of the dog’s master.
I explained the whole case, and wound up with:
“And now Stanley’s in my garden crying over his dog. Why doesn’t he take him back? They’re both unhappy.”
“Unhappy! There’s no sense in the little man any more. But ‘tis his fit.”
“What is his fit? He travels fifty miles a week to see the brute, and he pretends not to notice me when he sees me on the road; and I’m as unhappy as he is. Make him take the dog back.”
“It’s his penance he’s set himself. I told him by way of a joke, afther you’d run over him so convenient that night, whin he was drunk – I said if he was a Catholic he’d do penance. Off he went wid that fit in his little head an’ a dose of fever, an nothin’ would suit but givin’ you the dog as a hostage.”
“Hostage for what? I don’t want hostages from Stanley.”
“For his good behaviour. He’s keepin’ straight now, the way it’s no pleasure to associate wid him.”
“Has he taken the pledge?”
“If ‘twas only that I need not care. Ye can take the pledge for three months on an’ off. He sez he’ll never see the dog again, an’ so mark you, he’ll keep straight for evermore. Ye know his fits? Well, this is wan of them. How’s the dog takin’ it?”
“Like a man. He’s the best dog in India. Can’t you make Stanley take him back?”
“I can do no more than I have done. But ye know his fits. He’s just doin’ his penance. What will he do when he goes to the Hills? The doctor’s put him on the list.”
It is the custom in India to send a certain number of invalids from each regiment up to stations in the Himalayas for the hot weather; and though the men ought to enjoy the cool and the comfort, they miss the society of the barracks down below, and do their best to come back or to avoid going. I felt that this move would bring matters to a head, so I left Terrence hopefully, though he called after me “He won’t take the dog, sorr. You can lay your month’s pay on that. Ye know his fits.”
I never pretended to understand Private Ortheris; and so I did the next best thing I left him alone.
That summer the invalids of the regiment to which my friend belonged were ordered off to the Hills early, because the doctors thought marching in the cool of the day would do them good. Their route lay south to a place called Umballa, a hundred and twenty miles or more. Then they would turn east and march up into the hills to Kasauli or Dugshai or Subathoo. I dined with the officers the night before they left – they were marching at five in the morning. It was midnight when I drove into my garden, and surprised a white figure flying over the wall.
“That man,” said my butler, “has been here since nine, making talk to that dog. He is quite mad.”
“I did not tell him to go away because he has been here many times before, and because the dog-boy told me that if I told him to go away, that great dog would immediately slay me. He did not wish to speak to the Protector of the Poor, and he did not ask for anything to eat or drink.”
“Kadir Buksh,” said I, “that was well done, for the dog would surely have killed thee. But I do not think the white soldier will come any more.”
Garm slept ill that night and whimpered in his dreams. Once he sprang up with a clear, ringing bark, and I heard him wag his tail till it waked him and the bark died out in a howl. He had dreamed he was with his master again, and I nearly cried. It was all Stanley’s silly fault.
The first halt which the detachment of invalids made was some miles from their barracks, on the Amritsar road, and ten miles distant from my house. By a mere chance one of the officers drove back for another good dinner at the Club (cooking on the line of march is always bad), and there I met him. He was a particular friend of mine, and I knew that he knew how to love a dog properly. His pet was a big fat retriever who was going up to the Hills for his health, and, though it was still April, the round, brown brute puffed and panted in the Club verandah as though he would burst.
“It’s amazing,” said the officer, “what excuses these invalids of mine make to get back to barracks. There’s a man in my company now asked me for leave to go back to cantonments to pay a debt he’d forgotten. I was so taken by the idea I let him go, and he jingled off in an ekka as pleased as Punch. Ten miles to pay a debt! Wonder what it was really?”
“If you’ll drive me home I think I can show you,” I said.
So he went over to my house in his dog-cart with the retriever; and on the way I told him the story of Garm.
“I was wondering where that brute had gone to. He’s the best dog in the regiment,” said my friend. “I offered the little fellow twenty rupees for him a month ago. But he’s a hostage, you say, for Stanley’s good conduct. Stanley’s one of the best men I have when he chooses.”
“That’s the reason why,” I said. “A second-rate man wouldn’t have taken things to heart as he has done.”
We drove in quietly at the far end of the garden, and crept round the house. There was a place close to the wall all grown about with tamarisk trees, where I knew Garm kept his bones. Even Vixen was not allowed to sit near it. In the full Indian moonlight I could see a white uniform bending over the dog.
“Good-bye, old man,” we could not help hearing Stanley’s voice. “For ‘Eving’s sake don’t get bit and go mad by any measly pi-dog. But you can look after yourself, old man. You don’t get drunk an’ run about ‘ittin’ your friends. You takes your bones an’ you eats your biscuit, an’ you kills your enemy like a gentleman. I’m goin’ away – don’t ‘owl – I’m goin’ off to Kasauli, where I won’t see you no more.”
I could hear him holding Garm’s nose as the dog threw it up to the stars.
“You’ll stay here an’ be’ave, an’ – an’ I’ll go away an’ try to be’ave, an’ I don’t know ‘ow to leave you. I don’t know – ”
“I think this is damn silly,” said the officer, patting his foolish fubsy old retriever. He called to the private, who leaped to his feet, marched forward, and saluted.
“You here?” said the officer, turning away his head.
“Yes, sir, but I’m just goin’ back.”
“I shall be leaving here at eleven in my cart. You come with me. I can’t have sick men running about fall over the place. Report yourself at eleven, here.”
We did not say much when we went indoors, but the officer muttered and pulled his retriever’s ears.
He was a disgraceful, overfed doormat of a dog; and when he waddled off to my cookhouse to be fed, I had a brilliant idea.
At eleven o’clock that officer’s dog was nowhere to be found, and you never heard such a fuss as his owner made. He called and shouted and grew angry, and hunted through my garden for half an hour.
Then I said:
“He’s sure to turn up in the morning. Send a man in by rail, and I’ll find the beast and return him.”
“Beast?” said the officer. “I value that dog considerably more than I value any man I know. It’s all very fine for you to talk – your dog’s here.”
So she was – under my feet – and, had she been missing, food and wages would have stopped in my house till her return. But some people grow fond of dogs not worth a cut of the whip. My friend had to drive away at last with Stanley in the back seat; and then the dog-boy said to me:
“What kind of animal is Bullen Sahib’s dog? Look at him!”
I went to the boy’s hut, and the fat old reprobate was lying on a mat carefully chained up. He must have heard his master calling for twenty minutes, but had not even attempted to join him.
“He has no face,” said the dog-boy scornfully. “He is a punniar-kooter (a spaniel). He never tried to get that cloth off his jaws when