In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life

Chapter Fifteen.
Just Like Tiny

 
“The family friend for ten years or more
That basked in the garden and dozed in the hall,
And listened for songs on the mat on the door.”
 

Tupper.

“Just like our Tiny!” said little Ada Mair when she first saw the subject of my present sketch. “Just like our Tiny!” repeated her wee sister Ailie, going directly up, throwing her arms about Charlie’s neck and kissing him.

Charlie, you will understand, was the dog’s name, a small black and tan, with a coat as dark as a raven’s wing, and as soft and sheeny as satin. Not, mind you, that it was soft in reality, only it felt so. The tan in Charlie’s cheeks, and eyebrows, and neck and feet, was of the richest mahogany, and his eyes were like the eyes of a young seal, or some lovely gazelle. Altogether we were all very fond of Charlie, and not a little proud of showing off his tricks to strangers, and we were positively astounded when one day we were told by a gentleman who knows a very great deal about dogs, that although our Charlie was “a very pretty fellow,” still he was not quite well enough shaped in the head, too short and broad in fact, to take a prize at a show.

“O! you must be mistaken,” said our maiden aunt, bristling up; “we think him perfection.”

I smiled, but said nothing, for I knew the critic was right.

“And just like our Tiny!” said Ailie again, as she repeated the kiss.

Charlie was seated on a chair, a favourite location of his, because he was out of reach of the old cat’s claws. Tom the cat never agreed with Charlie, and there was no love lost between the pair of them. The truth is Tom was jealous, and took every opportunity that presented itself to make poor Charlie’s life as miserable as it could well be. Tom used to invite Charlie to have a drop of milk out of his saucer sometimes.

“Real new milk!” Tom would say; “have a drop, Charlie, it will do you good.”

“Do you really mean it?” Charlie would ask, talking with those great eyes of his.

“Of course I do,” puss would reply.

About a minute after this, Charlie would be coming flying up the back stairs as if the house were on fire, with Tom behind him, whacking him all the way, and crying:

“I’ll teach you to touch my milk.”

Sometimes Charlie would have a bone, and when done with it, would hide it in a corner. Well, pussy would settle down behind it, and presently when Charlie came back:

“Come away, Charlie,” pussy would say, or seem to say. “Come away, dear; I’ve been watching your bone. Those thieving rats, you know.”

“O, thank you, Tom,” Charlie would say.

But half a minute later Charlie would be once more rushing madly up the back stairs, and pussy after him, clawing him all the way.

Pussy’s favourite seat was the footstool, and in a winter’s evening, when tea was on the table, a bright fire in the grate, the kettle singing on the hob, and Tom half asleep, but singing all the same, on the hassock, our parlour looked so cheerful. But sometimes Tom would say to Charlie:

“I’m going away to the woods to-day, Charlie, for a long, long hunt after the rats and weasels, so you can curl up on my footstool all day.”

“O, thank you!” Charlie would say.

Then away Tom would trot, and Charlie would be up on top of the hassock, and asleep in five minutes, for on the whole Charlie was a shivering little fellow when the weather was cold – just like your Tiny.

Well, pussy would not go farther away than the paddock gate; she would sit there for perhaps ten minutes, making little funny faces at the sparrows, and at cock-robin. Then back she would come.

“He’ll be asleep by this time,” Tom would say to himself, as he came stealing to the parlour.

Next moment there would be another race up the back stairs, and Charlie would be howling most dismally.

This was very naughty of pussy, and it was not at all pleasant for Charlie; no wonder he preferred sitting in the chair.

I’ll never forgot the day Charlie caught and killed his first rat. It was a very big one, and he was as proud as any deer-stalker. He must needs bring it into the parlour and lay it on the rug before us all. Tom smacked him, and took the rat away to a corner, and gloated and growled over it, and told Charlie that all the rats and mice about the place belonged to him.

Charlie could swim as fast as a Newfoundland, he could follow the carriage for miles, and whenever it stopped he used to jump up and sit on the horse’s back, and perhaps go to sleep there, for he was a sleepy little fellow at times – just like your Tiny.

Charlie used to fetch and carry. Does your Tiny do so? He would carry things much, much bigger than himself. A carriage rug, for example. And this was funny, if the rug were very heavy Charlie would stop pulling it and give it a good shaking, growling all the time as if the rug were alive. Then he would stop and look at it for a minute or two, with his head first on one side and then on the other, as much as to say:

“Will you come now, then? I’ll give you more if you don’t.”

Bright, loving, brave, and gentle was Charlie. You see I say “was Charlie,” so you will know that Charlie is not alive now; I will tell you how it happened.

It was a winter evening. Our house, The Grange, is a good mile from the station, across a wild bleak common. It would be quite three miles round by the road, so we seldom go that way. Some of our friends were coming to spend a week with us. They ought to come by the 4:30 fast train, and I was there to meet them. It was eight before they arrived, however, and O! such a dreadful night. The snow had come down and was already fully a foot deep, and lay on the road in great wreaths that no horse could pass. Then the wind blew a perfect hurricane, and the drifting snow almost took our breath away. We must go by the common or remain at the station all night. Our friends were only two, a young lady and her father, but both were very brave.

Alas! we never could have crossed the common that night, had it not been for Charlie. Many a life was lost in that terrible storm, which will long be remembered in our shire. I had not taken Charlie with me, but when in the very middle of the moor, with poor Miss B – all but dead and my friend and I sinking, and not knowing which way to turn – we had probably been going round and round in a circle – I spied something black feathering about among the snow. It was Charlie! I leave you to imagine with what joy we received him.

“Go home, Charlie!” we cried.

And away went our little guide, sometimes quite invisible, but always coming back to encourage us. Half an hour afterwards we were all at home in our bright and cheerful parlour.

But poor Charlie never recovered it. He must have been out in the snow for hours. Next day he was ill, and got rapidly worse. Strange to say that Tom the pussy was now actually kind to him.

“I fear,” I said one evening, “Charlie is worse than ever.”

Charlie was worse – one pleading look at us, one slight shiver, and our pet was no more.

There is a little grassy grave down in the orchard, that the children always cover with flowers in spring-time and summer.

That is Charlie’s.

Chapter Sixteen.
Professor Dick’s Academy: A Strange Adventure

 
“Bodily rest is sleep – is soothing sleep,
Spirit rest is silence deep,
O daily discord! cease, for mercy cease,
Break not this happy peace.”
 

The caravan lay high up on a lonely moorland, amid the solitary grandeur of the Grampian mountains – a thousand good feet and over above the level of the sea.

The scenery around us was desolate in the extreme, for no vestige of human life, no house, no hut, not even a patch of cultivated land, was anywhere to be seen around us. Above was the blue sky, with here and there a fleecy cloud, and yonder an eagle soaring. Around us, as a horizon, the eternal hills, many of them flecked and patched with the snows, that never melt. Far beneath, at one side, was a stream; though not visible, we could hear its drowsy chafing roar, as it tumbled onwards, forming many a foaming cataract, to seek for outlet in some distant lake. On the other side was a good Scotch mile of heathery moor, blazing purple and crimson in the sunshine.

Here and there, on grassy banks, great snakes glittered and basked in the noontide heat, while agile lizards crept over the stones or stood panting on the heath-stems, to stalk the flies.

It was strangely silent up here. We could listen to the lambkins, bleating miles away, and the strange wild cry of mountain plover and ptarmigans, while the song of insects flitting from alpine flower to alpine flower was pleasant music to the ear.

On the right I could see the dark tops of pine-trees. But they were far away. Never mind, I would walk towards them. I so love forests and woodlands.

No, I would have no companion save my trusty friend Bob. A word was sufficient to deter Maggie May from accompanying me in my ramble. That word was “Snakes!” Frank was not so easily shaken off; but when I told him I was probably going to write verses, he refrained from forcing his company on me. So Bob and I set out on our rambles alone. Verses? Well, verses come sometimes when least expected. Better than wooing the muse, is being quiet and letting the muse woo you.

But a sweet spirit of melancholy was over me to-day. I wished for silence, I longed for solitude. A breeze was murmuring and sighing through the weird black trees of the forest when I entered it, and I sat me down on a stone to listen to its wail. Nature seemed whispering some sad tale to my ears alone. This to me was spirit rest.

It was indeed a strange forest. The trees were all dark firs, though not tall and not close together. But I had never seen such trees before. Gnarled and bent and fantastic, taking shapes and casting shadows that positively looked uncanny. I had not walked an hour among them till I fancied myself in some enchanted wood, and almost wished myself out of it and away. I stooped down more than once to smooth and talk to the great Newfoundland, to reassure myself; and once, when passing an ugly brown pool of water, I started almost with fright as some water-birds sprang whirring into the air in front of me.

Still I had as yet no thoughts of retracing my footsteps.

When, at last, I climbed a rocky mound and saw the sun going right away down behind a hill, like a ball of blood, I made up my mind to get homewards at once.

But in which direction did the caravan lie? My answer to this was a very hazy one. However, standing on this mound would not help me, so I set out to retrace my steps.

For fully half an hour I walked in what I considered the right direction, but I did not come to the pond again, and the trees seemed different – more close together, and more weird-looking and uncanny, if that were possible.

I got tired at last and sat down.

I had been pensive when I started, I was now perplexed. No wonder, for night was coming on. Stars were glinting out in the east, a big brown owl flew close over me, with a most melancholy shriek of “tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo,” that made my blood feel cold.

I was lost!

Yes, but what had I to fear? I thought I had been lost before, lost in Afric wilds, on prairie lands, and in Greenland mists: was I going to be baffled by a Highland forest and moorland?

“Tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo!”

A sweet spirit of melancholy is very nice, but one may have too much of it.

“Tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo!”

Bother the bird. His wings too are flapping on the night air, and rustling as they say evil spirits do.

The trees grow more uncanny-looking every minute, and after going on and on for fully twenty minutes more, these ghostly ill-omened pines positively seem to advance to meet me, and wave their gnarled arms in the starlit air as I pass.

“Tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo-oo.”

Horrible!

“Bob, my boy, bark, speak, and scare that awful bird.”

“Wowff – wowff – wowff!”

Listen! Hark!

At no great distance we can hear the sharp “Yap! yap! woo-oo” of a shepherd’s collie. No mistaking it. It cannot be a fox, and there are no wolves about.

I take my bearings by a star that shines over the place from which the barking appeared to come, and Bob and I make straight in that direction. To our great joy and relief, we presently emerge from among the black-branched uncanny trees, and on the moor, at no great distance, see a light streaming from the open door of a hut.

A creature very like a wolf, with hair all on end, comes grumbling and yelping in a most threatening way to meet us.

“Let me settle him,” says Bob.

“No, Bob,” I reply. “He is watching his master’s house. He is right.”

But one glance at Bob is enough for the collie. He disappears – goes bounding away over the hill, evidently to seek his master, for when we enter the one-roomed hut we find it deserted.

There is a bright fire on a low hearth, however, and the smoke finds its way up a real chimney, and not through a hole in the roof, as is the case so often in Highland shepherd huts. There is a pot hanging over the fire, simmering away slowly, and raising its lid a little every now and then to emit a whiff of steam, so savoury that Master Bob begins to lick his lips, and seems to wonder that I do not at once proceed to have supper.

I shake my head, as he looks up in my face inquiringly.

“No, no, Bob,” I say; “that pot does not belong to me.”

“Nonsense,” says Bob; at least he thinks it. “Nonsense, master, all the world belongs to you if you could only believe it. You’re king of the universe, in my mind at all events.”

We sit and look at the pot. There is an old-fashioned wag-at-the-wall clock, tick-ticking away, but no other sound. After a time the clock clears its throat, and slowly rasps out the hour of nine, then goes quietly on tick-ticking again.

A whole hour passes. The clock clears its throat once more and gives ten wheezy knocks.

Bob suggests supper more emphatically. I am getting very weary.

Those we left behind us must think we are indeed lost, or swallowed up in a quagmire. The thought makes me very uneasy, and I begin almost to wish my adventure in the weird forest may be all a dream, that presently the peat-fire, pot and soup and all may vanish, and I may wake in bed.

But while thus musing I am startled very much indeed, and so too is Bob, at hearing a cracked and dismal world-old voice close beside me say with a long-drawn sigh:

“Heigho! I wonder what o’clock it is!”

There is no one in the room, not a soul to be seen.

Next moment, from another direction, but whether above or beneath I cannot be sure, issues a low, half-demoniacal laugh of self-satisfaction.

“Ha! ha! ha!”

The great dog starts up. His hair is on end all along his spine. He growls low and glances fearfully round him as if he expected to see a spectre.

Again the mournful old-world voice and the long-drawn sigh.

“Heigho! Will he ever, ever come!”

The dog looks in my face with terrible earnestness. He expects me to explain. I cannot – I feel uneasy. We listen for many minutes, but hear no more, till the rising wind moans drearily round the house and the fire gets low on the hearth.

“Ha! ha! ha!” The demon laugh again! It is a kind of half-ironical chuckle, impossible to describe. Then a voice in pitiful tones of entreaty:

“Don’t do it. Don’t do it.”

I am really getting frightened. I look towards the door, which had hitherto been open, and stare to see it slowly shut as if moved by some spirit hand. The wind howls now like wild wolves outside.

“What is it? What is it? Ha! ha! ha! What is it?”

Then a wild unearthly shriek, and a yell of “Murder!” rises high above the wind. My nerves are quite unstrung. I verily believe my hair is moving under my Highland bonnet.

I would not stay another moment here for all the world.

I open the door, and rush out into the night, Bob at my heels, and shrieks and laughter resounding in my ears.

Out and away – anywhere, to be free of that uncanny hut.

A big round moon is shining now, and the weird pine-trees are casting weird shadows on the moorland.

Look, though, is that a pine-tree?

No, it is a tall figure, in Highland garb, with a long crook, which it grasps high up, the plaid depending from the uplifted arm.

“Yap, yap, yap – ”

That is the collie’s bark, and yonder figure is no doubt that of his master. He advances, and the moon shimmers brightly on the pleasant face and snow-white beard of an old man.

“Welcome, stranger. You’ve lost your way. My dog came to tell me. Come back and share my humble supper, then I will conduct you home.”

I thought it strange to be addressed in such good English. But I was not reassured. Was this a wizard, or a spectre – the spirit of this haunted wood?

“Back!” I cried, with a shudder; “back among goblins!”

“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed, and I could not help noticing that his laugh was precisely the same as that I had heard in the hut.

“Pardon me,” he said, “but my cockatoos have been talking to you from behind the scenes. Come back, sir, it is all right. See, our dogs are playing together.”

That was true. Bob and the collie were already the best of friends.

From the very moment he mentioned the word “cockatoos,” I felt somewhat ashamed of myself.

So back I went, and shared the shepherd’s soup, and we were soon enjoying a very interesting conversation.

I told him all about myself and caravan, and he explained who he was. A shepherd by choice, because a lover of Nature. A wizard according to some, a poet according to others, because his verses which, he said, were as rough as the heather and the granite rocks on the hillside, found entrée to the Glasgow papers. After supper, he lit a great oil-lamp: we had hitherto had only the fire-light.

Then he pulled aside a screen, and lo! and behold, a dozen at least of cages, each containing a cockatoo, and one a starling.

“What is it? What is it?” said this latter.

“Nothing much, Dick. But you’ve frightened this stranger.”

“Strange!” said Dick.

The old shepherd opened the cage-door, and out flew the bird, and straight on to the supper-table.

“Professor Dick,” said my host, “won’t say another word till he has finished his meal.”

“Professor Dick, you call him?”

“Yes, and I may as well tell you at once how I live and how I manage to get warm clothing, good food, and plenty of books.”

“I see your library is a most extensive one,” I put in.

“It is, for a poor man. I am a hermit by choice; I live all alone in these wilds; I am rent-free, because I have the charge of sheep, and I dearly love the solitudes around me.

“The house or hut I occupy I call Professor Dick’s Academy. Dick is my all in all. The collie comes next in my affections.

“But Dick maintains us.”

“Dick maintains you?”

“Yes, you see all these cockatoos? Well, Dick trains them all to speak. And he trains them tricks, he and I between us. Without Dick I would be nowhere, and perhaps Dick would go to the bad without me.”

“But what becomes of the cockatoos?”

“I sell them. That is the secret of our wealth and happiness. They are Australian hard-bill crestless cockatoos. I pay thirty shillings for each of them. I sell them for ten and even fifteen pounds. There is one there, forty years of age; the most wonderful bird in all the world. Rothschild is very rich, sir, and so is Vanderbilt, but neither possess money to buy that darling bird. No, nor Dick either. But here comes the Professor.”

The bird came hopping towards me, jumped up, perched on the back of a straw chair, and eyed me curiously for quite a minute, using first one eye, then the other, as if to make quite sure of diagnosing me properly.

I thought him somewhat brusque and peculiar at first. He asked me three questions in rapid succession, but gave me no time to answer: “Who are you? What do ye want? Are you hungry?” The Professor and I, however, soon settle down to steady conversation, and talked on all kinds of topics, as freely as if we had known each other for years. Only, like the dictionary, Dick was apt to change his subject rather frequently.

I must say, however, that this pretty bird was the cleverest and best talker I have ever known or heard. There positively seemed no end to his vocabulary, and the ridiculously amusing remarks he made would, I believe, have caused a horse to smile.

“In the name of goodness,” I was fain to exclaim at last to my host, “is this really a bird, or is it some sprite or fay you have picked up in the depths of this weird forest?”

The old shepherd seemed pleased. He nodded and smiled to Dick, and the bird waxed more boisterous and funny than ever.

“I begin to think,” I said, “that I have got into some house of enchantment, and that nothing around me is real.”

The shepherd put Professor Dick to bed at last, and conducted me safely over the moor. He promised to call for us next day, and take us back to the cottage in the forest to hear the Professor teaching his class.

There had been anxious hearts in the caravan during my absence, but Bob went bounding away in front of me to announce my arrival.

Frank was dressed and ready to go off to seek me, stick in hand and plaid across his manly shoulders. But all is well that ends well.