Part 3 (1/2)
The Bishop of Saskabasquia.
I have not a story, properly speaking, to tell about him. He, my Bishop, is quite unconscious that I am writing about him, and would, I daresay, be quite astonished if he knew that I could find anything that relates to him to write about. But I will tell you just how I came to do so. I went to see the ”Private Secretary” some months ago. I had never been a great admirer of clergymen as a s.e.x (vide Frenchman's cla.s.sification), and I thoroughly enjoyed the capital performance of so clever a play.
Here, thought I, is a genuine and perfectly fair, though doubtless exaggerated, portrait of the young and helpless curate. I quite lived on that play. I used to go about, like many another delighted playgoer, I expect, quoting the better bits in it, and they are many, and often laughing to himself at its admirable caricature. However, to go on with what I am going to tell you, about two months after I had seen the ”Private Secretary,” I had occasion to undertake a sea voyage. I had to go out on business to Canada, and embarked one fine Thursday at Liverpool. One of the first things you do on board an ocean steamer is to find your allotted place at table, and the names, etc, of your companions. I soon found mine, and discovered with a pang that I was six seats from the Captain at the side, between a lady and her daughter I had already met at the North-Western Hotel and did not like, and opposite to the Bishop of Saskabasquia, his wife and sister and three children. There was no help for it, I must endure the placid small talk, the clerical plat.i.tudes, the intolerable intolerance born of a deathless bigotry that would emanate from my _vis-a-vis_. What a fuss they made over him, too! Only a Colonial Bishop after all, but when we were all at the wharf, ready to get into the tender, we were kept waiting--we the more insignificant portion of the pa.s.sengers, mercantile and so on--till ”my lord” and his family, nine in number, were safely handed up, with boys and bundles and baggage of every description.
The Bishop himself was a tall thin man, rather priestly in aspect and careworn. Mrs. Saskabasquia as I called her all through the voyage and the seven children--seven little Saskabasquians--and Miss Saskabasquia, the aunt, were all merry enough it seemed though dressed in the most unearthly costumes I had ever seen. Where they had been procured I could not imagine, but they appeared to be made of different kinds of canvas, flannel s.h.i.+rting, corduroy, knitted wool and blankets. Of course we all mustered at the lunch table that first day, people always do, and affect great brightness and hysterical intellectuality and large appet.i.tes. I took my seat with a resigned air. There was not a single pretty girl on board. There were plenty of children, but I did not care much for the society of children. The lady and her daughter between whom I sat, presumably to hand them the dishes, did not like me any better than I liked them. They were Canadians, that was easy to discover by their peculiarly flat p.r.o.nunciation, a detestable accent I hold, the American is preferable. They were connected with the Civil Service in some way through ”papa” who figured much in their conversation and I fancy the mother rather disliked the idea of such close contact with a member of the commercial world. So much for colonial sn.o.bbery. The lunch was good however, excellent, and we did justice to it. The Bishop did not appear nor any of his family until we had almost finished. Then he entered with his wife and the two eldest boys. The only vacant seats were those opposite me which they took. I wondered they had not placed him next the Capt., but divined that the handsome brunette and the horsey broker, Wyatt and his wife of Montreal, fabulously rich and popular, had arranged some time before to sit next the Capt. My Bishop was perhaps annoyed. But if so, he did not show it. He and his wife ate abundantly, it was good to see them. I involuntarily smiled once when the Bishop sent his plate back the second time for soup, and he caught me. To my surprise, he laughed very heartily and said to me:
”I hope you do not think I am forgetting all the other good things to come! I a.s.sure you we are very hungry, are we not, Mary?”
Mrs. Saskabasquia laughed in her turn, and I began to perceive what a very pretty girl she must have been once, and her accent was the purest, most beautiful English. We seemed to warm up generally around the table as we watched the Bishop eat. The boys behaved beautifully and enjoyed their meal as well. Presently we heard a baby crying. It was evidently the youngest of the seven young Saskabasquians. The Bishop stopped directly.
”Go on, go on with your dinner, my dear; I'll see to him, its only James. Dropped his rattle and put his finger in his eye, I expect.”
He jumped up and went, I suppose, to the stateroom. Mrs. Saskabasquia laughed softly, and when she spoke she rather addressed herself to me.
”My husband is very good, you know. And James is such a little monkey, and so much better with him than with anyone else, so I just let him go, but it does certainly look very selfish, doesn't it?”
”Not at all,” I responded gallantly. ”I am sure you need the rest quite as much as he does, particularly if the ba--if the little boy is very young and you--that is--” I was not very clear as to what I was going to say, but she took it up for me.
”Oh, James is the baby. He is just six months' old, you know.”
”That is very young to travel,” said I. I began to enjoy the charming confidences of Mrs. Saskabasquia, in spite of myself.
”Oh, he was only _three_ months old when we left for England, quite a young traveller as you say. But he is very good, and I have so many to help me.”
Here the Bishop returned and sat down once more to his lunch. We had some further conversation, in which I learned that he and his wife had gone out to the North-West just twelve years ago for the first time.
All their children had been born there, and they were returning to work again after a brief summer holiday in England. They told me all this with the most delightful frankness, and I began to be grateful for my place at table, as without free and congenial society at meal-time, life on board an ocean steamer narrows down to something vastly uncomfortable. It was a bright and beautiful afternoon on deck, and I soon found myself walking energetically up and down with the Bishop.
I commenced by asking him some questions as to his work, place of residence and so on, and once started he talked for a long time about his northern home in the wilds of Canada.
”My wife and I had been only married two months when we went out,” said he, with a smile at the remembrance. ”We did not know what we were going to.”
”Would you have gone had you known?” I enquired as we paused in our walk to take in a view of the Mersey we were leaving behind.
”Yes, I think so. Yes, I am quite sure we would. I was an Oxford man, country-bred; my father is still alive, and has a small living in Ess.e.x.
I was imbued with the idea of doing something in the colonies long after I was comfortably settled in an English living myself, but I had always fancied it would be Africa. However, just at the time of our marriage I was offered this bishopric in Canada, and my wife was so anxious to go that I easily fell in with the plan.”
”Anxious to go out there?” I said in much surprise.
”Ah! You don't know what a missionary in herself my wife is! Then, of course, young people never think of the coming events--children and all that you know. We found ourselves one morning at three o'clock, having gone as far as there was any train to take us, waiting in a barn that served as a station for the buckboard to take us on further to our destination. Have you been in Canada yourself? No? Then you have not seen a buckboard. It consists of two planks laid side by side, lengthwise, over four antiquated wheels--usually the remains of a once useful wagon. Upon this you sit as well as you can, and get driven and jolted and b.u.mped about to the appointed goal. I remember that morning so well,” continued the Bishop. ”It was very cold, being late in November, and at that hour one feels it so much more--3 a.m., you know. There was one man in charge of the barn; we called him the station-master, though the t.i.tle sat awkwardly enough upon him. He was a surly fellow. I never met such another. Usually the people out there are agreeable, if slow and stupid.”
”Slow, are they?” said I in surprise.
”Oh, frightfully slow. A Canadian laborer is the slowest person in existence, I really believe. However, this man would not give us any information, except to barely tell us that this buckboard was coming for us shortly. It was pitch dark of course and the barn was lighted by one oil lamp and warmed by a coal stove. The lamp would not burn well, so my wife unstrapped her travelling bag and with a pair of tiny curved nail scissors did her best, with the wick, the man remaining perfectly unmoveable and taciturn all the while. At four o'clock our conveyance arrived, and would you believe it--both the driver and the station master allowed me to lift my own luggage into it as well as I could?
What it would not take I told the man in charge I would send for as soon as possible. There was no sleighing yet, and that drive was the most excruciating thing I ever endured over corduroy roads through wild and dark forests, along interminable country roads of yellow clay mixed with mud till finally we reached the house of the chief member of society in my district where we were to stay until our own house was ready.”