The tall, handsome girls who sat round the sewing-table had nothing but hard words for her; scarcely knowing why, yielding to a cruel impulse which a little thought, if nothing better, would have checked, they treated her vilely.
Little by little she had become the general butt of the workroom; one dismal day in December a last outrage was added to all the rest.
An ill-conditioned cripple, a girl who had borne Claire a grudge from the first day of her coming, because of their sisterhood in misfortune, which caused twice as many gibes to be levelled at her own club-foot, contrived to secrete a piece of silk, in order to accuse Claire of the theft. She declared stoutly she had taken the piece and hidden it inside her dress. In vain the poor girl, bursting into tears, swore she was innocent. The head of the shop ordered her to strip. She begged piteously for mercy, clasping her hands in supplication; but the cripple moved heaven and earth to set the others against her. Rough hands were laid on her; she was bruised and shaken and hurt; all she could do was to stammer out appeals to their compassion; she was nearly fainting, and the tears were streaming down her cheeks. No use; the poor back was bared, and while the mistress was searching her, the pretty, rosy-cheeked workgirls were feeling the deformity curiously, examining what like a hump exactly was.
Claire had buried her face in her hands; her hair had fallen about her ears, and there she stood, quite still and helpless, terrified at the angry faces about her; her throat was dry and her whole body quivering with overmastering agitation. She wished she was dead.
The mistress’s hard voice dismissing her roused her at last; she got to her feet amidst the jeers of the workroom, buttoned her frock, collected her needles and scissors, and, shuddering and shaking, catching her feet in her skirts, she hurried to the door; there was a loud buzzing in her ears, and she seemed to see everything through a sort of mist.
She dashed downstairs two steps at a time and reached the riverside quays, looking in her despair for an unfrequented bridge from which an unhappy hunchback might throw herself into the water and not be noticed. But everywhere she seemed to see mocking eyes pursuing her.
By degrees she began to think of the dreadful publicity of such a death; she saw herself dragged from the river, laid on the crowded bank, under the eyes of a throng of curious onlookers, in the glaring light of day.
No, what she craved was a quiet death in some dark corner, where she would be sheltered from prying looks.
She retraced her steps, bought a supply of charcoal, which she hid in a fold of her gown, and made her way home. Her poor worn hands had helped her—how hardly!—to live, now they should help her to die.
Possessed by these ideas, she pushed open the door of the room—and suddenly stopped....
How, when, by what way had he got in, the little sparrow she saw beating his wings against the walls, looking so scared and frightened, trying in vain to find a way out of the garret he had invaded so impudently, like the little good-for-nothing scamp he was?
Yes, she remembered; that morning, before leaving, she had left the window ajar; but no doubt the wind had blown it to, and after coming in unhindered, like a conquering hero taking possession of a new kingdom, the bird was now a prisoner.
A prisoner? But why a prisoner? What had she and he in common? He only asked to live, to fly, to soar in the free air, while she, she was fain to die. Begone, little madcap! you shall have your freedom again.
She went to the window; but as her hand touched the latch, she paused. The sparrow had stopped fluttering about the room; cowering in the corner of a cupboard, his little breast heaving with terror and breathlessness, he was looking at her with his frightened eyes.
To see him shivering and shaking and ruffling his feathers in terror, she seemed to recognise a fellow-sufferer.Her life, from first to last, had it not been one long quaking agony of fear, exposed to never-ending uncertainties and disappointments? The similarity made a sort of common bond between them, and her heart stirred with a longing for a last touch of love and sympathy with the living creatures of this earth she was about to quit.
She left the window, advanced a step, and held out her finger to beckon and encourage him. But the movement, gentle as it was, was misunderstood by the bird; he spread his wings and darted up to the ceiling. Then she spoke to him, and very humbly—she found it very easy to be humble—besought him—
“Poor birdie, why should you be afraid of me? Do you think I want to hurt you? I only ask you one favour—to kiss you once, just once, before.... There, come, light there on my hand; let me just hold you; you shall fly away again directly after. Come, dear birdie, I know I am ugly to look at, but I am not cruel.”
And stepping softly, silently, she followed him about the room, with outstretched fingers and smiling lips, almost like a mother, as if she were talking to a little child. Then, as he would not come—
“Come, now.... Does my back shock you—like the others? Why should you care if Iamhunchbacked, when you are so pretty? Come, pretty birdie—if only to give me the strength I need so badly.”
She crumbled some bread on the table. This made the bird hesitate; he did not come down at once, but, still perching aloft, gazed down at the white crumbs, craning his neck, his eyes glittering with greediness.
Finally appetite overcame prudence. He darted down on to the table and began to peck—tock, tock!at the food, stopping every now and then to shake out his feathers and cocking up his head to look about him.
Presently she scattered more crumbs, first on the floor and then on the window-sill, and he soon came hopping up to them on his little pink toes, flirting his tail and looking as happy as a king, the glutton!
What a darling he was, to be sure! She forgot all thoughts of death, to see him so alive and so handsome, coming and going, marching up and down with his mettlesome air, his rolling eye, his tossing head, his everlasting pickings and peckings and his fine look of swagger and impudence. He had a way of peeping at her askance, winking one eye with a merry, mocking glint in it, that seemed to say unmistakably: “I don’t mind eating your bread, because it’s downright good; but never you think I’m going to give up my freedom for you. I shall be off and away again just whenever I choose.”
Other times he would fix his little black beads of eyes meditatively upon her face, scrutinising her features as if bent on reading her inmost thoughts, but never missing a peck at the food for all that, or one crumb of this long, luxurious repast.
When he had eaten up every scrap, she got some more and offered it him, this time in her palm.
Up he fluttered, took his stand in front of her hand, examined it from every side, from above and from below, wishing but not daring; then suddenly caution carried the day, and he hopped away.
“Pst! pst!” she chirped to him, but never stirred. Her stillness reassured him; with a determined air, feeling a sinking again in his insatiable little stomach—it was not every day he had such a chance of filling it—he hopped forward, then drew back again; finally, making up his mind once for all, he began to peck warily at the contents of the well-stored hand.
She watched him with delight and admiration. The sight of him and his pretty ways stirred deep, unsuspected feelings within her. The blue sky seemed to have entered at her humble window, as if the bird had brought in along with him a fragment of space. Under his wing he hid, Claire thought, all the gaiety and brightness of the spring.
Memories awoke in her heart; she dreamed of the woodlands, the fields of golden grain, the water-springs, all the glories of kindly Mother Nature. Three or four times in her colourless life she had been taken into the country; she had heard the birds sing, the great trees swaying and rustling in the breeze and the prattling of the brooks. One day—it was fifteen years ago at least—she had actually dropped asleep on the moss in the warm shadow of the woods, and when she awoke the old oaks seemed to be smiling down on her.
Her black thoughts fled before this memory of rosy hours.
Besides, after days of gloom do not happier days follow? Had not he, too, her little friend, had not he known the hardships of winter? Shivering with cold, he had endured frost and bitter wind; his nest battered by the hail, his plumage soaked by the rain, his wings stiff with pain—was not all this far harder to bear than the gibes and insults of a few silly girls, giddy-pated perhaps rather than really ill-natured? Twenty times, a hundred times over, death had hovered near, when the storms scattered the leaves and tore down the nests all round him; but he had kept a good heart, and when spring-time came back again, had he not been rewarded for his bravery by happy, happy days? As she thought of the stubborn courage of the little sparrow, she was ashamed of her own weakness.
Who knows?—perhaps the bird had been sent to call her back to duty, to encourage her never to despair, to bring her a lesson straight from Mother Nature. Something of Nature’s tender care for the weak and unprotected was in his coming to visit her garret; it was not for nothing he had chosen out the barest and poorest of them all, driving away with the rustle of his tiny wings those other dark, overshadowing wings—the wings of death. She found herself calling down blessings on him, thanking him for arriving so opportunely, weeping with joy to see his graceful gambols; for he was not frightened now, but bright and gay, and rather amused than otherwise at the four walls that had suddenly replaced the boundless plains of air.
A new life began for the two.
Monsieur Friquet—that was the name she had given him—seemed to be quite content to take his place as house-mate with the poor work-girl, whose heart was so full of affection, and who, to his partial eyes, looked as pretty as the prettiest things he had ever seen in the world outside. Did she not always wear a kind smile on her lips whenever she came home? And is not kindness, when all is said and done, the same thing as beauty?
Monsieur Friquet had forgotten all about the distractions of the streets. Like a rakish younger son who has been living for years on his wits, he thoroughly enjoyed this life of slippered ease in a cosy house, where, it is true, the sun did not often penetrate, but then neither did the wind. Its quiet was unbroken all day long while his mistress was abroad, allowing him to doze and dream away the long hours till her return set stove and saucepans in activity again.
He was a lazy loon, and nothing could have suited him better than to have a place at table laid out for him morning and evening, without his having so much as to put his head outside the door.
He had known so many of his comrades who had perished miserably under a cat’s claws, at the corner of a gutter-pipe or in the treacherous shadow of a chimney-stack; so many who, grown old and impotent, and unable to find themselves a warm lodging, had died a lonely death on some deserted housetop; in fact, he had witnessed so much disappointment and disillusion and misery that he was ready—some days, at any rate—to swear he would not exchange for all the spacious blue of heaven shining in through the windowpane the indigo-blue paper with white bunches of flowers that covered the garret walls.
He had put on flesh, and his chirp had grown thick and fruity; nowadays the graceless fellow had nothing but ill to say of the freedom he had lost, but which, after all, was limited, in summer, to scolding and squabbling in the tree-tops, and, in winter, to freezing on a wretched perch.
Andpr’t! prr’t! chirp! chirp!he went, in scorn of everything that could remind him of the old bad times of his life.
How much better to sit soft and warm over a good feed of bird-seed, to sleep away his afternoons in slothful ease, never to soil his feathers scratching for doles in a dungheap, but to live like a gentleman on his means, among his own belongings, without even a thought of work or worry!
Monsieur Friquet, you see, was a philosopher of an accommodating temper.
Thank God! everybody does not think alike; for what would become of the sky and the woodland if all the race of sparrows forsook them like him for cosy quarters and a free table? He was one of those selfish folk who deem all is well directly all is well with them, and who only think of being on the best terms with the world and with themselves, without ever a care beyond.
True, he was barely awake ere he saw his kind mistress bustling about in her room and filling up his bowl with new milk; true, she shared her loaf and her eggs with him, always giving him the best of everything and cheerfully keeping the crust and the white for herself; true, all day long the table was laid for him, and he had nothing to do but to eat and drink to his heart’s content, like the regular glutton he was; but Monsieur Friquet never once thought at the cost of what painful sacrifices he enjoyed all these good things.
Claire had resumed the cruel slavery of the workroom.
Every morning, at seven o’clock, she set out, a meagre hunch of bread in her basket, and along the sleeping streets where the yawning passers-by were few and far between, half dozing herself, but brave and thinking of Monsieur Friquet, she would make her way to the dismal room where she was to be kept prisoner all day. Her companions never dreamed what strength to bear unhappiness a friend affords, a good friend you are sure to find at home on your return, who welcomes you with bright eyes of pleasure and who fills your thoughts even when he is not there.
How he filled her thoughts, to be sure! What endless dialogues she had with him down in her own heart, just between the two of them.
“Now then, Monsieur Friquet, what are we going to have for dinner? A couple of poached eggs? I’ve just bought them, new laid, at the green-grocer’s. Oh! you can almost see through them; just you look. And not too dear either, thank God! There, the fire just burning up nicely. Well, have you made up your mind? Will you have them poached or boiled? Oh! never mind me. To begin with, I don’t care which; I like one as well as the other. I’ve got some salad too—fine fresh salad. Ah! so you’re laughing, Monsieur Friquet! You’ll laugh better still directly. Boiled, then, it’s to be, eh? You see, you bad boy, we only think of pleasing you.”
She was hardly home before the fire was crackling, the egg-boiler singing; in next to no time the eggs were on the table, and the two of them, Claire and the sparrow, were pecking away, she sitting in front of the cloth, he perched in front of her on the edge of a glass or else clinging to her fingers.
At every mouthful he would give his wings a shake, looking saucily now at the food, now at Claire, with his head on one side.
Chirp! chirp! chirp!he would say in his shrill treble. It was at once an appeal to his mistress to give him more, and a way of thanking her for the trouble she took in feeding him.
His impudent little beak would dive into every single thing—bread, salt, salad, the hollow of his mistress’s hand, poking everywhere, filching bits from her very lips, never still for an instant. Teasing, defying, thieving, he was in perpetual motion, as his brethren are among the leaves of the forest trees.
They drank out of the same cup, ate off the same plate. Ah! but Monsieur Friquet had his wilful moods too at times;hewas not the fellow to be satisfied with everything; now it was the bread he refused with a little decided peck that said as plain as words: “I won’t have it!”—now it was the egg, or the salad, or something else. You see, he knew quite well, did Monsieur Friquet, there was a biscuit waiting for him in the cupboard, and he was inordinately fond of biscuit.
Sunday was a special festival.
Up betimes as usual, for workgirls are never lie-abeds, Claire would set to rights the disorder of the week, tripping on tip-toe about the room, not to wake Monsieur Friquet, who was snoring in a corner, a fat ball of feathers, with his head under his wing.
“Monsieur Friquet won’t be awake for another hour,” she would think to herself. “I shall have time enough to set all straight”—and she would set to work, dusting, sweeping, washing the floor, happy in the prospect of the coming Sunday that would release her a while from her chain of servitude.
At last the bird would wake up, and there would be quick cries of: “Good morning, Monsieur Friquet! How have you slept?”
“Chirp! chirp!” would come the answer.
And she would reply—
“Oh! so have I—excellently, thank you.”
Then breakfast would be served at once. He would come to table still half asleep, with heavy eyes, to be scolded and fondled and chided.
“Lazybones! why, it’s close on eight o’clock!”
But he would hop on her shoulder, and put his little round head to her lips as if to ask pardon.
Then they would talk of serious matters.
“Monsieur Friquet! I say, Monsieur Friquet!”
“Chirp! chirp!”—which meant: “Well, what? I’m all attention!”
“Monsieur Friquet, I want your advice. What shall we have to eat for Sunday?”
“Chirp!”
“I hear you! Biscuit! biscuit! But people can’t live only on biscuit! We must have something elseto go with it. Suppose we bought a couple of artichokes! Do you like artichokes, Monsieur Friquet? Yes? Ah! I knew an artichoke would please you. Wait here for me, and I’ll run round to the greengrocer’s.”
So the Sunday wore away in happy play and merry nonsense between the pair.
What more was needed to transform the sharp thorns of pain into fragrant roses of content? She had invested the bold little chattering fellow with all the treasures of her tenderness; on him she lavished all her care and devotion; he was father and mother and family to her, and where he was, was home.
They lived long and happily together, and their love was never interrupted.
A LOST DOGA LOST DOG
A LOST DOG
Have you ever noticed the melancholy pensive look masterless dogs assume at the hour when the press thins, and the passers-by slacken their pace on the side-walks, like waters from a tap running dry?
As the silence deepens they appear from every side, these poor, friendless beasts, their meagre forms slinking through the fog and gloom; up and down the streets they prowl, noses to the ground, and tails drooping, like so many lost souls. Some have sound legs to run on, others can hardly drag themselves along; but all have hollow flanks and protruding ribs. They are out in search of food, nosing in the refuse heaps, scratching in the mud, filching from the scavengers bones as fleshless as themselves.
What the world lets fall from its table is still a banquet for their starving bellies. They are not hard to please; till the wan light of dawn surprises them, they hunt the streets, rain-soaked and frost-bitten; then they creep back into mysterious holes and corners, where they curl themselves up in a round and sleep away the livelong day.
Most of them are wild and shy, for they have only known the blackest side of life—cuffs and kicks, wretchedness and desertion. For them no hope survives the shipwreck of friendships betrayed; alone they live and alone they creep into a hole to die—creatures of the dunghill whose obsequies will be performed by the scavenger’s cart.
But if some are discouraged and disillusioned, there are bolder spirits too who will sometimes, when they hear the steps of a belated wayfarer, tear themselves from the heap they are foraging in and stand panting and eager in the dark street, with the desperate eye of a swimmer looking out across the raging foam in search of a port of safety. Hope is not yet dead inthem; they still have faith in mankind, and each shadowy form that emerges in the light of the gas-lamps entices them as offering promise of a home. For hours they will trot, with a humble, gentle, deprecating gait, at the heels of a casual passer-by, a shadow among shadows, dogging his steps to the last, hoping against hope. It is afriendthey are fain to run to earth; but alas! the chase is one that is repeated night after night—and it is almost always unsuccessful. More often than not, the pursued has no inkling even of the dumb escort that attends him through the night.
Howshouldhe know? Behind his back the dog treads noiselessly, with paws of velvet and nose to earth, checking his pace when the stranger slackens his, stopping when he stops, bit by bit learning his walk and ways. At last, when he has journeyed far through the dark streets, when his legs ache with pursuing under the wayfarer’s form a dream that is never to come true, a door will interpose, a ponderous, an impassable barrier between him and his fond hopes. Yet, who can tell? perhaps he will still linger on, shivering, till daylight, so unconquerable is his faith in man.
It was one of these hopeful but unappreciated souls that encountered an old schoolmaster one night, when the latter had tarried late in the fields outside the fortifications, anxious to assist at the noble spectacle the sun gives gratuitously to one and all, as he sets in the glowing west.
He was returning by the boulevards, his heart full of these glories no fireworks have ever yet been invented to match; as he jogged along, he was thinking of God’s goodness, who every night lights up these ruddy lamps of the sky to make fine flame-coloured curtains for the slumbers of His creatures.
A little black dog, the ugliest little dog you ever saw, without ears and without a tail, or as good as without, saw the solitary stranger. Did he divine perhaps beneath the man’s easy, good-natured exterior a fellow-sufferer, the heart of a disappointed, disillusioned being like himself? Sometimes animals can see very far into things.
At any rate he started off in pursuit.
The stranger noticed nothing, but marched along, striding over gutters and stamping across pavements, knocking sometimes against benches and trees in his preoccupation. It had been raining for an hour past, as it does come down in spring, in floods of warm soaking rain and sudden showers that wetted man and dog to the skin, without either one or the other being much disturbed.
Absent-minded as he was, the old man presently felt something rubbing softly against his leg, and, looking down, was surprised to see the wretched-looking cur beside him.
It was crawling and cringing, and with little half-stifled barks seemed to be appealing to the generosity of this unknown friend, perhaps less hard-hearted than the generality of mankind.
Many people, seeing what a hideous beast it was, would have said “No, no!” at once. But it was just the creature’s hideousness that moved the worthy man’s pity irresistibly. Touched by its repulsive looks, he guessed at the pitiful hardships the wretched animal must have borne in secret. He saw its sunken flanks, its mangy coat, its sharp-ridged back, and loved it with a sudden ardour of affection—the affection poor suffering folks feel for one another. All very well for happy people to test and try one another for ever so long to see if they suit each other, but they who have nothing to lose by mutual affection make no bones about clapping hand in hand straight away and swearing eternal friendship.
And so it was with these two new comrades.
Both were poor, and they fraternised at once. The dog was enchanted to have met a kind stranger to help him in his need, while his benefactor thought to himself how pleasant it would be to have the faithful creature to share his solitude. He stooped, patted the animal’s streaming coat, tickled his ear, or as much of it as there was to tickle, and ended by taking him home to his garret.
It was many a day since the poor beast had known the comfort of four walls and a roof—if indeed he ever had! For two whole days, barring meal times, he slept like a log; on the third he roused himself from his lethargy, trotted up and down the room, poked his nose into every corner, and showed every sign of being wide awake at last.
The dog must have a name, and the good schoolmaster was not long in finding one. Azor and Faithful are names that never come amiss for poor folk’s dogs; he chose Azor, perhaps keeping Faithful for himself—and he well deserved it! He had only to move his lips, pronouncing the two syllables “Az-or” below his breath, and the dog was instantly on the alert, looking up at him with roguish eyes, wondering what he was going to say next. No doubt of it, he was a very intelligent animal.
It was a happy household. Not that bread was over and above plentiful; but people who have nothing are cheaply satisfied, and if stomachs were pinched some days, at any rate hearts were never chilled. The dog had come into the man’s life like a special providence; henceforth his existence had an object; he had some one to love, some one besides himself to think of; poverty, so heavy a burden for a lonely man, seemed almost a boon now there were two to bear it—like a load of which each carries his half.
He loved and indulged him like a child, and something of selfishness entering into all ardent affections, Azor soon came to represent all humanity in his eyes. One day, to make him look fine, he fastened in the coarse hair of his neck a pink bow a young girl had dropped in the street, and told himself the dog was the handsomest beast alive. Slender greyhound, fleet-footed pointer, sturdy Newfoundland, none were a patch, in the eye of this partial judge, on the little ragged-haired, undersized mongrel he had introduced to his hearth and home.
Azor had just as great an admiration for his master. Sitting up on his haunches in front of him, he would gaze into his face for hours together in a sort of ecstasy.
Did he see him transmuted into something other than he was, or did the rough face, scored with its network of heavy wrinkles, from amid which the nose shone like a beacon-fire, embody for the wee doggie the beau-ideal of manly beauty? For my part, I think Azor beheld in it a beauty of a higher sort than the perishable beauty of the features; the old man, to be sure, was goodness incarnate, and is not goodness the highest form of beauty?
They lived for one another. Azor yapped, and the old man talked, and between them they had wonderful fine dialogues; beginning in the garret, these were resumed in the street the days they took the air together.
The pair might be seen marching side by side, the old man laughing, the dog laughing, too, in a way he had of his own. And so they wandered through the streets, in search of quiet, both taking little short steps. True, Azor was young still, and would have liked to dart on ahead; but his friend could not have kept up, and that was quite enough to make him adopt the peaceful gait of a dog who has ceased to care for the distractions of the roadside.
But out in the fields you may be sure this sedateness was exchanged for wild excitement. Intoxicated by the open air, Azor would dash away, gambolling and wheeling and leaping like a mad creature, and performing a hundred tricks that mightily amused his good old master.
Azor had his little ways. Every morning he used to go down into the street to inspect the gutters and pay a visit to the dogs of the neighbourhood. He was always back in a quarter of an hour or so.
But one day he did not return.
His master waited patiently for him till midday. Animals are like men, and love to linger; perhaps he had met friends—and the old schoolmaster smiled indulgently at the notion.
However, when half the afternoon was gone, and still Azor did not appear, he began to get anxious. Had some accident befallen him? and he thought of carriage wheels and horses’ hoofs and the rush and roar of the main streets.
His first impulse was to rush to the stairs; but Azor might come back at any moment, so he stayed where he was, more dead than alive.
The window opened on the roof; the old man took a chair, climbed on it and craned his head over the sill till he could see down over the edge of the rain-shoot. There he stood for ever so long watching the little black dots darting in and out among the legs of the passers-by. But not one of them was Azor.
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead; he was obliged to get down off the chair.
At last, as dusk was falling, a paw came scratching at the door, and he flew to open it.
Yes, it was his old comrade—but in what a plight! dyed blue, with a rope’s end still dangling round his neck! Some tragedy had befallen, no doubt, of which he had been the victim—and he patted the poor beast, his mind a prey to a hundred sinister apprehensions. Azor meantime fawned round him, looking as contrite as a culprit who cannot hope to be forgiven.
The dye refused to be washed out; soap was of no avail, and they had to resort to caustics; but for all they could do, a tinge of blue remained. It lasted nearly a month, but at last the black reappeared. While his master was busy over these operations, Azor would lick his hands, only stopping to sneeze, when the strong fumes got up his nose. He seemed cured of all wish for adventures.
Nevertheless, when a month was over, these prolonged absences began again. Sometimes he would stay away an hour; one Saturday he was abroad six hours. This irregular behaviour vexed his good master exceedingly. What could the mysterious attraction be that kept his faithful friend like this? He determined to find out.
He had noticed that Azor, the better to elude his vigilance, apparently used always to loiter a bit in front of the house, not starting away before he felt certain no one was looking; then in one bound he would be at the end of the street and disappear.
One day he followed the truant. Now and again the dog would stop, nose all along the pavement, then, reassured, set off again at a trot. He turned the corner, then down a broader street, and so eventually into a square. The clumps of rhododendrons hid him for a moment from his master, who came puffing up; but presently he caught sight of him in the middle of a group of children. He was barking joyously, leaping up at them, rolling on his back in the grass, in transports of delight. They were five little pale-faced things, and among them one face paler still and pinched with illness.
The shock nailed the old man to the spot. Was it possible? Was Azor a traitor to his friend? And he gazed first at the dog and then at the children with the look a man wears who sees an edifice he has long been labouring at crumbling into ruin. He had put his trust in the animal; he esteemed him as well as loved him—and, lo! the ingrate was sharing his caresses with others. He hated duplicity, and his gorge rose at the thought.
“Come here!” he shouted.
Azor knew his voice instantly, and, crawling along the ground like a serpent, he crept up to his benefactor, his tail dragging in the dust. But the latter never so much as thought of punishing him, and patted him on the back gently. Their eyes met; the man’s were full of sadness, the dog’s besought forgiveness. Then, still in the same humble attitude, he tried to draw his master towards the little group of pale faces.
The children had come forward—all except the little invalid, who stayed where he was; and all with one accord, their hands behind their backs, were staring at the new arrival.
Was he going to take their dog from them? Their brows were puckered with anxiety, and as he watched them, he was amazed to think his anger had been so easily roused.
What harm had Azor done after all? Ah! the blow would have been harder to bear if he had betrayed him for another man; but children! The piteous air of the little one who had remained behind touched him so that he took his hands with a smile and asked him if he loved Azor too.
“Oh! yes,” cried the child.
His eyes moved languidly under drooping lids, and he wore the careworn look of an invalid. Azor laid his head on the child’s knees, and he caressed him with his thin fingers long and lovingly.
The others soon found their tongues. Azor, they said, used to come every morning, and they romped together. They had known him for a long time in fact; but he had been a month once without appearing, and they had believed he was dead. A dyer’s apprentice, after tying a cord round his neck, had dragged him off, and as they never saw him any more, they had laid his death at the bad boy’s door.
“So that’s the explanation!” the old man muttered, and remembered the long day of agonised suspense when he waited for him at the garret window, and then how he had come back dyed blue. It was a relief to know the truth.
He went again at the same time next day, the dog careering gaily ahead as if he quite understood. Presently all found themselves in the square again, and all faces lit up with a common pleasure.
They became fast friends; he learned their names, and that two of them were brothers of the pale-faced little fellow; their mother always sent them to look after him in the garden; they lived only a few steps away. His heart was filled with compassion for the frail-looking little lad. As Pierre could not walk, he got into the way by degrees of carrying him home in his arms as far as the door, Azor galloping after them, wagging his tail.
One day the child’s mother came down to thank the “kind gentleman,” and they fell into talk. The boy’s father was a workman on the railway, while she worked at fine sewing; the little one was a sore trouble to them; he had to be taken out for fresh air, and constantly looked after; and all hope of cure had had to be abandoned long ago.
“And yet he’s no fool either, sir; of the three he’s the cleverest.”
He only nodded, his head full of a notion that still occupied him after he got home; Azor lay at his feet and watched him thinking, thinking all day long. At nightfall he took the dog’s head between his hands.
“There!” he cried merrily, “you’ll be pleased with your old master this time.”
Three days later he bought a go-cart, in which he installed Pierre, and every morning they used to set out for the country, Azor scouting ahead and his master following with the child in tow.
The old schoolmaster would explain all they saw to him—animals and things; he had made him a present of an alphabet with coloured pictures where a yacht stood for Y and a zebra for Z. And Pierre soon learnt to read.
On Sundays, instead of three, they were seven; the whole family would join the expedition, and they would linger on till dark in the starlit fields.
They were very happy, and their happiness lasted many long years.
His plumage was glossy and abundant, his eye alert, his claws long and strong; in all points he was everything a handsome young owl should be. For two years he had slept snug under his mother’s wing, the fond object of her jealous care; but when spring came round again, his father, who was a very sententious bird, addressed him in these terms—
MISADVENTURES OF AN OWLMISADVENTURES OF AN OWL
MISADVENTURES OF AN OWL
“You are grown up now, and the time is come when we must part. The nest would be too small to hold both you and those who will come after you. Moreover, no owl is ever happy save as head of a household. All sorts of trials and tribulations await us; men feel nothing but anger and contempt for our race. No matter for the watch and ward we keep over the orchards, the war of extermination we wage on the prolific broods that devastate the wheat, for all our well-meant efforts to aid the harvests to grow and the fruit-trees to bloom, our only guerdon is to be shot at with guns. Alas! the most of us end by being nailed up to a barn-door, with spread-eagled wings. A wife and family will console you under all this cruel injustice. Year by year your heart will grow green again amid the joys of domesticity, and you will attach a higher value to life when you no longer stand alone to bear its burden. So quit the nest, as I did before you; choose a good helpmeet of your own age, and may you be happy together, as we are, your mother and I.”
Accordingly the youngster took his departure. Gravity comes early to owls, and though only two years old, he already wore the severe air of an old philosopher. But the young lady owls, likewise brought up to scorn worldly pleasures, prefer this serious deportment to the gay exterior the other birds find so fascinating.
He went methodically round the village, and was well received by the parents, while more than one young thing turned her head to look after him. But there was not one of them, he thought, like his mother, and as she was the paragon of all merit in his eyes, he had sworn only to choose a mate who should resemble her in mind if not in face. He was in despair, and on the point of returning to the paternal roof when, one evening, as he was hovering about an old church-steeple, he caught sight of a charming little head peeping out between the luffer-boards.
Was he weary of the search perhaps, or did the little face really remind him of the adored image of his parent? He lingered long in admiration, never tired of watching her dainty ways, and little by little something began to thump inside him, something he had never felt before. She was busy crunching a mouse, pecking and worrying at it with her sharp beak, and had very soon left nothing but the bare bones. Then she wiped her beak and preened her feathers prettily, as every well-bred young lady owl should.
Just as she was finished, she saw him sitting in the next tree, and, startled at being caught at her toilet, she hid her head under her wing; nor was he a whit less embarrassed, and each of them gazed at the other in equal confusion, without saying one word. At last he made up his mind and spoke to the parents, who both thought him a very charming fellow.
It was a quiet wedding, as weddings always are among the owls. There was no music or nonsense; they were married at night, in the old steeple, and the moon lent her illumination. When all was over, the parents gave their blessing, and the young couple set out on their honeymoon.
But it was not the sort of jaunt the sparrows indulge in, sailing away into the blue, so high, so high they seem as if they would never come back again;theylighted sedately on the bough of an old oak, and, finding it a good place, stopped there for good. Besides, the oak, being decrepit with years, had not, as a younger tree would, a whole host of impudent little cock-sparrows for its denizens; a blackbird lodged on the first floor, and a magpie had selected the trunk as his residence, and though both were great chatterers, the owls did not find their company disagreeable.
But it was not so with Father Blackbird and Mother Magpie; they were fond of gaiety, and the newcomers struck them as dismal neighbours to have. So they went off to see the tomtits, who are naturally very daring fellows, and told them about the hum-drum life the happy pair led; and between them they planned a finecharivarifor the benefit of their new neighbours in the early hours of the morning.