Kitobni o'qish: «In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life», sahifa 10

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Chapter Seventeen.
The Old Man’s Dogs

“But there was silence one bright golden day,
Through my own pine-hung mountains.”

The sun shone very brightly next morning; the sky was blue; and a silence, broken only by the constant roar of the torrent, brooded over the bills.

We all went to see, or rather seek, for Professor Dick’s Academy.

But for a long time all in vain, and I was beginning to think the events of last evening must all have taken place in dreamland, when, emerging from the trees, the stalwart form of the old shepherd himself was observed coming towards us. In a few minutes more we were in the cottage.

And there, sure enough was Dick hard at work teaching his class. He was loose, his pupils all caged. We were warned to keep silence, and did so as long as we could.

Dick repeated words and sentences over and over again, and some of the pupils were most attentive and apt. And the way some of the more earnest stretched down their necks, cocked their heads and listened, was amusing in the extreme.

But there was one bad boy in the class – a saucy-looking cockatoo, with a red garland round his neck.

“I want a bit o’ sugar,” was all he would say, and he kept on at it. “A bit o’ sugar, a bit o’ sugar; I want a bit o’ sugar.”

The Professor went towards the delinquent’s cage, as if to reason with him; but the naughty bird laughed derisively, and finished off by making a grab at Dick through the bars.

The old man at once threw a black cover over the cage, upon which the bird’s tune was changed, and in the dark he seemed to bitterly bemoan his fate, repeating in a most lugubrious voice the words – “Poor Polly! Poor dear little Polly.”

One of us laughed.

The spell was broken, and the Professor would teach no more.

“My birds will have a half-holiday,” said the old shepherd, laughing.

He came with us to the caravans, and greatly delighted he was. We gave him books and magazines, and that same morning shifted camp farther east, promising, if ever we came that road again, to visit the shepherd and Professor Dick’s Academy.

The story of the evening was —

The Old Man’s Dogs

“I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.”

When a boy at school, of all my favourite authors, Bulwer Lytton was facile princeps. Walter Scott fascinated, and Cooper enthralled me, while the “Arabian Nights” held me spell-bound; but there was a charm to me about all the writings of the first-mentioned novelist and poet that nothing else could equal.

Girls often have what they call “a hearty cry” over the book or story which moves their feelings; boys do not. I do not remember ever putting down a book in order to weep. Such a matter-of-fact way of going to work never occurred to me; yet, while reading, tears have often filled my eyes – yes, and sometimes do– so as to interfere materially with the distinctness of the print I hold before me.

Now, there is in my opinion no one less to be admired than an ungrateful person. One might surely be pardoned for thinking that ingratitude ranks as a great sin in the sight of Heaven. But we are not to judge, far less condemn. It were often better, perhaps, to extend pity rather than anger to one who has been found guilty of ingratitude, for so universal, as an inborn sentiment, is the feeling of gratefulness, not only in man, but in the animals he has domesticated, that the absence of it would seem to denote an imperfection of brain-structure rather than anything else.

Those who have to do with children should not forget that gratitude is a feeling that can be fostered and cultivated, even in those among them in whose minds it exists only in embryo. But if it can be cultivated, so also can it be crushed; that, too, should be borne in mind.

What a power gentle words and kind persuasion have over even the “brute” nature, as it is called! You may always lead, though you cannot always drive. My Newfoundland dog is very fond of being in the house. “Bob” has a temper of his own to strangers, and a strong will of his own at all times. Sometimes it is necessary that he should go to his kennel and mount guard when he would far rather stay indoors. If, on such occasions, I speak somewhat sharply to him, he refuses to move. No force could get him from under the table; but a few gentle pats on the head, and a few kindly words, succeed at once. The great dog jumps up and comes trotting along with me, looking up in my face as much as to say:

“Always talk like that, master, and I’ll go through fire and water to please you.”

Says Phil. G. Hamerton, “Whoever beats a dog gives evidence of his own personal stupidity; for a dog always tries his best to understand, and you can make things clearest to him by gentle teaching, if you know how to teach at all.”

I had to part with a lovely spaniel dog some years ago. We had had many a happy day together in the woods and fields, and the poor animal got exceedingly fond of me. Well, it was two years after that I met him by chance at a great dog show. I had passed his bench three or four times without knowing him. I only noticed that a certain spaniel was making frantic efforts to break his chain, and rush into somebody’s arms; and it was not until I at last stood opposite to him that it occurred to me to look at the catalogue, when I found it was my own old “Beau” that I had not known among the multitude of strange dogs, all of the same colour and shape. Ah! but he had known me in the multitude. But I am so thankful I noticed the dear fellow, and did all I could to make him happy for one short day at least. Suppose I had gone away and never said a word to him – never given one kind word or loving caress; it would have seemed to him so cruel and ungrateful!

On the stormiest winter’s day I seldom wear a hat about my own grounds. And shall I tell you why? It is because I cannot bear to see dogs disappointed, for whenever I do put on my hat, the dogs, with the impulsiveness characteristic of their race, jump to the conclusion that I am going for a walk, and that of course they are going as well.

But referring to Bulwer Lytton’s novels, or Lord Lytton’s, if you prefer it, there is a passage or scene in one of his charming tales that, when a boy, I could not read without the tears rising up and blinding me, and that I cannot think of, even as I write, without emotion.

An old man has none to care for him or tend him on earth save a daughter, whom he tenderly loves. But he finds a letter which proves her worse than false, worse than ungrateful, for she is, in that epistle, coolly reckoning and calculating on his death at no distant day. What a shock to the father! He is no longer any use; is a positive encumbrance; and she, whom he had so thoroughly trusted, she, too, wishes him away. He calls his dogs to him. They come to his knee, and with wistful, wondering eyes gaze up into his face, for they can see poor master is in grief. And his heart feels ready to break, as he pats his poor dumb friends and exclaims:

“Will there be no one even to look after the old man’s dogs when he is gone?”

There is a species of cruelty to animals, happily, I believe, very rare. I refer to that which induces a person to treat harshly and unkindly some dumb creature for the simple reason that it belongs to an enemy. Whatever of harm an animal’s master may have done me, it, at all events, is guiltless of evil. Reference to this is made in Holy Writ, and if we turn to Exodus twenty-three, verse 5, we read the following: “If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying down under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him.”

On the other hand, the pets of those we love become doubly dear to us in the absence of their real master or mistress. Yonder, let us say, is little Maggie’s pet canary. Maggie is always the merriest of the merry when she is about the house. It would be difficult indeed to say whether the canary or she sings the louder, or looks the brighter or the happier all day long. But there were tears in Maggie’s eyes on the day she went away, and when she went to the cage and said, “Bye, bye, birdie,” it was all she could do to keep from crying. And the bird seemed sad too, and does not sing so blithely now; and every morning, when any one enters the breakfast-room, he extends a very long neck indeed, for he is looking for and expecting the loved one. Now would it not be cruel if the person in whose charge that birdie is left were not more than kind to it in Maggie’s absence?

Yonder is Johnnie’s rough wee terrier dog. O, what romps and games and rambles far and near Johnnie and that little dog did use to have! But Johnnie has gone to sea. The little dog mourns for him; any one can notice that. But he does not mourn for him as one dead, for often when a step somewhat like his master’s sounds on the gravel, how wildly the little dog rushes to door or window to have a look, and how very low his tail droops as he returns disconsolate to his seat on the hearth. May Heaven send Johnnie safely home again; and won’t he find his doggie sleek and fat? It will not be our fault if he does not.

If any one were to ask me how long I supposed a dog would remember an absent master, I should answer – and I should speak advisedly when I did so:

“A dog will remember and mourn for an absent master until his return, no matter how long that may be; or until the dog’s own loving eyes are closed in death.”

About the mystery of death itself, I question if dogs know very much. They must at any rate imagine that there is a possibility of the dead one returning again to life.

Does the reader remember the story of the gentleman who lost his way among the mountains and was killed, his body being found a quarter of a year afterwards, with his faithful dog still beside it? Or Scott’s beautiful lines on the subject, a few of which I cannot resist the temptation to quote?

“Dark-green was the spot ’mid the brown mountain heather,
    Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in decay,
Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather.
    Till the mountain-winds wasted the tenantless clay.
Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended,
For, faithful in death, his mute favourite attended,
The much-loved remains of his master defended,
    And chased the hill-fox and the raven away.
How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber?
    When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start?
How many long days and long weeks didst thou number.
    Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart?”

I was travelling one time in Ireland in a jaunting-car which I had hired for some days. I had no other companion save a large Newfoundland dog, for whose comfort the seat of the car was hardly broad enough. But there was the driver to talk to, and nothing loth was Paddy either to carry on the greater share of the conversation.

It was the sweet summer-time, and whatever my companion the dog did, I know I felt as happy and light-hearted as the birds.

“See them two dogs?” said the driver to me, as we passed an old-fashioned gate, about a mile from the village of C – .

“Yes,” I replied, “pull up a moment, Paddy, till I have a look at them.”

A pair of lovely Basset hounds they were, a dark or liver-coloured and a light one, coupled together by a short chain. They were waiting for some one, apparently; the white one turned his head to look at us, but the other was all eagerness, all attention. He seemed to me to hear a footstep.

“Waiting for some one, I should think,” I said to my driver.

“Indeed, yes, sorr,” replied Paddy. “It is waiting for their master they do be. It is waiting for him they’ll never see again, they are, sorr. They call them ‘the old man’s dogs,’ and every evening at five o’clock out they trot, just as you see them, and there they stand, sorr, and there they listen for hours and hours together; then trot back, with hanging heads and tails, sorr; but they’ll never see him more.”

“Is he dead, then?” I inquired.

“Yes, sorr,” said Paddy; “but we’ll drive on a bit if we’re going to talk.”

I gave one last glance towards the dogs, and the look of eager expectancy in the dark one’s eyes I shall not soon forget.

“It was all owing to treachery, I think, sorr,” said Paddy, as we drew up under a drooping lime-tree.

“But there it was; the old man B – used to stay much in foreign parts, but he came home at last to settle down. He had an only daughter with him, that he loved right dearly, and barring her neither kith nor kin, that ever we could see, belonging to him.

“He was always cheerful, sorr, and she seemed always happy. He used to go to L – every day; his carriage waited him on his return at the station, and them two faithful brutes, sorr, at the old gate. So everything seemed to go as cheerfully as wedding-bells, and just as easy like.

“There was a count, they called him, that used often to stay at the mansion, sorr. Whether he had anything to do with it or not, it’s not myself that can tell you. But I won’t keep you waiting, for it’s a cruel story. The old man came home one day to an empty house. He was never the same after. Broken-down like he was, and didn’t seem to care for anything but them two dogs. Well, just in one month, sorr, the daughter came back. She never saw her father alive, though. He was carried in the same day at the old gate, dead, sorr. He had dropped down in a fit, or, as some do say, of a kind of heartbreak.

“I needn’t tell you more, sorr. There is nobody at the old manor now. She is abroad, and just guess you, sorr, what her feelings are if ever she thinks, as think she must. The house is a kind of tumbledown like, and there is no one ever likely to live there again owing to the ghost, you know.”

“I don’t care about the ghost, Paddy,” I said; “but what about the dogs? Where do they live?”

“Just inside the old gate, sorr, at the gardener’s cottage. And it’s waiting they do be, sorr, waiting, waiting. Hup! mare, hup!”

Chapter Eighteen.
Up the Vale of Don. – A Peep at Paradise

“Between these banks we in abundance find,
Variety of trouts of many different kind;
Upon whose sides, within the water clear,
The yellow specks like burnished gold appear.
And great red trouts, whose spots like rubies fine.
Mixed ’mong silver scales refulgent shine.”

The summer sped away.

But early autumn still found us among the bonnie blooming heather.

We were real gipsies now. We had settled down long since to our strangely delightful nomadic life. We were both healthy and happy. There were roses on the cheeks of Maggie May, and – let me whisper it – freckles on her nose.

Frank was as brown as a brick, and even Bob and the caravan cat had increased in size, and looked intensely self-satisfied, and on good terms with themselves.

This chapter finds me fishing in the Don; Maggie May is basking in the sunshine, book in hand, and the rest of our crew are invisible.

“There is something radically wrong, Robert,” I said, casting my fly for the fortieth time, and so coaxingly too, over the very spot where I knew more than one fine finny fellow was hiding.

“Something radically wrong, Bob; either the sky is too clear or the water too bright, or there isn’t wind enough, or I haven’t got the right fly on. But never a bite and never a ghost of a nibble have I had for the last half-hour. I’m tired of it; sick of it. But they are there, Bob, for many a one we have landed on luckier days than this. Besides, what says the old, old poem?”

Bob wagged his immensity of a tail by way of reply, but he never took his eyes off a hole in the bank, that he had been as earnestly watching as I had been flogging the pool.

Whip! Splash! I thought I had one then. And I believe I would have had one, only out of its hole sprang a big black vole, and took to the water. In floundered Hurricane Bob after it, and there was an end to my fishing.

Bob came out of the water presently, and stood between me and the sun, and shook himself several times, causing a rainbow to appear around him each time he did so.

I wound in my tackle, and put up my rod.

Half an hour afterwards, Maggie May, Bob, and I were on the braes above Balhaggarty. We lay ourselves down on a sweet mossy bank, bedecked with many a wild flower; peacock butterflies are floating in the sunshine, and great velvety bees make drowsy music in the air; and not far off, on a branch of a brown-trunked fir-tree, cock-robin is singing his clear, crisp little song. Before us, beneath us, and on every side, is spread out one of the fairest landscapes in all the wild romantic North. Woods and water, hills and dales, stretch away as far as the eye can reach. Yonder is the wimpling Ury, meandering through the peaceful valley to join the winding Don. Near its banks stands, or lies, or rather lies and sleeps, and seems to dream, the village of Inverurie. Very blue are the roofs of its houses in the surrounding greenery, very white are its granite walls, and its spires and steeples look like snow or marble in the autumn sunshine.

That was the village home of one of Scotia’s noblest bards – the gentle, genial Thom. Though six-and-thirty years have fled since they laid him to rest in the moors, there is more than one old man and woman living in the village there yet, who knew him in his prime, and have stories well worth listening to, to tell of the poet of the Ury; but as long as pine-trees shall nod on Scottish hills, as long as the dark plumes of Caledonia’s sons shall wave in the van of battle, so long will Thom’s name be known in the land of his nativity, and among his countrymen all over the world.

Far to the right of the spot where we are reclining, the giant mountain, Ben-na-chie, rears its proud head into the air.

It is a solitary hill, and yet tourists to this land of romance ought to know that from its summit the view obtained on a fine day is probably more beautiful, varied, and extensive than any other I know of in “a’ braid Scotland.”

It is a solitary hill – a wild, bold, cliffy mass – yet —

“The clouds love to rest on this mountain’s dark breast, Ere they
journey afar o’er the boundless blue sea.”

A solitary hill – and O! if it could but speak, what tales it could tell: eeriesome, drearisome tales, tales of intrigue and plot, plot domestic and plot political, tales of battle and slaughter and strife – for not a glen for miles and miles around it, not a moorland, not a hill the heather on which has not over and over again been dyed with the blood of fiercely fighting foemen.

Nor were the struggles that took place among these hills and forests and glens of merely local importance; for Aberdeenshire has cut as deep notches in the history of this country as any other shire I wot of.

Down yonder is Bruce’s howe, or cave, by the side of the Don at Ardtannies, celebrated in history as the place where the sick king lay, broken in health and fortune, and where he had his memorable interview with the spider, which so raised his hopes that he feared not shortly after to sally forth, give battle to and defeat the fierce, false Cumyn.

Then Bruce laid Buchan waste. After this the whole North of Scotland soon owned his sway, and five years after the sanguinary battle of Inverurie here Bannockburn was fought, and Scotland freed of its would-be conquerors.

But to-day we are seated on the very edge of the great battle-field of Harlaw.

This battle was fought here on a summer’s day in July 1411. The Duke of Albany, then regent of the kingdom, had managed by hook or by crook – more likely it was by crook – to secure the earldom of Ross to his son John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, although by rights it belonged to the wife of Donald, Lord of the Isles. Now Donald did not see any reason why he should submit to so barefaced a robbery. The Donalds and the McDonalds of the Isles have always been a bold and straightforward set of billies. The reader may remember the anecdote that is related of one of these Lords of the Isles. At a royal feast, having entered somewhat late, he had seated himself at the far end of the board, seeing which the king sent a messenger to ask him to come and sit by him, at the head of the table.

“Tell his Majesty,” was the reply, given loud enough for all to hear, “that wherever McDonald o’ the Isles sits is the head of the table.”

Donald of the Isles sent the fiery cross through the length and breadth of his domains, and soon crossed into the mainland at the head of his followers. He fought and conquered at Dingwall. Then captured Inverness, swept through the Highlands, and encamped here at Harlaw, determined to push on next day and attack the Aberdonians in their city of granite.

“Give their roofs to the flames,
And their flesh to the eagles.”

Donald had reckoned without his host, however. That host was the bold Earl of Mar, who with a splendid little army of not more than a thousand men, officered by the flower of the county, hurried out and gave Donald battle here on the hill-head of Harlaw. Donald’s wild followers numbered 10,000, though they were badly armed. But it was Greek to Greek, it was Scot to Scot, and the conflict was a terrible one.

As I look around me on this lovely autumn evening, my imagination can easily depict the conflict and people the plain once more with the brave knights, and men-at-arms, the mailed Lowlanders that made up the battalions of Mar, and with the wild kilted warriors that formed the hosts of Donald of the West.

Yonder is Mar himself leading the centre fight, on his right the Gordons, Leiths and Leslies, on his left the Keiths and Forbeses, and many other brave clans; all feuds are forgotten for a time, they make common cause against the foe. The Highlanders fight on foot, armed only with dirk and sword, the Lowlanders ride them down and hew them down in hundreds, but the odds against them are fearful; all day even till nightfall the battle rages, when in the darkness Donald draws off the remainder of his forces and slowly retreats by Ben-na-chie; leaving nearly one thousand dead on the field, while Mar is left presumably master thereof, but too sore beaten and far too weak to leave it.

The terrible nature of the struggle may be gleaned from the fact that of the thousand Lowland knights and men-of-arms, who had entered the battle, hardly four hundred remained alive. What a sad day for the gentry of Angus and Mearns! In many cases every male of the house was slain. Leslie of Balquhain fell with every one of his six bold sons, and besides others, Sir James Scrymgeour, Sir Alexander Ogilvie and son, the Constable of Dundee, the Provost of Aberdeen, Sir Alexander Irvine, Sir Thomas Moray, Gilbert de Greenlaw, Sir Robert Maul, etc, etc.

But Donald was conquered and Aberdeen was saved.

Just a word about the Ury for the reader’s sake, for who knows but these lines I write may lead some tourist who is fond of the romantic, fond of the beautiful, and fond of fishing, to sojourn for a time in these sequestered glens.

The trout-fishing then of the Ury and of many a brawling wee burn around here, and which are literally alive “wi sonsy fish,” can easily be obtained on application to the magistrates, and the kindly landlady of the Kintore Arms has also liberty to grant the boon to those who make her house their home.

“The Ury,” says Skinner, “moves onward in noiseless sweetness, winding and winding, as if aware of its own brief course, and all unwilling to leave the braes that hap the heroes of Harlaw. By-and-by it creeps mournfully past the sequestered graveyard of Inverurie, and kisses the Bass, and is then swallowed up in the blue waters of the Don.”

The Bass is a small round hill evidently made by human hands, and supposed to be the burial-place of an ancient Pictish king. I visit the quiet graveyard. I have reasons for doing so – sad ones. I might say with Thom —

“Move noiseless, gently Ury, around yon grassy bed,
And I’ll love thee, gentle Ury, where’er my footsteps tread;
For sooner shall thy fairy wave return from yonder sea,
Than I forget yon lowly grave and all it hides from me.”

The roads here are glorious, and what matter the hills when the air is so fresh and invigorating; if there are braes that one must walk up, there are also braes down which one can roll, at any speed one pleases without a touch on treadle. And how delightful it is to linger on these breezy hill-tops, and while positively drinking in health with every breath of the ozone-laden air, leisurely, dreamily scan the bold and matchless panorama spread out before us.

Yonder is Ben-na-chie again. You never can get past Ben-na-chie. Go where you like in this region, it is always frowning over your path just before you, or alongside, or on the horizon to the right or to the left.

There is “an ower true story” connected with that mountain which might well and easily furnish subject-matter for a three-volume novel. The Earl of Mar’s Master of Horse at the Harlaw was a Sir Thomas Leslie, of Balquhain, a wild and lawless man of unbridled passions. On the very summit of yonder mountain he built a fortress, to which he was in the habit of carrying off young women of beauty sufficient to attract him. One of these was Chief Allan’s daughter, the Fair Maid of Strathdon. In like manner his son bore away the Fair Maid of Kemnay, who was betrothed to young Sir John Forbes of Drumminnon. Sir John soon after attacked and burned the mansion or castle of Balquhain, and Sir Andrew Leslie, in revenge, sallied down from his fortress and laid waste the lands of the Forbeses with fire and sword. So much for the Fair Maid of Kemnay, and here is the village itself. High up on a table-land it is situated, among pine-woods and quarries, every house is a charming cottage, built of the whitest of granite. Surely poverty is unknown in such a place, and people here must live for a century at the very least! I’d like to come to Kemnay some time and live for a month in perfect peace, far from the bustle and worry of city life; to live and laze, and fish and dream – perchance to write a book.

Almost buried among trees is Monymusk, as primitive in every way as the grand old hills around it, with only one hotel, or rather inn, but a very cosy one; and O! so quiet is everything here, that in the silence of the night, gazing from the coupé when the moon was silvering the mountain-tops, I have positively heard the field-mice sneeze.

About a quarter of a mile from Monymusk is New Paradise, a kind of a sylvan fairy-land. Here are miles of charming walks, here are rustic-seats, and wells, and streams and bridges, and arbours, and a lake, the whole embosomed in woods, in which are many a bosky dell beloved of birds and all kinds of wild forest creatures. There are little glades, where ferns and brackens grow nearly ten feet high; it is sweet to see the soft evening sunshine shimmering down from among the trees, and falling on these, their greenery relieved by patches of warm autumn brown, and by the crimson lights of tall foxgloves.

Do lovers come here in the evening? We never see them. We have the sweet place all to ourselves, and when we want to change the scene we journey farther on, and soon enter a gloomy defile or forest ravine. This is Paradise Old. Its gateway is a huge jawbone of a whale; for anything I know to the contrary, it may have been the identical whale that swallowed up Jonah. The tourist, at all events, feels swallowed up as soon as he has entered. The long avenue that lies before him is one of the most remarkable in Scotland. It is on moss you are walking, at each side are trees – larches, spruces, and firs, as straight as arrows, and fully one hundred and twenty feet in height, the stems of which two men can hardly touch fingers round. To your right, dimly seen, is the roaring Don, beyond it cliffs and braes, covered with forest and fern, heather and blaeberries.

You come at last to a large circle of gigantic beeches and limes, eighteen in all, inside which seats and tables have been placed, though they are now but little used.

The most remarkable thing about these wondrous trees is that they have grown almost straight, their stems are mighty pillars, and even their branches have gone upwards, skywards, as if seeking the light, the result being a vast and leafy colosseum forming a dome for over a hundred feet high.

The silence is unbroken save for the steady hum of the river, or the occasional cry of some wild bird, and as he looks upwards or gazes around him, a feeling of awe steals over the beholder, which cannot be repressed.

There is in the valley of the majestic Don many a village where the tourist might dwell for a time with a certainty of enjoyment. The scenery everywhere is grand and noble; it is all a classic land, and eminently historical; in every glen a battle has been fought, every parish has its castle ruins, every castle has a story of its own, and be you artist, author, actor, or antiquary, or merely an invalid seeking rest and health, you cannot do better than visit —