AN ADVENTURE BY NIGHT
For some thirty-six hours after his parting with the Master, Finn
mourned silently in the big house, which overlooked the harbour and
was filled with brand-new luxuries, including the brightly polished
suits of mail and the carefully matured family portraits in the
hall. If Finn had been a year younger the Sandbrook family would
have learned from him the exact nature of the Irish Wolfhound howl,
and they would not have liked it at all. But, though Finn would be
capable of the howl as long as he lived, he had no mind to indulge
in it now. His grief was too deep for that and too understanding;
so understanding, indeed, that he was perfectly well aware that no
howls of his would bring the Master back to him. It was true he had
not understood the nature of the transaction which made him the
property of the Australian merchant; but he had clearly understood
that some grievous necessity had forced the Master to hand him over
to Mr. Sandbrook, and that his, Finn's, duty to the Master involved
remaining there in the house by the harbour.
But, as he saw it, his duty did not make it incumbent upon him to
enter into communication with a whole pack of people who had
nothing to do with the Master. In some dim way he comprehended that
he owed deference and obedience to Mr. Sandbrook; that the Master
had undertaken so much on his behalf; but he had no wish to become
familiar with the Sandbrook household; and the consequence was that
the daughters, and the servants--there were no sons at home--and
the lady of the house, while they admitted the magnificence of the
new acquisition's appearance, agreed in pronouncing him a rather
sulky animal. They showered caresses and foolish remarks upon him,
and he lay with his grey-black muzzle resting on outstretched
fore-legs, staring through them all at the door by which the Master
had disappeared. The only sign he would give of consciousness of the
presence of these other people, was in turning his head away from
them when they touched his muzzle. Once, when the younger daughter
of the house went so far as to sit down beside Finn, and bend her
head close down to his, he submitted courteously, though his nose
wrinkled with annoyance, until the young lady raised her head; and
then, very gently, lie rose, walked away from her to the mat beside
the door, and lay down there, with his nose close to the spot on
which the Master's feet had last rested in that house.
Finn was taken out in the garden two or three times on a leash; but
he had no thought of escape. The Master had left him, and bade him
stay there; and his heart was empty and desolate within him. Now
and again his dark eyes filled with moisture, and the sadness of
his face was so wonderfully striking as to impress the Misses
Sandbrook, who, truth to tell, were not over and above intelligent,
nor even very kind-hearted. They had not half the kindly
good-nature of their vulgar parents, though they had much better
taste, and a great variety of accomplishments.
Through the night Finn did not sleep, though he dozed occasionally
for a few minutes at a time, dreaming fitfully, waking and dozing,
of the Master and the Mistress, and the lodging they had shared of
late. The whole of the next day he passed in the same employment,
except that, in the afternoon, he had to go through the wearisome
ceremony of being introduced to a number of strange ladies, not one
among whom seemed from the smell of her clothes to have anything to
do with the Master. He comported himself through this ordeal with
dignity and patience, but, as one of the ladies said--"The dear
darling, he does look so dreadfully sad and tired of everything,
doesn't he?" To which Mrs. Sandbrook replied that this was just his
"strangeness," and that he would soon get over it. She added that
she did not object to this look of Finn's herself, he being such a
regular a-_ri_stocrat. It seemed to her in keeping with his general
appearance, she said, and quite suggestive of the sort of ancient,
ivy-covered mansion he had come from in the Old Country. The good
lady drew upon her imagination, of course, in the matter of Finn's
home in England. But she meant well, and Finn suffered her
head-pattings more gladly than those of the rest of the household,
recognizing clearly in her just about what there was to recognize,
and rightly appreciating that simple character, as being of greater
worth than the frothily pretentious nature of her daughters.
That night the master of the house announced that he thought Finn
had quite settled in his new home, and that he would now take the
Wolfhound for a stroll in the grounds without the leash. He did so,
and when they had walked twice round a lawn and down an avenue,
they came to the green gate by which Finn had first entered that
place. Finn had been walking dejectedly, his head carried low and
close to Mr. Sandbrook's legs, his mind still too full of mournful
thoughts of his lost Master to permit of his inquiring closely into
those smells and other details of his immediate surroundings, which
would have interested him in ordinary circumstances.
Now, as his eyes fell upon the green gate, an overpowering desire
to see the Master swept through his mind. He had no intention of
running away from his new owner. His one thought was just to run
down to the old lodging and see the Master again. His hind-quarters
bent under him, and the next instant saw him neatly clearing the
top of the five-foot gate, with never a thought of the
consternation he left behind him in poor Mr. Sandbrook's mind.
Before the portly merchant had the gate fairly open, Finn had
trotted thirty or forty yards down the moonlit road in the
direction from which he had approached the house with the Master on
the morning of the previous day. He paused once, and looked back at
Mr. Sandbrook, in response to agitated cries and whistles; but, not
being able to explain his precise object in going out in a manner
that would have been comprehensible to the merchant, he decided
that it would be better to get on with the matter in hand without
delay. So he went forward again, and this time at an easy canter
which took him out of earshot of Mr. Sandbrook in less than one
minute.
When Finn arrived in the streets of the city he was more than a
little confused, and once or twice took a wrong turning. But he
always retraced his steps and found the right turning before going
far, and in due course he arrived at the house in which he had
lodged with his friends. Rising on his hind-feet, he pawed the
front door vigorously. A few moments later the door was opened by
the landlady, to whose utter astonishment Finn brushed hurriedly
into the little passage and up the stairs to the door of the room
the Master had used, where he paused, with one foot pressed against
the closed door.
"Here, Sam!" cried the startled landlady, "you talk about your
blessed menagerie, come an' look 'ere. My word, this'll surprise
yer!"
The landlady's son, who had paid her a flying visit that day,
appeared in the passage in his shirt sleeves, holding a small lamp.
The landlady closed the front door, and together the two walked
upstairs to where Finn sat, whining softly, and pawing at the
closed door of what had been the Master's sitting-room.
"My bloomin' oath, what a dog!" exclaimed Sam, as his mother
reached forward and opened the sitting-room door, leaving Finn free
to plunge forward into the dark interior, which he did on the
instant. In the next instant he was out again, and pawing at the
opposite door, leading to the bedroom. This, too, was opened for
him, and in another moment he had satisfied himself that neither
room had been occupied by the Master or the Mistress for a
considerable time. This was a grievous blow to Finn, and as he
returned to the little landing between the two rooms, he sniffed
despairingly at the landlady's skirt, and even nuzzled her rough
hand, with a vague feeling that she might be able to produce his
friends. Not that he had any serious purpose in this, however, for
it was strongly borne in upon Finn now that he had lost his friends
for good and all.
"Well, what jer think of 'im?" the landlady asked of her son.
Sam was a tall, loosely built, rather slouching fellow; a typical
young Australian of a certain class; not unintelligent, rather
lazy, given to drawl in his speech, and extremely self-centred. He
had been eyeing Finn all this while with growing interest, and now
he said--
"Is he savage?"
"Wouldn't hurt a sheep," replied the mother. "Wouldn't yer like to
know where I got such a beauty?"
"No kid. He's not yours," said Sam.
"Well, I reckon he could be, if I wanted sech a great elephant. 'Is
Master lodged 'ere these two months an' more, but 'e went off to
the mountins yesterday with his sick Missis. Why, come to think of
it, er course, that's what it is. 'Is Master's sole him, that's
what 'e's done; and that's why 'e was able to pay me, an' the
doctor, an' go off to the mountins yesterday. An' now the bloomin'
dog's run away an' come back to look for 'im; that's what that is,
you can take yer oath."
Sam spat reflectively on the little coloured door-mat. "Well, the
dog's no use to you, mother," he said. "You can't do nothin' with
him."
"I'm not so sure about that, Sam," replied the landlady
thoughtfully. As a matter of fact, the idea of keeping Finn had not
occurred to her for a moment, up till then. But hers was not an
easy life; she was always short of money, and found it extremely
difficult to worm anything out of this big son of hers during his
rare visits to her. In fact, of late she had given up the attempt,
so that his visits represented only an additional expense for her.
"I don' know about that, Sam. I might keep 'im, an' watch out fer
the reward. A dawg like that's worth money."
"Too bloomin' big an' clumsy to be worth much," said Sam
disparagingly. "Clumsy" was no more applicable to Finn than it
would be to a panther, and Sam was well aware of it. "Tell you
what," he said, "I've got to be makin' for the station in half an
hour, anyway. I'll take the dog out o' yer way, an' give you half a
quid for him, if yer like. I shall lose on it, fer it's not likely
the boss could make any use of 'im, anyway. But I'll chance the
ducks this time, if yer like. You can't keep a bloomin' camel like
that here."
But the landlady knew her son tolerably well, and he could not
deceive her very much. When he left the house half an hour later
he was leading Finn at the end of a rusty chain, and the poorer by
twenty-five shillings than he had been an hour before. So Finn
changed hands for the second time in forty-eight hours, once for
seventy-five guineas, and once for twenty-five shillings; and upon
this second occasion the transaction was a matter of complete
indifference to him. He thought vaguely of returning to Mr.
Sandbrook's house later on. In the meantime this young man seemed
to want him to take a walk in another direction, and all ways were
alike to Finn in his bitter disappointment over not finding the
Master. He did not know that he was treading exactly the path the
Master and the Mistress had trod on the previous clay, when leaving
their lodging for the mountains. He only felt that he had now
completely lost his friends, and that he was rather well-disposed
than otherwise toward long-legged Sam, for the reason that Sam came
from the house in which the Master had lodged.
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