Landseer's Dogs and Their Stories

by Sarah Tytler

In addition, Flora had her susceptibilities keenly alive to any trace of Harry, or any association with him, so that on the sight of some article which had belonged to him, such as his cap or his old overcoat, or even on her catching the distant sound of the sportsmen’s dropping shots on the first of September, Flora would fall into an expectant position, and sit motionless and listening for hours. The last expression of her remembrance unquestionably detracted from the correctness of her premonitions of Harry’s reappearance; but his father and mother argued that there was a perceptible difference between Flora’s air when she sat thus waiting for her master, without any hope of seeing him, and her whole gait and manner when she flung up her bent head triumphantly before she made a bolt at the door or the open window, crying as plainly as if she had made the remark in so many words—“Ah! don’t you know Master Harry is at the gate?” Either expression was clear to Harry’s father and mother, who had a sympathy with the dog, and whose own dim eyes showed a reflection of the aimless wistfulness which was creeping into Flora’s brighter orbs.

A sore test was in store for all Harry’s friends, human and canine. In the course of honourable promotion he became a person of importance, and his absences were much longer, his returns briefer and less unfailing. At last there came a day when he had the pride of showing a lieutenant’s uniform; but as a qualification to the satisfaction, where his friends were concerned, he sailed for a distant station, from which he could not return for a period of years.

Slowly the days passed in the quiet parsonage, where the snows of winter had gathered thickly on the old curate’s head, and he was seldom fit to totter up the stairs to his pulpit, and where Mrs. Bloomfield had at last to avail herself of spectacles; and to own to a touch of rheumatism, so that she had to employ young deputies to do the entire decorations of the church at Christmas, and even to teach in the Sunday school, and undertake, under the old lady’s superintendence, her district visiting. Flora herself, by far the youngest of the household, was neither so young nor so active as she had been.

But whatever powers of seeing, hearing, and discharging professional duties were passing away from the members of the little party, there was one thing they were still fit for—to count the hours and look out for the appointed time of Harry’s return.

Alas! the hours were counted in vain. Although the long-desired season came duly round, it did not herald the event which was to have rendered it illustrious in one remote spot in Great Britain. Harry did not walk into the old house and rouse its slumberous inmates. His cutter was not even heard of; it had not been reported for many months.

Gradually misgivings and apprehensions, the sickness of hope deferred, the agony of the worst forebodings, gathered and darkened over the parsonage.

Everybody in the parish shook his or her head, and commiserated the bereaved parents: surely they were bereaved, though it was natural in them to cling to the last chance, and refuse to give up hope. Still, it would be better for them if they could resign their son, with his messmates, to an unknown death and a nameless grave.

Harry had been a favourite in the parish, and there was sincere mourning for his untimely fate, as well as real sympathy with his aged father and mother, even when their grief took a trying phase, and they shut themselves up—not to say refusing to be comforted, but declining to believe in their loss. “We won’t give him up so soon, old dog,” Mrs. Bloomfield was heard to say to Flora. “You still look out for him; don’t you? You would teach people, who ought to know better, greater confidence in God and His mercy, and more fidelity to their friends, instead of calling us afflicted, whom God has not afflicted.” And she refused to put on mourning.

Then people began to say it was a bad example from those who should be the first to show resignation to the Divine will, and that Mrs. Bloomfield was guilty of lamentable weakness and superstitious folly in paying heed to Harry’s dog and its ways. It was the grossest absurdity to suppose that a dumb animal could be aware whether its master had perished, or was sailing in strange waters, or had been cast away on a virgin island. It was well known that the Admiralty had given up the cutter. The speakers would not have expected such inconsistency in poor old Mrs. Bloomfield, who had been a clever, sensible woman in her day, though she was breaking up fast.

Harry’s mother got all the blame with reason, since the curate had grown so feeble in mind, as well as in body, that he was only able to take in what his wife told him; and if she had assured him that Harry had never been away at all, but had been all this while in the cricket-ground, or off with his gun and Flora, he would have called for his hat and stick, and claimed her arm, to go out and chide the boy for his thoughtless delay.