  Have you ever noticed the melancholy pensive look masterless dogs assume at the hour when the press thins, and the passers-by slacken their pace on the side-walks, like waters from a tap running dry? As the silence deepens they appear from every side, these poor, friendless beasts, their meagre forms slinking through the fog and gloom; up and down the streets they prowl, noses to the ground, and tails drooping, like so many lost souls. Some have sound legs to run on, others can hardly drag themselves along; but all have hollow flanks and protruding ribs. They are out in search of food, nosing in the refuse heaps, scratching in the mud, filching from the scavengers bones as fleshless as themselves. What the world lets fall from its table is still a banquet for their starving bellies. They are not hard to please; till the wan light of dawn surprises them, they hunt the streets, rain-soaked and frost-bitten; then they creep back into mysterious holes and corners, where they curl themselves up in a round and sleep away the livelong day. Most of them are wild and shy, for they have only known the blackest side of life—cuffs and kicks, wretchedness and desertion. For them no hope survives the shipwreck of friendships betrayed; alone they live and alone they creep into a hole to die—creatures of the dunghill whose obsequies will be performed by the scavenger’s cart. But if some are discouraged and disillusioned, there are bolder spirits too who will sometimes, when they hear the steps of a belated wayfarer, tear themselves from the heap they are foraging in and stand panting and eager in the dark street, with the desperate eye of a swimmer looking out across the raging foam in search of a port of safety. Hope is not yet dead in them; they still have faith in mankind, and each shadowy form that emerges in the light of the gas-lamps entices them as offering promise of a home. For hours they will trot, with a humble, gentle, deprecating gait, at the heels of a casual passer-by, a shadow among shadows, dogging his steps to the last, hoping against hope. It is a friend they are fain to run to earth; but alas! the chase is one that is repeated night after night—and it is almost always unsuccessful. More often than not, the pursued has no inkling even of the dumb escort that attends him through the night. How should he know? Behind his back the dog treads noiselessly, with paws of velvet and nose to earth, checking his pace when the stranger slackens his, stopping when he stops, bit by bit learning his walk and ways. At last, when he has journeyed far through the dark streets, when his legs ache with pursuing under the wayfarer’s form a dream that is never to come true, a door will interpose, a ponderous, an impassable barrier between him and his fond hopes. Yet, who can tell? perhaps he will still linger on, shivering, till daylight, so unconquerable is his faith in man. It was one of these hopeful but unappreciated souls that encountered an old schoolmaster one night, when the latter had tarried late in the fields outside the fortifications, anxious to assist at the noble spectacle the sun gives gratuitously to one and all, as he sets in the glowing west. He was returning by the boulevards, his heart full of these glories no fireworks have ever yet been invented to match; as he jogged along, he was thinking of God’s goodness, who every night lights up these ruddy lamps of the sky to make fine flame-coloured curtains for the slumbers of His creatures. A little black dog, the ugliest little dog you ever saw, without ears and without a tail, or as good as without, saw the solitary stranger. Did he divine perhaps beneath the man’s easy, good-natured exterior a fellow-sufferer, the heart of a disappointed, disillusioned being like himself? Sometimes animals can see very far into things. At any rate he started off in pursuit. The stranger noticed nothing, but marched along, striding over gutters and stamping across pavements, knocking sometimes against benches and trees in his preoccupation. It had been raining for an hour past, as it does come down in spring, in floods of warm soaking rain and sudden showers that wetted man and dog to the skin, without either one or the other being much disturbed. Absent-minded as he was, the old man presently felt something rubbing softly against his leg, and, looking down, was surprised to see the wretched-looking cur beside him. It was crawling and cringing, and with little half-stifled barks seemed to be appealing to the generosity of this unknown friend, perhaps less hard-hearted than the generality of mankind. Many people, seeing what a hideous beast it was, would have said “No, no!” at once. But it was just the creature’s hideousness that moved the worthy man’s pity irresistibly. Touched by its repulsive looks, he guessed at the pitiful hardships the wretched animal must have borne in secret. He saw its sunken flanks, its mangy coat, its sharp-ridged back, and loved it with a sudden ardour of affection—the affection poor suffering folks feel for one another. All very well for happy people to test and try one another for ever so long to see if they suit each other, but they who have nothing to lose by mutual affection make no bones about clapping hand in hand straight away and swearing eternal friendship. And so it was with these two new comrades. Both were poor, and they fraternised at once. The dog was enchanted to have met a kind stranger to help him in his need, while his benefactor thought to himself how pleasant it would be to have the faithful creature to share his solitude. He stooped, patted the animal’s streaming coat, tickled his ear, or as much of it as there was to tickle, and ended by taking him home to his garret. It was many a day since the poor beast had known the comfort of four walls and a roof—if indeed he ever had! For two whole days, barring meal times, he slept like a log; on the third he roused himself from his lethargy, trotted up and down the room, poked his nose into every corner, and showed every sign of being wide awake at last. The dog must have a name, and the good schoolmaster was not long in finding one. Azor and Faithful are names that never come amiss for poor folk’s dogs; he chose Azor, perhaps keeping Faithful for himself—and he well deserved it! He had only to move his lips, pronouncing the two syllables “Az-or” below his breath, and the dog was instantly on the alert, looking up at him with roguish eyes, wondering what he was going to say next. No doubt of it, he was a very intelligent animal. It was a happy household. Not that bread was over and above plentiful; but people who have nothing are cheaply satisfied, and if stomachs were pinched some days, at any rate hearts were never chilled. The dog had come into the man’s life like a special providence; henceforth his existence had an object; he had some one to love, some one besides himself to think of; poverty, so heavy a burden for a lonely man, seemed almost a boon now there were two to bear it—like a load of which each carries his half. He loved and indulged him like a child, and something of selfishness entering into all ardent affections, Azor soon came to represent all humanity in his eyes. One day, to make him look fine, he fastened in the coarse hair of his neck a pink bow a young girl had dropped in the street, and told himself the dog was the handsomest beast alive. Slender greyhound, fleet-footed pointer, sturdy Newfoundland, none were a patch, in the eye of this partial judge, on the little ragged-haired, undersized mongrel he had introduced to his hearth and home. Azor had just as great an admiration for his master. Sitting up on his haunches in front of him, he would gaze into his face for hours together in a sort of ecstasy. Did he see him transmuted into something other than he was, or did the rough face, scored with its network of heavy wrinkles, from amid which the nose shone like a beacon-fire, embody for the wee doggie the beau-ideal of manly beauty? For my part, I think Azor beheld in it a beauty of a higher sort than the perishable beauty of the features; the old man, to be sure, was goodness incarnate, and is not goodness the highest form of beauty? They lived for one another. Azor yapped, and the old man talked, and between them they had wonderful fine dialogues; beginning in the garret, these were resumed in the street the days they took the air together. The pair might be seen marching side by side, the old man laughing, the dog laughing, too, in a way he had of his own. And so they wandered through the streets, in search of quiet, both taking little short steps. True, Azor was young still, and would have liked to dart on ahead; but his friend could not have kept up, and that was quite enough to make him adopt the peaceful gait of a dog who has ceased to care for the distractions of the roadside. But out in the fields you may be sure this sedateness was exchanged for wild excitement. Intoxicated by the open air, Azor would dash away, gambolling and wheeling and leaping like a mad creature, and performing a hundred tricks that mightily amused his good old master. IIAzor had his little ways. Every morning he used to go down into the street to inspect the gutters and pay a visit to the dogs of the neighbourhood. He was always back in a quarter of an hour or so. But one day he did not return. His master waited patiently for him till midday. Animals are like men, and love to linger; perhaps he had met friends—and the old schoolmaster smiled indulgently at the notion. However, when half the afternoon was gone, and still Azor did not appear, he began to get anxious. Had some accident befallen him? and he thought of carriage wheels and horses’ hoofs and the rush and roar of the main streets. His first impulse was to rush to the stairs; but Azor might come back at any moment, so he stayed where he was, more dead than alive. The window opened on the roof; the old man took a chair, climbed on it and craned his head over the sill till he could see down over the edge of the rain-shoot. There he stood for ever so long watching the little black dots darting in and out among the legs of the passers-by. But not one of them was Azor. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead; he was obliged to get down off the chair. At last, as dusk was falling, a paw came scratching at the door, and he flew to open it. Yes, it was his old comrade—but in what a plight! dyed blue, with a rope’s end still dangling round his neck! Some tragedy had befallen, no doubt, of which he had been the victim—and he patted the poor beast, his mind a prey to a hundred sinister apprehensions. Azor meantime fawned round him, looking as contrite as a culprit who cannot hope to be forgiven. The dye refused to be washed out; soap was of no avail, and they had to resort to caustics; but for all they could do, a tinge of blue remained. It lasted nearly a month, but at last the black reappeared. While his master was busy over these operations, Azor would lick his hands, only stopping to sneeze, when the strong fumes got up his nose. He seemed cured of all wish for adventures. Nevertheless, when a month was over, these prolonged absences began again. Sometimes he would stay away an hour; one Saturday he was abroad six hours. This irregular behaviour vexed his good master exceedingly. What could the mysterious attraction be that kept his faithful friend like this? He determined to find out. He had noticed that Azor, the better to elude his vigilance, apparently used always to loiter a bit in front of the house, not starting away before he felt certain no one was looking; then in one bound he would be at the end of the street and disappear. One day he followed the truant. Now and again the dog would stop, nose all along the pavement, then, reassured, set off again at a trot. He turned the corner, then down a broader street, and so eventually into a square. The clumps of rhododendrons hid him for a moment from his master, who came puffing up; but presently he caught sight of him in the middle of a group of children. He was barking joyously, leaping up at them, rolling on his back in the grass, in transports of delight. They were five little pale-faced things, and among them one face paler still and pinched with illness. The shock nailed the old man to the spot. Was it possible? Was Azor a traitor to his friend? And he gazed first at the dog and then at the children with the look a man wears who sees an edifice he has long been labouring at crumbling into ruin. He had put his trust in the animal; he esteemed him as well as loved him—and, lo! the ingrate was sharing his caresses with others. He hated duplicity, and his gorge rose at the thought. “Come here!” he shouted. Azor knew his voice instantly, and, crawling along the ground like a serpent, he crept up to his benefactor, his tail dragging in the dust. But the latter never so much as thought of punishing him, and patted him on the back gently. Their eyes met; the man’s were full of sadness, the dog’s besought forgiveness. Then, still in the same humble attitude, he tried to draw his master towards the little group of pale faces. The children had come forward—all except the little invalid, who stayed where he was; and all with one accord, their hands behind their backs, were staring at the new arrival. Was he going to take their dog from them? Their brows were puckered with anxiety, and as he watched them, he was amazed to think his anger had been so easily roused. What harm had Azor done after all? Ah! the blow would have been harder to bear if he had betrayed him for another man; but children! The piteous air of the little one who had remained behind touched him so that he took his hands with a smile and asked him if he loved Azor too. “Oh! yes,” cried the child. His eyes moved languidly under drooping lids, and he wore the careworn look of an invalid. Azor laid his head on the child’s knees, and he caressed him with his thin fingers long and lovingly. The others soon found their tongues. Azor, they said, used to come every morning, and they romped together. They had known him for a long time in fact; but he had been a month once without appearing, and they had believed he was dead. A dyer’s apprentice, after tying a cord round his neck, had dragged him off, and as they never saw him any more, they had laid his death at the bad boy’s door. “So that’s the explanation!” the old man muttered, and remembered the long day of agonised suspense when he waited for him at the garret window, and then how he had come back dyed blue. It was a relief to know the truth. He went again at the same time next day, the dog careering gaily ahead as if he quite understood. Presently all found themselves in the square again, and all faces lit up with a common pleasure. They became fast friends; he learned their names, and that two of them were brothers of the pale-faced little fellow; their mother always sent them to look after him in the garden; they lived only a few steps away. His heart was filled with compassion for the frail-looking little lad. As Pierre could not walk, he got into the way by degrees of carrying him home in his arms as far as the door, Azor galloping after them, wagging his tail. One day the child’s mother came down to thank the “kind gentleman,” and they fell into talk. The boy’s father was a workman on the railway, while she worked at fine sewing; the little one was a sore trouble to them; he had to be taken out for fresh air, and constantly looked after; and all hope of cure had had to be abandoned long ago. “And yet he’s no fool either, sir; of the three he’s the cleverest.” He only nodded, his head full of a notion that still occupied him after he got home; Azor lay at his feet and watched him thinking, thinking all day long. At nightfall he took the dog’s head between his hands. “There!” he cried merrily, “you’ll be pleased with your old master this time.” Three days later he bought a go-cart, in which he installed Pierre, and every morning they used to set out for the country, Azor scouting ahead and his master following with the child in tow. The old schoolmaster would explain all they saw to him—animals and things; he had made him a present of an alphabet with coloured pictures where a yacht stood for Y and a zebra for Z. And Pierre soon learnt to read. On Sundays, instead of three, they were seven; the whole family would join the expedition, and they would linger on till dark in the starlit fields. They were very happy, and their happiness lasted many long years. |
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