"And what do you intend doing with yourself when you arrive in Canada?" said I.
"Find out some large hollow tree, and live like Bruin in winter by sucking my paws. In the summer there will be plenty of mast and acorns to satisfy the wants of an abstemious fellow."
"But, joking apart, my dear fellow," said my husband, anxious to induce him to abandon a scheme so hopeless, "do you think that you are at all qualified for a life of toil and hardship?"
"Are you?" returned Tom, raising his large, bushy, black eyebrows to the top of his forehead, and fixing his leaden eyes steadfastly upon his interrogator, with an air of such absurd gravity that we burst into a hearty laugh.
"Now what do you laugh for? I am sure I asked you a very serious question."
"But your method of putting it is so unusual that you must excuse us for laughing."
"I don"t want you to weep," said Tom; "but as to our qualifications, Moodie, I think them pretty equal. I know you think otherwise, but I will explain. Let me see; what was I going to say?--ah, I have it! You go with the intention of clearing land, and working for yourself, and doing a great deal. I have tried that before in New South Wales, and I know that it won"t answer.
Gentlemen can"t work like labourers, and if they could, they won"t--it is not in them, and that you will find out. You expect, by going to Canada, to make your fortune, or at least secure a comfortable independence. I antic.i.p.ate no such results; yet I mean to go, partly out of a whim, partly to satisfy my curiosity whether it is a better country than New South Wales; and lastly, in the hope of bettering my condition in a small way, which at present is so bad that it can scarcely be worse. I mean to purchase a farm with the three hundred pounds I received last week from the sale of my father"s property; and if the Canadian soil yields only half what Mr. C--- says it does, I need not starve. But the refined habits in which you have been brought up, and your unfortunate literary propensities--(I say unfortunate, because you will seldom meet people in a colony who can or will sympathise with you in these pursuits)--they will make you an object of mistrust and envy to those who cannot appreciate them, and will be a source of constant mortification and disappointment to yourself. Thank G.o.d!
I have no literary propensities; but in spite of the latter advantage, in all probability I shall make no exertion at all; so that your energy, damped by disgust and disappointment, and my laziness, will end in the same thing, and we shall both return like bad pennies to our native sh.o.r.es. But, as I have neither wife nor child to involve in my failure, I think, without much self-flattery, that my prospects are better than yours."
This was the longest speech I ever heard Tom utter; and, evidently astonished at himself, he sprang abruptly from the table, overset a cup of coffee into my lap, and wishing us GOOD DAY (it was eleven o"clock at night), he ran out of the house.
There was more truth in poor Tom"s words than at that moment we were willing to allow; for youth and hope were on our side in those days, and we were most ready to believe the suggestions of the latter.
My husband finally determined to emigrate to Canada, and in the hurry and bustle of a sudden preparation to depart, Tom and his affairs for a while were forgotten.
How dark and heavily did that frightful antic.i.p.ation weigh upon my heart! As the time for our departure drew near, the thought of leaving my friends and native land became so intensely painful that it haunted me even in sleep. I seldom awoke without finding my pillow wet with tears. The glory of May was upon the earth--of an English May. The woods were bursting into leaf, the meadows and hedge-rows were flushed with flowers, and every grove and copsewood echoed to the warblings of birds and the humming of bees. To leave England at all was dreadful--to leave her at such a season was doubly so. I went to take a last look at the old Hall, the beloved home of my childhood and youth; to wander once more beneath the shade of its venerable oaks--to rest once more upon the velvet sward that carpeted their roots. It was while reposing beneath those n.o.ble trees that I had first indulged in those delicious dreams which are a foretaste of the enjoyments of the spirit-land.
In them the soul breathes forth its aspirations in a language unknown to common minds; and that language is Poetry. Here annually, from year to year, I had renewed my friendship with the first primroses and violets, and listened with the untiring ear of love to the spring roundelay of the blackbird, whistled from among his bower of May blossoms. Here, I had discoursed sweet words to the tinkling brook, and learned from the melody of waters the music of natural sounds. In these beloved solitudes all the holy emotions which stir the human heart in its depths had been freely poured forth, and found a response in the harmonious voice of Nature, bearing aloft the choral song of earth to the throne of the Creator.
How hard it was to tear myself from scenes endeared to me by the most beautiful and sorrowful recollections, let those who have loved and suffered as I did, say. However the world had frowned upon me, Nature, arrayed in her green loveliness, had ever smiled upon me like an indulgent mother, holding out her loving arms to enfold to her bosom her erring but devoted child.
Dear, dear England! why was I forced by a stern necessity to leave you? What heinous crime had I committed, that I, who adored you, should be torn from your sacred bosom, to pine out my joyless existence in a foreign clime? Oh, that I might be permitted to return and die upon your wave-encircled sh.o.r.es, and rest my weary head and heart beneath your daisy-covered sod at last! Ah, these are vain outbursts of feeling--melancholy relapses of the spring home-sickness! Canada! thou art a n.o.ble, free, and rising country--the great fostering mother of the orphans of civilisation.
The offspring of Britain, thou must be great, and I will and do love thee, land of my adoption, and of my children"s birth; and, oh, dearer still to a mother"s heart-land of their graves!
Whilst talking over our coming separation with my sister C---, we observed Tom Wilson walking slowly up the path that led to the house. He was dressed in a new shooting-jacket, with his gun lying carelessly across his shoulder, and an ugly pointer dog following at a little distance.
"Well, Mrs. Moodie, I am off," said Tom, shaking hands with my sister instead of me. "I suppose I shall see Moodie in London. What do you think of my dog?" patting him affectionately.
"I think him an ugly beast," said C---. "Do you mean to take him with you?"
"An ugly beast!--d.u.c.h.ess a beast? Why she is a perfect beauty!--Beauty and the beast! Ha, ha, ha! I gave two guineas for her last night." (I thought of the old adage.) "Mrs. Moodie, your sister is no judge of a dog."
"Very likely," returned C---, laughing. "And you go to town to-night, Mr. Wilson? I thought as you came up to the house that you were equipped for shooting."
"To be sure; there is capital shooting in Canada."
"So I have heard--plenty of bears and wolves. I suppose you take out your dog and gun in antic.i.p.ation?"
"True," said Tom.
"But you surely are not going to take that dog with you?"
"Indeed I am. She is a most valuable brute. The very best venture I could take. My brother Charles has engaged our pa.s.sage in the same vessel."
"It would be a pity to part you," said I. "May you prove as lucky a pair as Whittington and his cat."
"Whittington! Whittington!" said Tom, staring at my sister, and beginning to dream, which he invariably did in the company of women. "Who was the gentleman?"
"A very old friend of mine, one whom I have known since I was a very little girl," said my sister; "but I have not time to tell you more about him now. If you so to St. Paul"s Churchyard, and inquire for Sir Richard Whittington and his cat, you will get his history for a mere trifle."
"Do not mind her, Mr. Wilson, she is quizzing you," quoth I; "I wish you a safe voyage across the Atlantic; I wish I could add a happy meeting with your friends. But where shall we find friends in a strange land?"
"All in good time," said Tom. "I hope to have the pleasure of meeting you in the backwoods of Canada before three months are over. What adventures we shall have to tell one another! It will be capital. Good-bye."
"Tom has sailed," said Captain Charles Wilson, stepping into my little parlour a few days after his eccentric brother"s last visit.
"I saw him and d.u.c.h.ess safe on board. Odd as he is, I parted with him with a full heart; I felt as if we never should meet again.
Poor Tom! he is the only brother left me now that I can love.
Robert and I never agreed very well, and there is little chance of our meeting in this world. He is married, and settled down for life in New South Wales; and the rest--John, Richard, George, are all gone--all!"
"Was Tom in good spirits when you parted?"
"Yes. He is a perfect contradiction. He always laughs and cries in the wrong place. "Charles," he said, with a loud laugh, "tell the girls to get some new music against I return: and, hark ye! if I never come back, I leave them my Kangaroo Waltz as a legacy.""
"What a strange creature!"
"Strange, indeed; you don"t know half his oddities. He has very little money to take out with him, but he actually paid for two berths in the ship, that he might not chance to have a person who snored sleep near him. Thirty pounds thrown away upon the mere chance of a snoring companion! "Besides, Charles," quoth he, "I cannot endure to share my little cabin with others; they will use my towels, and combs, and brushes, like that confounded rascal who slept in the same berth with me coming from New South Wales, who had the impudence to clean his teeth with my toothbrush. Here I shall be all alone, happy and comfortable as a prince, and d.u.c.h.ess shall sleep in the after-berth, and be my queen." And so we parted," continued Captain Charles.
"May G.o.d take care of him, for he never could take care of himself."
"That puts me in mind of the reason he gave for not going with us.
He was afraid that my baby would keep him awake of a night. He hates children, and says that he never will marry on that account."
We left the British sh.o.r.es on the 1st of July, and cast anchor, as I have already shown, under the Castle of St. Louis, at Quebec, on the 2nd of September, 1832. Tom Wilson sailed the 1st of May, and had a speedy pa.s.sage, and was, as we heard from his friends, comfortably settled in the bush, had bought a farm, and meant to commence operations in the fall. All this was good news, and as he was settled near my brother"s location, we congratulated ourselves that our eccentric friend had found a home in the wilderness at last, and that we should soon see him again.
On the 9th of September, the steam-boat William IV. landed us at the then small but rising town of ---, on Lake Ontario. The night was dark and rainy; the boat was crowded with emigrants; and when we arrived at the inn, we learnt that there was no room for us--not a bed to be had; nor was it likely, owing to the number of strangers that had arrived for several weeks, that we could obtain one by searching farther. Moodie requested the use of a sofa for me during the night; but even that produced a demur from the landlord.
Whilst I awaited the result in a pa.s.sage, crowded with strange faces, a pair of eyes glanced upon me through the throng. Was it possible?--could it be Tom Wilson? Did any other human being possess such eyes, or use them in such an eccentric manner?
In another second he had pushed his way to my side, whispering in my ear, "We met, "twas in a crowd."
"Tom Wilson, is that you?"
"Do you doubt it? I flatter myself that there is no likeness of such a handsome fellow to be found in the world. It is I, I swear!--although very little of me is left to swear by. The best part of me I have left to fatten the mosquitoes and black flies in that infernal bush. But where is Moodie?"