Born to Wander: A Boy's Book of Nomadic Adventures

Stables Gordon

Born to Wander: A Boy's Book of Nomadic Adventures

Book One – Chapter One

Grayling House, and the Wildery around it

“It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground,Half-prankt with spring with sommer half imbrowned.”

Scene: An old baronial hall, showing grey over the woods near to the banks of a tributary of the silvery Tweed.

It wasn’t the month for the Michaelmas daisies, for it was November.

And when the chrysanthemums opened their great eyes, and turned their faces upwards to meet the light, they felt quite put about to see those flowers still in bloom. They would have been angry, but it is not in the nature of our garden, or indeed of our wild flora and hedgerow pets, to be so. For flowers are ever meek, albeit they are lovely, and methinks that meekness and beauty, hand in hand, are inexpressibly charming.

No, the chrysanthemums were not angry, but they could not help saying to each other —

“Why have the Michaelmas daisies not gone to sleep? Is not their time gone by, and is not this our month in which to bloom and beautify the garden landscape?”

Little Effie came trotting round. It was quite early yet. The sun had just got high enough to peep over the almost leafless linden trees. And wherever his beams fell on bush or brake or fern, he melted the hoar-frost, and resolved it into drops of dew, in each of which a miniature rainbow might have been seen. But round at the back of the big stone mansion, where its shadow fell athwart the old-fashioned terraced lawn, the hoar-frost still lay thick and fast.

Out from among the shrubbery somewhere came Effie Lyle. She might, as likely as not, have dropped out of a yew tree for anything any one knew to the contrary.

She stood for a moment looking up at the blue sky, – her own eyes were quite as blue, – her pretty lips half-parted in a smile, and her golden hair somewhat dishevelled, afloat on her shoulders; as fresh and pure as the morning itself she was, the one thing that had been wanting to complete the beauty of the wildery in which she stood.

Effie glanced down at the chrysanthemums with love and admiration, at the pure white ones, and the pink-and-white, and the crimson, and the bright, bright yellow; she gently smoothed their gorgeous petals that looked so like nodding plumes.

“I love you all,” she cried, “and I am going to kiss the Michaelmas daisies!”

But these grew on such long, long stalks – for they had to creep high to meet the sun – that Effie had to stand on tiptoe, and bend down their mauve clusters to her face.

A momentary sadness crept over her, because one of her pet flowers had left a drop of dew on her cheek.

“Why are my darlings crying?” she said. “Oh, I know!” she added, after a second’s thought. “Because they soon must die. The wicked frost will kill my pets, and then – oh yes, then, I’ll have the chrysanthemums to love.”

An additional ray of sunshine seemed to fall over these flowers when she said this. But a chill crept over the daisies, and their petals began to fold, as fold the wings of insects when night begins to fall.

The gardens around Grayling House were indeed a wildery, yet not a wilderness. It was the pleasure of their owner to let all growing things have a good deal of their own way. For he loved nature even more than art. So in summer time the big lawn that stretched down as far as the quiet river’s bank – where the trailing willows kissed the water, and the splendidly bedecked kingfishers darted in and out from sunshine and shade – was carpeted with flowers, buttercups and daisies and nodding plumes of grasses, and clover white and red. Yet the sun had such access to this lawn, despite the bordering trees, that those wild things never grew high, but spread and spread, and intertwined, as if they really loved each other, and would not be parted for the world. A favourite lawn this for bees of every size and colour, and for a thousand strangely-shaped and gaudily-coloured beetles, which on cloudy days were content to climb up and down the grass stems and take exercise as acrobats do, but who, when the sun burst out, opened the little cupboards on their shoulders, where their wings had been carefully stowed away from the wet, unfolded these gauzy appendages, and flew away in search of wild adventures.

There were paths through this wildery that seemed to lead nowhere, and as often as not made pretence of taking you straight back towards the house again, but landed you at last perhaps in a greenwood glade, with broad-leaved sycamores, and elms around, in which blackbirds fluted in spring, thrushes piped, and the chaffinch tried to drown the notes of every other bird with his mad merry melody. And here perhaps was a rockery, with a fountain playing and a streamlet trickling away riverwards, through the greenest of grass. On this rockery dwelt ferns that loved moisture, and creeping saxifrages, with pretty flowerets of deepest crimson, but not a bit bigger than a bee’s head.

Had you wished to return from this delightful lonesome glade – and sooner or later you would be sure to wish to go back, notwithstanding its beauty – you would probably have taken a wrong turning, and after a while found yourself in a rose-covered, heather-roofed, rustic summer-house, with a little window opening over the river itself, and seats and lounges inside.

Here, on a summer’s day, if possessed of a nice book, you would have found it a pleasure indeed to enjoy a rest. Not that you would have read much, had the book been ever so nice, for as soon as you had got fairly settled, and animated nature around you had got used to your presence, there would have been quite a deal to watch and wonder at. Bright-eyed birds, who had sung in the boughs till their throats were dry, would have come down to slake their thirst and bathe and plash in the sandy-bottomed shallows, scaring the gladsome minnows away into deeper, darker water, where under the weeds lived fate in the shape of a gruesome pike, with terrible teeth and eyes that never closed. Or while you were trying to read, a rabbit or even a hare would come hopping along, and stand up to stare at you. A weasel would sneak past bent on no good. A beautiful squirrel would leap to the ground, and run around on the moss, with his wondrous tail like a train behind him. Bees and beetles would go droning past, or come in by the door, and fly out through the open window, making the great spider that had his web in the corner move his horizontal jaws in hungry expectancy. Meanwhile every now and then a glad fish would leap up and ripple the stream, and the stream itself would keep on chatter-chattering, and telling the nodding, listening trees such a long story in so drowsy a monotone, about where it had been, and where it was going, and what it had seen, that presently you would get listening to the story yourself, and nodding like the trees till the book would drop out of your grasp, and you would be at the back of the north wind.

When you wakened at last, you would be unable for a time to tell where you were, till on looking out you saw the trees again, and the green moss, with the squirrel on it still seeming to look for something, and the tall crimson foxgloves smiling at you through the greenery of ferns; then you would remember that you had fallen asleep while trying to read on a summer’s day in a cosy, drowsy summer cot by the banks of one of the most lovely streams that roll their waters into the silvery Tweed.

But at the time our story opens autumn, not summer, was reigning in the lovely wildery round Grayling House.

The leaves were nearly all gone off the trees, except from the oaks, those sturdiest children of our soil. Their leaves were withered and yellow, but would remain on for months to come. The oak and the beech are the wisest of all our broad-leaved trees; they put not forth their green leaves till spring sunshine has warmed the air, and long after the powdery snow has begun to fall, and other trees are bare and shivering in the blast, they still are clothed in their weather-stained garments of leaves.

Effie stooped once more to kiss and caress the chrysanthemums, then she hurried away, because she had heard her brother’s voice calling, —

“Effie, Effie, Effie!”

“Coming, Leonard – coming – coming – coming!” was Effie’s reply, as she ran round through the shrubbery to the terraced lawn behind.

“Come and see me jump from winter into spring,” cried Leonard, making a bound like a young antelope right off the lowest terrace, still white and crisp with frost, to the lawn where the grass was wet with dew, and green.

“Oh, Leonardie, Leonardie!” said Effie, pouting with her rosy lips, “why so cruel as to call me away from my flowers to see you jump?”

“You couldn’t do it, Effet,” said Leonard, nodding his head.

“Oh, I could! You see now.”

Next moment both were at it, running up and running down, leaping from winter into spring, bounding up from sunshine into shade, and keeping up the merry game till the cheeks of each were as red as roses, and their eyes as bright as drops of dew.

As handsome a boy was Leonard at the age of ten as one could wish to see. Twins the two were, though he was the taller, as became his sex, and I do not think they had been one hour parted since the bells of the village church were set ringing to announce the double birth.

Leonard threw himself down to rest on the frosty grass, and Effie stood laughingly looking down at him.

The boy was a young Scot, and wore that most picturesque of all costumes, the garb of old Gaul, but he was not afraid of getting his bare knees frozen as he lay there. In fact, I do not think that Leonard was afraid of anything.

As I have said the lad was a Scot, there is little need to add that Grayling House and the beautiful river that went wimpling by it were on the northern side of the Tweed.

It was very still and quiet all round Grayling House to-day, and the sky was very bright and almost cloudless. There was not wind enough to bend the course of the spiral wreaths of smoke that rose straight up into the frosty air, higher than the dark-roofed pines, before it melted away into a white haze across the woods.

High up yonder among the sturdy arms of the elms were many huge nests, but the rooks were far away foraging in some farmer’s field. In the other trees many an old nest was visible that could not have been seen in summer – nests of the chattering magpies, in the moss and lichen-covered larches; nests of the tree-sparrows everywhere high or low, great untidy wisps of weeds, with feathers sticking here and strings hanging there, nests that any other bird except a sparrow would feel ashamed to enter or go near. Then there were nests of the bold, bright-voiced cheery chaffinch close to the trunk of beech or elm, little gems of nests tricked out with lichens white and red, and looking all over like shapely bits of coral; and nests of the missel-thrush, so sturdily fixed between the tree forks that storm or tempest could not blow them down.

“I say, Effet,” said Leonard, looking up, “the birds are almost too clever for me. I can count dozens of nests now up there that I couldn’t find in summer. Wait till spring comes – I’ll be wiser then.

“Listen,” he continued, “was that a mole?”

“No,” said his sister, “it was only a sycamore leaf; I saw it falling.”

“Hullo! here comes another, and another, and another.” And off he flew, cap in hand, to catch the leaves as they fell.

He soon tired, however.

“I say, Effet, I don’t call this keeping a holiday. Let’s have some real fun.”

“Shall we go to Castle Beautiful, and read a story to the menagerie?”

“No, not yet. Let us try to hook old Joe.”

Old Joe was a monster pike, who lived in a monster pond or pool, big enough almost to be called a lake, for it covered three acres of ground, and one part of it, right in the centre, was said to be deep enough to bury the village church and steeple. It was down at the bottom of this deep dark hole that Joe lived.

Now it was somewhat funny, but nobody about Grayling House – with one solitary exception, namely, Peter the butler, who had been at the mansion, man and boy, for fifty years – could tell where this monster pike had come from, or when or why he had come.

The facts are these: the loch was fed by springs, and the only outlet for the water was a lead that had to pass over a big mill-wheel, that ground oats and barley for every one in the parish. The pike could not have come over the mill-wheel. Again, he had not been there ten years, and as he weighed, to all appearance, full thirty pounds, he must have been a monster when he got there.

Captain Lyle, Leonard’s and Effie’s father, believed he had scrambled over the grass some dark, dewy night, and taken up his quarters in the loch. This was strange if true, and it might have been, because, at the time the pike first appeared, a tenant of the same kind was missed from a deep tree-shaded pool in the river.

The country people, however, would not share the captain’s belief. There was something uncanny about the beast, they averred, and the less any one had to do with him the better.

He was a very matter-of-fact pike, at all events; for no sooner had he taken possession of his new quarters than he proceeded at once to turn out all the old tenants. Or rather – to speak more to the point – he turned them in, for he ate them. Captain Lyle had, years before the reign of this king-pike, stocked the water with trout, and they had done well, but now none were ever seen.

Sometimes the pike condescended to show himself, or even to take a bait, when some person more daring and less superstitious than his fellows tried to catch him. More than once he had been pulled above the water, but disappeared again, hook and all, with a splash.

When he had swallowed a hook it was Joe’s custom to sulk for a fortnight at the bottom of his pool, and having duly digested the morsel of blue steel, he appeared again livelier and more audacious than ever.

His size was reported to be something enormous by those who had raised him. They said his head was as big as that of Farmer Kemp’s great mastiff-dog.

It was also said that Joe had once upon a time swallowed a sow and a litter of young. This tale was always retailed to strangers who happened to come to the district to fish. It was, in fact, a catch, for Joe really had done this deed; but then the sow was a guinea pig, and the young ones mere hop-o’-my-thumbs.

“Yes, Leonardie,” said Effie, “let us go and try to hook old Joe.”

So while Effie ran to the hall for the fishing tackle, her brother went and dug some great garden worms, and half an hour afterwards they were both in the middle of the lake, with the line sunk, and sitting patiently in the little boat to see whether or not Joe would condescend to bite.

Book One – Chapter Two.

Glen Lyle

“I foraged all over this joy-dotted earth,To pick its best nosegay of innocent mirth,Tied up with the bands of its wisdom and worth, —And lo! its chief treasure,Its innermost pleasure,Was always at Home.”Tupper.

Scene: An old-fashioned parlour in Grayling House. The walls are hung with faded tapestry, the furniture is ancient, and a great fire of logs and peat is burning on the low hearth. In front lies a noble deerhound. At one side, in a high-backed chair, sits a lady still young and beautiful. Some lacework rests on her lap, and she listens to one who sits near her reading – her husband.

Captain Lyle reading —

“Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;Dream of battle-fields no more,Days of danger, nights of waking.“In our isle’s enchanted hall,Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,Fairy strains of music fall,Every sense in slumber dewing.“Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,Dream of fighting fields no more;Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,Morn of toil nor night of waking.”

Lyle looked up. There were tears in his wife’s blue eyes.

“Is it not beautiful, Ethel?” he said. “There is the true ring of martial poesy about every line that Walter writes.”

“Yes,” said Ethel, with a sigh, “it is beautiful; but oh, dear Arnold! I wish you were not quite so fond of warlike verses.”

“Ethel, I am a soldier.”

“Yes, poor boy, and must soon go away to the wars again. I cannot bear to think of it, Arnold. When last you were gone, how slowly went the time. The days and weeks and months seemed interminable. I do not wish to think of it. Let us be happy while we may. Put away that book.”

Lyle did as he was told. He took one of his wife’s fair tresses in his hand and kissed it, and looked into her face with a fond smile.

Man and wife – but lovers yet.

“Heigho!” he said, getting up and pulling aside the heavy crimson curtains to look out, “heigho! these partings must come. It must be sad sometimes to be a soldier’s wife.”

“It would be less sad, Arnold, if I could share your wanderings.”

“What, Ethel! you, my tender, too fragile wife? Think what you say, child.”

She let the work that she had resumed drop once more in her lap, and gazed up at him as he bent over the high-backed chair.

“Why not I as well as others?”

“Our children, dear one. My beautiful Effie and bold Leonard.”

“They have your blood and mine in their veins, Arnold. They are wise and they are brave.”

Arnold mused for a little.

“And we,” he said, “have few friends, and hardly a relative living.”

“All the more reason, Arnold, I should be near you, that we should be near each other. No, dear, I have thought of it all, planned it all; and if your colonel will but permit Captain Lyle’s wife to be among the chosen few who accompany their gallant husbands to the seat of war, I shall rejoice, and you may believe me when I say our children shall not be unhappy.”

Captain Lyle put his arm around her, and drew her closer towards him.

“I never refused any request you made, Ethel, and if the colonel, as you say, will but permit, I will not refuse you this.”

“Oh, thank you, Arnold! thank your kind and good unselfish heart. You have indeed taken a load off mine. I feel happy now, I feel younger, Arnold; for truly I was beginning to grow old.”

She laughed a half-hysteric laugh of joy.

“You may read to me now,” she added, re-seating herself in the high-backed chair, “and it can be all about war if you like.”

He took up the book and commenced at random —

“’Tis merry, ’tis merry, in Fairyland,    When fairy birds are singing,When the court doth ride by their monarch’s side,    With bit and bridle ringing.            And gaily shines the Fairyland.”

Captain Lyle got no further just then. Hurried steps were heard in the hall, the door was thrown unceremoniously open, and in rushed old Peter the butler, pale as death, and wringing his shining hands.

“Augh!” he gasped, clutching at the wall, “they’ve done it noo! They’ve done it noo! Oh that I should hae lived to see this day o’ wreck and ruin to the old hoose o’ Lyle. Ochone! ochone! o-chrie!”

“In the name of goodness, Peter, are you crazy, or is the house on fire? Speak, man!” cried Captain Lyle.

“Hoose on fire? Na, na; it’s waur and waur than that. But still there’s hope, sir. I have him in a tub, and though he is lying on his side he’s gasping yet. Hallo! there they come.”

In rushed Effie and Leonard, bright-eyed and rosy with joy and excitement.

Effie ran to her father’s arms.

Leonard ran to his mother.

“We’ve caught Joe!” they both cried at once.

“I hooked him,” cried Effie.

“I hauled him up,” cried Leonard.

“And we both hauled him out.”

“Dool1 on the day for the hoose o’ Glen Lyle,” exclaimed Peter, rolling his eyes.

“Come, father, come. Peter put him in a tub.”

Captain Lyle followed Effie. There, sure enough, in the tub of water lay Joe, the monarch of the loch. Peter pointed to the animal’s tail.

“How strange!” said Captain Lyle, as well he might, for a huge gold ring ran through the last vertebrae, and attached to this a plate, with the letters L.L., and the date 17 – plainly visible.

A few minutes afterwards Joe seemed to recover all of a sudden, and began tearing round and round the tub, his huge jaws snapping and his eyes glaring like a demon’s.

Every one started back astonished, but old Peter’s antics were a sight to see.

He seized a big wooden lid and clapped it over the tub, and set himself on top thereof. Then he addressed himself to the cook —

“Run, ye auld roodas,” he roared; “run to the kitchen, and fetch the biggest kettle-pot ye can lay yer claws on!”

The pot was duly fetched, and clapped upside down on top of the lid on the tub.

Then Peter flung his cap to the roof of the hall, and shouted, “Saved, saved! The auld hoose is saved yet.”

Now after that Captain Lyle drew old Peter aside. What the old man communicated to his young master the reader may learn in good time; but certain it is, that in less than half an hour Joe found himself back once more in his old quarters, not very much the worse for his singular adventure, and that within a week a high wooden palisade was placed all round the lake, with only one gate, and that padlocked. Leonard wondered, and so did his gentle sister. They looked at each other in silence at first, then Effie shook a serious little head, and said solemnly, —

“We mustn’t touch papa’s pike any more.”

“No,” replied Leonard, thoughtfully, “Joe is papa’s pike, and he mustn’t be touched.”

Leonard and Effie were the only children of their parents, who loved them very much indeed. Captain Lyle was proud of his boy, and, I fear, made almost too much of a pet of his girl Effie. He indulged them both to their hearts’ content, when they had done their duty for the day – that is, when they had both returned from the village school, for in those good old days in Scotland the upper classes were not above sending their boys and girls to the parish schools; there were of course no paupers went there, only the sons and daughters of farmers and tradespeople – when duty was over, then, Captain Lyle encouraged his children to play. Indeed, he seemed more like a big boy – a brother, for instance – than a father. He was always planning out new measures of enjoyment, and one of the best of these was what Leonard called The Miniature Menagerie.

I do most sincerely believe that the planning and building of this delightful little fairy palace saved the life of Captain Lyle. He had been invalided home in the month of January 1810 – about ten months before the opening scene of our tale – and it was judged that a year and a half at least must elapse before he would be again fit for service. War-worn and weary though he was, having served nearly a dozen years, he soon began, with returning health, to pine for activity, when the happy thought struck him to build a palace for his children’s pets.

He communicated his ideas to Leonard and Effie, and they were delighted.

“Of course,” said Leonard, “we must assist.”

“Assuredly you must,” said Captain Lyle; “the pie would be no pie at all unless you had a finger in it.”

The first thing that the head of the house of Glen Lyle had done was to sit down in his study one evening after dinner, with the great oil lamp swinging in front of him, a huge bottle of ink, and a dozen pens and pencils lying on the table, to say nothing of a whole regiment of mathematical instruments that had been all through the French war, compasses, rules, squares, triangles, semi-circles, and what not.

The second thing that Captain Lyle had done was, with a pencil, to fill a big page of paper with all kinds of droll faces and figures.

Little Effie climbed up behind his chair before long and had a peep over his shoulder.

“Oh, papa dear!” she cried, “that is not making a menagerie.”

“I know it isn’t, Effie. I think my thoughts had gone a wool-gathering.”

“Well,” said Effie, considering, “we may want some wool for nests and things; but don’t you think, papa, that we should build the house first, and look for the wool afterwards?”

“Oh!” cried Leonard, “don’t worry about the wool. Captain Lyle, your son Leonard, who stands before you, knows where to find lots of it. For whenever a sheep runs through a hedge – and they’re always, running through hedges, you know – they leave a tuft of wool on every thorn.”