Chum, roped securely to the cherry tree, is barking at the universe in
general and at the cows in the paddock beyond the orchard in
particular. Occasionally he pauses to snap at passing bees, of which
the orchard is full on this bright May morning; but he soon tires of
this diversion and resumes his loud-voiced demand to share in the good
things that are going. For the sun is high, the cuckoo is shouting
over the valley, and the woods are calling him to unknown adventures.
They shall not call in vain. Work shall be suspended and this morning
shall be dedicated to his service. For this is the day of deliverance.
The word is spoken and the shadow of the sword is lifted. The battle
for his biscuit is won.
He does not know what a narrow shave he has had. He does not know that
for weeks past he has been under sentence of death as an encumbrance, a
luxury that this savage world of men could no longer afford; that
having taken away his bones we were about to take away his biscuits and
leave his cheerful companionship a memory of the dream world we lived
in before the Great Killing began. All this he does not know. That is
one of the numerous advantages of being a dog. He knows nothing of the
infamies of men or of the incertitudes of life. He does not look
before and after and pine for what is not. He has no yesterday and no
to-morrow--only the happy or the unhappy present. He does not, as
Whitman says, "lie awake at night thinking of his soul," or lamenting
his past or worrying about his future. His bereavements do not disturb
him and he doesn't care twopence about his career. He has no debts and
hungers for no honours. He would rather have a bone than a baronetcy.
He does not turn over old albums, with their pictured records of
forgotten holidays and happy scenes and yearn for the "tender grace of
a day that is dead," or wonder whether he will keep his job and what
will become of his "poor old family," as Stevenson used to say, if he
doesn't, or speculate whether the war will end this year, next year,
some time, or never. He doesn't even know there is a war. Think of
it! He doesn't know there is a war. O happy dog! Give him a bone, a
biscuit, a good word, and a scamper in the woods, and his cup of joy is
full. Would that my needs were as few and as easily satisfied.
And now his biscuit is safe and I have the rare privilege of rejoicing
with Sir Frederick Banbury. I do not know that I should go as far as
he seems to go, for in that touching little speech of his at the Cannon
Street Hotel he indicated that nothing in the heavens above or in the
earth beneath should stand between him and his dogs. "In August,
1914," he said, "my son went to France. The night before he left he
said, 'Father, look after my dogs and horses while I am away.' I said,
'Don't you worry about them.' He was killed in December, and I have
got the horses and dogs now. As I said to Mr. Bonar Law last year, I
should like to see the man who would tell me I have not to look after
my son's dogs and horses." Well, I suppose that if the choice were
between a German victory and a dog biscuit, the dog biscuit would have
to go, Sir Frederick. But I rejoice with you that we have not to make
the choice. I rejoice that the sentence of death has passed from your
dead son's horses and dogs and from that noble creature under the
cherry tree.
Look at him, barking now at the cows, now with eloquent appeal at me,
and then, having caught my eye, turning sportively to worry the hated
rope. He knows that my intentions this morning are honourable. I
think he feels that, in spite of appearances, I am in that humour in
which at any radiant moment the magic word "Walk" may leap from my
lips. What a word that is! No sleep so sound that it will not
penetrate its depths and bring him, passionately awake, to his feet.
He would sacrifice the whole dictionary for that one electric syllable.
That and its brother "Bones." Give him these good, sound, sensible
words, and all the fancies of the poets and all the rhetoric of the
statesmen may whistle down the winds. He has no use for them. "Walk"
and "Bones"--that is the speech a fellow can understand.
Yes, Chum knows very well that I am thinking about him and thinking
about him in an uncommonly friendly way. That is the secret of the
strange intimacy between us. We may love other animals, and other
animals may respond to our affection. But the dog is the only animal
who has a reciprocal intelligence. As Coleridge says, he is the only
animal that _looks upward_ to man, strains to catch his meanings,
hungers for his approval. Stroke a cat or a horse, and it will have a
physical pleasure; but pat Chum and call him "Good dog!" and he has a
spiritual pleasure. He feels good. He is pleased because you are
pleased. His tail, his eyebrows, every part of him, proclaim that
"God's in his heaven, all's right with the world," and that he himself
is on the side of the angels.
And just as he has the sense of virtue, so also he has the sense of
sin. A cat may be taught not to do certain things, but if it is caught
out and flees, it flees not from shame, but from fear. But the shame
of a dog touches an abyss of misery as bottomless as any human emotion.
He has fallen out of the state of grace, and nothing but the absolution
and remission of his sin will restore him to happiness. By his
association with man he seems to have caught something of his capacity
for spiritual misery. I had an Airedale once who had moods of
despondency as abysmal as my own. He was as sentimental as any minor
poet, and at the sound of certain tunes on the piano he would break
into paroxysms of grief, whining and moaning as if in one moment of
concentrated anguish he recalled every bereavement he had endured,
every bone he had lost, every stone heaved at him by his hated enemy,
the butcher's boy. Indeed, there are times when the dog approximates
so close to our intelligence that he seems to be of us, a sort of
humble relation of ourselves, with our elementary feelings but not our
gift of expression, our joy but not our laughter, our misery but not
our tears, our thoughts but not our speech. To sentence him to death
would be almost like homicide, and the day of his reprieve should be
celebrated as a festival....
Come, old friend. Let us away to the woods. "Walk" ...