‘There’s nothin’ that young woman’s afraid of, ‘cept not bein’ made much of,’ Shingle replied. ‘Green ‘ud suit ‘er better than red in collars. But I expect you’ll do your own buyin’, sir.’
‘I will. You get the dog-biscuit,’ said John.
‘Puppy-biscuit!’ said Shingle, deeply shocked, and he mentioned the only brand. ‘A pup’s like a child — all stummick.’
Going to bed was a riot. Dinah had no intention of being left out, and when John moved a foot, tried to chew down to it through the blankets till she was admitted. Shingle, with the shaving-water, would have given her her walk before breakfast next morning; but John took the duty, and she got muddy and had to be cleaned and dried on her return. Then, at Shingle’s reminder, came the shopping expedition. John bought a green collar for Sunday, and a red for weekdays; two ditto leads; one wicker basket with green baize squab; two brushes; one toothed comb and one curry; and — Shingle sent him out again for these — pills, alterative, tonic, and antithelmintic. Ungrateful Dinah chewed the basket’s varnished rim, ripped the bowels out of the squab, nipped Marden’s inexperienced fingers as he gave her her first pill, and utterly refused to be brushed.
‘Gawd!’ said the agile Shingle, who was helping. ‘Mother used to say a child was a noosance. Twins ain’t in it with you, Dinah. An’ now I suppose you’ll ‘ave to show ‘em all off in your car.’
John’s idea had been a walk down the Mall, but Shingle dwelt on the dangers of distemper and advised Richmond Park in, since rain was likely, the limousine. Dinah condescended a little when it came round, but hopped up into the right-hand seat, and gave leave to get under way. When they reached the Park she was so delighted that she clean forgot her name, and John chivvied her, shouting till she remembered. Shingle had put up a lunch, for fear, he explained, of hotels where ladies brought infectious Pekes, flown over for them by reprobate lovers in the Air Service; and after a couple of hours bounding through bracken, John appreciated the half-bottle of Burgundy that went with it. On their return, all Dinah’s wordly pose dropped. ‘I am,’ she sniffed, ‘but a small pup with a large nose. Let me rest it on your breast and don’t you stop loving me for one minute.’ So John slept too, and the chauffeur trundled them back at five o’clock.
‘Pubs?’ Probert demanded out of a corner of his mouth when John had gone indoors.
‘Not in ther least,’ said Shingle. ‘Accordin’ to our taxi-man’ — (Shingle did not love John’s chauffeur) — ’Women and Song was ‘is game. ‘E says you ought to ‘ave ‘eard ‘im ‘owling after ‘er. ‘E’ll be out in his own Hizzer-Swizzer in a week.’
‘That’s your business. But what about my commission on the price? You don’t expect me to sanction dawgs ‘ere for nothin’? Come on! It’s all found money for you.’
John went drowsily up in the lift and finished his doze. When he waked, That Other was in his corner, but Shingle had found two tennis balls, with which Dinah was playing the Eton Wall Game by herself up and down the skirting-board — pushing one with her nose, patting the other along with her paws, right through That Other’s profiles.
‘That shows she’s been kitten-trained,’ said Shingle. ‘I’ll bring up the janitor’s and make sure.’
But the janitor’s kitten had not been pup-trained and leaped on the table, to make sure. Dinah followed. It took all hands ten minutes to clear up the smashed glass of siphon, tumbler, and decanter, in case she cut her feet. The aftermath was reaped by a palpitating vacuum- cleaner, which Dinah insisted was hostile.
When she and John and That Other in the corner sat it out after dinner, she discovered gifts of conversation. In the intervals of gossip she would seek and nose both balls about the room, then return to John’s foot, lay her chin over it, and pick up where she had left off, in eloquent whimperings.
‘Does she want anything?’ he asked Shingle.
‘Nothin’, excep’ not to be out of your mind for a minute. ‘Ow about a bone now, Dinah?’ Out came her little pink tongue, sideways, there was a grunt and a sneeze, and she pirouetted gaily before the serving-man.
‘Come downstairs, then,’ he said.
‘Bring it up here!’ said John, sweeping aside Shingle’s views on Bokhara rugs. This was messy — till Dinah understood that bones must be attended to on newspapers spread for that purpose.
These things were prelude to a month of revelations, in which Dinah showed herself all that she was, and more, since she developed senses and moods for John only. She was by turns, and in places, arrogant, imbecile, coy, forthcoming, jealous, exacting, abject, humourous, or, apparently, stone-cold, but in every manifestation adorable, and to be attended to before drinks. Shingle, as necessary to her comfort, stood on the fringe of her favours, but John was her Universe. And for her, after four weeks, he found himself doing what he had never done since Messines. He sang sentimental ditties — on his awful topnotes Dinah would join in — such as: —
‘Oh, show me a liddle where to find a rose
To give to ma honey chi-ile!
Oh, show me a liddle where my love goes
An’ I’ll follow her all de while!’
At which she would caper, one ear up and one a quarter down. Then: —
‘Ma love she gave me a kiss on de mouf.
An’ how can I let her go-o?
And I’ll follow her norf, and I’ll follow her souf
Because I love her so!’
‘‘Oo-ooo I Oooo!’ Dinah would wail to the ceiling.
And then came calamity, after a walk in the Green Park, and Shingle said: — ’I told you so.’ Dinah went off her feed, shivered, stared, ran at the nose, grew gummy round the eyes, and coughed.
‘Ye-es,’ said Shingle, rubbing his chin above her. ‘The better the breed, the worse they cop it. Oh, damn the ‘ole Air Force! It’ll be a day-and-night job, I’m thinkin’. Look up a Vet in the Directory? Gawd! No! This is distemper. I know a Canine Specialist and — ’
He went to the telephone without asking leave.
The Canine Specialist was duly impressed by John and his wealth, and more effectively by Shingle. He laid down rules of nursing and diet which the two noted in duplicate, and split into watches round the clock.
‘She ‘as worked like a charm ‘itherto,’ Shingle confided to Probert, whose wife cooked for Dinah’s poor appetite. ‘She’s jerked ‘im out of ‘isself proper. But if anythin’ ‘appens to ‘er now, it’ll be all Messines over again for ‘im.’
‘Did ‘e cop it bad there, then?’
‘Once, to my knowledge. I ‘eard ‘im before ‘e went underground prayin’ that ‘is cup might parse. It ‘ad come over ‘im in an ‘eap. Ye-es! It ‘appens — it ‘appens, as mother used to say when we was young.’
‘Then it’s up to you to see nothing happens this time.’
“Looks it! But she’s as jealous as a school teacher over ‘im. Pore little bitch! Ain’t it odd, though? She knows ‘ow to play Weepin’ Agnes with ‘im as well as a woman! But she’s cured ‘im of lookin’ in corners, an’ ‘e’s been damnin’ me something like ‘olesome.’
John, indeed, was unendurably irritable while Dinah’s trouble was increasing. He slept badly at first, then too heavily, between watches, and fussed so much that Shingle suggested Turkish baths to recover his tone. But Dinah grew steadily worse, till there was one double watch which Shingle reported to Probert as a ‘fair curiosity.’ ‘I ‘eard ‘im Our Fatherin’ in the bath-room when ‘e come off watch and she ‘adn’t conked out.’
Presently there was improvement, followed by relapse, and grave talk of possible pneumonia. That passed, too, but left a dreadful whimpering weakness, till one day she chose to patter back to life with her scimitar tail going like an egg-whisk. During her convalescence she had discovered that her sole concern was to love John Marden unlimitedly; to follow him pace by pace when he moved; to sit still and worship him when he stopped; to flee to his foot when he took a chair; to defend him loudly against enemies, such as c
ats and callers; to confide in, cherish, pet, cuddle, and deify without cease; and, failing that, to mount guard over his belongings. Shingle bore it very well.
‘Yes, I know you!’ he observed to her one morning when she was daring him to displace John’s pyjamas from their bed. ‘I’d be no good to you unless I was a puppy-biscuit. An’ yet I did ‘ave an’ ‘and in pullin’ you through, you pukka little bitch, you.’
For some while she preferred cars to her own feet, and her wishes were gratified, especially in the Hizzer-Swizzer which, with John at the wheel — you do not drink when you drive Hizzer-Swizzers — suited her. Her place was at his left elbow, nose touching his sleeve, until the needle reached fifty, when she had to throw it up and sing aloud. Thus, she saw much of summer England, but somehow did not recover her old form, in spite of Shingle’s little doses of black coffee and sherry.
John felt the drag of the dull, warm days too and went back to the Works for half a week, where he sincerely tried to find out what his secretary meant by plans for reorganisation. It sounded exactly like words, but conveyed nothing. Then he spent a night like that first one after Jerry Floyd had struck, and tried to deal with it by the same means; but found himself dizzily drunk almost before he began.
‘The fuse was advanced,’ Shingle chuckled to Probert. ‘‘E was like a boy with ‘is first pipe. An’ a virgin’s ‘ead in the mornin’! That shows the success of me treatment. But a man ‘as to think of ‘is own interests once-awhile. It’s time for me Bank ‘Oliday.’
‘You an’ your ‘olidays. Ain’t your bloke got any will of ‘is own?’
‘Not yet. ‘E’s still on the dole. ‘Urry your Mrs. P. up with our medical comforts.’
That was Dinah’s beef-tea, and very good. But if you mix with it a few grains of a certain stuff, little dogs won’t touch it.
‘She’s off ‘er feed again,’ said Shingle despairingly to John, whose coaxings were of no avail.
‘Change is what you want,’ said Shingle to her under his breath. ‘‘Tain’t fair to keep a dawg in town in summer. I ain’t sayin’ anythin’ against the flat.’
‘What’s all that?’ said John. Shingle’s back was towards him.
‘I said I wasn’t sayin’ anythin’ against the flat, sir. A man can doss down anywhere — ’
‘Doss? I pay eight hundred a year for the thing!’
‘But it’s different with dawgs, sir, was all I was going to remark. Furniture’s no treat to them.’
‘She stays with me,’ John snapped, while Dinah tried to explain how she had been defrauded of her soup.
‘Of course she stays — till she conks out.’ Shingle removed the bowl funereally...
‘No, I ‘ave not pulled it off at one go,’ he said to Probert. ‘If you ‘ad jest finished with seein’ dawgs in corners, you wouldn’t want to crash into society at a minute’s notice, either. You’d think a bit before’and an’ look round for a dry dug-out. That’s what we’re doin’.’
Two days later, he dropped a word that he had a sister in the country, married to a cowkeeper, who took in approved lodgers. If anyone doubted the merits of the establishment, the Hizzer-Swizzer could get there in two hours, and make sure. It did so, and orders were given for the caravan to start next day, that not a moment might be lost in restoring Dinah.
She hopped out into a world of fields full of red and white bullocks, who made her (and John) flinch a little; and rabbits always on the edge of being run down. There was, too, a cat called Ginger, evidently used to dogs; and a dusty old collie, Jock, whom she snapped into line after five abject minutes.
‘It suits ‘er,’ Shingle pronounced. ‘The worst she’ll catch off Jock is fleas. Fairy Anne! I’ve brought the Keatings.’
Dinah left Jock alone. Ginger, who knew all about rats and rabbits, was more to her mind, and those two ladies would work together along the brookside on fine, and through the barns on wet, mornings, chaperoned by John and a nobby stick. She was bitten through the nose at her first attempt, but said nothing about it at the time, nor when she laid out the disinterred corpse in his bedroom — till she was introduced to iodine.
The afternoons were given to walks which began with a mighty huntress before her lord, standing on hind legs at every third bound to overlook the tall September grass, and ended with a trailing pup, who talked to John till he picked her up, laid her across his neck, a pair of small feet in each hand, and carried her drowsily licking his right cheek.
For evenings, there were great games. Dinah had invented a form of ‘footer’ with her tennis ball. John would roll it to her, and she returned it with her nose, as straight as a die, till she thought she had lulled him into confidence. Then angle and pace would change, and John had to scramble across the room to recover and shoot it back, if possible past her guard. Or she would hide (cheating like a child, the while) till he threw it into a corner, and she stormed after it, slipped, fetched up against the skirting-board and swore. Last of all came the battle for the centre of the bed; the ferocious growling onsets; the kisses on the nose; the grunt of affectionate defeat and the soft jowl stretched out on his shoulder.
With all these preoccupations and demands, John’s days slipped away like blanks beneath a stamping-machine. But, somehow, he picked up a slight cold one Sunday, and Shingle, who had been given the evening off with a friend, had reduced the neglected whisky to a quarter bottle. John eked it out with hot water, sugar, and three aspirins, and told Dinah that she might play with Ginger while he kept himself housed.
He was comfortably perspiring at 7 P.M., when he dozed on the sofa, and only woke for Sunday cold supper at eight. Dinah did not enter with it, and Shingle’s sister, who had small time-sense, said that she had seen her with Ginger mousing in the wash-house ‘just now.’ So he did not draw the house for her till past nine; nor finish his search of the barns, flashing his torch in all corners, till later. Then he hurried to the kitchen and told his tale.
‘She’ve been wired,’ said the cowman. ‘She’ve been poaching along with Ginger, an’ she’ve been caught in a rabbit-wire. Ginger wouldn’t never be caught — twice. It’s different with dogs as cats. That’s it. Wired.’
‘Where, think you?’
‘All about the woods somewhere — same’s Jock did when ‘e were young. But ‘e give tongue, so I dug ‘im out.’
At the sound of his name, the old ruffian pushed his head knee-high into the talk.
‘She’d answer me from anywhere,’ said John.
‘Then you’d best look for her. I’d go with ‘e, but it’s foot-washin’s for me to-night. An’ take you a graf’ along. I’ll tell Shingle to sit up till you come back. ‘E ain’t ‘ome yet.’
Shingle’s sister passed him a rabbiting-spade out of the wash-house, and John went forth with three aspirins and some whisky inside him, and all the woods and fields under the stars to make choice of. He felt Jock’s nose in his hand and appealed to him desperately.
‘It’s Dinah! Go seek, boy! It’s Dinah! Seek!’
Jock seemed unconcerned, but he slouched towards the brook, and turned through wet grasses while John, calling and calling, followed him towards a line of hanging woods that clothed one side of the valley. Stumps presently tripped him, and John fell several times but Jock waited. Last, for a long while, they quartered a full-grown wood, with the spotlight of his torch making the fallen stuff look like coils of half-buried wire between the Lines. He heard a church clock strike eleven as he drew breath under the top of the rise, and wondered a little why a spire should still be standing. Then he remembered that this was England, and strained his ears to make sure that his calls were not answered. The collie nosed ground and moved on, evidently interested. John thought he heard a reply at last; plunged forward without using his torch, fell, and rolled down a steep bank, breathless and battered, into a darkness deeper than that of the woods. Jock followed him whimpering. He called. He heard Dinah’s smothered whine — switched on the light and discovered a small cliff of sandst
one ribbed with tree-roots. He moved along the cliff towards the sound, till his light showed him a miniature canon in its face, which he entered. In a few yards the cleft became a tunnel, but — he was calling softly now — there was no doubt that Dinah lay somewhere at the end. He held on till the lowering roof forced him to knees and elbows and, presently, stomach. Dinah’s whimper continued. He wriggled forward again, and his shoulders brushed either side of the downward- sloping way. Then every forgotten or hardly-held-back horror of his two years’ underground-work returned on him with the imagined weight of all earth overhead.
A handful of sand dropped from the roof and crumbled between his neck and coat-collar. He had but to retire an inch or two and the pressure would be relieved, and he could widen the bottlenecked passage with his spade; but terror beyond all terrors froze him, even though Dinah was appealing somewhere a little ahead. Release came in a spasm and a wrench that drove him backward six feet like a prawn. Then he realised that it would be all to do again, and shook as with fever.
At last his jerking hand steadied on the handle of the spade. He poked it ahead of him, at halfarm’s length, and gingerly pared the sides of the tunnel, raking the sand out with his hands, and passing it under his body in the old way of the old work, till he estimated, by torchlight, that he might move up a little without being pinned again. By some special mercy the tunnel beyond the section he had enlarged grew wider. He followed on, flashed once more, and saw Dinah, her head pressed close to the right-hand side of it, her white-rimmed eyes green and set.
He pushed himself forward over a last pit of terror, and touched her. There was no wire, but a tough, thumb-shaped root, sticking out of the sand-wall, had hooked itself into her collar, sprung backwards and upwards, and locked her helplessly by the neck. His fingers trembled so at first that he could not follow the kinks of it. He shut his eyes, and humoured it out by touch, as he had done with wires and cables deep down under the Ridge; grabbed Dinah, and pushed himself back to the free air outside.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 562