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WE, -- the Sine Qua Non, the
Duchess, the Sputchard, the Dutchard, the Ricapicticapic, Oz and Oz, the
Maid of Lorn, and myself, --- left Crieff some fifteen years ago, on a
bright September morning, soon after daybreak, in a gig. It was a morning
still and keen: the sun sending his level shafts across Strathearn, and
through the thin mist over its river hollows, to the fierce Aberuchil Hills,
and searching out the dark blue shadows in the corries of Benvorlich. But
who and how many are "we"? To make you as easy as we all were, let me tell
you we were four; and are not these dumb friends of ours persons rather than
things? Is not their soul ampler, as Plato would say, than their body, and
contains rather than is contained? Is not what lives and wills in them, and
is affectionate, as spiritual, as immaterial, as truly removed from mere
flesh, blood, and bones, as that soul which is the proper self of their
master? And when we look each other in the face, as I now look in Dick's,
who is lying in his "corny" by the fireside, and he in mine, is it not as
much the clog within looking from out his eyes — the windows of his soul --
as it is the man from his?
The Sine Qua Non, who will
not be pleased at being spoken of, is such an one as that vain-glorious and
chivalrous Ulric von Hatten — the Reformation's man of wit, and of the
world, and of the sword, who slew Monkery with the wild laughter of his
Epistolw Obscurorurn V ~irorzsrn --- had in his mind when he wrote thus to
his friend Fredericus Piscator (Mr. Fred. Fisher), on the 19th May, 1519, "Da
mnihi u corem, Friderice, et ut scias qualem, venustam, adolescentulam,
probe educatam, hilarem, verecundam, patientem." "ualerm," he lets Frederic
understand in the sentence preceding, is one 11 qua cum ludam, qua jocos
conferam, amceniores et leviuseulas fabulas miscearn, ubi sollicitudinis
aciem obtundam, curarum wstus mitigein." And if you would know more of the
Sine Qua Non, and in English, for the world is dead to Latin now, you will
find her name and nature in Shakespeare's words, when King Henry the Eighth
says, "go thy ways."
The Duchess, alias all the
other names till you come to the Maid of Lorn, is a rough, gnarled,
incomparable little bit of a terrier, three parts DandieDinmont, and one
part -- chiefly in tail and hair — cocker: her father being Lord
Rutherfurd's famous "Dandie," and her mother the daughter of a Skye, and a
light-hearted Cocker. The Duchess is about the size and weight of a rabbit;
but has a soul as big, as fierce, and as faithful as had Meg Merrilies, with
a nose as black as Topsy's; and is herself every bit as game and queer as
that delicious imp of darkness and of Mrs. Stowe. Her legs set her long slim
body about two inches and a half from the ground, making her very like a
huge caterpillar or hairy oobit — her two eyes, dark and full, and her
shining nose, being all of her that seems anything but hair. Her tail was a
sort of stump, in size and in look very much like a spare foreleg, stuck in
anywhere to be near. Her color was black above and a rich brown below, with
two dots of tan above the eyes, which dots are among the deepest of the
mysteries of Black and Tan.
This strange little being I
had known for some years, but had only possessed about a month. She and her
pup (a young lady called Smoot, which means smolt, a young salmon), were
given me by the widow of an honest and drunken — as much of the one as of
the other — Edinburgh street-porter, a native of Badenoch, as a legacy from
him and a fee from her for my attendance on the poor man's death-bed. But my
first sight of the Duchess was years before in Broughton Street, when I saw
her sitting bolt upright, begging, imploring, with those little rough four
leggies, and those yearning, beautiful eyes, all the world, or any one, to
help her master, who was lying "mortal" in the kennel. I raised him, and
with the help of a ragged Samaritan, who was only less drunk than he, I got
Macpherson — he held from Glen Truim — home; the excited doggie trotting
off, and looking back eagerly to show us the way. I never again passed the
Porters' Stand without speaking to her. After Malcohn's burial I took
possession of her ; she escaped to the wretched house, but as her mistress
was off to Kingussie, and the door shut, she gave a pitiful howl or two, and
was forthwith back at my door, with an impatient, querulous bark. And so
this is our second of the four; and is she not deserving of as many names as
any other Duchess, from her of Medina Sidonia downwards?
A fierier little soul never
dwelt in a queerer or stancher body; see her huddled up, and you would think
her a bundle of hair, or a bit of old mossy wood, or a slice of heathery
turf, with some red soil underneath; but speak to her, or give her a cat to
deal with, be it bigger than herself, and what an incarnation of affection,
energy, and fury — what a fell unquenchable little ruffian.
The Maid of Lorn was a
chestnut mare, a broken-down racer, thoroughbred as Beeswing, but less
fortunate in her life, and I fear not so happy occasione mortie: unlike the
Duchess, her, body was greater and finer than her soul; still she was a
ladylike creature, sleek, slim, nervous, meek, willing, and fleet. She had
been thrown down by some brutal half-drunk Forfarshire laird, when he put
her wildly and with her wind gone, at the last hurdle on the North Inch at
the Perth races. She was done for, and bought for ten pounds by the landlord
of the Drummond Arms, Crieff, who had been taking as much money out of her,
and putting as little corn into her as was compatible with life, purposing
to run her for the Consolation Stakes at Stirling. Poor young lady,
she was a sad sight — broken in back, in knees, in character, and wind — in
everything but temper, which was as sweet and all-enduring as Penelope's or
our own Enid's.
Of myself, the fourth, I
decline making any account. Be it sufficient that I am the Dutchard's
master, and drove the gig.
It was, as I said, a keen and
bright morning, and the S. Q. N. feeling chilly, and the Duchess being away
after a cat up a back entry, doing a chance stroke of business, and the mare
looking only half breakfasted, I made them give her a full feed of meal and
water, and stood by and enjoyed her enjoyment. It seemed too good to be
true, and she looked up every now and then in the midst of her feast, with a
mild wonder. Away she and I bowled down the sleeping village, all overrun
with sunshine, the dumb idiot man and the birds alone up, for the ostler was
off to his straw. There was the S. Q. N. and her small panting friend, who
had lost the cat, but had got what philosophers say is better — the chase. "Nous
ne cherchons jamais les choses, mais la recherche des choses," says Pascal.
The Duchess would substitute for les choses — les chats. Pursuit, not
possession, was her passion. We all got in, and off set the Maid, who was in
excellent heart, quite gay, pricking her ears and casting up her head, and
rattling away at a great pace.
We baited at St. Fillans, and
again cheered the heart of the Maid with unaccustomed corn — the S. Q. N.,
Duchie, and myself, going up to the beautiful rising ground at the back of
the inn, and lying on the fragrant heather looking at the loch, with its
mild gleams and shadows, and its second heaven looking out from its depths,
the wild, rough mountains of Glenartney towering opposite. Duchie, I
believe, was engaged in minor business close at hand, and caught and ate
several large flies and a, humble-bee; she was very fond of this small game.
There is not in all Scotland,
or as far as I have seen in all else, a more exquisite twelve miles of
scenery than that between Crieff and the head of Lochearn. Ochtertyre, anti
its woods; Benchonzie, the headquarters of the earthquakes, only lower than
Benvorlich - Strowan ; Lawers, with its grand old Scotch pines; Comrie, with
the wild Lednoch; Dunira; and St. Fillans, where we are now lying, and where
the poor thoroughbred is tucking in her corn. We start after two hours of
dreaming in the half sunlight, and rumble ever and anon over an earthquake,
as the common folk call these same hollow, resounding rifts in the rock
beneath, and arriving at the old inn at Lochearnhead, have a tousle tea. In
the evening, when the day was darkening into night, Duchie and I, — the S.
Q. N. remaining to read and rest — walked up Glen Ogle. It was then in its
primeval state, the new road non-existent, and the old one staggering up and
down and across that most original and Cyclopean valley, deep, threatening,
savage, and yet beautiful —
"Where rocks were
rudely heaped, and rent
As by a spirit turbulent;
Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild,
And everything unreconciled;"
with flocks of mighty
boulders, straying all over it. Some far up, and frightful to look at,
others huddled down in the river, immane pecus, and one huge
unloosened fellow, as big as a manse, up aloft watching them, like old
Proteus with his calves, as if they had fled from the sea by stress of
weather, and had been led by their ancient herd altos visere montes —
a wilder, more "unreconciled" " place I know not; and now that the darkness
was being poured into it, those big fellows looked bigger, and hardly
"canny."
Just as we were turning to
come home — Duchie unwillingly, as she had much multifarious, and as usual
fruitless hunting to do — she and I were startled by seeing a dog in the
side of the hill, where the soil had been broken. She barked and I stared;
she trotted consequentially up and snuffed more canino, and I went
nearer: it never moved, and on coming quite close I saw as it were the image
of a terrier, a something that made me think of an idea unrealized; the
rough, short, scrubby heather and dead grass, made a color and a coat just
like those of a good Highland terrier — a sort of pepper and salt this one
was—and below, the broken soil, in which there was some iron and clay, with
old gnarled roots, for all the world like its odd, bandy, and sturdy legs.
Duchie seemed not so easily unbeguiled as I was, and kept staring, and
snuffing, and growling, but did not touch it, — seemed afraid. I left and
looked again, and certainly it was very odd the growing resemblance to one
of the indigenous, hairy, low-legged dogs, one sees all about the Highlands,
terriers, or earthy ones.
We came home, and told the S.
Q. N. our joke. I dreamt of that visionary terrier, that son of the soil,
all night; and in the very early morning, leaving the S. Q. N. asleep, I
walked up with the Duchess to the same spot. What a morning! it was before
sunrise, at least before he had got above Benvorlich. The loch was lying in
a faint mist, beautiful exceedingly, as if half veiled and asleep, the
cataract of Edinample roaring less loudly than in the night, and the old
castle of the Lords of Lochow, in the shadow of the hills, among its trees,
might be seen
"Sole sitting by the shore of
old romance."
There was still gloom in Glen
Ogle, though the beams of the morning were shooting up into the broad fields
of the sky. I was looking back and down, when I heard the Duchess bark
sharply, and then give a cry of fear, and on turning round, there was she
with as much as she had of tail between her legs, where I never saw it
before, and her small Grace, without noticing me or my cries, making down to
the inn and her mistress, a hairy hurricane. I walked on to see what it was,
and there in the same spot as last night, in the bank, was a real dog — no
mistake; it was not, as the day before, a mere surface or spectrum, or ghost
of a dog; it was plainly round and substantial ; it was much developed since
eight P. M. As I looked, it moved slightly, and as it were by a sort of
shiver, as if an electric shock (and why not?) was being administered by a
law of nature ; it had then no tail, or rather had an odd amorphous look in
that region; its eye, for it had one — it was seen in profile — looked to my
profane vision like (why not actually?) a huge blaeberry (vaccinium
Mjrtillus, it is well to be scientific), black and full; and I thought, —
but dare not be sure, and had no time or courage to be minute, - that where
the nose should be, there was a small shining black snail, probably the
Lirnax niger of M. de Ferussac, curled up, and if you look at any dog's nose
you will be struck with the typical resemblance, in the corrugations and
moistness and jetty blackness of the one to the other, and of the other to
the one. He was a strongly - built, wiry, bandy, and short-legged dog. As I
was staring upon him, a beam —Oh, first creative beam! — sent from the sun —
"Like as an arrow from a bow,
Shot by an archer strong "
as he looked over
Benvorlich's shoulder, and piercing a cloudlet of mist which clung close to
him, and filling it with whitest radiance, struck upon that eye or berry,
and lit up that nose or snail: in an instant lie sneezed (the nisus
(sneezes?) farmativus of the ancients); the eye quivered and was quickened,
and with a shudder — such as a horse executes with that curious muscle of
the skin, of which we have a mere fragment in our neck, the .Platysma
Myoides, and which doubtless has been lessened as we lost our distance from
the horse-type --- which dislodged some dirt and stones and dead heather,
and doubtless endless beetles, and, it may be, made some near weasel. open
his other eye, up went his tail, and out he came, lively, entire,
consummate, warm, wagging his tail, I was going to say like a Christian, I
mean like an ordinary dog. Then flashed upon me the solution of the Mystery
of Black and Tan in all its varieties: the body, its upper part gray or
black or yellow according to the upper soil and herbs, heather, bent, moss,
etc.; the belly and feet, red or tan or light fawn, according to the nature
of the deep soil, be it oclirey, ferruginous, light clay, or comminuted mica
slate. And wonderfullest of all, the DOTS of TAY above the eyes — and who
has not noticed and wondered as to the philosophy of them? — I saw made by
the two fore feet, wet and clayey, being put briskly up to his eyes as he
sneezed that genetic, vivifying sneeze, and leaving their mark, forever.
He took to me quite
pleasantly, by virtue of "natural selection," and has accompanied me thus
far in our "struggle for life," and he, and the S. Q. N., and the Duchess,
and the Maid, returned that day to Crieff, and were friends all our days. I
was a little timid when he was crossing a burn lest he should wash away his
feet, but he merely colored the water, and every day less and less, till in
a fortnight I could wash him without fear of his becoming a solution, or
fluid extract of do, and thus resolving the mystery back into itself.
The mare's days were short.
She won the Consolation Stakes at Stirling, and was found dead next morning
in Gibb's stables. The Duchess died in a good old age, as may be seen in the
history of Our Dogs. The S. Q. N., and the parthenogenesic earth-born, the
Cespes Vivus — whom we sometimes called Joshua, because he was the Son of
None (Nun), and even Melchisedec has been whispered, but only that, and Fitz
Memnon, as being as it were a son of the Sun, sometimes the Autochthon
auroxeovoc; (indeed, if the relation of the coup de soleil and the blaeberry
had not been plainly causal and effectual, I might have called him Filius
Gunni, for at the very moment of that shudder, by which he leapt out of
non-life into life, the Marquis's gamekeeper fired his rifle up the hill,
and brought down a stray young stag,) these two are happily with me still,
and at this moment she is out on the grass in a low easy-chair, reading
Emilie Carlen's Brilliant Marriage, and Dick is lying at her feet, watching,
with cocked ears, some noise in the ripe wheat, possibly a chicken, for,
poor fellow, he has a weakness for worrying hens, and such small deer, when
there is a dearth of greater. If any, as is not unreasonable, doubt me and
my story, they may come and see Dick. I assure them he is well worth seeing. |
