Chapter 5

Yet let us not forget the fact that others, in the past, have gone before us, and far ahead of us, on this same track, of which we often speak with so much unction. In ancient Egypt dogs had names, and these are found inscribed in many places. They were the favourites of the home, and constantly made much of. They wore collars, too, and often by no means cheap ones; and just as they were everywhere admitted to the house, so, all these ages ago, they were talked to, and also made to talk. Legends were woven about their doings and their ways. And if, in many cases, they were small and insignificant, with short legs like the Dachs, or, perhaps, the Aberdeen, implicit trust was placed in their fidelity as guardians of the home and family. Of course there were bigger fellows to fulfil the heavier duties, like the huge Kitmer, the dog of the Seven Sleepers, whom God allowed once to speak, and to answer for himself and others for all time. "I love those," he said--"I love those who are dear unto God: go to sleep, therefore, and I will guard you."

That was sufficient, surely. Then, too, there was Anubis, who was given a dog's head and a man's body: he was worshipped as a deity and the genius of the Nile, who had ordered the rising of the great river at the proper season from the beginning of the world, and whose doings in this way were marked by the coming of the Dog-star, with seventy times more power than the sun--the brightest of all in the purple dome of the night.

An animal such as the dog, even if dumb, which in justice he could scarcely be thought, was thus judged entitled to a consideration never vouchsafed to others, and duly received it, therefore, at all times in this enlightened land. And not only in the fleeting years of his existence, but equally when he lay down under the common hand of death. The dog, in those forgotten days, received embalmment, just as his master and mistress, and was then carried with some solemnity to the burial-ground that was set apart for dogs in every town. And when the last good-bye had been said, the family to which he had belonged returned again to their house, and put on mourning for their friend and faithful guardian, shaving their heads, and abstaining for a time from food. So was it with dogs all those thousands of years ago. We have not come so very far since then.

Murphy was not told many of these latter things, though obscurantism is always to be utterly condemned. It was thought better that he should not know them, or other darker facts to do with modern scientific times, lest by chance they give rise to strange and unorthodox reflections in a brain so active as his.

When the day came for Dan's best friend--she called him "Best of all"--to set out on a journey, to see the last of him, Murphy and his master, being left alone, turned naturally in their talk to the place where Dan was to be laid, as also to the doings of many other dogs who had lived and loved and had had the supreme happiness of hunting there throughout their lives. Some were good, and others, well--not so good. Others were not thought much to look at, though this generally resolved itself into a matter of opinion. To set against these last, some were the very finest of their kind, such as Ben, the great Newfoundland, who had the glory of being painted in company with two small members of the family sixty or seventy years ago.

Each, of course, had his characteristics, and did his funny, or his wicked, things. In the face of a recent occurrence, it would have been a mistake to point a moral, or reference might have been made to Bruce, the deerhound, shot dead by accident when hunting sheep at night. That would do for another day, should circumstances arise to give the story point. There were plenty of other anecdotes besides that, and here are one or two that Murphy heard.

Perhaps Fritz, the Spitz, did the most remarkable thing of all. His master was an undergraduate of Christ Church at the time, and had been always in the habit of taking him with him on his return to Oxford. On a certain occasion he decided that Fritz, for once, should remain at home. The next day the dog was missing. Then a letter came, and this is what Fritz had done. He had found his way into the neighbouring town, distant three miles, and taken the train to Swindon, as was duly proved. Probably he changed there, though this is not recorded. But he went on to Didcot, where he certainly got out, found the Oxford train, and that same afternoon walked into his master's rooms at Christ Church.

One other action of his deserves to be recorded, for it affords an instance of how nearly dogs approach at times to human beings. No man is so wholly hardened as to care to die disliked, while many have a fancy ere the end to seek forgiveness, that they themselves may die forgiven. So was it with Fritz. Like many men of genius, his temper was uncertain, and on more than one occasion he was known to bite. The day before he died, though old and infirm, he made a round on his own account and visited one or two to whom he had certainly behaved badly. His action was recalled when once again he disappeared. But it was further remarked upon--some adding that they thought they understood--when Fritz was found curled in a hole beneath a bush--and dead.

Graf, another of the same breed, but belonging to a period twenty years later than Fritz, had also curious ways of his own. He could run down a rabbit in the open, and did it on many an occasion; but if this was remarkable--a rabbit being reckoned one of the quickest of all animals for a hundred yards--his curious behaviour exhibited itself in quite another way. He was a dog of great character and cleverness, as well as perfect manners. It was the custom in the family at that date to have prayers on Sunday evenings. This Graf never failed to resent. There had been service in the church during the day, and Sundays were dull days for dogs: why have prayers in the evenings to make things worse? Therefore, to show what he felt in the matter, no sooner had the family left the room for prayers, than he gathered up the newspapers and tore them deliberately to pieces. It was not only once or twice or even six times that he did this. He did it repeatedly; and when the family returned, _The Guardian_ especially was found in scraps upon the floor.

But he was otherwise a good dog, and so it was that he who read _The Guardian_ week by week on Sunday evenings showed that he bore Graf no resentment, for when the dog died he wrote a poem running thus, the last line and a half of which are graven on Graf's stone:

"Can such fidelity be all for naught? Is virtue less true virtue that it beats In a hound's faithful breast? No, Graf, the thought Of thy pure, true and faultless life defeats

All doubt. No! Virtue lives for ever, and the same, Whether in man, or in his faithful friend Who looked but could not speak his love. The flame That warmed thy faithful heart can never end

In dark oblivion. If not a Soul Is thine, at least is Life. The same great hand Made thee and us; but where upon the scroll, At day of Judgment, shall be found to stand

A human soul so faithful to the end, So true as thou hast been? God's great design Awaits both thee and us. Good-bye, sweet friend, And may our lives be simply true as thine."

By way of parodying this, in the case of another dog, it was suggested by one who was flippant that his epitaph might run--"And may our lives have fewer faults than thine." But while it is true that this one had run up quite a heavy bill in cats and committed many other enormities, the line _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_ was kept in view, and, if nothing could be said, it was judged better to say nothing. Moreover, as Murphy duly remarked, while we talked over the wonderful doings of many and many a dog now lying in this sacred corner, "What could you possibly have expected in such a case, and from one of Us that you had wilfully named Scamp?"

There was, of course, something in that, and many of Scamp's acts deserved to be recorded, though this is no place for doing so. At one time he was in London. Residence there naturally put a limit to the exercise of his sporting instincts, but he developed others to replace them. He was sometimes absent all day, to be found at the door at night; and on one occasion he met his master at a City railway station, when thought to have been lost for good and all--was indeed seen by his master to be making his way thither as he drove into the station yard in question.

To have done anything so clever as that might have been thought to have earned the right to headstone and epitaph in full. Yet his resting-place remains unmarked, and his name apparently dogged him to the end, and past it.

"What was that about _De mortuis_?" came the question from Murphy.

"_Nil nisi bonum._"

"That never should have been raised, in his case. What about _De vivis_?" There was indignation in the tone; perhaps justly.

IX

"What I does is this--what I does is, I gets 'em quite close to me, and then I talks to 'em."

This is what Mrs. Pinnix invariably replied, when asked how it was that her children were of such good behaviour and gave so little trouble. And Mrs. Pinnix knew, for she had been the careful mother of thirteen, and had developed this happy, good-natured method of dealing with each in turn, boys and girls alike. No doubt she was a remarkable woman in many ways, for she won the last event on the card at the time of the Jubilee sports, being then the mother of ten--"Skipping: open to mothers only." But the point here, in this remark of hers, is that a long experience with dogs shows the talking treatment to be as applicable to them as it was to Mrs. Pinnix's children.

Nor will this be found to be the fanciful idea of the few, if inquiry be made. To live largely, for instance, among those whose labours lie far from cities, and who, of long habit, have come to note many things concerning which the less fortunate townsman knows nothing, is to learn many things oneself. To hazard the remark in such quarters, that a good many people have no belief in the theory that talking to a dog does him good, is to receive for answer, "Ah, but I knows as it does." Others go further, and in reply to the question whether they think dogs--that is, the best dogs--really understand what is said to them, never fail to assert with emphasis, "Well, they does; I be sure as they does: 'tisn't a mossel o' use to tell folks the like o' we different." Shepherds, stockmen, farm labourers, old villagers who have had many experiences though living in a narrow circle, and who look back over a long life, constantly make use of such remarks. And probably dog-lovers of all classes will re-echo the same.

It was certainly the method adopted in the further training and education of Murphy. As already related, he had been taught to stop when his master stopped, and to come in when he sat or lay down. Thus, though he was generally allowed to range at will over the open lands and be sometimes far distant, in the event of the one he spent his life with lying down to rest for a while, very few minutes would elapse ere the dog would be found making use of shoulder, back, or arm as comfortable things to rest against. Tucked closely in in this way, his face was level with that other's, as, with ears cocked and those human eyes of his, he took stock of everything passing in the valley, or that moved on the edges of the great woods clothing the hill-tops.

That was the time to get hold of him; to train him not to run a hare that might come lolloping stupidly along, down wind, into the very jaws of danger; to take no notice of a rabbit that offered insult by drumming with his hind legs on the ground only a few yards off; to tell him strange stories of what he might expect in the years to come when he grew as old as his master, and had learnt to try to take many knocks, to face many problems, to bear and suffer much that might come from strange quarters--had learnt also how to live, and to reap his share of the happiness that the mere fact of living rarely fails to give to all who are not weak-kneed or chicken-hearted.

Of course experience, in some ways, tended to undermine confidence. Did he not know all about that himself? Had he not at one time come to doubt all things human? Had not happiness and trust and faith gone by the board, because of the hardness and injustice meted out to him? But what now? By some miraculous process there had come a change. Doubt had not altogether vanished; confidence had not altogether returned; faith and trust in the giants that stalked over the world, and who seemed to rule it, were not as yet quite re-established: perhaps they never could, or would be. To some natures recovery in such directions is impossible. The fire has seared, the cicatrice remains--though to be hidden away, of course. To show feelings--above all, to show you are hurt--to sing out, in fact--is to exhibit a poor spirit, to fall short in proper doggedness. Suffer in silence, if you can--that must be the rule; just as this dog, with his keen, eager face, loves in silence--loves all the more deeply, perchance, because he loves in silence, and because that silence is so much more eloquent than words.

Did Murphy understand? According to Job Nutt, the shepherd, who was a philosopher in his way, "of course he did--he know'd he did: his'n did; for why not your'n?" In the face of such definite assertion there was no room for doubt.

Nutt had had his lambing-pens, that year, down in the hollow where there was "burra" from the winds. It was snowing when the hurdles and the straw were carted out, and all hands had set to work building the sides of the great square, with their thick, straw walls, their straw roofs, the snug divisions into which the sides were divided, the whole sloping to the south to catch what might be of the pale, wintry sun. Every one knew that sheep lambed quicker and earlier when the snow fell. There had been no time to lose therefore. The first lambs would be heard a fortnight before Christmas. And, as a matter of fact, by mid January, Job Nutt's family already numbered sixty-three. That was of course nothing. Why, one January, his father had had one hundred and fifty-one lambs born between a Saturday morning at light and Monday, no fewer than forty-two being doubles--and snow falling all the time. Ay, and when he moved his hurdles--that is, those that were straw-wattled--they were caked so hard with snow that they stood upright of themselves. His father "had had to work _some_ that day and them two night." And Job always grinned a merry grin when he told the story.

But now, to-day, when the two who were always together dropped down from the hill to pay a visit to this shepherd, it was the last week of February, when the mornings are as brilliant and full of hope as any in the year. The rooks were busy building in the great elms by the river; the wattles just below the lambing-pens were already turning red. Spring was coming: the colour of the sky, the voices of the larks, the bleat of the lambs, all told the same story. Of course winter would return: it always did. But, for the moment, there was a passing exhibition of beauties in store, a reflection of things that should be. By the afternoon the grey blinds would be down again. But that did not matter in the least: this glimpse had been permitted, and in the brilliant sunlight and the stillness the happiness of full confidence had welled up, and seemed to fill the whole world.

Murphy certainly appeared to feel it. As he and his master sunk the hill, he stretched himself out as he ran; he jumped into the air for joy. His doings, in some mysterious way, frequently reflected the colour of the day; and his spirits varied with those of his master. The sympathy of dogs is no modern discovery, but as old as their comradeship with man; and thus this one varied his ways according as times were good or bad, or trials, mental or bodily, chanced to be the same. On this brilliant morning man and dog had caught the light of the sun and the gladness thereof, and the young dog played with his master's hand as he swung along, and barked and jumped for very love of life.

He was often like this now when they were alone together, though, with others, he would sometimes lapse again into uncertainty and hesitation. Nevertheless, there was no longer doubt that he was on the right road: happiness had in a large measure returned; confidence was following. The man and the dog were drawing very close to one another, and in more ways than one.

The pens were only tenanted now by some thirty ewes, still to lamb, and by those "in hospital," as Job spoke of them. Four hundred tegs, ewes, and lambs were in fold on the hill, on a clover stubble, or what remained of it, being given crushed swedes and other things, for keep was scarce so early in the year. The shepherd's boy and his dog were up there with them: only Job and Scot were in the pens. Murphy knew this last, savage though he was; and had duly delivered to him, on many a previous occasion, that strange message of his that compelled the most savage to let him pass free.

"Oh! he can come: I likes that dog o' your'n," called Job, ordering Scot to his place beneath the bleached and weather-worn hut on wheels, in which all the miscellaneous articles of a shepherd's craft lay stored. "I be just about to find that mother yonder a new child," he added, with his usual grin. He was busy tying the skin of a dead lamb on to the back of another--dressing him up, in fact, in another suit, even as Rebecca once did Jacob.

"When a yo do lose her lamb, we's careful to leave the dead un next its mother, for they've got hearts same as we. If us was to go for to take the lamb, they 'ould pine. 'Tis nat'ral, ain't it? Well, you see, 'tis like this. After a bit we takes a lamb from a yo as has a double, like this un here; skins the dead lamb; and ties the skin round t'other's neck, same as this--see? She'll let this un suck then; but she 'ouldn't afore--no fear! They do know their own childern, same as we; just as they knows them as tends 'em. By-and-by I'll cut this skin away, bit by bit, when I judges this un has got to smell same as her own child: it'll be all right then. Ah! 'tis like this with sheep--there's something to be learnt about they every time in the day as one comes nigh 'em."

So the two men rested against the hurdles in the sun, and Murphy sat solemnly between them: he had become very particular in his manners when with sheep. The disguised lamb was already sucking the ewe; and Job lit his short clay pipe and smiled: he had been up all night.

"I'd never have a lamb killed, if it was my way; no'r I wouldn't. Do you minds last season, when you and yer dog was along? I wus a-going across the Dene with a bottle o' warm milk, with a bit of a tube stuck in it, if you minds. 'Twas warm milk I'd taken from the cow. Ah, well, 'twas for a lamb as had lost its mother: udder wrong; I could find of it when the master brought the lot in. And I goes for to say as any un as 'ud serve a yo that way should be crucified. Well, 'tis that very lamb as was as is now the yo a-suckling the one we dressed up. See how things do work round, don't 'em?"

But the talk was not always about sheep, when the folds or the pens were visited, or "Him and his dog" walked with Nutt and other shepherds over the open lands, in the wind and the weather.

One day Job had been busy sheepwashing, and the talk turned on dogs, as it often did.

"'Tis wonderful what they knows. What don't 'em know? I says. See that Scot I had--the one afore this un. Well, I was down a-sheepwashing, same as I've been just. One o' the full-mouthed sheep as we had then broke away, and went straight over river, and it ain't very narrow there, as you minds. She got up on the further bank and stud. And Scot, he looks at me, and across at the sheep, and then at me again. I know'd, right enough, what he wanted. He wanted to go over and fetch that sheep back. But I 'ouldn't let un, for a bit. And he kept a-looking and a-looking, same as any one might speak. So I just moved my head, like; there was no call to do no more. And off he set in the water, and swam river, ketched the sheep by the throat--oh, no, he didn't hurt un, no fear!--dragged un to the bank, and brought un over, right enough: he did, though."

"Well, 'twas like this," he continued, after a laugh. "A gen'leman was a-rowing by in a boat at the time. And he comes across to our side, when he sees what Scot 'a' done, and he says, 'Shepherd,' he says, 'I'll have that dog off you, if you've a mind.' And with that he puts three golden sovereigns on the bank at my feet, where we was busy a-sheepwashing. So I looks at the sovereigns, and then at he, and says to un, with a laugh--I says, '_No Sir_.' Lord, how he did pray me to let un have that dog!

"Then it come about this way. That evening we was a-coming down through the village, and passed 'The Crown'--that was, Scot and me--and there stood the same gen'leman at the door. So he comes across the road, seeing me, and he says, 'Well, shepherd,' he says, 'will you part with the dog now, for, if so be as you will, I'll make it five instead of three?' he says. And that's truth. And I just looked he between the eyes, like, and says, 'Part with my dog, Sir?' I says. 'Why, Sir, if I wus to part with he, I'll tell ye what he'd do--he'd pine and die--he'd just pine away and die.' And with that I passed on, and left un. Dogs--well, sheep, if you do please to understand, is sheep; but dogs is dogs, and God Almighty do know as they be wonderful."

"It's not all dogs, though, that are as shepherds' dogs, Nutt--or capable of being."

Nutt shook his head. The two men and their dogs were on the hillside, with two hundred and fifty tegs moving before them. The sheep were walking with a wide front, but in single files, following those parallel tracks that had marked this steep hillside for centuries, to puzzle strangers.

"You can't make a shepherd's dog out of every dog, can you?"

"Perhaps not, in your meaning. But I do know I could train a'most any dog, if as I'd be so minded."

Scot was on ahead, where he should be. Murphy was close to heel.

"Do you mean to say you could train this one to fold sheep?"

Job Nutt took a deep draw at his pipe, and turned and looked down at Murphy, now just over three years old.

"I likes that dog; well, I've allus liked un. Train un to sheep? I believe as I could, were I to be so minded: I do believe as I could."

The two had to part then. It was dusk, and looked like wet; moreover, some wether sheep in the fold, far down in the valley, were "howling" for rain: they were true weather-prophets always.

So he might be trained to sheep. Job Nutt's words kept repeating themselves in the mind--"I believe as I could; I do believe as I could." What the shepherd had said was a testimony to this dog's marvellous intelligence; but then every one had come to testify to that and to remark upon it. He was of course nervous and shy, and no doubt would always be so. Perhaps it was these characteristics that gave him the further one of extraordinary gentleness, that won all hearts. Many had already said, with a laugh, that he was "born good"; but latterly some had come to add that he was incapable of harm or ill.