"Whose dog are you, Gold of Ophir?" I asked, and Sigurd, with an
impartial flourish of his tail, lay down exactly between us.
This delicate question was ultimately decided by no less an arbiter
than Mother Goose. In pursuance of the theory that her immortal
nonsense songs were written by Oliver Goldsmith--this is what is known
as Literary Research--I had obtained leave from a Boston librarian, an
indulgent spirit now gone to his reward, to take home for comparison
with an accumulation of other texts a unique copy, exquisitely printed
on creamy pages with wide margins and choicely bound in white and gold.
It was an extraordinary grace of permission and, even in the act of
passing that gem of a volume over, the librarian hesitated.
"It must not come to harm," he said, "for it is irreplaceable; but I
know how you value books and I believe there are no children, to whom
this might be a temptation, under your roof."
"Unfortunately, no; only a puppy."
"We will risk the puppy," he smiled,--but he did not know Sigurd.
I carried that book home as carefully as if it had been a nest of
humming-bird's eggs. As I used it that evening at my desk, I propped it
up at a far distance from any possible spatter of ink. Then I slipped
it into a vacant space on the shelf of the revolving bookcase close at
hand and, resolving to return it the next morning, turned to a
good-night romp with the Volsung. We tried several new games without
winning much popular applause. He was a failure as Wolf at the Door,
because he barked so gleefully for admittance to the room where
Joy-of-Life was brushing her mother's beautiful white hair and was so
welcome when he came bursting in; nor did he shine as Mother Hubbard's
dog, for his friend in the kitchen, Cecilia, who never let her cupboard
go bare, had just filled the doughnut jar. So we practiced in secret
for a few minutes on "a poetic recital" of Hickory Dickory Dock and
then came forth to electrify the household. Taking a central seat, I
repeated those talismanic syllables, at whose sound Sigurd jumped upon
me, climbed up till his forepaws rested on the high top of the chair,
in graphic illustration of the way the mouse ran up the clock, emitted
an explosive bark when, shifting parts at a sudden pinch, he became for
an instant the clock striking one, and then scrambled down with
alacrity, a motion picture of the retreating mouse. This was no small
intellectual exercise for a collie, and at the end of our one and only
public performance he broke away and squeezed himself under the sofa,
where he lay rubbing his poor, overwrought noddle against the coolest
spot on the wall.
His mental energies had revived by morning and apparently he wanted to
review his _Hickory Dickory Dock_, for he was in my study earlier than
I and there, from all the rows of books on all the open shelves, he
must needs pick out _Mother Goose_, even that unique copy _de luxe_.
When I came in, there was Sigurd outstretched on his favorite rug,
beside my desk, with the book between his forepaws, ecstatically
engaged in chewing off one corner.
My gasp of horror brought Joy-of-Life speedily to the scene, and
Sigurd, instantly aware that he had committed a transgression beyond
precedent, slid unobtrusively away, his penitent tail tucked between
his legs. We were too keenly concerned over the injury done to remember
to punish him, but no further punishment than our obvious distress was
needed. Never again would Sigurd touch a book or anything resembling a
book. He had discovered, once for all, that he had no taste for
literature.
"What can you do?" asked Joy-of-Life, distractedly trying to wipe that
pulpy corner dry with her napkin. "This rich binding is ruined, but the
margins are so broad that Sigurd--O _Sigurd_!--has not quite chewed
through to the print."
"Nothing but make confession in sackcloth and ashes and pay what I have
to pay," I answered gloomily. Then a wicked impulse prompted me to add:
"Of course, since it's _your_ dog that has done the damage----"
"Sigurd is _our_ dog," hastily interposed Joy-of-Life. "I give you half
of him here and now, and we'll divide the damage."
So as I went in to inflict this shock upon the kind librarian I was not
without a certain selfish consolation, for if I should have to pay over
all my bank account, I would be getting my money's worth. The librarian
bent his brows over that mangled volume, listened severely to my abject
narration and not until his eye-glasses hopped off his nose did I
realize that he was convulsed with laughter.
"What can I do?" I asked, too deeply contrite to resent his mirth.
He wiped his eyes, replaced his glasses, examined the book once more.
"Well!" he replied in a choking voice. "If it were possible to replace
this volume, I should have to require you to do so at whatever cost.
But there is no other copy to be had. Its aesthetic value is gone beyond
repair. The text, fortunately, is intact. We shall have to cut the
pages down to the print and bind them into plain covers. A pity, but it
can't be helped. The circumstances do not seem to call for a fine, but
the rebinding will cost you, I regret to say, twenty-five cents."
Choosing to deal generously with Joy-of-Life, I paid it all.
Although Sigurd's golden coat seemed but the outer shining of the
gladness that possessed him, he had his share of the ills that flesh is
heir to, the most serious being a well-nigh fatal attack of distemper.
With human obtuseness, we did not realize at first that our collie was
sick. We heard him making strangling sounds and thought he had
swallowed too big a piece of bone. We started out, that Sunday
afternoon, on a seven-mile walk, partly for the purpose of exercising
Sigurd, and were a bit hurt by his most unwonted lack of enthusiasm.
Instead of multiplying the miles by his usual process of racing in
erratic circles around and around us and dashing off on far excursions
over the fields on either side, he trotted soberly at heel, like the
well-trained dog he never was. He moped, tail hanging, ears depressed,
and soon began to fall behind. At the halfway turn he lay down and, for
a time, flatly refused to budge. We laughed at his new game of Lazy Dog
and relentlessly whistled him along. We were almost home, having passed
through the village square, Sigurd lagging far in the rear, when a
notorious bloodhound, out for his weekly constitutional, broke away
from the steel chain by which his master was holding him and charged on
our big puppy. Sigurd ran for his life, but the fleeter hound was close
upon him. There were knots of men loafing about the square and, waiting
for the next trolley car, there stood among them an old dame gayly
attired in the colors of her native Erin. Sigurd's limited range of
experience had led him to regard men either as secondary creatures who
did what they were bid by the all-potent Lady of Cedar Hill or as
parlor and piazza, ornaments enveloped in an unpleasant odor of
tobacco. His peril called for strong protection, so, as we were still
too distant, he took refuge behind the voluminous sea-green skirts of
that decent Irish body and, dodging skillfully as she twirled and
whirled, kept her as a buffer between himself and his enemy. Screeching
to all the saints for deliverance, she was still striving in vain to
escape from her awful position, when the owners of the dogs came
panting up. The bloodhound's master collared him, none too soon, and
beat him so savagely with the chain that we turned away from the sight
to sympathize with Sigurd's involuntary defender and help her adjust
her grass-green bonnet and veil. As for Sigurd, he had flashed out of
the picture, but we found him at home, lying inert, exhausted, refusing
water and biscuit, indifferent to bones. He sniffed regretfully at his
Sunday dinner, but left it untasted.
An hour or two before dawn, simultaneously awakened by the sound of
desperate coughing, Joy-of-Life and I met on the stairs and hurried
down to find a croupy puppy, who, in his emergency, had again bitten
his leash in two and climbed into his favorite--because forbidden--easy
chair. As we leaned over him, Sigurd put up a paw to each of us, his
suffering eyes expectant of relief. But we could devise no effectual
help, and the veterinary, called in as early as we dared, regarded the
invalid as a dangerous animal and handled him so roughly that, the
moment Sigurd found himself released, he slipped out of the house and
across the road to Nellie. Sorely disappointed in us, he tried to hide
his yellow towering bulk on the other side of that grizzled little
spaniel and waited, an exile from home, until the doctor had driven
away.
For weeks we had a sick collie on our hands. He dreaded food and would
squeeze himself into all impossible places when he saw either one of us
coming with the prescribed "nourishment." As for medicine, he
contracted that autumn an aversion to bottles which he never overcame.
Years afterward, if Sigurd, about to enter a room, stopped short on the
threshold and turned abruptly away, we looked around for the bottle.
One morning the gasps were very feeble. The veterinary told us the end
was at hand. We took our earth-loving collie out from his dark
hospital-nook in the house and laid him down among the asters and
goldenrods on the wild land at the rear. The Lady of Cedar Hill had
come over to see him once more. He was lying so still that we thought
he would not move again, but at the sound of that beloved voice Sigurd
stirred a feeble tail and breathed a ghostly echo of his lyric cry.
Faint and hoarse though it was, there was the old glad recognition in
it, and his first mistress, forgetting her intended precautions for the
dogs at home, knelt down beside her Njal, comforting him with tender
strokes and soft, caressing words. From that hour he began to mend, but
so slowly that we were anxious about him all winter. Cruel pains would
suddenly dart through him and he could never understand where they came
from nor who did it. We would hear the sharp, distinctive cry that
meant one of those pangs and then see Sigurd stagger up from his rug or
cushion, look at it with deep reproach and cross to the furthest corner
of the room. Once such a shoot of pain took him as he was standing by
Joy-of-Life's gentle mother, his head propped on her knee, and the air
of incredulous grief with which he drew back and gazed at her smote her
to the soul. It was a matter of days before he could be coaxed to come
to her again.
One of the discoveries of Sigurd's illness was the heart of our Swedish
maid, Cecilia. Fresh from Ellis Island, buxom, comely, neat as a
scoured rolling-pin, she regarded us with no more feeling than did her
molding-board. We introduced her to the ways of an American household;
we helped her with the speaking of English; we paid her wages; we were,
in short, her Plymouth Rock, on which she stepped to her career in the
New World. Best of all, we were palates and stomachs on which to try
her sugary experiments, for it was her steadfast ambition to become an
artist in dough with the view of securing a lucrative position as a
pastry cook. However much we might further her own interests, her
imperturbable coolness made it clear that as fellow-creatures we were
nothing, but she humored every whim of that sick puppy, even letting
him lie in her immaculate pantry when the restless fancy took him. Her
love was lasting, too, for although, as soon as we had suffered her
apprenticeship and begun to enjoy her perfected craft, she ruthlessly
left us for "a hotel yob," she persisted for several years in sending
Sigurd a dog-picture postcard every Christmas. We always gave him the
cards, telling him they came from his friend Cecilia, and he pawed them
politely, but inwardly deemed them a poor substitute for the cakes,
tarts, puffs and crinkle-pastes of many curious flavors that had, for
one brief season, made our At Homes famous in our "little academe,"
dropping delicious flakes for a thrifty tongue to garner under the
table.
The distemper finally passed off in a trailing effect of St. Vitus'
dance, which, again, our afflicted collie could not understand. On our
springtide walks, his head, as he trotted in front, would suddenly be
twitched to one side, as if we had jerked it by a rein. Apparently he
thought we had, for invariably he came running back to see what we
wanted of Sigurd.
The final, enduring result of this hard experience was an assured
devotion. Sigurd had genially accepted us from the first as his people,
but now, through the suffering and weakness, he had come to know us as
his very own. The lyric cry still belonged to high romance, but after
all those piteous weeks when he found his only comfort in lying close
beside our feet--even, in extremity, upon them--he reserved certain
welcomes and caresses for us alone. Ours was the long, silent pressure
of the golden head against the knee and, in time of trouble, the swift
touch of the tongue upon clouded faces, and ours the long, shining,
intimate gaze that poured forth imperishable loyalty and love.