Crowded Out! and Other Sketches

by S. Frances Harrison

CHAPTER I.

There flows in Western Canada, by which I mean a region east of the Saskatchewan and west of the Thousand Islands, a singular and beautiful stream. It is beautiful because it is narrow, undulating and shallow, because it has graceful curves and rounded bends, because its banks are willow-clad and its bed boulder-strewn, because it flows along between happy farms and neat white villages, because at one spot, it boasts a picturesque and ruined mill and a moss-covered bridge and because—chiefly because—it is above all things—placid. The mind familiar with our Canadian streams will easily understand then, that if these be its attributes of beauty, they also attest to its claim of singularity. For the Canadian river is seldom placid, but oftener seething and steaming and foaming; or else deep and dark and dangerous with many a mighty gorge and tumbling cascade, wide and lonely and monotonous for the most part; pine hung down to the very edge, black and lowering, or displaying waving wisps of dry gray foliage that only resembles human hair. What a contrast, then, does this cherished river I speak of, afford! No local Laureate has as yet written it up, though picnic parties used to gather themselves together on its banks and in its well-wooded shades, defiling everything they touched from bark to beach, leaving bits of bread here, dead pie there, buttering the leaves, peppering the grass, salting the stones, and scattering greasy crumpled paper—PAPER—PAPER—everywhere. That is what picnic parties do all over the world, and with such gusto all of them, even the Sunday-schools, Dorcases, W. C. T. U's. and all the rest of them, that I really think it must be intended as a serious part of the Picnicker's Ritual and forms very likely a peace-offering or sacrifice of propitiation towards some unknown God. I don't think the Druids left paper about underneath their oaks. But presumably they left worse. Well, if as yet, this river I love so well has not been immortalized in fiction, travels or verse, it has however attracted the attention of several gifted members of the Royal Academy—Royal Canadian of course, who have from time to time invaded its peaceful shores and stuffing themselves into adjacent if inconvenient farmhouses, sketched it in water and oil, in the common-place pencil, and the more ambitious charcoal. The results are charming and you may see them any day in the studios of our foremost artists or in the picture dealers' windows or haply on the terra-cotta tinted walls of our esteemed collectors, the retired grocers of Montreal, or the aesthetic lawyers of a more western and more ambitious city. Still though the sketches are charming both in conception and execution, I, were I a Canadian artist, eager to secure Canadian subjects for my pencil, would hardly choose this particular river as one likely to give the most correct idea of Canadian scenery. No, I would chose the St. Maurice or the Richelieu, the Lièvre or the Saguenay, the Ottawa or portions of the St. Lawrence, with the grim Azoic rocks, the turbulent rapids and the somber pines. What a superb river system it is! Tell them off on your fingers and you'll have to go on borrowing from them afterwards and then all over again. Think of all those rivers that cluster in the French Canada and feed the mighty Gulf of St. Lawrence. There are the Ottawa, the Gatineau, the Rideau, the Richelieu, the Lièvre, the Matanne, the Metapedia, the Métis, the Saguenay. Those are the ones we know. Then look at the Peribonka, the Maniconagan, all the Ste. Anne's, all the Rouge or Red rivers, the Du Moine, the Coalonge, the Vermilion, the St. Francis. Then, look at that cluster of great Saxon named streams, the Churchill, the Nelson, the Severn, the English, the Albany! Lastly, glance at the magnificent Saskatchewan with the historic streams of Battle and Qu'Appelle Rivers! And now I have omitted the Athabasca, the Peace, the Moose and the Assiniboine! There is no end to them; they defy enumeration while they invite it.

Now, most of these Canadian rivers are Azoic in character; hence their grim and formidable beauty. But my river has nothing the least Azoic about it. It belongs to a more recent, a more comfortable, more placid, more satisfying a formation. It is as idyllic a stream as any English one that Tennyson noted in a contemplative ramble to work up later into the “Brook.”

Crossing the moss-grown bridge I have alluded to, a gradual ascent presents itself on the opposite side, of firm white road well macadamized and leading through small neat low houses, each with a little garden in front, to a church with a needle-like spire on the top of the hill, and the parson's house adjoining. On a June day, for example, it made a pleasant picture. Pastoral and prosperous the landscape, contented the people on foot, in the fields, at the windows, and most delightful of all—a certain Old World haze hanging over it.

This is what struck the Mr. Foxleys, driving out slowly from the town one Saturday afternoon. George, the elder, pale with dark hair, lay back in the phaeton with folded arms. Joseph, the younger, fair-haired and freckled, sat up, driving. They had hardly exchanged a word since entering the phaeton. For eight miles they had proceeded in almost perfect silence. This did not mean that they were out of sorts, or not on pleasant terms with one another. On the contrary, it proved that they were the very best of friends, and never bored each other. I may as well say at once that they were Englishmen, which was easy to gather from their picturesque and unusual attire of neat gray small-clothes meeting gray stockings at the knee, low white shoes, a striped blue and white flannel shirt and canoe-shaped hats of gray, each bearing a snow-white “puggree” with blue and gold fringed ends. Such was the outward adorning of the Mr. Foxleys. Behind the phaeton ran a pretty brown retriever answering to the name of “Bess,” and laid across the floor of the little carriage were a couple of walking canes, a couple of fishing rods and a gun case strapped together, while under the seat was a medium-sized portmanteau, and a peculiar long box with a leather handle. The eight miles having been traversed by them in silence, George, the elder, broke it by remarking, as they slackened their pace, before advancing over the bridge, “This is better.”

“Very much so. Rather. I should think so,” answered Joseph, the younger, who had a slightly more lively manner than his brother, and very laughing eyes. “It looks a little more like the—the Old Country.”

The elder brother made no reply. A kind of weary smile flitted across his face instead.

“It's a little bit after—Devonshire, don't you think?” went on Joseph, surveying the green meadows, the neat painted fences, the sleeping cows, the rising uplands in the distance leaning lovingly next the sky, the bridge, the distant church, and the placid narrow river with the overhanging willows and the stony amber floor.

“A long way after,” said George, without unfolding his arms or looking around him at all. He was gazing straight before him.

“But you don't half see the beauty of it,” said the younger brother, stopping the horse and standing up in the phaeton, “especially after that horrid eight miles of half-cleared ugly-stumpy stubble! This is really beautiful, such soft lines you know and little corners—oh! quite English!” Some of his enthusiasm reached the quieter brother, who apparently roused himself and looked around as directed. A faint pink came into his pale cheeks, a new gleam into the weary eyes, “Well, it is better, as I said before—you'll remember, I noticed it first—but not English.”