Looking back, I always consider that my career as a dog proper really
started when I was bought for the sum of half a crown by the Shy Man.
That event marked the end of my puppyhood. The knowledge that I was
worth actual cash to somebody filled me with a sense of new
responsibilities. It sobered me. Besides, it was only after that
half-crown changed hands that I went out into the great world; and,
however interesting life may be in an East End public-house, it is only
when you go out into the world that you really broaden your mind and
begin to see things.
Within its limitations, my life had been singularly full and vivid. I
was born, as I say, in a public-house in the East End, and, however
lacking a public-house may be in refinement and the true culture, it
certainly provides plenty of excitement. Before I was six weeks old I
had upset three policemen by getting between their legs when they came
round to the side-door, thinking they had heard suspicious noises; and
I can still recall the interesting sensation of being chased seventeen
times round the yard with a broom-handle after a well-planned and
completely successful raid on the larder. These and other happenings of
a like nature soothed for the moment but could not cure the
restlessness which has always been so marked a trait in my character. I
have always been restless, unable to settle down in one place and
anxious to get on to the next thing. This may be due to a gipsy strain
in my ancestry--one of my uncles travelled with a circus--or it may be
the Artistic Temperament, acquired from a grandfather who, before dying
of a surfeit of paste in the property-room of the Bristol Coliseum,
which he was visiting in the course of a professional tour, had an
established reputation on the music-hall stage as one of Professor
Pond's Performing Poodles.
I owe the fullness and variety of my life to this restlessness of mine,
for I have repeatedly left comfortable homes in order to follow some
perfect stranger who looked as if he were on his way to somewhere
interesting. Sometimes I think I must have cat blood in me.
The Shy Man came into our yard one afternoon in April, while I was
sleeping with mother in the sun on an old sweater which we had borrowed
from Fred, one of the barmen. I heard mother growl, but I didn't take
any notice. Mother is what they call a good watch-dog, and she growls
at everybody except master. At first, when she used to do it, I would
get up and bark my head off, but not now. Life's too short to bark at
everybody who comes into our yard. It is behind the public-house, and
they keep empty bottles and things there, so people are always coming
and going.
Besides, I was tired. I had had a very busy morning, helping the men
bring in a lot of cases of beer, and running into the saloon to talk to
Fred and generally looking after things. So I was just dozing off
again, when I heard a voice say, 'Well, he's ugly enough!' Then I knew
that they were talking about me.
I have never disguised it from myself, and nobody has ever disguised it
from me, that I am not a handsome dog. Even mother never thought me
beautiful. She was no Gladys Cooper herself, but she never hesitated to
criticize my appearance. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who did.
The first thing strangers say about me is, 'What an ugly dog!'
I don't know what I am. I have a bulldog kind of a face, but the rest
of me is terrier. I have a long tail which sticks straight up in the
air. My hair is wiry. My eyes are brown. I am jet black, with a white
chest. I once overheard Fred saying that I was a Gorgonzola
cheese-hound, and I have generally found Fred reliable in his
statements.
When I found that I was under discussion, I opened my eyes. Master was
standing there, looking down at me, and by his side the man who had
just said I was ugly enough. The man was a thin man, about the age of a
barman and smaller than a policeman. He had patched brown shoes and
black trousers.
'But he's got a sweet nature,' said master.
This was true, luckily for me. Mother always said, 'A dog without
influence or private means, if he is to make his way in the world, must
have either good looks or amiability.' But, according to her, I overdid
it. 'A dog,' she used to say, 'can have a good heart, without chumming
with every Tom, Dick, and Harry he meets. Your behaviour is sometimes
quite un-doglike.' Mother prided herself on being a one-man dog. She
kept herself to herself, and wouldn't kiss anybody except master--not
even Fred.
Now, I'm a mixer. I can't help it. It's my nature. I like men. I like
the taste of their boots, the smell of their legs, and the sound of
their voices. It may be weak of me, but a man has only to speak to me
and a sort of thrill goes right down my spine and sets my tail wagging.
I wagged it now. The man looked at me rather distantly. He didn't pat
me. I suspected--what I afterwards found to be the case--that he was
shy, so I jumped up at him to put him at his ease. Mother growled
again. I felt that she did not approve.
'Why, he's took quite a fancy to you already,' said master.
The man didn't say a word. He seemed to be brooding on something. He
was one of those silent men. He reminded me of Joe, the old dog down
the street at the grocer's shop, who lies at the door all day, blinking
and not speaking to anybody.
Master began to talk about me. It surprised me, the way he praised me.
I hadn't a suspicion he admired me so much. From what he said you would
have thought I had won prizes and ribbons at the Crystal Palace. But
the man didn't seem to be impressed. He kept on saying nothing.
When master had finished telling him what a wonderful dog I was till I
blushed, the man spoke.
'Less of it,' he said. 'Half a crown is my bid, and if he was an angel
from on high you couldn't get another ha'penny out of me. What about
it?'
A thrill went down my spine and out at my tail, for of course I saw now
what was happening. The man wanted to buy me and take me away. I looked
at master hopefully.
'He's more like a son to me than a dog,' said master, sort of wistful.
'It's his face that makes you feel that way,' said the man,
unsympathetically. 'If you had a son that's just how he would look.
Half a crown is my offer, and I'm in a hurry.'
'All right,' said master, with a sigh, 'though it's giving him away, a
valuable dog like that. Where's your half-crown?'
The man got a bit of rope and tied it round my neck.
I could hear mother barking advice and telling me to be a credit to the
family, but I was too excited to listen.
'Good-bye, mother,' I said. 'Good-bye, master. Good-bye, Fred. Good-bye
everybody. I'm off to see life. The Shy Man has bought me for half a
crown. Wow!'
I kept running round in circles and shouting, till the man gave me a
kick and told me to stop it.
So I did.
I don't know where we went, but it was a long way. I had never been off
our street before in my life and I didn't know the whole world was half
as big as that. We walked on and on, and the man jerked at my rope
whenever I wanted to stop and look at anything. He wouldn't even let me
pass the time of the day with dogs we met.
When we had gone about a hundred miles and were just going to turn in
at a dark doorway, a policeman suddenly stopped the man. I could feel
by the way the man pulled at my rope and tried to hurry on that he
didn't want to speak to the policeman. The more I saw of the man the
more I saw how shy he was.
'Hi!' said the policeman, and we had to stop.
'I've got a message for you, old pal,' said the policeman. 'It's from
the Board of Health. They told me to tell you you needed a change of
air. See?'
'All right!' said the man.
'And take it as soon as you like. Else you'll find you'll get it given
you. See?'
I looked at the man with a good deal of respect. He was evidently
someone very important, if they worried so about his health.
'I'm going down to the country tonight,' said the man.
The policeman seemed pleased.
'That's a bit of luck for the country,' he said. 'Don't go changing
your mind.'
And we walked on, and went in at the dark doorway, and climbed about a
million stairs and went into a room that smelt of rats. The man sat
down and swore a little, and I sat and looked at him.
Presently I couldn't keep it in any longer.
'Do we live here?' I said. 'Is it true we're going to the country?
Wasn't that policeman a good sort? Don't you like policemen? I knew
lots of policemen at the public-house. Are there any other dogs here?
What is there for dinner? What's in that cupboard? When are you going
to take me out for another run? May I go out and see if I can find a
cat?'
'Stop that yelping,' he said.
'When we go to the country, where shall we live? Are you going to be a
caretaker at a house? Fred's father is a caretaker at a big house in
Kent. I've heard Fred talk about it. You didn't meet Fred when you came
to the public-house, did you? You would like Fred. I like Fred. Mother
likes Fred. We all like Fred.'
I was going on to tell him a lot more about Fred, who had always been
one of my warmest friends, when he suddenly got hold of a stick and
walloped me with it.
'You keep quiet when you're told,' he said.
He really was the shyest man I had ever met. It seemed to hurt him to
be spoken to. However, he was the boss, and I had to humour him, so I
didn't say any more.
We went down to the country that night, just as the man had told the
policeman we would. I was all worked up, for I had heard so much about
the country from Fred that I had always wanted to go there. Fred used
to go off on a motor-bicycle sometimes to spend the night with his
father in Kent, and once he brought back a squirrel with him, which I
thought was for me to eat, but mother said no. 'The first thing a dog
has to learn,' mother used often to say, 'is that the whole world
wasn't created for him to eat.'
It was quite dark when we got to the country, but the man seemed to
know where to go. He pulled at my rope, and we began to walk along a
road with no people in it at all. We walked on and on, but it was all
so new to me that I forgot how tired I was. I could feel my mind
broadening with every step I took.
Every now and then we would pass a very big house, which looked as if
it was empty, but I knew that there was a caretaker inside, because of
Fred's father. These big houses belong to very rich people, but they
don't want to live in them till the summer, so they put in caretakers,
and the caretakers have a dog to keep off burglars. I wondered if that
was what I had been brought here for.
'Are you going to be a caretaker?' I asked the man.
'Shut up,' he said.
So I shut up.
After we had been walking a long time, we came to a cottage. A man came
out. My man seemed to know him, for he called him Bill. I was quite
surprised to see the man was not at all shy with Bill. They seemed very
friendly.
'Is that him?' said Bill, looking at me.
'Bought him this afternoon,' said the man.
'Well,' said Bill, 'he's ugly enough. He looks fierce. If you want a
dog, he's the sort of dog you want. But what do you want one for? It
seems to me it's a lot of trouble to take, when there's no need of any
trouble at all. Why not do what I've always wanted to do? What's wrong
with just fixing the dog, same as it's always done, and walking in and
helping yourself?'
'I'll tell you what's wrong,' said the man. 'To start with, you can't
get at the dog to fix him except by day, when they let him out. At
night he's shut up inside the house. And suppose you do fix him during
the day what happens then? Either the bloke gets another before night,
or else he sits up all night with a gun. It isn't like as if these
blokes was ordinary blokes. They're down here to look after the house.
That's their job, and they don't take any chances.'
It was the longest speech I had ever heard the man make, and it seemed
to impress Bill. He was quite humble.
'I didn't think of that,' he said. 'We'd best start in to train this
tyke at once.'
Mother often used to say, when I went on about wanting to go out into
the world and see life, 'You'll be sorry when you do. The world isn't
all bones and liver.' And I hadn't been living with the man and Bill in
their cottage long before I found out how right she was.
It was the man's shyness that made all the trouble. It seemed as if he
hated to be taken notice of.
It started on my very first night at the cottage. I had fallen asleep
in the kitchen, tired out after all the excitement of the day and the
long walks I had had, when something woke me with a start. It was
somebody scratching at the window, trying to get in.
Well, I ask you, I ask any dog, what would you have done in my place?
Ever since I was old enough to listen, mother had told me over and over
again what I must do in a case like this. It is the A B C of a dog's
education. 'If you are in a room and you hear anyone trying to get in,'
mother used to say, 'bark. It may be someone who has business there, or
it may not. Bark first, and inquire afterwards. Dogs were made to be
heard and not seen.'
I lifted my head and yelled. I have a good, deep voice, due to a hound
strain in my pedigree, and at the public-house, when there was a full
moon, I have often had people leaning out of the windows and saying
things all down the street. I took a deep breath and let it go.
'Man!' I shouted. 'Bill! Man! Come quick! Here's a burglar getting in!'
Then somebody struck a light, and it was the man himself. He had come
in through the window.
He picked up a stick, and he walloped me. I couldn't understand it. I
couldn't see where I had done the wrong thing. But he was the boss, so
there was nothing to be said.
If you'll believe me, that same thing happened every night. Every
single night! And sometimes twice or three times before morning. And
every time I would bark my loudest and the man would strike a light and
wallop me. The thing was baffling. I couldn't possibly have mistaken
what mother had said to me. She said it too often for that. Bark! Bark!
Bark! It was the main plank of her whole system of education. And yet,
here I was, getting walloped every night for doing it.
I thought it out till my head ached, and finally I got it right. I
began to see that mother's outlook was narrow. No doubt, living with a
man like master at the public-house, a man without a trace of shyness
in his composition, barking was all right. But circumstances alter
cases. I belonged to a man who was a mass of nerves, who got the jumps
if you spoke to him. What I had to do was to forget the training I had
had from mother, sound as it no doubt was as a general thing, and to
adapt myself to the needs of the particular man who had happened to buy
me. I had tried mother's way, and all it had brought me was walloping,
so now I would think for myself.
So next night, when I heard the window go, I lay there without a word,
though it went against all my better feelings. I didn't even growl.
Someone came in and moved about in the dark, with a lantern, but,
though I smelt that it was the man, I didn't ask him a single question.
And presently the man lit a light and came over to me and gave me a
pat, which was a thing he had never done before.
'Good dog!' he said. 'Now you can have this.'
And he let me lick out the saucepan in which the dinner had been
cooked.
After that, we got on fine. Whenever I heard anyone at the window I
just kept curled up and took no notice, and every time I got a bone or
something good. It was easy, once you had got the hang of things.
It was about a week after that the man took me out one morning, and we
walked a long way till we turned in at some big gates and went along a
very smooth road till we came to a great house, standing all by itself
in the middle of a whole lot of country. There was a big lawn in front
of it, and all round there were fields and trees, and at the back a
great wood.
The man rang a bell, and the door opened, and an old man came out.
'Well?' he said, not very cordially.
'I thought you might want to buy a good watch-dog,' said the man.
'Well, that's queer, your saying that,' said the caretaker. 'It's a
coincidence. That's exactly what I do want to buy. I was just thinking
of going along and trying to get one. My old dog picked up something
this morning that he oughtn't to have, and he's dead, poor feller.'
'Poor feller,' said the man. 'Found an old bone with phosphorus on it,
I guess.'
'What do you want for this one?'
'Five shillings.'
'Is he a good watch-dog?'
'He's a grand watch-dog.'
'He looks fierce enough.'
'Ah!'
So the caretaker gave the man his five shillings, and the man went off
and left me.
At first the newness of everything and the unaccustomed smells and
getting to know the caretaker, who was a nice old man, prevented my
missing the man, but as the day went on and I began to realize that he
had gone and would never come back, I got very depressed. I pattered
all over the house, whining. It was a most interesting house, bigger
than I thought a house could possibly be, but it couldn't cheer me up.
You may think it strange that I should pine for the man, after all the
wallopings he had given me, and it is odd, when you come to think of
it. But dogs are dogs, and they are built like that. By the time it was
evening I was thoroughly miserable. I found a shoe and an old
clothes-brush in one of the rooms, but could eat nothing. I just sat
and moped.
It's a funny thing, but it seems as if it always happened that just
when you are feeling most miserable, something nice happens. As I sat
there, there came from outside the sound of a motor-bicycle, and
somebody shouted.
It was dear old Fred, my old pal Fred, the best old boy that ever
stepped. I recognized his voice in a second, and I was scratching at
the door before the old man had time to get up out of his chair.
Well, well, well! That was a pleasant surprise! I ran five times round
the lawn without stopping, and then I came back and jumped up at him.
'What are you doing down here, Fred?' I said. 'Is this caretaker your
father? Have you seen the rabbits in the wood? How long are you going
to stop? How's mother? I like the country. Have you come all the way
from the public-house? I'm living here now. Your father gave five
shillings for me. That's twice as much as I was worth when I saw you
last.'
'Why, it's young Nigger!' That was what they called me at the saloon.
'What are you doing here? Where did you get this dog, father?'
'A man sold him to me this morning. Poor old Bob got poisoned. This one
ought to be just as good a watch-dog. He barks loud enough.'
'He should be. His mother is the best watch-dog in London. This
cheese-hound used to belong to the boss. Funny him getting down here.'
We went into the house and had supper. And after supper we sat and
talked. Fred was only down for the night, he said, because the boss
wanted him back next day.
'And I'd sooner have my job, than yours, dad,' he said. 'Of all the
lonely places! I wonder you aren't scared of burglars.'
'I've my shot-gun, and there's the dog. I might be scared if it wasn't
for him, but he kind of gives me confidence. Old Bob was the same. Dogs
are a comfort in the country.'
'Get many tramps here?'
'I've only seen one in two months, and that's the feller who sold me
the dog here.'
As they were talking about the man, I asked Fred if he knew him. They
might have met at the public-house, when the man was buying me from the
boss.
'You would like him,' I said. 'I wish you could have met.'
They both looked at me.
'What's he growling at?' asked Fred. 'Think he heard something?'
The old man laughed.
'He wasn't growling. He was talking in his sleep. You're nervous, Fred.
It comes of living in the city.'
'Well, I am. I like this place in the daytime, but it gives me the pip
at night. It's so quiet. How you can stand it here all the time, I
can't understand. Two nights of it would have me seeing things.'
His father laughed.
'If you feel like that, Fred, you had better take the gun to bed with
you. I shall be quite happy without it.'
'I will,' said Fred. 'I'll take six if you've got them.'
And after that they went upstairs. I had a basket in the hall, which
had belonged to Bob, the dog who had got poisoned. It was a comfortable
basket, but I was so excited at having met Fred again that I couldn't
sleep. Besides, there was a smell of mice somewhere, and I had to move
around, trying to place it.
I was just sniffing at a place in the wall, when I heard a scratching
noise. At first I thought it was the mice working in a different place,
but, when I listened, I found that the sound came from the window.
Somebody was doing something to it from outside.
If it had been mother, she would have lifted the roof off right there,
and so should I, if it hadn't been for what the man had taught me. I
didn't think it possible that this could be the man come back, for he
had gone away and said nothing about ever seeing me again. But I didn't
bark. I stopped where I was and listened. And presently the window came
open, and somebody began to climb in.