Jan: A Dog and a Romance Part 5

Hardly a day pa.s.sed now that did not bring the introduction of some new interest for the black-and-gray pup. Novel experiences crowded upon him at such a rate that he was always in some way absorbed. Meals were frequent, and, of course, a matter of unfailing interest. Sleep also was frequent, as it is with all healthy young things. Given, as he was, plentiful liberty and abundance of fresh air and sunshine, Jan exhausted himself about once an hour, and took a nap, from which he would awake within five, ten, fifteen, or thirty minutes, as the case might be, once more charged to the throat with high spirits, energy, and puppyish abandon.

More by luck than good management, it happened in his seventh week that he killed a mouse in the stable. For some time he mounted guard over his kill, solemnly parading round and about it, emitting from time to time blood-curdling growls and snarls intended to warn the dead mouse of the frightful penalties it would incur as the result of any attempt to come to life again.

Then, the stable door having been left ajar, Jan valorously gripped the small corpse between his jaws and went swaggering off toward the house with it, questing kudos. In the garden he met Finn, who with careless good humor strolled toward him, offering a game. Jan tried his best to growl and to turn up his nose at the same time, indicating serious preoccupation with matters more weighty than play. But finding that his hold upon the mouse was gravely endangered by this process, he gave up the attempt, and swaggered on toward the front entrance, followed quizzingly by the wolfhound. Finding n.o.body in the porch, Jan fell over the step, dropped his mouse, growled fiercely, and then with a plunge regained his prize, and so, past the place where the caps and coats hung, over the mats into the hall.

Here he found Betty and the Mistress, and at their feet deposited his now rather badly mangled mouse; while Finn, like a big nurse taking pride in the escapades of her charge, stood at one side and smiled, with lolling tongue.

"Oh, what a fearsome beast it is!" laughed Betty, and ran to call the Master. Then Jan was patted and petted, and told what a fine fellow he was; what a mighty hunter before the Lord; and Finn smiled more broadly than ever. This over, Jan was taken into the kitchen to be weighed (he being now seven weeks old), and was told in an impressive manner that he was within four ounces of twenty pounds.

"Pretty nearly half-a-pound-a-day increase. You'll have to take a cure soon, my friend, if this goes on," said the Master.

From this time onward many of Jan's games were sensibly affected by his slaughter of the mouse. He now treated the big shin-bones that were provided for his delectation as live game of a peculiarly treacherous sort. He stalked, tracked, hunted, and slew those bones with unerring skill and remarkable daring. Their tenacity of life was most striking.

There were times when, having slain a bone after a long chase, poor Jan would give way to his natural exhaustion and fall sound asleep with his head pillowed on one end of the apparently well-killed and harmless bone. Yet as often as not, when he would wake, perhaps a quarter of an hour later, this same bone would once more betray its desperate and treacherous vitality by means of an attempt at escape. So that even in the very moment of waking the dauntless Jan would be obliged to growl fiercely and plunge straightway into hard fighting again.

His first real bark was another dazzling experience. It came in his eleventh week, when he was as heavy as two terriers, though still somewhat shapeless, and gristly, rather than bony, as to his limbs.

Colonel Forde walked into the garden one afternoon, followed very sedately by the Lady Desdemona, now sleek and shining, and more aristocratic-looking than ever. Jan was dozing in the front porch, and Finn away somewhere in the orchard. Jan sprang rashly to his feet and, losing his balance, rolled over. Rising again, with more of caution and considerable anger, he took a good look at the visitors, and glared with special severity at Desdemona, who serenely ignored his existence.

Then, bracing himself firmly against the door-jamb, Jan opened his jaws and--barked. But the novelty of the performance, superimposed upon the concussion and the exertion involved, was too much for his stability, and with one prolonged but unsuccessful effort to hold on to his dignity Jan rolled over on the side farthest from the door-jamb. It was not to be denied, however, that he had barked; and the strange sound--it was part bark, part growl, and in part a bloodhound's bay--brought Finn from the near-by orchard, and Betty Murdoch from the morning-room, and the Master from his study, and the Persian cat from her perch on the hall mantelshelf; so Master Black-and-Gray had no lack of audience, and, indeed, received an almost embarra.s.sing amount of congratulation, in the course of which he made shift to get a good sniff at Desdemona's legs and satisfy himself that she was art inoffensive person.

That Desdemona was any relation of his own neither he nor she seemed for one moment to guess, though less than a couple of months had pa.s.sed since he ceased to derive his sole nutriment and support in life from this same stately hound, at whose golden-brown fore legs and low-hanging dewlap he now sniffed so curiously.

One result of her return to the sheltered life was that Desdemona looked almost twice as big and ma.s.sive as she had looked in her nursing days.

The pendulous dugs were no longer in evidence; but the rich, silky rolls about her neck lay fold in fold; the immensely long ears were veritable b.u.t.tresses to her ma.s.sy head. Her black nose gleamed like satin at the end of her long muzzle, above which lay an interminable array of deep wrinkles, radiating out and downward from her high-peaked crown. Just once the n.o.ble head was lowered--as that of an ancient Greek philosopher to an inquisitive child--and the crimson-hawed eyes directed downward as, in a calm, aloof spirit of investigation, the Lady Desdemona took note of the fussy movements of her own son.

"I don't think we have been introduced, have we?" she seemed to say. It was difficult to realize that, not many weeks before, hollow of flank, with the mother anxiety in her eyes, the same n.o.ble creature had battled and contrived to keep life in herself and in this same l.u.s.ty pup out there on the open Down, four miles and more away, among the small wild creatures and the debris of her cave home.

Among the dog-folk Nature has arranged matters in this way, wisely and kindly. Separated from her good master, Colonel Forde, for many months, or even years, Desdemona would have recognized him again without hesitation. But like every other canine mother, and like every creature of the wild, her own flesh and blood became utterly strange to her within a very few weeks, when separated from her during its first months of life. And from Nature's standpoint this is a highly necessary ordinance, since, after a few more months, Desdemona, mated elsewhere, might easily find herself called upon to rear an entirely new family in new surroundings. So it is that whilst among her kind, as among the creatures of the wild, there is nothing to prevent mother and son or daughter from becoming friends in the youngster's adult life; yet never, after the first separation, can they meet consciously as mother and offspring.

It was an interesting picture for the Nuthill folk and Colonel Forde to see Finn and Desdemona sedately strolling across the lawn together, tried friends and mates, divided sometimes by the impudent gambols and even by the mock attacks and invitations to play of their own l.u.s.ty son--the only whelp in existence, probably the only one who ever had lived, to carry in his veins in equal parts the blood of centuries of Irish wolfhound and bloodhound champions.

"Do keep them there!" cried pretty Betty Murdoch. "I simply must have that picture; I'll fetch my camera." And after some skilled manoeuvering to secure the son's collaboration, the promised picture was secured.

XIII

SAPLING DAYS

At the age of six months, Jan, the son of Finn and Desdemona, weighed just ninety-eight and one-half pounds, and by reason of his well-furnished appearance might easily have been mistaken by many people for a grown hound. He was not really anything like fully grown and furnished, of course, nor would be until his second year was far advanced. But the free and healthy life he led, combined with a generous and correctly thought-out diet, had given him remarkably rapid development, and the strength to carry it without strain.

At this time Jan had, in outline, a.s.sumed his adult appearance. As time went on he would increase greatly in weight, and to some extent in height and length. His body would thicken, and his frame would harden and set; his coat would improve, and his muscles would develop to more than double their present growth. But in his seventh month one knew what Jan's appearance was to be; his type had declared itself, and so, to a considerable extent, had his personality.

There was not a brown hair in Jan's coat; not one hair of any other color than black or iron-gray. His saddle and haunches were jetty black, so was the crown of his head. But his muzzle was the right wolfhound steel-gray. So were his chest, belly, and legs, though the black hairs crept fairly low down on the outsides of his thighs and hocks, the inner sides being all hard gray. The gray of his chest extended, like a ruff, right round the upper part of his neck, forming a break of three or four inches between the silky blackness of his head and saddle. And all his coat was thicker, more dense, and longer in the hair than his sire's coat, which, again, was of course much longer than Desdemona's.

Thus, in color and texture of coat Jan was neither all wolfhound nor all bloodhound. For the rest, his bodily appearance and build favored his mother's race more than his father's. The depth and solidity of his head and muzzle, the length and shape of his ears, the rolling elasticity and plenitude of his skin and the deep wrinkles it had already formed about his face, were all features true to bloodhound type, as were also the thickness and solidity of his frame, the downward poise of his head, and his deep-pouched crimson-hawed eyes.

But when one saw Jan extended at the gallop, or in the act of leaping a gate or other obstruction, one was apt to forget the bloodhound in him, and to remember only his kinship with Finn, the fleetest son of a fleet race of hunters. Jan had all the wonderfully springy elasticity of the wolfhound. Already he leaped and ran as a greyhound leaps and runs.

Already, too, his accuracy of balance and his agility were remarkable.

He could trot quickly across the long drawing-room at Nuthill without sound, and without grazing anything. Occasional tables and the like were perfectly safe in his path. Despite his ninety-eight and a half pounds of weight (still rapidly increasing), he could, on occasion, tread lightly as a cat.

But the bloodhound came out in Jan in other ways besides his appearance.

He was for ever trailing, and used his dark hazel eyes far less than any wolfhound uses his. In questing about the place for Betty Murdoch, one noticed that Jan often did not raise his eyes or muzzle from the ground until he almost touched her skirt. Withal, his vision was keener than that of Desdemona's or any other typical bloodhound. His eyes served him well for scanning the Downs; and often he would see a rabbit in the far distance before picking up its trail. Still, once he did pick up a trail, he would follow it as no wolfhound could, with unfailing cert.i.tude, and without troubling to use his eyes.

The first notable demonstration of his trailing powers was his tracking down of a missing ewe, across several miles of open Down, to the edge of a remote, disused chalk-pit, into which the foolish creature had fallen and broken its neck.

The trifling episode which served to draw more general attention to Jan's all-round intelligence--which actually was considerably above the average level for a half-grown youngster--concerned Betty Murdoch in particular. It chanced that on a certain gray morning toward the close of the year Betty had a sudden curiosity to see again the hill-side cave beside which she had found Desdemona and Jan six months before. The gray weather, so far from depressing Betty, often moved her to take long walks; and if no other companion happened to be available, she could always be sure of Jan's readiness to bear her company, as he did on this occasion.

The fact that Betty did not appear at luncheon-time roused little comment. She often was late for luncheon, and the only meal over which Nuthill folk made a special point of being punctual was dinner. Still, when three o'clock brought no sign of Betty, and the short day's decline was at hand, the Master and the Mistress did begin to wonder. Then Jan arrived, apparently rather in a hurry, and very talkative. His short barks and little whines left no doubt about his determination to attract attention; and the manner in which he bustled into the hall, hastily nuzzled the Master's hand or coat-sleeve, and bustled, whining, back to the porch, told those concerned, as plainly as words could, that he wanted them to accompany him.

"Why, what's this?" said the Master. "I wonder if Betty is in sight."

Out in the garden nothing could be seen of Betty; but having led his friends so far, Jan became more than ever insistent in demanding their attendance on the path leading to the little orchard gate that opened upon the Downs.

"H'm! Looks to me as though Betty were in a difficulty. I wish you'd send out word to the stable for Curtin to saddle Punch and ride on after me. Or, wait a moment. You stay here with Jan. I'll send the message, and get my brandy--flask. One never knows. I'll be out again in a minute."

But this hardly met with Jan's views. He seemed determined that the Master should not go back. Whining and barking very urgently, he actually laid hold upon the Master's coat with his teeth, dragging with all his strength to prevent a return to the house.

"So, then. All right, good dog. I'll come, Jan."

And after all, the Mistress had to go back for the flask, and to send word to the stable, while the Master walked out to the Downs. Jan was overjoyed by his victory; but within a few moments he was urging haste, and expressing obvious dissatisfaction with the Master's slow pace.

"Now you just simmer down, my son, simmer down," said the Master, soothingly. "We haven't all got your turn of speed, so you might as well make up your mind to it. I'll have a horse here directly, and then you shall have your head I promise you. Meantime, just keep your teeth out of this shooting-jacket. It may be old, but I won't have it tattered. So you simmer down, my son."

Jan did his best, but it clearly did seem to him that the Master's pace was maddeningly slow; and so, to make up for this, Jan tried the experiment of covering just six times as much ground himself, apparently with the idea that hurrying ought to be done, and that if he could not make the Master do it the next best thing was to put in a double share himself. So Jan led the way downward in loops. He would gallop on for fifty yards, turn sharply, and canter back to the Master, emitting little whining noises through his nose. Having described a circle about the Master, on he would dash again, with more whines, only to repeat the process a few moments later.

Then Curtin, the groom, overtook them, riding Betty's cob, Punch, and carrying the flask which had been given him by the Mistress, who herself was following on foot. The Master slipped the flask into his coat pocket and mounted Punch.

"Now then, Jan, my son," said he, "I'm with you. Off you go!"

They were soon out of Curtin's sight. Jan perfectly understood the position; and it seemed, too, that he communicated some idea of it to Punch, upon whose velvety nose he administered one hurried lick before starting. Then, with frequent backward glances over one shoulder, Jan lay down to his task, and, followed by Punch and the Master, began to fly over the springy turf with occasional short bays, his powerful tail waving flagwise over his haunches.

Within eighteen or twenty minutes they were a good four miles from Nuthill and nearing the gap in the high ridge through which one looked out over the Suss.e.x weald from Desdemona's cave. In another couple of minutes the Master was on the ground beside Betty, and Punch, with the nonchalance of his kind, was nosing the turf, as though to distract attention from his hard breathing. The gallop had been mostly up-hill.

Betty was genuinely glad to welcome her visitors, for she had already spent several hours in the chalky hollow where she now sat; the evening air was cold, and Betty was in some pain. Clambering on the steep Downside below Desdemona's cave, she had trodden on a loose piece of chalk, her ankle had twisted as the chalk rolled, and Betty had fallen, with a sharp cry of pain, quite unable to put her injured foot to the ground. For a long while neither she nor Jan had thought of any way of obtaining a.s.sistance.

"Then I thought of sending a message by Jan," said Betty, in explaining matters to the Master, after she had been given a sip from his flask, which brought some color back to her pale lips. "I told him again and again to go home, waving my arm and trying hard to drive him off on the way. But he would only go backward a few yards, and then return to me. I had almost given it up when the thought came into my head that I ought to have had pencil and paper, and been able to tie a note to his collar.

But I thought my handkerchief would do just as well, without any writing. I was on the point of calling Jan to me again, so that I could tie my handkerchief to his collar, when, quite suddenly, he also had a brilliant idea. You could see it plainly in his face. He had suddenly realized what I wanted. He gave one bark, blundered up against my shoulder, tore my hair-net by the hurried lick he gave me, and was off like the wind for Nuthill. It really was most odd the way the inspiration came to him."

The Master nodded agreement. "It was extraordinarily intelligent for an untrained pup of six months. I doubt if either his father or his mother would have had wit enough for that at the same age. Very few dogs would."

After another little sip of brandy Betty was lifted carefully into the saddle and, Jan and the Master pacing beside him, Punch began the homeward journey. Jan was quite sedate again now, but he had fussed about a good deal, upon first arrival at the hollow, in his capacity as guide and messenger. An hour later and Betty was comfortably settled on the big couch beside the hall fire at Nuthill, and very shortly after that Dr. Vaughan was in attendance, so that when tea came to be handed round everybody's mind was at ease again. The doctor was for giving Jan a share of his plum cake as a reward for meritorious conduct. But Betty would have none of this.

"I'm surprised at you, Doctor," said Betty. "Bad habits and an impaired digestion as a reward for heroism! Never! Extra meat, and an extra-choice bone at supper-time, if you like; but no plum cake for my Jan boy, if I know it."

But this sensible decision did not prevent Jan being made much of by the whole household that evening; and partly by way of compliment, and in part because Betty could not go to the stable, he was promoted to grown-up privileges and allowed to take his supper in the porch that night beside his father. Upon showing a casual inclination to investigate his sire's supper-dish, he was firmly but good-humoredly put into his place by the wolfhound. Upon the whole, Jan bore his new honors well during this his first evening spent in a house. No doubt he received useful hints from Finn. In any case, it was decided next morning, by the Master's full consent, that from this time on, subject to his proper behavior, Jan need not again be sent to his bench in the stable.