CHAPTER IV
Larruppin’ Lyndesay, perturbed by the events of the morning, roared down Hillgate at a pace that sent peaceful marketers flying to the pavement. Dixon of Dockerneuk, coming up leisurely, watched him and smiled—for there was a dog.
The grip of the brakes swung the car close upon Jordan’s plate-glass, and several people thought they were killed, but the dog was spared; and Dixon smiled grimly a second time, both at Larry’s face and at a certain recollection. When the car pulled up beside him, he could see that the young man’s hands were shaking.
The chauffeur, exchanging a friendly wink of much understanding, sprang out and gave him his place beside his master. Dixon mounted after a brief greeting.
“You’ll be goin’ out, I suppose?” Larrupper said, moving on. “You’d better let me take you. I’m needin’ your moral support badly, Dock, old man. And I got a devil of a fright at that corner—you saw it, I expect? The dog had a silver brush to it. It reminded me——” He glanced sideways at his companion—“Sorry, old chap!”
“Lord, Dock!” he went on, presently, “if youknew what a time I’ve had, these last three years, keepin’ out of the way of things with a tail at one end and a bark at the other! I dream of them at nights. There’s times I think I’ll have to quit motorin’, an’ take to a tricycle. I’ve been punished, Dock, if it’s any comfort to you to know it.”
“Well, well,” Dixon answered thoughtfully and with admirable serenity, seeing that they were full speed on the track of a carrier’s cart which was occupying the whole of the road—“if it’s learned you to think on a bit before turning a corner, it happen wasn’t all wasted. You’re one that takes a deal of learning that way, Mr. Lionel!”
Larry chuckled, and then sighed. He did not like to think of that incident of three years ago. He had been fresh home from Eton, a hasty snatch at college and a wild rush round the world, and he had known nothing of Dixon in those days, or of all the things of the North that Dixon so adequately represented; but in one sharp lesson he had learned much, and at a price.
Dixon, too, went back in mind. It was not his way to dwell overmuch on the past; he took things as they came, ordinarily—one day with another—but he had had other memories stirred, that morning, and he was looking back in spite of himself. As the car whizzed down the white road, the two men saw the same scenes re-enacted before them.
Dixon of Dockerneuk came down the last slope of the fell.
Behind him, the fresh-herded sheep still cried hysterically to one another. In front, he saw the smoke of his farm and the twisted ribbon of the hedged road.
Round his knees flitted a gray and silver thing with adoring eyes hidden by a silken fringe; a silent-footed attendant whose ears lifted at the faintest whisper of command, and who dropped to heel at a raised finger.
Reaching the gate, he paused and looked down at her, and the steady seriousness of his face relaxed a little. Rain, sitting at his feet, flopped a lovely tail and reached out an insinuating tongue, but Dixon’s hand stayed at his side. A dalesman does not waste unnecessary caresses upon his dog, any more than upon his other daily companions.
Yet Rain was the pride of his heart. He had bred her himself, trained her himself, as he trained all his dogs, and she knew every shade of his whistle as a child knows the inflections of its mother’s voice. The least wave of his hand was her code; two words could give her a complete law of shepherding. The sympathy between them was the most perfect that has ever been known to exist between man and beast—the link between a shepherd and his dog.
He unsnecked the gate, and she danced out, eagerfor home, waving a silver tail for him to follow, but he paused again, leaning against the stoup. A sound escaped him, so soft that at the bend of the road you would not have heard it, but Rain dropped as if shot, ears cocked, body rigid; and this time Dixon of Dockerneuk smiled ever so slightly.
To-morrow he was to run her at the dog-trials at Arevar, before half the County, and he knew that there was not a dog within a fifty-mile radius that could beat her when handled by himself. Already she was famous; already “Dixon’s Rain” was a familiar phrase in the mouths of shepherds; her judgment, her intelligence, her beauty, were known in every household where a sheep-dog was a matter of serious consideration. She would be eagerly looked for, to-morrow, and he who possessed anything that could beat her would indeed be a proud man by sunset.
With another scarcely-breathed whistle he released her, and turned to hasp the gate and give a final look up the soaring fell, skirted with bracken, crowned by sullen rocks. Rain sprang round—sprang to meet a devil’s galloper of satin panels and shining brass, hurled at a criminal speed along the narrow, curving road—sprang and disappeared. She was quite dead when Dixon and the chauffeur drew her out from between the heavy wheels.
A group of those children who always appear miraculously at every untoward occurrence, thrust frightened faces through a break in the hedge. They knew Dixon and they knew Rain, and if the sky hadfallen upon the appalling catastrophe they would hardly have been surprised. They said “Goy!” at intervals, and held each other’s hands, knowing the meaning of the countryman’s set face.
Dixon said briefly—“She’s done!” through set teeth, and the chauffeur, rising reluctantly from his knees, dusted his smart livery, and nodded his head, biting his lip. It was not his place to criticise his master for taking other people’s risks as cheerfully as he took his own.
A dark young face looked over the side of the car, and eyed the dead dog with a perturbed expression. It was all a beastly bore, but of course he had taken the corner far too fast, and would have to pay for his pleasure. It was a decent-looking dog, too, worse luck! He liked dogs as well as anybody—jolly, wagging things that always met you with a smile. What a fool he had been to peg along at that pace! He might have been sure there would be a dog at the corner. There always was, whenhewas driving.
He fumbled in his pocket, wondering vaguely why nobody said anything except the children in the hedge, who still observed “Goy!” at intervals. Grange might have helped him out, but Grange was such a fool about animals; you wondered why he had ever taken to machines. Fortunately, the owner did not seem excited about the accident, thought the boy, seeing nothing unusual in the grim face which the northern children read so plainly.
He was a gentleman; and in justice it must beadmitted that he offered his apology before he offered his gold; but perhaps his curiously-worded expressions of sorrow conveyed too little to the farmer, just as the gold conveyed too much. Grange made a movement to stop him when he saw the money; he had been bred in the dales. But again it was none of his business, and he shrugged his shoulders and stood aside, awaiting events.
They were not long in arriving. As the careless hand came out, Dixon’s brown fist flew up to meet it; the gold clove a glittering path into the ditch, and the stranger subsided into his seat, nursing a damaged wrist.
Then he laughed, and motioned the chauffeur to get in.
“As you please!” he said to the farmer; and—“Take the wheel!” to his servant; and, as they moved, stopped nursing his wrist to raise his hand to his cap. Dixon stood like a block.
Opposite the children, the motorist checked the car.
“There’s somethin’ in the ditch, yonder,” he observed, leaning forward, “that will set you up in bull’s-eyes for a month of Sundays!”—and not a child stirred. Behind him, he heard his own laugh echoed sardonically by Dixon—Dixon standing like a block beside his silver-haired darling.
“Grange, you fathead,” said his master thoughtfully, as the chauffeur swung his responsibilities out of sight, “why in the name of all that’s sportin’, didn’t you warn me?”
“Sir,” answered the chauffeur, “I have always understood that you preferred to learn by experience!”
Bowman’s Pink trotted nervously in the wake of uncertain footsteps. Life had become a devious and dangerous thing since her master had taken to looking upon the ale when it was yellow, and she followed his erratic curves uneasily if faithfully, since a well-bred dog must always be at its master’s heels.
Not that the splendid title fitted her at first glance, as she pattered unhappily along the sticky road. Her slender, pointed limbs were plastered with mud; her black coat with the white star on the chest was rough and matted, and had lost its gloss; the fine, keen little head was shaggy and unkempt. She was underfed; she was uncared-for; and, much worse, she was cowed. A word from her lord set her trembling; a movement flattened her to the earth. Yet, she stayed, as many women stay in like case—women whom all the Divorce Commissions in the world will never reach. And so Bowman and Pink came to the Trials.
They were late. Men whose hour-glass turns with ale usually are late. But Bowman’s name was not among the first on the card, and he had not been called as yet. He pulled himself together as he made his way past the flower-show and the shooting-gallery and the brass band, and Pink drew a little closer,humbly thankful to be free from the perils of the open road. On the left, rows of hard and unattractive benches supported the honourable weight of the flower of the County. On the right, the competitors watched and chatted and compared notes. In front, the long meadow, dotted with flags, sloped upward much as a stage slopes, so that the performance regularly enacted every ten minutes was plain to every eye; while near to the Society gathering, just where sunshades and chatter might alarm sheep and distract canine intelligence, was the little pen where the last act of the round was played, the only one in which the owner of the competing dog was allowed to give definite assistance. Society always derived huge enjoyment from this crucial moment. Seventeen-stone Jackson of Dubbs, prancing cautiously around his woolly adversaries, hat in hand, was certainly a sight to be treasured in the memory. The skill of his crawling, quivering lieutenant was apt to be overlooked in the humour of the situation.
Dixon of Dockerneuk sat by himself in a corner of the big field. He had come because he could not stay away, but now that he was here, the whole business was torture to him. There was scarcely a man on the field but was asking for Rain, and annoying him with well-meant sympathy. Even the ladies had heard of her, fish-hooked each other’s hats with their sunshades, and said—“Dear me! How perfectly shocking!” as if their respective cars had never so much as slain a hen. There was an immaculate youth,nursing a bandaged wrist amid a bevy of beauty, who went hot all over at the mention of the dead dog’s name.
But Dixon would not be pitied. He shook off sympathy as a man shakes off a troublesome bluebottle. He was billed to run another dog beside Rain, a young yellow collie that had the root of the matter in him, but at present preferred to regard life in general, and sheep-dog-trials in particular, as a huge joke. Dashing up to his three victims, he greeted them with affectionate exuberance, much as some over-familiar parsons fall upon the necks of the dignified poor. Fleeing before his bouncing guidance, they were through the first flags in a rush, merely because that happened to be their line and they could not avoid it, but they ignored the rest, and were down the field and almost upon the lap of Society before Dixon’s imperious whistle could swing the culprit in front of them.
Lark went back cheerfully enough. A little energy wasted more or less made no difference to him. Another rush brought the resentful trio through the stone gap and between the second flagged limits, but there the happy fluke ended. One sheep broke off from the rest, and for the remainder of his allotted space Lark played Catch with it over every square inch of the field. Dixon wrestled with him patiently enough, while Society laughed and clapped, and the roughs in the background scoffed and called for Rain; but Lark, like the Punch ’cellist, was there to enjoyhimself, and came in when dismissed from the course with a lolling tongue and a grin that reached from ear to ear. Dixon walked back to his corner without a word, feeling no resentment against the yellow dog who had made such gorgeous fools of them both. He was only a puppy; he would steady in time; and since Rain was not there—was lying under a new-turfed mound at home—nothing else really mattered.
Bowman’s name was called at last by a member of the committee, and he disengaged himself from a group of second-rate acquaintances, and slouched forward. Pink was whining ever so softly to herself as she followed him out into the field, and every nerve in her body tingled with excitement. She had played this game before, and she was wild to get away and begin.
Society laughed again as Bowman’s Pink came into view; she looked so small, so hungry, so pathetically incompetent. “The Pink of Perfection!” observed a scarlet hat, nodding poppies, and was at once fish-hooked in revenge by a Reckitt’s Blue sunshade who had been about to make the same witty remark herself.
Bowman gave the welcome signal at last—the least lift of a knotted stick—and Pink was up the long field like a black streak to the far point where three plump, puzzled sheep had been suddenly dumped to await her. She was on them quicker than Lark, but there was no scattering this time. With one smart circling movement, she clumped them togetherand dropped, looking for further orders, a dingy speck on the vivid green.
Bowman had gained sufficient control of himself to appear before the footlights, but, once there, he went to pieces altogether. His fuddled brain could not command the situation; his bleared eye could scarcely mark his little black servant waiting his will; the hand that waved the stick was as reliable as a weather-cock in a shifting wind. He gave orders, it is true, but they were the wrong ones. Pink, straining ear and glance alike, could make nothing of him. He dropped her when a quick rush was imperative, forced her forward when to move an inch was to court disaster, rounded up at the wrong moment, scattered and separated when close upon the flags. The resulting confusion irritated him; the suppressed mirth of Society goaded him to fury. His stick began to wave wildly; he ceased to whistle, and took to shouting, and the tone of his shouting made the bright sunshades quiver. Pink quivered, too, shamed and insulted, for no really first-class man shouts at a first-class dog; he has no need. She obeyed him, because not to obey would have been as possible to her as to have made a live-mutton dinner off the three exasperated creatures whom she was being forced to torture so unnecessarily; but under the stress of puzzling, contradictory orders, she, too, was beginning to lose her head. The whole fiasco ended in a glorious exit of sheep and sheep-dog over one of the President’s newly-laid fences, while Society rocked with laughter,and Bowman, black in the face, was removed peremptorily by the committee.
Pink came back, terrified, puzzled, shamed, but faithful—faithful even beneath the rain of knotted blows, hobnailed kicks and purple objurgations. She cried a little as she pressed her slim little body against the turf and screwed up her frightened eyes, and Dixon from his corner heard her. He stood up suddenly, and thrust himself contemptuously between executioner and victim.
“Hold on a bit, lad,” he said grimly, “and answer a civil question before you get through with your leatherin’. D’you mind yon clashy winter’s night as you nabbed Geordie Garnett’s best pup from his shippon?”
Bowman accomplished the almost incredible feat of turning blacker in the face than ever.
“That’s a—something—lie!” he stormed thickly.
Dixon stooped and turned up one of Pink’s soft ears, showing the letter “G” within, faint but still discernible.
“I know that breed as a man knows his own barns,” he said slowly. “Geordie an’ I have always been thick as inkle-weavers, you’ll think on, and I’m not like to forget what he had to say, yon night. I’ll just step up and have a crack with him. He’ll be rarely set up to have lit on his lost pup at last.”
Bowman was understood to remark that not for all the Dixons gone before to a certain unmentionable locality should Geordie Garnett lay a finger on whatwas not, and never had been, his. Dixon eyed him steadily. The fight was healing the hurt places in his soul.
“Look you here,” he said firmly. “I’ll make you a fair offer, and you can take it or leave it, just as suits you! You’ve shamed the poor brute before the whole countryside. She was game for the work, right enough, but you were fair maiselt. Now, I’ll do this for you. Let me take her round just once, just to show Lyndesay and all the lot of them what she can do when she’s given half a chance, and when Geordie Garnett gets her back, I’ll never let wit where I clapped eyes on her. Is it a deal?”
Bowman laughed murderously.
“A deal?” said he. “Ay, a deal, right enough! Take her, my fine lad—take her!”
Dixon bent to obey, but his fingers had barely touched Pink’s head before he stepped back with an exclamation, for her teeth had met in his wrist. She eyed him sorrowfully, even while the growl rattled in her throat. A well-bred dog could do no less for her master, however unworthy.
Bowman rolled about in drunken glee, urging his opponent to further effort, and Dixon’s temper snapped like dry kindling. He took Bowman behind a quiet hedge, and thrashed him into acquiescence. When he reappeared, Pink trotted meekly in his shadow. Together, they sought out the President, who listened a little impatiently to the demand that the dog might be run again.
“What’s the good?” he asked, watching his head shepherd making a glorious mull of things at the pen. “Having been the round once, she is no longer eligible for the prize.”
Dixon growled contempt.
“’Tisn’t the prize,” he said. “It’s thedog. She was run by a man who wasn’t fit to run her, a drunken fool who simply threw her away. She comes of the best stock in the county, and she can do better than that, I’ll lay my best heifer. She doesn’t know me, but I think I can work her. She’s been shamed before the whole county. Give her another chance.”
Arevar’s eldest son stood up and joined in the conversation. Dixon’s eyes met his without the slightest change of expression. The eldest son had a bandaged wrist.
“Let her run, Father,” he said. “It’s not harmin’ any one, and everybody should have a second chance in this world, shouldn’t they, Mr.—er—Dixon, I think? Let her run.”
Lyndesay shrugged his shoulders, and with difficulty restrained himself from rushing down to assist the head shepherd, who had at last succeeded in penning the whole of two of the sheep and half of the third.
“Very well!” he said. “Just as you like. She’ll do no good, anyway. She’s had all the intelligence beaten out of her, poor little brute!”
His son smiled gallantly into Dixon’s grim face.
“Everybody should have a second chance,” hesaid again. “Everybody—rich or poor, knave or fool, starvin’ sheep-dogs or—motorin’ roadhogs. Let her run!”
There was a space on the yellow programme hallowed by the name of Rain, but when Dixon came out in his order, it was not the silver-haired beauty but the cowed little tramp that trotted at his side. Pink had spent a thrilling hour gleaning new impressions. These included a tentative grooming with an old stable-brush, a few dry biscuits, a few rough caresses, a few kindly words. The sympathy and the biscuits had put fresh heart into her; the grooming had eased her self-respect. She came out gladly enough to the work she loved, though her faithful heart still yearned after the drunken, hobnailed brute slumbering behind the hedge.
Dixon dropped his hand to the dog’s head, and she cowered to the very ground. He repeated the experiment until she stood up confidently under his touch, and the two looked into each other’s eyes. Then he jerked his own head sharply, and she was gone like the wind up the edge of the slope, to be checked by a sweet, clear whistle before she was upon the fresh prey, who raised innocent eyes, unafraid of the harmless black and white patch so near. Presently there was another whistle, a languid wave of a thin ashplant, and the quartette was ambling unconcernedly towards the first of the flags.
Dixon, for all his outward calm, was conscious of a slight nervousness. He had pledged his word, so tospeak, upon the dog’s worth, and would have staked his last coin, if need be; but every man handles a dog just a shade differently, and any sudden lack of sympathy between himself and his new protégée might bring fresh derision upon both. The dog was cowed, too, half-starved, home-sick for her old tyrant; but he knew the stock she came from, and the training that becomes inherited instinct after so many generations, and he counted strongly upon these. Taking a grip of himself, he concentrated all his attention upon the waif in Rain’s place, as if she had indeed been Rain herself, charged with all his hopes. And presently his confidence in the power of race changed to exultant wonder, for here was a trained intelligence answering to his will as even Rain had seldom answered. Such tact, such patience, such judgment, such skilled, gentle handling, he had never seen. There was no shouting, now, no furious waving, no volleying of oaths to scorch sensitive Society ears. The clear whistles hardly clove the air before they were obeyed; the sharp, clipped signal that means “Drop!”—the long, clear call, lifting at the end, that says “Come on!”—the shower of quick notes that telegraph “Round up!” Here were the first-class man and the first-class dog working like a single instrument. The President, his eyes glued to the little tramp, forgot that the head shepherd had never succeeded in penning the second half of the third sheep.
They had passed three of the tests—the top flags,the stone gap and the oak tree—and were making for the fourth when the first hitch occurred. Dixon, forgetting in his concentration that it was not Rain he was working, after all, employed a special call that he used on the fell to warn his dog of a precipice. It had a curious swerve in the middle, and meant—“Keep together!” and Rain would have had the sheep in a tight bunch right between the flags, but Pink was not fell-trained, and she dropped, puzzled for the first time. Dixon, cursing himself, gave her the signal she knew, but in that fatal pause one curly monster had separated itself from the rest, and taken a bee-line for home. Pink was in front of it in a flash, only to lose the other two, and there followed a pretty piece of handling which agitated the parasols into a perfect frenzy of fish-hooking, but at which Dixon frowned, for the precious minutes were flying.
The sheep were through the final flags at last, however, but their faith in their gentle conductor had been ruined by that sudden separation and breathless chase. They were in the mood to be alarmed by the smallest slip when they approached the narrow door of the uninviting fold. It was then that Dixon made his bold stroke.
Every other farmer on the field had helped to pen his sheep; it was a recognised fact that even the best of dogs could hardly accomplish the finish unaided, particularly when each of the sheep was as nervous as a cat, and would break on the slightest encouragement. But Dixon had faith in his dog, and he wasplaying for her reputation. He let her pen them alone.
Slowly, inch by inch, Pink crawled in rear of her charge. Slowly, inch by inch, the frightened heads turned to the pen. Something about it must have suggested safety to the first sheep, for it moved forward, and the second followed. The third, however, lost interest during the pause, and edged to the right, but Pink edged in the same direction. Tossing its head, it swung to the left, but Pink was there, also. This seemed to annoy it, for it skipped round in its own length, and faced the enemy defiantly, but Pink’s innocent muzzle was on the ground, her vivid eyes almost shut. The third sheep looked a little ashamed of itself, swung round again and lined up. The first was practically inside.
Dixon of Dockerneuk stood like stone, and Society forgot even to rustle. Pink crept nearer, nearer, and dropped for the last time; and as she did so, the first sheep, apparently disgusted with the accommodation, swerved like a shying horse in the face of its following, forcing the second sheep into the startled mouth of the third. Even then, Dixon did not stir; but there was no need, for Pink flung herself forward as the Winged Hats flung themselves at the Great Wall, and in another moment three disconsolate noses poked through barren bars, whilst a panting black and white streak stretched across the threshold of their prison.
Dixon whistled ever so softly, but she heard himand came to him gladly. He put out his hand, and she leaped to catch it joyously with her teeth. Through the cheering crowd he sought his way to his corner, but a yesterday’s enemy checked him. Larruppin’ Lyndesay faced him diffidently but courageously.
“You’ve given one dog a second chance,” he said. “Can’t you see your way to doin’ it for another?”
Dixon honoured him with a long look.
“There’s the Ring o’ Bells,” he said at last, “just across the road.”
They went off together.