train; his demeanour was grave and intensely respectable; he was not the
animal to commit himself by any flagrant indiscretion; he was gentle and
tractable too, and in all respects an agreeable contrast in character
to the original. Still, it may have been the after-dinner workings of
conscience, but I could not help fancying that I saw a certain look in
the creature’s eyes, as if he were aware that he was required to connive
at a fraud, and rather resented it.
If he would only be good enough to back me up! Fortunately, however,
he was such a perfect facsimile of the outward Bingo that the risk of
detection was really inconsiderable.
When I got him home I put Bingo’s silver collar round his neck,
congratulating myself on my forethought in preserving it, and took him
in to see my mother. She accepted him as what he seemed without the
slightest misgiving; but this, though it encouraged me to go on, was not
decisive--the spurious poodle would have to encounter the scrutiny of
those who knew every tuft on the genuine animal’s body!
Nothing would have induced me to undergo such an ordeal as that of
personally restoring him to the Curries. We gave him supper, and tied
him up on the lawn, where he howled dolefully all night and buried
bones.
The next morning I wrote a note to Mrs. Currie, expressing my pleasure
at being able to restore the lost one, and another to Lilian, containing
only the words, “Will you believe _now_ that I am sincere?” Then I tied
both round the poodle’s neck, and dropped him over the wall into the
colonel’s garden just before I started to catch my train to town.
I had an anxious walk home from the station that evening; I went round
by the longer way, trembling the whole time lest I should meet any of
the Currie household, to which I felt myself entirely unequal just then.
I could not rest until I knew whether my fraud had succeeded, or if the
poodle to which I had intrusted my fate had basely betrayed me; but my
suspense was happily ended as soon as I entered my mother’s room. “You
can’t think how delighted those poor Curries were to see Bingo again,”
she said at once; “and they said such charming things about you,
Algy--Lilian particularly; quite affected she seemed, poor child! And
they wanted you to go round and dine there and be thanked to-night, but
at last I persuaded them to come to us instead. And they’re going to
bring the dog to make friends. Oh, and I met Frank Travers; he’s back
from circuit again now, so I asked him in too to meet them!”
I drew a deep breath of relief. I had played a desperate game, but I had
won! I could have wished, to be sure, that my mother had not thought of
bringing in Travers on that of all evenings, but I hoped that I could
defy him after this.
The colonel and his people were the first to arrive, he and his wife
being so effusively grateful that they made me very uncomfortable
indeed; Lilian met me with downcast eyes and the faintest possible
blush, but she said nothing just then. Five minutes afterward, when she
and I were alone together in the conservatory, where I had brought her
on pretence of showing a new begonia, she laid her hand on my sleeve
and whispered, almost shyly, “Mr. Weatherhead--Algernon! Can you ever
forgive me for being so cruel and unjust to you?” And I replied that,
upon the whole, I could.
We were not in the conservatory long, but before we left it beautiful
Lilian Roseblade had consented to make my life happy. When we reentered
the drawing-room we found Frank Travers, who had been told the story of
the recovery; and I observed his jaw fall as he glanced at our faces,
and noted the triumphant smile which I have no doubt mine wore, and the
tender, dreamy look in Lilian’s soft eyes. Poor Travers! I was sorry for
him, although I was not fond of him. Travers was a good type of rising
young common-law barrister, tall, not bad-looking, with keen dark eyes,
black whiskers, and the mobile forensic mouth which can express every
shade of feeling, from deferential assent to cynical incredulity;
possessed, too, of an endless flow of conversation that was decidedly
agreeable, if a trifling too laboriously so, he had been a dangerous
rival. But all that was over now; he saw it himself at once, and during
dinner sank into dismal silence, gazing pathetically at Lilian, and
sighing almost obtrusively between the courses. His stream of small talk
seemed to have been cut off at the main.
“You’ve done a kind thing, Weatherhead,” said the colonel. “I can’t tell
you all that dog is to me, and how I missed the poor beast. I’d quite
given up all hope of ever seeing him again, and all the time there was
Weatherhead, Mr. Travers, quietly searching all London till he found
him! I sha’n’t forget it. It shows a really kind feeling.”
I saw by Travers’s face that he was telling himself he would have found
fifty Bingos in half the time--if he had only thought of it; he smiled
a melancholy assent to all the colonel said, and then began to study me
with an obviously depreciatory air.
“You can’t think,” I heard Mrs. Currie telling my mother, “how really
_touching_ it was to see poor Bingo’s emotion at seeing all the old
familiar objects again! He went up and sniffed at them all in turn,
quite plainly recognising everything. And he was quite put out to find
that we had moved his favourite ottoman out of the drawing-room. But he
_is_ so penitent too, and so ashamed of having run away; he kept under a
chair in the hall all the morning; he wouldn’t come in here, either, so
we had to leave him in your garden.”
“He’s been sadly out of spirits all day,” said Lilian; “he hasn’t bitten
one of the tradespeople.”
“Oh, _he’s_ all right, the rascal!” said the colonel, cheerily. “He’ll
be after the cats again as well as ever in a day or two.”
“Ah, those cats!” said my poor innocent mother. “Algy, you haven’t tried
the air-gun on them again lately, have you? They’re worse than ever.”
I troubled the colonel to pass the claret. Travers laughed for the first
time. “That’s a good idea,” he said, in that carrying “bar-mess” voice
of his; “an air-gun for cats, ha, ha! Make good bags, eh, Weatherhead?”
I said that I did, _very_ good bags, and felt I was getting painfully
red in the face.
“Oh, Algy is an excellent shot--quite a sportsman,” said my mother. “I
remember, oh, long ago, when we lived at Hammersmith, he had a pistol,
and he used to strew crumbs in the garden for the sparrows, and shoot at
them out of the pantry window; he frequently hit one.”
“Well,” said the colonel, not much impressed by these sporting
reminiscences, “don’t go rolling over our Bingo by mistake, you
know, Weatherhead, my boy. Not but what you’ve a sort of right after
this--only don’t. I wouldn’t go through it all twice for anything.”
“If you really won’t take any more wine,” I said, hurriedly, addressing
the colonel and Travers, “suppose we all go out and have our coffee
on the lawn? It--it will be cooler there.” For it was getting very hot
indoors, I thought.
I left Travers to amuse the ladies--he could do no more harm now; and,
taking the colonel aside, I seized the opportunity, as we strolled up
and down the garden path, to ask his consent to Lilian’s engagement to
me. He gave it cordially. “There’s not a man in England,” he said, “that
I’d sooner see her married to after to-day. You’re a quiet, steady young
fellow, and you’ve a good kind heart. As for the money, that’s neither
here nor there; Lilian won’t come to you without a penny, you know. But
really, my boy, you can hardly believe what it is to my poor wife and me
to see that dog. Why, bless my soul, look at him now! What’s the matter
with him, eh?”
To my unutterable horror, I saw that that miserable poodle, after
begging unnoticed at the tea-table for some time, had retired to an open
space before it, where he was industriously standing on his head.
We gathered round and examined the animal curiously, as he continued to
balance himself gravely in his abnormal position. “Good gracious, John,”
cried Mrs. Currie, “I never saw Bingo do such a thing before in his
life!”
“Very odd,” said the colonel, putting up his glasses; “never learned
that from _me_.”
“I tell you what I fancy it is,” I suggested wildly. “You see, he was
always a sensitive, excitable animal, and perhaps the--the sudden joy of
his return has gone to his head--_upset_ him, you know.”
They seemed disposed to accept this solution, and, indeed, I believe
they would have credited Bingo with every conceivable degree of
sensibility; but I felt myself that if this unhappy animal had many more
of these accomplishments I was undone, for the original Bingo had never
been a dog of parts.
“It’s very odd,” said Travers, reflectively, as the dog recovered his
proper level, “but I always thought that it was half the _right_ ear
that Bingo had lost.”
“So it is, isn’t it?” said the colonel. “Left, eh? Well, I thought
myself it was the right.”
My heart almost stopped with terror; I had altogether forgotten that.
I hastened to set the point at rest. “Oh, it _was_ the left,” I said,
positively; “I know it because I remember so particularly thinking how
odd it was that it _should_ be the left ear, and not the right!” I told
myself this should be positively my last lie.
“_Why_ odd?” asked Frank Travers, with his most offensive Socratic
manner.
“My dear fellow, I can’t tell you,” I said, impatiently; “everything
seems odd when you come to think at all about it.”
“Algernon,” said Lilian, later on, “will you tell Aunt Mary and Mr.
Travers and--me how it was you came to find Bingo? Mr. Travers is quite
anxious to hear all about it.”
I could not very well refuse; I sat down and told the story, all my own
way. I painted Blagg perhaps rather bigger and blacker than life, and
described an exciting scene, in which I recognised Bingo by his collar
in the streets, and claimed and bore him off then and there in spite of
all opposition.
I had the inexpressible pleasure of seeing Travers grinding his teeth
with envy as I went on, and feeling Lilian’s soft, slender hand glide
silently into mine as I told my tale in the twilight.
All at once, just as I reached the climax, we heard the poodle barking
furiously at the hedge which separated my garden from the road.
“There’s a foreign-looking man staring over the hedge,” said Lilian;
“Bingo always _did_ hate foreigners.”
There certainly was a swarthy man there, and, though I had no reason for
it then, somehow my heart died within me at the sight of him.
“Don’t be alarmed, sir,” cried the colonel; “the dog won’t bite
you--unless there’s a hole in the hedge anywhere.”
The stranger took off his small straw hat with a sweep. “Ah, I am not
afraid,” he said, and his accent proclaimed him a Frenchman; “he is not
enrage at me. May I ask, it is pairmeet to speak viz Misterre Vezzered?”
I felt I must deal with this person alone, for I feared the worst; and,
asking them to excuse me, I went to the hedge and faced the Frenchman
with the frightful calm of despair. He was a short, stout little man,
with blue cheeks, sparkling black eyes, and a vivacious walnut-coloured
countenance; he wore a short black alpaca coat, and a large white
cravat, with an immense oval malachite brooch in the centre of it, which
I mention because I found myself staring mechanically at it during the
interview.
“My name is Weatherhead,” I began with the bearing of a detected
pickpocket. “Can I be of any service to you?”
“Of a great service,” he said, emphatically; “you can restore to me ze
poodle vich I see zere!”
Nemesis had called at last in the shape of a rival claimant. I staggered
for an instant; then I said, “Oh, I think you are under a mistake; that
dog is not mine.”
“I know it,” he said; “zere ‘as been leetle mistake, so if ze dog is not
to you, you give him back to me, _hein_?”
“I tell you,” I said, “that poodle belongs to the gentleman over there.”
And I pointed to the colonel, seeing that it was best now to bring him
into the affair without delay.
“You are wrong,” he said, doggedly; “ze poodle is my poodle! And I was
direct to you--it is your name on ze carte!” And he presented me with
that fatal card which I had been foolish enough to give to Blagg as a
proof of my identity. I saw it all now; the old villain had betrayed me,
and to earn a double reward had put the real owner on my track.
I decided to call the colonel at once, and attempt to brazen it out with
the help of his sincere belief in the dog.
“Eh, what’s that; what’s it all about?” said the colonel, bustling up,
followed at intervals by the others.
The Frenchman raised his hat again. “I do not vant to make a trouble,”
he began, “but zere is leetle mistake. My word of honour, sare, I see my
own poodle in your garden. Ven I appeal to zis gentilman to restore ‘im
he reffer me to you.”
“You must allow me to know my own dog, sir,” said the colonel. “Why,
I’ve had him from a pup. Bingo, old boy, you know your name, don’t you?”
But the brute ignored him altogether, and began to leap wildly at the
hedge in frantic efforts to join the Frenchman. It needed no Solomon to
decide _his_ ownership!
“I tell you, you ‘ave got ze wrong poodle--it is my own dog, my Azor! He
remember me well, you see? I lose him, it is three, four days. . . . I
see a nottice zat he is found, and ven I go to ze address zey tell me,
‘Oh, he is reclaim, he is gone viz a strangaire who has advertise.’ Zey
show me ze placard; I follow ‘ere, and ven I arrive I see my poodle in
ze garden before me!”
“But look here,” said the colonel, impatiently; “it’s all very well to
say that, but how can you prove it? I give you _my_ word that the dog
belongs to _me_! You must prove your claim, eh, Travers?”
“Yes,” said Travers, judicially; “mere assertion is no proof; it’s oath
against oath at present.”
“Attend an instant; your poodle, was he ‘ighly train, had he some
talents--a dog viz tricks, eh?”
“No, he’s not,” said the colonel; “I don’t like to see dogs taught to
play the fool; there’s none of that nonsense about _him_, sir!”
“Ah, remark him well, then. _Azor, mon chou, danse donc un peu_!”
And, on the foreigner’s whistling a lively air, that infernal poodle
rose on his hind legs and danced solemnly about half-way round the
garden! We inside followed his movements with dismay.
“Why, dash it all!” cried the disgusted colonel, “he’s dancing along
like a d--d mountebank! But it’s my Bingo, for all that!”
“You are not convince? You shall see more. Azor, ici! Pour Beesmarck,
Azor!” (the poodle barked ferociously.) “Pour Gambetta!” (He wagged his
tail and began to leap with joy.) “Meurs pour la patrie!” And the too
accomplished animal rolled over as if killed in battle!
“Where could Bingo have picked up so much French?” cried Lilian,
incredulously.
“Or so much French history?” added that serpent, Travers.
“Shall I command ‘im to jump, or reverse ‘imself?” inquired the obliging
Frenchman.
“We’ve seen that, thank you,” said the colonel, gloomily. “Upon my word,
I don’t know what to think. It can’t be that that’s not my Bingo after
all--I’ll never believe it!”
I tried a last desperate stroke. “Will you come round to the front?” I
said to the Frenchman. “I’ll let you in, and we can discuss the matter
quietly.” Then, as we walked back together, I asked him eagerly what he
would take to abandon his claims and let the colonel think the poodle
was his after all.
He was furious--he considered himself insulted; with great emotion he
informed me that the dog was the pride of his life (it seems to be the
mission of black poodles to serve as domestic comforts of this priceless
kind!), that he would not part with him for twice his weight in gold.
“Figure,” he began, as we joined the others, “zat zis gentilman ‘ere
‘as offer me money for ze dog! He agrees zat it is to me, you see? Ver’
well, zen, zere is no more to be said!”
“Why, Weatherhead, have _you_ lost faith too, then?” said the colonel.
I saw it was no good; all I wanted now was to get out of it creditably
and get rid of the Frenchman. “I’m sorry to say,” I replied, “that I’m
afraid I’ve been deceived by the extraordinary likeness. I don’t think,
on reflection, that that _is_ Bingo!”
“What do you think, Travers?” asked the colonel.
“Well, since you ask me,” said Travers, with quite unnecessary dryness,
“I never did think so.”
“Nor I,” said the colonel; “I thought from the first that was never my
Bingo. Why, Bingo would make two of that beast!”
And Lilian and her aunt both protested that they had had their doubts
from the first.
“Zen you pairmeet zat I remove ‘im?” said the Frenchman.
“Certainly,” said the colonel; and, after some apologies on our part for
the mistake, he went off in triumph, with the detestable poodle frisking
after him.
When he had gone the colonel laid his hand kindly on my shoulder. “Don’t
look so cut up about it, my boy,” he said; “you did your best--there was
a sort of likeness to any one who didn’t know Bingo as we did.”
Just then the Frenchman again appeared at the hedge. “A thousand
pardons,” he said, “but I find zis upon my dog; it is not to me. Suffer
me to restore it viz many compliments.”
It was Bingo’s collar. Travers took it from his hand and brought it to
us.
“This was on the dog when you stopped that fellow, didn’t you say?” he
asked me.
One more lie--and I was so weary of falsehood! “Y-yes,” I said,
reluctantly; “that was so.”
“Very extraordinary,” said Travers; “that’s the wrong poodle beyond a
doubt, but when he’s found he’s wearing the right dog’s collar! Now how
do you account for that?”
“My good fellow,” I said, impatiently, “I’m not in the witness-box. I
_can’t_ account for it. It-it’s a mere coincidence!”
“But look here, my _dear_ Weatherhead,” argued Travers (whether in
good faith or not I never could quite make out), “don’t you see what a
tremendously important link it is? Here’s a dog who (as I understand the
facts) had a silver collar, with his name engraved on it, round his neck
at the time he was lost. Here’s that identical collar turning up soon
afterward round the neck of a totally different dog! We must follow
this up; we must get at the bottom of it somehow! With a clue like this,
we’re sure to find out either the dog himself, or what’s become of him!
Just try to recollect exactly what happened, there’s a good fellow. This
is just the sort of thing I like!”
It was the sort of thing I did not enjoy at all. “You must excuse me
to-night, Travers,” I said, uncomfortably; “you see, just now it’s
rather a sore subject for me, and I’m not feeling very well!” I was
grateful just then for a reassuring glance of pity and confidence from
Lilian’s sweet eyes, which revived my drooping spirits for the moment.
“Yes, we’ll go into it to-morrow, Travers,” said the colonel; “and
then--hullo, why, there’s that confounded Frenchman _again_!”
It was indeed; he came prancing back delicately, with a malicious
enjoyment on his wrinkled face. “Once more I return to apologise,” he
said. “My poodle ‘as permit ‘imself ze grave indiscretion to make a very
big ‘ole at ze bottom of ze garden!”
I assured him that it was of no consequence. “Perhaps,” he replied,
looking steadily at me through his keen, half-shut eyes, “you vill not
say zat ven you regard ze ‘ole. And you others, I spik to you: sometimes
von loses a somzing vich is qvite near all ze time. It is ver’ droll,
eh? my vord, ha, ha, ha!” And he ambled off, with an aggressively
fiendish laugh that chilled my blood.
“What the deuce did he mean by that, eh?” said the colonel, blankly.
“Don’t know,” said Travers; “suppose we go and inspect the hole?”
But before that I had contrived to draw near it myself, in deadly fear
lest the Frenchman’s last words had contained some innuendo which I had
not understood.
It was light enough still for me to see something, at the unexpected
horror of which I very nearly fainted.
That thrice accursed poodle which I had been insane enough to attempt to
foist upon the colonel must, it seems, have buried his supper the night
before very near the spot in which I had laid Bingo, and in his attempts
to exhume his bone had brought the remains of my victim to the surface!
There the corpse lay, on the very top of the excavations. Time had not,
of course, improved its appearance, which was ghastly in the extreme,
but still plainly recognisable by the eye of affection.
“It’s a very ordinary hole,” I gasped, putting myself before it and
trying to turn them back. “Nothing in it--nothing at all!”
“Except one Algernon Weatherhead, Esq., eh?” whispered Travers,
jocosely, in my ear.
“No; but,” persisted the colonel, advancing, “look here! Has the dog
damaged any of your shrubs?”
“No, no!” I cried, piteously; “quite the reverse. Let’s all go indoors
now; it’s getting so cold!”
“See, there _is_ a shrub or something uprooted,” said the colonel, still
coming nearer that fatal hole. “Why, hullo, look there! What’s that?”
Lilian, who was by his side, gave a slight scream. “Uncle,” she cried,
“it looks like--like _Bingo_!”
The colonel turned suddenly upon me. “Do you hear?” he demanded, in a
choked voice. “You hear what she says? Can’t you speak out? Is that our
Bingo?”
I gave it up at last; I only longed to be allowed to crawl away under
something! “Yes,” I said in a dull whisper, as I sat down heavily on a
garden seat, “yes . . . that’s Bingo . . . misfortune . . . shoot him
. . . quite an accident!”
There was a terrible explosion after that; they saw at last how I had
deceived them, and put the very worst construction upon everything. Even
now I writhe impotently at times, and my cheeks smart and tingle with
humiliation, as I recall that scene--the colonel’s very plain speaking,
Lilian’s passionate reproaches and contempt, and her aunt’s speechless
prostration of disappointment.
I made no attempt to defend myself; I was not, perhaps, the complete
villain they deemed me, but I felt dully that no doubt it all served me
perfectly right.
Still I do not think I am under any obligation to put their remarks down
in black and white here.
Travers had vanished at the first opportunity--whether out of delicacy,
or the fear of breaking out into unseasonable mirth, I cannot say; and
shortly afterward the others came to where I sat silent with bowed head,
and bade me a stern and final farewell.
And then, as the last gleam of Lilian’s white dress vanished down the
garden path, I laid my head down on the table among the coffee-cups, and
cried like a beaten child.
I got leave as soon as I could, and went abroad. The morning after my
return I noticed, while shaving, that there was a small square marble
tablet placed against the wall of the colonel’s garden. I got my
opera-glass and read--and pleasant reading it was--the following
inscription:
IN AFFECTIONATE MEMORY
OF
B I N G O,
SECRETLY AND CRUELLY PUT TO DEATH,
IN COLD BLOOD,
BY A
NEIGHBOUR AND FRIEND.
JUNE, 1881.
If this explanation of mine ever reaches my neighbours’ eyes, I humbly
hope they will have the humanity either to take away or tone down that
tablet. They cannot conceive what I suffer when curious visitors insist,
as they do every day, on spelling out the words from our windows, and
asking me countless questions about them!
Sometimes I meet the Curries about the village, and as they pass me with
averted heads I feel myself growing crimson. Travers is almost always
with Lilian now. He has given her a dog,--a fox-terrier,--and they take
ostentatiously elaborate precautions to keep it out of my garden.
I should like to assure them here that they need not be under any alarm.
I have shot one dog.
THAT BRUTE SIMMONS, By Arthur Morrison
Simmons’s infamous behaviour toward his wife is still matter for
profound wonderment among the neighbours. The other women had all along
regarded him as a model husband, and certainly Mrs. Simmons was a most
conscientious wife. She toiled and slaved for that man, as any woman in
the whole street would have maintained, far more than any husband had
a right to expect. And now this was what she got for it. Perhaps he had
suddenly gone mad.
Before she married Simmons, Mrs. Simmons had been the widowed Mrs. Ford.
Ford had got a berth as donkeyman on a tramp steamer, and that steamer
had gone down with all hands off the Cape: a judgment, the widow
woman feared, for long years of contumacy, which had culminated in the
wickedness of taking to the sea, and taking to it as a donkeyman--an
immeasurable fall for a capable engine-fitter. Twelve years as Mrs.
Ford had left her still childless, and childless she remained as Mrs.
Simmons.