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A DOG'S TALE
CHAPTER I
My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am
a Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know
these nice distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large
words meaning nothing. My mother had a fondness for such;
she liked to say them, and see other dogs look surprised and envious,
as wondering how she got so much education. But, indeed, it was not
real education; it was only show: she got the words by listening
in the dining-room and drawing-room when there was company,
and by going with the children to Sunday-school and listening there;
and whenever she heard a large word she said it over to herself
many times, and so was able to keep it until there was a dogmatic
gathering in the neighborhood, then she would get it off,
and surprise and distress them all, from pocket-pup to mastiff,
which rewarded her for all her trouble. If there was a stranger
he was nearly sure to be suspicious, and when he got his breath
again he would ask her what it meant. And she always told him.
He was never expecting this but thought he would catch her;
so when she told him, he was the one that looked ashamed,
whereas he had thought it was going to be she. The others were
always waiting for this, and glad of it and proud of her, for they
knew what was going to happen, because they had had experience.
When she told the meaning of a big word they were all so taken up
with admiration that it never occurred to any dog to doubt if it
was the right one; and that was natural, because, for one thing,
she answered up so promptly that it seemed like a dictionary speaking,
and for another thing, where could they find out whether it was right
or not? for she was the only cultivated dog there was. By and by,
when I was older, she brought home the word Unintellectual, one time,
and worked it pretty hard all the week at different gatherings,
making much unhappiness and despondency; and it was at this time
that I noticed that during that week she was asked for the meaning
at eight different assemblages, and flashed out a fresh definition
every time, which showed me that she had more presence of mind
than culture, though I said nothing, of course. She had one word
which she always kept on hand, and ready, like a life-preserver,
a kind of emergency word to strap on when she was likely to get
washed overboard in a sudden way--that was the word Synonymous.
When she happened to fetch out a long word which had had its day
weeks before and its prepared meanings gone to her dump-pile,
if there was a stranger there of course it knocked him groggy for
a couple of minutes, then he would come to, and by that time she
would be away down wind on another tack, and not expecting anything;
so when he'd hail and ask her to cash in, I (the only dog on
the inside of her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment--
but only just a moment--then it would belly out taut and full,
and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "It's synonymous
with supererogation," or some godless long reptile of a word
like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack,
perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking
profane and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor
with their tails in unison and their faces transfigured with a
holy joy.
And it was the same with phrases. She would drag home a whole phrase,
if it had a grand sound, and play it six nights and two matinees,
and explain it a new way every time--which she had to, for all she
cared for was the phrase; she wasn't interested in what it meant,
and knew those dogs hadn't wit enough to catch her, anyway.
Yes, she was a daisy! She got so she wasn't afraid of anything,
she had such confidence in the ignorance of those creatures.
She even brought anecdotes that she had heard the family and the
dinner-guests laugh and shout over; and as a rule she got the nub
of one chestnut hitched onto another chestnut, where, of course,
it didn't fit and hadn't any point; and when she delivered the nub
she fell over and rolled on the floor and laughed and barked
in the most insane way, while I could see that she was wondering
to herself why it didn't seem as funny as it did when she first
heard it. But no harm was done; the others rolled and barked too,
privately ashamed of themselves for not seeing the point, and never
suspecting that the fault was not with them and there wasn't any
to see.
You can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and
frivolous character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up,
I think. She had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored
resentments for injuries done her, but put them easily out of her
mind and forgot them; and she taught her children her kindly way,
and from her we learned also to be brave and prompt in time of danger,
and not to run away, but face the peril that threatened friend
or stranger, and help him the best we could without stopping to think
what the cost might be to us. And she taught us not by words only,
but by example, and that is the best way and the surest and the
most lasting. Why, the brave things she did, the splendid things! she
was just a soldier; and so modest about it--well, you couldn't help
admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her; not even a King
Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her society.
So, as you see, there was more to her than her education.
CHAPTER II
When I was well grown, at last, I was sold and taken away,
and I never saw her again. She was broken-hearted, and so was I,
and we cried; but she comforted me as well as she could, and said
we were sent into this world for a wise and good purpose, and must
do our duties without repining, take our life as we might find it,
live it for the best good of others, and never mind about the results;
they were not our affair. She said men who did like this would have
a noble and beautiful reward by and by in another world, and although
we animals would not go there, to do well and right without reward
would give to our brief lives a worthiness and dignity which in
itself would be a reward. She had gathered these things from time
to time when she had gone to the Sunday-school with the children,
and had laid them up in her memory more carefully than she had done
with those other words and phrases; and she had studied them deeply,
for her good and ours. One may see by this that she had a wise
and thoughtful head, for all there was so much lightness and vanity
in it.
So we said our farewells, and looked our last upon each other through
our tears; and the last thing she said--keeping it for the last
to make me remember it the better, I think--was, "In memory of me,
when there is a time of danger to another do not think of yourself,
think of your mother, and do as she would do."
Do you think I could forget that? No.
CHAPTER III
It was such a charming home!--my new one; a fine great house,
with pictures, and delicate decorations, and rich furniture,
and no gloom anywhere, but all the wilderness of dainty colors lit up
with flooding sunshine; and the spacious grounds around it, and the
great garden--oh, greensward, and noble trees, and flowers, no end!
And I was the same as a member of the family; and they loved me,
and petted me, and did not give me a new name, but called me by my
old one that was dear to me because my mother had given it me--
Aileen Mavoureen. She got it out of a song; and the Grays knew
that song, and said it was a beautiful name.
Mrs. Gray was thirty, and so sweet and so lovely, you cannot
imagine it; and Sadie was ten, and just like her mother, just a
darling slender little copy of her, with auburn tails down her back,
and short frocks; and the baby was a year old, and plump and dimpled,
and fond of me, and never could get enough of hauling on my tail,
and hugging me, and laughing out its innocent happiness; and Mr. Gray
was thirty-eight, and tall and slender and handsome, a little bald
in front, alert, quick in his movements, business-like, prompt,
decided, unsentimental, and with that kind of trim-chiseled face
that just seems to glint and sparkle with frosty intellectuality!
He was a renowned scientist. I do not know what the word means,
but my mother would know how to use it and get effects. She would
know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make a lap-dog
look sorry he came. But that is not the best one; the best one
was Laboratory. My mother could organize a Trust on that one that
would skin the tax-collars off the whole herd. The laboratory
was not a book, or a picture, or a place to wash your hands in,
as the college president's dog said--no, that is the lavatory;
the laboratory is quite different, and is filled with jars,
and bottles, and electrics, and wires, and strange machines;
and every week other scientists came there and sat in the place,
and used the machines, and discussed, and made what they called
experiments and discoveries; and often I came, too, and stood
around and listened, and tried to learn, for the sake of my mother,
and in loving memory of her, although it was a pain to me, as realizing
what she was losing out of her life and I gaining nothing at all;
for try as I might, I was never able to make anything out of it
at all.
Other times I lay on the floor in the mistress's work-room and slept,
she gently using me for a foot-stool, knowing it pleased me,
for it was a caress; other times I spent an hour in the nursery,
and got well tousled and made happy; other times I watched by the
crib there, when the baby was asleep and the nurse out for a few
minutes on the baby's affairs; other times I romped and raced
through the grounds and the garden with Sadie till we were tired out,
then slumbered on the grass in the shade of a tree while she read
her book; other times I went visiting among the neighbor dogs--
for there were some most pleasant ones not far away, and one very
handsome and courteous and graceful one, a curly-haired Irish
setter by the name of Robin Adair, who was a Presbyterian like me,
and belonged to the Scotch minister.
The servants in our house were all kind to me and were fond of me,
and so, as you see, mine was a pleasant life. There could not be
a happier dog that I was, nor a gratefuler one. I will say this
for myself, for it is only the truth: I tried in all ways to do
well and right, and honor my mother's memory and her teachings,
and earn the happiness that had come to me, as best I could.
By and by came my little puppy, and then my cup was full, my happiness
was perfect. It was the dearest little waddling thing, and so smooth
and soft and velvety, and had such cunning little awkward paws,
and such affectionate eyes, and such a sweet and innocent face;
and it made me so proud to see how the children and their mother
adored it, and fondled it, and exclaimed over every little wonderful
thing it did. It did seem to me that life was just too lovely to--
Then came the winter. One day I was standing a watch in the nursery.
That is to say, I was asleep on the bed. The baby was asleep in
the crib, which was alongside the bed, on the side next the fireplace.
It was the kind of crib that has a lofty tent over it made of gauzy
stuff that you can see through. The nurse was out, and we two
sleepers were alone. A spark from the wood-fire was shot out, and it
lit on the slope of the tent. I suppose a quiet interval followed,
then a scream from the baby awoke me, and there was that tent
flaming up toward the ceiling! Before I could think, I sprang
to the floor in my fright, and in a second was half-way to the door;
but in the next half-second my mother's farewell was sounding
in my ears, and I was back on the bed again., I reached my head
through the flames and dragged the baby out by the waist-band,
and tugged it along, and we fell to the floor together in a cloud
of smoke; I snatched a new hold, and dragged the screaming little
creature along and out at the door and around the bend of the hall,
and was still tugging away, all excited and happy and proud,
when the master's voice shouted:
"Begone you cursed beast!" and I jumped to save myself; but he
was furiously quick, and chased me up, striking furiously at me
with his cane, I dodging this way and that, in terror, and at last a
strong blow fell upon my left foreleg, which made me shriek and fall,
for the moment, helpless; the cane went up for another blow,
but never descended, for the nurse's voice rang wildly out,
"The nursery's on fire!" and the master rushed away in that direction,
and my other bones were saved.
The pain was cruel, but, no matter, I must not lose any time;
he might come back at any moment; so I limped on three legs to the
other end of the hall, where there was a dark little stairway leading
up into a garret where old boxes and such things were kept, as I had
heard say, and where people seldom went. I managed to climb up there,
then I searched my way through the dark among the piles of things,
and hid in the secretest place I could find. It was foolish to be
afraid there, yet still I was; so afraid that I held in and hardly
even whimpered, though it would have been such a comfort to whimper,
because that eases the pain, you know. But I could lick my leg,
and that did some good.
For half an hour there was a commotion downstairs, and shoutings,
and rushing footsteps, and then there was quiet again. Quiet for
some minutes, and that was grateful to my spirit, for then my fears
began to go down; and fears are worse than pains--oh, much worse.
Then came a sound that froze me. They were calling me--calling me
by name--hunting for me!
It was muffled by distance, but that could not take the terror out of it,
and it was the most dreadful sound to me that I had ever heard.
It went all about, everywhere, down there: along the halls, through all
the rooms, in both stories, and in the basement and the cellar;
then outside, and farther and farther away--then back, and all
about the house again, and I thought it would never, never stop.
But at last it did, hours and hours after the vague twilight of
the garret had long ago been blotted out by black darkness.
Then in that blessed stillness my terrors fell little by little away,
and I was at peace and slept. It was a good rest I had, but I woke
before the twilight had come again. I was feeling fairly comfortable,
and I could think out a plan now. I made a very good one;
which was, to creep down, all the way down the back stairs,
and hide behind the cellar door, and slip out and escape when the
iceman came at dawn, while he was inside filling the refrigerator;
then I would hide all day, and start on my journey when night came;
my journey to--well, anywhere where they would not know me and betray
me to the master. I was feeling almost cheerful now; then suddenly
I thought: Why, what would life be without my puppy!
That was despair. There was no plan for me; I saw that;
I must say where I was; stay, and wait, and take what might come--
it was not my affair; that was what life is--my mother had said it.
Then--well, then the calling began again! All my sorrows came back.
I said to myself, the master will never forgive. I did not know
what I had done to make him so bitter and so unforgiving, yet I
judged it was something a dog could not understand, but which was
clear to a man and dreadful.
They called and called--days and nights, it seemed to me.
So long that the hunger and thirst near drove me mad, and I
recognized that I was getting very weak. When you are this way you
sleep a great deal, and I did. Once I woke in an awful fright--
it seemed to me that the calling was right there in the garret!
And so it was: it was Sadie's voice, and she was crying; my name
was falling from her lips all broken, poor thing, and I could not
believe my ears for the joy of it when I heard her say:
"Come back to us--oh, come back to us, and forgive--it is all so sad
without our--"
I broke in with SUCH a grateful little yelp, and the next moment
Sadie was plunging and stumbling through the darkness and the lumber
and shouting for the family to hear, "She's found, she's found!"
The days that followed--well, they were wonderful. The mother
and Sadie and the servants--why, they just seemed to worship me.
They couldn't seem to make me a bed that was fine enough;
and as for food, they couldn't be satisfied with anything but game
and delicacies that were out of season; and every day the friends
and neighbors flocked in to hear about my heroism--that was the
name they called it by, and it means agriculture. I remember my
mother pulling it on a kennel once, and explaining it in that way,
but didn't say what agriculture was, except that it was synonymous
with intramural incandescence; and a dozen times a day Mrs. Gray
and Sadie would tell the tale to new-comers, and say I risked my life
to say the baby's, and both of us had burns to prove it, and then
the company would pass me around and pet me and exclaim about me,
and you could see the pride in the eyes of Sadie and her mother;
and when the people wanted to know what made me limp, they looked
ashamed and changed the subject, and sometimes when people hunted
them this way and that way with questions about it, it looked to me
as if they were going to cry.
And this was not all the glory; no, the master's friends came,
a whole twenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in
the laboratory, and discussed me as if I was a kind of discovery;
and some of them said it was wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest
exhibition of instinct they could call to mind; but the master said,
with vehemence, "It's far above instinct; it's REASON, and many a man,
privileged to be saved and go with you and me to a better world
by right of its possession, has less of it that this poor silly
quadruped that's foreordained to perish"; and then he laughed,
and said: "Why, look at me--I'm a sarcasm! bless you, with all
my grand intelligence, the only think I inferred was that the dog
had gone mad and was destroying the child, whereas but for the
beast's intelligence--it's REASON, I tell you!--the child would
have perished!"
They disputed and disputed, and _I_ was the very center of subject
of it all, and I wished my mother could know that this grand honor
had come to me; it would have made her proud.
Then they discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certain
injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could
not agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by;
and next they discussed plants, and that interested me, because in
the summer Sadie and I had planted seeds--I helped her dig the holes,
you know--and after days and days a little shrub or a flower came
up there, and it was a wonder how that could happen; but it did,
and I wished I could talk--I would have told those people about it
and shown then how much I knew, and been all alive with the subject;
but I didn't care for the optics; it was dull, and when they came back
to it again it bored me, and I went to sleep.
Pretty soon it was spring, and sunny and pleasant and lovely,
and the sweet mother and the children patted me and the puppy
good-by, and went away on a journey and a visit to their kin,
and the master wasn't any company for us, but we played together
and had good times, and the servants were kind and friendly,
so we got along quite happily and counted the days and waited
for the family.
And one day those men came again, and said, now for the test,
and they took the puppy to the laboratory, and I limped
three-leggedly along, too, feeling proud, for any attention shown
to the puppy was a pleasure to me, of course. They discussed
and experimented, and then suddenly the puppy shrieked,
and they set him on the floor, and he went staggering around,
with his head all bloody, and the master clapped his hands and shouted:
"There, I've won--confess it! He's a blind as a bat!"
And they all said:
"It's so--you've proved your theory, and suffering humanity owes
you a great debt from henceforth," and they crowded around him,
and wrung his hand cordially and thankfully, and praised him.
But I hardly saw or heard these things, for I ran at once to my
little darling, and snuggled close to it where it lay, and licked
the blood, and it put its head against mine, whimpering softly,
and I knew in my heart it was a comfort to it in its pain and
trouble to feel its mother's touch, though it could not see me.
Then it dropped down, presently, and its little velvet nose rested
upon the floor, and it was still, and did not move any more.
Soon the master stopped discussing a moment, and rang in the footman,
and said, "Bury it in the far corner of the garden," and then went
on with the discussion, and I trotted after the footman, very happy
and grateful, for I knew the puppy was out of its pain now, because it
was asleep. We went far down the garden to the farthest end,
where the children and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play
in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug
a hole, and I saw he was going to plant the puppy, and I was glad,
because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair,
and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home;
so I tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff,
you know, and you have to have two, or it is no use. When the
footman had finished and covered little Robin up, he patted my head,
and there were tears in his eyes, and he said: "Poor little doggie,
you saved HIS child!"
I have watched two whole weeks, and he doesn't come up! This last week
a fright has been stealing upon me. I think there is something terrible
about this. I do not know what it is, but the fear makes me sick,
and I cannot eat, though the servants bring me the best of food;
and they pet me so, and even come in the night, and cry, and say,
"Poor doggie--do give it up and come home; DON'T break our hearts!"
and all this terrifies me the more, and makes me sure something
has happened. And I am so weak; since yesterday I cannot stand on my
feet anymore. And within this hour the servants, looking toward the
sun where it was sinking out of sight and the night chill coming on,
said things I could not understand, but they carried something cold
to my heart.
"Those poor creatures! They do not suspect. They will come home
in the morning, and eagerly ask for the little doggie that did
the brave deed, and who of us will be strong enough to say the truth
to them: 'The humble little friend is gone where go the beasts
that perish.'"
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