Chapter 7

It was fifty yards further on before the voice of the oak was lost. But as man and dog worked further still, for very joy of the wind and the snow and love for the elements at their worst--the horses struggling, the waggoners calling to them loudly and urging them to put their best into it, with many a crack of the whip--there suddenly fell a lull, and for a moment there was peace. And just then, up from the valley, there came other sounds--the larch and the firs down there were sighing out a tune to themselves, being partly sheltered by the hill.

It was time to turn back. There was a lane in the direction of those last sounds: home could easily be reached that way, and, likely enough, with the set of the wind, the roadway itself would have been swept almost bare.

The waggons were lost to sight in a moment, though the woody rattle of the axles could still be heard: snow was falling heavily again: the cold was becoming intense: the wind was now dropping altogether. A dead bird or two were passed, lying in the snow, claws in air and already stiff: a felt and a yellowhammer were side by side at the bottom of the hill. It was like the dead in gay uniforms, lying scattered after an action. A little further on there was a blackbird, to Murphy's very evident glee. He found it at once, and was for carrying it home; it was still warm. But this was no time for fooling. It was already dark and growing darker; the proper thing to do was to keep together and make for home. Travelling was none too easy, even for tall men, and really difficult for dogs in places.

At points where field gates opened on to the road, drifts had formed two feet in depth, right across the way, and it was necessary to pick up the dog and carry him, though to the latter's thinking that was a silly thing to do. Time was, when his master had had to do that; but he had then been no better than a child in arms. Now he was a man, and had come to man's estate, and, furthermore, had learnt what life was, with its hours full of health, and crammed with fresh adventures and experiences, as, of course, it should be. His muscles were hard and flexible as steel, his heart strong with life, his brain quick to learn whatsoever his master thought best that he should know. Health, strength, what happiness it all was! The neighbourhood of those waggons had been rather depressing, and the crack of those whips somewhat disconcerting; but he did not stop to reason why. It was enough that he and his master were together. The past might look after itself, and so might the future; this was the all-sufficient present.

A deep silence reigned in the valley; even the larch and the firs had given up their songs. There was the scrunch of the foot at each step, and now and then a rustle in the hedge, as a bramble became overweighted with snow and dislodged its load into the ditch, or last year's leaves, still clinging to some oak, rustled and were still again. Otherwise the world was dead or asleep; it made little difference which.

A cottage was passed further on, and a chink of light from a candle within showed that the snowflakes were still falling fast. This way would be impassable by morning. At the turn of the lane voices were heard. They were some way off; but it was easy to recognise that they were those of two men talking. Presently the voices became more audible. It was too dark to see who the men were as they passed: at night, when snow is falling, those met are up and gone by almost before their approach is realised. There was just time for a "Good-night," with a "Good-night to you, Sir," in reply.

For an instant there was silence: then the men began talking again.

"Bless the Lord!--did you see who that was, Tom, and on such a night as this!" remarked one.

"Don't know as I know'd un."

"Not know un?"

"Why, bless the life on yer--that's Him an' his dog!"

"There, was it now? Him an' his dog, for sure. Carrying un, wus he? Like un."

"Ah--allus together, ain't 'em?"

"For his part, he don't seem to have much else."

It would be well to get on, and not to stand there gaping into the darkness, listening to what you were never meant to hear. The truth of the old saying generally holds good; and sometimes words accidentally overheard in such ways are fixed in the mind for life. These last were like a stab.

"Don't seem to have much else?" What did the fellow mean? How invariably lookers-on misjudged! What a mistake it was to pass judgment at all--on anything or anybody!

"... Much else ... much else...?"

The road was less deeply covered here. The dog was heavy: a few yards more and he was put down. As the journey was resumed, he took to playing in the darkness, and, in his winning and affectionate way, with the fingers of his master's hand, as much as to say, "Thank you: we are together; the rest matters little."

"Him and his dog ... much else ... much else...?" The words kept time with the footfall.

How dark it was!

And cold--the thermometer marked minus 1°.

XII

A summer night, and the heat the heat of the dog-days. The tramcars had stopped running long ago; the streets were quite deserted.

Not long since, the clock set high in the tower of St. Giles' had chimed three-quarters; and now it chimed the hour, and wearily struck "Two." Then other clocks also awoke to their duties, and, not possessing chimes, repeated the latter information in various keys, from far and near. It was all very sombre; and the smell of the streets very unlovely.

It was Bill's turn to be up that night; at least, they said it was his turn. As a matter of fact, he had been up three nights running, and at least ten in the last eighteen, for this was no ordinary case, and the credit of the firm was at stake. Not that he held the dignity of being a member, much less a partner, of the firm; but he had worked for it, he would often tell, and with no little pride in his voice--"worked for it thirty-two years, come Lammas; and that wus a very long while."

To Bill, and the few remaining, or still discoverable, like him, the firm's credit was his; and the firm should never find its confidence misplaced so long as Bill Withers could walk on his two feet, or aid some suffering creature. Those were his sentiments. Then, of course, this Bill had a soft place in his heart for animals generally, though the softest place of all was unreservedly retained for dogs.

"They wus human; well, a sight better than human, as any one might see humans at times";--that was the way he put it. "And there warn't a mossel o' doubt about it, no matter what nobody said."

At that, his mates in the yard thought well to let the matter drop.

"That there Bill has his queer hideas abaht most things; better leave him to hisself," they remarked, with a twist of the mouth, and passed on.

Bill had a habit of speaking his thoughts aloud, especially when up at night. He found company in the habit, and was employing his time in this way now.

"Two o'clock. Another half-hour and he'll have to have the soup, and then a little stim'lant. That wus the orders. Let's see. To-morrow's Toosday. That'll make it three weeks since the master brought un back with him in his motor, all wrapped in blankets. 'Twas that ogg-sigen as saved him at the moment. But here--he's been fed every two hours, night and day since, any way. Well, well...."

There was a step on the cobbles of the yard. Bill looked round. "Mr. Charles"--as he called him--the head of the firm, was coming.

Five weeks before this Murphy had been taken ill. Nobody appeared to know what was the matter with him, except that he was restless, refused his food, and looked wrong in his coat. The very spirit there was in him misled others: he would hunt birds under the smallest provocation; rabbits were not animals to be given up so long as there was breath in the body; that finest of games, working to the hand, was to be played to the last day, for was it not the jolliest of fun for both, and did not his master laugh loudly when it was all over, and he skipped and barked and jumped himself, asking for just one more turn? It was only the chicken-hearted that gave up; life was to be lived to the very last minute, especially when so full of fun and happiness as his. If he flagged and was tired after these doings, it was only the hot weather: he would be all right tomorrow. So he was kept quiet for a week.

But the morrow came, and he was less full of life than on the day before. There was something evidently wrong; though advice was asked, and with little gain. His bright eyes had grown dull now, and he refused all food. It was time to call in the best opinion that could be had.

"Distemper. Pneumonia; and the heart also affected." That was the verdict. There was just a chance for him. It would be a risk to move him so far; but it was perhaps worth it, as treatment could then be followed properly: in establishments of the kind all animals were tended with as much care and skill as patients in a hospital.

So Murphy was taken away. How suddenly it had all come about. And now three weeks had gone by; and the dog still lived.

"How's he doing, Bill?"

"No difference to my mind, as I can see."

"We must save him, if we can, Bill. She was here again to-day, and said the dog was such a very valuable one that she didn't know what would happen if he died."

"I judged something of the kind," remarked Bill. "I've got a cousin, over their way: shepherd to Mr. Phipps--him as has Fair Mile Farm. You knows. He come in with him--'twus last Saturday's market--over some tegs; and he called in here, and I do believes 'twus to ask how this un here wus. Said he'd allus liked un. Seemed to know all about un. Said as he and the gen'leman as owns un wus allus together; that he couldn't get about like some; and that he and this dog here was never apart, and seemed to hang together, curious ways like. They'd got some name for the two of 'em down in that part--so he says; but I a'most forgets what 'twus now."

"So I understand. One or two have been to call to ask after him, up at the office, and said much the same."

"Been here himself, hasn't he?" inquired Bill.

"Ay, yesterday. I told him he couldn't see him; or, rather, that if he did, with the dog's heart as rocky as it was, I would not answer for the result. He did not speak a word after that, except--'Do your best'; and went out."

"From what that cousin o' mine said," put in Bill, "I judge if he'd come in, it would a-killed the dog right off." He was smoothing Murphy's ears as he spoke.

"I told him," continued Mr. Charles, "that two things were especially against this dog; one was his high breeding, and the other, his brain development. It's the last I'm most afraid of, though."

"Brain? Clever?" put in Bill--"I should just say he _was_."

"--And I told him that I had never seen a dog that was easier to treat; and that he was making a real plucky fight for it."

"That's true," said Bill, in a tone as if the words had been "Amen."

"--And that he was that sensible that he allowed us to do just as we liked with him; so good and patient that there was not a man in the yard that wasn't _glad_ to do anything for him."

"True again," broke in Bill, with emphasis.--"Murphy," he said, calling the dog by name. "Whew! Another hot day, I judge; coming light afore long." Bill was looking at the sky.

"All against him; all against him," returned the other. "But there, I shall be downright sorry if we lose him now."

Bill shook his head. "See all as has been done ... and the telegrams ... and the letters, and ..."

The conversation of the two men was stopped by a low bark from the dog.

"Dreaming," said Bill; "does a lot o' sleep."

"Brain," said the other, listening--"I feared as much all along. It's all up, Bill."

Bill was down, and had got one of his hands under the dog's head.

The bark came again: only a very weak one; not enough to disturb anybody near. It became continuous after that; grew a little louder; then gradually fainter.

Perhaps he was hunting birds, though it may be doubted. More likely he was working to the hand over the sunlit fields, in the glad air, with a full life all before him yet; and in the company of one whom he loved with his whole heart, and to whom, while learning constantly himself, he, a dog, had taught no end of things.

There can be little doubt that he was working by the hand. Of course he was. But the hand that was beckoning him now was from over the border--from the land where there is room for both the man and the dog, and where there shall be a blessed reunion with old friends.

The bark died away: Murphy was dead.

"Not five years; or only just," remarked Bill.

Both men heaved a sigh.

Day was breaking as they walked away together down the yard.

* * * * *

A few days later came this, written by one whose business it was to tend the sick and the suffering among animals; to whom their passing was no rare event; and who must have had many thousands through his hands:

"I am so very sorry; but it was really a happy release after the brain symptoms had developed.

"I can only say your dog won the affection of all of us here to an extent unequalled by any other patient. I think this was due to the very brave way that he bore his sufferings, his kind and amenable temperament, and his almost human intelligence. There is no doubt that this last increased the susceptibility of his brain to disease, and made recovery hopeless."

* * * * *

Two men were working their way slowly up the Dene. They were the shepherd, Job Nutt, and his second. And their dogs followed them closely to heel.

They had just set out a new bait for the sheep on the vetches lower down, and were making for home.

Violet shadows had stretched themselves out to their furthest over the red wheat, now rapidly ripening; soon they would fade out altogether, and the woods would grow blue. For the sun was touching the line of the distant hills, and the long day's work was done.

"Why, there goes Him," says one, pointing up at the down to the eastward.

"So it be," returns the other--"Him and his ... Oh ah! but I was a-most forgettin'. I allus liked that dog"; and Job Nutt waved his hand.

All knew it. Contrary to what is generally supposed, certain items of news circulate rapidly among farm-folk.

XIII

It was only a dog.

Perhaps so.

The fact does not forbid the familiar question that rises always at certain hours to the mind of man, and will continue to do so till time shall cease, whether his friend take human or only canine form in life:

"But his spirit--where does his spirit rest? It was God that made him--God knows best."

In truth, there is no answer to this question--"Whither?" And thus it is that we are compelled to leave it according to our habit when we are at fault, and much as the poet leaves it here. In the case of the man, we think we understand. In that of the dog, our difficulty appears to defy solution: it is no question of argument, assertions are idle, dogma has no place. On the one hand we have those principles that come to man's aid, but of which it would be unbecoming now to speak. The vast majority of Christian men are enabled to ride out the storms of life without confidence wholly giving way, and with the first of sheet-anchors fixed in what is felt to be the best of holding ground. When, however, we turn to the possible future status of the dog, there is no sheet-anchor, and the holding ground is indifferent. Yet, in considering the case of the man and the dog, we are not left without a certain measure of support equally applicable to both. The spirit definable as the immediate apprehension of the mind without reasoning--the spirit of intuition--aids us on either hand. "We are endued," as Bishop Butler tells us, "with capacities of perception"; and these enable us to accept much that lies outside the actual region of proof, because our inner consciousness tells us that we are not altogether on a false track, and that truths, if half hidden, yet, of a certainty, exist in the direction in which we are making earnest search.

We necessarily suffer here, as always, from the tendency that makes the wish the father to the thought; or, in other words, we not infrequently shovel the unpalatable overboard, that we may lighten the ship, and ride out this or that squall without quite so much strain upon the sheet-anchor aforesaid. The majority of mankind believe, and will continue to believe, most staunchly in what they wish to believe. Yet this tendency on our part--visible as it often is in directions where we should least expect to find it--does not necessarily prove our beliefs false, while it also leads us not infrequently direct to truths, however unorthodox our course may have appeared to lookers-on.

In considering, then, the question of the possible future existence of our canine friends, the dominant feeling is commonly this: We believe that a future, in great probability, exists for them, because we feel that not to believe this would be to turn the whole scheme of the universe, as we understand it, into one little short of nonsense. We do not stop to reason: such things are because they must be; they cannot cease to be without total disfigurement of the plan of our conception. Intuition points, and almost impulsively perhaps, in one direction. There is "an intelligent Author of Nature or Natural Governor of the world." Life is not made up of haphazards. Eventually there will be happiness in completest form: otherwise there would be injustice, and of this, life, as we know it, affords little or no evidence. For happiness to be complete, there can be no question of the songs we are to hear being indifferently harmonised, there can be no rifts in the lute: in a state of perfection imperfections must necessarily be imperceptible.

With our narrow, human limitations we are driven to conclusions naturally circumscribed and coloured by those limitations. We are cognisant of the narrowness of the field of vision allowed us, and we are perpetually made aware that we are beating our wings against the bars; but we nevertheless accept this or that conclusion because it satisfies our souls, or we refuse to accept it because we cannot honestly confess that it does so. Yet, once again, behind both acceptance and rejection there is something further--that intuition and power of perception that enable us to find satisfaction in inferences that we know lie outside questions of faith, but which we nevertheless feel to be true. And the very fact that we are enabled to derive this satisfaction and to feel that our conclusions have an element of truth in them tends to confirm us, rightly or wrongly, in our conjectures.

Thus we come deliberately to the opinion that dogs will have a place in the land over the border. Such an opinion may be a bold one; but there is reason for believing that it is somewhat widely held. We naturally tend to materialise when we build up our several pictures; but we sin here, if at all, in the best of company. The city that lay foursquare, and that is described to us in the vision in the Island of Patmos, was of pure gold, with walls of jasper and gates of precious stones, and had within it trees and birds and many divers animals, and material things of greatest beauty, besides the figures of innumerable angels. The description could not have been otherwise drawn if it was to be grasped by the mind of man, even to a limited extent. So with ourselves. To conceive of a world with all the attributes of beauty yet without flowers is impossible. To realise a world full of music and song yet without birds may be possible, but transcends the powers of most minds. To attempt to believe in the happiness of a world where companionship is to be looked for and reunion is promised, yet where the companionship of dogs is denied, is to strain the belief of some to the uttermost and not improbably to fail.

"Nor," writes Bishop Butler in his immortal treatise, "can we find anything throughout the whole analogy of nature to afford us even the slightest presumption that animals ever lose their living powers; much less, if it were possible, that they lose them by death: for we have no faculties wherewith to trace any beyond or through it, so as to see what becomes of them. This event removes them from our view. It destroys the sensible proof, which we had before death, of their being possessed of living powers, but does not appear to afford the least reason to believe that they are, then, or by that event, deprived of them. And our knowing that they were possessed of these powers, up to the very period to which we have faculties capable of tracing them, is itself a probability of their retaining them beyond it."

When Robert Southey looked for the last time on his old friend, Phillis--and there is a bitter difference on such an occasion between looking upon the young and the old--he tells how often in his earlier days this dog and he had enjoyed childish sports together, and how, later on, when hard times overtook him, he found delight in recalling the faithful fondness of the friend in the distant home, and longed to feel again the warmth of his dumb welcome. Then, when the old dog is at last dead, and there has come a severance of these precious associations, he breaks out with:

"Mine is no narrow creed; And He who gave thee being did not frame The mystery of life to be the sport Of merciless man. There is another world For all that live and move--a better one! Where the proud bipeds, who would fain confine Infinite goodness to the little bounds Of their own charity, may envy thee!"

When we turn to the first of all books, the dog certainly appears to receive harsh treatment. The term "dog" is invariably one of reproach. Goliath cursing David asks, "Am I a dog?" Abner exclaims, "Am I a dog's head?" St. Paul refers to false prophets as dogs. In the Psalms the dog is found to be synonymous with the devil; in the Gospels it stands for unholy men. Evil-workers are dogs; a dog is the equivalent of a fool; nothing is lower than a dog, and nothing is to be more abhorred. Finally, there is that hardest sentence of all--"Without are dogs"; as though any hope for dogs was entirely forbidden. It is the same throughout: the depraved of mankind are dogs, and the very acme of possible reproach and contempt is apparently to be found in the use of this one term. Abandon hope;--without, are you who are dogs!

But is the use of this term "dog" to be taken literally? There seems to be ample evidence that it should not be. The very extravagance of the language raises a doubt at once, just as the grotesqueness of the application of the term shows that the dog itself could never have been meant. St. Paul speaks of false prophets as dogs because of their impudence and love of gain--characteristics hardly to be attributed to the animal itself. The term "dead dog" was the most opprobrious to which a Jew could lay his tongue; when David endeavoured to convey to the mind of Saul that the persecution to which he was subjecting him was a dishonour to himself, he asked him whom he was pursuing; was he pursuing "after a dead dog"? If, as Horace has it, "death is the utmost boundary of wealth and power," it is surely no less so of pursuit.

Then again, in the Psalms, David writes, "Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power of the dog"; in other words, the devil. All dogs are not good dogs, though all dogs are good dogs to their respective owners; but no dog can possibly be classed as we find him here, or as the very image and likeness of the most depraved and debased of mankind as we find him elsewhere. He is incapable of these sins; he does not fall into these errors.