Aileen Aroon, A Memoir Part 2

We were, if possible, kinder to Sable, or Aileen Aroon, as she was now called, than ever. She became the constant companion of all our walks and rambles, and developed more and more excellences every week.

Without being what might be called brilliant, Aileen was clever and most teachable. She never had been a trained or educated dog. Theodore Nero had, and whether he took pity on his wife's ignorance or not, I cannot say, but he taught her a very great deal she never knew anything about before.

Here is a proof that Aileen's reasoning powers were of no mean order.

When Master Nero wanted a t.i.t-bit he was in the habit of making a bow for it. The bow consisted in a graceful inclination or lowering of the chest and head between the outstretched fore-paws. Well, Aileen was not long in perceiving that the performing of this little ceremony always procured for her husband a morsel of something nice to eat, that "To boo, and to boo, and to boo," was the best of policies.

She therefore took to it without any tuition, and to see those "twa dogs," standing in front of me when a biscuit or two were on the board, and booing, and booing, and booing, was a sight to have made a dray-horse smile.

I am sure that Nero soon grew exceedingly fond of his new companion, and she of him in her quiet way.

I may state here parenthetically, that Master Nero had had a companion before Aileen. His previous experience of the married state, however, had not been a happy one. His wife, "Bessie" to name, had taken to habits of intemperance. She had been used to one gla.s.s of beer a day before she came to me, and it was thought it might injure her to stop it. If she had kept to this, it would not have mattered, but she used to run away in the evenings, and go to a public-house, where she would always find people willing to treat her for the mere curiosity of seeing a dog drink. When she came home she was not always so steady as she might be, but foolishly affectionate. She would sit down by me and insist upon shaking hands about fifteen times every minute, or she would annoy Nero by pawing him till he growled at her, and told her, or seemed to tell her, she ought to be ashamed of herself for being in the state she was. She was very fat, and after drinking beer used to take Nero's bed from him and sleep on her back snoring, much to his disgust. This dog was afterwards sold to Mr Montgomery, of Oxford, who stopped her allowance for some months, after which she would neither look at ale nor gin-and-water, of which latter she used to be pa.s.sionately fond.

Aileen and Nero used to be coupled together in the street with a short chain attached to their collars. But not always; they used to walk together jowl to jowl, whether they were coupled or not, and these two splendid black dogs were the wonder and admiration of all who beheld them. Whatever one did the other did, they worked in couple. When I gave my stick to Nero to carry, Aileen must have one end of it. When we went shopping they carried the stick thus between them, with a bag or basket slung between, and their steadiness could be depended on.

They used to spring into the river or into the sea from a boat both together, and both together bring out whatever was thrown to them.

Their immense heads above the water both in friendly juxta-position, were very pretty to look at.

They were in the habit of hunting rats or rabbits in couples, one going up one side of the hedge, the other along the other side.

I am sorry to say they used at times, for the mere fun of the thing, and out of no real spirit of ill-nature, to hunt horses as well as rabbits, one at one side of the horse the other at the other, and likewise bicyclists; this was great fun for the dogs, but the bicyclists looked at the matter from quite another point of view. But I never managed to break them altogether of these evil habits.

It has often seemed to me surprising how one dog will encourage another in doing mischief. A few dogs together will conceive and execute deeds of daring, that an animal by himself would never even dream of attempting.

As I travelled a good deal by train at that time, and always took my two dogs with me, it was more convenient to go into the guard's van with my pets, than take a first or second cla.s.s carriage by storm. I shall never forget being put one day with the two dogs into a large almost empty van. It was almost empty, but not quite. There was a ram tied up at the far end of it.

Now if this ram had chosen to behave himself, as a ram in respectable society ought to, it would have saved me a deal of trouble, and the ram some danger. But no sooner had the train started than the obstreperous brute began to bob his head and stamp his feet at me and my companions in the most ominous way.

Luckily the dogs were coupled; I could thus more easily command them.

But no sooner had the ram begun to stamp and bob, than both dogs commenced to growl, and wanted to fly straight at him. "Let us kill that insolent ram," said Nero, "who dares to stamp and nod at us."

"Yes," cried Aileen, "happy thought! let us kill him."

I was ten minutes in that van before the train pulled up, ten minutes during which I had to exercise all the tact of a great general in order to keep the peace. Had the ram, who was just as eager for the fray as the dogs, succeeded in breaking his fastenings, hostilities would have commenced instantly, and I would have been powerless.

By good luck the train stopped in time to prevent a catastrophe, and we got out, but for nearly a week, as a result of my struggle with the dogs, I ached all over and felt as limp as a stranded jelly-fish.

CHAPTER THREE.

CONTAINING THE STORY OF ONE OF AILEEN'S FRIENDS.

"The straw-thatched cottage, or the desert air, To him's a palace if his master's there."

Just eighteen months after the events mentioned in last chapter, as novelists say, things took a turn for the better, and we retired a little farther into the country into a larger house. A bigger house, though certainly not a mansion; but here are gardens and lawn and paddock, kennels for dogs, home for cats, and aviaries for birds, many a shady nook in which to hang a hammock in the summer months, and a garden wigwam, which makes a cool study even in hot weather, bedraped as it is in evergreens, and looks a cosy wee room in winter, when the fire is lighted and the curtains are drawn. "Ah! Gordon," dear old Frank used to say--and there was probably a grain of truth in the remark--"there is something about the quiet contented life you lead in your cottage, with its pleasant surroundings, that reminds me forcibly of the idyllic existence of your favourite bard, Horace, in his home by the banks of the Anio.

"'Beatus ille qui procul negotiis, Ut prisca gens mortalium, Patenta rure bubus exercet suis Solutus omni fenore, Neque excitatur cla.s.sico miles truci Neque horret iratum mare.'"

"True, Frank," I replied, "at sea I often thought I would dearly love a country life. My ambition--and I believe I represent quite a large majority of my cla.s.s--used to be, that one day I might be able to retire on a comfortable allowance--half-pay, for instance--take a house with a morsel of land, and keep a cow and a pony, and go in for rearing poultry, fruit, and all that sort of thing. Such was my dream.

"There were six of us in our mess in the saucy little 'Pen-gun.'

"It was hot out there on the East Coast of Africa, where we were stationed, and we did our best to make it hotter--for the dhows which we captured, at all events, because we burned them. Nearly all day, and every day, we were in chase, mostly of slave dhows, but sometimes of jolly three-masters.

"Away out in the broad channel of the blue Mozambique, with never a cloud in the sky, nor a ripple on the ocean's breast, tearing along at the rate of twelve knots an hour, with the chase two miles ahead, and happy in the thoughts of quite a haul of prize-money, it wasn't half bad fun, I can a.s.sure you. Then we could whistle 'A sailor's life is the life for me,' and feel the mariner all over.

"But, when the chase turned out to be no prize, but only a legitimate trader, when the night closed in dark and stormy, with a roaring wind and a chopping sea, then, it must be confessed, things did not look quite so much _couleur de rose_, dot a mariner's life so merry-o!

"On nights like these, when the fiddles were s.h.i.+pped across the table to keep things straight--for a lively la.s.s was the saucy 'Pen-gun,' and thought no more of breaking half-a-dozen wine-gla.s.ses, than she did of going stem first in under a wave she was too lazy to mount--when the fiddles were s.h.i.+pped, when we had wedged ourselves into all sorts of corners, so as we shouldn't slip about and fall, when the steward had brought the coffee and the biscuits called s.h.i.+ps', then it was our wont to sit and sip and talk and build our castles in the air.

"'It's all very fine,' one of us would say, 'to talk of the pleasures of a sailor's life, it's all very well in songs; but, if I could only get on sh.o.r.e now, on retired pay--'

"'Why, what would you do?'--a chorus.

"'Why, go in for the wine trade like a shot,' from the first speaker.

'That's the way to make money. Derogatory, is it? Well, I don't see it; I'd take to tea--'

"Chorus again: 'Oh! come, I say!'

"Some one, more seriously and thoughtfully: 'No; but wouldn't you like to be a farmer?' The s.h.i.+p kicks, a green sea breaks over her. We are used to it, but don't like it, even although we do take the cigars from our lips, as we complacently view the water pouring down the hatchway and rising around our chairs' legs.

"'A farmer, you know, somewhere in the midland counties; green fields and lowing kine; a nice stream, meandering--no not meandering, but--

"'Chattering over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, Bubbling into eddying bays.

Babbling o'er the pebbles; Winding about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a l.u.s.ty trout, And here and there a grayling.'

"'Yes,' from another fellow, 'and of course a comfortable house of solid English masonry, and hounds not very far off, so as one could cut away to a hunt whenever he liked.'

"'And of course b.a.l.l.s and parties, and a good dinner _every_ day.'

"'And picnics often, and the seaside in season, and shooting all the year round.'

"'And I'd go in for bees.'

"'Oh! yes, I think every fellow would go in for bees.'

"'And have a field of Scottish heather planted on purpose for them: fancy how nice that would look in summer!'

"'And I'd have a rose garden.'

"'Certainly; nothing could be done without a rose garden.'

"'Then one could go in for poultry, and grow one's own eggs.'

"'Hear the fellow!--fancy _growing_ eggs!'

"'Well, lay them, then--it's all the same. I'm not so green as to imagine eggs grow on trees.'

"'And think of the fruit one might have.'