The Old Man's Dogs

________________________________________________
Title:     The Old Man's Dogs
Author: Gordon Stables [More Titles by Stables]

"But there was silence one bright golden day,
Through my own pine-hung mountains."

The sun shone very brightly next morning; the sky was blue; and a silence, broken only by the constant roar of the torrent, brooded over the bills.

We all went to see, or rather seek, for Professor Dick's Academy.

But for a long time all in vain, and I was beginning to think the events of last evening must all have taken place in dreamland, when, emerging from the trees, the stalwart form of the old shepherd himself was observed coming towards us. In a few minutes more we were in the cottage.

And there, sure enough was Dick hard at work teaching his class. He was loose, his pupils all caged. We were warned to keep silence, and did so as long as we could.

Dick repeated words and sentences over and over again, and some of the pupils were most attentive and apt. And the way some of the more earnest stretched down their necks, cocked their heads and listened, was amusing in the extreme.

But there was one bad boy in the class--a saucy-looking cockatoo, with a red garland round his neck.

"I want a bit o' sugar," was all he would say, and he kept on at it. "A bit o' sugar, a bit o' sugar; I want a bit o' sugar."

The Professor went towards the delinquent's cage, as if to reason with him; but the naughty bird laughed derisively, and finished off by making a grab at Dick through the bars.

The old man at once threw a black cover over the cage, upon which the bird's tune was changed, and in the dark he seemed to bitterly bemoan his fate, repeating in a most lugubrious voice the words--"Poor Polly! Poor dear little Polly."

One of us laughed.

The spell was broken, and the Professor would teach no more.

"My birds will have a half-holiday," said the old shepherd, laughing.

He came with us to the caravans, and greatly delighted he was. We gave him books and magazines, and that same morning shifted camp farther east, promising, if ever we came that road again, to visit the shepherd and Professor Dick's Academy.

The story of the evening was--

----------------------------------

THE OLD MAN'S DOGS.

"I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm."

When a boy at school, of all my favourite authors, Bulwer Lytton was facile princeps. Walter Scott fascinated, and Cooper enthralled me, while the "Arabian Nights" held me spell-bound; but there was a charm to me about all the writings of the first-mentioned novelist and poet that nothing else could equal.

Girls often have what they call "a hearty cry" over the book or story which moves their feelings; boys do not. I do not remember ever putting down a book in order to weep. Such a matter-of-fact way of going to work never occurred to me; yet, while reading, tears have often filled my eyes--yes, and sometimes do--so as to interfere materially with the distinctness of the print I hold before me.

Now, there is in my opinion no one less to be admired than an ungrateful person. One might surely be pardoned for thinking that ingratitude ranks as a great sin in the sight of Heaven. But we are not to judge, far less condemn. It were often better, perhaps, to extend pity rather than anger to one who has been found guilty of ingratitude, for so universal, as an inborn sentiment, is the feeling of gratefulness, not only in man, but in the animals he has domesticated, that the absence of it would seem to denote an imperfection of brain-structure rather than anything else.

Those who have to do with children should not forget that gratitude is a feeling that can be fostered and cultivated, even in those among them in whose minds it exists only in embryo. But if it can be cultivated, so also can it be crushed; that, too, should be borne in mind.

What a power gentle words and kind persuasion have over even the "brute" nature, as it is called! You may always lead, though you cannot always drive. My Newfoundland dog is very fond of being in the house. "Bob" has a temper of his own to strangers, and a strong will of his own at all times. Sometimes it is necessary that he should go to his kennel and mount guard when he would far rather stay indoors. If, on such occasions, I speak somewhat sharply to him, he refuses to move. No force could get him from under the table; but a few gentle pats on the head, and a few kindly words, succeed at once. The great dog jumps up and comes trotting along with me, looking up in my face as much as to say:

"Always talk like that, master, and I'll go through fire and water to please you."

Says Phil. G. Hamerton, "Whoever beats a dog gives evidence of his own personal stupidity; for a dog always tries his best to understand, and you can make things clearest to him by gentle teaching, if you know how to teach at all."

I had to part with a lovely spaniel dog some years ago. We had had many a happy day together in the woods and fields, and the poor animal got exceedingly fond of me. Well, it was two years after that I met him by chance at a great dog show. I had passed his bench three or four times without knowing him. I only noticed that a certain spaniel was making frantic efforts to break his chain, and rush into somebody's arms; and it was not until I at last stood opposite to him that it occurred to me to look at the catalogue, when I found it was my own old "Beau" that I had not known among the multitude of strange dogs, all of the same colour and shape. Ah! but he had known me in the multitude. But I am so thankful I noticed the dear fellow, and did all I could to make him happy for one short day at least. Suppose I had gone away and never said a word to him--never given one kind word or loving caress; it would have seemed to him so cruel and ungrateful!

On the stormiest winter's day I seldom wear a hat about my own grounds. And shall I tell you why? It is because I cannot bear to see dogs disappointed, for whenever I do put on my hat, the dogs, with the impulsiveness characteristic of their race, jump to the conclusion that I am going for a walk, and that of course they are going as well.

But referring to Bulwer Lytton's novels, or Lord Lytton's, if you prefer it, there is a passage or scene in one of his charming tales that, when a boy, I could not read without the tears rising up and blinding me, and that I cannot think of, even as I write, without emotion.

An old man has none to care for him or tend him on earth save a daughter, whom he tenderly loves. But he finds a letter which proves her worse than false, worse than ungrateful, for she is, in that epistle, coolly reckoning and calculating on his death at no distant day. What a shock to the father! He is no longer any use; is a positive encumbrance; and she, whom he had so thoroughly trusted, she, too, wishes him away. He calls his dogs to him. They come to his knee, and with wistful, wondering eyes gaze up into his face, for they can see poor master is in grief. And his heart feels ready to break, as he pats his poor dumb friends and exclaims:

"Will there be no one even to look after the old man's dogs when he is gone?"

There is a species of cruelty to animals, happily, I believe, very rare. I refer to that which induces a person to treat harshly and unkindly some dumb creature for the simple reason that it belongs to an enemy. Whatever of harm an animal's master may have done me, it, at all events, is guiltless of evil. Reference to this is made in Holy Writ, and if we turn to Exodus twenty-three, verse 5, we read the following: "If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying down under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him."

On the other hand, the pets of those we love become doubly dear to us in the absence of their real master or mistress. Yonder, let us say, is little Maggie's pet canary. Maggie is always the merriest of the merry when she is about the house. It would be difficult indeed to say whether the canary or she sings the louder, or looks the brighter or the happier all day long. But there were tears in Maggie's eyes on the day she went away, and when she went to the cage and said, "Bye, bye, birdie," it was all she could do to keep from crying. And the bird seemed sad too, and does not sing so blithely now; and every morning, when any one enters the breakfast-room, he extends a very long neck indeed, for he is looking for and expecting the loved one. Now would it not be cruel if the person in whose charge that birdie is left were not more than kind to it in Maggie's absence?

Yonder is Johnnie's rough wee terrier dog. O, what romps and games and rambles far and near Johnnie and that little dog did use to have! But Johnnie has gone to sea. The little dog mourns for him; any one can notice that. But he does not mourn for him as one dead, for often when a step somewhat like his master's sounds on the gravel, how wildly the little dog rushes to door or window to have a look, and how very low his tail droops as he returns disconsolate to his seat on the hearth. May Heaven send Johnnie safely home again; and won't he find his doggie sleek and fat? It will not be our fault if he does not.

If any one were to ask me how long I supposed a dog would remember an absent master, I should answer--and I should speak advisedly when I did so:

"A dog will remember and mourn for an absent master until his return, no matter how long that may be; or until the dog's own loving eyes are closed in death."

About the mystery of death itself, I question if dogs know very much. They must at any rate imagine that there is a possibility of the dead one returning again to life.

Does the reader remember the story of the gentleman who lost his way among the mountains and was killed, his body being found a quarter of a year afterwards, with his faithful dog still beside it? Or Scott's beautiful lines on the subject, a few of which I cannot resist the temptation to quote?

"Dark-green was the spot 'mid the brown mountain heather,
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in decay,
Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather.
Till the mountain-winds wasted the tenantless clay.
Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended,
For, faithful in death, his mute favourite attended,
The much-loved remains of his master defended,
And chased the hill-fox and the raven away.
How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber?
When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start?
How many long days and long weeks didst thou number.
Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart?"

I was travelling one time in Ireland in a jaunting-car which I had hired for some days. I had no other companion save a large Newfoundland dog, for whose comfort the seat of the car was hardly broad enough. But there was the driver to talk to, and nothing loth was Paddy either to carry on the greater share of the conversation.

It was the sweet summer-time, and whatever my companion the dog did, I know I felt as happy and light-hearted as the birds.

"See them two dogs?" said the driver to me, as we passed an old-fashioned gate, about a mile from the village of C--.

"Yes," I replied, "pull up a moment, Paddy, till I have a look at them."

A pair of lovely Basset hounds they were, a dark or liver-coloured and a light one, coupled together by a short chain. They were waiting for some one, apparently; the white one turned his head to look at us, but the other was all eagerness, all attention. He seemed to me to hear a footstep.

"Waiting for some one, I should think," I said to my driver.

"Indeed, yes, sorr," replied Paddy. "It is waiting for their master they do be. It is waiting for him they'll never see again, they are, sorr. They call them 'the old man's dogs,' and every evening at five o'clock out they trot, just as you see them, and there they stand, sorr, and there they listen for hours and hours together; then trot back, with hanging heads and tails, sorr; but they'll never see him more."

"Is he dead, then?" I inquired.

"Yes, sorr," said Paddy; "but we'll drive on a bit if we're going to talk."

I gave one last glance towards the dogs, and the look of eager expectancy in the dark one's eyes I shall not soon forget.

"It was all owing to treachery, I think, sorr," said Paddy, as we drew up under a drooping lime-tree.

"But there it was; the old man B--used to stay much in foreign parts, but he came home at last to settle down. He had an only daughter with him, that he loved right dearly, and barring her neither kith nor kin, that ever we could see, belonging to him.

"He was always cheerful, sorr, and she seemed always happy. He used to go to L--every day; his carriage waited him on his return at the station, and them two faithful brutes, sorr, at the old gate. So everything seemed to go as cheerfully as wedding-bells, and just as easy like.

"There was a count, they called him, that used often to stay at the mansion, sorr. Whether he had anything to do with it or not, it's not myself that can tell you. But I won't keep you waiting, for it's a cruel story. The old man came home one day to an empty house. He was never the same after. Broken-down like he was, and didn't seem to care for anything but them two dogs. Well, just in one month, sorr, the daughter came back. She never saw her father alive, though. He was carried in the same day at the old gate, dead, sorr. He had dropped down in a fit, or, as some do say, of a kind of heartbreak.

"I needn't tell you more, sorr. There is nobody at the old manor now. She is abroad, and just guess you, sorr, what her feelings are if ever she thinks, as think she must. The house is a kind of tumbledown like, and there is no one ever likely to live there again owing to the ghost, you know."

"I don't care about the ghost, Paddy," I said; "but what about the dogs? Where do they live?"

"Just inside the old gate, sorr, at the gardener's cottage. And it's waiting they do be, sorr, waiting, waiting. Hup! mare, hup!"

[The end]
Gordon Stables's short story: Old Man's Dogs

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN