process what one may, Finn saw and understood his mate's grief. He
recognized that he could not give her comfort. He knew that if Desdemona
would not answer to a call from him she would respond immediately to the
claims of her offspring, and to her offspring he led her. This is what
actually occurred, and no matter what the theorists may say in their
learned generalizations, the rest of us are free to draw our own
conclusions.
What happened was that Finn led his mate from the abandonment of her
lonely mourning to renewed absorption in her motherly duties. It is true
enough that nature was at work on Finn's side in this matter, and
without the wolfhound's aid would presently have achieved the same
result. But Finn assisted and hastened the process; and is that not as
much as one can often say of the high task of the physician?
X
FAMILY LIFE--AND DEATH
In the very early morning of their ninth day in the world, one of
Desdemona's three pups died--it was the weakling sister--and the eyes of
the big black-and-gray dog pup began to open. It seemed he had absorbed
all the strength of his weakling sister to add to his own, and, as is so
often the case with the largest pup of a litter, he thrived apace;
growing almost visibly "like a weed" as the breeders say.
Desdemona paid very little heed to the puppy that died. Had it been a
human child, skilled nurture would likely have sustained its weakling
life, possibly for many years. But it was not part of Nature's plan that
any of the bloodhound mother's energies should be wasted over the
weakling of her little brood. The race is to the swift in Nature's
scheme. The black-and-gray pup always secured the most warmth because he
burrowed forcibly under his brothers and sisters. He secured the lion's
share of nutriment because he was strong enough to force his way from
teat to teat, ousting all other comers, till his lusty appetite was
satisfied. He secured the most of his mother's attention, partly because
of his ability and will to thrust himself to the fore at all times, and
partly, it may be, by compelling her prideful admiration.
When Finn found the little dead body he silently nosed and drew it out
from the cave. Out there on the open turf of the Down Nature would see
speedily to its sepulture, for Nature employs many grave-diggers and
suffers no unseemly waste. She works on a huge scale, but only the
superficial see wastefulness in Nature's plans.
So now Desdemona's family was reduced to two--the big black-and-gray dog
pup and one black-and-tan bitch pup. The reduction was probably a
beneficent one for Desdemona, for her flanks were very hollow now. Two
puppies were quite enough for her to nourish, more especially since one
of the two already demanded as much nourishment as any two ordinary
youngsters of his age. The sunken hollows of the Lady Desdemona's sides
gave extraordinary prominence to her low-hanging and not too well-filled
dugs. Her shape and general appearance were strangely different from
those of the sleek and shining young bitch whose beauty had aroused so
much enthusiasm in the minds of all judges who had seen her at Shaws. An
uninformed outsider would scarcely have recognized her as the
satin-coated beauty whose supple grace had so impressed Finn a few
months back, in the walled inclosure above the stables.
Yet in some ways the Lady Desdemona of the cave was a more admirable
creature than the beautiful young hound who won so much admiration at
Shaws. Desdemona had learned more during the past few weeks than in all
the rest of her life. Sustained effort for others and consistent
self-sacrifice had set their distinctive seal upon a merely beautiful
young animal; and now she had elements of grandeur and dignity, of
fineness and nobility, such as no amount of human care and kindness can
give even to the handsomest of creatures. She had gone out into the open
to meet life and deal with it in her own way; she had brought new life
into the world, and nurtured it with loving devotion and
self-forgetfulness; she had freely courted some of the severest of
Nature's tests, and withstood them with credit to herself. So that,
whatever the show judges might have said or thought, she was a finer,
better creature to-day than she had ever been at Shaws.
As the days slipped past in that early summer-time, the black-and-gray
dog pup thrived wonderfully in Desdemona's cave. Having keen sight now
in addition to the wonderful sense of smell which was his at birth, the
black-and-gray had become a definite person already. Young though he
was, he already knew the taste of rabbit's flesh, and would growl
masterfully at his own mother if she claimed his attention--say, for a
washing--when he had stolen one of her bones, and was busily engaged in
gnawing and scraping it with his pin-point teeth. When Finn appeared,
this masterful youngster would waddle purposely forward, growling at
times so forcibly as to upset his precarious equilibrium.
Twice he had adventured alone to the cave's mouth, and tumbled headlong
down the steep slope outside, grunting and growling the while (instead
of whimpering, as his sister would have done), and threatening the whole
South Downs with his displeasure. With never a hint of anything to fill
the place of the much-discussed attribute we call filial instinct in the
young of human kind, the black-and-gray pup conceived the greatest
admiration for his father. But it was little he recked of fatherhood and
he always vigorously challenged Finn's entry to the cave, which he
regarded as his property and his mother's. Her authority he was, of
course, obliged to recognize, and, too, he liked her well. But though he
recognized Desdemona's authority, he disputed it a dozen times a day,
and made a brave show of resistance every time he was washed.
His little sister was his abject slave, and if in her slow
peregrinations about the cave she should stumble upon a scrap of
anything edible, he would promptly roll her over with one of his
exaggeratedly podgy front paws and snatch the morsel from her without
the slightest compunction. In the same way he would chase her from teat
to teat when they both were nursing, and when full-fed himself would
ruthlessly scratch and tug at his mother's aching flanks from sheer
boisterous wantonness. At such times he would climb about her hollow
sides, holding on by his sharp claws, and scratch and chew her huge
pendulous ears, rarely meeting with any more serious check or rebuke
than a low, rumbling hint of a maternal growl, which, as a matter of
fact, alarmed his little sister more than it impressed him. In fact,
Master Black-and-Gray was a healthily thriving and insolent young cub,
who enjoyed every minute of his life and gave every promise of growing
into a big hound--providing he should chance to escape the
thousand-and-one pitfalls that lay before him, regarding the whole of
which his ignorance was, of course, complete.
The greatest adventure of his infancy came when he was just twenty-eight
days old. The time was late afternoon on a warm day. Having thrust his
sister out from the coolest innermost corner of the cave, the
black-and-gray pup had curled himself up there, and was sleeping
soundly, while his sister lay somewhat nearer the opening of the cave.
Had the weather been less warm, the black-and-gray pup would have used
his sister as a pillow, a blanket, or a mattress, and in that case the
adventure might have ended differently. As it was, his dream fancies
were suddenly dispelled by the coming of a musky, acrid odor that swept
across his small but sensitive nostrils with much the same effect that a
sound box on the ear would have upon a sleeping child.
He awoke with a jerk, to see silhouetted against the irregular path of
sky that was framed by the cave's mouth the figure of a full-grown
mother fox. This vixen was closely related to the red fox to whom this
cave had formerly belonged. She had long since learned of Reynard's end,
of course, and, indeed, had seen his corpse within twenty-four hours of
the execution. Though frequently moved by curiosity, she had never
before ventured so near to the cave and would hardly have been there now
but for the fact that she had seen Desdemona hunting a mile away and
more. Now she peered in at the cave's mouth, informing herself chiefly
through her sharp nose regarding its condition and inhabitants.
The black-and-gray pup snarled furiously, and the vixen leaped backward
on the instant. Reflection made her scornfully ashamed of this movement,
and she stepped delicately forward again. The smaller pup whimpered
fearfully, and that was the poor thing's death-knell. The vixen promptly
broke its neck with one snap of her powerful jaws and dragged the little
creature out into the sunshine. All this time Master Black-and-Gray had
been growling fiercely--his entire small body quivering under the strain
of producing this martial sound. His fat back was pressed hard against
the rear wall of the cave--partly, perhaps, to give him courage, and
partly, no doubt, by way of getting a better purchase, so to say, for
the task of growling, which really required all his small stock of
strength.
Outside the cave, in the sunshine, the vixen was sniffing and nosing at
the body of the puppy she had killed. She presented her flank to
Black-and-Gray's view, and, for herself, could see nothing inside the
cave now. Black-and-Gray had seen his sister slain. The blood of great
aristocrats and heroes was in his veins. His wrath was tremendous,
overwhelming, in fact, and, but for the support of the cave's wall,
would certainly have been too much for his still uncertain sense of
balance. Suddenly now his ancestry spoke in this undeveloped creature.
Determination took and shook him, and spurred him forward. With a sort
of miniature roar--the merest little mixture of breathless growl, snarl,
and embryonic bark--he blundered forth from his dark corner, hurtling
over the cave's floor at a gait partaking of roll, crawl, and gallop,
and flung himself straight at the well-furred throat of the unsuspecting
vixen.
Even as an accomplished swordsman may be wounded by the unexpectedness
of the onslaught of some ignorant youngster who hardly knows a sword's
pommel from its point, so this murderously inclined vixen was bowled
over by the astounding attack of Master Black-and-Gray. The slope was
very steep and the pup's spring a bolt from the blue. The vixen slipped,
lost her footing, and went slithering down the dry grass from the ledge,
snapping at the air as she slid, with bites, any one of which would
easily have closed Black-and-Gray's career if they had reached him. But
the puppy was quite powerless to put on the brake, so to say, and his
progress down the slope was therefore far more rapid than that of the
vixen. The breath was entirely knocked out of Black-and-Gray when he
finally was brought up, all standing, by a sharp little rise of ground
alongside the gap past which one saw across the Sussex weald from
Desdemona's cave. Here it seemed he must pay the ultimate penalty of his
unheard-of temerity, and be despatched by the now thoroughly angered
vixen at her leisure.
But in that same moment a number of other things happened. In the first
place, having reached it from the far side of the ridge, Desdemona
appeared beside the mouth of her cave, dangling a young rabbit from her
jaws. In the second place, Finn appeared, climbing from the landward
side, in the gap beside which the puppy came to the end of its long
tumbling flight. Midway between the gap and the cave, the startled vixen
crouched on the slope, turning her head from the terrible vision of
Finn, upward to the scarcely less alarming vision of Desdemona, now
sniffing in the fact of her little daughter's murder.
The position was a parlous one for the vixen, and as she pulled herself
together for flight along the side of the slope she doubtless regretted
bitterly the curiosity which had impelled her to visit the den of her
departed relative.
The vixen leaped warily and doubled with real agility. But Finn was
easily her master in the arts of the chase, and his strength was ten
times greater than that of any fox in Sussex. The vixen was still well
within sight from Desdemona's cave when her time came. She leaped and
snapped, and faced overwhelming odds without wavering, but her race was
run when the wolfhound's great weight bore her to the earth and his
massive jaw closed about her ruff as a vise grips wood.
And in the moment of the vixen's death, just as Master Black-and-Gray so
far recovered his breath and his senses as to sit up and take stock of
himself; a pony's nose appeared in the gap alongside him and introduced
another new experience into this adventurous puppy's life. The pony must
have appeared to his gaze very much as an elephant would appear to a
child upon first view. But Black-and-Gray growled threateningly, though
he did take two or three backward steps. On the pony's back sat Betty
Murdoch, who now slid to the ground and knelt down beside the pup.
Then Desdemona came shuffling down the slope with reassuring little
whines of response to her son's growling. And to these there came Finn,
a trifle winded, and bearing traces of blood and fur about his bearded
gray muzzle. So Master Black-and-Gray, whose knowledge of his
fellow-inhabitants of the earth had hitherto been confined to Finn and
Desdemona and his own brothers and sisters--now defunct--found himself,
at the close of this most adventurous afternoon, the center of an
admiring, wondering circle formed by his mother and her wolfhound mate,
and the pony and Betty Murdoch. Having regarded each one among his
audience in turn questioningly, he finally waddled out to his mother and
thrust his somewhat bruised little nose greedily into her hanging dugs,
so that Desdemona, forgetful for the moment of other matters, was
impelled to lower herself to the turf and yield sustenance to her only
surviving offspring.
XI
JAN GOES TO NUTHILL
The idea came to me quite suddenly when I saw Finn walk off with the
best of his dinner bones to the Downs. I'd just come in from the
village, and Punch was hitched to the gate-post, so I got into the
saddle again and set out on Master Finn's trail.
Thus Betty Murdoch, later on in the evening, explaining the position to
the Master and to the Mistress of the Kennels.
"I felt sure he must be going to Desdemona," continued Betty. "And--"
"It really is a wonder we none of us thought of that before," said her
aunt.
They were all assembled now in a roomy loose box in the Nuthill stables.
Comfortably ensconced in a bed of clean straw, Desdemona was nursing her
puppy under the approving gaze of Finn, who sat on his haunches beside
the Master, gravely reviewing his mate's changed situation.
"I think the cave must be quite four miles away; right out past Fritten
Ring and the long barrow, you know, and I fancy poor Desdemona must have
had quite a family, because, besides the one dead pup close to the cave,
I saw several little skeletons; quite a lot of animal remains scattered
about--pieces of rabbit and the remains of another fox besides the one
Finn killed. The extraordinary thing is that Jan, here, appeared to me
to have been fighting the fox that killed his sister. He was growling
away most ferociously when I found him."
"Yes, he's a real 'well-plucked un,' is Jan, as you call him," said the
Master. "Your pup, Betty. I'm sure the Colonel will say he must be
yours, for you found him, and there's fully as much Finn as Desdemona
about him. He will make a wonderful dog, that, unless I'm greatly
mistaken. Well, now I must get over to Shaws and let them know about
Desdemona. I dare say the Colonel will want to come back with me to see
the bitch; so I'll ask him to have dinner with us."
As the event proved, the Nuthill family and Colonel Forde spent most of
the evening in that loose box. Stools were brought in from the
harness-room; and Betty Murdoch had to tell her story all over again,
while the others made suggestions and filled in gaps with their
surmises; and everybody's gaze centered upon Desdemona and her son,
lying among the fresh straw. It is likely that Desdemona might have
noticed the confinement of that loose box a good deal more than she did,
but for the fact that she was thoroughly tired out. Her health was not
good just then, and the events of the day seemed rather to have overcome
her.
To the eyes of Colonel Forde and the Nuthill folk she appeared most
cruelly emaciated. She certainly was thinner than hounds who live with
men-folk grow; for she had gone rather short of food while nursing her
pups and had had to hunt for most of the food she did get. But in any
case unless specially nourished for the task, and given the abundant
rest of kennel or stable life, a bitch will always lose a lot of flesh
over suckling her young. Desdemona was not really so emaciated as her
friends thought her; but she was much thinner than she had ever been
before; and above all, had not a trace left of that sleekness which
sheltered life gives. The veterinary surgeon who came to see her next
morning, by Colonel Forde's request, had never before seen a dog fresh
from wild life; and he, too, thought Desdemona more dangerously
emaciated than she was.
"We must get that pup away from her just as soon as ever we can," said
the vet.
"But won't that make her fret?" asked the Mistress of the Kennels.
"Not very much if we let Finn be with her, I think," said the Master.
"And, in any case, she really isn't fit to go on feeding of that great
pup," repeated the vet. He even spoke of threatening trouble of the
milk-glands, which might mean losing Desdemona altogether. Her complete
loss of that smooth sleekness which life with humans gives deceived the
vet more than a little. And the upshot of it all was that Betty Murdoch
took over the sole management of the black-and-gray pup--her pup, as
Colonel Forde called him; and Desdemona and Finn were taken over to
Shaws in a cart, Finn being kept with the bloodhound to prevent her from
fretting for her puppy. At Shaws, Desdemona was established in a loose
box under the vet's supervision, and Finn spent some days there with
her.
Betty always said she had no earthly reason for christening her
black-and-gray pup Jan; but that, somehow, the name occurred to her as
fitting him from the moment at which she first saw him endeavoring to
stand up and growl at her pony, Punch, at the vixen, and at the world
generally on the Downs. From that same time Jan seemed to every one else
to fit his name; and it was clear he had taken a great fancy to Betty
Murdoch ever since she had wrapped him in her jacket and carried him
home triumphantly on her saddle-bow from the cave on the Downs.
If the season had been winter instead of midsummer, the orphaned Jan
would doubtless have missed greatly the warmth of his mother's body. As
it was, the harness-room stove was kept going at night to insure warmth
in the stable; and a large box, too deep for Jan to climb out from, and
snugly lined with carefully dried hay, was provided for his use o'
nights. Just at first, the deeply interested Betty tried feeding her new
pet with warm milk food in a baby's bottle. But Jan soon showed her that
though only a month old he was much too far advanced for such childish
things as this. He needed little teaching in the matter of lapping up
milk food from a dish (especially as he was allowed to suck one of
Betty's rosy finger-tips under the milk for a beginning); and as for
gravy and meat and bones, it might be said that he tackled these things
with the enthusiasm of a practised gourmet.
As a matter of fact, Desdemona did sorely miss Jan for a couple of days,
despite the comforting society of her mate; but Jan did not miss her a
scrap. At present there was not an ounce of sentiment in his
composition. He was kept warm, he lay snugly soft, and his stomach was
generally full. He had great gristly bones to gnaw and play with, and
Betty Murdoch, with a little solid-rubber ball, played with him also by
the hour together. Beyond these things Jan had no thought or desire at
present. He grew fast, and enjoyed every minute of the growing.
The Master's intimate knowledge of puppy needs caused certain mixtures
to be introduced into Jan's food from time to time, which saved the
youngster (without his knowing anything about it) from the worst of the
minor ills to which puppy flesh is heir. The same carefully exercised
knowledge, born of long practice, introduced other specially blended
elements into the pup's food which made for rapid bone and muscle
development. In a variety of ways the resources of man's civilization
and skill were made to serve Jan's welfare; and it must be admitted that
in most respects he gained considerably by losing his mother and the
life of the cave.
With Desdemona matters were somewhat different. For a little while she
was moodily conscious of the loss of her pups; and, too, missed the wide
open freedom of her cave life on the Downs. But, physically, she was in
some disorder, and the treatment now meted out to her was very helpful
and soothing in that direction. The fomenting of her sore and badly
scratched dugs was most comforting. The cleansing, healing medicine
given her was helpful. The gradually increased generosity of her diet
was gratifying; and at the end of a week her coat began to shine once
more under the application of Bates's grooming-gloves.
It is to be remembered that Desdemona, so far from being a creature of
the wild, had centuries of high civilization behind her. Her little
excursion into wild life was chiefly due to the inspiration of Finn's
society; and Finn himself, despite occasional attacks of the nostalgia
of the bush, was none the less a product of civilization; a deal more
subtle and complex in many ways than the native folk of the wild.
XII
SOME FIRST STEPS
The phase upon which little Jan now entered A was as jolly and enjoyable
as any form of sheltered dog life could well be. There were no kennels
at Nuthill, and it must be admitted that kennel life is never the
happiest sort of existence for a dog, though in some establishments it
is so organized, as to be a very healthy one.
Jan speedily became an object of affectionate interest for every member
of the Nuthill household, and was, from the first, the special and
well-loved protégé of Betty Murdoch, a privilege which, of itself, would
have insured his well-being. For Betty was an eminently sensible girl,
besides being a kindly, merry lover of animals and outdoor life. And in
her aunt and the Master she had perhaps the best sources of doggy
information to be found in Sussex.
Thus Jan was never subjected to the cruel kind of ordeals from which so
many petted dogs suffer. He was not treated as a delicate infant in arms
for a day or so, and then ignored for a week. His internal economy was
never poisoned or upset by means of absurd gifts of sweetmeats. His
meals reached him with the unfailing regularity of clockwork, and were
so carefully designed that, whilst his growth never was retarded for
lack of frequent nutriment, the finish of a meal always left him with
some little appetite. And he never saw food save at his mealtimes.
But, be it said, Betty did not forget that in Jan's case weaning had
been a very abrupt process. During his first few days at Nuthill he had
as many as nine meals in the twenty-four hours, and for a week or more
after that he had eight. Six daily meals was his allowance for several
weeks, and in the later stage of four a day he was kept for months.
After the first two days he never had two consecutive meals of the same
composition. That fact affected his appetite and, in consequence, his
bodily development, very materially. In fact, when Jan had been only a
few days at Nuthill, and but thirty-four days in the world, he turned
the big kitchen scale at 13 lb. 7-1/2 oz. In point of size and weight
his thirty-fourth day found him pretty much on a level with a fully
grown fox-terrier; though he was, of course, still quite unshapen, and
somewhat insecure upon his thick, gristly legs.
"He's going to be a slashing big hound, Betty," said the Master, after
weighing Jan. "And I think he's going to do you credit in every way. You
stick religiously to the feeding chart and the phosphates, and we shall
presently have Jan lording it over his own father--eh, Finn, boy!"