Then we went to Kirkcudbright, where there is an old castle, very dirty,
but where we stayed in the loveliest old inn. It was so "comfy" and
home-like at the "Selkirk" that it seemed as if the hostelry had
wandered out into the country one fine day and--forgot the way to come
back again! We liked it so much because it was kept by a nice jolly man,
whose mother had been good to father once when he was ill, and who made
the nicest cakes. We were in clover there, I can tell you. Specially
because "Mac" (the painter whom, when I was very little, I once named
"The Little Brown Bear") came for walks with us, and made us laugh at
dinner till we youngsters nearly got sent from the table. Yet it wasn't
a bit our fault. He told us a lot of things, and I could see father
listening with all his ears, and not even checking Sir Toady when he
stole the sugar, though he saw him. I was sure that something would
come out of that. You see, I know father's ways. And so it comes about
that I don't need to write any of the funny things that we heard that
night, or the nights that followed. You have only to read them in the
chapters of _Little Esson_, the part all about Ladas II, and the trip in
the caravan. I think that father ought really to have sent some of the
money he got to "The Little Brown Bear"--but I don't believe he ever
did.
"Mac owes me more than that!" he said, when I asked him about it. "I
brought him up by hand!"
I presume he meant the way Hugh John, my brother, brings up Sir
Toady--though that is with both hands, sometimes feet too.
There was one Sunday that I remember very well; at Newton Stewart it
was. There had been (or was going to be) a kind of circus in the town.
Or maybe they were only resting, as even circus folk must do sometimes.
Anyway I looked out at the window in the early morning, and if I had
seen a ghost I could not have been more surprised. And so would you--for
there, calmly grazing on the field just under my window, as quietly as
if it had been a cow, was a huge elephant! I did not see any circus
vans, nor the tents, nor anything--save and except this great Indian
elephant in the middle of the green field! You may imagine I thought
that I was still dreaming. I watched it pad-padding softly about, taking
the greatest pleasure in rolling like a donkey when the harness is taken
off. It also rubbed the big soft spreads of its feet on the softer
grass. I suppose its poor soles were sore with traveling over our hard
cycling roads, and now it was keeping Sunday after its kind, doing its
best to obey the commandment. And, as father says, what more can any of
us do than be fully persuaded in our own minds? One thing I noticed
which astonished me, and I think it will most people. The big beast must
have weighed a ton, I should think, at the least. And yet, as it went
here and there over the field of nice Galloway grass, it walked so
softly that the grass "rose elastic from its airy tread." Yes, it
actually did. Even Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself could hardly have found a
footmark in a quarter of an hour. Why, even the Maid, not to speak of
myself, could not get so lightly over the ground as that. We watched the
elephant all that day, whenever we could, that is--and thought of him in
church, though the minister was a nice man, nice-looking too, and did
not preach too long. It was, of course, frightfully wicked of us.
Because it was in one of the old "Kirks of the Martyrs" that the service
was held. But when the minister came to see us in the evening, we showed
him the elephant still grazing away, wig-wagging its long trunk like a
supple pendulum, and switching away quite imaginary flies with its tiny
tail! The minister was such a very good sort that we thought we ought to
own up why we had been restless in church. (He might have seen us, you
know.) So I said we were ashamed that we had not attended better to his
sermon. And do you know what he answered back, after seeing the elephant
take a double donkey roll, with its great sausagey legs in the air? "I'm
glad," he said, "that I did not see the elephant do that _before_
sermon. For if I had, I don't believe that I could have preached!"
"A pretty nice sort of a minister, that!" said Hugh John afterwards.
"I should go to his church myself," cried Toady Lion, and then, checking
himself suddenly under the gaze of Hugh John, he added, "I mean, when I
had to!"
There--that is quite enough to put in my Diary about a circus elephant,
though I will admit that it was about the very queerest thing that ever
happened to me in all my life--I mean the most unexpected, of course,
for when explained it was all perfectly simple.
But I must get on with my Diary of this Galloway journey, and the
"Sweethearty" things we saw there. Dear me, I had meant to tell about
Gatehouse too (which happened before Newton Stewart, only I forgot).
There was a nice minister there too, who went about without his hat, and
smoked, and called out nice things across the street to Tom and Dick and
Harry. Altogether we were fortunate in the ministers we met all through
the trip. And I think the children of Gatehouse must have benefited too,
owing to the nice bareheaded minister. For certainly they are not nearly
so rude and pesterful as I remember them when father and I stopped
there--oh, how many years ago? Ten, at least, or maybe more. Then they
rang the bell of the tricycle and said horrid things when father was in
the baker's shop. They made me so angry--I can remember it yet--I said I
would tell father. I nearly cried. But this time there was no one who
was not quite nice to us--except, Oh, yes, one person who wouldn't let
us any rooms. But that did not matter. Indeed, it was a blessing. For we
went farther down the street till we came to a delightful hotel or inn
or something, where Miss Blackett, who kept it, was just as good to us
as she could be, and gave us nice things to eat on the sly. Also the
"Little Brown Bear" came again, and told us more stories in the
evenings. Then, at ten or eleven at night, he got on his cycle and
wheeled away into the dark. It was so nice and romantic that I wished I
could have gone too. It is splendid in the summer to wheel on and on
through the archway of the green and sleeping woods. It is best when you
are sure of the policemen, and can ride without a light, which does no
good, but makes everything dark as pitch, and as uninteresting as the
Queensferry Road.
Then I saw the two boys at Creetown who once on a time were brought in
from playing on the street, and tidied up so that they might be ready to
kiss me. They both howled at the thought. For which I don't in the least
blame them. But all the same they had high collars on, and I don't think
that they would have minded nearly as much now.
This, of course, came before the elephant, but then, you see, if things
don't go into my Dear Diary just when I think of them, the probability
is that they won't go at all.
One long lovesome day, that I won't forget in a hurry, we spent driving
through Borgue--sunny, sweet, hawthorny Borgue, where the clover is, and
the green honey made by the bees that have never so much as sniffed a
heather bloom. It is not Galloway, of course. It has not the qualities
of Galloway, I mean. But there is something about it that makes the
heart grow fonder the longer one stays there--a kind of green "den" such
as the bairns have when playing at "soldiers-and-outlaws" in the wood--a
sheltered sanctuary, a Peace on Earth among men of good-will. At least
all we saw were that sort, and I hope the others were, just as much.
Here, I know, Hugh John would shrug his shoulders. But that does not
matter.
We did not linger in Borgue, however, which, with its still and pensive
beauty, was like a kirk-yard on Sunday morning. Indeed, there are many
of these along the shores--hidden nooks with tombstones, and beneath
wave-washed bights of clean sand. For assuredly it was not the right
Galloway. Rather it was like a bit of Devonshire that had floated away
and got joined on here, wooded and wind-swept, a carpet of flowers all
the summer long, one great bee-swarm booming all over it, from Kirk
Andrews, which is its Dan, to the Tower of Plunton, which is its
Beersheba. At any rate there is nothing like Borgue anywhere else in
Scotland. Which its natives declare, perhaps with truth, is the same as
to say in the world!
Well, we drove out of Newton Stewart past Palnure, turned sharply up the
hill road towards the Loch of the Lilies, past Clatteringshaws--where
not a shaw clattered, though in the wagonette there were many "she's"
who did--as a very clever lady, a friend of father's, once remarked when
her daughters proposed an excursion thither from Kenbank. "Deaved"[2]
with their tongues, she broke out at last with "Not Clatteringshaws, but
'Clatteringshe's'!" However, on this occasion not a dog barked. We
lunched in the midst of the solitude, and then father wandered away to
watch his dear hills through his glasses, while the rest of us washed
and cleaned up!
[Footnote 2: Deafened]
But the best of all days was that on the moors about the little house
where father was born. I had not been there for more than ten years,
and the ground was littered with memories. Father and I got off a little
south of the Raider's Bridge. We skirted the water meadows, and looked
back to the bulk of Bennan, still rugged and purple with heather, seeing
to the right of it Cairnsmore of Carsphairn, a double molehill of palest
blue paint. Then came the "Roman Camp," which, however, father told us
had been made by the "Levelers" in the early half of the eighteenth
century. But the other story of the farm bull which fell into the ditch,
was heard roaring for days, and, when found, had eaten every green thing
within reach of its hungry mouth--trees, leaves, branches and
all--pleased me most.
Then there was the well where once I had drunk from father's palms, and
of which there is such a very pretty picture in _Sweetheart
Travelers_--a picture which always used to puzzle me dreadfully. For I
knew that there were only father and I there. Besides which, there was
not nearly light enough for Mr. Gordon Browne to "take" us, even
supposing that he had been hid behind the bushes! At any rate we had a
drink at the ancient spring, just for old sake's sake. Some kind person
had cleaned it out not long before, and the water in the shade of the
woods of the Duchrae Bank was as cool and sweet as ever. Then across the
cropped meadows, again ankle-deep in aftermath, to the old
stepping-stones! Father carried me on his back to the big central
bowlder, which perhaps has been brought down by some forgotten flood,
and at any rate had long served for the keystone of the arrangement in
stepping-stones--which, even in father's day (so he told me), had been
variously named "Davie's Ford," "Auld Miss," "Rab's," and "Elphie's,"
according to the names of the various dwellers in the pretty cottage in
the wood above.