Aileen Aroon, A Memoir Part 4

When I went to take her dish away next morning, to wash and replenish it, only my own celerity in beating a retreat prevented my legs from being viciously bitten. I then endeavoured to remove the dish with the stable besom. Alas for the besom! Howling and growling with pa.s.sion, with scintillating eyes and flashing teeth, she tore that broom to atoms, and then attacked the handle. But I succeeded in feeding her, after which she was quieter.

Now, dogs, to keep them in health, need daily exercise, and I determined Dandie should not want that, wild though she seemed to be. There was another scene when I went to unloose her; and I found the only chance of doing so was to treat her as they do wild bulls in some parts of the country. I got a hook and attached it to the end of a pole the same length as the chain. I could then keep her at a safe distance. And thus for a whole week I had to lead her out for exercise. I lost no opportunity of making friends with her, and in about a fortnight's time I could both take her dish away without a broom and lead her out without the pole.

She was still the vixen, however, which her former master had called her. When she was presented with a biscuit, she wouldn't think of eating it, before she had had her own peculiar game with it. She would lay it first against the back of the barrel, and for a time pretend not to see it, then suddenly she would look round, next fly at it, growling and yelping with rage, and shake it as she would a rat. Into such a perfect fury and frenzy did she work herself during her battle with the biscuit, that sometimes on hearing her chain rattle she would turn round and seize and shake it viciously. I have often, too, at these times seen her bite her tail because it dared to wag--bite it till the blood sprang, then with a howl of pain bite and bite it again and again. At last I made up my mind to feed her only on soil food, and that resolution I have since stuck to.

Poor Dandie had now been with us many months, and upon the whole her life, being almost constantly on the chain, was by no means a very happy one. Her hair, too, got matted, and she looked altogether morose and dirty, and it was then that the thought occurred to my wife and me that she would be much better _dead_. I considered the matter in all its bearings for fully half an hour, and it was then I suddenly jumped up from my chair.

"What _are_ you going to do?" asked my wife.

"I'm going to wash Dandie; wash her, comb out all her mats, dry her, and brush her, for, do you know, I feel quite guilty in having neglected her."

My wife, in terror of the consequences of washing so vicious a dog, tried to dissuade me. But my mind was made up, and shortly after so was Dandie's bed--of clean dry straw in a warm loft above the stable.

"Firmly and kindly does it," I had said to myself, as I seized the vixen by the nape of the neck, and in spite of her efforts to rend any part of my person she could lay hold of, I popped her into the tub.

Vixen, did I say? She was popped into the tub a vixen, sure enough, but I soon found out I had "tamed the shrew," and after she was rinsed in cold water, well dried, combed, and brushed, the poor little thing jumped on my knee and kissed me. Then I took her for a run--a thing one ought never to neglect after washing a dog. And you wouldn't have known Dandie now, so beautiful did she look.

Dandie is still alive, and lies at my feet as I write, a living example of the power of kindness. She loves us all, and will let my sister, wife, or little niece do anything with her, but she is still most viciously savage to nearly all strangers. She is the best guard-dog that I ever possessed, and a terror to tramps. She is very wise too, this Dandie of mine, for when out walking with any one of my relations, she is as gentle as a lamb, and will let anybody fondle her. She may thus be taken along with us with impunity when making calls upon friends, but very few indeed of those friends dare go near her when in her own garden or kennel. We have been well rewarded for our kindness to Dandie, for although her usual residence by day is her own barrel, and by night she has a share of the straw with the other dogs, she is often taken into the house, and in spite of our residence being in a somewhat lonely situation, whenever I go from home for the night she becomes a parlour boarder, and I feel quite easy in my mind because _Dandie is in the house_.

"Well," said Frank, when I had finished, "if that little story proves anything, it proves, I think, that almost any dog can be won by kindness."

"Or any animal of almost any kind," I added.

"Ah!" cried Frank, laughing, "but you failed with your hyaena. Didn't you?"

"Grat.i.tude," I replied, smiling, "does not occupy a very large corner in a hyaena's heart, Frank."

Note. Since writing the above, poor Dandie has gone to her little grave in the orchard.

CHAPTER FOUR.

DEDICATED TO GIRLS AND BOYS ONLY.

"A little maiden, frank and fair, With rosy lips apart, And sunbeams glinting in her hair, And sunshine at her heart."

In my last chapter I mentioned the name of Ida. Ida Graham was my little niece. Alas! she no longer brightens our home with the sunshine of her smile. Poor child, she was very beautiful. We all thought so, and every one else who saw her. I have but to close my eyes for a moment and I see her again knitting quietly by the fire on a winter's evening, or reading by the open window in the cool of a summer's day; or, reticule in hand, tripping across the clovery lea, the two great dogs, Aileen and Nero, bounding in front of her; or blithely singing as she feeds her canaries; or out in the yard beyond, surrounded by hens and c.o.c.ks, pigeons, ducks, and geese, laughing gaily as she scatters the barley she carries in her little ap.r.o.n.

It was not a bit strange that every creature loved Ida Graham, from the dogs to the bees. We lost her one day, I remember, in summer-time, and found her at last sound asleep by the foot of a tree, with deer browsing quietly near her, a hare washing its face within a yard of her, and wild birds hopping around and on her.

Such was Ida. It is no wonder, then, that we miss the dear child.

Very often I would have Ida all to myself for a whole day, when my wife was in town or visiting, and Frank was gardening or had the gout, for he suffered at times from that aristocratic but tantalising ailment.

On these occasions, when the weather was fine, we always took the dogs and went off to spend an hour or two in the woods. If it rained we stayed indoors, seated by the open window in order to be near the birds.

But wet day or fine, Ida generally managed to get a story from me. It was in the wood, and seated beneath the old pine-tree, that I told her the following. I called it--

PUFF: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PERSIAN p.u.s.s.y.

I am one of seven. Very much to the grief and sorrow of my poor patient mother, all the rest of my little brothers and sisters met with a watery grave. I did not know what mother meant when she told me this, with tears in her eyes. I was too young then, but I think I know now. But I was left to comfort my parent's heart. This was humane at least in my mistress, because, although it seems the fate of us poor p.u.s.s.ies that very many of us come into the world to be speedily drowned, it is cruel, for many reasons, to destroy all a mother's darlings at once.

Well, the very earliest thing that I can remember is being taken up in the arms of a pretty young lady. I was two months old then, and had been playing with a ball of worsted, which I had succeeded in getting entangled among the chair-legs.

"Oh, what a dear, beautiful, wee puss!" said this young miss, holding me round, so that she might look at my face. "And, oh!" she added, "it has such lovely eyes, and such a nice long coat."

"You may have it, Laura dear," said my mistress, "if you will be kind to it."

"Thank you so very much," said Laura, "and I know I shall be fond of it always."

And I do not doubt for a moment that Laura meant what she said. Her fault, however, and my misfortune lay, as you shall see, in the fact that she did not know a bit how to treat a p.u.s.s.y in order to make it happy.

Laura liked me, and romped with me morning and night, it is true; but although cats are ever so fond of attention and of romps, they cannot live upon either, and often and often I have gone hungry to my saucer and found it empty, which made me feel very cold and sad and dispirited.

Yet, in spite of this, I grew to be very fond indeed of my new mistress, and as I sometimes managed to catch a mouse I was not so very badly off after all.

When I gazed at Miss Laura's gentle face and her sweet eyes--they were just like my own--I could not help thinking that if she only knew how hungry and cold I often was, she would surely feed me twice a day at least. But my crowning sorrow was to come; and this was nothing less than the loss, I fear entirely, of my mistress's affection.

My grief was all the more bitter in that I was in some measure to blame for it myself. You see, I was a growing cat, and every day the pangs of hunger seemed more difficult to bear; so one day, when left by myself in the kitchen, I found out a way to open the cupboard, and--pray do not blame me; I do think if you had seen all the nice things therein, and felt as hungry as I felt, you would have tasted them too.

One little sin begets another, and before two months were over I was known in the kitchen as "that thief of a cat." I do not think Miss Laura knew of my depredations downstairs, for I was always honest in the parlour, and she would, I feel certain, have forgiven me even if she had known. As I could not be trusted in the kitchen, I was nearly always tamed out-of-doors of a night. This was exceedingly unkind, for it was often dark and rainy and cold, and I could find but little shelter. On dry moonlight nights I did not mind being out, for there was fun to be got--fun and field-mice. Alas! I wish now I had kept to fun and field-mice; but I met with evil company, vagrant outdoor cats, who took a delight in mewing beneath the windows of nervous invalids; who despised indoor life, looked upon theft as a fine art, and robbed pigeon-lofts right and left.

Is it any wonder, then, that I soon turned as reckless as any of them?

I always came home at the time the milk arrived in the morning, however; and even now, had my young mistress only fed me, I would have changed my evil courses at once. But she did not.

Now this constant stopping out in all weathers began to tell on my beautiful coat; it was no longer silky and beautiful. It became matted and harsh, and did show the dirt, so much so that I was quite ashamed to look in the gla.s.s. And always, too, I was so tired, all through my wanderings, when I returned of a morning, that I did nothing all day but nod drowsily over the fire. No wonder Miss Laura said one day--

"Oh, p.u.s.s.y, p.u.s.s.y! you do look dirty and disreputable. You are no longer the lovely creature you once were; I cannot care for such a cat as you have grown."

But I still loved her, and a kind word from her lips, or a casual caress was sure to make me happy, even in my dullest of moods.

The end came sooner than I expected, for one day Miss Laura went from home very early in the morning. As soon as she was gone, Mary Jane, the servant, seized me rudely by the neck. I thought she was going to kill me outright.

"I'll take good care, my lady," she said, "that you don't steal anything, at any rate for four-and-twenty hours to come."

Then she marched upstairs with me, popped me into my mistress's bedroom, locked the door, and went away chuckling. There was no one else in the room, only just myself and the canary. And all that long day no one ever came near me with so much as a drop of milk. When night came I tried to sleep on Miss Laura's bed, but the pangs of hunger effectually banished slumber. When day broke I felt certain somebody would come to the door. But no. I thought this was so cruel of Mary Jane, especially as I had no language in which to tell my mistress, on her return, of my sufferings. Towards the afternoon I felt famishing, and then my eyes fell upon the canary.

"Poor little thing!" said I; "you, too, are neglected and starving."

"Tweet, tweet!" said the bird, looking down at me with one eye.

"Now, d.i.c.ky," I continued, "I'm going to do you a great kindness. If you were a very, very large bird, I should ask you to eat me and put me out of all this misery."

"Tweet, tweet!" said the bird very knowingly, as much as to say, "I would do it without the slightest hesitation."

"Well," said I, "I mean to perform the same good office for you. I cannot see you starving there without trying to ease your sufferings, and so--"

Here I sprang at the cage. I draw a veil over what followed.