Corporal Sam and Other Stories Part 23

'At Argos one evening, at the table of General Gordon, then commander-in-chief in the Morea, the conversation happened to turn on the number and fierceness of Greek dogs, when one of the company remarked that he knew a very simple expedient for appeasing their fury. Happening on a journey to miss his road, and being overtaken with darkness, he sought refuge for the night at a pastoral settlement by the wayside. As he approached, the dogs rushed out upon him, and the consequences might have been serious had he not been rescued by an old shepherd, the Eumaeus of the fold, who sallied forth and, finding that the intruder was but a frightened traveller, after pelting off his a.s.sailants, gave him a hospitable reception in his hut. His guest made some remark on the watchfulness and zeal of his dogs, and on the danger to which he had been exposed in their attack. The old man replied that it was his own fault for not taking the customary precaution in such an emergency, that he ought to have stopped _and sat down_, until some person whom the animals knew came to protect him.

'As this expedient was new to the traveller he made some further inquiries, and was a.s.sured that if any person in such a predicament will simply seat himself on the ground, laying aside his weapons of defence, the dogs will also squat around in a circle; that as long as he remains quiet they will follow his example, but as soon as he rises and moves forward they will renew the attack.'

At this point the doctor laid down his pen, arose, and went to the book-case for his Homer, with purpose to copy the original lines into a footnote--for, to tell the truth, he had never quite mastered the methods of the Greek accents. He found the pa.s.sage in Odyssey 14.

Yes, it was all right--

autar Odysseus Ezeto kerdosune, skeptrou de oi ekpese cheiros . . .

But--hallo! what was this next line?--

Eutha kev o para stathmo aeikelion pathen algos . . .

--'There by his own steading,' the poet went on, 'would Odysseus have suffered foul hurt, had not the swineherd hurried out and scolded the dogs and pelted them off with stones.' It would seem then, according to Homer, that this device of squatting upon the ground could not be trusted save as a diversion, a temporary check. Doctor Unonius bit his nether lip. Strange that he had overlooked this. . . .

He had a scholar's conscience. He could not endure to garble a quotation or suppress a material point for the sake of ill.u.s.trating an argument more vividly. . . . Besides, it might delude some unfortunate person into sitting down where self-preservation demanded a more alert posture. Somebody--dreadful thought!--might get himself severely bitten, mauled, mangled perhaps to death, merely by obeying a piece of pseudo-scientific advice. That he, Doctor Unonius, might never be reproached with the disaster, might never even hear of it, in no degree mitigated his responsibility.

While he stood by the bookcase, balancing his spectacles on his forefinger and Homer's words in his mind, Jenifer, his one small maid-servant, entered with word that Roger Olver was at the door with a message from Penalune.

'Show him in,' said Doctor Unonius.

So Roger Olver, huntsman and handy-man to Sir John Penalune of Penalune, squire of Polpeor, hitched his horse's bridle on the staple by the doctor's front door--it would be hard to compute how many farmers, husbands, riding down at dead of night with news of wives in labour, had tethered their horses to that well-worn staple--and was conducted by Jenifer to the doctor's study.

'Ah! Good morning, Roger!'

'Mornin', y'r honour. Sir John bade me ride down an' ask 'ee--'

'To be sure--to be sure. As it happens, no man could have come at a happier moment. Accustomed, as you are, to dogs--'

'Hounds,' corrected Roger.

'It makes no difference.' The doctor translated the pa.s.sage, and explained his difficulty.

'I reckon,' said Roger, after scratching his head, 'the gentleman acted right in settin' down--though I've never had occasion to try it, dogs bein' fond o' me by natur'. I've heard, too, that a very good way, when a dog goes for you, is to squatty 'pon your heels with your coat-tails breshin' the ground an' bust out laffin' in his face.

I tell that for what 'tis worth.'

'Thank you,' said the doctor. 'I will make a note of it.'

'It wants nerve, seemin' to me.' Roger Olver rubbed his chin.

'That is understood.'

'For my part, if it happened I had a stick, I'd slash out at the beggar's forelegs--so--an' keep slashin' same as if I was mowin'

gra.s.s. Or, if I hadn' a stick, I'd kick straight for his forelegs an' chest; he's easy to cripple there, an' he knows it. Settin' down may be all right for the time, only the difficulty is you've got to get up again sooner or later--onless help arrives.'

'Eureka!' exclaimed Doctor Unonius, rushing to his notes.

'I beg y'r honour's pardon?'

'The modern instance says that the dogs would remain seated in a circle round the man; that so long as he remained seated they would do the same; but that, if he attempted to rise, they would renew the attack. That vindicates me, and explains Homer.'

'Do it?' said Roger Olver. 'But, beggin' your pardon, sir, if it's about dogs you want to know, why not have a look in at the kennels-- ay, an' follow the hounds now an' then? I've often wondered, makin'

so bold, how a gentleman like yourself, an' knowin' what's good for health, can go wastin' time on dead fishes, with a pack o' hounds, so to speak, at your door.'

'There's no sport more healthful, I verily believe,' agreed the doctor.

'And as for nat'ral history, what can a man want that he can't larn off a fox? Five-an'-twenty years I've been at it, an' the varmints be teachin' me yet. But I'm forgettin' my message, sir, which is that Sir John sends his compliments and would be happy to see you at dinner this evenin', he havin' a few friends.'

Doctor Unonius sighed. He had designed to spend the evening on his treatise. But he cherished a real regard for Sir John, whom all the countryside esteemed for a sportsman and an upright English gentleman; and Sir John, who, without learning of his own, held learning in exaggerated respect, cherished an equal regard for the doctor.

'My compliments to your master. I will come with pleasure,' said Doctor Unonius, thrusting Homer back in his shelf.

CHAPTER III.

'Wunnerful brandy, Sir John!' said old Squire Morshead.

He said this regularly as he dined at Penalune when, after dinner and wine and songs, the hour came for the 'brandy-mixing' before the guests dispersed. Sir John was a widower and confined his hospitality to men. He had adored his wife and lost her young; and thereafter, though exquisitely courteous to ladies when he met them-- on the hunting-field, for example--he could not endure one within the walls of Penalune. As he put it to himself, quoting an old by-word, 'What the eye don't see the heart don't grieve.' It scarcely needs to be added that the heart _did_ grieve; but this was his way, albeit a strange one, of worshipping what he had lost.

For the rest, he was a hale, cheerful, even jovial gentleman, now well past fifty; clear of eye, sound of wind and limb, standing six feet two in his stockings; fearing no man, on good terms with all, but liking his neighbours best, and no more eccentric than a country squire has the right, if not even the obligation to be. Unless it were in the saddle, you could scarcely see him to better advantage than at this ceremony of brandy-mixing--for a ceremony it was; no pushing of a decanter, but a slow solemn ladling by the host himself from an ample bowl. Moreover, the Penalune brandy was famous.

'It has lain,' said he--'let me see--thirty-five years in cellar, to my own knowledge. My father never told me how or when he came by it.

Smuggled, you may be sure.'

The talk ran on smuggling and its decline. A Mr St Aubyn, of Clowance, lamented this decline as symptomatic--'the national fibre's deteriorating, mark my words.' A Mr Trelawny was disposed to agree with him. 'And, after all,' he said, 'the game was a venial one; a kind of sport. Hang it, a Briton must be allowed his sporting instincts!' 'By the same argument, no doubt, you would justify poaching?' put in Sir John, with a twinkle. Mr Trelawny would by no means allow this. 'It would interest me, sir, to hear you define the moral difference between smuggling and poaching,' said Doctor Unonius. 'I don't go in for definitions, sir,' Mr Trelawny answered.

'I'm a practical man and judge things by their results. Look at your Polpeor folk--smugglers all, or the sons of smugglers--a fine upstanding, independent lot as you would wish to see; whereas your poacher nine times out of ten is a sneak, and looks it.' 'Because,'

retorted the doctor, but gently, 'your smuggler lives in his own cottage, serves no master, and has public opinion--by which I mean the only public opinion he knows, that of his neighbours--to back him; whereas your poacher lives by day in affected subservience to the landowner he robs by night, and because you take good care that public opinion is against him.' 'To be sure I do,' affirmed Mr Trelawny, and would have continued the argument, but here old Squire Morshead struck in and d.a.m.ned the Government for its new coastguard service. 'I don't deny,' he said, 'it's an improvement on anything we've seen yet under the Customs, or would be, if there was any real smuggling left to grapple with. But the "trade" has been dwindling now for these thirty years, and to invent this fire-new service to suppress what's dying of its own accord is an infernal waste of public money.' 'I doubt,' Sir John demurred, 'if smuggling be quite so near death's door as you fancy. Hey, doctor--in Polpeor now?'

The doctor opined that very little smuggling survived nowadays; the profits were not worth the risk. 'Though, to be sure,' he added, 'public opinion in Polpeor is still with the trade. For an ill.u.s.tration, not a soul in the town will let the new coast-guardsmen a house to live in, and I hear the Government intends to send down a hulk from Plymouth Dock and moor it alongside the quay.' He paused.

'But,' he went on, with a glance over his spectacles at Sir John, 'our host, who owns two-thirds of the cottages in Polpeor, may correct me and say that Government never offered a fair rent?'

Sir John threw back his head and laughed. 'My heir, when he succeeds me,' he said, 'may start new industries in Polpeor; but I'll not build new houses to worry my sitting tenants.'

It was now eleven o'clock, and by-and-by the company dispersed--which they did almost simultaneously and from the stable-yard, amid a tremendous clattering of hoofs, rumbling of wheels, calls of stablemen, 'gee's' and 'woa's,' b.u.t.toning of overcoats, wrapping of throats in comforters, 'good-nights,' and invitations to meet again.

Sir John himself moved up and down in the throng, speeding his parting guests, criticising their horseflesh, offering an extra wrap to one, a.s.suring himself that another had his pocket-flask charged for a long night ride.

In the press Doctor Unonius--whether because he never stinted a vail to the grooms, or because they felt a natural kindness for one who had brought their wives through confinement and ushered their children into the world; and anyway there was sense in standing well with a man who might at any time in this transitory world have to decide the important question of your living or dying--managed to get old Dapple harnessed in the gig, and the lamps lit, and to jog off with the earliest. The drive of Penalune extends for a mile, and along it, ahead of him and behind him, the voices of his fellow-guests challenged one another in song, rising clear on the frosty air,--

'In the month of November, in the year 'fifty-two, Three jolly fox-hunters, all sons of the Blue, Sing fol-de-rol, lol-de-rol--'

Beyond the lodge gates came the high-road, and here half a dozen of the chorusers shouted goodnight, and rode away northward and by east in the teeth of the wind; but the greater number bowled along with the doctor south-west to the cross-roads under Barrow Down.

There the Polpeor road struck off to the left, and, swinging into it, he found himself alone.

CHAPTER IV.