A LOST DOG
A Lost Dog
I
Have you ever noticed the melancholy pensive look masterless dogs assume at the hour when the press thins, and the passers-by slacken their pace on the side-walks, like waters from a tap running dry?
As the silence deepens they appear from every side, these poor, friendless beasts, their meagre forms slinking through the fog and gloom; up and down the streets they prowl, noses to the ground, and tails drooping, like so many lost souls. Some have sound legs to run on, others can hardly drag themselves along; but all have hollow flanks and protruding ribs. They are out in search of food, nosing in the refuse heaps, scratching in the mud, filching from the scavengers bones as fleshless as themselves.
What the world lets fall from its table is still a banquet for their starving bellies. They are not hard to please; till the wan light of dawn surprises them, they hunt the streets, rain-soaked and frost-bitten; then they creep back into mysterious holes and corners, where they curl themselves up in a round and sleep away the livelong day.
Most of them are wild and shy, for they have only known the blackest side of life—cuffs and kicks, wretchedness and desertion. For them no hope survives the shipwreck of friendships betrayed; alone they live and alone they creep into a hole to die—creatures of the dunghill whose obsequies will be performed by the scavenger’s cart.
But if some are discouraged and disillusioned, there are bolder spirits too who will sometimes, when they hear the steps of a belated wayfarer, tear themselves from the heap they are foraging in and stand panting and eager in the dark street, with the desperate eye of a swimmer looking out across the raging foam in search of a port of safety. Hope is not yet dead in them; they still have faith in mankind, and each shadowy form that emerges in the light of the gas-lamps entices them as offering promise of a home. For hours they will trot, with a humble, gentle, deprecating gait, at the heels of a casual passer-by, a shadow among shadows, dogging his steps to the last, hoping against hope. It is a friend they are fain to run to earth; but alas! the chase is one that is repeated night after night—and it is almost always unsuccessful. More often than not, the pursued has no inkling even of the dumb escort that attends him through the night.
How should he know? Behind his back the dog treads noiselessly, with paws of velvet and nose to earth, checking his pace when the stranger slackens his, stopping when he stops, bit by bit learning his walk and ways. At last, when he has journeyed far through the dark streets, when his legs ache with pursuing under the wayfarer’s form a dream that is never to come true, a door will interpose, a ponderous, an impassable barrier between him and his fond hopes. Yet, who can tell? perhaps he will still linger on, shivering, till daylight, so unconquerable is his faith in man.