The Poythresses were cordiality itself. No sooner had the Don’s foot
crossed their threshold, than Mr. Poythress, taking him by the hand,
gave him a warm welcome to Oakhurst. “Yes, you are truly welcome,” said
Mrs. Poythress, taking the other hand; while Lucy, too, smiled in
hospitable assent.
The latter has told me since that she was struck, at the time, with a
certain something very singular in his manner of meeting these
courtesies. As the boat had neared the shore, she had observed that the
Don grew more and more silent; and now, in response to greetings of such
marked cordiality, he had merely bowed,—bowed low, but without a word.
“Are you cold?” asked Mrs. Poythress, looking up into his face, as they
entered the sitting-room. “Why, you are positively shivering! Mr.
Poythress, do stir the fire. Are you subject to chills? No?”
“The wind was very keen on the River,” said the Don. He spoke with
difficulty, and as he leaned over the fire, warming his hands, his teeth
chattered.
Charley whispered to Mrs. Poythress.
“Not a drop,” replied she; “you know Mr. Poythress will not allow a gill
of anything of the kind to be kept in the house. I am so sorry.”
“Well, it does not matter. Do you know it is past one o’clock? Suppose
all of you go to bed and leave him to me.”
“Now,” said Charley, when he and the Don were left alone, “let’s adjourn
to the dining-room and have a quiet pipe, after the labors of the
evening. I don’t know why it is,” continued Charley, as they entered the
room, “but fiddling—” Here Charley quickly drew back, as a horse when
sharply reined up, with a look that seemed to show that his eyes had
fallen upon some unwelcome object. The suppression of all appearance of
emotion was, as we know, a foible of his. There was one thing, however,
which he could not suppress; and it was this which often betrayed him to
his friends; to wit, his infirmity of stammering; of which, as I do not
care either to deface my pages or to make sport of my friend, I shall
give but sparing typographical indication, leaving the rest to the
reader’s imagination. “F-f-f-f-iddling,” continued he, “always gives me
a consuming thirst for a smo-mo-mo-moke. By the way, thirst for a smoke
strikes me as a mixed metaphor, but ‘hunger’ would scarcely improve
matters. I presume that if our Aryan ancestors had known the divine
weed, we should have had a better word wherewithal to express our
longing for it.”
Whenever Charley began to stammer and philosophize, he always suggested
to my mind a partridge tumbling and fluttering away through the grass;
there was always a nest somewhere near.
“As it is,” continued he, “we must be content to borrow from the
grovelling vocabulary of the eater and the drinker, leaving to
civilization—there, toast your toes on that fender—to evolve a more
fitting term.”
The Don, who had been looking serious enough before, could not suppress
a smile at this quaint sally of our friend,—a smile that broadened into
a laugh when Charley, having succeeded, after a protracted struggle, in
shooting a word from his mouth as though from a pop-gun, parenthetically
consigned all p’s and m’s to perdition; that being the class of letters
which chiefly marred his utterance.
There is, about the damning of a mere labial, a grotesque impotency that
goes far towards rescuing the oath from profanity; and we may hope that
Uncle Toby’s accusing angel neglected to hand this one in for record.
“This is very snug,” said Charley, drawing together the ends of logs
which had burned in two.
Charley had neglected to light the lamp, but the logs soon began to shed
a ruddy glow about the room, in the obscure light of which the stranger
began to look about him, as was natural. Charley could always see more
with his eyes shut than I could with mine wide open; but I cannot very
well understand how, in that dimly-lighted room, he contrived to observe
all that he pretends to have seen on this occasion; especially as he
acknowledges that he was steadily engaged at his old trick of blowing
smoke-rings, sighting at them with one eye, and spearing them with the
forefinger of his right hand.
The stranger did not stroll about the room with his hands behind his
back, examining the objects on the sideboard, and yawning in the faces
of the ancestral portraits, as he might have been pardoned for doing at
that hour, and in the absence of the family. “Yes, this is very snug,”
echoed he, in a rather hollow voice, while he glanced from object to
object in the room with an eager interest that contrasted strangely with
the immobility of his person; his almost motionless head giving a rather
wild look to his rapidly-roving eyes. Presently, seeming to forget
Charley’s presence, he gave vent to a sigh so deep that it was almost a
groan. Charley removed his pipe from his mouth, and with the stem
thereof slowly and carefully traced a very exact circle just within the
interior edge of one of his whirling smoke-wreaths, in the spinning of
which he was so consummate an artist.
The stranger, coming to himself with a little start, gave a quick glance
at the sphinx beside him, who, with head resting on the back of his
chair and eyes half closed, was lazily admiring another blue circle,
that rose silently whirling in the still air. Had he heard the moan? And
in his embarrassment the stranger seized the tongs and, with a nervous
pull, tilted over one of the logs which Charley had drawn together on
the hearth.
They flashed into a blaze.
“Why, hello!” exclaimed the stranger, chancing to cast his eye into the
corner formed by the projecting chimney-piece and the wall. “There’s a
dog. He seems comfortable,” he added, glad, seemingly, to have hit upon
so substantial a subject of conversation. “That rug seems to have been
made for him. Does he sleep there every night?”
“That’s his corner, whenever he wants it,” said Charley, rather dryly,
and without looking towards the dog. “Let me fill your pipe for you.”
Charley, somehow, did not seem anxious to talk about the dog, but his
companion, not observing this, very likely, would not let the subject
drop. Rising a little in his chair and peering into the somewhat obscure
corner: “He seems to be a—a—”
“Pointer,” said Charley. “He is very old,” added he, by way of a
finisher.
“Oh, I understand,—an old hunting-dog of Mr. Poythress’s that he
cherishes now for the good he has done in his day.”
This was not exactly a question, but it seemed to require some sort of a
reply.
“Well, yes, so one would naturally think; but Mr. Poythress was never
much of a Nimrod. It is Mrs. Poythress who claims the old fellow as her
property, I believe.”
Charley pulled out his watch in rather a nervous way, looked at the
time, and, thrusting it back into his pocket, gave a yawn.
“What rolls of fat he has along his back!” said the stranger, rising,
and taking a step or two in the direction of the sleeper.
“Yes,” said Charley, rising, and knocking the ashes from his pipe with a
few rapid taps, “it is the way with all old dogs.”
“Ah, I am afraid I have disturbed the slumbers of the old fellow,” said
the Don, softly retracing his steps.
“He is as deaf as a post,” said Charley.
The old pointer had raised his head, and was rocking it from side to
side with a kind of low whimpering.
“Speaking of slumbers,” said Charley, looking at his watch again, and
closing it with a snap, “suppose—”
“What can be the matter with the old boy?”
The dog was acting singularly. He had risen to his feet, and, with
staggering, uncertain steps, was moving first in this direction then in
that, sniffing the air with a whine that grew more and more intense and
anxious.
“He will soon get quiet, if we leave him.” And Charley made two or three
rapid strides towards the door, then stopped as suddenly, stopped and
stood biting his nails with unconscious vigor, then slowly turned, and,
walking up to the mantel-piece, rested his elbow upon it and his cheek
upon his hand. The attitude was one of repose; but his quick breathing,
his quivering lips, his restless eyes that flashed searchingly, again
and again, upon the face of his companion,—these told a different
story.
“He is trying to find you,” said the Don, with a sympathetic smile.
“Poor old fellow, he seems blind as well as deaf. Hello! he is making
for me. What! is he in his dotage? Whom does he take me for?” he added,
as the old dog, coming up to him and sniffing at his feet and legs with
an ever-increasing eagerness, kept wriggling and squirming and wagging
his tail with a vigor that was remarkable, considering his apoplectic
figure and extreme age. Growing more and more excited, the old creature
tried again and again to rear and place his paws upon the breast of the
Don; but his weak limbs, unable to sustain his unwieldy bulk, as often
gave way; and at last, with a despair that was almost human, he laid his
head between the knees of the young man; and rolling his bleared, opaque
eyes, as if searching for his face, he whimpered as though for help. The
Don looked bewildered, and glancing at Charley, saw him standing,
motionless, leaning upon the mantel-piece, his eyes fixed upon the fire.
The Don started, then bent a sudden, eager glance upon the dog. The
latter again strove to rear up, but falling back upon his haunches,
lifted up his aged head, and rolling his sightless eyes, gave forth a
low howl so piteous as must have moved the hardest heart.
It was then that the stranger, that man of surprises, as he had done
once or twice before in the course of this story, revealed by a sudden
burst of uncontrollable impetuosity the fervid temperament that
ordinarily lay concealed beneath his studied reserve. Stooping forward
like a flash, he lifted the dog and placed his paws upon his breast,
sustaining him with his arms.
It was touching to witness the gratitude of the old pointer, his whining
and his whimpering and his eagerness to lick the face that he might not
behold. He was happy, let us hope, if but for a moment. Suddenly he
fell,—fell as though stricken with heart-disease, all in a heap; then
tumbling over and measuring his length along the carpet, his head came
down upon the floor with a thump.
There he lay motionless,—motionless, save that every now and then his
tail beat the floor softly, softly, and in a sort of drowsy rhythm, as
though he but dreamt that he wagged it,—gently tapped the floor and
ceased; once more, and stopped again, and yet again; and he was still.
The stranger knelt over the outstretched form of the dying pointer.
“Ponto! Ponto, old boy! Can you hear me? Yes? Then good-by, dear old
fellow, good-by!”
Deaf as he was, and breathing his last, that name and that voice seemed
to penetrate the fast-closing channels of sense; and with two or three
last fluttering taps—he had no other way—he seemed to say farewell,
and forever.
The young man rose, and, staggering across the room, threw his arm over
his face and leaned against the wall. Charley made two or three hasty,
forward strides, then halted with a hesitating look, then springing
forward, placed a hand on either shoulder of the figure before him, and
leaned upon his neck.
“Dory!” whispered he, in a voice that trembled.
A shiver, as from an electric shock, ran through the stalwart frame of
the stranger. For a moment he seemed to hesitate; the next he had
wheeled about, and, clasping his companion in his mighty arms, hugged
him to his breast.
“Charley!” cried he, in a broken voice; and his head rested upon the
shoulder of his friend.