LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 313, 14 June 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

LEGENDS OF MUSKOKA

THE SETTLER’S TRAGEDY.

‘ Yes; that’s a queer-lookin’ place, now, ain’t it ? It’s the best piece of land you’ve seen anywhere in this day’s drive, and that’* a good deal to say, and likewise, it was once the prettiest farm along this road. Why, sir, I mind the time when that porch was all a-glory with roses, like a ’ouse in a hopera bouffe for aU the world. An’ right hin the front there, where you see all them docks an’ mullen a-growin’, that was chock full o’ Lunnun pride an’ chiuay asters, an’ roses, an’ stocks, an’ marigolds, an’ sweet mignonette; you could smell the place a mile off of a warm summer’s night. Ah! she was a fine girl, she was, that lived up there; an’ a terrible story that ’ouse tells. It ain’t just pleasant to be on the next lot to it. ’ Mr Wellbeloved, for I had stumbled in my Muskoka ramble on a person of that name, thus spoke of a log-house and lot which had attracted my curiosity. On one of the best stretches of arable land, lying well up the gentle swell of the valley, with a good exposure, backed by fine woodland, was—a singular sight in that raw, yet thriving settlement —a ‘ concession ’ which seemed to have been swept by some spiiit of ruin and decay. The log-house stood, but its roof was rotting; its slight porch had been shattered or displaced by snow; its windows remained unbroken, but one could see from the draggling paper blinds which had once made them gay with colour, that there was no housewife within to mend or change things; and all over the eight or ten acres of land which had been cleared about the house, there grew as high as the unremoved stumps a wealth of weed, such as is only the crop of absolute desertion and death. By this place, on one side, my friend Wellbeloved, at whose house I had drawn up for a mid-day meal, tilled a thriving farm; the evidences were visible in the roll of ripening wheat dotted with the disks of the blackened stumps, and in the cattle that loitered from the sun’s heat under the circle of young maples he had left in a corner of one of his fields where a spring welled up from among some boulders, and by the grunt of well-fed pigs which wandered down the road and cooled their heated sides in the marshy bottom, where I had found the road like a floating stage of logs. Moreover, there was Mrs Wellbeloved, a little weary-looking perhaps, for number nine in the cradle was ‘ the most bothersome child, that it was, God bless it, she had ever knew;’ and two or three fine, strapping boys that came home to the noontide meal from some hoeing work at the back at the back of the concession with an appetite for the pork and coin that made me envious. Wellbeloved was a Londoner, and had been in Canada exactly six years. “He was just turned forty,” having married at twenty, and now possessed a graduated scale of voracious infantry which must in the metropolis have severely worn his energies and Mrs Wellbeloved’s patience, but which, out here, was his most promising source of wealth. The elder boy, nearly nineteen, had added a hundred acres to the original government concession, and as the others grew up more would follow. Already Mr Wellbeloved’s house and barns began to take on an air, if not of wealth or even comfort, of sufficiency, which, as one looked into his bronzed face and clear eyes, and listened to his cheery voice, gave promise that the time might come when the patriarch should bless his sons and daughters, and his sons-in-law and daughter-in-law, looking out upon a scene of civilised beauty and fertility, and div Iding among them no mean iuheriauce. Such scenes have been witnessed in earlier settlements, and in the antecedent district of Lake Sitncoe, along whose cultivated shores I had travelled to Muskoka ; and such scenes will be repeated over and over again as the tide of population laps on and into the forest wilds of Ontario. ‘ Well,’l said, ‘what’s the story of that place ? It seems odd that it should be deserted like this. Why don’t you take it up?” “Me, sir! Kb, thankee. I’d not own a rod o’ that soil for its pavin’ in gold. No, no ! There’s blood on that land, and let some stranger came an’ wipe it bout. ’ lie wiped the beads from his forehead (the day was hot) and began—- * The man that took hup that concession was a gentleman, leastways, sir, you know, a guitleman by birth. Ts father were a Lunnun lawyer, you’ve ’card of ’im old Bytheway that used to ’ave the big cases at the hold Bailey. The hold man, he made money an’ spent it, an’ this ’ere boy he made none, an’ spent what ’is father made. ’E were sent to Heton, then to Hoxford, an’ afterwards ’e went where e’ weren’t sent—leastways not by direction—to the devil. The young ’ooman that lived an’ died in that ’ouse were acquainted with me. Lucy Burridge, that were her real name, though she were called ‘Lucinda Burrinda, the helegant dansews ; —she were in the corpus de halley at the Varieties Theayter in the Strand, I dcssay you know it ? . ._ . . Yes ? Well, sir, I were scene-shifter in that theaytre for seven years, an’ five years afore that at Drury Lane. I could tell you some queer stories ! If you want to know somethin’ of life, you get up in the wings, night after night, and watch the stage, you’ll see somethin’ of the bad ban’ the good o’ uman nature. Why, sir, I’ve seen cruelty an’ wickedness, an’ jealousy an’ revenge, an’ kindness an’ forgiveness, an’ charity, played far more real behind the canvas scenes I wei • a-shiftin’ than it were on the stage or before it. One night I see a young girl, which her name was Sairey Podge, from a dirty little street in the Borough she was, but a pretty one to look at, an’ danced like a sylph, an’ she ’ad a partikler rival, a

’alf Hitalian girl, as bad a little shrew for temper as hever you saw. Well, one night bin the Christuas pantomime—’twere last Christmas ten year—this girl, La Rosa, she broke down, and the people hissed her. Well, I was hup in the wings an’ I see it, an’ she ran behind one of the scenes where Sairey was waitin’ to jump out like a fairy, as she was, an’ I says to my mate, ‘ Look out for squalls there, Lorry—them two’ll fight,’ for I’ve seen girls fight behind the scenes before now. Well, sir, the Hitalian almost bounced into the other’s arms. Sairey drew back a minute, an’ looked straight hat ’er. The other was glowin’ with passion an’ spite, an’ my fear was that Sairey’s face was a-goin : to be spoiled, when I see Sairey, ’old bout both ’er ’ands, and I ’card ’er distinct-like, cry hout, ' Oh! Miss Rosa, I’m so sorry !’ and will you believe it, sir ? the poor Hitalian laid her ’ead on the bother's shoulder, an’ cried like a child ! In a minute the stage-master called out, sharp, for ‘ Miss Podge, an’ she dried ’er tears an’ went hout an’ danced so beautifully, the pit nearly went mad with ’er. Oh, yes, sir, there’s ’uman natur’ behind as well as before the scenes, an’ the great Sceneshifter above He watches it.

‘ Well, sir, Miss Lucy, afterwards Missis Blytheway, wer’ a clever dancer, an’ likewise sometimes took a small part, for she were as pretty a girl as I ever see hon the stage, an’ I’ve seen hall the swells you know. They’re wery partikler hat the Varieties, you know; hit’s only the royal family, an’ two or three wery speshul parties as gets the hentree there. I dunno ’ow that young Bytheway got in; but p’raps ’is father ’ad done the govner a good turn sometime. ’Owsomever ’e were hon the stage pretty hoften, an’ took a wiolent fancy to Miss Lucy. Ah, sir, my ’art used to bleed sometimes for those poor girls—to see ’ow bold and brazen some on ’em were, an’ ’ow gentle others was, an’ ’ow many of ’em came to grief! No matter. Lucy, she took to young Bytheway, an’ ’e tried hon a hold game with ’er, but she were too good or too knowin’ to be deceived, I believe she really liked the man. ’E were a terrible temper. No one ’ad never controlled it. ’E’d grown up just like that stalk of mullen you see there, as straight and long as he liked, an’ breakin out at every stage. ... ‘ Now you "want to know 'ow they come hout to this place ? I can’t tell you. All I know is, that hafter spoonin’ about the girl a precious long time, and she playin’ hoff an’ hon with ’im, one day she didn’t come to rehearsal, an’ then hit were rumoured among the young ladies she had run away with Mr Bytheway. The hold gent an’ the young un ’ad a row, han’ the young un said that ‘ rather than kill the old fool, he’d leave him.’ Well, a year after, I come across a Immigration hagent. ’E told me about Canada an’ the free grants, an’, lookin’ round on all those hungry children, I said, ‘We’ll try it—it’s worth the venture.’ I’d saved a little money, and when I got to Toronto I applied for land at the Government office, an’ they gave me this concession free. We got ’ere about the Ist of June, ban’ lived in the woods for some weeks ; I tell you the mosquitoes were awful. But you’ll fancy ’ow I started when the first thing I see on the next lot, where that ’ouse ’ad lately been built, was young Bytheway in a torn shirt an’ trousers, hoein’ round among the stumps j ast has if ’e’d been at it all ’is life. Then hout come Miss Lucythen Mrs Bytheway, for they’d got married before they left England—lookin’ pale like, has I’ve seen Mrs Wellbeloved look oftener than I cared for. We was very good friends, an’ the young gentleman, who was ‘ smart, ’ as they say ’ere, ’e put me hup to a good many things, an’ showed me ’ow to build my ’ouse, an’ all the naybours was kind an’ ’elpful enough, has all the people are hout ’ere to strangers. Well, young Bytheway was kind enough to Lucy, an’, for all I saw, she were fond enough of ’im ; but once or twice I noticed he went off to Orillia ’an stayed away some days, it might be three or four, an’ when he came back again he wasn’t ’imself for a long time. I knew what it was; it was the hold enemy —drink—an’ for the time hit made ’im another man. ‘By and by the autumn came, an’ we got in our root’crops an’ a little corn an’ wheat, an’ Bytheway laid in a decent lot. Then came the frost, and the failin’ of the leaves, an’ then the snow. Such snow ! I’ve seen snow ten to fifteen feet deep down in that gully, an’ all as crisp an’ shiny as the finest sugar, an’ the air as pure an’ the sky as bright, as I ever see painted in a Hitaliau scene at the theay ere Healthy ? I should think so. There ain’t no doctor nearer than Gravenhurst, an’ I never ’card of ’im cornin’ up here except to Joseph Jobson’s grandmother; they say she’s nigh upon eighty, an’ took the rhematiz so bad they thought she were dyin’, an’ sent for ’im to ’elp ’er on. Well, it was the second year, and then in the snow-time come Christmas, an’ the new tavern-keeper down at Bracebridge, he gave out a turkey-shootin’, an’ Mr Bytheway on the day before Christmas left ’is wife in our charge—she were very near her confinement—and went to try ’is luck. She come over here a Christmas Heve, an’ though she never said nothin’, she waren’t in no spirits we all noticed. My wife of course see the most of ’er, an’ tried ’er best to coax ’er to be more lively-like. She would go ’ome that night, and next mornin’ my wife went hup to ’er for a hour or so. She left ’er dressed an’ comfortable, waitin’ for By the way’s return. She expected ’im to reach ’ome about three or four in the afternoon. I went in after midday an’ there she were alayin’ the cloth for a Christmas dinner. The room w r as always very clean, an’ she’d stuck some green about an’ ornamented the table an’ made it all look very nice ; far better than we poor people can do out here, for Bytheway kept some of ’is hold habits, an’ she loved to make the ’ouse as swell-like as possible. I thought she looked very pretty though she was so pale, and she ’ad one of ’er old theater flowers in ’er brown ’air—it were a pleasure to me to see ’er. ‘Why, Mrs Bytheway,’ I says, ‘Merry Christmas.’ ‘ Merry Christmas, Wellbeloved,’ says she. An’ then turnin’ roun’ sharp, she says, ‘ How soon do you think Eeynold can get home ? He was to leave Bracebridge early this morning and walk out. I have a plumpudding for him. He knows nothing about it. I wish he -was home. ’ To be continued.