nuzzled the Master's hand, his invariable method of answering
unimportant inquiries of this sort. Then he walked forward and
good-humoredly sniffed round the puppy's head; whereupon Jan impudently
bit at his wolfhound father's gray beard, and had to be rolled over on
his back under one of Finn's massive fore feet. There followed upon this
a few minutes of romping that was most amusing to watch. Little Jan
would rush forward at Finn, growling ferociously. Finn would spread out
his fore legs widely, and lower his great frame till his muzzle almost
reached the ground, while his tail waved high astern. Just as the
bellicose pup reached his muzzle, Finn would spring forward or sideways,
often clean over Jan, alighting at some little distance, and wheeling
round upon the still growling pup with a grin that said, plainly:
"Missed me again! You're not half quick enough, young man!"
And then, by way of encouraging the youngster, Finn would lower himself
to the ground, head well out, and, covering his eyes and muzzle with his
two fore legs, would allow Jan to plunge like a little battering-ram
upon the top of his head, furiously digging into the wolfhound's wiry
coat in futile pursuit of flesh-hold for his teeth, and still exhausting
fifty per cent. of his energies in maintaining a warlike growl.
Hardly a day passed now that did not bring the introduction of some new
interest for the black-and-gray pup. Novel experiences crowded upon him
at such a rate that he was always in some way absorbed. Meals were
frequent, and, of course, a matter of unfailing interest. Sleep also was
frequent, as it is with all healthy young things. Given, as he was,
plentiful liberty and abundance of fresh air and sunshine, Jan exhausted
himself about once an hour, and took a nap, from which he would awake
within five, ten, fifteen, or thirty minutes, as the case might be, once
more charged to the throat with high spirits, energy, and puppyish
abandon.
More by luck than good management, it happened in his seventh week that
he killed a mouse in the stable. For some time he mounted guard over his
kill, solemnly parading round and about it, emitting from time to time
blood-curdling growls and snarls intended to warn the dead mouse of the
frightful penalties it would incur as the result of any attempt to come
to life again.
Then, the stable door having been left ajar, Jan valorously gripped the
small corpse between his jaws and went swaggering off toward the house
with it, questing kudos. In the garden he met Finn, who with careless
good humor strolled toward him, offering a game. Jan tried his best to
growl and to turn up his nose at the same time, indicating serious
preoccupation with matters more weighty than play. But finding that his
hold upon the mouse was gravely endangered by this process, he gave up
the attempt, and swaggered on toward the front entrance, followed
quizzingly by the wolfhound. Finding nobody in the porch, Jan fell over
the step, dropped his mouse, growled fiercely, and then with a plunge
regained his prize, and so, past the place where the caps and coats
hung, over the mats into the hall.
Here he found Betty and the Mistress, and at their feet deposited his
now rather badly mangled mouse; while Finn, like a big nurse taking
pride in the escapades of her charge, stood at one side and smiled, with
lolling tongue.
"Oh, what a fearsome beast it is!" laughed Betty, and ran to call the
Master. Then Jan was patted and petted, and told what a fine fellow he
was; what a mighty hunter before the Lord; and Finn smiled more broadly
than ever. This over, Jan was taken into the kitchen to be weighed (he
being now seven weeks old), and was told in an impressive manner that he
was within four ounces of twenty pounds.
"Pretty nearly half-a-pound-a-day increase. You'll have to take a cure
soon, my friend, if this goes on," said the Master.
From this time onward many of Jan's games were sensibly affected by his
slaughter of the mouse. He now treated the big shin-bones that were
provided for his delectation as live game of a peculiarly treacherous
sort. He stalked, tracked, hunted, and slew those bones with unerring
skill and remarkable daring. Their tenacity of life was most striking.
There were times when, having slain a bone after a long chase, poor Jan
would give way to his natural exhaustion and fall sound asleep with his
head pillowed on one end of the apparently well-killed and harmless
bone. Yet as often as not, when he would wake, perhaps a quarter of an
hour later, this same bone would once more betray its desperate and
treacherous vitality by means of an attempt at escape. So that even in
the very moment of waking the dauntless Jan would be obliged to growl
fiercely and plunge straightway into hard fighting again.
His first real bark was another dazzling experience. It came in his
eleventh week, when he was as heavy as two terriers, though still
somewhat shapeless, and gristly, rather than bony, as to his limbs.
Colonel Forde walked into the garden one afternoon, followed very
sedately by the Lady Desdemona, now sleek and shining, and more
aristocratic-looking than ever. Jan was dozing in the front porch, and
Finn away somewhere in the orchard. Jan sprang rashly to his feet and,
losing his balance, rolled over. Rising again, with more of caution and
considerable anger, he took a good look at the visitors, and glared with
special severity at Desdemona, who serenely ignored his existence.
Then, bracing himself firmly against the door-jamb, Jan opened his jaws
and--barked. But the novelty of the performance, superimposed upon the
concussion and the exertion involved, was too much for his stability,
and with one prolonged but unsuccessful effort to hold on to his dignity
Jan rolled over on the side farthest from the door-jamb. It was not to
be denied, however, that he had barked; and the strange sound--it was
part bark, part growl, and in part a bloodhound's bay--brought Finn from
the near-by orchard, and Betty Murdoch from the morning-room, and the
Master from his study, and the Persian cat from her perch on the hall
mantelshelf; so Master Black-and-Gray had no lack of audience, and,
indeed, received an almost embarrassing amount of congratulation, in the
course of which he made shift to get a good sniff at Desdemona's legs
and satisfy himself that she was art inoffensive person.
That Desdemona was any relation of his own neither he nor she seemed for
one moment to guess, though less than a couple of months had passed
since he ceased to derive his sole nutriment and support in life from
this same stately hound, at whose golden-brown fore legs and low-hanging
dewlap he now sniffed so curiously.
One result of her return to the sheltered life was that Desdemona looked
almost twice as big and massive as she had looked in her nursing days.
The pendulous dugs were no longer in evidence; but the rich, silky rolls
about her neck lay fold in fold; the immensely long ears were veritable
buttresses to her massy head. Her black nose gleamed like satin at the
end of her long muzzle, above which lay an interminable array of deep
wrinkles, radiating out and downward from her high-peaked crown. Just
once the noble head was lowered--as that of an ancient Greek philosopher
to an inquisitive child--and the crimson-hawed eyes directed downward
as, in a calm, aloof spirit of investigation, the Lady Desdemona took
note of the fussy movements of her own son.
"I don't think we have been introduced, have we?" she seemed to say. It
was difficult to realize that, not many weeks before, hollow of flank,
with the mother anxiety in her eyes, the same noble creature had battled
and contrived to keep life in herself and in this same lusty pup out
there on the open Down, four miles and more away, among the small wild
creatures and the débris of her cave home.
Among the dog-folk Nature has arranged matters in this way, wisely and
kindly. Separated from her good master, Colonel Forde, for many months,
or even years, Desdemona would have recognized him again without
hesitation. But like every other canine mother, and like every creature
of the wild, her own flesh and blood became utterly strange to her
within a very few weeks, when separated from her during its first months
of life. And from Nature's standpoint this is a highly necessary
ordinance, since, after a few more months, Desdemona, mated elsewhere,
might easily find herself called upon to rear an entirely new family in
new surroundings. So it is that whilst among her kind, as among the
creatures of the wild, there is nothing to prevent mother and son or
daughter from becoming friends in the youngster's adult life; yet never,
after the first separation, can they meet consciously as mother and
offspring.
It was an interesting picture for the Nuthill folk and Colonel Forde to
see Finn and Desdemona sedately strolling across the lawn together,
tried friends and mates, divided sometimes by the impudent gambols and
even by the mock attacks and invitations to play of their own lusty
son--the only whelp in existence, probably the only one who ever had
lived, to carry in his veins in equal parts the blood of centuries of
Irish wolfhound and bloodhound champions.
"Do keep them there!" cried pretty Betty Murdoch. "I simply must have
that picture; I'll fetch my camera." And after some skilled manoeuvering
to secure the son's collaboration, the promised picture was secured.
XIII
SAPLING DAYS
At the age of six months, Jan, the son of Finn and Desdemona, weighed
just ninety-eight and one-half pounds, and by reason of his
well-furnished appearance might easily have been mistaken by many people
for a grown hound. He was not really anything like fully grown and
furnished, of course, nor would be until his second year was far
advanced. But the free and healthy life he led, combined with a generous
and correctly thought-out diet, had given him remarkably rapid
development, and the strength to carry it without strain.
At this time Jan had, in outline, assumed his adult appearance. As time
went on he would increase greatly in weight, and to some extent in
height and length. His body would thicken, and his frame would harden
and set; his coat would improve, and his muscles would develop to more
than double their present growth. But in his seventh month one knew what
Jan's appearance was to be; his type had declared itself, and so, to a
considerable extent, had his personality.
There was not a brown hair in Jan's coat; not one hair of any other
color than black or iron-gray. His saddle and haunches were jetty black,
so was the crown of his head. But his muzzle was the right wolfhound
steel-gray. So were his chest, belly, and legs, though the black hairs
crept fairly low down on the outsides of his thighs and hocks, the inner
sides being all hard gray. The gray of his chest extended, like a ruff,
right round the upper part of his neck, forming a break of three or four
inches between the silky blackness of his head and saddle. And all his
coat was thicker, more dense, and longer in the hair than his sire's
coat, which, again, was of course much longer than Desdemona's.
Thus, in color and texture of coat Jan was neither all wolfhound nor all
bloodhound. For the rest, his bodily appearance and build favored his
mother's race more than his father's. The depth and solidity of his head
and muzzle, the length and shape of his ears, the rolling elasticity and
plenitude of his skin and the deep wrinkles it had already formed about
his face, were all features true to bloodhound type, as were also the
thickness and solidity of his frame, the downward poise of his head, and
his deep-pouched crimson-hawed eyes.
But when one saw Jan extended at the gallop, or in the act of leaping a
gate or other obstruction, one was apt to forget the bloodhound in him,
and to remember only his kinship with Finn, the fleetest son of a fleet
race of hunters. Jan had all the wonderfully springy elasticity of the
wolfhound. Already he leaped and ran as a greyhound leaps and runs.
Already, too, his accuracy of balance and his agility were remarkable.
He could trot quickly across the long drawing-room at Nuthill without
sound, and without grazing anything. Occasional tables and the like were
perfectly safe in his path. Despite his ninety-eight and a half pounds
of weight (still rapidly increasing), he could, on occasion, tread
lightly as a cat.
But the bloodhound came out in Jan in other ways besides his appearance.
He was for ever trailing, and used his dark hazel eyes far less than any
wolfhound uses his. In questing about the place for Betty Murdoch, one
noticed that Jan often did not raise his eyes or muzzle from the ground
until he almost touched her skirt. Withal, his vision was keener than
that of Desdemona's or any other typical bloodhound. His eyes served him
well for scanning the Downs; and often he would see a rabbit in the far
distance before picking up its trail. Still, once he did pick up a
trail, he would follow it as no wolfhound could, with unfailing
certitude, and without troubling to use his eyes.
The first notable demonstration of his trailing powers was his tracking
down of a missing ewe, across several miles of open Down, to the edge of
a remote, disused chalk-pit, into which the foolish creature had fallen
and broken its neck.
The trifling episode which served to draw more general attention to
Jan's all-round intelligence--which actually was considerably above the
average level for a half-grown youngster--concerned Betty Murdoch in
particular. It chanced that on a certain gray morning toward the close
of the year Betty had a sudden curiosity to see again the hill-side cave
beside which she had found Desdemona and Jan six months before. The gray
weather, so far from depressing Betty, often moved her to take long
walks; and if no other companion happened to be available, she could
always be sure of Jan's readiness to bear her company, as he did on this
occasion.
The fact that Betty did not appear at luncheon-time roused little
comment. She often was late for luncheon, and the only meal over which
Nuthill folk made a special point of being punctual was dinner. Still,
when three o'clock brought no sign of Betty, and the short day's decline
was at hand, the Master and the Mistress did begin to wonder. Then Jan
arrived, apparently rather in a hurry, and very talkative. His short
barks and little whines left no doubt about his determination to attract
attention; and the manner in which he bustled into the hall, hastily
nuzzled the Master's hand or coat-sleeve, and bustled, whining, back to
the porch, told those concerned, as plainly as words could, that he
wanted them to accompany him.
"Why, what's this?" said the Master. "I wonder if Betty is in sight."
Out in the garden nothing could be seen of Betty; but having led his
friends so far, Jan became more than ever insistent in demanding their
attendance on the path leading to the little orchard gate that opened
upon the Downs.
"H'm! Looks to me as though Betty were in a difficulty. I wish you'd
send out word to the stable for Curtin to saddle Punch and ride on after
me. Or, wait a moment. You stay here with Jan. I'll send the message,
and get my brandy--flask. One never knows. I'll be out again in a
minute."
But this hardly met with Jan's views. He seemed determined that the
Master should not go back. Whining and barking very urgently, he
actually laid hold upon the Master's coat with his teeth, dragging with
all his strength to prevent a return to the house.
"So, then. All right, good dog. I'll come, Jan."
And after all, the Mistress had to go back for the flask, and to send
word to the stable, while the Master walked out to the Downs. Jan was
overjoyed by his victory; but within a few moments he was urging haste,
and expressing obvious dissatisfaction with the Master's slow pace.
"Now you just simmer down, my son, simmer down," said the Master,
soothingly. "We haven't all got your turn of speed, so you might as well
make up your mind to it. I'll have a horse here directly, and then you
shall have your head I promise you. Meantime, just keep your teeth out
of this shooting-jacket. It may be old, but I won't have it tattered. So
you simmer down, my son."
Jan did his best, but it clearly did seem to him that the Master's pace
was maddeningly slow; and so, to make up for this, Jan tried the
experiment of covering just six times as much ground himself, apparently
with the idea that hurrying ought to be done, and that if he could not
make the Master do it the next best thing was to put in a double share
himself. So Jan led the way downward in loops. He would gallop on for
fifty yards, turn sharply, and canter back to the Master, emitting
little whining noises through his nose. Having described a circle about
the Master, on he would dash again, with more whines, only to repeat the
process a few moments later.
Then Curtin, the groom, overtook them, riding Betty's cob, Punch, and
carrying the flask which had been given him by the Mistress, who herself
was following on foot. The Master slipped the flask into his coat pocket
and mounted Punch.
"Now then, Jan, my son," said he, "I'm with you. Off you go!"
They were soon out of Curtin's sight. Jan perfectly understood the
position; and it seemed, too, that he communicated some idea of it to
Punch, upon whose velvety nose he administered one hurried lick before
starting. Then, with frequent backward glances over one shoulder, Jan
lay down to his task, and, followed by Punch and the Master, began to
fly over the springy turf with occasional short bays, his powerful tail
waving flagwise over his haunches.
Within eighteen or twenty minutes they were a good four miles from
Nuthill and nearing the gap in the high ridge through which one looked
out over the Sussex weald from Desdemona's cave. In another couple of
minutes the Master was on the ground beside Betty, and Punch, with the
nonchalance of his kind, was nosing the turf, as though to distract
attention from his hard breathing. The gallop had been mostly up-hill.
Betty was genuinely glad to welcome her visitors, for she had already
spent several hours in the chalky hollow where she now sat; the evening
air was cold, and Betty was in some pain. Clambering on the steep
Downside below Desdemona's cave, she had trodden on a loose piece of
chalk, her ankle had twisted as the chalk rolled, and Betty had fallen,
with a sharp cry of pain, quite unable to put her injured foot to the
ground. For a long while neither she nor Jan had thought of any way of
obtaining assistance.
"Then I thought of sending a message by Jan," said Betty, in explaining
matters to the Master, after she had been given a sip from his flask,
which brought some color back to her pale lips. "I told him again and
again to go home, waving my arm and trying hard to drive him off on the
way. But he would only go backward a few yards, and then return to me. I
had almost given it up when the thought came into my head that I ought
to have had pencil and paper, and been able to tie a note to his collar.
But I thought my handkerchief would do just as well, without any
writing. I was on the point of calling Jan to me again, so that I could
tie my handkerchief to his collar, when, quite suddenly, he also had a
brilliant idea. You could see it plainly in his face. He had suddenly
realized what I wanted. He gave one bark, blundered up against my
shoulder, tore my hair-net by the hurried lick he gave me, and was off
like the wind for Nuthill. It really was most odd the way the
inspiration came to him."
The Master nodded agreement. "It was extraordinarily intelligent for an
untrained pup of six months. I doubt if either his father or his mother
would have had wit enough for that at the same age. Very few dogs
would."
After another little sip of brandy Betty was lifted carefully into the
saddle and, Jan and the Master pacing beside him, Punch began the
homeward journey. Jan was quite sedate again now, but he had fussed
about a good deal, upon first arrival at the hollow, in his capacity as
guide and messenger. An hour later and Betty was comfortably settled on
the big couch beside the hall fire at Nuthill, and very shortly after
that Dr. Vaughan was in attendance, so that when tea came to be handed
round everybody's mind was at ease again. The doctor was for giving Jan
a share of his plum cake as a reward for meritorious conduct. But Betty
would have none of this.
"I'm surprised at you, Doctor," said Betty. "Bad habits and an impaired
digestion as a reward for heroism! Never! Extra meat, and an
extra-choice bone at supper-time, if you like; but no plum cake for my
Jan boy, if I know it."
But this sensible decision did not prevent Jan being made much of by the
whole household that evening; and partly by way of compliment, and in
part because Betty could not go to the stable, he was promoted to
grown-up privileges and allowed to take his supper in the porch that
night beside his father. Upon showing a casual inclination to
investigate his sire's supper-dish, he was firmly but good-humoredly put
into his place by the wolfhound. Upon the whole, Jan bore his new honors
well during this his first evening spent in a house. No doubt he
received useful hints from Finn. In any case, it was decided next
morning, by the Master's full consent, that from this time on, subject
to his proper behavior, Jan need not again be sent to his bench in the
stable.
XIV
WITH REFERENCE TO DICK VAUGHAN
One might search the English villages through without finding another
such medical practitioner as Dr. Vaughan, the man who dressed Betty
Murdoch's sprained ankle. For example, he was a Fellow of the Royal
Society, and the records of his original-research work won respectful
attention in at least four languages. When he inherited Upcroft (the
estate which flanks Nuthill to the eastward) and decided to establish
himself there, it certainly was not with any idea of playing the general
practitioner. But, as the event proved, he was given small choice. For
Sussex this district is curiously remote. It contains a few scattered
large houses, and outside these the population is made up of small
farmers and shepherds, very good fellows, most of them, but not at all
typical of home-county residents, and having more than a little in
common with the dalesmen of the north country. Their nearest resident
medical practitioner, before Dr. Vaughan came, was eight miles away, in
Lewes.
Dr. Vaughan used to say that his only son, Dick, should relieve him by
forming a practice in the district. But that was before Dick was sent
down from Oxford for ducking his tutor in the basin of a fountain and
then trying to revive that unfortunate gentleman by plastering his head
and face in chocolate meringues. It was prior also to Dick's unfortunate
expulsion from Guy's as the result of a stand-up fight with a
house-surgeon, and to his final withdrawal from the study of medicine as
a profession he was adjudged unworthy to adorn. The judgment was
emphatically indorsed by the young man himself, and so could not be
called over-severe.
When it became apparent that Dick was never to be a G.P., Dr. Vaughan
obtained the services of Edward Hatherley, a young doctor in search of a
practice, and specially altered and enlarged for his occupancy one of
the Upcroft cottages. This enabled Dr. Vaughan to decline the work of a
general practitioner without hurt to his naturally sensitive conscience.
But there still were people in the district whom he visited upon
occasion as a doctor, and his friends at Nuthill were among the favored
few. Such visits, however, did not in any way affect his income, which,
as the result of an unexpected legacy some twelve or fourteen years
before this time, was a substantial one, even apart from professional
earnings or the rents of Upcroft.