Bonny held small heed of justice (even in the plural number) whenever he could help it. The nature of his birth and nurture had been such as to gift him with an outside view of everything. If people liked him, he liked them, and would be the last to steal from them; or at any rate would let them be the last for him to steal from. His inner meaning was so honest, that he almost always waited for some great wrong to be done to him, before he dreamed of making free with almost anybody’s ducks.
Widely as he was known, and often glanced at from a wrong point of view, even his lowest detractor could not give his etymology. Many attempted to hold that he might have been called, in some generative outburst, “Bonnie,” by a Scotchman of imagination. Others laughed this idea to scorn, and were sure that his right name was “Boney,” because of his living in spite of all terror of “Bonyparty.” But the true solution probably was (as with all analytic inquiries) the third, – that his right name was “Bony,” because his father, though now quite a shadowy being, must have, at some time or other, perhaps, gone about crying, “Rags and Bones, oh!”
These little niceties of origin passed by Bonny as the idle wind. He was proud of his name, and it sounded well; and wherever he went, the ladies seemed to like him as an unknown quantity. Also (which mattered far more to him) the female servants took to him. And, with many of these, he had such a way, that it found him in victuals, perhaps twice in a week.
Nevertheless, he was forced to work as hard as could be, this summer. The dragging weight of a hopeless war (as all, except the stout farmers, now were beginning to consider it) had been tightening, more and more, the strain upon the veins of trade, and the burden of the community.
This good boy lived in the side of a hill, or of a cliff (as some might call it), white and beautiful to look at from a proper distance. Here he had one of those queer old holes, which puzzle the sagest antiquary, and set him in fiercest conflict with the even sager geologist. But in spite of them all, the hole was there; and in that hole lived Bonny.
Without society, what is life? Our tenderest and truest affections were not given us for naught. The grandest of human desires is to have something or other to wallop; and fate (in small matters so hard upon Bonny) had known when to yield, and had granted him this; that is to say, a donkey.
A donkey of such a clever kind, and so set up with reasoning powers and a fine heart of his own, that all his conclusions were almost right, until they were beaten out of him. His name was “Jack,” and his nature was of a level and sturdy order, resenting wrongs, accepting favours, with all the teeth of gratitude, and braying (as all clever asses do) at every change of weather. His personal appearance also was noble, striking, and romantic; and his face reminded all beholders of a well-coloured pipe-bowl upside down. For all his muzzle and nose were white, as snowy white as if he always wore a nosebag newly floured from the nearest windmill. But just below his eyes, and across the mace of his jaws, was a ring of brown, and above that not a speck of white, but deepening into cloudy blackness, throughout all his system. Then (like the crest of Hector) rose a menacing frontlet of thick hair, and warlike ears as long as horns, yet genially revolving; and body and legs, to complete the effect, conceived in the very best taste to match.
These great virtues of the animal found their balance in small foibles. A narrow-minded, self-seeking vein, a too vindictive memory, an obstinacy more than asinine, no sense of honour, and a habit of treating too many questions with the teeth or heels. These had lowered him to his present rank; as may be shown hereafter.
To any worked and troubled mind, escaping into the country, it would have been a treat to happen (round some corner suddenly, when the sun throws shadows long) upon Bonny and his jackass. In the ripe time of the evening, when the sun is at his kindest, and the earth most thankful, and the lines of every shadow now are well accustomed; when the air has summer hope of never feeling frost again; and every bush, and tump, and hillock quite knows how to stand and look; when the creases of yellow grass, and green grass, by the roadside, leave themselves for explanation, till the rain shall settle it; and the thick hedge in the calm air cannot rustle, unless it holds a rabbit or a hare at play, – when all these things, in their quiet way, guide the shadowy lines of evening, and the long lanes of farewell, what can soothe the spirit more than the view of a boy on a donkey?
Bonny, therefore, was in keeping with the world around him (as he always contrived to be) when he came home on Jack, that evening from a long day’s work at Shoreham. The lane was at its best almost, with all the wild flowers that love the chalk, mixed with those that hug the border where the chalk creams into loam. Among them Bonny whistled merrily, as his favourite custom was; to let the Pixies and the Fairies, ere he came under the gloom of the hill, understand that he was coming and nobody else to frighten them.
Soothed with the beauty of the scene and the majesty of the sunset, Jack drew back his ears and listened drowsily to his master. “Britannia rule the waves” was then the anthem of the nation; and as she seemed to rule nothing else, though fighting very grandly, all patriotic Britons found main comfort in commanding water.
The happiness of this boy and donkey was of that gleeful see-saw chancing, which is the heartiest of all. This has a snugness of its own, which nothing but poverty can afford, and luck rejoice to revel in. As a rich man hugs his shivers, when he has taken a sudden chill, and huddles in over a roaring fire, and boasts that he cannot warm himself, so a poor fellow may cuddle his home, and spread his legs as he pleases, for the sake of its very want of comfort, and the things it makes him think of; all to be hoped for by-and-by. And Bonny was so destitute, that he had all the world to hope for. He lived in a hole in the scarp of chalk, at the foot of the gully of Coombe Lorraine; and many of his delightful doings might have been seen from the lofty windows, if anyone ever had thought it worth while to slope a long telescope at him. But nobody cared to look at Bonny and scatter his lowly happiness – than which there is no more fugitive creature, and none more shy of inspection.
Being of a light and dauntless nature, Bonny kept whistling and singing his way, over the grass and through the furze, and in and out the dappled leafage of the summer evening; while Jack, with his brightest blinkings, picked the parts of the track that suited him. The setting sun was in their eyes, and made them wink every now and then, and threw the shadow of long ears, and walking legs, and jogging heads, here and there and anywhere. Also a very fine lump of something might in the shadows be loosely taken to hang across Jack in his latter parts, coming after Bonny’s legs, and choice things stowed in front of them.
The meaning of this was that they had been making a very lucky ’long-shore day at the mouth of the river Adur; and on their way home had received some pleasing tribute to their many merits in the town of Steyning, and down the road. Jack had no panniers, for his master could not provide such luxuries; but he had what answered as well, or better – a long and trusty meal-sack, strongly stitched at the mouth, and slit for inlet some way down the middle. So that as it hung well balanced over his sturdy quarters, anything might be popped in quickly; and all the contents must abide together, and churn up into fine tenderness.
As for Bonny himself, the shadows did him strong injustice, such as he was wont to take from all the world, and make light of. The shadows showed him a ragged figure, flapping and flickering here and there, and random in his outlines. But the true glow of the sunset, full upon his face, presented quite another Bonny. No more to be charged as a vagabond than the earth and the sun himself were; but a little boy who loved his home, such as it was, and knew it, and knew little else. Dirty, perhaps, just here and there, after the long dry weather – but if he had been ugly, could he have brought home all that dripping?
To the little fellow himself as yet the question of costume was more important than that of comeliness. And his dress afforded him many sources of pride and self-satisfaction. For his breeches were possessed of inexhaustible vitality, as well as bold and original colour, having been adapted for him by the wife of his great patron, Bottler the pigman, from a pair of Bottler’s