MY NEW HOME
We quit our old home--A winter day journey--Aspect of the country--Our
new home--A prisoner in the barn--The plantation--A paradise of rats--
An evening scene--The people of the house--A beggar on horseback--Mr.
Trigg our schoolmaster--His double nature--Impersonates an old woman--
Reading Dickens--Mr. Trigg degenerates--Once more a homeless wanderer
on the great plain.
The incidents and impressions recorded in the preceding chapter
relate, as I have said, to the last year or two of my five years of
life in the place of my birth. Further back my memory refuses to take
me. Some wonderful persons go back to their second or even their first
year; I can't, and could only tell from hearsay what I was and did up
to the age of three. According to all accounts, the clouds of glory I
brought into the world--a habit of smiling at everything I looked at
and at every person that approached me--ceased to be visibly trailed
at about that age; I only remember myself as a common little boy--just
a little wild animal running about on its hind legs, amazingly
interested in the world in which it found itself.
Here, then, I begin, aged five, at an early hour on a bright, cold
morning in June--midwinter in that southern country of great plains or
pampas; impatiently waiting for the loading and harnessing to be
finished; then the being lifted to the top with the other little ones
--at that time we were five; finally, the grand moment when the start
was actually made with cries and much noise of stamping and snorting
of horses and rattling of chains. I remember a good deal of that long
journey, which began at sunrise and ended between the lights some time
after sunset; for it was my very first, and I was going out into the
unknown. I remember how, at the foot of the slope at the top of which
the old home stood, we plunged into the river, and there was more
noise and shouting and excitement until the straining animals brought
us safely out on the other side. Gazing back, the low roof of the
house was lost to view before long, but the trees--the row of twenty-
five giant ombu-trees which gave the place its name--were visible,
blue in the distance, until we were many miles on our way.
The undulating country had been left behind; before us and on both
sides the land, far as one could see, was absolutely flat, everywhere
green with the winter grass, but flowerless at that season, and with
the gleam of water, over the whole expanse. It had been a season of
great rains, and much of the flat country had been turned into shallow
lakes. That was all there was to see, except the herds of cattle and
horses and an occasional horseman galloping over the plain, and the
sight at long distances of a grove or small plantation of trees,
marking the site of an estancia, or sheep and cattle farm, these
groves appearing like islands on the sea-like flat country. At length
this monotonous landscape faded and vanished quite away, and the
lowing of cattle and tremulous bleating of sheep died out of hearing,
so that the last leagues were a blank to me, and I only came back to
my senses when it was dark and they lifted me down, so stiff with cold
and drowsy that I could hardly stand on my feet.
Next morning I found myself in a new and strange world. The house to
my childish eyes appeared of vast size: it consisted of a long range
of rooms on the ground, built of brick, with brick floors and roof
thatched with rushes. The rooms at one end, fronting the road, formed
a store, where the people of the surrounding country came to buy and
sell, and what they brought to sell was "the produce of the country"--
hides and wool and tallow in bladders, horsehair in sacks, and native
cheeses. In return they could purchase anything they wanted-knives,
spurs, rings for horse-gear, clothing, yerba mate and sugar; tobacco,
castor-oil, salt and pepper, and oil and vinegar, and such furniture
as they required--iron pots, spits for roasting, cane-chairs, and
coffins. A little distance from the house were the kitchen, bakery,
dairy, huge barns for storing the produce, and wood-piles big as
houses, the wood being nothing but stalks of the cardoon thistle or
wild artichoke, which burns like paper, so that immense quantities had
to be collected to supply fuel for a large establishment.
Two of the smallest of us were handed over to the care of a sharp
little native boy, aged about nine or ten years, who was told to take
us out of the way and keep us amused. The first place he took us to
was the great barn, the door of which stood open; it was nearly empty
just then, and was the biggest interior I had ever seen; how big it
really was I don't know, but it seemed to me about as big as Olympia
or the Agricultural Hall, or the Crystal Palace would be to any
ordinary little London boy. No sooner were we in this vast place than
we saw a strange and startling thing--a man, sitting or crouching on
the floor, his hands before him, the wrists tied together, his body
bound with thongs of raw hide to a big post which stood in the centre
of the floor and supported the beam of the loft above. He was a young
man, not more than twenty perhaps, with black hair and a smooth, pale,
sallow face. His eyes were cast down, and he paid no attention to us,
standing there staring at him, and he appeared to be suffering or ill.
After a few moments I shrank away to the door and asked our conductor
in a frightened whisper why he was tied up to a post there. Our native
boy seemed to be quite pleased at the effect on us, and answered
cheerfully that he was a murderer--he had committed a murder
somewhere, and had been caught last evening, but as it was too late to
take him to the lock-up at the village, which was a long distance
away, they had brought him here as the most convenient place, and tied
him in the barn to keep him safe. Later on they would come and take
him away.
Murder was a common word in those days, but I had not at that time
grasped its meaning; I had seen no murder done, nor any person killed
in a fight; I only knew that it must be something wicked and horrible.
Nevertheless, the shock I had received passed away in the course of
that first morning in a new world; but what I had seen in the barn was
not forgotten: the image of that young man tied to the post, his bent
head and downward gaze, and ghastly face shaded by lank black hair, is
as plain to me now as if I had seen him but yesterday.
A little back from the buildings were gardens and several acres of
plantation--both shade and fruit trees. Viewed from the outside, it
all looked like an immense poplar grove, on account of the double rows
of tall Lombardy poplar trees at the borders. The whole ground,
including the buildings, was surrounded by an immense ditch or moat.
Up till now I had lived without trees, with the exception of those
twenty-five I have spoken of, which formed a landmark for all the
country round; so that this great number--hundreds and thousands--of
trees was a marvel and delight. But the plantation and what it was to
me will form the subject of a chapter by itself. It was a paradise of
rats, as I very soon discovered. Our little native guide and
instructor was full of the subject, and promised to let us see the
rats with our own eyes as soon as the sun went down; that would finish
the day of strange sights with the strangest of all.
Accordingly, when the time came he led us to a spot beyond the barns
and wood-piles, where all the offal of slaughtered animals, bones, and
unconsumed meats from the kitchen, and rubbish from a wasteful,
disorderly establishment, were cast out each day. Here we all sat down
in a row on a log among the dead weeds on the border of the evil-
smelling place, and he told us to be very still and speak no word;
for, said he, unless we move or make a sound the rats will not heed
us; they will regard us as so many wooden images. And so it proved,
for very soon after the sun had gone down we began to see rats
stealing out of the woodpile and from the dead weeds on every side,
all converging to that one spot where a generous table was spread for
them and for the brown carrion hawks that came by day. Big, old, grey
rats with long, scaly tails, others smaller, and smaller still, the
least of all being little bigger than mice, until the whole place
swarmed with them, all busily hunting for food, feeding, squealing,
fighting, and biting. I had not known that the whole world contained
so many rats as I now saw congregated before me.
Suddenly our guide jumped up and loudly clapped his hands, which
produced a curious effect--a short, sharp little shriek of terror from
the busy multitude, followed by absolute stillness, every rat frozen
to stone, which lasted for a second or two; then a swift scuttling
away in all directions, vanishing with a rustling sound through the
dead grass and wood.
It had been a fine spectacle, and we enjoyed it amazingly; it raised
_Mus decumanus_ to a beast of immense importance in my mind. Soon he
became even more important in an unpleasant way when it was discovered
that rats were abundant indoors as well as out. The various noises
they made at night were terrifying; they would run over our beds and
sometimes we would wake up to find that one had got in between the
sheets and was trying frantically to get out. Then we would yell, and
half the house would be roused and imagine some dreadful thing. But
when they found out the cause, they would only laugh at and rebuke us
for being such poor little cowards.
But what an astonishing place was this to which we had come! The great
house and many buildings and the people in it, the foss, the trees
that enchanted me, the dirt and disorder, vile rats and fleas and
pests of all sorts! The place had been for some years in the hands of
a Spanish or native family--indolent, careless, happy-go-lucky people.
The husband and wife were never in harmony or agreement about anything
for five minutes together, and by and by he would go away to the
capital "on business," which would keep him from home for weeks, and
even months, at a stretch. And she, with three light-headed, grown-up
daughters, would be left to run the establishment with half-a-dozen
hired men and women to assist her. I remember her well, as she stayed
on a few days in order to hand over the place to us--an excessively
fat, inactive woman, who sat most of the day in an easy-chair,
surrounded by her pets--lap-dogs, Amazon parrots, and several
shrieking parakeets.
Before many days she left, with all her noisy crowd of dogs and birds
and daughters, and of the events of the succeeding days and weeks
nothing remains in memory except one exceedingly vivid impression--my
first sight of a beggar on horseback. It was by no means an uncommon
sight in those days when, as the gauchos were accustomed to say, a man
without a horse was a man without legs; but it was new to me when one
morning I saw a tall man on a tall horse ride up to our gate,
accompanied by a boy of nine or ten on a pony. I was struck with the
man's singular appearance, sitting upright and stiff in his saddle,
staring straight before him. He had long grey hair and beard, and wore
a tall straw hat shaped like an inverted flower-pot, with a narrow
brim--a form of hat which had lately gone out of fashion among the
natives but was still used by a few. Over his clothes he wore a red
cloak or poncho, and heavy iron spurs on his feet, which were cased in
the _botas de potro_, or long stockings made of a colt's untanned
hide.
Arrived at the gate he shouted _Ave Maria purissima_ in a loud voice,
then proceeded to give an account of himself, informing us that he was
a blind man and obliged to subsist on the charity of his neighbours.
They in their turn, he said, in providing him with all he required
were only doing good to themselves, seeing that those who showed the
greatest compassion towards their afflicted fellow-creatures were
regarded with special favour by the Powers above.
After delivering himself of all this and much more as if preaching a
sermon, he was assisted from his horse and led by the hand to the
front door, after which the boy drew back and folding his arms across
his breast stared haughtily at us children and the others who had
congregated at the spot. Evidently he was proud of his position as
page or squire or groom of the important person in the tall straw hat,
red cloak, and iron spurs, who galloped about the land collecting
tribute from the people and talking loftily about the Powers above.
Asked what he required at our hands the beggar replied that he wanted
yerba mate, sugar, bread, and some hard biscuits, also cut tobacco and
paper for cigarettes and some leaf tobacco for cigars. When all these
things had been given him, he was asked (not ironically) if there was
anything else we could supply him with, and he replied, Yes, he was
still in want of rice, flour, and farina, an onion or two, a head or
two of garlic, also salt, pepper, and pimento, or red pepper. And when
he had received all these comestibles and felt them safely packed in
his saddle-bags, he returned thanks, bade good-bye in the most
dignified manner, and was led back by the haughty little boy to his
tall horse.
We had been settled some months in our new home, and I was just about
half way through my sixth year, when one morning at breakfast we
children were informed to our utter dismay that we could no longer be
permitted to run absolutely wild; that a schoolmaster had been engaged
who would live in the house and would have us in the schoolroom during
the morning and part of the afternoon.
Our hearts were heavy in us that day, while we waited apprehensively
for the appearance of the man who would exercise such a tremendous
power over us and would stand between us and our parents, especially
our mother, who had ever been our shield and refuge from all pains and
troubles. Up till now they had acted on the principle that children
were best left to themselves, that the more liberty they had the
better it was for them. Now it almost looked as if they were turning
against us; but we knew that it could not be so--we knew that every
slightest pain or grief that touched us was felt more keenly by our
mother than by ourselves, and we were compelled to believe her when
she told us that she, too, lamented the restraint that would be put
upon us, but knew that it would be for our ultimate good.
And on that very afternoon the feared man arrived, Mr. Trigg by name,
an Englishman, a short, stoutish, almost fat little man, with grey
hair, clean-shaved sunburnt face, a crooked nose which had been broken
or was born so, clever mobile mouth, and blue-grey eyes with a
humorous twinkle in them and crow's-feet at the corners. Only to us
youngsters, as we soon discovered, that humorous face and the
twinkling eyes were capable of a terrible sternness. He was loved, I
think, by adults generally, and regarded with feelings of an opposite
nature by children. For he was a schoolmaster who hated and despised
teaching as much as children in the wild hated to be taught. He
followed teaching because all work was excessively irksome to him, yet
he had to do something for a living, and this was the easiest thing he
could find to do. How such a man ever came to be so far from home in a
half-civilized country was a mystery, but there he was, a bachelor and
homeless man after twenty or thirty years on the pampas, with little
or no money in his pocket, and no belongings except his horse--he
never owned more than one at a time--and its cumbrous native saddle,
and the saddle-bags in which he kept his wardrobe and whatever he
possessed besides. He didn't own a box. On his horse, with his saddle-
bags behind him, he would journey about the land, visiting all the
English, Scotch, and Irish settlers, who were mostly sheep-farmers,
but religiously avoiding the houses of the natives. With the natives
he could not affiliate, and not properly knowing and incapable of
understanding them he regarded them with secret dislike and suspicion.
And by and by he would find a house where there were children old
enough to be taught their letters, and Mr. Trigg would be hired by the
month, like a shepherd or cowherd, to teach them, living with the
family. He would go on very well for a time, his failings being
condoned for the sake of the little ones; but by and by there would be
a falling-out, and Mr. Trigg would saddle his horse, buckle on the
saddle-bags, and ride forth over the wide plain in quest of a new
home. With us he made an unusually long stay; he liked good living and
comforts generally, and at the same time he was interested in the
things of the mind, which had no place in the lives of the British
settlers of that period; and now he found himself in a very
comfortable house, where there were books to read and people to
converse with who were not quite like the rude sheep- and cattle-
farmers he had been accustomed to live with. He was on his best
behaviour, and no doubt strove hard and not unsuccessfully to get the
better of his weaknesses. He was looked on as a great acquisition, and
made much of; in the school-room he was a tyrant, and having been
forbidden to punish us by striking, he restrained himself when to
thrash us would have been an immense relief to him. But pinching was
not striking, and he would pinch our ears until they almost bled. It
was a poor punishment and gave him little satisfaction, but it had to
serve. Out of school his temper would change as by magic. He was then
the life of the house, a delightful talker with an inexhaustible fund
of good stories, a good reader, mimic, and actor as well.
One afternoon we had a call from a quaint old Scotch dame, in a queer
dress, sunbonnet, and spectacles, who introduced herself as the wife
of Sandy Maclachlan, a sheep-farmer who lived about twenty-five miles
away. It wasn't right, she said, that such near neighbours should not
know one another, so she had ridden those few leagues to find out what
we were like. Established at the tea-table, she poured out a torrent
of talk in broadest Scotch, in her high-pitched cracked old-woman's
voice, and gave us an intimate domestic history of all the British
residents of the district. It was all about what delightful people
they were, and how even their little weaknesses--their love of the
bottle, their meannesses, their greed and low cunning--only served to
make them more charming. Never was there such a funny old dame or one
more given to gossip and scandal-mongering! Then she took herself off,
and presently we children, still under her spell, stole out to watch
her departure from the gate. But she was not there--she had vanished
unaccountably; and by and by what was our astonishment and disgust to
hear that the old Scotch body was none other than our own Mr. Trigg!
That our needle-sharp eyes, concentrated for an hour on her face, had
failed to detect the master who was so painfully familiar to us seemed
like a miracle.
Mr. Trigg confessed that play-acting was one of the things he had done
before quitting his country; but it was only one of a dozen or twenty
vocations which he had taken up at various times, only to drop them
again as soon as he made the discovery that they one and all entailed
months and even years of hard work if he was ever to fulfil his
ambitious desire of doing and being something great in the world. As a
reader he certainly was great, and every evening, when the evenings
were long, he would give a two hours' reading to the household.
Dickens was then the most popular writer in the world, and he usually
read Dickens, to the delight of his listeners. Here he could display
his histrionic qualities to the full. He impersonated every character
in the book, endowing him with voice, gestures, manner, and expression
that fitted him perfectly. It was more like a play than a reading.
"What should we do without Mr. Trigg?" our elders were accustomed to
say; but we little ones, remembering that it would not be the
beneficent countenance of Mr. Pickwick that would look on us in the
schoolroom on the following morning, only wished that Mr. Trigg was
far, far away.
Perhaps they made too much of him: at all events he fell into the
habit of going away every Saturday morning and not returning until the
following Monday. His week-end visit was always to some English or
Scotch neighbour, a sheep-farmer, ten or fifteen or twenty miles
distant, where the bottle or demi-john of white Brazilian rum was
always on the table. It was the British exile's only substitute for
his dear lost whisky in that far country. At home there was only tea
and coffee to drink. From these outings he would return on Monday
morning, quite sober and almost too dignified in manner, but with
inflamed eyes and (in the schoolroom) the temper of a devil. On one of
these occasions, something--our stupidity perhaps, or an exceptionally
bad headache--tried him beyond endurance, and taking down his
_revenque_, or native horse-whip made of raw hide, from the wall,
he began laying about him with such extraordinary fury that the room
was quickly in an uproar. Then all at once my mother appeared on the
scene, and the tempest was stilled, though the master, with the whip
in his uplifted hand, still stood, glaring with rage at us. She stood
silent a moment or two, her face very white, then spoke: "Children,
you may go and play now. School is over;" then, lest the full purport
of her words should not be understood, she added, "Your schoolmaster
is going to leave us."
It was an unspeakable relief, a joyful moment; yet on that very day,
and on the next before he rode away, I, even I who had been unjustly
and cruelly struck with a horsewhip, felt my little heart heavy in me
when I saw the change in his face--the dark, still, brooding look, and
knew that the thought of his fall and the loss of his home was
exceedingly bitter to him. Doubtless my mother noticed it, too, and
shed a few compassionate tears for the poor man, once more homeless on
the great plain. But he could not be kept after that insane outbreak.
To strike their children was to my parents a crime; it changed their
nature and degraded them, and Mr. Trigg could not be forgiven.
Mr. Trigg, as I have said before, was a long time with us, and the
happy deliverance I have related did not occur until I was near the
end of my eighth year. At the present stage of my story I am not yet
six, and the incident related in the following chapter, in which Mr.
Trigg figures, occurred when I was within a couple of months of
completing my sixth year.