THE QUEST OF THE DOG
Gilead had often encountered in the _Daily Post_--sandwiched, say,
between a heart-moving appeal on behalf of the outcast and houseless,
and a last drowning cry for help from a soul almost submerged--a plea
for some dog or cat seeking a kind home, and had reflected on the
curious variety and varied quality of the petitions which a medium for
benevolence was calculated to attract. He hoped that those, thus
fondly appealing to charity for their animal beloveds, were in the
habit of scrutinizing the lists in which their advertisements
appeared, and of justifying their own title to help in one form by
vouchsafing it in another. But he believed he had always noticed that
an excessive devotion to animals entailed a rather ironic attitude
towards the needs of the human family, and it was in no very
sympathetic mood, therefore, that he read the first words of the
following advertisement, which his secretary one morning pointed out
to him:--
“_Will anyone give a kind home to Pilot, a dog. O, please do help!
This is genuine. No money-lenders need apply. Address Judy, Marshlock
Old Rectory, Shipton-on-Thames._”
“Why do you show me this, Nestle?” he said, looking up.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the secretary. “Have you read to the end?”
Gilead bent to the paper again, and smiled.
“What a very odd advertisement!” he said. “Is it nonsense or
innocence, do you think?”
The secretary shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“Supposing we ask Miss Halifax’s opinion, Mr Balm?”
Gilead said “certainly,” and leaned back in his chair as the secretary
carried the paper to the young lady, who was engaged at her desk over
correspondence.
“Do you take that for a hoax, Miss Halifax?”
The beautiful amanuensis read and considered.
“No, Mr Balm,” she said. “This was written, I am sure, by some
distressed child, whose people take in the _Daily Post_. If it were a
hoax, some covering address would have been given.”
Gilead rose.
“Give me the paper, please,” he said.
She smiled, rather wistfully.
“I knew the very suggestion of a child would win you,” she said.
He looked at her kindly.
“It is your feminine perspicacity that wins me,” he said. “I cannot
tell you how it touches me to find us all three in such accord over
this business of humanitarianism, and so superior, in its pursuit, to
ignoble jealousies and misunderstandings.”
That was a tribute to the secretary, who had never shewn the least
resentment over the lady’s inclusion in the inner confidences of his
Chief. Nestle stood quiet a moment or two, as Gilead, having spoken,
left the room; and then, moving softly, addressed a word to the
amanuensis. She waved him away; and he saw at once, to his curious
concern, that she was crying.
Gilead, foreseeing a long day and a queer experience, drove to
Paddington Station, whence he took a train presently to a distant
up-river junction, from which a short branch line carried him
leisurely to Shipton-on-Thames. It was a quiet torrid day in late
April, hot as the ideal Midsummer, and, after asking his direction, he
started on foot across the fields for the Old Rectory, which, it
appeared, was situated at no great distance away on the banks of the
river. His path was a pleasant one, remote and peaceful, leading him
by sweet-smelling pastures and lanes to a waterside hamlet, where a
scrap of church-tower, ruined and ivy-grown, and a fragment of antique
graveyard at its foot spoke of some ancient benefice long since
discontinued or translated. He was looking about in this sleepy
retreat for someone to correct his way for him, when a sound of
youthful voices breaking out if a leafy road reached his ears, and he
saw two children, a boy and a girl, turn a corner and make in his
direction. He advanced to meet them.
“Can you tell me the way to the Old Rectory?” he asked.
The boy went on without answering, but, finding that his little
companion had stopped embarrassed, swaggered round and came back.
“Beg your pardon?” he said.
Gilead repeated his question.
“Well, we’re going there,” said the boy. “You can come with us, if you
like.”
He was a meaty youth of some twelve summers, with an imbecile
self-satisfied face and porky eyes; but his stylish white flannels and
little Oxford-blue blazer with the yellow badge on its pocket spoke
him quite the riverside dandy.
Gilead fell into pace with the two, and the little girl kept peeping
up at him from the other side of her cavalier. She was the dearest
charmer of nine, dressed in a sort of sweet Directory frock with
heliotrope sprays; and the shepherd’s straw hat on her head had its
mauve ribbon poked full of real daisies.
Presently the boy, shouldering his companion a little apart, spoke
something in her ear, and she whispered back “O, Georgy!” and flushed
as pink as an apple-blossom.
“Please,” she said, being nudged to the soft impeachment, “Georgy says
he believes you must have come about Pilot.”
Gilead smiled, oddly enlightened.
“The dog mentioned in the advertisement?” he said. “Did you put it
in?”
“No, I did,” said the boy, sniggering. “I say, what a lark! Have you
really come about him?”
“Supposing I have,” said Gilead; “what then?”
The boy grinned, but did not answer.
“Is this Judy, by any chance?” asked the young man.
“Yes, it is,” said the boy.
“Your sister?”
“Not much. I say, you know!” exclaimed the youth. “Her name’s Brown.
My name’s George Wimble. My father’s Captain Wimble. We live at the
Court. I only made it up for her, and got old Gask the stationer to
send it on.”
“I see,” said Gilead. “What was that about no moneylenders applying?”
“O! I don’t know,” said the boy. “You aren’t one, are you?”
“No, I’m not one.”
“I made it up out of the advertisements,” said Master Wimble. “They
always put in that sort of thing. I did it for her.”
“Father said I might,” ventured the little girl, between apology and
self-defence. “At leastways he said I might try and find a good home
for him.”
“He didn’t mean that way, you bet,” said the boy, glancing slyly up at
the stranger.
“No,” said Judy, her small mouth tightening a little. “When he saw it
in the newspaper this morning he was simply furiated. He is a very
boracic man.”
The boy stifled an explosion.
“Isn’t she funny?” he whispered.
“O! boracic,” said Gilead; and added, in some vague association of
ideas, “Is he a doctor?--O! no; a clergyman, I suppose?”
The boy plucked his sleeve.
“He’s neither the one nor the other,” he confided to his private ear.
“He’s a radical.” He spoke the word with a weight of social
significance. “He stood for Henley in the last by-election, but our
man beat him at the post. He doesn’t live here. He’s only taken the
house for the summer. He isn’t a gentleman, you know; he’s a radical;
but _she’s_ all right.”
The magnificence of the distinction quite silenced Gilead. He walked
on while the boy strutted on; but suddenly he was moved very sweetly
to feel little confiding fingers thrust into his.
“Please,” said the little girl, who had slipped round to his side,
“have you really and truly come about Pilot?”
“Really and truly,” said Gilead, looking down with a smile. “Do you
want to part with him?”
“No,” said the child, flushing very pink.
“Perhaps someone else does?” suggested Gilead.
“Yes, father.”
“Shall I see _him_ about it, then?” She did not answer. “What’s wrong
with him--the dog, I mean?” asked the young man.
The boy answered for her, with a contemptuous laugh.
“He bit somebody. Anybody would have, _her_.”
Gilead kept a discreet silence.
“Here’s the gate of the Rectory, if you want to see Mr Brown,” said
the boy, stopping; and then Gilead saw that the little girl was in
floods of tears. He bent down, very concerned.
“If he _has_ to go, Judy,” he whispered, “he shall find a good
friend.”
“O! don’t be such a ninny,” said the boy. “What’s a dog anyway? I’m
not going to go fishing with you, you know, if you’re going on like
this.”
He walked off, whistling. She sniffed once or twice, dried her eyes on
her sleeve, and fled after him. Gilead, watching the two a moment,
turned through a gate into a leafy drive, which swept round a
semi-circle of lawn to the front of a white-latticed creeper-hung
house of two storeys, where, ringing the bell, he sent in his card to
Mr Brown.
He had not waited a minute in an untidy tobacco-reeking study, into
which he had been informally and rather suspiciously shown, when a
gentleman came hurrying in with an air of effusive cordiality which
took him completely by surprise.
“Mr Balm?” said the gentleman. “This is kind of you--this is more than
kind. To come in person to answer my appeal? I had not expected such
distinction, such consideration, and it makes me proud. Pray take a
chair, sir, and let us discuss this matter.”
Gilead, immensely perplexed, bowed and seated himself. He saw before
him a fluffy fiery little man, wearing spectacles like burning
glasses, and clad in a blazing rhubarb tweed, with knickerbockers and
bright brown shoes. He was snappy in his movements, jerky in his
speech, and, in disposition, he alternated, it seemed, between white
heats of enthusiasm and dead ashes of depression.
“Your Agency, sir,” he said, “justifies its title to being the most
prompt and princely institution of its kind. I am favoured in a visit
from its founder.”
“Its representative,” corrected Gilead.
Mr Brown raised his hands and eyes with an air of polite deprecation.
“True,” he said; “we know your humour and respect it, Mr Balm. I say
no more. I am completely dumb.”
“Well,” said Gilead, a little chilly: “as to the purpose of my visit,
sir, I was led to suppose that the--the form of appeal somewhat lacked
your sanction.”
“Not at all,” said Mr Brown, with a surprised look. “How could you
have gathered that impression when I dictated its terms myself?”
“O! I didn’t know,” said the visitor. “I was misenlightened, no
doubt--made the victim very possibly of a trifling hoax.” He smiled.
“Then the little lady’s name was an intentional mask?”
“I don’t know, sir, what you mean by a mask,” said Mr Brown with some
apparent heat. “It was quoted to illustrate a very genuine sentiment.
If you had said a _bait_, I might have admitted the impeachment.”
“A bait, then,” said Gilead--“and a sweet one.”
“I am indebted to you for the term, Mr Balm,” said the gentleman, with
a certain dry dignity; “but I can hold it hardly applicable to a
personality endowed with such supreme gifts of force and intelligence.
I would as soon call the Mother of the Gracchi _sweet_, sir, for my
part.”
Gilead felt himself at a loss for words. Could it be possible that the
little girl so contradicted her appearance as to be an infant
phenomenon of an advanced type?
“Well, sir,” he said, utterly at sea--“a bait of whatever nature you
please. In any case, I am to understand, its purpose was to find
someone who would be willing to take this discarded pet off your
hands?”
Mr Brown rose from his chair.
“Sir--Mr Balm!” he exclaimed.
“To secure a kind home for it,” explained Gilead, “whether because it
is old, or because it bites, or--”
Mr Brown seized up a heavy paper-weight, poised it an instant
furiously, and replaced it on the desk calmly.
“I think, I am sure,” he said, “that there must be some mistake.”
Gilead, risen also, faced him gravely.
“Would you mind telling me,” he said, “to what you are alluding all
this time?”
“I am alluding, sir,” said Mr Brown, with sarcastic emphasis, “to the
letter I had the honour of addressing to you yesterday, and the
substance of which, I flattered myself, you had come to answer in
person. My name is Brown.”
“I am unfortunate,” said Gilead. “I have much correspondence and a
poor memory, and a name, however distinctive, is apt to slip me. I
devoted, I am afraid, but a cursory examination to this morning’s
letters. The penalty is mine.”
Mr Brown bowed stiffly.
“Assuredly not, sir, since, it seems, I have appealed to your
munificence in vain.”
“The misfortune, sir,” said Gilead, “is, by your favour, easily
amended for both of us.”
His courtesy was so charming, that the indignant gentleman was
instantly mollified.
“You are very good,” he said. “Your frankness invites a warmer
confidence than that I had already ventured in a sacred cause. You are
acquainted, no doubt, with the name of Mrs Craddock Flight?”
Gilead bowed.
“Of all the militant sisterhood,” said Mr Brown, “the bright
particular star. It was she, if you remember, who chained herself to
the wheel of the Prime Minister’s carriage, just as he was about to
enter it to drive to the House of Commons, and so forced him to seek
his infamous destination on foot. A woman of extraordinary resource
and originality.”
“Extraordinary,” said Gilead. “If I recollect, she was nearly killed
by the horses becoming restive before she could be released.”
“She would have been glad to die, sir,” said Brown, “in that glorious
situation--a second St Catherine broken on the wheel for her faith.”
He looked at his visitor searchingly. “Do not distress me, Mr Balm,”
he said, “by affirming that the cause is to be denied its share of the
vast resources at your disposal. No, no, you must be with us, sir. It
was for that purpose that I wrote to you; it was for that purpose that
I identified myself in my letter with a name calculated to shed
refulgence on any propaganda to which it should elect to give
itself--the name of Mrs Craddock Flight. That name, sir, and that
cause lack nothing but the devotion of a sympathetic capitalist to
ensure their immortality. It was to that stately name that I
questioned the right application of so sugary an epithet as ‘sweet’.
Finally, sir, that name--if I may dare the confidence--has pledged
itself to become, on a single condition, my priceless possession; to
adorn with its widowed lustre my no less widowed insignificance. I
confess, sir, that I yearn to bask in that reflected glory--to follow
in the tail of its comet-like flight to the new world its radiance is
destined to discover to the enraptured vision of posterity.”
“You allude--?” said Gilead.
“I allude,” said Mr Brown, “to a world reconsecrated, through the
political enfranchisement of woman, to reason, justice and purity.
Everything, you will grant, is wrong as it is. Civilization, as a male
imposition, has proved itself a depressing failure. Men, on true
premises, labour to false conclusions; women, on false, jump to true.
Their unerring moral sensitiveness penetrates all massed and
complicated sophistries, and pierces in a flash to the heart of the
real. Unbiassed by formulas, untrammelled by dogma, they will blow
through our corrupt institutions like a cleansing gale, whirling the
dead leaves of discredited systems before them. Woman is not
conscientious, so to speak, in the prescriptive sense. She will strip
from equity, justice and the moral law the trappings in which they
have been too long confounded, and show us nature again, primitive and
fearless.”
“Indeed?” said Gilead. “You surprise me.”
“There will be many surprises when the time comes,” said Mr Brown
grandiloquently; and, on the very word, suffered a surprising change
of countenance. “Why, why,” he cried, flushing scarlet; “my letter--my
letter, sir, in which I expatiated at some length on this very
subject. You have not seen it, you say? To what, then, am I to
attribute the honour of your visit?”
“To an advertisement, sir,” said Gilead quietly, “about a dog.”
The effect of his words was startling. Mr Brown seemed to burst at the
head, like an over-charged bottle of ginger-beer, and thence to spout
a volume of incoherent expletives. He then, as if impelled by some
uncontrollable emotion, went racing up and down the room, until, the
pressure slacking, he gradually slowed, and finally came to a stop
opposite his visitor, the steam, so to speak, all out of him.
“I see it all,” he said, in a state of the limpest depression. “By an
irony of circumstance scarce credible, the sympathies I sought to
engage have been forestalled by my own child in a trivial matter.”
“By a young friend of your child, sir, if I am correctly informed,”
said Gilead kindly.
“You mean the boy Wimble?” said Mr Brown bitterly. “No doubt, sir,
your information--”
“It was at first hand,” put in the visitor, smiling. “I met the young
people outside, and got into talk with them. The boy, he himself
confessed to me, composed and inserted the advertisement.”
“The grotesque impertinence of it!” cried Mr Brown, boiling over; “the
assurance and the inopportuneness!”
“I understand,” said Gilead, “that you authorized the little lady to
find, if possible, a home for the animal?”
“Go on, sir, go on!” said Mr Brown resignedly. “Tell me that I
authorized her to hold her father up to ridicule before the world.”
“Nay, sir,” said Gilead, “I am quite at sea in the matter.”
“I will acquaint you, Mr Balm,” said the father dismally, “with the
facts of the case--especially as they bear in some measure on a
confidence I have already reposed in you. Mrs Craddock Flight, sir,
made it a condition of our union that the dog should be destroyed.”
“It was the single condition to which you referred, I assume,” said
the visitor. “May I venture to ask what suggested it?”
“The dog had bitten her, sir. They will take these unaccountable
aversions. It was during a short visit she lately paid us.”
“Pardon me,” said Gilead, “if I enquire if your little girl is not
very attached to the animal?”
“There is no denying,” said Mr Brown, “that Judy is devoted to Pilot,
and Pilot to Judy. It was on that account that I was moved to sanction
the compromise of a new home, in which compromise, I have not the
least doubt, Mrs Flight’s superior reason will acquiesce, particularly
when she is informed of the character of the applicant.”
Gilead bowed. “May I see the dog?” he asked.
Mr Brown shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands in a manner of
patient repudiation.
“With pleasure,” he said, and evidently without the least. “We will go
at once.”
He led the visitor out by a back door, across a fair but neglected
lawn, through a space of untended kitchen garden, and so down to the
river bank, where, by some water steps and a little boat-house, stood
a dog-kennel of considerable dimensions. And straight, on the sound of
their approach, there issued from this last, with a rattle of iron
links, a magnificent Newfoundland.
Gilead exclaimed.
“But he is superb! I am quite astonished! His value, Mr Brown!”
The master was engaged in releasing swivel from collar. The beautiful
dog, fawning and delighted, made up to him endearingly.
“Judy, I am sure,” said Judy’s father in a suppressed voice, “would
never dream of making a transaction of her pet. Yes, there’s your
little mistress, boy.”
The great dog, released, went bounding joyously and sniffing
riverwards. There was a punt out there in mid-stream, and a small
meaty boy was upright in it, endeavouring to find soft bottom, for
fishing purposes, with one of its poles. A little girl in a flowered
hat sat in the stern.
“It seems a harsh necessity,” said the father, in a voice which made
Gilead approve him for the first time; “but the cause, sir, the cause
is paramount.”
Gilead, quite fascinated, called to the dog--approached him. At that
instant there came a shrill cry from the father: “Sit down, Judy, sit
down! My God!”
There was an answering screech from the river; a splash; the small
boy, slipping his hold in a panic, went down among the thwarts, and
the punt, leaving its pole sticking in the mud, began to swing
downstream. Judy, in anguish of the scene enacting on the banks,
thinking to see her pet ravished away before her eyes, had stood up,
and, blind with grief, had lost her footing and tumbled overboard. She
could not swim; neither of the men could swim; the boy in the punt,
nerveless and blubbered, was worse then inept. A dreadful moment of
paralysis followed, and then two little arms and a draggled head came
above the surface.
[image: images/img_075.jpg
caption: “A SOFT, SEAL-LIKE HEAD WAS SEEN DRIVING ACROSS THE SHINING
FLOOD.”]
Gilead, in agony, stumbled for the boat-house; the father, sobbing and
staring, was already waist-deep in the water. “My little child!” he
gasped--“my little child!”--there went by them both a great bound and
surge, and swift and unerring a soft seal-like head was seen driving
across the shining flood. They stood like things of stone, hardly
breathing--and then there came a swirl, a reasoned snap; and the
little face, wild and choking, was lifted above the surface. Good
Pilot! Loyal and lovely friend! He brought her, crying, to the steps,
and there having deposited her, shook himself, and crouched, somewhat
appealing, as if he had taken a liberty.
* * * * *
The little girl, well-frightened but unharmed, was asleep upstairs;
the greater dog lay blinking on the hearthrug; Gilead, by his host’s
particular desire, delayed his departure yet a little.
Very few words had passed between them, and the young man was
considering with what manner of blessing he could best terminate a
visit, whose prolongation, in view of the subdued and obviously
self-tormented figure before him, seemed an impertinence, when a ring
at the bell sounded through the silent house, and its master was
presented with a telegram. Its perusal appeared to act upon him like
an instant and amazing stimulant. He rose, his spectacles seemed to
glare, his head to bristle. Patently on the verge of an explosion, he
stepped across to Gilead with an exaggerated softness, and laid the
paper before him. “Oblige me by reading that,” he said. The young man,
wondering, obeyed.
“_Have just seen advertisement. Either the dog must be destroyed or
our compact ends. Answer prepaid. Isabella._”
Gilead looked up.
“Yes, from her,” said Mr Brown, still with an icy quietude, in answer
to the mute enquiry. And then the burst came--only a little rent at
the outset, but rapidly roaring to a breach:--
“Now, isn’t that just like a woman--without reason or justice or
decency--mere venomous spite, indifferent to the consequences to
others so long as it can injure the object of its resentment.
Sympathy? Nonsense! Tell me why, in the University boat-race on this
river, nine women out of ten will be Cambridge? Out of pity for its
persistent ill-success? Not in the least, sir. Simply because they
think the colour the more becoming.” (The breach widened)
“Consistency? Bosh! with minds the sport of any chance mood? Veering
as the compass--changeable as the weather--you may forecast ’em fair
in the morning, and be drenched or frozen by ’em in the afternoon?”
(The breach split resoundingly) “Principles? Lunacy! Their one
indestructible principle is vanity, and in their wild rush for
personal notoriety of any sort, all principles and all decencies may
go to the devil” (The breach, with a roar, rent from hem to hem).
“From this moment I repudiate the cause,” shouted Mr Brown, glaring
and dancing; “from this moment I refuse to identify myself with a sex
so utterly deficient in the moral sense. Votes for women! Not unless
we wish to see our national character for reason and fair-play thrown
by the board! Not unless we wish to see our most cherished
institutions of order and justice degraded to the uses of
irresponsible malice. Incapable of governing, even themselves--a set
of chattering harpies lusting for the blood of heroes!”
He ended with a roar. Gilead rose to his feet.
“The maid is waiting for an answer, sir,” he said; and, indeed, the
poor girl stood as if petrified.
“Give me the paper!” yelled Mr Brown. He snatched it from the young
man’s ready hand, slung out a pencil from his watch-chain, dabbed at
the reply form, fuming and sputtering.
[image: images/img_078.jpg
caption: “HE DABBED AT THE REPLY FORM, FUMING AND SPUTTERING.”]
“The dog must die, must he?” he panted ironically. “My child must be
sacrificed to a swollen-headed harpy’s caprice! A useful lesson; I
thank you, madam”--and he dashed off the following message. (Gilead
had the assurance to glance at it, as he handed it to the girl):
“_Offer declined. The dog remains with me. Theophilus._”
A minute later, Gilead, being assured of the departure of the
telegraph boy, took his own with much satisfaction, leaving Mr Brown
fondly stroking the head of the great dog as he lay upon the rug.