It was a pretty morning, two weeks after Julia's Dance; and blue and
lavender shadows, frayed with mid-summer sunshine, waggled gayly across
the grass beneath the trees of the tiny orchard, but trembled with
timidity as they hurried over the abnormal surfaces of Mrs. Silver as
she sat upon the steps of the "back porch." Her right hand held in
security one end of a leather leash; the other end of the leash was
fastened to a new collar about the neck of an odd and fascinating dog.
Seated upon the brick walk at her feet, he was regarding her with a
gravity that seemed to discomfort her. She was unable to meet his gaze,
and constantly averted her own whenever it furtively descended to his.
In fact, her expression and manner were singular, denoting
embarrassment, personal hatred, and a subtle bedazzlement. She could not
look at him, yet could not keep herself from looking at him. There was
something here that arose out of the depths of natural character; it was
intrinsic in the two personalities, that is to say; and was in addition
to the bitterness consequent upon a public experience, just past, which
had been brought upon Mrs. Silver partly by the dog's appearance (in
particular the style and colour of his hair) and partly by his
unprecedented actions in her company upon the highway.
She addressed him angrily, yet with a profound uneasiness.
"Dog!" she said. "You ain't feelin' as skittish as whut you did, li'l
while ago, is you? My glory! I dess would like to lay my han' to you'
hide once, Mister! I take an' lam you this livin' minute if I right sho'
you wouldn't take an' bite me."
She jerked the leash vindictively, upon which the dog at once "sat up"
on his haunches, put his forepaws together above his nose, in an
attitude of prayer, and looked at her inscrutably from under the great
bang of hair that fell like a black chrysanthemum over his forehead.
Beneath this woolly lambrequin his eyes were visible as two garnet
sparks of which the coloured woman was only too nervously aware. She
gasped.
"Look-a-here, dog, who's went an' ast you to take an' pray fer 'em?"
He remained motionless and devout.
"My goo'niss!" she said to him. "If you goin' keep on thisaway whut you
_is_ been, I'm goin' to up an' go way from here, ri' now!" Then she said
a remarkable thing. "Listen here, Mister! I ain' never los' no gran'
child, an' I ain' goin' 'dop' no stranger fer one, neither!"
The explanation rests upon the looks and manners of him whom she
addressed. This dog was of a kind at the top of dog kingdoms. His size
was neither insignificant nor great; probably his weight would have been
between a fourth and a third of a St. Bernard's. He had the finest head
for adroit thinking that is known among dogs; and he had an athletic
body, the forepart muffled and lost in a mass of corded black fleece,
but the rest of him sharply clipped from the chest aft; and his trim,
slim legs were clipped, though tufts were left at his ankles, and at the
tip of his short tail, with two upon his hips, like fanciful buttons of
an imaginary jacket; for thus have such dogs been clipped to a fashion
proper and comfortable for them ever since (and no doubt long before) an
Imperial Roman sculptor so chiselled one in bas-relief. In brief, this
dog, who caused Kitty Silver so much disquietude, as she sat upon the
back steps at Mr. Atwater's, belonged to that species of which no
Frenchman ever sees a specimen without smiling and murmuring:
"_Caniche!_" He was that golden-hearted little clown of all the world, a
French Poodle.
To arrive at what underlay Mrs. Silver's declaration that she had never
lost a grandchild and had no intention of adopting a stranger in the
place of one, it should be first understood that in many respects she
was a civilized person. The quality of savagery, barbarism, or
civilization in a tribe may be tested by the relations it
characteristically maintains with domestic animals; and tribes that eat
dogs are often inferior to those inclined to ceremonial cannibalism.
Likewise, the civilization, barbarism, or savagery of an individual may
be estimated by the same test, which sometimes gives us evidence of
sporadic reversions to mud. Such reversions are the stomach priests:
whatever does not minister to their own bodily inwards is a "parasite."
Dogs are "parasites"; they should not live, because to fat and eat them
somehow appears uncongenial. "Kill Dogs and Feed Pigs," they write to
the papers, and, with a Velasquez available, would burn it rather than
go chilly. "Kill dogs, feed pigs, and let _me_ eat the pigs!" they cry,
even under no great stress, these stern economists who have not noticed
how wasteful the Creator is proved to be if He made themselves. They
take the strictly intestinal view of life. It is not intelligent;
parasite bacilli will get them in the end.
Mrs. Silver was not of these. True, she sometimes professed herself
averse to all "animals," but this meant nothing more than her
unwillingness to have her work increased by their introduction into the
Atwater household. No; the appearance of the dog had stirred something
queer and fundamental within her. All coloured people look startled the
first time they see a French Poodle, but there is a difference. Most
coloured men do not really worry much about being coloured, but many
coloured women do. In the expression of a coloured man, when he looks at
a black and woolly French Poodle, there is something fonder and more
indulgent than there is in the expression of a coloured woman when she
looks at one. In fact, when some coloured women see a French Poodle they
have the air of being insulted.
Now, when Kitty Silver had first set eyes on this poodle, an hour
earlier, she looked, and plainly was, dumfounded. Never in her life had
she seen a creature so black, so incredibly black, or with hair so
kinky, so incredibly kinky. Julia had not observed Mrs. Silver closely
nor paused to wonder what thoughts were rousing in her mind, but bade
her take the poodle forth for exercise outdoors and keep him strictly
upon the leash. Without protest, though wearing a unique expression,
Kitty obeyed; she walked round the block with this mystifying dog; and
during the promenade had taken place the episode that so upset her
nerves.
She had given a little jerk to the leash, speaking sharply to the poodle
in reproach for some lingering near a wonderful sidewalk smell,
imperceptible to any one except himself. Instantly the creature rose and
walked beside her on his hind legs. He continued to parade in this
manner, rapidly, but nevertheless as if casually, without any apparent
inconvenience; and Mrs. Silver, never having seen a dog do such a thing
before, for more than a yard or so, and then only under the pressure of
many inducements, was unfavourably impressed. In fact, she had
definitely a symptom of M. Maeterlinck's awed feeling when he found
himself left alone with the talking horses: "With _whom_ was she?"
"Look-a-here, dog!" she said breathlessly. "Who you tryin' to skeer?
_You_ ain't no person!"
And then a blow fell. It came from an elderly but ever undignified woman
of her own race, who paused, across the street, and stood teetering from
side to side in joyful agitation, as she watched the approach of Mrs.
Silver with her woolly little companion beside her. When this smaller
silhouette in ink suddenly walked upright, the observer's mouth fell
open, and there was reason to hope that it might remain so, in silence,
especially as several other pedestrians had stopped to watch the
poodle's uncalled-for exhibition. But all at once the elderly rowdy saw
fit to become uproarious.
"Hoopsee!" she shouted. "Oooh, _Gran'ma_!"
* * * * *
And so, when the poodle "sat up," unbid, to pray, while Kitty Silver
rested upon the back steps, on her return from the excursion, she
fiercely informed him that she had never lost a grandchild and that she
would not adopt a stranger in place of one; her implication being that
he, a stranger, had been suggested for the position and considered
himself eligible for it.
He continued to pray, not relaxing a hair.
"Listen to me, dog," said Kitty Silver. "Is you a dog, or isn't you a
dog? Whut _is_ you, anyway?"
But immediately she withdrew the question. "I ain't astin' you!" she
exclaimed superstitiously. "If you isn't no dog, don't you take an' tell
me whut you is: you take an' keep it to you'se'f, 'cause I don' want to
listen to it!"
For the garnet eyes beneath the great black chrysanthemum indeed seemed
to hint that their owner was about to use human language in a human
voice. Instead, however, he appeared to be content with his little
exhibition, allowed his forepaws to return to the ground, and looked at
her with his head wistfully tilted to one side. This reassured her and
even somewhat won her. There stirred within her that curious sense of
relationship evoked from the first by his suggestive appearance;
fondness was being born, and an admiration that was in a way a form of
Narcissism. She addressed him in a mollified voice:
"Whut you want now? Don' tell me you' hungry, 'cause you awready done et
two dog biskit an' big saucer milk. Whut you stick you' ole black face
crossways at _me_ fer, honey?"
But just then the dog rose to look pointedly toward the corner of the
house. "Somebody's coming," he meant.
"Who you spectin', li'l dog?" Mrs. Silver inquired.
Florence and Herbert came round the house, Herbert trifling with a
tennis ball and carrying a racket under his arm. Florence was peeling an
orange.
"For Heavenses' sakes!" Florence cried. "Kitty Silver, where on earth'd
this dog come from?"
"B'long you' Aunt Julia."
"When'd she get him?"
"Dess to-day."
"Who gave him to her?"
"She ain't sayin'."
"You mean she won't tell?"
"She ain't sayin'," Kitty Silver repeated. "I ast her. I say, I say:
'Miss Julia, ma'am,' I say, 'Miss Julia, ma'am, who ever sen' you sech a
unlandish-lookin' dog?' I say. All she say when I ast her: 'Nemmine!'
she say, dess thataway. 'Nemmine!' she say. I reckon she ain't goin'
tell nobody who give her this dog."
"He's certainly a mighty queer-lookin' dog," said Herbert. "I've seen a
few like that, but I can't remember where. What kind is he, Kitty
Silver?"
"Miss Julia tell me he a poogle dog."
"A poodle," Florence corrected her, and then turned to Herbert in
supercilious astonishment. "A French Poodle! My goodness! I should think
you were old enough to know that much, anyway--goin' on fourteen years
old!"
"Well, I did know it," he declared. "I kind of knew it, anyhow; but I
sort of forgot it for once. Do you know if he bites, Kitty Silver?"