His Way Of Going On Is To Make A Companion Of
Me Whether I Want Him Or Not.
I do not want him, but his idea
is that I want him very much.
I bitterly blame myself for
having made the first advances, although nothing came of it
except that he growled. I met him in a Cornish village in a
house where I stayed. There was a nice kennel there, painted
green, with a bed of clean straw and an empty plate which had
contained his dinner, but on peeping in I saw no dog. Next
day it was the same, and the next, and the day after that;
then I inquired about it - Was there a dog in that house or
not? Oh, yes, certainly there was: Jack, but a very
independent sort of dog. On most days he looked in, ate his
dinner and had a nap on his straw, but he was not what you
would call a home-keeping dog.
One day I found him in, and after we had looked for about a
minute at each other, I squatting before the kennel, he with
chin on paws pretending to be looking through me at something
beyond, I addressed a few kind words to him, which he received
with the before-mentioned growl. I pronounced him a surly
brute and went away. It was growl for growl. Nevertheless I
was well pleased at having escaped the consequences in
speaking kindly to him. I am not a "doggy" person nor even a
canophilist. The purely parasitic or degenerate pet dog moves
me to compassion, but the natural vigorous outdoor dog I fear
and avoid because we are not in harmony; consequently I suffer
and am a loser when he forces his company on me. The outdoor
world I live in is not the one to which a man goes for a
constitutional, with a dog to save him from feeling lonely,
or, if he has a gun, with a dog to help him kill something.
It is a world which has sound in it, distant cries and
penetrative calls, and low mysterious notes, as of insects
and corncrakes, and frogs chirping and of grasshopper
warblers - sounds like wind in the dry sedges. And there are
also sweet and beautiful songs; but it is very quiet world
where creatures move about subtly, on wings, on polished
scales, on softly padded feet - rabbits, foxes, stoats,
weasels, and voles and birds and lizards and adders and
slow-worms, also beetles and dragon-flies. Many are at enmity
with each other, but on account of their quietude there is no
disturbance, no outcry and rushing into hiding. And having
acquired this habit from them I am able to see and be with
them. The sitting bird, the frolicking rabbit, the basking
adder - they are as little disturbed at my presence as the
butterfly that drops down close to my feet to sun his wings on
a leaf or frond and makes me hold my breath at the sight of
his divine colour, as if he had just fluttered down from some
brighter realm in the sky. Think of a dog in this world,
intoxicated with the odours of so many wild creatures, dashing
and splashing through bogs and bushes! It is ten times worse
than a bull in a china-shop. The bull can but smash a lot of
objects made of baked clay; the dog introduces a mad panic in
a world of living intelligent beings, a fairy realm of
exquisite beauty. They scuttle away and vanish into hiding as
if a deadly wind had blown over the earth and swept them out
of existence. Only the birds remain - they can fly and do not
fear for their own lives, but are in a state of intense
anxiety about their eggs and young among the bushes which he
is dashing through or exploring.
I had good reason, then, to congratulate myself on Jack's
surly behaviour on our first meeting. Then, a few days later,
a curious thing happened. Jack was discovered one morning in
his kennel, and when spoken to came or rather dragged himself
out, a most pitiable object. He was horribly bruised and sore
all over; his bones appeared to be all broken; he was limp and
could hardly get on his feet, and in that miserable condition
he continued for some three days.
At first we thought he had been in a big fight - he was
inclined that way, his master said - but we could discover no
tooth marks or lacerations, nothing but bruises. Perhaps, we
said, he had fallen into the hands of some cruel person in one
of the distant moorland farms, who had tied him up, then
thrashed him with a big stick, and finally turned him loose to
die on the moor or crawl home if he could. His master looked
so black at this that we said no more about it. But Jack was
a wonderfully tough dog, all gristle I think, and after three
days of lying there like a dead dog he quickly recovered,
though I'm quite sure that if his injuries had been
distributed among any half-dozen pampered or pet dogs it would
have killed them all. A morning came when the kennel was
empty: Jack was not dead - he was well again, and, as usual,
out.
Just then I was absent for a week or ten days then, back
again, I went out one fine morning for a long day's ramble
along the coast. A mile or so from home, happening to glance
back I caught sight of a black dog's face among the bushes
thirty or forty yards away gazing earnestly at me. It was
Jack, of course, nothing but his head visible in an opening
among the bushes - a black head which looked as if carved in
ebony, in a wonderful setting of shining yellow furze
blossoms. The beauty and singularity of the sight made it
impossible for me to be angry with him, though there's nothing
a man more resents than being shadowed, or secretly followed
and spied upon, even by a dog, so, without considering what I
was letting myself in for, I cried out "Jack" and instantly he
bounded out and came to my side, then flew on ahead, well
pleased to lead the way.
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