Greater bodily peace and comfort than he found in that thick-set,
creeper-covered, little cottage in the Rue Lucas, man might scarcely
hope for. Anything more would have tended to luxury and made for
restraint.
He was free as the wind to come and go as he listed, to roam the
lonely lanes all night and watch the coming of the dawn--which he did;
or to lie abed all day--which he did not; to do any mortal thing that
pleased him, so long only as he gave his hostess full and fair warning
of the state of his appetite and the times when it must be satisfied.
His quarters were not perhaps palatial, but what man, king of himself
alone, would live in a palace?
He bumped his head with the utmost regularity against the lintel of
the front door each time he entered, and only learned at last to bob
by instinct. And the beams in the ceilings were so low that they
claimed recognition somewhat after the manner of a boisterous
acquaintance.
But doors and windows were always open, night and day, and his good
friends the dogs came in to greet him by way of the windows quite as
often as by the doors.
All through the black times those two were his close companions, and
no better could he have had. They asked nothing of him--or almost
nothing, and they gave him all they had. They were grateful from the
bottom of their large hearts for any slightest sign of recognition.
And they were proud of his company, which to others would have proved
somewhat of a wet blanket. Without a doubt they assisted mightily in
his cure, though neither he nor they knew it.
Every morning when he jumped up to see the weather, the first things
that met him when he reached the open window, were four eager eyes
full of welcome, and a grave intelligent brown face and hopeful
swinging tail, and a dancing white face and little wriggling body.
Then he would pull up the blinds and they would enter with an easy
bound and a scramble, and while he hastily flung on his things they
would prowl about, now pushing investigating noses into an open
drawer, and again taking a passing drink out of his water-jug by way
of first breakfast.
Then, away through the gaps in the jewelled hedges, with the larks at
their matins overhead, and the tethered cows nuzzling out the dainty
morning grasses, and watching the intruders speculatively till they
passed out of sight into the next field.
"Which way? Which way? Which way?" shrieked Scamp, as he tore to and
fro down every possible road to show that all were absolutely alike to
him. While Punch bounded lightly to the first dividing of the ways and
waited there with slow-swinging tail to see which road Man would
choose.
The Harbour--or Les Lâches--which? Every morning Scamp raced hopefully
towards the sweet-smelling tunnel of hawthorn trees that led down to
the other tunnel in the rock and the tiny harbour, because, for a very
small dog, the granite slip was much easier to compass than the steep
ledges of Les Lâches. And every morning Punch waited quietly at
Colinette to see how Man would go.
And when the tide was low and the harbour empty, Punch knew it was Les
Lâches almost before Man's face had turned that way, and off he went
at a gallop, and Scamp came tearing back with expostulatory yelps, and
got in Punch's way and was rolled head over heels, but always came
right side up at the fourth turn and rushed on without even a
remonstrance, for that was a very small price to pay for the exalted
companionship of Punch and Man.
So, past La Peignerie and La Forge, with the thin blue smoke of gorse
fires floating down from every dumpy chimney and adding a flavour to
the sweetest air in the world,--with a morning greeting from everyone
they met--over the heights and down the zigzag path to the sloping
ledges, and in they went, all three, into the clearest and crispest
water in the world, water that tingled and sparkled, full charged with
life and energy.
Then shivers and shakes, and hasty play with a towel, and they were
racing back across the heights to breakfast and the passing of another
day, of which the greatest charm had passed already with that plunge
into the life-giving sea.
If you are inclined to think that I enlarge too much on these two
friends of his, let me remind you that a man is known by the company
he keeps, and these two were Graeme's sole companions for many a
day--those first dark days in the sunny little isle, when all human
companionship would have been abhorrent to him.
In their company he found himself again. Their friendship weaned him
by degrees from the jaundiced view of life which Margaret's
dereliction had induced. They drew him, in time, from his brooding
melancholy, and through the upbuilding of the body restored him to a
quieter mind.
Let no man despise the help of a dog, for there are times when the
friendship of a dog is more sufferable, and of more avail, and far
more comforting, than that of any ordinary human being.