A Lame Dog's Diary Part 8

"That is rather disobliging of you."

"Because," I said, "our lives should always show a perfect equation.

If you are a frivolous person you should behave frivolously."

"You mean _as_ I am a frivolous person," said Mrs. Fielden.

"As you are a frivolous person," I repeated.

"And after all," said Mrs. Fielden with a contemplative air, "how silly philosophy is! I asked somebody the other day the meaning of a syllogism, and really I don't think I ever heard anything quite so foolish."

"It is quite beneath your notice," I said.

"I did think of asking you if I might come over sometimes and read these musty volumes of yours."

"You would probably find them as uninteresting as I am," I said.

Mrs. Fielden looked as if she thought that might be possible, and did not press the matter.

I dislike being disloyal to my books, for they are such good friends of mine. But a great wish came to me then to get up and do something, instead of for ever reading the doings and the thoughts of other people. I thought how much I should like to live again, and just for once sleep on the veldt with the stars overhead, or longed that I could get astride of a horse, and follow a burst of the hounds over the wet fields in England. And so thinking I turned on the sofa and said petulantly, "I wish Maud Jamieson would not sing that song."

"Oh, that we two were maying," she sang, in the song that tells of love and separation, and the longings and heartbreaks which it is much better not to speak about, and the things which we want and cannot have.

"I hate yearners," I said. "Why can't she sing something cheerful?"

Mrs. Fielden rose from her chair by the fire and crossed the hearthrug, and came and sat down on my sofa. She took my hand in hers and said: "Poor boy! is it very hard sometimes?"

"Of course," said Palestrina, as we went upstairs to bed after our guests had departed, "you are sure to feel tired. The little party has been too much for you, I'm afraid. It was very tiresome for you having to leave us all."

"I felt rather a crock after dinner," I said, "and I think the hall gets hot in the evening."

"I wish I could make you better," said Palestrina affectionately; "it is horrid for you being ill."

"Every one," I said, "makes far too much fuss about health. Why, ten officers of our regiment are buried in South Africa. I suppose half the pensioners in Chelsea Hospital have had wounds as bad as mine, and a cripple more or less in the world does not matter very much. Women are kind enough to pity me. They even confide their troubles to me sometimes, because I am a poor thing lying on a sofa. I am really quite happy hobbling about with you, Palestrina; and when I am older, I shall probably take an interest in the garden. There is a proper and philosophical att.i.tude of mind in respect of these things."

"O Hugo," said Palestrina, "I always know you are not happy when you begin to be philosophical."

"Life is very easily explained without the a.s.sistance of philosophy when everything goes all right," I replied.

CHAPTER VII.

Have I ever mentioned that Palestrina is engaged to be married? If I have not done so, it is because it seems an obvious fact that all Palestrinas are engaged to be married. Her _fiance_, who is called Thomas, is stationed with his regiment in Ireland. A few weeks ago he sent her, as a token of his affection, a yellow dog with long hair.

Palestrina does not like dogs, but she is trying to love Down-Jock for Thomas's sake. She says his name is Jock. The dog is a curious creature, with a pa.s.sion for hurling himself at those who wear clean flannel trousers or light skirts. Thomas says he is full of intelligence. He appears to be quite a young animal, but he can affect the airs of extreme old age, sleeping in a basket a great part of the day, or standing on the doorstep to bark at visitors in an asthmatical manner, as though he would say, "I am too old and too feeble to give chase, but while I am alive this house shall not lack a defender." At other times he is wildly juvenile, and rolls himself over and over in an exuberance of youthful fun. This is chiefly on Sundays, when (his best joke) he pretends he wants to come to church with us. Sunday is Down-Jock's happiest day in all the week. No Christian in the land loves it more than he does. He begins his religious exercises early in the morning by barking outside the doors of all those people who have determined to take an extra half-hour's rest, and he continues barking without ceasing until the sleeper awakes and gets out of bed to open the door for him. He bustles in and wags his tail cheerfully, saying as plainly as a dog can say it, "I am an early riser, you see--and a teetotaler," he adds, trotting across the room to the water-jug, and lapping full red tonguefuls of its contents. Then he stands in the middle of the room and barks at you; runs to the door and barks at it; barks at the servants as they go downstairs, promising--the little tell-tale!--that their lateness shall be reported in the proper quarter. Finally, he climbs on to the bed, and goes to sleep upon your feet.

During breakfast he is attentive to every one, and sits on the skirts of those ladies who most dislike dogs, and pulls them down uncomfortably from the waist. He watches every mouthful of food that is eaten, and grudges it to the eater; and his eyes are saying all the time, "How can you be so greedy?" After breakfast his most boisterous juvenile mood begins. He jumps on every one, or rolls himself over and over under every one's feet. He wags his tail, barks in a piercing manner--the bark of the gay young dog--and madly rushes after imaginary rats. All gloves and shoes become his playthings, and he frolics blithely with the hat-brush.

On weekdays he pleads old age as an excuse, and refuses to come anywhere with us; but on the Sabbath morning who so ready as Down-Jock to take his walks abroad? He flies after us to the gate, his long hair streaming in the wind, and his short legs racing like a clockwork dog.

Palestrina says: "Oh dear, what shall we do? Down-Jock! down, sir!

Oh, he has spoilt my dress! Good doggie, mustn't go to church! Go home! go home! Oh, Jock, do get down!--Look, he is following us still, and the church door is always open; he is sure to come in in the middle of the service, and trot up to us in our pew. Do you think Thomas would mind if I were to look as if he didn't belong to us?"

Jock flies back with an old bone in his mouth and deposits it at Palestrina's feet, dares her to touch it, and makes flying s.n.a.t.c.hes at her shoes when she kicks the treasure aside.

"I must take him back," says Palestrina. "It will make me late of course, but I must go and shut him up."

"He won't follow you," I say. "He is quite determined to go to church."

Palestrina lifts the heavy beast in her arms, and in an exuberance of joy Down-Jock makes a doormat of her dress, and rubs his paws affectionately against it and licks her hand.

Of course he escapes presently and runs after us; that is his best and most killing joke. Inwardly one feels he is in a state of hardly-suppressed laughter as he tears down the road again, barking with glee. And then he gets a sober fit, walks demurely in front of us in the narrow field-path, changes his mind suddenly about going to church, stops dead short, and trips us up; thinks after all he ought to go to the morning service as an example to the servants; toddles on again, and stops to say (with the air of extreme old age again a.s.sumed) that, after all, he is not up to the exertion, and would have to sit down at the Psalms, so perhaps it really would be better to stay quietly at home. Another stop. A rapid toilet performed by scratching his head with his hind-leg, "just in case I meet any one coming out of church whom I know;" and then Down-Jock meets a boy friend strolling off to the fields, and running up to him, says: "One must conform to conventionalities, but between you and me I never had the remotest intention of going to church."

Down-Jock, in his moments of most restless activity, always reminds me of a servant of ours who has occasional fits of the most intense energy. It begins quite early in the morning, when she gets up some hours before her usual time, and gives a sort of surprise party to the rest of the household. These parties take place two or three times a year, and we do not get over them for weeks afterwards. Every room in the house is visited in turn, and delinquencies of a twelvemonth are laid bare. During the morning cupboards are turned out in a magisterial sort of way, and dusty corners are triumphantly displayed.

The most cherished rubbish is freely consigned to the waste-paper baskets, and collections of all sorts are contemptuously swept away.

We hastily gather up books and precious oddments, and hurry off with them to my den, where we take refuge till the whirlwind is past.

Curtains and tablecloths are shaken with a sort of vindictive energy at the back-door; all windows are flung open, and rugs are rolled up, making a sort of obstacle race in every pa.s.sage and room. Down-Jock, who never recognizes a superior in any one, is the only member of the party who is not rendered an abject coward. He unrolls rugs, and runs away with dusters, and snaps at the heels of the housemaid in a way that provokes one's wonder at his temerity. My sister and I, having locked away our most cherished possessions, generally contrive to be out of the house as much as possible on one of these tempestuous days.

And following the line of reasoning, not of the highest order, which suggests that if one cannot be happy one had better try and be good, Palestrina always visits her old women at the workhouse on these days.

"I wish," she said to me, "that you would walk into the village and meet me on my way home. I don't think anybody is coming up to see you this afternoon, and the house is so uncomfortable when Janet is in one of her whirlwind moods. Come as far as the corner, and go in and sit down at old Pettifer's if you get tired."

"Shadrach Pettifer tells me," I said, "that his affection for you is based on the fact that you are so like his poor old mother. Perhaps while I am waiting at his cottage he may give me further interesting facts about you."

Shadey is an old man with a bent back and curious bright eyes that gleam under a heavy thatch of eyebrow. His wife is the very thinnest old woman that I have ever seen; her cheeks have fallen in and are so very wrinkled that they always remind me of a toy balloon that a child has p.r.i.c.ked with a pin. She is always ill and never complaining. Any expression of sympathy seems foreign to her comprehension, and the "Poor thing!" or "I am so sorry," so eagerly accepted by more fortunate folk, is received by her with a certain air of independence. Last winter Mrs. Pettifer was dangerously ill with internal gout, but expressions of condolence were always met with the rather curious reply, "Well, you see, sir, we must have something to bring us to our end." There is a whole world of philosophy in this.

To-day the old couple spent the time while I waited for Palestrina in their cottage in describing to me the last days in the life of their tortoise, an old friend, and an animal of evidently strange and unusual qualities. Towards the close of its life it was, on the testimony of the Pettifers, taken with screaming fits, and, it even had to be held down "when the high-strikes was wuss." Later it used to run round and round as never was. And at last Shadey determined to release it from this earthly tabernacle. He asked his friend Bridgeman, Anthony Crawshay's head-keeper, to come round some evening and administer poison to the unfortunate beast, and the effect of the dose was as strange as it was unexpected. The poison was the first thing for weeks that poor Toots the tortoise had seemed to enjoy. It seemed, to quote again from the testimony of those most intimately acquainted with the animal, to "put new life into Toots," and the more poison that was administered the livelier did he become, "until he was that gay it seemed as if he would ha' laughed at yer!" Finally, I understood that when poison sufficient to kill two cart-horses had been given, the afflicted animal yielded to treatment, and its sh.e.l.l now adorns the kitchen dresser.

We returned home to find the house smelling of furniture polish, and permeated with a certain cold primness which succeeds a tidying-up, and which can only be dispelled by a glowing fire. One by one things were brought back to the hall, and we felt like snails creeping out in the evening after a day of rain. Banished property strewed the tables again, and Palestrina opened the piano and spread it with music. It was an act of defiance, but comfortable nevertheless, to collect the cushions which had been dotted primly about in clean muslin covers, and to pile them all on to the sofa before the fire. But Down-Jock, who always goes one better than any one else, contributed still more completely to the systematized disorganization of the house. He gaily wiped his muddy feet on clean paint, and tore blithely round after imaginary rats wherever order reigned. Finally, in an exuberance of joy, he made a hearty supper of Palestrina's ma.n.u.script book of music, and barked with glee.

And yet some people say that dogs are not intelligent!

CHAPTER VIII.

The Uncle, Sir John, is coming to stay at the Taylors', and the town is in something of a flutter over this event. It was hoped that the Taylors would give a tea-party in honour of their guest, but there is a shrewd notion abroad that no one will be allowed to see very much of him except at a distance. The Taylors had hoped that there would be some occasion during his visit on which The Uncle might speak in public, and Mr. Taylor has tried, half jestingly, to induce his brother townsfolk to arrange what he calls "something in the political line"

while the august relative is staying with him. I think we owe it to the fact that the political meeting was found to be an impossibility that we were asked to tea at the Taylors'.

Invitations, instead of taking the form of a friendly note, after the pattern of Stowel invitations in general, were conveyed on one of Mrs.

Taylor's visiting cards, with "At home, Thursday the 17th, four to seven," upon it. "A little abrupt," ladies of Stowel were inclined to think, but of course the Taylors are people of some importance in the place. No one quite knew how to answer the invitation, and a good many friendly little visits were paid on the afternoon on which it arrived, and the mysterious card was produced from a bag or purse, with the smiling apology, "I am sure fashions change so quickly that one hardly knows how to keep up with them." And then ideas were exchanged as to the reply suitable to such a form of invitation. Miss Tracey said that she always thought that an invitation was accepted in as nearly as possible the same manner in which it was given, and she announced that she and her sister meant to return one of their own visiting-cards to Mrs. Taylor, with the day and the hour named upon it, and "With pleasure" written underneath. This was considered suitable, for the most part; but those who still had doubts upon the subject made elaborate efforts to meet Mrs. Taylor during the morning's shopping, and to say to her in a friendly way, "We are coming, of course, on Thursday. Will you excuse our writing a note, at this busy time?"

The Miss Blinds always send their thanks for a "polite invitation" in the old style, but on this occasion Miss Lydia was obliged to offer regrets as well as thanks, as she had not been very well lately. She, I suppose, was the only person in Stowel who did not accept Mrs.

Taylor's invitation. Two parties are, of course, never given on the same day, and it would be considered eccentric to prefer staying at home to going out.

"I am sorry Miss Lydia cannot come," said Mr. Taylor, when the notes of acceptance were being opened at breakfast-time; "after all, it is not every day that people have a chance of meeting so distinguished a man as the General."