Loveliness: A Story

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

On that black day when the baby girl had used her white apron by way of blowers before the reluctant nursery fire, the little dog was alone in the room with her. It had so happened.

Suddenly, through the busy house resounded four shrill, staccato barks. In the vocabulary of Loveliness this meant, "Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!" Borne with them came the terrible cries of the child. When the mother and the nursemaid got to the spot, the baby was ablaze from her white apron to her yellow hair. She was writhing on the floor. The terrier, his own silver locks scorching, and his paws in the flame, was trying to cover his young mistress with the big Persian rug, in itself a load for a collie. He had so far succeeded that the progress of the flames had been checked.

For years the professor speculated on the problems raised by this tremendous incident. Whether the Yorkshire regarded the fire as a superfluity, like a dinner one does not want,—but that was far-fetched. Whether he knew that wool puts out fire,—but that was incredible. Whether this, that, or the other, no man could say, or ever has. Perhaps the intellect of the dog, roused to its utmost by the demand upon his heart, blindly leaped to its most difficult exertion. It was always hard to cover things with rugs. In this extremity one must do the hardest. Or did sheer love teach him to choose, in a moment that might have made a fool or a lunatic of a man, the only one or two of several processes which could by any means reach the emergency?

At all events, the dog saved the child. And she became henceforth the saint and idol of the family, and he its totem and its hero. The two stood together in one niche above the household altar. It was impossible to separate them. But after that terrible hour little Adah was as she was: frail, uncertain of step, scarred on the pearl of her neck and the rose of her cheek; not with full command of her voice; more nervously deficient than organically defective,—but a perfect being marred. Her father said, "She goeth lame and lovely."

On the afternoon when our story began, the child and the Yorkshire sat cuddled together in the broad window seat for a long time. Blessedness sat with them. Adah talked in low love tones, using a language as incomprehensible to other people as the tongue in which the dog replied to her. They carried on long conversations, broken only by caresses, and by barks of bliss or jets of laughter. The child tired herself with laughing and loving, and the dog watched her; he did not sleep; he silently lapped the fingers of her little hand that lay like a cameo upon the silken cushion.

Some one came in and said in a low voice: "She is tired out. She must have her supper and be put to bed."

Afterwards it was remembered that she clung to Loveliness and cried a little, foolishly; fretting that she did not want her supper, and demanding that the dog should go up to bed with her and be put at once into his basket by her side. This was gently refused.

"You shall see him in the morning," they told her. Kathleen put the little dog down forcibly from the arms of the child, who wailed at the separation. She called back over the balusters: "Love-li-ness! Good-by, Loveliness! When we're grown up, we'll always be togever, Loveliness!"

The dog barked rebelliously for a few minutes; then sighed, and accepted the situation. He ran back and picked up the pamphlet which Kathleen had dropped, and carried it upstairs to the professor's study, where he laid it on the lowest shelf of the revolving bookcase. The professor glanced at the dog-eared pages and smiled. The pamphlet was one of the innumerable throng issued by some philanthropic society devoted to improving the condition of animals.

When Kathleen came downstairs she found the dog standing at the front door, patiently asking that it might be opened for him. She went down the steps; for it was the rule of the house never to allow the most helpless member of the family at liberty unguarded. The evening was soft, and the maid stood looking idly about. A man in a yellow jersey, and with straight, black eyebrows, was on the other side of the street; but he did not look over. The suburban town was still and pleasant; advancing spring was in the air; no one was passing; only a negro boy lolled on the old-fashioned fence, and shouted: "Hi! Yi! Yi! Look a' dem crows carryin' off a b'iled pertater 'n' a piecer squushed pie!"