The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer" Part 11

It has occurred to me that a slightly more detailed account of the internal economy of our land-yacht, the Wanderer, might not prove devoid of interest to the reader, and I cannot give this in an easier way to myself, nor more completely, than by describing a day in the life of a gentleman gipsy.

It is the ninth of July, and early morning. The belfry-clock, which we can see from the meadow in which we have been lying all night, will presently chime out the quarter-past six. Foley is busy erecting the after-tent under which I have my bath every morning, as sure as sunrise.

In a few minutes, ere ever I have finished my toilet, our coachman will be here for oats and beans for Corn-flower and Pea-blossom. No fear that John will neglect his horses, he is quite as kind to them as I myself am to Bob and Polly, and now that Pear-blossom's fetlock is slightly strained, it is three times a day most carefully bandaged and rubbed with healing liniment.

The bed which is made every night on the sofa is not yet taken up, but as soon as I emerge from the back door and enter the tent my valet enters by the saloon front door, the bedclothes are carried outside, carefully shaken and folded, and finally stowed away under the lockers.

The saloon is then brushed and dusted and the cloth laid for breakfast.

Bob sleeps on the driving ap.r.o.n in the corner of the saloon, Polly in her cage occupies another corner. The first thing I do every morning is to hang Polly under the balcony, and chain Bob on the _coupe_, wrapping him in his red blanket if the weather be chilly. He is there now; ominous warning growls are followed by fierce barking, for some one is nearing the caravan whose looks Bob does not like, or whose movements he deems suspicious. At every bark of the brave dog the van shakes and the lamp-gla.s.ses rattle.

I have finished shaving--water boiled by spirits-of-wine.

"The bath all ready? thank you, Foley."

Do not imagine that I carry an immense tin-ware bath in the Wanderer.

No, a gipsy's bath is a very simple arrangement, but it is very delightful. This is the _modus operandi_. I have a great sponge and a bucket of cold water, newly drawn from the nearest well. This morning the water is actually ice-cold, but I am hungry before I have finished sponging, so benefit must result from so bracing an ablution.

Foley has laid the cloth. The kettle is boiling, the eggs and rashers are ready to put in the frying-pan, the Rippingille oil-stove is in a little tent made of mats under the caravan. There is nothing in the shape of cooking this stove will not perform.

Now Bob must have his early run, and while I am walking with him I call a bunch of the seedling gra.s.ses Polly loves so well, for I believe with Norman McLeod, D.D. "I think nothing of that man's religion," said that truly great and good man, "whose cat and dog are not the better for it."

We have not a caravan cat, but Polly is an excellent subst.i.tute.

I return and once more fasten Bob on the _coupe_, but he now insists on having the front door open that he may watch me at breakfast, and get the t.i.t-bits. How bright, and clean, and pleasant the saloon looks!

There are garden flowers in the crystal boat, and a splendid bouquet of wild flowers and ferns that I culled in the woods yesterday morning stands in the bracket beneath one of the windows; crimson foxgloves there are, rare and beautiful ox-eye daisies, and a score of others of every colour and shade.

The sun is streaming in through the panes and shimmering on the red lamp-gla.s.ses; the table is laid to perfection, the tea is fragrant, the eggs and bacon done to a turn, and the bread as white as snow. The milk, too, is newly from that very cow who was playing the trombone so noisily last night in the meadow near me, and the b.u.t.ter all that could be desired. And yet some of these dainties are wondrous cheap up here in Yorks; for that b.u.t.ter we paid but eleven pence a pound, fourteen new-laid eggs we secured for a shilling, the bacon cost but sixpence, while three halfpence buys me a jugful of the richest of milk. Who would not be a gipsy?

But breakfast is soon discussed and everything cleared away, the spoons and dishes are washed beneath the tent, the hind tables having been let down to facilitate matters. In half an hour or less the pantry is as bright and tidy as eye could wish to see. The tent itself is taken down and stowed away, the ladder is shipped and secured, buckets and mats, and nosebags and chains, fastened beneath the caravan, then the steps are put up, and the after-door closed and locked. The horses are now put-to; I myself have one last walk round the Wanderer to see that everything is in its place and no drawer left unlocked, then away we rattle right gaily O!

To-day the gate that leads to the meadow is narrow, it does not give us two inches to spare at each side. I have to walk backwards in front of the horses to guide the coachman in his exit. But John has a keen eye, and in a few moments we are in the road.

Nothing has been forgotten, and the landlord of the Stalled Ox gives us kindly good morning and wishes us _bon voyage_. More than one friendly hand is waved, too, and some hats are lifted, for the good people, having soon settled in their minds that we were neither in the Cheap-Jack line nor Salvation soldiers, have promoted me to the dignity of baronet. This is nothing new. Some scions of n.o.bility are actually caravanning around somewhere, and I am often supposed to be one of them.

I travel _incog_, and do not care whom I am taken for, whether Cheap-Jack, n.o.ble earl, or political agent. I now let down the front seat, and Hurricane Bob withdraws to the quiet seclusion of the pantry, where he rests on cushions to fend him from the jolting.

Pea-blossom invariably nudges Corn-flower with her nose before starting.

This is to make him straighten out and take the first pull at the caravan. He never refuses, and once it is in motion they both settle soberly down to their work.

Foley is on ahead with the tricycle--some hundred yards. This is a judicious and handy arrangement. We hardly know how we should have done without our smart and beautiful Ranelagh Club machine.

The day will be a warm one. It is now eight o'clock, the road is level and firm, and we hope to reach Darlington--sixteen miles--to-night.

The country is flat again, but the landscape is bounded by far-off blue hills.

The roses still accompany us in the hedgerows. There is even a greater wealth of them to-day than usual, while the sward at each side of our path still looks like a garden laid out in beds and patches of brightest colours.

There is nothing of very special interest to view in this long town of Northallerton, not in the streets at all events. Last night, though, we were visited by hundreds of well-dressed people; many of these were really beautiful girls, though here the beauty is of a different type from that you find far south. More of the Saxon probably, and a sprinkling of the auburn-haired Dane.

For weeks I have cared but little how the world wagged. With an apathy and listlessness born of bracing air and sunshine, I have troubled myself not at all about foreign wars or the fall of governments, but to-day I have invested in a _Yorkshire Post_. I arrange my rags on the _coupe_, and lying down, dreamily scan my paper as the horses go trotting along. I have plenty of work to do if I choose, bundles of proofs to correct from my publishers, but--I'll do it by-and-bye.

By-and-bye is a gipsy's motto. There is no news in this day's paper.

What care I that Oko Jumbo has departed, or that there has been a royal visit to Leeds? Bah! I fold the thing up and pitch it to a cow-boy.

Had it fallen in that cow-boy's mouth it would hardly have filled it.

The road is silent and almost deserted, so we see but few people saving those who run to their garden gates, or peep from behind the geraniums in windows.

But it is most pleasant lolling here on such a glorious morning, and the veriest trifles that I notice in pa.s.sing awaken a kind of drowsy interest in my mind.

In proof of this let me mention a few. A country boy playing with a collie puppy. Puppy nearly gets run over. Agony and anxiety of country boy. Red-tiled brick cottages peeping up through orchards. Red-tiled cottages everywhere, by hedgerows, by brook-sides, in meadows, on morsels of moorland. A sweep in full costume, brush and all, standing glaring from under a broad Scotch bonnet. A yellow-haired wee la.s.sie standing in a doorway eating a slice of bread; she has not finished her toilet, for she wears but one stocking, the other shapely leg is bare.

Great banks of elder-trees covered with snowy blossoms. A quiet and pretty farm-steading near the road, its garden ablaze with crimson valerian. Milch cows in the adjacent meadow, ankle-deep in yellow celandine and daisies. A flock of lambs in a field lying down under the shade of a great sycamore, the sycamore itself a sight worth seeing.

And now we are on the top of Lovesome Hill. What a charming name, by the way! Spread out before and beneath us is a large and fertile plain, fields and woodlands, as far as ever the eye can reach, all slumbering in the sweet summer sunshine. In the distance a train is speeding along, we can trace it by its trailing smoke. I had almost forgotten we lived in the days of railway trains. There is a redbrick village on the hilltop straight ahead of us.

That must be Smeaton. Smeaton? Yes, now I remember, and the lovely fertile plain yonder, that now looks so green and smiling, hides in its bosom the dust of an army. History tells us that ten thousand Scotchmen were there slain. I can fancy the terrible tulzie, I can people that plain even now in imagination with men in battle array; I see the banners wave, and hear the border slogan cry:

"And now at weapon-point they close, Scarce can they hear or see their foes; They close in clouds of smoke and dust, With sword's-sway and lance's thrust; And such a yell was there, Of sudden and portentous birth, As if man fought upon the earth, And fiends in upper air.

Oh! life and death were in the shout, And triumph and despair."

[The Battle of the Standard, fought in 1138, in which the Scottish army was routed, and the flower of the land left dead on the field.]

But here we are in Smeaton itself--gra.s.s or a garden at every cottage.

This village would make a capital health resort. We stop to water the horses, and though it is hardly ten o'clock I feel hungry already.

Clear of the village, and on and on. A nice old lady in spectacles tending cows and knitting, singing low to herself as she does so. An awful-looking old man, in awful-looking goggles, breaking stones by the roadside. I address the awful-looking old man.

"Awful-looking old man," I say, "did ever you hear of the Battle of the Standard?"

"Naa."

"Did you never hear or read that a battle was fought near this spot?"

The awful-looking old man scratched his head.

"Coome ta think on't noo, there was summut o' th' kind, but it's soome years agone. There war more 'n a hoondred c.o.c.ks. A regular main as ye might call it."

I pa.s.s on and leave the old man muttering to himself. Pinewoods on our right mingling with the lighter green of the feathery larches. A thundercloud hanging over a town in the plains far away. A duck-pond completely surrounded by trailing roses. Ducks in the pond all head down, tails and yellow feet up. Road suddenly becomes a lovers' lane, charmingly pretty, and robins are singing in the copses. We are just five miles from Darlington.

We stable our horses at a roadside inn and Foley cooks the dinner.

How very handy sheets of paper come in! Look at that snow-white tablecloth--that is paper; so is the temporary crumb-cloth, and eke my table-napkin; but in fifty other ways in a caravan paper is useful.

The dinner to-day is cold roast beef and floury new potatoes; add to this a delightful salad, and we have a _menu_ a millionaire might not despise.

I write up my log while dinner is cooking, and after that meal has been discussed comes the hour for reading and siesta.

Now the horses are once more put-to, and we start again for Darlington.

We pa.s.s through the charming village of Croft; it lies on the banks of the Tees, and is a spa of some kind, and well worthy of being a better-frequented resort for the health or pleasure seeker.

The treescapes, the wood and water peeps, are fine just before you reach Darlington. This town itself is one of the prettiest in England. Fully as big but infinitely more beautiful even than Reading.