Maltby Phar was responsible for Togo; he had given him--a little black
fluff-ball with shoe-button eyes--to Susan, about six months after she
first came to live with me. Togo is a Chow; and a Chow is biologically
classified as a dog. But if a Chow is a dog, then a Russian sable muff
is a dish rag. Your Chow--black, smoke blue, or red--is a creation
apart. He is to dogdom what Hillhouse Avenue is to Birch Street--the
wrong end, _bien entendu_. His blood is so blue that his tongue is
purple; and, like Susan's conception of Gertrude, he is a living
confession of faith in the rightness of the right people, a living
rebuke to the wrongness of the wrong; the right people being, of course,
that master god or mistress goddess whom he worships, with their
immediate _entourage_. No others need apply for even cursory notice,
much less respect.
I am told they eat Chows in China, their native land. If they do, it
must be from the motive that drove Plutarch's Athenian to vote the
banishment of Aristides--ennui, to wit, kindling to rage; he had wearied
to madness of hearing him always named "the Just." Back, too, in
America--for I write from France--there will one day be proletarian
reprisals against the Chow; for in the art of cutting one dead your Chow
is supreme. He goes by you casually, on tiptoe, with the glazed eye of
indifference. He sees you and does not see you--and will not. You may
cluck, you may whistle, you may call; interest will not excite him, nor
flattery move him; he passes; he "goes his unremembering way." But let
him beware! If Americans are slow to anger, they are terrible when
roused. I have frequently explained this to Togo--more for Susan's sake
than his own--and been yawned at for my pains.
Personally, I have no complaint to make. In Togo's eyes I am one of the
right people. He has always treated me with a certain tact, though with
a certain reserve. Only to Susan does he prostrate himself with an
almost mystical ecstasy of devotion. Only for her does his feathered
tail-arc quiver, do his ears lie back, his calm ebon lips part in an
unmistakably adoring smile. But there is much else, I admit, to be said
for him; he never barks his deep menacing bark without cause; and as a
mere _objet d'art_, when well combed, he is superb. Ming porcelains are
nothing to him; he is perhaps the greatest decorative achievement of the
unapproachably decorative East....
But for Tumps, my peculiar legacy, I have nothing good to say and no
apologies to offer. Like Calverley's parrot, he still lives--"he will
not die." Tumps is a tomcat. And not only is he a tomcat, he is a
hate-scarred noctivagant, owning but an ear and a half, and a poor third
of tail. His design was botched at birth, and has since been degraded;
his color is unpleasant; his expression is ferocious--and utterly
sincere. He has no friends in the world but Susan and Sonia, and Sonia
cannot safely keep him with her because of the children.
Out of the night he came, shortly after Togo's arrival; starved for
once into submission and dragging himself across the garden terrace to
Susan's feet. And she accepted this devil's gift, this household
scourge. I never did, nor did Togo; but we were finally subdued by fear.
Those baleful eyes cursing us from dim corners--Togo, Togo, shall we
ever forget them! Separately or together, we have more than once failed
to enter a dusky room, toward twilight, where those double phosphors
burned from your couch corner or out from beneath my easy-chair.
But nothing would move Susan to give Tumps up so long as he cared to
remain; and Tumps cared. Small wonder! Nursed back to health and
rampageous vivacity, he soon mastered the neighborhood, peopled it with
his ill-favored offspring, and wailed his obscene balladry to the moon.
Hillhouse Avenue protested, _en bloc_. The Misses Carstairs, whose
slumbers had more than once been postponed, and whose white Persian,
Desdemona, had been debauched, threatened traps, poison and the law.
Professor Emeritus Gillingwater attempted murder one night with a .22
rifle, but only succeeded in penetrating the glass roof of his
neighbor's conservatory.
Susan was unmoved, defending her own; she would not listen to any plea,
and she mocked at reprisals. Those were the early days of her coming,
when I could not force myself to harsh measures; and happily Tumps,
having lost some seven or eight lives, did with the years grow more
sedate, though no more amiable. But the point is, he stayed--and, I
repeat, lives to this hour on my distant, grudging bounty.
Such was the charge lightly laid upon me....
Oh, Susan--Susan! For once, resentment will out! May you suffer, shamed
to contrition, as you read these lines! Tumps--and I say it now
boldly--is "no damn good."