Part 14

And out of the tub there crawled slowly, with a snuffling whimper and a rattling of its chain, the identical dog I had slain a few evenings before!

At least, so I thought for a moment, and felt as if I had seen a spectre; the resemblance was so exact--in size, in every detail, even to the little clumps of hair about the hind parts, even to the lop of half an ear, this dog might have been the doppelganger of the deceased Bingo. I suppose, after all, one black poodle is very like any other black poodle of the same size, but the likeness startled me.

I think it was then that the idea occurred to me that here was a miraculous chance of securing the sweetest girl in the whole world, and at the same time atoning for my wrong by bringing back gladness with me to Shuturgarden. It only needed a little boldness; one last deception, and I could embrace truthfulness once more.

Almost unconsciously, when my guide turned round and asked, “Is that there dawg yourn?” I said hurriedly, “Yes, yes; that’s the dog I want; that--that’s Bingo!”

“He don’t seem to be a-puttin’ of ‘isself out about seein’ you again,” observed Mr. Blagg, as the poodle studied me with calm interest.

“Oh, he’s not exactly my dog, you see,” I said; “he belongs to a friend of mine!”

He gave me a quick, furtive glance. “Then maybe you’re mistook about him,” he said, “and I can’t run no risks. I was a-goin’ down in the country this ‘ere werry evenin’ to see a party as lives at Wistaria Willa; he’s been a-hadwertisin’ about a black poodle, he has!”

“But look here,” I said; “that’s me.”

He gave me a curious leer. “No offence, you know, guv’nor,” he said, “but I should wish for some evidence as to that afore I part with a vallyable dawg like this ‘ere!”

“Well,” I said, “here’s one of my cards; will that do for you?”

He took it and spelled it out with a pretence of great caution; but I saw well enough that the old schoundrel suspected that if I had lost a dog at all it was not this particular dog. “Ah,” he said, as he put it in his pocket, “if I part with him to you I must be cleared of all risks. I can’t afford to get into trouble about no mistakes. Unless you likes to leave him for a day or two you must pay accordin’, you see.”

I wanted to get the hateful business over as soon as possible. I did not care what I paid--Lilian was worth all the expense! I said I had no doubt myself as to the real ownership of the animal, but I would give him any sum in reason, and would remove the dog at once.

And so we settled it. I paid him an extortionate sum, and came away with a duplicate poodle, a canine counterfeit, which I hoped to pass off at Shuturgarden as the long-lost Bingo.

I know it was wrong,--it even came unpleasantly near dog-stealing,--but I was a desperate man. I saw Lilian gradually slipping away from me, I knew that nothing short of this could ever recall her, I was sorely tempted, I had gone far on the same road already; it was the old story of being hung for a sheep. And so I fell.

Surely some who read this will be generous enough to consider the peculiar state of the case, and mingle a little pity with their contempt.

I was dining in town that evening, and took my purchase home by a late train; his demeanour was grave and intensely respectable; he was not the animal to commit himself by any flagrant indiscretion; he was gentle and tractable too, and in all respects an agreeable contrast in character to the original. Still, it may have been the after-dinner workings of conscience, but I could not help fancying that I saw a certain look in the creature’s eyes, as if he were aware that he was required to connive at a fraud, and rather resented it.

If he would only be good enough to back me up! Fortunately, however, he was such a perfect facsimile of the outward Bingo that the risk of detection was really inconsiderable.

When I got him home I put Bingo’s silver collar round his neck, congratulating myself on my forethought in preserving it, and took him in to see my mother. She accepted him as what he seemed without the slightest misgiving; but this, though it encouraged me to go on, was not decisive--the spurious poodle would have to encounter the scrutiny of those who knew every tuft on the genuine animal’s body!

Nothing would have induced me to undergo such an ordeal as that of personally restoring him to the Curries. We gave him supper, and tied him up on the lawn, where he howled dolefully all night and buried bones.

The next morning I wrote a note to Mrs. Currie, expressing my pleasure at being able to restore the lost one, and another to Lilian, containing only the words, “Will you believe now that I am sincere?” Then I tied both round the poodle’s neck, and dropped him over the wall into the colonel’s garden just before I started to catch my train to town.

I had an anxious walk home from the station that evening; I went round by the longer way, trembling the whole time lest I should meet any of the Currie household, to which I felt myself entirely unequal just then. I could not rest until I knew whether my fraud had succeeded, or if the poodle to which I had intrusted my fate had basely betrayed me; but my suspense was happily ended as soon as I entered my mother’s room. “You can’t think how delighted those poor Curries were to see Bingo again,” she said at once; “and they said such charming things about you, Algy--Lilian particularly; quite affected she seemed, poor child! And they wanted you to go round and dine there and be thanked to-night, but at last I persuaded them to come to us instead. And they’re going to bring the dog to make friends. Oh, and I met Frank Travers; he’s back from circuit again now, so I asked him in too to meet them!”

I drew a deep breath of relief. I had played a desperate game, but I had won! I could have wished, to be sure, that my mother had not thought of bringing in Travers on that of all evenings, but I hoped that I could defy him after this.

The colonel and his people were the first to arrive, he and his wife being so effusively grateful that they made me very uncomfortable indeed; Lilian met me with downcast eyes and the faintest possible blush, but she said nothing just then. Five minutes afterward, when she and I were alone together in the conservatory, where I had brought her on pretence of showing a new begonia, she laid her hand on my sleeve and whispered, almost shyly, “Mr. Weatherhead--Algernon! Can you ever forgive me for being so cruel and unjust to you?” And I replied that, upon the whole, I could.

We were not in the conservatory long, but before we left it beautiful Lilian Roseblade had consented to make my life happy. When we reentered the drawing-room we found Frank Travers, who had been told the story of the recovery; and I observed his jaw fall as he glanced at our faces, and noted the triumphant smile which I have no doubt mine wore, and the tender, dreamy look in Lilian’s soft eyes. Poor Travers! I was sorry for him, although I was not fond of him. Travers was a good type of rising young common-law barrister, tall, not bad-looking, with keen dark eyes, black whiskers, and the mobile forensic mouth which can express every shade of feeling, from deferential assent to cynical incredulity; possessed, too, of an endless flow of conversation that was decidedly agreeable, if a trifling too laboriously so, he had been a dangerous rival. But all that was over now; he saw it himself at once, and during dinner sank into dismal silence, gazing pathetically at Lilian, and sighing almost obtrusively between the courses. His stream of small talk seemed to have been cut off at the main.

“You’ve done a kind thing, Weatherhead,” said the colonel. “I can’t tell you all that dog is to me, and how I missed the poor beast. I’d quite given up all hope of ever seeing him again, and all the time there was Weatherhead, Mr. Travers, quietly searching all London till he found him! I sha’n’t forget it. It shows a really kind feeling.”

I saw by Travers’s face that he was telling himself he would have found fifty Bingos in half the time--if he had only thought of it; he smiled a melancholy assent to all the colonel said, and then began to study me with an obviously depreciatory air.

“You can’t think,” I heard Mrs. Currie telling my mother, “how really touching it was to see poor Bingo’s emotion at seeing all the old familiar objects again! He went up and sniffed at them all in turn, quite plainly recognising everything. And he was quite put out to find that we had moved his favourite ottoman out of the drawing-room. But he is so penitent too, and so ashamed of having run away; he kept under a chair in the hall all the morning; he wouldn’t come in here, either, so we had to leave him in your garden.”

“He’s been sadly out of spirits all day,” said Lilian; “he hasn’t bitten one of the tradespeople.”