"Right, sir! That"s fact, straight up and down," said he, in an approving tone.
"Ha! Jacques, my good fellow, is that you?--Redfeather, my friend, how are you?" said Mr Kennedy, turning round and grasping a hand of each.--"Sit down there, Louis, beside Mrs Taddi--eh!--ah!--popple.--Mr Addison, this is Jacques Caradoc, the best and stoutest hunter between Hudson"s Bay and Oregon."
Jacques smiled and bowed modestly as Mr Addison shook his hand. The worthy hunter did indeed at that moment look as if he fully merited Mr Kennedy"s eulogium. Instead of endeavouring to ape the gentleman, as many men in his rank of life would have been likely to do on an occasion like this, Jacques had not altered his costume a hairbreadth from what it usually was, excepting that some parts of it were quite new, and all of it faultlessly clean. He wore the usual capote, but it was his best one, and had been washed for the occasion. The scarlet belt and blue leggings were also as bright in colour as if they had been put on for the first time; and the moccasins, which fitted closely to his well-formed feet, were of the cleanest and brightest yellow leather, ornamented, as usual, in front. The collar of his blue-striped shirt was folded back a little more carefully than usual, exposing his sunburned and muscular throat. In fact, he wanted nothing, save the hunting-knife, the rifle, and the powder-horn, to const.i.tute him a perfect specimen of a thorough backwoodsman.
Redfeather and Louis were similarly costumed; and a n.o.ble trio they looked as they sat modestly in a corner, talking to each other in whispers, and endeavouring, as much as possible, to curtail their colossal proportions.
"Now, Harry," said Mr Kennedy, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, at the same time winking vehemently, "we"re about ready, lad. Where"s Kate, eh? shall we send for her?"
Harry blushed, and stammered out something that was wholly unintelligible, but which, nevertheless, seemed to afford infinite delight to the old gentleman, who chuckled and winked tremendously, gave his son-in-law a facetious poke in the ribs, and turning abruptly to Miss Cook.u.mwell, said to that lady, "Now, Miss Cook.u.mpopple, we"re all ready. They seem to have had enough tea and trash; you"d better be looking after Kate, I think."
Miss Cook.u.mwell smiled, rose, and left the room to obey; Mrs Taddipopple followed to help, and soon returned with Kate, whom they delivered up to her father at the door. Mr Kennedy led her to the upper end of the room; Harry Somerville stood by her side, as if by magic; Mr Addison dropped opportunely before them, as if from the clouds; there was an extraordinary and abrupt pause in the hum of conversation, and ere Kate was well aware of what was about to happen, she felt herself suddenly embraced by her husband, from whom she was thereafter violently torn and all but smothered by her sympathising friends.
Poor Kate! she had gone through the ceremony almost mechanically-- recklessly, we might be justified in saying; for not having raised her eyes off the floor from its commencement to its close, the man whom she accepted for better or for worse might have been Jacques or Redfeather for all that she knew.
Immediately after this there was heard the sound of a fiddle, and an old Canadian was led to the upper end of the room, placed on a chair, and hoisted, by the powerful arms of Jacques and Louis, upon a table. In this conspicuous position the old man seemed to be quite at his ease.
He spent a few minutes in bringing his instrument into perfect tune; then looking round with a mild, patronising glance to see that the dancers were ready, he suddenly struck up a Scotch reel with an amount of energy, precision, and spirit that might have shot a pang of jealousy through the heart of Neil Gow himself. The noise that instantly commenced, and was kept up from that moment, with but few intervals, during the whole evening, was of a kind that is never heard in fashionable drawing-rooms. Dancing in the backwood settlements _is_ dancing. It is not walking; it is not sailing; it is not undulating; it is not sliding; no, it is _bona-fide_ dancing! It is the performance of intricate evolutions with the feet and legs that makes one wink to look at; performed in good time too, and by people who look upon _all_ their muscles as being useful machines, not merely things of which a select few, that cannot be dispensed with, are brought into daily operation.
Consequently the thing was done with an amount of vigour that was conducive to the health of performers, and productive of satisfaction to the eyes of beholders. When the evening wore on apace, however, and Jacques"s modesty was so far overcome as to induce him to engage in a reel, along with his friend Louis Peltier, and two bouncing young ladies whose father had driven them twenty miles over the plains that day in order to attend the wedding of their dear friend and former playmate, Kate--when these four stood up, we say, and the fiddler played more energetically than ever, and the stout backwoodsmen began to warm and grow vigorous, until, in the midst of their tremendous leaps and rapid but well-timed motions, they looked like very giants amid their brethren, then it was that Harry, as he felt Kate"s little hand pressing his arm, and observed her sparkling eyes gazing at the dancers in genuine admiration, began at last firmly to believe that the whole thing was a dream; and then it was that old Mr Kennedy rejoiced to think that the house had been built under his own special directions, and he knew that it could not by any possibility be shaken to pieces.
And well might Harry imagine that he dreamed; for besides the bewildering tendency of the almost too-good-to-be-true fact that Kate was really Mrs Harry Somerville, the scene before him was a particularly odd and perplexing mixture of widely different elements, suggestive of new and old a.s.sociations. The company was miscellaneous.
There were retired old traders, whose lives from boyhood had been spent in danger, solitude, wild scenes, and adventures to which those of Robinson Crusoe are mere child"s play. There were young girls, the daughters of these men, who had received good educations in the Red River academy, and a certain degree of polish which education always gives, a very _different_ polish, indeed, from that which the conventionalities and refinements of the Old World bestow, but not the less agreeable on that account--nay, we might even venture to say, all the more agreeable on that account. There were Red Indians and clergymen--there were one or two ladies of a doubtful age, who had come out from the old country to live there, having found it no easy matter, poor things, to live at home; there were matrons whose absolute silence on every subject save "yes" or "no" showed that they had not been subjected to the refining influences of the academy, but whose hearty smiles and laughs of genuine good-nature proved that the storing of the brain has, after all, _very_ little to do with the best and deepest feelings of the heart. There were the tones of Scotch reels sounding-tones that brought Scotland vividly before the very eyes; and there were Canadian hunters and half-breed voyageurs, whose moccasins were more accustomed to the turf of the woods than the boards of a drawing-room, and whose speech and accents made Scotland vanish away altogether from the memory. There were old people and young folk; there were fat and lean, short and long. There were songs too--ballads of England, pathetic songs of Scotland, alternating with the French ditties of Canada, and the sweet, inexpressibly plaintive canoe-songs of the voyageur. There were strong contrasts in dress also: some wore the home-spun trousers of the settlement, a few the ornamented leggings of the hunter. Capotes were there--loose, flowing, and picturesque; and broadcloth tail-coats were there, of the last century, tight-fitting, angular--in a word, detestable; verifying the truth of the proverb that extremes meet, by showing that the _cut_ which all the wisdom of tailors and scientific fops, after centuries of study, had laboriously wrought out and foisted upon the poor civilised world as perfectly sublime, appeared in the eyes of backwoodsmen and Indians utterly ridiculous. No wonder that Harry, under the circ.u.mstances, became quietly insane, and went about committing _nothing_ but mistakes the whole evening. No wonder that he emulated his father-in-law in abusing the gray cat, when he found it surrept.i.tiously devouring part of the supper in an adjoining room; and no wonder that, when he rushed about vainly in search of Mrs Taddipopple, to acquaint her with the cat"s wickedness, he at last, in desperation, laid violent hands on Miss Cook.u.mwell, and addressed that excellent lady by the name of Mrs Poppletaddy.
Were we courageous enough to make the attempt, we would endeavour to describe that joyful evening from beginning to end. We would tell you how the company"s spirits rose higher and higher, as each individual became more and more anxious to lend his or her aid in adding to the general hilarity; how old Mr Kennedy nearly killed himself in his fruitless efforts to be everywhere, speak to everybody, and do everything at once; how Charley danced till he could scarcely speak, and then talked till he could hardly dance; and how the fiddler, instead of growing wearied, became gradually and continuously more powerful, until it seemed as if fifty fiddles were playing at one and the same time. We would tell you how Mr Addison drew more than ever to Mr Conway, and how the latter gentleman agreed to correspond regularly with the former thenceforth, in order that their interest in the great work each had in hand for the _same_ Master might be increased and kept up; how, in a spirit of recklessness (afterwards deeply repented of), a bashful young man was induced to sing a song which in the present mirthful state of the company ought to have been a humorous song, or a patriotic song, or a good, loud, inspiriting song, or _anything_, in short, but what it was--a slow, dull, sentimental song, about wasting gradually away in a sort of melancholy decay, on account of disappointed love, or some such trash, which was a false sentiment in itself, and certainly did not derive any additional tinge of truthfulness from a thin, weak voice, that was afflicted with chronic flatness, and _edged_ all its notes.
Were we courageous enough to go on, we would further relate to you how during supper Mr Kennedy, senior, tried to make a speech, and broke down amid uproarious applause; how Mr Kennedy, junior, got up thereafter--being urged thereto by his father, who said, with a convulsion of the cheek, "Get me out of the sc.r.a.pe, Charley, my boy!"-- and delivered an oration which did not display much power of concise elucidation, but was replete, nevertheless, with consummate impudence; how during this point in the proceedings the grey cat made a last desperate effort to purloin a cold chicken, which it had watched anxiously the whole evening, and was caught in the very act, nearly strangled, and flung out of the window, where it alighted in safety on the snow, and fled, a wiser, and, we trust, a better cat. We would recount all this to you, reader, and a great deal more besides; but we fear to try your patience, and we tremble violently--much more so, indeed, than you will believe--at the bare idea of waxing prosy.
Suffice it to say that the party separated at an early hour--a good, sober, reasonable hour for such an occasion--somewhere before midnight.
The horses were harnessed; the ladies were packed in the sleighs with furs so thick and plentiful as to defy the cold; the gentlemen seized their reins and cracked their whips; the horses snorted, plunged, and dashed away over the white plains in different directions, while the merry sleigh-bells sounded fainter and fainter in the frosty air. In half an hour the stars twinkled down on the still, cold scene, and threw a pale light on the now silent dwelling of the old fur-trader.
Ere dropping the curtain over a picture in which we have sought faithfully to portray the prominent features of those wild regions that lie to the north of the Canadas, and in which we have endeavoured to describe some of the peculiarities of a cla.s.s of men whose histories seldom meet the public eye, we feel tempted to add a few more touches to the sketch; we would fain trace a little further the fortunes of one or two of the chief actors in our book. But this must not be.
Snowflakes and sunbeams came and went as in days gone by. Time rolled on, working many changes in its course, and among others consigning Harry Somerville to an important post in Red River colony, to the unutterable joy of Mr Kennedy, senior, and of Kate. After much consideration and frequent consultation with Mr Addison, Mr Conway resolved to make another journey to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to those Indian tribes that inhabit the regions beyond Athabasca; and being a man of great energy, he determined not to await the opening of the river navigation, but to undertake the first part of his expedition on snowshoes. Jacques agreed to go with him as guide and hunter, Redfeather as interpreter. It was a bright, cold morning when he set out, accompanied part of the way by Charley Kennedy and Harry Somerville, whose hearts were heavy at the prospect of parting with the two men who had guided and protected them during their earliest experience of a voyageur"s life, when, with hearts full to overflowing with romantic antic.i.p.ations, they first dashed joyously into the almost untrodden wilderness.
During their career in the woods together, the young men and the two hunters had become warmly attached to each other; and now that they were about to part--it might be for years, perhaps for ever--a feeling of sadness crept over them which they could not shake off and which the promise given by Mr Conway to revisit Red River on the following spring served but slightly to dispel.
On arriving at the spot where they intended to bid their friends a last farewell, the two young men held out their hands in silence. Jacques grasped them warmly.
"Mister Charles, Mister Harry," said he, in a deep, earnest voice, "the Almighty has guided us in safety for many a day when we travelled the woods together; for which praised be His holy name! May He guide and bless you still, and bring us together in this world again, if in His wisdom He see fit."
There was no answer save a deeply-murmured "Amen." In another moment the travellers resumed their march. On reaching the summit of a slight eminence, where the prairies terminated and the woods began, they paused to wave a last adieu; then Jacques, putting himself at the head of the little party, plunged into the forest, and led them away towards the snowy regions of the Far North.
THE END.