It was Sunday morning at Sunnyside Cottage, where lived an author and his wife, and they were at breakfast.
Now the Sunday morning meal at Sunnyside is a very leisurely affair, with the different dishes sandwiched in between fragments from the morning paper.
They had finished the grapefruit, and were sampling the Sunday sermon, when there came a timid tat-a-tat-tat at the screen door on the front piazza.
"I wonder who it is?" inquired the author, and to answer the question the mistress got up and went to the door.
There upon the mat sat a sorrowful figure. A stump of a tail was slowly and gently thumping the door-mat as though feeling its way cautiously. The head was downcast, but the mistress might have noticed, had she looked sharply, that the bright eyes were watching her narrowly.
The whole attitude was apologetic, as though he excused himself for being there at that time of day, and looking so bedraggled.
"Good-morning, Mr. Dog," said the mistress cheerily.
The stump of the tail began thumping the mat more quickly and with greater determination, and the bright, quizzical face was turned up inquiringly.
"Please, lady," it seemed to be saying, "I am cold and hungry. The world outside is a great lonesome place, and it looks very inviting inside your house."
The mistress read the dog thought rightly, so she opened the door and asked, "Will you come in, Mr. Dog?"
Pierre needed no second invitation, and slipped inside quickly as though fearing she might change her mind when she saw the sad condition of his toilet.
On the threshold of the living-room, he stopped doubtfully.
"Will you step in and take a chair, Mr. Dog?" inquired the kind lady.
Without the slightest hesitation, and seeming to comprehend what was said perfectly, Pierre slipped over the threshold and made for the master's easy-chair.
He reached this favorite seat with an easy bound as though he was used to the best chair, and there he sat straight as a drum-major, ears cocked, eyes snapping, waiting for the next move on this interesting program.
The mistress returned to the dining-room, and without a sign of a smile, said, "There is a gentleman in the sitting-room who wishes to see you."
The author swallowed a gulp of coffee to be primed for any emergency and went to the living-room, and there in the best chair sat Mr. Dog.
"Well, well, this is taking some liberties," said the master sternly, for Pierre's paws were muddy, and the chair was almost new. This was rather too much to be endured calmly, even by a lover of dogs.
If a dog could be described as blushing, Pierre blushed, and a look of shame overspread his face.
His whole manner and expression seemed to say, "I know I am very shabby this morning, but I am down on my luck. You do not think I am a tramp, do you? Really, I am used to the very best things. I am sorry about my paws."
The man smiled in spite of a determination to be very stern with a tramp who took such liberties. The smile did not escape the snapping, intelligent eyes.
Pierre got down from the chair deliberately, and came mincingly towards the author, the stub tail wagging feebly, dejection and tragic dog despair in every motion.
"Oh, it isn't so bad as that, Mr. Dog," said the man. "I see you are really a gentleman. We all have our ups and downs."
The Airedale stopped and listened intently to what the man said. He was watching for the intonation, to see whether it was friendly or not.
He probably concluded in his own favor, for he began walking slowly about the master, sniffing eagerly at his trousers.
Twice he made the circle, and then he looked up into the man's face with a bright relieved expression, and gave two short glad barks.
"You think I will do?" the man asked. Pierre barked twice, which was interpreted as "Why, you will do, perhaps not quite up to my real master, but still a rather good fellow who knows dogs."
Then it was that the man noticed the chain about the dog's neck and the War Cross.
"What have we here?" he inquired. "A decorated knight, or a soldier?"
He reached for the cross to examine it. Pierre backed away, wrinkling his upper lip and looking belligerent.
"I wouldn't steal your War Cross, that's a good fellow," said the man. "Let me see it." The Airedale advanced a step. The author patted his head, then slowly laid his hand upon the cross. The dog watched his every movement.
It was not a trinket, but a real Croix de Guerre. Many a brave man had given his life to be buried with that cross upon his breast.
"Guess I had better take it off and keep it for you," the man said. "You might lose it," and so he started to unclasp the chain. Quickly the dog's jaws closed over the wrist and his eyes glazed. A deep growl admonished the man.
"Oh, if you feel that way about it I will not touch it," he said, and he never tried to take the cross from Pierre again while he remained at Sunnyside. When the author finally heard from Madame how the Airedale had gained it and the Colonel's dying request, he did not wish to.
"Will you walk out and have some breakfast?" inquired the master, leading the way to the dining-room. Pierre followed meekly, showing by his dainty manners that he was used to the very best society.
He sat on a rug by the man's chair watching him eat, and from his expression he seemed hungry.
So the man passed him a juicy bit of steak, not porterhouse, but the best cut from the round.
He sniffed at it daintily, then looked up with a sorrowful expression, as though the meat were a great disappointment to him.
"Eat it, you little beggar," said the author rather sharply, for he was not in the habit of having dogs turn up their noses at good steak.
Pierre reached down and licked the meat with his dainty tongue, and then partly closed his lips upon it, but at once dropped the morsel.
Then he retreated a step or two and sat down upon the rug, thumping the floor with the stump tail. His expression was one of apology.
"I am very sorry," he seemed to be saying, "I would eat it to accommodate you if I could, but really it is quite out of the question."
"He must be sick," said the mistress tenderly.
"Sick nothing," snorted the man, "he is an aristocrat. He probably wants porterhouse. Well, he will have to wait a spell."
"Come here, you poor dog, and try this," said the mistress, at the same time spreading a bun generously with delicious new butter.
The Airedale went around with great alacrity, understanding the sympathetic tone if not the words.
"There, there, you poor hungry dog, eat that," said the kind lady.
She placed the delicious bun before his majesty.
As a special mark of condescension Pierre licked the butter from the bun but would not touch the bun itself.
"Well, well, he is some epicurean; won't touch my good buns."
"Perhaps he would like a plate of humming-birds' tongues, or a little ambrosia," the man suggested, ironically.
Pierre looked at him reproachfully, understanding that he was scornful of his dainty manners.
"If you had been brought up as I was, you would understand," he seemed to be saying. "I really can't help it. I am so sorry to hurt your feelings when you are so kind."
The mistress next brought him a piece of cake. He ate off the frosting and wagged his stump for more.
"I guess not," the man said; "you can't let him lick all the frosting off the cake. He may be some gentleman, but we won't stand for that. I am not fussy, but I don't want to eat the cake after him."
Pierre looked at the author with an expression of real sorrow. If they could only reach an understanding!
"See how sleek his coat is," said the mistress, all sympathy and concern for the starving guest.
"It's probably raw eggs," the man said. "They always help a dog's coat, but only kings and millionaires can afford to feed them."
At the word "egg," the Airedale cocked his ears and looked up at the author sharply.
"Is it eggs?" inquired the man.
Pierre barked gladly.
"I do really believe he is asking for eggs," said the sympathetic lady.
"You might try him on one," suggested the man. "They are only eighty cents a dozen."
The mistress hurried into the pantry closely followed by her new friend, that seemed perfectly to understand being the subject of their conversation.
She brought out the egg, and he watched her while she broke it, fairly quivering with eagerness; and when she put it down before him in a decorated saucer he licked it up frantically.
"Eggs it is," cried the man. "We have opened our doors and our hearts to an aristocrat, and there is no knowing what the cost will be."
Three raw eggs Pierre ate for breakfast before he was satisfied.
It did not take the people of Sunnyside long to discover that they had been adopted by an epicurean of no uncertain taste. One after another they tried upon him the dishes they had usually fed their dogs; but everything that was not costly and most extraordinary for a dog was refused. Not rudely nor bluntly, but with such grace, and with such consideration for their feelings that it was enough to make a dog laugh.
Often Pierre would take up a bit of something they had offered him daintily between his lips and stand holding it looking imploringly at them, as much as to say, "You see I would eat it if I possibly could, but really it is quite out of the question." Then he would finally drop the food, and go and lick the mistress's hands with his soft tongue by way of apology.
The only things they ever discovered that he would eat after much experimenting were raw eggs, cream, porterhouse steak, macaroons, nabiscos, lady-fingers, and the frosting from cake.
So it will be seen Pierre was a most perplexing boarder, and a costly one as well.
The author would have fits of sternness with him, saying that he must eat what other dogs did or starve, and he would come to it if he went hungry long enough. Then they would skip a meal, but it was not for long, for the author would soon catch the mistress feeding Pierre eggs on the sly, and when he told her it was against the rules, she would reply that she could not endure seeing a dear dog like that waste away.
For the first day or two the manners of the Airedale were a pattern for all dogs.
He was gentle and quiet and very dainty in the house.
To be sure he always wanted the best chair, and twice when he slipped away quietly and they looked for him he was discovered in the guest-chamber on the best bed—a fact that made the mistress highly indignant, but her husband explained to her the dog had divined this was the guest-chamber, and he probably considered himself their guest, as indeed he was, and they never worked harder to please a guest.
Pierre was very particular about being disturbed when in the master's easy-chair. The first time he tried to push him out of it the dog growled at him—not that throaty disagreeable growl which usually precedes a snap, but a deep-chested friendly growl, which the man interpreted as a remonstrance.
The first time Pierre did it the man took another chair, begging his pardon for having been so discourteous, but the second time the man said to him, "You are just a little bluffer, with your deep growl," and gave him a sharp slap and invited him to get down at once, which he did with a very sorry injured air, his whole mien saying. "Well, look at that. Who ever heard of treating a gentleman so rudely?"
It was the second day of his sojourn at Sunnyside that the man discovered his true nature. The days of tramp life, and the hardships that he had endured had subdued him, and the quiet, demure terrier that they knew thus far was not the real Pierre.
It had always been the habit of the master's old collie, that he had lost a year or two before, to go with him for the mail; so when he started out one afternoon he whistled for the Airedale.
That whistle and the invitation to accompany the man set off a thousand steel springs in the dog, and loosened an energy of which his friends had not even dreamed. He came after the author like the wind, leaping and barking.
"Here, here, go quietly," he admonished. "We must be respectable citizens," but he might have as well spoken to the wind. He gestured, threatened, scolded, and coaxed, but all to no avail. The imp of mischief had been set loose in Pierre, and the man was perfectly helpless.
The first thing he discovered on this walk was that Pierre was not used to children, and every time he saw one he started for it frantically, barking, and making a great fuss. He evidently considered it some new kind of playfellow made for his special amusement.
Although he intended the children no harm, yet he went with such seeming ferocity towards them, that with one accord they took to their heels, yelling with fright, and this pleased him prodigiously.
Time and again angry mothers asked the author if that was his dog, and he would reply meekly he was not really his, but one that was staying at Sunnyside. The master tried to excuse Pierre in each instance, pointing to his War Cross and saying he was a hero, but he met with little success.
In the course of a short walk he chased three groups of children, tipped over a perambulator, treed two cats, one of which he nearly got, and had a scrap with the butcher's boy, who threw stones at him from a safe distance, making him perfectly frantic with fury. The author whistled and shouted until he was out of breath. Finally he disowned Pierre altogether, and hurried home trying to throw him off his scent. When he entered the front door, the Airedale appeared from somewhere and slunk in at his heels.
The man was completely worn out and somewhat angry.
"I never'll take that little imp to walk with me again," he said hotly. The mistress at once took the dog's part. He quickly saw how the land lay and went to her with an injured air.
"You should have controlled him with kindness," she said. "See how gentle he is. You probably spoke harshly to him, and ruffled him."
"He may go with you next time," her husband replied. "I will let you try kind persuasion on him."
So the next day he went to walk with his mistress. They came back in half an hour, and she was nearly in tears, and so tired out she had to lie down.
But you must not get a wrong impression of Pierre from these sorry experiences, for there was not a mean thing about him. He was so full of dog spirits he did not know what to do with them.
The only way they could get along with him at all, was to punish him every day or two severely enough to keep his spirits down. He was one of those dogs that need affliction to keep them within bounds.
The children were such a source of delight to him that he would chase every child that went by the house. So the author finally had to tie him up, although it nearly broke his heart. The children avenged themselves when he was tied, by yelping at him, and this promptly made him furious.
The master forbade their barking at him, but they would do it on the sly, and he could not watch them all the time. Pierre finally became so sensitive that if a boy pointed a finger at him, he would bristle up like a porcupine. One boy could even drive him into a fury by merely making up a face at him.
So the author finally tied him behind the house where he could not see them. Here he dug under a choice grape-vine, and tangled himself up a dozen times a day.
The man wore out more shoe-leather travelling into the back yard to untangle his rope than he did all the rest of the day, so he tied Pierre in the shed. But he was always into something.
One day he dug under the house and went on a voyage of discovery. He filled up the hole after him, and the master was obliged to take down a part of the wall to get him out.
He gnawed things, he tore up things, and he made his good friends more trouble than all the dogs they had ever possessed, and the number had been legion. But somehow they forgave him all.
Some days when he had been more full of mischief than usual, the mistress would go out at night to feed him raw eggs, and cover him up with a warm blanket, and he would be so affectionate and gentle that she would declare he had reformed, and we would see a better-behaved dog on the morrow. But on the morrow all his imps came back, with reinforcements.
Yet through all these tribulations with him, he was so affectionate, and so gentlemanly when he had a mind to be, that they had never loved a dog more.
The mistress and the master might have gone to premature graves, had not a friend from Meadowdale called, and disclosed Pierre's identity.
She had seen the great actress in her private car, when she was playing in the city, and had there made the acquaintance of the Airedale.
"Why, what in the world!" she cried. "Where did you get Madame Bernier's dog?"
"He adopted us," the author replied, and explained briefly.
"He ran away when she was playing in Meadowdale," the lady continued. "Madame advertised for him and was nearly heart-broken, but they could not find him. Pierre, come here, you rascal," she concluded.
A more delighted dog than he was at the mention of his name could not be imagined. He fairly bounded into the lady's lap, nearly upsetting her with his exuberance.
"He does seem to know his own name," the author said. "I shall have to write to Madame and tell her all about it." Although he had nearly been the death of them, a pang shot through the man's heart at the thought of losing him.
The next day he wrote the letter, and slipped it into the letter-box, wondering what strange thing it would bring about.
After the author had mailed his letter to Madame, Pierre began to mend his ways rapidly. Probably the continual dinning of manners and morals into him was having effect, for he certainly became quite a well-behaved dog, that could on occasions even accompany the author to walk without disgracing him.
Also his affection for his new friends seemed to increase with each passing day. The truth was, he was growing into their hearts and lives, and they were—growing into his.
I presume most of my readers have read Kipling's little poem about giving one's heart to a dog to tear. That is what a true dog-lover usually does. Not that the dog tears his heart intentionally, but there are always so many things that may happen to make your heart ache after you have given it fully and unreservedly to a dog.
At the very best, he will grow old and blind, and there will come that wretched day, when after sleepless nights you resort to the chloroform bottle. Then there are accidents and a dozen and one things that may happen to your pet, even if he does not live to a good old age.
Finally the letter that they had dreaded so long came. Full of foreboding, the master tore open the envelope and read as follows:
"My dear Monsieur, the Poet:
"I can never tell you with mere pen and paper what joy your letter gave me. To think that my dear Pierre is still alive and well, and as happy as he could ever be without his mistress.
"The poor little beggar! What must he not have suffered! I never played worse in my whole life, not even when I was young, than the week following the day that I lost him. That stupid Marie! I could have wrung her neck with relish, but she is a fine servant, and I could not spare her.
"What hardship my darling must have seen before he found his kind friends! Think of it, Monsieur, he always had his bath and his combing every morning as regularly as I did. But he was a rogue, Monsieur. That must have been why I loved him so. But, thanks to his kind friends, I shall soon see him again."
"Last June, when I returned to France," the letter continued, "I left Marie in America, to visit friends, and also to see if anything turned up concerning Pierre. She is to sail Saturday at three p. m. on the Princess Louise from New York. Can you meet her at the steamer, and bring dear Pierre with you? I will cable her, and she will be on the watch for you.
"I am glad he has not lost his War Cross. It was the gift of a brave Colonel who was dying on the battle-field. He said Pierre must always wear it and for me to have it buried with him.
"The enclosed check for a thousand francs is very small payment for all you have done for Pierre. You have, besides, my dear poet, my most abundant gratitude for all time.
"Thanking you again a thousand times, both for myself and Pierre, I am your much-indebted friend.
"Madame Bernier."
The man gasped and rubbed his eyes, and then turned to the letter again, and read it over carefully to see if he had made any mistake. But there it was in black and white, as irrevocable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. He had got to give up his little dog friend. There was no other honorable course left to him.
That night the mistress tearfully tucked Pierre for the last time under his blanket in the kennel, and they held their last good-night confab.
Pierre was conscious, from the manner of his friends, of some impending change. He did not know just what it was, but he knew that they were depressed and so he shared their distress.
It was a very demure Airedale that the master led on the leash the following morning to the depot. While they stood on the platform waiting for the train, he crowded between the man's legs, and could not seem to get close enough to his adopted master.
They took their place in the smoking-car, as the conductor told them parlor-cars were not for dogs. What if he had seen the car in which Pierre had ridden so many thousand miles. But they did not care as long as they were together. A smoking-car was good enough for the man, if he had good company, and he did that morning.
Pierre insisted on sitting next to the window so that he could look outside and watch the landscape as they rushed along. It must have reminded him of old days,—the old days when he sat at the window of his mistress's car, and watched the great wide world slip by.
But the world could not hold him for long this morning, and he frequently turned to the master and nosed the morning paper from his hands, and invited him to cuddle him, and talk to him.
Then it was that the author told him the full contents of the letter. He looked very grave at its conclusion, taking his cue from the man.
Finally the long journey was over and they took a taxi at the Grand Central for the wharves. They had just time enough to catch the boat.
The author had no difficulty in finding Marie, and she recognized him by the dog on the leash.
The master followed her to the palatial French liner, and left her after a few minutes on one of the upper decks, keeping a tight hold on the leash. Pierre looked very forlorn and anxious, but Marie assured the author that he would not get away again. She would see to that, as her own life would be the forfeit if he did.
The master had her cover the Airedale's head with a handkerchief while he slipped quickly away, without any special farewell. He had been saying good-bye all the way down to New York.
Five minutes later he stood on the wharf watching the tugs work the liner out of her slip. He could just distinguish Marie on the upper deck where he had left her with Pierre.
This was the last he ever saw of them.