Flora Lyndsay Volume I Part 5

"They were meant for my _private_ hours," said Flora, laughing, as she collected the fallen articles, and stowed them once more into their hiding-place. "With _such_ the public has nothing to do."

"Well, if ever I marry, I'll take good care to give away every old thing I have in the world. No wife of mine shall have it to say that she was forced to mend my rags."

"Wait till the time comes," said Flora quietly. "You don't know what may happen yet. There are more disagreeable things in every-day life than mending old clothes. Industry and perseverance may soon replace these with new ones; but it is useless to throw away old friends until we are sure of obtaining others as good."

Flora had often thought of this scene, and in her overflowing happiness had blessed G.o.d that she had been permitted to share Lyndsay's poverty.

Mending the old clothes had become a privilege.

Thirty pounds was all that she could now afford to lay out upon herself and her little one. A small sum, indeed, to the rich, who would have expended as much in a single article of dress, but very large in her estimation, whose wants had always been regulated more by the wants of others than her own.

Ignorant of the nature of the colony to which she was about to emigrate, and of the manners and customs of the people among whom she was to find a new home, and of whom she had formed the most laughable and erroneous notions, many of her purchases were not only useless, but ridiculous.

Things were overlooked, which would have been of the greatest service; while others could have been procured in the colony for less than the expense of transportation.

Twenty years ago, the idea of anything decent being required in a barbarous desert, such as the woods of Canada, was repudiated as nonsense.

This reminds one of a gentleman who sent his son, a wild, extravagant, young fellow, with whom he could do nothing at home, to grow tame, and settle down into a quiet farmer in the Backwoods. The experiment proved, as it always does in such cases, a perfect failure. All parental restraint being removed, the young man ran wild altogether, and used his freedom as fresh occasion for licentiousness. The prudent father then wrote out to the gentleman to whose care the son had been consigned, that he had better buy him a wild farm, and a _negro and his wife_ to keep house for him.

This, too, after the pa.s.sing of the Anti-Slavery bill! But, even if slaves had been allowed in the colony, the horror of _colour_ is as great among the native-born Canadians as it is in the United States. So much did this otherwise clever man know of the colony to which he sent his unmanageable son!

Flora had been led to imagine that settlers in the Backwoods lived twenty or thirty miles apart, and subsisted upon game and the wild fruits of the country until their own lands were brought into a state of cultivation. Common sense and reflection would have pointed this out as impossible; but common sense is very rare, and the majority of persons seldom take the trouble to think. We have known many persons just as wise as Flora in this respect. It is a fact, however, that Flora believed these reports, and fancied that her lot would be cast in one of those remote settlements, where no sounds of human life were to meet her ears, and the ringing of her husband's axe alone awake the echoes of the forest.

She had yet to learn, that the proximity of fellow-labourers in the great work of clearing is indispensable; that man cannot work alone in the wilderness, where his best efforts require the aid of his fellow-men.

The oft-repeated a.s.sertion, that _anything would do for Canada_, was the cause of more blunders in the choice of an outfit, than the most exaggerated statements in its praise.

Of the fine towns and villages, and the well-dressed population of the improved districts of the Upper Province, she had not formed the slightest conception. To her fancy, it was a vast region of cheerless forests, inhabited by unreclaimed savages, or rude settlers doomed to perpetual toil,-a climate of stern vicissitudes, alternating between intense heat and freezing cold, and which presented at all seasons a gloomy picture. No land of Goshen, no paradise of fruits and flowers, rose in the distance to console her for the sacrifice she was about to make. The ideal was far worse than the reality.

Guided by these false impressions, she made choice of articles of dress too good for domestic drudgery, and not fine enough to suit the rank to which she belonged. In this case, extremes would have suited her better than a middle course.

Though fine clothes in the Backwoods may be regarded as useless lumber, and warm stuffs for winter, and good was.h.i.+ng calicoes for summer, are more to be prized than silks and satins, which a few days' exposure to the rough flooring of a log-cabin would effectually destroy; yet it is absolutely necessary to be well dressed when visiting the large towns, where the wealthier cla.s.ses not only dress well, but expensively.

In a country dest.i.tute of an hereditary aristocracy, and where the poorest emigrant, by industry and prudence, may rise to wealth and political importance, the appearance which individuals make, and the style in which they live, determine their claims to superiority with the public, chiefly composed of the same elements with themselves. The aristocracy of England may be divided into three distinct cla.s.ses,-that of family, of wealth, and of talent,-all powerful in their order. The one which ranks the last should hold its place with the first, for it originally produced it; and the second, which is far inferior to the last, is likewise able to buy the first. The heads of old families are more tolerant to the great men of genius than they are to the acc.u.mulators of riches; and a wide distinction is made by them between the purse-proud millionaire and the poor man of genius, whose refined tastes and feelings are more in unison with their own.

In Canada, the man of wealth has it all his own way; his dollars are irresistible, and the money makes the man. Fine clothes are there supposed to express the wealth of the possessor; and a lady's gown determines her right to the t.i.tle, which, after all, presents the lowest claims to gentility. A runaway thief may wear a fas.h.i.+onably cut coat, and a well-paid domestic flaunt in silks and satins.

Now, Flora knew nothing of all this; and she committed a great error in choosing neat and respectable every-day clothing. The handsome, and the very ordinary, would have answered her purpose much better.

If "necessity is the mother of invention," experience is the handmaid of wisdom, and her garments fit well. Flora was as yet a novice to the world and its ways. She had much to learn from a stern and faithful preceptress, in a cold, calculating school.

CHAPTER VII.

HOW MISS WILHELMINA CARR AND FLORA BECAME ACQUAINTED.

Among the many persons who called upon Flora to talk over her projected emigration was a Miss Wilhelmina Carr-a being so odd, so wayward, so unlike the common run of mortals, that we must endeavour to give a slight sketch of her to our readers. We do not possess sufficient artistic skill to do Miss Wilhelmina justice; for if she had not actually lived and walked the earth, and if we had not seen her with our own eyes, and heard her with our own ears, we should have considered her a very improbable, if not an impossible, variety of the human species feminine. We have met with many absurd people in our journey through life, but a more eccentric individual never before nor since has come under our immediate observation.

Flora's means were far too limited for her to entertain company. Her visitors were confined entirely to her own family, and a few old and chosen friends, with whom she had been intimate from childhood. How, then, did she become acquainted with this lady? Oddly enough; for everything connected with Miss Carr was odd, and out of the common way.

There was a mystery, too, about Miss Carr, which had kept the gossips busy for the last four months, and clever and prying as they were-quite models in their way-not one of them had been able to come at the solution of the riddle.

One hot day during the preceding summer, Miss Wilhelmina walked into the town, wearing a man's broad-brimmed straw hat, and carrying a cane in her hand, with a very small dog trotting at her heels. She inquired at the first hotel in the town for lodgings, and hired two very handsome apartments of Mrs. Turner, who kept very respectable lodgings, and was patronised by the best families in the neighbourhood. Miss Wilhelmina paid three months' rent in advance; she brought no servant, and was to find her own table, engaging Mrs. Turner to cook and wait upon her.

Some days after her arrival, two large travelling trunks, and several well-filled hampers full of wine of the best quality, were forwarded to her direction, and Miss Carr became one of the lions of the little watering-place.

Who she was, or from what quarter of the world she emanated, n.o.body could find out. She had evidently plenty of money at her command, lived as she liked and did what she pleased, and seemed perfectly indifferent as to what others thought of her.

Her eccentric appearance attracted general attention, for she was no recluse, and spent most of her time in the open air. If your walk lay along the beach, the common, or the dusty high-road, you were sure to meet Miss Carr and her dog at every turn.

The excitement regarding her was so great, that most of the ladies called upon her in the hope of gratifying their curiosity, and learning something about her from her own lips. In this they were quite disappointed, for Miss Wilhelmina Carr, though she was sitting at the window nursing her dog, did not choose to be at home to any one, and never had the courtesy to return these ceremonious visits. An old practised propagator of news waylaid Mrs. Turner in the street, and cross-questioned her in the most dexterous manner concerning her mysterious lodger; but the good woman was either seized with a fit of unusual prudence, or, like Horace Smith's mummy-

"Was sworn to secrecy."

There was no getting anything out of her beyond the astounding facts, that Miss Carr smoked out of a long pipe, drank brandy-punch, and had her table served with all the dainties of the season. "Besides all this," whispered the cautious Mrs. Turner, "she swears like a man." This last piece of information might be a scandal, the ladies hoped that it was, but believed and talked about it as a shocking thing, if true, to all their acquaintance, and congratulated themselves that the dreadful woman had shown her wisdom in not returning the visits of respectable people.

The person about whom all this fuss was made, was a tall, and very stout woman of fifty years of age; but active and energetic looking for her time of life. Her appearance was eccentric enough to afford ample scope for all the odd sayings and doings in circulation respecting her. She had a satirical, laughing, jolly red face, with very obtuse features; and, in order to conceal hair of a decidedly carroty hue, she wore an elaborately curled flaxen wig, which nearly covered her large forehead, and hung over her eyes like the curly coat of a French poodle dog. This was so carelessly adjusted, that the red and flaxen formed a curious shading round her face, as their tendrils mingled and twined within each other. Her countenance, even in youth, must have been coa.r.s.e and vulgar; in middle life, it was masculine and decidedly ugly, with no redeeming feature, but the large good-natured mouth, well set with brilliantly white teeth-strong, square, even teeth, that seem to express their owner's love of good cheer; and silently intimated, that they had no light duty to perform, and were made expressly for eating.

Miss Carr, though she sported a man's hat and carried a cane, dressed expensively, her outer garments being made of the richest materials; but she wore these so ridiculously short, that her petticoats barely reached below the middle of her legs; leaving exposed to general observation, the only beauty she possessed-a remarkably handsome and neatly made foot and ankle.

Now, we don't believe that Miss Carr cared a fig about her handsome legs and feet. If they had belonged to the regular Mullingar breed, she would have shown them as freely to all the world; simply, because she chose to do so. She was a great pedestrian, to whom long petticoats would have been uncomfortable and inconvenient.

If she was vain of anything, it was of her powers of locomotion. She had made the tour of Europe on foot and alone, and still continued to walk her ten or fourteen miles a day, let the weather be what it would. Hail, rain, blow, or snow, it was all one to Miss Carr. "She was walking," she said, "to keep herself in practice, as she was contemplating another long journey on foot."

Ida Pfeiffer, the celebrated female traveller, was unknown in those days; or Miss Carr might have taken the s.h.i.+ne out of that adventurous lady; as easily as the said Ida destroys all the romantic notions previously entertained by stay-at-home travellers, about the lands she visits, and the people who form the subjects of her entertaining matter-of-fact books.

When Miss Carr made her _debut_ at church, with her masculine hat placed resolutely on the top of her head, and cane in hand, people could not say their prayers, or attend to the sermon, for staring and wondering at the uncouth apparition which had so unceremoniously appeared in the midst of them. This was not diminished, by her choosing to stand during those portions of the service, when pious females bend the knee. Miss Wilhelmina said, "that she was too big to kneel-that her prayers were just as good in one att.i.tude as another. The soul had no legs or knees, that she could discover-and if the prayers did not come from the heart, they were of no use to her, or to any one else. She had not much faith in prayers of any kind. She never could find out that they had done her the least good, and if she had to go through a useless ceremony, she would do it in the most convenient manner."

Flora had heard so much about this strange woman, that she had not called upon her on her first arrival in the town, though it must be confessed, that her curiosity was as much excited as her neighbours'. In her walks to and fro from her mother's house, who resided within a short distance of the town, Flora had often encountered the st.u.r.dy pedestrian stumping along at full speed, and she had laughed heartily with her husband at her odd appearance; at her short petticoats, and the resolute manner in which she swung her cane, and planted it down upon the ground.

She had often wondered how such an elephant of a woman could move so rapidly upon such small feet, which looked as if she had lost her own, and borrowed a pair of some child by the way.

She was always followed in all her rambles by a diminutive nondescript kind of dog-a tiny, long-haired, silky looking creature, the colour of coffee freshly ground, no bigger than a large squirrel, with brilliant black eyes, bushy tail, and a pert little face, which greatly resembled that animal.

Often, when moving at full speed along the dusty highway, its mistress would suddenly stop, vociferating at the top of her voice-"m.u.f.f! m.u.f.f!

where are you, my incomparable m.u.f.f?" when the queer pet would bound up her dress like a cat, and settle itself down upon her arm, poking its black nose into her hand, or rearing up on its hind legs, to lick her face. They were an odd pair, so unlike, so widely disproportioned in size and motion, that Flora delighted in watching all their movements, and in drawing contrasts between the big woman and her small four-footed companion.

By some strange freak of fancy, Lyndsay and his wife had attracted the attention of Miss Carr, who never pa.s.sed them in her long rambles without bestowing upon them a gracious bow and a smile, which displayed, at one gesture, all her glittering store of large, white teeth.

"I do believe, John, the strange woman means to pick acquaintance with us," said Flora to her husband, one fine afternoon during the previous summer, as they were on their way to spend the evening with her mother at -- Hall. "Instead of pa.s.sing us at her usual brisk trot, she has loitered at our pace for the last half-hour, smiling at us, and showing her white teeth, as if she were contemplating the possibility of an introduction. I wish she would break the ice; for I am dying with curiosity to know something about her."

"You are very foolish," said Lyndsay, who was not one of Miss Carr's admirers, "to trouble your head about her. These eccentric people are often great bores; and, if you get acquainted with them, it is not easy to shake them off. She may be a very _improper_ character. I hate mystery in any shape."

"Oh, bless you!" said Flora, laughing: "she is too old and ugly for scandal of that sort. I should think, from her appearance, that she never had had a sweetheart in her life."

"There's no telling," returned Lyndsay. "She may be lively and witty.

Odd people possess an attraction in themselves. We are so much amused with them, that they fascinate us before we are aware. She has a good figure for her very voluminous proportions, and splendid trotters, which always possess charms for some men."

"Now, don't be censorious, husband dear. If she should speak to us-what then?"