“Stop one moment,” I cried. “If you think it necessary to get provisions enough for an army to give me breakfast, I must tell you that I draw the line at brandy. I never touch it—in this country.”
He shook hands with me again.
“You are right,” he said. “Always stick to the native drink, wherever you are, even if it is black draught. Whisky in Scotland, in the Banda Orientál rum—that’s my rule.”
The place was now in a great commotion, the children saddling ponies, shouting in pursuit of fugitive chickens, and my energetic host ordering his wife about.
After the boy was despatched for the things and my horse taken care of, we sat for half an hour in the kitchen sipping maté and conversing very agreeably. Then my host took me out into his garden behind the house to be out of his wife’s way while she was engaged cooking breakfast, and there he began talking in English.
“Twenty-five years I have been on this continent,” said he, telling me his history, “eighteen of them in the Banda Orientál.”
“Well, you have not forgotten your language,” I said. “I suppose you read?”
“Read! What! I would as soon think of wearing trousers. No, no, my friend, never read. Leave politics alone. When people molest you, shoot ’em—those are my rules. Edinburgh was my home. Had enough reading when I was a boy; heard enough psalm-singing, saw enough scrubbing and scouring to last me my lifetime. My father was a bookseller in the High Street, near the Cowgate—you know! Mother, she was pious—they were all pious. Uncle, a minister, lived with us. That was all worse than purgatory to me. I was educated at the High School—intended for the ministry, ha, ha! My only pleasure was to get a book of travels in some savage country, skulk into my room, throw off my boots, light a pipe, and lie on the floor reading—locked up from everyone. Sundays just the same, They called me a sinner, said I was going to the devil—fast. It was my nature. They didn’t understand—kept on ding-donging in my ears. Always scrubbing, scouring—you might have eaten your dinner off the floor; always singing psalms—praying—scolding. Couldn’t bear it; ran away at fifteen, and have never heard a word from home since. What happened? I came here, worked, saved, bought land, cattle; married a wife, lived as I liked to live—am happy. There’s my wife—mother of six children—you have seen her yourself, a woman for a man to be proud of. No ding-donging, black looks, scouring from Monday to Saturday—you couldn’t eat your dinner off my kitchen floor. There are my children, six of ’em, all told, boys and girls, healthy, dirty as they like to be, happy as the day’s long; and here am I, John Carrickfergus—Don Juan all the country over, my surname no native can pronounce—respected, feared, loved; a man his neighbour can rely on to do him a good turn; one who never hesitates about putting a bullet in any vulture, wild cat, or assassin that crosses his path. Now you know all.”
“An extraordinary history,” I said, “but I suppose you teach your children something?”
“Teach ’em nothing,” he returned, with emphasis. “All we think about in the old country are books, cleanliness, clothes; what’s good for soul, brain, stomach; and we make ’em miserable. Liberty for everyone—that’s my rule. Dirty children are healthy, happy children. If a bee stings you in England, you clap on fresh dirt to cure the pain. Here we cure all kinds of pain with dirt. If my child is ill I dig up a spadeful of fresh mould and rub it well—best remedy out. I’m not religious, but I remember one miracle. The Saviour spat on the ground and made mud with the spittle to anoint the eyes of the blind man. Made him see directly. What does that mean? Common remedyof the country, of course. He didn’t need the clay, but followed the custom, same as in the other miracles. In Scotland dirt’s wickedness—how’d they reconcile that with Scripture? I don’t say Nature, mind, I say, Scripture, because the Bible’s the book they swear by, though they didn’t write it.”
“I shall think over what you say about children, and the best way to rear them,” I returned. “I needn’t decide in a hurry, as I haven’t any yet.”
He barked his short laugh and led me back to the house, where the arrangements for breakfast were now completed. The children took their meal in the kitchen, we had ours in a large, cool room adjoining it. There was a small table laid with a spotless white cloth, and real crockery plates and real knives and forks. There were also real glass tumblers, bottles of Spanish wine, and snow-white pan creollo. Evidently my hostess had made good use of her time. She came in immediately after we were seated, and I scarcely recognized her; for she was not only clean now, but good-looking as well, with that rich olive colour on her oval face, her black hair well arranged, and her dark eyes full of tender, loving light. She was now wearing a white merino dress with a quaint maroon-coloured pattern on it, and a white silk kerchief fastened with a gold brooch at her neck. It was pleasant to look at her, and, noticing my admiring glances, she blushed when she sat down, then laughed. The breakfast was excellent. Roast mutton to begin, then a dish of chickens stewed with rice, nicely flavoured and coloured with red Spanish pimenton. A fowl roasted or boiled, as we eat them in England, is wasted, compared with this delicious
