Chapter 38

A CUT, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

What could be the matter? Ponto, at all events, seemed to think it of much importance, for he never ceased to pull their skirts and whine an entreaty, and go through the pantomime of running off in a great hurry--never farther than the threshold--until he saw the girls put on their cloaks and hoods. Gravely he sat on his tail, looking at them with patient eyes, and, when the door was opened, sprang off madly towards the pond.

'Could Reginald have sent him for anything? Something might have happened to Reginald. Ponto never came home in that way before. Could a tree have fallen on Reginald?' and Jay's small hand shivered in Linda's at the thought. They hurried after the dog, over the spotless surface of snow, into the charred forest, where now every trunk and bough of ebony seemed set in silver. Thither Reginald had gone to chop at noon, in a little fit of industry. They were guided to the spot by the sad whinings of faithful Ponto, who could not comprehend why his master was lying on the ground, half against a tree, and what meant that large crimson stain deepening in the pure snow.

A desperate axe-cut in his foot--this was the matter. Linda almost turned sick at the sight; but Jay, compressing her white lips very firmly, to shut in a scream, kneeled down by her brother.

He had succeeded, with infinite effort, in drawing off his long leather boot, through which the axe had penetrated, and had been trying to bind his neckcloth tightly above the ankle. Jay helped him with all her little strength.

'Give me a stick,' said he hoarsely--'a strong stick;' Linda flew to find one. 'Something to make a tourniquet;' and, not readily seeing any wood to answer the want, she used his axe, stained as it was, to chop a branch from the single tree he had felled. She had never tried her strength of arm in this way before; but now the axe felt quite light, from her excitement. Before the stick could be ready, in her unpractised fingers, Jay cried out, 'Oh, Linda, he is dying! he has fainted!'

Still, she had common sense to know that the first necessity was to stop the bleeding; so, quieting the little sister by a word or two, she inserted the stick in the bandage above the ankle, and turned it more than once, so as to tighten the ligament materially. Looking at the pallid features, another thought struck her.

'Let us heap up snow round the wounded foot and leg; I'm sure the cold must be good for it;' and, with the axe for their only shovel, the two girls gathered a pile of frozen snow, as a cushion and covering to the limb--'Oh, if Edith were here! if Edith were here!' being Jay's suppressed cry.

'Where is the labourer whom I saw working on the farm?'

'Gone away; discharged last week. Papa said he couldn't afford to pay him any longer. That's why Reginald went out to chop to-day. Oh, Linda, I wish somebody came. He is lying so white and still: are you sure he is not dead?'

His head was on the little sister's lap, and Linda chafed the temples with snow. Would the sleigh-bells ever be heard? She longed for help of some sort. As to surgery, there was not a practitioner within thirty miles. What could be done with such a bad hurt as this without a surgeon?

A universal slight shudder, and a tremor of the eyelids, showed that consciousness was returning to the wounded man. Almost at the same instant Ponto raised his head, and ran off through the trees, whining. A man's footsteps were presently heard coming rapidly over the crisp snow. It was Mr. Holt: and a mountain load of responsibility and dread was lifted from Linda's mind at the sight of him. This was not the first time that she had felt in his presence the soothing sense of confidence and restfulness.

He could not help praising them a little for what they had done with the primitive tourniquet and the styptic agency of the snow. Beyond tightening the bandage by an additional twist or two of the inserted stick, he could do nothing more for the patient till he was removed to the house; but he began collateral help by cutting poles for a litter, and sent Jay and Linda for straps of basswood bark to fasten them together. When the sleigh at last came up the avenue, Mr. Wynn the elder helped him to carry young Armytage home, wherein Sam Holt's great physical strength carefully bore two-thirds of the dead weight.

It seemed that he had been chopping up that fir for firewood, perhaps without giving much thought to his work, when the axe, newly sharpened before he came out, caught in a crooked branch, which diverted almost the whole force of the blow on his own foot. Well was it that Mr. Holt, in his erratic education, had chosen to pry into the mysteries of surgery for one session, and knew something of the art of putting together severed flesh and bone; although many a dreadful axe wound is cured in the backwoods by settlers who never heard of a diploma, but nevertheless heal with herbs and bandages, which would excite the scornful mirth of a clinical student.

Thus began a long season of illness and weakness for the young man, so recently in the rudest health and strength. It was very new to his impetuous spirit, and very irksome, to lie all day in the house, not daring to move the injured limb, and under the shadow of Zack Bunting's cheerful prediction, that he guessed the young fellar might be a matter o' six or eight months a-lyin' thar, afore such a big cut healed, ef he warn't lamed for life.

Reginald chafed and grumbled and sulked for many a day; but the fact could not be gainsaid; those divided veins and tendons and nerves must take long to unite again; Mr. Holt found him one morning in such an unquiet mood.

'Armytage,' said he, after the usual attentions to the wound, 'I suppose you consider this axe-cut a great misfortune?'

'"Misfortune!"' and he rose on his elbow in one of the fifty positions he was wont, for very restlessness, to assume. 'Misfortune! I should think I do: nothing much worse could have happened. Look at the farm, without a hand on it, going to rack and ruin'--

Rather a highly coloured picture; and Reginald seemed to forget that, while his limbs were whole, he had devoted them almost entirely to amusement. Mr. Holt heard him out patiently.

'I should not be surprised if it proved one of the best events of your life,' he observed; 'that is, if you will allow it to fulfil the object for which it was sent.'

'Oh, that's your doctrine of a particular providence,' said the other peevishly, lying back again.

'Yes; my doctrine of a particular providence, taught in every leaf of the Bible. Now, Armytage, look back calmly over your past life, and forward, whither you were drifting, and see if the very kindest thing that could be done for you by an all-wise and all-loving God was not to bring you up suddenly, and lay you aside, and _force_ you to think. Beware of trying to frustrate His purpose.'

Mr. Holt went away immediately on saying that, for he had no desire to amuse Reginald with an unprofitable controversy which might ensue, but rather to lodge the one truth in his mind, if possible. Young Armytage thought him queer and methodistical; but he could not push out of his memory that short conversation. Twenty times he resolved to think of something else, and twenty times the dismissed idea came round again, and the calm forcible words visited him, 'Beware of trying to frustrate God's purpose.'

At last he called to his sister Edith, who was busy at some housework in the kitchen, across a little passage.

'Come here; I want to ask you a question. Do you think that I am crippled as a punishment for my misdeeds, idleness, etcetera?'

'Indeed, I do not,' she answered with surprise. 'What put such a thought into your head?'

'Holt said something like it. He thinks this axe-cut of mine is discipline--perhaps like the breaking-in which a wild colt requires; and as you and he are of the same opinion in religious matters, I was curious to know if you held this dogma also.'

She looked down for a moment. 'Not quite as you have represented it,' she said. 'But I do think that when the Lord sends peculiar outward circumstances, He intends them to awake the soul from indifference, and bring it to see the intense reality of invisible things. Oh, Reginald,' she added, with a sudden impulse of earnestness, 'I wish you felt that your soul is the most precious thing on earth.'

He was moved more than he would have cared to confess, by those tearful eyes and clasped hands; he knew that she went away to pray for him, while about her daily business. More serious thoughts than he had ever experienced were his that afternoon: Jay could not avoid remarking--in private--on his unusual quietude. Next morning he found a Bible beside his bed, laid there by Edith, he had no doubt; but for a long time she could not discover whether he ever looked into it.

When Mr. Holt left the country, he gave Robert Wynn charge of the patient mentally as well as corporeally. He knew that Robert's own piety would grow more robust for giving a helping hand to another.

Somehow, the Yankee storekeeper was very often hanging about Daisy Burn that winter. Captain Armytage and he were great friends. That gallant officer was, in Zack's parlance, 'the Colonel,' which brevet-rank I suppose was flattering, as it was never seriously disclaimed. He was king of his company in the tavern bar at the 'Corner;' and few days passed on which he did not enjoy that bad eminence, while compounding 'brandy-smash,' 'rum-salad,' 'whisky-skin,' or some other of the various synonyms under which the demon of drink ruins people in Canada.

But where did the captain find cash for this? The fact is, he never paid in ready money; for that was unknown to his pockets, and very rare in the district. He paid in sundry equivalents of produce; and a nice little mortgage might be effected on his nice little farm of Daisy Burn if needs be. Zack held his greedy grasping fingers over it; for the family were obliged to go a good deal in debt for sundry necessities. Slave and scrape as Miss Armytage might, she had no way of raising money for such things as tea and coffee. Once she attempted to make dandelion roots, roasted and ground, do duty for the latter; but it was stigmatized as a failure, except by loving little Jay. Then wages must be paid to the Irish labourer, whose services to chop wood, etc., were now absolutely necessary. Meat was another item of expense. A large store of potatoes was almost the sole provision upon which the household could reckon with certainty; mismanagement and neglect had produced the usual result of short crops in the foregoing season, and their wheat went chiefly to the store in barter.

'An' ef Zack ain't shavin' the capting, I guess I'm a Dutchman,' remarked a neighbouring settler to Robert. 'I reckon a matter of two year'll shave him out o' Daisy Burn, clear and clean.'

But its owner had some brilliant scheme in the future for lifting him free of every embarrassment. Rainbow tints illuminated all prospective pages of Captain Armytage's life.

'Edith, my dear,' he would say, if that young lady deprecated any fresh expenditure, or ventured an advice concerning the farm,--'Edith, my dear, the main fault of your character is an extraordinary want of the sanguine element, for the excess of which I have always been so remarkable. You know I compare it to the life-buoy, which has held me up above the most tempestuous waves of the sea of existence, eh! But you, my poor dear girl, have got a sad way of looking at things--a gloomy temperament, I should call it perhaps, eh? which is totally opposite to my nature. Now, as to this beast, which Mr. Bunting will let me have for twenty-eight dollars, a note of hand at three months, he is kind enough to say, will do as well as cash. And then, Reginald, my boy, we need drink _café noir_ no longer, but can have the proper _café au lait_ every morning.'

'I don't know who is to milk the cow, sir,' said his son, rather bluntly. 'Edith is overwhelmed with work already.'

'Ah, poor dear! she is very indefatigable.' He looked at her patronizingly, while he wiped his well-kept moustache in a handkerchief which she had washed. 'Indeed, Edith, I have sometimes thought that such continual exertion as yours is unnecessary. You should think of us all, and spare yourself, my child.'

'I do, papa,' she answered: whether that she thought of them all, or that she spared herself, she did not explain. Her brother knew which it was.

'That is right, my child. It grieves me to see you condescending to menial offices, unsuitable to your rank and position.'

She did not ask--as a less gentle nature would have asked--who else was to be the menial, if not she?

'That is the worst of a bush life. If I had known how difficult it is to retain one's sphere as a gentleman, I think I should not have exposed myself to the alternative of pecuniary loss or debasing toil. Perhaps it would be well to walk down to the "Corner" now, and conclude that bargain with our good friend the storekeeper, eh? Is there anything I can do for either of you, eh? Don't hesitate to command me,' he added blandly. 'What! you want nothing? A very fortunate pair--very fortunate, indeed, eh?' And Captain Armytage kissed hands out of the room.

'Edith,' said her brother, after a pause of some minutes, 'my father will be ruined by his confidence in that man. Bunting can twine him round his finger. I am ashamed of it.'

She shook her head sadly. But there was no help for the fact that their father was in the toils already; unless, indeed, the debt could be paid off, and the acquaintanceship severed. Hopeless! for the tendencies of a life cannot be remodelled in a day, except by the power of divine grace.