Chapter 9 – In Which Mysteries Are Explained, and Things Brought to a General Conclusion

Friday January 1, 1812

Around a warm wood fire, in a Native American dwelling, sat three European children and two Native men.  A wild blizzard raged outside, but within the building only its distant sound could be heard.  A modern visitor might have found the smoke from the fire unpleasant, but the three children did not seem to notice it as they huddled close to the heat, while a Native woman moved quietly about tucking blankets and furs around them.

It was about six-thirty in the morning on the last day of the year, which we say in full contradiction of the title. The 1^st of January shall be arrived at in due time, with the reader’s patience, but it is necessary for us to establish a few details first.

The children could not understand the talk of the two men, for though the Macintoshes  could speak both English and French, their hosts were conversing in their own tongue.  We shall make a translation for our readers, who may find themselves enlightened upon several points by this convenience.  However, they must bear with a few generalizations which may be less than pleasant to them, such as the statement of the first speaker whose words are faithfully rendered as follows:

“The British are very bad hunters.”

This statement was received by his companion as a matter of course, and only complimented with a brief nod.

“They are all so easily lost,” continued the first with a shake of his head.  “What they may do when we are not camped here, I cannot say.  Surely very many must freeze every winter, for these are the second party we have found this week, and but for our fire and food they had all perished.”

“They have not yet learned,” said his companion.  “They may do so in time.”

“What shall be done with these?” asked the first speaker, motioning towards the three children who were being given bowls of hot stew by the lady, and shivering over them as if the contrast made them even colder than they had been before.

“Take them to the white lady,” said the second man with decision.  “She will want to see them.”

“Come they from the same village, think you?” asked the first.  “There are many towns in this part and they may not know each other.”

His companion shook his head.  “They are from the same tribe,” he said with decision.  “They have the same eyes and faces, and odd voice when they speak.  The lady has it more than the children, who have only learned it from her.  They were born here, but she came from another land and brought her tongue with her.”

And I must here apologize to my young readers for not having made a greater point of the slight accent which the whole family of Macintoshes still preserved from their native Scotland.  Dr. Macintosh and his sisters had still a noticeable shade of Scottish pronunciation in their speech, but in the children the accent was so faint that it is a great wonder that the man remarked it.  I can only suppose that his ears, sharpened as all faculties are by a life of constant activities in the wilderness, caught more than even mine have done in their somewhat longer acquaintance with the family.

But to return to the question at hand.  What was to be done with the children?  It was agreed that they must see the other guest in the course of time, but their nodding heads proved that it was impossible to do so now, and they were wrapped up warmly and put to bed as soon as the soup had been swallowed.

It is astonishing the amount of time children may sleep when they have been thoroughly exhausted.  Our little friends actually slept away the daylight hours, so that when they roused themselves they might have thought they had only been asleep for a few moments. Except that, as Henry said, they were not half so tired as they should have been, and the darkness was evening not morning. The two men had gone out, but the woman who had been so kind to them the night before was still in the shelter.  I do not know what else to call it, for Henry had been quite right in calling it but a temporary abode, serving the same purpose which tents might to a European army (and indeed they were an army, but that shall follow later).  The lady came forward as soon as she saw that they were awake and gave them another meal, which they were now at liberty to enjoy heartily.  And then they commenced to ask questions.  (They had been too sleepy to do so before they slept.)  The lady did not speak English, but she went to the tent door and called to one of the men who had been there previously, and he answered all they could ask.

The tribe with whom they were now lodged was a group of Canadian natives on their way to join the British forces in the area.  They were temporarily camped in this place by the recommendation of the commander at Fort George.  It was really not very far from where Grace had discovered the boat, as they learned afterwards.  The children must have indeed walked in circles for most of the night, not to have come upon them sooner.

“Then it is still the last day of the year?” asked Henry, when this had been explained.

“The white children are not ill,” said the chief in a consoling tone.  “It will not be the last day of their year.”

“No, no,” Henry laughed.  “I mean—how shall I explain myself—is it still the day we came here?”

“The white children came in the morning,” said the chief patiently.  “It was very early, and they thought it still the night.  They slept all the hours of the sun, and it has grown dark again.”

“It is still the 31^st, then,” said Henry to his sisters.  “We crossed the Niagara after supper on the 30^th, but we did not reach this place, evidently, until almost morning—the 31^st as you see.  Then we have been asleep all day, but it cannot be long past sunset now.  It is still the old year.”

“And Papa?” asked Grace, timidly.

“Yes, we must go home at once!” exclaimed Helen.  “He will be so worried about us!”

“Nay, children, such haste is not good,” said their host.  “The little white children would be blown away by the wind if they went by night.”

“But our father will be very anxious,” protested Henry.  “And I am afraid our Grandmother will have another attack of palpitations.”

“The doctor will not fear,” said their host, still in the same calm, unruffled tone.  “A message has been sent that will put him to rest.  He knows where you are and will soon come.”

“But why—how?” asked Henry.  “How did you know who he was?”

“Ah,” said the man, with a wise nod.  “We have other guests besides the little white children.” (A name which by the way greatly annoyed Henry in recollection, but which he tolerated now in the thankfulness of being safe and alive.)  “Come with me, and I shall show how we knew where to send our message.”

He led them out of the building and into another close by. There, reclining on a bed made of warm furs, was a lady.  She looked pale and weak as if she had been ill, but when the three children saw her they gave a simultaneous shriek of delight.  For it was none other than their Aunt Rose!

Some of my readers who had the benefit of the translation with which this chapter commenced may not be quite so surprised as the young Macintoshes were. But they can at any rate imagine the astonishment of our three friends, and what a joyful greeting there was between them and their aunt.

Aunt Rose, as she later explained, had indeed managed to get out of the boat when in was wrecked upon the bank where Grace had found it, but not before she had received a considerable drenching.  She had attempted to walk home, but the freezing weather, combined with wet garments, had so far chilled her that she could not go on.  Undoubtedly, she owed her life to the native hunters who had come upon her and brought her back to their camp, nearly frozen and almost unconscious.  She had caught so bad a chill that she was barely in a state to notice her surroundings, and the chill rapidly turned into severe pneumonia from which she was even now only partially recovered.   She had been therefore unable to given any clue as to her identity or the whereabouts of her friends until the day before, when a messenger had been dispatched who must have relieved the suspense at home just after the doctor and Grace had left for their afternoon drive.

The chief, (for so he proved), who had recognized the three young wayfarers as relations of the sick lady, had dispatched another messenger as soon as the storm lifted that morning.  And this messenger, finding the doctor out, had promised to return in the evening to guide him to the camp.

And thus it was, that just as dark was falling on the last day of the year, the Chiveley carriage rolled into the Native encampment, and the doctor had all his missing ones at last!  There is no need to relate the joyful homecoming, or the relief and gratitude with which the family gathered once more around the parlour fire.  I shall allow you to paint for yourself the happy scene in the style which you love best, saying only that they did indeed sit up to midnight on that thankful New Year’s Eve.  But they did so in living over again every moment which has occupied this entire narrative, so that there was a positive jolt when the clock slowly and solemnly struck out its twelve grand notes to tell that the New Year had begun.

And what sort of New Year was it to be?  I expect you have all known, dear readers, what it is to look ahead into only an impenetrable mist of the future, to welcome the new year without any idea what it will bring.  There was many a person on both sides of the Atlantic that night who looked forwards with worry and fear to that uncertain year of war and tragedy.  Britain was fighting Napoleon on one side of the ocean and the United States on the other.  The general outlook was not one to inspire unmixed confidence upon either front, but at such a moment there is more faith in looking back than forward.  And for our young heroes and heroines the past week alone was enough to efface any fears for the future which lay ahead.  Who could fear what might come when their very existence was proof of such Providential care?  Whatever this coming year might bring, whether war or peace, it would come from Him who directs the course of all his children, and without Whose knowledge not a sparrow falls to the ground.

 

And thus ended the adventures of the young Macintoshes for the time being, though not  the growth of character which it stimulated, as the following conversation shall illustrate.  It took place some weeks after the events recorded above, after Aunt Rose had at last taken her place in her brother’s home and her management had had time to prove its skill and effect.

“I am glad Aunt Rose is in charge of us all now,” said Grace thoughtfully, looking up from the handkerchief she was hemming.  “I don’t think we could ever have gotten on long without her!”

“You did the best of all of us, though,” put in Helen.  “All the little boys say you are the best manager of the three because you don’t try to manage at all!”

“Aunt Rose manages, though,” said Mary, her knitting needles clicking away briskly.  “And it stands to reason that someone must be in authority, or all will go to ruin for lack of coordination.  I admit most freely that I was too strict with the boys and only made them the more unmanageable, and yet I don’t think letting them do as they liked would have answered either.”

“It didn’t certainly,” said Helen with feeling.  “I still wonder that Philip didn’t hurt himself more with that fall!  And yet, as you say, some order must be kept.  And Aunt Rose does keep order.  After that first day, when she did not realize and let Philip eat all the jam he could hold, she has kept him to even less than Aunt Alice allowed.  And he has not complained over it, either.”

“I think the effects of the aforesaid ‘all he could hold’ have worked their natural consequences,” said Mary with a laugh.

“But there are other things too,” insisted Helen. “She doesn’t make the boys wash the dishes all the time, but they do it when she asks them to.  It is not because she does not make it an order, either.  And when Mary and I were arguing the other day, she was positively fierce with us!  Yet I don’t know whether even an exact copy of her actions would have served in our own case.  What did you do, Grace?  You seem to have been the most successful of us all.”

“Oh, I didn’t do anything,” said Grace in her bright, honest way.  “And we didn’t go on as well as we ought, for I know Aunt Alice would not have liked the table manners nor the state of the kitchen floor.  But I knew I couldn’t do everything at once, and I thought how Aunt Alice always said it wasn’t a sister’s place to scold.”

“Not if she wasn’t in authority, certainly,” began Mary, but Helen broke in:

“I do believe that’s it!  Grace was only a sister, without any desire to gratify her own pride by being lady of the house!  And so the things she really did insist upon were for their good, and hadn’t any air of domineering about them!”

“That sounds very grand, Helen, but I must confess that I thought nothing of the kind,” said Grace, laughing.  “And as I told you before, a great many things went undone.”

“No, but it is your whole general air when you take a stand about anything,” said Helen.  “You do it because it is right, and upon someone else’s authority—Papa’s or Aunt Alice’s or the Bible’s—but not because of yourself.”

“But you know it would not be good for the boys to have that go on forever,” said Grace.  “They did run a little bit wild I am afraid, and you know they ruined Phil’s best shirt.”

“But they didn’t detest your being over them,” said Helen.  “Which is more than can be said for either Mary or me.”

“Might it not be this?” asked Mary.  “Might not the role of a sister, only in charge for a little time, be different from that of a mother or aunt, responsible for bringing their charges up properly, as the saying is?  The one must be firm and insist upon order, and so we get the idea that the other can’t give a sister’s guidance without it?  And I am quite sure that those things come harder from a sister than from one whose age and wisdom stand at a greater gap.”

“But what about sisters who really are in charge of the house?” asked Helen.  “They have the task of a mother or aunt to do, and yet they are only sisters still.”

“I should only hope not to be one of them,” said Mary with a laugh.  “But seriously, I suppose their task is very difficult, and I would not wonder if they were doomed to make a great many mistakes.  But I think that even then, as you said Helen, thinking of ourselves only as stewards to someone higher would at least help so far as the terrible temptation to be over-bearing is concerned.  And the greater the gap in age between them and those they govern, the greater chance they must have.”

“I hope none of us shall have the chance again,” said Grace fervently.

“Not until we are better fit for it,” said Helen.  “But it will have been a useful glimpse if it makes us respect those who do have the charge of households and children.  We might have been tempted to be annoyed when Aunt Rose differs from Aunt Alice.  But we have seen for ourselves what a difficult thing it is to manage perfectly all the time!”

“Yes,” said Grace with a laugh.  “I never can pen a note for Aunt Rose without thinking: ‘How very glad I am to be only a younger daughter and to wait a good long while before I become

Miss Macintosh, of Chiveley, Bentford.’”

 

 

Epilogue

It is only fair, before closing this narrative, to give our readers some glimpse of the future lives of the characters whose adventures during one short week have formed this tale.

Aunt Rose, as has been intimated above, soon recovered health and strength, and took up the position as the lady of the house with great success.  Indeed, the children always maintained that she was quite as good as Aunt Alice, although in a different way.

The kind soldier, Karl Bennett, who had risked so much for our friends during their adventure in New York, did indeed make it safely back across the Niagara.  Nor did he, as far as we know, ever suffer in the esteem of the General or anyone else by his conduct.  When he next met British troops it was at Frenchtown, under William Henry Harrison’s attempt to re-take Detroit.  The expedition failed, and Captain Bennett was captured by Lord Proctor’s forces, and spent most of the remainder of the conflict in Canada as a prisoner of war.  When he was released by the Peace Treaty, he did not return to the army.  The brutal realities which he had seen on the war front had convinced him of the same fact which Dr. Macintosh had striven to impress upon his own sons: that there is no glory in causing the loss of human life.  Karl Bennett had a little money of his own, and with it he bought a good piece of land near the city of Detroit.

In 1819 he was married to Miss Helen Macintosh, and together they laboured for many decades, as part of the host of unsung heroes who have built a thriving country out the vast North American wilderness. Mary and Grace were likewise both happily married.  The former to a good, steady Canadian farmer, and her orderly and methodical habits have succeeded far better with her own children than they did with her siblings.  And the latter to a British gentleman by the name William Smythe-Jones.  Their grandson, Sir William Smythe-Jones III, became a distinguished reformer of orphanages during Victoria’s reign.

All four of Dr. Macintosh’s sons followed in his profession, although each in their own characteristic way.  Henry succeeded his father’s practice in Bentford, where he lived and worked steadily and quietly for the rest of his days.  Percy, having gone to England for further medical training, there became absorbed in research and lived for many years with his sister and brother-in-law.  Their interest secured him a place upon a commissioned board for the investigation of sanitary conditions, at which job he excelled.  George and Philip seemed to have been bitten by that fever of restlessness which is responsible for so much of our Western exploration and development.  They pursued their course farther and farther west, never content unless working under the most unfavorable conditions in the much-needed role of physicians to the first wave of prairie settlement.  It is our private opinion that they were positively disappointed when they at last conquered the crossing of the Rockies and the sea barred the way to farther exploration and discovery.  There can be no doubt, however, that their practice upon the Pacific cost was invaluable to the rapidly-growing community which they served.

They seem to have passed on their adventure-loving spirits to their children and grandchildren, so that there are now Macintoshes in all four quarters of the globe.  And of course, there still remain many in Bentford, where a merry young Miss Macintosh still presides over the old house of Chiveley.  And we think, although we are not quite sure, that whenever the family wishes to very greatly honour anyone, they invite them for dinner, sending them a note on certain old, yellowed paper, upon which are typeset with quaint, colonial letters, the words “Miss Macintosh, Chiveley, Bentfort”.

Because some things never do change.

THE END

 

 

Historical Note

The town of Bentford with its surrounding characteristics is the product of fiction, as are all the main characters of this story, including Captain Karl Bennett and the 7th Light Scouting Company.  The War of 1812, of course, as well as some of the details of battles and commanders, are factual.  The Battle of Queenston Heights, the death of General Brock, as well as the attempted attack upon Detroit, and the Battle of Frenchtown on January 22nd,  are all taken from real life.

The presence of American scouts on the New York side of the Niagara River in the December of 1812 is fictional.  After the defeat of the U.S. army at Queenston Heights, the Americans did not again attack until late January.  As far as I know, their armies were not in the district, as it became necessary to send a new set of forces up to the area.  The possibility of some scouts being in the region as a forerunner of the army is just possible, although so far before the main body, it is unlikely.

The area of the Niagara Peninsula where Bentford was located went on to experience a good deal of fighting before the end of the war, and was the theatre of raids and battles, including the American capture of Fort George, and the burning of Newark during the American evacuation of that town.  This incident is of interest because it commenced a series of retaliations finally culminating in the famous conflagration of Washington, D.C.

It may be worth mentioning, for the sake of accuracy, that the Surveys of North America by Crown Commission which Henry is represented as reading, are also fictitious.  A surprising variety of North American maps had already been accumulated by the early 1800s (with an amusing mixture of correct, and incorrect facts), although the specific volume mentioned was created for this story.

Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery, on the other hand, is a real book.  It was published in the United States in 1796, and is available online today.  The Shrewsbury cakes, to which Helen added raisins for a special treat, are taken from the original recipe out of this volume.

The War of 1812 finally ended in the Treaty of Ghent, signed upon Christmas Eve in 1814.  This treaty left Britain retaining her control of Canada, but the U.S. having gained their point regarding the rights of American sailors.  The War of 1812 was the last open conflict between the two great English-speaking powers of the modern world. It is interesting to note that at the very time the older nation was gaining its huge victory over the threat of French conquest, it also ceased its last open struggle with the new nation which in time would slowly take its place on the world stage.