A ROUGH SHAKING
By George MacDonald
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. HOW I CAME TO KNOW CLARE SKYMER.
II. WITH HIS PARENTS.
III. WITHOUT HIS PARENTS.
IV. THE NEW FAMILY.
V. HIS NEW HOME.
VI. WHAT DID DRAW OUT HIS FIRST SMILE.
VII. CLARE AND HIS BROTHERS.
VIII. CLARE AND HIS HUMAN BROTHERS.
IX. CLARE THE DEFENDER.
X. THE BLACK AUNT.
XI. CLARE ON THE FARM.
XII. CLARE BECOMES A GUARDIAN OF THE POOR.
XIII. CLARE THE VAGABOND.
XIV. THEIR FIRST HELPER.
XV. THEIR FIRST HOST.
XVI. ON THE TRAMP.
XVII. THE BAKER’S CART.
XVIII. BEATING THE TOWN.
XIX. THE BLACKSMITH AND HIS FORGE.
XX. TOMMY RECONNOITRES.
XXI. TOMMY IS FOUND AND FOUND OUT.
XXII. THE SMITH IN A RAGE.
XXIII. TREASURE TROVE.
XXIV. JUSTIFIABLE BURGLARY.
XXV. A NEW QUEST.
XXVI. A NEW ENTRANCE.
XXVII. THE BABY HAS HER BREAKFAST.
XXVIII. TREACHERY.
XXIX. THE BAKER.
XXX. THE DRAPER.
XXXI. AN ADDITION TO THE FAMILY.
XXXII. SHOP AND BABY.
XXXIII. A BAD PENNY.
XXXIV. HOW THINGS WENT FOR A TIME.
XXXV. CLARE DISREGARDS THE INTERESTS OF HIS EMPLOYERS.
XXXVI. THE POLICEMAN.
XXXVII. THE MAGISTRATE.
XXXVIII. THE WORKHOUSE.
XXXIX. AWAY.
XL. MALY.
XLI. THE CARAVANS.
XLII. NIMROD.
XLIII. ACROSS COUNTRY.
XLIV. A THIRD MOTHER.
XLV. THE MENAGERIE.
XLVI. THE ANGEL OF THE WILD BEASTS.
XLVII. GLUM GUNN.
XLVIII. THE PUMA.
XLIX. GLUM GUNN’S REVENGE.
L. CLARE SEEKS HELP.
LI. CLARE A TRUE MASTER.
LII. MISS TEMPEST.
LIII. THE GARDENER.
LIV. THE KITCHEN.
LV. THE WHEEL RESTS FOR A TIME.
LVI. STRATEGY.
LVII. ANN SHOTOVER.
LVIII. CHILD-TALK.
LIX. LOVERS’ WALKS.
LX. THE SHOE-BLACK.
LXI. A WALK WITH CONSEQUENCES.
LXII. THE CAGE OF THE PUMA.
LXIII. THE DOME OF THE ANGELS.
LXIV. THE PANTHER.
LXV. AT HOME.
LXVI. THE END OF CLARE SKYMER’S BOYHOOD.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
MRS. PORSON FINDS CLARE BY THE SIDE OF HIS DEAD MOTHER
CLARE IS HEARD TALKING TO MALY
CLARE MAKES FRIENDS DURING MR. PORSON’S ABSENCE
THE BLACKSMITH GIVES CLARE AND TOMMY A ROUGH GREETING
CLARE, TOMMY, AND THE BABY IN CUSTODY
CLARE AND ABDIEL AT THE LOCKED PUMP
CLARE PROCEEDS TO UNTIE THE ROPES FROM THE RING IN THE BULL’S NOSE
CLARE FINDS THE ADVANTAGE OF A POWERFUL FRIEND
THE GARDENER’S DISCOMFITURE
CLARE ASKS MISS SHOTOVER TO LET HIM CARRY ANN HOME
CLARE IS FOUND GIVING THE SHOE-BLACK A LESSON
CLARE ASLEEP IN THE PUMA’S CAGE
Dedicated
to my great-nephew,
Norman MacKay Binney,
aged seven,
because his Godfather and Godmother
love him dearly.
Hampstead, August 26, 1890.
A ROUGH SHAKING.
Chapter I.
HOW I CAME TO KNOW CLARE SKYMER.
It was a day when everything around seemed almost perfect: everything
does, now and then, come nearly right for a moment or two, preparatory
to coming all right for good at the last. It was the third week in
June. The great furnace was glowing and shining in full force, driving
the ship of our life at her best speed through the ocean of space. For
on deck, and between decks, and aloft, there is so much more going on
at one time than at another, that I may well say she was then going at
her best speed, for there is quality as well as rate in motion. The
trees were all well clothed, most of them in their very best. Their
garments were soaking up the light and the heat, and the wind was
going about among them, telling now one and now another, that all was
well, and getting through an immense amount of comfort-work in a
single minute. It said a word or two to myself as often as it passed
me, and made me happier than any boy I know just at present, for I was
an old man, and ought to be more easily made happy than any mere
beginner.
I was walking through the thin edge of a little wood of big trees,
with a slope of green on my left stretching away into the sunny
distance, and the shadows of the trees on my right lying below my
feet. The earth and the grass and the trees and the air were together
weaving a harmony, and the birds were leading the big orchestra--which
was indeed on the largest scale. For the instruments were so
different, that some of them only were meant for sound; the part of
others was in odour, of others yet in shine, and of still others in
motion; while the birds turned it all as nearly into words as they
could. Presently, to complete the score, I heard the tones of a man’s
voice, both strong and sweet. It was talking to some one in a way I
could not understand. I do not mean I could not understand the words:
I was too far off even to hear them; but I could not understand how
the voice came to be so modulated. It was deep, soft, and musical,
with something like coaxing in it, and something of tenderness, and
the intent of it puzzled me. For I could not conjecture from it the
age, or sex, or relation, or kind of the person to whom the words were
spoken. You can tell by the voice when a man is talking to himself; it
ought to be evident when he is talking to a woman; and you can,
surely, tell when he is talking to a child; you could tell if he were
speaking to him who made him; and you would be pretty certain if he
was holding communication with his dog: it made me feel strange that I
could not tell the kind of ear open to the gentle, manly voice saying
things which the very sound of them made me long to hear. I confess to
hurrying my pace a little, but I trust with no improper curiosity, to
see--I cannot say the interlocutors, for I had heard, and still heard,
only one voice.
About a minute’s walk brought me to the corner of the wood where it
stopped abruptly, giving way to a field of beautiful grass; and then I
saw something it does not need to be old to be delighted withal: the
boy that would not have taken pleasure in it, I should count half-way
to the gallows. Up to the edge of the wood came, I say, a large
field--acres on acres of the sweetest grass; and dividing it from both
wood and path stood a fence of three bars, which at the moment
separated two as genuine lovers as ever wall of “stones with lime and
hair knit up” could have sundered. On one side of the fence stood a
man whose face I could not see, and on the other one of the loveliest
horses I had ever set eyes upon. I am no better than a middling fair
horseman, but, for this horse’s sake, I may be allowed to mention that
my friends will all have me look at any horse they think of buying.
He was over sixteen hands, with well rounded barrel, clean limbs,
small head, and broad muzzle; hollows above his eyes of hazy blue, and
delicacy of feature, revealed him quite an old horse. His ears pointed
forward and downward, as if they wanted on their own account to get a
hold of the man the nose was so busily caressing. Neither, I presume,
had heard my approach; for all true-love-endearments are shy, and the
man had his arm round the horse’s neck, and was caressing his face,
talking to him much as Philip Sidney’s lady, whose lips “seemed at
once to kiss and speak,” murmured to her pet sparrow, only here the
voice was a musical baritone. That there was something between them
more than an ordinary person would be likely to understand appeared
patent.
Whether or not I made an involuntary sound I cannot tell: I was so
taken with the sight, bearing to me an aspect of something eternal,
that I do not know how I carried myself; but the horse gave a little
start, half lifted his head, saw me, threw it up, uttered a shrill
neigh of warning, stepped back a pace, and stood motionless, waiting
apparently for an order from his master--if indeed I ought not rather
to call them friends than master and servant.
The man looked round, saw me, turned toward me, and showing no sign
that my appearance was unexpected, lifted his hat with a courtesy most
Englishmen would reserve for a lady, and advanced a step, almost as if
to welcome a guest. I may have owed something of this reception to the
fact that he saw before him a man advanced in years, for my beard is
very gray, and that by no means prematurely. I saw before me one
nearly, if not quite as old as myself. His hair and beard, both rather
long, were quite white. His face was wonderfully handsome, with the
stillness of a summer sea upon it. Its features were very marked and
regular and fine, for the habit of the man was rather spare. What with
his white hair and beard, and a certain radiance in his pale
complexion, which, I learned afterward, no sun had ever more than
browned a little, he reminded me for a moment as he turned, of Cato on
the shore of Dante’s purgatorial island.
“I fear,” I said, “I have intruded!” There was no path where I had
come along.
The man laughed--and his laugh was more friendly than an invitation to
dinner.
“The land is mine,” he answered; “no one can say you intrude.”
“Thank you heartily. I live not very far off, and know the country
pretty well, but have got into a part of which I am ignorant.”
“You are welcome to go where you will on my property,” he answered.
“I could not close a field without some sense of having thrown a
fellow-being into a dungeon. Whatever be the rights of land, space can
belong to the individual only ‘_as it were_,’ to use a Shakspere-phrase.
All the best things have to be shared. The house plainly was designed
for a family.”
While he spoke, I scarce heeded his words for looking at the man, so
much he interested me. His face was of the palest health, with a faint
light from within. He looked about sixty years of age. His forehead
was square, and his head rather small, but beautifully modelled; his
eyes were of a light hazel, friendly as those of a celestial
dog. Though slender in build, he looked strong, and every movement
denoted activity.
I was not ready with an answer to what he said. He turned from me, and
as if to introduce a companion and so render the interview easier, he
called, in tone as gentle as if he spoke to a child, but with that
peculiar intonation that had let me understand it was not to a child
he was speaking, “Memnon! come;” and turned again to me. His movement
and words directed my attention again to the horse, who had stood
motionless. At once, but without sign of haste, the animal walked up
to the rails, rose gently on his hind legs, came over without
touching, walked up to his master, and laid his head on his shoulder.
I bethought me now who the man was. He had been but a year or two in
the neighbourhood, though the property on which we now stood had been
his own for a good many years. Some said he had bought it; others knew
he had inherited it. All agreed he was a very peculiar person, with
ways so oddly unreasonable that it was evident he had, in his
wanderings over the face of the earth, gradually lost hold of what
sense he might at one time have possessed, and was in consequence a
good deal cracked. There seemed nothing, however, in his behaviour or
appearance to suggest such a conclusion: a man could hardly be counted
beside himself because he was on terms of friendship with his
horse. It took me but a moment to recall his name--Skymer--one odd
enough to assist the memory. I caught it ere he had done mingling
fresh caresses with those of his long-tailed friend. When I came to
know him better, I knew that he had thus given me opportunity--such as
he would to a horse--of thinking whether I should like to know him
better: Mr. Skymer’s way was not to offer himself, but to give easy
opportunity to any who might wish to know him. I learned afterward
that he knew my name and suspected my person: being rather prejudiced
in my favour because of the kind of thing I wrote, he was now waiting
to see whether approximation would follow.
“Pardon my rude lingering,” I said; “that lovely animal is enough to
make one desire nearer acquaintance with his owner. I don’t think I
ever saw such a perfect creature!”
I remembered the next moment that I had heard said of Mr. Skymer that
he liked beasts better than men, but I soon found this was only one of
the foolish things constantly said of honest men by those who do not
understand them.
There are women even who love dogs and dislike children; but, nauseous
fact as this is, it is not so nauseous as the fact that there are men
who believe in no animal rights, or in any God of the animals, and
think we may do what we please with them, indulging at their cost an
insane thirst after knowledge. Injustice may discover facts, but never
truth.
“I grant him nearly a perfect creature,” he answered, “But he is far
more nearly perfect than you yet know him! Excuse me for speaking so
confidently; but if we were half as far on for men, as Memnon is for a
horse, the kingdom of heaven would be a good deal nearer!”
“He seems an old horse!”
“He is an old horse--much older than you can think after seeing him
come over that paling as he did. He is forty.”
“Is it possible!”
“I know and can prove his age as certainly as my own. He is the son of
an Arab mare and an English thoroughbred.--Come here, Memnon!”
The horse, who had been standing behind like a servant in waiting, put
his beautiful head over his master’s shoulder.
“Memnon,” said Mr. Skymer, “go home and tell Mrs. Waterhouse I hope to
bring a gentleman with me to lunch.”
The horse walked gently past us, then started at a quick trot, which
almost immediately became a gallop.
“The dear fellow,” said his master, “would not gallop like that if he
were on the hard road; he knows I would not like it.”
“But, excuse me, how can the animal convey your message?--how
communicate what he knows, if he does understand what you say to him?”
“He will at least take care that the housekeeper look in his mane for
the knot which perhaps you did not observe me tie in it.”
“You have a code of signals by knots then?”
“Yes--comprising about half a dozen possibilities.--I hope you do not
object to the message I sent! You will do me the honour of lunching
with me?”
“You are most kind,” I answered--with a little hesitation, I suppose,
fearing to bore my new acquaintance.
“Don’t make me false to horse and housekeeper, Mr. Gowrie,” he
resumed.--“I put the horse first, because I could more easily explain
the thing to Mrs. Waterhouse than to Memnon.”
“Could you explain it to Memnon?”
“I should have a try!” he answered, with a peculiar smile.
“You hold yourself bound then to keep faith with your horse?”
“Bound just as with a man--that is, as far as the horse can understand
me. A word understood is binding, whether spoken to horse, or man, or
pig. It makes it the more important that we can do so little, must
work so slowly, for the education of the lower animals. It seems to me
an absolute horror that a man should lie to an inferior creature. Just
think--if an angel were to lie to us! What a shock to find we had been
reposing faith in a devil.”
“Excuse me--I thought you said _an angel_!”
“When he lied, would he not be a devil?--But let us follow Memnon, and
as we walk I will tell you more about him.”
He turned to the wood.
“The horse,” I said, pointing, “went that way!”
“Yes,” answered his master; “he knew it was nearer for him to take the
long way round. If I had started him and one of the dogs together, the
horse would have gone that way, and the dog taken the path we are now
following.”
We walked a score or two of yards in silence.
“You promised to tell me more about your wonderful horse!” I said.
“With pleasure. I delight in talking about my poor brothers and
sisters! Most of them are only savages yet, but there would be far
fewer such if we did not treat them as slaves instead of friends. One
day, however, all will be well for them as for us--thank God.”
“I hope so,” I responded heartily. “But please tell me,” I said,
“something more about your Memnon.”
Mr. Skymer thought for a moment.
“Perhaps, after all,” he rejoined, “his best accomplishment is that he
can fetch and carry like a dog. I will tell you one of his feats that
way. But first you must know that, having travelled a good deal, and
in some wild countries, I have picked up things it is well to know,
even if not the best of their kind. A man may fail by not knowing the
second best! I was once out on Memnon, five and twenty miles from
home, when I came to a cottage where I found a woman lying ill. I saw
what was wanted. The country was strange to me, and I could not have
found a doctor. I wrote a little pencil-note, fastened it to the
saddle, and told the horse to go home and bring me what the
housekeeper gave him--and not to spare himself. He went off at a
steady trot of ten or twelve miles an hour. I went into the cottage,
and, awaiting his return, did what I could for the woman. I confess I
felt anxious!”
“You well might,” I said: “why should you say _confess_?”
“Because I had no business to be anxious.”
“It was your business to do all for her you could.”
“I was doing that! If I hadn’t been, I should have had good cause to
be anxious! But I knew that another was looking after her; and to be
anxious was to meddle with his part!”
“I see now,” I answered, and said nothing more for some time.
“What a lather poor Memnon came back in! You should have seen him! He
had been gone nearly five hours, and neither time nor distance
accounted for the state he was in. I did not let him do anything for a
week. I should have had to sit up with him that night, if I had not
been sitting up at any rate. The poor fellow had been caught, and had
made his escape. His bridle was broken, and there were several long
skin wounds in his belly, as if he had scraped the top of a wall set
with bits of glass. How far he had galloped, there was no telling.”
“Not in vain, I hope! The poor woman?”
“She recovered. The medicine was all right in a pocket under the flap
of the saddle. Before morning she was much better, and lived many
years after. Memnon and I did not lose sight of her.--But you should
have seen the huge creature lying on the floor of that cabin like a
worn-out dog, abandoned and content! I rubbed him down carefully, as
well as I could, and tied my poncho round him, before I let him go to
sleep. Then as soon as my patient seemed quieted for the night, I made
up a big fire of her peats, and they slept like two babies, only they
both snored.--The woman beat,” he added with a merry laugh. “It was
the first, almost the only time I ever heard a horse snore.--As we
walked home next day he kept steadily behind me. In general we walked
side by side. Either he felt too tired to talk to me, or he was not
satisfied with himself because of something that had happened the day
before. Perhaps he had been careless, and so allowed himself to be
taken. I do not think it likely.”
“What a loss it will be to you when he dies!” I said.
He looked grave for an instant, then replied cheerfully--
“Of course I shall miss the dear fellow--but not more than he will
miss me; and it will be good for us both.”
“Then,” said I,--a little startled, I confess, “you really think--”
and there I stopped.
“Do _you_ think, Mr. Gowrie,” he rejoined, answering my unpropounded
question, “that a God like Jesus Christ, would invent such a delight
for his children as the society and love of animals, and then let
death part them for ever? I don’t.”
“I am heartily willing to be your disciple in the matter,” I replied.
“I know well,” he resumed, “the vulgar laugh that serves the poor
public for sufficient answer to anything, and the common-place retort:
‘You can’t give a shadow of proof for your theory!’--to which I
answer, ‘I never was the fool to imagine I could; but as surely as you
go to bed at night expecting to rise again in the morning, so surely
do I expect to see my dear old Memnon again when I wake from what so
many Christians call the sleep that knows no waking.’--Think,
Mr. Gowrie, just think of all the children in heaven--what a
superabounding joy the creatures would be to them!--There is one
class, however,” he went on, “which I should like to see wait a while
before they got their creatures back;--I mean those foolish women who,
for their own pleasure, so spoil their dogs that they make other
people hate them, doing their best to keep them from rising in the
scale of God’s creation.”
“They don’t know better!” I said. For every time he stopped, I wanted
to hear what he would say next.
“True,” he answered; “but how much do they want to know the right way
of anything? They have good and lovely instincts--like their dogs, but
do they care that there is a right way and a wrong way of following
them?”
We walked in silence, and were now coming near the other side of the
small wood.
“I hope I shall not interfere with your plans for the day!” I said.
“I seldom have any plans for the day,” he answered. “Or if I have,
they are made to break easily. In general I wait. The hour brings its
plans with it--comes itself to tell me what is wanted of me. It has
done so now. And see, there is Memnon again in attendance on us!”
There, sure enough, was the horse, on the other side of the paling
that here fenced the wood from a well-kept country-road. His long neck
was stretched over it toward his master.
“Memnon,” said Mr. Skymer as we issued by the gate, “I want you to
carry this gentleman home.”
I had often enough in my youth ridden without a saddle, but seldom
indeed without some sort of bridle, however inadequate: I did not, at
the first thought of the thing, relish mounting without one a horse of
which all I knew was that he and his master were on better terms than
I had ever seen man and horse upon before. But even while the thought
was passing through my head, Memnon was lying at my feet, flat as his
equine rotundity would permit. Ashamed of my doubt, I lost not a moment
in placing myself in the position suggested by Sir John Falstaff to
Prince Hal for the defence of his own bulky carcase--astride the body
of the animal, namely. At once he rose and lifted me into the natural
relation of man and horse. Then he looked round at his master, and they
set off at a leisurely pace.
“You have me captive!” I said.
“Memnon and I,” answered Mr. Skymer, “will do what we can to make your
captivity pleasant.”
A silence followed my thanks. In this procession of horse and foot, we
went about half a mile ere anything more was said worth setting
down. Then began evidence that we were drawing nigh to a house: the
grassy lane between hedges in which we had been moving, was gradually
changing its character. First came trees in the hedge-rows. Then the
hedges gave way to trees--a grand avenue of splendid elms and beeches
alternated. The ground under our feet was the loveliest sward, and
between us and the sun came the sweetest shadow. A glad heave but
instant subsidence of the live power under me, let me know Memnon’s
delight at feeling the soft elastic turf under his feet: he had said
to himself, “Now we shall have a gallop!” but immediately checked the
thought with the reflection that he was no longer a colt ignorant of
manners.
“What a lovely road the turf makes!” I said. “It is a lower
sky--solidified for feet that are not yet angelic.”
My host looked up with a brighter smile than he had shown before.
“It is the only kind of road I really like,” he said, “--though turf
has its disadvantages! I have as much of it about the place as it will
bear. Such roads won’t do for carriages!”
“You ride a good deal, I suppose?”
“I do. I was at one time so accustomed to horseback that, without
thinking, I was not aware whether I was on my horse’s feet or my own.”
“Where, may I ask, does my friend who is now doing me the favour to
carry ‘this weight and size,’ come from?”
“He was born in England, but his mother was a Syrian--of one of the
oldest breeds there known. He was born into my arms, and for a week
never touched the ground. Next month, as I think I mentioned, he will
be forty years old!”
“It is a great age for a horse!” I said.
“The more the shame as well as the pity!” he answered.
“Then you think horses might live longer?”
“Much longer than they are allowed to live in this country,” he
answered. “And a part of our punishment is that we do not know them. We
treat them so selfishly that they do not live long enough to become our
friends. At present there are but few men worthy of their friendship.
What else is a man’s admiration, when it is without love or respect or
justice, but a bitter form of despite! It is small wonder there should
be so many stupid horses, when they receive so little education, have
such bad associates, and die so much too young to have gained any ripe
experience to transmit to their posterity. Where would humanity be now,
if we all went before five-and-twenty?”
“I think you must be right. I have myself in my possession at this
moment, given me by one who loved her, an ink-stand made from the hoof
of a pony that died at the age of at least forty-two, and did her part
of the work of a pair till within a year or two of her death.--Poor
little Zephyr!”
“Why, Mr. Gowrie, you talk of her as if she were a Christian!”
exclaimed Mr. Skymer.
“That’s how you talked of Memnon a moment ago! Where is the
difference? Not in the size, though Memnon would make three of
Zephyr!”
“I didn’t say _poor Memnon_, did I? You said _poor Zephyr_! That is
the way Christians talk about their friends gone home to the grand old
family mansion! Why they do, they would hardly like one to tell them!”
“It is true,” I responded. “I understand you now! I don’t think I ever
heard a widow speak of her departed husband without putting _poor_, or
_poor dear_, before his name.--By the way, when you hear a woman speak
of her _late_ husband, can you help thinking her ready to marry
again?”
“It does sound as if she had done with him! But here we are at the
gate!--Call, Memnon.”
The horse gave a clear whinny, gentle, but loud enough to be heard at
some distance. It was a tall gate of wrought iron, but Memnon’s
summons was answered by one who could clear it--though not open it any
more than he: a little bird, which I was not ornithologist enough to
recognize--mainly because of my short-sightedness, I hope--came
fluttering from the long avenue within, perched on the top of the
gate, looked down at our party for a moment as if debating the
prudent, dropped suddenly on Memnon’s left ear, and thence to his
master’s shoulder, where he sat till the gate was opened. The little
one went half-way up the inner avenue with us, making several flights
and returns before he left us.
The boy that opened the gate, a chubby little fellow of seven, looked
up in Mr. Skymer’s face as if he had been his father and king in one,
and stood gazing after him as long as he was in sight. I noticed
also--who could have failed to notice?--that every now and then a bird
would drop from the tree we were passing under, and alight for a
minute on my host’s head. Once when he happened to uncover it, seven
or eight perched together upon it. One tiny bird got caught in his
beard by the claws.
“You cannot surely have tamed _all_ the birds in your grounds!” I
said.
“If I have,” he answered, “it has been by permitting them to be
themselves.”
“You mean it is the nature of birds to be friendly with man?”
“I do. Through long ages men have been their enemies, and so have
alienated them--they too not being themselves.”
“You mean that unfriendliness is not natural to men?”
“It cannot be human to be cruel!”
“How is it, then, that so many boys are careless what suffering they
inflict?”
“Because they have in them the blood of men who loved cruelty, and
never repented of it.”
“But how do you account for those men loving cruelty--for their being
what you say is contrary to their nature?”
“Ah, if I could account for that, I should be at the secret of most
things! All I meant to half-explain was, how it came that so many who
have no wish to inflict suffering, yet are careless of inflicting it.”
I saw that we must know each other better before he would quite open
his mind to me. I saw that though, hospitable of heart, he threw his
best rooms open to all, there were others in his house into which he
did not invite every acquaintance.
The avenue led to a wide gravelled space before a plain, low, long
building in whitish stone, with pillared portico. In the middle of the
space was a fountain, and close to it a few chairs. Mr. Skymer begged
me to be seated. Memnon walked up to the fountain, and lay down, that
I might get off his back as easily as I had got on it. Once down, he
turned on his side, and lay still.
“The air is so mild,” said my host, “I fancy you will prefer this to
the house.”
“Mild!” I rejoined; “I should call it hot!”
“I have been so much in real heat!” he returned. “Notwithstanding my
love of turf, I keep this much in gravel for the sake of the desert.”
I took the seat he offered me, wondering whether Memnon was
comfortable where he lay; and, absorbed in the horse, did not see my
host go to the other side of the basin. Suddenly we were “clothed
upon” with a house which, though it came indeed from the earth, might
well have come direct from heaven: a great uprush of water spread
above us a tent-like dome, through which the sun came with a cool,
broken, almost frosty glitter. We seemed in the heart of a huge
soap-bubble. I exclaimed with delight.
“I thought you would enjoy my sun-shade!” said Mr. Skymer. “Memnon and
I often come here of a hot morning, when nobody wants us. Don’t we,
Memnon?”
The horse lifted his nose a little, and made a low soft noise, a chord
of mingled obedience and delight--a moan of pleasure mixed with a
half-born whinny.
We had not been seated many moments, and had scarcely pushed off the
shore of silence into a new sea of talk, when we were interrupted by
the invasion of half a dozen dogs. They were of all sorts down to no
sort. Mr. Skymer called one of them Tadpole--I suppose because he had
the hugest tail, while his legs were not visible without being looked
for.
“That animal,” said his master, “--he looks like a dog, but who would
be positive what he was!--is the cleverest in the pack. He seems to me
a rare individuality. His ancestors must have been of all sorts, and
he has gathered from them every good quality possessed by each. Think
what a man might be--made up that way!”
“Why is there no such man?” I said.
“There may be some such men. There must be many one day,” he answered,
“--but not for a while yet. Men must first be made willing to be
noble.”
“And you don’t think men willing to be made noble?”
“Oh yes! willing enough, some of them, to be _made_ noble!”
“I do not understand. I thought you said they were not!”
“They are willing enough _to be made_ noble; but that is very
different from being willing _to be_ noble: that takes trouble. How
can any one become noble who desires it so little as not to fight for
it!”
The man drew me more and more. He had a way of talking about things
seldom mentioned except in dull fashion in the pulpit, as if he cared
about them. He spoke as of familiar things, but made you feel he was
looking out of a high window. There are many who never speak of real
things except in a false tone; this man spoke of such without an atom
of assumed solemnity--in his ordinary voice: they came into his mind
as to their home--not as dreams of the night, but as facts of the day.
I sat for a while, gazing up through the thin veil of water at the
blue sky so far beyond. I thought how like that veil was to our little
life here, overdomed by that boundless foreshortening of space. The
lines in Shelley’s _Adonais_ came to me:
“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.”
Then I thought of what my host had said concerning the too short lives
of horses, and wondered what he would say about those of dogs.
“Dogs are more intelligent than horses,” I said: “why do they live a
yet shorter time?”
“I doubt if you would say so in an Arab’s tent,” he returned. “If you
had said, ‘still more affectionate,’ I should have known better how to
answer you.”
“Then I do say so,” I replied.
“And I return, that is just why they live no longer. They do not find
the world good enough for them, die, and leave it.”
“They have a much happier life than horses!”
“Many dogs than some horses, I grant.”
That instant arose what I fancied must be an unusual sound in the
place: two of the dogs were fighting. The master got up. I thought
with myself, “Now we shall see his notions of discipline!” nor had I
long to wait. In his hand was a small riding-whip, which I afterward
found he always carried in avoidance of having to inflict a heavier
punishment from inability to inflict a lighter; for he held that, in
all wrong-doing man can deal with, the kindest thing is not only to
punish, but, with animals especially, to punish at once. He ran to the
conflicting parties. They separated the moment they heard the sound of
his coming. One came cringing and crawling to his feet; the other--it
was the nondescript Tadpole--stood a little way off, wagging his tail,
and cocking his head up in his master’s face. He gave the one at his
feet several pretty severe cuts with the whip, and sent him off. The
other drew nearer. His master turned away and took no notice of him.
“May I ask,” I said, when he returned to his seat, “why you did not
punish both the animals for their breach of the peace?”
“They did not both deserve it.”
“How could you tell that? You were not looking when the quarrel
began!”
“Ah, but you see I know the dogs! One of them--I saw at a glance how
it was--had found a bone, and dog-rule about finding is, that what you
find is yours. The other, notwithstanding, wanted a share. It was
Tadpole who found the bone, and he--partly from his sense of
justice--cannot endure to have his claims infringed upon. Every dog of
them knows that Tadpole must be in the right.”
“He looked as if he expected you to approve of his conduct!”
“Yes, that is the worst of Tadpole! he is so self-righteous as to
imagine he deserves praise for standing on his rights! He is but a
dog, you see, and knows no better!”
“I noticed you disregarded his appeal.”
“I was not going to praise him for nothing!”
“You expect them to understand your treatment?”
“No one can tell how infinitesimally small the beginnings of
understanding, as of life, may be. The only way to make animals
reasonable--more reasonable, I mean--is to treat them as
reasonable. Until you can go down into the abysses of creation, you
cannot know when a nature begins to see a difference in quality
of action.”
“I confess,” I said, “Mr. Tadpole did seem a little ashamed as he went
away.”
“And you see Blanco White at my feet, taking care not to touch
them. He is giving time, he thinks, for my anger to pass.”
He laughed the merriest laugh. The dog looked up eagerly, but dropped
his head again.
If I go on like this, however, I shall have to take another book to
tell the story for which I began the present! In short, I was drawn to
the man as never to another since the friend of my youth went where I
shall go to seek and find him one day--or, more likely, one solemn
night. I was greatly his inferior, but love is a quick divider of
shares: he that gathers much has nothing over, and he that gathers
little has no lack. I soon ceased to think of him as my _new_ friend,
for I seemed to have known him before I was born.
I am going to tell the early part of his history. If only I could tell
it as it deserves to be told! The most interesting story may be so
narrated as that only the eyes of a Shakspere could spy the shine
underneath its dull surface.
He never told me any great portion of the tale of his life
continuously. One thing would suggest another--generally with no
connection in time. I have pieced the parts together myself. He did
indeed set out more than once or twice to give me his history, but
always we got discussing something, and so it was interrupted.
I will not write what I have set in order as if he were himself
narrating: the most modest man in the world would that way be put at a
disadvantage. The constant recurrence of the capital _I_, is apt to
rouse in the mind of the reader, especially if he be himself
egotistic, more or less of irritation at the egotism of the
narrator--while in reality the freedom of a man’s personal utterance
_may_ be owing to his lack of the egotistic. Partly for my
friend’s sake, therefore, I shall tell the story as--what indeed it
is--a narrative of my own concerning him.