“The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in its flight;
“But the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.”
No cares had Colonel Clarkson to trouble him. So everyone would have told round the village or in the parish. It was then nearly the autumn of life with the Colonel, but really and truly he seemed to be growing old gracefully. Nor did he allow the little worries of life to interfere in the least with the calm enjoyment of his placid existence.
He had been a busy man in his younger days. But that was years ago. He had fought in the Crimea, he had waved his sword on Persian plains, and on Afghanistan heights, and he had gone through all the horrors of the Indian Mutiny. He had even been side by side with brave Havelock in the rush for the Residency up that long street of death and fire where brave Neill fell. Yet concerning these and his many other adventures he was seldom very communicative, albeit there were times when his friend Uncle Ben succeeded in drawing him out, and then his stories were well worth listening to.
The Colonel was like many brave soldiers, a somewhat shy man, and certainly kept himself personally very much in the background when describing a battle or the storming of a trench against fearful odds. That he had not kept himself in the background on the real field of fight was evident enough from the medals he had won but seldom if ever wore. And one of these was the Victoria Cross.
When the Colonel did suffer himself to be drawn out, as Sailor Ben phrased it, he never told his stories excitedly, but in low calm tones, and in earnest conversational English, that carried conviction of the truthfulness of every item of his narrative to the hearts of his listeners.
And who would these listeners be? I must tell you that, and having done so I shall have introduced you to most of the personalities who figure in this biography.
The listeners then may, indeed they must be, divided into two groups. The first group was composed of human beings, the second of what I am loth indeed to call the lower animals. It is mere conventionality on my part to do so, for the creatures God has permitted us to domesticate, and who are such faithful and trustworthy servants, are oftentimes quite as interesting in a way as many of their masters—men.
On that very autumnal evening on which Shireen paid her visit to Uncle Ben’s bungalow, and made it so hot for the butcher’s dog, our two groups were all together around the fire at the Colonel’s Castle, as the old soldier’s house was generally called, and Castle it once had been in reality.
On this particular evening after Ben had finished his pipe and drank the tea that Pedro had brought him, he had smoothed pussy once more, and said:—“I think now, Shireen, we’ll take a walk to the Castle and see your master. By that time gloaming will be falling, and it will be what my dear friend the Colonel calls the ‘Children’s Hour.’”
“Meow!” said puss, as if she knew all about it, and quite understood every word that Uncle Ben said when he repeated Longfellow’s dreamy lines: