Chapter 20
I have spoken of the drives and walks Graham and I used to take with the Wrights, and it is not astonishing that Graham presently began to feel a warmer sentiment than friendship for Miss Edith, the younger sister. She was a very nice girl, not nearly so pretty as her sister, but with a very sweet disposition and very unselfish. Not long after Christmas he made her an offer of marriage. She gave him no decided answer and just at that juncture we had to accept an invitation to a house eight or nine miles away. We all felt uncomfortable but we had promised to go and could not well get out of it.
It was bitterly cold and I think we did not speak a word all the way. The woman we were to visit was the sister-in-law of the poor little woman who lived in the turf house and died a few weeks after I came up. Mrs. Allen (I do not think that was her name) had taken the baby and was struggling to keep it alive. The house was very cold. She used to dress it up in a flannel cape and mitts when it went to bed, or it would have frozen. Her larder was very empty; all she could give us was dry bread and some dried beef, very like a piece of your shoe. All the poor baby had was some bread and a scrape of butter; she had about half a pound and kept it just for the poor mite. We left early and that was the last of our gaiety. The next day Edie told Graham she would not have him and the intercourse between the families was more or less stopped.
It was now very cold weather and our house was dark and dull. The half window in the kitchen looked north and was covered inches deep in frost. One pane was broken and I had mended it with a shingle over which I pasted a picture of a lady in a very summer dress, with a parasol. Her head and parasol was the only bit of the window uncovered and it used to make me shiver to look at her.
It did not get light until 9 a.m. or after and by 3 p.m. we needed a light again. We had broken all our lamp glasses and were reduced to the lantern, which we used to put on a stool between us as we sat by the fire. We were really never cold, but the wood we burned was poplar, or “popular”, as some called it, and our stove, being very small, needed constant stoking. We had no milk, as our cow had wandered away in the autumn and when we found her, 15 miles from home, she was dry. Of course having no milk, no butter, nor eggs or fresh meat, we were getting very weary of “mess pork”, potatoes, porridge and syrup. Sometimes I made a gingerbread. I remember Louie Wright said a spoonful of fresh snow was equal to an egg, so we tried a cake, but our scrap of shortening was so hard we melted it, mixed the sugar and then put it outside to get cool. When we looked out five minutes afterwards something had eaten it up. Indeed to turn aside for a minute, there was a “something” around.
One morning, being alone in the house, I heard a scratching at the door and opening it, a large animal appeared, with rough brown hair and enormous claws. I am afraid I was rather rude, as I shut the door in his face. After remaining around for a while he trotted off to the stable. When Graham came in and heard of it, he said it must be a badger. He found it in an unused pigsty he had prepared for a prospective pig and shot it. On bringing it into the house my poor cat Punch came and lay down beside it and moaned and cried as for a dear friend. We concluded they had been sleeping together in the pigsty and had a real love for one another.
But to return to our subject, things were certainly very dull. Graham would sit by the hour not speaking, his appetite failed and I began to grow uneasy. One day I said, “Why don’t you go home for a visit, there is nothing to be done during the next two months.” Well, to make a long story short, after much discussion it was decided he could go almost immediately and I would stay with Mrs. Scott in Emerson. Charley Wright was more than willing to take care of the horses and also took the cow. The cat and Flossy found good homes and we packed up our goods and started.
Driving into Emerson with a good team of horses and good sleighing was an easy matter and not unpleasant. It was very cold but I was well wrapped up and had a nice little three-sided tin water bottle Cousin Sarah Gamble had had made for me. I filled it with boiling water on starting, and when we stopped at noon to eat pork and potatoes and dried apple pie in somebody’s house, I simply stood it on the stove and it was ready for the next four or five hours drive. It was on this trip I first saw the mirage which is so common in winter on the prairie. I have noticed it generally very early in the morning or when the light is beginning to grow dim. A tiny log cabin will look in the distance like a castle, or suddenly villages will appear all around you which a few moments ago were invisible. Sometimes a house will seem to be hanging from the clouds, but always upside down.
Mrs. Scott was delighted to see me and only too pleased to have my help and company, as she was alone. Graham made no delay, but went on at once, and I established myself very comfortably at Mrs. Scott’s. The end of January was very cold. It went as low as 59° below zero, but we had a huge box stove in the hall, with an oven above, and wood was plentiful. I think both Mr. and Mrs. Scott were the kindest and most hospitable people I ever met. It was the one point they were both agreed upon. Life had been a disappointment to both. Mrs. Scott had always desired to be a missionary, but seventy-five or eighty years ago when she was a girl it was an unheard of thing for a girl to go off alone. “No,” said her father, “if you marry a missionary, all right, but otherwise you stay at home.” She was very zealous in good works. One Sunday afternoon when teaching her class in Sunday School, on looking up she saw a short good looking gentleman, in minister’s clothes, watching her. On coming home she found he had come to tea. She soon learned from her sisters that he was going to Egypt as a missionary and was anxious to take a wife with him. By the help of officious friends the match was soon made and they were married at once, knowing nothing of one another. Then came the great blow. They reached Montreal, where they were to sail from, and he was taken very ill and the doctors positively forbade his ever attempting missionary work. They ended by settling down in Napanee and later came to the West. She had had a sad life. Three little girls she had raised to five years of age and they died, two of scarlet fever, contracted by their father’s carelessness. I think she had never forgiven him. But in the matter of hospitality they were entirely one.
After the very bitter weather had passed, Mrs. Scott took me over one day to spend the day at her married son’s shack on the prairie. On our return we found Mr. Scott rubbing his hands in great spirits. He said an Englishman had come to see him. He had just arrived in the country with a wife and four little children and expecting a fifth in a few weeks. He had little or no money and did not know what to do. “So of course,” said Mr. Scott, “I told him to bring them all here tomorrow.” Mrs. Scott heartily agreed. The big kitchen was given up to them, and one or two bedrooms, and they remained there until the spring, Mrs. Scott nursing the woman herself when the little newcomer arrived. This is only a sample of their kindness.
Mr. Scott was a clever man and had a nice little library. I read Trench “On the Study of Words”, while there, and I remember beginning to learn the Gospel of Mark, but I only mastered the first chapter. I used to help Mrs. Scott with the work, but we also had a big strong French Canadian Girl who came sometimes. When she had worked about an hour, Mrs. Scott would say, “Do sit down Marie, you must be so tired, and I will make you a cup of tea.” “Deed and I think it should be I making you the cup of tea,” she would reply.
Mr. Scott had a great friend who was a missionary in Dakota (Emerson is just on the line). He used to make his headquarters at the house. We would see him drive up with his skittish little pony, but Mrs. Scott warned me that we were never to appear until he was unwrapped and had and an opportunity to dye his hair, bringing it back from almost white to its original Highland yellow. At the same time he always dyed his moccasins the same color. One day, unfortunately, there was something wrong with the dye and both came out green. But notwithstanding this little foible, he was a good man and a brave missionary, fearing neither cold nor storm to carry the Gospel to the scattered homesteads of the West. Mr. Scott’s pony was a great contrast to Mr. MacNeil’s; it rarely went beyond a walk and he kept up a gentle urging with whip and reins, which was quite ineffectual.
Besides old Mr. MacNeil, we used to have visits from a yellow haired laddie called McPherson, and another dark haired young man, whose name I have forgotten. I went into Emerson occasionally too, and visited my first friend there, Mrs. Newcombe, and also a new and very kind friend Mrs. Ireland. I also saw Emmie Wright several times and found she was engaged to the druggist, Mr. Carmen and was to be married in the spring.
There was much marrying in those early days and few girls went home single. The doctor told me he was at the station one day and a bright looking girl got off the train. Seeing she was alone and no one to meet her, he went up and asked if he could help her. “Where was she going?” “I came up to be married,” she replied. “And where is your intended?” he asked. “Oh I have no one yet but I understood a girl had just to come up and the young men would be all ready to take her.” “But in the meantime,” said the doctor, “I had better find you a nice place.” “No, indeed, I did not come up to work.” A few days afterwards he met her and she said, “Let me introduce you to my husband.” “And,” added the doctor, “he was really a very decent chap.” So with books and work and visits the winter wore away pleasantly enough, and early in March Graham returned, looking a different boy. I had just heard that Edie Wright was engaged to Mr. Ashby the young Englishman who held the Sunday services, and was afraid the news would knock him out, but he did not, so to speak, “turn a hair”, so I do not think it had been very deep.
Mr. Radford’s son-in-law Mr. Miller had brought in the horses and also had his own oxen, laying in our summer’s provisions. Graham had not returned alone. He had brought back with him a lad of eighteen called Eddie Bishop. He was the younger son of that Mr. Bishop in whose store Graham worked in Brantford. Not being very strong, his father thought a summer in the West would build him up.
It did not take Graham long to find out that one of his horses was quite ill and not at all fit to travel. In fact they had both been thoroughly overworked. But now we had to get home and this we did by easy stages, spending nine or ten days on the way. One night I remember we spent in a Mennonite house. It had an earth floor and only one room. There were slats nailed from the beds to the floor and the hens lived underneath. The young men got bundles of hay and we lay down in our clothes. I was soon awakened by a grunting at my head and found only a thin board partition separated us from the pigs. Going to sleep again I was soon awakened by a heavy body falling on my chest. I found a large cat had jumped from the loft above. I do not mind cats and turning him out, went to sleep again and was wakened a third time to find a hen roosting on my feet. This is a sample of the nights in Mennonite houses. Another night we spent in a school house, but found the schoolmaster’s family also slept there, and I remember how they all came tumbling over us as they groped their way to bed in the dark.
It must have been the sixth or seventh night we came to a respectable Canadian farmer’s house. The motherly wife said, “Do tell me, is this your pa or your husband?” But she was very kind to me. She had a lot of sons and one daughter. The girl, about my own age, took me up after supper to the corner curtained off in the loft for her use. The boys took up the rest, and the father and mother slept in the one room downstairs. The girl said, “You shall sleep with me and don’t you want to go to bed at once?” Indeed I did and I was just dropping asleep and luxuriating in the feather bed when she came up again with a friend who was staying with her. I heard her whisper, “I’ve made a bed on the floor for us; she looks so dreadfully tired; she shall have the bed to herself.” I can never forget her kindness to a perfect stranger. The name was Morden and I see a station named Morden in that vicinity, so I hope they have all done well and prospered.
The next night—and I know it was March 3rd., the day of the year I came up—Graham said, “We will sleep at Nimrod’s tonight.” My curiosity was much roused but he would tell me no more. It was a shack in the Pembina Mountains. Nimrod himself came out to greet us, declaring he could not put us up. But it was late and dark and cold, and at last he agreed. He was an enormous man, perhaps nearly sixty, dressed in a huge white flannel shirt and dark trousers. I went into the kitchen, trembling with cold; a small lean-to kitchen, only holding the stove. The wife, a thin dejected looking woman, was frying pancakes, and we kept her busy before we were all satisfied. Off the kitchen was the large living room—all the house except a small attic. In one corner was a huge fireplace with a big fire of logs. Round the room, with the firelight dancing on them, were horns and skulls, strings of birds’ eggs and bears’ claws, while skins of bears and wolves were laid as mats on the floor. Then I recognized in my host “the mighty hunter”. He was a regular tyrant to his wife and the thin, bitter looking daughter with whom I slept, and who told me her woes as we went to bed. However cold it was, she and her mother had to carry water from the frozen creek for all the stock, and he never gave them a cent to buy clothing. To us he was pleasant enough and as we sat by the big fire, recalling old memories, he suddenly asked if we were related to Mr. Somerville Boulton. “Why, yes, he was our father.” “I thought I saw a likeness,” he said, “I was rod man for him in such and such a year, on a survey.” After that he could not do enough for us.
I think it was at Lorneville that Miss Emmie Wright overtook us. She was being driven home by a young man we girls called “The Knight of Snowdon”, he was such a fine gentleman. We had dinner together, but they soon left us, as he had a fast horse and a sort of cutter.
The last night was at the French settlement, proverbially dirty; indeed it was there Mr. Snowdon got one of his worst shocks when the old mother licked the drop from the spout of the syrup jug, after helping herself. However, they evidently desired to do me honor, and washed out the bedroom just before I went to bed. I had come safely through ten days exposure in all kinds of places but this finished me, and I arrived at the Wright’s the next evening with a terrible cold. Mrs. Wright kept me all night and the boys went on to the house, but I followed them in the morning and worried through somehow. The potatoes were nearly all frozen in the cellar and a few things had been stolen, but these were small items compared with the poor horse, which lingered a few weeks and then died, just as the spring work was commencing. Graham could not get a mate for poor Dolly, but he succeeded in buying a small white pony and he used to hitch the two ponies on one side and the big horse on the other, and so he put in all his crop, and did a good deal of plowing.