Interesting? My life? Well, let me see. I suppose some people would
call it so, for now I come to think of it I did go through a good deal;
what with the fighting with the Spaniards, and the Indians, and the
fire, and the floods, and the wild beasts, and such-like adventures.
Yes; it never seemed to occur to me before, you know, me--George Bruton,
son of Captain Bruton of the King's army, who went out with the General
to help colonise Georgia, as they called the country after his Majesty
King George the Second, and went through perils and dangers such as no
one but English gentlemen and their brave followers would dare and
overcome.
You'll find it all in your histories; how the General had leave to take
so many followers, and carve out for themselves land and estates in the
beautiful new country.
My father was one of the party. He went, for he was sick at heart and
despondent. He had married a sweet English lady--my mother--and when I
was about six years old she died; and after growing more and more
unhappy for a couple of years, his friends told him that if he did not
seek active life of some kind, he would die too, and leave me an orphan
indeed.
That frightened him so that he raised himself up from his despondent
state, readily embraced the opportunity offered by the General's
expedition, sold his house in the country to which he had retired on
leaving the army, and was going out to the southern part of North
America with me only. But Sarah would not hear of parting from me, and
begged my father to take her to be my attendant and his servant, just as
on the same day Morgan Johns, our gardener, had volunteered to go with
his master. Not that he was exactly a gardener, though he was full of
gardening knowledge, and was a gardener's son; for he had been in my
father's company in the old regiment, and when my father left it,
followed him down and settled quite into a domestic life.
Well, as Morgan Johns volunteered to go with the expedition, and said
nothing would suit him better than gardening in a new country, and doing
a bit of fighting if it was wanted, and as our Sarah had volunteered
too, it fell out quite as a matter of course, that one day as my father
was seated in his room writing letters, and making his final
preparations for his venturesome journey, and while I was seated there
looking at the pictures in a book, Morgan and Sarah came in dressed in
their best clothes, and stood both of them looking very red in the face.
"Well?" said my father, in the cold, stern way in which he generally
spoke then; "what is it?"
"Tell him, Sarah," I heard Morgan whisper, for I had gone up to put my
hand in hers.
"For shame!" she said; "it's you who ought."
"Now look you," said Morgan, who was a Welshman, and spoke very Welshy
sometimes, "didn't you just go and promise to help and obey? And the
first thing I tells you to do you kicks."
"I am very busy," said my father. "If you two want a holiday, say so."
"Holiday, sir? Not us," said Morgan, in a hesitating way. "We don't
want no holiday, sir, only we felt like as it was our dooty to tell you
what--"
"To tell me what?"
"Yes, sir; seeing as we were going out to a savage country, where you've
got to do everything yourself before you can have it, and as there'd be
no parsons and churches, we thought we'd get it done decent and
'spectable here first."
"My good fellow, what do you mean?" said my father.
"Why, what I've been telling of you, sir. Sarah says--"
"I did not, Morgan, and I shouldn't have thought of such a thing. It
was all your doing."
"Steady in the ranks, my lass. Be fair. I'll own to half of it, but
you know you were just as bad as me."
"I was not, sir, indeed," cried Sarah, beginning to sob. "He deluded me
into it, and almost forced me to say yes."
"Man's dooty," said Morgan, dryly.
"What!" cried my father, smiling; "have you two gone and been married?"
"Stop there, sir, please, begging your pardon," said Morgan; "I declare
to gootness, you couldn't make a better guess than that."
"I beg your pardon, sir," said Sarah, who was very red in the face
before, but scarlet now; and as I sit down and write all this, as an old
man, everything comes back to me as vividly as if it were only
yesterday--for though I have forgotten plenty of my later life, all this
is as fresh as can be--"I beg your pardon, sir, but as you know all the
years I have been in your service, and with my own dear angel of a
mistress--Heaven bless her!"
"Amen," said my father, and, stern soldier as he was, I saw the tears
stand thick in his eyes, for poor Sarah broke down and began to sob,
while Morgan turned his face and began to blow his nose like a trumpet
out of tune.
"I--I beg your pardon for crying, sir, and it's very weak, I own,"
continued Sarah, after a few minutes' interval, during which I hurriedly
put my arm round her, and she dabbed down and kissed me, leaving my face
very wet; "but you know I never meant to be married, but when Morgan
comes to me and talks about what I was thinking about--how you and that
poor darling motherless boy was to get on in foreign abroad, all amongst
wild beasts and savages, and no one to make a drop o' gruel if you had
colds, or to make your beds, or sew on a button, and your poor stockings
all in holes big enough to break any decent woman's heart, and to Master
George's head--"
"I can wash my own head well enough now, Sarah," I said.
"Yes, my dear; but I don't believe you'd do it as well as I could, and
you know I never let the soap get in your eyes. And when, sir, Morgan
comes to me, and he asks me if I'd got the heart to let you both go out
into the wilderness like that without a soul to look after you, and
tells me as it was my dooty to marry him, and go out and look after the
housekeeping for you both, while he did the garden, what could I say?"
Poor Sarah paused quite out of breath.
"Say?" said my father, smiling, but looking very much moved. "You could
only say _yes_, like the good, true-hearted woman you are."
"Oh, sir!" exclaimed Sarah.
"You have both relieved me of a great deal of care and anxiety by your
faithful, friendly conduct," continued my father, "for it will make what
I am going to seek in the wilderness quite a home at once. It is not
the wilderness you think, for I know on very good authority that the
place where we are going is a very beautiful and fertile country."
"Can't come up to Wales," said Morgan, shaking his head.
"Perhaps not," said my father, smiling; "but very beautiful all the
same. I ought to warn you both, though, while there is time to draw
back, that the land is entirely new."
"What, wasn't it made with the rest of the world, sir?" said Morgan,
staring.
"Yes, of course," said my father; "but I mean it has never been
inhabited more than by a few Indians, who passed through it when
hunting. No houses; not so much as a road."
"Then there won't be no taverns, Sarah," said Morgan, giving her a
nudge.
"And a very good thing too," she replied.
"So that," continued my father, "I shall have to help cut down the trees
to build my own house, make my own furniture, and fence in the estate--
in short, do everything."
"Well, I don't see nothing to grumble at in that, sir, so long as
there's plenty of wood," said Morgan.
"There'll be too much wood, my man," said my father, smiling, "and we
shall have to ply the axe hard to clear our way."
"Any stone or slate, sir?"
"Plenty of stone, but no slate that I am aware of."
"No," cried Morgan, triumphantly. "I knew there'd be no slate. That
proves as it won't come up to Wales. There isn't such a country for
slate anywhere as Wales. Well, sir, but even if there's no slate, we
can make shift. First thing we do as soon as we get out, will be for me
to rig the missus up a bit of a kitchen, and we shall take a few pots
and pans in a box."
"Oh, I shall go well provided with necessaries," said my father.
"Then pray don't forget a frying-pan, sir. It's wonderful what the
missus here can do with a frying-pan."
"Do be quiet, Morgan Johns," said Sarah.
"Shan't," he growled. "I'm a-telling of the truth. It's wonderful,
sir, that it is. Give her a frying-pan and a bit o' fire, and we shan't
never hurt for a bit o' well-cooked victuals."
"But--" began my father, when Morgan rushed in again.
"Washin', sir, I forgot all about the washing. We shall want a tub and
a line. Trees 'll do for tying up to, and you'll see we shall none of
us ever want for clean clothes."
"Do be quiet, Morgan."
"I shan't, Sarah. It's only fair as the master should know what you can
do, look you."
"But I wish you people to think seriously now, while there is yet time,"
said my father.
"Seriously, sir? Oh yes, we've been thinking of it seriously enough,
and--I say, missus, do try and do without flat-irons; they're very heavy
kind o' traps for a man to take in his kit."
"Come, come," said my father; "you had better think better of it, and
not embrace such a rough life."
"We have thought better on it, sir, and the very best too. We're
coming, and if you won't take us, we'll come without. And look you,
sir, of course you'll take some guns, and swords, and powder and shot."
"Of course."
"Then don't forget some tools: spades, and hoes, and seeds, and some
carpenter's things and nails. You can't think what a deal can be done
with a hammer, a saw, and a few nails."
"Then you mean to come?"
"Mean to come, sir?" cried Morgan, in astonishment. "Why we got married
o' purpose; didn't we, Sarah?"
"Oh yes, sir; that's the very truth."
"And we shall be obliged to go now."
I did not see where the obligation came in, but I supposed it was all
right.
"Then I can only say thank you heartily," cried my father, warmly; "and
for my part, I'll do my duty by you both."
"Of course we know that, don't we, Sarah? Or else we shouldn't go."
"My dear master!" said Sarah, and she bent forward and kissed his hand
before clapping her handkerchief to her eyes, and rushing out of the
room.
"She'll be all right, sir, soon," whispered Morgan. "And look you, I'll
begin getting together all sorts of little tackle, sir, as I think 'll
be useful out yonder. Knives and string, and--look you, Master George,
strikes me as a few hooks and lines wouldn't be amiss. A few good fish
in a frying-pan, cooked as Sarah can cook 'em, arn't to be sneezed at
now and then."
He gave us both a sharp nod, and hastily followed his wife, while I
stayed to pester my father with endless questions about our new home.