Aileen Aroon, A Memoir. Stables Gordon

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      Chapter Two.

      Introducing Aileen Aroon

      “Heigho!” I sighed, as I sat stirring the fire one evening in our little cosy cottage. “So that little dream is at an end.”

      “Twenty guineas,” said my wife, opening her eyes in sad surprise. “Twenty guineas! It is a deal of money, dear.”

      “Yes,” I assented, “it is a deal of money for us. Not, mind you, that Sable isn’t worth double. She has taken the highest honours on the show benches; her pedigree is a splendid one, and all the sporting papers are loud in her praises. She is the biggest and grandest Newfoundland ever seen in this country. But twenty guineas! Yes, that is a deal of money.”

      “I wish I could make the money with my needle, dear,” my wife remarked, after a few minutes’ silence.

      “I wish I could make the money with my pen, Dot,” I replied; “but I fear even pen and needle both together won’t enable us to afford so great a luxury for some time to come. There are bills that must be paid; both baker and butcher would soon begin to look sour if they didn’t get what they call their little dues.”

      “Yes,” said Dot, “and there are these rooms to be papered and painted.”

      “To say nothing of a new carpet to be bought,” I said, “and oilcloth for the lobby, and seeds for the garden.”

      “Yes, dear,” said my wife, “and that American rocking-chair that you’ve set your heart upon.”

      “Oh, that can wait, Dot. There are plenty other things needed more than that. But it is quite evident, Sable is out of the question for the present.”

      I looked down as I spoke, and patted the head of my champion Newfoundland Theodore Nero, who had entered unseen and was gazing up in my face with his bonnie hazel eyes as if he comprehended every word of the conversation.

      “Poor Nero,” I said, “I should have liked to have had Sable just to be a mate and companion for you, old boy.”

      The great dog looked from me to my wife, and back again at me, and wagged his enormous tail.

      “I’ve got you, master,” he seemed to say, “and my dear mistress. What more could I wish?”

      Just as I pen these lines, gentle reader, two little toddlers are coming home from forenoon school, with slates under their arms; but when the above conversation took place, no toddlers were on the books, as they say in the navy. We were not long married. It was nine long years ago, or going on that way. The previous ten years of my life had been spent at sea; but service in Africa had temporarily ruined my health, so that invaliding on a modicum of half-pay seemed more desirable than active service on full.

      These were the dear old days of poverty and romance. Retirement from active duty afloat and – marriage. It is too often the case that he who marries for love has to work for siller. Henceforward, literature was to be my staff, if not the crutch on which I should limp along until “my talents should be recognised,” as my wife grandly phrased it.

      “Poor and content is rich, and rich enough,” says the greatest William that ever lived. There is nothing to be ashamed of in poverty, and just as little to boast about. Naval officers who retire young are all poor. I know some who once upon a time were used to strut the quarter-deck or ship’s bridge in blue and gold, and who are now, God help them, selling tea or taking orders for wine.

      “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” I squeezed the hand of my bride at the altar as I spoke the words, and well she knew the pressure was meant to recall to her mind a fact of which she was already cognisant, that “all my worldly goods” consisted of a Cremona fiddle, and my Newfoundland dog, and my old sea-chest; but the bottom of that was shaky.

      But to resume my story.

      “Hurrah!” I shouted some mornings after, as I opened the letters. “Here’s news, Dot. We’re going to have Sable after all. Hear how D. O’C writes. He says —

      “‘Though I have never met you, judging from what I have seen of your writings, I would rather you accepted Sable as a gift, than that any one else should have my favourite for money,’ and so on and so forth.”

      These are not the exact words of the letter, but they convey the exact meaning.

      Sable was to come by boat from Ireland, and I was to go to Bristol, a distance of seventy miles, to meet her, for no one who values the life and limbs of a dog, would trust to the tender mercies of the railway companies.

      “I’ll go with you, Gordon,” said my dear friend, Captain D – . Like myself, he had been a sailor, but unmarried, for, as he used to express it, “he had pulled up in time.” He had taken Punch’s advice to people about to marry – “Don’t.”

      Captain D – didn’t.

      “Well, Frank,” I said, “I’ll be very glad indeed of your company.”

      So off we started the night before, for the boat would be in the basin at Hotwells early the next morning. The scene and the din on board that Irish boat beggars description, and I do not know which made the most noise, the men or the pigs. I think if anything the pigs did. It seemed to me that evil spirits had entered into the pigs, and they wanted to throw themselves into the sea. I believe evil spirits had entered into the men, too; some of them, at all events, smelt of evil spirits.

      “Is it a thremendeous big brute ’av a black dog you’ve come to meet, sorr?” said the cook to me.

      “Yes,” СКАЧАТЬ