Air castle Don; or, From Dreamland to Hardpan

Front matter

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER page

I. Introduces Don Donalds 9

II. The Lady of the Lake Club 18

Chapter I. Introduces Don Donadds

It is possible for a boy to keep still, and that, too, without being either crippled or dumb, asleep or dead. For instance, there was Don Donalds. He sat upon a grassy bluff below which there was a raceway through which rapid water tinkled with perpetual music, and beyond which was a rocky islet dividing the raceway from a small river that ran over a stony bottom to a deep pool a short distance below. His back rested against a mossy stonewall built by pioneers whose very memory had perished from the face of the earth. Behind the wall there was an old apple orchard that was a Mecca for boy pilgrims from the time of the earliest green apple to the time when the last frost-mellowed one hung on the topmost bough a sun-painted prize for him who had a searching eye and enterprising legs and hands. When Don sat there the spring birds, holding undisputed possession, were experiencing the songprovoking raptures of mating and nest building, while the wind stirred through the leaves whispering strange stories of its adventures in earth and sky.

One patriarchal tree, whose juices ran to sweet apples, stretched a long sturdy branch over the wall and held a thick canopy of leaves over the boy’s head to protect him from the rather fervid heat of the rapidly nooning sun. Two robins had selected the very center of the canopy for their nest, and as it was not among their calculations to have a boy so near, they scolded at him from above, and in their restless protests against his intrusion shook down showers of blossoms upon him. Perceiving that he took no notice of their presence, and was as still as the stones against which he leaned, they went about their business. A chipmonk, however, seemed to take up the fears they had discarded. He was making a journey on the top of the wall, and coming to where Don sat, he gave him notice to get out of the way by scolding at him with a series of diminutive barks that sounded like the abdominal squeaks of a toy dog. As no notice was taken of him he sat up on the topmost stone of the wall, and for a moment meditated in silence. What manner of boy could this boy be that would let a chipmonk come in sight without attempting to molest him, and that, too, when pebbles were within reach of hand? He ran by, and not satisfied with his meditations, sat up again and whisked his tail in another attempt to solve the mystery surrounding the still figure. He could see that Don’s eyes were open, and that his chest gave evidence of , his being breathingly alive, but that was about all. The^ chipmonk passed on his way, but his subdued manner said as plainly as any manner could, “I give it up. That boy beats any nut I ever attempted to crack.”

There was nothing mentally or physically wrong with Don that he should keep so phenomenally still. His dark, vivacious eyes were filled with slumbering fires of thought, and his lively face and reasonably stalwart limbs gave countenance to the supposition that he was at that stage of his existence when the monkey propensities of human nature are at their highest. He, in fact, could clear a wall at a bound, and vie with any noises common to the average boy throat, and was not slow to join in the athletic sports or roystering rackets of his fellow boys.

Perhaps he was looking at things around him, and listening to the varied sounds that punctured the silence of the scenery. Swallows and martins raced dizzily in the air and occasionally dipped with crazy motions into the waters of the stream. A milk-white flock of geese squatted on the green grass of the islet pluming their feathers and quacking about their adventures in the pool below. Beyond them a dozen or more of crows were quarrelling over a herring that one of them had pulled from among the shore rocks of the stream. A fishhawk circled high in the sky above them watching for a chance to descend and claim the herring for his own, or to make a swoop upon some of the trout that; ignorant of danger, occasionally shot above the surface of the water in pursuit of insects hovering temptingly near.

On the far side of the stream, the stones of the village grist-mill monotonously grumbled as they ground out their daily grist of oats and barley. On the near side, the single saw of a dilapidated sawmill growled hoarsely as it danced up and down and struck its big teeth into the vitals of a great oaken log that was being turned into ship plank. Above the bridge which crossed below the mills the low, vibrant thunder of the dam predominated over all other sounds, reducing them to a general harmony, so that even the whang of the blacksmith’s sledge, and the whock of the carpenter’s hammer striking on the other side of the stream were made tributary to the concord.

But Don was paying no attention to things visible or audible; and he remained as silent as the vacant church, schoolhouse and courthouse that formed the still group of public buildings on the far side of the stream. A cow with a bell at her throat came up the bluff and tinkingly grazed her way to his feet without having any more notice taken of her, or of her gently surprised moo than if she were not put on four legs for boys to throw stones at or to torment in sundry other ways. Like the robins and the chipmonk, she wondered at him awhile, asking all sorts of questions of her internal self and then passed munchingly on to where taller blades of grass invited the coil of her industrious tongue.

Don had removed his hat — a curious chip made from the strippings of a birch by an ancient Indian squaw for his especial benefit — and had put it over a small flat stone to the great terror of a pair of field mice that had been watching him from beneath. Don was reading a book; and this was the secret of his apparent indifference to things in Heaven, things on earth and things under the earth. The book was so absorbing that the whole outer world was as if it were not.

Not far distant, standing upon the middle bridge of the thrice divided stream, and leaning upon the rail was another figure almost as motionless as Don himself. It was the figure of an old Scotch fisherman, who had wandered around the world so long and had seen so much of human nature, and, other things, that his chief refrain was “ Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” This was Peter Piper of whom Madge, Don’s sister, declared, that he was the very Peter who picked a peck of pickled peppers — the Peter Piper of the pronouncing puzzle that Avard Doane, the village schoolmaster used to test his thick-speeched pupils by. And she further declared that there was no need of asking. Where’s the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked? for he carried them about with him and was always ready to administer liberal doses of them to both young and old on the slightest provocation. Her belief in his sour and peppery disposition grew mainly from the fact that he had once reproved her for doing her hair up in curl papers.

Peter was in some respects the victim of popular injustice. Although the softer soil of his heart had been covered by irruptions of hard experience, it was not destroyed, and one had but to go deep enough to find it. At that very moment he was thinking of the native cottage and land from which he had wandered so long and so far; and like many another of us older ones, he was sighing for the days of his youth. And knowing that they could never return in this life, he was trying to console himself with the thought that some of the things that he learned in the “auld kirk at hame” would turn out to be more than true in the life to come. In his own way he was saying to himself :

I am far frae my hame, an’ Pm weary aften- whiles.

For the langed hame-bringin’, an’ my Father’s welcome smiles,

An’ I’ll ne’er be fu’ content till mine een do see

The gowden gates o’ Heaven an’ my ain countree.

Shaking his tears into the stream to dry his eyes, he compressed his quivering lips and resolutely lifting his head he thumped his gnarled stick vigorously upon the planks of the bridge in protest against his melting mood. Just then he caught sight of Don and his book, and the sight restored to him his peck of pickled peppers.

When Peter saw a boy reading a book at his own sweet will — free from all compulsory tutorings, and in a corner by himself, he at once jumped to the conclusion that he was reading something that ought not to be read. He doubtless remembered the escapades of his own young days, and judged the lad by his own misdoings, as is apt to be the case with those who have indicting memories.

“Gin I were the daddy o’ that lad,” he wrathily exclaimed, “I’d take all his haverings an’ burn them afore all men, an’ gie him fu’ screeptural authority for that same : See Acts o’ the Apostles, nineteenth chapter an’ nineteenth varse. An’ gin that wadna cure his appetite for all sich cantankerosities. I’d supplement the fire wi’ a gude birch rod: See Proverbs twinty-third an’ fourteenth: ‘Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt save his soul from hell.’ ”

It eased Peter’s recollection of his own shortcomings to think that here was a chance to discover and comment upon the failings of others. And he continued: “See what comes o’ havin’ a meenister for a daddy wha preaches sae much at ither people there’s naethin’ left for his ain bairns. Tf a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the house of God?’ See fust Timothy, third chapter an’ fifth varse. Charity begins at home; see — see — Aye, Peter, where did ye see it? Ye ought to know that it’s no’ in the buik, an’ is not a text o’ the elect.” '

And having tired of talking to himself, and to make amends for having quoted unscriptural authority, Peter determined to interfere with Don’s reading, and to find out for himself what he was reading. Don was so absorbed in his book that he didn’t notice Peter till he was close upon him.

Without ceremony Peter touched the book with his stick and said with his whole peck of pickled peppers in his mouth: “Ye’ll be readin’ Fox’s Book o’ Martyrs, or The Lives o’ The Saints, the noo?”

Don had had many encounters with the Scotchman, encounters which he rather enjoyed than feared, and he replied laughingly: “No, Mr. Piper; I took those bitter doses when I was coming up from the scarlet fever, and because Betty Crowell brought them in and said they were good for sick boys. But that was a bad day for the books, for the Doctor ordered them into the stove after I got through with them lest they should give the scarlet fever to somebody else. Betty has been mourning for them ever since.”

“More’s the peety! Gin ye had filled yersel’ wi’ them ye’d be more likely to make a mon o’ yersel’.” And seeing that Don was not disposed to volunteer information about the book in hand, Peter added: “Maybe it’s the Scotch varsion o’ the Psalms ye’re tunin’ yer soul wi.”

“I didn’t know that the Scotch had written any Psalms,” said Don, half innocently and half mischievously.

“Ploot, laddie! I said Varsion.’ Dinna ye ken the meanin’ o’ varsion, an’ ye a meenister’s son? Gin ye’d ben nursed at the paps o’ the Old School Presbyterians, like mysel’, ye’d no’ be the coof ye are this minute.” And not to be diverted from his purpose, Peter returned to the charge. “I make free to say that the buik ye’re spierin’ into belangs to the frogs an’ the lice kind which hae come into the land for its wickedness. That’s the cause o’ your eegnorance of the varsion. ‘Ephraim is joined to his idols’: See Hosea, fourth chapter an’ seventeenth varse. An’ may the Lord hae marcy on your ^oul afore ye’re given up to a reprobate mind, for ye’re bewitched wi’ wickedness.”

“Yes, I am bewitched; and if Sir Walter Scott is wickedness I am be\vitched with wickedness, for I am reading Peveril of the Peak, and this is not the first of his books I have read.”

Don spoke proudly when he should have spoken with some twinges of conscience. He had read Scott to an excess. His head was full of castles and towers; moats and drawbridges; shining steel and brilliant banners ; gallant knights and beautiful ladies, and stirring trumpets and thrilling tournaments. Under the wand of The Wizard of the North he had gone straight up to the clouds, where he lived more than was good for his mind.

The moment he mentioned Sir Walter Scott, Peter changed; his gray eyes became luminous, and his worldseamed face shared in the glow of his eyes. For the time being he forgot the Book of Martyrs, The Lives of The Saints and The Scotch V ersion of The Psalms.

^‘Sir Walter Scott!” he exclaimed with growing excitment. ^^He was the canniest Scot that ever climbed a hill or drew in the breath of the heather! I was born in sight o’ bonny Abbotsford. When I was but a lad aft hae I seen him roamin’ the gray hills wi’ his high bred dogs. His face was like the sun shinin’ aboon the mountains. These lugs o’ mine hae heard his voice soundin’, sometimes like the waters amang the rushes, an’ sometimes like the flood cornin’ down the brae. Mony’s the time I hae got him a flower frae the clif¥ or fetched him a pebble frae the bottom o’ the brook. He wasna a snob always a fearin’ his respectability might dissolve in a shower, but he took my gifts an’ thankt me for them, an’ talked about them like a gentleman. An’ when I carried him a pair o’ salmon ye wadhaethocht I were a givin’ him a crown. He didna forget that he was a lad ance, an’ though he became a lord he was not ashamed to own the bairns wi’ whom he played. Ye mind his words in Marmion :

And much I miss those sportive boys.

Companions of my mountain joys.

Just at the age ‘twixt boy and youth.

When thought is speech, and speech is truth.”

It was Don’s turn to be astonished, and he said: ‘‘Why, Mr. Piper I never knew that you had seen — actually seen Sir Walter Scott!”

“That’s not to be wonnered at. ‘What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him?’ See fust Corinthians, chapter two, varse eleven. We dinna so much as knov/ the people on whose toes we tread ivery day; we are a’ meesteries to ane anither.”

“Please sit down and tell me all you know about Sir Walter,” pleaded Don earnestly, and with a respect that he had never before felt for the old fisherman. And thus it happened that the two who seemed to be at the opposite poles of life found themselves on the equator together. As the man went on with his recital of what he had seen of the great romancist and poet, Don saw that he was possessed of reminiscences that were far more interesting than some things he had read in the books about Sir Walter Scott.

“Aa’ noo,” said Peter at the end of his narrative, “I hae said ower much to the praise o’ Sir Walter, an’ maybe ye’ll be readin’ him mair than ever, an’ that too, without asavin’ mixture o’ other things. The emagination, ye ken, is a gude friend, but an unco bad guide. Gin ye live on stories an’ tales a’ the time, ye’ll be like the stork which is a’ legs, wings an’ neck, an’- which has an uncanny way o’ spendin’ the maist o’ its time in the marshes cockit up on one leg by itself. Or ye’ll be like Jacob dreamin’ aboot angels an’ angels’ ladders owermuch; see Genesis twenty-eight and twelve. Angels’ ladders, ye ken, were not made for the likes o’ Jacob to climb. Whin ye get to be an angel it’ll be time enough to try that way of rising; but while ye are a mortal bein’, ye maun do your wrastlin’ an’ fight your battles on solid ground, e’en though ye hae to do it in the dark, an’ get your hip crackit in the doin’ o’ it,”

CHAPTER 11.

Barrington Head was so far removed from the bustle of the outside world that not even a telegraph instrument clicked to disturb its quiet. The weekly stage arrivals, and the Sunday gatherings at the two ‘meeting houses’ were the most exciting events of current history. An occasional gale of wind with a seasoning of thunder in it was welcomed for variety’s sake. The people went to bed betimes and rose up early to greet the first rays of the sun.

When the village school was in session there was a pleasant hum of life in its vicinity, for the youth of both sexes were no exception to their kind when they gathered on the green before the bell rang, or poured out in noisy tumult when the welcome times of recess released them from their books.

The court house by the school seldom or never had a trial to disturb its vacancy and stillness. When the circuit judge made his annual visitation, the most he ever did was to put on his robe and wig, and then in addition draw on his white gloves in compliance with the customs of the time as a sign that his docket was white or empty of cases. With this formality the court was adjourned and His Honor hied to the stream to angle for trout till it was time for him to go to some other place to go through with the same arduous ceremonies. There was so little litigation in the hamlet that no lawyer deemed it worth his while to become a resident of it. The people knew their own business and attended to it without any legal aid.

It would have taken a day’s travel to discover a liquor saloon. Any attempt to fix such a curse upon the community would have resulted in the tipping of the building into the river without the benefit of either judge or jury. Drunkards were as scarce as white elephants.

Nevertheless, quiet as was the hamlet it was the home of mariners who did business upon the great waters, and who went down to the sea in ships and sailed with them unto the uttermost parts of the earth. And not a few born in these scenes of silence became the occupants of exalted stations in centers of both commercial and political activity.

Don lived in an old colonial house near the bluff on which we found him sitting with his book. The gabled residence was a house of many rooms each one of which was finished in a style suggestive of a wealth of wood and no end of time.

By the irony of Fate or the miscalculations of the builder, the two porches of the rear of the house fronted upon the public highway, while, by way of contradiction, the quite elaborate front backed upon the orchard through which no visitor ever thought of making an approach to the premises. Not so much as a footpath invited from that direction, for the orchard was bounded by a thornhedge, and the thornhedge by a salt meadow that ended in the waters of the harbor — a deep dented bay scooped out by the Atlantic during the innumerable years of unrecorded time.

One gable of the paint-despising building faced a turn in the road, and the old sawmill; and the other commanded an extended view of the winding highway along which were scattered the few houses of the hamlet that seemed in danger of tumbling into the boundless contiguity of space or into the dark evergreen forest that belted the sea-jagged coast.

One of the porches — the one that served as the main entrance to this wooden cave — opened into a large room or kitchen whose most noticeable object was the great fireplace flanked on either side with yawning ovens deeply set in the enormous chimney. The crane and andirons, and great bulging pots and kettles might have served for the kitchen utensils of the Cyclopean monster whose single eye Homer’s hero punched out with the burning stake. The fuel for this omnivorous fire-cave was amply furnished by the waste slabs and logs from the convenient sawmill. The narrow window opening between the two porches afforded a dim light to the odd reception room into which no visitor entered for the first time without experiencing both surprise and curiosity. The general furniture of the room was largely extemporized by family skill from the scantlings of the mill-yard.

The ample cooking facilities were exceptionally convenient for the Donalds family, the offspring being both numerous and healthy. And visitors were so frequent that it was seldom the house was without one or more guests. Now it was the lord bishop or the chief justice of the province, and then a patent medicine vender, or a lecturer who carried an accordeon with which to increase his chance of a hearing. The house, however, was not a hostelry; that dignity was reserved to the Homer Hotel, situated on the green opposite, whose keeper was a county celebrity, a member of the provincial parliament, and a man of such knowledge and oratorical ability that when he mounted the hustings the people bowed before his eloquence as the tree -tops bow before the wind. His guests seldom left his hotel without first paying their respects to the old house and its occupants, and it thus happened that the Donalds, both small and great, were kept well apprised of the current gossip of the world without.

As Don knew the haunts of the trout, and was skilled in the lures best adapted to them, he was in frequent demand as a guide to the fishing pools. But being jealous of his reputation as a companion he always refused compensation as an attendant. Although the visitors often smiled at his airs, he suffered no inconvenience from their private opinions, for where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise.

One day a man of middle age, all the way from London made his appearance in the place and signified his intention to remain for several weeks. Little by little it came out that he was an artist of great distinction ; one who had made sketches in Africa, India, South America and in the United States; and one whose domestic infelicities had been paraded wherever the English language was printed. Mr. Barry, for that was his name, sought the province thinking that he could here effectually seclude himself, but only to find that his fame had preceded him. Although connected with a titled family, his manners were simple and hearty, and he was as much devoid of all pretence as though he were the descendent of a log cabin family. Being a passionate angler and hunter, as well as an ardent artist, he at once secured Don for his attendant.

When Peter Piper saw them together for the first time, he said in his most peppery manner: “It’s unco bad for a nobody to be cheek-by-jowl wi’ a somebody unless, like Elisha he grows beeg enough to wear his mantle; see fust Kings, nineteenth an’ nineteenth. The lad’ll be going straight to the clouds, an’ when his ludship’s gone it’ll be a twel’ mo before he sees ground agen.”

At the same moment Barry was saying to Don: “That’s a saucy looking little craft lying out there in the bay. I’d like to charter her while I’m here. She’s just the size for nosing in and out among the harbors of this coast.” If he had looked more closely he would have seen that her sails were not bent, and that she was far from being in trim for sea-work.

‘That’s The Lady of The Lake,” Don replied.

“Lady of The Lake?” exclaimed the artist. “How did she get such a name as that in such an out of the way place as this?”

“She was built in the woods by Jacob Kendrick, a man who knew as much about Sir Walter Scott’s poems as he did about his Bible, and what he didn’t know about the Bible was scarcely worth knowing;” and Don answered with spirit.

“Built in the woods?” Barry exclaimed, with increasing surprise.

“Yes; three miles above this; back of Oak Park; two of them. The other one was called The Youth. The Lady is about twenty-five tons burthen, and the other was about nineteen tons.”

“How did they get them down to the sea?” Barry interrupted, believing that he had stumbled upon a new thing under the sun.

“They put them in cradles, and the cradles on rollers and hauled them down with a long row of oxen to low water mark ; and when the tide came in, they floated as trimly as though they had been built in a regular shipyard and had gone into the sea on tallowed skids.”

“And you saw all this with your own eyes?” and Barry looked into Don’s eyes as if searching the retina for some photograph of the scene.

“Oh, no, but it’s just as true as if I did. That was more than thirty years ago; and the little craft out there having served her day, is no longer fit for sea. She is now headquarters for The Lady of The Lake Club, and but for the club she would have been torn to pieces long before this.”

“Well, I have stumbled upon some oddities in my time, but, judging from what I am learning in this place, I have not yet exhausted them all. Pray, what is this club of which you speak?”

“It is a club of ten boys — the upper ten of Barrington — ranging from twelve to sixteen. I’m the Grand Keyman of the club, and if you would like to go aboard and take a closer look at The Lady of The Lake, I’ll row you off at your convenience.”

“I’ll accept your invitation on the spot ; we can afford to let the trout keep themselves in the water till we get back.”

Don led the artist down to Sargent’s wharf without delay. Here they stepped into a gaily painted yawl, of which Barry said with a merry twinkle: “Somebody believes in paint as much as I do.”

“Yes,” Don replied, with some hesitation; “we painted her ourselves and with the odds and ends of all the forsaken paint-pots of the village.”

“Here, I’ll take one of those oars,” said Barry, as he saw Don seat himself with both oars in hand.

“Then you can row?” Don answered, looking rather suspiciously at the artist’s delicate hands.

“I was born on the Thames, and have wet several pieces of wood first and last; but you may play stroke-oar if you wish.”

“Well, here we go,” and Don fetched a stroke which was intended to swing the boat strongly against the artist’s side.

But Barry countered the stroke so quickly the yawl instead of looking around to watch her wake shot ahead as straight as an arrow, and Don instead of giving a lesson to Barry took several for himself. When they reached the vessel the artist was breathing as easily as an infant, while Don was puffing like a porpoise.

“She is rather past the prime of life/’ said Barry comprehensively, running his eyes over the craft swiftly and discovering that although she sat the water like a duck, all her running rigging had been removed, save the color-halliards which still clung to the maintopmast as if for use. The railing was much dented and weatherworn, and the decking showed many signs of amateur calking and tarring where the club had worked to prevent the seams from gaping too widely to the weather.

Taking a formidable key from his pocket, Don turned the great padlock from the companionway-staple and pushing back the slide, and shoving open the two parts of the little door, stood aside for Barry to descend the steps to the cabin. The bulkhead, which originally divided the cabin from the hold, had been removed and a new partition made, which increased the length of the room to half the length of the vessel.

“Wait till I light the chandelier so that you can see better,” said Don, as the artist stumbled against the near end of a long table which ran lengthwise the narrow cabin.

“That is a chandelier worth having,” remarked the artist when the suspended moose-antlers illuminated by ten candles, one for each member of the club, lighted up the cabin. Taking one of the plain wooden chairs placed neatly by the table, which he noticed was covered with clean napery and a fair supply of dishes ready for use, the artist sat down and began to look around. One end of the table that was not occupied by dishes was covered with books. The plain spaces of the cabin were pasted over with pictures, and little shelves here and there contained curiosities gathered from forest, stream and sea shore. But what most attracted him was a motley array of many-hued and many-shaped robes that hung upon the rear wall of the cabin.