It is fifty years ago and some months since that rainy, bloody,
flame-lit October night. And now this cold, wintery, blustering
midnight, I--the Bob Tregellin of my story--sit writing this concluding
chapter.
There is a coal-fire glowing hot in the grate. There are shelves and
shelves of books; easy-chairs sprawling their indolent figures here and
there; a curled-up bunch of fur purring in one; an old black setter-dog
dreaming--as I can see by the whine in his quick breathing and the
kicking of his outstretched legs--on a bearskin rug before the fire; and
a circle of bright light from a well-shaded lamp falls about my table.
Yes--but I shall get up now for a minute and take down the old musket
and dog-collar, the sight of which always vividly recalls those happiest
months of my life--Fifty Years Ago.
As I replace them the storm without comes in a heavier, fiercer gust. I
hear it rush in a whirl up the street. I see it almost lift the heavy
curtains over the window, as if it would come in and rest itself. I
hear it whistling through all the cracks and keyholes of the house--
whistling dismally. Its voices, and the rumbling of a hack in some
neighbouring street, remind me of storms I have heard, lying comfortably
in my snug attic bed in the old house on the cape--the wind and the
waves dashing up the rocky shore.
That strong whiff disturbed pussy's and "the Captain's" (so I have
called my old setter friend) nap, for puss stands up on her morocco bed
and arches her back like a horseshoe, and then springs, with a
jolted-out "mew-r-r-r," right on my table, and proceeds to walk over
this manuscript, carrying her tail up as if she wanted to light it by
the gas and beg me then to touch it to my pipe and stop scribbling. So
I shall presently. And the Captain strolls up to lay his cold nose on
my knee, slowly wag his silky tail, and look kindly into my face with
those soft, big eyes, as if he would say, "Come, master, don't be
low-spirited."
You are right, old fellow! I was somewhat sad about leaving the
pleasant companionship I have held through my pen with brothers and
friends of the old time, and a goodly number of those who are young now,
while I am so no longer, except in memory and heart. Youth has come
back with these pages, and perhaps you are tired with me, but I--I shall
never tire of the _young_--the glorious companionship of the pure,
merry, brave hearts that look undaunted and without suspicion on the
great road stretching far into the Future, and fading only to reappear
in mirages of splendour in a brilliant sky.
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There! I have smoked my pipe: and now, Miss Puss, stretch yourself in
the chair again, and you, Captain, resume that dream by the fire. I
have got a few more lines to write before my invisible friends leave me.
From that autumn night, 1830, to this winter night of 1872, no clue has
ever been discovered to the murderers of faithful old Clump. About
Christmas time of the same year Juno closed her earthly eyes in the old
Cape House--to open them again, I fervently believe, in heaven.
Mr Clare lives--a venerable clergyman in one of our great cities--his
head and heart yet labouring earnestly in the Great Cause he serves.
Captain Mugford sleeps in the home of his adoption--the ocean. Five
years after our six months together he sailed from Bristol as boatswain
of a splendid ship for the Pacific. A fortnight after, he was spoken by
a homeward-bound brig, and that was the last ever heard of honest Roland
Mugford, or the ship he sailed in. I hope seas, winds, and
undercurrents, however rough they may have been, left undisturbed the
red bandanna and the short black pipe. And we feel sure that the
mother's prayers were answered, and that the boy who ran away from her
in his youth came back to her,--whither her memory was a beacon light--
the Eternal Harbour, unstirred by storms.
Walter is a man of eminence--a diplomatist--and Harry a merchant, a
cheerful, generous-hearted man, whose name is the synonym of honour, and
whose hands "to do good, and to distribute, forget not."
Drake, who entered the army after travelling in every strange and dim
corner of the globe--frozen up in the Arctic Seas, perspiring in the
interior of Africa, exploring among the western wilds of the Rocky
Mountains, and doing other things adventurous in every out-of-the-way
part--finally went with all his honest, hot zeal to India, where,
fighting his country's battles, he spent many years of his life, and
came back a general and one-legged man. Now he _stumps_ about in this
same library, but manages to take me travelling thousands of never-weary
miles; and many and many a time do we walk, and shoot, and swim, and
race, and fight over and over again that happy time at the cape.
Poor Alfred--the best of all of us--died before his thirtieth year,
nursed by a few devoted Africans, at his missionary station in the
southern Atlantic.
And I, whom the general calls "Vieux Moustache," have finished an old
Boy's Story of "Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors."