Читать книгу The Lucky Number - Major General John Hay Beith - Страница 7

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A walk along the village street was always a great event for Excalibur. Still, it must have contained many humiliating moments for one of his sensitive disposition; for he was always pathetically anxious to make friends with other dogs and was rarely successful. Little dogs merely bit his legs, while big dogs cut him dead.

I think this was why he usually commenced his morning round by calling on a rabbit. The rabbit lived in a hutch in a yard at the end of a passage between two cottages—the first turning on the right after you entered the village—and Excalibur always dived down this at the earliest opportunity. It was no use for Eileen (who usually took him out on these occasions) to endeavour to hold him back. Either Excalibur called on the rabbit by himself or Eileen went with him: there was no other alternative.

Arrived at the hutch, Excalibur wagged his tail and contemplated the rabbit with his usual air of vacuous benevolence. The rabbit made not the faintest response, but continued to munch green food, twitching its nose in a superior manner. Finally, when it could endure Excalibur’s admiring inspection and hard breathing no longer, it turned its back and retired into its bedroom.

Excalibur’s next call was usually at the butcher’s, where he was presented with a specially selected and quite unsaleable fragment of meat. He then crossed the road to the baker’s, where he purchased a halfpenny bun, for which his escort was expected to pay. After that he walked from shop to shop, wherever he was taken, with great docility and enjoyment; for he was a gregarious animal and had a friend behind or underneath almost every counter in the village. Men, women, babies, kittens, even ducks—they were all one to him.

At one time Eileen had endeavoured to teach him a few simple accomplishments, such as begging for food, dying for his country, and carrying parcels. She was unsuccessful in all three instances. Excalibur upon his hind legs stood about five feet six, and when he fell from that eminence, as he invariably did when he tried to beg, he usually broke something. He was hampered, too, by inability to distinguish one order from another. More than once he narrowly escaped with his life through mistaking an urgent appeal to come to heel out of the way of an approaching motor for a command to die for his country in the middle of the road. As for educating him to carry parcels, a single attempt was sufficient. The parcel in question contained a miscellaneous assortment of articles from the grocer’s, including lard, soap, and safety matches. It was securely tied up, and the grocer kindly attached it by a short length of string to a wooden clothes-peg, in order to make it easier for Excalibur to carry. They set off home....

Excalibur was most apologetic about it afterwards, besides being extremely unwell. But he had no idea, he explained to Eileen, that anything put into his mouth was not meant to be eaten. He then tendered the clothes-peg and some mangled brown paper with an air of profound abasement. After that no further attempts at compulsory education were undertaken.

But it was his daily walk with Eileen which introduced Excalibur to Life—Life in its broadest and most romantic sense. As I was not privileged to be present at the opening incident of this episode, or most of its subsequent developments, the direct conduct of this narrative here passes out of my hands.

One sunny morning in July a young man in clerical attire sat breakfasting in his rooms at Mrs. Tice’s. Mrs. Tice’s establishment was situated in the village street, and Mrs. Tice was in the habit of letting her ground-floor to lodgers of impeccable respectability.

It was half-past eleven, which is a late hour for the clergy to breakfast, but this young man appeared to be suffering from no qualms of conscience upon the subject. He was making an excellent breakfast, and reading the Henley results from The Sportsman with a mixture of rapture and longing.

He had just removed The Sportsman from the convenient buttress of the teapot and substituted Punch, when he became aware that day had turned to night. Looking up, he perceived that his open window, which was rather small and of the casement variety, was completely blocked by a huge, shapeless, and opaque mass. Next moment the mass resolved itself into an animal of enormous size and surprising appearance, which fell heavily into the room, and—

“Like a stream that, spouting from a cliff,

Fails in mid-air; but gathering at the base,

Remakes itself,”

—rose to its feet, and, advancing to the table, laid a heavy head upon the white cloth and lovingly passed its tongue (which resembled that of the great anteater) round a cold chicken conveniently adjacent.

Five minutes later the window framed another picture—this time a girl of twenty, white-clad, and wearing a powder-blue felt hat caught up on one side by a silver buckle, which twinkled in the hot morning sun. The Curate started to his feet. Excalibur, who was now lying upon the hearthrug dismembering the chicken, thumped his tail guiltily upon the floor, but made no attempt to rise.

“I am very sorry,” said Eileen, “but I am afraid my dog is trespassing. May I call him out?”

“Certainly,” said the Curate. “But”—he racked his brains to devise some means of delaying the departure of this radiant, fragrant vision—“he is not the least in the way. I am very glad of his company: I think it was most neighbourly of him to call. After all, I suppose he is one of my parishioners? And—and”—he blushed painfully—“I hope you are, too.”

Eileen gave him her most entrancing smile, and from that hour the Curate ceased to be his own master.

“I suppose you are Mr. Gilmore,” said Eileen.

“Yes. I have only been here three weeks, and I have not met everyone yet.”

“I have been away for two months,” Eileen mentioned.

“I thought you must have been,” said the Curate,—rather subtly for him.

“I think my brother-in-law called upon you a few days ago,” continued Eileen, upon whom the Curate’s last remark had made a most favourable impression. She mentioned my name.

“I was going to return the call this very afternoon,” said the Curate. And he firmly believed that he was speaking the truth. “Won’t you come in? We have an excellent chaperon”—indicating Excalibur. “I will come and open the door.”

“Well, he certainly won’t come out unless I come and fetch him,” admitted Eileen thoughtfully.

A moment later the Curate was at the front door, and led his visitor across the little hall into the sitting-room. He had not been absent more than thirty seconds, but during that time a plateful of sausages had mysteriously disappeared; and as they entered, Excalibur was apologetically settling down upon the hearthrug with a cottage loaf.

Eileen uttered cries of dismay and apology, but the Curate would have none of them.

“My fault entirely!” he insisted. “I have no right to be breakfasting at this hour. But this is my day off. I take early service every morning at seven; but on Wednesdays we cut it ou—— omit it, and have full Matins at ten. So I get up at half-past nine, take service at ten, and come back at eleven and have breakfast. It is my weekly treat.”

“You deserve it,” said Eileen feelingly. Her religious exercises were limited to going to church on Sunday morning and coming out, if possible, after the litany. “And how do you like Much Moreham?”

“I did not like it at all when I came,” said the Curate; “but recently I have begun to enjoy myself immensely.” He did not say how recently.

“Were you in London before?”

“Yes—in the East End. It was pretty hard work, but a useful experience. I feel rather lost here during my spare time. I get so little exercise. In London I used to slip away for an occasional outing in a Leander scratch eight, and that kept me fit. I am inclined,” he added ruefully, “to put on flesh.”

“Leander? Are you a Blue?”

The Curate nodded.

“You know about rowing, I see,” he said appreciatively. “The worst of rowing,” he continued, “is that it takes up so much of a man’s time that he has no opportunity of practising anything else. Cricket, for instance. All curates ought to be able to play cricket. I do my best, but there isn’t a single boy in the Sunday-school who can’t bowl me. It’s humiliating!”

“Do you play tennis at all?” asked Eileen.

“Yes, in a way.”

“I am sure my sister will be pleased if you will come and have a game with us one afternoon.”

The enraptured Curate had already opened his mouth to accept this demure invitation, when Excalibur, rising from the hearthrug, stretched himself luxuriously and wagged his tail, thereby removing three pipes, an inkstand, a tobacco-jar, and a half-completed sermon from the writing-table.