In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life

Chapter Thirteen.

Dicky Dumps: the Parson’s Pony.

“A little water, chaff and hay,
And sleep, the boon of Heaven;
How great return for these have they,
To your advantage, given!
And yet the worn-out horse or ass.
Who makes your daily gaining,
Is paid with goad and thong, alas!
Though nobly uncomplaining.”

Tupper.

There are, or were, two immortal men, who never spoke without saying something—I refer to Shakespeare and Burns; and when the former remarks so prettily,—

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

we cannot help replying, “That is true.”

But for all that, every one who owns a pet animal of any kind, that he really loves, will be ready enough to admit that seemingly senseless though the names be which we sometimes give them, there is generally some reason in them, albeit there may not be much rhyme. When we talk to animals which we have a great affection for, we often use a deal of ridiculous abbreviations. Never mind—they, our favourites, understand them, and really appear to prefer them. Just one or two examples. There is an immense Newfoundland lying not far from me while I write, an animal who by reason of his beauty, his bounding independence, and his very roguishness, takes all hearts by storm. His name was originally “Robin;” that soon came down to honest simple “Bob.” He is known in what is called the canine world as “Hurricane Bob,” he being a show dog. He derives the sobriquet “Hurricane” from the mad way he rushes round his own paddock when he first gets out of a morning. With his long black hair floating in the wind, he is hardly visible as he races round and round about you. You can just see a black shape, that is all, which you conclude is Hurricane Bob. You can set him off racing round and round at any time by calling—

“Hurricane, Hurricane, Hurricane!”

He has a great sense of humour and of the ridiculous; but if you say to him, “Robert, come here,” he then approaches very gravely indeed.

“What’s up!” he seems to say, “that I am being called Robert? Have I done anything wrong, I wonder?”

Again, if you call him Bobbie, he expects to be patted, caressed, and made much of.

So he has a name for all weathers, as a sailor would say.

“Eily” is the name of a splendid collie of mine. In the course of years her name became Eily-Biley. She prefers this. There is love and affection and pats and pieces of cake, and all kinds of pleasantness associated with the name. Eily is simply her business name, as it were, and there are times when she is called “Bile” emphatically, and on these occasions she knows she has been doing something wrong and is to be scolded, so she at once throws herself at my feet, makes open confession, and sues for forgiveness.

“Yes, dear master,” she seems to say; “it is quite true, I did chase the cock, and I did tree the cat. They did provoke me, but I will try not to do so again.”

I have a great many wild-bird friends. There are several sparrows visit me every day, at and in my wigwam, or garden study. One comes to name. That name is “Weekie!” I heard his little wife call him “Weekie” one day, so the name has stuck to him. We have been friends for years, Weekie and I. He is bold and pert, but affectionate. He roosts in winter among the creepers on my wigwam, and steals morsels of my manuscripts to help in building his nest in summer.

So there is something in pet names at all events. I daresay most of my readers would think that “Dumps” was a queer name to give a pony. Well, and so it is; but the name grew, for he was originally Dick; from Dick to Dickie the transition is natural. “But how about the ‘Dumps’?” you may ask. Well, Dickie belonged to a good old country parson that I knew, who lived some years ago in one of the wildest glens of our Scottish Highlands. If this parson was not, like some one else, “Passing rich with forty pounds a year,” he managed to live and support his family upon not much more than double that sum. But he had a very thrifty wife, and his children were each and all of them as good as they looked, and that is saying a deal. They possessed the kind hearts that are worth more than coronets, and the simple faith that is better far than Norman blood. So poor though Mr Mack, let us call him, was, his home was a very happy one. Mrs Mack rather prided herself on her cookery, and her skill in the art was fully appreciated by all the family—including Dickie the pony. But what Dick particularly loved was a morsel of suet dumpling.

The dining-room window looked over Dick’s field, and was entirely surrounded with lovely climbing roses, as indeed was all the cottage, for great yellow roses could be gathered even through the attic windows, and they actually trailed around the chimneys.

In spring and summer the dining-room window used to be left open, and Dickie would station himself there, and wait with equine patience for his morsel of dumpling. Sometimes he got two or three pieces, and even then would have the audacity to ask for a fourth help. “It is so nice,” he would appear to say, with a low, comical kind of a nicker. “It is dee-licious. Do you know what I’ll do, if I don’t have more dumpling? I’ll crop the rose-leaves.”

“Ah, Dickie, would you dare?” Mrs Mack would cry; for she dearly loved the roses.

“Well, then,” Dick would appear to answer, “give me some more dumpling.”

Even at breakfast-time, if the window were open, Dick would pop his head in, and apparently ask: “Is there any of that dumpling left? I don’t mind taking it cold.”

So there is no great wonder that the pony came to be called “Dickie Dumpling,” and finally, for short, Dumps.

Poor old Dumps, he was such a favourite; and no wonder either that the children all loved him so, for they had grown up with him; the eldest girl, Muriel, was seventeen, and Dumps was at the parsonage when she was a baby.

Dumps had been grey, when in his prime—a charming grey, almost a blue in point of fact; but, alas! he was white enough now, and there were hollows in his temples that, feed him as he would, his master never could fill up. Sometimes, too, Dumps’ lower lip would hang a bit, and shake in a nervous kind of way; and as to his teeth! well, the less said about them the better; they could still scoop out a turnip or bite a bit of carrot, but as for his oats, Dumps had a decided preference for them bruised.

These, of course, were all signs of advancing age; but age had some advantages, for the older Dumps grew, the wiser he got. There was very little that concerned him that Dumps didn’t know, and very little that concerned his master either.

The Rev. Mr Mack was one of the most tenderhearted men I ever knew. Many and many an old pauper blessed and prayed for him. Yes, and he for them; but I am bound in honesty to say that Mr Mack’s blessings often took a very substantial and visible form. There was a large box under the seat of the old-fashioned gig, that the parson used to drive, and Dumps used to drag; and, nearly always, after he had prayed with, read, and talked a bit to some poor afflicted pauper, Mr Mack would go to the door, and stretch his arm in under the seat, and haul something out: it might be a loaf of bread, it might be a bit of cheese, a pot of jam—Mrs Mack was a wonder at making jams and jellies—it might be merely the remains of yesterday’s pie, or it might be—whisper, please—a tiny morsel of tobacco, or a pinch or two of snuff in a paper.

“Don’t go away, Dumps,” the parson would say to the pony, as he returned into the house.

Dumps would give a fond, foolish little nicker, that sounded like a laugh.

“At my age,” the pony would seem to reply, “I’m not likely to run very far away.”

I happened to be practising in Mr Mack’s parish for six weeks, having taken the duties of a gentleman who was gone away to get married. I drove, the parson’s pony.

“Just give him his head,” said Mr Mack on the first day that I went to visit my paupers; “he’ll take you all round.”

Not knowing anything at all about the roads, I was very pleased to leave the whole arrangement of my visits that day to Dumps. He went jogging up the road, half a mile, then down a lane, and finally brought up at a long, low, thatched cottage. Then he jerked his head round to me, as much as to say, “Get out here.”

And in the same way poor Dumps took me everywhere over the parish. Here would be a sick child to see, here a bedridden old woman, here a feeble, aged man, and so on and so forth.

The sun was set, and the stars coming out, and it appeared to me I must have still ten miles to drive before I reached the parsonage, when all at once that dear, rose-clad old cottage stood before me, and there were Mr Mack and two of his charming daughters standing at the gate laughing.

I was indeed surprised. The explanation is this: Dumps had returned by a different road. He had really and truly taken me on a round.

My friend, who had gone to get married, returned at last, and I left the glen. But happening to be on half-pay in the June of the succeeding year, I received a pressing invitation from my brother professional to spend the summer with him, and enjoy some fishing, a sport of which I am extremely fond. It was while I was at his house that a cloud shadow fell on the old parsonage, and its inmates, hitherto so quietly happy, were plunged into grief.

I did not know, nor had I any business to know, the exact history of poor Mr Mack’s trouble. From the little he told me, however, it was pretty evident that it was occasioned or arose from his own kind-heartedness: he had become security for the debts of a friend. O! it is the same old story, you see; the friend had failed to meet certain demands, and they had fallen on Mr Mack. How willingly I would have come to the kindly parson’s relief had it been in my power, and I believe he would have accepted assistance from me as soon as from any one, for I was looked upon as a friend of the family.

I could not help noticing now that it was a case of pinch, pinch, pinch with the Macks. Indeed, I fear their table no longer groaned with the weight of the good things of this life, but rather for the want of them. But for all that—let it be said to his credit—the poor of the parish never went without the dole to which they had been so long accustomed.

Things grew worse instead of better, although, when I expressed my concern, Mr Mack assured me, with a sadly artificial smile on his face, that after a certain day it would be all right again.

“My dear,” said Mr Mack to his wife one evening as she sat sewing after the young folks had all gone to bed, “to-morrow is the fair at B—, and I fear I must go. Poor old Dumps! My heart is as cold as lead at the thoughts of parting with our children’s pet.”

His wife never looked up. She couldn’t have spoken a single word if she had tried to, but the tears rolled down her cheeks and fell thick and fast on the white seam.

Mr Mack was up next morning betimes. I question if he had slept a single wink. He was up before the lark, and long before any one in the house was stirring. He made himself a hasty breakfast, fed Dumps, and started. It was better, he thought, to go ere the family were about.

When Mrs Mack took the children into the study, and explained to them why they were forced to part with Dumps, they showed far less exuberance of grief than might have been expected, and lent their aid individually to console the mother; but—

O! the sorrow was deep, though silent.

The father returned the same evening alone. He looked jaded and wan. Hardly any one touched a bit of supper that night, and, judging from their faces next morning, I feel sure some of the girls mast have cried themselves to sleep.

It would be waste of words to say that Dickie Dumps, with all his droll, wise ways, was sadly missed. Poor old fellow, they would have given almost anything now to see his head popped in through the breakfast-window, or even to see him cropping the rose-leaves. Who, they thought, would give him his morsel of dumpling now? And they hoped and trusted that he might have a good home.

One day the parson came to see me.

“I’ve got bad news to-day,” he said. “O! I wouldn’t that my wife and darlings knew it for all I possess.”

“Nothing very serious, I hope,” I inquired anxiously.

“Some might not think so,” he replied. “My dear old pony! He is working in a coal-mine: slaving away down in the dark and grime; the horse that took my wife away on our marriage tour, the horse that has been my children’s friend all their lives. Don’t think me foolish, Gordon, but only think, the poor old fond creature that loved us all so well, been used to the green country all his life, to sunlight and daisied leas and kind treatment, and now—”

He couldn’t say any more, and I did not wonder; and I tell you, reader, that at that moment I wished to be rich as much as ever I did in my life.

I went away over the hills. I walked for miles and miles. It is a capital plan this, when one is thinking. I was thinking, and before I returned I had concocted a scheme which, if successful, would restore Dumps once more to the bosom of his family. I told the parson of the plan, and he was delighted, and rubbed his hands and chuckled with gladness.

A day or two after, a short series of lectures was advertised to take place in the village school-house, to be illustrated with a magic lantern. Two lecturers were to officiate every night, and together tell stories of their lives and wandering adventures. One was a soldier friend of mine—dead now, alas!—the other my humble self. The lectures were somewhat original in their way, for we not only told stories on the little stage, but we sang songs, and even gave specimens of the dances of all nations, including the savages of America, Africa, and Southern Australia. I daresay we succeeded in making fools of our two selves; but never mind, we made the people laugh and we drew bumper houses, and the best of it all was, that we raised money enough to buy back Dumps.

“Never say a word to anybody,” whispered the parson to me, “till Dickie is back again in the stable.”

Nor did I.

But though Dumps had gone away a white pony, he returned a black one, and what made matters worse was that it was raining hard on the evening I led him round to his old stable at the manse.

I stopped to supper, of course, and as soon as thanks had been returned, Mr Mack went away into the kitchen and came back with the lantern lighted.

“I want you to see something,” he said, “that I have in the stable.”

Ah! but the parson spoiled the whole thing by looking so happy. His wife and children could read his face as easily as telling the clock. There was a regular shout of “Dumps! O! pa, it must be Dumps!”

His wife snatched the lantern out of his hand, and the children, wild with joy, ran after her, so that instead of being first in the stable the parson was the very last.

There was no occasion now to hide tears as they caressed the old pony, for they were tears of joy. Dumps was back, and nickering in the old foolish fond way, and nosing everybody all over in turn.

“Isn’t it first-rate?” Dumps seemed to say; “fancy being back again among you all; and how is the grass, and how is the rose-tree, and how is the dumpling?”

When we returned at last to the parlour, the parson glanced at his family and burst out laughing, and the members of his family looked at each other and laughed too. And no wonder, for what with the rain, and the coal-dust of the pony’s neck, I never before or since have seen a family of faces that more needed washing.

But what did that signify? Wasn’t Dumps in the stable once more?