Chapter 4

I think it was then that the idea occurred to me that here was a miraculous chance of securing the sweetest girl in the whole world, and at the same time atoning for my wrong by bringing back gladness with me to Shuturgarden. It only needed a little boldness; one last deception, and I could embrace truthfulness once more.

Almost unconsciously, when my guide turned round and asked, “Is that there dawg yourn?” I said hurriedly, “Yes, yes; that’s the dog I want; that--that’s Bingo!”

“He don’t seem to be a-puttin’ of ‘isself out about seein’ you again,” observed Mr. Blagg, as the poodle studied me with calm interest.

“Oh, he’s not exactly _my_ dog, you see,” I said; “he belongs to a friend of mine!”

He gave me a quick, furtive glance. “Then maybe you’re mistook about him,” he said, “and I can’t run no risks. I was a-goin’ down in the country this ‘ere werry evenin’ to see a party as lives at Wistaria Willa; he’s been a-hadwertisin’ about a black poodle, _he_ has!”

“But look here,” I said; “that’s _me_.”

He gave me a curious leer. “No offence, you know, guv’nor,” he said, “but I should wish for some evidence as to that afore I part with a vallyable dawg like this ‘ere!”

“Well,” I said, “here’s one of my cards; will that do for you?”

He took it and spelled it out with a pretence of great caution; but I saw well enough that the old schoundrel suspected that if I had lost a dog at all it was not this particular dog. “Ah,” he said, as he put it in his pocket, “if I part with him to you I must be cleared of all risks. I can’t afford to get into trouble about no mistakes. Unless you likes to leave him for a day or two you must pay accordin’, you see.”

I wanted to get the hateful business over as soon as possible. I did not care what I paid--Lilian was worth all the expense! I said I had no doubt myself as to the real ownership of the animal, but I would give him any sum in reason, and would remove the dog at once.

And so we settled it. I paid him an extortionate sum, and came away with a duplicate poodle, a canine counterfeit, which I hoped to pass off at Shuturgarden as the long-lost Bingo.

I know it was wrong,--it even came unpleasantly near dog-stealing,--but I was a desperate man. I saw Lilian gradually slipping away from me, I knew that nothing short of this could ever recall her, I was sorely tempted, I had gone far on the same road already; it was the old story of being hung for a sheep. And so I fell.

Surely some who read this will be generous enough to consider the peculiar state of the case, and mingle a little pity with their contempt.

I was dining in town that evening, and took my purchase home by a late train; his demeanour was grave and intensely respectable; he was not the animal to commit himself by any flagrant indiscretion; he was gentle and tractable too, and in all respects an agreeable contrast in character to the original. Still, it may have been the after-dinner workings of conscience, but I could not help fancying that I saw a certain look in the creature’s eyes, as if he were aware that he was required to connive at a fraud, and rather resented it.

If he would only be good enough to back me up! Fortunately, however, he was such a perfect facsimile of the outward Bingo that the risk of detection was really inconsiderable.

When I got him home I put Bingo’s silver collar round his neck, congratulating myself on my forethought in preserving it, and took him in to see my mother. She accepted him as what he seemed without the slightest misgiving; but this, though it encouraged me to go on, was not decisive--the spurious poodle would have to encounter the scrutiny of those who knew every tuft on the genuine animal’s body!

Nothing would have induced me to undergo such an ordeal as that of personally restoring him to the Curries. We gave him supper, and tied him up on the lawn, where he howled dolefully all night and buried bones.

The next morning I wrote a note to Mrs. Currie, expressing my pleasure at being able to restore the lost one, and another to Lilian, containing only the words, “Will you believe _now_ that I am sincere?” Then I tied both round the poodle’s neck, and dropped him over the wall into the colonel’s garden just before I started to catch my train to town.

I had an anxious walk home from the station that evening; I went round by the longer way, trembling the whole time lest I should meet any of the Currie household, to which I felt myself entirely unequal just then. I could not rest until I knew whether my fraud had succeeded, or if the poodle to which I had intrusted my fate had basely betrayed me; but my suspense was happily ended as soon as I entered my mother’s room. “You can’t think how delighted those poor Curries were to see Bingo again,” she said at once; “and they said such charming things about you, Algy--Lilian particularly; quite affected she seemed, poor child! And they wanted you to go round and dine there and be thanked to-night, but at last I persuaded them to come to us instead. And they’re going to bring the dog to make friends. Oh, and I met Frank Travers; he’s back from circuit again now, so I asked him in too to meet them!”

I drew a deep breath of relief. I had played a desperate game, but I had won! I could have wished, to be sure, that my mother had not thought of bringing in Travers on that of all evenings, but I hoped that I could defy him after this.

The colonel and his people were the first to arrive, he and his wife being so effusively grateful that they made me very uncomfortable indeed; Lilian met me with downcast eyes and the faintest possible blush, but she said nothing just then. Five minutes afterward, when she and I were alone together in the conservatory, where I had brought her on pretence of showing a new begonia, she laid her hand on my sleeve and whispered, almost shyly, “Mr. Weatherhead--Algernon! Can you ever forgive me for being so cruel and unjust to you?” And I replied that, upon the whole, I could.

We were not in the conservatory long, but before we left it beautiful Lilian Roseblade had consented to make my life happy. When we reentered the drawing-room we found Frank Travers, who had been told the story of the recovery; and I observed his jaw fall as he glanced at our faces, and noted the triumphant smile which I have no doubt mine wore, and the tender, dreamy look in Lilian’s soft eyes. Poor Travers! I was sorry for him, although I was not fond of him. Travers was a good type of rising young common-law barrister, tall, not bad-looking, with keen dark eyes, black whiskers, and the mobile forensic mouth which can express every shade of feeling, from deferential assent to cynical incredulity; possessed, too, of an endless flow of conversation that was decidedly agreeable, if a trifling too laboriously so, he had been a dangerous rival. But all that was over now; he saw it himself at once, and during dinner sank into dismal silence, gazing pathetically at Lilian, and sighing almost obtrusively between the courses. His stream of small talk seemed to have been cut off at the main.

“You’ve done a kind thing, Weatherhead,” said the colonel. “I can’t tell you all that dog is to me, and how I missed the poor beast. I’d quite given up all hope of ever seeing him again, and all the time there was Weatherhead, Mr. Travers, quietly searching all London till he found him! I sha’n’t forget it. It shows a really kind feeling.”

I saw by Travers’s face that he was telling himself he would have found fifty Bingos in half the time--if he had only thought of it; he smiled a melancholy assent to all the colonel said, and then began to study me with an obviously depreciatory air.

“You can’t think,” I heard Mrs. Currie telling my mother, “how really _touching_ it was to see poor Bingo’s emotion at seeing all the old familiar objects again! He went up and sniffed at them all in turn, quite plainly recognising everything. And he was quite put out to find that we had moved his favourite ottoman out of the drawing-room. But he _is_ so penitent too, and so ashamed of having run away; he kept under a chair in the hall all the morning; he wouldn’t come in here, either, so we had to leave him in your garden.”

“He’s been sadly out of spirits all day,” said Lilian; “he hasn’t bitten one of the tradespeople.”

“Oh, _he’s_ all right, the rascal!” said the colonel, cheerily. “He’ll be after the cats again as well as ever in a day or two.”

“Ah, those cats!” said my poor innocent mother. “Algy, you haven’t tried the air-gun on them again lately, have you? They’re worse than ever.”

I troubled the colonel to pass the claret. Travers laughed for the first time. “That’s a good idea,” he said, in that carrying “bar-mess” voice of his; “an air-gun for cats, ha, ha! Make good bags, eh, Weatherhead?” I said that I did, _very_ good bags, and felt I was getting painfully red in the face.

“Oh, Algy is an excellent shot--quite a sportsman,” said my mother. “I remember, oh, long ago, when we lived at Hammersmith, he had a pistol, and he used to strew crumbs in the garden for the sparrows, and shoot at them out of the pantry window; he frequently hit one.”

“Well,” said the colonel, not much impressed by these sporting reminiscences, “don’t go rolling over our Bingo by mistake, you know, Weatherhead, my boy. Not but what you’ve a sort of right after this--only don’t. I wouldn’t go through it all twice for anything.”

“If you really won’t take any more wine,” I said, hurriedly, addressing the colonel and Travers, “suppose we all go out and have our coffee on the lawn? It--it will be cooler there.” For it was getting very hot indoors, I thought.

I left Travers to amuse the ladies--he could do no more harm now; and, taking the colonel aside, I seized the opportunity, as we strolled up and down the garden path, to ask his consent to Lilian’s engagement to me. He gave it cordially. “There’s not a man in England,” he said, “that I’d sooner see her married to after to-day. You’re a quiet, steady young fellow, and you’ve a good kind heart. As for the money, that’s neither here nor there; Lilian won’t come to you without a penny, you know. But really, my boy, you can hardly believe what it is to my poor wife and me to see that dog. Why, bless my soul, look at him now! What’s the matter with him, eh?”

To my unutterable horror, I saw that that miserable poodle, after begging unnoticed at the tea-table for some time, had retired to an open space before it, where he was industriously standing on his head.

We gathered round and examined the animal curiously, as he continued to balance himself gravely in his abnormal position. “Good gracious, John,” cried Mrs. Currie, “I never saw Bingo do such a thing before in his life!”

“Very odd,” said the colonel, putting up his glasses; “never learned that from _me_.”

“I tell you what I fancy it is,” I suggested wildly. “You see, he was always a sensitive, excitable animal, and perhaps the--the sudden joy of his return has gone to his head--_upset_ him, you know.”

They seemed disposed to accept this solution, and, indeed, I believe they would have credited Bingo with every conceivable degree of sensibility; but I felt myself that if this unhappy animal had many more of these accomplishments I was undone, for the original Bingo had never been a dog of parts.

“It’s very odd,” said Travers, reflectively, as the dog recovered his proper level, “but I always thought that it was half the _right_ ear that Bingo had lost.”

“So it is, isn’t it?” said the colonel. “Left, eh? Well, I thought myself it was the right.”

My heart almost stopped with terror; I had altogether forgotten that. I hastened to set the point at rest. “Oh, it _was_ the left,” I said, positively; “I know it because I remember so particularly thinking how odd it was that it _should_ be the left ear, and not the right!” I told myself this should be positively my last lie.

“_Why_ odd?” asked Frank Travers, with his most offensive Socratic manner.

“My dear fellow, I can’t tell you,” I said, impatiently; “everything seems odd when you come to think at all about it.”

“Algernon,” said Lilian, later on, “will you tell Aunt Mary and Mr. Travers and--me how it was you came to find Bingo? Mr. Travers is quite anxious to hear all about it.”

I could not very well refuse; I sat down and told the story, all my own way. I painted Blagg perhaps rather bigger and blacker than life, and described an exciting scene, in which I recognised Bingo by his collar in the streets, and claimed and bore him off then and there in spite of all opposition.

I had the inexpressible pleasure of seeing Travers grinding his teeth with envy as I went on, and feeling Lilian’s soft, slender hand glide silently into mine as I told my tale in the twilight.

All at once, just as I reached the climax, we heard the poodle barking furiously at the hedge which separated my garden from the road.

“There’s a foreign-looking man staring over the hedge,” said Lilian; “Bingo always _did_ hate foreigners.”

There certainly was a swarthy man there, and, though I had no reason for it then, somehow my heart died within me at the sight of him.

“Don’t be alarmed, sir,” cried the colonel; “the dog won’t bite you--unless there’s a hole in the hedge anywhere.”

The stranger took off his small straw hat with a sweep. “Ah, I am not afraid,” he said, and his accent proclaimed him a Frenchman; “he is not enrage at me. May I ask, it is pairmeet to speak viz Misterre Vezzered?”

I felt I must deal with this person alone, for I feared the worst; and, asking them to excuse me, I went to the hedge and faced the Frenchman with the frightful calm of despair. He was a short, stout little man, with blue cheeks, sparkling black eyes, and a vivacious walnut-coloured countenance; he wore a short black alpaca coat, and a large white cravat, with an immense oval malachite brooch in the centre of it, which I mention because I found myself staring mechanically at it during the interview.

“My name is Weatherhead,” I began with the bearing of a detected pickpocket. “Can I be of any service to you?”

“Of a great service,” he said, emphatically; “you can restore to me ze poodle vich I see zere!”

Nemesis had called at last in the shape of a rival claimant. I staggered for an instant; then I said, “Oh, I think you are under a mistake; that dog is not mine.”

“I know it,” he said; “zere ‘as been leetle mistake, so if ze dog is not to you, you give him back to me, _hein_?”

“I tell you,” I said, “that poodle belongs to the gentleman over there.” And I pointed to the colonel, seeing that it was best now to bring him into the affair without delay.

“You are wrong,” he said, doggedly; “ze poodle is my poodle! And I was direct to you--it is your name on ze carte!” And he presented me with that fatal card which I had been foolish enough to give to Blagg as a proof of my identity. I saw it all now; the old villain had betrayed me, and to earn a double reward had put the real owner on my track.

I decided to call the colonel at once, and attempt to brazen it out with the help of his sincere belief in the dog.

“Eh, what’s that; what’s it all about?” said the colonel, bustling up, followed at intervals by the others.

The Frenchman raised his hat again. “I do not vant to make a trouble,” he began, “but zere is leetle mistake. My word of honour, sare, I see my own poodle in your garden. Ven I appeal to zis gentilman to restore ‘im he reffer me to you.”

“You must allow me to know my own dog, sir,” said the colonel. “Why, I’ve had him from a pup. Bingo, old boy, you know your name, don’t you?”

But the brute ignored him altogether, and began to leap wildly at the hedge in frantic efforts to join the Frenchman. It needed no Solomon to decide _his_ ownership!

“I tell you, you ‘ave got ze wrong poodle--it is my own dog, my Azor! He remember me well, you see? I lose him, it is three, four days. . . . I see a nottice zat he is found, and ven I go to ze address zey tell me, ‘Oh, he is reclaim, he is gone viz a strangaire who has advertise.’ Zey show me ze placard; I follow ‘ere, and ven I arrive I see my poodle in ze garden before me!”

“But look here,” said the colonel, impatiently; “it’s all very well to say that, but how can you prove it? I give you _my_ word that the dog belongs to _me_! You must prove your claim, eh, Travers?”

“Yes,” said Travers, judicially; “mere assertion is no proof; it’s oath against oath at present.”

“Attend an instant; your poodle, was he ‘ighly train, had he some talents--a dog viz tricks, eh?”

“No, he’s not,” said the colonel; “I don’t like to see dogs taught to play the fool; there’s none of that nonsense about _him_, sir!”

“Ah, remark him well, then. _Azor, mon chou, danse donc un peu_!”

And, on the foreigner’s whistling a lively air, that infernal poodle rose on his hind legs and danced solemnly about half-way round the garden! We inside followed his movements with dismay.

“Why, dash it all!” cried the disgusted colonel, “he’s dancing along like a d--d mountebank! But it’s my Bingo, for all that!”

“You are not convince? You shall see more. Azor, ici! Pour Beesmarck, Azor!” (the poodle barked ferociously.) “Pour Gambetta!” (He wagged his tail and began to leap with joy.) “Meurs pour la patrie!” And the too accomplished animal rolled over as if killed in battle!

“Where could Bingo have picked up so much French?” cried Lilian, incredulously.

“Or so much French history?” added that serpent, Travers.

“Shall I command ‘im to jump, or reverse ‘imself?” inquired the obliging Frenchman.

“We’ve seen that, thank you,” said the colonel, gloomily. “Upon my word, I don’t know what to think. It can’t be that that’s not my Bingo after all--I’ll never believe it!”

I tried a last desperate stroke. “Will you come round to the front?” I said to the Frenchman. “I’ll let you in, and we can discuss the matter quietly.” Then, as we walked back together, I asked him eagerly what he would take to abandon his claims and let the colonel think the poodle was his after all.

He was furious--he considered himself insulted; with great emotion he informed me that the dog was the pride of his life (it seems to be the mission of black poodles to serve as domestic comforts of this priceless kind!), that he would not part with him for twice his weight in gold.

“Figure,” he began, as we joined the others, “zat zis gentilman ‘ere ‘as offer me money for ze dog! He agrees zat it is to me, you see? Ver’ well, zen, zere is no more to be said!”

“Why, Weatherhead, have _you_ lost faith too, then?” said the colonel.

I saw it was no good; all I wanted now was to get out of it creditably and get rid of the Frenchman. “I’m sorry to say,” I replied, “that I’m afraid I’ve been deceived by the extraordinary likeness. I don’t think, on reflection, that that _is_ Bingo!”

“What do you think, Travers?” asked the colonel.

“Well, since you ask me,” said Travers, with quite unnecessary dryness, “I never did think so.”

“Nor I,” said the colonel; “I thought from the first that was never my Bingo. Why, Bingo would make two of that beast!”

And Lilian and her aunt both protested that they had had their doubts from the first.

“Zen you pairmeet zat I remove ‘im?” said the Frenchman.

“Certainly,” said the colonel; and, after some apologies on our part for the mistake, he went off in triumph, with the detestable poodle frisking after him.

When he had gone the colonel laid his hand kindly on my shoulder. “Don’t look so cut up about it, my boy,” he said; “you did your best--there was a sort of likeness to any one who didn’t know Bingo as we did.”

Just then the Frenchman again appeared at the hedge. “A thousand pardons,” he said, “but I find zis upon my dog; it is not to me. Suffer me to restore it viz many compliments.”

It was Bingo’s collar. Travers took it from his hand and brought it to us.

“This was on the dog when you stopped that fellow, didn’t you say?” he asked me.

One more lie--and I was so weary of falsehood! “Y-yes,” I said, reluctantly; “that was so.”

“Very extraordinary,” said Travers; “that’s the wrong poodle beyond a doubt, but when he’s found he’s wearing the right dog’s collar! Now how do you account for that?”

“My good fellow,” I said, impatiently, “I’m not in the witness-box. I _can’t_ account for it. It-it’s a mere coincidence!”

“But look here, my _dear_ Weatherhead,” argued Travers (whether in good faith or not I never could quite make out), “don’t you see what a tremendously important link it is? Here’s a dog who (as I understand the facts) had a silver collar, with his name engraved on it, round his neck at the time he was lost. Here’s that identical collar turning up soon afterward round the neck of a totally different dog! We must follow this up; we must get at the bottom of it somehow! With a clue like this, we’re sure to find out either the dog himself, or what’s become of him! Just try to recollect exactly what happened, there’s a good fellow. This is just the sort of thing I like!”

It was the sort of thing I did not enjoy at all. “You must excuse me to-night, Travers,” I said, uncomfortably; “you see, just now it’s rather a sore subject for me, and I’m not feeling very well!” I was grateful just then for a reassuring glance of pity and confidence from Lilian’s sweet eyes, which revived my drooping spirits for the moment.

“Yes, we’ll go into it to-morrow, Travers,” said the colonel; “and then--hullo, why, there’s that confounded Frenchman _again_!”

It was indeed; he came prancing back delicately, with a malicious enjoyment on his wrinkled face. “Once more I return to apologise,” he said. “My poodle ‘as permit ‘imself ze grave indiscretion to make a very big ‘ole at ze bottom of ze garden!”

I assured him that it was of no consequence. “Perhaps,” he replied, looking steadily at me through his keen, half-shut eyes, “you vill not say zat ven you regard ze ‘ole. And you others, I spik to you: sometimes von loses a somzing vich is qvite near all ze time. It is ver’ droll, eh? my vord, ha, ha, ha!” And he ambled off, with an aggressively fiendish laugh that chilled my blood.

“What the deuce did he mean by that, eh?” said the colonel, blankly.

“Don’t know,” said Travers; “suppose we go and inspect the hole?”

But before that I had contrived to draw near it myself, in deadly fear lest the Frenchman’s last words had contained some innuendo which I had not understood.

It was light enough still for me to see something, at the unexpected horror of which I very nearly fainted.

That thrice accursed poodle which I had been insane enough to attempt to foist upon the colonel must, it seems, have buried his supper the night before very near the spot in which I had laid Bingo, and in his attempts to exhume his bone had brought the remains of my victim to the surface!

There the corpse lay, on the very top of the excavations. Time had not, of course, improved its appearance, which was ghastly in the extreme, but still plainly recognisable by the eye of affection.

“It’s a very ordinary hole,” I gasped, putting myself before it and trying to turn them back. “Nothing in it--nothing at all!”

“Except one Algernon Weatherhead, Esq., eh?” whispered Travers, jocosely, in my ear.

“No; but,” persisted the colonel, advancing, “look here! Has the dog damaged any of your shrubs?”

“No, no!” I cried, piteously; “quite the reverse. Let’s all go indoors now; it’s getting so cold!”

“See, there _is_ a shrub or something uprooted,” said the colonel, still coming nearer that fatal hole. “Why, hullo, look there! What’s that?”

Lilian, who was by his side, gave a slight scream. “Uncle,” she cried, “it looks like--like _Bingo_!”

The colonel turned suddenly upon me. “Do you hear?” he demanded, in a choked voice. “You hear what she says? Can’t you speak out? Is that our Bingo?”