The cottage was apparently empty. His guide and namesake looked into
the kitchen, and called up a stair which led out of it, but got no
answer.
"She will be up at the house," he said, and turned and went off up the
garden behind, while the dogs raced on in front to show the way.
Through a cleft in the high green bank topped by a thick hedge of
hawthorn, they came out into a garden of less utilitarian aspect. Here
were shrubs and flowers, palms and conifers and pale eucalyptus trees,
clumps of purple iris and clove pinks, roses just coming to the bud,
and beyond, a very charming bungalow, built solidly of gray granite
and red tiles, with a wide verandah all round. A pleasant-faced woman
in a large black sunbonnet came out of the open front door as they
went up the path.
"My wife," murmured Carré, and proceeded quietly to explain matters in
an undertone of patois.
"I hope you speak English also, Mrs. Carré," said Graeme.
"Oh yess," with a quick smile. "We are all English here."
"Surely you are Welsh," he said, for he had met just that same
cheerful type of face in Wales.
"Noh, I am Sark," she smiled again. "I can gif you a sitting-room and
a bet-room"--and they proceeded to business, and then the dogs
escorted them back to the cottage, to see the stranger fairly inducted
to his new abode, and to let him understand that they rejoiced at his
coming and would visit him often.
He thought he would be very comfortable there, but why the
sitting-room was not the bedroom he never could understand. For it was
only a quarter the size of the other, and its single window looked
into a field, and a rough granite wall clothed with tiny rock-weeds
hid all view of the road and its infrequent traffic. While the bedroom
was a room of size, and its two windows gave on to the covered well
and the cobbled forecourt, and offered passers-by, if so inclined,
oblique views of its occupant in the act of dressing if he forgot to
pull down the blind.
The windows of both rooms were set low in the massive granite walls,
and being always wide open, they offered, and indeed invited, easy
access to--say, a grave-faced gentlemanly brown dog and a spasmodic
rough-coated terrier without a tail, whenever the spirit moved them to
incursion, which it invariably did at meal-times and frequently in
between.
These two new friends of his--for they were never mere acquaintances,
but adopted him into fullest brotherhood at sight--proved no small
factors in Graeme's extrication from the depths.
Human companionship, even of the loftiest, most philosophic, most
gracious, would, for the time being, have jarred and ruffled his
naturally equable spirit. Two only exceptions might have been
conceivably possible--some humble, large-souled friend, anxious only
to anticipate his slightest wish, desirous only of his company,
and--dumb, and so unable to fret him with inane talk; or--Margaret
Brandt.
The first he could have endured. The latter--ah, God! How he would
have rejoiced in her! The spirit groaned within him at times in
agonised longing for her; and the glories of the sweet spring days, in
a land where spring is joyous and radiant beyond most, turned gray and
cheerless in the shadow of his loss. What Might Have Been stabbed What
Was to the heart and let its life-blood run.
But, since neither of these was available, a benignant Providence
provided him with friends entirely to his taste. For the great brown
hound, Punch, was surely, despite the name men had given him, a
nobleman by birth and breeding. Powerful and beautifully made, the
sight of his long lithe bounds, as he quartered the cliff-sides in
silent chase of fowl and fur, was a thing to rejoice in; so exquisite
in its tireless grace, so perfect in its unconscious exhibition of
power and restraint. For the brown dog never gave tongue, and he never
killed. He chased for the keen enjoyment of the chase, and no man had
ever heard him speak.
He was the first dumb dog Graeme had ever come across, and the
pathetic yearning in his solemn brown eyes was full of infinite appeal
to one who suffered also from an unforgettable loss. He answered to
his name with a dignified appreciation of its incongruity, and the
tail-less white terrier, more appropriately, to that of Scamp.
V
They were on the very best of terms, these two friends of his,
possibly because of their absolute unlikeness,--Punch, large, solemn,
imperturbable, with a beautifully-curved slow-waving tail and no
voice; Scamp, a bundle of wriggling nerves moved by electricity, with
a sharp excited bark and not even the stump of a tail. When he needed
to wag he wagged the whole of his body behind his front legs.
These two were sitting watching him expectantly as Mrs. Carré brought
in his dinner that first day, and she instantly ordered them out.
Punch rose at once, cast one look of grave appeal at Graeme, as who
would say--"Sorry to leave you, but this is the kind of thing I have
to put up with,"--and walked slowly away. Scamp grovelled flat and
crawled to the door like a long hairy caterpillar.
"Oh, let them stop," said Graeme. "I like them by me," and the
culprits turned hopefully with pricked ears and anxious faces.
"Mais non! They are troublesome beasts. Allez, Ponch! Allez, Scamp! A
couche!"--and their heads and ears drooped and they slunk away.
But, presently, there came a rustling at the wide-open window which
gave on to the field at the back, and Graeme laughed out--and he had
not smiled for days--at sight of two deprecatingly anxious faces
looking in upon him,--a solemn brown one with black spots above the
eloquent grave eyes, and a roguish white one with pink blemishes on a
twisting black nose. And while the large brown face loomed steadily
above two powerful front paws, the small white face only appeared at
intervals as the nervous little body below flung it up to the sill in
a series of spasmodic leaps.
"We would esteem it a very great favour, if you are quite sure it
would not inconvenience you," said Punch, as plain as speech.
"Do, do, do, do, do give us leave!" signalled Scamp, with every twist
of his quivering nose, and every gleam of his glancing eyes, and every
hair on end.
A click of the tongue, a noiseless graceful bound, and Punch was at
his side. A wild scrambling rush, a wriggle on the sill, a patter over
the window-seat, and Scamp was twisting himself into white
figure-eights all over the room, with tremendous energy but not a
sound save the soft pad of his tiny dancing feet.
Then, as he ate, the great brown head pillowed itself softly on his
knee, and the eloquent brown eyes looked up into his in a way that a
stone image could hardly have resisted. The while Scamp, on his hind
legs, beat the air frantically with his front paws to attract
attention to his needs and danced noiselessly all over the floor.
He gauged their characters with interest. When he gave them morsels
turn about, Punch awaited his with gentlemanly patience, and even when
purposely passed by in order to see what he would do, obtruded his
claims by nothing more than a gentle movement of the head on his
friend's knee; while Scamp, in like case, twisted himself into knots
of anxiety and came perilously near to utterance.
The difference between them when, through lack of intimate knowledge
of their likes and dislikes, they got something not entirely to their
taste, was also very typical. Punch would retire quietly into
obscurity, and having disposed of the objectionable morsel
somehow--either by a strenuous swallow or in some corner--would
quietly reappear, lay his head on Graeme's knee again, and work it up
to his lap with a series of propitiatory little jerks that never
failed of their object. Scamp, on the other hand, would hold it in his
mouth for a moment till he had savoured it, then place it meekly on
the floor, bow his head to the ground, and grovel flat with
deprecatory white-eyed up-glances, and as clearly as dog could say,
would murmur,--"Oh, Man, Lord of all that go on four legs, forgive thy
humble little servant in that he is unable with enjoyment to eat that
thou hast of thy bounty tendered him! The fault is wholly his. Yet, of
thy great clemency, punish him not beyond his capacity, for his very
small body is merely a bundle of nerves, and they lie so very close to
the skin that even a harsh word from thee will set them quivering for
an hour." But, at a comforting word, he was up in a flash dancing and
sparring away as gaily as ever.
Then, when Mrs. Carré brought in the next course, they both retired
discreetly below the tent of the tablecloth. But she, knowing them of
old perhaps, found them out at once and cried, "Ah you! I see you
there! You are just troublesome beasts!" But, seeing that her guest
was in the conspiracy, she permitted them for that once; and in time,
seeing that he really desired their company, she allowed them to
remain as a matter of course and without any preliminary harrying.