Part 9

What to do with Laddie? Gunnar, disgusted enough at having Flosi back again, flatly avowed that he would not put up with another brother on the premises. Ralph, in the fullness of years, and little Dora, prematurely, had slipped away to Shadowland, bequeathing the care of Cedar Hill to Gunnar, who was keenly alive to his responsibilities. From one of our recent visits Sigurd had come back with a bleeding ear and a red blotch on the top of his head. So the farmhouse of the estate opened its doors to Laddie, but he had other views and, running away the first afternoon, made a valiant effort to get back to the Sisters. He took one wrong turn and was lost for a night and a day, but his rare beauty and appealing charm won him a friend who allowed him to follow her home, fed him, read his collar and soon made telephone connection with his distressed mistresses, already resolved to let their steamer go without them rather than sail in ignorance of Laddie's fate. They were stout-hearted enough, however, when they knew that he was found, to ask the Cedar Hill farmer to go and reclaim the stray, denying themselves and Laddie another farewell.

We hoped that in the year's separation the two brothers would forget each other or, at least, outgrow their propensity to revert to the wild together. It seemed the more likely because Laddie, always fragile, had suffered a severe attack of pneumonia at the farmhouse, and came back to the Sisters looking more like a white spirit than ever. But he took time, on arrival, only to greet his household saints and indulge in a brief nap on the sofa before dashing off to find Sigurd. Away they went on an impassioned run, from which, seven hours later, Laddie came drooping home, and even Sigurd spent the next day curled up in his green easy chair, subdued and quiescent, looking like an illustration for "After the Ball."

Although we kept what guard we could upon them, they managed to elude us several times that autumn, but after the first wild spurt they would run more slowly, Sigurd slackening his natural speed in order to keep side by side with Laddie, whose hard panting could be heard above the rustling of the autumn leaves through which they raced. The worry cow hooked us badly on Christmas day. Laddie, who had coughed all night, had to be coaxed to come out for a little walk after breakfast and was dragging behind the Younger Sister when, turning the corner of a bright barberry hedge, they came upon Sigurd, gorgeous in his new, upstanding bow of holly ribbon. Hey, presto! Off they shot like young wolves on the trail. Under the starlight our truant returned, a damp wisp hanging from his collar. That white, wavy front of his, so carefully groomed for the festal day, was all red and green from the holly ribbon that he had been chewing up for his Christmas dinner. As for poor Laddie, he was ill for a week, but rallied again, and, despite our doubled and redoubled vigilance, the brothers had still two or three runs together before the end of February brought with it the end of Laddie's life.

Beautiful being that he was, he had gladdened earth for five and a half years. If it is hard to believe in immortality, it is harder to understand how his Maker could cast away a spirit of such pure sweetness as Laddie's. Perhaps he ranges the celestial meadows now and has found out what King Lear wanted to know,--"the cause of thunder." For thunder was Laddie's terror. He could be quieted only by the Younger Sister, who, going to the piano, would play her loudest, while the trembling collie crouched against her feet.

This second attack of pneumonia was relentless. Laddie was not allowed to suffer it to the end, but was tenderly put to sleep. Shortly after, Sigurd trotted over to The Orchard of his own impulse and, without any of the customary lurking and looking for Laddie, went straight in to the Sisters, licking their hands and pressing close against their knees.

That afternoon a few of Laddie's closest friends--though all the town loved Laddie--gathered about a little grave on The Orchard lawn, while the delicate Elder Sister, wrapped in a white shawl, with Sigurd, wearing a white ribbon, close beside her for comfort, looked down on the scene from an open chamber window. In the group below, one of us after another quietly spoke of Laddie's gentleness and gladness and affection, of the happiness he had given and received. The Younger Sister read a lyric good-bye that the Elder Sister had written and thanked God, as simply as if He were standing in our midst, for all the joy of Laddie. Then we lowered the box, dropping upon it the white rosebuds that the Dryad had sent and the white carnations that Jack's mistress had brought. When the earth went in, one voice said softly, "Dust to dust," but another responded clearly, "Love to love." All the while Sigurd's intent eyes and golden head peered from the window above and once he gave a short, troubled bark.

SIGURD'S MEDITATIONS IN THE CHURCH-PORCH

The gaze of a dog is blind To splendors of summit and sky, Ocean and isle, But never a painter shall find The beautiful more than I In my lady's smile.

The thought of a dog is dim. Not even a wag he deigns To the wisest book. Philosophy dwells for him In loving the law that reigns In voice, in look.

The heart of a dog is meek. He places his utter trust In a mortal grace, Contented his God to seek In a creature framed of dust With a dreaming face.

The human is our divine. In the porch of the church, I pray For a rustling dress, For those dear, swift steps of thine, Whose path is my perfect way Of holiness.

ADVENTURES

"Puntarvolo. Is he religious?

Gentleman. I know not what you call religious, but he goes to church, I am sure."

--Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour.

The zest, the fun, the excitement Sigurd infused into our human humdrum outwent all expectation. I think it added a relish even to Joy-of-Life's devotions at the early service of St. Andrew's that a suppressed yelp and a vehement scamper might at any second denote Laddie's appearance and Sigurd's instant reversion from her pious attendant in the vestibule to a wild creature of enraptured speed. He opened our eyes to a new vision of the most familiar things. What we had considered merely gray squirrels were revealed, through his glorious campaign against them, as goblin banditti bent on insult and robbery. For on those enchanted autumn days, when we would be wandering through the rich-colored, spicy woods, where winds laughed among the branches and chased leaves bright as jewels down the air, these impertinent squirrels were always scolding overhead and dropping acorns on us. I remember one such stroll, when a falling chestnut smacked Sigurd soundly on the nose. He at once attributed the indignity to the squirrels--quite unjustly this time--and made off in pursuit of a wily old fellow that whisked in and out among the slender birch boles and led him, as if for the mere sport of it, on a far chase. I was absorbed meanwhile in altruistic combat with a troop of ants, a foraging party returning to their hill-castle with a company of belated beetles as booty. As often as I brushed the ranks into confusion with a spray of goldenrod, it was astonishing to see how quickly the discomfited ants would rally and how immediately every one of the madly skurrying beetles--for their pitiless captors had deprived them of their wings--would be again a prisoner, surrounded in close formation by a marching escort. Looking up from this insect tragedy, I saw Sigurd tearing back with something in his mouth that, for one horrified instant, I thought was the slaughtered squirrel. It turned out to be my hat, which, blowing merrily away from the bramble whereon it was hung, had been captured by my friend in need, who proudly restored it, somewhat the worse for the manner of its rescue. Later on, in the hushed Indian summer noons, Joy-of-Life and I would take our luncheon out into the woods, where our golden collie would roll over and over in a rustling bed of leaves much of his own color or of brown, fragrant pine-needles, his bright eyes always on the watch for any aggression from the peering citizens of the trees.

The winter, however, was Sigurd's heroic season. He had the soul of a helper, not of a pet, and longed for occupation, responsibility, service. His sentry duty at night, his guardianship in our walks, his herding of the family into the dining-room three times a day with punctual solicitude, these were not enough. It was amusing and yet, in a way, touching to see with what strenuous earnestness he took upon himself the task of driving the squirrels away from the bird boxes. For our neighbors, the "shadowtails," as the Greeks called them, were so obtuse as to appropriate to their own comfort and convenience every provision we made for the flying folk. We had put up in the trees near the house a few bird palaces, variously named, according to the dominant interest of those whose respective windows overlooked them, Toynbee Hall, the Tabard Inn, the Waldorf-Astoria, the Mermaid Tavern; but their bluebird tenants were soon ejected, and families of baby squirrels, for whose repose their parents busily chewed up mattresses of leaf and bark, were reared in those proud abodes. To this Sigurd had to submit, though he would lie for hours on the piazza, his chin on his paws, wondering why the Collie Creator, whom he probably took to be much like his adorable father Ralph, only a thousand times as big--for had not Sigurd heard in the skies the thunder of his bark?--denied to dogs the gift of climbing trees. But their attack on the food-boxes brought these pirates almost within Sigurd's reach.

From several of the upper windows had been built out simple and practical feeding-shelves,--shallow wooden boxes partitioned off by cross-pieces into some six or eight compartments. Here we would put out marrowbones, suet, shreds and scraps from the dinner-plates, nuts, acorns, pinecones, grains, crumbs, fragments of cheese, and here, all the long winter through, our welcome guests were chickadees, nut-hatches, tree sparrows, downy woodpeckers, juncos, with an occasional fox sparrow or purple finch or flock of Canadian crossbills. Our unwelcome guests were English sparrows, of whom, however, we had but few and those of rather subdued deportment; blue jays, who would fly away with big pieces of meat or cocoanut, and the gray squirrels, who would come stealing softly down the edge of the casement and suddenly leap into the box. Here they would sit up on their haunches, defying us through the pane with hard, black eyes, and gobble till they could gobble no more. Then they would stuff their elastic cheeks almost to bursting and make off with their plunder only to be back again before the little birds, so long and so patiently waiting on the snowy branches of the nearest tree, had really settled down to enjoy the leavings.

Sigurd instinctively understood that the little birds were guests--to the English sparrows he gave the benefit of the doubt--and that the blue jays and squirrels were intruders. On a keen winter day, when the boxes had been freshly filled, he was indeed an overworked collie, scampering from room to room and window to window, barking furiously at the raiders. This vociferous warning that no trespassers were allowed sufficed for the blue jays, who would flap sullenly away, but the squirrels were quick to learn that a bark was not a bite. Shadowtail would only drop his nut and sit up erect and alert, his little fists pressed to his heart, his beady eyes staring straight against the dog's honest, indignant gaze. Seeing that his loudest roar had lost its terrors, Sigurd would leap up toward the window and give it a resounding thump with his paw. At first this new menace put the squirrels to precipitate retreat. Off they went, nor stood upon the order of their going. A few minutes later, one shrewd little gray face after another would peer around the casement edge, but at the first view of that upright, shining figure, with the flowing snow-white ruff, mounting guard on chair or hassock, the goblin faces vanished. Sigurd was immensely proud of himself during this epoch of the warfare. A very Casabianca in his firm conception of duty, only the most imperative summons could call him from his post. But when the squirrels had learned that the barrier between the collie and themselves was, though transparent, an effective screen, and would, as before, saucily plant themselves in the middle of the box and resume the stuffing and pillaging process more diligently than ever, under his very eyes, Sigurd, frantic with fury, would beat an utterly tremendous tattoo upon the pane. Three times one January he crashed through the glass in one of my chamber windows, cutting his face and paws and subjecting the room to a more Arctic ventilation than I cared for. On these occasions the squirrels saved themselves by prodigious leaps into the nearest tree and did not venture back while that jagged gap remained,--so satisfactory a result, from Sigurd's point of view, that he marveled at my folly in calling in a glazier to repair the damage. As the man was working at the window, Sigurd would look from him to me with a puzzled and reproachful expression accentuated by the long strips of court plaster across his nose.

He had a vigorous ally in my mother, who brought her own bright wits to bear on the circumvention of the enemy. She knitted a little bag, filled it with nutmeats and hung it from the middle sash outside the window, so that it dangled halfway down in the open space which gave the squirrels no footing but delighted our winged pensioners. It was fun to see two spirited fluffs squaring at each other atop a lump of suet for the best chance to rise at the bag, till another plumy midget came fiercely down upon them and drove them, chirping remonstrance, off to the outer edges of the box. Then the newcomer, bristling with victory, flew up and secured the most desirable position on that swinging dinner-pail, while the others, nudging and scrambling, sought for a footing on the further side. But the squirrels studied the situation from above and from below and presently learned to run up the blind, make a sidelong leap to the bag and cling to it with all four legs and feet, while they gnawed through the threads until the goodies literally poured into their mouths. There they would cling and feast, while on the other side of the glass my mother and Sigurd, both of them sharply protesting and angrily rapping the pane, held a Council of War. As a result, my mother bought two iron sink-mops, wired them together and triumphantly fashioned a bag which even the strong teeth of the furry burglars, for all their persevering and ingenious efforts, could not bite open. But the happy chickadees and nut-hatches would perch there, by relays, all day long, thrusting their bills through the iron interstices and drawing out, bit by bit, the finely broken nutmeats.

The blue jays were routed quite by accident. The support of my box, a strip of wood running from the underside of that little feeding table to the house wall, had loosened its lower nail, and one day, when some passing touch of grippe kept me in bed, with Sigurd sitting upright on a chair beside me, playing nurse, a plump jay lit heavily upon the edge of the shelf and screeched with fright as it shook and slid beneath him. He took to his glossy wings and, within five minutes, the oak hard by was alive with our whole colony of blue jays, all eying that box and deep in agitated discussion. At last one venturesome fellow struck boldly out and lit on it, only to feel it sway and sag and, with a shriek rivaling that of his predecessor, flapped up just in time to save himself, as he believed, from a terrific disaster. This performance was repeated twice more and then the whole blue jay crew abandoned, for the rest of the winter, not only their attacks on my particular bird box, though its support was promptly made secure, but on all the bird boxes of the house. Sigurd and I were well content as we heard them croaking to one another, "A trap! Jam my feathers, a hateful, human trap! But they couldn't hoodwink us. Yah, yah, yah!"

The squirrels, however, continued to be Sigurd's chief household care. Out of doors, too, he was forever chasing them, but never, to my knowledge, so much as brushed the tail of one. In his sleep, he often seemed to be dreaming of a squirrel hunt, his feet running eagerly even while his body lay at full stretch upon the rug, and his breath coming in short pants. Sometimes he would howl in nightmare slumbers, but generally he appeared elate, climbing, perhaps, the trees of Dreamland, less slippery than our icy oaks, and driving out his enemies from their loftiest fastness.

Sigurd bore no grudges and when, as the pussy-willows, anemones and violets, the robins and the orioles were bringing in the spring, he was called upon to adorn a blue jay funeral procession, he wore his black ribbon with decorum. The chief mourner, a little lad by name of Wallace, was one of our nearest neighbors and most honored friends. He had been much perturbed in spirit over the perils of the blue jay brood whose nursery, so reckless were their parents, tilted precariously on a pine branch that overhung a ledge just beyond one end of Wallace's porch. He feared every wind would overthrow that nest, but when the shocking old mother, apparently in a fit of temper, deliberately pushed her children out herself, and they fell, one by one, to instant death on the rock below, Wallace's grief and horror were too great for a child's good. His resourceful father therefore proposed a grand funeral, as the only testimony of regard and regret that we could offer to the unlucky fledgelings, and Wallace, who was much preoccupied with his future career, having at one time planned to be a dentist in the forenoon, a musician in the afternoon, and an editor at night, entered with enthusiasm upon the duties of undertaker, sexton, and clergyman. Called upon for an anthem, I responded with a lament which Wallace found "too sad" to hear more than twice. On the second occasion it was intoned at the tiny grave, above which Sigurd drooped a puzzled head, not understanding a game that had in it neither romp nor laughter.

Though fond of Wallace, our collie's bearing toward small boys in general was not conspicuous for cordiality. Women he accepted as essential to the running of the universe; men--except for those vindictive monsters perched on express teams with long whips in hand--he regarded with amiable indifference; but about small boys he was dubious. Some of our rougher little neighbors had stoned and snowballed the new puppy. At Christmas we met that situation by converting Sigurd into Santa Claus,--dressing him up in holly ribbon and sleighbells and hanging on him the little gifts which we were in the way of taking about to the children on our hill. The immediate effect was excellent. Sigurd was thanked and patted and, in his pleasure at such appreciation, he would magnanimously lick the boyish hands that had been so often raised against him. One urchin was so impressed by a toy fire-engine that, at least through January, he touched his cap to "Mr. Sigurd" whenever they met; but with Fourth of July and Hallowe'en our troubles were all renewed. Firecrackers and torpedoes are so disconcerting to collie nerves that no normally bad boy could resist setting them off under Sigurd's very nose, somersaulting with ecstasy to see his instantaneous bolt for home; while on Hallowe'en all the youngsters on the hill would call in a troop, weirdly disguised, swinging Jack-o'-Lanterns and banging, scraping, whistling, piping, on strange instruments not of music. On these distracting occasions Sigurd was ready to tear those giggling spooks to bits, and either Joy-of-Life or I had to hold him tight, while the other passed the cookies and candies for which our supernatural visitants had come.

May Day was better fun for Sigurd. He quickly understood that the Maybasket chase was only a game and played it with a vim. But in general he did not care for festivals nor for any variation of the usual round. Just everyday living was joy enough for him. If Sigurd had made the calendar, the week would have been all Mondays. Even Christmas puzzled more than it pleased him. Such a confusion of brown paper and tissue paper, such a flourishing of queer, lumpy stockings, such tangles of string, such excitement over objects that had no thrill for his inquiring nose! And for himself, the rubber cats with gruesome squeaks inside them, the mechanical beetles that shook his courage as they charged at him across the floor! He could not make it out. Once when all the people present were shouting with mirth over a new, preposterous game of cards, Sigurd quietly picked up from under the table a pack not yet called into service and carried it out into the kitchen, where he was presently discovered with one forefoot set on the cards tumbled about before him, while he gazed dejectedly down at them in a defeated effort to find out why they were amusing. And the Christmas parties, for which he had to be scrubbed until he shone like an image of white and gold! And if it happened that, between his toilet and the party, he whizzed off with Laddie, what unpleasantness on his return!

"Sigurd was especially invited for to-night and I promised Wallace to bring him. But he's too dirty now and he hasn't had his dinner."

"All his own doing. He shall come dirty and dinnerless and learn to be ashamed of himself."

Not that he felt ashamed at all, but very tired and lame, hobbling behind his family into a bright, chattering room, where everybody wanted to pet him and where all he wanted was to be let alone to sleep his frolic off. Why must he be waked up with foolish laughter because that glittering tree, which he had not been allowed to investigate for squirrels, had given, in his name, a toy ship to Wallace, whose father, Professor Wit, must needs observe: "How like dear Sigurd, to present his neighbors with his barque!" And though for him the Christmas tree bore a chocolate caramel in the inmost box of a nest of boxes, he would, to the disappointment of the company who had heard of his skill in opening parcels, yawn and fall asleep over each box in turn. At his best, he bit drowsily into the pasteboard and pushed at the string more clumsily than usual with a pair of grimy paws from which the circle of silken skirts would draw away. Christmas, indeed, and an inaccessible chocolate caramel for dinner!