceeded to the part of the building where the women were kept; but on perceiving a stranger, she turned her head away, so that I could not get a glimpse of her face.

  Having made known my wishes to the matron, she very kindly called her in to perform some trifling duty in the ward, so that I might have an opportunity of seeing her. She is a middle-sized woman, with a slight graceful figure. There is an air of hopeless melancholy in her face which is very painful to contemplate. Her complexion is fair, and must, before the touch of hopeless sorrow paled it, have been very brilliant. Her eyes are a bright blue, her hair auburn, and her face would be rather handsome were it not for the long curved chin, which gives, as it always does to most persons who have this facial defect, a cunning, cruel expression.

  Grace Marks glances at you with a sidelong stealthy look; her eye never meets yours, and after a furtive regard, it invariably bends its gaze upon the ground. She looks like a person rather above her humble station, and her conduct during her stay in the Penitentiary was so unexceptionable, that a petition was signed by all the influential gentlemen in Kingston, which released her from her long imprisonment. She entered the service of the governor of the Penitentiary, but the fearful hauntings of her brain have terminated in madness. She is now in the asylum at Toronto; and as I mean to visit it when there, I may chance to see this remarkable criminal again. Let us hope that all her previous guilt may be attributed to the incipient workings of this frightful malady.

  TO THE WIND.

  “Stern spirit of air, wild voice of the sky!

  Thy shout rends the heavens, and earth trembles with dread;

  In hoarse hollow murmurs the billows reply,

  And ocean is roused in his cavernous bed.

  “On thy broad rushing pinions destruction rides free,

  Unfettered they sweep the wide deserts of air;

  The hurricane bursts over mountain and sea,

  And havoc and death mark thy track with despair.

  “When the thunder lies cradled within its dark cloud,

  And earth and her tribes crouch in silence and dread,

  Thy voice shakes the forest, the tall oak is bowed,

  That for ages had shook at the tempest its head.

  “When the Lord bowed the heavens, and came down in his might,

  Sublimely around were the elements cast;

  At his feet lay the dense rolling shadows of night,

  But the power of Omnipotence rode on the blast.

  “From the whirlwind he spake, when man wrung with pain,

  In the strength of his anguish dare challenge his God;

  ‘Mid its thunders he told him his reasoning was vain,

  Till he bowed to correction, and kiss’d the just rod.

  “When call’d by the voice of the prophet of old,

  In the ‘valley of bones,’ to breathe over the dead;

  Like the sands of the sea, could their number be told,

  They started to life when the mandate had sped.

  “Those chill mouldering ashes thy summons could bind,

  And the dark icy slumbers of ages gave way;

  The spirit of life took the wings of the wind,

  Rekindling the souls of the children of clay.

  “Shrill trumpet of God! I shrink at thy blast,

  That shakes the firm hills to their centre with dread,

  And have thought in that conflict – earth’s saddest and last –

  That thy deep chilling sigh will awaken the dead!”

  MICHAEL MACBRIDE

  “His day of life is closing – the long night

  Of dreamless rest a dusky shadow throws,

  Between the dying and the things of earth,

  Enfolding in a chill oblivious pall

  The last sad struggles of a broken heart.

  Yes! ere the rising of to-morrow’s sun,

  The bitter grief that brought him to this pass

  Will be forgotten in the sleep of death.”

  S.M.

  We left Kingston at three o’clock, P.M., in the “Passport,” for Toronto. From her commander, Captain Towhy, a fine British heart of oak, we received the kindest attention; his intelligent conversation, and interesting descriptions of the many lands he had visited during a long acquaintance with the sea, greatly lightening the tedium of the voyage.

  When once fairly afloat on the broad blue inland sea of Ontario, you soon lose sight of the shores, and could imagine yourself sailing on a calm day on the wide ocean. There is something, however, wanting to complete the deception, – the invigorating freshness – the peculiar smell of the salt water, that is so exhilarating, and which produces a sensation of freedom and power that is never experienced on these freshwater lakes. They want the depth, the fulness, the grandeur of the ocean, though the wide expanse of water and sky are, in all other respects, the same.

  The boat seldom touches at any place before she reaches Cobourg, which is generally at night. We stopped a short time at the wharf to put passengers and freight on shore, and to receive fresh passengers and freight in return. The sight of this town, which I had not seen for many years, recalled forcibly to my mind a melancholy scene in which I chanced to be an actor. I will relate it here.

  When we first arrived in Canada, in 1832, we remained for three weeks at an hotel in this town, though, at that period, it was a place of much less importance than it is at present, deserving little more than the name of a pretty rising village, pleasantly situated on the shores of Lake Ontario. The rapid improvement of the country has converted Cobourg into a thriving, populous town, and it has trebled its population during the lapse of twenty years. A residence in a house of public entertainment, to those who have been accustomed to the quiet and retirement of a country life, is always unpleasant, and to strangers as we were, in a foreign land, it was doubly repugnant to our feelings. In spite of all my wise resolutions not to give way to despondency, but to battle bravely against the change in my circumstances, I found myself daily yielding up my whole heart and soul to that worst of all maladies, home sickness.

  It was during these hours of loneliness and dejection, while my husband was absent examining farms in the neighbourhood, that I had the good fortune to form an acquaintance with Mrs. C—, a Canadian lady, who boarded with her husband in the same hotel. My new friend was a young woman agreeable in person, and perfectly unaffected in her manners, which were remarkably frank and kind. Hers was the first friendly face I had seen in the colony, and it will ever be remembered by me with affection and respect.

  One afternoon while alone in my chamber, getting my baby, a little girl of six months old, to sleep, and thinking many sad thoughts, and shedding some bitter tears for the loss of the dear country and friends I had left for ever, a slight tap at the door roused me from my painful reveries, and Mrs. C—entered the room. Like most of the Canadian women, my friend was small of stature, slight and delicately formed, and dressed with the smartness and neatness so characteristic of the females of this continent, who, if they lack some of the accomplishments of English women, far surpass them in their taste in dress, their choice of colours, and the graceful and becoming manner in which they wear their clothes. If my young friend had a weakness, it was on this point; but as her husband was engaged in a lucrative mercantile business, and they had no family, it was certainly excusable. At this moment her pretty neat little figure was a welcome and interesting object to the home-sick emigrant.

  “What! always in tears,” said she, carefully closing the door. “What pleasure it would give me to see you more cheerful! This constant repining will never do.”

  “The sight of you has made me feel better already,” said I, wiping my eyes, and trying to f
orce a smile. “M—is away on a farm-hunting expedition, and I have been alone all day. Can you wonder, then, that I am so depressed? Memory is my worst companion; for by constantly recalling scenes of past happiness, she renders me discontented with the present, and hopeless of the future, and it will require all your kind sympathy to reconcile me to Canada.”

  “You will like it better by and by; a new country always improves upon acquaintance.”

  “Ah, never! Did I only consult my own feelings, I would be off by the next steam-boat for England; but then – my husband, my child, our scanty means. Yes! yes! I must submit, but I find it a hard task.”

  “We have all our trials, Mrs. M—; and, to tell you the truth, I do not feel in the best spirits myself this afternoon. I came to ask you what I am certain you will consider a strange question.”

  This was said in a tone so unusually serious, that I looked up from the cradle in surprise, which her solemn aspect, and pale, tearful face, did not tend to diminish. Before I could ask the cause of her dejection, she added quickly –

  “Dare you read a chapter from the Bible to a dying man?”

  “Dare I? Yes, certainly! Who is ill? Who is dying?”

  “It’s a sad story,” she continued, wiping the tears from her kind eyes. “I will tell you, however, what I know of it, just to satisfy you as to the propriety of my request. There is a poor young man in this house who is very sick – dying, I believe, of consumption. He came here about three weeks ago, without food, without money, and in a dreadfully emaciated state. He took our good landlord, Mr. S—, on one side, and told him how he was situated, and begged that he would give him something to eat and a night’s lodging, promising that if ever he was restored to health, he would repay the debt in work. You know what a kind, humane man, Mr. S—is, although,” she added, with a sly smile, “he is a Yankee, and so am I by right of parentage, though not of birth. Mr. S—saw at a glance that the suppliant was an object of real charity, and instantly complied with his request. Without asking further particulars, he gave him a good bed, sent him up a bowl of hot soup, and bade him not distress himself about the future, but try and get a good night’s rest. The next day, the young man was too ill to leave his chamber. Mr. S—sent for old Dr. Morton, who, after examining the lad, informed his employer that he was in the last stage of consumption, and had not many days to live, and it would be advisable for Mr. S—to have him removed to the hospital –(a pitiful shed erected for emigrants who may chance to arrive ill with the cholera). Mr. S—not only refused to send the young man away, but has nursed him with the greatest care, his wife and daughters taking it by turns to sit up nightly with the poor patient.”

  My friend said nothing about her own attendance on the invalid, which, I afterwards learned from Mrs. S—, had been unremitting.

  “And what account does the lad give of himself?” said I.

  “All that we know about him is, that his name is Macbride,* and that he is nephew to Mr. C—, of Peterboro’, an Irishman by birth, and a Catholic by religion. Some violent altercation took place between him and his uncle a short time ago, which induced Michael to leave his house, and look out for a situation for himself. Hearing that his parents had arrived in this country, and were on their way to Peterboro’, he came down as far as Cobourg in the hope of meeting them, when his steps were arrested by poverty and sickness on this threshold.

  “By a singular coincidence, his mother came to the hotel yesterday evening to inquire the way to Peterboro’, and Mr. S—found out, from her conversation, that she was the mother of the poor lad, and he instantly conducted her to the bedside of her son. I was sitting with him when the interview between him and his mother took place, and I assure you that it was almost too much for my nerves – his joy and gratitude were so great at once more beholding his parent, while the grief and distraction of the poor woman, on seeing him in a dying state, was agonising; and she gave vent to her feelings in uttering the most hearty curses against the country, and the persons who by their unkindness had been the cause of his sickness. The young man seemed shocked at the unfeminine conduct of his mother, and begged me to excuse the rude manner in which she answered me; ‘for,’ says he, ‘she is ignorant and beside herself, and does not know what she is saying or doing.’

  “Instead of expressing the least gratitude to Mr. S—for the attention bestowed on her son, by some strange perversion of intellect she seems to regard him and us as his especial enemies. Last night she ordered us from his room, and declared that her ‘precious bhoy was not going to die like a hathen, surrounded by a parcel of heretics;’ and she sent off a man on horseback for the priest and for his uncle – the very man from whose house he fled, and whom she accuses of being the cause of her son’s death. Michael anticipates the arrival of Mr. C—with feelings bordering on despair, and prays that God may end his sufferings before he reaches Cobourg.

  “Last night Mrs. Macbride sat up with Michael herself, and would not allow us to do the least thing for him. This morning her fierce temper seems to have subsided, until her son awoke from a broken and feverish sleep, and declared that he would not die a Roman Catholic, and earnestly requested Mr. S—to send for a Protestant clergyman. This gave rise to a violent scene between Mrs. Macbride and her son, which ended in Mr. S—sending for Mr. B—, the clergyman of our village, who, unfortunately, had left this morning for Toronto, and is not expected home for several days. Michael eagerly asked if there was any person present who would read to him from the Protestant Bible. This excited in the mother such a fit of passion, that none of us dared attempt the task. I then thought of you, that, as a perfect stranger, she might receive you in a less hostile manner. If you are not afraid to encounter the fierce old woman, do make the attempt for the sake of the dying creature, who languishes to hear the words of life. I will watch the baby while you are gone.”

  “She is asleep, and needs no watching. I will go as you seem so anxious about it,” and I took my pocket Bible from the table. “But you must go with me, for I do not know my way in this strange house.”

  “Carefully closing the door upon the sleeping child, I followed the light steps of Mrs. C—along the passage, until we reached the head of the main staircase, then, turning to the right, we entered the large public ballroom. In the first chamber of many that opened into this spacious apartment we found the object that we sought.

  Stretched upon a low bed, with a feather fan in his hand, to keep off the flies that hovered in tormenting clusters round his head, lay the dying Michael Macbride.

  The face of the young man was wasted by disease and mental anxiety; and if the features were not positively handsome, they were well and harmoniously defined, and a look of intelligence and sensibility pervaded his countenance, which greatly interested me in his behalf. His face was deathly pale, as pale as marble, and his large sunken eyes shone with unnatural brilliancy, their long dark lashes adding an expression of intense melancholy to the patient endurance of suffering that marked his fine countenance. His nose was shrunk and drawn in about the nostrils, his feverish lips apart, in order to admit a free passage for the labouring breath, their bright red glow affording a painful contrast to the ghastly glitter of the brilliant white teeth within. The thick black curls that clustered round his high forehead were moist with perspiration, and the same cold unwholesome dew trickled in large drops down his hollow temples. It was impossible to mistake these signs of approaching dissolution – it was evident to all present that death was not far distant.

  An indescribable awe crept over me. He looked so tranquil, so sublimed by suffering, that I felt my self unworthy to be his teacher.

  “Michael,” I said, taking the long thin white hand that lay so listlessly on the coverlid, “I am sorry to see you so ill.”

  He looked at me attentively for a few minutes. –“Do not say sorry, Ma’am; rather say glad. I am glad to get away from this bad world – young as I am – I am so weary of it.”

  He sighed deeply, and tears filled
his eyes.

  “I heard that you wished some one to read to you.”

  “Yes, the Bible!” he cried, trying to raise himself in the bed, while his eager eyes were turned to me with an earnest, imploring expression.

  “I have it here. Are you able to read it for yourself?”

  “I can read – but my eyes are so dim. The shadows of death float between me and the world; I can no longer see objects distinctly. But oh, Madam, if my soul were light, I should not heed this blindness. But all is dark here,” laying his hand on his breast, –“dark as the grave.”

  I opened the sacred book, but my own tears for a moment obscured the page. While I was revolving in my own mind what would be the best to read to him, the book was rudely wrenched from my hand by a tall, gaunt woman, who just then entered the room.

  “Och! what do you mane by disturbing him in his dying moments wid yer thrash? It is not the likes o’ you that shall throuble his sowl! The praste will come and administher consolation to him in his last exthremity.”

  Michael shook his head, and turned his face sorrowfully to the wall.

  “Oh, mother,” he murmured, “is that the way you treat the lady?”

  “Lady, or no lady, and I mane no disrispict; it is not for the like o’ her to take this on hersel.’ If she will be rading, let her rade this,” and she tried to force a book of devotional prayers into my hand. Michael raised himself, and with an impatient gesture exclaimed –

  “Not that – not that! It speaks no comfort to me. I will not listen to it. Mother, mother! do not stand between me and my God. I know that you love me – that what you do is done for the best; but the voice of conscience will be heard above your voice. I hunger and thirst to hear the word as it stands in the Bible, and I cannot die in peace unsatisfied. For the love of Christ, Ma’am, read a few words of comfort to a dying sinner!”