Читать книгу The Openers of the Gate - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 5

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If I measure the events of this story by the effect they have had on my own life and beliefs they seem to me stupendous in their simplicity, but what they will mean to others I cannot guess. Only I know that, when I gave the stark truth of these flashes of insight (for so I will call them) to a man well qualified to estimate their value from the material and psychic angles, he considered a moment and said: “I can well understand that it might be distasteful to you to give the public the facts, and yet when one remembers how the world at present is trembling on the verge of realization of the undiscovered continent of the superconscious faculty in man I believe that every atom of reliable evidence should be added to the common stock. And I think it the more in your case because of the very unusual way in which what we call the lower consciousness of animals was involved. Therefore, though you have not asked my opinion on this point, I say, ‘Write it down. It is a true record.’”

That decided me. It may mean as much to some others as it did to me.

I will be brief with the preliminaries but some are necessary. Two people were concerned, my distant cousin, Helen Keith, and myself. She married as a very young girl, and her husband had died after ten years of a very unhappy marriage. She had no children. I am unmarried, a doctor by profession, my name James Livingstone. I scarcely need name myself, 2 however, for, though the great results are mine also, the story is hers.

She had a charming little house near Tetford, the lawn sloping down to the Thames, and there, after release from her miserable bondage, she settled down to shape her life as best she might into some semblance of future hope and happiness. My practice was in one of the western suburbs of London lower down the river and my chief pleasure when I got a spare hour was to motor over and sit under the great trees on her lawn, watching the river glide by in the eternal serenity, and there talk the sun down the sky in the harmony of perfect understanding. I know there were people who said it would be a very suitable arrangement if we married some day—she was only thirty when her husband died, I thirty-eight. But I also know that such a thought never occurred or would have occurred to her nor at that time to me. We possessed the treasure of an equal friendship—rare enough, God knows, between a man and a woman—helped by the touch of kindred blood, and she with her wretched memories of marriage would have shrunk with horror from the notion; the bird set free has no yearning for the cage—while for myself my profession engrossed me body and soul.

I had made some mark with work on the endocrine glands, had written a monograph which attracted notice, and it was Helen’s opinion as well as mine that I might yet climb out of the ruck and do some useful stuff. Marriage had no more interest for me than psychology, and if I could put it more strongly I would. But Helen and her life interested me enormously. She was so bruised, so wounded in the battle, that I wondered sometimes if she would ever regain heart and hope and march onward as man or woman should. 3 She had fallen by the wayside, and the world went by her. From the medical point of view too it was interesting; one of those obscure cases of jangled nerves which are most difficult of all to deal with because there are hardly any pronounced symptoms. The only really definite one was insomnia—you could see that in the feverish brightness of her eyes and a twitch sometimes of the eyelids. Beautiful eyes, brave, honest, and kind, in a white intellectual face with sensitive mouth and chin, but they had a tortured look still, if one caught her off guard. Otherwise she lived her life like other people, had her friends and saw enough of them to escape the reproach of eccentricity and, I hoped, was gradually beginning to take peace of mind for granted.

Yet I doubted. She could interest herself in nothing; she—with exceptional intellectual gifts, with money enough to set her free from material fetters, with health behind it all, as I was assured, if only one could touch the hidden spring and set the nerves working smoothly again. But, there seemed to be no point at which she could take hold of things.

I came over one Sunday afternoon of many to Tetford and found her sitting under the great sweeping beech, staring at the river where the boats went up and down with happy young people gay as flowers, whose dresses and blazers made bright reflections in still water. The lily-leaves swayed gently in the little bights, and bulrushes stood on guard along the banks. The meadows on the other side glittered like cloth of gold sheening into cloth of silver with buttercups and daisies. A blackbird sang divinely from among flaming rhododendrons. It was a perfect setting for perfect content and yet—her book had fallen on the grass, and with chin propped on her hand she saw no beauty, no peace, only the nightmare of the past.

She stared and looked up smiling as I brushed over the lawn, but the smile did not deceive me.

“Helen,” I said, flinging myself on the grass beside her with my hands under my head so that I could look up into the towering green above me, “I’ve been thinking of you. Not in my honorary capacity of cousin, but as an eminent medical gent, and I say you can’t go on as you’re going. Did you sleep two or four hours last night? Be honest!”

She evaded details.

“Not brilliantly, but enough. It’s surprising how much less sleep one can do with than most people think. And it isn’t half bad in a way. The night goes so quickly—there’s such a lot of interesting things to think of. If only one weren’t rather tired in the morning, there’s no other drawback.”

“Exactly. But that being so we can’t go on living on capital. Now I’ve come down with a definite proposal.”

“I hope it’s not a proposal of marriage,” she said gaily. “Only yesterday old Mrs. Lowther told me that was the clear intention of Providence as regarded us both. Will people ever learn the noble and simple art of minding their own business?”

“Well—why should they? It amuses them and doesn’t hurt us. Old Lowther lives in a perpetual drama of other people’s imaginary adventures. She’d die of her own company if she didn’t. But what I wanted to say is this. We’ve often agreed that ‘The Way of All Flesh’ is probably the cleverest novel written in English, haven’t we?”

“Yes—and what’s the proposal? A sequel in collaboration? You’d much better stick to the endocrine glands.”

“Gowk! Do you remember that the hero goes through a beastly experience which simply leaves him 5 drained and flattened out? His doctor gives some very remarkable advice: ‘He’s not strong enough to travel. I should take him to the Zoo. The animals have the most remarkable curative effects. I don’t recommend the influence of the felines. They are apt to be too stimulating, but the larger mammals, such as the elephants and greater bovines, are immensely soothing.’ I haven’t got it right—I’m mixing my own notions up with Butler’s—but the point was—”

“The point appears to be that I’m to ride up and down the Zoo on elephants. Well, Jim, I won’t. So now you know.”

I liked Helen’s laugh. It pleased me even more than the blackbird’s song. The worst was that one heard it so much less often.

“You idiot!” she added. “Every word of that stuff is pure irony and excellent irony at that. I’ve often enjoyed it.”

“I’m not so sure. I think Butler’s right and that the society of animals is the most soothing in all the world. Look at the shepherd in poetry. Look at the milkmaid with diamond eyes and cheeks of rose! Look at the hunting horn and the gay tally-ho!”

“Yes, and so nice for the hare and the deer!” she said sarcastically.

“‘We’ll all go a-hunting today

All nature looks smiling and gay—’

so let’s go out and kill something. Why not a little blood in the picture!”

I raised myself on my elbow and protested.

“I aspired neither to elephants nor hunting for you. What I was leading up to was simply that I should like you to have a dog. I believe in dogs. They’re gentlemen.”

“When they’re not ladies. Well, I respect animals. I’d die to save them from cruelty, but I neither know nor understand them. I’ve never lived with them. And I don’t like soulless things about me. It’s bad enough to have no soul myself. I don’t want to see my mortality repeated on a lower scale. It’s tragic to me.”

This was an old story. Helen had no instinct of immortality, no blind belief in a spring after the winter of death. Nor for that matter had I. We both had had our upbringing in families priding themselves on a scientific view of life and no nonsensical theories. My father had liked to call himself a Positivist, though I never troubled my head as to what that might imply beyond the agreeable fact that we never went to church. If Helen had not been in much the same case to start with I can imagine that her life with Moray Keith would have pretty well killed any spiritual romance in her. But I could not agree that it bore on dogs one way or another.

“My dear Helen, you’re talking crass nonsense. What have souls got to do with it! A dog’s the best company in the world, bar none, and that quiet non-intrusive kind of companionship is just what you want.”

She would only ridicule me.

“If I can’t have an elephant—but I really almost could on this lawn, and he would just love wallowing in the river!—why not fall back on a dog, you think! No, thank you. I’d almost as soon adopt a baby. I believe you get fond of dogs and then they die in about a year. I prefer to have all my troubles under my own hat.”

So we argued and she was obstinate and the talk drifted to other things. But each time I came down her eyes were brighter and more wearied, and she could interest herself in nothing. Each time she dragged 7 herself more tragically through days that must be endured, facing life as if all were well, but crippled—crippled!

“If only you had a touch of genius or anything like that!” I said one day with more anxiety than flattery. “Then you’d put things at their right values. You’d see Keith isn’t worth a curse, much less a memory. But you’re so confoundedly commonplace.”

I wanted even to make her angry if I could. But she took that smiling too. Then more seriously.

“Jim, I have a genius for one thing and yet in that I’ve always been a mute inglorious Milton and I expect to die unhonored and unsung. But I really have a genius for loving, as sure as you sit there. I could be someone else and make them me. But that’ll never come off.”

If it couldn’t there was no use discussing it. I waved that aside. I was not fool enough to suggest the usual tonic and a little gentle distraction of the mind. So it lapsed and I grew yet more anxious about her ultimate recovery of the instinct of happy living. And then a remarkable thing happened.

But before I go on to that I pause to hope I have made it clear that we were neither of us people with an ounce of what are called psychic instincts or promptings. If I have not, I must put it clearly on record that there was nothing of the kind. Helen had rather a cold critical intellectuality. I was just what I have described. And now for the beginning.

Once in a way she would coax me to a theater in London, and then I would motor her home and return to my own diggings. On this particular night the play was excellent, and we had enjoyed ourselves to the full. I remember we came out laughing and I suggested supper at Prince’s and she agreed; and I left her standing 8 on the edge of the pavement while I hunted for a taxi in the throng. Suddenly there was confusion and a general hold-up of traffic; I heard shouts and a woman screamed near me, and I made my way back hot-foot to where I had left Helen, and she was gone.

I could not even dimly imagine what had happened nor where to look for her. She might have forgotten something in the stalls and have gone back. In my bewilderment and with the crowd hurrying past it seemed safer to stand where I had left her until she appeared. And then to my consternation the crowd parted, and Helen emerged from the street, her white dress torn and stained, her wrap gone, clasping something in her arms.

“Good God, what on earth is it? Where have you been?”

“It’s a dog!” she gasped. “A puppy. It was right under a taxi and I swung it out and fell down. Do let’s get away! Look at the crowd.”

“But are you hurt? My dear old girl!”

For she was white as death, and the bystanders were very much inclined to cheer her for a regular sport. The London mob loves pluck and it likes a dog. A crowd was certainly gathering and a swift getaway in a taxi strongly indicated. We achieved it.

“Little brute! You might have killed yourself. Will you swear you’re not hurt?” I said indignantly when we were bowling along.

“Honest Injun! And he isn’t hurt either. Look here!” she said.

She showed me the smallest black Scotch terrier I had ever seen. How such an infant contrived to be wandering in the Strand at half past eleven will never be known. At least we never found out. Helen declared when she knew him better that it was his audacious 9 pluck and curiosity which had sent him out into the world to seek adventures when the rest of his family were nestling (figuratively) under their mother’s wing in a padded basket. That seemed probable enough. He had the look of it now, though trembling all over with nerves and amazement.

He was evidently a gentleman of the bluest Scotch blood, perfect, with sharply pricked velvet ears, bright wise eyes, large head, and quaint little sturdy legs, the promise of a square well-set body—every point as it should be; and I speak with authority for I know a bit about that breed. I liked the look of him, the feel of him, the minute I saw the creature.

“Well, you have never ceased bothering me to get a dog. Now I’ve got him. The gods have spoken. And the first result is that we can’t go out to supper. I look as if I’d been in a drunken scrap. And, good heavens! where’s my wrap? I never thought of it till now. See what it is to have a dog!”

She would not be serious, but as a matter of fact it was rather a splendid thing to have dashed into that whirl of cars for the small scrap of life in her arms. I doubt if I should have done it myself. I stated that fact judicially.

“Oh yes, you would! He’s so ridiculously small, you see. You never would have let him go under just because he wanted to explore. The courage of the thing! What shall we call him?”

“Then you mean to keep him! But he’s a valuable little chap. I don’t know whether we shouldn’t advertise. . . .”

“I do,” she said decisively. “If he was valuable to them they shouldn’t have let him be parading the Strand at night. I’m—well, I’m damned if I advertise. He’s mine.”

I noticed she was holding him up so that he lay with his head on her bare breast. It seemed the soft contact pleased her. I withdrew the motion about advertising and suggested “Sandy.”

“Yes—that will do. Sandy.” She repeated it in a voice with a new note in it. I suppose if one has saved a life—even a dog’s—at the risk of one’s own it may mean more than a little to one. Anyhow it was clear that the gods knew best. I took them home and still she held him to her breast.

I pass on to the next time I went over to Tetford. Sandy had made good. She said he had reconnoitered the house and garden and decided they would do. There was indeed everything to recommend them. The lawn was a velvet couch for dreaming in the sunshine, and the trees here and there were full of promise for investigation and scuffling rushes. There was a rabbity paddock at one side of the garden from which nothing but a bowl of milk would coax him, so did it fascinate the hunter in his queer little scrap of a body. Then also he was a born swimmer and even in those first gropings of exploration had tried to dash into the river to what Helen believed would be a watery grave, and had spoiled a second dress as she hauled him out. Delicious secrets were evidently hidden for him in the clumps of rhododendrons, and when at last, exhausted with adventure, he collapsed upon the grass with a pink tongue extended disclosing teeth as white as new ivory, it needed no words to assure her that his cup was full. He asked no more of life. She told me the story of these first days with a kind of amazed interest—amazed that such a trifle should have got hold of her. But it had with a vengeance!

She had a tendency at first to call him the elephant and to assure me that she found the presence of such 11 a huge mammal inexpressibly soothing. It had been exactly the right prescription! Well, she might laugh but it was true. From the minute that dog entered the house she was a changed woman, and I had only to stand aside and watch the miracle of love. I own it interested me enormously, for I had never seen her under that especial sway before—there had been only decorous family affections and then a marriage of terror and repulsion. Now—well, even from the medical point of view it was interesting. I was not a little proud of my intuition and began to think there was something to be said for her theory that she had a genius for love. I must have sensed that truth unconsciously. Her old nurse, Mrs. Bramham, who adored her, proposed at first that Sandy should sleep in the kitchen in the character of a watch-dog. His size made him ridiculous from that point of view in any case, but I saw Helen’s eye harden with resolve.

“No, Brammy dear. He means to sleep on the foot of my bed. I saw that the minute he walked into the bedroom. I should have put my foot down then, but I forgot to. We’ll have to put up with it.”

“But, heavens above, Miss Helen—you that can’t sleep as it is! You’ll never get so much as a wink! A nasty dog picked up in the street!”

She sat down on the floor and he scrambled into her lap, and the two looked up at Mrs. Bramham—who saw it was a lost cause and shook her head groaning audibly. I also had misgivings on that head I own. A lively puppy is scarcely the bedfellow for an insomniac.

Yet when I next came over—and I came oftener, from curiosity, and to see my treatment through—Helen assured me that she had slept like a top after the first night. That had been a terror.

“He had so much to see to that he was scuttling up 12 and down the bed and burrowing under the pillows all the time, getting to know his way about, you see. He had to do that before he could settle down. And once he fell off the bed with a fearful plop and I thought he was done for. Then I tried to make him take his milk and we spilled it and broke the basin. It was a perfect Walpurgis Nacht of horrors, and Brammy nearly preached me to death next morning, for I was a wreck. But after that—mark you! the very next night—he curled up at the foot of the bed and never stirred till six nor did I. And it’s been the same ever since. Look at me!”

I looked. Her eyes were beaming—no tension in the light of them. The strained pucker between the eyebrows was gone. There was the indescribable radiation of happiness that indicates health alike of body and mind, and her lips and cheeks bloomed like the flowers in the garden. The little miracle-worker sat looking gravely up into her face, and she snatched him up, struggling for freedom in her arms, while she asked triumphantly:

“Was it worth dashing into the taxis to save such a worthless little bit of goods? Was it?”

And I answered yes, with fullest conviction.

Now here I must indicate the extraordinary love that bound those two together because it bore on what followed. Night or day they were never separated. Wherever Helen went, Sandy went. Even on shopping days in London he followed, but on his leash for safety. Whether she read or wrote he was at her feet. When she punted or paddled on the river he had his cushion in the stern. Even in his garden and meadow adventures she must follow or he was soon at her feet again. Their walks were heavens of romance to both, for a Scotch terrier is a born scout and he made her one too. 13 In a word, he cured her. I saw the Helen of eighteen again, expectant and glad. And under the influence of this constant human companionship (for as regards other dogs he was a little stand-off and high-brow), intellect in Sandy developed together with his adoration until I solemnly declare I have seen that dog do things that no hypothesis but reason could account for, and highly complicated reason at that. I have seen him think, consider, and act on his thought, and I have known that speech itself could not make clearer either his love or the wishes and resolutions he shaped in that queer, intelligent brain-box of his and proceeded to carry into effect. Sometimes I have wondered whether his very speechlessness did not presage that higher form of communication when we shall desert the clumsy medium of words for something better.

Certainly Helen thought so, and their mutual understanding and contentment was in its way a most beautiful thing to see. I told her frankly one day that there had been a time when I began to think her mainspring was broken and the joy of life past resurrection.

“And look at you now, and you owe it all to Sandy!” I said: “Wasn’t I right? Wasn’t it a resurrection?”

“A thousand times right. But—” She paused on a long sigh. “Isn’t it strange and fearful to think that for all that love there’s no resurrection? My little Sandy will die and it will all be poured out and wasted like spilled water. All that love!”

“No worse than for us!” I answered shortly, “I never yet heard an argument about the mortality of animals that didn’t cut at ourselves too. We have nothing to plume ourselves on. Your love will be as much wasted as Sandy’s, if you come to that. And yet you would give your life for him. You very nearly did, even before you knew him.”

He lay with his head between his paws and bright eyes fixed on his mistress, as though he drank in every word she uttered. That was a favorite attitude of his. I could almost believe he understood and followed our talk.

“Oh yes, I claim no exemption for ourselves!” she said sadly.

“Strange law of every mortal lot!

Which man, proud man finds hard to bear,

And builds himself I know not what

Of second life, I know not where.

No, I’m not so weak as that. Sandy goes out like a blown-out spark and I too. Well—let us live and love, for tomorrow we die. Only—I wish I might go first!”

“And what for Sandy then?”

“I did think of your taking him. But I knew even that wouldn’t console him. I’m a poor thing, but his own. So I’ve put it in my letter of instructions that you’re to give him the mercy of sleep and then we’re to be burned together. Tell me, Jim, did you ever see the roses so lovely as they are this year?”

I knew she shied at the subject from sheer inability to face her own position if the order of the exit should be reversed. And indeed I myself—and here the medical man comes in again—was very apprehensive of what might happen in a nature so highly strung as hers, keyed by fate to such suffering, if such a thing were to be.

There are so many possible tragedies, you see, in those strange little mysterious lives lived so close beside us. I used to watch Sandy (and indeed I myself loved the wise little creature) frolicking about the lawn in the winning clumsy way those Scotch terriers have, and think how quickly the scene might change. He had his 15 adventures too—the day when a bull-terrier attacked him, and the little Scotchman stood up to him game as a rat and took his punishment like a man, until Helen, badly bitten herself, dragged the bulldog off and carried home her little warrior dripping blood along the road. But—it might have ended otherwise, and then what? I did not like to think. They were all in all to each other. Could one say more of God or man? Love is a queer thing. I have learned a lot more about it since then.

Reflecting, I brought her a present I knew she would dislike at first though from me she would not refuse it—a beautiful big Alsatian puppy, a harmony in cream and brown deepening into black on the back, with noble mask and keen ears and eyes, taut and alert in every nerve-cell. There is no dog more beautiful and faithful nor a better guard to his own people, and after the bull-terrier episode I thought Fritzel’s care might not be amiss. She accepted him graciously and he was adopted straight into the family. After a while she said:

“Jim, I love Fritzel with all my heart. But Sandy and I are one. Do you see the distinction? I decipher Fritzel’s mind from the outside, but I live in Sandy’s brain. You would not believe it—no, not even you!—if I told you how I can be in touch with him and he with me. Something far more intimate than words. Look now. I’ll call him.”

He was rollicking round the paddock far away—a gentleman at his hunting and naturally engrossed. The grass ran down to the river bank and there were alluring water-rats among other attractions too many to be told. That paddock was his happiest hunting ground of all, and his business interests there growing daily.

She put her hand over her eyes and sat very still for a second, the other hand lifted for silence. In a moment 16 came a nearing rush and he was at her feet, panting, staring up into her eyes for instructions. A strange thing to see. In a moment more his round black paws were on her lap, his tail wagging furiously. Then he was off again, her eyes following him.

“I called him with my mind,” she said. “I discovered that quite accidentally one day when I wanted him. And he can call me. If he were in difficulties now I should know; isn’t it strange? Do you believe in telepathy, Jim?”

“Certainly. There are all sorts of queer mental byways unexplored as yet, but I’m not sure I’ve heard of an animal case. I should like to see you do that again: it may have been chance.”

“Oh no, it wasn’t. I do it often. But Sandy has taken me in hand. You haven’t been here for so long that you don’t know the new development,” she said. “You know there’s a crêche in the village for the kiddies whose mothers work in the factory at Felton. Well, I couldn’t help thinking how they’d like the lawn and Sandy and Fritzel, and so a woman brings up the three- and four-year-olds twice a week and we all have a great time. I’ve got to know some of the mothers too. Fritzel is perfect with children—and as for Sandy!” Words could not express that perfection.

We discussed it at great length, and again it interested me profoundly. She was opening out in so many ways—I could see the heart of universal compassion growing in her—that heart which brings understanding of all the world, and is to my mind the highest form of human development. I could give singular and beautiful instances of the effects I noticed of this, as more and more the dogs brought her in touch with the humanity about her. But I must come to the stranger parts of my story. I have given indication enough to show what they sprang from.

Four years had passed since Sandy’s arrival. Fritzel had grown into magnificence. A dog may have beauty as noble as that of a lion or an eagle and he had it all. He was a very present help in the troubles that the little Scotchman’s indomitable courage often invited, and the three walked abroad secure. My mind was at ease about them as it had never been yet. But be Fritzel what he would—and Helen loved the ground he walked on—their brains and hearts were not interwoven as were hers and Sandy’s. He would lie on her knees sometimes, looking up at her in a mute communion and interchange beyond any speech. They understood each other in the most intimate and beautiful fashion I have ever seen. Love had worked its miracle, and that atom of life had rebuilt Helen as doctors and philosophers could not. A singular thing to watch.

Then came the end. An agonized telephone from Helen:

“Sandy is dying—poisoned. I have the vet here, but for God’s sake come.”

I raced down, but I could do nothing. I will not describe the scene. I have no wish to play upon emotion and there are things that pierce me still when I recall them. The last convulsion came and she sat with her head dropped upon the little stiffening body. I shall never forget her face when she looked up then. Her words startled me:

“I saw an idiot child at the crêche yesterday. If God can do that—and this—who can forgive him? Is there any law anywhere at all in all this hell?”

I pass this time over. Again I have no wish to write emotionally and it was too pitiful for any words. I stayed that night, for it seemed to me that she might relapse into her old listlessness, and that Fritzel and I were her only safeguards.

It was then with senses sharpened by anxiety that I began to notice singular things about Fritzel. He had been devoted to Sandy—no closer dog-friendship ever existed, and they had formed certain habits which had all the authority of routine. Every morning after breakfast they trotted off side by side into the paddock to call upon the water-rats and other interesting families, and they allowed half an hour for this invariably.

Now on the morning after Sandy’s death he stood in the dining-room by Helen as we finished breakfast, bewildered, looking about him, looking up at her, like one lost in a world unknown. It touched me more than I like to say, coupled with her hopeless look of pain.

Suddenly I saw him turn to the French window open on the lawn. He froze into attention as if someone were coming up the drive. Do you know that amazingly beautiful attitude of suspense in a dog, when with head erect and one paw held up he thrills from nose-tip to tail-tip with hope and expectation? We watched him in amazement—there was no one he welcomed like that.

A breath of roses blew in at the window and ruffled the curtains. Fritzel’s paw dropped. He laughed all over his face, his tail wagged delightedly. He leaped to the window and was gone.

“So soon to be happy—to forget!” Helen said brokenly. “Sandy wouldn’t have—” But she could not finish the sentence. I went out and watched. Fritzel was hunting round the paddock in his usual way, alive with interest. He came back in about half an hour, found his mistress under the beech tree and lay down beside her. But again I noticed a curious thing—it is a part of my trade to watch seeming trifles. He had had a way of lying that made a hollow for Sandy’s repose, and there they would doze in a heap of warmth and tranquil comfort, all tangled up together. He stretched out in the 19 same attitude now, with of course the difference that it exposed the thinly haired under-part of his body to the air—a thing a dog always avoids if possible unless in very warm weather. Helen noticed it too. She pointed at him.

“Poor Fritzel—dear Fritzel! I was wrong. He doesn’t forget. But that’ll soon pass over. It will be cold in winter without the little one and the fire will take his place. Well—we must do the best we can for each other, old boy.”

Before I left that day I had seen Fritzel do another thing which I thought the most extraordinary of all.

Their dinners had always been brought out and put a little apart in two basins on the veranda. Each took his own in perfect confidence that there would be no interference, and when that delightful moment ended they went down a certain path that led to the river, and then sat together under the beech tree waiting for Helen.

Now when the solitary dinner was brought out Fritzel looked about him with the bewildered air of the morning. He walked up and down the veranda, hesitated, ate a little, nosed a bone out of the way, walked about again evidently much perturbed, then returning ate a large share of his dinner, leaving a portion untouched, and went slowly down the path to the river.

“He doesn’t care for his food today. Take it away, Mary,” Helen said slowly. She had eaten nothing herself.

“No, leave it,” I said quickly. From the window we could see Fritzel sitting under the beech where so much of Helen’s life was passed. Twenty minutes and more went by. Then suddenly he came leaping back with great arrowy bounds, his feet scarcely touching the ground, and so into the veranda. He finished his dinner hungrily, 20 took possession of the bone and went off with it to the tree. I think Helen was disappointed in him. I, on the contrary, was constructing a possible drama in my mind. Which of us was right?

After that I did two things. I came over to Tetford whenever I could spare the time and I got certain of the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research and began to consider them, and when at Tetford I divided my watch between anxiety for Helen and interest in Fritzel.

Of Fritzel I cannot enter into all the details which carried conviction to my mind that he was leading exactly the life he had lived with Sandy and that he saw and interpreted things on a different plane of being from our own. But I saw it in his every movement. All Helen’s habits were riven by the change and loss. None of Fritzel’s. She stooped under a growing weariness though she continued the little pleasures for the children and so on because she felt she owed them to her memory of Sandy. All else which merely appeared to concern herself she dropped. Fritzel on the contrary had dropped nothing. He was content. It may seem a kind of folly thus to analyze a woman’s mind side by side with a dog’s, but knowledge comes by many paths, some of them little more than tracks. Knowledge was my aim now and then, and I was trailing Fritzel.

I was all this time profoundly interested in the literature of the Fourth Dimension—that singular world which is our own but which cannot be seen or realized through the blinding, distorting medium of the five senses. It has always been a vague traditional belief among the peasantry of many nations that animals have the faculty of seeing spiritual apparitions, and even in the Bible occurs the celebrated instance of Balaam’s ass who was so much less asinine than his master. Have 21 certain animals anything of the Fourth Dimensional outlook which is denied to reason but open to the subconscious? I seriously asked myself whether, looking to our utter ignorance of the working of a dog’s consciousness, I should prove myself a lunatic if I entertained the hypothesis that Fritzel was still conscious of some impress, if I can so put it, of Sandy’s presence.

I would not say anything about it to Helen, for her wound still bled, and she was sleeping badly again, relapsing slowly into the state from which Sandy had rescued her. On that head I had a right to real anxiety, but I understood her, and Fritzel I could not. The one appeared to me blind, the other awake and aware. There were perpetually times when he would get up and smile (you know the delicious smile in a dog’s eyes) and stand with uplifted paw, and after giving the welcome, settle down into peace at Helen’s feet, when we could see nothing and yet I would swear he hailed a friend. The weirdest thing to watch, and yet breathing joy and security. I would have given more than I was worth to get behind his brilliant eyes and see with him. I began to know it would have meant a voyage of discovery to wider realms than man has sized up as yet. I asked myself perpetually, did she notice all this? Could it escape her? Amazing that it should!

At last came a letter from Helen:

“My dear Jim, I am writing on a subject that may bore you, but I know your endless compassion—and who has tested it more than I. So here goes! I am beginning to think I did Fritzel an injustice. I thought he cared so little when Sandy went—I have sort of undervalued him ever since. To see Sandy forgotten was more than I could bear. But once or twice lately—I had better tell you what happened last night. You know Fritzel has slept in the upper veranda into which 22 my bedroom opens. He never moves at night. You could not tell he was there. But last night—I could not sleep and I am ashamed to say I was crying and very lonely, when suddenly he pushed the door open and came in. He walked straight to my bed, put his paws on the side and so stood, looking not at me, but at the place where Sandy always slept, wagging his tail and smiling. Then he lifted one paw and laid it on the very place (you remember how he would touch Sandy like that in the garden?) and so stood for a second talking—you know the way they used to talk to each other?—and then dropped on the floor and went off to the veranda satisfied. Now this sounds a trifle to you. You will laugh! But something in the way it all happened made me ask myself whether it could be possible that life once lived in a house leaves some kind of emphasis behind it—not, of course, survival in any spiritual sense—which a dog can realize? I seem to have read some such theory somewhere. Tell me if you have ever heard of that kind of thing. I can easily see it might be only memory. Or even perhaps a sense of smell—or some quite natural explanation. Do tell me what you think.”

I told her I had noticed the thing from the very beginning and had watched with the utmost interest because I felt certain something was going on beyond our comprehension and well worth following up, but that her explanation did not, I thought, meet the case nor the intermittent character of Fritzel’s manifestations. I said I should prefer to defer giving my own until I had studied the subject more deeply, and ended by begging her to watch and make notes.

This she did, and I have those notes lying before me now. They are far more acute than mine, for a woman of Helen’s type brings intuition to aid observation, and 23 her knowledge of the dogs and their ways was far closer.

She came to the definite conclusion that Fritzel thought he was not alone. He still, at close intervals but not continuously, enjoyed the companionship. But the odd thing was that she drew no deduction from this of life-persistence. Sometimes she would call it “idealized memory” or “a kind of reflex action of the brain cells” and so forth. I, reading and thinking steadily forward into the new worlds of psychology opening on the dazed eyes of materialistic science, felt all this to be a little—shall we say?—unenterprising, more especially as I passed her notes on to a man working high and far along the line of indications of the higher psychology, and his flashing interest in Fritzel’s problems enlightened my own. I have already mentioned this friend of mine.

It was about six months after Sandy’s death that Helen was taken very ill with influenza. In reality it was grief plus a germ. She had never been herself since her loss. The moment the news reached me I went over and saw Dr. Marsham, who had the case in charge, and gained his permission to look in when I would and consider with him the turn it took. I knew we were in for a battle.

Mrs. Bramham knew it too.

“I wish Miss Helen had never seen that dog!” she wept to me. “You couldn’t help loving the thing—it had such a way of its own, and she was never one to do things by halves. She’ll kill herself over it yet. Why, even that Fritzel has more sense! He don’t fret nor worry about it. If Miss Helen knew half what was going on in that dog’s head she’d have more sense than she has.”

This was a dark oracle and I asked for more, but 24 Mrs. Bramham was very shy over what would be called “the superstitions of the lower classes.”

“Animals knows things we don’t. Just like we knows things they don’t.” Which was so incontrovertible that it ended the discussion.

Influenza took Helen in its manifestation of high fever at first and utter exhaustion later, and I thought she would slip through our hands. Dr. Marsham and the very excellent night and day nurses thought the same. The day came when I may say I was sure of it.

Fritzel had been permitted to go in and out of the room all the time, partly because his perfect training made it possible, partly because it was evident that Helen suffered in his absence. Briefly, we regarded him as one of her slipping holds on life.

On that afternoon I was in the room with the nurse, Fritzel lying beside the fire, the room in full daylight reflected upwards on the ceiling from a great fall of snow outside—a desolate landscape with the river running black through it. Helen lay in a white exhaustion. Nurse had taken pulse and temperature and silently showed me the result. I will not dwell on what I felt—reason told me it was a question of hours. We stood by the wide window and waited. There was nothing more we could do.

Suddenly and silently Fritzel rose to his feet and went towards the door. It was closed but not shut—I mean it was not ajar. There he stood gazing at it steadily, one paw in air, ears stiff as iron with intensity of listening, quivering from head to foot in the dead silence. I had the impression that he might break out into a great cry, and held my will against his that he should not, for I feared to move lest it should excite him more.

Nothing of the kind happened. The door seemed to move a very little ajar as doors sometimes do of themselves, 25 and instantly Fritzel relaxed into joy. Not a sound, not a movement, but joy unmistakable, at gaze, watching, glad. At the same instant Helen raised herself in bed, white as death, radiant.

“Sandy, Sandy!” she said, and fell back on her pillows again.

I thought it was death and the perception that sometimes comes with it, and was at her side in a moment—nurse at the foot of the bed. The light flashing up before extinction—that was in my mind. But she opened her eyes on me.

“Lift him. He’s trying but it was always too high for him. Lift him, Jim.”

I went as if in a dream to the other side of the bed. Fritzel’s eyes led me to where Sandy would have been standing, supposing—! I passed nurse to do it and shall never forget her expression.

There, because Helen’s eyes were on me, I stooped and made the motion of lifting something that stood with paws on the bed struggling to get up. And, as I did it, she opened her arms and made a place for him and laid her cheek over where his head would have been, and so convincing was the drama that for an instant I believed I saw him myself. That Fritzel did I cannot doubt. He went back satisfied and silent and lay down by the fire.

Now what I am going to say is as true as truth and yet I can scarcely find words for it. I felt no weight as I lifted, but I felt something in my hands which I can only describe as life. Something vital. A man of my profession may recognize the faint vibration of life under the very mask of death, but it was not with knowledge or reason that I knew this thing. It was by that new quality beginning to bud in me which I called the extension of consciousness. For the instant it struck 26 me dumb. I had lifted life and laid it by Helen. I knew it but understood nothing. The thing was—that was all you could say.

Then instantly reason reasserted itself in us both, and we busied ourselves with her. Nurse gave her a restorative. Her pulse was stronger. Her attitude was one of rest not of collapse.

An hour went by and still she lay content. She had not moved and we dared not shift her. But there was a glimmer of hope.

After Dr. Marsham’s visit, nurse, an educated young woman, whispered to me in the firelight:

“That was the most wonderful thing I ever saw, doctor. Can you explain it?”

I could answer nothing. I had not adjusted my mind. But I assert this: when she left the room for a moment and I stood at the foot of the bed looking down on Helen, now asleep, I declare as solemnly as man can speak that I saw Sandy’s bright eyes looking out at me from under the shelter of her cheek.

It has been said by a great Indian thinker that when one meets a true ghost one is never frightened—fear denotes that the appearance is only imagination. I believe the reason of this would be that being ourselves a part of the psychic we cannot fear it, whereas phantoms created by the imagination may be monstrous and alien as the skeleton shadows of tree branches flung on snow, not having any relation of truth to us at all.

Before I leave this part of my story I wish to state that I acquired the power of focusing so that I could see the dog when I would. Call me insane if you will, but remember that when we chatter of consciousness it is in the first place a word more misused than any other, and in the second that what we ordinarily call consciousness is nothing but a film thin as tissue paper between 27 the depths of the subconscious and the heights of the superconscious. It is little surprising then that human beings should now and again tear a way through it by which they pass to one or the other of the vastnesses above and below.

I knew now that Helen would recover and awaited her revelation with indescribable interest. She had never uttered a word about Sandy from the moment of her cry of “Lift him.” She was for a long time weak as water and what was passing in her mind I could not tell. But the double life of the dogs went on about her, and focusing, as I have said above, I could see (whether with my eyes or no I cannot tell) that they were together and went and came as naturally as in life. With one exception. Sandy would disappear on his own occasions for hours together, but where, I never could tell. There was always Fritzel’s delighted welcome when he returned. I have the impression and give it for what it is worth that Fritzel did not understand these absences, had no part in them and disliked them. But this is guesswork. I saw Sandy constantly lying on Helen’s bed, and Fritzel conscious that he was there and satisfied. Of this there is no doubt.

It was not until spring had come and Helen was able to be in the veranda that I had any real talk with her, and by that time I had much advanced in knowledge of the difficult subject I was studying. Nurse was still with her but she strengthened every day, and it interested me when I could go over—which was not very often—to see how her eyes dwelt on Fritzel, and his passion of devotion in response. That increased steadily. He was taking up Sandy’s lead and developing immensely in reason and needfulness. I began to have hope that he might yet be her life-belt as Sandy had been.

On this particular May day the sun was shining and 28 it was warm as June. She lay on a sofa in the veranda propped high on pillows with something soft and white flung over her. Sandy lay at her feet, his head on his paws, his eyes fixed on her face, Fritzel on the ground within reach of her hand. I thought she had acquired a most touching and spiritual beauty—but I will not dwell on that, nor on the first part of our talk. I pass straight on to what I waited for.

“Jim, do you know why I recovered?” she asked at last. “I was slipping straight down into death—and by the way never let anyone be afraid to die!—I—I liked it.”

“They never are when they reach that point. It’s the lookers-on who get up the wind,” I said.

“Well—I hope so. Anyway I was all but there, when—can you guess?”

I said nothing. I was not going to color her story with any reflection of my own. She went on.

“I saw you and nurse like figures in a dissolving dream. You were ghosts to me. The door opened and Sandy came in. He stood up and put his paws on the side of the bed next the door—he never could get up alone because it was too high for him. So I don’t know what happened, but in a minute he was in my arms. I felt his heart beat. He was much more real than you and nurse. He lay there thinking love to me exactly as he used to do. A dream—but it cured me. So don’t laugh it to scorn.”

A dream! And as she said his name Sandy raised his head from his paws and was “thinking love” to her under her very eyes! I could almost see the vibrations passing from him to her. It was very strange. I sat in the presence of a truth she could not see and that concerned her most intimately. And I saw it and she could not. She went on.

“When I woke up he was gone, but I knew I should live. A line of Shakespeare’s haunted me—‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.’—I wish you could know how real that dream was. You have been so kind and patient with me about Sandy.”

I considered a moment. “Do you happen to remember if Fritzel was in the room?”

“Yes—yes—” she said, hesitating as if fishing for a memory. “I think he was near the door. Yes, I am sure. And in the dream he knew Sandy was there.”

“As you say in your notes he had often seemed to do before?”

“Yes, I had forgotten the notes. But, yes. Was he there really?”

“He was lying by the fire and got up and went towards the door,” I said.

A long pause. Then very slowly:

“Jim, did I speak in my dream? Is there anything you can tell me? All, except Sandy, was like moving in a thick white mist. He seemed real.”

Again the dog looked up. He moved slightly, and curled up with his head against her foot in an exquisite attitude of trust. I saw that. God knows what thoughts flashed through me of the wonders about me to which I myself was blind—the clues everywhere about us for the picking up; we moving through them confident and arrogant in our blindness!

I told her exactly what had happened. It was taking an emotional risk, but I saw her mind was questing weariedly and restlessly. I chose the lesser evil and spoke. I did so with no emotion or exaggeration of any kind; flatly, if I may use the term. She stared at me with her soul in her eyes.

“Jim! You say you felt him. Have you gone mad? And you saw him later? What is one to believe? For 30 if that were true—there is no such thing as death. Do you know what you’re saying?”

“Certainly I know. There is no such thing as death. The body comes and goes; the soul never comes or goes; it includes all the universe in itself. It is the universe.”

“But a little dog—a little dog!” she repeated wonderingly. “Oh, Jim, how you have changed!”

“Yes, I’ve changed. You think in terms of time and space, Helen, and I think in very different terms now. I have at all events a shaft of light shining into my darkness—and I owe it to the dogs.”

I changed the subject then. She had had enough for mind and body and I knew she must do her own thinking. No one else can do it for one. She made me promise to come again when I could, and I left the three with an extraordinary longing to come back and get into closer touch, if I could, with the Mysteries. Not the least of them to me was that she on whom such love was lavished had felt only the back-wash of the wave and still took it as a dream. I put that to the man who had read her notes on Fritzel. He answered:

“She loves intellectually not absolutely. She can’t forget herself and that is not the right approach. The dogs love her with utter faith and absorption. They never think of themselves, and are her in the deepest sense. They couldn’t lose touch with her if they tried. That’s one of the reasons, though there are others, why the bond between man and dog is forged of steel. Dogs understand—no, feel—no, are—the very essence of love m a way to which very few men and women attain. Does that wound your pride? It needn’t. Very strange forces and mystic states are involved in the relation of man to animals, as they know in Asia. But in that of man and dog most of all.”

He said more, which I will not record here though 31 it impressed me profoundly with its truth and beauty. He ended with what he called a hit at a prophecy.

“I believe that when Fritzel goes your cousin will not survive him long. The two will draw her. Sandy has been doing it steadily, as love will, and he nearly won. The two together will succeed. I don’t mean in the least that she would die of grief. You understand better than that now. They will want her to go on with them. She will go. What we call death not infrequently happens in that way. They will go on educating her.”

Again he said more that I shall not repeat because of the simplicity of its high truth. That obscuring simplicity stands in the way of much revelation, for men will have the long words and complicated processes if they are to give the tribute of even a passing belief.

Helen remained in ignorance. The outlines of the “dream” blurred a little into vagueness for her, though it remained always the most beautiful memory of her life. My vision she attributed to “the nervous tension of the moment.” “One understands so well,” she said sadly, “how anything can be imagined at the moment of eternal loss. I know that when my Sandy went—unless I had held my mind very steady I could have believed any wildest possibility. But I am where I was, though I wish I could dream again!”

I said no more—what use? I never told her that when I went to Tetford I always saw Sandy at her feet, watching her with the worship of a perfect devotion. Once, unseen by her, I tried to touch the velvet of his ears as his head lay against her dress, but as I did it he blurred and was gone like a reflection in water when a stone is flung, returning at once when it settles into calm. I loved him, but his concentration was not for me. I could not touch him.

So she went on grieving when she might have lived 32 in sunlight. For one thing, she never recovered her health after the influenza. And it was a shock she could ill stand when one day quite suddenly Fritzel died in his sleep beside her. Sandy had won his friend back, and Fritzel had pulled with him. They wanted to be together without the stupid limitations of this dull three-dimensional world of ours. I could understand that well enough now. I grew a little tired of them myself.

But I remembered my friend’s prophecy and knew what to expect. They were always about her after that, happy, eager, like dogs who stand sentry at the door for a walk, hearing the beloved footstep coming down the steps, knowing that perfect delight awaits them. It was astonishingly beautiful to see their eagerness and expectation. They were tense with hope. I could hardly forbear telling her, assuring her, every time I came, but her sad fixed unbelief held me back. Helen needed so much education, but that I could not give her. I knew it was in store for her now, and soon.

The day before she died I was with her. She lay with Sandy at her feet and Fritzel standing in the veranda outside and looking in as if to entreat her to come out and romp in the paddock or swim in the river.

“Why do you lie there all the stupid day, beloved,” he said with his eager eyes, “when all the world is before us? Come out—out, and have done with it all! Have you forgotten how lovely it is in the wide open? We want you. Come! It’s heavenly out here.”

The dog glittered with energy and invitation. You have seen it yourself on a happy day when the dog you love drags you out and will take no denial. But this was intensified tenfold. It ran through me like bright spring sunshine. Little Sandy, more patient, lay awaiting his moment tense and confident, his eyes fixed on her.

“Jim,” she said faintly, “I’m dead tired of being ill and a nuisance. I crave to be out in the open and blow in the wind over a great moor like a bit of thistledown. Can I? Shall I? Is it a dream? You’ve got so much further than I. Tell me.”

“That and better,” I answered. “And with the dogs.”

“The dogs!” she said with a note of weary wonder. “I believe you believe they’re here. I wish I could. I wish I could!”

I did then what I could not have done before. The moment had come and I cannot tell how I knew it but I knew. I did a thing and with a result that I never could have imagined. I put my hand on hers and clasped it. I sent my will through her eyes, saying, “See!”—in the inmost of my being. And I saw perception run through her just as when the sap runs up a bough like wine and the leaves thrill with life. She raised herself and looked at the window.

“Fritzel!” she said. “Fritzel! Yes—soon—soon! And Sandy!” As he sprang into her arms, she looked at me like one stunned with revelation. “You knew and you didn’t tell me. Oh, thank God—thank God!” I won’t dwell on it. It was a passion of recognition. Let that suffice.

She died next day. Died: what a word for the supreme reality! But so, I suppose, it must be stated until we acquire the new language with the new wisdom. For myself, life goes on to its inevitable developments. I am a busy man in my profession and I find this inward knowledge adds much to my usefulness. We are only beginning on the psychic side of medicine but its promise is vast. I could tell so much more, but here I must call a halt. Of all subjects this is one where one must be guarded.

I shall not marry, for the woman I loved is not dead 34 as far as I am concerned. Only two evenings ago I pulled down past her house by the river. Other folk live there now and the garden is tended and happy. But as I neared it I allowed the boat to drift past as I always do that I might watch Helen running and laughing in the meadow opposite like a girl, with Sandy leaping about her and Fritzel circling them both with his great arrowy bounds—the perfection of grace and strength. She ran to the edge of the bank and waved her hand to me smiling, and the dogs stood at gaze beside her with welcome in their eyes. I drifted on and the sunset, less radiant than they, absorbed them into radiance.

I envied them.

“But we like sentries are compelled to stand

In starless nights and wait the appointed hour.”

And I have seen and known. I have the Key of the Fields and the time will not seem too long though I could wish it shorter.