Aileen Aroon, A Memoir Part 6

I was sorry for the cat.

If you lifted Wasp up in your arms to have a look at him, he flashed his alabaster teeth in your face one moment, and fleshed them in your nose the next. He never looked you straight in the face, but aslant, from the corners of his wicked wee eyes.

In course of time--not Pollok's--Wasp's black puppy-hair fell off, and discovered underneath the most beautiful silvery-blue coat ever you saw in your life; but his puppy-manners did not mend in the least. In his case the puppy was the father of the dog, and if anything the son was worse than the father.

Talk of growing, oh! he did grow: not to the height--don't make any mistake, please; Wasp calculated he was plenty high enough already--but to the length, if you like. And every day when I went down to see him Annie would innocently ask me--

"See any odds on him this morning, doctor?"

"Well, Annie," I would say, "he really does seem to get a little longer about every second day."

"La! yes, sir, he do grow," Annie would reply--"'specially when I puts him before the fire awhile."

Indeed, Annie a.s.sured me she could see him grow, and that the little blanket with which she covered him of a night would never fit in the morning, so that she had to keep putting pieces to it.

As he got older, Wasp used to make a flying visit upstairs to see the parson, but generally came flying down again; for the parson isn't blessed with the best of tempers, anyhow. Quickly as he returned, Wasp was never down in time to avoid a kick from the clergyman's boot, for the simple reason that when Wasp's fore-feet were at the kitchen-door his hindquarters were never much more than half-way down the stairs.

N.B.--I forgot to say that this story may be taken with a grain of salt, if not found spicy enough to the taste.

There was a stove-pipe that lay in a back room; the pipe was about two yards long, more or less. Wasp used to amuse himself by running in at one end of it and out at the other. Well, one day he was amusing himself in this sort of way, when just as he entered one end for the second time, what should he perceive but the hindquarters of a pure-bred Skye just disappearing at the other. (You will please to remember that the stove-pipe was two yards long, more or less.) Day after day Wasp set himself to pursue this phantom Skye, through the pipe and through the pipe, for Wasp couldn't for the life of him make out why the animal always managed to keep just a _little_ way ahead of him. Still he was happy to think that day after day he was gaining on his foe, so he kept the pot a-boiling. And one day, to his intense joy, he actually caught the phantom by the tail, in the pipe. Joy, did I say? I ought to have said sorrow, for the tail was his own; but, being a game 'un, he wouldn't give in, but hung on like grim death until the plumber came and split the pipe and relieved him. (Don't forget the length of the pipe, please.) Even after he _was_ clear he spun round and round like a Saint Catherine's wheel, until he had to give in from sheer exhaustion. Yes, he was a long dog.

And it came to pa.s.s, or was always coming to pa.s.s, that he grew, and he grew, and he grew, and the more he grew, the longer and thicker his hair grew, till, when he had grown his full length--and I shouldn't like to say how long that was--you couldn't have told which was his head and which was his tail till he barked; and even Annie confessed that she frequently placed his dish down at the wrong end of him. It was funny.

If you take half a dozen goat-skins and roll them separately, in cylinders, with the hairy side out, and place them end to end on the floor, you will have about as good an idea of Wasp's shape and appearance as any I can think about. You know those circular sweeping-machines with which they clean the mud off the country roads?

Well, Wasp would have done excellently well as the roller of one of those; and indeed, he just looked like one of them--especially when he was returning from a walk on a muddy morning. It was funny, too, that any time he was particularly wet and dirty, he always came to the front door, and made it a point of duty always to visit the drawing-room to have a roll on the carpet previously to being kicked downstairs.

Getting kicked downstairs was Wasp's usual method of going below. I believe he came at last to prefer it--it saved time.

Wasp's virtues as a house-dog were of a very high order: he always barked at the postman, to begin with; he robbed the milkman and the butcher, and bit a half-pound piece out of the baker's leg. No policeman was safe who dared to live within a hundred yards of him. One day he caught one of the servants of the gas company stooping down taking the state of the metre. This man departed in a very great hurry to buy sticking-plaster and visit his tailor.

I lost sight of Wasp for about six months. At the end of that time I paid the parson a visit. When I inquired after my longitudinal friend, that clergyman looked very grave indeed. He did not answer me immediately, but took two or three vigorous draws at his meerschaum, allowing the smoke to curl upwards towards the roof of his study, and following it thoughtfully with his eyes; then he slowly rose and extracted a long sheet of blue foolscap from his desk, and I imagined he was going to read me a sermon or something.

"Ahem!" said the parson. "I'll read you one or two casual items of Wasp's bill, and then you can judge for yourself how he is getting on."

There is no mistake about it--

Wasp was a "well bred 'un and a game 'un." At the same time, I was sorry for the parson.

"I am really vexed that it is so dark and wet," said Frank that night, as he came to the lawn-gate to say good-bye. "I wish I could walk in with you, but my naughty toe forbids; or, I wish I could ask you to stay, but I know your wife and Ida would feel anxious."

"Indeed they would," I replied; "they would both be out here in the pony and trap. Good-night; I'll find my way, and I've been wet before to-night."

"Good-night; G.o.d bless you," from Frank.

Now the lanes of Berks.h.i.+re are most confusing even by daylight, and cabmen who have known them for years often go astray after dark, and experience considerable difficulty in finding their way to their destination. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that I, almost a stranger to them, should have lost myself on so dark a night.

Aileen Aroon and Nero were coupled together, and from the centre of the short chain depended a small bicycle lamp, which rendered the darkness visible if it did nothing else.

I led the dogs with a leathern strap.

"It is the fourth turning to the right, then the second to the left, and second to the right again; so you are not going that way."

I made this remark to the dogs, who had stopped at a turning, and wanted to drag me in what I considered the wrong direction.

"The fourth turning, Aileen," I repeated, forcing them to come with me.

The night seemed to get darker, and the rain heavier every moment, and that fourth turning seemed to have been spirited away. I found it at last, or thought I had done so, then the second to the left, and finally the second to the right.

By this time the lights of the station should have appeared.

They did not. We were lost, and evidently long miles from home. Lost, and it was near midnight. We were cold and wet and weary; at least I was, and I naturally concluded the poor dogs were so likewise.

We tried back, but I very wisely left it to the two Newfoundlands now to find the way if they could.

"Go home," I cried, getting behind them; and off they went willingly, and at a very rapid pace too.

Over and over again, I felt sure that the poor animals were bewildered, and were going farther and farther astray.

Well, at all events, I was bewildered, and felt still more so when I found myself on the brow of a hill, looking down towards station lights on the right instead of on the left, they ought to have been. They were our station lights, nevertheless, and a quarter of an hour afterwards we were all having supper together, the Newfoundlands having been previously carefully dried with towels. Did ever dogs deserve supper more? I hardly think so.

CHAPTER SIX.

AILEEN AND NERO--A DOG'S RECEIPT FOR KEEPING WELL--DOG'S IN THE SNOW IN GREENLAND--THE LIFE-STORY OF AILEEN'S PET, "FAIRY MARY."

"Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace."

Simplicity was one of the most prominent traits of Aileen's character.

In some matters she really was so simple and innocent, that she could hardly take her own part. Indeed, in the matter of food, her own part was often taken from her, for any of the cats, or the smaller dogs, thought nothing of helping the n.o.ble creature to drink her drop of milk of a morning.

Aileen, when they came to her a.s.sistance in this way, would raise her own head from the dish, and look down at them for a time in her kindly way.

"You appear to be very hungry," she would seem to say, "perhaps more so than I am, and so I'll leave you to drink it all."

Then Aileen would walk gently away, and throw herself down beneath the table with a sigh.

There was a time when illness prevented me from leaving my room for many days, but as I had some serials going on in magazines, I could not afford to leave off working; I used, therefore, to write in my bedroom.

As soon as she got up of a morning, often and often before she had her breakfast, Aileen would come slowly upstairs. I knew her quiet but heavy footsteps. Presently she would open the door about half-way, and look in. If I said nothing she would make a low and apologetic bow, and when I smiled she advanced.

"I'm not sure if my feet be over clean," she would seem to say as she put her head on my lap with the usual deep-drawn sigh, "but I really could not help coming upstairs to see how you were this morning."

Presently I would hear more padded footsteps on the stairs. This was the saucy champion Theodore Nero himself, there could be no mistake about that. He came upstairs two or three steps at a time, and flung the half-open door wide against the wall, then bounded into the room like a June thunderstorm. He would give one quick glance at Aileen.

"Hallo!" he would say, talking with eyes and tail, "you're here, are you, old girl? Keeping the master company, eh? Well, I'm not very jealous. How goes it this morning, master?"

Nero always brought into the sick-room about a hundredweight at least of jollity, sprightliness, life, and love. It used to make me better to see him, and make me long to be up and about, and out in the dear old pine woods again.

"You always seem to be well and happy, Nero," I said to him one day; "how do you manage it?"