Part 7 (1/2)
It was a dream that caused Finn to give that growling bark, and it was a dream of a kind that had been foreign to his breed for generations. He dreamed that he was chasing Matey, in the form of a huge rabbit, armed with a stick. Matey, the rabbit, bounded away from him, just as ordinary rabbits did; but sounds came from Matey's rabbit mouth, and they were the horrid, venomous sounds of the curses with which Matey had followed him that morning in the walled-in yard. In the dream Finn was always on the point of leaping upon the back of rabbit-Matey's neck, with jaws stretched wide for slaughter. But something always intervened to prevent Finn taking the leap. The something was this: at the moment of the leap, Matey always looked more like a man and less like a rabbit, and the instinct which told Finn not to slay a man was a very strong one.
But, somehow, rabbit-Matey seemed an exception. Finn was very anxious to feel the crunching of his shoulder and neck bones; and altogether it was unfortunate that such a dream should have been inspired in the brain of so n.o.bly born a hound.
When Finn finally woke he gaped right in the eye of the setting sun, and all about him was the solemn silence of a fine October twilight. He yawned cavernously, and, raising his haunches, stretched his huge trunk from fore-paws placed far out. But, in the midst of the stretch, he gave a little smothered yelp of pain, and came to earth again, solicitously licking at the ribs of his right side. Matey's heavy boot had done great execution there. Slowly, then, Finn rose, and walked out into the darkening twilight of the field. Before he had covered a hundred yards, a rabbit started up from behind a bush, and scurried hedgewards for its life. But the distance was too great for bunny by three yards, and Finn's jaws snapped his backbone in sunder within six feet of his own burrow.
This was hard on the rabbit; but it was no more than one tiny instance of the outworking of Nature's most inexorable law. Finn had killed many rabbits before this evening; but in the past he had merely obeyed his hunting and killing instinct. Now this instinct in him was sharpened by hunger, by having slept on the open earth, and by being conscious of no human control or protection. Finn proceeded to eat this particular rabbit, and that was distinctly a new experience for him, and one that left him upon the whole pleased with himself. He was not aware of the fact, of course, but this simple act placed him more nearly on terms with his ancestors than anything else he had ever done, unless, perhaps, one counts the dream acts of that afternoon.
After his meal Finn strolled along the hedge-side till he came to a gap, and then slipped through to the road. For a mile or two he trotted along the silent road with no particular object in view, and then, coming to a gra.s.sy lane, turned into that, and trotted for another mile or two, leaping a gate and a stile which barred his way at intervals, and coming presently to a group of three large ricks. His side was aching dully, and Finn was rather unhappy over finding no sign of the home beside the Downs where his friends were, and his own comfortable bed. Having allowed his mind to dwell upon this for several minutes, he sat down on his haunches near one of the ricks, and howled to the stars about it all for quite a while, and so effectively that a farmer, sitting in his comfortable dining-room nearly half a mile away, made a remark to his daughter about the new-fangled way these pesky motor-car people have of blowing fog-horns like the s.h.i.+ps at sea, and carrying on as if the road belonged to them--drat 'un!
It was not active unhappiness, let alone misery like that of the previous night, that moved Finn to this vocal display; but only a kind of gentle melancholy such as we call home-sickness, and after five minutes of it, he curled up beside one of the ricks, after scratching and turning round and round sufficiently to make a kind of burrow for himself, and was fast asleep in about two minutes.
In the morning, long before the dew was off the gra.s.s, Finn set out to do what he had never done a before: he set out deliberately to hunt and kill some creature for his breakfast. He very nearly caught an unwary partridge, though the bird did not tempt him nearly so strongly as a thing that ran upon the earth, and ran fast. In the end his menu was that of the previous evening, and, as he eyed its still warm and furry remains, Finn felt that life was really a very good thing, even when one had a pain in one's side, and a large a.s.sortment of bruises and sore places in various other parts of one's body.
Towards midday Finn lounged into a rather large village, and did not like it at all. It stirred up in him the recollection of Matey and his horrible environment, and he began to hurry, impelled by a nervous dread of some kind of treachery. Towards the end of the village he pa.s.sed a pretty, creeper-grown cottage, from the door of which a policeman issued. The policeman stared at Finn, and smacked his own leg. Then he bent his body in an insinuating manner and called to the Wolfhound: ”Here, boy! Here, good dog! Come along!”
But Finn only lengthened his stride, and presently broke into a gallop. He was no longer the guileless, trustful Finn of a week ago. The rural constable sighed as he resumed an erect position and watched Finn's disappearing form.
”He must be the dog that's wanted, all right; reg'ler monster, I'm blessed if he isn't. But, takin' one thing with another, I'd just as soon they catched him somewhere else than here. Why, I reckon my missis 'ud have a fit. I don't call it hardly right, myself; not 'avin' 'em that size.”
Half an hour later, to his great delight, Finn found himself clear of roads and houses, and on the warm, chalky slopes of the Suss.e.x Downs. These great, smooth, immemorial hills, with their blunt crests, and close-cropped, springy turf, brought a rush of home-feeling into Finn's heart, which made his eyes misty, so that he had to sit down and give vent to two or three long-drawn howls by way of expressing his gentle melancholy. But Finn's nose told him plainly that he had never before been on these particular Downs.
And so, good and kindly as this ancient British soil was to him, it brought him no sight of actual home.
Towards evening he coursed and killed another rabbit, eating half of it, and providing, in the other half which he left, a substantial repast for a prowling weasel who followed in his trail.
Something--it may have been merely the fact that the day had not been in any way exhausting like its predecessors--prevented Finn from being inclined to curl down and sleep, when he pa.s.sed a convenient wheat rick in a valley an hour after his supper. The night was fine and clear, and night life in the open, with its many mysterious rustlings, bird and animal calls, and other enticing sounds and smells, was beginning to present considerable attractions to Finn. The events of the past few days had aroused all sorts of latent tendencies and inclinations in him; feelings which resembled memories of bygone days in their effects upon him, but yet were not memories of any life that he had known, though they may have been blood memories of the experiences of his forbears. Later on, however, the young Wolfhound began to tire of the freedom of the night, and home-sick longings rose in his heart as he thought of the coach-house and of Kathleen. It was at about this time that Finn fell to walking along a narrow, white sheep-walk, on the side of a big, billowy down, which seemed to him pleasanter and more homely than any of the hills he had traversed that evening. Gradually the track in the chalk deepened and widened a little, until it became a path sunk in the hill-side to a depth of fifteen or twenty feet, and ended in a five-barred gate beside a road. Finn leaped the gate with a strange feeling of exultation in his heart, which made him careless of the sharp pain the leap brought to his side. Something rose in his throat as he reached the road. His eyes became misty, his nose drooped eagerly to the surface of the road, and he whimpered softly as he ran, with tail swaying from side to side, and a great tenderness welling up within him.
Two minutes later he came to a white gate leading to a shrub-sheltered garden before a small, low, rambling little house. He leaped the little gate, and turned sharply to the right in the garden. But then his way was blocked by high doors, set in masonry, which could not possibly be climbed or jumped. Before these gates, which evidently led to the stables and rear of the house, Finn sat down on his haunches. Then he lifted his long muzzle heavenward and howled lugubriously. He continued his howling steadily for about one minute and a half, and at the end of that time a door opened behind him in the front of the house, and a man clad in pyjamas rushed out into the garden. Finn had studiously avoided men for these two days past now; but, so far from avoiding this man, he rose on his hind-legs to give greeting, and could hardly be induced to lower his front paws, even when the man in pyjamas had removed his caressing arms from about the Wolfhound's shoulders. The man, you see, was the Master, and three minutes afterwards he was joined by the Mistress of the Kennels. But they were all three in the Master's outside den then with Tara.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER IX
THE HEART OF TARA
The Mistress of the Kennels held on to one of Finn's fore-paws as though she feared he might be spirited away from the den, even while he was being welcomed home there. The fatted calf took the form of a dish of new milk and some sardines on toast which had been prepared for the next morning's breakfast. But this came later, and was polished off by Finn more by reason of its rare daintiness and his desire to live up to what the occasion seemed to demand of him, than because he was hungry. At an early stage in proceedings the Master noticed, and removed, the slip-collar.
”Well, that disposes of the theory that Finn wandered away of his own accord,” said the Master. ”If the police know their business this ought to help them.” Then he turned to Finn again. ”You didn't know there was a twenty-five pound reward out for you, my son, did you? It was to have been made fifty in another day or two; though, if you did but know it, our solvency demands rather that you should be sold, than paid for in that fas.h.i.+on.”
The Mistress nodded thoughtfully.
”But that's quite impossible after this,” she said; ”selling Finn, I mean.”
The Master smiled. ”I suppose it is. That seems to be rather our way. It's a dead sure thing there can be no selling of Tara, and--I'm inclined to think you're right about Finn, too. Heavens! If I could lay my hands on the man who took that chip off his muzzle, I think I'd run to the length of a ten pounds fine for a.s.sault. I'd get my money's worth, too. The dog has been clubbed; he has been man-handled; I could swear he has had to fight for his freedom.
Poor old Finn! What a dog! What a Finn it is!”
While the last of these remarks was being made the Master was carefully examining Finn all over, parting the Wolfhound's dense hard hair over places in which the skin beneath had been broken, and pressing his fingers along the lines of different bones and muscles solicitously. There was a half-spoken oath on the Master's lips when Finn winced from him as his hand pa.s.sed down the ribs of the hound's right side.
”There is a rib broken here,” he said to the Mistress, ”unless I am much mistaken. When the post office opens in the morning we must wire for Turle, the vet. Thieving's bad enough, but--there are some stupid brutes in this world!”