Sigurd Our Golden Collie and Other Comrades of the Road Part 3

What spirit art thou of?"

It answers: "Love,"

Lifting its head, no less Cajoling a caress, Our winsome collie wraith, Than in glad faith

The door will open wide, Or kind voice bid: "Abide, A threshold soul to greet The longed-for feet."

_Ah, Keeper of the Portal, If Love be not immortal, If Joy be not divine, What prayer is mine?_

THE CALL OF THE BLOOD

"Come, brother; away!"

--Shakespeare's _Much Ado About Nothing_.

Sigurd was not the only representative of his family in our favored town. His sister Hildigunna, who might well be described in the words applied to Hildigunna of the saga as "one of the fairest," was given to a comparatively remote household in Wellesley Hills from which--alas!--she soon was stolen and spirited away to fates unknown.

But his brother Hrut, a name speedily changed by his new owners to Laddie, took up his happy abode at The Orchard, not half a mile from us. These owners, returning from one of their many holidays abroad, had found on s.h.i.+pboard the Lady of Cedar Hill, on her way back from Norway. Of course she told them about the ten puppies and of course she promised them one.

Reared in the best traditions of New England, these travelers had already achieved an ideal success as founders and directors of a famous school for girls and had retired from active labors to a tranquil home whose broad Colonial porches were screened with "white foam flowers" of the clematis. They were Neighbors _par excellence_, so beloved, so leaned upon, so beset with callers and "old girls," with church committees and town committees, with causes and confidences, that they literally had to go to Europe to secure an occasional rest. And it was charming to see how their modest dignity and winsome graciousness received due meed of honor the Old World over, from t.i.tled personages of London to the very cab-drivers of Florence, whom they believed to be "honorable men" and were undoubtedly cheated less for so believing.

Hard, shrewd faces of Paris pensions and Swiss hotels softened in their presence, and even the severe old Scotch dame who rated them roundly for gadding about the globe instead of having married and reared a freckled family, like hers, was moved to add: "But I mak nae doobt ye are mooch respectet where ye cam fram." She would have been confirmed in this amiable concession if she could have seen how their return was a village jubilee and how all our acc.u.mulated joys and sorrows trooped in at once through their open doors. They were Ladies of rare and precious quality, with a touch of precise, old-fas.h.i.+oned elegance, which made one frank admirer exclaim: "But they are like finest china, like porcelain, like _Sevres_. There is nothing so exquisite left on earth. They are cla.s.sics." Most eminently of all, they were Sisters. A childhood of strange peril and suffering, in which their hearts clung so close together that they grew into one, had fitted naturally dissimilar natures into an utter harmony of desire and deed. n.o.body ever thought of one without the other. Not Castor and Pollux s.h.i.+ne with a more closely related and serener light.

The Sisters hardly waited for our first tumult of greetings to subside before, on a September afternoon as quietly radiant as their own faces, they drove over to Cedar Hill to see what they described as "ten little fluffy b.a.l.l.s, only just large enough to wriggle." The choice of their collie they left to the giver. It was not determined then, but early in April they had a message setting the day on which they were to "come for Hrut." I presume they kissed the telephone. At all events, they went with glad alacrity. As the door opened to admit them, a beautiful little collie, pure white save for touches of a rich golden brown on the ears, on the fall of the tail and on the top of his n.o.bly carried head, ran to meet them and sprang into the outstretched arms of the foremost, cuddling there as if he knew that he had found his Earthly Paradise.

His mistress had followed directly after him, aglow with pride in the grace of his welcome.

"But this one cannot be ours,--he is _too_ lovely," exclaimed the Sister who was already clasping him tight.

"Yes," smiled the Lady of Cedar Hill, "this one is yours," and the puppy acquiesced with wagging tail and lapping tongue and every collie courtesy.

From the first a delicate little fellow, the long drive back made him ill, but he never gave, then or later, the least sign of homesickness, settling at once with aristocratic ease into the comforts and privileges of his new environment and lavishly returning love for love.

The Sisters, as well as the elder Cousin who dwelt with them, were "lovers of all things alive," from bishops and other dignitaries, who paid them appreciative homage, to the South Sea Islanders, of whose costumes they disapproved but to whom, from babyhood up, they had helped send missionaries. The grimiest urchin in town would grin confidentially as he touched his cap to them, and their sympathy overflowed all local limits to childhood everywhere. Little cripples were the special objects of their care and tenderness. Of birds and beasts they were spirited champions. No man dared whip his horse if they were in sight. One of the Sisters had a magic pen, and many of her stories, whimsical and wise, carried an appeal for human grat.i.tude toward the domestic animals who spend their patient strength in human service, and for friendliness toward all these sensitive fellow-creatures, our brief companions on a whirling star. The quadrupeds must have pa.s.sed on from one to another the glad tidings of these Ladies of Lovingkindness, for many a hungry and thirsty cur sought the hospitalities of their kitchen, and stray cats, forsaken by selfish owners on vacation, used their piazza and even their parlor as a summer hotel. Early one July morning I was starting out for the college grounds on the search for a wretched mongrel that, having appeared from nowhere in the spring term, as dogs will, had become a cheerful hobo of the campus, living sumptuously through unlimited attendance on the out-of-door luncheon parties of the village students.

A Commencement auto had broken one of his legs and frightened him into hiding, and now the ebb of all that girl life which had fed and petted him and the disappearance of chance bones from the closed back doors of the dormitories had brought upon the college, I was informed by special delivery letter from an indignant alumna, "the disgrace of leaving one of G.o.d's creatures to suffer slow starvation." Old experience led me, before setting forth to the rescue, to telephone the Sisters and ask if they had any news of this divine vagabond.

"Yes, indeed," rang back a cheery voice. "He is breakfasting with us now on the porch. He came limping up the walk just as the bell rang, exactly as if he had been invited. Such a pleasant dog in his manners, though dreadfully thin and--it's not his fault, poor dear--_so_ dirty!

I have just been calling Dr. Vet. to come and see what can be done for that poor leg."

Of course Laddie was not their first dog. The checks of the school are still stamped with the head of Don, their black Newfoundland, who had a pa.s.sion for attending the morning service in the school hall and nipping the heels of the kneeling girls. In the repeating of the Lord's Prayer he would join with a subdued rumble, doubtless acceptable to his Creator, but when shut out from the sacred exercises, he would howl under the windows an anthem of his own that offended both Heaven and earth.

In the inexorable process of the years, Don grew old, becoming a very Uncle Roly-Poly, but he was only loved the more. A cherished legend of the school relates how he was sleeping on his rug by the bed of one of his mistresses on a winter night, dreaming a saintly dream of chasing cats out of Paradise, when some real or fancied noise awoke him and, the faithful guardian of the school, he rushed through the low, open window and out upon the piazza roof, barking his thunderous warning to all trespa.s.sers. But he was still so bewildered with sleep that his legs ran faster than his mind and, before he knew it, he had pitched off the edge of that icy roof and was floundering in the snow beneath, the most astonished dog that ever bayed the moon. What happened to him then is supposed to have been related by Don himself:

"My howls dismayed the starry skies, The Great and Little Dippers, _O!_ Till came an angel in disguise, In dressing gown and slippers, _O!_ I staggered up the steepy stair; She pushed me from behind, _Bow wow!_ She tended me with mickle care, O winsome womankind! _Bow wow!_ She bathed my brow and bruised knee.

I only whined the louder, _O!_ She murmured: 'Homeopathy!

I'll give dear Don a powder,' _O!_ And may I be a pink-eyed rabbit If she chose not from her stock, _Bow wow!_ FOR PERSONS OF A GOUTY HABIT WHO'VE HAD A NERVOUS SHOCK. _Bow wow!_"

Other dogs had come after, notably Cardigan, a stately St. Bernard, who made the fatal mistake of biting a pacifist, but Laddie, the only real rival of Don in the Sisters' affections, was the crown of their delight in doghood.

Sigurd had been with us only a few days when we took him over to see his brother, already for nearly three months a resident at The Orchard.

We found Laddie, slender, white and dainty, quite at home on the luxurious drawing-room sofa.

"I'm stronger than you," growled Sigurd, but Laddie, always the gentlest and sweetest tempered of collies, acquiesced so pleasantly that it was an amicable meeting. At the first hint of a second growl, Laddie gave up the place of honor to his guest.

Of course we remonstrated, admonished Sigurd and urged the accommodating host, whose good manners delighted the Sisters, to jump back, which he did, tucking himself un.o.btrusively into the further corner of the sofa. Sigurd immediately claimed that corner, which Laddie yielded to him with unruffled magnanimity, crossing over to the other. Sigurd promptly changed his mind again, pus.h.i.+ng Laddie, this time a little inclined to demur, down to the floor. Unable to devise a plan by which he could curl into both corners at once, Sigurd stretched himself out at full length, doing his best to reach from end to end of the sofa, while Laddie, closely copying the att.i.tude of this arrogant big brother, lay along the rug below. Scandalized by Sigurd's conduct, we would have removed him from his usurped throne in short order, but the Sisters, rejoicing in the perfection of Laddie's social graces and secretly convinced of their collie's moral superiority to ours, would not allow any interference with the visiting puppy's comfort.

That freedom of the sofa was precious to Sigurd's pride and by repeated efforts he tried to convince his obtuse mistresses that he was ent.i.tled to the same privilege at home. But Joy-of-Life, who did not believe in "pampering pets," stood firm. There was one evening, in particular, when Sigurd jumped up on our living-room lounge some score of times, keeping all the while a challenging eye on her, and just as many times was ignominiously tumbled off. When she finally took possession herself, laughing at his discomfiture, he banged his way out into the kitchen and went down with a thump on the bare floor, hoping that we would hear how hard it was and realize how sorely poor Sigurd was abused. Finding that no apologies were forthcoming, he bounded to the front door, barked his orders to have it opened and shot out into the dark. Within five minutes the familiar tinkle called us to the telephone and over the wire flowed the blithe voice of one of the Sisters.

"I _must_ tell you what a lovely call we are having from dear Sigurd.

He barked to come in only a minute ago and went right up to the sofa and took it all for himself--oh, yes, our Cousin had been sitting there with Laddie, but they didn't mind at all--and there he is now, making himself so charmingly at home, the beautiful boy. I _do_ wish you could see him."

"_We will_," responded Joy-of-Life, and off we started to chastise Young Impudence, whom we had begun to suspect of being a trifle self-willed; but when we arrived the Sisters would by no means consent to his overthrow. So there, while the chat went on, Sigurd lolled and sprawled, yawning, stretching himself to an incredible length, rolling over on his back with paws held high as if to applaud his victory and continually turning up to Joy-of-Life eyes of such sparkling glee that her purposes of discipline melted in mirth.

None the less, she was a match for him, resorting to strategy when she was forbidden the exercise of force. Calling Laddie to her, she began to stroke his nestling head. Instantly Sigurd, with a mult.i.tudinous flourish of legs that might have moved a centipede to envy, flung himself off the sofa and roared imperiously at the front door:

"Open this, Somebody, and be quick about it, too. Time to be off. Oh, come along, Folks. You've no need to pat any dog but me. Good-night, Lovely Ladies. S'long, Lad. See you tomorrow in the gloaming."

And unless we kept a strict watch, so he would. How often, while surveying from our west porch, with Sigurd demurely sitting up between us, the last faint flushes of the sunset sky, from across the road there would be suddenly visible against the dusk a presence like a celestial apparition, so white and hushed it was, the s.h.i.+ning figure, the lifted, listening head! And in the fraction of a second, even while we were catching at his collar, off would go Sigurd with a great leap, and away the brother collies would tear on a mighty run that kept two households anxious far into the night. There was nothing celestial about their behavior.

These lawless excursions often culminated in garbage-pail raids, debauches from which the young prodigals would sneak home, abashed with nausea. Once in a Commencement season we returned late in the evening, with a guest, from the high solemnity of the President's Reception, to find our hall strewn with Jonah strips of ham-rind and junks of pumpkin. Our guest was a brilliant, worldly being, a very dragon-fly of swiftness and gleam, and there she stood, exquisitely gowned in rose-red under lace whose color was that of moonlight seen through thin clouds, beholding our culprit, who an hour before had been exultantly ranging a world of mysterious and infinite adventure, flattened contritely in the midst of his enormities.

"How human!" was her only comment.

Often they came back injured, with bitten ears, scratched faces, bleeding feet, and pretended to be worse off than they were, so as to divert our reproaches into pity. Sigurd limped home one dawn with a cruelly torn claw and lay all day in a round clothes-basket, to which he had taken a fancy, curled up like a yellow caterpillar and sleeping like a dormouse. But when I was sitting on the piazza steps that evening, putting a fresh bandage on the claw, while Sigurd, almost too feeble to stir, watched the process with pathetic eyes, a blanched sprite glistened by, only a white motion through the dark, and in an instant the invalid had sped away, bandage trailing, to be wicked all over again.

No matter how often the four mistresses agreed that discipline required doors to be shut against the truants till daybreak, on these nights of their escapes ours were light slumbers that a pleading whine too easily broke and many were the tiptoe journeys down derisively creaking stairs to let the wanderers in. The next day such lame, dirty, subdued, meek-minded stay-at-homes as our collies were! It was hard to scold them properly when they rolled over on their backs and presented aching stomachs to be comforted. But sometimes these stampedes took place by day, for whenever they met out-of-doors these brothers, otherwise fairly obedient, would disregard all human commands for the authoritative call of the blood and dart away side by side like arrows shot from a single bow. The sins that neither would commit alone they reveled in without scruple when they were together. From all over town we heard of our paragons as chasing cats, jumping at horses' heads, over-running gardens and upsetting children. One sedate young woman on whom they leaped, entreating her to play with them, sent in a substantial bill to "the owner of the dog that tore my dress." When we inquired whether it was the golden collie or the white that did the damage she coldly replied that "the animals were so mixed up" she couldn't tell whether it was "the brown one or the drab,"--to such a condition had a bath of mud brought our dandies. One mother sternly confronted us with a weepy little boy who complained that "zem two dogs made me frow sticks for 'em all the way home from school an' my arm's most bwoke with tiredness."

I remember clearly one typical escapade. It had snowed for three successive days and nights. Joy-of-Life was away in Was.h.i.+ngton, reading a learned paper before some convention of economists. Her mother pa.s.sed the shut-in hours patiently by the fireside, meditating with disapproval on Dante's _Inferno_ which I was reading to her, at intervals, for cheer during her daughter's absence. Sigurd was spoiling for a romp. At last, in desperation, he amused himself by eating everything he came across,--a tube of paste, a roll of tissue paper, one of his own ribbons. I saw the latter end of the ribbon disappearing into his mouth and sprang to seize it, meaning to drag the rest out of his inner recesses, but Sigurd secured it by a furious gulp and capered away in triumph. At last the flakes had ceased falling, the snow plow had struggled through and, yielding to the big puppy's desperate urgency, I took him out to walk, following after the plow between glittering walls as high as my shoulder. At a turn in the road, I caught sight, across the level expanse, of the Younger Sister exercising an invisible Laddie. Suddenly there appeared above the parapet the tips of two golden-brown ears, p.r.i.c.ked up in eager inquiry.

Sigurd, overtopped by our own wall, could not have seen them, but with one tremendous lurch he was up and out, wallowing madly through the drifts to meet Laddie, who, like a miniature snow plow, was already breaking a way toward him. The collies touched noses and, ranging themselves side by side, plunged off into that blank of white, utterly deaf to the human calls that would check the onward impulse of their sacred brotherhood.

They had another glorious run two days later, when the snow was frosted and could bear their weight. Mad with mischief, they raced miles on miles,--to Oldtown and beyond, barking at every man they met and leaping at every horse; they dashed into Waban Way and out over the s.p.a.cious Honeymoon estates; they scampered hither and thither across the three hundred acres of the campus; they careered back and forth over the frozen lake and challenged the college girls to a rough-and-tumble in the snow. Meanwhile the Younger Sister and I, seriously alarmed lest some nervous horse, startled by their antics, should bring about disaster, had taken a sleigh and gone forth in pursuit. Disquieting news of them kept coming to us as we drove.

"Two young collies? I should say so. I met them an hour ago, way over in Dover. They both jumped at my old Dobbin's head, barking all Hallelujah."

"O yes, I've seen two runaway dogs. Shepherds, white and fawn. They were chasing an express team down by Eliot Oak. The driver was standing up and whipping out at them for all he was worth."

Presently we came on their fresh tracks in the snow, tracks of running feet always side by side, until at last we overtook the truants. There they were, barking in duet, hoa.r.s.e but happy, trying to scramble up an icy telephone pole after a spitting cat. They bounded to greet us and followed the sleigh home like lambs. The Sister, secretly condemning Sigurd as the dangerous misleader of her angel Laddie, a.s.sured them firmly that they were _never_ to play together again.

Sigurd still had so much frolic in him that, when we had arrived at our own door, he coaxed me to stay outside and throw sticks for him from the piazza into the drifts. But soon I noticed red touches on the snow and, bringing him in, found that his feet were ice-cut and bleeding. I told him sternly that such were his just deserts and he rolled over on his back, holding up his paws to be healed. While I was anointing them with vaseline, a vain remedy because of the avidity with which Sigurd licked it off, I discovered that he had lost, in his wild whirl, the ornamental blue-bead collar, wrought for him by a student devotee at the cost of many patient hours. When I had done what he would let me for his feet and he had curled up cosily in his basket, I solemnly set about my duty of rebuking him, but the youngster was too tired for rhetoric. With an apologetic grunt, he instantly fell fast asleep.

Being inwardly persuaded that Laddie was chiefly to blame, I left my misguided innocent to his repose.

The next afternoon he limped demurely down the hill and, in about two minutes, was on The Orchard porch, exchanging vociferous greetings with Laddie, but for once his effrontery failed of its effect. Steeling their hearts, the Sisters refused to let the outside collie in or the inside collie out. Sigurd, always most dignified when his feelings were hurt, rose against one of the drawing-room windows, took a long look at the sofa and vanished into the early winter twilight, not to be seen again by our anxious eyes for thirty-six hours. It was just on the silver edge of the third day that a wistful _woof_ on our porch sent four hastily slippered feet skurrying to the door. Such a famished, unkempt, exhausted collie as stood wagging there! His coat was grimy, his ruff gray and tangled, and from his collar, drawn cruelly tight, dragged a c.u.mbrous length of iron chain. The Sisters, who, suffering all the pangs of contrition, had been no less eager than we in prosecuting the search, hurried over (without Laddie) straight from their breakfast table, and one of them, flinging her arms about Sigurd as he nestled in the forbidden easy-chair--for he never missed the opportunity to wrest some special privilege out of any emotional crisis--sobbed with relief. Spent as he was, the collie licked her cheek, forgiving and consoling, even while his happy, love-beaming eyes could hardly hold themselves open. If an attempt had been made to kidnap him, Sigurd's strength and often proved cleverness in extricating himself from bonds had stood him in good stead. More fortunate than his sister Hildigunna and than another high-spirited sister, Unna, likewise supposed to have been stolen--though in the saga Unna ran away from her home (and husband),--Sigurd, if he could not break the chain of captivity, had managed to pull it out of its staple and lug it along with him back to freedom.

By an a.s.siduous use of the telephone to the effect, "We are taking Laddie for a walk. Will you please keep Sigurd in?" or "Sigurd has just started off in your direction. Where's Laddie?" we kept a certain check on their escapades for the rest of that winter, but they contrived to meet at some secret rendezvous in apple-blossom time and came home panting and jubilant, with pink and white blossoms all over their coats. Sigurd apparently liked the effect, considering himself a King of the May, for no sooner were those petals brushed off than he frisked out and rolled over in the tulip-bed to acc.u.mulate some more. On the few occasions when our runaways, oozing through the merest cracks of doors, gave us the slip, we dropped all minor occupations and hunted them down, calling in the aid of an amused liveryman, an Irish neighbor whose white hairs thatched a pate where wit and kindliness kept house together.

"It's the goolden dog y'are to me," he would say to Sigurd. "Many's the good dollar I've made out o' yez thraipsin's and throublin's."

The Lady of Cedar Hill had given away to appreciative friends all the puppies save Gunnar, but several of them had homes nearby and she thought it would be pleasant to have a family reunion once a year, on their common birthday. One such gathering proved enough for all time.