Kenneth McAlpine Part 18

"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?

These are the questions those voles seem trying in vain to solve.

"Here in this New Forest is a silence seldom broken save by the song of bird or cry of some wild creature in pain, while all around you is a wealth of floral beauty and verdure that is charming in the extreme.

"Yes, Archie, I came ere autumn was over to love that forest well. I was not selfish enough, though, to keep all the pleasures of it quite to myself, and the Major's children often accompanied me in my rambles. I used to read Burns and Ossian to them. They liked that, but they liked the flute far better. It appealed straight to their senses.

"But when autumn pa.s.sed away, when the leaves fell, and the fields were bleak and bare, at night, when the wind moaned around the house which I now called home, then, Archie, I used to dream I heard the surf beating in on the rugged sh.o.r.es of my native land. I would start and listen, and long to be once more in Scotland.

"I went, one day, to the forest all alone; I went to think.

"'What are you staying here for?' perhaps said one little thought.

'Major Walton may leave you money when he dies.'

"I smothered that thought at its birth, and crushed many more like it.

"Kind good old Major Walton! I must tear myself away; I must be independent; I must push my own way in the world.

"'Heaven help me to do so,' I prayed. Then I took out the little old Bible Nancy had given me, Archie, and I found some comfort there.

"I was putting it back again in my bosom when a little card dropped out; I picked it up. On it were pressed these, Archie."

Kenneth took the Book from his breast as he spoke, and opening it, handed the card to Archie.

"I know," said the latter: "the primrose and the bit of heather."

"Yes, dear boy, foolish of me, I know; but I have never parted with them, and if I go to Davy Jones's locker--as we sailors say--if I am drowned, Archie, these flowers will sink with me.

"But on that winter's day in the forest, Archie, these flowers seemed to speak to me, or rather the golden-haired child spoke to me through these flowers. I was back again on the hills above Glen Alva walking by her side; the sky above us was blue and clear, the clouds on the horizon looking like snow-white feathers, and the bees making drowsy music among the pinky heath.

"I started up, and the vision fled, and around me were only the bare bleak forest trees and the fading heather. The vision fled, but it left in my breast the desire stronger now than ever to make my own way in the world, by the blessing of Providence; and Providence has never deserted me yet, Archie, lad.

"I went straight home. I saw Major Walton, and talked to him, and told him all.

"He seemed sorry. The last words he said to me when I went away--and there was moisture in the old man's eyes as he spoke--were these:--

"'Mind, I'm not tired of you, and I hope to live to meet you once again.'

"I went to Southampton next day. I thought I had nothing to do but march on board some outward-bound s.h.i.+p, that they would be glad to have me.

"Alas! I was disappointed."

[The author hopes some boy who meditates running away to sea may read these lines.]

"I was rudely jostled and laughed at, I was called a Scot, a Sawnie, a Johnny-raw, but work was never once offered me.

"I wandered about the streets, not knowing what to do. The few coins I had in my possession did not last many days.

"I felt sad and unhappy. I felt almost sorry I had left the good people who had done so much for me. The 'bairnies' had been in tears when I went away; even the black-and-tan terrier had followed me a long way down the road, and looked very 'wae and wistfu" at me with his brown beseeching eyes when I said he must go back.

"For two whole days I had hardly anything to eat. My flute, that I was fain to fall back upon, failed to support me, for the English, Archie, have not so much music and romance in their souls as the Scotch have.