'Oh, you'll get over that in a few days,' Mrs. Godfrey countered.
'You're the sporting, responsible, doggy friend who--'
'He used to look at me like that at first,' said Attley, with a visible
shudder, 'but he gave it up after a bit. It's only because you're new
to him.'
'But, confound you! he's a ghoul--' I began.
'And when he gets quite well, you'll send him back to her direct with
your love, and she'll give you some pretty four-tailed goldfish,' said
Mrs. Godfrey, rising. 'That's all settled. Car, please. We're going to
Brighton to lunch together.'
They ran before I could get into my stride, so I told the dog Harvey
what I thought of them and his mistress. He never shifted his position,
but stared at me, an intense, lopsided stare, eye after eye. Malachi
came along when he had seen his sister off, and from a distance
counselled me to drown the brute and consort with gentlemen again. But
the dog Harvey never even cocked his cockable ear.
And so it continued as long as he was with me. Where I sat, he sat and
stared; where I walked, he walked beside, head stiffly slewed over one
shoulder in single-barrelled contemplation of me. He never gave tongue,
never closed in for a caress, seldom let me stir a step alone. And, to
my amazement, Malachi, who suffered no stranger to live within our
gates, saw this gaunt, growing, green-eyed devil wipe him out of my
service and company without a whimper. Indeed, one would have said the
situation interested him, for he would meet us returning from grim walks
together, and look alternately at Harvey and at me with the same
quivering interest that he showed at the mouth of a rat-hole. Outside
these inspections, Malachi withdrew himself as only a dog or a
woman can.
Miss Sichliffe came over after a few days (luckily I was out) with some
elaborate story of paying calls in the neighbourhood. She sent me a note
of thanks next day. I was reading it when Harvey and Malachi entered and
disposed themselves as usual, Harvey close up to stare at me, Malachi
half under the sofa, watching us both. Out of curiosity I returned
Harvey's stare, then pulled his lopsided head on to my knee, and took
his eye for several minutes. Now, in Malachi's eye I can see at any hour
all that there is of the normal decent dog, flecked here and there with
that strained half-soul which man's love and association have added to
his nature. But with Harvey the eye was perplexed, as a tortured man's.
Only by looking far into its deeps could one make out the spirit of the
proper animal, beclouded and cowering beneath some unfair burden.
Leggatt, my chauffeur, came in for orders.
'How d'you think Harvey's coming on?' I said, as I rubbed the brute's
gulping neck. The vet had warned me of the possibilities of spinal
trouble following distemper.
'He ain't _my_ fancy,' was the reply. 'But _I_ don't question his
comings and goings so long as I 'aven't to sit alone in a room
with him.'
'Why? He's as meek as Moses,' I said.
'He fair gives me the creeps. P'r'aps he'll go out in fits.'
But Harvey, as I wrote his mistress from time to time, throve, and when
he grew better, would play by himself grisly games of spying, walking
up, hailing, and chasing another dog. From these he would break off of a
sudden and return to his normal stiff gait, with the air of one who had
forgotten some matter of life and death, which could be reached only by
staring at me. I left him one evening posturing with the unseen on the
lawn, and went inside to finish some letters for the post. I must have
been at work nearly an hour, for I was going to turn on the lights,
when I felt there was somebody in the room whom, the short hairs at the
back of my neck warned me, I was not in the least anxious to face. There
was a mirror on the wall. As I lifted my eyes to it I saw the dog Harvey
reflected near the shadow by the closed door. He had reared himself
full-length on his hind legs, his head a little one side to clear a sofa
between us, and he was looking at me. The face, with its knitted brows
and drawn lips, was the face of a dog, but the look, for the fraction of
time that I caught it, was human--wholly and horribly human. When the
blood in my body went forward again he had dropped to the floor, and was
merely studying me in his usual one-eyed fashion. Next day I returned
him to Miss Sichliffe. I would not have kept him another day for the
wealth of Asia, or even Ella Godfrey's approval.
Miss Sichliffe's house I discovered to be a mid-Victorian mansion of
peculiar villainy even for its period, surrounded by gardens of
conflicting colours, all dazzling with glass and fresh paint on
ironwork. Striped blinds, for it was a blazing autumn morning, covered
most of the windows, and a voice sang to the piano an almost forgotten
song of Jean Ingelow's--
Methought that the stars were blinking bright,
And the old brig's sails unfurled--
Down came the loud pedal, and the unrestrained cry swelled out across a
bed of tritomas consuming in their own fires--
When I said I will sail to my love this night
On the other side of the world.