Aileen Aroon, A Memoir. Stables Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ and neither Miss Smith nor I can entice him out, or get him to go away. And we are afraid to go near him.’

      “I followed Nellie readily enough, and there, lying on a sack, which he had taken possession of, was the dog in question. To all intents and purposes he was of a very common kind. Nobody in his senses would have given sixpence for him, except perhaps his owner, and who that might be was at present a mystery.

      “‘Will you turn him out and send him away?’ asked Nellie.

      “The dog looked in my face, oh, so pleadingly!

      “‘Kind sir,’ he seemed to say, ‘do speak a word for me; I’m so tired, my feet are sore, I’ve wandered far from home, and I am full of grief.’

      “‘Send him away?’ I replied to Nellie. ‘No, dear; you wouldn’t, would you, if you thought he was weary, hungry, and in sorrow for his lost mistress? Look how thin he is.’

      “‘Oh!’ cried Nellie, her eyes filling with tears, ‘I’ll run and bring him part of my own breakfast.’

      “‘Nellie,’ I said, as we parted, ‘be kind to that poor dog; he may bring you good fortune.’

      “I do not know even now why I should have made that remark, but events proved that my words were almost prophetic. It was evident that the dog had travelled a very long way; but under Nellie’s tender care he soon recovered health and strength and spirits as well, and from that day for three long years you never would have met the girl unaccompanied by ‘Tray,’ as we called him.

      “Now it came to pass that a certain young nobleman came of age, and a great fête was given to his tenantry at P – Park, and people came from quite a long distance to join in it. I saw Nellie the same evening. It had been a day of sorrow for her. Tray had found his long lost mistress.

      “‘And, oh, such an ugly little old woman!’ said Nellie almost spitefully, through her tears. ‘Oh, my poor Tray, I’ll never, never see him more!’

      “Facts are stranger than fiction, however, and the little old lady whom Nellie thought so ugly adopted her (for she was an orphan), and Nellie became in time very fond of her. The dog Tray, whose real name by the way was Jumbo, had something to do with this fondness, no doubt.

      “The old lady is not alive now; but Nellie has been left all she possessed, Jumbo included. He is by this time very, very old; his lips are white with age, he is stiff too, and his back seems all one bone. As to his temper – well, the less I say about that the better, but he is always cross with everybody – except Nellie.”

      Chapter Five.

      Embodying a Little Tale and a Little Adventure

      “Reason raise o’er instinct as you can —

      In this ’tis Heaven directs, in that ’tis man.”

      If ever two days passed by without my seeing the portly form of my friend Captain D – , that is Frank, heaving in sight about twelve o’clock noon, round the corner of the road that led towards our cottage, then I at once concluded that Frank either had the gout or was gardening, and whether it were the fit of the gout or merely a fit of gardening, I felt it incumbent upon me to walk over to his house, a distance of little more than two miles, and see him.

      Welcome? Yes; I never saw the man yet who could give one a heartier welcome than poor Frank did. He was passionately fond of my two dogs, Nero and Aileen Aroon, and the love was mutual.

      But Frank had a dog of his own, “Meg Merrilees” to name, a beautiful and kind-hearted Scotch collie. Most jealous though she was of her master’s affections, she never begrudged the pat and the caress Nero and Aileen had, and, indeed, she used to bound across the lawn to meet and be the first to welcome the three of us.

      On the occasion of my visits to Frank, I always stopped and dined with him, spending the evening in merry chatter, and tales of “auld lang syne,” until it was time for me to start off on the return journey.

      When I had written anything for the magazines during the day, I made a practice of taking it with me, and reading over the manuscript to my friend, and a most attentive and amused listener he used to be. The following is a little jeu d’esprit which I insert here, for no other reason in the world than that Frank liked it, so I think there must be a little, little bit of humour in it. It is, as will be readily seen, a kind of burlesque upon the show-points and properties of the Skye-terrier. I called the sketch —

“That Skye-Terrier.” – A Burlesque

      “He’s a good bred ’un, sir.” This is the somewhat unclassical English with which “Wasp’s” Yorkshire master introduced the puppy to me as he consigned it to my care, in return for which I crossed his hand five times with yellow gold. “And,” he added, “he’s a game ’un besides.”

      I knew the former of these statements was quite correct from young Wasp’s pedigree, and of the latter I was so convinced, before a week was over, that I consented to sell him to a parson for the same money I gave for him – and glad enough to get rid of him even then. At this time the youthful Wasp was a mere bundle of black fluff, with wicked blue eyes, and flashing teeth of unusually piercing properties. He dwelt in a distant corner of the parson’s kitchen, in a little square basket or creel, and a servant was told off to attend upon him; and, indeed, that servant had about enough to do. Wasp seemed to know that Annie was his own particular “slavey,” and insisted on her being constantly within hail of him. If she dared to go upstairs, or even to attend the door-bell, Wasp let all the house hear of it, and the poor good-natured girl was glad to run back for peace’ sake. Another thing he insisted on was being conveyed, basket and all, to Annie’s bedroom when she retired for the night. He also intimated to her that he preferred eating the first of his breakfasts at three o’clock every morning sharp, upon pain of waking the parson; his second at four; third at five, and so on until further notice.

      I was sorry for Annie.

      From the back of his little basket, where he had formed a fortress, garrisoned by Wasp himself, and provisioned with bones, boots, and slippers enough to stand a siege of any length of time, he used to be always making raids and forays on something. Even at this early age the whole aim of his existence seemed to be doing mischief. If he wasn’t tearing Annie’s Sunday boots, it was because he was dissecting the footstool; footstool failing, it was the cat. The poor cat hadn’t a dog’s life with him. He didn’t mind pussy’s claws a bit; he had a way of his own of backing stern on to her which defied her and saved his eyes. When close up he would seize her by the paw, and shake it till she screamed with pain.

      I was sorry for the cat.

      If you lifted Wasp up in your arms to have a look at him, he flashed his alabaster teeth in your face one moment, and fleshed them in your nose the next. He never looked you straight in the face, but aslant, from the corners of his wicked wee eyes.

      In course of time – not Pollok’s – Wasp’s black puppy-hair fell off, and discovered underneath the most beautiful silvery-blue coat ever you saw in your life; but his puppy-manners did not mend in the least. In his case the puppy was the father of the dog, and if anything the son was worse than the father.

      Talk of growing, oh! he did grow: not to the height – don’t make any mistake, please; Wasp calculated he was plenty high enough already – but to the length, if you like. And every day when I went down to see him Annie would innocently ask me —

      “See any odds on him this morning, doctor?”

      “Well, Annie,” I would say, “he really СКАЧАТЬ