Far Away and Long Ago Part 5

On first discovering it I took a spray to show to my mother, and was strangely disappointed that she admired it merely because it was a pretty flower, seen for the first time. I had actually hoped to hear from her some word which would have revealed to me why I thought so much of it: now it appeared as if it was no more to her than any other pretty flower and even less than some she was peculiarly fond of, such as the fragrant little lily called Virgin's Tears, the scented pure white and the rose-coloured verbenas, and several others. Strange that she who alone seemed always to know what was in my mind and who loved all beautiful things, especially flowers, should have failed to see what I had found in it!

Years later, when she had left us and when I had grown almost to manhood and we were living in another place, I found that we had as neighbour a Belgian gentleman who was a botanist. I could not find a specimen of my plant to show him, but gave him a minute description of it as an annual, with very large, tough, permanent roots, also that it exuded a thick milky juice when the stem was broken, and produced its yellow seeds in a long, cylindrical, sharply-pointed pod full of bright silvery down, and I gave him sketches of flower and leaf. He succeeded in finding it in his books: the species had been known upwards of thirty years, and the discoverer, who happened to be an Englishman, had sent seed and roots to the Botanical Societies abroad he corresponded with; the species had been named after him, and it was to be found now growing in some of the Botanical Gardens of Europe.

All this information was not enough to satisfy me; there was nothing about the man in his books. So I went to my father to ask him if he had ever known or heard of an Englishman of that name in the country. Yes, he said, he had known him well; he was a merchant in Buenos Ayres, a nice gentle-mannered man, a bachelor and something of a recluse in his private house, where he lived alone and spent all his week-ends and holidays roaming about the plains with his vasculum in search of rare plants. He had been long dead--oh, quite twenty or twenty-five years.

I was sorry that he was dead, and was haunted with a desire to find out his resting-place so as to plant the flower that bore his name on his grave. He, surely, when he discovered it, must have had that feeling which I had experienced when I first beheld it and could never describe. And perhaps the presence of those deep ever-living roots near his bones, and of the flower in the sunshine above him, would bring him a beautiful memory in a dream, if ever a dream visited him, in his long unawakening sleep.

No doubt in cases of this kind, when a first impression and the emotion accompanying it endures through life, the feeling changes somewhat with time; imagination has worked on it and has had its effect; nevertheless the endurance of the image and emotion serves to show how powerful the mind was moved in the first instance.

I have related this case because there were interesting circ.u.mstances connected with it; but there were other flowers which produced a similar feeling, which, when recalled, bring back the original emotion; and I would gladly travel many miles any day to look again at any one of them. The feeling, however, was evoked more powerfully by trees than by even the most supernatural of my flowers; it varied in power according to time and place and the appearance of the tree or trees, and always affected me most on moonlight nights. Frequently, after I had first begun to experience it consciously, I would go out of my way to meet it, and I used to steal out of the house alone when the moon was at its full to stand, silent and motionless, near some group of large trees, gazing at the dusky green foliage silvered by the beams; and at such times the sense of mystery would grow until a sensation of delight would change to fear, and the fear increase until it was no longer to be borne, and I would hastily escape to recover the sense of reality and safety indoors, where there was light and company. Yet on the very next night I would steal out again and go to the spot where the effect was strongest, which was usually among the large locust or white acacia trees, which gave the name of Las Acacias to our place. The loose feathery foliage on moonlight nights had a peculiar h.o.a.ry aspect that made this tree seem more intensely alive than others, more conscious of my presence and watchful of me.

I never spoke of these feelings to others, not even to my mother, notwithstanding that she was always in perfect sympathy with me with regard to my love of nature. The reason of my silence was, I think, my powerlessness to convey in words what I felt; but I imagine it would be correct to describe the sensation experienced on those moonlight night among the trees as similar to the feeling a person would have if visited by a supernatural being, if he was perfectly convinced that it was there in his presence, albeit silent and unseen, intently regarding him, and divining every thought in his mind. He would be thrilled to the marrow, but not terrified if he knew that it would take no visible shape nor speak to him out of the silence.

This faculty or instinct of the dawning mind is or has always seemed to me essentially religious in character; undoubtedly it is the root of all nature-worship, from fetishism to the highest pantheistic development. It was more to me in those early days than all the religious teaching I received from my mother. Whatever she told me about our relations with the Supreme Being I believed implicitly, just as I believed everything else she told me, and as I believed that two and two make four and that the world is round in spite of its flat appearance; also that it is travelling through s.p.a.ce and revolving round the sun instead of standing still, with the sun going round it. as one would imagine. But apart from the fact that the powers above would save me in the end from extinction, which was a great consolation, these teachings did not touch my heart as it was touched and thrilled by something nearer, more intimate, in nature, not only in moonlit trees or in a flower or serpent, but, in certain exquisite moments and moods and in certain aspects of nature, in "every gra.s.s" and in all things, animate and inanimate.

It is not my wish to create the impression that I am a peculiar person in this matter; on the contrary, it is my belief that the animistic instinct, if a mental faculty can be so called, exists and persists in many persons, and that I differ from others only in looking steadily at it and taking it for what it is, also in exhibiting it to the reader naked and without a fig-leaf expressed, to use a Baconian phrase. When the religious Cowper confesses in the opening lines of his address to the famous Yardley oak, that the sense of awe and reverence it inspired in him would have made him bow himself down and worship it but for the happy fact that his mind was illumined with the knowledge of the truth, he is but saying what many feel without in most cases recognizing the emotion for what it is--the sense of the supernatural in nature. And if they have grown up, as was the case with Cowper, with the image of an implacable anthropomorphic deity in their minds, a being who is ever jealously watching them to note which way their wandering thoughts are tending, they rigorously repress the instinctive feeling as a temptation of the evil one, or as a lawless thought born of their own inherent sinfulness. Nevertheless it is not uncommon to meet with instances of persons who appear able to reconcile their faith in revealed religion with their animistic emotion. I will give an instance. One of the most treasured memories of an old lady friend of mine, recently deceased, was of her visits, some sixty years or more ago, to a great country-house where she met many of the distinguished people of that time, and of her host, who was then old, the head of an ancient and distinguished family, and of his reverential feeling for his trees. His greatest pleasure was to sit out of doors of an evening in sight of the grand old trees in his park, and before going in he would walk round to visit them, one by one, and resting his hand on the bark he would whisper a goodnight. He was convinced, he confided to his young guest, who often accompanied him in these evening walks, that they had intelligent souls and knew and encouraged his devotion.

There is nothing surprising to me in this; it is told here only because the one who cherished this feeling and belief was an orthodox Christian, a profoundly religious person; also because my informant herself, who was also deeply religious, loved the memory of this old friend of her early life mainly because of his feeling for trees, which she too cherished, believing, as she often told me, that trees and all living and growing things have souls. What has surprised me is that a form of tree-worship is still found existing among a few of the inhabitants in some of the small rustic villages in out-of-the-world districts in England. Not such survivals as the apple tree folk-songs and ceremonies of the west, which have long become meaningless, but something living, which has a meaning for the mind, a survival such as our anthropologists go to the end of the earth to seek among barbarous and savage tribes.

The animism which persists in the adult in these scientific times has been so much acted on and changed by dry light that it is scarcely recognizable in what is somewhat loosely or vaguely called a "feeling for nature": it has become intertwined with the aesthetic feeling and may be traced in a good deal of our poetic literature, particularly from the time of the first appearance of Lyrical Ballads, which put an end to the eighteenth-century poetic convention and made the poet free to express what he really felt. But the feeling, whether expressed or not, was always there. Before the cla.s.sic period we find in Traherne a poetry which was distinctly animistic, with Christianity grafted on it. Wordsworth's pantheism is a subtilized animism, but there are moments when his feeling is like that of the child or savage when he is convinced that the flower enjoys the air it breathes.

I must apologize to the reader for having gone beyond my last, since I am not a student of literature, nor catholic in my literary tastes, and on such subjects can only say just what I feel. And this is, that the survival of the sense of mystery, or of the supernatural, in nature, is to me in our poetic literature like that ingredient of a salad which "animates the whole"; that the absence of that emotion has made a great portion of the eighteenth century poetic literature almost intolerable to me, so that I wish the little big man who dominated his age (and till a few months ago still had in Mr. Courthope one follower among us) had emigrated west when still young, leaving Windsor Forest as his only monument and sole and sufficient t.i.tle to immortality.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.

Mr. Trigg recalled--His successor--Father O'Keefe--His mild rule and love of angling--My brother is a.s.sisted in his studies by the priest-- Happy fishing afternoons--The priest leaves us--How he had been working out his own salvation--We run wild once more--My brother's plan for a journal to be called _The Tin Box_--Our imperious editor's exactions--My little brother revolts--The Tin Box smashed up--The loss it was to me.

The account of our schooling days under Mr. Trigg was given so far back in this history that the reader will have little recollection of it. Mr. Trigg was in a small way a sort of Jekyll and Hyde, all pleasantness in one of his states and all black looks and truculence in the other; so that out of doors and at table we children would say to ourselves in astonishment, "Is this our schoolmaster?" but when in school we would ask, "Is this Mr. Trigg?" But, as I have related, he had been forbidden to inflict corporal punishment on us, and was finally got rid of because in one of his demoniacal moods he thrashed us brutally with his horsewhip. When this occurred we, to our regret, were not permitted to go back to our aboriginal condition of young barbarians: some restraint, some teaching was still imposed upon us by our mother, who took, or rather tried to take, this additional burden on herself. Accordingly, we had to meet with our lesson-books and spend three or four hours every morning with her, or in the schoolroom without her, for she was constantly being called away, and when present a portion of the time was spent in a little talk which was not concerned with our lessons. For we moved and breathed and had our being in a strange moral atmosphere, where lawless acts were common and evil and good were scarcely distinguishable, and all this made her more anxious about our spiritual than our mental needs.

My two elder brothers did not attend, as they had long discovered that their only safe plan was to be their own schoolmasters, and it was even more than she could manage very well to keep the four smaller ones to their tasks. She sympathized too much with our impatience at confinement when sun and wind and the cries of wild birds called insistently to us to come out and be alive and enjoy ourselves in our own way.

At this stage a successor to Mr. Trigg, a real schoolmaster, was unexpectedly found for us in the person of Father O'Keefe, an Irish priest without a cure and with nothing to do. Some friends of my father, on one of his periodical visits to Buenos Ayres, mentioned this person to him-this priest who in his wanderings about the world had drifted hither and was anxious to find some place to stay at out on the plains while waiting for something to turn up. As he was without means he said he would be glad of the position of schoolmaster in the house for a time, that it would exactly suit him.

Father O'Keefe, who now appeared on the scene, was very unlike Mr. Trigg; he was a very big man in black but rusty clerical garments. He also had an extraordinarily big head and face, all of a dull, reddish colour, usually covered with a three or four days' growth of grizzly hair. Although his large face was unmistakably, intensely Irish, it was not the gorilla-like countenance so common in the Irish peasant- priest--the priest one sees every day in the streets of Dublin. He was, perhaps, of a better cla.s.s, as his features were all good. A heavy man as well as a big one, he was not so amusing and so fluent a talker out of school as his predecessor, nor, as we were delighted to discover, so exacting and tyrannical in school. On the contrary, in and out of school he was always the same, mild and placid in temper, with a gentle sort of humour, and he was also very absent-minded. He would forget all about school hours, roam about the gardens and plantations, get into long conversations with the workmen, and eventually, when he found that he was somewhat too casual to please his employer, he enjoined us to "look him up" and let him know when it was school-time. Looking him up usually took a good deal of time. His teaching was not very effective. He could not be severe nor even pa.s.sably strict, and never punished us in any way. When lessons were not learned he would sympathize with and comfort us by saying we had done our best and more could not be expected. He was also glad of any excuse to let us off for half-a-day. We found out that he was exceedingly fond of fishing--that with a rod and line in his hand he would spend hours of perfect happiness, even without a bite to cheer him, and on any fine day that called us to the plain we would tell him that it was a perfect day for fishing, and ask him to let us off for the afternoon. At dinner time he would broach the subject and say the children had been very hard at their studies all the morning, and that it would be a mistake to force their young minds too much, that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and so on and so forth, and that he considered it would be best for them, instead of going back to more lessons in the afternoon, to go for a ride. He always gained his point, and dinner over we would rush out to catch and saddle our horses, and one for Father O'Keefe.

The younger of our two elder brothers, the sportsman and fighter, and our leader and master in all our outdoor pastimes and peregrinations, had taken to the study of mathematics with tremendous enthusiasm, the same temper which he displayed in every subject and exercise that engaged him--fencing, boxing, shooting, hunting, and so on; and on Father O'Keefe's engagement he was anxious to know if the new master would be any use to him. The priest had sent a most satisfactory reply; he would be delighted to a.s.sist the young gentleman with his mathematics, and to help him over all his difficulties; it was accordingly arranged that my brother was to have an early hour each morning with the master before school hours, and an hour or two in the evening. Very soon it began to appear that the studies were not progressing smoothly; the priest would come forth as usual with a smiling, placid countenance, my brother with a black scowl on his face, and gaining his room, he would hurl his books down and protest in violent language that the O'Keefe was a perfect fraud, that he knew as much of the infinitesimal calculus as a gaucho on horseback or a wild Indian. Then, beginning to see it in a humorous light, he would shout with laughter at the priest's pretentions to know anything, and would say he was only fit to teach babies just out of the cradle to say their ABC. He only wished the priest had also pretended to some acquaintance with the manly art, so that they could have a few bouts with the gloves on, as it would have been a great pleasure to bruise that big humbugging face black and blue.

The mathematical lessons soon ceased altogether, but whenever an afternoon outing was arranged my brother would throw aside his books to join us and take the lead. The ride to the river, he would say, would give us the opportunity for a little cavalry training and lance- throwing exercise. In the cane-brake he would cut long, straight canes for lances, which at the fishing-ground would be cut down to a proper length for rods. Then, mounting, we would set off, O'Keefe ahead, absorbed as usual in his own thoughts, while we at a distance of a hundred yards or so would form in line and go through our evolutions, chasing the flying enemy, O'Keefe; and at intervals our commander would give the order to charge, whereupon we would dash forward with a shout, and when about forty yards from him we would all hurl our lances so as to make them fall just at the feet of his horse. In this way we would charge him a dozen or twenty times before getting to our destination, but never once would he turn his head or have any inkling of our carryings-on in the rear, even when his horse lashed out viciously with his hind legs at the lances when they fell too near his feet.

We enjoyed the advantage of the O'Keefe regime for about a year, then one day, in his usual casual manner, without a hint as to how his private affairs were going, he said that he had to go somewhere to see some one about something, and we saw him no more. However, news of his movements and a good deal of information about him reached us incidentally, from all which it appeared that during his time with us, and for some months previously, Father O'Keefe had been working out his own salvation in a quiet way in accordance with a rather elaborate plan which he had devised. Before he became our teacher he had lived in some priestly establishment in the capital, and had been a hanger- on at the Bishop's palace, waiting for a benefice or for some office, and at length, tired of waiting in vain, he had quietly withdrawn himself from this society and had got into communication with one of the Protestant clergymen of the town. He intimated or insinuated that he had long been troubled with certain scruples, that his conscience demanded a little more liberty than his church would allow its followers, and this had caused him to cast a wistful eye on that other church whose followers were, alas! accorded a little more liberty than was perhaps good for their souls. But he didn't know, and in any case he would like to correspond on these important matters with one on the other side. This letter met with a warm response, and there was much correspondence and meetings with other clerics-Anglican or Episcopalian, I forget which. But there were also Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Methodist ministers, all with churches of their own in the town, and he may have flirted a little with all of them. Then he came for his year of waiting to us, during which he amused himself by teaching the little ones, smoothing the way for my mathematical brother, and fishing. But the authorities of the church had not got rid of him; they heard not infrequently from him, and it was not pleasant hearing. He had come, he told them, a Roman Catholic priest to a Roman Catholic country, and had found himself a stranger in a strange land. He had waited patiently for months, and had been put off with idle promises or thrust aside, while every greedy pushing priest that arrived from Spain and Italy was received with open arms and a place provided for him. Then, when his patience and private means had been exhausted, he had accidently been thrown among those who were not of the Faith, yet had received him with open arms. He had been humiliated and pained at the disinterested hospitality and Christian charity shown to him by those outside the pale, after the treatment he had received from his fellow-priests.

Probably he said more than this: for it is a fact that he had been warmly invited to preach in one or two of the Protestant churches in the town. He did not go so far as to accept that offer: he was wise in his generation, and eventually got his reward.

Our schoolmaster gone, we were once more back in the old way; we did just what we liked. Our parents probably thought that our life would be on the plains, with sheep and cattle-breeding for only vocations, and that should any one of us, like my mathematical-minded brother, take some line of his own, he would find out the way of it for himself: his own sense, the light of nature, would be his guide. I had no inclination to do anything with books myself: books were lessons, therefore repellent, and that any one should read a book for pleasure was inconceivable. The only attempt to improve our minds at this period came, oddly enough, from my masterful brother who despised our babyish intellects--especially mine. However, one day he announced that he had a grand scheme to put before us. He had heard or read of a family of boys living just like us in some wild isolated land where there were no schools or teachers and no newspapers, who amused themselves by writing a journal of their own, which was issued once a week. There was a blue pitcher on a shelf in the house, and into this pitcher every boy dropped his contribution, and one of them--of course the most intelligent one--carefully went through them, selected the best, and copied them all out in one large sheet, and this was their weekly journal called The Blue Pitcher, and it was read and enjoyed by the whole house. He proposed that we should do the same; he, of course, would edit the paper and write a large portion of it; it would occupy two or four sheets of quarto paper, all in his beautiful handwriting, which resembled copper-plate, and it would be issued for all of us to read every Sat.u.r.day. We all agreed joyfully, and as the t.i.tle had taken our fancy we started hunting for a blue pitcher all over the house, but couldn't find such a thing, and finally had to put up with a tin box with a wooden lid and a lock and key. The contributions were to be dropped in through a slit in the lid which the carpenter made for us, and my brother took possession of the key. The t.i.tle of the paper was to be _The Tin Box,_ and we were instructed to write about the happenings of the week and anything in fact which had interested us, and not to be such little a.s.ses as to try to deal with subjects we knew nothing about. I was to say something about birds: there was never a week went by in which I didn't tell them a wonderful story of a strange bird I had seen for the first time: well, I could write about that strange bird and make it just as wonderful as I liked.

We set about our task at once with great enthusiasm, trying for the first time in our lives to put our thoughts into writing. All went well for a few days. Then our editor called us together to hear an important communication he wished to make. First he showed us, but would not allow us to read or handle, a fair copy of the paper, or of the portion he had done, just to enable us to appreciate the care he was taking over it. He then went on to say that he could not give so much time to the task and pay for stationery as well without a small weekly contribution from us. This would only be about three-halfpence or twopence from our pocket-money, and would not be much missed. To this we all agreed at once except my younger brother, aged about seven at that time. Then, he was told, he would not be allowed to contribute to the paper. Very well, he wouldn't contribute to it, he said. In vain we all tried to coax him out of his stubborn resolve: he would not part with a copper of his money and would have nothing to do with The Tin Box. Then the Editor's wrath broke out, and he said he had already written his editorial, but would now, as a concluding article, write a second one in order to show up the person who had tried to wreck the paper, in his true colours. He would exhibit him as the meanest, most contemptible insect that ever crawled on the surface of the earth.

In the middle of this furious tirade my poor little brother burst out crying. "Keep your miserable tears till the paper is out," shouted the other, "as you will have good reason to shed them then. You will be a marked being, every one will then point the finger of scorn at you and wonder how he could ever have thought well of such a pitiful little wretch."

This was more than the little fellow could stand, and he suddenly fled from the room, still crying; then we all laughed, and the angry editor laughed too, proud of the effect his words had produced.

Our little brother did not join us at play that afternoon: he was in hiding somewhere, keeping watch on the movements of his enemy, who was no doubt engaged already in writing that dreadful article which would make him a marked being for the rest of his life.

In due time the editor, his task finished, came forth, and mounting his horse, galloped off; and the little watcher came out, and stealing into the room where the Tin Box was kept, carried it off to the carpenter's shop. There with chisel and hammer he broke the lid to pieces, and taking out all the papers, set to work to tear them up into the minutest fragments, which were carried out and scattered all over the place.

When the big brother came home and discovered what had been done he was in a mighty rage, and went off in search of the avaricious little rebel who had dared to destroy his work. But the little rebel was not to be caught; at the right moment he fled from the coming tempest to his parents and claimed their protection. Then the whole matter had to be inquired into, and the big boy was told that he was not to thrash his little brother, that he himself was to blame for everything on account of the extravagant language he had used, which the poor little fellow had taken quite seriously. If he actually believed The Tin Box article was going to have that disastrous effect on him, who could blame him for destroying it?

That was the end of _The Tin Box_; not a word about starting it afresh was said, and from that day my elder brother never mentioned it. But years later I came to think it a great pity that the scheme had miscarried. I believe, from later experience, that even if it had lasted but a few weeks it would have given me the habit of recording my observations, and that is a habit without which the keenest observation and the most faithful memory are not sufficient for the field naturalist. Thus, through the destruction of the Tin Box, I believe I lost a great part of the result of six years of life with wild nature, since it was not until six years after my little brother's rebellious act that I discovered the necessity of making a note of every interesting thing I witnessed.

CHAPTER XIX.

BROTHERS.

Our third and last schoolmaster--His many accomplishments--His weakness and final breakdown--My important brother--Four brothers, unlike in everything except the voice--A strange meeting--Jack the Killer, his life and character--A terrible fight--My brother seeks instructions from Jack--The gaucho's way of fighting and Jack's contrasted--Our sham fight with knives--A wound and the result--My feeling about Jack and his eyes--Bird-lore--My two elder brothers' practical joke.

The vanishing of the unholy priest from our ken left us just about where we had been before his large red face had lifted itself above our horizon. At all events the illumination had not been great. And thereafter it was holiday once more for a goodish time until yet a third tutor came upon the scene:--yet another stranger in a strange land who had fallen into low (and hot) water and was willing to fill a vacant time in educating us. Just as in the case of the O'Keefe, he was thrust upon my good-natured and credulous father by his friends in the capital, who had this gentleman with them and were anxious to get him off their hands. He was, they a.s.sured my father, just the man he wanted, a fine fellow of good family, highly educated and all that; but he had been a bit wild, and all that was wanted to bring him round was to get him out a good distance from the capital and its temptations and into a quiet, peaceful home like ours. Strange to say, he actually turned out to be all they had said, and more. He had studied hard at college and when reading for a profession; he was a linguist, a musician, he had literary tastes, and was well read in science, and above all he was a first-rate mathematician. Naturally, to my studious brother he came as an angel beautiful and bright, with no suggestion of the fiend in him; for not only was he a mathematician, but he was also an accomplished fencer and boxer. And so the two were soon fast friends, and worked hard together over their books, and would then repair for an hour or two every day to the plantation to fence and box and practise with pistol and rifle at the target. He also took to the humbler task of teaching the rest of us with considerable zeal, and succeeded in rousing a certain enthusiasm in us. We were, he told us, grossly ignorant--simply young barbarians; but he had penetrated beneath the thick crust that covered our minds, and was pleased to find that there were possibilities of better things; that if we would but second his efforts and throw ourselves, heart and soul, into our studies, we should eventually develop from the grub condition to that of purple-winged b.u.t.terflies.

Our new teacher was tremendously eloquent, and it looked as if he had succeeded in conquering that wildness or weakness or whatever it was which had been his undoing in the past. Then came a time when he would ask for a horse and go for a long ride. He would make a call at some English estancia, and drink freely of the wine or spirits hospitably set on the table. And the result would be that he would come home raving like a lunatic:--a very little alcohol would drive him mad. Then would follow a day or two of repentance and black melancholy; then recovery and a fresh fair start.

All this was somewhat upsetting to all of us: to my mother it was peculiarly distressing, and became more so when, in one of his repentant fits and touched by her words, he gave her a packet of his mother's letters to read:--the pathetic letters of a broken-hearted woman to her son, her only and adored child, lost to her for ever in a distant country, thousands of miles from home. These sad appeals only made my mother more anxious to save him, and it was no doubt her influence that for a while did save and make him able to succeed in his efforts to overcome his fatal weakness. But he was of too sanguine a temper, and by and by began to think that he had conquered, that he was safe, that it was time for him to do something great; and with some brilliant scheme he had hatched in his mind, he left us and went back to the capital to work it out. But alas! before many months, when he was getting seriously to work, with friends and money to help him and every prospect of success, he broke down once more, so hopelessly that once more he had to be got rid of, and he was sent out of the country, but whether back to his own people or to some other remote district in Argentina I do not remember, nor do I know what became of him.

Thus disastrously ended the third and last attempt my father made to have us instructed at home. Nor could he send us to town, where there was but one English school for boys, run by a weak, sickly gentleman, whose house was a nest of fevers and every sort of ailment incidental to boys herded together in an unhealthy boarding-school. Prosperous English people sent their children home to be educated at that time, but it was enormously expensive and we were not well off enough. A little later an exception had to be made in the case of my elder brother, who would not settle down to sheep-farming or any other occupation out on the pampas, but had set his heart on pursuing his studies abroad.

At this period of my life this brother was so important a person to me that I shall have to give even more s.p.a.ce to him in this chapter than he had in the last one. Yet of my brothers he was not the one nearest to my heart. He was five full years my senior, and naturally a.s.sociated with an elder brother, while we two smaller ones were left to amuse ourselves together in our own childish way. With a younger brother for only playmate, I prolonged my childhood, and when I was ten my brother of fifteen appeared a young man to me. We were all four extremely unlike in character as well as appearance, and alike in one thing only--the voice, inherited from our father; but just as our relationship appeared in that one physical character, so I think that under all the diversities in our minds and temperaments there was a hidden quality, a something of the spirit, which made us one; and this, I believe, came from the mother's side.

That family likeness in the voice was brought home to us in a curious way just about this time, when I was in my tenth year. My brother went one day to Buenos Ayres, and arriving at the stable where our horses were always put up, long after dark, he left his horse, and on going out called to the stableman, giving him some direction. As soon as he had spoken, a feeble voice was heard from the open door of a dark room near the gate, calling, "That's a Hudson that spoke! Father or son-- who is it?"

My brother turned back and groped his way into the dark room, and replied: "Yes, I'm a Hudson--Edwin's my name. Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm glad you're here! I'm your old friend Jack," returned the other, and it was a happy meeting between the boy in his sixteenth year and the grey-headed old battered vagabond and fighter, known far and wide in our part of the country as Jack the Killer, and by other dreadful nicknames, both English and Spanish. Now he was lying there alone, friendless, penniless, ill, on a rough bed the stableman had given him in his room. My brother came home full of the subject, sad at poor old Jack's broken-down condition and rejoicing that he had by chance found him there and had been able to give him help.

Jack the Killer was one of those strange Englishmen frequently to be met with in those days, who had taken to the gaucho's manner of life, when the gaucho had more liberty and was a more lawless being than he is now or can ever be again, unless that vast level area of the pampas should at some future time become dispeopled and go back to what it was down to half a century ago. He had drifted into that outlandish place when young, and finding the native system of life congenial had made himself as much of a native as he could, and dressed like them and talked their language, and was horse-breaker, cattle-drover, and many other things by turn, and like any other gaucho he could make his own bridle and whip and horse-gear and la.s.so and bolas out of raw hide. And when not working he could gamble and drink like any gaucho to the manner born--and fight too. But here there was a difference. Jack could affiliate with the natives, yet could never be just like them. The stamp of the foreigner, of the Englishman, was never wholly eradicated. He retained a certain dignity, a reserve, almost a stiffness, in his manner which made him a marked man among them, and would have made him a b.u.t.t to the wits and bullies among his comrades but for his pride and deadly power. To be mocked as a foreigner, a gringo, an inferior being, was what he could not stand, and the result was that he had to fight, and it then came as a disagreeable revelation that when Jack fought he fought to kill. This was considered bad form; for though men were often killed when fighting, the gaucho's idea is that you do not fight with that intention, but rather to set your mark upon and conquer your adversary, and so give yourself fame and glory. Naturally, they were angry with Jack and became anxious to get rid of him, and by and by he gave them an excuse. He fought with and killed a man, a famous young fighter, who had many relations and friends, and some of these determined to avenge his death. And one night a band of nine men came to the rancho where Jack was sleeping, and leaving two of their number at the door to kill him if he attempted to escape that way, the others burst into his room, their long knives in their hands. As the door was thrown open Jack woke, and instantly divining the cause of the intrusion, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the knife near his pillow and sprang like a cat out of his bed; and then began a strange and b.l.o.o.d.y fight, one man, stark naked, with a short-bladed knife in his hand, against seven men with their long facons, in a small pitch-dark room. The advantage Jack had was that his bare feet made no sound on the clay floor, and that he knew the exact position of a few pieces of furniture in the room. He had, too, a marvellous agility, and the intense darkness was all in his favour, as the attackers could hardly avoid wounding one another. At all events, the result was that three of them were killed and the other four wounded, all more or less seriously. And from that time Jack was allowed to live among them as a harmless, peaceful member of the community, so long as no person twitted him with being a gringo.

Quite naturally, my brother regarded Jack as one of his greatest heroes, and whenever he heard of his being in our neighbourhood he would mount his horse and go off in search of him, to spend long hours in his company and persuade him to talk about that awful fight in a dark room with so many against him. One result of his intimacy with Jack was that he became dissatisfied with his own progress in the manly art of self-defence. It was all very well to make himself proficient with the foils and as a boxer, and to be a good shot, but he was living among people who had the knife for sole weapon, and if by chance he were attacked by a man with a knife, and had no pistol or other weapon, he would find himself in an exceedingly awkward position. There was then nothing to do but to practise with the knife, and he wanted Jack, who had been so successful with that weapon, to give him some lessons in its use.

Jack shook his head. If his boy friend wanted to learn the gaucho way of fighting he could easily do so. The gaucho wrapped his poncho on his left arm to use it as a shield, and flourished his facon, or knife with a sword-like blade and a guard to the handle. This whirling about of the knife was quite an art, and had a fine look when two accomplished fighters stood up to each other and made their weapons look like shining wheels or revolving mirrors in the sun. Meanwhile, the object of each man was to find his opportunity for a sweeping blow which would lay his opponent's face open. Now all that was pretty to look at, but it was mere playing at fighting and he never wanted to practise it. He was not a fighter by inclination; he wanted to live with and be one with the gauchos, but not to fight. There were numbers of men among them who never fought and were never challenged to fight, and he would be of those if they would let him. He never had a pistol, he wore a knife like everybody else, but a short knife for use and not to fight. But when he found that, after all, he had to fight or else exist on sufferance as a despised creature among them, the b.u.t.t of every fool and bully, he did fight in a way which he had never been taught and could not teach to another. It was nature: it was in him. When the dangerous moment came and knives flashed out, he was instantly transformed into a different being. He was on springs, he couldn't keep still or in one place for a second, or a fraction of a second; he was like a cat, like india rubber, like steel--like anything you like, but something that flew round and about his opponent and was within striking distance one second and a dozen yards away the next, and when an onset was looked for it never came where it was expected but from another side, and in two minutes his opponent became confused, and struck blindly at him, and his opportunity came, not to slash and cut but to drive his knife with all his power to the heart in the other's body and finish him for ever. That was how he had fought and had killed, and because of that way of fighting he had got his desire and had been permitted to live in peace and quiet until he had grown grey, and no fighter or swashbuckler had said to him, "Do you still count yourself a killer of men? then kill me and prove your right to the t.i.tle," and no one had jeered at or called him "gringo."

In spite of this discouragement my brother was quite determined to learn the art of defending himself with a knife, and he would often go out into the plantation and practise for an hour with a tree for an opponent, and try to capture Jack's unpremeditated art of darting hither and thither about his enemy and making his deadly strokes. But as the tree stood still and had no knife to oppose him, it was unsatisfactory, and one day he proposed to me and my younger brother to have a fight with knives, just to find out if he was making any progress. He took us out to the far end of the plantation, where no one would see us, and produced three very big knives, with blades like butchers' knives, and asked us to attack him with all our might and try our best to wound him, while he would act solely on the defensive. At first we declined, and reminded him that he had punished us terribly with gloves and foils and singlestick, and that it would be even worse with knives-he would cut us in pieces! No, he said, he would not dream of hurting us: it would be absolutely safe for us, and for him too, as he didn't for a moment believe that we could touch him with our weapons, no matter how hard we tried. And at last we were persuaded, and taking off our jackets and wrapping them, gaucho- fashion, on our left arms as a protection, we attacked him with the big knives, and getting excited we slashed and lunged at him with all our power, while he danced and jumped and flew about a la Jack the Killer, using his knife only to guard himself and to try and knock ours out of our hands; but in one such attempt at disarming me his weapon went too far and wounded my right arm about three inches below the shoulder. The blood rushed out and dyed my sleeve red, and the fight came to an end. He was greatly distressed, and' running off to the house, quickly returned with a jug of water, sponge, towel, and linen to bind the wounded arm. It was a deep long cut, and the scar has remained to this day, so that I can never wash in the morning without seeing it and remembering that old fight with knives. Eventually he succeeded in stopping the flow of blood, and binding my arm tightly round; and then he made the desponding remark, "Of course they will have to know all about it now."

"Oh no," I returned, "why should they? My arm has stopped bleeding, and they won't find out. If they notice that I can't use it--well, I can just say I had a knock."

He was immensely relieved, and so pleased that he patted me on the back--the first time he had ever done so--and praised me for my manliness in taking it that way; and to be praised by him was such a rare and precious thing that I felt very proud, and began to think I was almost as good as a fighter myself. And when all traces of blood had been removed and we were back in the house and at the supper- table, I was unusually talkative and hilarious, not only to prevent any one from suspecting that I had just been seriously wounded in a fight with knives, but also to prove to my brother that I could take these knocks with proper fort.i.tude. No doubt he was amused; but he didn't laugh at me, he was too delighted to escape being found out.

There were no more fights with knives, although when my wound was healed he did broach the subject again on two or three occasions, and was anxious to convince me that it would be greatly to our advantage to know how to defend ourselves with a knife while living among people who were always as ready on any slight provocation to draw a knife on you as a cat was to unsheathe its claws. Nor could all he told us about the b.l.o.o.d.y and glorious deeds of Jack el Matador arouse any enthusiasm in me; and though in his speech and manner Jack was as quiet and gentle a being as one could meet, I could never overcome a curious shrinking, an almost uncanny feeling, in his presence, particularly when he looked straight at me with those fine eyes of his. They were light grey in colour, clear and bright as in a young man, but the expression pained me; it was too piercing, too concentrated, and it reminded me of the look in a cat's eyes when it crouches motionless just before making its dash at a bird.

Nevertheless, the fight and wound had one good result for me; my brother had all at once become less masterful, or tyrannical, towards me, and even began to show some interest in my solitary disposition and tastes. A little bird incident brought out this feeling in a way that was very agreeable to me. One evening I told him and our eldest brother that I had seen a strange thing in a bird which had led me to find out something new. Our commonest species was the parasitic cowbird, which laid its eggs anywhere in the nests of all the other small birds. Its colour was a deep glossy purple, almost black; and seeing two of these birds flying over my head, I noticed that they had a small chestnut-coloured spot beneath the wing, which showed that they were not the common species. It had then occurred to me that I had heard a peculiar note or cry uttered by what I took to be the cowbird, which was unlike any note of that bird; and following this clue, I had discovered that we had a bird in our plantation which was like the cowbird in size, colour, and general appearance, but was a different species. They appeared amused by my story, and a few days later they closely interrogated me on three consecutive evenings as to what I had seen that was remarkable that day, in birds especially, and were disappointed because I had nothing interesting to tell them.

The next day my brother said he had a confession to make to me. He and the elder brother had agreed to play a practical joke on me, and had snared a common cowbird and dyed or painted its tail a brilliant scarlet, then liberated it, expecting that I should meet with it in my day's rambles and bird-watching in the plantation and would be greatly excited at the discovery of yet a third purple cowbird, with a scarlet tail, but otherwise not distinguishable from the common one. Now, on reflection, he was glad I had not found their bird and given them their laugh, and he was ashamed at having tried to play such a mean trick on me!

CHAPTER XX.

BIRDING IN THE MARSHES.

Visiting the marshes--Pajonales and Juncales--Abundant bird life--A Coots' metropolis--Frightening the Coots--Grebe and Painted Snipe colonies--The haunt of the Social Marsh Hawk--The beautiful Jacana and its eggs--The colony of Marsh Trupials--The bird's music--The aquatic plant Durasmillo--The Trupial's nest and eggs--Recalling a beauty that has vanished--Our games with gaucho boys--I am injured by a bad boy-- The shepherd's advice--Getting my revenge in a treacherous manner--Was it right or wrong?--The game of Hunting the Ostrich.

At this time of my boy-life most of the daylight hours were spent out of doors, as when not watching the birds in our plantation or asked to go and look at the flock grazing somewhere a mile or so from home, in the absence of the shepherd or his boy, I was always away somewhere on the plain with my small brother on egg-hunting or other expeditions. In the spring and summer we often visited the lagoons or marshes, the most fascinating places I knew on account of their abundant wild bird life. There were four of these lagoons, all in different directions and all within two or three miles from home. They were shallow lakelets, called _lagunas,_ each occupying an area of three or four hundred acres, with some open water and the rest overgrown with bright green sedges in dense beds, called _pajonales,_ and immense beds of bulrushes, called _juncales._ These last were always the best to explore when the water was not deeper than the saddle-girth, and where the round dark polished stems, crowned with their bright brown tufts, were higher than our heads when we urged our horses through them. These were the breeding-places of some small birds that had their beautifully-made nests a couple of feet or so above the water, attached in some cases to single, in others to two or three, rush stems. And here, too, we found the nests of several large species-- egret, night-heron, cormorant, and occasionally a hawk--birds which build on trees in forest districts, but here on the treeless region of the pampas they made their nests among the rushes. The fourth lakelet had no rush-or sedge-beds and no reeds, and was almost covered with a luxuriant growth of the floating _camalote,_ a plant which at a distance resembles the wild musk or mimulus in its ma.s.ses of bright green leaves and brilliant yellow blossoms. This, too, was a fascinating spot, as it swarmed with birds, some of them being kinds which did not breed in the reeds and rushes. It was a sort of metropolis of the coots, and before and after the breeding season they would congregate in flocks of many hundreds on the low wet sh.o.r.e, where their black forms had a singular appearance on the moist green turf. It looked to me like a reproduction in small size of a scene I had witnessed--the vast level green pampa with a scattered herd of two or three thousand black cattle grazing on it, on a large cattle estate where only black beasts were bred. We always thought it great fun when we found a big a.s.sembly of coots at some distance from the margin. Whipping up our horses, we would suddenly charge the flock to see them run and fly in a panic to the lake and rush over the open water, striking the surface with their feet and raising a perfect cloud of spray behind them.

Coots, however, were common everywhere, but this water was the only breeding-place of the grebe in our neighbourhood; yet here we could find scores of nests any day--scores with eggs and a still greater number of false nests, and we could never tell which had eggs in it before pulling off the covering of wet weeds. Another bird rarely seen at any other spot than this was the painted snipe, a prettily-marked species with a green curved bill. It has curiously sluggish habits, rising only when almost trodden upon, and going off in a wild sacred manner like a nocturnal species, then dropping again into hiding at a short distance. The natives call it _dormilon_--sleepy-head. On one side of the lagoon, where the ground was swampy and wet, there was always a breeding-colony of these quaint birds; at every few yards one would spring up close to the hoofs, and dismounting we would find the little nest on the wet ground under the gra.s.s, always with two eggs so thickly blotched all over with black as to appear almost entirely black.

There were other rushy lagoons at a greater distance which we visited only at long intervals, and one of these I must describe, as it was almost more attractive than any one of the others on account of its bird life. Here, too, there were some kinds which we never found breeding elsewhere.

It was smaller than the other lagoons I have described and much shallower, so that the big birds, such as the stork, wood-ibis, crested screamer, and the great blue ibis, called _vanduria,_ and the roseate spoonbill, could wade almost all over it without wetting their feathers. It was one of those lakes which appear to be drying up, and was pretty well covered with a growth of camalote plant, mixed with reed, sedge, and bulrush patches. It was the only water in our part of the country where the large water-snail was found, and the snails had brought the bird that feeds on them--the large social marsh hawk, a slate-coloured bird resembling a buzzard in its size and manner of flight. But being exclusively a feeder on snails, it lives in peace and harmony with the other bird inhabitants of the marsh. There was always a colony of forty or fifty of these big hawks to be seen at this spot. A still more interesting bird was the jacana, as it is spelt in books, but p.r.o.nounced ya-sa-NA by the Indians of Paraguay, a quaint rail-like bird supposed to be related to the plover family: black and maroon-red in colour, the wing-quills a shining greenish yellow, it has enormously long toes, spurs on its wings, and yellow wattles on its face. Here I first saw this strange beautiful fowl, and here to my delight I found its nest in three consecutive summers, with three or four clay-coloured eggs spotted with chestnut-red.

Here, too, was the breeding-place of the beautiful black-and-white stilt, and of other species too many to mention. But my greatest delight was in finding breeding in this place a bird I loved more than all the others I have named--a species of marsh trupial, a bird about the size of the common cowbird, and like it, of a uniform deep purple, but with a cap of chestnut-coloured feathers on its head. I loved this bird for its song--the peculiar delicate tender opening notes and trills. In spring and autumn large flocks would occasionally visit our plantation, and the birds in hundreds would settle on a tree and all sing together, producing a marvellous and beautiful noise, as of hundreds of small bells all ringing at one time. It was by the water I first found their breeding-place, where about three or four hundred birds had their nests quite near together, and nests and eggs and the plants on which they were placed, with the solicitous purple birds flying round me, made a scene of enchanting beauty. The nesting-site was on a low swampy piece of ground grown over with a semi-aquatic plant called durasmillo in the vernacular. It has a single white stalk, woody in appearance, two to three feet high, and little thicker than a man's middle finger, with a palm-like crown of large loose lanceolate leaves, so that it looks like a miniature palm, or rather an ailanthus tree, which has a slender perfectly white bole. The solanaceous flowers are purple, and it bears fruit the size of cherries, black as jet, in cl.u.s.ters of three to five or six. In this forest of tiny palms the nests were hanging, attached to the boles, where two or three grew close together; it was a long and deep nest, skilfully made of dry sedge leaves woven together, and the eggs were white or skim-milk blue spotted with black at the large end.

That enchanting part of the marsh, with its forest of graceful miniature trees, where the social trupials sang and wove their nests and reared their young in company--that very spot is now, I dare say, one immense field of corn, lucerne, or flax, and the people who now live and labour there know nothing of its former beautiful inhabitants, nor have they ever seen or even heard of the purple- plumaged trupial, with its chestnut cap and its delicate trilling song. And when I recall these vanished scenes, those rushy and flowery meres, with their varied and mult.i.tudinous wild bird life--the cloud of shining wings, the heart-enlivening wild cries, the joy unspeakable it was to me in those early years--I am glad to think I shall never revisit them, that I shall finish my life thousands of miles removed from them, cherishing to the end in my heart the image of a beauty which has vanished from earth.

My elder brother occasionally accompanied us on our egg-hunting visits to the lagoons, and he also joined us in our rides to the two or three streams where we used to go to bathe and fish; but he took no part in our games and pastimes with the gaucho boys: they were beneath him. We ran races on our ponies, and when there were race-meetings in our neighbourhood my father would give us a little money to go and enter our ponies in a boys' race. We rarely won when there were any stakes, as the native boys were too clever on horseback for us, and had all sorts of tricks to prevent us from winning, even when our ponies were better than theirs. We also went tinamou, or partridge, catching, and sometimes we had sham fights with lances, or long canes with which we supplied the others. These games were very rough, and one day when we were armed, not with canes but long straight pliant green poplar boughs we had cut for the purpose, we were having a running fight, when one of the boys got in a rage with me for some reason and, dropping behind, then coming quietly up, gave me a blow on the face and head with his stick which sent me flying off my pony. They all dashed on, leaving me there to pick myself tip, and mounting my pony I went home crying with pain and rage. The blow had fallen on my head, but the pliant stick had come down over my face from the forehead to the chin, taking the skin off. On my way back I met our shepherd and told him my story, and said I would go to the boy's parents to tell them. He advised me not to do so; he said I must learn to take my own part, and if any one injured me and I wanted him punished I must do the punishing myself. If I made any fuss and complaint about it I should only get laughed at, and he would go scot free. What, then, was I to do? I asked, seeing that he was older and stronger than myself, and had his heavy whip and knife to defend himself against attack.

"Oh, don't be in a hurry to do it," he returned. "Wait for an opportunity, even if you have to wait for days; and when it comes, do to him just what he did to you. Don't warn him, but simply knock him off his horse, and then you will be quits."

Now this shepherd was a good man, much respected by every one, and I was glad that in his wisdom and sympathy he had put such a simple, easy plan into my head, and I dried my tears and went home and washed the blood from my face, and when asked how I had got that awful wound that disfigured me I made light of it. Two days later my enemy appeared on the scene. I heard his voice outside the gate calling to some one, and peering out I saw him sitting on his horse. His guilty conscience made him afraid to dismount, but he was anxious to find out what was going to be done about his treatment of me, also, if he could see me, to discover my state of mind after two days.

I went out to the timber pile and selected a bamboo cane about twenty feet long, not too heavy to be handled easily, and holding it up like a lance I marched to the gate and started swinging it round as I approached him, and showing a cheerful countenance. "What are you going to do with that cane?" he shouted, a little apprehensively. "Wait and see," I returned. "Something to make you laugh." Then, after whirling it round half a dozen times more, I suddenly brought it down on his head with all my force, and did exactly what I had been counselled to do by the wise shepherd--knocked him clean off his horse. But he was not stunned, and starting up in a screeching fury, he pulled out his knife to kill me. And I, for strategic reasons, retreated, rather hastily. But his wild cries quickly brought several persons on the scene, and, recovering courage, I went back and said triumphantly, "Now we are quits!" Then my father was called and asked to judge between us, and after hearing both sides he smiled and said his judgment was not needed, that we had already settled it all ourselves, and there was nothing now between us. I laughed, and he glared at me, and mounting his horse, rode off without another word. It was, however, only because he was suffering from the blow on his head; when I met him we were good friends again.

More than once during my life, when recalling that episode, I have asked myself if I did right in taking the shepherd's advice? Would it have been better, when I went out to him with the bamboo cane, and he asked me what I was going to do with it, if I had gone up to him and shown him my face with that broad band across it from the chin to the temple, where the skin had come off and a black crust had formed, and had said to him: "This is the mark of the blow you gave me the day before yesterday, when you knocked me off my horse; you see it is on the right side of my face and head; now take the cane and give me another blow on the left side"? Tolstoy (my favourite author, by the way) would have answered: "Yes, certainly it would have been better for you--better for your soul." Nevertheless, I still ask myself: "Would it?" and if this incident should come before me half a second before my final disappearance from earth, I should still be in doubt.

One of our favourite games at this period--the only game on foot we ever played with the gaucho boys--was hunting the ostrich. To play this game we had bolas, only the b.a.l.l.s at the end of the thong were not of lead like those with which the grown-up gaucho hunter captures the real ostrich or rhea. We used light wood to make b.a.l.l.s, so as not to injure each other. The fastest boy was chosen to play the ostrich, and would be sent off to roam ostrich-fashion on the plain, pretending to pick clover from the ground as he walked in a stooping att.i.tude, or making little runs and waving his arms about like wings, then standing erect and mimicking the hollow booming sounds the c.o.c.k bird emits when calling the flock together.

The hunters would then come on the scene and the chase begin, the ostrich putting forth all his speed, doubling to this side and that, and occasionally thinking to escape by hiding, dropping upon the ground in the shelter of a cardoon thistle, only to jump up again when the shouts of the hunters drew near, to rush on as before. At intervals the bolas would come whirling through the air, and he would dodge or avoid them by a quick turn, but eventually he would be hit and the thong would wind itself about his legs and down he would come.

Then the hunters would gather round him, and pulling out their knives begin operations by cutting off his head; then the body would be cut up, the wings and breast removed, these being the best parts for eating, and there would be much talk about the condition and age of the bird, and so on. Then would come the most exciting part of the proceedings--the cutting the gizzard open and the examination of its varied contents; and by and by there would be an exultant shout, and one of the boys would pretend to come on a valuable find--a big silver coin perhaps, a _patacon,_ and there would be a great gabble over it and perhaps a fight for its possession, and they would wrestle and roll on the gra.s.s, struggling for the imaginary coin. That finished, the dead ostrich would get up and place himself among the hunters, while the boy who had captured him with his bolas would then play ostrich,