VII
It was four months before any improvement was discernible: it was a year before confidence could really be said to have grown at all. In some directions it never grew. For instance, of labouring men, gardeners, and the like, Murphy always remained shy. It was in no spirit of unforgivingness, for he was perfectly civil; neither did he owe them any grudge, grudges being forbidden usually by dog law and only entertained by the poorest characters of all. Thus he never became familiar, even with those he met daily: his memory was phenomenal, and by passing by on the other side he showed that his associations in this direction were unhappy.
It fell to this dog’s lot to live a very quiet life and to be thrown with few—either dogs or men. His days were regulated by his master’s doings, and these again were regulated, of necessity, by method. The weeks came, and ran their course, and did not vary very greatly one from the other. There was the daily round of work—almost incessant work, life being supportable that way and in no other. There was the break, half-way through the morning, of a run of a quarter of an hour, wet or shine. There was the walk across country in the afternoon, also totally irrespective of the weather. There was the turn at night under similar conditions. That was the dog’s day in winter-time; perhaps also the man’s. In spring and summer both lived under the sky, and regarded a house only as a place to sleep in. Habit is second nature. Interests were many, and in some directions ran parallel—sporting instincts, especially, being quite ineradicable. Life for both was thus exceeding happy; and life grew always happier with friendship: that is as it should be.
With those he met Murphy was genial, if shy. He grew to love the members of his little home circle; though three of the quartet ever averred that, in reality, he only loved one wholly and altogether, and clung to him in a way that others noticed—folk on the land always referring to them, the country over, as “Him and his dog.”
Were they not always together? The shepherds on the downs recognised them at great distances, for shepherds see far. The shepherds’ dogs knew them equally well, and they see furthest. The ploughmen in the hollows caught sight of them against the skyline in the waning winter day, when the team grew weary as they themselves—which last fact, too, made these best of men shout with full lungs, “Please, will you tell us the time!” The man with the hand-drill sowing the spring seeds; the poorer folk, men and women with their buckets, stone-picking in the chill, autumnal weather; the stockmen as they drove the cattle home, or called them from the lush fields with the crack of a whip—spring-time and harvest, all the seasons through; in wind and rain, in the great heat, in the snow and the blizzard, it was always the same. And thus, in this unenclosed country, where there were great woods, but where hedges were almost non-existent, the men of the land would look up and pass the remark to their mates, with a jerk of the head, “Ther’s ’im an’ ’is dog; see?”
Outside the home circle—though, to be sure, a dog is, or should always be considered, a part of the family—Murphy’s passion was for Dan. He invariably got up when Dan entered the room, and often licked him many times upon the lips: he paid him every kind of attention; bullied him to play when out of doors; woke him when he judged it was not fitting he should be asleep; and, in fact, made a young dog of him again for a time, though Dan was really old. He already owed Dan a good deal, for Dan had initiated him into many things concerning rabbits, rats, and the rest, that all self-respecting dogs should know. Thus the old dog being an inveterate sportsman, Murphy followed suit—and both were, at all risks, encouraged so to be.
As Murphy furnished and grew stronger he naturally became more handsome, till passers-by would turn and remark upon the pair—the old dog and the young, lying on the bank of the river, patiently, while some one did mysterious things with paints; or they were seen returning together in the evening, sitting side by side in the stern of a boat. They were certainly a very uncommon pair.
Dan’s character had been, of course, fully formed long ago, and a truly wonderful character it was, as has already been related. Murphy’s was still in the making. If the whole of the first year was a period of difficulty, the first four months might well have staggered any one undertaking a self-imposed task of such a nature. The ideal aimed at was never suffered to be out of sight, but, like most ideals, it had a trick at times of receding almost beyond the range of hope. It was not that the dog was continually doing wrong. Perhaps it would have been better if he had been, for then there would have been something tangible. The difficulty consisted in conveying to the dog what he should not do, without frightening him, and without getting cross and losing temper. To train a dog that takes his thrashing, shakes himself, lays his ears back, and prepares for the next, oblivious of consequences, is not beyond the wit of man, though possibly a gift. But what is to be done in the case of a dog that is terror-stricken, even if the voice is raised? The position forms as fine a period of probation in its way as any that wilful man could desire; and at that the matter may be left.