The Red Eric Part 43

"Now, what am I to do with it? that is the question."

Glynn propounded this knotty question one evening, about three weeks after the trial, to his friends of the yellow cottage with the green-painted door.

"Put it in the bank," suggested Aunt Martha.

"Yes, and live on the interest," added Aunt Jane.

"Or invest in the whale-fishery," said Captain Dunning, emitting a voluminous cloud of tobacco-smoke, as if to suggest the idea that the investment would probably end in something similar to that. (The captain was a peculiarly favoured individual; he was privileged to smoke in the Misses Dunning's parlour.)

"Oh! I'll tell you what to do, Glynn," cried Ailie, clapping her hands; "it would be _so_ nice. Buy a cottage with it--a nice, pretty, white-painted cottage, beside a wood, with a little river in front of it, and a small lake with a boat on it not far off, and a far, far view from the windows of fields, and villages, and churches, and cattle, and sheep, and--"

"Hurrah! Ailie, go it, my la.s.s!" interrupted Glynn; "and horses, and ponies, and carts, and cats, and blackbirds, and c.o.c.ks and hens, and ploughmen, and milkmaids, and beggars, all in the foreground; and coaches, and railroads, and steamboats, and palaces, and ca.n.a.ls, in the middle distance; with a glorious background of the mighty sea glittering for ever under the blazing beams of a perpetually setting sun, mingled with the pale rays of an eternally rising moon, and laden with small craft, and whale-ships, and seaweed, and fish, and b.u.mboats, and men-of-war!"

"Oh, how nice!" cried Ailie, screaming with delight.

"Go ahead, lad, never give in!" said the captain; whose pipe during this glowing description had been keeping up what seemed like a miniature sea-fight. "You've forgot the main point."

"What's that?" inquired Glynn.

"Why, a palace for Jacko close beside it, with a portrait of Jacko over the drawing-room fireplace, and a marble bust of Jacko in the four corners of every room."

"So I did; I forgot that," replied Glynn.

"Dear Jacko!" said Ailie, laughing heartily, and holding out her hand.

The monkey, which had become domesticated in the house, leaped nimbly upon her knee, and looked up in her face.

"Oh! Ailie dear, do put it down!" cried Aunt Jane, shuddering.

"How can you?" said Aunt Martha; "dirty beast!" Of course Aunt Martha applied the latter part of her remark to the monkey, not to the child.

"I'll never be able to bear it," remarked Aunt Jane.

"And it will never come to agree with the cat," observed Aunt Martha.

Ailie patted her favourite on the cheek and told it to go away, adding, that it was a dear pet--whereupon that small monkey retired modestly to a corner near the sideboard. It chanced to be the corner nearest to the sugar-basin, which had been left out by accident; but Jacko didn't know that, of course--at least, if he did, he did not say so. It is probable, however, that he found it out in course of time; for an hour or two afterwards the distinct marks of ten very minute fingers were visible therein, a discovery which Aunt Martha made with a scream, and Aunt Jane announced with a shriek--which caused Jacko to retire precipitately.

"But really," said Glynn, "jesting apart, I must take to something on sh.o.r.e, for although I like the sea very well, I find that I like the land better."

"Well, since you wish to be in earnest about it," said Captain Dunning, "I'll tell you what has been pa.s.sing in my mind of late. I'm getting to be an oldish young man now, you see, and am rather tired of the sea myself, so I also think of giving it up. I have now laid by about five thousand pounds, and with this I think of purchasing a farm. I learnt something of farming before I took to the sea, so that I am not quite so green on such matters as you might suppose, though I confess I'm rather rusty and behind the age; but that won't much matter in a fine country like this, and I can get a good steward to take command and steer the ship until I have brushed up a bit in sh.o.r.e-goin' navigation. There is a farm which is just the very thing for me not more than twenty miles from this town, with a cottage on it and a view _somewhat_ like the one you and Ailie described a few minutes ago, though not _quite_ so grand.

But there's one great and insuperable objection to my taking it."

"What is that?" inquired Aunt Martha, who, with her sister, expressed in their looks unbounded surprise at the words of their brother, whom they regarded as so thoroughly and indissolubly connected with the sea that they would probably have been less surprised had he announced it to be his intention to become a fish and thenceforward dwell in a coral cave.

"I have not enough of money wherewith to buy and stock it."

"_What_ a pity!" said Ailie, whose hopes had been rising with extraordinary rapidity, and were thus quenched at once.

Glynn leaped up and smote his thigh with his right hand, and exclaimed in a triumphant manner--"That's the very ticket!"

"What's the very ticket?" inquired the captain.

"I'll lend you _my_ money," said Glynn.

"Ay, boy, that's just the point I was comin' to. A thousand pounds will do. Now, if you lend me that sum, I'm willin' to take you into partnership, and we'll buy the place and farm it together. I think we'll pull well in the same boat, for I think you like me well enough, and I'm sure I like you, and I know Ailie don't object to either of us; and after I'm gone, Glynn, you can work the farm for Ailie and give her her share. What say you?"

"Done," exclaimed Glynn, springing up and seizing the captain's hand.

"I'll be your son and you'll be my father, and Ailie will be my sister-- and _won't_ we be jolly, just!"

Ailie laughed, and so did the two aunts, but the captain made no reply.

He merely smoked with a violence that was quite appalling, and nodding his head, winked at Glynn, as if to say--"That's it, exactly!"

The compact thus half-jestingly entered into was afterwards thoroughly ratified and carried into effect. The cottage was named the Red Eric, and the property was named the Whale Brae, after an ancestral estate which, it was supposed, had, at some remote period, belonged to the Dunning family in Scotland. The t.i.tle was not inappropriate, for it occupied the side of a rising ground, which, as a feature in the landscape, looked very like a whale, "only," as Glynn said, "not quite so big," which was an outrageous falsehood, for it was a great deal bigger! A small wooden palace was built for Jacko, and many a portrait was taken of him by Glynn, in charcoal, on many an outhouse wall, to the immense delight of Ailie. As to having busts of him placed in the corners of every room, Glynn remarked that that was quite unnecessary, for Jacko _almost_ "bu'st" himself in every possible way, at every conceivable time, in every imaginable place, whenever he could conveniently collect enough of food to do so--which was not often, for Jacko, though small, was of an elastic as well as an amiable disposition.

Tim Rokens stuck to his old commander to the last. He said he had sailed with him the better part of his life, in the same ships, had weathered the same storms, and chased the same fish, and now that the captain had made up his mind to lay up in port, he meant to cast anchor beside him. So the bold harpooner became a species of overseer and jack-of-all-trades on the property. Phil Briant set up as a carpenter in the village close by, took to himself a wife (his first wife having died), and became Tim Rokens' boon companion and bosom friend. As for the rest of the crew of the _Red Eric_, they went their several ways, got into separate ships, and were never again re-a.s.sembled together; but nearly all of them came at separate times, in the course of years, to visit their old captain and shipmates in the Red Eric at Whale Brae.

In course of time Ailie grew up into such a sweet, pretty, modest, loveable woman, that the very sight of her did one's heart good. Love was the ruling power in Ailie's heart--love to her G.o.d and Saviour and to all His creatures. She was not perfect. Who is? She had faults, plenty of them. Who has not? But her loving nature covered up everything with a golden veil so beautiful, that no one saw her faults, or, if they did, would not believe them to be faults at all.

Glynn, also, grew up and became a _man_. Observe, reader, we don't mean to say that he became a thing with long legs, and broad shoulders, and whiskers. Glynn became a real man; an out-and-out man; a being who realised the fact that he had been made and born into the world for the purpose of doing that world good, and leaving it better than he found it. He did not think that to strut, and smoke cigars, and talk loud or big, and commence most of his sentences with "Aw! 'pon my soul!" was the summit of true greatness. Neither did he, flying in disgust to the opposite extreme, speak like a misanthrope, and look like a bear, or dress like a savage. He came to know the truth of the proverb, that "there is a time for all things," and following up the idea suggested by those words, he came to perceive that there is a place for all things-- that place being the human heart, when in a true and healthy condition in all its parts, out of which, in their proper time, some of those "all things" ought to be ever ready to flow. Hence Glynn could weep with the sorrowful and laugh with the gay. He could wear a red or a blue flannel shirt, and pull an oar (ay, the best oar) at a rowing match, or he could read the Bible and pray with a bedridden old woman. Had Glynn Proctor been a naval commander, he might have sunk, destroyed, or captured fleets. Had he been a soldier, he might have stormed and taken cities; being neither, he was a greater man than either, for he could "_rule his own spirit_." If you are tempted, dear reader, to think that an easy matter, just try it. Make the effort. The first time you chance to be in a towering rage (which I trust, however, may never be), try to keep your tongue silent, and, most difficult of all, try at that moment to pray, and see whether your opinion as to your power over your own spirit be not changed.

Such were Glynn and Ailie. "So they married, of course," you remark.

Well, reader, and why not? Nothing could be more natural. Glynn felt, and said, too, that nothing was nearer his heart. And Ailie admitted-- after being told by Glynn that she must be his wife, for he wanted to have her, and was determined to have her whether she would or not--that her heart was in similar proximity to the idea of marriage. Captain Dunning did not object--it would have been odd if he had objected to the fulfilment of his chief earthly desire. Tim Rokens did not groan when he heard of the proposal--by no means; on the contrary, he roared, and laughed, and shouted with delight, and went straight off to tell Phil Briant, who roared a duet with him, and they both agreed that it "wos the most gloriously nat'ral thing they ever did know since they wos launched upon the sea of time!"

So Glynn Proctor and Ailie Dunning were married, and lived long, and happily, and usefully at Whale Brae. Captain Dunning lived with them until he was so old that Ailie's eldest daughter (also named Ailie) had to lead him from his bedroom each morning to breakfast, and light his pipe for him when he had finished. And Ailie the second performed her duties well, and made the old man happy--happier than he could find words to express--for Ailie the second was like her mother in all things, and greater praise than that could not possibly be awarded to her.

The affairs of the cottage with the yellow face and the green door were kept in good order for many years by one of Ailie the second's little sisters--Martha by name; and there was much traffic and intercourse between that ancient building and the Red Eric, as long as the two aunts lived, which was a very long time indeed. Its green door was, during that time, almost battered off its hinges by successive juvenile members of the Proctor family. And truly deep and heartfelt was the mourning at Whale Brae when the amiable sisters were taken away at last.

As for Tim Rokens, that ancient mariner became the idol of the young Proctors, as they successively came to be old enough to know his worth.

The number of ships and boats he made for the boys among them was absolutely fabulous. Equal, perhaps, to about a twentieth part of the number of pipes of tobacco he smoked during his residence there, and about double the number of stories told them by Phil Briant during the same period.

King b.u.mble lived with the family until his woolly head became as white as his face was black; and Jacko--poor little Jacko--lived so long, that he became big, but he did not become less amiable, or less addicted to thieving. He turned grey at last and became as blind as a bat, and finally crawled about the house, enfeebled by old age, and wrapped in a flannel dressing-gown.

Sorrows and joys are the lot of all; they chase each other across the sky of human life like cloud and sunshine on an April day. Captain Dunning and his descendants were not exempt from the pains, and toils, and griefs of life, but they met them in the right spirit, and diffused so sweet an influence around their dwelling that the neighbours used to say--and say truly--of the family at the Red Eric, that they were always good-humoured and happy--as happy as the day was long.

THE END.