WE were called into my mother’s room one day, and shown a hamper which had just arrived. The hamper was strangely agitated, like that hasty-pudding in which Tom Thumb sheltered, and when it was opened out rolled a puppy! It was a collie puppy, long haired, black, with tancheeks, a white tip to his tail, white collar and paws, and wholly fascinating.
It was really a charming puppy; at present too young to sin; too young to do anything but roll about and be petted.
He was named Watch, “for,” said the friend who gave him, “he is a sheep dog, and you are a pastoral family”—a very pretty reason, but I think she was also influenced by thehorlogerieof our namesake.
Time passed, and Watch grew older and uglier. His neck lengthened, until his ears looked like ridiculous ornaments on the top of it, his legs grew long and lanky, his coat grew thin, and he grew naughty. He did not indeed eat up slippers, which is the favourite employment of story-book puppies, but he did pull most of a cold Sunday dinner on to the lawn, lick the butter out of the dish, and leave joints of mutton and beef on the grass. And he had another very original, reprehensible, natural impulse—he wished to garden. His method of gardening was to dig up saplings from a carefully-planted hedge of yews. He knew it was wrong, but he could not help it. When he was seen thus employed, he fled back and sheltered himself in his stable. He was just in that state of mind and body which answers in human beingsto the condition of rapid growth and dissatisfied temper, when sleeves retreat up the arms, and frocks and knickerbockers up the legs, and the family seems to be in a conspiracy for making things disagreeable to you.
So it seemed best that he should be sent to a shepherd for training. He went, and three months passed, and we looked daily for his return; when one morning, I was sent for to the door, where I saw, held in a strap, a beautiful, bashful, silky collie, small and well-proportioned, with long tail and ruff, and silk-fringed legs, ready to hide his face against the first friend with affection. I could hardly believe it was Watch—he was full-blown, come out!
That he should sleep in a stable any longer was a manifest impossibility. Watch was established as a house-dog.
He was wonderfully quick and obedient; he learnt to shut the door, play the piano, shake hands, catch things from his nose, and lie dead, in no time. He was so gentle that one could put little animals under his charge; the canary would stand on his head, and a kitten run between his paws. One of our blue-eyed white kittens, granddaughter of the formidable cat Rector, attached herself warmly to him.
But there were one or two circumstances underwhich he was not docile. Soon after he came home we took him for a walk in the fields near the town. He followed quietly; when, suddenly, he spied a flock of sheep feeding, and up went the white tufted tail like a banner; nothing could hold him; no threats restrain him, until from hedge and ditch he had collected the whole flock into marching order. Much severe treatment was necessary before we could induce him to relinquish his profession. Then often as we went through the fields, Watch following with an eager eye, longing to be off after a scattered flock, an old north-country shepherd would sidle up and “pass the time of day,” and gently turn the conversation until he could say, “I suppose that dog of yours is not for sale?” He was right, Watch was not for sale.
He could not, it is true, quite resist the instinct of the chase; and often one saw him flying down the garden in pursuit of the white kitten Midge, while her old-fashioned, under-bred, good-hearted tabby mother followed to protect her. But nothing happened; he rolled over and over with Midge, and Jenny jumped upon the soft heap, and dealt out boxes of the ear when Watch’s head got uppermost. Then they all got amicably up together, and went off quite good friends. Once, I am sorryto say, he did break the leg of a rabbit, but he was more surprised than any one else at it. I found him another time, having caught a blackbird; he was very much surprised and delighted, but puzzled as to the right course to adopt next; so he made short runs at it, and pretended to bite it, and wagged his tail very much, and asked me to come up and look at it.
As for the goat, he was a most excellent good comrade with her. He exercised all his sheep-driving skill to fetch her when she lagged behind. And it takes as much skill to fetch one goat as fifty sheep. When she behaved well, he consented to go in double harness with her. The double harness was made out of tape dyed purple with Judson’s dyes. There was an old madman who lived in a house opposite the field where I generally drove them. He was very fond of watching the performance.
But now I come to a part of Watch’s character which I cannot present in such a favourable light. He was jealous.
Of course we did not find it out at first. He was not brought into comparison with other dogs, only with inferior animals, and he would naturally not be jealous of them. We are not jealous of ourfriend’s cat and dog, but of our friend’s friends. Watch was not jealous of our cats and birds, and goats and guinea-pigs, but of our dog-acquaintance. Occasionally he showed slight uneasiness when a horse or a baby was much noticed; they were rather too high in the scale of creation—nearly at the level of dogs.
But one day there had been a dog show near us, and after the booths had been taken down, and the exhibits gone, one poor spaniel was discovered who had lost his friends, and appealed to us for sympathy; so we invited him to afternoon tea in the garden. Watch came to tea as usual; but when he saw the other dog, he suddenly became demonstratively affectionate. This was quite appreciated; but the other dog was not therefore neglected. So Watch bit him. This was not appreciated at all. We told Watch so, but he only sat down and turned his back to us, and gave the family five minutes for repentance; and as they did not fall on their knees, and beseech his forgiveness, he solemnly marched away into the house and lay in his master’s study, quite alone, sulking. I am sorry to say, too, that he conceived occasionally the most violent antipathies to the most delightful and well-intentioned people. There wasa friend of ours, devoted to dogs in general, and to him in particular, whom he would not allow to touch him; he would not take food from her hand; once, when he had accepted from some one else the food he had refused from her, he stopped eating it because he heard her laugh. Once he was the victim of uncontrollable fascination. A girl came to tea, at whose greeting he growled; then he lay down in a corner with his eyes fixed on her. She went on talking and taking no notice of him, and he came out into the room, little by little, looking at her, till he finally sat straight in front of her, with his eyes fixed on hers; and there he remained until she went away.
Watch had become identified with the family, to the extent of being called “Watch Benson” by many friends. His English vocabulary was wonderfully large. I remember the surprise of one gentleman who came to talk business with my father. Watch was in the room, and, hearing our voices outside, suddenly started to the door, which was shut. “Why don’t you go out of the window, then?” my father said, quite quietly, and Watch in a moment ran to the window and jumped out.
I never quite knew what Watch’s position was towards religious exercises. I think he approvedof them, but disapproved of our exclusiveness about them. So he pretended altogether to despise church. He was depressed on Sunday morning, came to the garden gate to congratulate us when church was over, and pretended to be sleepy when the time for evening church drew near. But I think that was because he was not allowed to go; for he took up a very different position about prayers; he insisted on coming; he had his own stall in a window; though occasionally, when strangers were there, and he could not be turned out, he suddenly decided to leave it for the softer rugs in the middle of the chapel. There was one memorable occurrence, when the 26th chapter of St. Matthew was read, and Watch got more and more excited as he heard his own name repeated more and more emphatically, until at the final, “I say unto all,Watch,” he ran eagerly out into the middle—such exciting, personal prayers!
But he made a great point of attending; for when we changed our house, and came to the conclusion that his presence would no longer be appreciated, his efforts to attend prayers were quite pathetic. Sometimes he scratched at the door, or pushed it open, and marched in in the middle; sometimes he slunk in when we went into the chapel, and sometimesran in first and tried to hide. He had a vague idea in his mind, that it was some special privilege, some special identification with the family.
Now that we were in London half the year, Watch could not be with us constantly. For one thing his dirty paws were such a mortification to him, and we thought he would die from the amount of soot he licked off. And he could not go walks, for he would stand smiling at us in the middle of the street, with a tram, two omnibuses, a cart, and four hansoms, bearing down upon him. So he went to stay with friends, or down to the farm in the country.
That last was often necessary, but not a great success. Watch was very exclusive; he never would go walking with servants, except when everyone else was—not out, for he might have met them—but away from home. The one exception was when the servants were nurses with children. He was fond of children, and did not think itinfra dig.to play with them. In the same way he despised everyone at the farm, and had to be treated in a very special manner, quite different from all other dogs. “Why can’t Watch live like any of the other dogs?” one of the children asked. “Oh, my dear, Watch is much too good for us,” his mother told him, witha deep sarcasm. No other dog could come on the rug when Watch was lying there. The cat might come and was welcome, and liked the benevolent old gentleman. Just as one would not like anybody to come and take half of one’s armchair, but might be rather flattered if a cat or a little dog jumped up to settle itself there. Cats were only cats, and fit subjects for philanthropy, but other dogs were his own ill-bred relatives. As some one summed it up, “Watch doesn’t care for dogs.”
The other dogs could not be expected to appreciate this, and Watch’s airs provoked at last one outburst from King, the steady old patriarchal collie of the farm. King flew upon him one fine day to have it out, and all the other dogs, seeing that King “had taken out a free ticket,” as the bailiff phrased it, flew to avenge their private grievances. Watch was very nearly killed, but he kept his airs to the last. Such strong arguments were brought to bear upon King, that ever after, when Watch crossed the yard, King retired promptly to his kennel. He could not trust his own self-control, and fled temptation.
Poor King! he had a sad end. He and a young golden collie called Pat went out together in some woods—poachers, I fear. Towards evening Pat came back in a fearful state of agitation, trembling.The dog must have longed for words to tell what he had seen! But they guessed it. The gamekeeper was known to have a grudge against King, and he was never heard of again from that day to this.
Watch had a very different end. He grew old and blind. He had to live altogether at the farm now, but he did not mind that. He had two great friends. One was the bailiff’s daughter, and one the niece of the landlady at the “Cricketers,” over the way. The first nursed Watch, the second he went to see every day. But the niece got married, and Watch never crossed the road again, but transferred all his affection to Katie. He was nearly blind now, quite deaf, and very rheumatic. He had not much emotion left; it soon wearied him. I remember while he was still at the house, that when we all came home at the end of the holidays in two detachments, he greeted the first-comers effusively, and then retired under the sofa, and took no notice of the second batch until they had been in the house about an hour; then, his emotions being rested, he came out and greeted them too with affection.
But two loves remained to the end; his love for Katie and his love for milk pudding—and Katiegenerally gave him the milk pudding. He hobbled about after her as long as he could, and sat in her room. Once they thought him dying. He lay on Katie’s bed, and Katie was away—was coming back that evening. His head lay on the pillow and his eyes were closed, and they thought him dead, when Katie came upstairs and spoke to him; and the life came back to him, and she fed him, and he lived a few days more. Then he died, this time with Katie close to him.
He is buried by the gold-fish pond under a cedar, and he has a tombstone and an epitaph, “Esne Vigil.” And the other day I passed by, and freshly-gathered daisies were lying on it. I think Katie must have put them there.