The Others In Their Turn Laughed At Him, Despising His Ideal, And Then
We Set Off Once More.
They had not thought to put the question to me, because I was only a
boy while they were
Grown men; but I had listened with such intense
interest to that colloquy that when I recall the scene now I can see
the very expressions of their sun-burnt faces and listen to the very
sound of their speech and laughter. For they were all intimately known
to me and I knew they were telling openly just what their several
notions of a happy life were, caring nothing for the laughter of the
others. I was mightily pleased that they, too, had felt the attractions
of my Dovecot House as a place where a man, whatsoever his individual
taste, might find a happy abiding-place.
Time rolled on, as the slow-going old storybooks written before we were
born used to say, and I still preserved the old habit of pulling up my
horse on coming abreast of each one of the two houses on every journey
to and from town. Then one afternoon when walking my horse past the
Cannon House I saw an old man dressed in black with snow-white hair and
side-whiskers in the old, old style, and an ashen grey face, standing
motionless by the side of one of the guns and gazing out at the
distance. His eyes were blue - the dim weary blue of a tired old man's
eyes, and he appeared not to see me as I walked slowly by him within a
few yards, but to be gazing at something beyond, very far away. I took
him to be a resident, perhaps the owner of the house, and this was the
first time I had seen any person there. So strongly did the sight of
that old man impress me that I could not get his image out of my mind,
and I spoke to those I knew in the city, and before long I met with one
who was able to satisfy my curiosity about him. The old man I had seen,
he told me, was Admiral Brown, an Englishman who many years before had
taken service with the Dictator Rosas at the time when Rosas was at war
with the neighbouring Republic of Uruguay, and had laid siege to the
city of Montevideo. Garibaldi, who was spending the years of his exile
from Italy in South America, fighting as usual wherever there was any
fighting to be had, flew to the help of Uruguay, and having acquired
great fame as a sea-fighter was placed in command of the naval forces,
such as they were, of the little Republic. But Brown was a better
fighter, and he soon captured and destroyed his enemies' ships,
Garibaldi himself escaping shortly afterwards to come back to the old
world to renew the old fight against Austria.
When old Admiral Brown retired he built this house, or had it given to
him by Rosas who, I was told, had a great affection for him, and he
then had the two cannons he had taken from one of the captured ships
planted at his front gate.
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