Birds and Beasts :: Jack and Murph I

Jack and Murph I

Jack and Murph were friends, old friends, trusty and tried.

It was now nearly six years since the day chance had brought them together as members of the same company. Jack had come straight from the African forests; he had crossed the seas, and set foot on the continent of Europe for the first time; his amazement knew no bounds.

It is not for nothing a little fellow of his sort is torn from the freedom of his vagabond life in the woods and surrendered to the tender mercies of a showman of performing animals. He learned to know the cruel tedium of captivity; shut up in a cage, he thought sadly of his merry gambols in the tree-tops; his little face grew wan and withered, and he came near pining to death. But time damped the keenness of his grief; by dint of seeing around him other little creatures that, like himself, had wearied for their native wilds, then little by little had grown reconciled to their fate, and now seemed to get a prodigious amount of fun out of their new life, he made the best of the bars, the tainted air of the booth, and the clown’s grimaces, rehearsing his drolleries before the animals’ cages.

At the same time he could never quite share the gaiety of his companions in misfortune. While they were enjoying everlasting games of hide-and-seek, scuffling, squabbling, pelting each other with nuts, he would cower timidly in a corner, too sad at heart to join in their noisy merriment. Sometimes, when his feelings grew too much for him, he would break out in a series of sharp, shrill outcries, or wail like a new-born babe in his doleful despair.

The master was very fond of him, for he was both intelligent and teachable. In a very short time he learned to do his musket drill, to walk the slack-rope, and use the spring-board. But these accomplishments only earned him the ill-will of the other pupils. There was never a prank they did not play him. No sooner had he cracked a nut, to eat the kernel, than a hand would dart over his shoulder and snatch the morsel just as he was putting it between his teeth. They slapped his face, pinched his tail, scarified his head with their nails, jumped upon him, or half strangled him in a corner, till a day came at last when his master, noticing how he was bullied, put him in a separate cage all by himself. But this loneliness only made him more unhappy still; he spent his life in lamentation, sitting stock-still all day long, with his arms hanging limp, and his eyes fixed on vacancy, refusing either to eat or drink. This would never do; so they left him at liberty to wander at will in the house.

II

Oh! but this house was not a bit like mine or yours; yet it had doors and windows like any other house, but so tiny these doors and windows were, they were hardly worth mentioning. Imagine a house on four wheels, and no higher than a man of middle size, with three little windows high up admitting light and air from outside; you entered by a wooden staircase that looked more like the ladder of a windmill than anything else.

This queer construction rolled most part of the year along the high roads, jolting, gee-wo, gee-hup! in and out of the ruts, and carting about in its interior men and animals, to say nothing of household stuff—beds, cooking-stoves, chests crammed with clothes, and a whole heap of other things. An old horse, who was little better than a bag of bones, was in the shafts; when a halt was called, they let him crop the grass alongside the hedgerows.

It was the funniest thing, being hauled along like this, tossing and tumbling in this box on wheels where the furniture seemed to be always just on the point of starting a polka. The table would throw up its legs in the air, and the chairs turn head over heels, while the pots and pans knocked together in the corners, making the quaintest music, sharp or flat in key according to the jolts.

Jack, perched atop of a big press, held on tooth and nail to save a tumble. More often than not he found himself under the table along with his good friend Murph, a Stoic philosopher, who let nothing ever disturb his equanimity, but calmly went on beating the bush of his thick woolly coat in search of the game that lived there. All the while the caravan, bumping and thumping with a terrific rattle, was tacking and luffing over the rolling billows of the stony roads.

III

It is high time to tell you that Jack was a dear, pretty little monkey of the chimpanzee kind, with tiny, delicate hands, nervous and semi-transparent, almost like a sick child’s. He was no bigger, the whole body of him, than a pocket-handkerchief, and you could have easily hidden him inside your hat. He was slim and slender, daintily made, with narrow chest and sloping shoulders—a creature all nerves, with a wonderful little pale phiz of his own, puckered and wrinkled, and long, drooping eyelids, greyish-white, and as thin as an onion skin, that slowly, rhythmically, opened and closed over brown eyes ringed with yellow. He bore the solemn, serious look of those who suffer; his eyes seemed fixed on something beyond the visible world, and now and again he would pass his long, dry fingers across his eyes as if to wipe away a tear. He seldom gambolled, and never indulged in the grotesque contortions of other apes; their restless, ceaseless activity seemed foreign to his nature, and even his grimaces had nothing in common with theirs.

Noise scared him; he was never angry, but habitually silent and thoughtful. He preferred to lurk alone in dark corners, where he would spend long hours, squatted on his tail, almost motionless, dreaming sadly of some mysterious, unattainable future. But, for all his unlikeness to his colleagues and their comicality, his queer little crumpled, wrinkled face never failed to produce its effect on the spectators. Jack was perfectly irresistible; no one could look at him for any length of time without bursting out laughing. His aspect was at once so piteous and so ridiculous, his gaze so pathetic and so grotesque, his deadly earnestness so side-splitting, while his eyelids would droop suddenly ever and anon in so anxious and appealing a wink, that the result was comic beyond belief. An old, old man’s head on a baby’s body, a mask that was for ever changing, twitching, wrinkling, with eyes that looked out grave, intense, solemn, from beneath a low, flat brow crowned by what looked for all the world like a wig!

The louder the merriment he excited, the more serious Jack became. On show days, while the audience was convulsed with mirth, the gravity of his mien, the careworn look in his eyes, over which the lids dropped mechanically at regular intervals, as if weighed down with their load of melancholy, reached the acme of fantastic absurdity.

Alas! men cannot tell what monkeys are thinking of. If they knew, they would not always laugh. Jack was dreaming of the sun, the vast green forests, the friends he had left behind; he was dreaming of the delights of swinging high in the air, cradled in the leafy hammocks of the boughs, dreaming of the trailing lianas, of the romps and games with his fellows throwing cocoanuts at one another’s heads, and of the endless chivyings and chasings from tree-top to tree-top above the rolling billows of the wind-tossed jungles, through which the wild beasts—elephants, panthers, and lions—plough their way like ships on the high seas, leaving in their wake a broad furrow of floating odours and deep-toned sounds.

IV

But Jack had a friend, and he never embarked on his voyages into the far-away dreamland without calling on his old chum Murph to join him.

Yes, Murph gambolled with him in the tropical jungles, Murph frolicked with him in the tall grasses, Murph and he amused themselves together at never-ending games of play; if ever it was granted him to see his native land again, he fully hoped to take Murph along with him.

Poor Jack! he did not understand that the worthy Murph, acrobat as he was, would have found it hard to follow him in the lofty regions where his congeners are wont to disport themselves, nearer to the stars than the earth. Not a doubt of it, Murph would have had to kick his heels at the foot of a tree, while his friend was off and away aloft; and the smallest of his perils would have been to find himself, on looking round, face to face with a python-snake, just uncoiling his folds to spring, or else, on the river-banks, confronted with the gaping jaws of a crocodile.

Murph could play dominoes, tell fortunes, hunt for a handkerchief in a spectator’s pocket, read the paper. Murph had many other accomplishments besides, but it is far from certain that he would have extricated himself successfully from a tÊte-À-tÊte of this sort with beasts that could boast neither his education nor his manners.

The liking was reciprocal. From the very first Jack had taken a fancy to the big woolly-coated dog, as woolly as a sheep, who never barked or growled or grumbled or showed his teeth—so unlike the other dogs in the menagerie; in the same way Murph, the big dog, had formed an affection for the well-behaved, sad-faced little ape, who never pulled his tail and never tried to scratch out his eyes.

As it happened, the showman had made up his mind to make them perform together. Murph was the best runner in the troupe; there was nobody like him for a round trot or a swinging gallop, for wheeling suddenly round and dropping to his knees just before making his exit, nobody to match Murph, always good-tempered and imperturbable, always on the look-out, with his bright eyes half hid under the bushy eyebrows, for a bit of sugar and a round of applause.

Jack, for his part, had very soon become a brilliant horseman, lissom and fearless, an adept at leaping through the hoops and vaulting the bars. Thus the two seemed made for each other, both in body and mind. They bore the hardships of the life together, and they shared its successes; by dint of standing so often back against back and muzzle against muzzle, they found their hearts brought close together too, and became fast friends. Murph was never to be seen without Jack; wherever Jack was, Murph was there as well; they lived curled up on the same rug, in the same corner, under the same table, Murph licking Jack in the neck, and Jack stroking Murph’s nose, each bound to each in perfect trust and amity.

V

Murph was older than Jack by nearly nine years, and his years made him nearly as serious-minded as his friend. But it was a different sort of gravity. Murph was neither morose nor disillusioned; his was the gentle seriousness of old age. He had seen many things since he had been in the world, but life did not appear to have left only its dregs in him. He still believed in springtide, in friendship, in the master’s kind heart; then he had neither family nor native land to regret, for he had been born in the menagerie of a father and mother broken in like himself to circle the trapeze and leap through the hoop.

His horizon was bounded by the four walls of the caravan in which, as a puppy still sucking at his mother’s breast, he had been carted from fair to fair. Day by day he had watched from behind the window-panes the long procession of cities and countries filing past; he had visited most parts of Europe, in company with the strange omnium-gatherum of apes, goats, parrots, and dogs that at each halting-place was the delight of the infant population. But he had never taken it upon him to covet the kingdom of this world; he had never craved to roam at liberty through the streets; never, in one word, had he so much as dreamt of playing truant. He was a very learned dog, and, like other learned people, he lived absorbed in his own thoughts, self-centred within the circle of his meditations, seeking nothing of things outside.

VI

Murph was a poodle by breed, and you might have searched long before you found a bigger or better-built one. Standing well on his legs, with a good, strong, supple back of his own, he carried his head high, as a self-respecting poodle should. I mean, of course, in the days when Murph was still young, for since age had crept on him, it would droop more or less; but even so, there was something proud and dignified about its carriage that always attracted attention. He walked slowly and sedately, as if intent on the solution of an ever-insoluble problem. His thick, curly fleece clothed his neck like a mane, while a stout pair of long drooping moustaches gave him the look of an old cavalry officer; his skin was smooth and polished where the coat had been cut very close; he wore heavy ruffles round his ankles, and his tail ended in a woolly tuft.

Thus accoutred, Murph was a fine-looking dog; the curs of low degree that came prowling round the van, and caught a glimpse of him through the crack of the door, gazed at him with admiration. He had the majestic port of beings destined to greatness; it was easy to see he might have been a diplomatist, or a great general, if nature, in fashioning his lot, had not chosen rather to give him the shape of a poodle; nor was Murph slow to appreciate and enjoy the impression he produced.

Fine fellow as he was, he was not altogether free from vanity; the humblest animal with which Murph compared himself was the lion; he had seen one once in a travelling menagerie, and been struck by his own likeness to the king of beasts. Why, had he not, like the lion, a mane about his neck, a tuft to his tail, and bracelets of hair about his ankles? Had he not likewise his Olympian look and superb carriage? By dint of a little imagination, Murph had come to believe the lion a degenerated type of poodle dog.

But let us pass lightly over his foibles; every one has his little weaknesses. Time, moreover, that damps the foolish ardour of mankind and dogkind, had tamed our friend’s ambitions. He was by now as contemplative and calm as some wise philosopher satiated with the glories of this world. More often on his back than on his feet, he would watch the younger dogs, his juniors in the profession, capering and giving themselves the airs of a drum-major heading his regiment, without any other feeling towards them but one of kindly indulgence; and if any one else was disposed to rebuke them, he would shake his head, as much as to say, “There, there, we have all of us done the like in our day!”

VII

Jack had come as a solace to his old age; he had loved him as a friend, almost as a son, with a truly fatherly affection.

This little suffering, delicate creature, so morbidly nervous and excitable, had roused in him some mysterious instinct of protection, that had grown little by little and ended by forming an unbreakable bond of brotherhood. Ceaselessly he watched over his protÉgÉ, sheltered him, defended him, kept for him the best of his bodily heat and his warm heart. If a bullying animal ran after Jack, in one bound the latter was beside Murph, who would show a determined front, that soon sent the would-be tormentor to the right-about. One day, indeed, Murph, usually so good-tempered, showed his teeth to the master himself, who, for some small fault, had thought good to lift his whip at the little monkey. If Jack was a-cold—and he was always shivering, blow the wind from what quarter it might—quick he would slip between Murph’s paws and cuddle against his breast in the warm, cosy place. Murph was Jack’s special providence.

Thus they had been living for nearly half-a-dozen years. Never a cloud had dimmed their good accord; never an angry snap of the teeth—never a pettish fit; mankind might have taken a lesson in the art of friendship from them. Thus they had grown old, loving, fondling, helping each other, making between them the prettiest happy family ever known in the world, never weary one of the other, but realising the ideal of the most perfect union.

Mutual esteem further increased their affection. Murph had never seen an ape more alert and clever, more intelligent and active than Jack; he would gladly have stood for hours watching him performing his tricks, clinging to the cords with his delicate, dry little hands, then hurling himself into space to alight again on his feet, or else holding on by his tail and swinging from earth to heaven on the trapeze.

On his side Jack—Jack the cynic, whose lack-lustre eyes seemed incapable of any curiosity—admired his friend Murph as a creature of extraordinary gifts.

And what wonderful things the good dog could do, to be sure! I have mentioned some of them; I could tell of many others. Murph could climb a ladder; Murph could walk along a line of bottle necks; Murph could nose out the prettiest lady in the audience; Murph could play the cornet-À-piston; Murph could smoke a pipe; Murph was almost a man.

VIII

It did one good to see him “come on,” a big pink bow knotted in the tufts that adorned his tail. He would enter gravely, bow politely to right and left, then cast a questioning look at his master, quite motionless the while, except for a slight quiver of the tail, waiting for the conclusion of the introductory remarks which the “old man” never failed to address to the audience. At last came the loud “Hi, Murph!”—and the good dog began his evening’s work.

He could have given points to the most experienced actors by his aplomb, his punctiliousness, his patient and never-flagging attention. Nothing ever distracted him from his part. Wags would amuse themselves sometimes by offering him a lump of sugar, or even pitch a sausage or a cake right between his paws; but Murph was adamant against such temptations. How the crowd cheered and clapped hands and stamped feet when he went bounding from hoop to hoop, so supple and nimble and self-possessed, never losing step or missing a spring, striking the paper with his head fair and square in the middle every time, crashing through and landing again on his feet, gravely and yet so elegantly.

His tricks finished, he would repeat his bows to right and left, still quite sedate and unintoxicated by the thunders of applause. The fact is, Murph respected both his audience and himself; he knew how to keep his feelings to himself—how different from those ill-trained dogs that yelp and bark and lose their heads in the hurly-burly, quite forgetting that the finest thing on earth is to take one’s triumph modestly.

IX

But Murph was particularly admirable in the tricks he went through with Jack. Each of the two friends seemed made to help out the other, and each vied with the other in sacrificing himself to enhance the general effect. Now it was “Mazeppa’s ride”; you know—Mazeppa bound on the back of his fiery charger and borne on and on in wild career over the steppes in a whirlwind of flying stones and smothering dust. Now it was a powder-play of Bedouins, pursuing, retreating, prancing, curvetting, rising in their stirrups and brandishing their muskets; or else a mortal combat between two troops of horse, firing at each other, reloading and firing again. The spectacle, whatever it was, was always thrilling.

Murph would stand waiting in the side-scenes for his cue. Suddenly he would give a spring, a tremendous spring, and like a bomb-shell he was on the stage, with mane erect and flashing eyes; clearing every obstacle, upsetting everything he encountered, animate or inanimate, he hurled himself on to the boards; on his back, clinging to his woolly coat, shaking and shivering, teeth hard set and mouth awry, rode a little black figure wrapped in a voluminous burnous that flapped in the wind.

And bing! bang! bang! as his steed dashed by, with all the flash and dazzle of red saddle braided with gold, scarlet bridle, and red, green, blue spangles, shaking the boards, rattling the lustres, rustling the curtain, to reiterated cries of “Hi! hip! hurrah, hurrah!” and the crack of the whip going off like pistol-shots behind, Jack would fire off his gun over and over again, till he was shrouded in a cloud of smoke, through which he could be discerned still tireless, still indefatigable, bestriding Murph in every possible position, now perched on the neck, now on the crupper. He seemed made of iron, the frail little being! Murph might prance and jib and shy, buck-jump and leap fences—nothing could unseat Jack. The performance over, the latter would shake his little head under its jockey-cap two or three times, by way of bow, and so exit, as his friend the poodle gave one last tremendous bound that carried him and his rider out of sight.

The enthusiasm of the spectators followed him behind the scenes, and the floor trembled and shook under the drumming of heavy boots. The applause grew deafening, and suddenly Jack and Murph made a final whirlwind dash across the stage, executed a last frantic fantasia—and retired for good and all.

X

But, alas! Murph was getting old. His exertions tired him dreadfully; after each performance he had to be rubbed down and attended to, or he would have lain moaning and groaning for an hour.

His master was sorry for him, and with deep regret—for he saw no glimpse among his troupe of any talent to take the place of the “falling star”—he set him to do his more quiet tricks—playing dominoes, finding handkerchiefs, walking on bottles.

At the same time he resolved to try a young poodle to fill the hole in the receipts his good, faithful Murph’s retirement was bound to make. He trained the animal to run in circles, to leap through hoops, to clear obstacles, and one fine day clapped Jack on his back.

Banco—that was the poodle’s name—had not gone three steps before he was bitten, beaten, garrotted, and left blinded and bleeding. The master punished Jack severely, and presently made a fresh attempt. But, no—Jack would not obey; he tore Banco’s ear in two, and then sprang from the saddle and hid himself in a dark corner.

Much the same thing happened at every new trial. The whip was no sort of use; Jack was not to be moved. At last, wearied out, the showman gave in, and Jack and Murph remained inseparable, living and working together as before.

One night Murph came in from his performance utterly worn out, his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his strength exhausted; his midday meal had proved indigestible, and, to cap all, the applause to-night had been faint and feeble.

Ah! few of us know how actors live on that elusive thing, the favour of the public, and what renewed force, when they are grown old and have one foot in the grave already, what fresh vigour the smiles of a delighted audience instil in their veins, when the blood is beginning to run feeble!

No, the thankless audience did not for once acknowledge Murph as their old favourite, the veteran of the boards, the good and gallant beast that had so often been their darling and their delight. Under his outward show of indifference Murph hid a vast fund of sensibility, and the coldness of his audience cut him to the quick, coming so soon after his late successes. He thought the dark night of public neglect was beginning for him; he realised his loss of vigour, his waning energies, and, like other old players, he saw himself superannuated, out of date, unknown, and misunderstood by a new public, become a mere shadow on the scene of his former triumphs. Add to this his master’s evident ill-humour, as he foresaw the inevitable moment when his old servant would be a mere pensioner on his bounty.

Murph staggered off, and fell panting on the rug that formed his bed.

Then Jack came to help him; but, alas! even Jack could not console him just at first. Murph rejected his friend’s ministrations, so bitter was his rancour against mankind. But his pique was soon over, and his wounded heart found healing under the gentle hand of his lifelong companion.

XI

But the fatal hour had struck; old age was upon him. Murph had grown infirm; he would take a dozen steps, crawling from one corner to another, and then sink down helplessly. His legs, once so prodigiously strong and active, tottered and stumbled from sheer weakness. In vain his master’s voice called him to show his tricks; he would struggle to his feet, for an instant his head would recover its proud carriage of old days; then suddenly, his momentary strength exhausted, his limbs tingling with rheumatic pains that cut like whip-lashes, he would slink away to fall back again into the lifeless attitude of an aged invalid.

A cloud floated before his eyes, he could no longer see things clearly, and a growing deafness filled his head with a buzz-buzzing that never stopped. Life was slowly dying down in the old body. He would lie torpid for hours and doze away the time in dark corners, under tables, where nothing would wake him, neither the yapping of the other dogs nor the chattering of the monkeys, neither the noise of footsteps coming and going nor the shrill trumpetings of the clown’s cornet-À-piston playing “Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre!”

It was a deep, dreamless sleep. Jack did not like it, and would crouch down beside him, watching him with sad eyes, like a friend at a sick man’s bedside. Poor beast, he could make nothing of this new state of affairs. Some change he could not comprehend had come over his chum and laid him low. He seemed to be mutely questioning him, asking him why he never nowadays trotted about behind the scenes. But it was all Murph could do to see his little anxious, sorrowful face; he could only view him as if through a fog, an indistinct shape of sympathy hardly distinguishable from surrounding objects.

Nevertheless, he still tried hard to make out in the dusk of his blindness his kindly comrade of yore; he would raise his palsied head, and from the depths of his dim eyes, veiled by a milky film, dart a pale look of infinite gentleness.

Sometimes the two bushy tufts on his forehead dropped right over his eyes and further confused his vision. But Jack would put them back lightly with the tips of his delicate fingers. Indeed he never left his side, tickling his ears to amuse him, tapping and stroking him, ever on the watch, a tender-hearted nurse of inexhaustible care and foresight.

This lowly being had learnt to love like a mother; his little dim soul had emerged from its darkness to answer his dying comrade’s need, and now, shining bright in the light of day, was working deeds of charity.

XII

One evening the show pitched on the outskirts of a big town. The booth was raised, the trestles fixed, the boards laid, and the costume-chests emptied of their miscellaneous finery.

Murph lay curled up by himself behind the stove; all round him reigned a deafening uproar, a rush and scurry of feet, a perfect hurricane of noise. The master was shouting and scolding; the Jack-pudding with his hoarse voice was yelping like a dog, mewing like a cat, crowing like a cock, getting into trim for the patter-speech with which to tickle the ears of the groundlings, while the general hands were bustling about, nailing and hammering, stimulated by copious libations of wine.

The monkeys, too, bore their part; hearing all this uproar, they joined in with a will. Their shrill scolding rose above the hammering, and they chattered incessantly and shook the bars of their cages. The dogs barked, a solemn-faced parrot repeated a bad word over and over again, while the musicians hired for the evening performance drew lugubrious notes from their instruments by way of keeping their hand in.

Hurrah! the stage was set up at last.

Then the dogs were dressed, the seats given a last wipe-down—and suddenly boom! boom! the big drum, furiously beaten, rolled out its deep-toned summons. Instantly a perfect hurricane of discordant, ear-splitting noises was let loose in front of the show-tent. Answering the deafening rumble of the big drum, the fifes and ophicleide awoke, the kettledrum began its rub-a-dub, the cymbals clashed, and the whole booth shivered and shook from floor to roof-tree.

Shouts, yells, bursts of ribald laughter, combined in one deep-toned, incessant roar to form the bass, while cat-calls, cries of vituperation and repartee, the trampling of many feet marking time before the doors, the clown’s voice rising and falling amid a tempest of scuffling and kicking, all met and mingled in the air above the red glow of the pitch-pine torches flaring in the wind, and punctuating the general din one never-ceasing refrain—

“First seats one franc; second seats half a franc; third places twenty centimes—only twenty centimes. Walk up, ladies and gentlemen; just about to begin! Citizens and soldiers, walk up, walk up!”

XIII

A torrent of humanity surged up the steps, pushing, shoving, shouting; then, suddenly released, poured tumultuously over the seats of the auditorium. Then the big drum redoubled its efforts, the fife blew its shrillest, the ophicleide lost all control of its keys, tom-toms and hand-bells, frantically beaten, added their quota to the din, the kettledrums made a terrific rub-a-dub, and the whole force of the company, a mad whirl of startling colours and flashing spangles, danced a fandango on the platform.

“Walk up, gentlemen, walk up!” the master-showman kept yelling; “here you shall see what you shall see—marvels and miracles you’ve never seen the like of before! Look at me! I am the world-famous Brinzipoff, director-in-chief to the Royal Theatre of St. Petersburg and to all the crowned heads of Europe! Hi! ho! hup! only twenty centimes the back seats! Halloa! ha! hurrah! here you are, here you are, ladies and gentlemen, this way for the front seats!”

A pause of comparative calm succeeded this grand chorus of ear-splitting noises.

The close-packed audience was waiting, stamping with impatience, for the curtain to rise. Then Jack-pudding came on, pulled his funny faces, and let off his jokes amidst a dropping fire of jeers and bravos, and presently made way for Esmeralda, the performing goat, “the unique, the incomparable Esmeralda, the very same identical animal described by the immortal Alexandre Hugo!” The musicians struck up an appropriate air, mostly made up of the vigorous thumping of drumsticks on drumheads.

XIV

Murph had never budged from his corner; he was quite insensible as yet to the din that had once had such power to excite him. His head resting on his outstretched paws, he lay asleep, stolid and stupid, callous to all external things. Round his neck, buried in the dirty, matted fleece, now long untouched by the curry-comb, were wound Jack’s arms; for Jack never left his side.

Esmeralda made her exit, and then suddenly bombarding the audience with a tornado of sound, the big drum rolled again, as if to announce some special and extraordinary turn.

Murph knew this furious, frantic prelude well; this was always the way Mazeppa’s headlong ride began. Yes, next moment, fifes, drums, bells, tom-toms struck up together in a mad concert of all the instruments combined, whereby the bandsmen strove to depict poor Mazeppa’s terrors as his galloping steed bore him off to be the prey of all the fiends of hell!

XV

Then something stirred in the old dog’s brain. Did he recall his former triumphs, the shouts of excited audiences, the encores, all the intoxicating successes of his life on the boards? Did some vision of an applauding multitude, of arms outstretched, and voices raised in gratitude, amid the crash of trumpet and drum, in the hot air thick with men’s breath and the fumes of powder—did some vision of all this pass before the poodle’s dying eyes?

It was a strange awakening, at any rate. Murph sprang suddenly to his feet, took a leap, and bounded on the stage, tail proudly swinging, and head erect, Jack hanging on to his woolly coat. Delighted, entranced, amazed, the poor little beast kept craning over to peer into his comrade’s face, to see if it was really true, and watch the light of life dawning and brightening in his deep-set eyes.

So his friend was himself again at last! So they were to begin the old merry life again, to gallop and leap, and risk their necks as in the dear, daredevil days of yore! Jack danced and pranced on the poodle’s back, as if drunk with the delight of this miraculous transformation.

At sight of this great, hollow-flanked, unkempt beast, with his dirty, greasy, tangled fleece, standing there stark and stiff, his legs tottering under him, his body shaken from head to foot by a nervous tremor, paws sprawling, back bending, a few scanty hairs bristling in his tail—when the crowd beheld this pitiful ruin, to which Jack, alert and debonair, Jack and his grimaces and contortions, Jack and his caresses, the tender eyes he made, and the close, loving embrace he cast about his comrade’s neck, all added a touch of comedy, at once sad and irresistibly ludicrous, a mighty shout of laughter arose.

It burst like a rocket, then spread from row to row of the spectators, till it ended in a tempest of merriment that from the audience extended to the stage, and burst on the dying comedian who stood there.

Suddenly the dog’s legs gave way beneath him, and Murph fell over on his side. His supreme effort had killed him; he had succumbed, as great men sometimes will, at the very moment of their greatness.

He lay there, the death-rattle in his throat, the death-agony shaking his poor body in a last, dreadful spasm. He opened his eyes wide, unnaturally wide, in a stony, sightless stare, as empty as the heads of the thoughtless crowd in front.

Then they came and dragged him off the scene.

XVI

Jack was farther from understanding things than ever; his wonder had only increased.

Why had his friend stopped short when so well under way? He could not tell; he could only gaze at him with questioning eyes, his eyelids winking very fast in a startled way.

He pressed closer and closer to Murph, and felt a shock as of something snapping, a shudder, the quiver of a breaking chain. A deeper darkness still crept over poor Murph’s senses; he was dying!

Jack crouched over him, gazing down at his friend.

Just then Murph made a supreme effort, half turned his head and peered up in his friend’s face, while a look of tender affection passed over his glazing eyeballs, mingled with the reflection of the objects he had known all his life.

The tip of a white, dry tongue came out between his teeth, and lengthening out like a slender riband, licked Jack’s paw. It was not drawn back again; Murph was dead.

Close by in the slips the fifes were shrilling, the drums beating, the audience in front clapping hands and stamping.

Jack watched beside his friend all night. At first he had crept in between his paws, as he had always done; but the chill of the cold, rigid limbs had forced him to abandon his position.

His little brain was sorely exercised, you may take my word for that. What was this icy chill, like the coldest winter’s frost, that drove him from his dear comrade’s bosom, generally so warm a refuge? He lay there by Murph’s side, dozing with one eye open; then, suddenly starting wide awake in a panic, he would touch his friend with exploring fingers to see if he was still asleep.

Finally, he lost all patience at the other’s prolonged slumbers; he shook him, he plucked at the tufts of his woolly coat, he tickled his nose—gently at first, then more roughly. But it was all no use.

Then he took Murph’s head in his little arms; it was as heavy as lead and dragged him down all sideways. But he would not let it go, holding it hard against his breast, examining it all the while with surprise and consternation. Presently, recalling what he had seen his master’s wife do, he began to rock it to and fro, cradling it softly and swaying it slowly, unceasingly from side to side, his queer little head swaying in time, like an old man’s crooning over an infant.

The dawn filtered in through the shutters of the van, and a sunbeam trembled for an instant in the dead poodle’s eyes.

XVII

Jack absolutely refused to be parted from Murph. He fell into a fury, and bit the men who tried to separate them on face and hands. He had to be dragged away and shut up in a cage. There he lived for three days, whimpering like an old man fallen into the imbecility of dotage, his haggard eyes looking out despairingly from between his wrinkled temples, his little face all shrivelled like a medlar, his lips as pale as wax, and an expression of utter life-weariness in every feature.

He would eat nothing, leaving untasted the carrots he was once so fond of, and refusing to touch either sugar or milk. All day long he cowered motionless in a corner, moaning, his eyes fixed on something invisible to others, outside the cage, far away.

XVIII

On the morning of the third day they found him stark and cold, his angular little skeleton almost piercing through the skin. His long, dry hands were closed convulsively; the lips were drawn back and showed the small, white teeth; two deep, moist furrows were visible on either side his nose, as if, before he died, the ape had been weeping for his friend.

THE CAPTIVE GOLDFINCH

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