"The straw-thatched cottage, or the desert air,
To him's a palace if his master's there."
Just eighteen months after the events mentioned in last chapter, as
novelists say, things took a turn for the better, and we retired a
little farther into the country into a larger house. A bigger house,
though certainly not a mansion; but here are gardens and lawn and
paddock, kennels for dogs, home for cats, and aviaries for birds, many a
shady nook in which to hang a hammock in the summer months, and a garden
wigwam, which makes a cool study even in hot weather, bedraped as it is
in evergreens, and looks a cosy wee room in winter, when the fire is
lighted and the curtains are drawn. "Ah! Gordon," dear old Frank used
to say--and there was probably a grain of truth in the remark--"there is
something about the quiet contented life you lead in your cottage, with
its pleasant surroundings, that reminds me forcibly of the idyllic
existence of your favourite bard, Horace, in his home by the banks of
the Anio.
"`Beatus ille qui procul negotiis,
Ut prisca gens mortalium,
Patenta rure bubus exercet suis
Solutus omni fenore,
Neque excitatur classico miles truci
Neque horret iratum mare.'"
"True, Frank," I replied, "at sea I often thought I would dearly love a
country life. My ambition--and I believe I represent quite a large
majority of my class--used to be, that one day I might be able to retire
on a comfortable allowance--half-pay, for instance--take a house with a
morsel of land, and keep a cow and a pony, and go in for rearing
poultry, fruit, and all that sort of thing. Such was my dream.
"There were six of us in our mess in the saucy little `Pen-gun.'
"It was hot out there on the East Coast of Africa, where we were
stationed, and we did our best to make it hotter--for the dhows which we
captured, at all events, because we burned them. Nearly all day, and
every day, we were in chase, mostly of slave dhows, but sometimes of
jolly three-masters.
"Away out in the broad channel of the blue Mozambique, with never a
cloud in the sky, nor a ripple on the ocean's breast, tearing along at
the rate of twelve knots an hour, with the chase two miles ahead, and
happy in the thoughts of quite a haul of prize-money, it wasn't half bad
fun, I can assure you. Then we could whistle `A sailor's life is the
life for me,' and feel the mariner all over.
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"But, when the chase turned out to be no prize, but only a legitimate
trader, when the night closed in dark and stormy, with a roaring wind
and a chopping sea, then, it must be confessed, things did not look
quite so much _couleur de rose_, dot a mariner's life so merry-o!
"On nights like these, when the fiddles were shipped across the table to
keep things straight--for a lively lass was the saucy `Pen-gun,' and
thought no more of breaking half-a-dozen wine-glasses, than she did of
going stem first in under a wave she was too lazy to mount--when the
fiddles were shipped, when we had wedged ourselves into all sorts of
corners, so as we shouldn't slip about and fall, when the steward had
brought the coffee and the biscuits called ships', then it was our wont
to sit and sip and talk and build our castles in the air.
"`It's all very fine,' one of us would say, `to talk of the pleasures of
a sailor's life, it's all very well in songs; but, if I could only get
on shore now, on retired pay--'
"`Why, what would you do?'--a chorus.
"`Why, go in for the wine trade like a shot,' from the first speaker.
`That's the way to make money. Derogatory, is it? Well, I don't see
it; I'd take to tea--'
"Chorus again: `Oh! come, I say!'
"Some one, more seriously and thoughtfully: `No; but wouldn't you like
to be a farmer?' The ship kicks, a green sea breaks over her. We are
used to it, but don't like it, even although we do take the cigars from
our lips, as we complacently view the water pouring down the hatchway
and rising around our chairs' legs.
"`A farmer, you know, somewhere in the midland counties; green fields
and lowing kine; a nice stream, meandering--no not meandering, but--
"`Chattering over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
Bubbling into eddying bays.
Babbling o'er the pebbles;
Winding about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling.'
"`Yes,' from another fellow, `and of course a comfortable house of solid
English masonry, and hounds not very far off, so as one could cut away
to a hunt whenever he liked.'
"`And of course balls and parties, and a good dinner _every_ day.'
"`And picnics often, and the seaside in season, and shooting all the
year round.'
"`And I'd go in for bees.'
"`Oh! yes, I think every fellow would go in for bees.'
"`And have a field of Scottish heather planted on purpose for them:
fancy how nice that would look in summer!'
"`And I'd have a rose garden.'
"`Certainly; nothing could be done without a rose garden.'
"`Then one could go in for poultry, and grow one's own eggs.'
"`Hear the fellow!--fancy _growing_ eggs!'
"`Well, lay them, then--it's all the same. I'm not so green as to
imagine eggs grow on trees.'
"`And think of the fruit one might have.'
"`And the mushroom beds.'
"`And brew one's own beer and cider.'
"`And of course one could go in for dogs.'
"`Oh! la! yes--have them all about the place. Elegant Irish setters,
dainty greyhounds, cobby wee fox-terriers, a noble Newfoundland or two,
and a princely bloodhound at each side of the hall-door.'
"`That's the style!'
"`Now, give us a song, Pelham!'
"`What shall it be--Dibdin?'
"`No, Pelham, give us, "Sweet Jessie, the Flower o' Dumblane," or
something in that style. Let us fancy we are farmers. Doesn't she
pitch and roll, though! Dibdin and Russell are all very well on shore,
or sitting under an awning in fine weather when homeward bound. We're
not homeward bound--worse luck!--so heave round with the "Flower o'
Dumblane."'
"My dream has in some measure been fulfilled, my good friend Frank; I
can sit now under my own vine and my own fig-tree, but still look back
with a certain degree of pleasure to many a night spent on board that
heaving, pitching, saucy, wee ship."
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Our new home nestles among trees not far from a very primitive wee town
indeed. We have only to descend along the hill-side through the
pine-trees, wind some way round the knoll, and there at our feet lies
_our_ village--Fernydale, to wit. It might just as well be called
Sleepy Hollow, such a dreamy little spot it is. Not very far from a
great line of rails--just far enough to subdue the roar of the trains,
that night and day go whirling past in a drowsy monotone, like the
distant sound of falling water. Everything and everybody about our
little village looks quiet and drowsy; the little church itself, that
nestles among the wealth of foliage, looks the picture of drowsiness,
and the very smoke seems as if it preferred lingering in Fernydale to
ascending upwards and joining the clouds. We have a mill here--oh! such
a drowsy old mill! No one was ever known to be able to pass that mill
without nodding. Intoxicated lieges, who have lain down to rest
opposite that mill, have been known to sleep the sleep that knows no
waking; and if at any time you stop your horse for a moment on the road,
while you talk to the miller, the animal soon begins to nod; and he
nods, and nods, and nid-nid-nods, and finally goes to sleep entirely,
and it takes no end of trouble to start him off again.
Our very birds are drowsy. The larks don't care to sing a bit more than
suffices for conjugal felicity, and the starlings are constantly
tumbling down our bedroom chimney, and making such a row that we think
the burglars have come.
The bees are drowsy; they don't gather honey with any degree of
activity; they don't seem to care whether they gather it or not. They
are often too lazy to fly back to hive, and don't go home till morning;
and if you were to take a walk along our road at early dawn--say 11:45
a.m.--you would often find these bees sitting limp-winged and half
asleep on fragrant thistle-tops, and if you poked at them with a stalk
of hay, and tried to reason with them, they would just lift one lazy
fore-leg and beckon you off, as much as to say, peevishly--
"Oh! what was I born for? _Can't_ you leave a poor fellow alone? What
do ye come pottering around here at midnight for?"
Such is the hum-drum drowsiness of little Fernydale.
But bonny is our cottage in spring and summer, when the pink-eyed
chestnuts are all ablaze at the foot of the lawn, when flowers bloom
white on the scented rowans, when the yellow gorse on the knoll beyond
glints through the green of the trees, when the merlin sings among the
drooping limes, and the croodling pigeons make soft-eyed love on the
eaves; and there is beauty about it, too, even in winter, when the world
is robed in snow, when the leafless branches point to leaden skies, and
the robin, tired of his sweet little song, taps on the panes with his
tiny bill, for the crumbs he has never to ask for in vain.
It was one winter's evening in the year eighteen hundred and seventy
something, that Frank stood holding our parlour-door in his hand, while
he gazed with a pleased smile at the group around the fire. It wasn't a
large group. There were Dot and Ida knitting: and my humble self
sitting, book in hand and pipe in mouth. Then there were the
Newfoundland dogs on the hearth, and pussy singing on the footstool,
singing a duet with the kettle on the hob. And I must not forget to
mention "Poll," the parrot. Nobody knew how old Polly was, but with her
extreme wisdom you couldn't help associating age. She didn't speak much
at a time; like many another sage, she went in for being laconic, pithy,
and to the point. I think, however, that some day or other Polly will
tell us quite a long story, for she often clears her throat and says,
"_Now_," in quite an emphatic manner; then she cocks her head, and says
"Are you listening?"
"We are all attention, Polly," we reply. So Polly begins again with her
decided "_Now_;" but up to this date she has not succeeded in advancing
one single sentence farther towards the completion of her story.
Well, upon the winter's evening in question Frank stood there, holding
the door and smiling to himself, and any one could see at a glance that
Frank was pregnant with an idea.
"I've been thinking," said Frank, "that there is nothing needed to
complete the happiness of the delightful evenings we spend here, except
a story-teller."
"No one better able than yourself, Frank, to fill the post," I remarked.
"Well, now," said Frank, "for that piece of arrant flattery, I fine you
a story."
"Read us that little sketch about `Dandie,'" my wife said.
"Yes, do," cried Ida, looking up from her work.
If a man is asked to do anything like this he ought to do it heartily.
Dandie, I may premise, is, or rather was, a contemporary of Aileen
Aroon.
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