Sisters

CHAPTER XIV.

There was an attic at the top of a dark flight of stairs in the suburban villa that was now the sisters' home. It contained a fireplace and a long dormer window—three square casements in a row, of which the outer pair opened like doors—facing the morning sun and a country landscape. The previous tenants had used it for a box and lumber room, and left it cobwebbed, filthy and asphyxiating. Deb ordered a charwoman to clean it, and a man to distemper the grubby plaster and stain the floor, and then laid down rugs, and assembled tables and books, and basket-chairs, and girls' odds and ends; whereby it was transformed into a cosy boudoir and their favourite room. Hither came Mary when she could escape from that treadmill of which she never spoke, bringing her black-eyed boy to astonish his aunts with his cleverness, and astonishing them herself with the heretical notions which an intimate association with orthodoxy seemed to have implanted in her. But Bennet was not admitted, nor any other outsider.

The little bricked hearth, when reminiscent wood fires burned on it, was a pleasant gathering-place in cold weather; but it was the window in the projecting gable towards which the sisters most commonly converged. It was about eight feet long by two feet high, and close up under it, nearly flush with its sill, stood a substantial six-foot-by-four table, the chairs at either end comfortably filling the rest of the alcove. They could sit here to write or sew, or drink afternoon tea, and look out upon as pleasant a rural landscape—the Malvern Hills—as any suburban villa could command. It was that view, indeed, which had decided Deb to take the house.

There was, of course, a towny foreground to it; and this it was, rather than the distant blue ranges, that held the gaze of Rose Pennycuick when she looked forth—the back-yard of the villa next to their own. It was a well-washed-and-swept enclosure, spacious and well-appointed, and amongst its appointments displayed a semi-circular platform of brickwork, slightly raised above the asphalted ground, and supporting the biggest and best dog-kennel that she had ever seen.

"Those are nice people," she remarked, "for they have given their dog as good a house as they have given themselves. Isn't it a beauty? I wish to goodness everybody was as considerate for the poor things. I wonder what sort of a dear beast it is?"

She watched so long for its appearance that she thought the kennel untenanted, but presently saw a maid come out from the kitchen with a tin dish. This she dumped upon the brick platform, turning her back instantly; and a fine, ruffed, feather-tailed collie stepped over the kennel threshold to get his dinner.

"Chained!" cried Rose. "And she never spoke to him!"

Deb looked over her shoulder, sympathetically concerned. "Is he really? What a shame! I expect they are too awfully clean and tidy to stand a dog's paws on anything; but no doubt they let him out for a run."

Rose waited for days, and never saw this happen. The master of the house and a dapper young man, his son, went to town every morning at a certain hour, evidently for the day's business; a stout, smart lady, with smart daughters, was seen going forth in the afternoons; the maids took their little outings; but no one took the dog. He lived alone on his patch of brick, either hidden in the kennel or lying in the sun with his nose between his paws. He had his food regularly, for it was a regular household; but beyond that, no notice seemed taken of him. Rose, worked up from day to day, declared at last that she could not stand it. "Why, what can you do?" said Deb. "He is their dog, not yours." "Oh, I don't know; but I must do something."

One moonlight night she heard him—always silent and supine, except when suspicious persons came into the yard—baying softly to himself, plainly (to her) voicing the weariness of his unhappy life. She sat up in bed and listened to him, and to his master shouting to him at intervals to "be quiet"; and she wept with sympathetic grief.

It was a Saturday night. On Sunday morning she excused herself from going to church. She saw Deb and Francie go, and she saw the family of the next house go—heard their front door bang, and caught gleams of smart dresses through the foliage of their front garden. Then she put on her hat and stole forth to intercede for the collie with the cook of his establishment, a kindly-looking person, who had once been observed to pat his head.

The gleaming imitation-mahogany door at which she rang with a determined hand but a fluttering heart, was, to her dismay, opened to her by a young man—the son of the house, whom she had seen going to business every week-day morning, tailored beautifully, and wearing a silk hat that dazzled one. He was now in a very old suit, flannel-shirted and collarless, so that at first she did not recognise him.

The desire of each was to turn and fly, but the necessity upon them was to face their joint mishap and see it through. Crimson, the young man mumbled apologies for his state of unreadiness to receive ladies; equally crimson, Rose begged him not to mention it, and apologised for her own untimely call.

"Miss Pennycuick, I believe?" stammered he, with an awkward bow.

"Miss Rose Pennycuick—yes," said she, struggling through her overwhelming embarrassment. "I called—I wanted—I—I—MIGHT I speak to you for just one minute, Mr Breen?"

She had lived beside him long enough to know his name, also his occupation. The Breens were drapers. Their shop in the city was not to be compared with Buckley & Nunn's or Robertson & Moffat's, but it was a good shop in its way, as this good home of the proprietors testified.

"Certainly," said young Mr Breen, whose name was Peter. "With pleasure. By all means. Walk in, Miss Pennycuick."

She walked into a gorgeous drawing-room, where all was of the best, and wore that shining air of furniture too valuable for daily use. Mr Peter drew up a cream linen blind that was one mass of lace insertion, and apologised anew for his unseemly costume.

"The fact is, Miss Pennycuick—I hope you won't be shocked at my doing such things on Sunday—I was cleaning my gun. There is a holiday this week, and I am going shooting with a friend. It was he I expected to see when I went to the door in this state." "Oh," said Rose, more at her ease, "I often do things on Sundays; I don't see why not. In fact, I am doing something now—"

She cast about for words wherein to explain her errand, while he shot a stealthy glance at her. Though not beautiful, like Deb and Francie, she was a wholesome, healthy, bonnie creature, and he was as well aware of her position in life as she was of his.

"I came, Mr Breen—I thought there were only servants in the house—I am sure you must wonder how I can take such a liberty, such an utter stranger, but I wanted to speak about that poor dog of yours—"

"Bruce—ah!" Enlightenment seemed to come to the young man. "You have called to complain of the row he made last night. We were only saying at breakfast—"

"No, no, indeed!" Rose spread out protesting hands, and ceased to feel embarrassed. "Not to complain of him, poor dear, but—but—if you will forgive such impertinence, to ask somebody—I thought I should see your cook, who looks kind—to do something to make his life a little less miserable."

"Miserable!" Mr Breen broke in, and sat up, stiffening, as if half inclined to be offended, even with this very nice young lady.

"There isn't a dog in the country better off. We had his place in the yard built on purpose for him; had his kennel made to a special design—"

"A lovely kennel! I never saw a better."

"Clean straw every few days; all his food cooked—"

"But CHAINED, Mr Breen. And a collie, too!"

"Well, we couldn't have him messing all over the place; at any rate, my people wouldn't. Oh, I assure you, Miss Pennycuick, Bruce is in clover. He was only baying the moon. Dogs often do that. It's only their fun—though it isn't fun to us."

"Fun!" sighed Rose helplessly. And she fixed her eyes upon her companion, as they sat VIS-A-VIS on the edges of their brocaded chairs, with no sense that he was a strange young man—a gaze that troubled and disconcerted him. "I am sure," she answered earnestly, "that you have a kind heart. One has only to look at you to know it."

"The idea never occurred to me before," he mumbled, flattered by her discernment, and no more offended with her.

"I am sure no one could mean better by a dog than you, giving him all those nice things," she continued. "But—but you don't THINK. You don't try to imagine yourself chained up in one spot night and day, week in and week out, with nothing to do—no interests, no amusements, unable to get to your work, to go shooting with your friends, to do anything that you were born to do—and consider how you would like it."

Mr Peter submitted to her humbly the fact that he was not a dog.

"And you think you are not both made of the same stuff? That's just where people make the mistake, even the kindest of them. Mr Breen, I once had a long talk with the curator of a zoological garden, and he told me that animals in confinement suffer mentally, just as we should do in their place. Unless they have occupation and companionship they go out of their minds. They get sullen and savage, and people say they are vicious, and punish them, when it is only misery. He said no happy dog ever got hydrophobia unless it was bitten; and that it was to save themselves from going mad that squirrels kept whirling their wheel and tigers running round and round their cages. They want notice, and change, and work, or they cannot bear it. The stagnation kills them—or I wish it did kill them quicker than it does. Look at your Bruce, born to work sheep, to scamper over miles of country, free as air, to be mates with some man who would know the value of such a friend, and be worthy of him. Oh, it is too cruel!"

Never had Rose displayed such eloquence, and a sudden glisten in her candid eyes put the piercing climax to it. Mr Peter's kind heart, which had been growing softer and softer with every word she spoke, was in melting state.

"Upon my soul," he declared, "you put quite a new light on it; you do indeed, Miss Pennycuick. I see your point of view exactly. But—"

With the utmost willingness to meet her views, he was unable to see how to do it. It was easy to say "Let him off the chain," but the mater, who was very particular, would never stand a dog muddying the verandahs and digging holes for his bones in the flower-beds. He, Mr Peter, was an only son, and she would do most things for him, but he was afraid she would draw the line at that.

"Well, you might at least take him for walks," Rose pleaded. "Nobody could object to that." "Yes, I might take him for walks," the young man conceded thoughtfully. "Of course, I don't get home from business till tea-time, and I have to leave directly after breakfast—"

"Our Pepper, when we go to town, takes us to the station and sees us off; and you are not at business on Saturday afternoons." "I usually play tennis or something on Saturday afternoons—"

"Well, take him and let him see you play tennis. He'd love it."

"I question whether my club would. But see here, Miss Pennycuick, I WAS going to meet some lady friends this afternoon, but now I won't; I will take him for a walk instead. And I'll get up in the mornings, and give him a run before breakfast. There!"

"Oh, how kind, how good you are!" she exclaimed delightedly.

"Not at all," he returned, glowing. "It is you who are good, taking all this trouble about us. I am only ashamed that you should have had to do it, and that you should have caught me in this state"—another blushing reference to his distressing toilet.

"Never mind your state," she consoled him sweetly, rising from her chair. "I like you better in this state than I do when you are smart. I thought you were too smart to—to condescend to trouble yourself about a poor dog."

"I am sorry you had such a bad opinion of me. It was simply—the thing didn't occur to me until you mentioned it."

"I know. But it is all right now. Well, I must go. You will never get your gun cleaned at this rate."

"Bother the gun! This is better than—I mean—won't you take a glass of wine?"

She declined emphatically and with haste, and hurried into the hall. He opened the front door for her, and they stood together for a moment on the dustless door-mat, mathematically laid upon verandah boards as white as new-peeled almonds.

"What a lovely garden!" remarked Rose, as she stepped down to it. Those were her words, but what she really said in her mind was: "Who would think he was a draper?"

Francie was aroused from her Sunday afternoon snooze on the drawing-room sofa.

"What IS the matter with that dog?" she complained pettishly. "Surely, after howling like a starved dingo all night—be quiet, Pepper! One of you is enough." Rose's terrier was up and fidgeting, with pricked ears.

"They must be killing him!" cried Deb, lifting her handsome head from her book.

"Oh, no," said Rose; "that sort of bark means joy, not pain."

"Poor, dear beast! What's making him joyful, I wonder?"

"I must go up and see," said Rose, who had carefully refrained from mentioning her forenoon proceedings.

The drowsy pair sank back upon their cushions; only Pepper accompanied her to the attic room. He jumped upon the window seat, wriggling and yapping, and they looked forth together from the open casement upon the spectacle of Bruce and Mr Peter apparently engaged in mortal combat. The collie had realised that he was off the chain and about to take a walk, and was expressing himself not merely in frenzied yells, but in acrobatic feats that threatened to overwhelm his master. The latter, tall-hatted, frock-coated, lavender-trousered, with a cane in his hand and a flower in his button-hole, jumped and dodged wildly to escape the leaping mass, his face puckered with anxiety for the results of his experiment. Pepper's delighted comments drew his eyes upwards, and he made shift to raise his hat, with a smile that was instantly and generously repaid. Rose nodded and waved her hand, and Peter went off, making gestures and casting backward glances at her, until he was a mere dot upon the distant road, with another dot circling around him.

"Dear fellow!" she mused, when he was out of sight.