The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories Page 11

  CHAPTER III

  It was such a charming home!--my new one; a fine great house, withpictures, and delicate decorations, and rich furniture, and no gloomanywhere, but all the wilderness of dainty colors lit up with floodingsunshine; and the spacious grounds around it, and the great garden--oh,greensward, and noble trees, and flowers, no end! And I was the same asa member of the family; and they loved me, and petted me, and did notgive me a new name, but called me by my old one that was dear to mebecause my mother had given it me--Aileen Mavoureen. She got it out of asong; and the Grays knew that song, and said it was a beautiful name.

  Mrs. Gray was thirty, and so sweet and so lovely, you cannot imagineit; and Sadie was ten, and just like her mother, just a darling slenderlittle copy of her, with auburn tails down her back, and short frocks;and the baby was a year old, and plump and dimpled, and fond of me,and never could get enough of hauling on my tail, and hugging me, andlaughing out its innocent happiness; and Mr. Gray was thirty-eight, andtall and slender and handsome, a little bald in front, alert, quick inhis movements, business-like, prompt, decided, unsentimental, and withthat kind of trim-chiseled face that just seems to glint and sparklewith frosty intellectuality! He was a renowned scientist. I do not knowwhat the word means, but my mother would know how to use it and geteffects. She would know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make alap-dog look sorry he came. But that is not the best one; the best onewas Laboratory. My mother could organize a Trust on that one that wouldskin the tax-collars off the whole herd. The laboratory was not abook, or a picture, or a place to wash your hands in, as the collegepresident's dog said--no, that is the lavatory; the laboratory is quitedifferent, and is filled with jars, and bottles, and electrics, andwires, and strange machines; and every week other scientists came thereand sat in the place, and used the machines, and discussed, and madewhat they called experiments and discoveries; and often I came, too,and stood around and listened, and tried to learn, for the sake of mymother, and in loving memory of her, although it was a pain to me, asrealizing what she was losing out of her life and I gaining nothing atall; for try as I might, I was never able to make anything out of it atall.

  Other times I lay on the floor in the mistress's work-room and slept,she gently using me for a foot-stool, knowing it pleased me, for itwas a caress; other times I spent an hour in the nursery, and got welltousled and made happy; other times I watched by the crib there, whenthe baby was asleep and the nurse out for a few minutes on the baby'saffairs; other times I romped and raced through the grounds and thegarden with Sadie till we were tired out, then slumbered on the grass inthe shade of a tree while she read her book; other times I went visitingamong the neighbor dogs--for there were some most pleasant ones notfar away, and one very handsome and courteous and graceful one,a curly-haired Irish setter by the name of Robin Adair, who was aPresbyterian like me, and belonged to the Scotch minister.

  The servants in our house were all kind to me and were fond of me, andso, as you see, mine was a pleasant life. There could not be a happierdog that I was, nor a gratefuler one. I will say this for myself, for itis only the truth: I tried in all ways to do well and right, and honormy mother's memory and her teachings, and earn the happiness that hadcome to me, as best I could.

  By and by came my little puppy, and then my cup was full, my happinesswas perfect. It was the dearest little waddling thing, and so smoothand soft and velvety, and had such cunning little awkward paws, and suchaffectionate eyes, and such a sweet and innocent face; and it made meso proud to see how the children and their mother adored it, and fondledit, and exclaimed over every little wonderful thing it did. It did seemto me that life was just too lovely to--

  Then came the winter. One day I was standing a watch in the nursery.That is to say, I was asleep on the bed. The baby was asleep in thecrib, which was alongside the bed, on the side next the fireplace. Itwas the kind of crib that has a lofty tent over it made of gauzy stuffthat you can see through. The nurse was out, and we two sleepers werealone. A spark from the wood-fire was shot out, and it lit on the slopeof the tent. I suppose a quiet interval followed, then a scream from thebaby awoke me, and there was that tent flaming up toward the ceiling!Before I could think, I sprang to the floor in my fright, and in asecond was half-way to the door; but in the next half-second my mother'sfarewell was sounding in my ears, and I was back on the bed again.,I reached my head through the flames and dragged the baby out by thewaist-band, and tugged it along, and we fell to the floor together in acloud of smoke; I snatched a new hold, and dragged the screaming littlecreature along and out at the door and around the bend of the hall,and was still tugging away, all excited and happy and proud, when themaster's voice shouted:

  "Begone you cursed beast!" and I jumped to save myself; but he wasfuriously quick, and chased me up, striking furiously at me with hiscane, I dodging this way and that, in terror, and at last a strongblow fell upon my left foreleg, which made me shriek and fall, forthe moment, helpless; the cane went up for another blow, but neverdescended, for the nurse's voice rang wildly out, "The nursery's onfire!" and the master rushed away in that direction, and my other boneswere saved.

  The pain was cruel, but, no matter, I must not lose any time; he mightcome back at any moment; so I limped on three legs to the other endof the hall, where there was a dark little stairway leading up into agarret where old boxes and such things were kept, as I had heard say,and where people seldom went. I managed to climb up there, then Isearched my way through the dark among the piles of things, and hid inthe secretest place I could find. It was foolish to be afraid there, yetstill I was; so afraid that I held in and hardly even whimpered, thoughit would have been such a comfort to whimper, because that eases thepain, you know. But I could lick my leg, and that did some good.

  For half an hour there was a commotion downstairs, and shoutings,and rushing footsteps, and then there was quiet again. Quiet for someminutes, and that was grateful to my spirit, for then my fears beganto go down; and fears are worse than pains--oh, much worse. Then came asound that froze me. They were calling me--calling me by name--huntingfor me!

  It was muffled by distance, but that could not take the terror out ofit, and it was the most dreadful sound to me that I had ever heard. Itwent all about, everywhere, down there: along the halls, through allthe rooms, in both stories, and in the basement and the cellar; thenoutside, and farther and farther away--then back, and all about thehouse again, and I thought it would never, never stop. But at last itdid, hours and hours after the vague twilight of the garret had long agobeen blotted out by black darkness.

  Then in that blessed stillness my terrors fell little by little away,and I was at peace and slept. It was a good rest I had, but I wokebefore the twilight had come again. I was feeling fairly comfortable,and I could think out a plan now. I made a very good one; which was, tocreep down, all the way down the back stairs, and hide behind the cellardoor, and slip out and escape when the iceman came at dawn, while he wasinside filling the refrigerator; then I would hide all day, and starton my journey when night came; my journey to--well, anywhere where theywould not know me and betray me to the master. I was feeling almostcheerful now; then suddenly I thought: Why, what would life be withoutmy puppy!

  That was despair. There was no plan for me; I saw that; I must say whereI was; stay, and wait, and take what might come--it was not my affair;that was what life is--my mother had said it. Then--well, then thecalling began again! All my sorrows came back. I said to myself, themaster will never forgive. I did not know what I had done to make him sobitter and so unforgiving, yet I judged it was something a dog could notunderstand, but which was clear to a man and dreadful.

  They called and called--days and nights, it seemed to me. So long thatthe hunger and thirst near drove me mad, and I recognized that I wasgetting very weak. When you are this way you sleep a great deal, and Idid. Once I woke in an awful fright--it seemed to me that the callingwas right there in the garret! And so it was: it was Sadie's voice,and she was cryi
ng; my name was falling from her lips all broken, poorthing, and I could not believe my ears for the joy of it when I heardher say:

  "Come back to us--oh, come back to us, and forgive--it is all so sadwithout our--"

  I broke in with _such _a grateful little yelp, and the next momentSadie was plunging and stumbling through the darkness and the lumber andshouting for the family to hear, "She's found, she's found!"

  The days that followed--well, they were wonderful. The mother and Sadieand the servants--why, they just seemed to worship me. They couldn'tseem to make me a bed that was fine enough; and as for food, theycouldn't be satisfied with anything but game and delicacies that wereout of season; and every day the friends and neighbors flocked in tohear about my heroism--that was the name they called it by, and itmeans agriculture. I remember my mother pulling it on a kennel once, andexplaining it in that way, but didn't say what agriculture was, exceptthat it was synonymous with intramural incandescence; and a dozen timesa day Mrs. Gray and Sadie would tell the tale to new-comers, and say Irisked my life to save the baby's, and both of us had burns to prove it,and then the company would pass me around and pet me and exclaim aboutme, and you could see the pride in the eyes of Sadie and her mother; andwhen the people wanted to know what made me limp, they looked ashamedand changed the subject, and sometimes when people hunted them this wayand that way with questions about it, it looked to me as if they weregoing to cry.

  And this was not all the glory; no, the master's friends came, a wholetwenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in the laboratory,and discussed me as if I was a kind of discovery; and some of them saidit was wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest exhibition of instinct theycould call to mind; but the master said, with vehemence, "It's far aboveinstinct; it's _reason_, and many a man, privileged to be saved and gowith you and me to a better world by right of its possession, has lessof it that this poor silly quadruped that's foreordained to perish"; andthen he laughed, and said: "Why, look at me--I'm a sarcasm! bless you,with all my grand intelligence, the only thing I inferred was thatthe dog had gone mad and was destroying the child, whereas but for thebeast's intelligence--it's _reason_, I tell you!--the child would haveperished!"

  They disputed and disputed, and _I_ was the very center of subject of itall, and I wished my mother could know that this grand honor had come tome; it would have made her proud.

  Then they discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certaininjury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could notagree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by;and next they discussed plants, and that interested me, because in thesummer Sadie and I had planted seeds--I helped her dig the holes, youknow--and after days and days a little shrub or a flower came up there,and it was a wonder how that could happen; but it did, and I wished Icould talk--I would have told those people about it and shown then howmuch I knew, and been all alive with the subject; but I didn't care forthe optics; it was dull, and when they came back to it again it boredme, and I went to sleep.

  Pretty soon it was spring, and sunny and pleasant and lovely, and thesweet mother and the children patted me and the puppy good-by, and wentaway on a journey and a visit to their kin, and the master wasn't anycompany for us, but we played together and had good times, and theservants were kind and friendly, so we got along quite happily andcounted the days and waited for the family.

  And one day those men came again, and said, now for the test, and theytook the puppy to the laboratory, and I limped three-leggedly along,too, feeling proud, for any attention shown to the puppy was a pleasureto me, of course. They discussed and experimented, and then suddenly thepuppy shrieked, and they set him on the floor, and he went staggeringaround, with his head all bloody, and the master clapped his hands andshouted:

  "There, I've won--confess it! He's a blind as a bat!"

  And they all said:

  "It's so--you've proved your theory, and suffering humanity owes you agreat debt from henceforth," and they crowded around him, and wrung hishand cordially and thankfully, and praised him.

  But I hardly saw or heard these things, for I ran at once to my littledarling, and snuggled close to it where it lay, and licked the blood,and it put its head against mine, whimpering softly, and I knew inmy heart it was a comfort to it in its pain and trouble to feel itsmother's touch, though it could not see me. Then it dropped down,presently, and its little velvet nose rested upon the floor, and it wasstill, and did not move any more.

  Soon the master stopped discussing a moment, and rang in the footman,and said, "Bury it in the far corner of the garden," and then went onwith the discussion, and I trotted after the footman, very happy andgrateful, for I knew the puppy was out of its pain now, because itwas asleep. We went far down the garden to the farthest end, where thechildren and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play in the summer inthe shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and I saw hewas going to plant the puppy, and I was glad, because it would growand come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair, and be a beautifulsurprise for the family when they came home; so I tried to help him dig,but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to havetwo, or it is no use. When the footman had finished and covered littleRobin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and hesaid: "Poor little doggie, you saved _his _child!"

  I have watched two whole weeks, and he doesn't come up! This last weeka fright has been stealing upon me. I think there is something terribleabout this. I do not know what it is, but the fear makes me sick, and Icannot eat, though the servants bring me the best of food; and they petme so, and even come in the night, and cry, and say, "Poor doggie--dogive it up and come home; _don't_ break our hearts!" and all thisterrifies me the more, and makes me sure something has happened. AndI am so weak; since yesterday I cannot stand on my feet anymore. Andwithin this hour the servants, looking toward the sun where it wassinking out of sight and the night chill coming on, said things I couldnot understand, but they carried something cold to my heart.

  "Those poor creatures! They do not suspect. They will come home in themorning, and eagerly ask for the little doggie that did the brave deed,and who of us will be strong enough to say the truth to them: 'Thehumble little friend is gone where go the beasts that perish.'"

  WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL?

  CHAPTER I

  "You told a _lie_?"

  "You confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!"