MONCRIEFF RELATES HIS EXPERIENCES.
Our life at sea had been like one long happy dream. That, at all events, is how it had felt to me. 'A dream I could have wished to last for aye.' I was enamoured of the ocean, and more than once I caught myself yearning to be a sailor. There are people who are born with strange longings, strange desires, which only a life on the ever-changing, ever-restless waves appears to suit and soothe. To such natures the sea seems like a mother—a wild, hard, harsh mother at times, perhaps, but a mother who, if she smiles but an hour, makes them forget her stormy anger of days or weeks.
But the dream was past and gone. And here we had settled down for a spell at Buenos Ayres. We had parted with the kindly captain and surgeon of the Canton, with many a heartily expressed hope of meeting again another day, with prayers on their side for our success in the new land, with kindliest wishes on ours for a pleasant voyage and every joy for them.
Dear me! What a very long time it felt to look back to, since we had bidden them 'good-bye' at home! How very old I was beginning to feel! I asked my brothers if their feelings were the same, and found them identical. Time had been apparently playing tricks on us.
And yet we did not look any older in each other's eyes, only just a little more serious. Yes, that was it—serious. 87 Even Dugald, who was usually the most light-hearted and merry of the three of us, looked as if he fully appreciated the magnitude of what we had undertaken.
Here we were, three—well, young men say, though some would have called us boys—landed on a foreign shore, without an iota of experience, without much knowledge of the country apart from that we had gleaned from books or gathered from the conversations of Bombazo and Moncrieff. And yet we had landed with the intention, nay, even the determination, to make our way in the new land—not only to seek our fortunes, but to find them.
Oh, we were not afraid! We had the glorious inheritance of courage, perseverance, and self-reliance. Here is how Donald, my brother, argued one night:
'Look, here, Murdo,' he said. 'This is a land of milk and honey, isn't it? Well, we're going to be the busy bees to gather it. It is a silver land, isn't it? Well, we're the boys to tap it. Fortunes are made here, and have been made. What is done once can be done five hundred times. Whatever men dare they can do. Quod erat demonstrandum.'
'Et nil desperandum,' added Dugald.
'I'm not joking, I can tell you, Dugald, I'm serious now, and I mean to remain so, and stick to work—aren't you, Murdo?'
'I am, Donald.'
Then we three brothers, standing there, one might say, on the confines of an unknown country, with all the world before us, shook hands, and our looks, as we gazed into each other's eyes, said—if they said anything—'We'll do the right thing one by the other, come weal, come woe.'
Aunt entered soon after.
'What are you boys so serious about?' she said, laughing merrily, as she seated herself on the couch. 'You look like three conspirators.'
'So we are, aunt. We're conspiring together to make our fortunes.'
'What! building castles in the air?' 88
'Oh, no, no, no,' cried Donald, 'not in the air, but on the earth. And our idols are not going to have feet of clay, I assure you, auntie, but of solid silver.'
'Well, we shall hope for the best. I have just parted with Mr. Moncrieff, whom I met down town. We have had a long walk together and quite a nice chat. He has made me his confidant—think of that!'
'What! you, auntie?'
'Yes, me. Who else? And that sober, honest, decent, Scot is going to take a wife. It was so good of him to tell me. We are all going to the wedding next week, and I'm sure I wish the dear man every happiness and joy.'
'So do we, aunt.'
'And oh, by the way, he is coming to dine here to-night, and I feel sure he wants to give you good advice, and that means me too, of course.'
'Of course, auntie, you're one of us.'
Moncrieff arrived in good time, and brought his mother with him.
'Ye didn't include my mither in the invitation, Miss M'Crimman,' said the Scot; 'but I knew you meant her to come. I've been so long without the poor old creature, that I hardly care to move about without her now.'
'Poor old creature, indeed!' Mrs. Moncrieff was heard to mumble. 'Where,' she said to a nattily dressed waiter, 'will you put my umbrella?'
'I'll take the greatest care of it, madam,' the man replied.
'Do, then,' said the little old dame, 'and I may gi'e ye a penny, though I dinna mak' ony promises, mind.'
A nicer little dinner was never served, nor could a snugger room for such a tête-à-tête meal be easily imagined. It was on the ground floor, the great casement windows opening on to a verandah in a shady garden, where grass was kept green and smooth as velvet, where rare ferns grew in luxurious freedom with dwarf palms and drooping bananas, and where stephanotis and the charming lilac bougainvillea were still in bloom. 89
When the dessert was finished, and old Jenny was quite tired talking, it seemed so natural that she should curl up in an easy-chair and go off to sleep.
'I hope my umbrella's safe, laddie,' were her last words as her son wrapped her in his plaid.
'As safe as the Union Bank,' he replied.
So we left her there, for the waiter had taken coffee into the verandah.
Aunt, somewhat to our astonishment, ordered cigars, and explained to Moncrieff that she did not object to smoking, but did like to see men happy.
Moncrieff smiled.
'You're a marvel as well as my mither,' he said.
He smoked on in silence for fully five minutes, but he often took the cigar from his mouth and looked at it thoughtfully; then he would allow his eyes to follow the curling smoke, watching it with a smile on his face as it faded into invisibility, as they say ghosts do.
'Mr. Moncrieff,' said aunt, archly, 'I know what you are thinking about.'
Moncrieff waved his hand through a wreath of smoke as if to clear his sight.
'If you were a man,' he answered, 'I'd offer to bet you couldn't guess my thoughts. I was not thinking about my Dulcinea, nor even about my mither; I was thinking about you and your britheries—I mean your nephews.'
'You are very kind, Mr. Moncrieff.'
'I'm a man of the worrrld, though I wasn't aye a man of the worrrld. I had to pay deep and dear for my experience, Miss M'Crimman.'
'I can easily believe that; but you have benefited by it.'
'Doubtless, doubtless; only it was concerning yourselves I was about to make an observation or two.'
'Oh, thanks, do. You are so kind.'
'Never a bit. This is a weary worrrld at best. Where would any of us land if the one didn't help the other? Well then, there you sit, and woman of the worrrld though you be, you're in a strange corner of it. You're in 90 a foreign land now if ever you were. You have few friends. Bah! what are all your letters of introduction worth? What do they bring you in? A few invitations to dinner, or to spend a week up country by a wealthy estanciero, advice from this friend and the next friend, and from a dozen friends maybe, but all different. You are already getting puzzled. You don't know what to do for the best. You're stopping here to look about you, as the saying is. You might well ask me what right have I to advise you. The right of brotherhood, I may answer. By birth and station you may be far above me, but—you are friends—you are from dear auld Scotland. Boys, you are my brothers!'
'And I your sister!' Aunt extended her hand as she spoke, and the worthy fellow 'coralled' it, so to speak, in his big brown fist, and tears sprang to his eyes.
He pulled himself up sharp, however, and surrounded himself with smoke, as the cuttle-fish does with black water, and probably for the same reason—to escape observation.
'Now,' he said, 'this is no time for sentiment; it is no land for sentiment, but for hard work. Well, what are you going to do? Simply to say you're going to make your fortune is all fiddlesticks and folly. How are you going to begin?'
'We were thinking—' I began, but paused.
'I was thinking—' said my aunt; then she paused also.
Moncrieff laughed, but not unmannerly.
'I was thinking,' he said. 'You were thinking; he, she, or it was thinking. Well, my good people, you may stop all your life in Buenos Ayres and conjugate the verb "to think"; but if you'll take my advice you will put a shoulder to the wheel of life, and try to conjugate the verb "to do".'
'We all want to do and act,' said Donald, energetically.
'Right. Well, you see, you have one thing already in your favour. You have a wee bit o' siller in your pouch. 91 It is a nest egg, though; it is not to be spent—it is there to bring more beside it. Now, will I tell you how I got on in the world? I'm not rich, but I am in a fair way to be independent. I am very fond of work, for work's sake, and I'm thirty years of age. Been in this country now for over fourteen years. Had I had a nest egg when I started, I'd have been half a millionaire by now. But, wae's me! I left the old country with nothing belonging to me but my crook and my plaid.'
'You were a shepherd before you came out, then?' said aunt.
'Yes; and that was the beauty of it. You've maybe heard o' Foudland, in Aberdeenshire? Well, I came fra far ayant the braes o' Foudland. That's, maybe, the way my mither's sae auldfarrent. There, ye see, I'm talkin' Scotch, for the very thought of Foudland brings back my Scotch tongue. Ay, dear lady, dear lady, my father was an honest crofter there. He owned a bit farm and everything, and things went pretty well with us till death tirled at the door-sneck and took poor father away to the mools. I was only a callan o' some thirteen summers then, and when we had to leave the wee croft and sell the cows we were fain to live in a lonely shieling on the bare brae side, just a butt and a ben with a wee kailyard, and barely enough land to grow potatoes and keep a little Shetland cowie. But, young though I was, I could herd sheep—under a shepherd at first, but finally all by myself. I'm not saying that wasn't a happy time. Oh, it was, lady! it was! And many a night since then have I lain awake thinking about it, till every scene of my boyhood's days rose up before me. I could see the hills, green with the tints of spring, or crimson with the glorious heather of autumn; see the braes yellow-tasselled with the golden broom and fragrant with the blooming whins; see the glens and dells, the silver, drooping birch-trees, the grand old waving pines, the wimpling burns, the roaring linns and lochs asleep in the evening sunset. And see my mither's shieling, too; and many a night have I lain awake to pray I might have her near me once again.' 92
'And a kind God has answered that prayer!'
'Ay, Miss M'Crimman, and I'll have the sad satisfaction of one day closing her een. Never mind, we do our duty here, and we'll all meet again in the great "Up-bye." But, dear boys, to continue my story—if story I dare call it. Not far from the hills where I used to follow Laird Glennie's sheep, and down beside a bonnie wood and stream, was a house, of not much pretension, but tenanted every year by a gentleman who used to paint the hills and glens and country all round. They say he got great praise for his pictures, and big prices as well. I used often to arrange my sheep and dogs for him into what he would call picturesque groups and attitudes. Then he painted them and me and dogs and all. He used to delight to listen to my boyish story of adventure, and in return would tell me tales of far-off lands he had been in, and about the Silver Land in particular. Such stories actually fired my blood. He had sown the seeds of ambition in my soul, and I began to long for a chance of getting away out into the wide, wide world, and seeing all its wonders, and, maybe, becoming a great man myself. But how could a penniless laddie work his way abroad? Impossible.
'Well, one autumn a terrible storm swept over the country. It began with a perfect hurricane of wind, then it settled down to rain, till it became a perfect "spate." I had never seen such rain, nor such tearing floods as came down from the hills.
'Our shieling was a good mile lower down the stream than the artist's summer hut. It was set well up the brae, and was safe. But on looking out next day a sight met my eyes that quite appalled me. All the lowlands and haughs were covered with a sea of water, down the centre of which a mighty river was chafing and roaring, carrying on its bosom trees up-torn from their roots, pieces of green bank, "stooks" of corn and "coles" of hay, and, saddest of all, the swollen bodies of sheep and oxen. My first thought was for the artist. I ran along the bank 93 till opposite his house. Yes, there it was flooded to the roof, to which poor Mr. Power was clinging in desperation, expecting, doubtless, that every moment would be his last, for great trees were surging round the house and dashing against the tiles.
'Hardly knowing what I did, I waved my plaid and shouted. He saw me, and waved his arm in response. Then I remembered that far down stream a man kept a boat, and I rushed away, my feet hardly seeming to touch the ground, till I reached—not the dwelling, that was covered, but the bank opposite; and here, to my delight, I found old M'Kenzie seated in his coble. He laughed at me when I proposed going to the rescue of Mr. Power.
'"Impossible!" he said. "Look at the force of the stream."
'"But we have not to cross. We can paddle up the edge," I insisted.
'He ventured at last, much to my joy. It was hard, dangerous work, and often we found it safest to land and haul up the boat along the side.
'We were opposite the artist's hut at length, hardly even the chimney of which was now visible. But Power was safe as yet.
'At the very moment our boat reached him the chimney disappeared, and with it the artist. The turmoil was terrible, for the whole house had collapsed. For a time I saw nothing, then only a head and arm raised above the foaming torrent, far down stream. I dashed in, in spite of M'Kenzie's remonstrances, and in a minute more I had caught the drowning man. I must have been struck on the head by the advancing boat. That mattered little—the sturdy old ferryman saved us both; and for a few days the artist had the best room in mither's shieling.
'And this, dear lady, turned out to be—as I dare say you have guessed—my fairy godfather. He went back to Buenos Ayres, taking me as servant. He is here now. I saw him but yesterday, and we are still the fastest friends. 94
'But, boys, do not let me deceive you. Mr. Power was not rich; all he could do for me was to pay my passage out, and let me trust to Providence for the rest.
'I worked at anything I could get to do for a time, principally holding horses in the street, for you know everybody rides here. But I felt sure enough that one day, or some day, a settler would come who could value the services of an honest, earnest Scottish boy.
'And come the settler did. He took me away, far away to the west, to a wild country, but one that was far too flat and level to please me, who had been bred and born among the grand old hills of Scotland.
'Never mind, I worked hard, and this settler—a Welshman he was—appreciated my value, and paid me fairly well. The best of it was that I could save every penny of my earnings.
'Yes, boys, I roughed it more than ever you'll have to do, though remember you'll have to rough it too for a time. You don't mind that, you say. Bravely spoken, boys. Success in the Silver Land rarely fails to fall to him who deserves it.
'Well, in course of time I knew far more about sheep and cattle-raising than my master, so he took me as a partner, and since then I have done well. We changed our quarters, my partner and I. We have now an excellent steading of houses, and a grand place for the beasts.'
'And to what qualities do you chiefly attribute your success?' said my aunt.
'Chiefly,' replied Moncrieff, 'to good common-sense, to honest work and perseverance. I'm going back home in a week or two, as soon as I get married and my mither gets the "swimming" out of her head. She says she still feels the earth moving up and down with her; and I don't wonder, an auld body like her doesn't stand much codging about.
'Well, you see, boys, that I, like yourselves, had one advantage to begin with. You have a bit o' siller—I got a fairy godfather. But if I had a year to spare I'd go 95 back to Scotland and lecture. I'd tell them all my own ups and downs, and I'd end by saying that lads or young men, with plenty of go in them and willingness to work, will get on up country here if they can once manage to get landed. Ay, even if they have hardly one penny to rattle against another.
'Now, boys, do you care to go home with me? Mind it is a wild border-land I live on. There are wild beasts in the hill jungles yet, and there are wilder men—the Indians. Yes, I've fought them before, and hope to live to fight them once again.'
'I don't think we'll fear the Indians very much,' said my bold brother Donald.
'And,' I added, 'we are so glad you have helped us to solve the problem that we stood face to face with—namely, how to begin to do something.'
'Well, if that is all, I'll give you plenty to do. I've taken out with me waggon-loads of wire fencing as well as a wife. Next week, too, I expect a ship from Glasgow to bring me seven sturdy Scotch servant men that I picked myself. Every one of them has legs like pillar post-offices, hands as broad as spades, and a heart like a lion's. And, more than all this, we are trying to form a little colony out yonder, then we'll be able to hold our own against all the reeving Indians that ever strode a horse. Ah! boys, this Silver Land has a mighty future before it! We have just to settle down a bit and work with a will and a steady purpose, then we'll fear competition neither with Australia nor the United States of America either.
'But you'll come. That's right. And now I have you face to face with fate and fortune.
| "Now's the day and now's the hour, See the front of battle lower." |
Yes, boys, the battle of life, and I would not give a fig for any lad who feared to face it.
'Coming, mither, coming. That's the auld lady waking up, and she'll want a cup o' tea.'