(April 1914)
My friend Attley, who would give away his own head if you told him you
had lost yours, was giving away a six-months-old litter of Bettina's
pups, and half-a-dozen women were in raptures at the show on
Mittleham lawn.
We picked by lot. Mrs. Godfrey drew first choice; her married daughter,
second. I was third, but waived my right because I was already owned by
Malachi, Bettina's full brother, whom I had brought over in the car to
visit his nephews and nieces, and he would have slain them all if I had
taken home one. Milly, Mrs. Godfrey's younger daughter, pounced on my
rejection with squeals of delight, and Attley turned to a dark,
sallow-skinned, slack-mouthed girl, who had come over for tennis, and
invited her to pick. She put on a pince-nez that made her look like a
camel, knelt clumsily, for she was long from the hip to the knee,
breathed hard, and considered the last couple.
'I think I'd like that sandy-pied one,' she said.
'Oh, not him, Miss Sichliffe!' Attley cried. 'He was overlaid or had
sunstroke or something. They call him The Looney in the kennels.
Besides, he squints.'
'I think that's rather fetching,' she answered. Neither Malachi nor I
had ever seen a squinting dog before.
'That's chorea--St. Vitus's dance,' Mrs. Godfrey put in. 'He ought to
have been drowned.'
'But I like his cast of countenance,' the girl persisted.
'He doesn't look a good life,' I said, 'but perhaps he can be patched
up.' Miss Sichliffe turned crimson; I saw Mrs. Godfrey exchange a glance
with her married daughter, and knew I had said something which would
have to be lived down.
'Yes,' Miss Sichliffe went on, her voice shaking, 'he isn't a good life,
but perhaps I can--patch him up. Come here, sir.' The misshapen beast
lurched toward her, squinting down his own nose till he fell over his
own toes. Then, luckily, Bettina ran across the lawn and reminded
Malachi of their puppyhood. All that family are as queer as Dick's
hatband, and fight like man and wife. I had to separate them, and Mrs.
Godfrey helped me till they retired under the rhododendrons and had it
out in silence.
'D'you know what that girl's father was?' Mrs. Godfrey asked.
'No,' I replied. 'I loathe her for her own sake. She breathes through
her mouth.'
'He was a retired doctor,' she explained. 'He used to pick up stormy
young men in the repentant stage, take them home, and patch them up till
they were sound enough to be insured. Then he insured them heavily, and
let them out into the world again--with an appetite. Of course, no one
knew him while he was alive, but he left pots of money to his daughter.'
'Strictly legitimate--highly respectable,' I said. 'But what a life for
the daughter!'
'Mustn't it have been! _Now_ d'you realise what you said just now?'
'Perfectly; and now you've made me quite happy, shall we go back to the
house?'
When we reached it they were all inside, sitting in committee on names.
'What shall you call yours?' I heard Milly ask Miss Sichliffe.
'Harvey,' she replied--'Harvey's Sauce, you know. He's going to be quite
saucy when I've'--she saw Mrs. Godfrey and me coming through the French
window--'when he's stronger.'
Attley, the well-meaning man, to make me feel at ease, asked what I
thought of the name.
'Oh, splendid,' I said at random. 'H with an A, A with an R, R with a--'
'But that's Little Bingo,' some one said, and they all laughed.
Miss Sichliffe, her hands joined across her long knees, drawled, 'You
ought always to verify your quotations.'
It was not a kindly thrust, but something in the word 'quotation' set
the automatic side of my brain at work on some shadow of a word or
phrase that kept itself out of memory's reach as a cat sits just beyond
a dog's jump. When I was going home, Miss Sichliffe came up to me in the
twilight, the pup on a leash, swinging her big shoes at the end of her
tennis-racket.
''Sorry,' she said in her thick schoolboy-like voice. 'I'm sorry for
what I said to you about verifying quotations. I didn't know you well
enough and--anyhow, I oughtn't to have.'
'But you were quite right about Little Bingo,' I answered. 'The spelling
ought to have reminded me.'
'Yes, of course. It's the spelling,' she said, and slouched off with the
pup sliding after her. Once again my brain began to worry after
something that would have meant something if it had been properly
spelled. I confided my trouble to Malachi on the way home, but Bettina
had bitten him in four places, and he was busy.
Weeks later, Attley came over to see me, and before his car stopped
Malachi let me know that Bettina was sitting beside the chauffeur. He
greeted her by the scruff of the neck as she hopped down; and I greeted
Mrs. Godfrey, Attley, and a big basket.
'You've got to help me,' said Attley tiredly. We took the basket into
the garden, and there staggered out the angular shadow of a sandy-pied,
broken-haired terrier, with one imbecile and one delirious ear, and two
most hideous squints. Bettina and Malachi, already at grips on the lawn,
saw him, let go, and fled in opposite directions.
'Why have you brought that fetid hound here?' I demanded.
'Harvey? For you to take care of,' said Attley. 'He's had distemper, but
_I_'m going abroad.'
'Take him with you. I won't have him. He's mentally afflicted.'
'Look here,' Attley almost shouted, 'do I strike you as a fool?'
'Always,' said I.
'Well, then, if you say so, and Ella says so, that proves I ought to go
abroad.'
'Will's wrong, quite wrong,' Mrs. Godfrey interrupted; 'but you must
take the pup.'
'My dear boy, my dear boy, don't you ever give anything to a woman,'
Attley snorted.
Bit by bit I got the story out of them in the quiet garden (never a sign
from Bettina and Malachi), while Harvey stared me out of countenance,
first with one cuttlefish eye and then with the other.
It appeared that, a month after Miss Sichliffe took him, the dog Harvey
developed distemper. Miss Sichliffe had nursed him herself for some
time; then she carried him in her arms the two miles to Mittleham, and
wept--actually wept--at Attley's feet, saying that Harvey was all she
had or expected to have in this world, and Attley must cure him. Attley,
being by wealth, position, and temperament guardian to all lame dogs,
had put everything aside for this unsavoury job, and, he asserted, Miss
Sichliffe had virtually lived with him ever since.
'She went home at night, of course,' he exploded, 'but the rest of the
time she simply infested the premises. Goodness knows, I'm not
particular, but it was a scandal. Even the servants!... Three and four
times a day, and notes in between, to know how the beast was. Hang it
all, don't laugh! And wanting to send me flowers and goldfish. Do I look
as if I wanted goldfish? Can't you two stop for a minute?' (Mrs. Godfrey
and I were clinging to each other for support.) 'And it isn't as if I
was--was so alluring a personality, is it?'
Attley commands more trust, goodwill, and affection than most men, for
he is that rare angel, an absolutely unselfish bachelor, content to be
run by contending syndicates of zealous friends. His situation seemed
desperate, and I told him so.
'Instant flight is your only remedy,' was my verdict. I'll take care of
both your cars while you're away, and you can send me over all the
greenhouse fruit.'
'But why should I be chased out of my house by a she-dromedary?' he
wailed.
'Oh, stop! Stop!' Mrs. Godfrey sobbed. 'You're both wrong. I admit
you're right, but I _know_ you're wrong.'
'Three _and_ four times a day,' said Attley, with an awful countenance.
'I'm not a vain man, but--look here, Ella, I'm not sensitive, I hope,
but if you persist in making a joke of it--'
'Oh, be quiet!' she almost shrieked. 'D'you imagine for one instant that
your friends would ever let Mittleham pass out of their hands? I quite
agree it is unseemly for a grown girl to come to Mittleham at all hours
of the day and night--'
'I told you she went home o' nights,' Attley growled.
'Specially if she goes home o' nights. Oh, but think of the life she
must have led, Will!'
'I'm not interfering with it; only she must leave me alone.'
'She may want to patch you up and insure you,' I suggested.
'D'you know what _you_ are?' Mrs. Godfrey turned on me with the smile I
have feared for the last quarter of a century. 'You're the nice, kind,
wise, doggy friend. You don't know how wise and nice you are supposed to
be. Will has sent Harvey to you to complete the poor angel's
convalescence. You know all about dogs, or Will wouldn't have done it.
He's written her that. You're too far off for her to make daily calls on
you. P'r'aps she'll drop in two or three times a week, and write on
other days. But it doesn't matter what she does, because you don't own
Mittleham, don't you see?'