quarter, an American artist has kept “bachelor hall” for a score of
years or more. He is an animal-painter, and spends the winter in
elaborating his summer’s studies, and in preparing immense canvases for
sacrifice before that Juggernaut, the annual Salon. He received once a
commission to paint a portrait--a “post-mortem,” as such a commission is
usually called--of a deceased black-and-tan terrier. The only data he
had to work from were a small American tintype and the tanned skin of
the defunct pet. Having been inoculated with the spirit of modern French
realism, the artist could not be content with constructing a portrait of
the dog out of the materials provided, and went to a dog-fancier and
hired an animal as near as could be like the one in the tintype. At the
appointed hour the dog was brought to the studio in a covered basket.
When the canvas was ready and the palette set, the artist opened the lid
of the basket and the animal sprang out and began to run about the room.
The artist thought the dog would soon make himself at home, so at first
he did not attempt to secure him. But he shortly found that he grew
wilder and more excited every moment, and that catching him was no easy
matter. After knocking over all the furniture in the room except the
heavy easel, he succeeded in cornering him and seized him by the
collar. A savage bite through the thumb made him loose his hold, and the
rôles of pursuer and pursued immediately changed. The beast flew into a
terrible state of rage, snapping and snarling like a mad thing. As there
was no safer refuge than the large easel, the artist climbed upon that
to escape his infuriated enemy. By the aid of a long mahl-stock he
fished up the bell-cord which hung within reach, and pulled it until the
concierge came. The owner of the dog was speedily brought, and the siege
of the studio was raised. The same artist brought in from the country
one autumn a torpid snake, which he kept in a box all through the
winter. One morning in spring he was horrified to find the reptile
coiled up on the rug beside his bed. He killed it by dropping a heavy
color-box on it, without stopping to find out whether it was venomous or
not. It is easy to see how my story grew out of these two incidents.
Now that the chief actors in the drama which I have sketched in “The
Fourth Waits” are long since dead, I may confess without fear of
hurting anybody’s feelings that all the incidents in this tale are
absolutely true. There are plenty of witnesses to the accuracy of this
statement, and I have no doubt they would, if called upon, gladly
testify to almost every detail of the descriptions. No one who was
present at the funeral ceremonies in Antwerp and Rome can ever forget
the impression made upon him at the time; neither is any member of the
little artistic circle likely to forget to the end of his days the
strange sensation of superstitious awe with which the incidents of the
story of the stray dog were listened to every time the subject was
broached among us. The memory of this experience weighed heavily upon my
mind for two or three years, and I only threw off the load after I had
written the story.
It is only to complete this series of confessions that I explain how
this preface came to be written. I was riding home with a friend late
one raw afternoon at the close of a long day’s hunting in one of the
Midland counties of England, and we stopped to refresh ourselves and
horses at a wayside inn called The Holly Bush. When we mounted again at
the door, I reached up with my hunting crop and struck the holly bush
that hung over the door as a sign. It rattled like metal, and as we rode
away I said to my companion:
“That wasn’t a real holly bush!”
“That wasn’t real whiskey!” he replied.
The memory of the mongoose story which these remarks called up cheered
us more than the pause at the inn.
“The mongoose story is almost the only tale that need not be explained
even to a Scotchman,” my friend added.
This is how I came to think of explaining the construction of my
stories, and how I came to call my confessions “The Bush.”
THE END.