13 Tales strange and varied

It is undoubtedly true that human perceptions are not only widely different in their accuracy and acuteness, but that even in the case of each individual the growing awareness of the world is far from being an orderly process of development. In my own case, for instance, I seem to have been relatively untouched by the daily bustle round me, forming no faintest idea of even the most commonplace happenings, whereas I was always peculiarly sensitive to varying moods, and read into gestures and the odd high-sounding phrase all manner of provocative meanings and possibilities. Which is only to say that, so far as my fundamental characteristics were concerned, I was potentially a true Icelander. For the Icelander, tempered by centuries of cataclysmic disasters that have taught him the impermanence and inadequacy of material possessions, is more likely to be keenly engrossed with problems of time than of space. The ancient Norsemen set great store by pomp and circumstance, like the Greeks, to whose classics the sagas are comparable, they delighted in physical prowess and beauty, in everything that pleasured the five senses. But, as time rolled on and all these things were senselessly destroyed by senseless nature, their descendants came by degrees to fix the quest of their restless souls on imperishable concepts. Less and less they coveted and prized externals, and embraced instead beauties of the mind and heart.

This, I suppose, is the reason why so many Icelanders of the older generation were seemingly oblivious of their lack of trimness and taste in their houses, although they might discourse with understanding and deep insight on the elegance of literature and philosophy. As a matter of fact, most foreign visitors to Iceland find it necessary to comment upon what strikes them as most singular: that not infrequently some uncouth-looking farmer whose entire days have been spent in the fields, has, upon the least encouragement, launched into an animated discussion of subjects of this kind. The simple explanation is, of course, that the Icelander prizes intellect as other nations prize money, and that his true solace lies in spiritual abstractions. Consequently, he is not religious in the conventional sense, for religion is rooted in materialism. In its final analysis, it is a doctrine of me and mine, a sanctifier of property, patriotism, and war, and its ultimate glory is a triumphant entry into paradise. Perverse though it may seem, the thinking Icelander has, whether he knows it or not, reverted to the old common sense of his Viking ancestors, whose gods were merely symbols of abstract qualities, and to whom the creative force of the universe remained the Nameless One, unconditioned by time and space. In this scientific day the terminology has changed, but the idea is the same. The old Vikings spoke of death as a passing to ‘The Other Light.’ The modern Icelander thinks of dissolution as a return to the elements. And, in both instances, the obvious, the tangible, and concrete were recognized for what they are—perishable symbols of an imperishable power flowing on towards some dim, undivined fruition. For which reason, causes, rather than acts, engage our interests, and our standard of values is based upon lasting reality. No doubt these pleasant conceits will be wiped out of us in this enlightened country, Canada, where everything from a baby’s bonnet to a literary masterpiece is conscientiously gauged by dollars and cents. But, as yet, those of us who were conditioned in old-fashioned homes cling to the delusion that what a man has is of less importance than what he is. For, say we, in the height of our folly, it is even conceivable that an unfortuitous series of circumstances might annihilate one or all of the Ford plants, but less likely that Mr. Ford himself should be knocked on the head. Moreover, we are hideously sceptical of any art which is worn like a mental bustle to lend a bump of importance to an otherwise undeveloped space.

That I was a victim of that sort of conditioning there seems no doubt. Even as a child I was bored with the familiar and commonplace, and sought to escape into a weird world of fabulous imaginings. Because I could not attend school for reasons of ill health, this silly habit of dreaming became a sort of obsession, so that I walked about with my head full of imaginary people, whose perplexities and peccadilloes became my own. I talked to myself in several voices, and argued at length the destinies of hypothetical sprites and spirits. When, on rare occasions, I enjoyed a real companion, I naturally tyranized the show, for how could I play like other children when I had never been permitted to risk my precious skin in such happy pastimes? But if I knew nothing about pom-pom-pullaway, drop-the-hand-kerchief, and puss-in-the-corner, I could quickly improvise a dramatic situation with nothing better than a shawl, some chairs, and a pillow or two. I could walk about, imitating the wrath of God slaying the Egyptians, or, less thrilling, adopt the dignified mien of the good old homoeopathic doctor, and save, one by one, the suffering pillows from the vapours, biliousness, and lumbago.

There was nothing particularly clever or remarkable in these fabrications, but they served me well as an antidote for boredom on those sunny days when I must watch the antics of happier children from the prison square of my window. If my immediate world was confined to cough syrups, mustard plasters, and turnip soup, I could, at least, forswear these horrors in the jealous kingdom of my imagination.

So, too, if adult conversation centred upon sickness, struggles, and want, I drew back into my shell of cultivated inattention. Yet, so soon as the topic swerved to less familiar subjects, my ears were keen enough. I recall one hushed conversation to which I should have been deaf. A flibbertigibbet woman had deserted her two-year-old son and a husband who adored her, to run off with a scallawag paramour.

‘He just a smooth-tongued wastrel!’ exclaimed our informer, unctuously. ‘An unholy rascal! The wretched woman has no sense at all—the soulless wench. To desert her own child—Herra Gud! If that were the end—what’s to become of the little —’ and she crossed her arms over an ample bosom, rocking to and fro, developing suspense with unconscious delight, while mamma, coffee-pot in hand, waited for the conclusion.

‘Ja, ja,’ sighed my parent, sympathetic but impatient. ‘Out with it, Kristine. What has the poor man done, for I take it that’s what you’re coming to?’

Kristine groaned, her eyes accusative and wet. ‘Ha! What could he have done, God rest him, loving that frivolous creature, as men will, the fools! Yes, what? What, but died of a broken heart!’

This final bit of acting was so mournfully sepulchral that the flesh wriggled on my bones and my stomach hitched itself into a hard knot under my breastbone. To die of a broken heart, I at once perceived, was indeed a terrible business, and the cause of it no better than a Jezebel. For our visitor further related how the maddened husband, in the dead of night, had wandered into the vicinity of the hospital and shot himself. ‘And his brains scattered on the common walk!’ sobbed Kristine, between bites of doughnut. ‘You may call it death by a bullet,’ said she, ‘or suicide, more like, but that’s not what the Day of Judgement will call it!’

Sure, and even I could guess that much! It was the flibbertigibbet wench killed him. Long after my bedtime I lay awake, with a hand to my breast, trying to suffer, as that poor man had suffered, speculatively awaiting the first indications of an acute internal eruption certain to end in a broken heart.

Thereafter, I used to watch women on the street, trying to distinguish the incipient Jezebel from her commonplace sisters, the light hussy from sensible females who trundled babies and trailed their voluminous alpaca skirts in the mud. I fared rather badly at the game, however, for the drabness of our neighbourhood was only surpassed by its virtue, and even my tolerant imagination balked at attributing glamour to the straight-haired, firmly corsetted females who billowed by. Yet, fortunately for my weavings, our house was a centre for all sorts of odd characters. Some one was always popping in from the country, or near-by villages, with tales strange and varied.

There was Rosa, for instance. A pretty Icelandic girl, so the tale went, but giddy in the head. So giddy, in fact, that she took up with a Frenchman—and he a Roman Catholic. Yes indeed! The silly girl met him at a picnic, and proceeded to beguile him to such an extent that, by New Year’s Day, he was ready, and even eager, to take part in the Elf Dance. Now, as every one knows, the Elf Dance should be conducted by intimates and lovers, for the Little People are most particular that way. Their morals are shocked by frivolities of the heart. Besides, it is undoubtedly a pretty sight when sweethearts, arms linked, and lighted candles in their hands, go dancing down a frozen stream on the peal of midnight. For, as you must guess, the stars are then reflected in smiling youthful eyes, and the greetings they shout to the Little People are as warm and sincere as their heart’s devotion.

Dear me! Poor Rosa seems to have thought more of showing off her paces and a new red bonnet than of the custom itself, or of the consequences of wheeling through the starlight with a romantic Frenchman by her side. So, of course, they fell in love, but under the ban of the offended Little People. Which may, or may not explain the blight that fell upon them. For, can you believe it, when little Rosa, red as a peony, and simpering like an infant brook, told her papa the glorious news, the good man was horrified. Never, in his wildest nightmares, had he suffered such a shock! A Frenchman, and an idolator! Why, he refused pointblank to give the creature house-room, let alone his daughter. Nor was Pierre’s mamma one wit better. Passionately, she implored the saints to strike her dead if ever she consented to such a preposterous union.

Goodness me, how the Little People must have snickered up their sleeves, as the mischief grew from bad to worse. Never dreaming that boastful mortals, who aspire to vanquish the earth and rule the seven heavens, wouldn’t find a happy solution for a little problem in random love. But there it was: the old folks thundered, and the young folks sulked. When flesh could bear no more, Rosa stole into the fields to weep on Pierre’s shoulder, and he, poor lad, shaken to the marrow, threatened heaven and earth—but not mamma.

Of piety and paprika there can be too much. Poor Pierre was seasoned too highly to withstand the boilings and bubblings of carnal passions. He hanged himself in the cowshed. ‘Oh well, virtue is its own reward,’ papa commented dryly, and added, ‘That pious old beldam should be satisfied—her son chose Purgatory, rather than bliss with a heretic!’

As for Rosa, softly fashioned for a man’s arms, and unburdened with brains, she took the blow philosophically. To be sure, she wept for a week, and wore a black ribbon oh her sleeve for the rest of the season; but in the fall she cheerfully married a gentleman who possessed a good team of oxen, a quarter section of ploughed land, three cows, and her parents’ admiration was unbounded because he played the harmonica and was a Godfearing Lutheran.

There were other tales, no less interesting, though without romantic connotations. Tales of quiet heroism, enacted by quite ordinary people. Gimli pioneers were fond of telling how a certain farmer, with little to commend him by way of concrete accomplishments, had, none the less, saved his daughter’s life by a spectacular feat of endurance. The family lived near Sandy Bar, isolated from neighbours, and, even when the lake froze over, it was an arduous trip to Gimli if the snowfall was heavy, or the winds raging. But when the child was stricken with high fever and symptoms terrifying to the parents, the lake was far from safe. Yet the father set out in the teeth of the storm, determined to make the passage. He was a famous sprinter, and, in his speed, half-blinded by the snow that clung like frozen tears to his eyes, he fell into a wide fissure. Weighted with heavy clothes and cowhide boots, he thrashed about in the water, dodging moving ice, and finally, when almost prostrate, reached safety on the other side. By the time he reached the doctor’s house, he was literally armoured in ice that had to be chipped from his clothing.

The doctor admired his courage, but not to the point of emulating such a crazy venture. He prescribed for the child to the best of his ability, furnished the required medicines, and with that the father was well content. For it meant he could return more swiftly, unhampered by a stoutish gentleman with no taste for berserk exploits. Nor would he wait for the dawn. Not he! A quart of coffee and a shot of rum were all the support he needed.

It is pleasant to know that the small daughter recovered, and that her father’s devotion became a tale told with honest wonder for the edification of a softer, sophisticated second generation.

The laurels were not always for the sterner sex. There was Great-Aunt Steinun, as brave a little lady as ever faced the wilderness. She came to Canada in the first immigration, as we called it. That is to say, with that group of twelve hundred settlers who arrived in 1872, destined for the Gimli and Icelandic River settlements. Through the negligence of the immigration officials in Montreal, these poor, weary home-seekers were made to spend the night in quarters that had housed some Indians polluted with small-pox. Consequently, the immigrants had barely reached their destination when the plague broke out. And, for eighteen months, homeless and helpless, without medical supervision, they were quarantined in the swamps of Gimli.

Now that Gimli has become a favourite summer resort, with railway flier service to Winnipeg, it is difficult to conceive of a time when all the surrounding country was a fly-infested quagmire, through which, in rainy seasons, you had to wade knee-high. Homesteads were often under water for weeks in the spring, the wretched inmates clinging to the damp shelter of their miserable log huts until the water invaded the firebox of the stove, thereby routing the last shreds of comfort.

Great-Aunt Steinun’s first shelter in Gimli was a roofless log enclosure, so full of water that her husband had to build a raft on which to lay their beds. A foolish sort of arrangement, you may think, but, to quote the little lady: ‘It broke the October winds and kept us from floating all over the field.’

In such surroundings, the travel-worn immigrants had to meet and suffer the horrors of small-pox, alternating their labours of burying the dead with felling green timber for huts to house the living. Great-Aunt Steinun, though fond enough of reminiscing, did not like to dwell on the epidemic. It was too painful to think of the sodden graves that marked the end of so many fair hopes—and more painful still to remember that one hundred and twenty-five babies literally died of starvation. Poor innocents! How desperately their mothers tried to keep them alive on fish broth and bean stock, the only substitutes available for the milk which could not be had. The Government had intended to supply the settlers with cattle, but all such worthy plans were disrupted and long delayed by the raging pestilence. It was hard enough to get staple foods to the people, to say nothing of livestock and luxuries. Every few weeks the Mounted Police rode up to a specified zone with rations of salt, pork, and beans, food the Icelanders had never before tasted, and, consequently, found indigestible fare in their enfeebled condition.

Terrible though these trials were, the sorest weight upon great-aunt’s heart was the uncertainty concerning her eldest daughter. This girl, about fourteen years old, had been sent into service by the immigration authorities, it being their thought she was well able to support herself in the city. In the general confusion of settling so many people, they had, however, omitted to leave the girl’s address with her parents, and when the plague set in it was, of course, impossible to communicate this or any other information to the immigrants. During all those frightful months, Great-Aunt Steinun was haunted by the thought that this dearest of her children might have contracted the disease, and perhaps died among strangers indifferent to her suffering and loneliness. Nor was she relieved of this worry when the quarantine was lifted. By that time no one in the immigration bureau even remembered the girl, and it was not until three years later that the family was reunited.

What I like best to remember about Great-Aunt Steinun, however, has to do with an incident which, to my mind, surpasses all others in her hard experience and throws a revealing light upon her forceful character. It happened that, while raising his permanent house Mr. Haldorson, her husband, cut his foot rather badly, yet continued his labour, giving slight heed to the wound. An infection set in, which, as the days passed, grew steadily worse, until it was no longer possible for him to keep on his feet, and, as the fever mounted, it was obvious that his condition was rapidly becoming critical. Their homestead, like so many others, was isolated, far from any neighbour. They had no means of conveyance, no draft beast of any kind, and Winnipeg was sixty miles away.

Great-Aunt Steinun was not the sort of woman to sit weeping, waiting for some miracle of grace. What they did possess was a crude hand sleigh for hauling wood. Her mind made up, she poured water on the wooden runners, affixed a rude harness, and, overruling Mr. Haldorson’s dismayed objections, pronounced herself ready to take him to Winnipeg. But when the sick man had been made as comfortable as the means permitted, Steinun was momentarily panic-striken. She realized suddenly that she had not the slightest idea, beyond an indefinite direction, how to reach Winnipeg. Her husband was no better informed. They had only made the journey once before, in the company of the other immigrants. Besides, the poor man by now was half delirious with fever.

‘I thought for a moment that no one had ever been left so helpless,’ she used to say. ‘Then I was ashamed of myself. What was the good of having a God you wouldn’t trust as well as your neighbour, I asked myself? So then and there I started, and, at the edge of the lake, put it up to the Almighty. Whatever thought He put in my head, I would take for guidance. And that’s what I did.’

There, according to Great-Aunt Steinun, the tale rightly ended, for she was always loath to delineate personal hardships. Sometimes, however, especially if the listener were sceptical of divine provision, she might supply the remaining details. Drawing that cumbrous sleigh, with its human burden, was in itself a task beyond the normal strength of a little woman scarcely five feet tall, worn with vigils over the sick and dying, and in all probability under-nourished. Yet she trekked on bravely, over the lonely waste of ice, only pausing to rest when the heavy pounding of her heart made her dizzy. Hours later, a wind sprang up, with driving puffs of snow—not the gentle flakes of a milder climate, but the dry, powdered concomitant of a gathering blizzard. No one who has not experienced this phenomenon of the prairie can possibly imagine how quickly a peaceful landscape is changed to an inferno of lashing wind and whirling clouds of snow that sting the eyes and stifle the breath, and obliterate every familiar object.

‘Oh, it was a bit of a struggle, to be sure,’ she admitted. ‘What of it? I had put myself in God’s care. Humanly speaking, I was lost, I suppose, and the strength flowing out of me like water from a cracked crock. But again, what of that? Before I was overcome, an Indian found us, and took us home to his tepee.

‘That was a lesson, let me tell you. The young squaw massaged my frozen feet with a mixture of bear’s grease and some sort of herb. She fed us from the family pot, and, before I set out once more, dressed me in deerskin leggings and moccasins lined with moss. Ah, they were good, those two brown people. They shared all they had with us and when the storm was over that fierce-looking brave saw me off on the right trail. So you see if my husband was saved, it was not all my doing, but a miracle of God’s mercy, working through the simple heart of a savage.’

Sometimes these homespun yarns had a humorous twist, even when the undertones were sober. I remember the hair-raising experience of an old charwoman whom the young wags loved to terrorize with tall tales of Indian atrocities. She lived alone in a tiny shanty on Point Douglas, and though her days were devoted to monotonous labour she was always exuberant in praise of her many blessings. Had she not a cosy shelter for her old bones, food in the larder, and good Manitoba spruce cut to fit her carron stove laid in against the winter? What was more, had not the blessed Lord given her a knack with the little ones, and more than enough strength and patience to struggle with spotted linen and pine boards, so that, whatever the ladies in their big houses required of her, it was always well and respectably done, and she paid with a cheery heart that often expressed itself in a cast-off petticoat or a queerish bonnet, in addition to wages? Blessed she certainly was, and, except for that menace of redskins, found the New World all that one might have expected, since the good God made it.

There came a chill October evening when this fixed obsession was especially rampant. It was cold, with flurries of snow, and shadows long and black on the river bank. A night for evil deeds, thought poor old Ellen, and quickened her stride, despite the crick in her back. On such a night it was good to have a secure shelter, a bit of a place that kept one safe from savage eyes. The sight of her tar-paper shack, hidden in a windbreak of ragged poplars, drew a sigh of happiness from her heart. In no time at all she would be toasting her toes by the stove, and the cat purring his gladness.

She was an orderly soul, and always laid the fire before she went to work in the morning. She had only to drop a match on the kindling to start a cheery blaze, light the wall lamp, and set the kettle on for coffee. This done, she usually called the cat, removing her wraps while Thomas took his time responding, and then shut and barred the door for the night. But now, chilled and blue from the biting wind, she thought of the woodbox, and frowned to discover that she had forgotten to fill it. Well, thought Ellen, that’s what comes of sleeping in for fifteen minutes! Now she must fetch and carry, though nineteen devils plagued her back. Grumbling, she flung wide the door, ‘Thomas’ framed on her tongue, but neither that nor any other sound came from her lips. As stricken as Lot’s sinful wife, she stood there, her horrified eyes fixed upon the road. God and his angels help her! Plain as the nose on her face, the doom she dreaded marched upon her. Three dusky, buckskinned knaves were striding towards the house, snow whirling round their horrid heads, a long lean hound loping at their heels. She was so frightened, so certain of the inevitable end, that it never occurred to her that she might shut the door, and, by this simple act, escape an unwelcome visitation. Instead, she stood there, too petrified for speech, while the strangers, who, politely enough, asked for shelter, filed in, and with grunts of satisfaction seated themselves on the bench before the table. Evidently they wanted food, as well as shelter, thought the old woman, dim stirrings of rising anger minimizing her fear. The scallawags! Why didn’t they kill her and be done! Why must they prolong the agony, the murdering villains! She supposed they would scalp her as a matter of course, for she had long, yellow hair. Just the sort of hair braves love to dangle from their belts, so the wags had assured her. Just the same, there they sat, hungrily, eyeing the kettle. Well, thought Ellen, gathering what wit she had, and hurrying to the cupboard, if she must so shortly meet her Maker, she might as well do it without the sin of inhospitality on her soul. As glumly silent as her company, she laid the supper, which was eaten in typical Indian stolidity, and at its conclusion the trio plunged down upon the floor, prepared to sleep. Even the hound had dropped in a weary loop before the glowing stove.

Ellen was now completely mystified. Was it possible she had misjudged the wanderers? Or were they, perchance, waiting some prescribed ritualistic hour for their evil purpose? Whatever their designs, she had not the heart to let them lie on the cold, bare boards uncovered. Gingerly, she crossed behind the human huddle, and from an old wooden trunk fetched two patchwork quilts for their comfort. A grunt, thoroughly unnerving, was all the thanks she received.

There was nothing more that could be done. She dared not even call the cat. Poor Thomas must take his ease where he found it. Grieved for her pet, whose place was usurped by a smelly mongrel, she restocked the fire, and, musing upon the uncertainty of life, decided that she might as well snatch a wink of sleep to support her through the ordeal to come. With shaking fingers she removed the lamp from its bracket and bore it to the home-made table beside the bed, which occupied the far corner, and was neatly dressed in a cretonne cover and long, frilled valance. Being a modest female, she naturally meant to lie down fully clothed, howsoever her stays pinched. But the fine spread and valance must be removed. This done, she lay down, and then, the breath rattling in her throat, cautiously leaned out and extinguished the light.

Almost instantly hell broke loose. With a savage scraping of nails upon the floor, and hair-raising snarls from a cavernous chest, the great hound came hurtling across the room and dived under the bed. The sleepers sprang to their feet. Some one relit the lamp. Then, to the quaking woman, it seemed that men and dog were inextricably mixed in a heaving, howling mêlée. A nightmare of fury too swift to follow or comprehend, until the din of battle died away, and there was stamped upon her mind the ineradicable vision of a hulking negro who had been dragged from under her bed, and now hung limply in the iron grasp of the Metis.

Thereupon, realizing the miracle of her deliverance, poor old Ellen promptly fainted. When she regained consciousness the house was sheathed in silence. The red eye of the stove blinked beneficently through the dusk. The dog breathed like a cheerful bellows, and the angels she had entertained unaware snored in solid comfort.

Oh, but she was sore ashamed! Never again would she believe those tales of evil—never, never! In the morning she would open a jar of strawberry jam and fry a batch of flatbread. Other things as well she planned, and, in the midst of it, fell sound asleep—for fear may reign an hour, but old bones require rest. When she wakened the fire was crackling, and the kettle sang, and the bright prairie sunshine was a sunburst of joy on the windowpane. What happiness it now was to hustle up the meal. How glad she was that her bit of cooking was always a matter of pride—her flatbread golden-brown, and her tea hot and fragrant.

This morning she would have welcomed a little chatter to open the way for the question that burned her mind. But the visitors ate all that was set before them in unbroken silence. Not a murmur out of any of them. Not a single reference to the terrible incident of the night before. They behaved just as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened—just as though they had not saved her life.

Not until they were leaving was a word spoken, and then it was an irrelevant question, flung out with a sudden dazzling smile by the youngest of the trio.

‘You like moose meat?’ he asked. Yes, yes, she did, Ellen acknowledged. ‘Good,’ said he, and the others nodded. They would bring her some on their way back from the north.

‘But—but—’ stammered Ellen, ‘I want to know—I’ve got to know—’ And there words failed her.

It was then that the nut-brown ancient whose wrinkled face had struck the deepest terror to Ellen’s heart spoke for the first time. Drawing himself up to his full, fine height, and swinging his arm in a majestic curve toward the Red River, he said, with proud finality:

‘Heap much gone hell!’

As I think of it now, it seems to me that, despite the general hardship of our existence in those vanished days, life itself supplied us with sufficient interesting drama. We were rich in characters. It was not so important then as now for every one to be as like his neighbour as two rabbits in a taxidermist’s window. Even quite fine ladies went in for little mild eccentricities. They strove for the unique, rather than the popular, and prided themselves on certain delicate, cultured reactions. As a rule, these ethical distinctions were a challenge to the flesh and the devil. One virtuous female, for instance, went about in nine petticoats. Another boasted, discreetly, of course, that never, in the entire course of her married life, had she disrobed in the light! This was the more remarkable, since the lady was reasonably good to look upon. Another good woman saved the morals of the neighbourhood by hanging her personal wear in a shed, out of sight. These excellent creatures were, in their opinion, delicacy personified, and had the same claim to virtue as the good Queen, who still graced the throne of England. Indeed, they fainted at the least hint of coarseness, and upon occasion, had to be helped from the meeting-house if the Pastor chose too sulphuric a topic. This was always a telling act if an attractive male happened to be near. Next to the dainty swoon, poetry was a genuine asset to any unattached female. An enduring asset, I might add, for, years later, when my small world had been greatly extended, I met a pathetically plain spinster who recited ‘The Sonnets from the Portuguese’ with such passionate abandon as would certainly have annihilated poor ‘Ba.’ The poor old girl was an exponent of culture, garbed herself in grey and leaf-brown, and never, under any circumstances, clipped her words like the abominable barbarians across the border. Commonplace as a sparrow, she was fond of quoting that beauty is only skin deep, and swatted every attempted argument on the social inequalities by murmuring that God was in His heaven, and all was right with the world.

But, in those older days, there were ladies of equally fixed principles who were gifted with sufficient genius to inflict their preferences upon less admirable mortals. Such a one was old Rebecca. Her fetish was temperance, and her affliction a wayward spouse. Reason failing to cure the culprit, she sewed him up in bedsheets, administered a sound whipping, and promised a similar correction upon all or any occasion when his pleasant vice reduced him to helpless slumber. What was more, if he misbehaved in the near future she would leave him sewed up in a bolster until the minister saw fit to release him, for she herself wouldn’t raise the scissors on his behalf! The threat was so effective that Rebecca’s Cure became a byword among the less valiant, who envied, but dared not copy, such admirable measures.

The lordly male had other weaknesses, I was led to infer from guarded gossip and innuendo. The fine-whiskered creatures had too keen an eye for slim ankles and soft bosoms not theirs under divine contract. What was worse, the rascals slipped from grace without any appreciable shame or evil consequence. They carried on as shamelessly as Solomon with Sheba, secure in the knowledge that wives were by law and common acceptance little better than chattel, and that, to boot, the Holy Scriptures upheld the dominance of the male, in everything from petticoats to predicating piety.

This pleasant state of affairs was, none the less, not always maintained at even keel. There were rebels even in the Victorian harems—wives, if you will, who tired of the holiness of unquestioning submission and, with the vindictiveness of less fortunate females, sought redress for their long-suffered slights.

One gentle-spoken lady, whose tragic tale I have approximated elsewhere, once turned the tables on her philandering husband by installing his enamorata in the guest-room of her house. To say that the master was rudely shaken infers too little. The poor man exploded. Shocked to the depths of his Victorian soul at the sight of his wife and the glamorous hussy chatting amicably over the breakfast table, manners flew windward, and his righteous indignation boiled over. What the devil did his lady mean by such scandalous behaviour? Had she lost her senses? How dared she invite such a—such a—well, such a person into the same house with his children? To which the maddening woman merely replied that, so far as she knew, her friends had always been perfectly safe companions for the children, and would so continue to be. What could you do with such a wife, I wonder—what, indeed, but build a new house, and henceforth curtail, within reason, those enchanting primrose pastimes.

True, grown-ups were a queer lot; that I perceived, as the small years lengthened and these tales were stored up in memory. At first I had expected unalloyed wisdom from my elders, for were they not swift and eager to point out the stupidities of a child? To confound what seemed the straightness of truth with complexities of conduct beyond my understanding, and which I must of course accept as right and proper? Unhappily for me, I discovered too quickly that adult reasoning was a curious process, as often as not quite divorced from common sense. For example, it was surely common sense not to eat what made you ill, but all the same the rule did not apply to whatever article of food the doctrines of the moment held to be most nutritious. So, however your stomach revolted, you swallowed what mamma or papa decided was good for you, simply because mamma or papa said so. The same was true of moral and religious mendacity. Every decent child must learn to be truthful, modest, and obedient, and under no condition to interfere with the rights and privileges of others. All of which, high sounding and splendid, was tremendously appealing, until it dawned on me that almost every act of my own life was interfered with by somebody, and without rhyme or reason. In matters of faith I fared much better than most children, as I was to learn much later. I was never forced to accept as literal the external word trappings of mythology, nor was I encouraged to feed my own conceit by the happy supposition that every one who adhered to another faith was at least a fool, if not actually predestined to everlasting damnation. In other words, although I had to accept as right and proper the superficialities of human conduct, I was not hedged about in my thinking by any orthodox strictures, and, therefore, in my own childish way, I began very early to form judgements and estimates of those happenings that stirred my imagination.

There was one tale above all others that captured my heart, and which to this day seems to me more eloquent of goodness than any organized charity. It had to do with a young Icelandic doctor, whose passion for the poor and the outcast was only equalled by his enslavement to liquor. He was too sensitive to suffering, and resented too deeply the inequalities of a social system that admitted of no practical cure for the miseries of the many. Old people who still remember him with affection shake their heads that such a brilliant man should have ruined himself with drink. With the untroubled judgement of mediocrity, which never sounds the heights or depths of profound emotion, they deplore what they consider to have been the weakness in his character, never suspecting that, without his vulnerability of spirit, the tenderness they admire could not have existed. For it was an excess of sympathy, weariness, and tortured nerves that drove him to luckless oblivion.

It is said that, toward the end of his ill-starred career, his colleagues would hunt for him through the taverns and saloons of the town, and literally carry him back to the hospital, where some serious operation required the magic they all conceded to his skilful fingers. ‘Get him sober, damn it, no matter how!’

Faced by an emergency, by the sight of a poor, tortured creature crying for relief, the man had an almost superhuman way of snapping back to instantaneous efficiency. So the legend went.

He was a stormy soul, too swift in justice for the stone mouths of Victorian mercy. One incident, out of a meteoric career that leaves one a little stunned by its brilliant warm-heartedness, leaves all others outclassed. Or so it seemed to me. It had to do with a wretchedly poor woman who, like so many others of her kind, had established a home of sorts on the ‘flats’—the lowly portion of the Red River banks which now have been filled in and built over with wholesale houses. As so often happens with the poor, this woman had refrained from seeking medical aid for her ailing child because of poverty. There was scarcely enough to eat. How then should she pay a doctor?

Besides, was there not God, to whom the miseries of the outcast are a special charge? Surely the Divine Ear must heed and comprehend such dire necessity? Surely her prayers would be answered, for had she not always been told that faith, though no larger than a mustard seed, would remove mountains? Night and day, her prayers went up to the Lord of Hosts in trusting supplication that knew no doubt. Yet the child grew worse, and on the rounds of his duty among the miserables the young doctor heard of it. But not until it was too late. The little thing died, and the distracted mother found herself facing even more piteous circumstances. How was the child to be buried? To whom could she turn in this sorest of afflictions?

Himself without funds, the doctor could offer no better solution than a plea to the city. The civic authorities must, he supposed, have made some provision in their laws for just such pressing emergencies. He was wrong. With admirable dispatch, his appeal was heard and dismissed. Such things were not within the province of the city administration, an impeccably polite individual told him. It was not their business or problem to adjust domestic difficulties, however tragic—they were not a charitable organization.

Fury eating his heart, the doctor studied the bland face of the imperturbable clerk, thinking how typical the little man was of the dead-in-life, who worship the letter of the law and let the spirit go hang. How worse than useless to expect intelligent, not to say sympathetic co-operation from such wooden heads. Nothing would have pleased him more than to air these and other similarly impolitic sentiments, but instead he replied with disarming, almost humble politeness:

‘You’ve set me right about my paupers. Now tell me—for a doctor meets up with such unexpected problems—how would authorities act toward a suicide—say, an unclaimed corpse in the street? Would it be left to the mercy of the elements?’

Certainly not! The civic mouthpiece was moved to indignation. Anything that endangered the public health was an immediate concern—the law provided for the removal of all such nuisances. Really, the little man was wounded to think that the doctor could harbour even the faintest doubts of the hygienic zeal of the city fathers. To which pained accusation the offender listened with a mounting gleam in his sombre grey eye, and a swiftly shaping plan forging in his mind. ‘Well, that’s gratifying information,’ said he, slamming on his hat, and striding from the room.

An hour later he was back at the city hall with a large paper carton under his arm. Dark as a thunder-cloud, he stalked into the mayor’s office. His worship had left for the day, so he was told. No, there was not the slightest hope of his coming back before to-morrow. ‘What a pity!’ exclaimed the visitor, with malicious politeness. ‘Then I fear I must leave this bequest to his worship without comment.’ With which ambiguous statement the mad young doctor deposited the poor little infant corpse in its paper coffin on the mayor’s desk, and, highly pleased with himself, dashed out of the building. Well, that’s once blood was squeezed from a stone!

The impetuous doctor has gone the way of the storm, forgotten save by a few. Yet I think that the ghost of his wreckless courage still walks the night, jousting with fears and injustices in the old, free-handed manner; yes, and that the fine passion which consumed him like a fire burns as brightly still in some medium of mind, stuff for the inspiration of susceptible hearts.