FINN WALKS ALONE
For a long while after the men had left the scene of Finn's
miserable captivity, he remained standing, and occupying as small a
space as possible in his prison. The fastidiousness bred in him by
careful rearing told severely against Finn just now. He had never,
until this night, been without water to slake his thirst; and
never, never had he smelt anything so horrible as the earth of the
little den in which he was now confined. Also, the place was
actually filthy, as well as apparently so. Finn could not bring
himself to move in it. He stood shrinking by the door, with his
nose near a crack beside its hinges. For long he reflected upon the
events of that night, without moving. Then, gradually, thoughts of
Kathleen and Tara, and the sweet cleanliness and freedom of his home
beside the Downs, came swimming into Finn's mind, and these
thoughts seemed to add intolerably to the aching of his bruised
bones and muscles, to the soreness of those spots in which his skin
had been broken, and to the misery of the thirst which kept his
tongue protruding at one side of his jaws.
Unable to bear these things any longer, Finn turned cautiously
toward the middle of his loathsome prison, and, though his feet
shrank from the task, scraped a hollow place in its midst of about
the bigness of a wash-hand basin. Then, treading as though upon hot
bricks, he squirmed his great body round to avoid touching the
walls of his prison, and sat on his haunches in the hollow he had
made. He was now filled with a desire to inform Tara and the
Master, and, it may be, the rest of the world, about his sorry
plight. But, particularly, he wanted to let the Master and Tara
know about it. And so, seated there in what he had endeavoured to
make the one approachably clean spot available, Finn pointed his
long muzzle toward the stars he could not see, and, opening his
jaws wide, expelled from them the true Irish Wolfhound howl, which
seemed to tear its way outward and upward from the very centre of
the hound's grief-smitten heart, to wind slowly through his lungs
and throat, and to reach the outer air with very much the effect of
a big steamship's syren in a dense fog. It is a very long-drawn
cry, beginning away down in the bass, dragging up slowly to an
anguished treble note in a very minor key, and subsiding,
despairingly, about half-way back to the bass. It is a sound that
carries a very long way--though not so far as from the place of
Finn's captivity to the Sussex Downs--and carries misery with it
just as far as ever it can reach. Upon the hearer who has any
bowels of compassion it falls with a weight of physical appeal
which may not be denied. Above all, it is a strange, mysterious,
uncanny cry, and not a sound which can be ignored. It is a sound to
fetch you hurriedly from your bed at midnight; and that though you
had been sunk in dreamless sleep when first it smote its
irresistible way into your consciousness.
Finn was beginning the bass rumble of his sixth howl when the door
of his prison was flung suddenly open, and he saw Matey, armed with
a hurricane lamp and a short, heavy stick. He was still so new to
the ways of Matey's kind of human, that he thought his howls had
brought him release, and, for an instant, he even had a vision of a
deep basin of cold water, a meal, and a sweet, clean bed, which his
innocent fancy told him Matey might have been engaged in preparing
for him. If he had not been so loath to risk touching the walls of
his prison, his powerful tail would have wagged as the door opened
and the clean night air came in to him. As it was, he leaned
forward to express his gratitude for the opening of the door. And
as he moved forward, delicately, Matey's stick descended on his
nose, with all the weight of Matey's arm and Matey's savage anger
behind it. There was no more sensitive or vulnerable spot in the
whole of Finn's anatomy, physically or morally. The blow was
hideously painful, hideously unexpected, hideously demoralizing. It
robbed Finn of sight, and sense, and self-respect, and forced a
bewildered cry from him which was part bark, part howl, part growl,
and part scream of pain. It planted fear and horror in a single
instant in a creature who had lived in the world for fifteen months
with no consciousness of either. The filth of his prison was
forgotten in this new anguish of pain, and fear, and humiliation,
compared with which the kicks and stranglings of the early part of
the night were as nothing at all. In a few seconds of time the
proudest of princes in the dog world was reduced to a shuddering,
cringing object, cowering in one corner of a filthy cupboard.
Matey was not only furiously angry, he was also a good deal afraid;
and that added cruelty to his anger. He had heard a number of
bedroom windows raised as he crossed the walled-in yard; he wanted
no enquiries about the source and reason of the weird, syren-like
howls that had brought him out in his shirt and trousers. It was
his business to see that there were no more howls; and the only
means that occurred to his brutal mind were those he now proceeded
to put into operation. He closed the door of the den behind him,
and he rained down blows upon Finn's shrinking body till his arm
ached, and the dog's cries subsided into a low, continuous whimper,
the very paralysis of shame, anguish, fear, and distress. Then,
when his arm was thoroughly tired, he flung the stick viciously
into Finn's face, went out, and locked the door.
Matey certainly could not be called a clever dog stealer, because
he had no notion of how to preserve that which he stole. Putting
aside their brutality, his methods were incredibly stupid; but
when, five minutes later, he lay listening in his bed, the only
reflection that his stupid mind brought him was that he had
succeeded admirably. No further sound came from the walled-in yard;
and it appeared that there was to be no further risk of neighbours
being disturbed by howls from Finn. Matey was too far away to hear
anything of the low, tremulous, nasal whimpering which trickled out
into the night through the holes in the door of Finn's prison; and,
in any case, there was no fear of that small sound disturbing any
one. So, after his own fashion--which one really hesitates to call
brutal, because brutes rarely, and probably never, indulge in
pointless, unnecessary ferocity--Matey had been successful.
But if Matey had had sense enough to be called a clever dog-stealer,
he would have recognised that, despite his huge bulk and
strength, Finn was one of the gentlest and most docile of created
things, whose silence and tractability a little child could and
would have brought about with the greatest ease, and without so
much as an angry word. And, so, one has to admit that Matey's
cruelty was like nine-tenths of the other cruelty in the world,
alike among the educated and the uneducated, in that it was due to
ignorance and stupidity.
For a long time Finn was conscious of nothing but fear, and pain,
and misery. He really had been very badly handled, and, though he
knew it not, one of his ribs was broken. After an hour or two, he
became perfectly silent, and began, tentatively and in a half-hearted
way, to lick some of his bruises and abrasions. Then, before
this task was half accomplished, wise Nature asserted her claims,
and the exhausted Wolfhound fell into a fitful sleep just before
daybreak. When he woke, fully a couple of hours later, much of
his pain and misery remained with him; but the fear had given
place to other feelings, chief among which came the determination
to escape from the dominion of Matey. His own short experience of
life gave Finn nothing to draw upon in coping with the situation in
which he now found himself. He was drawing now, not upon teaching
or experience, but upon what we call instinct: the store of
concentrated inherited experience with which Nature furnishes all
created things, and some more richly than others. Deep down in
Finn's share of this store there were faint stirrings in the
direction of hatred and vengeance; but of these, Finn was not
actually conscious as yet. What he was acutely conscious of was the
determination with which instinct supplied him to seize the very
first opportunity of getting clear away from his present
environment, and from Matey. So much, instinct taught him: that he
must get his freedom if he could, and that he must never, never
again, for one moment, trust Matey. This was only the surface of
the lesson instinct taught him. There was a lot more in the lesson
which would permanently affect Finn's attitude toward humans and
toward life itself. But the surface was the immediate thing; to win
to freedom, and never to trust Matey again.
The first result of Finn's lesson was that he examined the whole of
his prison very carefully, by the aid chiefly of his sense of smell
and touch. There was hardly any light in the place. His nose was
very sore, because Matey's stick had knocked a large piece of skin
from it and bruised it badly. Also, the smell of every part of
Finn's prison was revolting to him. But, though with sensitively
wrinkled nostrils, Finn made his examination very thoroughly. And
in the end he decided that he could do nothing for the present.
Three sides of his prison were brick-work, and the fourth, the
door, presented no edge or corner which his teeth could touch. So
Finn sat still, waiting, listening, and watching, with his tongue
hanging out a little on one side of his mouth, by reason of the
horrid dryness which afflicted his throat. And every hour that he
waited brought greater strength to his determination, besides
teaching him something in the way of patience and caution.
Presently, the waiting Finn heard heavy footsteps in the yard
outside, and the muscles of his body gathered themselves together
for action. The door opened, and Finn saw Matey standing there with
a stick and a chain in his hand. Instinct told Finn on the instant
that he must at all hazards avoid both the stick and the chain;
but, more than anything else, the chain.
"Come 'ere!" said Matey. And Finn came. But, whereas Matey had
reckoned on a slow movement, in the course of which his hand would
have fallen on Finn's slip-collar preparatory to fixing the chain
on that, the movement was actually very swift and low to the
ground, and resulted in Finn's passing out scathless into the
walled-in yard.
"Oho! So we don't like our new master, don't we? Haven't forgotten
our blooming gruellin', eh? Better take care we don't get some more
o' the same sort, Mister Wolfhound, if you arst me!"
The walled-in yard was quite safe. Matey was in nowise perturbed,
and, moreover, having slept soundly and breakfasted copiously, he
was, for him, in an amiable mood. Still, he had no wish to waste
time, and he wanted to overhaul his plunder, and groom Finn up a
little before the prospective purchaser arrived. So Matey turned
round, leaned forward with a hand resting on one knee, and tried to
twist his features into an ingratiating expression, as he said--
"Here, then, good dog! Come on, Finn! Here, boy!"
But instinct made Finn's intelligence upon the whole superior to
Matey's in this matter, and, having already satisfied himself by
means of hurried investigation that at present he could not escape
from the walled-in yard, the Wolfhound stood half a dozen paces
distant from the man, waiting, with every nerve and muscle at
concert pitch. The man moved forward, with hand outstretched
invitingly. The Wolfhound moved backward, with hackles slightly
raised. Thus they followed each other round the little yard perhaps
six times, the distance between them being maintained with nicety
and precision by Finn. Then Matey's mental inferiority appeared. He
was expecting very shortly now the man from whom he hoped to
receive his reward--the price of Finn. His intelligence, such as it
was, told him that strategy would now be necessary to enable him to
lay hands on the Wolfhound; but, even while recognising that, he
could not refrain from angrily flinging his chain in Finn's face,
after his sixth promenade of the yard, and cursing the dog
savagely, before retiring into the house to prepare a stratagem.
Finn did not snarl as the chain struck him. Instinct had not
carried him so far from education. But he barked angrily, and
bounded to one side. While the man was away Finn examined the gate
of the yard through which he had been driven on the previous night,
and, though it rattled hopefully when he plunged against it with
his fore-paws, raised high above its fastening, it remained solidly
closed.
As Finn turned away from the doors of the yard, Matey appeared from
the house, holding in one outstretched hand a piece of the same
kind of meat with which he had seduced Finn into accompanying him
on the previous evening, and calling the hound to him in a friendly
tone. But Finn had learned a good deal since his first taste of
that savoury meat; more a good deal than the man who offered the
meat had learned in the same time. Taking the middle of the yard,
so as to leave himself ample space for retreat, he remained
watchfully regarding Matey, and refused to advance a step. Matey's
spoken blandishments were now a dead letter to Finn. Having once
discovered the possibilities of human treachery, he would never
forget them. And here the folk who belong to what we call the brute
creation are apt to be a good deal wiser than their betters in the
scale of evolution. They do not forget the teaching of experience
so readily as do those of us who are farther removed from Nature.
To be sure, Matey's notion of strategy was puerile enough; but,
apart from that, it is safe to assume that Finn would never again
completely trust this man, who had been the first to introduce him
to fear and misery, to humiliation, and to knowledge of the
existence of treachery and cruelty in men folk.
Matey cursed the Wolfhound angrily, but that did not incline Finn
to trust him any the more. Then the man advanced a little in his
strategy, and tossed a piece of the meat on to the ground, before
Finn, to inspire confidence. But Finn's mistrust was too profound
to admit of his stooping to pick this up. He was not very specially
hungry, in any case; and if Matey had been an observant creature,
or even one who used his memory wisely, he would have known that
the offer of drinking-water would have been infinitely more
tempting to Finn than any quantity of savoury meat. But, as a fact,
Finn was too much possessed just now by his determination to escape
from Matey and all his works to be very clearly conscious of any
other need.
Then, his petty strategy exhausted, and his paltry measure of self-control
with it, Matey started to chase Finn with a stick. Now and
again he succeeded in getting a blow home, as Finn wheeled and
leapt before him within the narrow limits of the yard; and every
time the stick touched him Finn barked angrily. This performance
was extremely bad for Finn. It was calculated to break down some of
the most valuable among his acquired qualities; the characteristics
that he acquired with his blood through many generations of wisely-bred
and humanely-reared hounds. In one sense it was more harmful
than the merciless and unreasonable punishment of the previous
night, because there was no faintest hint of a punishment about it;
not even of the sort of punishment that had followed his howling.
That had had the bad qualities of cruelty and unreasonableness,
unjustifiableness. This was not punishment at all, it was sheer
savagery, the savagery of a running fight in which the man, though
he might hurt occasionally, could not conquer. And that is a most
demoralizing sort of a happening, as between dog and man. Its
demoralizing influence could have been detected by an observant
spectator in the notes of Finn's barks when the stick reached him.
They approached momentarily nearer the threatening nature of a
growl; a new, dangerous note to hear in Finn's speech with mankind.
Matey was rapidly becoming exhausted, and in another moment or two
would probably have flung his stick at Finn and given up his
senseless pursuit, when, just as the Wolfhound bounded forward from
under his stick at the house end of the yard, the gate leading into
that yard opened, and Bill appeared. In an instant Finn had sprung
for the opening, Bill's legs were thrust from under him, and as he
stumbled, with one hand on the ground and an oath on his lips, Finn
reached the open road outside. Behind him, for a moment, Finn heard
a hurried scrambling, and a deal of broken, breathless whistling,
and calling aloud of his name. And then he heard no more from the
place of his captivity and anguish, for the reason that he was
already nearing the limits of the little town, and galloping hard
for the open country, over the road by which he had travelled some
ten hours earlier in Matey's cart.
[Illustration: The gate leading into the yard opened, and Bill
appeared]
Finn galloped for about three miles, his heart swelling within him
for joy in his freedom. Then, gradually, his gait slackened to a
canter, and then to a trot, and, finally, the sight of a wayside
pond brought him to a standstill; and, after a mechanical look
behind him, he walked into the water and drank, and drank, and
drank till he could drink no more. Finn emerged from the pond with
heaving flanks and dripping muzzle, conscious now of some of his
hurts and bruises, but licking his wet chops with satisfaction, and
supremely glad of his freedom. He lay down on the grass near the
pond and proceeded to lick those of his wounds and bruises which
were within licking reach, and to pity himself regarding the sharp
pain in his side which his broken rib was causing. Presently a cart
came jolting along from the direction in which Finn had come, and
the Wolfhound shrank back as far as possible into the hedge behind
him. But the driver of the cart took no further notice of Finn than
to stare idly at him, possibly without even seeing him; at all
events with an absolutely incurious stare. With renewed confidence,
the young hound stretched himself out again on the cool grass and
presently began to doze, this being the wise manner of all his kind
in assisting Nature to cure them of their various ills.
While Finn dozed, another cart approached him from the little town
he had left behind, and in this second cart were two extremely
angry men, one of whom strongly desired Finn's recapture on
mercenary grounds, while the other desired it upon these grounds
and others also. Bill wanted his share of Finn's price; Matey
wanted his larger share of that price, and he also wanted badly to
have Finn securely tied up in a convenient position for being
soundly beaten. Matey would almost rather have foregone the money
than the satisfaction of administering the beating, the very
thorough beating which he pictured himself administering to Finn.
His heavy mouth twitched viciously as Matey thought about it.
Suddenly Bill pulled the pony on to its haunches with a jerk.
"I'm jiggered if that ain't 'im a-waitin' for us!" exclaimed Bill,
in a hoarse whisper.
Matey was out of the trap in an instant, and, with meat in his
hand, was already beginning a whining call, which was meant to be
extremely ingratiating. But Finn sprang to his feet at the sound of
the cart coming to a standstill, and, after one glance at Matey,
was off like a wolf down the empty country road.
This was yet another lesson learned. Finn would not be in a hurry
to rest by the wayside again. After two miles of galloping at the
rate of nearly twenty miles an hour, Finn steadied down to a fast
loping gait, which would have kept him abreast of any other road
vehicle than a motor-car, and maintained this for quite a long
while. Then, by reason of the pain in his side, and of other pains,
he decided to stop. But, with his last-learned lesson fresh in his
mind, he had no intention of resting by the roadside. With a twist
of pain that cut into his side like a knife, he leapt a field gate,
and crept along the inner side of the hedge for some distance
before finally curling up in a dry hollow beside a hayrick. Here,
sheltered by the rick and half buried in dry hay and straw, Finn
courted the sleep he needed, so that it came to him swiftly. In his
sleep the young Wolfhound whimpered occasionally, and once or twice
his whole great body shook to the sound of a growling bark, causing
two bloodshot eyes to be half opened, and then mechanically closed
again, with a small grunt, as Finn's muzzle drove a little deeper
into the dry hay under his hocks, and he allowed sleep to
strengthen its healing hold upon him.
It was a dream that caused Finn to give that growling bark, and it
was a dream of a kind that had been foreign to his breed for
generations. He dreamed that he was chasing Matey, in the form of a
huge rabbit, armed with a stick. Matey, the rabbit, bounded away
from him, just as ordinary rabbits did; but sounds came from
Matey's rabbit mouth, and they were the horrid, venomous sounds of
the curses with which Matey had followed him that morning in the
walled-in yard. In the dream Finn was always on the point of
leaping upon the back of rabbit-Matey's neck, with jaws stretched
wide for slaughter. But something always intervened to prevent Finn
taking the leap. The something was this: at the moment of the leap,
Matey always looked more like a man and less like a rabbit, and the
instinct which told Finn not to slay a man was a very strong one.
But, somehow, rabbit-Matey seemed an exception. Finn was very
anxious to feel the crunching of his shoulder and neck bones; and
altogether it was unfortunate that such a dream should have been
inspired in the brain of so nobly born a hound.
When Finn finally woke he gaped right in the eye of the setting
sun, and all about him was the solemn silence of a fine October
twilight. He yawned cavernously, and, raising his haunches,
stretched his huge trunk from fore-paws placed far out. But, in the
midst of the stretch, he gave a little smothered yelp of pain, and
came to earth again, solicitously licking at the ribs of his right
side. Matey's heavy boot had done great execution there. Slowly,
then, Finn rose, and walked out into the darkening twilight of the
field. Before he had covered a hundred yards, a rabbit started up
from behind a bush, and scurried hedgewards for its life. But the
distance was too great for bunny by three yards, and Finn's jaws
snapped his backbone in sunder within six feet of his own burrow.
This was hard on the rabbit; but it was no more than one tiny
instance of the outworking of Nature's most inexorable law. Finn
had killed many rabbits before this evening; but in the past he had
merely obeyed his hunting and killing instinct. Now this instinct
in him was sharpened by hunger, by having slept on the open earth,
and by being conscious of no human control or protection. Finn
proceeded to eat this particular rabbit, and that was distinctly a
new experience for him, and one that left him upon the whole
pleased with himself. He was not aware of the fact, of course, but
this simple act placed him more nearly on terms with his ancestors
than anything else he had ever done, unless, perhaps, one counts
the dream acts of that afternoon.
After his meal Finn strolled along the hedge-side till he came to a
gap, and then slipped through to the road. For a mile or two he
trotted along the silent road with no particular object in view,
and then, coming to a grassy lane, turned into that, and trotted
for another mile or two, leaping a gate and a stile which barred
his way at intervals, and coming presently to a group of three
large ricks. His side was aching dully, and Finn was rather unhappy
over finding no sign of the home beside the Downs where his friends
were, and his own comfortable bed. Having allowed his mind to dwell
upon this for several minutes, he sat down on his haunches near one
of the ricks, and howled to the stars about it all for quite a
while, and so effectively that a farmer, sitting in his comfortable
dining-room nearly half a mile away, made a remark to his daughter
about the new-fangled way these pesky motor-car people have of
blowing fog-horns like the ships at sea, and carrying on as if the
road belonged to them--drat 'un!
It was not active unhappiness, let alone misery like that of the
previous night, that moved Finn to this vocal display; but only a
kind of gentle melancholy such as we call home-sickness, and after
five minutes of it, he curled up beside one of the ricks, after
scratching and turning round and round sufficiently to make a kind
of burrow for himself, and was fast asleep in about two minutes.
In the morning, long before the dew was off the grass, Finn set out
to do what he had never done a before: he set out deliberately to
hunt and kill some creature for his breakfast. He very nearly
caught an unwary partridge, though the bird did not tempt him
nearly so strongly as a thing that ran upon the earth, and ran
fast. In the end his menu was that of the previous evening, and, as
he eyed its still warm and furry remains, Finn felt that life was
really a very good thing, even when one had a pain in one's side,
and a large assortment of bruises and sore places in various other
parts of one's body.
Towards midday Finn lounged into a rather large village, and did
not like it at all. It stirred up in him the recollection of Matey
and his horrible environment, and he began to hurry, impelled by a
nervous dread of some kind of treachery. Towards the end of the
village he passed a pretty, creeper-grown cottage, from the door of
which a policeman issued. The policeman stared at Finn, and smacked
his own leg. Then he bent his body in an insinuating manner and
called to the Wolfhound: "Here, boy! Here, good dog! Come along!"
But Finn only lengthened his stride, and presently broke into a
gallop. He was no longer the guileless, trustful Finn of a week
ago. The rural constable sighed as he resumed an erect position and
watched Finn's disappearing form.
"He must be the dog that's wanted, all right; reg'ler monster, I'm
blessed if he isn't. But, takin' one thing with another, I'd just
as soon they catched him somewhere else than here. Why, I reckon my
missis 'ud have a fit. I don't call it hardly right, myself; not
'avin' 'em that size."
Half an hour later, to his great delight, Finn found himself clear
of roads and houses, and on the warm, chalky slopes of the Sussex
Downs. These great, smooth, immemorial hills, with their blunt
crests, and close-cropped, springy turf, brought a rush of home-feeling
into Finn's heart, which made his eyes misty, so that he
had to sit down and give vent to two or three long-drawn howls by
way of expressing his gentle melancholy. But Finn's nose told him
plainly that he had never before been on these particular Downs.
And so, good and kindly as this ancient British soil was to him, it
brought him no sight of actual home.
Towards evening he coursed and killed another rabbit, eating half
of it, and providing, in the other half which he left, a
substantial repast for a prowling weasel who followed in his trail.
Something--it may have been merely the fact that the day had not
been in any way exhausting like its predecessors--prevented Finn
from being inclined to curl down and sleep, when he passed a
convenient wheat rick in a valley an hour after his supper. The
night was fine and clear, and night life in the open, with its many
mysterious rustlings, bird and animal calls, and other enticing
sounds and smells, was beginning to present considerable
attractions to Finn. The events of the past few days had aroused
all sorts of latent tendencies and inclinations in him; feelings
which resembled memories of bygone days in their effects upon him,
but yet were not memories of any life that he had known, though
they may have been blood memories of the experiences of his
forbears. Later on, however, the young Wolfhound began to tire of
the freedom of the night, and home-sick longings rose in his heart
as he thought of the coach-house and of Kathleen. It was at about
this time that Finn fell to walking along a narrow, white sheep-walk,
on the side of a big, billowy down, which seemed to him
pleasanter and more homely than any of the hills he had traversed
that evening. Gradually the track in the chalk deepened and widened
a little, until it became a path sunk in the hill-side to a depth
of fifteen or twenty feet, and ended in a five-barred gate beside a
road. Finn leaped the gate with a strange feeling of exultation in
his heart, which made him careless of the sharp pain the leap
brought to his side. Something rose in his throat as he reached the
road. His eyes became misty, his nose drooped eagerly to the
surface of the road, and he whimpered softly as he ran, with tail
swaying from side to side, and a great tenderness welling up within
him.
Two minutes later he came to a white gate leading to a shrub-sheltered
garden before a small, low, rambling little house. He
leaped the little gate, and turned sharply to the right in the
garden. But then his way was blocked by high doors, set in masonry,
which could not possibly be climbed or jumped. Before these gates,
which evidently led to the stables and rear of the house, Finn sat
down on his haunches. Then he lifted his long muzzle heavenward and
howled lugubriously. He continued his howling steadily for about
one minute and a half, and at the end of that time a door opened
behind him in the front of the house, and a man clad in pyjamas
rushed out into the garden. Finn had studiously avoided men for
these two days past now; but, so far from avoiding this man, he
rose on his hind-legs to give greeting, and could hardly be induced
to lower his front paws, even when the man in pyjamas had removed
his caressing arms from about the Wolfhound's shoulders. The man,
you see, was the Master, and three minutes afterwards he was joined
by the Mistress of the Kennels. But they were all three in the
Master's outside den then with Tara.
[Illustration]