Part 18 (1/2)
”Some time afterwards I found myself standing at a book-seller's window looking at a picture, a s.h.i.+p, a gallant s.h.i.+p in a gale of wind.
”How I longed to be at sea then! How I hated the bustle and stir and talking and noise all round me! That splendid s.h.i.+p--the sea was wild and rough all around her, the spray das.h.i.+ng over her bows; there would be the roar of the wind through rigging and shroud, and the wild scream of sea bird rising high over the dash of the waves. She bore it well; the sheets were taut; the sails were rounded out and full. How I longed to be at sea!
”A hand was laid on my shoulder. I started and looked up. No need to start.
”A kindly face looked down into mine.
”'You are in grief of some kind, my boy,' he said, this white-haired old gentleman. 'Nay, don't be too proud to admit it. Pride has been the downfall of the Highland race.'
”'If you please, sir,' I replied, boldly enough now, 'the Highlanders are not a downfallen race.'
”'I did not mean it in that way,' he said, smiling at my vehemence.
'But come with me, boy; I know we will be friendly.'
”Where he took me, or what he said to me, I need not tell you.
”Suffice it to say that next day we left Scotland and journeyed south by rail, and I wept--yes, I do not now think it shame to say so, though I struggled then to hide my tears--I wept to cross the border.
”'It will be such a pleasant change for you, my dear boy,' said good old Major Walton--for that was the gentleman's name, and he had quite taken to me after hearing all my story--'a delightful change indeed after your own bleak, cold, wild hills. We have a very pretty home in Hamps.h.i.+re.
You'll soon forget you were ever anywhere else.'
”The Major's home was indeed a very nice one; close to the borders of the New Forest it was, and not a great way from the sea.
”But ah! Archie, lad, everything was very foreign to me; the very trees looked strange and uncouth, especially the docked pollards, that stood by the banks of the sluggish streams. The style of the houses was strange to me, and the lingo and talk of the people, who, in my opinion, were terribly ignorant.
”The Major was kindness itself, and so were his wife, her sister, and two children. The major had but one hobby--music. He played the violin himself, and he told me honestly that his chief reason for 'taking me'-- these are his very words--was because I played with such feeling.
”My evenings were happy enough in this English home of mine; my days I spent in the garden, where I was allowed to work, or in the great forest. You must not imagine, Archie, the New Forest is anything like a deer forest in our own land. There are in it no wild mountains, no deep dark dells, no beetling crags and cliffs, no cataracts, no foaming torrents; the red deer does not toss his wide antlers here and fly proudly away at your approach, nor far above you in the sky do you see the bird of Jove circling upwards round the sun.
”Wilson would never have said about the New Forest,--
”'What lovely magnificence stretches around!
Each sight how sublime, how awful each sound; All hushed and serene, like a region of dreams, The mountains repose 'mid the roar of the streams.'
”But many a long day I spent roaming about in this forest, nevertheless.
”I was charmed with the solitary grandeur of the place. I had no idea it was so extensive either, or so varied in its beauties. Why, here one might wander about for weeks and never weary, for he would always be coming to something new. Is this the reason, I wonder, that it is called the _New_ Forest? New in point of time it certainly cannot be termed, for everything in it and about it is old, extremely old. The oaks are gnarled and wrinkled, and grey with age; its elms and its ash trees, its limes and its alders, are bent and distorted by the touch of time, and the lichens that cling to their stems only add to their general appearance a look of h.o.a.riness that is far from unpleasing to the eye.
”Then the heather which covers the large sweeps of moorland that you see here and there is very st.u.r.dy and strong, while from the furze or whins boats' masts could be made.
”The creatures, too, that one sees while walking through this forest, seem birds and beasts of some bygone time, and look as if they hardly, if ever, saw a human being from one year's end to the other.
”The hares or rabbits, instead of scurrying away at your approach, sit leisurely on one end while they wash their faces and study you. The blackbirds and the mavises hardly trouble themselves to cease their song even when you walk close by the trees on which they are perched. The great beetles and other members of the coleoptera tribe are far too busy to take the slightest notice of your presence, and the great velvety bees go on working and humming just as if there were no such creature as you within a thousand miles of them.
”Then the voles or water rats that live in the depths of this truly English forest are not the least curious specimens of animal life to be found therein. If you happen to be reclining anywhere near a pool that by long-established custom belongs to them alone, before many minutes one, if not two of them, will come out to stare and wonder at you; they, like the hares, sit up on one end to conduct their scrutiny; and they gaze and gaze and gaze again, digging their finger joints or knuckles into their eyes, in a half-human kind of a way, to squeeze out the water, and clear their sight for one more wondering look.”
[My country readers, who love nature, must have noticed the voles at this queer performance.]
”What is he at all? Where did he come from? What is he going to do?