John Campbell - Two Knapsacks

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TWO KNAPSACKS:

A Novel of Canadian Summer Life.

by

J. CAWDOR BELL.

Toronto
The Williamson Book Co., Ltd.
Entered, according to the Act of the Parliament of Canada, in
the year eighteen hundred and ninety-two, by the Williamson Book
Company, Limited, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture.

PUBLISHERS' NOTE.

The Publishers have extreme pleasure in placing this novel, by a new and
promising native author, before the reading public of Canada. They will
be greatly disappointed if it does not at once take its place among the
best products of Canadian writers. While the work has peculiar interest
for Torontonians and dwellers in the districts so graphically described,
its admirable character drawings of many "sorts and conditions" of our
people--its extremely clever dialect, representing Irish, Scotch,
English, Canadian, French, Southern and Negro speech, and the working
out of its story, which is done in such a way as would credit an
experienced romancer--should insure the book a welcome in very many
homes. The literary flavour is all that can be desired; the author
evidencing a quite remarkable acquaintance with English Literature,
especially with Wordsworth, the Poet of the Lake Country.

TWO KNAPSACKS:

A Novel of Canadian Summer Life.

by

J. CAWDOR BELL.

CHAPTER I.

The Friends--The Knapsacks--The Queen's Wharf--The Northern
Railway--Belle Ewart--The _Susan Thomas_, Captain and Crew--Musical
Performance--The Sly Dog--Misunderstanding--Kempenfeldt Bay.

Eugene Coristine and Farquhar Wilkinson were youngish bachelors and
fellow members of the Victoria and Albert Literary Society. Thither, on
Wednesday evenings, when respectable church-members were wending their
way to weekly service, they hastened regularly, to meet with a band of
like-minded young men, and spend a literary hour or two. In various
degrees of fluency they debated the questions of the day; they read
essays with a wide range of style and topic; they gave readings from
popular authors, and contributed airy creations in prose and in verse to
the Society's manuscript magazine. Wilkinson, the older and more sedate
of the two, who wore a tightly-buttoned blue frock coat and an eyeglass,
was a schoolmaster, pretty well up in the Toronto Public Schools.
Coristine was a lawyer in full practice, but his name did not appear on
the card of the firm which profited by his services. He was taller than
his friend, more jauntily dressed, and was of a more mercurial
temperament than the schoolmaster, for whom, however, he entertained a
profound respect. Different as they were, they were linked together by
an ardent love of literature, especially poetry, by scientific pursuits,
Coristine as a botanist, and Wilkinson as a dabbler in geology, and by
a firm determination to resist, or rather to shun, the allurements of
female society. Many lady teachers wielded the pointer in rooms not far
removed from those in which Mr. Wilkinson held sway, but he did not
condescend to be on terms even of bowing acquaintance with any one of
them. There were several young lady typewriters of respectable city
connections in the offices of Messrs. Tyler, Woodruff and White, but the
young Irish lawyer passed them by without a glance. These bachelors were
of the opinion that women were bringing the dignity of law and education
to the dogs.

It was a Wednesday evening in the beginning of July, and the heat was
still great in the city. Few people ventured out to the evening
services, and fewer still found their way to the Victoria and Albert
hall; in fact, there was not a quorum, and, as the constitution stated
that, in such a case, the meeting should be adjourned, it was adjourned
accordingly. Coristine lit a cigar in the porch, and Wilkinson, who did
not smoke, but said he liked the odour of good tobacco, took his arm for
a walk along the well-lit streets. They agreed that it was time to be
out of town. Coristine said: "Let us go together; I'll see one of the
old duffers and get a fortnight's leave." Wilkinson had his holidays, so
he eagerly answered: "Done! but where shall we go? Oh, not to any female
fashion resort." At this Coristine put on the best misanthropic air he
could call up, with a cigar between his lips, and then, as if struck by
a happy thought, dug his elbow into his companion's side and ejaculated:
"Some quiet country place where there's good fishing." Wilkinson
demurred, for he was no fisherman. The sound of a military band stopped
the conversation. It came into sight, the bandsmen with torches in their
headgear, and, after it, surrounded and accompanied by all the small
boys and shop-girls in the town, came the Royals, in heavy marching
order. The friends stood in a shop doorway until the crowd passed by,
and then, just as soon as a voice could be distinctly heard, the
schoolmaster clapped his companion on the shoulder and cried, "Eureka!"
Coristine thought the music had been too much for his usually staid and
deliberate friend. "Well, old Archimedes, and what is it you've found?
Not any new geometrical problems, I hope." "Listen to me," said the
dominie, in a tone of accustomed authority, and the lawyer listened.

"You've heard Napoleon or somebody else say that every soldier of France
carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack?"

"Never heard the gentleman in my life, and don't believe it, either."

"Well, well, never mind about that; but I got my idea out of a
knapsack."

"Now, what's the use of your saying that, when its myself knows that you
haven't got such a thing to bless yourself with?"

"I got it out of a soldier's--a volunteer's knapsack, man."

"O, you thief of the world! And where have you got it hid away?"

"In my head."

"O rubbish and nonsense--a knapsack in your head!"

"No, but the idea."

"And where's the knapsack?"

"On the grenadier's back."

"Then the grenadier has the knapsack, and you the idea: I thought you
said the idea was in the knapsack."

"So it was; but I took it out, don't you see? My idea is the idea of a
knapsack on a man's back--on two men's backs--on your back and on mine."

"With a marshal's baton inside?"

"No; with an extra flannel shirt inside--and some socks, and a flask,
and some little book to read by the way; that's what I want."

"It'll be mortal heavy and hot this boiling weather."

"Not a bit. You can make one out of cardboard and patent cloth, just as
light as a feather, and costing you next to nothing."

"And where will you be going with your knapsack? Will it be parading
through the streets with the volunteers you would be after?"

"Go? We will go on a pedestrian tour through the finest scenery
available." This was said correctly and with great dignity. It had the
effect of sobering the incredulous Coristine, who said: "I tell ye,
Farquhar, my boy, that's a fine idea of yours, barring the heat; but I
suppose we can rest where we like and go when we like, and, if the
knapsacks get to be a nuisance, express 'em through, C.O.D. Well, I'll
sleep over it, and let you know to-morrow when I can get away." So the
pair separated, to retire for the night and dream a knapsack nightmare.

Coristine's leave did not come till the following Tuesday, so that
Friday, Saturday and Monday--or parts of them, at least--could be
devoted to the work of preparation. Good, strong, but not too heavy,
tweed walking suits were ordered, and a couple of elegant flannel shirts
that would not show the dirt were laid in; a pair of stout, easy boots
was picked out, and a comfortable felt hat, with brim enough to keep off
the sun. Then the lawyer bought his cardboard and his patent cloth and
straps, and spent Saturday evening with his friend and a sharp penknife,
bringing the knapsacks into shape. The scientists made a mistake in
producing black and shiny articles, well calculated to attract the heat.
White canvas would have been far better. But Wilkinson had taken his
model from the military, hence it had to be black. The folded ends of
the patent cloth, which looked like leather, were next to the wearer's
back, so that what was visible to the general public was a very
respectable looking flat surface, fastened round the shoulders with
becoming straps, equally dark in hue. "Sure, Farquhar, it's pack-men the
ignorant hayseeds will be taking us for," said Coristine, when the
prospective pedestrians had strapped on their shiny baggage holders. "I
do not agree with you there," replied the schoolmaster; "Oxford and
Cambridgemen, and the best _litterateurs_ of England, do Wales and
Cornwall, the Lakes and the Trossachs, to say nothing of Europe, dressed
just as we are." "All right, old man, but I'm thinking I'll add a
bandanna handkerchief and a blackthorn. They'll come in handy to carry
the fossils over your shoulder. There now, I've forgot the printers'
paper and the strap flower press for my specimens. True, there's Monday
for that; but I'm afraid I'll have to shave the boards of the flower
press down, or it'll be a sorry burden for a poor, tired botanist. Good
night to you, my bouchal boy, and it's a pack you might throw into a
corner of your sack." "Cards!" replied Wilkinson; "no sir, but my
pocket chess box will be at your service." "Chess be hanged," said the
lawyer; "but, see here, are they checkers when you turn them upside
down? If they are, it's I'm your man."

On Tuesday morning, about eight o'clock, there appeared at the Brock
Street Station of the Northern Railway, two well-dressed men with shiny
knapsacks on their shoulders. They had no blackthorns, for Wilkinson had
said it would be much more romantic to cut their own sticks in the bush,
to which Coristine had replied that, if the bush was as full of
mosquitos as one he had known, he would cut his stick fast enough. They
were the astonishment, rather than the admiration, of all beholders, who
regarded them as agents, and characterized the way in which they carried
their samples as the latest thing from the States. For a commencement,
this was humiliating, so that the jaunty lawyer twisted his moustache
fiercely, and felt inclined to quarrel with the self-possessed,
clean-shaven space between Wilkinson's elaborate side-whiskers. But the
pedagogue, in his suavest manner, remarked that Cicero, in his _De
Natura Deorum_, makes Cotta call the common herd both fools and
lunatics, whose opinion is of no moment whatever. "Why, then," he asked,
"should we trouble our minds with what it pleases them to think? It is
for us to educate public opinion--to enlighten the darkness of the
masses. Besides, if you look about, you will see that those who are
doing the giggling are girls, sir, positively girls."

"Your hand on that, Farquhar, my boy; if it keeps the hussies off, I'll
wear a knapsack every day of my life."

Coristine did not know where he was going, being subject to the superior
wisdom and topographical knowledge of his companion, who appeared in the
row that besieged the window of the ticket office. "Two for Belle
Ewart," he demanded, when his turn came.

"Trains don't run to Belle Ewart now; you had better take Lefroy, the
nearest point."

"All right; two for Lefroy."

The ticket agent looked at the attire of the speaker, and was about to
produce the cardboard slips, then hesitated as he glanced at the straps
and the top of the black erection on Wilkinson's shoulders, and
enquired, "Second class, eh?" The dominie was angry, his face
crimsoned, his hand shook with indignation. Being a moral man, he would
not use bad language, but he roared in his most stentorian academic
tone, a tone which appalled the young agent with rapid visions of
unfortunate school days, "Second Tom-cats! Does the company put you
there to insult gentlemen?" It was the agent's turn to redden, and then
to apologize, as he mildly laid the tickets down, without the usual
slap, and fumbled over their money. The feminine giggling redoubled, and
Coristine, who had regained his equilibrium, met his friend with a
hearty laugh, and the loud greeting, "O Lord, Wilks, didn't I tell you
the fools would be taking us for bagmen?" But Wilkinson's irritation was
deep, and he marched to the incoming train, ejaculating, "Fool, idiot,
puppy; I shall report him for incivility, according to the printed
invitation of the company. Second! ach! I was never so insulted in my
life."

There was room enough inside the car to give the travellers a double
seat, half for themselves and the other for their knapsacks. These
impedimenta being removed the occupants of the carriage became aware
that they were in the company of two good-looking men, of refined
features, and in plain but gentlemanly attire. The lady passengers
glanced at them, from time to time, with approbation not unmingled with
amusement, but no responsive glance came from the bachelors. Wilkinson
had opened his knapsack, and had taken out his pocket Wordsworth, the
true poet, he said, for an excursion. Coristine had a volume of Browning
in his kit, but left it there, and went into the smoking-car for an
after breakfast whiff. The car had been swept out that morning by the
joint efforts of a brakesman and the newsagent, so that it was less
hideously repulsive than at a later stage in the day, when tobacco
juice, orange peel, and scraps of newspapers made it unfit for a decent
pig. The lawyer took out his plug, more easily carried than cut tobacco,
and whittled it down with his knife to fill his handsome Turk's head
meerschaum. When all was ready, he discovered, to his infinite disgust,
that he had no matches nor pipe-lights of any description. The news
agent, Frank, a well-known character on the road, supplied him with a
box of Eddy's manufacture, for which he declined to receive payment.
However, he pressed his wares upon the grateful Coristine, recommending
warmly the Samantha books and Frank Stockton's stories. "Are there any
women in them?" asked the smoker. "Full of them," replied Frank; "Why,
Samantha is a woman." "Take them away, and bring me something
different." The news agent returned with a volume made up of cartoons
and other illustrations from _Puck_, and soon the Irishman was shaking
his sides over the adventures of Brudder Sunrise Waterbury and similar
fictitious characters. So absorbed was he in this trivial literature
that he failed to notice the entrance of an old man, respectably dressed
who took a seat on the opposite side of the aisle, and was preparing to
smoke his three inches of clay. He was aroused by the salutation and
request:--

"Good marnin', Sor, an' moight Oi be afther thrubblin' yeez for a loight
to my poipe?"

"Certainly, with pleasure; glad to be of any use to a fellow
countryman," replied Coristine, looking up, and perceiving that his new
acquaintance, though old and stooped, had a soldierly air. "You have
been in service?" he continued.

"Troth I have, puff, puff, now she's goin' aisy. Oi was in the Furren
Laygion in South Ameriky, an' my cornel was the foinest man you iver
see. It was Frinch he was by his anshesters, an' his name it was
Jewplesshy. Wan toime we was foightin' wid the Spanyerds an' the poor
deluded haythen Injuns, when a shpint bullet rickyshayed an' jumped into
my mouth, knockin' out the toot' ye'll percaive is missin' here. Will,
now, the cornel he was lookin' at me, an', fwhen Oi shput out the bullet
and the broken toot' on the ground, he roides up to me, and says, says
he, 'It's a brave bhoy, yeez are, Moikle Terry, an' here's a' suverin to
get a new toot' put in whin the war is over, says he. Oh, that suverin
wint to kape company wid a lot more that Oi'd be proud to see the face
av in my owld age. But, sorra a toot' did the dintist put in for me, for
fwhere wud the nate hole for the poipe have been thin, till me that,
now?"

Mr. Coristine failed to answer this conundrum, but continued the
conversation with the old soldier. He learnt that Michael had
accompanied his colonel to Canada, and, after serving him faithfully for
many years, had wept over his grave. One of the old man's sons was a
sergeant in the Royal Artillery, and his daughter was married to a
Scotch farmer named Carruthers, up in the County of Grey.

"She was a good gyurl, as nate an' swate as a picter, whin she lift the
cornel's lady's sarvice, an' wint an' tuk up wid Carruthers, a foine man
an' a sponsible, not a bit loike the common Scotch. Carruthers and her,
they axed me wud Oi go an' pay thim a visit, an' say to the comfort av
her young lady on the way."

"What young lady?" asked Coristine, and immediately repented the
question.

"Miss Jewplesshy, to be sure, the cornel's darter, and an illigant wan
she is, av she has to make her livin' by the wroitin'."

At this juncture, the lawyer, with lively satisfaction, hailed the
arrival of Frank, who came straight towards him.

"Are you Mr. Coristine, the lawyer?" he half whispered. "Yes; that's my
name," his victim replied, thinking that Wilkinson had sent him a
message.

"Well, there's a lady in the rear car wanted to know, and I said I'd
find out."

"Fwhat's that you'll be sayin' av a lady in the rare car, my lad?"
questioned the old soldier, who had overheard part of the conversation.

"It's the tall girl in the travelling duster and the blue ribbons that
wants to know if Mr. Coristine is here."

"Fwhat? my own dare young mishtress, Miss Ceshile Jewplesshy; shure it's
her that do have the blue ribbins, an' the dushter. Do yeez know that
swate young crathur, Sor?"

"I do not," replied Coristine abruptly, and added, _sotto voce_, "thank
goodness!" Then he relit his pipe, and buried his head in the Puck book,
from the contemplation of which the Irish veteran was too polite to seek
to withdraw his attention. In a few minutes, the door opened and closed
with a slam, and Wilkinson, pale and trembling, stood before him.

"Eugene, my dear friend," he stammered, "I'll never forgive myself for
leading you and me into a trap, a confounded, diabolical, deep-laid
trap, sir, a gin, a snare, a woman's wile. Let us get off anywhere, at
Aurora, Newmarket, Holland Landing, Scanlans, anywhere to escape these
harpies."

"What's the matter, old man?" enquired Coristine, with a poor attempt at
calmness.

"Matter!" replied Wilkinson, "it's this matter, that they have found us
out, and the girl with the cream coloured ribbons and crimson wrapper
has asked that villainous news-agent if my name is not Wilkinson, and if
I don't teach in the Sacheverell Street School. The rascal says her name
is Miss Marjorie Carmichael, the daughter of old Dr. Carmichael, that
was member for Vaughan, and that her friend, the long girl with the blue
ribbons, knows you. O, my dear friend, this is awful. Better be back in
Toronto than shut up in a railway car with two unblushing women."

"Stay here," said Coristine, making way for his friend, "they'll never
dare come into this car after us." Yet his eye followed the retreating
form of the South American warrior with apprehension. What if he should
bring his 'dare young misthress' and her friend into the atmosphere of
stale tobacco after their lawful game? Wilkinson sat down despairingly
and coughed. "I feel very like the least little nip," he said faintly,
"but it's in my knapsack, and I will not enter that car of foul
conspiracy again for all the knapsacks and flasks in the world."

Now, Coristine had smoked two big pipes, and felt that it was dry work,
but loyalty to his friend made him braver than any personal necessity
would have done. "It's sick you're looking, Farquhar, my dear," he said,
"and it's no friend of your's I'd be, and leave you without comfort in
such a time of trouble. Here's for the knapsack, and woe betide the man
or woman that stops me." So up he rose, and strode out of the car,
glowering fiercely at the second-class passengers and all the rest, till
he reached the vacated seats, from which he silently, and in deep inward
wrath, gathered up the creations of cardboard and patent cloth, and
retreated, grinding his teeth as he heard the veteran call out behind
him, "Would yeez moind comin' this way a bit, Mishter?" He paid no
attention to that officious old man, but hurried back to the
smoking-car, where he extracted Wilkinson's flask from its flannel
surroundings, removed the metal cup, poured out a stiff horn, and
diluted it at the filter. "Take this, old man," he said sternly,
pressing it to the lips of the sufferer, "it'll set you up like a new
pin." So the schoolmaster drank and was comforted, and Coristine took a
nip also, and they felt better, and laughed and joked, and said
simultaneously, "It's really too absurd about these girls, ha, ha!"

Apprehension made the time seem long to the travellers, who gazed out of
the windows upon a fine agricultural country, with rolling fields of
grain, well-kept orchards and substantial houses and barns. They admired
the church on the hill at Holland Landing, and the schoolmaster told his
friend of a big anchor that had got stuck fast there on its way to the
Georgian Bay in 1812. "I bet you the sailors wouldn't have left it
behind if it had been an anchor of Hollands," said Coristine, whereupon
Wilkinson remarked that his puns were intolerable. At Bradford the track
crossed the Holland River, hardly flowing between its flat, marshy banks
towards Lake Simcoe. "This," said the schoolmaster, "is early
Tennysonian scenery, a Canadian edition of the fens of Lincolnshire,"
but he regretted uttering the words when the lawyer agreed with him that
it was an of-fens-ive looking scene. But Lake Simcoe began to show up in
the distance to the right, and soon the gentlemanly conductor took their
tickets. "Leefroy," shouted the brakesman. They gathered up their
knapsacks, dropped off the smoker, and sped inside the station, out of
the windows of which they peered cautiously to see that no attempt at a
pursuit was made by the ladies and their military protector. The train
sped on its way northward, and feeling that, for a time, they were safe,
the pedestrians faced each other with a deep-drawn sigh of relief. The
station-master told them to walk back along the track till they met the
old side-line that used to go to Belle Ewart. So they helped each other
to strap on their knapsacks, and virtually began their pedestrian tour.
The station-master would have liked to detain them for explanations, but
they were unwilling to expose themselves to further misunderstanding.
Walking on a railway track is never very pleasant exercise, but this
old Belle Ewart track was an abomination of sand and broken rails and
irregular sleepers. Coristine tried to step in time over the rotting
cedar and hemlock ties, but, at the seventh step, stumbled and slid down
the gravel bank of the road-bed. "Where did the seven sleepers do their
sleeping, Wilks?" he enquired. "At Ephesus," was the curt reply. "Well,
if they didn't efface us both, they nearly did for one of us."
"Coristine, if you are going to talk in that childlish way, we had
better take opposite ends of the track; there are limits, sir."

"That's just what's troubling me; there are far too many limits. If this
is what you call pedestrianizing, I say, give me a good sidewalk or the
loan of an uneven pair of legs. It's dislocation of the hip or
inflammatory rheumatism of the knee-joint I'll be getting with this hop
and carry one navigation." Wilkinson plodded on in dignified silence,
till the sawmills of the deserted village came in sight, and, beyond it,
the blue green waters of Lake Simcoe. "Now," he said, "we shall take to
the water." "What?" enquired Coristine, "on our knapsacks?" to which his
companion answered, "No, on the excellent steamer _Emily May_."

There was no excellent steamer _Emily May_; there had not been for a
long time; it was a memory of the past. The railway had ruined
navigation. What was to be done? It would never do to retrace their
steps over the railroad ties, and the roads about Belle Ewart led
nowhere, while to track it along the hot lake shore was not to be
thought of. Wilkinson's plans had broken down; so Coristine left him at
the village hostelry, and sallied forth on exploration bent. In the
course of his wanderings he came to a lumber wharf, alongside which lay
an ancient schooner.

"Schooner ahoy!" he shouted, when a shock-headed man of uncertain middle
age poked his head up through a hatchway, and answered: "Ahoy yourself,
and see how you like it." This was discouraging, but not to a limb of
the law. Coristine half removed his wide awake, and said: "I have the
pleasure of addressing the captain of the ship _Susan Thomas_," the name
he had seen painted in gold letters on the stern.

"Not adzackly," replied the shock headed mariner, much mollified; "he's
my mate, and he'll be along as soon as he's made up his bundle. I'm
waitin' for him to sail this yere schooner."

"Where is the _Susan Thomas_ bound for?"

"For Kempenfeldt Bay, leastways Barrie."

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