CHAPTER II.
Early next day Jeanie and her mother saw a short, stout man emerge from the woods. He was a stranger to them, but his aspect indicated he was a lumberman. He had a towsy head of reddish hair and a matted beard and whiskers of the same hue.
“A pleasant day, ma’am,” he said, in a voice so soft and insinuating, and contrasting so strikingly with the roughness of his appearance, that Mrs Morison was somewhat startled. “It is, indeed, a fine spring day,” she replied.
“And the water is high, ma’am, and the rafts are getting away finely—oh, very finely,” and the man stood complacently eyeing the mother and daughter, and rubbing his hands.
“Hae ye seen ocht o’ my husband? Ye’ll hae come about him?”
“Oh, my dear ma’am, don’t fret; take it coolly and comfortable like.”
“I see ye ken aboot him; oh, dinna play wi’ me, but tell me at once.”
Not in the least discomposed, the little man, in more oily tones than ever, replied, “Well, well, ma’am, there is no denying it, accidents will happen, you know. You shouldn’t be supposing the worst, and taking it easy, for”—
Before he could finish his sentence there was heard a heavy trampling in the woods, and soon there came from beneath their cover half a dozen men, four of them carrying a burden laid on two poles. They came in silence to the door, when Mrs Morison saw their burden was her husband. She snatched away the red handkerchief that covered his face, a glance at which showed her he was dead. She gave a shriek that resounded through the forest, and fell senseless upon the corpse.
The career of the dead man may be told in a few words. He had been the son of a small farmer in the south of Scotland, a strapping, lively fellow, who won the good graces of the daughter of a draper in the neighboring village. Her parents opposed her keeping company with him, not merely because his circumstances were indifferent but because his habits were not of the steadiest, he being fond of convivial gatherings, at which, more than once, he had got overcome by drink. Their opposition seemed only to strengthen their daughter’s affection for the free-hearted, good tempered young fellow, and the upshot was, that one morning she was not to be found, and before evening they learned she had been married. The imprudent match resulted as the parents had anticipated; the young man was unequal to the task of supporting a wife and his habits did not mend. Moving to a mining village, he got work as a laborer, and out of his scanty earnings a large percentage went into the till of the whisky shop every Saturday night, so that his wife, to eke out a living, had to exert herself to do something also. Quietly and uncomplainingly she took in sewing, washed, or spun, as opportunity offered, to earn an honest shilling, and did what lay in her power to keep things decent. Children came but none lived to maturity save Jeanie. The village was unhealthy, its fumes and murky smoke were not favorable to childhood, typhus was a regular winter visitor, and, more than all, the narrow means at her disposal afforded not the necessaries of life in the abundance children need, so, to her heart-sorrow, one after another was taken away. Time passed, and her father died, leaving her a small legacy, and with this she determined they should emigrate. She fondly thought were her husband removed from his boon companions, were all his old associations broken, and he transplanted into a new sphere, he might reform. Often had she striven with him, often had hope kindled in her bosom that he was going to keep the good resolutions he so often formed; always doomed to bitter disappointment. To emigrate was the last chance, it seemed to her, and for Canada they accordingly sailed. Deplorable to relate, on the day of their arrival at Quebec her husband got drunk with several of his fellow-passengers who went to take, as they termed it, a parting glass, and before he got over his spree the greater part of their little stock of money was gone. Instead, therefore, of being in a position to go to Upper Canada and take up land, as intended, he had to engage at Quebec with a lumberman who was getting out masts and square timber on the Chateaugay, and thus it came that, two years before the opening of our narrative, he had made a home, a poor one as we have seen, in what is now the township of Elgin. Altho their privations were great, Mrs Morison did not regret the change from the dirty, squalid, mining village in Scotland to the lonely woods of Canada. Her husband had fewer opportunities of getting drink and, on the whole, they lived happily. Possessing a superior education herself and having moved before her marriage in respectable society, she brought up her daughter very differently from what might have been expected from their circumstances, and Jeanie, despite her home-spun dress, had acquirements and manners that qualified her to move in any station of life. As already stated, on the Monday morning Morison had gone to assist in running logs out of the creek. On the evening of the succeeding day his employer settled with him for the season’s work, and, in addition to the small balance of wages that was coming to him, gave him a few pieces of pork to take home and, fatal parting gift, a bottle of rum. He left the raftsmen in high spirits, an able-bodied if not very active man, taking the track that led to his humble dwelling. What followed no human eye witnessed. He never reached his home, and the searching-party that morning had discovered his body a few yards from the creek, stretched upon the ground, with his face immersed in a pool of water—a pool only an inch or so in depth, left by the melting of the snow and gathered in a cavity formed by the roots of a tree. Had he, when he stumbled and fell, moved his head ever so little, he would have breathed and lived. The more than half empty bottle, found in his stony grasp, showed he had been too overcome to stir a hairsbreadth, and there, in a basin of water, so small that a squirrel could have leaped it; so shallow that a robin, in pruning his wings, could have stepped through without wetting a feather; this stalwart man, before whose axe the loftiest pines had fallen and whose vigorous oar had stemmed the rapids of the Chateaugay, had ignominiously met his death, within hail of the faithful wife and loving daughter who were anxiously waiting his return. Jeanie, in going home the preceding evening, had unconsciously passed within a few paces of the body which once contained her father’s spirit. On finding it, damp from the exposure of a day and two nights, the searching party had made the body as presentable as possible, and sent ahead one of their number to break, as gently as might be, the news to the wife and daughter. With what success he, who was chosen on account of his smooth tongue, acquitted himself, the reader knows.
So long did Mrs Morison remain in her swoon that once the dreadful thought darted through Jeanie’s mind that she was not going to recover, and at one fell swoop she was to be deprived of both parents. She did not cease her exertions, however, and while bathing the rigid temples she rejoiced to see the flush of returning animation. Slowly did Mrs Morison raise herself to a sitting posture, and looked in a dazed manner, as if wondering why they were there, at the rough lumbermen grouped around her, who stood in silence and with the awkwardness of people who were anxious to help but did not know how. Unconsciously she moved her glance from one to the other until it fell upon the body of her husband. Recollection returned in a flash, and drawing the inanimate form to her lap she pressed the bloated and discolored features to her lips.
“Oh, Willie,” she exclaimed, unconscious in her overwhelming passion of sorrow that there was a listening ear, “lang did we ken ane anither and braw and gallant were you ance; my pride and joy. Sair hae oor trials been and muckle hae ye been misguided, but aye faithfu and true to me. Oh, that I had been wi’ you; oh, that ye had given me your last kiss and deed in my arms! There hae been them wha despised you, wha tauld me to leave you; little did they ken o’ the love that bound me to you. Oh, that we should hae partit thus!”
Here she paused, and turning her eyes upwards she slowly and reverently said: “Merciful God, as in your wise decree you have been pleased to bring this affliction upon me, grant, in your pity, that I tarry not long behind him whom ye hae taen awa.”
The solemn petition calmed the tumult of her mind, and reverently disposing of the body, she rose to her feet and said modestly—
“You will excuse me, freens, for taking on sae sairly afore you, but I couldna help it; this misfortune has come so sudden. I thank you for what you hae dune, and, gin it be your pleasure, as you can do nae mair noo, leave us alane and come the morn to bury him wha’s gane.”
The red-whiskered man was about to make a voluble reply, when he was cut short by a tall lumberman, in whose eye there glistened a tear, with the remark, “Yes, ma’am, we are at your service and mean to do all we can for you.” Then, looking at his comrades, he said, “Let us go,” and turning abruptly he led the way, leaving the mother and daughter alone with their dead.