A DOG VIOLATE.
A GREAT observer of these latter days has advised us to abstain from
deep research into the origin of our own names. Otherwise we might
become convinced of a lamentable want of lofty tone among those,
without whom we could not have been here, to show our superiority. A
vein of fine thought is at once set flowing; but for “Ragless” it would
have flowed in vain, as dogs have no surname to dwell upon.
His case was a strange one, and not without interest. Nobody in our
parish had any knowledge of his ancestry, although he had won very high
repute by biting many people who got over it. Any other dog would have
become the victim of an injudicious outcry; but “Ragless,” by making
some other good bites, established his legal right to do it, and was
now considered a very wholesome dog, though he might have a temper of
his own. But even if he had, who was to blame?
Some seven, or it may have been eight years since, Miss Coldpepper was
“rolling in her carriage” down Feltham hill, when the coachman pulled
up very sharply, and just in time to save mishap. All the boys in the
village were let loose from school, and with one accord had found a
genial pastime, which they were pursuing with the vigour of our race.
They had got a poor dog, with no father, or mother, or even policeman
to defend him, and they had put him in a barrel near a garden-gate, and
tacked in the head so that no escape was left. This being done to their
entire satisfaction, what remained except to roll him down the hill?
And this they were doing with a lofty sense of pleasure, and shouts
that almost drowned the smothered howls from within, when the carriage
came upon them, and very nearly served them right. “Let them have the
whip,” cried the lady with due feeling, when the footman had jumped
down and reported all the facts; but the ring-leaders had vanished, and
the boys who tasted lash were some innocent little ones who had only
helped in shouting. “Hand him in to me,” was her next order; and the
poor trembling animal saw pity in her eyes, and gave her face a timid
lick, which made his fortune. No claimant being found for him, the lady
took him home, and aptly called him “Regulus,” which the servants very
promptly converted into “Ragless,” reasoning well that the Italian
greyhound wore a coat, but this dog had none, save the bristles
wherewith Nature had endowed him. In the course of time he superseded
every other dog, and probably every human being, in the affection of
Miss Coldpepper.
If the early portion of his life had been unhappy, fortune had now
made him ample amends, and he should have been in amity with all
mankind. But whether from remembrance of his youthful woes, or cynical
perception of our frailties and our frauds, Regulus never acquired that
sweetness, which we look for in dogs, so much more than in ourselves.
His standard of action was strict duty beyond doubt, but a duty
too strictly limited, and confined to two persons—himself, and his
mistress. With the rest of creation he was cheerfully at war, though
tolerably neutral towards the cook, when she could bid high enough for
his consideration. These things made him deeply respected.
In person however, he was not quite a dog to arouse any vast
enthusiasm. He belonged to the order of the wiry-coated terriers, if he
was a terrier at all; for in him all the elements were so duly mingled,
that Nature could only proclaim him a dog. The colour of ginger and
that of cinnamon were blended together in his outward dog; and he went
on three legs, quite as often as on four, as much from contempt of the
earth perhaps as from feelings of physical economy. There was nothing
base about him; he had fine teeth, and he showed them, but never made
insidious assault on anybody. When he meant to bite, he did it quickly,
and expressed his satisfaction afterwards.
To seduce such a sentry, was an enterprise worthy of him, who in sweet
love’s service, and dispensing its mournful melodies, enchanted the
son of Echidna. And it may have been this sense of difficulty, and a
sporting desire to conquer it, which led me to follow up the joke, and
try my hand at a job, which had beaten the deepest dog-stealers of
Seven Dials.
All day long, I hoped to get at least a glimpse, or if bad luck
would not allow that, to hear at any rate something of that young
lady, without whom my life must grow old and barren. For this was no
school-boy affair of the fancy, nor even a light skit of early manhood,
such as fifty young fellows have out of fifty-one, and go their way
quickly after some other girl. I had never been given to such fugitive
sport; I was now in the prime of my years almost, and though I might
have looked at maidens, and thought what pretty things they were, none
had ever touched my heart till now. And “touched” is by no means the
proper word to use; it should be said plainly, that all my heart was
occupied, and possessed to its deepest fibre by a being far better, and
sweeter, and nobler than its outer and bodily owner; and that this must
abide so to its very latest pulse; as you will truly find, if you care
to hear about it.
Not a word came to me about those things which destroyed all my
attention to any other; and the dusk had stopped work—which was my
only comfort—and I sat all alone that Wednesday evening trying to get
through a little bread and cheese, but glancing more often from our
old window at the gloomy rush of the river, which was still in high
flood though some little abated. Uncle Corny was gone, to try to get
some money from people who had thriven on his hard-won fruit, and Mrs.
Tabby Tapscott had left the house early, upon some business of her own.
The house-door was open, for we had not many rogues, till the railway
came some years afterwards; and the evening was of those that smell of
beehives, and cornstacks, and horses upon their way home. At last, when
I had made up my mind to be forgotten by every one, in came Tabby, as
bright as a bun.
“Oh fai, oh fai!” she cried; “whatever be ’e doing of? Atin’ no zupper,
and zittin’ as if ’e was mazed a’most. Look ’e zee what the Lord hath
zent ’e! I was vorced to go arl the way to Hampton for ’un, for year
of they long tongues to Zunbury. If this wun’t vetch Measter Ragless,
arl I can zay is her bain’t a dog. Putt ’un down in zellar, when I’ve
larned ’e how to use ’un.”
From beneath her shawl she produced a little box, which she opened in
triumph, and the room was filled at once with a very peculiar odour
quite unknown to me. It was pungent rather than pleasant, and it made
me sneeze as well as laugh.
“You be up there by vaive o’clock, when the daisies’ eyes be openin’,
and goo to the zide door I tould ’e of”—Mrs. Tapscott knew all the
household ways at Coldpepper Hall, through a niece of hers who was
kitchen-maid, “and vang this by the coord out o’ heelin’, wi’out
titchin’ of ’un with thy vingers, and drag ’un athort the grass and the
pilm to backzide o’ the zhrubbery, and then you step out o’ zight in a
lew cornder. Ould dog be put out at zix o’clock riglar, and ’tis liable
he’ll hurn straight to ’e. Then let ’un ate a hummick, and kitch ’un up
vittily, and pop ’un into barg, and carr ’un home here, and I’ll zhow
’e what to do with ’un. But mind as her don’t scammel ’e. Her be turble
itemy.”
She gave me many other minute directions, and made me laugh so that
my spirits rose, with the hope of an interesting little farce, to
relieve the more tragic surroundings. I undertook briskly to play my
part, looking on the matter as a harmless joke; though I came to think
in course of time that the cruel theft I suffered from might partly
be a just requital for this wicked robbery. And yet it was absurd and
senseless, to make such comparison.
Without disturbing Uncle Corny, who slept very heavily, I was up before
daylight on the Thursday morning, and set out with the box and bag on
my felonious enterprise. Coldpepper Hall, or Manor, as it was called
indifferently, stood back upon some rising ground at a distance from
the river, and was sheltered well by growth of trees. There was nothing
very grand about it, and it leaned on stucco more than stone; but there
was plenty of room both within and without, and any one getting inside
the doors might say to himself, with some comfort flowing into him—“I
am sure that I need never be in any hurry here.”
The sun meant to get up a little later on, when I jumped the palings
of this old demesne, at a place where of right there should have
been a footpath, but the owner of the Manor had stopped it long ago,
perceiving the superior claims of quietude. Nobody had cared to make a
fuss about it, but enough of ancestral right remained to justify me in
getting over. Every window of the house was still asleep, and I gazed
at it with humble reverence, not as the citadel of the Coldpeppers,
but as the shrine of my sacred love. Then I chose a place of ambush in
a nest of hollies, and approaching the sallyport of Regulus, drew a
slow trail from it across the dewy grass to my lurking-place, and there
waited calmly.
Sweet visions of love from the ivory gate now favoured me with their
attendance, partly perhaps because love had not allowed me to sleep
out my sleep. Far as I am from any claim to the merits of a classical
education, I had been for some years, off and on, as a day boy at
Hampton Grammar-school, and could do a bit of Virgil pretty well,
and an ode or two of Horace. Whenever Uncle Corny came across a
Latin name he would call for me; and take it altogether, I had long
been considered the most learned young man in Sunbury. Even now I
remembered, though most of it was gone, the story of the Nymph who
placed her son in ambuscade for Proteus, and the noble description of
Regulus on parole, waving off the last kiss of his wife and babes.
Grimly he set his manly visage on the ground; and my Regulus was doing
the very same thing now.
Fat Charles had opened the door with a yawn, and sent forth that animal
of Roman type, to snuff the morning air, and perform his toilet, and
pay his orisons in general. Luxurious days had told their tale; it was
too plain that Capua had corrupted Sabine simplicity. Regulus moved
with a listless air, his desire to find whom he might bite lay dormant,
and no sense of iniquity pricked his ears, or lifted the balance of
his tail. “Let the world wag,” was the expression of his eyes, “I get
whatever I want in it, and would wag to it also, if I were not too
fat.” It appeared too certain that if I meant to catch him, I should
have to go and bag him where he stood.
But suddenly down went his nose, and his bristles flew up, and every
line of his system grew stiff as wire. He had lit on my trail near a
narrow flower-border, and it presented itself with a double aspect.
Was it the ever-fresh memory of a cat—not a cat of every-day life of
course, but a civet-cat, a musk-cat, a cat of poetic, or even fabulous
perfume? Or was it the long-drawn sweetness of a new ambrosial food,
heaven-sent to tempt his once lively, but now vainly wept-for appetite?
Whatever it might be, the line of duty was marked, and beyond evasion.
Those of our race who have made a study of dogs, for the sake of
example, declare that the best and most noble of them follow quest with
their noses well up in the air. Regulus failed in this test of merit;
he spread his nostrils affably within an inch of where the worms lay,
pricked his hairy ears, which were of divers colours, and with the
stump of his tail as the loftiest point of his person, ran a bee-line
towards me. In accordance with his fame, I made ready for a bite; but
to my surprise he paused, when he came point-blank upon me, and seemed
taken aback, as with some wholly new emotion. Regardful of the teaching
of my Nymph, I offered him a portion of the magic sop, and while he was
intent upon it slipped a stout potato-sack over his head, tumbled him
in with a push in the rear, and shouldered him.
Taking the path across the fields, I got home without meeting any one,
and found Tabby waiting for me near the root-house, which was simply
the trunk of a grand old oak, with a slab of elm fitted as a door to
it. No one was likely to visit this old storehouse at the present time
of year, and the loudest wailing of the largest dog might be carried on
in the strictest privacy. But I meant him to be happy there, and so he
was—to some extent.
For he seemed to resign himself, as if recalling his early adventure
in the barrel, and regarded his later prosperity as a dream; and
probably the charm of the drug he had swallowed acted benignly upon his
nerves. At any rate he allowed himself to be secured by a chain and a
fold-pitcher, and even licked my hand instead of snarling and showing
his teeth. Every arrangement was made for his comfort, and he lay down
as happy as a lotus-eater.
After breakfast, I took a little turn in the village, and there had
the pleasure of seeing fat Charles, the Coldpepper footman, nearly
trying to run, and looking sadly out of breath. He carried a leading
strap, with no dog to it, and under his arm was a bundle of papers.
As I approached him with kind inquiries, he drew forth his roll and
requested me to read, while he was recovering his breath a little. My
face must have turned as red as his—for this was the first theft I ever
committed, except of some apples from a rival grower, a curmudgeon who
would not tell us what they were—and I felt very queer as I read the
following, written in round hand and with many capitals.
“Reward of one guinea!—Lost, stolen, or strayed, a large brindled
terrier, known as ‘Regulus,’ the property of Miss Coldpepper of
Coldpepper Manor. He is very hard of hearing, and a little fond of
snapping. Any person bringing him home will receive the above reward,
and no questions asked. Any one detaining him will be prosecuted, with
the utmost rigour of the law.”
Charles had a score perhaps of these placards, written in sundry hands,
and spelt in divers manners, as if all the household had been set to
work.
“Oh, Mr. Kit,” he cried, for every one called me that; “there is the
devil to pay, up to the ’All, and no mistake! And all of it blamed on
me, as innocent as the babe unborn, and more so, for only obeying of my
horders. What did I do, but just turn the brute out—for a brute he is
and no mistake, though wholesome in his bite, because it is his nature
to; and no one round these parts would be tough enough in the legs to
come forrard with a view of making off with him—then I shut the door
to, for his quarter hour airing, as laid down in written horders issued
every night. And my hair stood on end when he never come back, the same
as his does, when he flies at you.”
“But surely, Charles, some of you must have some suspicion?” I asked,
with astonishment at my own vice, and wondering what I should come to,
though not far enough gone as yet to look at him; “why should the dog
go from such a good home?”
“Because he’ve had enough of it, or we of him at any rate. He ain’t
been stolen, sir; the dog have that knowledge of the world, that all
Seven Dials couldn’t lay a tack to him. And everybody knows what our
Missus is. A guinea! Who’d steal a dog for a guinea? Let alone a dog
who’ll make a pepper-caster of you. No, no, I always said Old Nick
would come for ’un, some blessed morning; and I’m jiggered if he
haven’t! But bless my soul, you mustn’t keep me loitering like this,
sir. Mother Cutthumb wouldn’t have one, to stick up in her dirty old
window, Lord knows why. Do’e take one, and stick on your Uncle’s wall;
or a couple if you will, that’s a dear young man. There’ll be thirty
more ready, by eleven o’clock.”
It occurred to me that some of them perhaps had been written by a
certain lovely warm hand, which had the most delicious way with it that
could ever be imagined of stealing in and out of muff or glove, and of
coming near another hand (as coarse as a crumpet) in a sort of way that
seemed to say—“Now wouldn’t you like to touch me?”
“Who on earth can have written all these?” I asked. “Mr. Charles, why
you must have done most of them yourself.”
“Never a blessed one; Lord save you, I’ve a’ been on my poor legs, all
the morning! Every maid that could fist a few was ordered in. But the
young leddy fisted them four at the bottom.”
Making due allowance for his miscreant coarseness, I slipped away the
lowest four, and two others; those two I stuck up on the outer face of
Uncle Corny’s red-brick wall; but the other four never were exhibited
to the public, nor even to myself, except as a very private view. And
every one of them belongs to me at the present moment. The footman
thanked me warmly for this lightening of his task, and hurried on
towards Rasp the baker, and the linendraper.
So far as my memory serves, Uncle Corny got very little work out of
me that day. I was up and down the village, till my conscience told
me that my behaviour might appear suspicious; and I even beheld the
great lady herself, driving as fast as her fat steeds could travel, to
get her placards displayed all around in the villages towards London.
Although she was not very popular, and the public seemed well pleased
with her distress, I felt more than half inclined to take her dear love
back, and release him at his own door after dark. But Tabby Tapscott
said, and she had a right to speak,—“Don’t ’e be a vule now, Measter
Kit. Carr’ the job droo, wanst ’a be about ’un.” And just before dark
I met Mrs. Marker, and somebody with her, who made my heart jump. They
had clearly been sent as a forlorn hope, to go the round of the shops
where the bills had been posted. I contrived to ask tenderly whether
the dog was found.
“Not he, and never will be,” replied the housekeeper. “There are so
many people who owe the cur a grudge. Why, he even flies at me, if I
dare to look at him. Miss Kitty, tell Mr. Kit what your opinion is.”
“I fear indeed that somebody must have shot him with an air-gun. I am
very fond of dogs, when they are at all good dogs; but very few could
praise poor Regulus, except—except as we praise mustard. And I heard of
a case very like it in London.”
Her voice was so silvery sweet, and she dropped it (as I thought) so
sadly at that last word, that I could not help saying, although I was
frightened at my own tone while I said it,—
“Surely you are not going back to-morrow? Do say that you are not going
to leave us all to-morrow.”
Before she could answer, the housekeeper said sharply—“She was to have
gone to-morrow, Mr. Orchardson. But now Miss Coldpepper has made up her
mind to send for Captain Fairthorn the first thing to-morrow, unless
she recovers the dog meanwhile. Not that he knows anything about dogs,
but he is so scientific that he is sure to find out something. Good
night, sir! Come, Kitty, how late we are!”
Is it needful to say that Regulus indued a tunic of oak that night?