Two Knapsacks Part 11

"Of course I will, if I have to do her work as well as my own."

"I knew it, Wilks, I knew it. You're as soft hearted as a girl, for all your adamant exterior. G.o.d bless you, my dear boy!"

"Corry, Corry, what allowances must be made for your exaggerated Irish language! What is there like adamant about me, I should like to know?"

"Good mawnin, gentlemen," said the soft voice of the colonel, "I am delighted to see you looking so well. I envy you Canadian gentlemen yoah fine fyesh complexions and yoah musical voices. We have sawft voices in the south, but it is a soht of niggro sawftness, gained by contact I pehsume. My sehvant and I byeakfasted some time ago."

"I trust he is to your liking, Colonel?" enquired Coristine.

"Suh, you have found me a jewel in Maguffin, and he has found me two splendid roadsters that are now being fitted with saddles. We staht for To-hon-to in an houah, gentlemen."

"By the bye, Colonel, I have a telegram from my firm that concerns you.

It says 'Look up Colonel Morton, Madame Du Plessis, 315 Bluebird Avenue, Parkdale."

"But wheah is Pahkdale?"

"It is a suburb of Toronto. You had better keep the telegram."

"So, Mr. Cohistine, you are a lawyeh?"

"Yes; of the firm of Tylor, Woodruff, and White, but I'm not that now, I'm a gentleman out on a grand stravague."

"You may be a lawyeh, suh, but you are a gentleman as well, and I hope to meet you befoah many days are past. Good mawnin, my kind friends!"

The knapsacks were put on boldly, in the very parlour of the hotel, and their bearers strode along the lake road into the west, as coolly as if they were doing Snowden or Windermere. It was a glorious morning, and they exulted in it, rejoicing in the joy of living. The dominie had written his letter to the vulgar school-trustees, and felt good, with the approbation of a generous conscience. He recited with feeling:--

"_What, you are stepping westward?_" "_Yea_"-- 'Twould be a wildish destiny, If we, who thus together roam In a strange land, and far from home, Were in this place the guests of chance; Yet who would stop, or fear t' advance, Though home or shelter he had none, With such a sky to lead him on.

The dewy ground was dark and cold;

"Faith, 'tis nothing of the kind, Wilks," interrupted Coristine; but the dominie went on unheeding.

Behind, all gloomy to behold, And stepping westward seemed to be A kind of heavenly destiny: I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound Of something without place or bound And seemed to give me spiritual right To travel through that region bright.

The voice was soft, and she who spake Was walking by her native lake; The salutation had to me The very sound of courtesy; Its power was felt; and while my eye Was fix'd upon the glorious sky, The echo of the voice enwrought A human sweetness with the thought Of travelling through the world that lay Before me in my endless way.

"O Wilks, but you're the daisy. So you're going to travel through the world with the human sweetness of the soft voice of courtesy? You're a fraud, Wilks, you're as soft-hearted as a fozy turnip."

"Corry, a little while ago you called me adamant. You are inconsequential, sir."

"All right, Wilks, my darling. But isn't it a joy to have the colonel taking the bad taste of the Grinstun man out of your mouth?"

"The colonel, no doubt, is infinitely preferable. He is a gentleman, Corry, and that is saying a good deal."

"Hurroo for a specimen! look at that bank on your left, beyond that wet patch, it's thyme, it is. _Thymus serpyllum_, and Gray says it's not native, but advent.i.tious from Europe. Maccoun says the same; I wonder what my dear friend, Spotton, says? But here it is, and no trace of a house or clearing near. It's thyme, my boy, and smells sweet as honey:--

Old father Time, as Ovid sings, Is a great eater up of things, And, without salt or mustard, Will gulp you down a castle wall, As easily as, at Guildhall, An alderman eats custard."

"Drop your stupid Percy anecdote poems, Corry, and listen to this,"

cried the dominie, as he sang:--

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows, I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows, Where oxlips and the nodding violets blow, Where oxlips linger, nodding violets blow, I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grow-ow-ow-ow-ows!!!

The lawyer joined in the chorus, encored the song, and trolled "ow ow ow ow ows" until the blood vessels over his brain pan demanded a rest.

"Wilks," he said, "you're a thing of beauty and a joy forever."

Soon the road trended within a short distance of the lake sh.o.r.e. The blue waves were tumbling in gloriously, and swished up upon the shelving limestone rocks. "What is the time, Corry?" asked Wilkinson. "It's eleven by my repeater," he answered. "Then it is quite safe to bathe; what do you say to a dip?" The lawyer unstrapped his knapsack, and hastened off the road towards the beach. "Come on, Wilks," he cried, "we'll make believe that it's gramp.u.s.s.es we are."

"What is a grampus?" enquired the dominie.

"Dad, if I know," replied his friend.

"A grampus, sir, etymologically is 'un grand poisson,' but, biologically, it is no fish at all, being a mammal, mid-way between a dolphin and a porpoise."

"So you got off that conundrum a porpoise to make a fool of me, Wilks?"

"O, Corry, you make me shudder with your villainous puns."

"That's nothing to what I heard once. There were some fellows camping, and they had two tents and some dogs for deerhunting. As it was raining, they let the hounds sleep in one of the tents, when one of the fellows goes round and says: 'Shut down your curtains.' 'Were you telling them that to keep the rain out?' asked one, when the rascal answered: 'To all in tents and purp houses.' Wasn't that awful, now?"

The water was cold but pleasant on a hot day, and the swimmers enjoyed striking out some distance from sh.o.r.e and then being washed in by the homeward-bound waves. They sat, with their palms pressed down beside them, on smooth ledges of rock, and let the breakers lap over them. The lawyer was thinking it time to get out, when he saw Wilkinson back into the waves with a scared face. "Are you going for another swim, Wilks, my boy?" he asked. "Look behind you," whispered the schoolmaster. Coristine looked, and was aware of three girls, truly rural, sitting on the bank and apparently absorbed in contemplating the swimmers. "This is awful!"

he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as he slid down into deep water; "Wilks, it's scare the life out of them I must, or we'll never get back to our clothes. Now, listen to me." Dipping his head once more under water till it dripped, he let out a fearful sound, like "Gurrahow skrrr spat, you young gurruls, an' if yeez don't travel home as fast as yer futs'll taake yeez, it's I'll be afther yeez straight, och, garrahow skrr spat whishtubbleubbleubble!" The rural maidens took to their heels and ran, as Coristine swam into sh.o.r.e. In a minute the swimmers were into their clothes and packs, and resumed their march, much refreshed by the cool waters of the Georgian Bay.

"And where is it we're bound for now, Wilks?"

"For the abandoned shale-works at the foot of the Blue Mountains."

"Fwhat's that, as Jimmie Butler said about the owl?"

"The Utica formation, which crops out here, consists largely of bituminous shales, that yield mineral oil to the extent of twenty gallons to the ton. But, since the oil springs of the West have been in operation, the usefulness of these shales is gone. The Indians seem to have made large use of the shale, for a friend of mine found a hoe of that material on an island in the Muskoka lakes. Being easily split and worked, it was doubtless very acceptable to the metal wanting aborigines."

"But, if the works are closed up, what will we see?"

"We shall meet with fossils in the shale, with trilobites, such as the _Asaphus Canadensis_, a crustacean, closely allied to the wood-louse, and occasionally found rolled up, like it, into a defensive ball, together with other specimens of ancient life."

"Wilks, my son, who's doing Gosse's Canadian Naturalist, now, I'd like to know? Pity we hadn't the working geologist along for a lesson."

"I am sorry if I have bored you with my talk, but I thought you were interested in science. Does this suit you better?

Many a little hand Glanced like a touch of suns.h.i.+ne on the rocks, Many a light foot shone like a jewel set In the dark crag; and then we turn'd, we wound About the cliffs, the copses, out and in, Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff, Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the sun Grew broader towards his death and fell, and all The rosy heights came out above the lawns."

"That's better, avic. Tennyson's got the shale there, I see. But rag and trap and tuff is the word, and tough the whole business is. Just look at that living blue bell, there, it's worth all the stony names of rock and fossil.

Let the proud Indian boast of his jessamine bowers, His garlands of roses and moss-covered dells, While humbly I sing of those sweet little flowers, The blue bells of Scotland, the Scottish blue bells.

We'll shout in the chorus forever and ever, The blue bells of Scotland, the Scottish blue bells."

"You are a nice botanist, Mr. Coristine, to confound that campanula with the Scottish blue-bell, which is a scilla, or wild hyacinth."

"Poetic license, my dear friend, poetic license! Hear this now:--