Born to Wander: A Boy's Book of Nomadic Adventures

On the arrival of the Gloaming Star, our heroes first and foremost did something which may not accord with my readers’ idea of romance. A most useful and most needful something it was. They paid a visit to a West End tailor. Before doing so, however, they went to Captain Lyle’s lawyer.

The old man – he was very old – did not at first know Leonard, but as soon as he did, he shook hands with him over and over again. He was almost childlike in his joy to see him again.

“What will your father say?” he cried, “and all of them, all of them?”

Of course Leonard had a dozen questions to ask, and what a big sigh of relief he got rid of, when told that not only were all of them well, including Peter and Peter’s pike, which by some means or another – considered supernatural by Peter – was once more all alive and plunging, but that the estate of Glen Lyle was free again, and that Captain Fitzroy had rented one of the farms, thus figuratively, if not literally, turning his sword into a ploughshare.

Leonard had stood all the time he was getting this news, but now that the hysterical ball of doubt and anxiety had left his throat, he flung his hat to the other end of the room, and took a chair. Douglas and Blunt did the same, and the whole four glided right away into a right jolly, right merry whole hour’s conversation, what the Scotch folks would call “a foursome crack.” The old lawyer’s clerk – and he was old, too – came on tiptoe to the door and listened, for he had not heard such laughing and joking and merriment for many and many a long year.

The wanderers rose at last to say good-bye for the present.

“Now don’t write and tell them we’ve come,” said Leonard. “We want to go and surprise them.”

“But, my dear young squire – ”

“Bother the squire!” cried Leonard, laughing.

“Well, my dear Leonard, then – ”

“Yes, that’s better.”

“Aren’t you going right away down at once? Do you mean to say you’ll let the grass grow beneath your shoes for an hour?”

And now Douglas put in his oar.

“Why, Mr Fraser,” he said, “look at us. Run your eagle eye over us from stem to stern. Rough and unkempt. Covered with salt. Barnacles growing on us. Could you, Mr Fraser, suggest our putting in an appearance before ladies in such a plight? No, sir, the tailor must first and foremost come upon the scene.”

Mr Fraser laughed heartily.

“Well, well,” he said, “young men will be young men, but I’ll warrant you, gentlemen, the ladies would be right glad to see you, barnacles and all.”

And the old gentleman laughed and rubbed his hands, as if he had said something very clever indeed.

Once upon a time, as the fairy stories begin, my good ship M — had arrived at Portsmouth after a long commission of cruising along the shores of Eastern Africa and round India.

At luncheon the day after we came in, our chief engineer said, in his quiet, stoical manner, —

“My wife is coming to-day by the three train.”

“What!” cried somebody. “And you are not going to meet her at the station, after so long an absence?”

“No, I’m not,” was the answer. “The fact is, I’ve a very great horror of anything approaching what people call a scene. Now if I had gone to meet my wife, the poor thing, overcome by her feelings, would be sure to faint in my arms or something. So I’ve sent my assistant to meet her. She isn’t likely to faint in little Jones’s arms.”

On the same principle, the reader must excuse me if I omit describing the scene of the meeting and reunion at Grayling House. I will not even tell of the tears that were shed, tears of joy and anxiety long pent up, of the hearty handshakes, of the whispered words and half-spoken sentences of welcome, for all this can be better imagined than told.

It was three days, at least, before the old house settled down again to anything like solid order, and conversation became less spasmodic in character.

Old Peter, who, of course, was quite one of the family, was probably the last to settle down, owing perhaps to the fact that he listened with wonder and astonishment to the conversation at table, and to the tales the wanderers had to tell, about the wonders they had seen, and the adventures they had come through. More than once, indeed, he had let fall a plate, and he had actually filled up Effie’s cup on the second morning from the water-bottle instead of the teapot. That same day, when he found Leonard and Douglas in the garden by themselves, he treated them to the following morsel of edification.

“Oh, laddies!” he said, “it’s a wondrous warld we live in, whether we dwall upo’ the dry lan’ or gang doon to the sea in ships. But few, unco few, hae come through what ye’ve come through. And what brocht ye back, think ye? What else but prayer, prayer, prayer? Your father prayed, and your lady mither prayed, and Miss Effie prayed, and poor auld Peter prayed, and – and thare ye are. And yonder is Grayling Ha’, and all aroond us is the bonnie estate o’ Glen Lyle, its hills and dells, and moors and fields, and woods and waters, a’ oor ain again. And the muckle pike ploupin’ aboot (ploupin’, Scottice– plunging) as if naething had ever ailed him. Verily, verily, we’ve a lot to be thankfu’ for!”

“Well, bless you, Peter, dear old friend, for your prayers, and long may you live to pray. But tell me, Peter, for I forgot to ask mother, what has become of Zella the gipsy girl?”

“Oh! hae they no tauld you? It’s a year ago come Whitsunday since they cam’ for her.”

“Who?”

“Who? who but the Faas of her ain tribe, and bonnily they decked her, in a muslin gown o’ gowden-spangled white, and they put roses and ferns in her dark hair, and a croon upon her head, and it’s wondrous beautiful she looked. Ay, ye may stare, but Zella is queen o’ the gipsies, and no doubt ye’ll see her ere lang.”

He turned sharp round towards Douglas as he spoke.

“I dinna doubt, sir,” he said, “but that the gipsy queen will come to your weddin’.”

Now Douglas’s face was, from exposure to sun and weather, of a sort of dignified brick-dust hue. One would have thought it impossible for such a face to blush, but deeper in colour it really got as he laughingly replied to the garrulous old Peter.

“My wedding, Peter! Why, my dear old friend, you’ve been dreaming.”

“Och, mon!” said Peter, with a sly wink. “I can see as far through a millstone as the miller himself. But I’m off, there’s the bell. It’s that auld limmer of a cook, she keeps ring, ring, ringing for me a’ day lang, with ‘Peter, do this’ and ‘Peter, do that.’ Sorrow tak’ her! Ring, ring, ring; there it goes again. Comin’, comin,’ comin’.”

“Strange old man!” said Douglas.

“That he is,” said Leonard, “but yet how leal and true he has been to our family.”

A day or two after this the old family carriage was had out – and a stately and ancient-looking affair it was, hung on monster leather straps, which permitted it to swing about like a hammock, while inside it was as snug and soft as a feather bed – the carriage was got out, and accompanied by a phaeton, in which rode the younger folks, a visit was made to the gipsy camp in a far-off forest.

A horseman had been sent the day before with a note to her gracious majesty Queen Zella to apprise her of their coming, so that after a delightful drive on this lovely spring day they arrived at the encampment, safe and merry, and were received in state.

The gipsies were arrayed in their very best, and the queen was a sight to see, and indeed she really did look charming.

“Oh!” she said to Mr Lyle, “I was pleased to be with you in your cottage by the sea, and pleased to be at bonnie Glen Lyle, but the brown blood is strong within me. I was born to wander, and here I am wild and free as the birds that sing so sweetly on the trees to-day.

“Oh!” she continued, turning to our heroes, “it is not altogether because the sun is shining so brightly that their notes are so joyous. They sing thus madly because you have returned.”

Verily the queen knew how to pay a pretty compliment.

“And,” she added, “you have been happy. Oh! you must have been happy. Every one must be happy at sea. I dreamt you had met Captain Bland.”

“Your majesty has dreamt a strange dream, and a true one, for we did. He saved our lives. But, alas! he is no more. For just two days after he left us we saw a fire at sea. We bore down towards the burning ship. It was Bland’s barque. There was no sign of life on board. All was silent except for the rush of the flames and the crackling of the burning wood. And I fear no one was saved.”

The conversation was somewhat saddened for a time by Leonard’s recital, but what hearts could long remain sad in the fair, fresh scene, amid the greenery of trees, the wild melody of birds, and the soft spring sunshine?

“Man was made to mourn.” No, great poet, no; I will not have it. Man was made to be glad and to rejoice with everything that is glad and rejoiceth around him on this fair earth of ours.

“Tell me not in mournful numbers
Life is but an empty dream,
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

“Life is real; life is earnest,