Читать книгу Dogtown - Mabel Osgood Wright - Страница 5

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During all these days Lumberlegs, the St. Bernard, grew mightily. When he was a year old, he looked like an awkward young calf; but when his second year was ended, he had the tawny head of a lioness, and his body, well rounded yet muscular, was in keeping with his huge paws.

When he sat and Tommy stood, their heads were on a level, and when they walked abroad together, Tommy tugging sturdily at his collar to keep pace, they usually had the roadway to themselves, for Lumberlegs was not only the largest inhabitant of Dogtown, but of the whole county, and people made so many remarks about his size that Tommy dubbed him Bigness.

Lumberlegs and Tommy.

These same people predicted that some day there would be a dog fight at Happy Hall when Lumberlegs came to realize his strength, and the feeling of jealousy that comes to a dog with full growth. Surely there was material for both jealousy and a fight. Waddles loved Anne with the sort of love that thinks it owns the object of its devotion; Lumberlegs loved both Tommy and Anne in the same way; while Lily, the bulldog, was devoted to Tommy alone, and deeply resented the coming of Happy, who loved every one, as an infringement of her rights; so that at the time Happy became the mother of Jack and Jill, and consequently an object of much attention, there was a considerable strain upon dog tempers.

At this point fate wisely stepped in as she often does, though tears came with her. Lily broke one of the most rigid of dog laws, the penalty for which is death—she defied an express train! In going with Tommy and Anne to the town she did not follow the road and cross the railway bridge with high safe sides, but lingered by the way, sniffing here and then there until she lost sight of her friends, and took a short cut across the fields that bordered the tracks, running between the rails until she should reach a gap in the guard fence that opened on the road the other side.

It was time for the morning express, the particular train that always whistles as it turns the curve, and thrusts out an iron arm to grab the mail bag, swinging from its gallows, while it drops another bag into a rack beneath.

It was always a puzzle to Tommy as to how the bag was seized without missing, and he often coaxed Anne to wait on the bridge until the train came, as there were little star-shaped openings in the iron work through which he could see.

This morning they had crossed, and then hearing the train turned back. Anne missing Lily looked up the hill for her, while Waddles, who, as a matter of course, was one of the party, trotted soberly along toward the village, where he would wait for his mistress upon the steps of either the market or grocery store, according as he understood her destination.

As the train reached the curve Tommy, whose eye was at the chink, gave a shriek and dashed himself at the barrier, wailing: “Lily, Lily, my Lily! She’ll be killed! O Anne, come quick!”

In reality, by this time Lily had crossed the rails and was quite safe, but her master’s cry made her turn to locate him. Whether she thought he was in pain or danger no one knows, but at that moment the train rounded the curve, whistling furiously. To the bewildered dog it must have been associated with her master’s scream or else sounded like a challenge, for like a flash she turned and charged the monstrous engine face to face. Tommy cast himself face downward on the roadway, his tears making mud of the dust. Anne caught hold of the railing and closed her eyes while the train thundered by underneath. Lily lay quite still high up on the bank; the engine had been quickly merciful.

That afternoon Baldy buried Lily in the corner of the orchard pasture where there was quite a company of pet animals, ranging from canaries, with school slates for headstones, to Brownie, the dear old pony that had belonged to Anne’s mother when a girl, and lived out a happy old age in that very pasture. One thing about pet animals is that their lives at best are so short, that we should treat them very kindly to make up for it.

Some of the neighbours laughed at what they called Unhappy Hall Cemetery, but Anne resented this with a good deal of spirit, saying, “I think that it is very mean to love an animal one day, when it is alive and can amuse you, and then throw it on the ash heap the next, just because it’s dead and can’t help itself.”

Tommy still crying, and remorseful at perhaps having caused Lily’s death by calling her at the wrong moment, insisted upon Miss Jule, and his father, and mother attending her funeral. Anne made a wreath of her best flowers, sacrificing four tea rosebuds and all of her mignonette and heliotrope, but Tommy would have none of it. Instead, he begged two beef bones from the cook, and tying them together crosswise with Anne’s best pink hair ribbon, which she had not the heart to deny him, put them on the middle of the mound, saying between sobs, “She—loved—bones—but—she didn’t like flowers—except to sleep on,” which was perfectly true, her favourite places for a siesta having been alternately the verbena, nasturtium, or lettuce bed.

Tommy’s father and mother were resigned, though they did not say much about it before the children. Complaints had begun to reach their ears that Lily not only felt it her duty to prevent strange people from coming near Tommy, but declined to let them pass by on the road unchallenged; and though they cherished all animals, they never allowed them to become a nuisance or bore those who cared less for them.

Baldy was also resigned and spoke his mind freely, much to Tommy’s chagrin.

As for Dogtown, it was jubilant to the barking point, especially among the lower classes, consisting of those dogs who, being in reduced circumstances, had been used to come shrinking and timid between dusk and dawn for castaway bones or swill-pail dainties.

Waddles was liberal minded upon such matters—as liberal as the law allows. Dog law says that no dog shall dig up a bone that another has buried; but all bones that lie abandoned and uncovered are public property and fair eating.

Waddles, being affluent, never ate swill, and only buried special bones to ripen, casting others about at random, often with scraps of flesh ungnawed; for this he was regarded in Dogtown as the people’s friend.

Lily, in coming, stopped this patronage. She had known want herself, in the days when she tramped with gypsies, so she ranged about, industriously burying everything she found for possible future use, and kept such a strict watch on all the outbuildings that the most ravenous cur dared not steal a lap of sour milk from the pig’s trough for fear of seeing those wide jaws gnashing in front of him; for Lily had the one bad trait of her race: she laid hold without warning.

So after all it was only Tommy who grieved for Lily. To him she stood for property rights, strength, and friendship, and for a time he was inconsolable.

“Let’s come home and see the twins have their supper; it won’t do any good for you to stay here and cry. Your eyes are swelled up like a frog’s, now,” said Anne, trying to lead Tommy away after Baldy and his shovel had disappeared.

“Supposin’ it was Waddles was dead, would you stop cryin’—the very same day—even if you were frogs?”

“Waddles! why that is entirely different; he is a person. There is no other dog like him,” and then Anne sat down suddenly on the tumble-down stone fence in sheer amazement at the possibility of mischance overtaking her little friend.

A friend he was, and she was entirely right—there was no other quite like him among sturdy, self-reliant, gentlemen dogs. He had been so long the companion of the House People that, without being of the objectionable, pampered, perfumed, spoon-fed type of lap dog who demands the care that a child alone should have, he really seemed to be, as Anne said, a person.

Waddles did not know a single taught trick; he could not hold sugar on his nose, like Miss Letty’s poodle, Hamlet; he could not sit up and beg, though he had a language of his own, part gesture, part speech, by which he could ask for anything that he could not get without aid.

In his frisky youth even he scorned the mere idea of jumping through a hoop, or the poodle trick of “saying his prayers.”

Yet there were few walls that he could not manage to get over or through, and he would put his paws upon his mistress’s knees and gaze into her face in unmistakable supplication.

“It’s a great responsibility having a dog like Waddles,” Anne had said one day, shortly after her brother was born, when she had given him half of her name, and stopped being Tommy-Anne, and there had been much talk about her new responsibility. “Do you know, mother, I believe Waddles thinks that I’m God, and it will be dreadful if I’m unkind and disappoint him.”

No, Waddles was untrained and untutored in the common sense of the words, but he “knew,” which was better; his method of treeing cats or coons in company with Miss Jule’s big Ben Uncas, and the fox terrier, Quick, though somewhat reprehensible, was a marvel of military tactics, and it was knowledge of this sort that made and kept him Mayor of Dogtown; for he was the one dog that no other had ever attacked or fought, so it was no wonder that Anne grew grave at the mere suggestion of losing him, though never dreaming that there was really trouble hovering about, and that, too, from a dog of the Happy Hall household and herself.

For a time after Lily’s departure everything was peaceful. Jack and Jill were fast growing able to play and indulge in the wrestling matches that make puppies quick-witted and strengthen their muscles.

Happy often superintended these bouts herself, stirring up first one pup and then the other, often aiding and protecting the under dog if too roughly vanquished. Anne soon discovered that these affairs were not merely aimless play upon Happy’s part, but a way she took for teaching the twins how to protect themselves.

The next step was to teach them to protect their food, and when one day Happy dragged a ripe and well-cleaned beef bone from its hiding-place, and deliberately threw it down between Jack and Jill, and they began a struggle for its possession, Anne in amazement rushed into the house to call the family, crying: “Do come out and see the queerest thing—Happy is teaching the pups to play ‘snatch bone’ exactly the same way as Waddles played it with Lumberlegs when he was a puppy. You’ll really have to see it to believe what I say.” It was more than true, for not only did they wrestle and snatch the bone from one another, seeking in turn to hide it in the grass under a few leaves, but when the frolic was fast turning to a pitched battle, and ludicrous baby growls mingled with flashing teeth from between drawn-up lips, then Happy gave a sharp “yap” that must have meant something very dreadful, for the pups instantly let go and drew apart with a most abject droop of the tail, while she seized the bone, and trotting off reburied it.

Though Waddles seldom forgot his dignity sufficiently to play with the twins, he allowed them to take morsels from his dish, and was always close at hand if their shrill cries told that they were in trouble, and the slightest look from Happy brought him to her aid.

Lumberlegs, on the contrary, delighted to gambol with them, and his clumsy bounds and imitations of their gestures usually ended in his overthrow, when he would lie on his back with a most idiotic grin upon his face, fanning the air with his paws, while the twins gnawed at his great tail with mock fierceness.

Now the race law for puppies and grown dogs is quite different, even as are those laws that govern childhood and manhood among House People. Actions that are tolerated and even encouraged in puppyhood are read as insults when done by a dog of two years, and bear a penalty.

In spite of Waddles’s instructions and warnings, Lumberlegs was either heedless of the law, often deliberately breaking it, or else from his size and strength felt himself superior to it; which it was Anne could never tell. Perhaps it was because he was unevenly developed, for he had all a man dog’s jealousy and craving for the exclusive attention of his owners, while he kept his baby playfulness and total disregard of food rights. So trouble befell one fine day, like rain from sudden clouds that no one has noticed gathering.

After it had happened Anne was continually remembering little things that might have given her warning.

Waddles had a favourite afternoon station on the end of the porch that commanded the front and barn roads, the front door, and the garden also if he turned his head. Suddenly Lumberlegs regularly appropriated this watch-tower, and his length being so great that there was no view from a back seat Waddles, after unavailing verbal remonstrance, was forced to lie upon the grass.

Waddles was the only dog that had been allowed in the dining room at meal times, when he sat quietly under the table at Anne’s feet. Soon Lumberlegs discovered a way of opening the door and he would hide under the table, lying at Tommy’s feet. As he was quiet, and Tommy declared that he made “a fine feet bench,” he was allowed to remain. Consequently Waddles was squeezed against the table’s claw legs and presently left his old place and lay disconsolately upon the door-mat.

When Lumberlegs came, a gift from Miss Jule, he was regarded as Tommy’s property; but when the novelty wore off, and Jack and Jill became counter attractions, he turned wholly to Anne to supply his needs both of food and affection, and became devotedly attached to her as big dogs usually are to only one person; while Anne, though faithful to Waddles, returned his devotion, for he was in many ways a noble dog.

Anne had insisted almost from her babyhood that one of her ancestors must have been an Indian, so fond she was of wild ways and things, and this liking did not decrease as she grew of an age to crave friends of her own race.

She still tramped about the near-by woods, but Miss Letty was often her companion. Also Miss Letty was timorous and made a point of insisting that Lumberlegs go with them. This he often did, and would either follow close or sit quite still on guard for any length of time; while Waddles and Happy would perhaps strike a trail and dash off in full cry, thereby disturbing the very things that Anne had come to watch. One day, after they had in this way scattered a quail brood that Anne had hunted from the time that Bobwhite announced his arrival, until she found the dear little chicks huddled in a leafy hollow among wild blackberry canes on the orchard edge, she felt provoked, and did not allow Waddles to go to walk with her for almost a week. “Mistress,” said he, his eyes growing deep and luminous with reproach, “I’ve always been with you until now; have you forgotten all those fine days before Tommy came, and there was only you and I? Don’t you remember I was with you when we met the miller’s bull, and he was so angry because, though he tolled the bell at Cock Robin’s funeral, they didn’t ask him to the feast, and how I followed you and Obi when you went for the wood-duck’s nest, though I was very sick, and that day when Ko-ko-ko-ho showed us the way to where the last rattlesnake was, and the night that we went up on the hill and I barked you awake just when you thought you were at the Forest Circus? What has happened, mistress? Are you tired of me, or can that Lumberlegs show you better paths than I do? Though you gave my tail and back legs half to Tommy when he was born, I’ve always used them to follow you and tell you I was glad just the same as ever, but now you love Lumberlegs best.”

“You dear, jealous old Waddlekins,” cried Anne, lifting his paws to her knee as of old so that he stood up and she could look in his face, “it’s nothing of the kind, only Miss Letty often comes with me, and she is used to the city, and she doesn’t care for those long ‘go over everything’ walks that we take, and she has read in the papers about tramps, and thinks Lumberlegs makes a splendid policeman. Besides, you know that you chased all those lovely little quails off our land just when they were getting big enough to have their pictures taken, and father had spent a lot of money for rubber tubing so he could work his camera from behind the old green apple tree. Now they are as shy as loons, and pop down in those wild roses when we are a whole field away and there isn’t even a big bush to hide behind.

“But never mind; I’m sorry, anyway, so touch noses and be friends, and to-morrow we will do the brook walk all by ourselves; for even if I do love Lumberlegs, it’s quite different.”

Instead of the usual dainty lick Waddles gave a half-suppressed growl. Anne dropped his paws, exclaiming in surprise: “To think of it, you growled at me when I was apologizing, the very first time in your life, too. I think you had better go over and rest in your kennel and think it over.”

Then she led him to his little house, snapped the chain in his collar, and walked away without once looking back, Lumberlegs leaving his stolen seat on the porch to follow her.

The truth about the growl was this: Waddles, dislodged by Lumberlegs from many of his nap nooks, had lately taken to lying in the grass or under bushes, which as he was elderly and the season very wet had given him rheumatism in his hind quarters. As Anne held up his paws the strain soon gave his back a miserable wrench. This caused the growl, and for thus being misunderstood to threaten his idol, Waddles was not only left behind, but dethroned and chained up in his rival’s presence, where he stood as if transfixed with a strange, drawn expression on his face, which when House People wear we know they are struggling to keep back tears.

If only Anne had then remembered what she had once said about disappointing him!

“He stood transfixed.”—p. 79.