Aileen Aroon, A Memoir

“And I’ve no doubt the love is reciprocated, my little mouse. But now, talking about trees, if Frank will bring the lamp, I’ll read you a kind of a story about two trees. It isn’t quite a tale either – it is a kind of reverie; but the descriptive parts of it are painted from the life. Thank you, Frank. Now if the moths will only keep away for a minute, if it wasn’t for that bit of displayed humanity on the top of the glass in the shape of a morsel of wire gauze, that big white moth would go pop in and immolate himself. Ahem!”

The Twin Chestnuts: A Reverie. “They grew in beauty side by side.”

We weren’t the only happy couple that had spent a honeymoon at Twin Chestnut Cottage. In point of fact, the chestnuts themselves had their origin in a honeymoon; for in the same old-fashioned cottage, more than one hundred and ninety years ago, there came to reside a youthful pair, who, hand in hand, had just commenced life’s journey together. They each had a little dog, and those two little dogs were probably as fond of each other, after their own fashion, as their master and mistress were; and the name of the one dog was “Gip,” and the name of the other was “George” – Gip and George, there you have them. And it was very funny that whatever Gip did, George immediately followed suit and did the same; and, vice versa, whatever George did, Gip did. If Gip harked, George barked; if George wagged his tail, so did Gip. Whenever Gip was hungry, George found that he too could eat; and when George took a drink of water, Gip always took a mouthful as well, whether she was thirsty or not. Well, it happened one day in autumn, when the beauty-tints were on the trees – the sunset glow of the dying year – that the two lovers (for although they were married, they were lovers still) were walking on the rustling leaves, and of course George and Gip were no great way behind, and were having their own conversation, and their own little larks all to themselves, when suddenly —

“I say, Georgie,” said Gip.

“Well, my love?” replied George.

“I’m quite tired watching for that silly blind old mole, who I’m certain won’t come again to-night. Let us carry a chestnut home.”

“All right,” said George; “here goes.”

So they each of them chose the biggest horse-chestnut they could find, and they were only very small dogs, and went trotting home with them in their mouths; and when they got there, they each laid their little gifts at the feet of their loved master or mistress.

This they did with such a solemn air that, for the life of them, the lovers could not help laughing outright. But the little dogs received their due meed of praise nevertheless, and the two chestnuts were carefully planted, one on each side of the large lawn window. And when winter gave place to spring, lo! the chestnuts budded, budded and peeped up through the earth, each one looking for all the world like a Hindoo lady’s little finger, which isn’t a bit different, you know, from your little finger, only it is dark-brown, and yours is white. Then the little finger opened, and bright green leaves unfolded and peeped up at the sun and the blue sky, and long before the summer was over they had grown up into sprightly little trees, as straight as rushes, and very nearly as tall, for they had been very carefully watered and tended. Very pretty they looked too, although their leaves seemed a mile too big for their stems, which made them look like two very small men with very large hats; but the young chestnuts themselves didn’t see anything ridiculous in the matter.

These, then, were the infant chestnuts.

And as the years rolled on, and made those lovers old, the chestnuts still grew in height and beauty. And in time poor Grip died, and as George had always done exactly as Gip did, he died too; and Gip was laid at the foot of one tree, and George at the foot of the other, and their graves were watered with loving tears. And the trees grew lovelier still. And when at last those lovers died, the trees showered their flowers, pink-eyed and white, on the coffins, as they were borne away from the old cottage to their long, quiet home in the “moots.”

And time flew on, generation after generation was born, grew up, grew old, and died, and still the twin chestnuts increased and flourished, and they are flourishing now, on this sweet summer’s day, and shading all the cottage from the noonday sun.

It is a very old-fashioned cottage, wholly composed, one might almost say, of gables, the thatch of some of which comes almost to the ground, and I defy any one to tell which is the front of the cottage and which isn’t the front. There are gardens about the old cottage, fruit gardens and flower gardens, and grey old walls half buried in ivy, which never looked half so pretty as in autumn, when the soft leaves of the Virginia creepers are changing to crimson, and blending sweetly with the ivy’s dusky green.

The principal gable is that abutting on to the green velvety lawn, which goes sloping downwards to where the river, broad and still, glides silently on its way to bear on its breast the ships of the greatest city of the world, and carry them to the ocean.

But the main beauty of the cottage lies in those twin chestnuts. No chestnuts in all the countryside like those two beautiful trees; none so tall, so wide, so spreading; none have such broad green leaves, none have such nuts – for each nutshell grows as big and spiny as a small hedgehog, and contains some one nut, many two, but most three nuts within the outer rind. I only wish you could see them, and you would say, as I do, there are no trees like those twin chestnuts.

The earth was clad in its white cocoon when first we went to Twin Chestnut Cottage, and the two giant trees pointed their skeleton fingers upwards to the murky sky; but long before any of the other chestnut-trees that grew in the parks and the avenues, had even dreamt of awakening from their deep winter sleep, the twin chestnuts had sent forth large brown buds, bigger and longer than rifle bullets, and all gummed over with some sticky substance, as if the fairies had painted them all with glycerine and treacle. With the first sunshine of April those bonnie buds grew thicker, and burst, disclosing little bundles of light-green foliage, that matched so sweetly with the brown of the buds and the dark grey of the parent tree.

Day by day we watched the folded leaves expanding; and other eyes than ours were watching them too; for occasionally a large hornet or an early bee would fly round the trees and examine the buds, then off he would go again with a satisfied hum, which said plainly enough, “You’re getting on beautifully, and you’ll be all in flower in a fortnight.”

And, indeed, hardly had a fortnight elapsed, from the time the buds first opened, till the twin chestnuts were hung in robes of drooping green. Such a tender green! such a light and lovely green! and the pendent, crumply leaves seemed as yet incapable of supporting their own weight, like the wings of the moth when it first bursts from its chrysalis. Then, oh! to hear the frou-frou of the gentle wind through the silken foliage! And every tree around was bare and brown save them.

Even the river seemed to whisper fondly to the bending reeds as it glided past those chestnuts twain; and I know that the mavis and the merle sung in a louder, gladder key when they awoke in the dewy dawn of morn, and their bright eyes rested on those two clouds of living green.

And now crocuses peeping through the dun earth, and primroses on mossy banks, had long since told that spring had come; but the chestnut-trees said to all the birds that summer too was on the wing. Cock-robin marked the change, and came no more for crumbs – for he thought it was high time to build his nest; only there were times when he seated himself on the old apple-tree, and sung his little song, just to show that he hadn’t forgotten us, and that he meant to come again when family cares were ended and summer had flown away.

Meanwhile, the flower-stems grew brown and mossy, and in a week or two the flowers themselves were all in bloom. Had you seen either of those twin chestnuts then, you would have seen a thing of beauty which would have dwelt in your mind as a joy for ever. It was summer now. Life and love were everywhere. The bloom was on the may – pink-eyed may and white may. The yellow laburnum peeped out from the thickets of evergreen, the yellow broom dipped its tassels in the river, and elder-flowers perfumed the wind. I couldn’t tell you half the beautiful creatures that visited the blossoms on the twin chestnut-trees, and sang about them, and floated around them, and sipped the honey from every calyx. Great droning, velvety bees; white-striped and red busy little hive-bees; large-winged butterflies, gaudy in crimson and black; little white butterflies, with scarlet-tipped wings; little blue butterflies, that glanced in the sunshine like chips of polished steel; and big slow-floating butterflies, so intensely yellow that they looked for all the world as if they had been fed on cayenne, like the canaries, you know. In the gloaming, “Drowsy beetles wheeled their droning flight” around the trees, and noisy cockchafers went whirring up among the blossoms, and imagined they had reached the stars.

When the roses, purple, red, and yellow, clung around the cottage porch, climbed over the thatch, and clung around the chimneys, when the mauve wisterias clustered along the walls, when the honeysuckle scented the green lanes, when daisies and tulips had faded in the garden, and crimson poppies shone through the corn’s green, a breeze blew soft and cool from the south-east, and lo! for days and days the twin chestnuts snowed their petals on the lawn and path. And now we listened every night for the nightingale’s song. They came at last, all in one night it seemed: “Whee, whee, whee.” What are those slow and mournful notes ringing out from the grove in the stillness of night? A lament for brighter skies born of memories of glad Italy?

“Churl, churl; chok, wee, cho!” This in a low and beautiful key; then higher and more joyful, “Wheedle, wheedle, wheedle; wheety, wheety, wheety; chokee, okee, okee-whee!”

Answering each other all the livelong night, bursting into song at intervals all the day, when, we wondered, did they sleep? Did they take it in turns to make night and day melodious, keeping watches like the sailors at sea? We thought the song of the mavis so tame now; but cock-robin’s had not lost its charm, just as the dear old simple “lilts” of bonnie Scotland, or the sadder ditties of the Green Isle, never pall on our ear, love we ever so well the lays of sunny Italy.

As the summer waned apace, and the leaves on the chestnuts changed to a darker, hardier green, the nightingales ceased their song; but, somehow, we never missed them much, there were so many other songsters. We used to wonder how many different sorts of birds found shelter in those twin chestnuts, apart from the bickering sparrows, who colonised it; apart from the merle and thrush, who merely came home to roost; apart from the starling, who was continually having quarrels with his wife about something or other; and apart from the noisy jackdaw, who was such an argumentative fellow, and made himself such a general nuisance that it always ended in his being forcibly ejected.

Robin was invariably the first to awake in the morning. As the first faint tinge of dawning day began to broaden in the east, he shook the dew from his wings, and gave vent to a little peevish twitter. Then he would hop down from the tree, perch on the gate, and begin his sweet wee song: “Twitter, twitter, twee!” We used to wonder if it really was a song of praise to Him who maketh the sun to rise and gladden all the earth.

“Twitter, twitter, twee!” Little birdies are so happy, and awake every morning as fresh and joyous as innocent children.

“Twitter, twitter, twitter, twee!” went the song for fully half an hour, till it was so light that even the lazy sparrows began to awake, and squabble, and scold, and fight; for you must know that sparrows hold about the same social rank in the feathered creation, that the dwellers around Billingsgate do among human beings.

Then there would be such a chorus of squabbling from the big trees, that poor robin had to give up singing in disgust, and come down to have his breakfast.

“Hullo!” he would cry, addressing a humble-bee, who with his wings all bedraggled in dew, was slowly moving across the gravel, thinking the sun would soon rise and dry him – for poor bees often do stay too long on thistles at night, get drugged with the sweet-scented ambrosia, and are unable to get home till morning – “Hullo!” robin would say; “do you know you’re wanted?”

The poor bee would hold up one arm in mute appeal.

“Keep down your hands,” robin would say; “I’ll do it ever so gently;” and off the bee’s head would go in a twinkling. Then robin would eye his victim till the sting ceased to work out and in, then quietly swallow it. This, with an earthworm or two, and a green caterpillar by way of relish, washed down with a bill-full of water from a little pool in a cabbage-leaf, would form robin’s breakfast; then away he would fly to the woods, where he could sing all day in peace.

And so the summer sped away in that quiet spot, and anon the fields were all ablaze with the golden harvest, and the sturdy leaves of our chestnut-trees turned yellow and brown, and the great nuts came tumbling down in a steady cannonade each time the wind shook the branches. And the twin chestnuts, perhaps, looked more lovely now than ever they had looked – they had borrowed the tints of the autumn sunset; yet their very beauty told us now that the end was not far away.

The wind of a night now moved the branches with a harsher, drier rustling, like the sound of breaking waves or falling water, and we often used to dream we were away at sea, tossed up and down on the billows. “Heigho!” we (Part of this page missing.)

There were days when the sun set in an ochrey haze, when the evening star with its dimmed eye looked down from a sky of emerald green, where as the gloaming deepened into night, not a cloud was there to hide the glittering orbs; then the fairies set to work to adorn the trees, and when morning came, lo! what a sight was there! All around the hoar-frost lay, white and deep on bush and brake, on the hedgerows and brambles; and every twiglet and thorn was studded with starry jewels on tit twin chestnuts, and they were trees no more – every branchlet and spray was changed to glittering coral; and garlands of silver and lace-work, lovelier far than human brains could ever plan or fingers weave, were looped from bough to bough, and hung in sheeny radiance around the sturdy stems.

Those dear old chestnut-trees!

And as the seasons pass o’er the chestnut-trees, and each one clothes them in a beauty of its own, so across the seasons of our life Time spreads his varied joys: childhood, in its innocence, hath its joys, youth in its hope of brighter days, manhood in its strength and ambition, and old age in the peaceful trust of a better world to come.

Chapter Twenty Six.

The Story of Aileen’s Husband, Nero

“The pine-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,Listened in every spray – ”

I certainly had no intention of bringing tears to little Ida’s eyes; it was mere thoughtlessness on my part, but the result was precisely the same; and there was Ida kneeling beside that great Newfoundland, Theodore Nero, with her arms round his neck, and a moment or two after I had spoken, I positively saw a tear fall on his brow, and lie there like a diamond. Ah! such tears are far more precious than any diamonds.

“You don’t love that dog, mouse?” These were the words I had given utterance to, half-banteringly, as she sat near me on the grass playing with the dog. I went on with my writing, and when I looked up again beheld that tear.

Yes, I felt sorry, and set about at once planning some means of amends. I knew human nature and Ida’s nature too well to make any fuss about the matter – I would not even let her know I had seen her wet eyelashes, nor did I attempt to soothe her. If I had done so, there would have been some hysterical sobbing and a whole flood of tears, with red eyes and perhaps a headache to follow. So without looking up I said —

“By the way, birdie, did ever I tell you Nero’s story?”

“Oh, no,” she said, in joyful forgetfulness of her recent grief; “and I would so like to hear it. But,” she added, doubtfully, “a few minutes ago you said you could not talk to me, that you must finish writing your chapter. Why have you changed your mind?”

“I don’t see why in this world, Ida,” I replied, smiling, “a man should not be allowed to change his mind sometimes as well as a woman.”

This settled the matter, and I put away my paper in my portfolio, and prepared to talk.

Where were we seated? Why, under the old pine-tree – our very favourite seat. My wife was engaged at home turning gooseberries into jam, and had packed Ida and me off, to be out of the way, and friend Frank himself had gone that day on some kind mission or other connected with boys. I never saw any one more fond of boys than Frank was; I am sure he spent all his spare cash on them. He was known all over the parish as the boys’ friend. If in town Frank saw a new book suitable for a boy, it was a temptation he could not resist. If he had been poor, I’m certain he would have gone without his dinner in order to secure a good book for a boy. He was constantly finding out deserving lads and getting them situations, and the day they were going to start was a very busy one indeed for Frank. He would be up betimes in the morning, sometimes before the servants, and often before the maids came down he would have the fire lighted, and the kettle boiling, and everything ready for breakfast. Then he would hurry away to the boy’s home, to see he got all ready in time for the start, and that he also had had breakfast. He saw him to the station, gave him much kind and fatherly advice, and, probably, in the little kit that accompanied the lad, there were several comforts in the way of clothes, that wouldn’t have been there at all if friend Frank had not possessed the kindest heart that ever warmed a human breast.

I said Frank found out the deserving boys; true. But he did not forget the undeserving either, and positively twice every season what should Frank do but get up what he called —

“The Bad Boys’ Cricket Match.”

Nobody used to play at these matches but the bad boys and the unregenerate and the ungrateful boys. And after the match was over, if you had peeped into the tent you would have seen Frank, his jolly face radiant, seated at the head of a well-spread table, and all his bad boys around him, and, had you been asked, you could not have said for certain whether Frank looked happier than the boys, or the boys happier than Frank.

But I’ve seen a really bad boy going away from home to some situation, where Frank was sending him on trial, and bidding Frank good-bye with the big lumps of tears rolling down over cheeks and nose, and heard the boy say —

“God bless ye, sir; ye’ve been a deal kinder to me than my own father, and I’ll try to deserve all your goodness, sir, and lead a better life.”

To whom Frank would curtly reply, perhaps with a tear in his own honest blue eye —

“Don’t thank me, boy – I can’t stand that. There, good-bye; turn over a new leaf, and don’t let me see you back for a year – only write to me. Good-bye.”

And Frank’s boys’ letters, how he did enjoy them to be sure!

Dear Frank! he is dead and gone, else dare I not write thus about him, for a more modest man than my friend I have yet to find.

Well, Frank was away to-day on some good mission, and that is how Ida and I were alone with the dogs. Nero, by the way, was on the sick-list to some extent. Indeed, Nero never minded being put on the sick-list if there was nothing very serious the matter with him, because this entailed a deal of extra petting, and innumerable tit-bits and dainties that would never otherwise have found the road to his appreciative maw. As to petting, the dog could put up with any amount of it; and it is a fact that I have known him sham ill in order to be made much of. Once, I remember, he had hurt his leg by jumping, and long after he was better, if any of us would turn about, when he was walking well enough, and say – in fun, of course – “Just look how lame that poor dear dog is!” then Nero would assume the Alexandra limp on the spot, and keep it up for some time, unless a rat happened to run across the road, or a rabbit, or a hedgehog put in an appearance – if so, he forgot all about the bad leg.

“Well, birdie,” I said, “to give you anything like a complete history of that faithful fellow you are fondling is impossible. It would take up too much time, because it would include the history of the last ten years of my own life, and that would hardly be worth recording. When my poor old Tyro died, the world, as far as dogs were concerned, seemed to me a sad blank. I have never forgotten Tyro, the dog of my student days, I never shall, and I am not ashamed to say that I live in hopes of meeting him again.

“What says Tupper about Sandy, birdie? Repeat the lines, dear, if you remember them, and then I’ll tell you something about Nero.”

Ida did so, in her sweet, girlish tones; and even at this moment, reader, I have only to shut my eyes, and I seem to see and hear her once more as she sits on that mossy bank, with her one arm around the great Newfoundland’s neck, and the summer wind playing with her bonnie hair.

“Thank you, birdie,” I said, when she had finished.

“Now then,” said Ida.

“I was on half-pay when I first met Nero,” I began, “and for some time the relations between us were somewhat strained, for Newfoundlands are most faithful to old memories. The dog seemed determined not to let himself love me or forget his old master, and I felt determined not to love him. It seemed to me positively cruel to let any other animal find a place in my affections, with poor Tyro so recently laid in his grave in the romantic old castle of Doune. So a good month went past without any great show of affection on either side.

“Advancement towards a kindlier condition of feeling betwixt us took place first and foremost from the dog’s side. He began to manifest regard for me in a somewhat strange way. His sleeping apartment was a nice, clean, well-bedded out-house, but every morning he used to find his way upstairs to my room before I was awake, and on quietly gaining an entrance, the next thing he would do was to place his two fore-paws on the bed at my shoulder, then raise himself straight up to the perpendicular.

“So when I awoke I would find, on looking up, the great dog standing thus, looming high above me, but as silent and fixed as if he had been a statue chiselled out of the blackest marble.

“At first it used to be quite startling, but I soon got used to it. He never bent his head, but just stood there.

“‘I’m here,’ he seemed to say, ‘and you can caress me if you choose; I wouldn’t be here at all if I didn’t care just a little about you.’

“But one morning, when I put up my hand and patted him, and said – ‘You are a good, honest-hearted dog, I do believe,’ he lowered his great head instantly, and licked my face.

“That is how our friendship began, Ida, and from that day till this we have never been twenty-four hours parted – by sea or on land he has been my constant companion.

“He was very young when I first got him, and had only newly been imported, but he was even then quite as big as he is now.

“The ice being broken, as I might say, affection both on his side and on mine grew very fast; but what cemented our friendship infrangibly was a terrible illness that the poor fellow contracted some months after I got him.

“He began to get very thin, to look pinched about the face, and weary about the eyes, his coat felt harsh and dry, and his appetite went away entirely.

“He used to look up wistfully in my face, as if wanting me to tell him what could possibly be the matter with him.

“The poor dog was sickening for distemper.

“All highly-bred dogs take this dreadful illness in its very worst form.

“I am not going to describe the animal’s sufferings, nor any part of them; they were very great, however, and the patience with which he bore them all would have put many a human invalid to shame. He soon came to know that I was doing all I could to save him, and that, nauseous though the medicines were he had to take, they were meant to do him good, and at last he would lick his physic out of the spoon, although so weak that his head had to be supported while he was doing so.