Chapter Thirty Two.
Suffering and its Results
When the news that young Duncan had been shot was brought to Ben Nevis, the effect on his father was much more severe than might have been expected, considering their respective feelings towards each other.
It was late in the evening when the news came, and the old man was seated in what he styled his smoking-room, taking his evening glass of whisky and water.
“Elspie,” he said, in a subdued voice, on being told, “help me up to my bed.”
This was so very unusual a request that Elspie was somewhat alarmed by it, as well as surprised—all the more so that the old man left the room without finishing either his pipe or glass. Still, she did not suppose that anything serious would come of it. A night’s rest, she thought, would do away with the evils of the shock.
“Dear father,” she said, as she kissed him at parting, “do believe that God is waiting to be gracious: that He really means it when He says, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ And, consider—we have no reason to suppose that dear Duncan’s wound is very dangerous.”
“Goot-night, Elspie,” was all the reply.
Next morning McKay did not make his appearance at the usual breakfast-hour, and, on going to his room, they found him lying speechless in his bed, suffering under a stroke of paralysis.
He soon recovered the power of speech, but not the use of his limbs, and it became evident ere long that the poor man had received a shock which would probably cripple him for life. Whatever may have been his secret thoughts, however, he carefully concealed them from every one, and always referred to his complaint as, “this nasty stiff feeling about the legs which iss a long time of goin’ away—whatever.”
In a few days, Fergus returned from the plains, bringing his brother in a cart, which had been made tolerably easy by means of a springy couch of pine-branches. They did not tell him at first of his father’s illness, lest it should interfere with his own recovery from the very critical condition in which he lay. At first he took no notice of his father’s non-appearance, attributing it to indifference; but when he began slowly to mend, he expressed some surprise. Then they told him.
Whatever may have been his thoughts on the subject, he gave no sign, but received the information—as, indeed, he received nearly all information at that time—in absolute silence.
Fortunately, the bullet which struck him had passed right through his side, so that he was spared the pain, as well as the danger, of its extraction. But, from his total loss of appetite and continued weakness, it was evident that he had received some very severe, if not fatal, internal injury. At last, very slowly, he began to grow a little stronger, but he was a very shadow or wreck of his former self. Nevertheless, the more sanguine members of the family began to entertain some faint hope of his recovery.
Of course, during these first days of his weakness his sister Elspie nursed him. She would, if permitted, have done so night and day, but in this matter she had to contend with one who was more than a match for her. This was Old Peg, the faithful domestic.
“No, no, dearie,” said that resolute old woman, when Elspie first promulgated to her the idea of sitting up all night with Duncan, “you will do nothin’ of the sort. Your sainted mother left your father an’ Fergus an’ yourself to my care, an’ I said I would never fail you, so I can’t break my promise by letting you break your health. I will sit up wi’ him, as I’ve done many a time when he was a bairn.”
It thus came to pass that Elspie nursed her brother by day, and Old Peg sat up with him at night. Of course the duties of the former were considerably lightened by the assistance rendered by various members of the family, as well as friends, who were ever ready to sit by the bedside of the wounded man and read to or chat with him. At such times he was moderately cheerful, but when the night watches came, and Old Peg took her place beside him, and memory had time to commence with him undisturbed, the deed of which he had had been guilty was forced upon him; Conscience was awakened, and self-condemnation was the result. Yet, so inconsistent is poor humanity that self-exculpation warred with self-condemnation in the same brain! The miserable man would have given all he possessed to have been able to persuade himself that his act was purely one of self-defence—as no doubt to some extent it was, for if he had not fired first Perrin’s action showed that he would certainly have been the man-slayer. But, then, young McKay could not shut his eyes to the fact that premeditation had, in the first instance, induced him to extend his hand towards his gun, and this first act it was which had caused all the rest.
Often during the wakeful hours of the night would the invalid glance at his nurse with a longing desire to unburden his soul to her, but whenever his eye rested on her calm, wrinkled old visage, and he thought of her deafness, and the difficulty of making her understand, he abandoned his half-formed intention with a sigh. He did not, indeed, doubt her sympathy, for many a time during his life, especially when a child, had he experienced the strength and tenderness of that.
After attending to his wants, it was the habit of Old Peg to put on a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles and read. Her only book was the Bible. She read nothing else—to say truth, at that time there was little else to read in Red River. The first night of her watch she had asked the invalid if he would like her to read a few verses to him.
“You may if you like, Peg,” he had replied. “You know it iss little I care for releegion, for I don’t believe in it, but you may read if you like—it may amuse me, an’ will help to make the time pass—whatever.”
Thus the custom was established. It was plain that the old woman counted much on the influence of the simple Word of God, without comment, for every time she opened the Bible she shut her eyes and her lips moved in silent prayer before she began to read.
The invalid was greatly tickled with this little preliminary prayer, and would have laughed aloud if he had not been too weak to do so. As time went on, however, he became interested in the Gospel narratives in spite of himself, and he began to experience some sort of relish for the evening reading—chiefly because, as he carefully explained to Elspie, “the droning o’ the old wumman’s voice” sent him to sleep.
Meanwhile the other invalid—Duncan senior—progressed as slowly as did his son. The nursing of him was undertaken chiefly by Jessie Davidson—the sympathetic Jessie—who was established as an inmate of Ben Nevis pro tem, for that very purpose. She was ably seconded—during part of each day—by Billie Sinclair, between whom and the old Highlander there grew up at that time a strong friendship. For many weeks poor old McKay was confined to his bed, and then, when allowed to rise, he could only walk across his room with the aid of the strong arm of his stalwart son Fergus. To sit at his open window and look out at his garden was his principal amusement, and smoking a long clay pipe his chief solace. Like Duncan junior, old Duncan was quite willing to hear the Bible read to him now and then, by Jessie Davidson and more especially by Little Bill; but the idea of deriving any real comfort from that book never for a moment entered his head.
One day Elspie came to him and said:
“Daddy, Dan wants to see you to-day, if you feel well enough.”
“Surely, my tear. It iss not the first time he will be seein’ me since I got the stroke.”
“He has brought you a present—something that he has made—which he hopes will be useful to you.”
“What is it, Elspie?”
“You shall see. May I tell him to come in and bring it with him?”
“Surely, my tear. Let him come in. It iss always goot for sore eyes to see himself—whatever.”
Elspie went out. A few minutes later there was heard in the passage a strange rumbling sound.
“What in all the world iss that?” said the old man to Little Bill, who happened to be his companion at the time.
“It sounds like wheels, I think,” said Billie.
The door opened as he spoke, and Dan Davidson entered, pushing before him an invalid chair of a kind that is familiar enough in the civilised world, but which was utterly unknown at that time in those regions.
“Goot-mornin’, Tan; what hev you got there? Iss it a surprise you will be givin’ me?”
“It is a chair, sir, which will, I hope, add a good deal to your comfort,” said Dan. “I made it myself, from the memory-model of one which I once saw in the old country. See, I will show you how it acts. Push me along, Jessie.”
Dan sat down in the chair as he spoke, and his sister Jessie, who entered at the moment, pushed him all about the room with the greatest ease.
“Well, well!” said the amused invalid. “Ye are a clever man, Taniel. It iss a goot contrivance, an’ seems to me fery well made. Could Little Bill push it, think ye? Go an’ try, boy.”
Little Bill found that he could push Dan in the chair as easily as Jessie had done it.
“But that is not all,” said Dan. “See—now I will work the chair myself.”
So saying he laid his hands on the two large wheels at either side—which, with a little wheel behind, supported the machine—and moved it about the room, turned it round, and, in short, acted in a very independent manner as to self-locomotion.
“Well, now, that iss goot,” exclaimed the pleased invalid. “Let me try it, Tan.”
In his eagerness the poor man, forgetting for a moment his helpless condition, made an effort to rise, and would certainly have fallen off the chair on which he was seated if Elspie had not sprung to his assistance.
“Come, there’s life in you yet!” said Dan as he assisted the old man into the wheel-chair. “Put your hands—so. And when you want to turn sharp round you’ve only to pull with one hand and push with—”
“Get along with you,” interrupted the old man, facetiously giving the chair a swing that caused all who stood around him to leap out of his way: “will you hev the presumption to teach a man that knew how to scull a boat before you wass born? But, Taniel,” he added, in a more serious tone, “we must hev one like this made for poor Tuncan.”
As this was the first reference which McKay had made to his younger son since his illness—with the exception of the daily inquiry as to his health—it was hailed as an evidence that a change for the better was taking place in the old man’s mind. For up to that period no one had received any encouragement to speak of, or enter into conversation about, Duncan junior.
“You are right,” returned Dan. “I have been thinking of that, and have even laid in the wood to make a similar chair for him. But I fear he won’t be able to use it for some time to come. Elspie was thinking, if you don’t object, to have your bedroom changed to one of the rooms on the ground floor, so that you could be wheeled into the garden when so inclined.”
“Yes, daddy,” said Elspie, taking up the discourse; “we can put you into the room that corresponds with Duncan’s room at the other end of the house, so that you and he will be able to meet after your long illness. But there is another contrivance which Dan has been making for us—not for you, but for Old Peg. Tell daddy about it, Dan.”
“Like the chair,” said Dan, “it is no novelty, except in this out-o’-the-way place. You see, I have noticed that Old Peg is rather deaf—”
“Well, Tan,” interrupted old McKay with a benignant smile, “it iss not much observation that you will be requirin’ to see that!”
“Just so. Well, I also observed that it gives Duncan some trouble to speak loud enough to her. So I have invented a sort of ear-trumpet—a tin pipe with an ear-piece at one end and a mouth-piece at the other, which I hope may make things easier.”
“Hev ye not tried it yet?” asked McKay.
“Not yet. I’ve only just brought it.”
“Go down, lad, an’ try it at wanse, an’ let me know what the upshot iss.”
Down they all went accordingly, leaving Duncan senior alone.
They found Old Peg in the act of administering beef-tea refreshment—or something of that sort—to the invalid. Peter Davidson and Archie Sinclair were there also, paying him a visit.
“Hallo, Little Bill!” said Archie as his brother entered. “You here! I guessed as much. Your passion for nursing since you attended Dan is outrageous. You do more nursing in this house, I do believe, than Elspie and Jessie and Old Peg put together. What d’ee mean by it, Bill? I get no good of you at all now!”
“I like it, Archie, and I’m training myself to nurse you when you get ill or old!”
“Thank ’ee for nothin’, Little Bill, for I don’t mean to become either ill or old for some time to come; but, I say, are they goin’ to perform an operation on Old Peg’s head?”
This was said in consequence of Elspie shouting to the old woman to let her put something into her ear to cure deafness.
“Cure deafness!” she exclaimed, with a faint laugh, “nothin’ will ever cure my deafness. But I can trust you, dearie, so do what you please.”
“Shut your eyes, then.”
“And open your mouth!” said Archie to Little Bill in a low voice.
Old Peg did as she was bid. Dan, approaching behind her, put the small end of the tube into her right ear—which was the best one—and Elspie, putting her mouth to the other end, spoke to her in her soft, natural voice.
The effect was amusing. Old Peg dropped into her chair as if paralysed, and gazed from one to another in mute amazement.
“Eh! dearie. Did I ever think to hear the sweet low voice o’ Elspie like as it was when she was a bairn! Most amazin’!” she said. “Let me hear’t again.”
The operation was repeated, and it was finally found that, by means of this extemporised ear-trumpet, the poor creature once more became a conversable member of society. She went about the house the remainder of that day in a quite excited state, asking questions of everybody, and putting the end of the instrument to their mouths for an answer. Archie even declared that he had caught her alone in the back-kitchen shoving the cat’s head into the mouth-piece of the instrument, and pinching its tail to make it mew.
It was two days after the occurrence of these incidents that the old woman was seated by Duncan’s bedside, gazing through her tortoise-shell glasses at the well-thumbed Bible, when her patient, who had been very restless, looked up and spoke.
“Can I do anything for ye, dearie?” said Old Peg, putting the trumpet-end into her ear, and handing the mouth-piece to Duncan.
“You—you hear much better now, Old Peg?” said the sick man, in his natural voice.
“Ay, much, much better; thanks to the Lord—and to Mr Daniel.”
“If Daniel had not thought of it,” said the invalid, quite gravely, “do you think that the Lord would hev sent the machine to you?”
“He might or He might not,” returned the old woman, promptly. “It’s not for me to say, nor yet to guess on that point. But this I do know for certain—if the Lord hadna’ thought upon Mr Daniel, then Mr Daniel wouldna’ have been here to think upon me.”
Duncan made no reply, and for some time remained quite silent. Then he spoke again.
“Peg, what wass it that you would be reading to me last night—something about a malefactor, I’m thinking.”
“Ay, it was about the robbers that was crucified on each side o’ the Lord. One o’ them reviled the Lord as he was hangin’ there, the other found forgiveness, for he was led to see what a lost sinner he was, and repented and confessed his sins.”
“That is fery strange,” said Duncan, after a few moments’ thought. “Do you think, Peg, that the robber that was forgiven wass a—a murderer?”
“I have little doubt o’t,” answered Peg, “for I’ve heard say that they think very little o’ human life in them Eastern countries. But whatever he was, the blood of Jesus Christ was able to cleanse him.”
“Ay, but if he was a murderer, Peg, he did not deserve to be forgiven.”
“My bairn,” said the old woman, with something of motherly tenderness in her tone, “it’s not them that deserve to be forgiven that are forgiven, but them that see that they don’t deserve it. Didna’ this robber say that he was sufferin’ for his sins justly? That, surely, meant that he deserved what he was getting, an’ how is it possible to deserve both condemnation an’ forgiveness at the same time? But he believed that Jesus was a king—able and willing to save him though he did not deserve it, so he asked to be remembered, and he was remembered. But lie down now, bairn, an’ rest: Ye are excitin’ yoursel’, an’ that’s bad for ye.”
A week or so after the conversation above recorded, Dan brought a wheel-chair for Duncan, similar to the one he had made for his father. As Duncan had been getting out of bed for several days before, Dan found him dressed and sitting up. He therefore lifted him into the chair at once, and wheeled him out into the garden, where a blaze of warm sunshine seemed to put new life into the poor invalid.
It had been pre-arranged that old McKay should be brought down that same day to his new room, and that he should also be wheeled into the garden, so as to meet his son Duncan, without either of them being prepared for the meeting.
“I don’t feel at all sure that we are right in this arrangement,” Elspie had said; but Dan and Fergus, and Mrs Davidson and Jessie had thought otherwise, so she was overruled.
Archie was deputed to attend upon Duncan junior, and Little Bill obtained leave to push the chair of old McKay. The younger man was wheeled under the shade of a tree with his back to the house, and left there. Then the family retired out of the way, leaving Archie to attend the invalid.
A few minutes after young Duncan had been placed, Little Bill pushed his charge under the same tree, and, wheeling the chair quickly round, brought father and son suddenly face to face.
The surprise was great on both sides, for each, recollecting only the man that had been, could hardly believe in the reality of the ghost that sat before him.
“Father!” exclaimed Duncan at last.
But the old man answered not. Some strong feeling was evidently surging within him, for his mouth was tightly pursed and his features worked strangely. Suddenly he burst into tears, but the weakness was momentary. With an effort that seemed to concentrate the accumulated energy of all the McKays from Adam downwards, he again pursed his mouth and looked at his younger son with a stern persistent frown, worthy of the most rugged of Highlanders in his fiercest mood.
Duncan was inexpressibly touched.
“Father,” said he again, “I’ve been a baad, baad son to you.”
“Tuncan,” retorted the old man, in a husky but firm voice, “I’ve been a baad, baad father to you.”
“Let us shake hands—whatever,” said the son.
The two silently grasped each other’s hands with all the little strength that remained to them. Then old McKay turned suddenly to his henchman.
“Little Bill,” said he, in a tone that was not for an instant to be disregarded, “shove me down to the futt of the garden—you rascal!”
With a promptitude little short of miraculous the Highlander was wheeled away, and thus the momentous meeting was abruptly brought to a close.
Chapter Thirty Three.
Matrimonial Plans and Prospects
Time passed by, as time is rather apt to do, and still the feud between the rival fur companies continued, to the detriment of the Indians and the fur-trade, the unsettling of Red River Settlement, and the demoralisation more or less of all concerned.
Men who would gladly have devoted all their energies to the arts of peace, became more or less belligerent in spirit, if not in act, and many were forced to take sides in the controversy—some siding with the Nor’-Westers and others with the Hudson’s Bay Company.
With the merits of their contentions we do not propose to meddle. We confine ourselves to facts.
One important fact was that our hero Daniel Davidson took the side of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Being a stout fellow, with a good brain, a strong will, an independent spirit, and a capable tongue, he was highly appreciated by the one side and considerably hated by the other, insomuch that some of the violent spirits made dark suggestions as to the propriety of putting him out of the way. It is not easy, however, or safe, to attempt to put a strong, resolute man out of the way, and his enemies plotted for a considerable time in vain.
The unsettled state of the colony, and the frequent failure of the crops had, as we have seen, exerted an evil influence for a long time on poor Dan’s matrimonial prospects, and at last, feeling that more settled times might yet be in the remote future, and that, as regarded defence and maintenance, it would be on the whole better both for Elspie and himself that they should get married without delay, he resolved to take the important step, and, as old McKay remarked, have it over.
“You see, Taniel,” said the old man, when the subject was again broached, “it iss of no use hangin’ off an’ on in this fashion. Moreover, this nasty stiff leg o’ mine is so long of getting well that it may walk me off the face o’ the earth altogether, an’ I would not like to leave Elspie till this matter iss settled. Tuncan also iss a little better just now, so what say you to have the weddin’ the month after next? Mr Sutherland will be back from the Whitehorse Plains by then, an’ he can tie the knot tight enough—whatever. Anyway, it iss clear that if we wait for a munister o’ the Auld Kirk, we will hev to wait till doomsday. What say you, Taniel?”
It need hardly be said that Dan had nothing whatever to say in objection to this scheme. It was therefore settled—under the proviso, of course, that Elspie had no objection. Dan went off at once to see Elspie, and found that she had no objection, whereupon, after some conversation, etcetera, with which we will not weary the reader, he sought out his friend Fred Jenkins, to whom he communicated the good news, and treated him to a good many unanswerable reasons why young people should not delay marriage when there was any reasonable prospect of their getting on comfortably in life together.
The sailor agreed with effusive heartiness to all that he said, and Dan thought while he was speaking—orating—as one of the American settlers would have expressed it—that Jenkins wore a peculiar expression on his manly countenance. Attributing it to unusual interest in the event, he continued—
“Now, Fred, I want you to be my best-man—”
“Unpossible—quite unpossible,” interrupted the seaman with a grave shake of the head.
“How—impossible!”
“Ab-so-lutely unpossible.”
“But why? Explain yourself, Fred.”
“’Cause it’s only a bachelor as can be a best-man to a bachelor—ain’t it?”
“I believe so, though I’m no authority in such matters; but surely that is a matter of no importance, for you are a bachelor, you know.”
“True, that’s what I am to-day, but I won’t be that long, for I am goin’ to be married next month, so I won’t be available, d’ee see, the month after.”
“You—married!—to whom?” exclaimed Dan in amazement.
“Well, that’s a point blank shot right between wind an’ water. Hows’ever, I suppose I can’t go wrong in tellin’ you, Dan, for it’s all settled, though not a soul knows about it except Little Bill, an’ yourself, an’ her brother.”
“But I don’t know about it yet,” returned Dan. “Who is it?”
“A angel—pure an’ unmixed—come straight down from heaven a-purpus to marry poor, unedicated, sea-farin’ Fred Jenkins, an’ her terrestrial name is Elise Morel!”
Dan laughed while he congratulated the modest seaman, and admitted the strength of his difficulty.
“D’you know, Fred, I’ve had a suspicion for some time past that you had a leaning in that direction?”
“So have I, Dan, had an uncommon strong suspicion for a very long time past, not only that I had a leanin’ that way, but a regular list to port, an’ now I’m fairly over on my beam-ends!”
“But, surely, it must have come upon you very sudden at last,” said Dan. “How was it?”
“Sudden! I should just think it did—like a white squall in the Mediterranean, or a hurricane in the China seas. This is how it was. I’d bin cruisin’ about her—off an’ on—for a considerable time, tryin’ to make up my mind to go into action, an’ screwin’ my courage up to the stickin’ pint by recallin’ all the fine sentiments that has carried Jack-tars through fire an’ smoke, shot and shell since the world began—‘England expects every man to do his dooty,’—‘Never say die,’—‘Hookey Bunkum,’ an’ such like. But it warn’t no manner o’ use, for I’m an’ outrageous coward wi’ the gals, Dan. So, in a sort o’ despair, I sailed away this very mornin’ into the plantation at the futt o’ your garden, intendin’ to cool myself an’ think over it, when, who should I see almost hull down on my lee bow but the enemy—Elise herself!
“Well, I changed my course at once; bore straight down on her, an’ soon overhauled her, but the nearer I came the more did my courage run out, so I gradooally begun to take in sail an drop astarn. At last I got savage, ‘You’re a fool, Jenkins!’ says I to myself. ‘That’s a fact!’ says su’thin’ inside o’ me.
“Now, if that su’thin’ had kep’ quiet, I do believe that I’d have gone about-ship an’ showed her my heels, but that su’thin’, whatever it was, set up my dander. ‘Now then,’ says I, ‘haul taut the main brace! Up wi’ the t’gall’nt-s’ls an’ sky-scrapers! “England expects,” etceterer!’
“Afore you could say Jack Robinson, I was along side—grapplin’-irons hove into her riggin’, and a broadside fired. The way I gave it her astonished even myself. Nelson himself could scarce ha’ done it better! Well, she struck her colours at the first broadside, an’ somehow—I never could make out exactly how—we was sittin’ on the stump of a tree with her head on my rough unworthy buzzum. Think o’ that! Dan, her head—the head of a Angel! Give us your flipper, mate.”
“I congratulate you, Jenkins, with all my heart,” said Dan, grasping the seaman’s flipper, and giving it a hearty shake. “So now, I must look out for another best-man. Morel will do for me, I think, and you can have my brother Peter, no doubt. But could we not manage to have both weddings on the same day?”
“Impossible,” answered the seaman, promptly. “Couldn’t wait.”
“But we might compromise the matter. I might have mine a little sooner and you could have yours a little later.”
Still Jenkins shook his head. “Not fair-play,” he said. “All the advantage on your side. However, we might consider it. Hold a sort o’ drum-head court-martial over it, with Elise and Elspie as judges.”
When the said court-marital—as Dan called it—was held, the compromise was agreed to, and it was finally fixed that six weeks thereafter the two couples should be united in Ben Nevis Hall.
But the current of these parallel streams of true love was not yet destined to run smooth—as the next chapter will show.