Part 9 (2/2)

He fell back and I caught no more. The excitement proved too much for my poor friend. When I spoke to him, he was unconscious and he never fully recovered his senses. Alas! he lay in a few weeks, beneath the sod of Grand Calumet Island, and France is ignorant of the fact that a true aristocrat and simple-hearted gentleman existed in the humble person of my friend the _habitant_, Etienne Guy Chezy D'Alencourt, _alias_ ”Netty.”

Descendez a L'Ombre, ma Jolie Blonde.

The Honourable Bovyne Vaxine Vyrus refused to be vaccinated. Stoutly, firmly and persistently refused to be vaccinated. Not even the temptation of exposing to the admiring gaze of a medical man the superb muscles and colossal proportions of an arm which had beaten Grace and thrashed (literally) Villiers of the Guards, weighed with him.

”It's deuced cool!” he said, to his cousin Clarges, of Clarges St.

Mayfair, a fair, slight fellow, with a tiny yellow moustache. ”Haven't I been six times to India, and twice to Africa; that filthy Algiers, you remember, and Turkey, and New Orleans, and Lisbon, and Naples? and now, when I was done only eight years ago at home, here I am to be done again, where, I am sure, it all looks clean enough and healthy! It makes me ill, and I _won't_ be done; laid up for a week and lose all the fun I came for!”

”Bovey, though you _are_ the strongest fellow in England, you're no less a coward!”

Young Clarges looked up as he spoke, seriously: ”_I_ shall be done!”

”You? Well, so I should expect from a baby like you, Arthur! You will never grow up, never learn to think for yourself! Now let me alone on the subject, and let us look up this country place we were told about!”

But Clarges was not easily silenced.

”Think of Lady Violet, Bovey! If anything were to happen to you out here, and the children, Bovey,--Rex and Florence, you know!”

”Oh! cut it, now, Arthur; I tell you it's of no use!”

Young Clarges looked out across the river, and bit the tiny yellow moustache. ”Then I won't be done, either!” said he to himself. ”It's borne in upon me that one of us has got to get this accursed thing, and if I can prevent it, it shan't be Bovey!” What a strange scene it was beneath, around, above and opposite them! Beneath flowed the river, solid with sawdust, the yellow acc.u.mulation of which sent up a strong resinous smell that almost made them giddy; to the left the tumultuous foam of the Chaudiere cast a delicate veil of spray over the sharp outlines of the bridge traced against a yellow sky; to the right, the water stretched away in a dull gray expanse, bordered by grim pines and flat sterile country. Around them the three mighty cliffs on which the Capital is built, above them the cold gray of an autumnal sky, and opposite them the long undulations of purplish brown hills that break the monotony of the view, and beyond which stretch away to an untrodden north the wastes and forests of an uncleared continent.

”Are we looking due north, now, Arthur, do you know?”

”I suppose so,” returned Clarges. He was astride a cannon and still biting the tiny moustache. ”Yes, by the direction of the sunset we must be, I suppose. I say, if we are, you know, I should like to be able to tell between what two trees--it would have to be between two of those trees there--we should have to walk to get to the North Pole.”

The Hon. Bovyne looked around suddenly and laughed. He was fis.h.i.+ng apparently in his pockets for a paper or something of the kind, as he had a number of letters in his hand, looking them over.

”What two trees? Where? Arthur, you _are_ a donkey. What are you talking about?”

”I say,” returned Clarges, ”that it is perfectly true that as we sit here, facing due north, all we have to do is to walk straight over this river--”

”On the sawdust?”

”Certainly, over those hills and between two of those trees in order to get to the North Pole. Curious, isn't it? If you look awfully close, real hard, you know, you can almost count their branches as they stand up against the sky. Like little feathers--huff-f-f-f--one could almost blow them away!”

The Honorable Bovyne laughed again. Clarges was a mystery to him, as to many others. Half-witted he sometimes called him, though on other occasions he stood in awe of his bright, candid, fearless nature, and his truthful and reckless tongue.

”I say,” went on Clarges excitedly, shading his eyes with his hand.

”There are two trees out there in a straight line from this very cannon that--that I should know again, Bovey! Do look where I point now like a good fellow. Don't you see there, following the chimney of that big red place, factory or other, right in a line with that at the very top of the hill at its highest point, two trees that stand a little apart from the others and have such funny branches--Oh! you must be able to see them by those queer branches! One crooks out on one side just as the other does on the other tree. That isn't very lucid, but you see what I mean can't you? They make a sort of--of--lyre shape.”

The Hon. Bovyne shaded his eyes with his hand and looked out over the river and distant hills. ”I see a line of trees, feathery trees, you aptly call them my dear Arthur, but I can't make out your particular two. How is it possible, at such a distance, to see anything like a _lyre_ of all things? Come along, I've found the address I wanted. It reads most peculiarly. It seems there are still a great number of French people around here, in fact, all over this Province which they sometimes call Lower Canada. Do you remember much of your French?” I spoke a lot in Algiers of course but I fancy it isn't much like this jargon. Our destination is or appears to be, _c/o Veuve Peter Ross, Les Chats_, p.r.o.nounced _Lachatte_, so Simpson told me.

”Who told you about the place?” enquired young Clarges getting off the cannon? ”Simpson? What sort of a fellow is he?”

”Who? Simpson?” said his cousin in turn. ”Um--not bad. Been out here too long, though. Awfully quiet, goes in for steady work and takes hardly any exercise. I wonder why it is the fellows here don't walk more! New country and all that; I should have thought they would all go in for country walks and shooting and sports of all kinds. They don't, you know, from some reason or other. It can't be the fault of the country.”

<script>