Landseer's Dogs and Their Stories

by Sarah Tytler

But another day arrived when the prescribed fugitive had wandered many a mile, and sat down faint and weary by a brooklet that crossed his path. He had turned aside for the purpose into a little wood through which the stream gurgled. It was a golden harvest day, with the green of the fern changing to straw-colour, and the leaves of the wild cherry-trees becoming brushed with crimson. He could hear the hearty voices of the reapers from a cornfield beyond the wood in which he had taken shelter; but there was no harvest or ingathering for Master Neville. He scrupled even to draw near to his fellow-creatures and ask grace from them in their rejoicing, since he was in a specially hostile district.

However, it was not his way to complain. He sat and courted repose after his fatigue, while he listened to the trill of the robin which was taking up the fuller song of earlier song-birds. He had a hunch of bread in his wallet, and he prepared to divide it with Roy and Reine.

The little dogs had lost much of their sleekness and trimness. No ribbons adorned their necks; their master had cut off the last faded rag long ago. As he watched them listlessly, he was sorry to see the tokens of adversity in their roughening coats, in the griminess of Reine, which gave her white livery a strong resemblance to the greasy shabbiness of a disreputable white kitten that has run the gauntlet of all the pots and pans in a kitchen. Then he glanced at his own ragged sleeve and at the weather-stained skin beneath, and reflected that the appearance of the dogs was in keeping with that of their master.

Reine certainly did not take ill with reverses; though she was getting up in years, she was more frisky than he recollected to have known her. As he was about to give her the crust which was her due, she voluntarily stood up on her hind legs, and, quite ignoring the fact that dancing was prohibited by the Puritans, began to execute a pas seul which he had taught her when he was an idle gentleman and she a pampered favourite in the hall of the Alders. The spectacle of the dirty, dishevelled little dog, in the untoward circumstances, capering demurely, of her own accord, like Queen Elizabeth before the Scotch Ambassador, overcame a man in whom a sense of the ridiculous was naturally strong, and he laughed till the tears ran down his battered cheeks.

Afterwards his attention was drawn to Roy, that was not joining in the dance, and had only sniffed at the bit of bread he had already received. The action had not been disdainful, as of old, but wistful, and with a certain heaviness before the dog turned away from his meal, and crept back, with hanging head and drooping tail, to crouch down near his master. Master Neville remembered that Roy had fallen behind in the morning’s walk. He spoke encouragingly to the dog, and invited him to his knee, which had always been a coveted couch and throne of honour with the little pair.

But all Roy’s response was to look up with the eyes which were so like a child’s, dim and glazing over, to draw a shivering sigh, to utter a little whimper of distress in which there was the most piteous meek resignation, and to make one final effort to drag himself nearer for help and comfort to his master, in which the dog’s head fell helplessly on Master Neville’s worn boot.

“Ah! has it come to this, my dog?” cried Master Neville, bending hastily over the slightly convulsed limbs. “Poor little soul!” he said to the creature which had no soul; “I would give much to lend the help you ask;” and he groaned as his own misfortunes had never forced a groan from his lips—not since another than Roy had appealed to him for aid which he could not bestow.

In a second it was all over, and Reine, with an instinct of something wrong about her motionless companion, had not only given over dancing, but leaped scared into her master’s arms, to which he had bidden Roy in vain.

It was only the death of a little dog to him who had lost wife and children, house and lands, and position—who had seen the ghastly horrors of battle-fields, and known his King lay down his head on the block.

But at this moment his own powerlessness to save, together with his loneliness, his utter loneliness, if Reine should die likewise, pressed sorely on Master Neville. He saw once more the young bride he had brought to the Alders, while the sound of his children’s pattering feet came again into his ears. He looked back on the thoughtlessness and vanity of his early manhood, on the hours he had wasted, and the opportunities he had lost, never to return. He recalled words he had heard Master Arundel say in the pulpit and out of it. He even remembered what he had witnessed of the conviction of the Puritans, that their God was ever with them to sustain and satisfy.