A Dog and his Shadow ... A new edition

Front matter

THE PICCADILLY NOVELS. Library Editions, many Illustrated. Crown Zvo. , cloth extra, y. 6d. each. By F. M. ALLEN.— Green as Grass. DUTTON COOK. -Paul Foster's Daughter. E. H. COOPER.— GeoSory Hamilton. By V. CECIL COTES. Two Girls on a Barge. By MATT CRIM. Adventures of a Fair Rebel. By GRANT ALLEN Strange Stories. The Devil's Die. Philistia. | Babylon. This Mortal Coil. The Beckoning Hand The Tents of Shorn. In aU Shades, [ter. The Great Taboo. Dumaresqs Daugh- Blood Royal. The Duchess of Ivan Greet's Master- Powysland. piece. For Maimie's Sake. The Scallywag. By EDWIN LESTER ARNOLD. Phra the Phœnician. I The Constable of St. Nicholas. By ALAN ST. AUBYN. A Fellow of Trinity. | The Junior Dean. The Master of St. Benedict's By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. Red Spider. I Eve. By ROBERT BARR. In Steamer Chair.

I From Whose Bourne. By WALTER BESANT & JAMES RICE. My Little Girl. The Seamy Side. Case of Mr. Lucraft. Ten Years' Tenant. This Son of Vulcan. Ready-Money Mort. TheGoldenButterfly. With Harp & Crown. By Celia's Arbour. In Trafalgar's Bay. Monks of Thelema. Chaplain of the Fleet By WALTER BESANT. All Sorts and Condi- Uncle Jack. tions of Men. ChUdren of Gibeon. The Captains' Room. Herr Paulus. AU in a Garden Fair. The Bell of St. Paul's The World Went To Call Her Mine. Very Well Then. The Holy Rose. For Faith & Freedom St. Katherine's by Dorothy Forster. the Tower. Verbena Camellia Arraorel of Lyonesse Stephanotis. The Ivory Gate. By ROBERT BUCHANAN. Shadow of the Sword Annan Water. A Child of Nature. Matt. The Martyrdom of The New Abelard. Madeline. Foxglove Manor. God and the Man. Master of the Mine.

Love Me for Ever. The Heir of Linne. By HALL CAINE. The Shadow of a I A Son of Hagar. Crime. I The Deemster. MACLAREN COBBAN.— The Red Sultan. By MORTIMERS FRANCES COLLINS. The ViUage Comedy. 1 Blacksmith and You Play Me False. I Scholar. Midnight to Midnight. | Transmigration. By WILKIE COLLINS. Armadale. The Frozen Deep. After Dark. The Two Destinies. No Name. Law and the Lady. Antonina. | Basil. The Haunted Hotel. Hide and Seek. The Fallen Leaves. The Dead Secret. Jezebel's Daughter. The Queen of Hearts. The Black Robe. My Miscellanies. Heart and Science. The Woman in White " I Say No. " The Moonstone. Little Novels. Man and Wife. The Evil Genius. Poor Miss Finch. The Legacy of Cain. Miss or Mrs. ? A Rogue's Life. The New Magdalen. Blind Love. By B. M. CROKER. Pretty Miss Neville. I Proper Pride.

Preface

In the Fable which this Story had, when planned, no intention of following (and which, purists tell me, ought to be hideously called 'The Dog and his Eeflection '), the Dog snatched at the Shadow : in the story of my Story the Shadow has very substantially dogged the Dog. The shade of trouble haunted it from the beginning. First came the trouble of a title, in an aggravated form. ' A Beggar on Horseback ' was the name under which my old friend Sylvanus Urban was to have introduced it to his readers. But I was informed (for once, not too late) that this had been anticipated by Mr. James Payn. Unable to find proof of this in my memory, I searched catalogues in vain. An application to Mr. Payn himself obtained a courteous answer that he had written a serial under that title, but that he also had been anticipated, and so had re-named it when it became a three-volume novel.

Then, when my tale emerged from the Gentleman's Magazine into the state of publication, it had to face the fire, not of criticism — which indeed is oftener cool than warm — but of actual and literal flame. The premises of its publishers were burned down before the Dog had fairly opened his eyes to the daylight : and I have the better reason for VI

PREFACE.

remembering the incident because another story of mine, still in manuscript, shared in the conflagration — 'Pare Good Luck' was its highly inappropriate title — the re writing of which cost me a summer holiday. The Dog now, under new auspices and in another form, trusts, like every other member of his race, to ' have his day ' after all : and to suffer, if suffer he still must, fairly for his faults, and not from mere misfortune. R. E. FRANCILLON. March, 1894.

Book I. Chaptee

I. ' Whence blows it ? Never a man may know : And whither ? None may say : Yet high and low must come and go Along the Wind's highway. For every blast that lists to blow, Whither and whence it may, Doth strip some leaflet from the bough It gave but yesterday — Doth waft a soul to weal or woe, Or whirl a soul away.' ' Milly ! Oh, you dreadful child ! Can't you let one rest one's eyes a minute from looking to see where next you're going to ? And I with all this work to do before to-morrow ! I declare I little knew what a trial I was laying on myself when I promised to look after you. You're Brother Sam's child every inch you're high. Milly — Milly — there, if I didn't know it — head over heels into the coal-box again, and your frock clean on this morning — you're enough to tire out Job's patience, that you are — what is it you want now ?

No, Milly — you mustn't have the carving knife — nor yet the candles — no, nor the beer. My spectacles ? — There they are then, if you must have something to keep you quiet — though how I'm to get through my work without my spectacles ' And so, for a good hour or more, rambled the sharp voice of Mrs. Tallis, the housekeeper, as she sat over her supper and her sewing in her own snug little corner of the old Manor House at Winbury. She was a stately personage of middle age and of an ancient school, drawing additional dignity from a high cap, then out of date, and a black silk gown. Everything about and around her was in keeping with her air of old-fashioned service — she sat in an un compromisingly upright posture, as if arm-chairs were made, not for relaxation, but for the practice of self-denial : her figure was tall and lean, and her expression, as well as her features, sharp, formal and severe, as if she had dili gently cultivated a natural genius for unbending gravity.

One would as soon look for a smile from her as from that bleak March evening. There was only one note of dis orderly discord in the whole room — and that was Milly. Tumbling about all over the floor, now under the table, now half between the bars of a chair old enough to have played with her great-grandmother, now clattering with the fire-irons, now threatening to drag down the table-cloth and all arranged upon it with such precision, was that sore trial to a lover of order. She was a very small girl indeed, flaxen-haired and blue-eyed after the ultra-English pattern, just old enough to find life and mischief different words for the same thing, and not a day older — next to a terrier puppy in being out of place wherever a Mrs. Tallis might happen to be. Nor, while Mrs. Tallis expressed her opinions freely, was Milly silent : but she spoke, as yet, too much in her own, and too little in her mother-tongue, to be readily under stood by any but a mother's ears.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Tallis, that pattern of mature severity, seemed to understand it as if her own babyhood had been a thing of yesterday ; she answered every capricious demand for this or that — so long as it was not for knives, beer, or lighted candles — as soon as it was made. She translated at once the particular look into her face that meant ' spectacles ' — and, while keeping up every appearance of dignity, immediately obeyed. The knife might hurt Milly, but Milly could only hurt the spectacles ! No doubt if Milly had not been more than a little spoiled she would have been in bed and asleep by this time, for the sun had shut his eyes long ago. And if she with the magical instinct of her age, had not been able to translate the housekeeper's querulous scoldings into a hidden meaning, she could not have enjoyed herself so thoroughly in the stiff old lady's company.

In short, these two unlikenesses were both thoroughly comfortable, each in her own way, though their comfort lay in mischief on one side and in blame on the other. It was as well they were, for the fire could not keep the room warm, and the windows rattled in the east wind — March had come in his lion-skin that year. At last, however, the mixture of warmth and cold, of noise and quiet, took one very natural effect — Mrs. Tallis's head gave a nod forward, and Milly was left free to pull off the table-cloth, if she pleased, undisturbed. It may be that the old lady even dreamed — perhaps of being called upon to set chaos in order with Milly behind to undo her work as soon as it was done ; more likely — for the dream-earth circles backwards round the sun — of days before she was wife or widow, and when she, too, had other matters to think of than keeping things straight and square.

But, in any case, her dream was connected with a crash of some sort, for she woke with a start at the exclamation : ' Oh, Mrs. Tallis, ma'am ! Oh, ma'am, if there isn't burgulars at the front door !' The bearer of this alarming news was a country girl, red faced and red-haired, who had bounced into the room in all the excitement of terror — not a wholly unpleasant sensation for one of her order when combined with the satisfaction of being the first bearer of ill news. 'Burglars!' exclaimed Mrs. Tallis, starting up and glancing instinctively at one particular corner cupboard. ' Nonsense, Susan. You're terrified if you hear a mouse squeak, I do believe.' ' Didn't you hear the bell, ma'am ?' asked Susan below her breath, as if afraid the burglars might hear. ' No — nor you. The idea of burglars ringing a bell !' ' The bell did go, ma'am — I heard it as plain as I see you.

Pr'aps you was taking a nap, ma'am ?' ' I taking a nap ! Gracious ! I never did such a thing since I was born. It's you were asleep, Susan ; and what's more, you must be asleep now, or you'd never dream such a thing. It's impertinent — why, I should have heard a pin drop, let alone a bell. We usedn't to sleep except in our beds when I was a girl — but girls were different then. Look there, if you haven't allowed Miss Milly to _ tumble into the coal-box again with your nonsensical fancies, and her frock only clean — ah !' There was no mistake about it this time. A bell clashed and jarred through the house as if pulled by one who wanted to break the wire. Mrs. Tallis started, and Susan shook from head to heel. ' There, ma'am!' she said, with trembling triumph. 'That's what I heard !' ' Who in the name of gracious can it be ?' ' Pr'aps if we don't take no notice they'll go away.

If only John Carter hadn't been but five minutes gone. Oh, ma'am, there it goes again !' And sure enough the bell clanged for a third time, more loudly than before. ' Thieves or no thieves, I must go and investigate who's there,' said the housekeeper decisively. ' Take Miss Milly while I go to the front door.' Susan picked up the unfortunate Milly, who, finding her self neglected in the confusion, set up an unseasonable wail. Mrs. Tallis, for once paying no attention, pulled a shawl over her head and went along a passage into the dark, empty entrance hall, from which led a broad, uncarpeted flight of stone stairs. Having carefully put up the chain, she opened the front door about the space of an inch, and asked, boldly and sharply : ' Who's there?' ' Be this here place Winbury, miss ?' answered a man's gruff voice, in an accent that did not belong to Eastington shire and of a hoarseness known in every shire where spirits are sold. ' Of course it's Winbury.

A gentlemanlike thing indeed to pull people's bells down to ask if this is Winbury.' ' Hold a bit, miss — don't smash my nose betwixt post and door. Where's the doctor?' ' What doctor ?' ' The medical practitioner, ma'am— the gentleman that tinkers up the flesh-pots, ma'am, like I do the tin-pots where's he ?' ' There's no doctor.' ' Parson, then ?' ' There's no parson.' ' Squire, then? Maybe he lives here ?' ' There's no squire.' ' Who be there, then, if there ben't no doctor, nor no parson, nor no squire ?' ' There's nobody — that's all. If you want a medical man you must go on to Westcote.' ' Thankye, ma'am. And how far may that be ?' ' Seven miles, if you go the short way.' ' Seven mile ! Don't nobody live at Winbury, ma'am ? Can't I see the master— or the good lady, if there ben't no squire ?' ' There's no lady.' ' Well, I am blessed then !

Ben't there nothing in Win bury, ma'am ? Ben't there never a blessed soul to keep a poor wench from dying like a dog in a ditch nearer than seven mile — the short way ? Don't Winbury profess and call itself Christian ? I'm Cornelius Boswell, ma'am, well known as I may say half over England as renovator of hard ware, and by appointment umbrella-mender in ordinary to her Majesty Queen Victoria, as is proved by what's painted on my travelling workshop I've left standing in the road : but I've been a parish clerk, ma'am, so I know what a parish ought to be, and as a travelling tradesman I know what most of 'em are : but if ever I heard tell of so much as a extra-parochial like Winbury, smash me flat, ma'am — and I can't say no fairer.' Mrs. Tallis had been about to slam the door in the face of so suspicious a visitor when something deeper than her ear was caught by three words that would have made him even more suspicious in the ears of many a person of an aspect far less severe than hers. ' What's that — -a woman in a ditch ?' she asked, even more sharply than she had answered. ' Dying in one, ma'am — that's what I said : not drunk, poor soul — p'raps there ben't no public in Winbury ?' he asked, with would-be biting sarcasm, as if to pique the parish into action by an accusation of having reached the lowest depth of degradation. ' And I were told — -by — by a — sort of chap as how there was a kind-hearted lady here — as might be your own self, ma'am ' ' Then I'm sure you weren't informed any such non sense.

There's no lady — I'm Mrs. Tallis, the housekeeper. What woman? What's the matter with her? Where is she?' ' Well, ma'am, she be a dying woman, as I don't know from Eve. As to where, it may be a matter of two mile along the canal. As to matter, a lady that's got one of her own, as I can hear crying out now, bless its heart, might be able to tell better than me, not being in the family line.' ' Then why in the name of gracious didn't you inform me at once, instead of prevaricating round about the bushes ? Susan ! Eun out to the Vane Arms ' ('Then there be something in Winbury!' muttered the tinker.) ' And request them to send their cart up along the road to discover if there's a young person requiring assistance — tell them to stop at the lodge gate, and I'll accompany. And, Susan — when you've been there, run to Mr. Pottinger's — the constable's,' she added in a higher key, so as to be heard more distinctly through the door, ' and request him to come up here at once — it may be a device to get me out for somebody to get in.

Then run back and mind Miss Milly while I'm gone. Quick — never mind your bonnet — your apron will do — give me Miss Milly — and go out the back way.' ' It's a uncommon cold night, ma'am,' said the tinker, encouraged by her sudden and rather impulsive thaw. ' If we've got to wait for a cart, ma'am, I wouldn't mind setting down on a hall chair. The way I've puffed and blew on this here arrant of mercy, ma'am, has gone nigh to split my bellus. And running's but dry work, at best,' he added meditatively, as if enunciating a general proposition without personal application. But the doctrine was thrown away upon unsympathetic ears. ' You'll find the pump just round the corner,' said Mrs. Tallis, and slammed the door. The tinker did not go to the pump. But neither did he move towards the Vane Arms.

He waited on the doorstep, audibly stamping his feet and thrashing himself with his arms, to keep his blood going. After a long five minutes the door opened again to the limit of the chain. ' Are you still there ?' asked Mrs. Tallis. 'Here I be, ma'am,' said the tinker sulkily. 'Here be this here species of a travelling tradesman, wet out and dry in.' ' Then as the constable has arrived, and as I am going to the lodge to wait for the conveyance, there's no manner of occasion for you to hang about my door.' ' I know that, ma'am, without telling. That be what they call gratitude, that be — a chap gives you a chance of helping a fellow creature, and you send him to the pump to drink your health for it. Blessed if I ever ask anybody to be charitable again. Never mind, ma'am. A man that's said Amen as many times as I have gets to act up to it some how.

I'll look to my reward hereafter, and put up with a lift in the cart this go. I've left my workshop standiDg, ma'am, and being more trustful of human nature than you, ma'am, I didn't think to put up the chain.' ' Very well,' said Mrs. Tallis shortly, as she at last left the house, carrying a horn stable lantern to light her down the avenue. By its dim light she saw a shabby, slouching fellow in threadbare clothes, who, counting by the fallacious arithmetic of years, was apparently in the noontide of his days, but whose shambling gait, stooping shoulders, and cheeks wherein many a tumbler had blossomed, displayed little of the vigour of noon. It is true that a certain amount of personal unattractiveness might be pardoned on a night when even a Good Templar's nose must have looked swollen and blue.

But, from many significant signs, the state of the tinker's nose seemed due less to acute cold without than to chronic warmth within. For his part, he could not fail to be very differently impressed by the tall, upright figure now wrapped in a long blue cloak, and the hard, thin face sur rounded by a bonnet of a fashion as old as his own hat, than which nothing could be older. Though she had assumed only the title of housekeeper, he could not but feel himself in the presence of a personage of consequence — perhaps of the first consequence in a village that appeared to possess no regular aristocratic order. Her studied choice of words was calculated to impress an ex-parish clerk, and therefore a scholar : and as a travelled man of the world he must have known that the stinginess which the state of his throat betokened is the very strongest evidence of the very highest respectability.

She had made all her preparations for combining charity with the safety of the front door in the shortest time pos sible: but the quickest action, supposing the tinker's tale to be true, implied terrible delay. Happily the landlord of the Vane Arms had been able to send his cart promptly : it was waiting at the end of the long beech avenue, with a man ma smock frock to drive it, so that not a minute was wasted in listening for the sound of wheels. There are parishes, must the tinker have thought, where countesses are not obeyed with the alacrity that Mrs. Tallis the housekeeper seemed to command. He did not think how it is not every great lady, or small lady either, who would have left a warm fireside, late on a bitter winter's evening, and have ridden a couple of miles in a jolting cart to help an unknown wayfarer whose very existence was open to doubt, at the bidding of a strange tinker.

He did not try to reconcile her stingy denial of a drop of beer to himself with her readiness to give more than money's worth to another. Without diving into the depths of his mind, this much is certain, for the simple reason that his mind was furnished with more interesting food. The skirt of the housekeeper's cloak partly covered a basket : from the basket projected the neck of a bottle : and the tinker's mind's nose smelt brandy in the air. No doubt the man in the smock frock made all the haste in his power, but the plough-horse was leaving his stable behind him, and dragged on the heavy, springless cart as if he thought that the slower he went out the sooner he should be at home again. The road was good enough, being as straight as the crow's flight and as level as the canal that ran with it.

But it gave no shelter. It lay between two low-cropped hedges, dividing it from the towing-path on one side, and from an unbroken stretch of flat fields on the other, so that the weather had free play to do its worst, and was doing it. The east wind was luckily behind them, but the wind itself was hardly needed to add to the dreariness of that unspeakably cold, dark, and dreary ride. Mrs. Tallis showed no sign of impatience but silence, though she must have found a new meaning in the phrase ' As cold as charity.' The tinker, however, became fidgety, and began to hum through his nose the tune of the Old Hundredth Psalm, beating time with his feet among the straw. The wind, having a clear sweep over open fields, was silent in its strength : nor is the east wind given to bluster before stabbing.

The faintest moan by the wayside would therefore have been audible, and it could only have been Mrs. Tallis's thick and close bonnet that kept her from knowing what made the driver pull in the horse suddenly. The tinker started up, held the lantern above his head, and looked forward. ' Hold hard there !' he said. ' Don't run over my truck, whatever you do. Here we are, ma'am.' He shambled out. Mrs. Tallis took the lantern from him, and went straight to the roadside. Stooping down and adjusting her spectacles carefully, she saw a young girl lying under the hedge, just as the tinker had said, dressed in a common print gown not over-new or over-clean, and wearing a straw hat and thin shawl. She could not have been more than twenty years old, and was a complete stranger to Winbury. Indeed, she was obviously not a country girl at all, though to what class she belonged it was impossible to tell, except that she could not have been very high in the scale.

Her features were good, but their expression was hard to read, and her eyes were closed. For the rest, she was lying as calm and quiet as if the driving wind were the warm air of a pleasant bed-chamber, and the hard wayside a bed of down. Mrs. Tallis touched her lightly — not even her heart stirred. ' Quite cold,' said Mrs. Tallis after a pause. ' We're too late by a full hour — poor young thing ! Lift her up into the cart — gently, mind. What are you standing like a wooden image for?' she said to the carter, with extra sharpness to make up for her lapse into pity. ' Can't you move ?' ' I can move, ma'am. But it aren't what I call straight forward to hear a dead woman squeal. I'd send for the constable, ma'am, if I was you — 'twas all one as if that there wauled like a child.' ' What !' said the tinker. ' Then I'm ' But, whatever he was, he was not afraid of spirits ; perhaps, like another philosopher, he had seen and swallowed too many to be afraid, and he did not hesitate to stoop over the girl.

Mrs. Tallis also stooped down hurriedly and pulled aside the shawl. When she rose up, she held a tiny human creature in her arms — perhaps alive. Had not the child already been clothed, after a fashion, it was as if they had witnessed a visible transmigration of souls — as if the spirit of the mother had in the moment of death taken upon itself a new body, unaccountably refusing to part from a cold east wind and a hard highway that some solitary memory had made too beautiful to leave. It was only for a second that the carter or the tinker caught sight of the child. Mrs. Tallis wrapped it up closely in her cloak, seated herself in the cart again, and did her best to warm Milly's fellow-creature against her breast. Maybe it was the concentration of all her warmth there that made her face and her speech so chill. ' Do you want us,' asked the carter, relieved of his ghostly fears, ' to heave that there dead un up in the cart along of you?' ' Yes ; and be quick.

How would you like your own corpse to be left on the road out in the cold ? Poor young thing ! a baby not a week old if it's a day, and a married woman too. 1 wonder where the man is who put on that ring? I must investigate,' she went on, now fairly recovering the elegance of diction that plain-speaking pity had interrupted, ' and see if there's anything in her pockets that can inform. It's a gratification all the same that we've not been assisting a — how's this ? Why, I could take my oath and testament —wasn't there now, John Carter? Wasn't there a gold ring on her married finger this very minute ago?' ' Sure there were, missis. I seen't. ' ' Where is it now, then? And where's that man ?' And where was the brandy bottle ? Tinker and truck had seemingly been blown away by the wind, and the bottle and the ring after them.

Chapter II

' From hidden nooks the dust to sweep, To scrub from floor to beam : To guard the cheese from mice : to keep Grimalkin from the cream : Time by his foremost lock to clutch, Nor fail to bolt the door — A statesman may do half as much — A king can do no more.' ' Seven times three's eighteen, seven times four's twenty four, seven times five's twenty-three, seven times six is ' ' What's that ?' asked the schoolmaster, shortly and sharply, as if to make believe that he had not been in a brown study. ' What do you say is six times seven ?' ' Please, sir,' stammered the mathematical genius, in an injured tone, ' I aren't got to dodging, I aren't, sir. It's in seven times I be — I are.' ' Begin again, then. Seven times one — yes,' reckoned the schoolmaster to himself, as the sing-song drone began again, ' seven times one ! — it's the first step is hardest, I've read ; but, if the world is ruled by numbers, as Pythagoras taught, the first step is one times one — the easiest step of all.

Any way, well begun is half done ; and nobody that I ever read about, in Plutarch, or the Lives of the Poets, or anywhere, has begun half so well as I. At one-and-twenty to have mastered all human knowledge — to have all literature at my fingers' ends — to be already a man of mark as far as Eastington, and maybe farther, for aught I know — and to be a poet besides, is to begin where others have left off. I have only to put out my hand and lay hold of the prize. Only to escape from this wretched drudgery was wanting, and now, like a godsend, comes this eighty pounds a year — three times eight is twenty-four — two hundred and forty pounds in three short years. Why, in one year of freedom I shall have finished my Epic, my Wars of the Stars : ' " Far orbed Methratton, whom no weaker gaze Than Seraphs', eagle-eyed with love, hath seen : Razael, the lord of Wisdom, darkly known — The seven that sway the world and they that rule The four times seven mansions of the moon " ' ' Is twenty-eight, five times seven's twenty-nine ' Down came the schoolmaster's hand upon the ear of the unlucky urchin who had interrupted his reverie. ' Do you think because I haven't stopped your blunders I haven't heard them ?