"Njal is my dog," she said.
"What! Not Njal!" protested the Lady of Cedar Hill. "Why, in the count
of collie points----"
"But I'm not looking for a dog to keep me supplied with blue ribbons. I
want a friend. Njal has a soul."
The Lady of Cedar Hill bent a doubtful glance on me.
"Oh, we've just settled that," smiled Joy-of-Life. "She would rather
have him than all the other eight."
So it was that on the last day of June, 1903, we drove again to Cedar
Hill to bring our collie home.
"It's a queer choice," laughed our hostess, as she poured tea, "but at
least you need not put yourselves out for him. He is used to the barn,
and a box of straw in your cellar will be quite good enough for Njal."
She rang for more cream. No maid appeared. Surprised, she rang again,
sharply. Still no response. One of the ever numerous guests rose and
went out to the kitchen. She came back laughing.
"All the maids are kneeling around Njal, disputing as to whose ribbon
becomes him best and worshiping him as if he were the golden calf. And
really William has given an amazing shine to that yellow coat of his.
It is astonishing what a splendid fellow the barn-puppy has grown to
be."
In came Jane with the cream, blushing for her delay, but lingering to
see what reception would be given the collie who walked politely a step
or two behind.
Groomed till he shone, his new leather collar adorned with a flaring
orange-satin bow, Njal entered with the quiet stateliness of one to
drawing-rooms born, widely waving his tail in salutation to the entire
company. But it was to the Lady of Cedar Hill that he went and against
her side that he pressed close, while his questioning eyes passed from
face to face, for he seemed already aware of an impending change in his
fortunes.
The phaeton was brought to the door. Joy-of-Life and I took our places,
and the Lady of Cedar Hill, who gave her puppies away right royally,
passed in a new leash and complete box of brushes. Then the coachman
lifted Njal, an armful of sprawling legs, and deposited him at our
feet. The collie sat upright, making no effort to escape. But as his
mistress perched on the carriage step to give him a good-bye hug, his
eyes looked back into hers so wistfully, and yet so trustfully, that
one of the maids in the background was heard to sniff.
"Be a good doggie," the beloved voice adjured him, "and don't give your
new ladies any trouble on the long drive."
If he promised, he certainly kept his word. All the way he sat quietly
where he had been put, erect and alert, watching the road and bestowing
a very special regard on every dog and cat we passed. When we reached
our modest home, he jumped out at our bidding, entered the open door
and proceeded steadily from room to room, looking long out of each
window as if hoping to find a familiar view. We had been warned that
strange surroundings would probably affect his appetite, but Njal was
far too sensible a collie to disdain a good dinner. He took to his
puppy-biscuit and gravy with such a relish that, in an incredibly short
period, the empty dish was dancing on the gravel under the hopeful
insistence of his tongue. Homesickness, however, came on with the dusk.
He gazed longingly from the piazza down the road, and when we attempted
to introduce him to the cellar and his waiting box of plentiful clean
straw, he resisted in a sudden agony of fright.
Njal had known nothing of cellars, and the terror with which that
unnatural, lonesome hollow under ground affected him lasted for two
full years. Then a visiting nephew, boy-wise in the ways of animals,
romping with him, purposely scampered back and forth through the
cellar, running in at one door and out at the other, so that the dog,
in the ardor of the chase, had traversed that realm of awful chill and
gloom before he realized where he was. Later on, one torrid afternoon,
I carried a bone down cellar and, sitting on a log beside it, chanted
its praises until, tempted beyond endurance, Njal came tumbling
headlong downstairs and fell upon it. For a little while longer, he
would not stay in the cellar without companionship, but at last his
dread was so entirely overcome that, in the midsummer heats, the
cellar, and especially, to our regret, the coal bin, was his favorite
resort.
But on this first night he would have none of it. We were reluctant to
use force and compromised on the bathroom. Here he obediently lay down
and bore his lot in silence till dead of night, when at last the rising
tide of desolation so overswelled his puppy heart that a sudden wail,
which would have done credit to a banshee, woke everybody in the house.
The second evening he made his own arrangements. Our academic home was
simple in its appointments,--so simple that Joy-of-Life and I often
merrily quoted to each other the comment of a calling freshman:
"When _I'm_ old, I mean to have a dear little house just like this one,
all furnished with nothing but books."
The barn-dog inspected our chambers and promptly decided that only the
best was good enough for him. This approved bower was then occupied by
the Dryad, over whose couch was appropriately spread a velvety green
cover, a foreign treasure of her own, marvelous for many-hued
embroidery. As bedtime came on, Njal disappeared and was nowhere to be
found, until the Dryad's pealing laugh brought us to her room, where a
ball of golden collie, even the tail demurely tucked in, was sleeping
desperately hard in the middle of the choice coverlet. One anxious eye
blinked at us and then shut up tighter than ever. Njal was so
determined not to be budged that the tender-hearted Dryad took his part
and pleaded against our amateur efforts at discipline.
"Poor puppy! Let him be my room-mate tonight. He's so new and scared.
He can sleep over there on the lounge under that farthest window and he
will not bother me one bit."
Njal consented to this transfer, but in the small hours homesickness
again swept his soul and he jumped up beside the Dryad, to whom he
nestled close. The night was excessively hot, and the morning found a
pallid lady snatching a belated nap on the lounge under the far window,
while Njal remained in proud possession of the bed.
Joy-of-Life thereafter insisted on leashing him at night in the lower
hall, where we would spread out for him the Thunder-and-Lightning Rug,
an embarrassing gift for which we had never before been able to find a
use. There he would contentedly take his post, the conscious guardian
of the house, his white and yellow in vivid contrast to the black and
scarlet of the rug, and his blue-figured Japanese bowl of water within
easy reach. This disposition of our problem worked both well and ill,
since Njal found distraction from his diminishing attacks of nostalgia
in trying with his sharp white teeth the toughness of the leashes which
succeeded one another in costly succession. But as a watch dog he took
himself most seriously, though not greatly to the furtherance of our
repose. From the depths of slumber he would leap up with a dynamic
bark, accompanied by a bass growl, as if there were two of him,
spinning around and around upon his leash, until we all rose from our
beds, grasping electric torches, and sped downstairs to behold a fat
beetle scuttling off across the floor or to hear the receding scamper
of a mouse behind the wainscot. On the night before the Fourth,
outraged by such a racket as he had never heard before, our
ten-months-old protector succeeded in making more noise than all the
horns, torpedoes and firecrackers in our patriotic neighborhood.
We celebrated the national holiday by changing his name, which sounded
in the mouth of the mocker too much like _miaul_, to that of the
shining hero of the _Volsunga Saga_. Joy-of-Life hesitated a little
lest the Lady of Cedar Hill should deem her own Norse hero, Burnt Njal,
"gentle and generous," treated with discourtesy, but I pleaded that in
all likelihood our home would never again be blessed with anything so
young and so yellow, so altogether fit to bear the honors of the Golden
Sigurd. The collie readily accepted his new name, but never forgot the
old, and even to the last year of his sunny life, if the word Njal were
spoken, however softly, would glance up with bright recognition.
Sigurd bore himself through that first July with such civility and
dignity that we did not dream how homesick he really was,--that
towering puppy, who looked absurdly tall as we took him out to walk on
his latest leash. He submitted to this needless indignity as he
submitted to the long chain that bound him to the piazza railing, with
magnanimous forbearance. We had used a rope at first, but he felt it a
point of honor to gnaw this apart, coming cheerfully to meet us with a
section of our clothesline trailing from his collar. Through these
first weeks he had much to occupy his mind and tax his fortitude in the
engine whistles and rumble of trains, the whirr of electric cars,
Cecilia's energetic broom that threatened to brush him off the piazza,
the manners of the market-man, who, unlearned in Norse mythology,
injuriously called him Jigger, and divers other perils and excitements.
His ears were forever on the cock and his tail busy with the agitated
utterance of his changing emotions. When we ventured, after a little,
to let him run loose, he investigated the immediate territory but kept
within call, bounding to meet us as we came out to look for him. The
first time that he actually ventured off on an independent quest, he
came tearing back after forty minutes' absence as if he had been
putting a girdle round the earth, insisting on a complete and repeated
family welcome as well as a second breakfast. My first vivid sense of
the comfort of having a dog smote me on the edge of a tired evening,
when, trudging home from a long day in one of the Boston libraries, a
sudden nose was thrust into my hand and a gleaming shape leapt up out
of the roadside shadows in jubilant welcome. So we supposed our collie
was light-hearted.
But one after-sunset hour, when we had feloniously sallied out to strip
the flower-beds of an absent neighbor, Sigurd, in amiable attendance,
suddenly started, wheeled and was off down the hill like a shimmering
arrow of Apollo. How was he aware of her at that distance, in that
dusk, the Lady of Cedar Hill? He flung himself like a happy avalanche
upon her and poured out all the bewilderment and yearning, the
lonesomeness and love of his loyal soul, in a shrill, ecstatic tremolo
that we came to designate as "Sigurd's lyric cry." It was reserved for
a favored few, objects of romantic devotion; it was rarely vouchsafed
to the commonplace members of his own household; but it never failed
the Lady of Cedar Hill, though months might elapse between her visits.
On this her first coming, his joy was touching to see. He pressed close
to her side as she walked up the hill and after she had seated herself
in a piazza chair he tried to climb into her lap as in his fuzzy
puppyhood, and succeeded, too, though he hung over her knees like a
yellow festoon, his feet touching the floor on either side and his
plumy tail fanning her face. Yet when she went away, he made no effort
to follow. He watched her intently from the piazza steps as she passed
down the hill and turned the corner. When she was out of sight, tail
and ears drooped and he came in of his own accord, soberly lying down
on the Thunder-and-Lightning Rug, beside his leash. Feelings were all
very well in their way, but duty was supreme. He had a house to guard
from beetles and other bugbears of the night.
Sigurd was so big and strong that he needed plenty of exercise. Before
he came, a spacious "run" had been provided for him on the wild bank,
hardly yet redeemed from the forest, back of the house, but this he
promptly repudiated for all purposes of frolic. He seemed to regard it
as a singing-school, for, dragged out there "to play," he would sit on
his haunches and practice dirge-music in howls of intolerable crescendo
until a decent respect for the opinions of the neighbors obliged us to
bring him in. We called him our gymnasium, walking and romping with him
all we could, but our utmost was not enough. So we would drive out,
once or twice a week, along the less frequented roads, though
automobiles were not so many then, to give the boy a "scimper-scamper."
He delighted to accompany the carriage, running alongside with brief
dashes down the bank for water or into the woods after a squirrel. When
he was tired, he would run close and look up, asking for a lift, but
after a few minutes of panting repose, lying across the phaeton in
front of our feet, nose and tail in alarming proximity to the wheels,
he would want to scramble out and race again.
The first time that we took him back to Cedar Hill was a thrilling
event for Sigurd. He had been running most of the way and jumped in
just before we reached familiar landmarks. As soon as these appeared,
all his weariness vanished. Standing erect, eyes shining, ears pricked
up, nose quivering, his tail thumping the dashboard with louder and
louder blows, he sent his lyric cry like a bugle through the air,
heralding our approach so well that all his kindred yet remaining on
the estate, as well as his original mistress, her guests and her maids,
were drawn up on the lawn and steps to receive us. Sigurd sprang out
before the horse had stopped and tore up with a special squeal of
filial devotion to greet his sire, Ralph the Magnificent, who was
barely restrained by a circle of strenuous hands on his collar from
hurling himself in fury on this most obnoxious of his sons. Dora
trotted up and sniffed at him with coquettish curiosity, as if
wondering who this golden young gallant might be, but her bearing could
by no stretch of language by styled maternal. Gunnar, a puppy with
every mark of high descent, now installed on the estate as crown
prince, was so infected by his father's rage that they both had to be
shut up during our stay. Sigurd pranced rapturously all over the place,
visiting every scene of his childhood with the conspicuous exception of
the barn. He disdained to recognize the cows and gave but a
supercilious curl of his tail even to the most affable of the dairymen.
A cattle-dog, indeed! He invited himself to tea in the drawing-room and
had the further impertinence to take a snooze on Dora's own cushion,
close to the skirts of the Lady of Cedar Hill. She doubted whether he
would be willing to go back with us, but when the phaeton was driven to
the door, Sigurd rushed out to meet it and leapt into his place before
we had finished our more ceremonious farewells. We knew then that he
was really ours.