Читать книгу Lassie Come-Home - Eric Knight - Страница 11

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The next day Lassie lay in her pen, the early summer sunlight streaming on her coat. Her head rested on her paws. It was pointing in the direction that Sam Carraclough and his son had gone the evening before. Her ears were lifted, thrown forward, so that, although her body was at rest, her senses were awake to any sight or sound or smell that might mean her masters were returning.

But the afternoon was quiet. There was the hum of early bees in the air, the smell of the damp English countryside. That was all.

The afternoon deepened, and Lassie began to stir. There was some impulse warning her faintly. It was indistinct, indefinable, perhaps as when an alarm clock rings to disturb but dimly a still-sleeping human being.

Lassie lifted her head suddenly and scented the breeze. But this did not give her any quieting answer to the vague stirrings within her.

She got up, walked slowly toward the kennel, and lay down in the shade. That did not bring her any ease. She got up again and went back to the sun; but that was not the answer. The curious urging in her mind drove more strongly. She began walking about the pen, circling around, walking by the stout mesh-wire. The force within her drove her to walking round and round, going circle after circle about her cage. Then in one corner she halted, and with her paw she clawed the wire.

As if that were the signal, now she suddenly understood her desire. It was time! Time to go for the boy!

It was not that she thought this plainly, as a human being might. She knew it only blindly. But the impulse held her entirely and drove everything else away from her feeling or awareness. She only knew that it was time to go to the school, as she had gone every day for so many years.

She clawed vigorously at the wire, but she made little impression. Memory told her she had escaped there before, clawing, tearing at the wire, then digging and squeezing underneath, lifting with her powerful neck and back muscles so that she could be free.

But Hynes had cut off that path to escape. He had reinforced the mesh of the pen with even stouter wire, and had driven stout stakes of wood into the ground beside it. No matter how Lassie clawed and fought it was no use. As if her defeat and the passing of time forced her to even more energy, Lassie raced about inside the pen. She scratched at places where her instinct told her there might be a path to safety, but Hynes had reinforced them all.

Frantically she lifted her head to bark in frustrated anger, and then, tentatively, she reared and stood on her hind legs against the wire, looking up.

If you could go under a thing, you might go over it!

Dogs can know these things not by logical thought processes, or because someone has told them it must be so. Even the very smartest dogs know them only slowly and by hazy instinct and by training they have had in their own short lives.

So, dimly, and then more clearly, the new idea came into Lassie’s mind. She leaped, and fell back again. The fence was six feet high, much too high for a collie to leap. A greyhound or a borzoi could have sailed over it easily. Dogs have been bred through the years to develop types for varying needs. Collies are of that group called working dogs, raised for centuries to work with man, to understand his words and signs, to be intelligent and to help him, and in these things they excel; but they cannot leap or race as can other types of dogs that have been perfected for these qualities alone.

Lassie’s leaping, therefore, brought her nowhere near the top of the wire. She turned back the length of her pen and raced in a running start, but each time she fell back.

It seemed impossible, but with the courage and persistence of a good animal, she tried again and again, leaping at different spots, as if one place might be more accessible than another.

And one place was!

She jumped right at the corner, where the mesh joined at a right angle, and, while she was in the air, her driving hind legs found some support in the angle of the fence.

She tried again and this time, almost like a man climbing a ladder, she scrambled higher in a wild flurry of energy. She was almost at the top, and then she fell back.

But she had learned quickly. She turned and ran again, this time held against the angle of wire by her own driving rush. Her feet clawed at the wire in that instant when the force of gravity was overcome. She struggled higher and higher, and her front paws reached the top. For a single second she hung there. And then slowly she pulled herself upward. She teetered a moment, uncertainly. The top of the wire clawed at her belly. But she did not feel it. Only one thought was in her mind. It was time, the time to keep faith at a meeting place.

She launched herself out and dropped to the ground outside the pen. She was free!

Now that she had achieved it, it seemed that all angry energy had left her. She had a clear way, yet instinct drove her to a new action. As if she knew that she would be captured again if she were seen, she moved warily as a dog can when it is hunting or being hunted.

With her belly close to the ground, she slid across the path silently to the rhododendron thicket. The heavy foliage swallowed her. A second later she was gliding like a ghost in the shadow of a wall far away. Her memory of terrain, like that of most animals, was perfect. She went silently, but with amazing speed, to a spot where the wall ended and the iron-paling fence began. There was a hole under the fence there that she had found before. She slid through it.

As if she understood that this was the limit of a sort of enemy territory, her way of going now changed. She became normal again. She trotted calmly, her head erect, her full tail flowing behind in a graceful continuation of the curving lines of her body. She was just a glorious collie, trotting along happily, going through a routine of life without fuss or excitement.

Joe Carraclough had never expected to see Lassie any more. After he had bidden her stay, after he had scolded her for running home, he had really believed that she would never come to meet him any more at school.

But somewhere, down far in the depths of his hopes, he had dreamed of it, without ever believing his dream would come true. And when he came from school that day and saw Lassie waiting, exactly as usual, he felt that it was not true—he was only living in his dreams.

Then slowly she pulled herself upwards.

He stared at his dog, his broad, boyish face full of amazement. Then, as if his silence were a sign that her behavior had been worthy of disapproval, Lassie dropped her head. She wagged her tail slowly, asking forgiveness for the unknown sin she had committed.

Joe Carraclough dropped his hand to touch her neck.

“It’s all right, Lassie,” he said slowly. “It’s all right.”

He did not look at the dog. For his mind was racing, going far, far away in thought. He was remembering how, twice before, he had brought his dog home. And yet, despite all his hopes and pleadings, she had been taken away.

So he did not hurry gladly toward his home this time. Instead, he stood, his hand resting on the neck of his dog, his forehead wrinkled as he tried to puzzle out this problem of his life.

Hynes thundered at the cottage door and walked in without waiting for an answer.

“Come on, where is she?” he demanded.

Mr. and Mrs. Carraclough stared at him, and then their glances turned toward each other. The woman, with troubled eyes, seemed to pay no attention to Hynes.

“So that’s why he’s not home!” she said.

“Aye,” the man agreed.

“They’re together—him and Lassie. She’s got away again and he’s afraid to come home. He knows we’ll take her back. He’s run away with her so’s we can’t take her back.”

She dropped into a chair, and her voice became unsteady.

“Oh, my heavens! Shall I never have any peace and quiet in my home? Never any peace any more.”

Her husband rose slowly. Then he went to the door. He took his cap from the peg and went back to his wife.

“Now don’t thee worry, lass,” he said. “Joe’ll not have gone far, just up on the moors he’ll head. And he won’t get lost—both him and Lassie knows the moors too well for that.”

Hynes seemed to ignore the despair of the people in the cottage.

“Now, come on,” he said. “Where’s that there dog o’ mine?”

Slowly Sam Carraclough turned to the little man.

“That’s what I’m off to find out, isn’t it?” he said mildly.

“Well, Hi’ll just go along wiv yer,” Hynes said. “Just to make sure there ain’t no monkey business.”

For a moment, a great anger surged in Sam Carraclough, and he strode toward the other man. Hynes quailed quickly.

“Now don’t ye start no trouble,” he piped. “Ye’d better not start no trouble.”

Carraclough stared down at the smaller man, and then, as if scorning one so beneath him in size and spirit, he went to the door. There he turned.

“Ye’ll just go right home, Mr. Hynes,” he said. “Thy dog’ll be back to thee, just as soon as I find her.”

Then Sam Carraclough went out into the dark evening. He did not go to the village. Instead he went up the hill on the side street, until he had reached the great, flat table-land that stretched, foreboding and bleak, for mile after mile over the Northern country.

He tramped forward steadily. It was soon dark, but as if by instinct his feet kept to the lightly worn paths which men had made in the hundreds of years of their going and coming over the wild country. A stranger might soon be lost in that land where there seemed no landmarks for guidance, but not any of the village men.

All their lives—when children at play—they had learned their country. They knew every inch of the moorland, and a twist in a path spoke to them as surely of their whereabouts as a street sign on a corner does to a city dweller.

Surely then, Joe’s father strode, for he knew where to look for his son. Five miles over the moor the land broke into what was an island in the flatness, an island of outcropping rocks, great sharp-edged blocks which looked much as if in some strange long ago a giant child had begun to pile up building-block towers and then had deserted the game while it was only half finished. For it was there that the village people often wandered in their hours of trouble. The gaunt, forbidding rock towers, with their passages and caves, formed a place where one could sit in the vast silence and puzzle upon the problems of the world and of life without being disturbed by anyone.

And it was there that Sam Carraclough strode. He walked steadily through the darkness. The night rain began sweeping over the moor, fine and mist-like and insistent, but he did not slacken his step. At last the stone pile half loomed in the dark. And then, as his feet stepped on the first echoing stones, Sam Carraclough heard a sharp bark—the bark of a dog on watch, sounding a warning.

Climbing up on a path he remembered well from his own childhood, the man went toward the sound. And there, in the lea of a rock that sheltered them from the drive of the rain, he found the dog and his son. For a moment he stood, and there was only the sound of his breathing. Then the man said:

“Come, Joe.”

That was all.

Obediently the boy rose, and in miserable silence he followed his father. Together with the dog they went along the paths over the tangled heath grass, the paths they both knew so well. When they were near the village again, his father spoke once more.

“Go right home and wait up for me, Joe. I’m taking her back to the kennels. Then, when I get home, I want a word with thee.”

What that “word” would be, Joe knew well. He knew he had offended the life of the family by running away. And how deeply that offence had cut his parents by the actions of his mother, he fully realized when he reached the cottage. She did not speak as he took off his soaking coat and set his shoes to dry by the hearth. She set food before him, a bowl of steaming tea. But still she did not speak.

Then, at last, his father was back again, standing in the cottage, his stern face glistening with the dampness of rain, and the light of the lamp cutting sharp reflections over his nose and cheekbones and chin.

“Joe,” the man began, “tha knows what tha’s done wrong by running away wi’ Lassie—done wrong to thy mother and to me?”

Joe looked steadily at his father. He lifted his head and spoke clearly.

“Aye, Father.”

His father nodded and took a deep breath. Then he put his hands to his waist and unbuckled his thick leather belt.

Joe watched silently. Then, to his surprise, he heard his mother speaking.

“Ye’ll not,” she cried. “I say ye’ll not.”

She was standing now, facing his father. Joe had never seen his mother quite like that before. She was standing there, face to face with his father. She turned quickly.

“Joe, go right upstairs to bed. Off ye go.”

As Joe went obediently, he saw her turn back to his father and speak clearly.

“There’s things to talk of first,” she was saying. “And I’m off to speak ’em right here and now. I think it’s time someone did.”

The two were silent, and then as Joe passed his mother on the way to the stairs, she took him by the shoulders and for a second smiled into his face. She pressed his head quickly against her and then, with a kind motion of her hand, pushed him toward the steps.

As Joe went upstairs he was wondering why it was that grownups sometimes were so understanding, just when you needed them most.

The next morning at breakfast nothing was said of the matter while his father was there.

Joe remembered that after he had gone upstairs the night before, long after he was in bed, his father and mother had talked. Once he had wakened to hear them still talking below. In the stoutly built cottage he had not heard the words—only the sounds of the voices: his mother’s urgent and persistent, and his father’s, low and rumbling and patient.

But when his father had finished breakfast and had gone out, Joe’s mother began:

“Joe. I promised thy father I’d talk to thee.”

Joe bent his gaze to the table and waited.

“Now tha knows tha did wrong, lad, doesn’ta?”

“Aye, Mother. I’m sorry.”

“I know, but being sorry afterwards doesn’t help at the time, Joe. And it’s very important, for tha mustn’t worry thy father. Not at this time, tha mustn’t.”

She sat, plump and motherly, at the table, looking into Joe’s face. Then her gaze seemed to go beyond him.

“Ye see, things ain’t like what they used to be, Joe. And ye must remember that. Thy father, well, he’s got a lot on his mind these days with things as they are. Tha’s a big lad now, tha’s twelve years old—and tha’s got to try to understand things as if tha’s more grown up.

“Now, it’s hard just now making things go right in a home. And it does take a lot to feed a tyke, to feed it properly, that is. She had a very good appetite, Lassie did, and it’s hard work to feed ’em properly these days, things being as they are. Now do ye understand?”

Joe nodded slowly. In a way he half understood. If grownups could only see it the way he did, he wanted to say that. But his mother was patting his arm, patting it with the hand that was so clean and shiny and plump, the hand that kneaded the bread and moved so quickly when there were stockings to knit, and that danced over the needle when there was darning.

“That’s a good lad, Joe.”

Her face brightened.

“And happen some day, things’ll all be changed again—and it’ll be like old times again—and then, first thing ye know, we’ll get another dog, shall we?”

Joe did not know why, but it seemed as though the oatmeal were stuck in his throat.

“But I don’t want another dog,” he cried. “Not ever. I don’t want another dog.”

He wanted to say too:

“I only want Lassie.”

But he knew somehow that this would hurt his mother. So instead he took his cap and ran from the house, down the street to where the others were going to school.