Sigurd Our Golden Collie and Other Comrades of the Road Part 8

"Let the dogs alone, girls. Look out for yourselves."

"Let Sigurd go. Give him a chance to fight."

"Choke Coco off."

"Twist Coco's tail."

"Bring water."

"_Don't_ put your hands between them, girls. Keep away."

The janitor, the only man on the scene, had discreetly climbed into a high window-seat, and it was one of the slenderest, most flowerlike maidens there who finally jerked a half-strangled Coco loose and flung him forth from the sacred portals. The choir promptly reformed in rank and, a trifle flushed and disheveled but chanting more l.u.s.tily than ever, swung up the aisle with the air of the Church Militant. Only the few who were slightly bitten remained behind to be conducted by Joy-of-Life to the hospital for immediate attention to their wounds, while Sigurd and I made for home, marking the trail with our blood. No real harm was done. Coco's owner, though secretly convinced that Sigurd did all the biting, insisted on paying the doctor's bills and, a few days after the encounter, Sigurd, with a scarred forehead, welcomed his injured defenders to a dinner-party, at which I presided with my arm in a sling. Sigurd seemed to feel a dim responsibility for that hurt of mine and, as long as I wore a bandage, would come up at intervals to give it a penitent lick.

At all the festivals of the spring term Sigurd deemed his attendance indispensable. He fell in with the parades, frisked out into the midst of the campus dances, and once, at least, took a conspicuous part in the Tree Day pageant. A graceful, carmine-clad Narcissus had died to slow music on the bank of Longfellow Fountain. The wood-nymphs and water-nymphs, Diana and her train, even the hilltop Oreads had tripped off the sylvan stage, but the audience, ma.s.sed on the other side of the pool, refused to take the hint and, instead of breaking up, still sat spell-bound, their gaze fastened on poor Narcissus, who, cramped in the dying att.i.tude, could not conceive any dramatic way of coming to life again. So we bade Sigurd: "Go find," and after two false starts, once for a squirrel and once for a stick, he sped straight for Narcissus and, anxiously thrusting his nose into her face, recognized a special friend and broke into loud barks of joy, while, throwing her arm about him, she sprang no less gladly to her feet. The audience thought it all a part of the pageant, the prevailing opinion being that Sigurd was playing the role of Cerberus and welcoming Narcissus to Hades.

But for all his years of enthusiastic college attendance, Sigurd never took a degree. Not even his own Cla.s.s of 1911 was allowed to carry out its design of dressing their mascot in a specially made cap and gown and leading him with them in the Commencement procession. His B.A.

stood only for Beloved Animal.

TO SIGURD

Not one blithe leap of welcome? Can you lie Under this woodland mold, More still Than broken daffodil, When I, Home from too long a roving, Come up the silent hill?

Dear, wistful eyes, White ruff and windy gold Of collie coat so oft caressed, Not one quick thrill In snowy breast, One spring of jubilant surprise, One ecstasy of loving?

Are all our frolics ended? Never more Those royal romps of old, When one, Playfellow of the sun, Would pour Adventures and romances Into a morning run; Off and away, A flying glint of gold, Startling to wing a husky choir Of crows whose dun Shadows would tire Even that wild speed? Unscared to-day They hold their weird seances.

Ever you dreamed, legs twitching, you would catch A crow, O leaper bold, Next time, Or chase to branch sublime That batch Of squirrels daring capture In saucy pantomime; Till one spring dawn, Resting amid the gold Of crocuses, Death stole on you From that far clime Where dreams come true, And left upon the starry lawn Your form without your rapture.

And was Death's whistle then so wondrous sweet Across the glimmering wold That you Would trustfully pursue Strange feet?

When I was gone, each morrow You sought our old haunts through, Slower to play, Drooping in faded gold.

Now it is mine to grieve and miss My comrade true, Who used to kiss With eager tongue such tears away, Coaxing a smile from sorrow.

I know not what life is, nor what is death, Nor how vast Heaven may hold All this Earth-beauty and earth-bliss.

Christ saith That not a sparrow falleth --O songs of sparrow faith!-- But G.o.d is there.

May not a leap of gold Yet greet me on some gladder hill, A s.h.i.+ning wraith, Rejoicing still, As in those hours we found so fair, To follow where love calleth?

FAREWELLS

"The door of Death is made of gold, That mortal eyes cannot behold."

--Blake's _Dedication to Queen Charlotte_.

We were slow to realize that Sigurd was having too many birthdays. That guardian figure stretched out on the south porch just above the steps, s.h.i.+ning like an embodied welcome, had become a part of life itself.

Indeed, a caller, not famed for tact, after surveying our Volsung for some time in silence, dropped the cryptic remark: "How much a dog comes to look like the family!" Brightening our busy months with golden glints of romp and mischief and caress, he kept his run of birthdays like festivals which brought no warning with them.

They were celebrated with becoming pomp, with much-wrapped gifts that he rejoiced to open himself and often with a yellow tea. As his taste inclined to broad and simple effects, there would be a giant sunflower in the center of the table, with strips of goldenrod emanating from it like rays. The guests, his best-beloved of all ages and conditions, would drink Sigurd's health in orangeade and feast in his honor on sponge cake. From the day of Poor Ellen to that of Housewife Honeyvoice, Amelia, a young and comely Irish Protestant, reigned in the kitchen and made it her pride to celebrate Sigurd's anniversaries with all due splendor, though even then she would not intermit the daily scoldings to which she attributed his very gradual growth in grace. For still he would run away at intervals and wallow in all iniquity. If the prodigal returned by daylight and found us together, he would disport himself at our feet in a brief agony of penitence. As he lay on his back, writhing with remorse and apparently trying to clasp his paws in supplication, we would reproach him, to the accompaniment of his hollow groans, until our gravity would break down. Then he would cheerfully scramble up and fetch us his latest rubber toy, with a coaxing invitation to let bygones be bygones and have a frisk with Sigurd. If he came home under cover of darkness, he would shamelessly go straight to his own piazza corner, venting an indignant grunt, like an outraged man of the house, if he found his supper soggy and his bed not made.

The birthday teas, though they brought so many of his friends across the threshold, were not an unmixed joy to Sigurd. The flaunting bow of new, stiff, yellow ribbon tickled his ears, until he had succeeded in working it around, a rumpled knot, under his chin, and worse yet were the wreaths of yellow wild flowers that the small fingers of some of his child neighbors had woven for his neck. His share of his own birthday cake, too, was more hygienically apportioned than he approved.

What is a speck of yellow frosting on a collie's long red tongue? But Amelia saw to it that his birthday dinner was after his own heart,--fresh corncake, rice and liver, while now and then some devoted soph.o.m.ore, even though the long vacation had put a thousand miles between them, would send him a home-made chocolate cream as large as a saucer, at which he was allowed only to sniff and nibble.

We may have noticed that Sigurd's girth was ampler and his bearing more sedate than in his younger days, but still he was the first in every frolic and almost as fleet as a deer. He roused one at the edge of the woods one morning when he was out for an early airing with Joy-of-Life and chased it across the meadows so fast and far that she was in dismay lest he overtake the beautiful creature and pull it down. Even to the last he would let no dog pa.s.s him. His frankest admirer and fellow-runner through his sunset years was a simple-minded young collie whom Sigurd would outwit by wheeling sharply, when he felt Sandy gaining on him, and making off at right angles while the precipitate pursuer sped on for some distance in the old direction. But the goal was what Sigurd chose to make it, and Sandy, bewildered by these subtle tactics, always believed himself outrun.

We had come to regard a walk without Sigurd as hardly a walk at all.

Perhaps we observed that he found the heat, which brought out his tormenting eczema, a little harder to bear from summer to summer, but our crisp, crackling winters revived him to all manner of puppy antics.

I remember, like a picture, one frosty afternoon, the evergreens festooned with ice, while the leafless trees, struck by the level rays of the western sun, glistened with rainbow crystals. Through this enchanted world, as through the heart of a diamond, Joy-of-Life and Sigurd were coming home. Sigurd, barking his glad music, was bounding hither and thither over the sparkling crust, now trying to fulfill his contract to keep all chickadees and nut-hatches, blue jays and juncos, from alighting on the earth, and now convinced that at last the moment had come when he was to realize his supreme ambition, inherited from Ralph, and catch a crow. Their sardonic caws above his head, as they flapped heavily from pine to pine, made him so furious that he would pounce on their black, sliding shadows, while Joy-of-Life, her cheeks apple-bright with the cold, laughed at him so merrily that he took it for applause.

Yet change was busy about our collie, who welcomed no changes but loved his world exactly as it was. We sold the first home and moved into a more s.p.a.cious one that we had built on a strip of untamed land hard by.

Then a street came, and more houses, and quietly the wildwood drew away from us. Within our own bounds, at least, we strove to keep the forest growth in its own careless beauty, but never a man stepped on the place, brother or guest or gardener or state warden or whosoever, but, driven by the deep instinct of the pioneer, he must needs go stealthily forth with ax or saw or shears and lay about him in our happy tangle.

The worst of it was that we had to appear grateful.

Sigurd accepted his new abode with but a pa.s.sing bewilderment. Racing up from the train on his return from a summer in the mountains with Joy-of-Life, he was whistled into the Scarab while yet too utterly absorbed in the rapture of his greetings to heed where he was. After a little he looked about him in obvious surprise and perplexity and set out at once on a tour of investigation, trotting from cellar to attic, nosing into the closets and under the shelves, sniffing at the familiar desks and bookcases and recognizing with a wag his own chair and rug.

As soon as might be he was out of doors, examining porches and paths.

Then he crossed the intervening bit of wilderness, granite ledge matted over with the red-berried kinnikinic, and woofed for admittance at his accustomed door. He was kindly received and allowed to go about as he liked, upstairs and downstairs and into my lord's chamber, but the furniture was not his furniture, the smells were not his smells, and within ten minutes he had quitted those rooms, scene of so many puppy exploits, to enter them no more. He knew the difference between house and home.

Yet our new holding did not seem to Sigurd nor to us entirely natural until he had cut one of his unfortunate paws on a broken bottle left by the carpenters as a souvenir and had strewn steps and driveway and lawn with shreds of cotton bandages and adhesive plaster. "When is a clutter not a clutter?" asked my mother, and answered her own conundrum: "When Sigurd does it."

In a snug corner against the south wall of the Scarab stood a ma.s.sive and elegant erection, with gable roof and olive-green door, that only the unsophisticated called a kennel. It was "Sigurd's House," and as such he accepted it, counting its artistically s.h.i.+ngled walls and heavy layers of sheathing paper no more than his just deserts. He delighted in its deep bed of fresh straw which tickled him most agreeably as he rolled over and over in it. He found it an exciting by-play, too, to dash in with stick or bone and lose it under his bedding, which he would proceed to scratch up with all the fury of a New England matron in housecleaning time. Then he would come swaggering out with the air of duty done, shaking his own skin. Sigurd's House was such a palace that the children of the neighborhood liked to play in it, but our collie deemed this high trespa.s.s and, from the screened study porch, would roar indignant protest when five or six chubby tots, with that saucy black spaniel, Curly, would all squeeze in together.

To the Scarab came new friends for Sigurd with new caresses, to which he always made cordial and courteous response. Amelia crossed the ocean to a waiting bridegroom and a happy home of her own, but Housewife Honey-voice, with her little Esther, petted Sigurd even more devotedly.

Sigurd's only difficulty with Housewife Honey-voice, the only shadow on their sympathy, arose from the delicacy of her appet.i.te by which she was inclined, at first, to measure his. When her enthusiasm and culinary skill persuaded the family to go on a vegetable diet, Sigurd gave us clearly to understand that we need not count him in. And when I came home, one evening, from a week's motor trip, Sigurd barely waited for his customary chant of welcome before gripping my dress and leading me to the refrigerator.

"Hasn't Sigurd had his dinner yet?"

"Why, yes, an hour ago."

"Nonsense, boy! You're not hungry. n.o.body is hungry just after dinner."

"What a whopper!" sighed Sigurd, as he pattered after me back to the study.

No sooner had I turned my attention to the acc.u.mulation of letters on my desk than again Sigurd pulled gently, yet with determination, at my skirt and insisted on a second promenade to the refrigerator.

"He really is hungry. How much have you been giving him for dinner?"

But when I saw the measure, I heaped his plate, while he eagerly watched the process, waving his tail in triumph, but hurrying once across the kitchen to snuggle his head against the knee of Housewife Honey-voice, looking up at her with those comprehending, trustful eyes that said:

"You didn't _mean_ to starve dear Sigurd, and now that you know how big my hollow is, it will be all right forever."

Every autumn a new horde of freshmen fell in love with him and visiting alumnae embraced him in mid-campus. Toward the Freshman Twins, who gladdened the Scarab one year, he conducted himself like a soph.o.m.ore, humoring their childish ways, guiding them through the college labyrinth, serving as a towel for their homesick tears and partaking freely of their consoling fudge, but all with a comical air of condescension. He was himself accustomed to the best society, even seniors. Our gracious college president made him welcome to her veranda, as she sat at tea among her roses; a beloved frequenter of the Scarab, Hoops-of-Steel, though clinging to her preference for boys, accorded him a true if tempered friends.h.i.+p; and even Scholar Carol, our fifteenth-century historian, who affected the fireside sphinx and had named a particularly gallant kitten Eddy IV, counted him only a little lower than a cat. As for the children on our hill, they hugged him to the limit of endurance. His warmest admirer among them was Wee-wee, a rosy bunch of unweariable energy, who, when she came to us of an afternoon in order to give her exhausted parents a brief respite, would wear out the entire family as, one by one, we undertook to amuse her, and would finally fling herself upon Sigurd, riding on his back, rolling him over and over and examining his paws with an envious admiration that broke forth in the remark: "Wen I'm old and big like Sigurd, maybe I'll have feet on _my_ hands."

For two lively years a brace of graduate students, Cherub and Seraph, folded their wings beneath the Scarab rooftree. Cherub was a bit afraid, at first, of "that bouncing yellow elephant," but Seraph instantly became Sigurd's very pink of playmates. Every morning they would start off early for the college library, scampering across the landscape at a rate that sent the sparrows fluttering from their path like so many irregular verbs. Between the meadow and the campus is a perilous stretch of railway tracks and trolley tracks, and here Sigurd would a.s.sume full charge of his companion. If the whistle of an engine, as they drew near the crossing, cut the air, Sigurd would leap upon her and, with his paws upon her breast, hold her back until the train had hurtled by, when he would lead her triumphantly across under the trailing plume of smoke. Every autumnal Sunday they spent hours together in the woods, from which the Seraph would bring home gentians, wych-hazel and a lyric, and Sigurd a ruff all tangled up with burrs.