Now, as for me, I was neither wearied by toil nor pleasure; no sense of past fatigue, no anticipation of coming exertion, invited slumber,—nay, I was actually more wakeful than I had been during the entire evening, and I felt a most impulsive desire for a little social enjoyment,—that kind of intercourse with strangers which I always remarked had the effect of eliciting my own conversational qualities to a degree that astonished even myself.
In search of some house of entertainment, some public resort, I paced all the streets of the Upper Town, but to no purpose. Occasionally, lights in a drawing-room, and the sound of a piano, would tell where some small evening party was assembled; or now and then, from a lower story, a joyous roar of laughter, or the merry chorus of a drinking-song, would bespeak some after-dinner convivialities; but to mingle in scenes like these, I felt that I had yet a long road to travel,—ay, to pass muster in the very humblest of those circles, what a deal had I to learn! How much humility, how much confidence; what deference, and what self-reliance; what mingled gravity and levity; what shades and gradations of color, so nicely balanced and proportioned, too, that, unresolved by the prism, they show no preponderating tint,—make up that pellucid property men call “tact!” Ay, Con, that is your rarest gift of all,—only acquire that, and you may dispense with ancestry, and kindred, and even wealth itself; since he who has “tact” participates in all these advantages, “among his friends.”
As I mused thus, I had reached the “Lower Town,” and found myself opposite the door of a tavern, over which a brilliant lamp illuminated the sign of “The British Grenadier,”—a species of canteen in high favor with sergeants and quartermasters of the garrison. I entered boldly, and with the intention of behaving generously to myself; but scarcely had I passed the threshold than I heard a sharp voice utter in a half-whisper, “Dang me if he an't in livery!”
I did not wait for more. My “tact” assured me that even there I was not admissible; so I strolled out again, muttering to myself, “When a man has neither friend nor supper, and the hour is past midnight, the chances are it is 'time to go to bed;'” and with this sage reflection, I wended my way towards a humble lodging-house on the quay, over which, on landing, I read the words, “The Emigrant's Home.”
CHAPTER XIV. HOW I 'FELL IN' AND 'OUT' WITH THE WIDOW DAVIS
For the sake of conciseness in this veracious history, I prefer making the reader acquainted at once with facts and individuals, not by the slow process in which the knowledge of them was acquired by myself, but in all the plenitude which intimate acquaintance now supplies; and although this may not seem to accord with the bit-by-bit and day-by-day narrative of a life, it saves a world of time, some patience, and mayhap some skipping too. Under this plea, I have already introduced Sir Dudley Broughton to the reader; and now, with permission, mean to present Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis, relict of Thomas John Davis, was a character so associated with Quebec that to speak of that city without her would be like writing an account of Newfoundland and never alluding to the article “cod-fish.” For a great number of years her house had been the rendezvous of everything houseless, from the newly come “married” officer to the flash commercial traveller from the States; from the agent of an unknown land company to the “skipper” of a rank pretentious enough to dine at a boarding-house. The establishment—as she loved to style it—combined all the free-and-easy air of domesticity with the enjoyment of society. It was an “acted newspaper,” where paragraphs, military and naval, social, scandalous, and commercial, were fabricated with a speed no “compositor” could have kept up with. Here the newly arrived subaltern heard all the pipeclay gossip, not of the garrison, but of the Province; here the bagman made contracts and took orders; here the “French Deputy” picked up what he called afterwards in the Chamber “l'opinion publique;” and here the men of pine-logs and white deal imbibed what they fervently believed to be the habits and manners of the “English aristocracy.” “To invest the establishment with this character,” to make it go forth to the world as the mirror of high and fashionable life, had been the passion of Mrs. D.'s existence. Never did monarch labor for the safeguard that might fence and hedge round his dynasty more zealously; never did minister strive for the guarantees that should insure the continuance of his system. It was the moving purpose of her life; in it she had invested all her activity, both of mind and body; and as she looked back to the barbarism from which her generous devotion had rescued hundreds, she might well be pardoned if a ray of self-glorification lighted up her face. “When I think of Quebec when T. J.”—her familiar mode of alluding to the defunct Thomas John—“and myself first beheld it,” would she say, “and see it now, I believe I may be proud.” The social habits were indeed at a low ebb. The skippers—and there were few other strangers—had a manifest contempt for the use of the fork at dinner, and performed a kind of sword-exercise while eating, of the most fearful kind. Napkins were always misconstrued,—the prevailing impression being that they were pocket-handkerchiefs. No man had any vested interest in his own wine-glass; while thirsty souls even dispensed with such luxuries, and drank from the bottle itself.
Then sea-usages had carried themselves into shore life. The company were continually getting up to look out of windows, watching the vessels that passed, remarking on the state of the tide, and then, resuming their places with a muttering over the “half ebb,” and that the wind was “northing-by-west,” looked for change. All the conversation smacked of salt-water; every allusion had an odor of tar and seaweed about it.