Sigurd Our Golden Collie and Other Comrades of the Road Part 5

Suddenly he caught sight of Gyp trying with guilty haste to get a long object, balanced in his jaws, through a favorite hole in his backyard fence. It was never done, for Sigurd was upon him in a twinkling, had shaken him thoroughly and brought back the parasol essentially unharmed. Several times again he recovered our goods and chattels, invariably giving the culprit a vigorous shaking, but otherwise keeping on neighborly terms with the little scamp, till life ended for Gyp in a kick from his drunken master's boot.

With another neighbor, black Rod, a n.o.ble St. Bernard, the initial friends.h.i.+p was soon broken. The two dogs were of about the same age and had many a frisk together that first summer, but when Rod tried to join us on our walks, Joy-of-Life, who thought one big puppy enough for amateurs to handle, would sternly bid Rod, "Go home." Sigurd would promptly spring to enforce the command, and Rod would slowly and sulkily retreat. After a few of these experiences, Rod ceased to follow us, but he never forgave any one of the three. Thenceforth for the rest of their lives the two dogs, who knew themselves almost equally matched in size and strength, pa.s.sed each other, often a dozen times a day, with bristling backs and low, cautious growls, while never could my friendliest greetings, even when I was alone, win the least wiggle of a wag from Rod's rigid, remembering tail. He was so fortunate as to live in a household of children, for whom he made the most faithful of protectors, and often, on a sparkling winter day, I have met him coasting with them, racing down the hill abreast of the sled, tail waving, eyes gleaming, but the instant he became aware of my obnoxious presence and observation, the tail would stiffen and the eyes would cloud. His hostility was a genuine hurt to me, so much did I like and respect the dog, but even in his old age, when pain and weakness lay heavy on him, and the children--did he understand?--were teasing their mother to have him chloroformed so that they might have in his place a stylish young Boston bull, he would accept from me no comfort of touch or tone. Another unhappy result of these early rebuffs was that Sigurd got it firmly fixed in his yellow noddle that the words _Go home_ were the profanest of curses, and whenever he was so addressed, especially by one of us, his aspect of grief and horror was ludicrous to behold.

Besides, he did not go.

Through Sigurd our circle of fellows.h.i.+p was widened for all time. Here we had been living on, half stifled in biped society, well-nigh unaware of the jubilant dog world bounding about our feet, but in a few months our own collie had made us acquainted with a democratic variety of canine types. And still I would almost rather meet a new dog than a new poet. A certain Norwegian lake is twice as dear to memory for the courteous Great Dane that did the honors of the bank and shared our tea cakes there; the only d.u.c.h.ess to whose boudoir, at the heart of a frowning Border castle, we were ever invited, impressed us less than the three pompous poodles, their snowy curls so absurdly like her own, that squatted on the edges of her flowing heliotrope morning-gown and were simultaneously upset whenever one of her Ladys.h.i.+p's energetic impulses brought her to her feet.

Sigurd's acquaintances were legion. To only a few may s.p.a.ce be given here. There was Teddy, a black spaniel who aspired to the high standard of manners held by his master, a retired army officer, and, following example, would punctiliously rise as ladies entered or left the room.

There were twin dachshunds, who daily drove abroad in a limousine and enraged Sigurd by looking down on him, short-legged that they were, from the window opened hardly wide enough to let them thrust their black noses through the crack. There was the lean, forlorn old hound whom all the dog-clubs blackballed and who, in consequence, had to satiate his yearning for fellows.h.i.+p by keeping company with the minister's cow. Every summer morning a silver-headed saint whose pulpit labors were done escorted his Mulley down our hill and tethered her in the broad green pasture below. At a respectful distance would follow the homeless hound, who had picked up during the night what sustenance he could from the neighborhood garbage pails. And hard of heart we deemed that neatest of our housewives who, to keep his meddling muzzle away, used to scatter a profusion of red pepper over her garbage. All day long the hound would stay in the meadow close to the cow, who, uneasy at first under his attentions, came to accept them with bovine placidity. Indeed, there was, we thought, a certain coquetry in her carriage as, a person of importance, she came sedately stepping up the hill at sunset, the old clergyman on one side and the old dog on the other. Her friends.h.i.+p with the happy hound grew to be as famous in our local annals as, in the realm of books, is that of the horse and hen related by White (in his _Natural History of Selbourne_), or that of the swan and trout so poignantly told by Hudson (in his _Adventures Among Birds_).

Certain dogs Sigurd would bully shamelessly, like amiable old Bounce, on whom he would hurl himself in Bounce's own yard and sit on top of him, growling most offensively, until we pulled him off. To the subsequent scolding Sigurd would listen as long as it interested him and then press up against us and offer his paw, as if to say, "All right; enough of that; let's be friends again."

On the other hand, he had such a liking for our Professor Far-Away that he stretched his regard to cover her successive dogs, Chum and Jack, though he was born too late to know her beautiful black collie, Wallace. He would even allow Chum, an adopted stray, a nondescript animal of preposterous awkwardness, to drink from his own j.a.panese bowl, spattering the water, in Chum's uncouth fas.h.i.+on, half across the hall, while Jack, an Irish terrier,

"With the soul in the s.h.i.+ning eyes of him,"

ranked in Sigurd's esteem next after Laddie. Professor Far-Away, whose perilous joy it was to traverse, with Jack, unexplored tracts of China and Thibet, attended by a train of coolies, would, when dull destiny called her back to the cla.s.s room, effect brief escapes by way of bicycle runs through the wood roads, attended by a train of dogs. When her cavalcade swept by our hill, Sigurd would leap up as if at the call of the Wild Huntsman and rush forth to fall in. Through her long absences in foreign lands he never ceased to listen for her gypsy whistle, and once, at least, he was literally her first caller on her return. He came tearing back to his own family, in high excitement, with a traveler's tag waving from his collar. The tag was penciled over with the Wanderer's greeting, adding "how dear it was of Sigurd" to be barking at her door within ten minutes after she and Jack had crossed their threshold. When Professor Far-Away writes _The Junketings of Jack_, there will be a book worth reading.

Although our puppy had several times returned with a scratched face, after encounters with veteran cats, his first fight was with Major, a rugged brindle bull, who lorded it over all the dogs in town. We had been warned of Major and when, one September morning, I went to the door in answer to the now familiar _woof_, I knew, even without the uplift of Sigurd's eloquent look, what had happened. He was dripping with blood, his own and Major's, and dragged one hind leg painfully, yet he had an air of expecting congratulations. We bathed and disinfected his wounds as well as our inexperience could--in the course of the next few years we became experts at canine first aid--but the injury to the leg looked so serious that we called in Dr. Vet, who found that one of Major's tusks had penetrated the joint. The leg was packed in an antiphlogistic clay until it looked more like an elephant's leg than Sigurd's and was secured from the investigation of his own inquisitive teeth by broad bands of plaster and innumerable yards of bandages. The proud sufferer, who, claiming that he was now ent.i.tled to all sick privileges, had insisted on taking to my bed, lay there on a fresh rug, anxiously watching every movement of the doctor's hands but enduring even the probing without protest.

After aesculapius had gone and the rest of the family were gathered about the invalid, who, despite all smarts and aches, keenly relished being the center of attention, Joy-of-Life and I sallied forth to inquire for Major. That redoubtable little ruffian, cuddled into his basket, rolled up doleful eyes from a gory lump that bore but small resemblance to his ma.s.sive, wrinkled, pugnacious head. A beholder of the battle reported that as Sigurd was trotting innocently across a vacant lot, a brighter spot of yellow weaving its path through the goldenrod, Major, after his wonted manner of attack, came sneaking up behind and gripped him by the joint of a hind leg. Sigurd wheeled, catching and crus.h.i.+ng Major's head between his own powerful jaws, and then the two dogs, locked in furious combat, spun round and round, a snarling whirligig, gathering a vociferous group of ineffective dissuaders, until a grocer's boy, jumping down from his delivery wagon, came rus.h.i.+ng up with a packet of pepper, hurling its contents into Sigurd's nostrils and, through his literally open countenance, into Major's. In a spasm of sneezing, the circle of dog broke apart, and each dilapidated fragment made for home. Sigurd was a week or more in getting well and he limped for a month after, but the scars on Major's head were in evidence longer yet. They never matched prowess again, though the language that they would use to each other, especially with a wide road between them, is not fit for print.

Every evening of that first week our hero was carried or helped downstairs and put to bed on the piazza, but every morning he crawled and scrambled up again, crying out like a child as his injured leg, trailing behind him, suffered jar or b.u.mp. n.o.body could resist his pleading to be lifted back to the bed and allowed to play hospital a little longer, and Cecilia, more than ever his devoted slave, delighted in bringing him, to his enormous pride, his dinner on a tray. He always barked for the family to come in and behold that glorious spectacle, and he barked, too, whenever the door bell rang, requesting the caller to come up at once and pay respects to the Happy Warrior. Apart from these red-letter events, his great diversion was trying to rid his m.u.f.fled leg of the bandages and plaster,--an exercise in which he soon became only too proficient.

In Sigurd's last fight--with a gallant old mastiff, Rex--one of his forelegs, bitten in three places, was put out of action for two months, but no fuss was made about it. We had grown hardened to Sigurd's battle-wounds. Sulpho-naphthol and his own tongue worked the cure, though it took no little ingenuity to extract from between Sigurd's teeth the stray tufts of grizzled hair that he wanted to keep as souvenirs of Rex, who, still feebly growling, had to be fetched off the field in a wheelbarrow.

From first to last, Sigurd's adventures were too often misadventures.

As a youngster, he was continually getting into trouble. It seemed unfortunate that he should have so many feet, for what with thorns, tacks, broken gla.s.s, jagged ice and the like, one or another of them was usually in piteous condition.

His name brought more than one fight upon him, as our call of _Sigurd!_ _Sigurd!_ when he started out to investigate a dog-stranger, was often mistaken for _Sick 'em!_ _Sick 'em!_ and the dog's owner would reciprocate in kind. Once an indignant father, a summer visitor in the town, pa.s.sionately charged us with setting our dog on his two "motherless boys," whereas we had been doing our best to call Sigurd off from a chase after those provoking little rascals, who had attacked him with a shower of pebbles.

Restless with his waxing strength he took to roving in the woods, where once he was caught in a trap and painfully dragged himself home with a lacerated leg that he had torn free from the cruel grip of the steel.

In the West Woods he once had a narrow escape. He was seen by a wandering botanist to plunge into a swampy hole for water, a beverage that, in spite of our hygienic warnings, Sigurd seemed to prefer with a flavor of dirt. The mire there has a quicksand quality, and Sigurd sank, splas.h.i.+ng in frantic struggle, until only his nose was barely visible above the black ooze, but in that extremity he seemed to get a momentary hold for his hind feet, perhaps on root or snag, and by a desperate effort lurched himself up and out. He lay on the bank, panting and trembling, a sorely spent collie, for thirty-five minutes by the botanist's watch, before he revived sufficiently to roll over and over in the ferns and rub off some of the mud. Even so, when he reached home he was so smeared and malodorous with mire that, all unwitting of the mortal peril from which he had emerged, we met him with a scolding, scoured him off with newspapers and shut him out of doors for the rest of the day.

We grew to dislike the progress of civilization, so much did trains, trolleys, golf-b.a.l.l.s and motors add to our anxiety, but his own supreme aversion was, in his early years, the bicycle. On a certain summer day, when a deeper trouble than Sigurd could understand brooded over the house, he trotted down to the forbidden center of the town, The Square, in quest of entertainment. As he was crossing, there came upon him from one side a carriage and from the other a bicycle, whose rider, a Canadian, turned in his flurry the wrong way. Out of the resultant crash Sigurd sprang to the sidewalk, but the bicycle reeled after him and, in falling, struck him so sharply as to leave a long black bruise under one eye. An observer of the collision told us that Sigurd "flashed off toward home like a streak of sulphur." As soon as the door was opened in response to his frantic barking, he bolted upstairs and took refuge under my bed. The household in its grieved pre-occupation forgot all about him, and it was not until evening that he stole down into the family circle. With a careless glance at the black mark, we rebuked him for having a s.m.u.tty face. The wistful look of the misunderstood came into those amber eyes, but he comforted himself with a belated dinner and waited for Time to tell his story. The bruise lasted long and the fright still longer. More than a year later Joy-of-Life and I were driving through the tranquillities of an Indian summer afternoon, with Sigurd, by this time a strong and rapid runner, far ahead. Suddenly we saw him tearing back in terror. Without waiting for us to pull up, he bounded over the wheel into the phaeton and pressed his shaking body close against our knees. As we drove on, we looked to right and left for the hippogrif that had so appalled him, and presently beheld it,--a riderless bicycle leaning against a garden wall.

THE HEART OF A DOG

Where did they learn The miracle of love, These dogs that turn From food and sleep at our light-whistled call, Eager to fling Their all Of speed and grace into glad following?

Not the wolf pack Taught savage instinct love, For there to lack The power to slay was to be hunger-slain; Once down, a prey, A stain Of crimson on the snow, a tuft of gray.

Was it from us They learned such loyal love Magnanimous, Meeting our injuries with trustful eyes?

Are we so true, So wise, So broken-hearted when love's day is through?

Where did they learn The miracle of love?

Though beauty burn In rainbow, foam and flame, these have not heard, Nor trees and flowers, That word.

Only our dogs would give their lives for ours.

HOME STUDIES

"Thou know'st whate'er I see, read, learn, Related to thy species, friend, I tell thee, hoping it may turn To thine advantage--so attend."

--Caroline Bowles Southey's _Conte a Mon Chien_.

In pursuance of this curriculum, while Joy-of-Life sat on the floor beside Sigurd for a good-night brush of his gleaming coat, I would read to them from any canine cla.s.sic that chanced to be at hand,--_Rab and His Friends_, _Bobby of Greyfriars_, _My Dogs of the Northland_, _The Call of the Wild_, _Bob_, _Son of Battle_, John Muir's vivid story of his Stickeen, Maeterlinck's brooding biography of his Pelleas with the bulging forehead of Socrates, or De Amicis' touching account of his blessed mongrel, d.i.c.k. When Sigurd grew restless under his toilet and wanted to jump up and play, we would tell him how the great dog Kitmer, the only animal besides Balaam's a.s.s and the camel that carried Mahomet on his flight from Mecca to be admitted into the Moslem paradise, had "stretched forth his forelegs" for three hundred years in the mouth of a cave, mounting guard over the Seven Sleepers.

Joy-of-Life, who was an historian as well as an economist and had written, despite the annoyance of being confined to the same set of dates and dynasties, three histories of England, would reach down from her book shelves some high authority and read us, perhaps, Plutarch's report of the watchdog, Cipparus, who guarded the temple of aesculapius at Athens so well that when a thief slipped off with some of the precious offerings, he went after in unrelenting pursuit. "First, the man pelted him with stones, but Cipparus would not give up. When day came, he kept at a little distance, but followed with his eye on the man and, when the fellow threw him food, would not touch it. When the man lay down, he spent the night by him; when he walked again, the dog got up and kept following. Cipparus fawned on any wayfarers he met, but kept barking at the thief. When the authorities, who were in chase, heard of this from people who had met the pair and who described the color and size of the dog, they pursued with yet more zeal, seized the man and brought him back from Crommyon. The dog turned round and led the way, proud and delighted, evidently claiming that _he_ had caught the temple thief."

Another evening it would be Motley's account of the escape of the Prince of Orange from a night raid sent out by the Duke of Alva, when the Prince was encamped near Mons. "The sentinels were cut down, the whole army surprised, and for a moment powerless, while, for two hours long, from one o'clock in the morning until three, the Spaniards butchered their foes, hardly aroused from their sleep, ignorant by how small a force they had been thus suddenly surprised, and unable in the confusion to distinguish between friend and foe. The boldest, led by Julian in person, made at once for the Prince's tent. His guards and himself were in profound sleep, but a small spaniel, who always pa.s.sed the night upon his bed, was a more faithful sentinel. The creature sprang forward, barking furiously at the sound of hostile footsteps, and scratching his master's face with his paws. There was but just time for the Prince to mount a horse which was ready saddled, and to effect his escape through the darkness, before his enemies sprang into the tent. His servants were cut down, his master of the horse and two of his secretaries, who gained their saddles a moment later, all lost their lives, and but for the little dog's watchfulness, William of Orange, upon whose shoulders the whole weight of his country's fortunes depended, would have been led within a week to an ignominious death. To his dying day, the Prince ever afterwards kept a spaniel of the same race in his bed-chamber."

And well he might, and well, too, did the sculptors place a little dog of marble or bronze at the feet of his royal statues hardly more silent than himself, but what Sigurd and I clamored to know was whether, on that wild night of September eleventh, 1572, the spaniel escaped with his master or died with the servants and secretaries on Spanish steel, and no historian, not even our own, could tell us. With the ancient guile of teachers she would divert our attention from the question she could not answer by relating something else,--how Denmark commemorates a dog true to a deposed king in a high order of n.o.bility whose motto runs, _Wild-brat was faithful_. Or she would take down the first volume of her well-worn _Heimskringla_ and excite Sigurd's young ambition by the record of King Saur. For when Eyestein, King of the Uplands, had harried Thrandheim and set his son over them, and they had slain the son, then "King Eyestein fared a-warring the second time into Thrandheim, and harried wide there, and laid folk under him. Then he bade the Thrandheimers choose whether they would have for king his thrall, who was called Thorir Faxi, or his hound, who was called Saur; and they chose the second, deeming they would then the rather do their own will. Then let they bewitch into the hound the wisdom of three men, and he barked two words and spake the third. A collar was wrought for him, and chains of gold and silver; and whenso the ways were miry, his courtmen bare him on their shoulders. A high-seat was dight for him, and he sat on howe as kings do; he dwelt at the Inner Isle, and had his abode at the stead called Saur's Howe. And so say folk that he came to his death in this wise, that the wolves fell on his flocks and herds, and his courtmen egged him on to defend his sheep; so he leaped down from his howe, and went to meet the wolves, but they straightway tore him asunder."

On the whole, Sigurd preferred poetry, whose rhythm promptly put him to sleep. It was all one to him whether Homer sang the joy-broken heart of old Argus, over whom

"the black night of death Came suddenly, as soon as he had seen Ulysses, absent now for twenty years,"

or Virgil chanted the device whereby aeneas and the Sibyl baffled the giant watch-dog of Hades.

"The three-mouthed bark of Cerberus here filleth all the place, As huge he lieth in a den that hath them full in face; But when the adders she beheld upon his crest up-borne, A sleepy morsel honey-steeped and blent of wizard's corn, She cast him: then his three-fold throat, all wild with hunger's lack, He opened wide, and caught at it, and sank his monstrous back, And there he lay upon the earth enormous through the cave."

Sigurd would softly thump his tail in cadence with the melancholy beat of a dog elegy, whether Prior's tribute to the virtues of Queen Mary's True, or Gay's ironic consolation to Celia on the death of her lap-dog Shock, Cowper's impartial epitaphs for My Lord's pointer Neptune and My Lady's spaniel Fop, Lehmann's memorial of his retriever, who

"Chose, since official dogs at times unbend, The household cat for confidante and friend,"

Louise Imogen Guiney's lament for

"All the sweet wavy Beauty of Davy,"

or Winifred Letts' apostrophe to the debonair collie Scott, or Hilton Brown's tenderest of farewells to his Scotch terrier, Hamish.

"In the nether s.p.a.ces Will the soul of a Little Black Dog despair?

Will the Quiet Folk scare him with shadow-faces?

And how will he tackle the Strange Beasts there?

Tail held high, I'll warrant, and bristling, Marching stoutly if sore afraid, Padding it steadily, softly whistling;-- That's how the Little Black Devil was made."

Sigurd lived too early to take part in the Free Verse controversy, but he evinced an open mind on matters metrical in that he liked Lord Byron's inscription for his Newfoundland Boatswain no better than Lord Eldon's for his Newfoundland Caesar. It was Sir William Watson's famous quatrain, _An Epitaph_, that affected him most keenly, because it invited emphasis on the one word that always brought him springing to his feet.

"His friends he loved. His fellest earthly foes --Cats--I believe he did but feign to hate.

My hand will miss the insinuated nose, Mine eyes the tail that wagged contempt at Fate."