Azor had his little ways. Every morning he used to go down into the
street to inspect the gutters and pay a visit to the dogs of the
neighbourhood. He was always back in a quarter of an hour or so.
But one day he did not return.
His master waited patiently for him till midday. Animals are like men,
and love to linger; perhaps he had met friends—and the old schoolmaster
smiled indulgently at the notion.
However, when half the afternoon was gone, and still Azor did not
appear, he began to get anxious. Had some accident befallen him? and he
thought of carriage wheels and horses’ hoofs and the rush and roar of
the main streets.
His first impulse was to rush to the stairs; but Azor might come back at
any moment, so he stayed where he was, more dead than alive.
The window opened on the roof; the old man took a chair, climbed on it
and craned his head over the sill till he could see down over the edge
of the rain-shoot. There he stood for ever so long watching the little
black dots darting in and out among the legs of the passers-by. But not
one of them was Azor.
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead; he was obliged to get down off
the chair.
At last, as dusk was falling, a paw came scratching at the door, and he
flew to open it.
Yes, it was his old comrade—but in what a plight! dyed blue, with a
rope’s end still dangling round his neck! Some tragedy had befallen, no
doubt, of which he had been the victim—and he patted the poor beast, his
mind a prey to a hundred sinister apprehensions. Azor meantime fawned
round him, looking as contrite as a culprit who cannot hope to be
forgiven.
The dye refused to be washed out; soap was of no avail, and they had to
resort to caustics; but for all they could do, a tinge of blue remained.
It lasted nearly a month, but at last the black reappeared. While his
master was busy over these operations, Azor would lick his hands, only
stopping to sneeze, when the strong fumes got up his nose. He seemed
cured of all wish for adventures.
Nevertheless, when a month was over, these prolonged absences began
again. Sometimes he would stay away an hour; one Saturday he was abroad
six hours. This irregular behaviour vexed his good master exceedingly.
What could the mysterious attraction be that kept his faithful friend
like this? He determined to find out.
He had noticed that Azor, the better to elude his vigilance, apparently
used always to loiter a bit in front of the house, not starting away
before he felt certain no one was looking; then in one bound he would be
at the end of the street and disappear.
One day he followed the truant. Now and again the dog would stop, nose
all along the pavement, then, reassured, set off again at a trot. He
turned the corner, then down a broader street, and so eventually into a
square. The clumps of rhododendrons hid him for a moment from his
master, who came puffing up; but presently he caught sight of him in the
middle of a group of children. He was barking joyously, leaping up at
them, rolling on his back in the grass, in transports of delight. They
were five little pale-faced things, and among them one face paler still
and pinched with illness.
The shock nailed the old man to the spot. Was it possible? Was Azor a
traitor to his friend? And he gazed first at the dog and then at the
children with the look a man wears who sees an edifice he has long been
labouring at crumbling into ruin. He had put his trust in the animal; he
esteemed him as well as loved him—and, lo! the ingrate was sharing his
caresses with others. He hated duplicity, and his gorge rose at the
thought.
“Come here!” he shouted.
Azor knew his voice instantly, and, crawling along the ground like a
serpent, he crept up to his benefactor, his tail dragging in the dust.
But the latter never so much as thought of punishing him, and patted him
on the back gently. Their eyes met; the man’s were full of sadness, the
dog’s besought forgiveness. Then, still in the same humble attitude, he
tried to draw his master towards the little group of pale faces.
The children had come forward—all except the little invalid, who stayed
where he was; and all with one accord, their hands behind their backs,
were staring at the new arrival.
Was he going to take their dog from them? Their brows were puckered with
anxiety, and as he watched them, he was amazed to think his anger had
been so easily roused.
What harm had Azor done after all? Ah! the blow would have been harder
to bear if he had betrayed him for another man; but children! The
piteous air of the little one who had remained behind touched him so
that he took his hands with a smile and asked him if he loved Azor too.
“Oh! yes,” cried the child.
His eyes moved languidly under drooping lids, and he wore the careworn
look of an invalid. Azor laid his head on the child’s knees, and he
caressed him with his thin fingers long and lovingly.
The others soon found their tongues. Azor, they said, used to come every
morning, and they romped together. They had known him for a long time in
fact; but he had been a month once without appearing, and they had
believed he was dead. A dyer’s apprentice, after tying a cord round his
neck, had dragged him off, and as they never saw him any more, they had
laid his death at the bad boy’s door.
“So that’s the explanation!” the old man muttered, and remembered the
long day of agonised suspense when he waited for him at the garret
window, and then how he had come back dyed blue. It was a relief to know
the truth.
He went again at the same time next day, the dog careering gaily ahead
as if he quite understood. Presently all found themselves in the square
again, and all faces lit up with a common pleasure.
They became fast friends; he learned their names, and that two of them
were brothers of the pale-faced little fellow; their mother always sent
them to look after him in the garden; they lived only a few steps away.
His heart was filled with compassion for the frail-looking little lad.
As Pierre could not walk, he got into the way by degrees of carrying him
home in his arms as far as the door, Azor galloping after them, wagging
his tail.
One day the child’s mother came down to thank the “kind gentleman,” and
they fell into talk. The boy’s father was a workman on the railway,
while she worked at fine sewing; the little one was a sore trouble to
them; he had to be taken out for fresh air, and constantly looked after;
and all hope of cure had had to be abandoned long ago.
“And yet he’s no fool either, sir; of the three he’s the cleverest.”
He only nodded, his head full of a notion that still occupied him after
he got home; Azor lay at his feet and watched him thinking, thinking all
day long. At nightfall he took the dog’s head between his hands.
“There!” he cried merrily, “you’ll be pleased with your old master this
time.”
Three days later he bought a go-cart, in which he installed Pierre, and
every morning they used to set out for the country, Azor scouting ahead
and his master following with the child in tow.
The old schoolmaster would explain all they saw to him—animals and
things; he had made him a present of an alphabet with coloured pictures
where a yacht stood for Y and a zebra for Z. And Pierre soon learnt to
read.
On Sundays, instead of three, they were seven; the whole family would
join the expedition, and they would linger on till dark in the starlit
fields.
They were very happy, and their happiness lasted many long years.