Birds and Beasts 11

Birds and Beasts 11

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.

 

 

II

 

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.