Was the most utterly shabby, vulgar, mean-looking cur I ever beheld: in
one word, _a tyke_. He had not one good feature except his teeth and
eyes, and his bark, if that can be called a feature. He was not ugly
enough to be interesting; his color black and white, his shape leggy and
clumsy; altogether what Sydney Smith would have called an
extraordinarily ordinary dog; and, as I have said, not even greatly
ugly, or, as the Aberdonians have it, _bonnie wi' ill-fauredness_. My
brother William found him the centre of attraction to a multitude of
small blackguards who were drowning him slowly in Lochend Loch, doing
their best to lengthen out the process, and secure the greatest amount
of fun with the nearest approach to death. Even then Toby showed his
great intellect by pretending to be dead, and thus gaining time and an
inspiration. William bought him for twopence, and as he had it not, the
boys accompanied him to Pilrig Street, when I happened to meet him, and
giving the twopence to the biggest boy, had the satisfaction of seeing a
general engagement of much severity, during which the twopence
disappeared; one penny going off with a very small and swift boy, and
the other vanishing hopelessly into the grating of a drain.
Toby was for weeks in the house unbeknown to any one but ourselves two
and the cook, and from my grandmother's love of tidiness and hatred of
dogs and of dirt, I believe she would have expelled "him whom we saved
from drowning," had not he, in his straightforward way, walked into my
father's bedroom one night when he was bathing his feet, and introduced
himself with a wag of his tail, intimating a general willingness to be
happy. My father laughed most heartily, and at last Toby, having got his
way to his bare feet, and having begun to lick his soles and between his
toes with his small rough tongue, my father gave such an unwonted shout
of laughter, that we--grandmother, sisters, and all of us--went in.
Grandmother might argue with all her energy and skill, but as surely as
the pressure of Tom Jones' infantile fist upon Mr. Allworthy's
forefinger undid all the arguments of his sister, so did Toby's tongue
and fun prove too many for grandmother's eloquence. I somehow think Toby
must have been up to all this, for I think he had a peculiar love for my
father ever after, and regarded grandmother from that hour with a
careful and cool eye.
Toby, when full grown, was a strong, coarse dog; coarse in shape, in
countenance, in hair, and in manner. I used to think that, according to
the Pythagorean doctrine, he must have been, or been going to be a
Gilmerton carter. He was of the bull-terrier variety, coarsened through
much mongrelism and a dubious and varied ancestry. His teeth were good,
and he had a large skull, and a rich bark as of a dog three times his
size, and a tail which I never saw equalled--indeed it was a tail _per
se_; it was of immense girth and not short, equal throughout like a
policeman's baton; the machinery for working it was of great power, and
acted in a way, as far as I have been able to discover, quite original.
We called it his ruler.
When he wished to get into the house, he first whined gently, then
growled, then gave a sharp bark, and then came a resounding, mighty
stroke which shook the house; this, after much study and watching, we
found was done by his bringing the entire length of his solid tail flat
upon the door, with a sudden and vigorous stroke; it was quite a _tour
de force_ or a _coup de queue_, and he was perfect in it at once, his
first _bang_ authoritative, having been as masterly and telling as his
last.
With all this inbred vulgar air, he was a dog of great moral
excellence--affectionate, faithful, honest up to his light, with an odd
humor as peculiar and as strong as his tail. My father, in his reserved
way, was very fond of him, and there must have been very funny scenes
with them, for we heard bursts of laughter issuing from his study when
they two were by themselves; there was something in him that took that
grave, beautiful, melancholy face. One can fancy him in the midst of his
books, and sacred work and thoughts, pausing and looking at the secular
Toby, who was looking out for a smile to begin his rough fun, and about
to end by coursing and _gurrin'_ round the room, upsetting my father's
books, laid out on the floor for consultation, and himself nearly at
times, as he stood watching him--and off his guard and shaking with
laughter. Toby had always a great desire to accompany my father up to
town; this my father's good taste and sense of dignity, besides his fear
of losing his friend (a vain fear!), forbade, and as the decision of
character of each was great and nearly equal, it was often a drawn game.
Toby ultimately, by making it his entire object, triumphed. He usually
was nowhere to be seen on my father leaving; he however saw him, and lay
in wait at the head of the street, and up Leith Walk he kept him in view
from the opposite side like a detective, and then, when he knew it was
hopeless to hound him home, he crossed unblushingly over, and joined
company, excessively rejoiced of course.
One Sunday he had gone with him to church, and left him at the vestry
door. The second psalm was given out, and my father was sitting back in
the pulpit, when the door at its back, up which he came from the vestry,
was seen to move, and gently open, then, after a long pause, a black
shining snout pushed its way steadily into the congregation, and was
followed by Toby's entire body. He looked somewhat abashed, but snuffing
his friend, he advanced as if on thin ice, and not seeing him, put his
forelegs on the pulpit, and behold there he was, his own familiar chum.
I watched all this, and anything more beautiful than his look of
happiness, of comfort, of entire ease when he beheld his friend,--the
smoothing down of the anxious ears, the swing of gladness of that mighty
tail,--I don't expect soon to see. My father quietly opened the door,
and Toby was at his feet and invisible to all but himself; had he sent
old George Peaston, the "minister's man," to put him out, Toby would
probably have shown his teeth, and astonished George. He slunk home as
soon as he could, and never repeated that exploit.
I never saw in any other dog the sudden transition from discretion, not
to say abject cowardice, to blazing and permanent valor. From his
earliest years he showed a general meanness of blood, inherited from
many generations of starved, bekicked, and down-trodden forefathers and
mothers, resulting in a condition of intense abjectness in all matters
of personal fear; anybody, even a beggar, by a _gowl_ and a threat of
eye, could send him off howling by anticipation, with that mighty tail
between his legs. But it was not always so to be, and I had the
privilege of seeing courage, reasonable, absolute, and for life, spring
up in Toby at once, as did Athene from the skull of Jove. It happened
thus:--
Toby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones in the small gardens
before his own and the neighboring doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors off,
a bulky, choleric, red-haired, red-faced man--_torvo vultu_--was, by the
law of contrast, a great cultivator of flowers, and he had often scowled
Toby into all but non-existence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of
his eye. One day his gate being open, in walks Toby with a huge bone,
and making a hole where Scrymgeour had two minutes before been planting
some precious slip, the name of which on paper and on a stick Toby made
very light of, substituted his bone, and was engaged covering it, or
thinking he was covering it up with his shovelling nose (a very odd
relic of paradise in the dog), when S. spied him through the inner glass
door, and was out upon him like the Assyrian, with a terrible _gowl_. I
watched them. Instantly Toby made straight at him with a roar too, and
an eye more torve than Scrymgeour's, who, retreating without reserve,
fell prostrate, there is reason to believe, in his own lobby. Toby
contented himself with proclaiming his victory at the door, and
returning finished his bone-planting at his leisure; the enemy, who had
scuttled behind the glass-door, glaring at him.
From this moment Toby was an altered dog. Pluck at first sight was lord
of all; from that time dated his first tremendous deliverance of tail
against the door, which we called "come listen to my tail." That very
evening he paid a visit to Leo, next door's dog, a big, tyrannical bully
and coward, which its master thought a Newfoundland, but whose pedigree
we knew better; this brute continued the same system of chronic
extermination which was interrupted at Lochend,--having Toby down among
his feet, and threatening him with instant death two or three times a
day. To him Toby paid a visit that very evening, down into his den, and
walked about, as much as to say "Come on, Macduff!" but Macduff did not
come on, and henceforward there was an armed neutrality, and they merely
stiffened up and made their backs rigid, pretended each not to see the
other, walking solemnly round, as is the manner of dogs. Toby worked his
new-found faculty thoroughly, but with discretion. He killed cats,
astonished beggars, kept his own in his own garden against all comers,
and came off victorious in several well-fought battles; but he was not
quarrelsome or foolhardy. It was very odd how his carriage changed,
holding his head up, and how much pleasanter he was at home. To my
father, next to William, who was his Humane Society man, he remained
stanch. And what of his end? for the misery of dogs is that they die so
soon, or as Sir Walter says, it is well they do; for if they lived as
long as a Christian, and we liked them in proportion, and they then
died, he said that was a thing he could not stand.
His exit was miserable, and had a strange poetic or tragic relation to
his entrance. My father was out of town; I was away in England. Whether
it was that the absence of my father had relaxed his power of moral
restraint, or whether through neglect of the servant he had been
desperately hungry, or most likely both being true, Toby was discovered
with the remains of a cold leg of mutton, on which he had made an ample
meal;[5] this he was in vain endeavoring to plant as of old, in the hope
of its remaining undiscovered till to-morrow's hunger returned, the
whole shank bone sticking up unmistakably. This was seen by our
excellent and Radamanthine grandmother, who pronounced sentence on the
instant; and next day, as William was leaving for the High School, did
he in the sour morning, through an easterly _haur_, behold him "whom he
saved from drowning," and whom, with better results than in the case of
Launce and Crab, he had taught, as if one should say, "thus would I
teach a dog," dangling by his own chain from his own lamp-post, one of
his hind feet just touching the pavement, and his body preternaturally
elongated.
[5] Toby was in the state of the shepherd boy whom George Webster
met in Glenshee, and asked, "My man, were you ever fou'?"
"Ay, aince" speaking slowly, as if remembering--"Ay, aince."
"What on?" "Cauld mutton!"
William found him dead and warm, and falling in with the milk-boy at the
head of the street, questioned him, and discovered that he was the
executioner, and had got twopence, he--Toby's every morning crony, who
met him and accompanied him up the street, and licked the outside of his
can--had, with an eye to speed and convenience, and a want of taste, not
to say principle and affection, horrible still to think of, suspended
Toby's animation beyond all hope. William instantly fell upon him,
upsetting his milk and cream, and gave him a thorough licking, to his
own intense relief; and, being late, he got from Pyper, who was a
martinet, the customary palmies, which he bore with something
approaching to pleasure. So died Toby; my father said little, but he
missed and mourned his friend.
There is reason to believe that by one of those curious intertwistings
of existence, the milk-boy was that one of the drowning party who got
the penny of the twopence.