Part 5 (1/2)
”What is a louis d'or?” cried three of my children; and ”What is brandy?” asked the other four.
”I smell valerian,” said I; on which they poked out their seven noses, and I ran at them with my spines, for a father who is not an Encyclopaedia on all fours must adopt _some_ method of checking the inquisitiveness of the young.
One more quotation must be made from the end of the story, where Father Hedgehog gives a list of the fates that befell his children:
Number one came to a sad end. What on the face of the wood made him think of pheasants' eggs I cannot conceive. I'm sure I never said anything about them! It was whilst he was scrambling along the edge of the covert, that he met the Fox, and very properly rolled himself into a ball. The Fox's nose was as long as his own, and he rolled my poor son over and over with it, till he rolled him into the stream. The young urchins swim like fishes, but just as he was scrambling to sh.o.r.e, the Fox caught him by the waistcoat and killed him. I do hate slyness!
It seems scarcely conceivable that any one can sympathize sufficiently with a Hedgehog as to place himself in the latter's position, and share its paternal anxieties,--but I think Julie was able to do so, or, at any rate, her translations of the Hedgepig's whines were so _ben trovati_, they may well stand until some better interpreter of the languages of the brute creation rises up amongst us. As another instance of her breadth of sympathy with beasts, let us turn to ”A Week Spent in a Gla.s.s Pond” (which also came out in _Aunt Judy's Magazine_ for 1876), and quote her summary of the Great Water-beetle's views on life:
After living as I can, in all three--water, dry land, and air,--I certainly prefer to be under water. Any one whose appet.i.te is as keen, and whose hind-legs are as powerful as mine, will understand the delights of hunting, and being hunted, in a pond; where the light comes down in fitful rays and reflections through the water, and gleams among the hanging roots of the frog-bit, and the fading leaves of the water-starwort, through the maze of which, in and out, hither and thither, you pursue and are pursued, in cool and skilful chase, by a mixed company of your neighbours, who dart, and shoot, and dive, and come and go, and any one of whom, at any moment, may either eat you or be eaten by you. And if you want peace and quiet, where can one bury oneself so safely and completely as in the mud? A state of existence without mud at the bottom, must be a life without repose!
I must here venture to remark, that the chief and lasting value of whatever both my sister and my mother wrote about animals, or any other objects in Nature, lies in the fact that they invariably took the utmost pains to verify whatever statements they made relating to those objects. Spiritual Laws can only be drawn from the Natural World when they are based on Truth.
Julie spared no trouble in trying to ascertain whether Hedgehogs _do_ or do not eat pheasants' eggs; she consulted _The Field_, and books on sport, and her sporting friends, and when she found it was a disputed point, she determined to give the Hedgepig the benefit of the doubt.
Then the taste for valerian, and the fox's method of capture, were drawn from facts, and the gruesome details as to who ate who in the Gla.s.s Pond were equally well founded!
This (1876) volume of the Magazine is rich in contributions from Julie, the reason being that she was stronger in health whilst she lived at Aldershot than during any other period of her life. The sweet dry air of the ”Highwayman's Heath”--bared though it was of heather!--suited her so well, she could sleep with her hut windows open, and go out into her garden at any hour of the evening without fear of harm. She liked to stroll out and listen to ”Retreat” being sounded at sundown, especially when it was the turn of some regiment with pipes to perform the duty; they sounded so shrill and weird, coming from the distant hill through the growing darkness.
[Ill.u.s.tration: OUR LATEST PET--A REFUGEE PUP, WHOM WE HAVE SAVED FROM THE COMMON HANGMAN.]
We held a curious function one hot July evening during Retreat, when, the Fates being propitious, it was the turn of the 42nd Highlanders to play. My sister had taken compa.s.sion on a stray collie puppy a few weeks before, and adopted him; he was very soft-coated and fascinating in his ways, despite his gawky legs, and promised to grow into a credit to his race. But it seemed he was too finely bred to survive the ravages of distemper, for, though he was tenderly nursed, he died.
A wreath of flowers was hung round his neck, and, as he lay on his bier, Julie made a sketch of him, with the inscription, ”The Little Colley, Eheu! Taken in, June 14. In spite of care, died July 1.
_Speravimus meliora_.” Major Ewing, wearing a broad Scotch bonnet, dug a grave in the garden, and as we had no ”dinner-bell” to m.u.f.fle, we waited till the pipers broke forth at sundown with an appropriate air, and then lowered the little Scotch dog into his resting-place.
During her residence at Aldershot Julie wrote three of her longest books--”A Flat Iron for a Farthing,” ”Six to Sixteen,” and ”Jan of the Windmill,” besides all the shorter tales and verses that she contributed to the Magazine between 1870 and 1877. The two short tales which seem to me her very best came out in 1876, namely, ”Our Field”
(about which I have already spoken) and ”The Blind Man and the Talking Dog.” Both the stories were written to fit some old German woodcuts, but they are perfectly different in style; ”Our Field” is told in the language and from the fresh heart of a Child; whilst the ”Blind Man”
is such a picture of life from cradle to grave--aye, and stretching forward into the world beyond,--as could only have come forth from the experiences of Age. But though this be so, the lesson shown of how the Boy's story foreshadows the Man's history, is one which cannot be learned too early.
Julie never pictured a dearer dog than the Peronet whom she originated from the fat stumpy-tailed puppy who is seen playing with the children in the woodcut to ”Our Field.”
People sometimes asked us what kind of a dog he was, but we never knew, except that he was the nicest possible kind.... Peronet was as fond of the Field as we were. What he liked were the little birds. At least, I don't know that he liked them, but they were what he chiefly attended to. I think he knew that it was our field, and thought he was the watch-dog of it; and whenever a bird settled down anywhere, he barked at it, and then it flew away, and he ran barking after it till he lost it; by that time another had settled down, and then Peronet flew at him, all up and down the hedge. He never caught a bird, and never would let one sit down, if he could see it.
Then what a vista is opened by the light that is ”left out” in the concluding words:--
I know that Our Field does not exactly belong to us. I wonder whom it does belong to? Richard says he believes it belongs to the gentleman who lives at the big red house among the trees. But he must be wrong; for we see that gentleman at church every Sunday, but we never saw him in Our Field.
And I don't believe anybody could have such a field of their very own, and never come to see it, from one end of summer to the other.
It is almost impossible to quote portions of the ”Blind Man” without marring the whole. The story is so condensed--only four pages in length; it is one of the most striking examples of my sister's favourite rule in composition, ”never use two words where one will do.” But from these four brief pages we learn as much as if four volumes had been filled with descriptions of the characters of the Mayor's son and Aldegunda,--from her birthday, on which the boy grumbled because ”she toddles as badly as she did yesterday, though she's a year older,” and ”Aldegunda sobbed till she burst the strings of her hat, and the boy had to tie them afresh,”--to the day of their wedding, when the Bridegroom thinks he can take possession of the Blind Man's Talking Dog, because the latter had promised to leave his master and live with the hero, if ever he could claim to be perfectly happy--happier than him whom he regarded as ”a poor wretched old beggar in want of everything.”
As they rode together in search of the Dog:
Aldegunda thought to herself--”We are so happy, and have so much, that I do not like to take the Blind Man's dog from him”; but she did not dare to say so. One--if not two--must bear and forbear to be happy, even on one's wedding-day.
And, when they reached their journey's end, Lazarus was no longer ”the wretched one ... miserable, poor, and blind,” but was numbered amongst the blessed Dead, and the Dog was by his grave:
”Come and live with me, now your old master is gone,” said the young man, stooping over the dog. But he made no reply.
”I think he is dead, sir,” said the gravedigger.
”I don't believe it,” said the young man, fretfully. ”He was an Enchanted Dog, and he promised I should have him when I could say what I am ready to say now. He should have kept his promise.” But Aldegunda had taken the dog's cold head into her arms, and her tears fell fast over it.