LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 220, 22 February 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

CICELY. Continued. On recovering, the first voice I heard was that of my Jehu saying,— ‘He ain’t dead now, I b’lieve; but you bet he’s a gonner in twenty-four hours. A doctor ain’t the least use. ’ ‘Nay, man, while there is life there is hope, with the blessing of God,’ said a strong, deep voice in a Scotch accent. ‘ Malcolm shall hitch in the black horse and go to G for the doctor, and we must do our best while he is away. ’ ‘ Yes, Cameron, please do, ’ was said by a clear girlish voice, with a touch of the quaint burr of native Canadians. ‘Go at once; there is no time to be lost. ’ ‘ Why, what matter is it to you ?’ replied the person addressed, evidently a young man. ‘ You don’t know the man, do you.’ ‘ No; but I know he’s a fellow-creature.’ ‘ Hum!’ said Malcolm; and, being a man or youth of few words, I presume, I. heard his heavy tread on the boarded floor as he left the room. I could scarcely move a muscle; but by inclining my head a few inches, I at length caught sight of the group and its surroundings. I was lying on a low wooden bedstead in the corner of a very large square room, of the sort with which I had lately become familiar in log houses. The curtain which generally sequestered this bed from the common room had been pulled aside in bringing me in. At the other side of the room, nearly opposite the great fireplace, stood a gray-haired, sun-burnt man, with clear eyes and a pleasant smile. Near the hearth were two women; one in a cap which did not affect to conceal her grey hair, with the broad square forehead and regular features of the lowland Scotch women; the other a girl of about eighteen, her long brown locks merely tied with a bright ribband at the poll and then suffered to flow down in ripples over her fine shoulders; her complexion bright, yet brown as a berry, with a pair of dazzling eyes, a delicate aquiline nose, and a mouth and teeth that were too bewitching, too fascinatingly brought to bear in sweet conjunction of smiles on any one blessed with her approval or her pity. I did not find this out, you may depend upon it, just then. I was too pained and interested to notice details. I only caught an idea of sweetness and grace which comes up before me now, even as I write. And besides these there was my friend the driver, seated at one end of the table, with eyes and ears alert to the conversation, but with his jaws (and those teeth !) engaged in decimating the large joint of meat that stood before him.

The girl was the first to look my way and notice that my eyes were open. ‘ There !’ she cried, ‘ he’s awake,’ and she ran [to my side. * Poor fellow,’ said she again, * are you very much hurt ?’ Before I could reply the older woman and the man were beside her, Curtis continued to work away at the table. ‘ You’ve broke your collar-bone, young man, and I guess you can’t st!r for some time,’ said the matron. ‘ It will be twelve hours before the doctor comes, but we’ll do what we can meantime. ’ I groaned and thought of the twelve hours of pain and waiting, and, I must tell the truth, fainted away. As consciousness departed I felt the girl’s soft hands placing my head in a better position on the pillow. * * * * Days and days had gone by. The lapse of time had amounted to weeks, and I was still a visitor at Coney place—convalescent, it is true, but not yet, as Cicely said, * of much account.’ Cicely was the giri I have described—a straight, strong, handsome girl, with an arm turned like that of a sculptor’s model. It was a picture to me to watch her of a morning, with her calico dress, so well made and fitted, tucked up over her short petticoat of the Stuart plaid, and showing a well-made pair of legs in grey spun stockings and boots befitting the backwoods, as after breakfast she trotted about the great room and in and out of it, washing the crockery, cleaning the boards, preparing the food for the cattle, or the meals for their human, master. She was up at dawn, milking cows, feeding poultry, and helping the vigorous old lady to spread the great early breakfast—worthy the board of a Scottish laird—which covered the rough tablecloth of the Scottish immigrant. I say I used to watch her. I couldn’t help it. I was a young man, and I had nothing to do. Some one else watched her. There were three ‘ boys’ in the house, of whom Malcolm was the eldest. They had a clearing for timber, and a water-mill for sawing logs, some ten miles oil’ in the woods, and two of them slept there ; the third in turn always coming home with the latest news, to rest beneath the paternal roof and get the benefit of the morning and evening blessing which Kerr regularly implored with all the length and fervour which is distinctive of his race. And I noticed that, though cleaxdy all the boys loved Cicely, they yielded the precedence to Malcolm, and he came home oftener than the others. And it was to me very beautiful, sitting there a poor invalid, to see how those two young men struggled with their evident liking for the girl, to prevent it from manifesting itself too eagerly in rivalry with the admitted claims of Malcolm. As for Miss Cicely, she took the woman’s privilege, and apparently declined to accept the general verdict of the house, which assigned her to the eldest boy, manly and pleasant as he was. Nay, she used poor me as a blind ; and when her lover came home o’ nights or Sundays, and she ought to have gone and sat beside him in the large square window that looked out upon the so-called garden, wherein the elder immigrants sought to preserve the memories of some of the floral scenes they had left behind them, Cicely would come and sit beside me, and ask me to tell her all about London and its gay societies and pretty shows, and the fields and castles, the nobles and soldiers of England. I verily believe that if I had been a well man Malcolm would have crunched up every bone in my body. But he kept his temper under control, and sat there listening to my stories, and watching the play of pleasure on Cicely’s face. And who was |Cicely ? That was exactly the question I had come to Coney place to ascertain. For Cicely was not a Kerr, though she was called Cicely Kerr by every one in that part of Muskoka. This I had learnt while making inquiries in the county of Peterborough. And indeed I had now extracted from Mr Kerr the story of her life. He said— ‘ When I came to Canada, now nearly forty years ago, it was nothing like what it js to-day. There were no steamers

to Quebec. Lower Canada was almost given up to French influence, and Upper Canada was but thinly populated, I was a Scotch mechanic from Perth, where I worked for a cabinet-maker at sixteen shillings a week, pretty good wages as things were in those days. My father was the same, but he was an ambitious sort of man and he managed to give me some education. He used to beg me to look out beyond the seas for a fortune. He said, ‘No good Scotchman in your position should allow himself to rot at home. And that is what the like of us are doing. Here have I labored these fifty years. I’ve been sober, industrious, economical, even saving, and see where I am now. Little better than when I began. I have brought up you six children, and whatever I saved went to try to educate you, but I know it has only been half done. Had I been in America I should have had you all educated and have been myself at least independent, and probably a landowner, Be off with your wife, you’re both strong and healthy, and see what God gives you,’ ‘ Well, Elizabeth and I set sail for Canada with about thirty pounds in cash and a small outfit. We landed at Quebec, and I tried my hand at work there, but soon gave that up. Then we went to Sherbrooke, then to Montreal, where I managed to make a living for a year and a half. It was hard work, and in winter cold weather, but we did not dislike it. The air was dry, fuel then was cheap, and wages for men of my class were good enough. Still I was not making a fortune, and by that time a child had been born—that big boy Malcolm. So I resolved to go to Toronto and try for a bit of land. Both my wife and I thought if we could get some land we could make something out of it. She was a bold, brave young woman, and had a good deal of judgment as well as natural energy, as you shall see. I went to Toronto first alone, and made inquiries about locations. Peterborough district was being settled at that time, and lots were to be had on easy terms. In near townships settling land was beginning to be valuable, and of course a great deal was taken up by the lumberers. I saw that the country was gradually improving, that cultivation was year by year eating its way into the wilderness, and I made up my mind that I would go to the very verge of settlement and take up a good location. So I went up to the lake region, and found my way to a clearing far out in the woods by a capital mill-stream. It belonged to a Scotchman. He told me there were very few people beyond him, and warned me that new settlers should keep nearer to settlements. But he informed me that the land ten miles up the valley was the best land in the district, and I could get a concession there on nominal terms. ‘ There is only one man up there, he said, ‘ and he won’t be there long. He’s a gentleman, a half-pay officer. He passed through this way with two great waggon-loads of furniture and a man servant. It must have cost him half a fortune to get it up. The man left him long since, but he sticks to it himself, though it must be terribly hard on the poor lady—a tine-looking, proud woman—and her little girl, as like her mother as could be. ’ I was curious and interested, so I went up to see Captain Masham’s clearing. It was beautifully situated on a knoll, at a bend of the little river, giving a pretty view up and down the water avenue among the trees. The captain had built a nice log house, and his lady had covered it with creeping vines, and made a tasteful garden about it. In the course of two years he had, with the aid of his servant, cleared a few acres; and there among the stumps, in the fall, I saw as fine a crop of wheat growing as you’d wish to see. The captain was a hearty, kindly man, and when I told him what I had come up for, he offered to put me up for a day or two, and take me out to look for a lot. At length I fixed on a position at the end of the valley, where the river turned almost at right angles, with a rising wood and a fine plateau of rich soil. The town of now stands on my first clearing; but, I dare say, few people think of what it cost the first pioneer. It was eight miles from Captain Masham’s clearing. There was no road. The woods were thick, and the bush uncleared. Here and there were swamps which conld only be passed by leaping from log to log of fallen trees. The river was not even navigable for a small boat because of the number of trees that impeded it at every turn: I decided on the location, and determined to come at once. The _ captain earnestly dissuaded me from trying it at the beginning of the winter, although he admitted that that was the time to do the clearing and build a log house. However 1 was a stubborn man, and I resolved to come if my wife would. In the end I arrived at Captain Masham’s on the 25th of November, with a ■wagon containing my boxes, a few tools, and my wife and child. The cold weather had set in fairly before we left Kingston; and the night we slept at the captain’s, and all the next day, the snow fell fast and thick, until there must have been fifteen to eighteen inches. Mrs Masham entreated us to remain with them, but the second day, being cold and clear, I began to move. A sort of road had been made by Captain Masham for a little over a mile, beyond that there was a reach of tolerably open woods in consequence of the cropping out there of a ridge of rock, and so, bidding good-bye to our new friends, we managed to get our waggon, after a day s hard work, to within five miles of our destination. Beyond that it was plain the waggon could not go. The brushwood, now stripped of its leaves, presented an impenetrable obstacle to any vehicle, could we have trusted to the ground beneath the snow to permit it to pass over it. So we camped out that night. Elizabeth and I digging with the wood shovels I had brought a hole for the horse, and covering it in with a tarpauline, and making a big fire with the dried wood the captain had thoughtfully given us, turned in and slept under the cover of our waggon. 1 The next day we held a consultation. How were we to get over to our new home, and, still more difficult, how were we to get our goods and chattels there ? There was no help to be got for love or money. The captain was, no doubt, chopping away at his trees, and we had not the face to ask him to come and carry our goods for us. There they were Five fair-sized boxes made with my own hands of strong wood—not a light w r eight—three barrels and a quantity of smaller packages, let alone the tools. The horse could not help us. Everything would have been swept from his back.’ To he continued.